Accidental War Mage

It had been easy enough to detour around Drusipons with the bulk of my wagons and supplies as it lay nestled in a river confluence to one side of the old Roman road. Tridentum, by contrast, sprawled to both sides of the old Roman road, fresh buildings and bustling commercial activity displaying the wealth of the city. It was the southernmost tip of the rail line from the imperial capital and the main point of transfer of cargo between the rail line and riverine transport on the Adige. The surrounding mountains also hosted rich veins of silver and the southernmost imperial mint, producing coin of good purity.

I am not sure which factor contributed more greatly to the city’s wealth; but either way, I needed to march an army directly through the town in order to pass through.

While a small group of soldiers without heavy equipment might pass into a bustling city with little notice, Raven’s Battalion was not small and had substantial heavy equipment in the form of steam knights, mechs that looked like more steam knights, artillery, and the necessary logistical supplies to support both artillery and machinery. I had hoped that my new employer would ease the way using her connections as the daughter of an important imperial mage, but after helping me don my fashionable (if questionably useful) brass wizard armor she said she would stay behind.

She insisted that she needed to keep Banneret Teushpa company on the self-propelled charcoal kiln. Perhaps she was fond of being entertained by sleight-of-hand tricks; perhaps she was feeling shy about her appearance being remarked upon by strangers in a city where she wasn’t known. After a brief and evasive discussion in which she made it clear that no explanation would be offered for her behavior, I gave up.

Nor was Quentin available to assist in negotiations; he had been left behind in Oenipons in the care of (or rather, to take care of) a certain highly eligible landgravine to whom he had addressed a variety of flattering poems and promises. The particularly clever part was that those poems and promises had been sent in my name with my only partially witting assent, a bit of cleverness that made me all the more certain that Quentin was an effective negotiator even as it irked me.

This far south, the Swedes were out of their linguistic element; the local Gothic dialect was the next best thing to incomprehensible for them, and the main trade language in the area was Venetian. I picked Johann and Georg (who had good Latin to speak with educated locals) and our chief surgeon, who spoke Venetian natively. Katya and Yuri also accompanied me. Four men, two women, and a dog, none with anything more offensive than a pistol or sword, seemed to be the limit of what the skeptical guards were willing to allow through the walls without special permission.

Since we needed to enter in order to obtain special permission, I left it at that. Nominally, Tridentum along with the surrounding lands were governed by a prince-bishop, much like Batavis; however, while the prince-bishop’s cathedral loomed over the city, most day-to-day authority within the city rested within the hands of a mayor elected by a council of prominent citizens. I expected that I would probably need to speak with several different people in order to arrange passage.

Vitold slipped through unnoticed a few dozen paces behind me, walking close behind a cabbage cart as if he was a good friend of the farmer.

It was at the train station that I met with local authorities. The train station was not the location I had in mind for meeting with the local authorities, so I should explain how that came to be before discussing the results of that meeting.

While we walked into town, a train arrived from Oenipons on its regular schedule. Among the passengers of that train were Pasha Mustafa and his entourage. The astrologer pointed me out with considerable excitement and consternation, and then the pasha went to a cluster of bored city guards.

“Seize that man in the golden armor,” Pasha Mustafa told the guards. “He is guilty of lese majeste. It is he who was responsible for the scurrilous rumors that caused the princess to flee the capital!”

The city guards were at first reluctant to do the bidding of a man who was clearly a foreign dignitary, but after verifying the importance of the personage making the request of them, they decided to approach. Not wanting to provoke a violent incident, I handed my sword to Katya, telling her and Yuri to stand down while I presented myself to the uncertain guards. I proclaimed my innocence; the pasha said he had proof from his astrologer and that my sins were written in the stars.

“At least one of Landgravine Wilhemina von Geschwendtberg’s maids knew of such a rumor not three days after the first winter court.” The rotund and well-dressed pasha pointed up at me. “This man was none other than the landgravine’s escort to the first winter court.”

“Yes, I was,” I said. “And their imperial majesties discussed the subject that very day, though I didn’t hear them come to a final decision.”

“They discussed the matter privately!” Pasha Mustafa’s face grew red. “See? This man spied on the imperial privy council itself! I knew he was untrustworthy the moment my astrologer examined his aura!”

“I didn’t say anything to the landgravine or her maid about it!” I said hotly. Only Quentin and Georg, I almost said, and then stopped myself. Quentin, who wrote numerous letters in my name to the landgravine, and who carried most of them there himself. Could I have truly been the one to start the rumor?

