Accidental War Mage

For a moment, I stood there in shock. Katya chewed and swallowed the piece of baklava and then playfully sucked on my fingers, not realizing the reason for my sudden inattention. Understandable, as she did not understand Turkish, and thus had not understood the quiet conversation being carried out in the anteroom of the coffeehouse that enclosed the private gardens we were sitting in.

“Katya,” I said, very quietly in Slavonic. “We need to get out of here quickly and quietly.”

She paused, pulling her head back from my hand, but not letting go. “Now?”

I nodded, pointing at the back wall as I took to my feet. Katya reached the back wall first, but waited for me, giving me a boost to help me reach the top of the wall and clamber over before following herself. As she did so, I heard bells ringing, distant shouting, and the rumble of steam engines being brought up to full – all sounds of alarm and concern. For half a heartbeat I thought I had caused the ruckus by leaping over the wall; then I realized that it was not in any way possible, as Mahmud had not yet returned to the garden to find me absent, and in any event the sounds of alarm were coming from the palace.

We had landed in an empty alleyway. After a short panicked jog, Katya told me that running would attract more attention, so we walked very briskly, as if we had considerable purpose but no fear of being detained. We did run very briefly to get out of the way of steam carts carrying soldiers twice, and once to get out of the way of a steam cart carrying a pair of mechs. Because we were going downhill, we found ourselves at the harbor considerably more quickly than I had expected.

As I climbed aboard the ship, I heard the rapid footsteps of a man running at a full sprint; turning, I saw Lieutenant Teushpa running by a group of marching soldiers. Since they did not stop him, I came to the conclusion that perhaps the soldiers were not concerned with some individual criminal or fugitive like the rope thief that Mahmud had mentioned, but rather an attack of some kind, perhaps a rebellion or some kind of intrigue. Nevertheless, having been wrongfully accused by Pasha Mustafa’s astrologer of arranging the theft of a magic rope, I felt I needed to set out as quickly as possible.

I told Katya as much and then asked her to get a full count of who, other than Lieutenant Teushpa, was still missing; she gave me an odd look, but I didn’t feel like explaining my reasoning. Instead, I waited for Lieutenant Teushpa to clamber up the rope ladder, giving him a hand and asking him much the same question.

He held up a hand, panting as he caught his breath, and then Katya came back, telling me that we were missing a total of four persons, including two lieutenants, an arquebusier, and a sailor.

“Felix said he told everyone to be back by sunset,” Katya said. “It’s not like Lieutenant Teushpa to be late.”

Lieutenant Teushpa ignored the insult. As he finished catching his breath, he made a few dramatic gestures. Katya stepped back.

“Correction, one lieutenant is not back yet,” Katya said.

“Ragnar,” the Cimmerian said. “I know. I’d like to wait for him, but we can’t, we really can’t. Warm up the rowing-engine and make ready to cast off as quickly as we can. He’s the one they’re looking for. I’m sorry, I caught up to him in the sultan’s harem briefly, but we got separated again.”

For a moment, I felt offended that, having been recently promoted to lieutenant, my Cimmerian cavalry officer now felt he was ready to give me orders; then his last sentence clicked into place. I looked at his haggard face, and looked at the mechs lining the harbor. Some bore cannons; others, long thin menacing tubes attached to barrels, not structurally sound enough to be guns. Between the astrologer’s continued persecution of me and my junior officers having thoroughly offended local sensibilities, I could not avoid agreeing with the insubordinate lieutenant.

“We’re leaving, with or without Ragnar,” I said. “Vitold, make ready the rowing-engine. Teushpa, you have the helm. Kransky, try not to make it obvious, but make ready to return fire if we find ourselves in a firefight. Felix, I want us untied from the dock without it seeming obvious.”

Teushpa paused. “Someone else should take the helm, sir, I have an idea about how to get us untied without making it obvious.”

I gave him a look. “Very well. I’ll take the helm.” We could talk about insubordination later; in the heat of the moment, though, I decided to trust that he had a good idea and walked back to the helm. Katya was talking with the other sharpshooters, pointing at the tops; in a few minutes, she would be scurrying up to the crow’s nest, and I would be alone.

Then I heard a splash, a wave of dark brown hair emerging from the water. “What is going on?” It was one of the mermaids; I told her that we found ourselves needing to depart swiftly, and that Ragnar, unfortunately, might not make it.

The mermaid smiled toothily, then ducked down below the water, repeating the news I had given, with the addition of a few choice words about how a certain mermaid could get rid of the stupid-looking blonde color on her hair. The blonde mermaid poked her head out of the water at the same time that we set into motion; sadly, I still did not see Ragnar anywhere. Katya had a better vantage point and a spyglass, and made no signal.

