Accidental War Mage

When we reached the road that paralleled the tracks of the railroad from Oenipons into the pass, imperial soldiers stopped us, their captain desiring some discussion with me and my officers while his men searched our wagons and carts. He had orders to give us, he told us; notwithstanding our lack of allegiance to Emperor Sigismund II, we were expected to obey his commands to the letter.

His first order was that we were to keep clear of the tracks as much as possible. It was built for trains, not wagons and carts, and it needed to stay clear for trains. We should not walk on them either If we stood in the way of the trains, we should surely die, either as a result of being hit by said trains or by firing squad charged with executing those guilty of interfering with imperial transit. If we damaged the tracks, the latter fate would also find us. Thus, we were to stay off the tracks.

As the Gothic captain discussed all the ways in which we were forbidden to interact with the tracks, his lieutenant silently mouthed along, eyes glazed with boredom. Then the lieutenant shut his mouth and came to attention, helping draw my attention to the fact that the captain had now changed subjects. I learned that Princess Anna was missing, perhaps kidnapped by inimical forces. If we had seen anything that might give a clue – any suspicious activity, riders in the night, or even just a truly remarkably beautiful woman dressed in peasant clothes and out of place – we should speak of it.

At that moment, Banneret Teushpa suddenly remembered that he needed to tend to the engine of the self-propelled charcoal kiln, excusing himself. He had not previously shown mechanical interest, but I would hardly object to the self-proclaimed wizard applying his decidedly nonmagical capabilities toward a more useful endeavor than the occasional sleight of hand tricks that he practiced to entertain his fellow soldiers. Especially not when the imperial captain required my full attention.

Not that I could help the Gothic captain solve the mystery of the missing princess; the only rider in the night that had passed our way was a homely woman, clearly not the elusive Princess Anna – not that I had seen Princess Anna personally, only a portrait of her. I paused. I had seen a life-sized portrait of her recently and had been told it was an exceptionally good likeness. Perhaps I could promise some assistance.

“I have not seen any sign of Princess Anna or of any possible kidnappers, but I do know what she looks like from her portrait, so I will take care to keep my eyes open,” I said. “Her face is distinctive enough that I’m sure I could recognize it daubed with an inch of mud from a mile away, if she but turns to glance in my direction.”

The imperial captain snorted. “I’m not one of your noble employers to be impressed with wild boasts,” he said. “No man can recognize a face from a mile away.”

I felt unreasonably insulted but swallowed my pride. “Of course not,” I lied, wincing inwardly. Likely the officer was a shortsighted man who blithely assumed all other men were likewise shortsighted to the point of being half-blind. Someone else could correct his misapprehensions. “I was just excited. Still, if I see her, I will send word at once.”

The officer waved me off; thus dismissed, I waited while the imperial soldiers finished checking each wagon and cart. Along the way, they asked questions of most of my men. They did not ask questions of either of our civilians, though; the weather-witch glowered too fiercely as she nursed her baby and the pockmarked woman was completely beneath their notice as she sat next to Banneret Teushpa on the self-propelled charcoal kiln.

They looked right past the plain-looking woman as if she wasn’t there – I have seen sometimes that men simply ignore homely women in such a way, pretending they aren’t even there, and I felt sad for her at that moment. Soon enough, the imperial soldiers finished their search and we were on our way.

Though there was some mud, it was nothing compared to the deep morass I had experienced every spring in Ruthenia. Additionally, the Roman road was well-kept even if the train was far faster and more efficient. Sometimes trains break down; but, also, the limited capacity of the trains made tickets too expensive for many travelers. The Rhaetian Pass was too much of a major route for trade and travel and too close to the imperial capital to be neglected.

It took a full week before Drusipons came into sight, a city nestled among the mountains. Even if it was a good road as such go, we were moving heavy equipment through the mountains and had not spent much time marching recently; many of us were not in good condition for such exercise. We set camp outside of Drusipons and I announced to the men that they could each take a day’s leave in four separate shifts as we rested, repaired, and resupplied.

The city was abuzz; by imperial orders, the whole city had just been searched from house to house over the course of several days, the entire militia called up for that purpose. The first train to leave Oenipons the morning of the princess’s disappearance stopped in Drusipons before the second train had caught up to it, and it had been thought the princess might have been hidden in the city somewhere.

