Christopher G. Nuttall's Blog, page 12

Queenmaker 18-19

Sorry about the long delay.

Chapter Eighteen

I would have sold my soul for satellite reconnaissance.

Or orbiting drones.  Or modern communications.  Or any one of a hundred technological miracles I’d taken for granted until I’d wound up in a world that didn’t have any of them.  The closest thing I had to radio was magic parchments, the closest thing I had to air power was a single hot air balloon and orbital reconnaissance … forget it.  It simply didn’t exist. There were spells that allowed magicians to spy on their enemies, but … they weren’t as effective as the movies suggested. It was incredibly frustrating. I knew the enemy army was on the way, but where was it? How long did I have to prepare?

I didn’t let the grass grow under my feet – and neither did Alonzo. We both knew – we all knew – that Houdon would be sacked, if Cuthbert retook the city. There was no way in hell the warlord would let the city maintain the sack. I feared it would be devastated, perhaps even burnt to the ground and the ashes strewn with salt. The warlord’s army would know it was in deep shit, would know what we’d done to them. I doubted Cuthbert would be able to keep them under control when they stormed the city, not when their blood was up and any officers trying to keep order would be put to the sword. They’d kill the men, rape the women and children, loot everything they could and leave a ruined city behind. Cuthbert might even benefit from the massacre. If the atrocity convinced the rest of the cities to bend the knee to him, it would be worth losing control for a few days.

As long as he manages to secure the supply dumps, I thought. It would be ironic if the sack destroyed the supplies Cuthbert needed to maintain his army, although once Houdon was out of the way he could fall back on his core lands and dare my successor to come after him. He’ll send parties to grab the supplies, then let the men work out their rage on the city folk.

We worked hard. Half the male population were hastily armed and trained – not for the first time, I gave thanks it was so easy to teach a man to use a firearm – while the other half, and many of the women, dug trenches, piled up earthworks and prepared for the coming onslaught. Homes were prepped for an urban defence, roof tiles were stockpiled, simple – very basic – grenades were mass-produced from the warlord’s stockpile of gunpowder … he’d prepared so much, we discovered, that his storage protocols left a great deal to be desired. A spark in the wrong place would have blown a large chunk of the city to kingdom come. I’d made sure the office and bedroom of the safety officer, back in Roxana, had been carefully sited on top of the stockpile, to keep his mind on the job. Cuthbert, it seemed, hadn’t bothered to install a safety officer, let alone keep his nose to the grindstone. I supposed it had worked in my favour. If someone had blown up the stockpile when we liberated the city, we’d have inherited a giant smoking crater and little else.

“They’re working hard,” Alonzo said. He’d proven himself an effective organiser over the last few days. “But won’t they try to lay siege to us?”

I shook my head. Cuthbert needed those supplies. Worse, because we held the supplies, we could hold out for quite some time until they finally ran out. My calculations were pessimistic – I’d erred on the side of extreme caution – but even in the worst-case scenario we should be able to hold out for at least a month, maybe two. The rationing system was crude and barely functional, and we’d already hanged a couple of people for trying to game the system, yet it would work as long as morale held out. Cuthbert simply couldn’t tie his army down long enough for a proper siege. My army was right behind him.

I lifted my gaze and let it wander across the defences. Hundreds of older men and women were working on the lines, their younger male counterparts drilling mercilessly behind them. Young girls ran back and forth, carrying messages from the lines to the city and my makeshift HQ … my lips twitched. There’d been some resistance to letting women join the militia, even as messengers, but what choice did they have? The girls would be at risk if they were carrying messages or hiding in the bunkers, praying to be delivered from evil. I suspected the city elders were going to find it harder to put that particular genie back in the bottle, after the battle was fought and won. Houdon might find itself having to give women the vote.

Moscow might have looked like this, back when the Germans were nearing the lines, I thought, as I turned away. The entire city preparing itself for a fight to the death.

A series of bangs shook the air as the men practiced with their grenades. I tried not to wince. Any halfway competent Range Safety Officer would have gone ballistic, if he’d seen the grenades or the way they were handled; he’d have been court-martialled for dereliction of duty and sheer bloody stupidity if he hadn’t. The grenades were dangerous to their users as well as their targets, but … what choice did we have? I gritted my teeth and turned away, heading back into the camp. Captain Eddo was waiting for me.

“We harassed the army here, sir,” he said, pointing to the map. I hoped the pinpointed location was close to wherever it had actually been, although there was no way to be sure. The map had everything in the right place, more or less, which made it one of the more accurate maps we had, but … “And we dropped off the prisoners as per instructions.”

I ignored the disapproval in his voice. Letting some of the POWs go to the army – with messages from me to the warlord’s allies – was a calculated risk. Cuthbert had fucked up and his allies, if I was any judge, were already considering how to jump ship. Richard III had been betrayed at Bosworth Field, or so the story ran, and I had no qualms about trying to undermine Cuthbert in the same way. If one of his clients switched sides … my lips quirked at the thought. Some of the messengers would fall into his hands and be interrogated, fuelling his paranoia. Who knew? He might launch a purge, triggering a civil war. We might win without firing a shot.

Don’t get too hopeful, I told myself. You don’t know the messengers even passed on their messages.

They weren’t the only messengers. A handful of volunteers – I’d dubbed them influencers – had slipped into the enemy camp, telling the conscripted soldiers they could surrender rather than fight to the death. Others had gone to the mercenaries, telling them they’d be executed if they were captured in battle. It was another calculated risk, but I thought the gamble was worth taking. Mercenaries didn’t want to fight to the death. They wanted to live long enough to spend their money, perhaps even to switch sides. If the coming battle went badly, the mercenaries might abandon their master and run before it was too late.

The days wore on. I cursed the lack of actionable intelligence and waited, encouraging the men and laying traps for the enemy army. Doubts assailed me, every night, as I lay with Fallon, barely able to sleep despite knowing the enemy army was very near. What if I’d misjudged the warlord? His title wasn’t an empty one. What if he’d skirted the city and headed back to his core lands, abandoning his army to its fate? Or … what if his army was already breaking up? It would save the city, but not us. I wanted to smash that army so completely the warlord, and his subordinates, would never recover.

I was half-asleep when there was a knock on the door. I reached under my pillow for the flintlock, just in case, and sat upright. “Come!”

A young servant girl entered, averting her eyes. “My Lord, the pickets have galloped back to the city,” she said. I glanced at the clock. It was an hour before dawn. “The enemy army is approaching.”

“Good,” I said. The waiting was over, at least. Sort of. If the army had been spotted by the outer pickets, it would be at least two hours before it got into attack position and challenged the defences. “Please bring us some breakfast” – I needed to make a show of calm, even though my insides were churning – “and inform the war council I want to see them in my tent, one hour from now.”

The girl bobbed a curtsey, then hurried away. I smiled after her. She would carry out my orders, then tell everyone – I hoped – that I was calmly ordering breakfast rather than an immediate attack. Or something. Right now, we’d have to wait to be attacked. It wouldn’t be long. The basic equations hadn’t changed. No matter how badly we’d harassed the warlord’s army, it was still intact and dangerous.

Score one for Cuthbert, I suppose, I thought coldly. He kept his army together.

The girl returned with a very basic breakfast, looking as if she was trying desperately not to flinch as she presented it to me. I felt a moment’s pity for the serving girl. Any normal aristocrat would have thrown a fit at being offered such fare, although it was what the common soldiers were eating in the trenches, and he’d either take it out on the girl himself or ensure her boss did it instead. She’d probably get the blame … I thanked her politely, then dismissed her. It was just another reminder of how screwed up this society actually was. She wasn’t the cook, but she’d still be blamed …

And now she’s going to tell everyone I eat army fare, I reminded myself. A year ago, the officers had eaten fine foods, while their men had struggled to survive on hardtack. Who could blame them for resentment? I’d changed that as soon as I’d assumed command, making sure everyone ate the same basic rations. It will do wonders for my reputation amongst the troops.

Fallon sat upright. “It’s time?”

“They’re coming,” I confirmed. I gave her a quick kiss, feeling a pang of guilt as I looked at her chest. She was starting to show. “We have to move.”

I ate quickly, donned my tunic and walked to the command tent. It was important not to show any hint of panic, not when the entire city was watching me. The streets were already alive with troops rushing to their positions and civilians, those who had no military duties, making their way to the bunkers. I hoped the safety they promised wasn’t an illusion … it would be, if the city was stormed. The civilians would be dragged out of hiding and put to the sword.

“We all know what we have to do,” I said, as I stepped into the tent and checked the updated map. “There’s no need to go over it again.”

The war council looked relieved. I hit my amusement with an effort. Repeating the same thing over and over again could be calming, but not here. I smiled coldly as I let my eyes wander from face to face. I didn’t have to fear betrayal, not from my council. No one believed the city could surrender, and no one believed Cuthbert could control his men even if he accepted our offer to bend the knee. Hell, he might not even try. Houdon had risen against his men and letting the city get away with it would set a terrible precedent.

“We’re going to kick his ass,” I told them. It wasn’t as dramatic as some pre-battle speeches I’d heard, but … frankly, I’d never liked senior officers trying to sound like movie stars. We were soldiers, not football stars or cheerleaders … I tried not to smile at the thought. The men would probably have appreciated a few cheerleaders. Were they a thing here? I didn’t know. “To your stations.”

Alonzo joined me as I made my way to the ramparts. It had been rebuilt extensively to give me a view of the coming battlefield, although I was painfully aware I couldn’t see everything. My officers and men knew what to do, if the enemy swept around the city and tried to take us in the rear, but … I looked up as the hot air balloon rose into the sky, two observers already scanning the ground for enemy threats and a magician standing ready to transmit their findings to the HQ. It wasn’t much, but it was all we had.

“Shit,” Alonzo muttered.