“Ragnar is in trouble?” The blonde mermaid bobbed in the water as she swam after us.

“Yes,” I called down. “He has gotten himself into trouble, unfortunately, and we need to leave. He’s somewhere in the city.”

One of the mechs fired its cannon, the ball splashing some ten yards behind the mermaid, who squeaked with alarm. I wasn’t sure if the miss was the result of bad aim or intended as a warning shot, but a sidewheeler was turning in our direction, picking up speed to try to head us off.

“You can’t abandon Ragnar!” The blonde mermaid sounded upset. “If he’s in trouble, you have to save him.”

My heart sank in my chest as I beckoned Felix over to the helm. I needed to try to shield the ship with my magic. “Sometimes, you can’t save everyone,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can save him. We’ll be lucky if we survive.”

Felix jogged over.

“I don’t know what got into my cousin,” Felix said. “He’s been moping and writing poetry… I thought the worst case would be that he got drunk and someone needed to carry him back to the ship again. Did he really break into the sultan’s harem?”

“You know as much as I do, at this point,” I said. “I’m sorry, I really am. Maybe he’ll escape the city by foot.” I braced my hands on the railing, getting ready to try to shield the ship; the mechs began to fire cannons one at a time, and turquoise light flared under my hands, but I felt nothing. Then I saw the splashes of the shot, landing deeper in the water, and thought to look up.

There, up in the sky—a carpet with a hole punched in its middle, an intrepid Swedish lieutenant clinging to the fringes as it flew over the ship from front to back. As it passed over the crow’s nest, it flipped sideways, beginning to spiral out of control, and a large basket fell off, dropping down and landing with a firm thud on our deck.

“Ragnar!” I shouted, watching helplessly as the carpet spiraled away, losing altitude rapidly as it flew south into the open sea, plunging downwards. “That’s Ragnar,” I shouted down at the distraught mermaid swimming in our wake as the carpet hit the water. There was a great splash, and when the water cleared, Ragnar and the carpet were gone; the blonde mermaid leapt all the way out of the water, reversing her course.

Then I felt a great shock pass through my body, up from the railing, as turquoise light flared. “Faster!” I shouted down. “Can we go any faster?”

There was a rumble as Fyodor’s team and the steam-knights returned fire, some shooting at the mechs on the dock and some shooting at the sidewheeler slowly gaining on us. In the distance, I could see four more sidewheelers moving into motion. I heard a screaming baby and a shouting woman, and the steady breeze I had felt from our passage began to still. “Sails! We will have wind soon enough!”

There was a shot from the sidewheeler behind us, and I fell to my knees, suddenly tired, my hands slipping from the railing. I shook my head, staggering forward as the wind picked up, and the sidewheeler began to fall behind. Several minutes passed, and the sidewheeler’s stern bombard fired again; I gripped the railing, thin wisps of turquoise light wrapping my fingers before flickering out. The shell splashed down fifty yards short, producing a great splash that momentarily obscured my view of the warship.

I sighed. I could not stop any more shots from the bombard. Was there anything else I could do? I wobbled my way forward, finding the basket sliding around on deck in the rough seas. The top of the basket had blown off in the wind somewhere; inside the basket was a coiled rope. I had a vague idea that perhaps the rope would be useful to the sailors, and in any event the basket sliding around on deck was a hazard, so I grabbed it, securing it between my knees as I began to pull the rope out, coiling it.

As I did so, I found that the rope had a curious amount of resistance to being pulled, as if a great weight was attached to the end; then two pale limbs emerged from the basket, clinging to the rope along with a blonde Circassian woman, who stepped unsteadily onto the deck with a surprised and delighted expression, reducing the amount that I had to lift by her own weight. A brunette Circassian was next, with a sour look on her face; when she greeted her blonde countrywoman, I recognized their voices from the slave market.

Third was a close-lipped auburn-haired woman, whose eyes promised thunder and turned away from mine; fourth was a woman with black hair and an expression that lay somewhere between amused and bemused. And that was the end of the rope; I peered into the bottom of the basket curiously for a long moment before one of the women addressed me.

“I am the youngest sister of Sultan Allaedin,” the auburn-haired woman said, by way of an introduction, bright moonlight gleaming off her richly-colored hair for a moment before the gathering clouds blocked the moon. “If you know what is good for you, you will turn the ship about at once.”

I opened my mouth, pausing for a moment as I considered how to frame my rebuttal to this argument; then there was a very loud crunch as the next bombard shot smashed into the side of the ship at an angle.