One lurid rumor Vitold brought back from a bakery along with a sack of morale-boosting pastries suggested that Princess Anna, rather than being kidnapped, had thrown a jealous fit and taken a boat downriver to Avaria to challenge Princess Marie to a magical duel for the hand of King Janos. It was a ridiculous rumor – I had never heard of princesses dueling over a man’s hand – but I could not dismiss it out of hand. She had been brought up to be Queen of Avaria, and the shattering of childhood dreams can drive people to very unreasonable actions.

The next morning, the pockmarked woman tried to convince me that as her new bodyguard, I should be fitted into the armor she had brought. It accounted for half of the luggage she had strapped onto the back of an anonymous-looking donkey and bore the heraldry. It was of mage-tempered Corsican brass and close-fitting; unlike the mech-sized wizard armor I had built out of a steam suit, the legs and arms were true-fitted, meant to be the same length as the wearer’s limbs, gauntlets over their actual hands and boots over their actual feet. It would, she asserted, be suitable for escorting her into buildings, aboard ships, into very small boats, and over light-duty footbridges that would collapse under the weight of a mech.

For my part, I hadn’t crossed any such flimsy footbridges over anything worse than a stream I could walk through, and had no need for small boats, and I told her as much. By contrast, while my existing armor was large, it was also very well protected, with over ten times the sheer mass of armor. In addition to the superior protection provided by my existing armor’s thick steel plates, the flux engine powered the suit’s lightning-fused actuators with far more strength than I personally had.

Nor did the suit’s expensive construction do it any favors. Corsican brass was praised for its use as a metal for hull cladding, resistant to corrosion and fouling – it was not known for its strength and hardness, and it was extremely difficult to get in quantity unless you were a shipwright working for Emperor Leon’s navy. In spite of its brilliant gold color and the cachet generated by its rarity, mage-tempered Corsican brass was consequentially barely as strong as mundanely-tempered steel. And that was without considering the additional protection I could gain by powering the protective magics of my wizard armor!

“First, this is also wizard armor,” she told me, turning the breastplate upside-down and showing me the orichalcum-inlaid runes on the back. “The strength of the protective enchantments is limited only by your own power. These are state of the art.”

“I see,” I said. The runes on the back of the breastplate were familiar.

She continued. “Even if you were to need the extra protection, you could not wear it where we are going. In Venice, the roads are canals and much of the city consists of buildings placed directly on the water. They use very small boats to get around the city.”

This was the first time the name of Venice had passed her lips as her intended destination. I raised a finger, wanting to interrupt with more questions about my erstwhile employer’s plans.

She grabbed my arm and continued. “I have faith in the strength of your arms without any flux engine.” She squeezed my bicep, a smile quirking her lips under her crooked nose. “But what is most important is that you must be presentable and present. Ideally, I would have brought a tabard or cape for you to wear over the armor, too, something fashionable, but I barely had room in my bags for clothes of my own.”

I may, at that point, have mentioned that Prince-Bishop Raphael had provided us with a bolt of cerulean fabric as part of our payment, hoping that perhaps the prospect of hiring a tailor to make her a dress of the color that was the latest rage in fashion would distract her from her project of fitting me into more fashionable armor. This did not shift her focus in the slightest.

As for the fitting of the armor, the procedure was simple but slow. First, we would attempt to put the piece on and see in what ways it fit me ill. (Mostly, I was longer of limb.) Second, I would lie down on a flat surface, generally an empty cart, and touch the piece of armor. Third, she would hold one hand on the piece of armor and the other slowly kneading the corresponding part of my flesh that it was supposed to be better fitted to, reciting Latin poetry with me until I was bored enough to nod off momentarily. Then the woman would pinch me awake once the armor was done.

Katya and Johann both watched us very closely during this process, the former with a sour frown and the latter with a look of utter fascination.

When I asked Johann how massaging my leg helped reshape the metal of the leg armor, he said he didn’t see how it could and then paused expectantly, quill in hand, as if he were the one who had asked a question of me.

Katya, that night, asked me the same question, albeit in a rather different tone. I gave her much the same answer at first before hastening to add that I would rather it had been Katya’s hand rubbing my leg.

After three days of the fitting process, the pockmarked woman had a tailor fetched from the city to work on a cerulean cape and matching pennants to accent my newly fitted Corsican brass wizard armor, using up most of the cloth Prince-Bishop Raphael had given us. Then we set off down the road to Tridentum, again traveling parallel to the railroad.