Accidental War Mage

As the level of the Istros lowered back down to its usual levels, we saw a surge of boat traffic – in fact, we saw it quite close at hand, since the lower fort functioned as a toll castle. Every boat that came down the Istros or Ohe had to stop at the lower fort. The boatmen who worked those rivers were accustomed to obediently stopping without tempting the wrath of the bishop’s men, and most of them paid their tolls without asking why foreign mercenaries now stood atop the walls instead of the bishop’s men.

At least, that is what I was told. I stayed in the tower, either working on my translation of the alchemy text or watching from a distance. The difference in height between the tower and the height of the walls of the lower fort was very substantial; I could see the upper fort and the impatient army camped outside. I could even see the town of Batavis itself, sited on the spit between the Istros and the Oen, which went about its business with little visible concern for either prospective ruler. And I could also see the river traffic, boats lining up obediently to pay tolls at the lower fort.

In addition to the traffic up and down the river, there was a steady trickle of small boats back and forth across the Istros. Goods and people moved toll-free, presumably a mixture of camp followers and enterprising locals with goods to sell to the encamped army. If the town had a militia, and I would be surprised if it didn’t, the militia should have the numbers to be able to intervene decisively, but the townsfolk seemed to prefer to avoid taking sides in a dispute between nobles. If they chose wrongly between the two, Sigismund II might send an army to correct the matter, and that would be unpleasant.

Similarly, those aboard the larger boats traveling downriver from further west on the Istros surely noticed that a small army was camped outside the upper fort, but boat captains are generally sensible men who prefer not to inquire about the disputes of high nobles if they can stay out of them. They were just happy that the river wasn’t blocked and that – whichever side had hired us – we hadn’t increased the tolls.

I assume that some of them shortchanged us because of our ignorance about what the customary tolls actually were, but I didn’t greatly care about that. Some of them paid in cash; others paid with a share of their cargo. Captain Rimehammer diligently recorded and valued all of it. After nightfall, he brought the list to me, remarking that it didn’t seem bad for a day’s work.

I stared at the list for a moment, and then inspiration struck. “Felix, if you don’t mind, I’d like to borrow your assistant,” I said, gesturing at Georg. “Georg has a way with words, and I think I want to write another message to our neighbors.”

“Ah. You want me to send Quentin again, too?” Felix rubbed his chin.

I nodded. “Just so,” I told the Swedish captain. “A good commander knows his limits, and those two know a great deal more about the foibles of nobility than I do.”

Felix shook his head. “Just take care which insults you sign your name to. Lads that age are full of trouble.”

Georg flushed momentarily, her cheeks turning bright red with anger, but she held her tongue.

Realizing that any outburst would have amounted to a spirited defense of Quentin, I paused in thought. I hadn’t thought her attached to Quentin, but now I guessed that she must be in order to leap to his defense. Why else would she bristle at a comment singling out young men as troublesome? Internally, I began to question the wisdom of leaving the two of them together alone to work on messages for me; then I explored the consequences. True, fraternization might be improper given the difference in their military ranks, but the maid and Quentin were likely not actually that far apart in social status.

After all, the maid’s looks marked her clearly as a relative of the baron’s daughter, she even had the hair the same shade (that of aged cheese). Quentin might have actively presumed a right to a title, but that seemed a distant possibility at this point. A marriage between the two of them would not even qualify as a social scandal, and it would be hard for me to say that the Raven’s Battalion had a consistent tradition of barring fraternization.

Besides, whatever else the two of them might have gotten up to after I’d left them alone to work, they had succeeded in writing letters full of eloquence and subtlety, with all of the appropriate formalities, stating nothing outright while implying everything indirectly. While their first round of messages hadn’t gotten the desired results, neither would-be bishop had begun preparations to carry out an attack against the lower fort.

Then Quentin arrived, cutting off my train of thought and clapping Georg heartily on the back by way of greeting, almost bowling over the petite maid. “Good man,” he said, looking at Georg. “I hear you’ve come up with an idea to sell the bishop his own river tolls back to him? Brilliant!”

I wasn’t sure why Quentin looked at Georg when his words suggested he was addressing me as the only other man in the room, but I provided the two of them with Captain Rimehammer’s list, talking about the value of the tolls and trying to extrapolate what part of the bishop’s income likely came from tolls rather than traditional tithes and taxes. Local tithe income probably mostly went directly to the cathedral in Batavis proper and the monastery situated on the opposite side of the three-river confluence.