The emperor and empress had been whispering quietly, and the regular attendees of the court were clearly used to tuning out what they heard whispered – if they even heard it clearly at all. I had barely heard it, after all, and my mother had always told me I had keen ears. Perhaps that had not been idle flattery. With a sinking sensation, I started to suspect that I truly was guilty. And if I was guilty, did that mean that the astrologer – the man who had spouted complete nonsense about Jupiter – really could perform magical divination by watching the stars and planets?

It troubled me to think that my conversation with Quentin and Georg could have shifted a star or planet in the sky. True, the stars were innumerable, but they were clearly greatly distant, bright pinpricks occluded by the closer round discs of the planets – which, like the moon, had a brighter and darker part. The heavens moved like clockwork. Were my actions then predestined? Had a star in the sky caused me to tell Quentin that Princess Anna might be sent to marry Sultan Allaedin?

While I considered these philosophical matters and reflected on what I had seen in the last several clear starry nights, the city guardsmen must have continued walking with my armored arms held in theirs, because I suddenly realized that they were locking the door to an iron-barred cage set on an elevated platform by the town square. There was an unfortunate individual already locked in a set of stocks; evidently, though, I merited more special treatment.

I was still wearing my wizard armor, and the bars were merely cold iron; I could perhaps pry them out of place, if it came to that. For now, though, I would claim innocence and wait patiently. I had not spied on any privy council, and my private report of the emperor and empress’s comments on the possibility of Princess Anna’s marriage did not seem like it qualified as an act of lese majeste. I had not been speaking disrespectfully, simply honestly presenting what I had heard. I waited, watched, and listened.

Barges came and left; so did another train. As the sun set, one last barge arrived, pulled upstream by a small boat. It carried a marble pedestal with some kind of statue wrapped in cloth, the crew of boatmen accompanied by a nervous-looking young man wearing an apron and carrying a sack full of tools. An artist, I surmised, as he tried to get the boatmen to unload the statue, invoking the name of the town’s mayor; but it was late and the young artist did not have any extra money to offer to the boatmen. The barge was left anchored close to the town square.

Night fell, the weather growing chill, and I grew hungry. Hours passed, and the town grew quiet. Then a figure approached my cell. Vitold. Metal clinked in his hands.

“Shh,” he whispered as I stood up. “I’m getting you out of here. Hang on.”

“But if I leave, how will I prove my innocence?” I whispered back.

“Think, Mikolai, we’re at the edge of the Gothic Empire. It doesn’t matter what they have you in here for, we leave town and they won’t be able to do anything,” he whispered back. “Now shut up and let me focus.”

I sighed. Perhaps Vitold was right, I thought to myself as a thick fog started to roll across the town square. Wait – shouldn’t the fog hug the river? It was sweeping in from the town to the river. The door to my cell popped open, and I hesitated. “What’s with the fog?” I asked.

Vitold looked over his shoulder. “I told them to wait until we got back,” he said, an edge of complaint to his voice. “I guess they got impatient. What was this all about, anyway?”

I could hear the creak of wheels and the tread of boots inside the fog. A baby wailed, and the fog momentarily swirled in place before resuming its advance. “The pasha thinks I’m responsible for Princess Anna’s disappearance,” I said, shaking my head. “I hope that notion doesn’t spread.”

“Oh. Yeah, we don’t want that getting put about,” Vitold said. “How did he figure it out?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “His astrologer somehow divined the source of a rumor. Supposedly.”

Vitold’s face twisted in confusion. “How could he figure out where Princess Anna was from a rumor?”

“I don’t think he knows where Princess Anna is,” I said. After all, I didn’t know where Princess Anna was. I did, however, know where my army was – in the middle of a city they didn’t have permission to enter – and I also knew where a mostly-empty barge was. At my insistence, we offloaded the statue, which turned out to be a statue of a man holding a trident with a gilded head carved delicately out of marble.

I was amazed that the delicate marble trident did not break. No wonder the artist had been nervous; one nasty bump on the river and his statue would have been ruined. It was only later, as we were drifting downstream, that I found the other trident lying under a pile of canvas – a real one, also with a gilded head, likely the model for the marble version. While I didn’t know the artist’s intentions in bringing a second trident, I guessed that he had also been worried about the marble trident breaking in transit.