Accidental War Mage

The ice was transparent, flush against the stone. Past the thin line marking the edge of the advancing ice, there was little difference to be seen between ice with more rain falling on it and the natural wetness of the stones behind Father Waldemar. His staff whirled and he continued chanting Latin.

For now, the eight iron hooves of the steam-horse were flush against the stone; they had firm traction. If I throttled the steam-horse forward, would the hooves smash through the ice from the weight behind them, or would they slip? Considering my unfamiliarity with steam-horses, I would rather dismount, I decided, muttering the protective charm under my breath. Turquoise light reflected off the inside of my armor.

I placed the lance in its holder, unlocked the kite shield from its slot in the side of the steam horse, and dismounted. On both ends of the causeway, I could hear people asking each other questions. Why had I chosen to dismount? Would Waldemar follow suit, or ride me down? I paused, looking at the selection of hand weapons on the side of the steam-horse as I clung one-handed to the saddle, ice slick under my feet.

Perhaps dismounting had been a bad idea, I thought to myself as I went through my choices. My bronze sword, being too distinctive, had been left behind. I had the choice of two straight swords, one longer than the other; then there were an axe, a warhammer, and a flanged mace. The axe looked most familiar out of all the weapons – I had little confidence in my swordsmanship – but I felt confident it would not be of much use against the priest’s armor. The warhammer, then; it had a spike on one end. I stuck it through a loop on my sword belt; then, realizing the sword belt had another such loop, stuck the axe on the other side.

Turquoise light flared inside my armor as a barely visible whip of force lashed through rain, deflecting raindrops on its way to strike me; the line of force bounced when it met me, whipping into the steam-horse. The mechanical horse’s boiler ruptured with a flash of golden light, venting steam. I cried out in surprise and then gusts of wind started to whip up around me.

I needed to fight or the priest would simply knock me down or send me flying off the causeway. My open hand twitched, fingers tying an invisible knot, a glowing line of force lashing out at the priest. The loop settled around his armor and then suddenly broke with a flare of golden light. He was protected. I retied the knot, looping it around his horse’s neck, and the priest reached out to break it with his hand.

The horse, however, was unsettled, rearing out of control. Father Waldemar was an experienced horseman, but he was also an old man with one hand on his staff. In reaching forward to break my spell with his other hand, he had necessarily released the reins just as the horse was in the process of experiencing an unfamiliar and unusual sensation. The priest tumbled to the causeway backwards as the horse bucked and stepped forward on its hind legs; then the horse screamed as its front hooves landed and failed to find traction on the icy causeway.

My stomach lurched as the horse started sliding towards me, its hooves sliding over the wet ice. The truly impressive thing is that the creature hadn’t fallen over yet, but that would surely change soon. I had to act quickly or be swept down the icy causeway all the way back to the lower fort. I put one foot in the stirrup of the steam-horse, then the other on the saddle, and leaped forward over the sliding and screaming horse, maneuvering the kite shield in front of me in both hands. Turquoise light flooded the back of the shield as I pushed hard on the enchantment of the vestments, the song of the mountain – that is, the fourth protection of Saint Jerome – on my lips.

Living horse met steam-horse with a crash and a scream behind me; it didn’t sound good, but I was focused on my own landing. My reasoning was that a kite shield was not so different from a sled, though icy stone is considerably less soft than snowy ground. There was a blinding flash of light as I hit, and then the inside of my armor went dark as my momentum sent me sliding up the icy causeway. Steel scraped on stone as I slid past the edge of the ice.

Father Waldemar and I both stood up at nearly the same time, the dented kite shield at my feet and his silver staff in his hands. I was younger and my sudden voyage through the air had been intentional, but his fall had come first. For a moment, we looked at each other, and then I heard him start to chant.

I dashed forward quickly, but not quickly enough, for it was a very quick spell; a thunderclap sounded as he slammed the butt of his staff on the ground, a sudden wave of concussive force knocking me off my feet and into the air as the causeway itself shuddered. I slammed against the chest-high wall guarding the edge of the elevated causeway, fumbling with the hammer at my belt as the priest started a new incantation, this one low and sonorous.

I had heard him clearly, and in desperation, chanted back at him, repeating his previous phrase back at him on my knees, slamming the hammer against stone in a diagonal strike that was neither straight down nor straight at the priest, the hammer bouncing out of my hand and away from me.

Father Waldemar’s feet clipped the chest-high wall as he was flung into the air away from me, and he tumbled out of sight as he threw a small object with one hand. There was a distant wail of feminine despair and a fiery blast. Then nothing.

***

“How many of me do you see?” The voice sounded familiar, and there was a refreshing chill draft brushing against my face.

I opened my eyes. It was a Swedish man. Lieutenant Rimehammer, I thought to myself, but what was his given name? Ragnhild? No, that was a woman’s name. “You’re Ragnar,” I said, pieces falling back into place. I felt around with my hands. I was sitting against a wall, but what was this? “I have an axe,” I said, announcing my discovery.

Ragnar frowned. “Can you stand up?”