I put a pair of charmed spectacles on my eyes and followed his gaze. The enemy army was flying a bright red flag, promising no quarter. Back home, it was a black flag, but the intent was the same. No surrenders would be accepted, no mercy would be shown … oddly, I felt a twinge of relief. The warlord had ensured my troops – and the city – would fight to the death.

“No messenger,” a councillor muttered.

“There wouldn’t be,” I told him. “It’s a fight to the death.”

I kept my voice even. Cuthbert didn’t need to send a herald to tell us anything. The red flag was all the message he needed. His army taken down the pennants and flags they’d normally fly, just to make sure the defenders got the message. I smiled in cold amusement. The aristocrats had to have realised, by now, that wearing fancy uniforms and flying their banners made them targets, but they couldn’t take them down without appearing cowardly. They had to be pleased to have orders to take them down. They could make a show of moaning and groaning about following their master’s commands, all the while being secretly relieved …

Just like a gang of street toughs, I thought, wryly. I’d known too many to have any illusions about their lack of maturity, or about how easy it was to goad them into making a fatal mistake. The fear of being thought a coward is worse than the fear of death or imprisonment.

The enemy army deployed in a ragged formation; cavalry sweeping around the city defences in hopes of finding an easy way into the city itself; infantry and artillery preparing themselves for the coming assault. Cuthbert had fewer pieces of artillery than I’d expected, from the reports … I hoped that meant he’d had to abandon his guns when he’d lifted the siege of Damansara and raced to Houdon. If he had … had he spiked them? My officers knew to sweep the battlefield for anything the enemy had left behind, even ruined guns. They could always be melted down and recycled if they couldn’t be repaired.

I tried not to roll my eyes as the cavalry returned. If Cuthbert genuinely thought I’d only fortified one side of the city, he was a bigger fool than I’d thought. Houdon’s walls would be worse than useless if they didn’t run around the entire city and my defences were no better, although they were a little thicker around the gates. I suspected he was buying time, time to get his men organised before the charge. His guns were swinging into position …

They opened fire.

Alonzo gasped as the cannons rained shells on our trenches. I wasn’t so impressed. The guns might be far superior to anything the locals had possessed, a few years ago, but compared to modern artillery they were crap. An MLRS could do more damage to the city in one shot than the primitive guns could do in days … probably. I frowned as I saw the cannonballs strike down, some exploding and others producing dense black smoke. Explosive shells … I had teams working on putting them into production, but there’d been too many problems unsolved when my army had set out. I kicked myself, mentally. I’d fallen into the habit of assuming the warlords couldn’t innovate, not really. But I’d been wrong.

The Nazis were monsters and the Communists were no better, but they still made a hell of a lot of technological innovations, I reminded myself grimly. And they had no qualms about stealing ideas from us and putting them into practice.

“The smoke has to be magic,” Alonzo said. He sounded a little unnerved. I shot him a sidelong look. Magic was part of this world. He should be more used to it than me. “What is it doing?”

“Obscuring our vision,” I said. The black smoke – I had feared it might be Black Smoke – didn’t seem to be poisonous, thankfully, but it was making it harder to see. The land around the city had been relatively clear, even before the war, and I’d cleared what remained to ensure my men had clear fields of fire in all directions. Cuthbert had clearly given the assault more thought than I’d expected. “You” – I waved to a messenger girl – “tell the magicians to get rid of that shit.”

The girl nodded – I’d threatened beatings to anyone who showed any overt respect to an officer in the middle of a fight – and hurried off. I cursed under my breath as the bombardment grew louder. We didn’t have many guns and what few we had were being held in reserve. I would have killed for a sniper with a modern rifle … hell, I would have settled for a modern rifle. If there was a magician on the far side, directing the smoke …

Another messenger ran into the room. “Sir, signal from the balloon,” she said. “They’re coming!”

Chapter Nineteen

The first time the cavalry had met modern firearms, or what passed for modern firearms in this world, they’d come off worst.

I’d been there. I’d commanded the defence and I had laid a trap and I had known what was going to happen … and I had still been astonished, when Clarence Aldred had led his men straight into the guns. It had been the most one-sided battle I’d ever fought and I’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years, when our enemies had yet to learn how to fight us effectively. Warlord Cuthbert, I had to admit, had learnt a few things from the early disasters too. His cavalry were using the smoke for cover, jinking back and forth as they neared the outer trenches; his gunners were laying down covering fire, forcing my men to keep their heads down. It was pretty much the first combined-arms operation I’d seen since finding myself in a whole new world.

“Launch the flare,” I ordered. “And signal the catapults to open fire.”

Cuthbert had done a good job, I admitted sourly. My trenches offered excellent protection against cannonballs – his accuracy was as shitty as ours – but the combination of explosive shells and charging cavalry made it harder for my men to get up and open fire. Their accuracy wasn’t great at the best of times and it was going to be worse, now they couldn’t even see their targets. I lifted my gaze and saw dust rising from the enemy lines. Diggers? They couldn’t charge our lines without getting mown down, but they could easily dig their own trenches and tunnel towards our lines. The only upside was that it would be very difficult for them to get into – or under – the city itself.

I cursed under my breath as the cavalry charged out of the smoke and into the trenches. They had never seemed very effective to me, but I’d never seen them at their best. They were practically tanks, crashing through defensive lines and plunging on rather than staying to stand and fight. I saw one of my men beheaded by a passing cavalryman – using swords wasn’t as stupid as it looked, I conceded; the cavalrymen certainly had no time to reload as they charged onwards – and another trampled into the ground by a passing horse. The enemy didn’t have it all their own way – I saw a number of cavalry gunned down, their bodies falling from the saddle even as their beasts panicked and ran – but they were alarmingly effective. I had never expected to hold the outer trench – I’d assumed it would fall sooner or later – yet it was going to fall quicker than I had thought. Too many of my troops were untried. I could tell panic was already starting to settle in. The cavalry was taking full advantage.

“Signal Trench One, order them to fall back to Trench Two,” I said. Events were moving faster than I had expected, but we were far from beaten. “Trench Two is to provide covering fire, as planned.”

“Yes, sir.”

I nodded, curtly, and resumed my watch. A retreat could easily become a rout if the enemy gave chase, and the cavalry were trained to do just that. My men had been carefully briefed – they needed to crawl from trench to trench, as bullets zipped over their heads – but I was afraid they were panicking too much to remember what they had to do. The smoke was starting to clear, thankfully, yet … I saw a man running from the trench, stumbling and then falling to the ashy ground. Poor bastard. I feared he’d been killed by one of my men.

The shooting grew louder. The enemy cavalry staggered and started to fall back, a handful tossing grenades of their own as they retreated. A line of enemy infantry ran forward, trying to get into the outer trench; they hit the ground as my men targeted them, crawling onwards with surprising speed. I wondered, numbly, if they were the warlord’s best men, or – more likely – if they were more scared of their superiors than the men in front of them. It was quite possible. Russian troops, back in the Second World War, had kept mounting futile attacks even when it was clear they were pointless, driven on by officers too scared of their superiors to say no. It was horrible, and yet it had worked for them. I told myself it wouldn’t work for my enemies.

“There’re digging their own trenches,” Alonzo said. “Why …?”

I nodded. I’d already seen it. “They’re taking cover,” I said, repeating my earlier thoughts. “And digging their way towards us.”

The fighting raged on. The enemy cavalry swept around the city, shooting towards our trenches … seemingly at random. Our men held their fire. The cavalry were keeping their distance, to the point we’d be lucky if we hit one of them. Their guns just didn’t have the power to strike the trenches, let alone the city itself. I wondered if they were looking for weak spots, although there were none. It might make sense later, when I had to move men to replace the dead, but not now. Perhaps Cuthbert was just trying to keep them busy. The cavalrymen were almost all aristocrats, the fools. They’d be the most likely to challenge their master openly if they thought he was fucking up.

My lips twisted in disgust. It made a certain kind of sense – horses were expensive, and having officers who could feed the beasts themselves was economical – but it was stupid. The care and feeding of horses was bad enough … the social life was worse. What sort of idiot designed a system in which cavalry officers had to be rich, just to meet their social obligations? I’d thought military wives were bad – I’d met a general’s wife who thought she shared his rank – but this was absurd …

That will change, as they become more and more vulnerable, I thought. The Brits had lost the flower of their aristocracy in the First World War. It won’t be long before the locals have the same problem.

“Make sure you get relief forces out to the trenches,” I said, quietly. It wasn’t wise to leave men fighting indefinitely – and, for once, I had the reinforcements to ensure they didn’t have to. “And make sure they get something to eat too.”

“Yes, sir.”

I nodded, accepted a flask of water for myself and kept my eye on the battleground. The enemy trenches were getting closer, despite our best efforts. I’d run a pair of makeshift mortars into the trenches, in a bid to shell their diggers, but it hadn’t been enough to slow them down. Cuthbert was already funnelling more men forward, trying to feed men into the attacking trenches and flank the city. I frowned as I noticed his cavalry massing on our flank. There was no smoke this time, but …

That’s one of the weaker points, I thought. The trench network was still formidable, but … from the outside, that point might look vulnerable. Does he think he can get in?

My mind raced. He was bringing his trenches closer and closer to the front lines. If he launched a flanking attack at the same time … it might not work, if I had troops in place to meet it, but it might be worth the risk. If it worked, he could roll up a lot of my trenches, perhaps even get to the wall and start knocking it down. Or …

Or maybe he’s trying to distract me from the main attack, I noted. It might work.

“Get the caltrops into place,” I ordered, tapping the map. “And then order the men to retreat as soon as the cavalry get into range.”

“Yes, sir.”

