Accidental War Mage

In the broadsheets that reached the village during the conquest of Wallachia, the sea guarded by Troy on one end and Constantinople on the other was often called the Sultan’s Lake. It has other names as well. Traveling across it gave a strong impression of the strength of the Sultan’s navy, and we were treated to a close look at several more steamships by naval captains curious about our ship.

I kept a running count of ships; while the lighter escorting galliots with their conventional oars were more numerous, the greater weight of the steamships probably made them the more important part of the strength of the Sultan’s great fleet, which had terrified the ship’s captains of the Golden Empire in the Axine Sea and now greatly worried the Republic of Venice in the Aegean Sea.

For my part, I wondered if the Sultan’s lead–sheathed sidewheelers stayed in the Sultan’s Lake most of the time because the Sultan was worried about losing them. There had been no word of the French having designs north of the islands of Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus, but French cruisers were taller, longer, faster, and clad in Corsican brass. Though I had not seen the one near Crete close enough to gauge its armament, I suspected they were better armed, as well.

While several of the Sultan’s sidewheeler captains were curious enough to draw near for a better look at our unusual ship, only one captain was curious enough to stop us to get a closer look.

Between our quinquereme’s unusually high freeboard and the sidewheelers’ unusually low freeboard, the Sultan’s most curious naval captain was treated to a difficult climb before coming aboard. The man was surprisingly young for a captain, with dark hair, bright eyes, and a beard that nearly matched the shade of Katya’s hair; on viewing Vitold’s rowing-engine, he agreed that we clearly did not have spare galley slaves for him to purchase for his galliot escorts.

He made an offer to purchase certain other members of my crew, including Vitold (on account of my crediting him the design of the rowing-engine we had built together with Johann), Katya (on account of her hair), Zaneta (on account of her “aristocratic beauty and poise,” which I guessed was a polite method of referring to the fact that she had a comely figure), and two other of the personal servants assigned to my comfort by Constantine (on the grounds that surely I wouldn’t miss “one or two hearty wenches”).

I assured him that I did not have any slaves at all for sale, being that I ran a free company of soldiers rather than a slave-trading enterprise. After the red-bearded captain climbed back down the rope ladder to his sidewheeler, having been satisfied with my handing him the modest “gift” of a small waxed wooden chest I had found in the hold, filled with red threads of some kind that smelled like hay. (An irritated Felix Rimehammer later informed me that he thought the chest was of greater market value than Zaneta, which seemed rather a cruel assessment.)

After the curious captain’s departure, I was thanked individually by several of the former galley slaves among our crew, as well as Zaneta. Zaneta’s thanks were profuse enough to leave no doubt that her generous endowment was no illusion produced by padded cloth, and for me to discover that her red lips were that color due to scented lip-paint. Katya took exception to the latter, and I told Georg to keep Zaneta busy belowdecks out of sight of the crow’s nest.

That night, I slept in the crow’s nest again; Katya considered the climb well outside of Zaneta’s capabilities.

In the morning, we reached Constantinople, and I declared my intention for us to stay in port for the day. I placed Captain Felix Rimehammer in charge of a security detail for the ship along with our mechs, our religious order of steam-knights, and whomever else wished to stay. This included Vitold (who was concerned about the naval captain’s interest in our rowing-engine), Fyodor (whose wife had assigned him baby-related duties while she napped), Zaneta (who, as I mentioned earlier, seemed irrationally afraid of going shopping in Constantinople), and nearly included Ragnar, who was inclined to continue moping and writing poetry.

I took him by the shoulders, looked him very firmly in the eye, and told him very firmly with every bit of controlled energy as I could muster that he should put Bianca out of his mind for the day, go have the best time that he could, and then return to the ship by sundown.

“Yes, sir,” Ragnar told me, blinking confusedly.

“So you’re ready to get over Bianca?” I asked.

“Who?” He gave me his best befuddled look.

I smiled at his joking antics and waved him off down the gangplank. Then I gave Katya a little bow. “After you,” I told her. I had decided to visit the city myself. It was true that I had not found myself in good favor with the Sultan’s emissary to the Gothic Empire, and this should perhaps have inspired me to greater caution during my visit to Constantinople; however, while Pasha Mustafa’s astrologer blamed me for the sudden flight of Princess Anna from Oenipons, I did not expect to encounter the pasha or anyone else who knew me.

Even if he had planned to return directly to Constantinople to swiftly report his failure to obtain the legendary beauty as a wife for Sultan Allaedin, which I doubted on account of all the stories I had heard about sultans chopping of heads of pashas who displeased them, Pasha Mustafa had perhaps a week’s head start on us due to our delays in Venice. We had made excellent time traveling by sea; in spite of Constantine’s claim that Venetians had circulated my description via messenger pigeons, I doubted very much that I featured in what little news traveled at the speed of wind.

Besides, I do not think it is possible for a man possessed of both an interest in history and the freedom of setting his own schedule to simply sail past Constantinople without taking port for at least one day. In my defense, I also felt it would be suspicious if I attempted to sail straight through the Strait of Constantinople without stopping to sell and buy at least some cargo.

Although, I find I must clarify what I mean by “cargo.” In spite of Katya’s pointed suggestions on that topic, expressed both before our departure and then later when we passed the women’s slave market near the harbor, I did not count Zaneta as cargo to be sold. We did, however, stop at the men’s slave market, as by that point I had remembered the Venetians’ claim that the siren who had stolen my men was Turkish.

Though I doubted that the woman with the enchanted (and quite literally enchanting) necklace was Turkish, the Venetians, Dalmatians, and Turks all participated in a wide-ranging slave trade that spanned many kingdoms, with Constantinople being the final point of sale to a long term owner for many slaves. This trade was only occasionally interrupted by wars between the Sultanate, the Republic, and Avaria, and even then not completely; the loyalties of trader captains are often most strongly attached to coin rather than country.