“Hmm,” I said, collecting my wits about me slowly. My first attempt failed. One leg of my armor was fused straight, the joint melted together, and that made things a bit awkward. Still, I could stand; I heard a cheer in the distance. I turned and saw the lower fort, a mix of mercenary soldiers and Burgundians clustered in the gateway behind a halfway-disassembled steam-horse.

Then I remembered everything, and limped over to the opposite wall, peering down at Father Waldemar’s body. There was another priest standing next to him, this one wearing normal vestments rather than armor; I saw one of Father Waldemar’s arms twitch, bringing a hand up. I backed away from the wall. In the moment, I felt glad I hadn’t killed the man, though I learned later that he did not survive his injuries.

“I won?” I asked.

“You definitely won,” Ragnar said. “Let’s head down.”

I slipped on a patch of ice that Ragnar didn’t notice, his feet treading firmly on it as if it was dry ground. Fortunately, Ragnar caught me by the arm; unfortunately, the sudden spike in pain revealed that my arm had been seriously injured, broken in two places during the fight. Later, after we removed the ruined leg of the armor, I discovered new fresh pain; my leg was also injured seriously.

Walking on it gingerly, I could get used to the pain; but our surgeon was also a physician. After setting my arm, he inspected my leg closely. It was cracked, he told me, the bone not out of place but threatening to slip apart in two pieces if placed under strain. I should splint it even if it seemed in place for now, he added, and use a cane to keep my weight off it if I could.

Raphael went from being a claimant to the title of prince-bishop to the undisputed holder of the title; even depleted as it was, the treasury of the bishopric could and did provide coin for my services as champion. He strongly suggested I buy a sword. Batavis is famous for its enchanted swords, though swordsmiths elsewhere sometimes copy the signature wolf mark used by Batavis’s thaumaturges.

I already had a sword; its bright bronze blade had sufficed for the tasks I had set it to. However, with the prince-bishop personally introducing me to one of Batavis’s finest sword sellers and offering to cover the price as part of my earned pay, I ended up with a wolf mark sword of my own. It was small and fancy-looking, with runed silver inlay down the blade and decorative gems set in the handle; it was suitable for wear at a dress party and quite possibly originally commissioned for a noble lad not yet grown to full size.

We stayed for a little while in Batavis, long enough for swordsmiths to fulfill a special commission for wolf-marked swordstaves. The Batavis swordsmiths hadn’t seen the likes of the Swedish weapon before, but a sword blade was a sword blade, was it not? That gave me an excuse to stick my curious nose into their shop – supposedly to provide guidance as a customer with exacting and unique demands, but in practice to satisfy my curiosity.

Johann volunteered to accompany me as my assistant as he was quite interested in the enchantment process. This kept him out of mischief, unlike most of my other junior officers. Felix didn’t tell me any of the details of the mischief the others got up to, although I know that Ragnar somehow managed to spend or lose every last coin he had on hand without the excuse of purchasing a new sword. We also lost and gained a few soldiers, something which I accepted seemed an inevitable part of operating a free company.

With a cane occupying one arm, the other bound in a sling, and the pain of my injuries distracting me, I felt remarkably useless. I could supervise what was in front of me; I could make a simple decision, if someone brought it to me; but I couldn’t keep a train of thought moving for very long. The pain was too bad unless I dulled it with brandy or poppy juice, which had their own dulling effects on my intellect.

The morning before we loaded ourselves onto a trio of smaller boats headed up the Oen, I had another dream involving being pursued by the hunting hound with the green eyes, the one I’d dreamed about before. Brandy and poppy juice before bed meant I woke with a fuzzy headache that obscured most of the details beyond the rust-colored fur of my pursuer, though I felt for some reason that the dream had been important.

We didn’t quite fill the three boats by ourselves, and they took on other passengers traveling to (or at least toward) the capital. One was Giselle, the woman who had been in charge of the maidservants in the lower fort, her long blonde hair tucked out of sight under a close-fitting black mourning cap. She wore a matching black dress and carried a heavy bag; when she saw me she flinched. Ragnar later informed me that she was hoping to find work in an uncle’s household.

These were not steamboats, so the trip was very quiet. I spent a considerable portion of it napping in the sun near the front of the boat. The wind was favorable on the first day; on the second day, it died down and the boats were towed by oxen moving alongside of the river. That evening, Fyodor, marking out the course on a map, suggested it would likely take several weeks if the wind had run out on us; the visibly pregnant young weather-witch sitting next to him took that poorly.

On the third day and thereafter, we experienced unusually brisk wind that, unusually, blew perfectly straight along the river during the daytime. It would stop in the evening, at which point we would anchor and a certain very tired-looking pregnant woman would go to sleep. The boatmen were at first appreciative and then grew increasingly unsettled. One boat captain approached me nervously and asked me not to summon up unnatural winds; I told him I had done nothing of the sort.

I’m not sure if he believed me or merely decided it was imprudent to dispute me; in either case, the boatmen were glad to see our backs when we reached the imperial capital of Oenipons.