I gritted my teeth and waited. Was I outthinking him? Or was he outthinking me? It was hard  to tell. The lack of smoke shells bothered me. Sending his cavalry into the teeth of my guns was certain death, unless he had something up his sleeve. The bombardment was growing stronger … I cursed as an explosive shell, by sheer bad luck, came down in a trench and exploded. The men had no chance to escape. Two had survived, but not for long. We didn’t have enough medics to save their lives.

The cavalry charged. I blinked in surprise. Was he mad? Or was it an illusion …? The gunners opened fire and the cavalry kept coming, seemingly untouched? Perhaps it was an illusion … but it looked so real. I could see the ground shaking under their hooves … I bit my lip, recalling my earlier thoughts about Alonzo and magic. Magic was dangerously unpredictable. For all I knew, my mind was filling in the blanks, ensuring I saw what I expected to see. My men retreated, abandoning the outer trench. The cavalry kept coming …

… And ran straight into the caltrops.

I heard a horse neighing in pain and felt a stab of guilt as the poor beast crashed into the ground. Caltrops were almost fiendishly simple, pieces of twisted metal scattered on the ground to await a horse’s hooves. Horses were surprisingly good at avoiding danger on the ground, but there was no way they could avoid all the caltrops. The cavalry charge came to an abrupt halt as the horses threw their riders and fled, or fell to the ground. I doubted they’d ever recover. The local vets were better than the local doctors, but they couldn’t work miracles. If the riders didn’t hire a magical healer to save their beasts …

“Get a team out there,” I ordered, quietly. Some of the cavalrymen were lying on the ground, clearly wounded. The unwounded were crawling away as fast as they could. “I want prisoners.”

Alonzo gave me a sharp look. “Sir?”

“They’re aristos,” I pointed out. There was no point in appealing to the laws of war. The red flag had made it clear the enemy wasn’t going to follow them – and most of the defenders would happily return the favour, no matter what I ordered. I appealed to his head instead. “They know things we need to know.”

He nodded and hurried off. I hoped his men would follow orders. I hadn’t lied – I did want to find out what they knew – but I didn’t want to preside over an atrocity either. It wasn’t going to be easy to prevent one, not here. My soldiers had been lectured, time and time again, on following the rules, but they were grossly outnumbered by the city militia. And it was the militia who wanted to avenge their city’s treatment …

An explosion shook the air. I turned to see the enemy’s trenches intersecting with ours, their infantry hurling makeshift grenades ahead of them as they charged. My men returned the favour, throwing grenades of their own as the organised struggle broke down into confused hand-to-hand fighting. I gritted my teeth as the fighting grew worse, reminding myself I’d chosen to focus on firearms and semi-modern military hardware rather than swords, shields and other medieval weapons. In hindsight, perhaps that had been a mistake. Cuthbert’s troops had more training in close-quarter combat than mine.

Something to fix later, I told myself. The militia knew how to fire their muskets, but it took longer to learn how to fight with a sword. If we survive …

Alonzo returned, looking grim. “They know nothing,” he said, curtly. “The army has orders to press the attack until we fall.”

“Or they do,” I added, dryly.

I wasn’t too surprised. There was little else the warlord could do, certainly nothing that would keep his army together. I wondered, darkly, if he were actually counting on us wiping out hundreds of his men. I couldn’t recall any general ever sacrificing his men so ruthlessly – Bonnie Prince Charlie had been accused of leaving men to die, although I thought that was a smear rather than literal truth – but few generals had ever been caught in such a trap. Even Hitler, when he’d issued stand-and-fight orders …

He did tell Rommel to stand and fight, staking his men out for the kill, I reminded myself. But he didn’t order the troops to charge head long into enemy defences.

“Tell them we’re sending them back to their lines,” I said. The longer we kept the aristocrats prisoner, the greater the chance someone would kill them. “Give them their parole, and caution them of what will happen if we catch them again. And tell them that if they bring anyone over to our side, they will be richly rewarded.”

“They’ll be killed on sight,” Alonzo predicted.

I shrugged.  “Keep two back and pump them for info,” I added. “Troop numbers, morale, weapons and supplies … political disputes, everything we need to know. Tell the ones you send back that we’re keeping them for ransom, and as guarantees the others keep their parole.”

Alonso nodded and hurried off. I doubted either gamble would work, but … it would cost us nothing and possibly give us a decisive edge. The aristocrats would pay no need to grumbling amongst the rank and file, yet I’d bet half my estates the aristos were grumbling too. Their willingness to serve their master, and follow his orders without question, had to be falling with their morale.

The battle raged on and on. If the enemy had low morale, it was impossible to tell. They pressed their attack savagely, throwing more and more men into the line as my trenches started to break. My men counterattacked with equal savagery, tossing the invaders back out again … I thought a patch of ground little bigger than my old house had changed hands a dozen times in less than an hour. It reminded me of Fallujah, only worse. And we were getting slowly pushed back to the walls.

“Order the guns to open fire,” I said, reluctantly. Cuthbert had moved the red flag closer to the lines. I hoped he was standing near the flagpole, although I doubted it. “Try and slow them down …”

The ground heaved, violently. I found myself on the floor with no clear memory of how I’d gotten there. I grabbed for my pistol, half-convinced the post was under attack, then scrambled to my feet. An enormous cloud of smoke was rising from the nearest trenchline, billowing into the air. They’d dug a mine … I swore, savagely, as I realised the warlord had blown away a number of his own men, as well as mine. It was not going to end well.

I glanced at the map, then cursed. Time was running out.

“Pull the troops back to the wall,” I ordered. Cuthbert, damn the man, had prepared for the moment carefully. His troops were already charging into the crater … I recalled the Battle of the Crater and changed my mind. The men should have circumvented the crater, not tried to run through it. “Belay that. Get the gunners to pour fire into the crater.”

“Yes, sir.”

I snapped further orders as the gunners opened fire, shooting the enemy troops like fish in a barrel. I had no idea if the enemy CO was drunk – General Ledlie should have been shot, not dismissed – but it didn’t matter. The enemy artillery returned fire, targeting my men as the enemy infantry resumed the offensive. I had to admire their spirit, or their desperation. If their leader hadn’t flown the red flag, they might have been able to break off or even surrender. As it was …

We’ll hang Cuthbert, if we take him alive, I thought. I could see a wounded man waving for help, as he bled to death. There was no hope of rescue, not now. It won’t make up for everything, but at least he’ll pay for his crimes.

“Get the forward elements back to the wall,” I ordered. The enemy guns had done too much damage to my guns. “We may have to fall back into the city itself.”

Alonzo nodded, curtly. The trenches were collapsing now. There was no point in trying to hold the rest of the line, now the enemy had made a breach. Technically, we were supposed to offer to surrender at this point, but … the fight wasn’t over yet. We could still hold out long enough for my plan to work. And besides, there was the bright red flag, still flapping in the air. Cuthbert had to be kicking himself, I hoped. If there had been a hope of a peaceful surrender without a sack, the defenders might have taken it.

The shelling tapered off, somewhat to my surprise. Cuthbert shouldn’t have had any qualms about bombarding the city, unless he was worried about setting off the gunpowder … perhaps he was. Did he even know how it had been stored? Or perhaps … I shook my head and watched as he recognised his lines, funnelling more and more men into the breach. It was just a matter of time before he punched a hole in the wall and …

“Sir,” a messenger called. He was so frantic he had to gasp for breath before speaking again. “The balloon signalled.  They’re here!”

I sucked in my breath. The plan had worked! And that meant …

“Draw in the rest of the lines, into the gates,” I ordered. Opening the gatehouse was another calculated risk, but … the enemy shouldn’t have time to capitalise on their victory, if they captured the gate, before the other shoe dropped. If I was lucky, the mere prospect of capturing a gate would hypnotise them. I couldn’t blame them, either. Taking a gate would let them send troops right into the city itself. “And hurry!”

Trumpets blared. Cuthbert had seen the trap. Finally.

But it was too late, now, for him to escape.

I smirked. Got you, you bastard!

OUT NOW – A Hope in Hell (The Heirs of Cataclysm Book III)

They hold the secret that could break the world… again.

John, Scout, and the rest of Joyce’s crew flee across the deserts and magical wastelands holding the plans to make motivators, devices that provide unlimited magical power to any mage.

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Will John and his friends stand up against the greatest wizard in the world? Can they hold off all the assembled armies? Or is releasing the second apocalypse their only hope?

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Book Review: Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

– Daniel Allen Butler

In the early years of Second World War historiography, characters such as Erwin Rommel assumed a prominence as “Good Germans” they did not always deserve. Part of this was for political reasons – drawing a line between the supposedly clean-handed Wehrmacht as opposed to the bloody-handed SS, a divide that existed only in the minds of people who promoted the myth for political purposes – but also to explain British and later American defeats at the hands of a handful of remarkable generals who served an evil cause. Rommel was very much the beneficiary of both reasons, at least partly because he fought a reasonably clean war that could be admired, in stark contrast to German officers who served Hitler loyally and profited accordingly, all the while turning a blind eye or actively encouraging the atrocities that came to mark the eastern front as one of the most brutal battlefields in human history. Rommel also had the advantage of being implicated in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944, which gave him a glamour no other German officer could match.

The myth of Rommel’s combination of military skill and willingness to take a stand against the Nazis, therefore, has remained very pronounced, even with the benefit of more modern scholarship. The only other person who can claim to have been mythologized on such a scale is Robert E. Lee and Lee, at least, could be charged with costing his side the war. Rommel cannot be so accused. But it is a myth. The real Rommel was a very different man. In this book, Daniel Allen Butler has set out to separate the myth from reality.

In his retelling, Rommel was a common-born soldier who had a surprisingly controversial life prior to his service to Adolf Hitler. Among other escapades, he cheated on his fiancée with another woman and impregnated her, then – somehow – convinced his soon-to-be wife to allow that woman and his bastard daughter to live with them, apparently in harmony. This was the only moment he was unfaithful to her, and he remained very close to his wife (often writing to her every day) until his death. The unfortunate woman, forced to pose as a close relative (a not implausible story) eventually died; it was suspected she committed suicide, although the truth will never be known for sure.

