Accidental War Mage

It has been some time since I last wrote, but Ragnar has been so kind as to fetch me my journal and writing materials and I find myself in need of distraction as I recover from my injuries. The Swedes were not among the troops selected to go on what Ragnar calls “the great troll hunt,” and the lieutenant has been keenly interested in the details of our encounter with the great and terrifying man-like beings he only knows from storybooks. Apparently, these creatures are well-known in the north.

I am sure it is an adventure that my little sister Septima would find interesting, and after telling the tale several times to Ragnar, I feel sure of the details, so I will write on that. I will begin by saying that I am grateful our mother insisted that I practice my lance-work before going east along the Istros.

The colonel was concerned over the fact that his woman had not returned, and asked me to personally retrace her trail as far as she had marked it along the way, which was to a thicket of blackberry bushes. Searching all the way around the thicket, we found that on the far side from her markings, there were broken and torn bushes and deep gouges in the earth, signs of a violent disturbance.

We followed the trail out until it became harder to track, and then sent scouts in all directions. The one who found the campsite was none other than Banneret Teushpa, the Cimmerian who had wanted my honeycomb pistol for a trophy after my shameful defeat. We have since become friends of a sort; he is of good breeding and a skilled illusionist, and the third-ranked officer of the cavalry after myself and the colonel’s woman.

The troll camp was full of bones, gruesome evidence of their appetites, singed and gnawed-upon, and footprints much like those of men, only much larger. I could recognize among the many bones a horse’s skull, and it seemed likely that the colonel’s woman had met her end there, eaten by forest trolls. While the colonel dealt with his grief, I rode ahead with my men, following the trail of the trolls to their next campsite. There were many of them, and the trail was much easier to follow than the one that had led to the campsite in the first place.

The smallest was at least seven feet tall, and the largest easily ten, and there were thirteen of them, an unlucky number that boded ill. As we waited for the colonel on his plodding draft horse to approach, bringing with him several squads of infantrymen mounted on equally slow mules, the forest grew darker and quieter. The only sound I could hear was a faint susurrus that grew in volume until the colonel came into view.

I looked up; there were many crows in the trees and flying about, though none of them were cawing, a fact that disturbed me greatly. The colonel told us that his woman was likely still alive and captive in the camp. He would ride down to negotiate with them; but if the negotiations went poorly, we were to come down in force.

Banneret Teushpa volunteered to ride into their camp unseen and see if she was there at all, to save us the trouble; he turned himself and his horse invisible with a flourish.

“Stop,” the colonel said, holding up his hand and looking at a spot a few yards downhill from where the Cimmerian had vanished. “I know you think well of your ability to move quietly, but if you are seen, it will go badly. I will ride in myself openly to negotiate instead.”

Banneret Teushpa’s voice responded from the empty air. “Sir, are you sure?”

“Yes,” the colonel said. “Your horse may be sure-footed with a quiet gait, but all it takes is one of them looking in the wrong direction and they will react poorly. It is better I approach them openly and appeal to their reason, for they can be reasonable creatures from what I have read of the matter. If they prove unreasonable, I will give a signal, and you can ride down from the hill.”

As Banneret Teushpa reappeared in his new position, a disappointed look on his face, Lieutenant Kransky raised his objections to the plan for a general charge. The infantry officer said that his men were mainly arquebusiers and wasted in a pointless charge, whether they did it afoot or attempted to spur the mules into an act against their nature.

He himself had brought several explosive rockets, and had nothing better than an officer’s one-handed sword for close combat, countering that I and my men should charge while his held the top of the hill, raking the camp with fire. To me, this sounded a recipe for getting myself and my men shot by friendly infantrymen along with the trolls.

After some negotiation between us with the colonel moderating, we compromised – most of the infantry should charge on foot behind us, but we would begin with a single concerted volley of gunfire to soften them. That the colonel would be in the middle of such a volley didn’t seem to concern anyone, least of all himself. The sky darkened with more nearly-silent wingbeats as the colonel crested the hill, taking his first direct look at the trolls.

Then there was total silence for the space of three heartbeats. He pointed his sword down the hill at the smallest of the trolls. The air filled with the sounds of cawing and the colonel began to run down the hill. I looked over at my fellow officers. There was a rush to fire such guns as had been readied, and then I raised lance and called the charge over the crest and down the hill.

The man to my left let his lance-tip dip as he tried to keep control of his mount downhill, and was yanked right out of his saddle; to my right, a horse stumbled, both mount and rider tumbling down into the stream. My mount leaped across the stream cleanly at my signal, and I arrived with space to either side of me, my tip held true and level and piercing a nine-foot troll through the heart. Importantly, I gripped the lance well as it pierced the creature’s ribcage, or the blow would not have had enough force to pierce the creature through; the skin of trolls is very thick and their bones massive.

I was unhorsed but not without means to fight, even if the impact with the ground took the wind out of my lungs and left me unable to stand; I fired all six shots from my honeycomb pistol, and I think at least three shots landed home, though with all the feathers and fury and pain it was difficult to discern matters clearly.

We paid a steep price riding to avenge the colonel’s woman; eight men dead and five injured, three seriously. He stayed by their first campsite, the one with the bones, seeking to bury what he could. To my surprise, he somehow found her there, horribly wounded but still alive, one arm missing and a leg ending in a ragged mess; I was there in the infirmary tent resting from my own injuries when he brought her in, the surgeon working at a nauseating rate.

The next morning, an unfamiliar old hag barged into the tent; I woke to the sounds of the colonel and the hag talking in some dialect of Slavonic and the clink of teacups. I only understood a scattering of words, but from her tone of voice, the old woman seemed to think she’d done the colonel some sort of favor and was about to demand payment.

Then she surprised me by pulling out a most remarkable object. It was ovoid and smooth, irregularly black and red but also glittering with gold and the iridescent colors of the rainbow. In the dim tent, it seemed to glow on its own. She held it out to the colonel, saying something in the sort of insistent and querulous tone that old women take when they’re demanding that you give them something.

The colonel shrugged and accepted the object with a look somewhere between puzzlement and boredom, as if the object was nothing special, and asked her a question; the two of them talked for a while, the colonel nodding politely, and I stared at the object sitting on the breakfast tray for a long while, trying to discern a pattern in the irregular red and black blotches, the gold flecks, the shimmering bits of rainbow tucked into it. Then the colonel’s hand covered it, and I realized suddenly that the old hag was no longer around.

Maestro Zilioli was, though, and he made a careful inspection of my ribs before saying I should stay at rest for several days and to keep my chest stiffly wrapped so that nothing went out of place. I have never before met a surgeon who is also a physician, or rather a physician who decided to take up surgery; based on his results, his surgical technique seems a great improvement on the usual barbers, and I have decided that he is a truly wonderful person even if he does not speak much on his reasons for departing his home city.