Accidental War Mage

A warm spell and a bout of rain left us wading through mud for three days. Those who had griped about the constant cold now complained instead about the constant wet and were joined by the more winter-hardy members of our company. The would-be thief settled uneasily into our company under the wary supervision of the Rimehammer cousins.

The older of the two was particularly annoyed. That first rainy afternoon, Felix said more words to me than I’d heard out of him since we’d first met, and every one of them was a word of complaint related to his newest subordinate. After the sixth or seventh time that the captain pointed out a convenient spot to bury a body, I decided to have a little conversation with the man.

He was struggling to keep up, and fallen a bit behind; he was nearly at the back of the column. I found him letting his pet pigeon out of its cage for some air while he took a short break from wrangling his cart through the churned mud the rest of the army had left behind. It was a very tame bird, not the least bit alarmed about being handled, and the man released it without a care in the world, seeming to fully trust that it would come back.

In spite of that apparent trust, it did wear a little collar with a tube attached; and there was a little scrap of paper in the tube. I heard it rustle once as the pigeon’s wings beat, unrolling just a little bit to fill the tube more completely; a faint but clear note among the music of the pigeon’s wingbeats, heartbeats, and his crooning about how much he liked to fly. (Pigeons, as you may recall, are not noted for their cleverness or much of a vocabulary for expressing themselves. This one was some variety of overly domesticated pigeon; very pretty, but with half of what little brain pigeons normally had lost to inbreeding.)

Presumably, the paper named the bird’s owner and gave the address of one of his more sedentary friends or relatives to bring the bird to in the event it managed to get itself lost. The bird seemed intent on trying not to get lost – it started jabbering about making sure it knew which way to go home before it was even out of sight. (How stupid does a bird have to be to need to remind itself which way back to the person who feeds it before it’s even gotten out of sight? Wild birds usually have a little more sense, even pigeons.) I cleared my throat, and the man jumped in surprise, both of his feet sucking nearly clear of the mud at once.

The sudden movement brought Yuri’s attention back to the man – he had been watching the bird fly off with the focus of a hungry predator watching a tasty feathered snack. Yuri growled at the man. I patted Yuri on the head and told him to shush, then addressed the man.

“Given the dislike the captain has taken to you,” I said, “I shouldn’t be surprised if you change your mind about working with us. I won’t hold it against you if you decide to part ways with us with the next town you reach, but we won’t force you out of the company.”

I paused, remembering the terms on which he had left his last several employers, and added a caveat.

“Well, unless you give us a reason to do so. You do understand that I will not tolerate theft any more than Captain Rimehammer will?”

The man told me that he could deal with being thought of as a kleptomaniac. He deserved it, even, it would be penance of a sort for his past sins. He cared about earning the captain’s good opinion and pledged to be a diligent worker.

“I appreciate your positive attitude. Just remember, you have proven yourself no good at thieving. Stick to being a mechanic and you’ll make out much better in the long haul.” I picked my way forwards through the column, back towards the front, carefully avoiding the deeper ruts and holes. Difficult to believe that this had all been frozen solid just the day before. The speed with which the ground had thawed was an affront to my northern-bred weather senses; I had been aware of the need for haste, but it seemed unnatural to have ground frozen solid enough for a mech to walk over it one day, and then simply mud the next day, with not even a crust of frozen ground; no patches of ice, no piles of snow, nothing but the wet rain, mud, and the smell.

The smell was the worst part. I had feared mud. I had considered mud. I had not realized that the mud of foreign lands would smell so bad. Perhaps it was a matter of acclimation – I was used to the scent of Ruthenian mud, and this mud smelled subtly different. Yuri’s fur was caked with it after taking several spills. The weight of my boots doubled from their extra layer of clinging mud; I left them outside my tent that night, only to find them full of water in the morning, and nearly ruined.

On the second and third days, we took everything that could walk under power out of the carts, including my armor, and pressed forward burning peat. I had to take point to find solid ground, and we had to go single file if we didn’t want to get any heavy machinery stuck in the mud. It was an exhausting ordeal, but we did not lose any machines or men to the mud that way.

We did lose one pet bird, though: The pet pigeon never returned. I assumed this was the result of a wild bird of prey having noticed the dumb domestic bird and having decided that it looked appetizing.

It was still raining lightly when we made our way onto solid ground the morning of the third day of warm weather. Morale was low. Fuel was low. Many of the soldiers had picked up a ragged wheezing cough. Everybody was bone tired; even the cavalrymen up on their horses were spattered with mud from head to toe. Only those of us inside steam suits had been spared mud-soaked skin; in our cases, the mud was simply all over our armor. I made the executive decision to clear out a section of trees, build fires, and set up camp while there was plenty of daylight left; the people, horses, and machines of our little army needed a break.

I was strongly considering spending another couple of days camped there, though I didn’t want to promise that until the scouts had gotten a good look around.

“Sir, the trees bleed when we try to cut them.” It was one of the soldiers detailed to clear trees.

I had been about to take my armor off, but decided I couldn’t spare the time. I hurried over. I saw no blood anywhere; several trees were partway hacked through. Sap oozed from the edges of some of the cuts. I allowed that a color-blind man in the grip of superstitious frenzy might have managed to mistake it for blood.

“See the blood, sir?” The soldier pleaded with me hopefully.

Several squads of soldiers stood around nervously, axes in hand, but not chopping. They looked wet, miserable, and frightened.