It was the First World War that was the making of him. Unlike many other German officers who would serve on the Western Front, Rommel spent much of his career in the Romanian and Italian campaigns, giving him a different experience and insight into what technology and audacity made possible. Rommel took immense risks, but they often paid off. He was later described as pioneering Blitzkrieg, although that wasn’t true and he paid little role in the development of the concept. At the time, he was still a very junior officer.

Rommel’s attitude to the Nazis was complicated. On one hand, he regarded them as pretentious and flatly refused to allow his son to join the SS. He was not amused by their conduct, and thought the rank-and-file fools. On the other hand, his personal relationship with Adolf Hitler was warm and friendly, at least until the Mediterranean campaign turned him permanently against the Axis. Both Rommel and Hitler were essentially enlisted men turned good, giving them something in common that was missing in their relationships with the old guard of generals, most of whom came from the military aristocracy. They clearly bonded, and Hitler took a certain degree of interest in Rommel’s early career. Rommel, it seems, had nothing but respect for Hitler even as he scorned the Nazi Party.

The arrival of the Second World War gave Rommel a chance to prove what he could do. He played a major role in the conquest of France, then was given command of the Afrika Korps in the wake of Italian defeats that threatened their empire and – more importantly, from Hitler’s point of view – Germany’s soft underbelly. Rommel had orders to stand on the defensive, orders he gleefully ignored. The Afrika Korps went on the offensive at once, tricking a seesaw series of battles that raged back-and-forth until El Alamein. If Rommel had been given the supplies he needed, it is quite likely he would have reached Cairo and the Suez Canal. In reality, his logistics were a constant nightmare, permanently on the verge of being cut once and for all. He came very close to losing everything more than once, including his life.

His relationship with his Italian allies was a mixed bag. Rommel respected the average Italian soldier, but not the leaders or their equipment. He managed to get on good terms with some of them, yet never formed close relationships with their superior officers. He was frequently clashing with the Italian High Command and Mussolini, particularly after the latter lost much of his influence in this country. His own superiors saw him as something of a maverick, although he was good at convincing visitors he knew what he was doing. However, as the tide of the war turned against the Axis, Rommel started to slip out of favour. To him, it was increasingly clear that the war might well be lost – and Hitler didn’t seem to realise or care.

As he came to personalise the battles in North Africa, to the point of being mentioned by name by Winston Churchill, it is fair to say Rommel fought a relatively clean war (although it should be noted that the opportunity for atrocities was often lacking). He was lucky in his opponents – the best British general of the time, Richard O’Connor, was captured fairly early on and escaped too late to have any major influence on desert war – and also in weaknesses hardwired into the British military machine. However, this changed when he was forced to fight a battle on the enemy’s terms, which ended badly at El Alamein. Rommel was driven back into Libya, then French North Africa (where he bested the Americans at Kasserine Pass), and finally recalled to Europe, where he helped plan the defence of Italy before finally being sent to command the German defences in France.

By this point, Rommel was thoroughly disenchanted with the Nazis and Hitler himself. The dictator meddled, all the while constantly veering between insane optimism and pessimism, driven by a complete lack of awareness of modern war. Rommel apparently believed the war was lost, not least because American and British airpower would cripple any German response to the coming landings. He rarely expressed his doubts, however, and had little contact with plotters against Adolf Hitler. Indeed, as bad luck would have it, he was in the hospital after an air attack when the plot to kill Hitler went into operation. Unfortunately, it failed.

Rommel’s exact involvement is difficult to establish. The author believes he was largely uninvolved. He had the misfortune to be named by a conspirator who was being tortured and might well have been innocent of any involvement, contrary to the myth. (If Rommel had been involved, and he had been able to get over his reluctance to assassinate his political leader, it is hard to believe the aftermath of the bomb plot would have gone so badly.) For various reasons, Hitler chose to bully Rommel into committing suicide in 1944, on condition his family were spared. Surprisingly, after Rommel took poison, Hitler kept his side of the agreement. But then, it would have been terrible for German morale if a hero like Rommel turned on the regime. The Nazis may have been the original source of the Rommel myth.

Rommel has been taken to be a rare hero of the German military, a warrior untarnished by Nazi atrocities. This is not wholly accurate. Rommel apparently chose to turn a blind eye to a number of atrocities, possibly including shooting prisoners. He also never had to decide if he wanted to let the Einsatzgruppen into Cairo and Palestine, a decision that would have cost the lives of countless Jews and Muslims. But then, he did not ever have to make that decision and he would probably have been overruled if he said no. It’s unlikely the Nazis would have honoured his decision.

He might have grown disenchanted with the regime, and Hitler himself, but he made no concentrated attempt to do anything about it. In that, he is one with a long and dishonourable list of German officers who did nothing about the monster they served.

The book also highlights a number of potential points of divergence, for alternate history fans.  Rommel could have been side-lined permanently after trying to get the Hitler Youth subordinated to the Wehrmacht. He could have been passed over for the coveted post that put him close, alarmingly so, to Adolf Hitler.  He could have easily been killed or captured quite a few times, during the Desert War, and he could have had a free hand in preparing the defences of France against Operation Overlord. (He was pessimistic about Germany’s chances, but hasty counterattacks on the bridgeheads might have smashed the landings before airpower took its toll.) And he could have avoided being fingered during the interrogations after the bombing plot, leaving him alive to keep fighting for Germany.  This would not have saved the regime, but Himmler – apparently – saw the much-respected Rommel as a potential conduit to negotiate a surrender with the western allies.  It is unlikely this would have worked – at this point, Germany had nothing to bargain with – but it remains a possibility. And the prospect of Rommel surviving into the 1950s, after the war, might force the Germans – and everyone else – to come to terms with the myth, and their role in perpetrating it.

Rommel was, the book concludes, a complex character who was more than just the admirable Desert Fox. He served an evil cause, and was lucky enough not to have to grapple with the grim realities of Nazi Germany. He was also lucky enough to have a free hand and opponents who couldn’t match him and his troops, giving him a chance to achieve results far out of proportion to his resources. But much of the myth is nothing more than a myth. Rommel was not directly involved in the bomb plot, or any other attempt to assassinate Hitler, and the inevitable end result of a Nazi Victory – or even a compromise peace – would have been misery on a scale beyond imagination.

Overall, Field Marshal is a very interesting read. And well worth your time if you want to understand the man behind the myth.

Snippet – Marah’s Tale

Introducing someone who will become very important to Emily …

Prologue

The man who called himself the Wild Fox, and crafted a legend of heroic deeds and daring do, of brilliant raids on the aristocracy and taxmen that always ended with the noblemen and their mercenaries looking like fools while their ill-gotten gains were returned to their rightful owners, always wore his costume, even when every hand was turned against him and it would be prudent to blend in with the crowd.  It was part of the legend, of a hero who stood tall and proud, daring the enemies of the common man to strike him down – and, in doing so, turn him into a martyr. The price on his head was unimaginably high, and the slightest mistake could bring him down, but the Wild Fox went on.  He could do no else.

It had always amused Virgil Quintus Fabius that far too many people, including people old enough to know better, believed the myth. It would be folly, in the extreme, to show himself so openly. The aristocrats would not hesitate to do whatever it took to bring him down, from planting spies in the various revolutionary organisations to storming the entire district and arresting everyone present, even the ones who had nothing to do with the Levellers or him. He wore a simple suit and hat when he walked the streets, the kind of garb that might be worn by a lower-class commoner. It was not the sort of outfit that would draw attention. There were thousands of such people in Valetta, men with no money to pay for prostitutes or anything else they might find in the Coalsack, men with nothing worth the effort of stealing. He kept his eyes open anyway as he walked down the street. Valetta was a violent town and recent events have only made it worse. It was quite possible he would run into someone who wants to put a knife between his ribs for fun.

Virgil smiled as he passed a pair of young aristocrats, slumming it on the streets. The Coalsack had a bad reputation for shady doings and outright criminality, but that didn’t deter the aristocrats from visiting. The Coalsack was a place where you could find anything, including potions and other pleasures forbidden even to the aristocracy. There were buildings that catered to the very darkest of tastes, isolated bedrooms offering pleasures so twisted and perverse that anyone who tasted them could never be trusted again. It wasn’t just pleasure, either. The Coalsack was a haven for everyone who opposed the monarchy, a hiding place kept secure by the king’s unwillingness to risk alienating his aristocrats. It was rare for the Royal Guard to enter the district. But the chance to catch the Wild Fox would be enough to bring them in.

His smile grew wider, and nastier, as he spotted the private guards following the aristocrats. It could not be an easy job, even without the pressure of visiting the Coalsack. They might be dressed as servants, rather than guards, but it was obvious they were nothing of the sort. The crowd gave them a wide berth, careful not to draw their attention. It was possible they might draw their swords first and ask questions later, if they felt threatened. Getting out of the Coalsack afterwards would be difficult, if they drew blood, but they might not be thinking too clearly. They were clearly not paying enough attention to their surroundings. Virgil had no trouble spotting a little girl in boy’s clothing walking past the guards, picking their pockets as she moved. She was very good at her job. The guards didn’t notice anything – and wouldn’t, until it was too late. He made a mental note of her face, as a prospective recruit, then walked into the alleyway. The stench of too many humans in too close proximity worse off around him, a smell that would deter the perfumed aristocrats. He did his best to ignore the men and women lying on the paving stones, drunk or drugged out of their minds or simply overwhelmed by despair. There was little hope for anyone who fell into the Coalsack. The treasurers came at a cost, one paid by the locals. The people in the alleyway would be dead soon. The Coalsack wouldn’t notice their deaths.

