Accidental War Mage

Excerpt from Ragnar Rimhamar, Gentleman Adventurer

Though I thought the previous six defeats at my hands had dulled their appetite and thinned their numbers, the agents of Sultan Allaedin found us once more while we camped outside of Tridentum, arriving at a moment that was both indelicate and inconvenient.

We had shared the road with a merchant caravan; the factor in charge of the caravan was a Venetian and had brought his daughter with him, a lovely brunette named Jessica whom he hoped to marry off soon.

As the factor had no sons, he had decided to give his daughter a hands-on education about finance and trade so as to ensure that his future son-in-law would be likewise educated and be able to take over the running of his business when he grew old for the rigors of the road and had to retire from the business. According to his varied complaints, this sad event would take place sometime within the next ten years; five years; and by the time we reached Tridentum, ought to have occurred some two years in the past.

Not trusting the local officials and criminals of Tridentum any further than he could launch them from a catapult, the factor camped his merchant caravan next to our encampment and headed into town to negotiate matters related to pricing, passage, and the exchange of goods without risking theft. After seeing him and the colonel off on their way into the walled town, I returned to the privacy of my tent to polish my armor – you must understand that as an officer, naturally, I had a private tent.

No sooner had I unpacked my traveling chest and sat upon the blanket laid on top of my cot than the flap to my tent twitched, and there stood Jessica. Several dark curls had worked their way loose from her braids, framing her face as she gazed into my eyes, biting her lip in a vain attempt to restrain her passion for but a moment. Her elbows nearly met as she pulled her arms behind her back, the motion thrusting her chest towards my eyes as her fingers danced to untie her dress and stays.

“We must be quick,” she said. “My father will be away for but three or four hours, and I am painfully hollow inside for the lack of you. I must have you for every minute, no, every second that I can before he knows of my absence.”

“But…” I said, attempting in vain to restrain her lust. This was a respectable daughter of an honest factor! “Surely it is unwise for you to bed before you wed,” I said.

By way of response, she pulled the dress to the ground, revealing her full glory. “Take me,” she breathed. “Take me, or I will die of a broken heart.”

What else could I do but take her offered gift in order to save her life? And so, I did…

Another excerpt from Ragnar Rimhamar, Gentleman Adventurer

“Hold,” Jessica whispered in my ear. “I hear footsteps. It may be my father’s guard captain.”

With catlike quickness, I leapt to my feet, tossing a blanket over the dark-haired beauty’s naked form where she lay. As there was no time to waste, I took hold of my pants and jumped in, putting both legs on at once to save time.

A finger tugged at the tent flap. “Ragnar?” asked a female voice, a moment before the flap was pulled away to reveal the princess, her golden hair shining in the sun. Within a perfect heart-shaped face, two cerulean pools bracketed a pert little nose. She was breathing heavily, her ample bosom straining at the confines of her dress over a waist that still seemed impossibly small.

“Princess,” I said, bowing respectfully. “What brings you to my tent?”

“Georg and Johann came back from town without the colonel, and all the men are distracted,” she said. “When I realized that for just this moment nobody was watching over me, and that you were all alone in your tent … I am sorry, I succumbed to the temptation to see you.” Her soft hand moved forward as if pulled by an invisible force, caressing the muscles of my chest.

Keenly aware that the second most beautiful woman in the encampment was only a few feet away, I shook my head. “We must not, princess,” I said with an ashen taste in my mouth. “It is unwise in the extreme. You said so yourself. In your position, any doubt of your purity could be your ruin.”

The princess shuddered, her finger tracing up my chest, then neck, then chin, lingering on the point. “One kiss,” she said. “One kiss is all I ask.”

When the most beautiful woman in the world places her finger upon your chin and begs, could you hold strong?

“But only one kiss. And then you must go,” I said, unable to look away from the twin cerulean pools welling with unshed tears.

As her tongue prodded at the seal of my lips, I heard booted footsteps approaching with haste. Perhaps the factor’s guard captain; perhaps a fellow officer who would have harsh words to say about my corrupting our honored employer. “Quick!” I said. “You must hide!”

And so I crammed the most beautiful woman in the world into my traveling chest (with her panicked cooperation) and latched it shut.

This third visitor proved to be Georg.

Georg, as I have said before, was on the slight and short side for a soldier, but very well-kempt with a neat goatee that he waxed regularly. While one might have considered him a pitiful weakling in a prior age where might of arm was more essential to martial success, he was educated and disciplined enough that I thought of him as an officer in training and had learned to shoot a gun and keep the pointed end of a sword in the direction of an enemy coming to grips with him.