At the men’s slave markets, Katya tugged on my hand, stopping me to point out a face that she found familiar, penned up with a bunch of other men under an awning.

“That man is Wallachian,” she told me in an energetic whisper. “I met him in Wallachia.”

I paused. “I don’t think I have seen him before,” I said.

Katya shook her head. “He was the rebel who told me where to find you. I asked him where the handsome Ruthenian prisoner was kept. He must have thought you were handsome. That was before I decided you were handsome. I thought he was telling me where Ilya was.”

Curious, I took two steps toward the pen.

“If you take the whole lot, I can give you a special rate – three thousand akcheh a head!” The slave-seller smiled brightly, his gaze taking in my armor as he addressed me in badly-accented Greek. “They are trained fighting-men!”

I hesitated, unsure of what to say in reply, and the man repeated himself in Venetian before continuing.

“You do not need so many? Perhaps only a pair of guards? I will give you any two you want for seven thousand akcheh,” the slave-seller said, then shook his head. “Of course, I understand if you do not have akcheh. I would also accept one hundred Venetian ducats!”

“Where are they from?” I asked.

“They are Latins,” the slave-seller said. “They speak Venetian poorly, but they understand it well enough. For you, I see you have a beautiful concubine, an exotic Circassian with flame-colored hair, surely you have need of guards for your women’s quarters. They are not yet gelded, but I will have it done for you for no extra charge. One hundred golden ducats for two trained gelded fighting-men as household guards!”

“How could I possibly trust slave fighting-men?” I asked, crossing my arms. “Wouldn’t they want to kill me in the night and take their freedom?”

“They are very far from home. They were captured by Ruthenians in the fighting in northern Rumelia, the northern vilayet that the Deathless Emperor stole.” The slave-seller turned his head to spit, which I learned to be a regular custom among the loyal citizens of Constantinople followed when mentioning Emperor Koschei I in an outdoor setting. “They only have reason to hate Ruthenians, and they have no home to return to – between the Dragon’s son and the Empire, half their country has been put to flame. For only one hundred – no, only ninety – Venetian ducats, you will give them new purpose.”

“May I speak with them?” I asked.

“Of course, of course. You will want to make your choice of the best two.” The slave-seller smiled broadly, rubbing his hands together.

The slave-seller looked a little more nervous when I addressed the man in Romanian rather than Venetian.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Oh!” The man seemed startled by my choice of language. “Vesel, milord. Have you come to ransom us?”

“Vesel.” I paused, trying to commit the name to memory. “Thank you, Vesel.” I felt a strange sense of obligation to the man. His unwitting betrayal of his comrades had led directly to my rescue, and indirectly to my close connection with Katya.

Vesel and I spoke for a little while. The conversation was uncomfortable for both of us; I wanted to know what had taken place in Wallachia since my departure, and Vesel wanted to impress me with his valuable and marketable skills. Vesel didn’t really want to discuss how he had been captured, as it reflected poorly on him; and I didn’t really want to hear the professional assessment of the owner and manager of a whorehouse applied to Katya.

“You could still get a good price for her here, simply on account of her coloration; red hair, fair skin, and blue eyes are not so easily obtained here, and so her deformities and small breasts do not impede her value as much as they ordinarily would,” Vesel told me at one point. “Indeed, you could probably trade her in kind for a swarthy and dark-haired woman with a truly spectacular figure, or a good figure and intact virginity.”

Vesel clearly did not recognize the woman he had talked to a few years ago one fateful day before several of his close comrades had died. To be fair, Katya looked somewhat different: Her face had been hardened by years of fighting and killing and she had two fewer limbs.

I did learn that he believed Prince Vladimir to be alive and that the sultan’s men did as well. Somehow, the Wallachian prince had survived whatever disaster had befallen everyone else aboard the ill-fated Ceres, washing ashore somewhere along the Tauridan coastline. From there, he traveled west alone, traveling more swiftly than the news of his presence and unleashing devastating magic. Along the way, left behind an intermittent trail of destruction across the Sultan’s prized northern holdings, Ruthenia’s Axine Sea coastline, and both sides of the delta of the Istros that briefly restarted the war between the Sultanate and Golden Empire.

That flare-up died after several exchanges of emissaries between the courts of Allaedin and Koschei, though the fighting did not, with the rebellion spreading east into Moldova and south into northern Rumelia. After being sold across the border into the Sultanate by an enterprising officer of the Golden Empire who considered the logistics of sales revenue a greater benefit than anything else that could be done with prisoners of war, the local Rumelian slave factor put them directly on a boat south from Rumelia to Constantinople, reselling the captives immediately to a ship’s captain for a profit that Vesel considered shockingly modest.

Vesel speculated that the slave factor had feared that one of them might know a secret way of sending a magical summons to Prince Vladimir and that the Dragon’s son would appear from the sky to fire another loyal village full of the Sultan’s taxpayers.

As Vesel and I continued our conversation, the slave-seller grew impatient and skeptical of my intentions as a customer. Upon being presented with an individual price for Vesel and pointed questions regarding the subject of imminent purchase, I found that I did not consider my nagging sense of accidental indebtedness to be worth paying fifty ducats to free a man whose most productive form of employment in Constantinople would be either in assisting with the buying and selling of slave women or in operating a bordello. Especially not after his unkind words about Katya.

I sincerely bade Vesel the best of luck, telling him I would pray that he found a kind master. Then we went back downhill to visit the women’s slave market. While I had not found any of my missing men in the men’s slave market, there had been one woman officer numbered among my missing soldiers. There was a chance, however slim, that I might find a familiar face there in need of rescue.