The door was unmarked, like most of the others. If you didn’t know what it was, you had no business there. Virgil knocked on the door, beating out a pattern, then turned the knob. Magic – a very low-power charm connected to something nastier – flickered around his fingertips as the door opened. The interior was a workshop, dominated by a handful of portable printing presses turning out the latest revolutionary broadsheets. The apprentices – all female – barely looked up from their work. Virgil nodded in approval. The printing shop was buried within the Coalsack, protected by street thugs and gangsters who could be relied upon to challenge anyone who entered their territory in force. The printers would have plenty of time to pack up and vanish if the Royal Guard came calling.

“Welcome,” a tart voice said. “This way.”

Virgil nodded and followed the older woman into the office. It had been difficult, once upon a time, to wrap his head around such a woman being part of the growing network of evolutionary organisations. She looked like a fishwife, or one of the merchant women who ran the store while her husband bargained for goods with his suppliers. Her face was scarred and pitted, her dress loose and anonymous – in its own way, as anonymous as his own outfit. She could let her dark hair down, change her outfit, and effectively vanish. By the time the Guardsman realised who and what she was, she’d be gone. Virgil had no idea why she had taken up the revolutionary trade, or what she had been called before she had abandoned her family name, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had.

He felt a handful of protective wards snap into place as the older woman closed the door. “I take it your master’s last mission was successful?”

“Yes.” Virgil opened his bag to reveal four golden candlesticks. “You’ll have to melt them down, of course, but they are real gold.”

The women inspected the candlesticks as if she expected she’d be cheated. Trust was in short supply in the Coalsack. There was no such thing as honour amongst thieves. The Levellers claimed to be honest even when it worked against them, but very few people believed they truly were. The line between revolutionary and criminal activity was incredibly blurred. Virgil might tell the world that his theft had undermined the aristocracy, and funded the revolution, but not everyone would agree. He had seen quite a few revolutionary organisations fall all the way into outright criminality, preying on the people they claimed to fight for.

“They are real gold,” the woman said. Her tone didn’t change, even though she was holding the money to feed an entire apartment block for weeks. “Your master did well.”

Virgil nodded, playing the servant. The woman was not supposed to know that he and the Wild Fox were one and the same. He had wondered, occasionally, if she had guessed the truth, but he had never bothered to ask. The servant was as much a facade as the masked avenger of the night, the righter of wrongs and fighter of evil. If he had to discard the persona, he would do so without a second thought. His business in the city could be carried on under another name.

The woman stared down at the candlesticks for long moment. “It seems almost a shame to melt them.”

“Do as you see fit,” Virgil advised. The candlesticks were quite recognisable. There was no way to hide the coat of arms, not without making it obvious what they’d done. If there wasn’t a description circulating already, with the promise of vast rewards for the man who found and returned them, he’d eat his hat. My master just wants the funds to be used properly.

“Indeed.” The woman sounded suspicious. Charity was rare in the Coalsack, even amongst the revolutionaries. But Virgil didn’t need the money. He could get pretty much anything he wanted, through magic or mundane skills. “What else does he want?”

“An assistant,” Virgil said. He thought briefly of the young pickpocket, before dismissing the thought. She was skilled, but a lifetime on streets would have given her a cynical attitude towards anyone who tried to reach out to her. She would always be looking for the ulterior motive and in this case she would be right. He needed someone a little less suspicious. “Someone young, with magic and without any local connections.”

The woman said nothing for a long moment. Virgil waited impatiently. The women straddled a number of revolutionary groups, from organisations quietly pressuring the monarchy to make a handful of limited reforms to groups planning outright violence, but most of the people she knew wouldn’t qualify. It was difficult anyone to enter a group without someone vouching for them, if only to keep the secret police from infiltrating them. There were very few people isolated from the rest of the city. A recent immigrant would be ideal, if there was one. But they tended to come in groups.

“I may have a lead for you,” the women said, finally. “Someone with magic. But you will have to act fast.”

Virgil nodded. Patience had never come easily to him. It was always better to be doing something, anything, rather than sitting around waiting to be attacked. He could wait for his plans to mature, if he had no other choice, but … he didn’t like it. If time wasn’t on his side … it was all the excuse he needed to act.

He smiled. “Tell me.”

Chapter One

Marah muttered a very unladylike word under her breath as she dug the shovel into the pile of coal, picked up a scoopful, and dumped it into the makeshift wagon. The air was cold, but sweat soaked her clothes as she picked up a second scoopful and tossed it after the first. Her hands felt grimy and unpleasant, her outfit so badly stained with coal dust that she felt she would never be clean again. Every breath she took brought in a mouthful of dust, forcing her to cough and spit in a manner her mother would hate. She took a swig of water from her canteen, then forced herself to carry on. Her shift wasn’t over yet.

She kept her face a blank mask as a supervisor walked past. He was a middle-aged man, wearing clothes that made him look as if he were putting on airs and graces, but he had the power of life and death over the young men and women working in the yard. A word from his could see her, or one of the others, tossed out with no hope of return. Her stepfather would be furious if she got fired and her mother … Marah sighed inwardly. It wasn’t as if their supervisor actually owned the yard, or the railway, or the coal pits on the far side of town. He was just lucky enough to have a job that let him boss people around. She let her gaze linger on the handful of girls who were eyeing him as a prospective husband, then rolled her eyes. The supervisor might take them away from the yard, but Marah doubted married life with him would be pleasant. And yet, the saddest thing about it was that the supervisor was probably the best catch in town.

The wagon filled slowly, right to the rim. Marah wiped sweat from her forehead as the locomotive – a wooden steam kettle that somehow moved along the tracks without being pulled or pushed by humans or horses – was connected to the wagon train, then sent down the railway to the distant city. She had thought it fascinating, the first time she’d seen it, but it to grow commonplace in the last few weeks. It was hard to keep her spirits up when she felt trapped in the town, rotating between the yard and her father’s house. There was nowhere else for a young woman. They had been promised a proper school, with a curriculum that covered everything from the basics to preparing students for apprenticeships, but it hadn’t materialised. Marah wasn’t surprised. The town council thought young men and women would be better served going straight to work, rather than bettering themselves. If she had been a boy, she’d be at the pits right now.

She straightened as the supervisor blew his whistle, put down her shovel and made her way to the gates. It was the end of her shift. She couldn’t help dawdling, the matter how much she loathed the yard and the work she did there. Going back home meant encountering her beaten down shell of a mother and her stepfather. She couldn’t decide if it was worse to find him at home, after his shift in the pits, or for him to come staggering home later, after drinking away most of his pay in the bar. He would be in a foul mood either way, but if he was drunk he might collapse before he had a chance to start shouting at or beating his children and stepchildren. Or his wife. Marah knew it wasn’t easy for a young widowed mother, even if there was no question over the legitimacy of her children, but she would never forgive her mother for marrying Garang. To call the man a brute was an insult to brutes.

The gates closed behind her. She forced herself to keep walking towards the town, taking off her hat and allowing the wind to blow through her red hair. It felt dank, almost powdery, as if there was so much dust trapped within her hair that there was no way to wash it properly, no matter how much time she spent in the communal baths. The rest of her leathery outfit, passed down through more wearers than she could count, was dirty and smelly, a grim reminder she would probably never get out of the town. And yet …

She gritted her teeth until it hurt. She could feel the power and potential within her, something that had been part of her since her feminine cycles had begun. She had been tested magic, and she had magic, but her stepfather had refused to even consider allowing her to apply for a scholarship. He’d pointed out that Marah was nothing more than an uneducated common-born girl from a mining town, hardly the sort of person who would be granted money for nothing, and refused to allow her to take the chance. Marah suspected he was afraid of what she would do with magic, but there was no way to prove it. Or to escape. He was her father, legally speaking, and if she ran away she’d be bought straight back to him.

Two more years, she told herself. She was sixteen. When she turned eighteen, she intended to follow the railway tracks to the city and vanish. Her stepfather might have a contract with the company, but she didn’t. She would have nothing keeping her in the town when she turned eighteen. Everyone knew the big city was full of pitfalls for a young woman, and the slightest mistake could get her killed, but it had to be better than staying in the town for the rest of her life. Two more years and then I can get out of here.

The thought cheered her as she walked slowly into town. It was hard to believe that Lubbock was only five years old, founded when the demand for coal grew and grew to the point that anyone who owned a coalmine could be sure of making a vast profit. The town was a cluster of stone and wooden buildings arranged around a handful of administrative buildings, all so dirty they looked older than her. She pretended not to see the line of young men waiting outside the knocking shop – she wasn’t supposed to know it existed – and turned away from the older men flowing into the nearest pub. They would be drunk off their asses soon enough, unless they ran out of money. It was unlikely. Alcohol was cheap, to keep the miners from thinking about how badly the company screwed them, and the innkeepers would often keep the booze flowing and put it on the drinker’s tab. Marah was no mathematician – she didn’t know her numbers and letters – but she didn’t have to be a genius to know the tab, and the debt, would keep rising until it was impossible to pay. It was just another trick to make sure the miners stayed put, working until they dropped.

A shiver ran down her spine as the wind shifted, blowing a cold gust of wind into her face. She tasted coal on the wind, a grim reminder that her brothers and stepbrothers were down in the pit, breathing that muck from the moment they walked into the tunnels until they returned to the surface. Mining wasn’t safe. A tunnel could collapse, or be filled with poisonous or explosive gas, or … she’d heard her stepfather coughing, most nights, as he expelled gunk from his lungs. The supervisors said it was perfectly safe, but Marah didn’t believe them. It was impossible to believe it was harmless.

“So,” a voice called. “What have we here?”