He was also quite handsome, perhaps second only to myself; but his inferior height and musculature unfortunately brought with it a lack of confidence when it came to women. Whenever a woman flirted with him, he was consumed with wooden awkwardness, apparently unable to believe any woman would truly find such a puny specimen attractive.

Lieutenant Quentin Gavreau had taken on training him as a sort of personal project; unfortunately, with the departure of Quentin to serve as the knight-champion and guard-captain of Landgravine Wilhelmina von Gschwendtberg, Georg had been sad and sullen in spite of my efforts to take him under my wing and build up his confidence. Even now, he seemed slightly ill at ease with my shirtless state, staring down at my chest with what I could only assume was naked envy.

“Georg? What is it?” I asked.

“My apologies, I did not mean to wake you if you were sleeping,” Georg said, averting his eyes. “I had news from Tridentum. The colonel has been arrested.”

Conscious of the small man’s jealous discomfort and how it would undermine his confidence further the longer he compared my physique to his, I tossed on my shirt. “Is he very upset about the attempt to arrest him?”

“I don’t know,” Georg said. “He just let them do it. They’re holding him prisoner. But we don’t know what he plans by it. Pasha Mustafa told them to do it.”

I sighed. “Help me put my armor on,” I said, recognizing the name of one of the sultan’s officials. “We will have to fight the sultan’s agents at any moment. I have defeated them seven times already, but I would prefer to be prepared.”

No sooner did we finish donning my armor than the side of my tent was sliced open in a flash of scimitars. This was no overweight muscle-bound eunuch; this was one of the infamous fanatical hashishim, those who are known as assassins. The man was clad in black silk, a scimitar greased with vile poison gripped in each hand, an unearthly look in his eyes. The blades rang harmlessly against my armor as I blocked with my arms, hissing noises following spatters of vile venom against Swedish steel.

“Have at you,” I said, slamming a gauntleted hand against the silk-masked face.

There was a sickening crunch as the assassin’s jaw proved itself inferior to my fist, and the man fell, taking my tent down with him. One of the tent lines caught on the corner of the blanket that hid Jessica from view, revealing for a moment a shapely foot.

“The princess!” gasped the assassin through broken teeth, pointing with one of his blades.

Fearing a deadly assault on the person of a beautiful woman, I bore down on the assassin, hammering gauntlet after gauntlet down into his face until he stopped moving, either unconscious or dead.

“Oh, no, the princess!” Georg shouted. “They’re stealing her away!”

I turned to look; two shapely legs sticking out of a bundled blanket kicked, struggling helplessly in the arms of a second assassin. Could I catch up? I lunged for a pistol, and another scimitar chopped down to destroy the gun before I could load it, a third and then a fourth black-clad assassin appeared from somewhere unseen to batter me with blows. My armor held – but against fanatics whose treated blades ate away slowly at steel, how long would it continue to do so?

“Georg! Stop the kidnapper!” I dropped to the ground and rolled to where my hammer lay as the short man ran after the second assassin, finding courage in my words as he called for assistance. Deeming him harmless and myself to be the true threat, three more assassins revealed themselves by striking at me.

I could not say that the princess was safe inside of my luggage without revealing her true location to the assassins; nor could I leave her side. Silently, I apologized to the poor kidnapped Jessica as I fought back against the assassins in earnest, one against five, my hammer cracking limbs and crushing skulls. One; two; a third; and then I felt a burning sensation against my arm. The poison had finally gotten through my armor. It was sheer agony.

I fell to my knees, shouting out something halfway between a prayer and a curse; when the hammer fell from my hand, ice crackled outward from the point of impact, freezing the feet of the two remaining assassins fast to the ground.

Still driven to kill, they cut at their own legs, trying to break free; and then gunshots sounded, and they were still. Though their detestable poison had brought me low, I was in the middle of a camp full of allies, and those allies had arquebuses to bring to a swordfight. Yet again, I had foiled the agents of the Turks – and that for the final time. We would deliver the princess to her secret allies in Venice without any more interference from the agents of Sultan Allaedin; of those allies in Venice I can say little, for that is a secret that must be kept.

I will say only that we left Venice aboard a quinquereme – which, I think, was the first of its kind to sail the Aegean Sea in a thousand years.