Accidental War Mage

Excerpted from Ragnar Rimhamar, Gentleman Adventurer

The thief was babbling his fool head off in an unintelligible Gothic dialect. What sort, I don’t know – his Latin had been hard enough to understand – but Mikolai seemed to know, and after addressing it first in Latin and then what I thought was probably a Ruthenian dialect (I couldn’t make it out very well) he started talking to it in more or less the same language.

As much, that is, as one could tell, the high-pitched and high-paced jabbering was nothing like the deep, harsh, and measured words that Mikolai uttered. I couldn’t get a clear look at what was going on between them, on account of the darkness; but then I saw a flare of white-ish light, and when I poked my head in, the man’s hand was glued fast to the hammer of the barrow-wight king, little rivulets of ice creeping up his arm.

Had the thief tried to snatch the artifact from him?

Mikolai said something that left the thief looking pleadingly at the heated tongs that Corporal Banks was handling.

“I think you can put those away now,” I whispered to her.

She startled, dropping the tongs into the dirt, where they hissed.

“Shit! You startled me!” She paused and looked at me. “I mean, shit, sir?”

I waved aside the formality. I could forgive the way her obvious lust for me left her fumbling for the right thing to say; professionally, sleeping with one of the enlisted soldiers in my cousin’s command seemed like a bad idea, though on a personal level, her interest was flattering.

“What do you think they’re saying?” I said.

I was keeping it down to a whisper so that my superior officer the colonel wouldn’t take notice. Colonel. A pretty pretentious rank for a mercenary who commanded a short battalion rather than a full regiment, but I wasn’t going to question it. The man was downright terrifying, one of those war mages who was worth a battalion by himself, and I think his original rank in the Golden Empire was something close to equivalent to that anyway.

“I don’t know. Sir.” She whispered back, putting special emphasis on the last word.

I watched, fascinated, as Mikolai released his spell on the thief’s arm and pronounced him part of the company.

“They’re like insane children,” Corporal Banks muttered under her breath.

Mikolai pointed at me, addressing me in his archaic Norse speech.

“Lieutenant Ragnar Rimehammer, attendest thou me,” he said. “It is fit that this man be into thy father’s eldest son’s brother’s second son’s company’s mechanic-platoon inducted as a machinist of meanest rank. His records ought be filled by his hand or by discussion with him.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” I tossed a casual salute.

He beckoned me closer, holding out the hammer. “I grant unto thee this hammer as a boon. It fits thy name as a hammer rimed.”

Hesitantly, I grasped the enchanted weapon. Thunder rolled in the distance, and chills ran down my spine. I could feel the magic flaring out from it, freezing the rain around me as it fell, little pellets of ice bouncing off my boots.

“Thank you, sir!” I clicked my heels.

“Also, I must tell thee this; this man hath confessed to theft of one pair pistols; and also of an elemental cage; and that is but the times that he was caught. His intent was similar upon his first approach to thy tents.”

Mikolai gave me a look I could not interpret immediately; I decided after a minute that it had been an apologetic one, but that I had never seen him looking apologetic before. I passed the job of bringing the bad news to my cousin to Corporal Banks, who did not appreciate being exiled from my company, and cursed out loud as she realized hers was the short squad of mechanics and probably would be assigned the extra pair of hands, complete with sticky fingers attached.

For myself, I had a magical hammer to examine. I had never owned a warhammer before; the sidearms used in my cousin’s unit were either swords or axes, the latter having considerably more use as a tool in the field but the former having a bit of prestige. It was longer in the haft than a hatchet – not quite a two-handed maul. In spite of its length and weight, it swung surprisingly easily in my hands. The long grip, I realized, was one meant to accommodate a user who slid his hand to different positions, closer and further from the head; you could fit two hands on the grip at once for power, or a single hand for longer reach.

Snowflakes swirled around the hammer in unnatural eddies, illuminated by a silvery glow as they orbited the enchanted artifact. A truly priceless artifact that, for reasons I could not fathom, had been simply given to me. Mikolai had offered the justification of whimsy fueled by the coincidence of my name with the tracery of frost on the hammer’s head, but I felt sure there was some deeper purpose behind it. Thoughts of Corporal Banks’s problems and sticky-fingered Goths left my mind as I tried to grasp the implications. I resolved to speak with my cousin about it; perhaps he would better understand what it meant.

I went to sleep a happy man.