Marah glanced back, then swore under her breath. Jock and Geordie were thugs, the children of minors who had moved to the town in hope of a better life and discovered, like Marah’s stepfather, that the pit was a trap. They were already working in the mines … she realised, dully, that it must be their day off. The company gave its workers one day off a week, more out of practicality than compassion. She saw the bottle in Jock’s hand and scowled. Normally, they’ll be smart enough to leave her and other girls alone. But if they were drunk …

Jock held up the bottle. “Give us a kiss and we’ll give you a drink?”

Marah felt a hot flash of pure anger. She was many things, but she was no whore. She wasn’t one of the girls who went to work at the knocking shop, deluding themselves that they could leave one day and have a normal life. It was hard not to look down on a girl who sold her body to survive. Her mother, for all her flaws, had married again. She hadn’t sold herself to uncounted men.

She clenched her fists. She knew the type all too well. Showing weakness would invite attack. She could not turn away, or run, without being jumped. She was tired and worn, her body aching after hours in the yard. And even if she managed to outrun them, they would catch up with her later.

“No,” she said, bracing herself. They were too drunk to realise what they were doing. Get lost.

Jock pasted a smile on his face. “A kiss? Your mother gave me so much more.”

Marah blinked. “What?”

“Your mother opens her legs for everyone,” Jock said. Beside him, his friend nodded in agreement, even as he shifted into position to grab her if she tried to run. “Why doesn’t her daughter …?”

Marah charged at him and jabbed her fist into his chest. Jock staggered under the blow, giving her a moment to aim for his eyes before Geordie could try to intervene. He tumbled backwards, trying to bat her away with one hand; she landed on top of him, her hands smashing into his face. Geordie grabbed her a second later, pulling her back; she slammed the back of her head into his nose and had the satisfaction of feeling it break, an instant before he tightened his grip. Marah kept struggling, lifting up her leg and bringing her boot down on his foot as hard as possible. Geordie yelped and loosened his grip. Marah pulled free and ran straight into Jock. He punched her in the chest, barely pulling the punch. Marah choked and bent over, gasping in pain. The two bastards were strong, whatever else they were. Marah was used to pain – she had felt her stepfather’s fists too many times to count – but this was different. Geordie gave her a shove and sent her sprawling to the ground. She kept struggling desperately …

Jock hit the ground beside her, choking and vomiting. Marah blinked in surprise, then looked up to see her stepbrother confronting Geordie. The drunkard was sobering up rapidly. He had enough sense to turn and run, rather than try to fight. They had had enough trouble with Marah and Roth, her stepbrother, was stronger. And the rest of the family might be on their way.

Roth kicked Jock somewhere painful, then helped Marah to her feet. “You have to stop getting into fights,” he said. “Dad isn’t pleased.”

Marah scowled at him. Roth wasn’t bad, for a stepbrother. He at least tried to be friendly to his stepsiblings. It was hard to believe he’d been fathered by Garang, a man who resorted to violence at the slightest publication. And yet … she brushed down her shirt, her chest aching painfully. That had been too close. Her temper gotten her in trouble again.

“He was raging about it earlier,” Roth added, as they made their way back home. “You’re in trouble.”

Marah gritted her teeth. Roth didn’t sound pleased about it, but …

“As long as he lets me recover first,” she said. She had never let her stepfather beat her into submission. Two years, she reminded herself. Two years … and then she could leave and never look back. “What was he saying?”

Roth didn’t answer as they entered their home. It was surprisingly large, compared to her old house, but hardly big enough for the combined family to have enough space. She caught sight of her mother, bent over the stove, working under the eagle eye of her mother-in-law. The older woman glanced at Marah and scowled, her eyes cold and hard. She had never liked Marah and the feeling was mutual. Marah glanced at her mother and felt a strange mixture of feelings. She loved her mother, and she wanted to help her, but the same time she could never forgive her mother for remarrying.

“Behave,” Roth told her. “You’re already in enough trouble.”

Marah sighed, washed her hands in the bucket, and started to help her mother clear the table for dinner. The mother-in-law watched her coldly, pointing out every last speck of dust in a manner that grated on Marah’s nerves. Marah wanted to tell her where to go, but she knew it would just get her in worse trouble. The hell of it was that the mother-in-law was hardly the worst mother-in-law in town. They had spent so long being oppressed by their mothers-in-law that they had no qualms about doing the same to their new daughters-in-law. Marah promised herself she would never do that, if she became a mother and then the mother-in-law, but she couldn’t help wondering how many others had made the same promise. It wasn’t an easy one to keep

The door opened. Garang stepped into the room, his eyes flickering across the chamber until they saw Marah. He would have heard about the fight already, if she was any judge. No one had bothered to help her, apart from Roth, but everyone would have spread the story and far and wide as they could. No doubt the story would have grown in the telling, with different versions spread by friends and enemies alike. Marah forced herself to straighten as he marched towards her. She couldn’t force herself to submit.

“I have had quite enough of you,” Garang said. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. She tried not to look at his fists. They were already clenched, ready for a beating. “You are the most rebellious little brat in town.”

“They wanted to rape me,” Marah snapped. She wasn’t sure if the two boys had really wanted to go that far, but she wouldn’t have cared to bet against it. “I had to fight them!”

“She did,” Roth said. “Dad …”

Garang silenced him with a look. Marah winced as Roth looked down. He was no coward, but he wasn’t going to fight his father. Marah didn’t really blame him. If her father were still alive, she wouldn’t have wanted to fight him either.

“You led them on,” Garang accused. “And then you add the nerve to complain.”

“Of course she did,” Marah’s mother-in-law said. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Marah bit her lip to keep from screaming at the older woman. Garang was too close for comfort. He could crack her skull like an eggshell, if he hit her in a drunken rage. Or worse. There was no law and order in the town, save for the company’s guards, and they wouldn’t intervene in a domestic dispute. They wouldn’t care if Garang beat her and his entire family to death. She reached for the power inside her, hoping she could use it, but nothing happened.

“You think you are so much better than us,” Garang said. “You think you can look down your nose at us? You are an ungrateful little brat, and I have had enough of you.”

Marah’s mother whimpered. Ice ran down Marah’s spine. Her stepfather had made hundreds of bloodcurdling threats over the last two years, from marrying her off to a miner searching for a young wife to selling her to a knocking shop, but he had never carried the threats out. Now … she wondered, suddenly, if he had really had had enough. She was not the ideal stepdaughter. And yet …

“I got you a good job,” Garang hissed. “But you threw it back in my face!”

“You took my wages,” Marah snapped back, her anger at losing the money she had rightfully earned overriding her common sense. Her supervisor had been told to give her pay packet to a stepfather and the bastard had agreed, without even consulting her. She had asked him to give her some of the wages separately, but apparently it was illegal. Or something. “They were mine to save, not for you to use to drink yourself to death!”

Garang turned purple. Marah braced herself for the blow. But instead her stepfather calmed himself. It was so out of character that she half-expected it to lead to something worse. His lips twisted into an evil smile.

“I have had enough of dealing with you,” he said. “I decided to let someone else have a chance. I’ve sold you to the Traveller’s Inn, as a servant. They need a new worker and I need to be rid of you. I’m sure you’ll do well there.”

Marah stared at him. “You did what?”

“I sold you,” Garang repeated. He clinked the money in his pocket. Marah had a feeling he had already spent half his gains on alcohol before staggering home. “Count your blessings. It could have been the knocking shop. It will be, if they send you back here. I’ve already had to pay off your supervisor.”

It was hard to remain upright. Marah had heard of children being sold into service, effectively being sent away for good, but she had never seen it done. Not until now. If Garang had spent the money, and negotiated with Marah’s supervisor, there been no way to undo the agreement. A shiver ran down her spine. She had always wondered if she would be discarded, but until now …

Garang leaned closer, breathing into her face. This is your last night here, he said. The stench was overpowering. “Go pack. We leave tomorrow at dawn.”

Marah nodded, and hurried upstairs.  She had nothing to pack, save for a handful of clothes passed down through the generations. There were few private possessions in the house and none of them were hers. She thought about asking for one of them, perhaps a memento of her father, but she knew it wouldn’t be granted. Her stepfather had effectively disowned her. She was no longer one of the family.

Perhaps it is for the best, she thought. The Traveller’s Inn was quite some distance from Lubbock. She would have a chance to make a new life for herself. Perhaps …

But she feared, as she wrapped up what little she had, that it would be nothing of the sort.

Snippet – The First Witch’s Tale

Foreword

Despite the importance of Whitehall School, there have been surprisingly few attempts to unlock the secrets of the school and its history. Successive grandmasters have been reluctant to permit archaeologists to explore underneath the school itself, or to search the pocket dimension for clues that might lead to whoever built the school. Worse, a significant amount of historical material was destroyed during the wars and what remains is not informative enough to put together a full picture of just what happened, the year the Whitehall Commune stumbled across the castle and turned it into the first school of magic. The result is a hodgepodge of historical sources that regularly contradict one another, and even contradict themselves, and can therefore not be considered reliable.

No one knows who built the castle. Lord Whitehall discovered it, through some unknown means, but it was not he who laid the groundwork for the building itself. (It is generally believed the castle builders made a failed attempt to control the nexus point and were killed in the backlash.) Lord Whitehall did take control of the nexus point under the castle, allowing him to turn the building into a fortress capable of standing against almost anything, yet precisely how did that is another mystery. We know some names that have been passed down through the years – Bernard De Born, Lady Julianne, Lord Alfred, the enigmatic Dark Lady – but precisely who they were and what they did is unknown. Indeed, we have no idea why Lord Whitehall chose to found the school in the first place. The concept of a formal educational establishment was largely unknown at the time.

Regardless, we do know that Whitehall grew and flourished in the years since Lord Whitehall took control of the castle. The growing population of trained magicians laid the groundwork for the magical community we know today, as well as improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The concept of educating every magician, regardless of their origins, took root at Whitehall and spread, despite opposition from various senior magicians. We know this, but we don’t know the details. Precisely when, for example, was it decided to accept female students? Or how, precisely, did Lord Bernard succeed Lord Whitehall as Grandmaster of Whitehall?