It was Quentin who informed me that the town of Batavis was home to a substantial number of skilled craftsmen – as far as he was concerned, this city was the fourth-best place to buy swords in the whole world. Between the prized wolf-mark swords that made the city’s thaumaturges famous even among French nobility and the commerce fueled by its position at the junction of three rivers, the city of Batavis was quite wealthy – and had the bishop as its direct liege lord.

At that, Georg assumed a thoughtful look as she made a stroking motion with her fingers in the empty air in front of her chin, nodding. These other sources of income probably weren’t being collected during the partial siege, either; the most convenient method of delivering them would be by boat to the lower fort. The direct river access of the lower fort meant that a full siege required blocking off the river, and the encamped army was either unwilling or unable to do so.

After being assured that the two of them felt fully able to come up with ideas to use our toll collection activities as a lever to encourage negotiations, I went down the tower to talk with my troops, inspect the battlements, and deliver the finished Slavonic translation of the alchemy text to Vitold. The man might not have any magical talent, but if I understood correctly from the text, much of alchemy involved letting the natural magics of materials invoke themselves. The author seemed to even think that baking invoked a type of alchemy, simply one so widely learned as to have lost its mystique.

“You want me to hold this for you, sir?” Vitold frowned. He held the sheaf of papers dubiously.

Hearing the formality in Vitold’s speech, I frowned. “I meant it as a present for my friend Vitold, not as a burden for Lieutenant Szpak,” I said, an edge of complaint entering my voice. “You seemed to be a lot more interested in it than Johann,” I added.

“But … I’m not a wizard,” Vitold said. “I’m a mechanic. I’d be a baker’s boy if I wasn’t. No point in me learning alchemy, is there?”

“There is if you want to learn,” I said. “Or rather, even if there isn’t, if you have fun reading about alchemy, it’s as good as a storybook, isn’t it? I penned it out for you in the simplest and easiest-to-read Slavonic I could so that you can read it for yourself, and if you don’t want it, you don’t have to take it, but …” I stopped. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say.

“Oh,” Vitold said, flipping through the pages. “So, all that time you were shut up by yourself, you were writing this out? And for me?” He counted under his breath, then paused to eyeball the size of the stack of paper in his right hand compared to the stack remaining in his left. “Oh. Thank you, Mikolai.” He turned away from me suddenly, rubbing his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I’ll put it somewhere safe for now, my friend,” he added.

This time, the two letters sent out in the morning were almost identical. They had me thank his excellency (granting both presumptive bishops the full honors of their claimed title) for providing an advance deposit ahead of the conclusion of negotiations for my services, but tell him that my honor would require me to eventually return it if we did not come to mutually agreeable terms. A copy of Felix’s itemized list of tolls collected was enclosed. The message also included extensive praise for the architecture and interior decor of the lower fort.

I was assured I didn’t need to be more direct than that. My first thought had simply been to tell them I would keep the money from the tolls until one of them came to their sense and made me an offer to vacate the castle, but Georg and Quentin convinced me that acting as if I was more interested in honor than money would pique their interest. I should act as if occupying the lower fort indefinitely was beneath my dignity, something that I had been forced to do by circumstances.

For my part, I felt that the main insult done to me had been the soldiers shooting at my troops when we had done nothing wrong. Several men had died because of a foolish misunderstanding. Holding the lower fort ransom in exchange for having been unjustifiably attacked, however, was not as respectable as pretending I had been lured by false promises, been refused my rightful payment, and was too proud and impractical of a noble to directly admit that I’d been tricked into attacking the lower fort.

To me, that seemed less believable than the truth. Feeling pessimistic, I started drawing up plans for leaving the fort under the cover of night. If I didn’t have the leverage to force either of them into making a decision, then eventually the dispute between the two would-be bishops would be resolved without me. At that point, there would be one actual bishop with the authority, resources, and inclination to evict a stray mercenary company from the lower fort.

My planning was interrupted when the infantry captain rushed in to tell me that an envoy was arriving from the bishop.

“Which bishop?” I asked. “The one in the upper fort, or the one with the steam-horses?”

“Oh. Ah, the one in the upper fort,” she said, holding her hat in her hands. “Should I send the messenger up here?”

I looked around at the table. It was strewn with papers, some weighted down by a now-cold samovar. “No. I think … down on the second floor, the room with all the paintings? But not right away, let me get settled in there. And I think I want Quentin to meet me there first, too.”

Yuri let out a soft inquiring whine.

“Yes, you come with me too, you might notice something,” I said to the dog, giving his ears a quick scratch. “Okay, let’s go get ready to meet the bishop’s envoy.”

The infantry captain gave me a funny look before dashing down the stairs.