“No,” I said. “Sap, yes, but no blood.” I held out my hand for an axe; one of the soldiers handed me theirs, and I chopped away. The soldiers flinched and cringed.

“See? Just ordinary sap.”

“And the screaming, sir?” The soldier was holding his fingers in his ears.

I gave him a hard look. Then I gave the tree a hard look. It was chopped halfway through. I pulled back my armored fist and slammed hard, steam power lending my shove extra force. The tree cracked and fell.

“Does that sound like a scream to you?” I glared fiercely at the soldier.

“Sir! No, sir!” The soldier snapped off a frightened salute.

The soldier busied himself, as did the other troops. A weedy-looking fellow in a white cloak grimaced in frustration, shaking his head, and then vanished as he stepped behind a boulder. Too late, I realized that he was not one of my men; which explained the fact that he was idling rather than helping set up camp.

I walked over and looked more closely at the boulder. There was something unnatural about the man’s disappearance. I couldn’t see any signs of a cave that he might have vanished into, nor any tracks at all. The woods had a reputation for playing host to witches and ogres and all sorts of wild things. It dawned on me that he might have been a local playing some kind of trick on my men, trying to drive us away from his home.

However, he hadn’t looked like a merry prankster out for a laugh. He had looked deathly serious. I had the feeling he would be back; and back with something more substantial in hand than phantasms with which to frighten superstitious soldiers. So, as the scouts began to report back in and say they found no signs of any hostiles in the area, I ordered double watches and the construction of barricades and cleared fire lanes.

The men grumbled, but these woods had a terrifying reputation, and the strict reporting of the chain of command meant that I could refer vaguely to “reports” with only the cavalry lieutenant knowing it hadn’t come from one of the scouts. Said lieutenant privately put forward the suggestion that my paranoia could wait until the next day, after the men had rested.

“Lieutenant, I appreciate your input,” I said.

Then a voice continued, sounding like my father and I found myself unable to finish the sentence the way I originally intended. “However, the enemy is approaching from the west.” I found I was pointing up to the sky. Was this voice mine? Was that what I sounded like?

As I looked up, I could see carrion birds had begun to gather, along with storm clouds, and I shook my head to clear it. “Lieutenant, I need a full load of coal in every mech, stragglers rounded up and brought back in, and as many of those barricades finished as possible.”

After the lieutenant slunk off, Vitold lowered his voice to a level I could barely hear over my own idling arcane turbine. “Did you really mean that, Mikolai? Or was that just to get them all hopping out of your way?”

“The birds see bloodshed and carrion in the near future,” I said. “And see over there? Past the second low hill? The trees moving?”

“Trees move in the wind, right?” Vitold was still at heart a city boy.

“Not quite in that way. That particular sort of vibration is different, and those trees are in the lee of the hill. Footsteps of something large and heavy, like a mech, will shake the trees like so, for several hundred yards; you can see the vibrations are shared alike over a wide area, yes? There’s no sign of smoke, though, so whatever the heavy element of their force is, it doesn’t burn coal.” I peered off into the distance.

Vitold frowned. “I had best get to work, then,” he said.

“Ready for a feast, birds?” I asked the sky rhetorically, as the lead rank of the enemy slowed under cover of the trees. Presumably, they were readying their weapons as their leaders took stock of the situation, waiting to shoot until after they had assured themselves everything was going to plan.

The birds did not wait. A horrendous cawing filled the air and black feathers flew as they tried for an early dinner, attacking men armed with bows, javelins, and axes – a few on horseback, but most on foot. By the time the strangers had recovered from the surprise of the avian assault, Lieutenant Kransky was directing shells into their midst. While some officers might have described his decision to fire without my express orders as premature presumption, I soundly approved of his initiative.

The men retreated, leaving behind scattered dead and an alert army. I sent word to hold ground and be ready to fire on their reappearance; they had not fled but were merely regrouping to synchronize their assault. Having been denied the advantage of surprise, they would instead hope for the advantage of overwhelming force, striking all at once.

We readied ourselves, our own heavy armor closing up in tight formation. I stood front and center with the mechs with the steam knights anchoring the left side of the line, a choice that made me concerned with my own safety but that appeared to have a strongly positive effect on morale, while the Swedes anchored the right side. Our artillerists reloaded and waited for the enemy to reappear; our infantry dispersed behind the cover of hastily-constructed barricades; and our cavalry held in reserve to counter any attempts at flanking our position.

The rumble of the clouds overhead sounded like an echo of our guns. The wind whipped the trees, not quite disguising their unnatural motion as the enemy’s heavier forces moved forwards.

I waited. Waiting is the difficult part of fighting. To ease the strain on my arms, I locked them in place, twisting the catch of the manipulators sideways. This kept the pointy end of my weapon towards the enemy and my shield steady. The unnatural motions of the trees came closer, yet I still saw nothing above the thick underbrush. Whatever massive devices or creatures were nudging the trees out of their way were no taller than men.

The lucky stone around my neck grew suddenly cold as a white-cloaked figure stepped up on top of a boulder, holding up what I thought to be a copper-clad spear. The mage (I could sense he was such) shouted as he thrust the spear skywards once, twice, and then a third time. Blindingly bright lightning connected him with the sky.

My eyes flinched shut. For a brief and optimistically naive moment, I thought that in his hubris, the cloaked war mage had brought divine vengeance down on himself. Then deafening thunder erupted all around me.