It was not until Grandmaster Gordian succeeded Grandmaster Hasdrubal, four years ago, that there was a serious attempt to open up the tunnels under the school in a bid to answer some of those questions. The process caused considerable disruption to the school – quite by accident, the pocket dimension was nearly collapsed – yet it did reveal previously unknown chambers within the school. Many of those chambers had been emptied when they were abandoned, for reasons unknown, but a surprising amount of historical material was recovered, transported to the surface, and examined.

The manuscript you hold in your hands is one of them.

I cannot swear to the historical accuracy of the information contained within the scroll. Manuscripts we know to date back to the founding often contradict themselves. The unknown author of Life of Whitehall later wrote and published Life of Bernard, which appeared to indulge in a certain degree of historical revisionism. Lord Whitehall’s accomplishments were given to Bernard. (It is worth noting that Bernard’s own account of those times went to some pains to correct the record, returning Whitehall to his place of honour.) Life of Whitehall insists that Bernard was Lord Whitehall’s son as well as his apprentice; this manuscript, by contrast, states that Bernard was in fact Lord Whitehall’s son-in-law and notes that the historical Lady Julianne was Lord Whitehall’s daughter. It is worth noting that Life of Bernard glosses over the question completely.

I also cannot swear the scroll is genuine. Forged historical documents are common and fakes difficult to spot without the proper spells. The sheer lack of hard data ensures that fast-talking conmen can explain the historical discrepancies, even when dealing with a properly trained academic archaeologist. My guild has spent years developing techniques for verifying the age of new documents, particularly when they were discovered under dubious circumstances, yet we have to admit that we have been fooled more than once. Indeed, one particular good forgery remained undiscovered for nearly a decade and was only revealed as part of a confession when the forger was arrested for an unrelated matter. This was, of course, hugely embarrassing. A number of careers had been built on the forged document.

This scroll was discovered under the school, in a sealed compartment that was only revealed by chance, and it has passed all the tests. However, it contradicts so much of what we know – or think we know – that it is difficult to be entirely sure.

I advise you to bear that in mind.

Historian Titus, History Guild

Chapter One

On my fifteenth birthday, I ran away from home.

It was something I had been mulling over for the last two years, ever since I’d turned into a young maiden, ever since I had realised I had magic. I had grown up in Bramble Fire, and never gone more than a few miles beyond the town’s perimeter, but I had never truly fitted in. People had pointed and whispered from the very first day, when my father introduced me as his daughter, and it had never gotten any better. The magic just made it worse. Women with magic were dangerous. Everyone said so.

I hadn’t meant to hurt David, really I hadn’t. But he had tried to kiss me and I had panicked and my magic had sparked and now when he looked at me I saw nothing but fear in his eyes.

I’d laid my plans carefully, ever since a passing Peddler had told me the news. I had packed a knapsack with everything I needed, everything that belonged to me. Never let it be said that I was a thief, picking what rightfully belong to others. I did my last set of chores as I waited for nightfall, for the brief hour between sunset and complete darkness, then slipped out of the house – bidding my siblings a silent goodbye – and made my way across the fields to the trees. I was a skilled woodsman. There were few who could match me when it came to slipping through the forest without being spotted. As long as I left without being noticed, I would be well away by the time the alarm was sounded. If it ever was. I suspected Bramble Fire would be quietly glad to see the back of me.

My father caught me at the edge of the fields.

“And where,” he asked, “do you think you are going?”

I tried not to flinch, caught red-handed. My father – Gurdon – was a decent father, as fathers went, but I was trying to run away from home. I hesitated, torn between the urge to tell him precisely where was going and a strange guilt for leaving him and the rest of the family. Children had obligations to their parents, including the obligation to look after them as they grew older. I might not be a son, or even his eldest child, but I still had duties. And I was planning to travel much further than one of our neighbouring villages. If something happened to my father, I might never hear about it – or if I did, it would be too late to do anything about it.

Father cocked his head. “Where?”

“Whitehall,” I said. The peddler had told me the castle, the school for young magicians, was now accepting female students. It had been rare for women to be schooled in magic, unless she wanted to be a hedge witch, and even then the training had been very limited. “I’m not coming back.”

The words cost me. I had grown up with the disdain of the entire village, but my father had never treated me as anything other than his daughter. The idea of abandoning him didn’t sit well with me, even if there was no other choice. I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying a farmer boy and bearing his children, spending my entire life as a broodmare … if, of course, I could find a man willing to marry me.  There were no secrets in small towns and everyone knew what I’d done to David. No one believed it had been an accident.

Father studied me for a long moment. I looked back at him. We made an odd pair. It was easy to see why the old woman muttered darkly about just who, or what, my mother had slept with, nine months before she died giving birth to me. Father was just like the rest of the villagers. He had fiery red hair and pale skin, a short and muscular body, and a practicality that sometimes made him appear cold and uncaring. I was tall and willowy, with dark hair and darker slanted eyes that made me look very different to my siblings and step-siblings. If my mother had lived, Father might have wanted a few words with her about just what should been doing, before conceiving me. There were plenty of stories of young girls who found themselves courted by the Other Folk – or, more likely, by passing peddlers. It spoke well of Father that he had accepted me as his daughter, right from the start. No one would have blamed him for casting me out to die.

“It’s a long walk to the mountains,” Father said, finally. “Are you sure you want to go?”

I blinked in surprise. I had envisaged a hundred versions of this conversation, but none of my imaginations had suggested it would go this way. Father would have been within his rights to march me back home and lock me up, before selling me off to anyone willing to take me. Or to turn his back on me and tell me to get lost. No one would blame him for that either. The chatterboxes who insisted I was an unnatural child would tell him I deserved little else.

“There’s nowhere else to go,” I said. The magic burned within me like a fire. The idea of trying to quench it was unthinkable. So too was the idea of replacing Hilde, the local hedge witch. I knew the price she had paid for her power, the isolation that came with her role. “I have to go.”

Father said nothing for a long moment. I wished I knew what he was thinking. He had five children and seven stepchildren, all of whom were more inclined to spend the rest of their lives in Bramble Fire or the neighbouring villages. The farm would not die without me. Indeed, my absence might even help. It was unusual for a daughter to inherit her father’s farm, but her husband might stake a claim on the lands. I wondered, not for the first time, if Father had been concerned when I’d started walking out with David. It would have complicated his life, and his children’s inheritance, if David had had a claim to a share of the farm.

“I don’t fit in here,” I said. “And you know it.”

“Yes, but you are still my daughter,” Father said. “Are you aware of the dangers?”

I nodded, curtly. The roads outside the villages were known for being dangerous. The forests were even more inhospitable to passing travellers. We knew little of what was happening beyond our villages, but it was clear there were risks in travelling beyond the known world … particularly for a woman. The peddlers were about the only people who travelled far from home and while their lives seemed wonderful, I knew they were often precarious. It was quite easy, I had been told, for a peddler to discover his trade goods were worthless, or to be robbed by poor or desperate villagers. And very few – if any – peddlers were women. It was young men who fantasised about becoming peddlers, not young girls.

“Yes, Father,” I said. I wondered, suddenly, how he had known I was planning to leave. I had thought he was fast asleep, along with my stepmother and the rest of their conjoined brood. Where else can I go?

Father met my eyes. “Is this about David?”

I shook my head, not daring to speak. Father had always been good at sniffing out lies. The truth was … I was ashamed of what I had done to him, and yet I was unwilling to give up practising magic. And that meant the villagers would eventually drive me out or kill me if I refused to go. I understood their feelings – everyone knew magic was dangerous, and doubly so if a woman had magic – but if I was going to leave I want to leave on my own terms. The idea of living alone in the forest, publicly shunned and privately consulted by everyone, simply didn’t appeal. I wanted to be something more.

“Very well.” Father reached into his pocket and produced a dark leather pouch. “I told myself I would give this to you the day you left, either to marry or … something else. Take it with you, and go with my blessing.”

His lips quirked. “And if you do become a great lady, give us your blessing in return.”

I took the pouch and swallowed, astonished, as I felt the money inside. It was unusual for any of us to have more than a couple of coins, if any, and there was little use for it in the village. We bartered with our neighbours – near or far – trading goods for services or vice versa. I had wanted to take a little money with me, when I left, but I had none. The idea of Father giving me money he didn’t have was just laughable. And yet, he had put a pouch in my hand … where had he even gotten the money?

It wasn’t until much later that I figured out the answer.

“Be careful,” Father observed, unaware of my thoughts. “You could lose that very easily.”

I stared at him. I knew, without having to ask, that my stepmother hadn’t known the money existed. She wasn’t a bad stepmother, any more than my father was a bad father, but she was parsimonious to a fault and if she had realised he intended to give the money to me she would have exploded with rage. The value of the coins was somewhat debatable – I had done plenty of bargaining, when peddlers had passed through the village, and I knew it wasn’t easy to be sure what the coins were actually worth – but they were worth something. Her older children could have made better matches if they had brought the money with them.

“Father, I …”

Father cut me off. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “I have been proud to call you my daughter. And if your destiny calls you elsewhere, then I wish you luck. And farewell.”

He nodded politely to me, then turned and strode away without looking back. I stared after him, my heart beating like a drum. I wanted to call to him, to beg his forgiveness, and yet I knew there was no way things could go back to normal. How could they? The idea of me having a normal life had died, the moment I had shocked David. The villagers would never forget. It was just a matter of time until they told my father to kick me out or did it themselves. My stepmother might already be hinting it was time to marry me off or simply tell me to leave. The thought didn’t hurt as much as it should. It was far from uncommon, in an age of high mortality, for families to blend together as widows and widowers sought comfort and support in each other, but my stepmother could not be faulted for pressing the interests of her children ahead of her stepchildren. Everyone did it.

I forced myself to turn and look north, towards the Craggy Mountains. They were clearly visible in the gloom, towering up into clouds that marked the border between the northern realm and the south. Or so I had been told. I knew very little about the kingdoms and princes and magicians and everything else that lurked beyond the borderline, and what I knew could not be taken on trust. I had once met a passing fortune-teller who’d insisted he could tell us what was happening on the other side of the world; Father, not being a fool, had demanded proof of the man’s powers. He’d left in something of a hurry after that! I smiled at the memory, silently blessing the man who had called himself my father, and then started to walk. I didn’t expect pursuit, not any longer, but I still needed to put some distance between myself and the village. The last thing I needed was someone trying to drag me home to Father. That would be embarrassing.

And if they tried, I thought, it would make them the most unpopular person in the village.

The thought haunted me as I walked north. It was not an easy trip, even though I could see the mountains in the distance and as long as I was walking towards them I was heading in the right general direction. I had no trouble finding food and drink – I knew which plants were poisonous, or how to trap small animals and start a fire to cook the meat, or even find water that was safe to drink – and I knew to avoid the deepest darkest parts of the forest, but that then I had to pass near a number of villages, none of which knew me. It was a grim reminder that the most dangerous creatures in the world walked on two legs. Back home, everyone have known and feared my father’s temper. Here …

One village thought me a thief and put me in the stocks for a day. I slipped away at nightfall and made a mental note never to return. Another was in the grip of an army and I found myself threatened with conscription, or worse, before I managed to escape into the undergrowth. A third was surprisingly friendly, until I discovered the local headsman was desperately looking for a bride. He really must have been desperate. My appearance alone marked me as an outsider, while he knew nothing of my family or what they might give him in exchange for taking me off their hands. Somehow, I doubted he’d taken one look at me and fallen deeply in love he forgot the practical considerations. No headsman ever born could afford to lose track of reality. It wouldn’t be long before his people overthrew him. And a fourth village was burnt to the ground, the handful of buildings little more than blackened patches of scorched ground. It couldn’t have happened that long ago, I decided, or the village would have been reclaimed by the surrounding countryside, but I never worked out who or what laid waste to the village. There were no bodies, as far as I could tell. My instincts were screaming at me to run. I did, and I never looked back.

The landscape grew rougher as I neared the mountains. I fell in with a couple of travelling bards, who were kind enough to point me to the mountain pass and let me stay with them until we reached the nearest village to the magic school. I didn’t hang around. My experiences had taught me that bards were not always welcome, particularly in the more isolated villages. And besides, I wasn’t entirely sure of their motives. It would be very difficult indeed if they hadn’t been friendly. Bards had a bad reputation for seducing young women and I doubted the local villagers would take my side, if I found myself trapped. They might consider it preferable to a bard seducing one of their daughters.

I had been told there was a well-kept road leading directly to the castle. The peddler who had told me that had either been lying or been misinformed. It could have been either. The road was far from well-kept, little more than a rocky track leading up through the mountain pass. The forests were so close to the roads that was almost no room to hide, if someone who might be unfriendly appeared in the distance. I had been careful to avoid men on horseback, and convoys larger than a handful of men. They had bad reputations. I didn’t think I was a runaway serf – my father had been a freeman – but they might have different ideas. For all I knew, I had left my home kingdom behind weeks ago. I haven’t crossed anything that resembled a borderline, but I was pretty sure no one had marked the borders so carefully. And no one would speak for me if I were caught.

The road grew harder to follow as I neared the castle. I could feel the magic in the air, currents of power swirling around the mountaintops, drawing me onwards despite my doubts and fears. I had magic – I could feel the power beating within my breast, I knew what had done to David – and yet I had no idea what sort of reception I’d get, when I presented myself at the castle. I hadn’t met many magicians. They rarely passed through the village and when they did children and women were kept firmly out of sight. The only one I’d spoken to was Hilde and she had been a hedge witch. I was fairly sure the magicians didn’t acknowledge her as one of them.

My fears grew stronger as I walked on. Sweat trickled down my back as the road widened suddenly, revealing a small stone wall. It looked like a joke – I could jump over the wall easily – but I could sense raw power crackling around it. It was like staring into the sun. My soul quailed, just for a moment. I almost wanted to turn and walk away. It wouldn’t be that hard to find a place to live in the forest, or someone willing to take me in. There was always room for a young woman willing to marry a widow, no matter her background, if she was willing to raise her stepchildren as her own. My lack of apparent family would be a bonus. I wouldn’t have any grasping relatives demanding a share of the family inheritance.

And then I saw – or sensed – the magician, standing by the gap in the wall.

And I knew the die was cast.

Updates …

Hi, everyone

Good news first, I have finished the first draft of The Land Of Always Summer. It is currently with the editor, and I have hopes of publishing it within a month or so. The Firelighters and The Demon’s Design are doing well, and I’m currently working on plots for sequels for both of them, but if you read and liked the books please leave reviews. It is very encouraging and it helps sales.

(Audio editions will be along shortly.)

A Hope in Hell has been edited and should be published shortly. I don’t know if there will be any more in that series yet, but if you want them please let me know.

The bad news is that it is now the school holidays and we are going away for a bit. I also have two novellas I want to do – The First Witch’s Tale and The Apprentice’s Tale, the latter of which will tie into the planned SIM26 – and I should probably finish Queenmaker before I start writing Judgement Day (which will wrap up the Endeavour trilogy of Ark Royal). I don’t know when I will get started on the latter, but watch this space.

I’ve also been messing around with potential plots for more Empire’s Corps books.  One would follow a number of people abandoned by the Empire on a very hostile planet; another would follow a collection of naval cadets who were effectively cut off by the empire’s sudden collapse and left to fend for themselves; a third would toss Roland into a complex multisided conflict that would push him to the limit; a fourth would follow a mercenary turned warlord turned Emperor as he tries to put together an empire of his own.

What would you like to see?

Oh, and I also have some free books in this sale.

Chris

On The Origins Of The Alluvian Revolution

A bit of background for a later project:

On The Origins Of The Alluvian Revolution

Your Majesty;

As per your request, I have put together a detailed report tracing the origins of the revolution in Alluvia and assessing the likely course of future events. This was a challenging task. Many historical records have been deliberately altered or destroyed, while more modern records rely very much on witness statements (often from witnesses who have agendas) and other, equally unreliable, sources. I believe it is accurate in broad outline, but many of the finer details cannot be verified.

The Kingdom of Alluvia has existed as a distinct entity for nearly a thousand years. Our historical records are lacking, but it appears clear that a combination of defensible borders and the presence of the newborn Whitehall School helped the early monarchs to secure their power and establish a kingdom bound together by more than just brute force. The original Royal Family was assimilated into the Imperial family, when the Empire took shape, and is apparently extinct. The Jorlem Dynasty certainly claims to be directly descended from the original family, that such claims are inherently improbable. It seems likely that King Jorlem I, the founder of the new post-imperial kingdom, was nothing more than an aristocrat and warlord who succeeded himself and his family onto a political structure that existed well before the fall of the Empire. The official story put forward by the monarchy is so full of holes that any decent academic would have no trouble pointing them out, if he dared. They rarely did, until recently.

Whatever the truth, it cannot be denied that King Jorlem was an excellent empire-builder who took full advantage of the opportunity placed before him. He secured control of the country before anyone could challenge him, then – as the looming threat of the necromancers took shape – restructured the country, officially to defend the newborn Allied Lands against the mad sorcerers, but unofficially to secure his position. It is clear his restructuring saved his kingdom from collapse, when he died, yet it also laid the groundwork for the uprising that would eventually destroy his descendants when they proved unable to maintain the structure in the face of social strains and eventual revolution.

The geography of Alluvia worked in its favour. To the south, the Craggy Mountains block any major offensive from the necromancers or the newborn Republic of Kuching. North, Alluvia is bordered by Red Rose; east and west, by a number of small princedoms that are largely incapable posing any real threat. The internal geography is almost as convenient: a combination of relatively flat lands allow both intensive farming and rapid transit, while canals and rivers make it easy to convoy supplies around the country. This has prevented most of the cities from becoming effectively independent; The Free City of Vendee is the only city that has any degree of independence, and that is only because of a combination of geography and a long-standing agreement between King Jorlem I and the city’s ruling families. Despite its advantages, and a culture that is very different from the surrounding kingdom, it is unlikely Vendee could defend itself for long if Alluvia decided it wanted to invade.

The post-imperial kingdom rested on three pillars. The original aristocracy was woven into the kingdom’s framework with a series of sticks and carrots, not least the grant of a pension to anyone who could reasonably claim aristocratic blood. The powerful noblemen became the king’s friends and advisers, giving them a stake in maintaining his power, while the lesser noblemen took up positions within the administration and ever-growing bureaucracy that ensured the king could control nearly every aspect of his kingdom. The aristocrats became a de facto caste inherently superior to the commoners it ruled, to the point a wealthy merchant was obliged to bow in the street to a poverty-stricken aristocrat. Over the years, this caste became a severe burden on the kingdom’s finances. While royal pensions help keep the aristocrats from plotting trouble, the cost was staggeringly high and could not be borne indefinitely.

Second, King Jorlem used the threat of the necromancers as an excuse to build a powerful army. The trusted aristocrats were given high ranks within the military, while – unusually for the Allied Lands – the king’s soldiers were effectively treated as a de facto caste of their own, with privileges not granted to commoners. For example, when there was a dispute between a soldier and a common born civilian, the soldier won by default. The aristocrats were also expected to raise troops of their own – the militia – although this custom fell by the wayside as the kingdom grew and developed. The expenditure of maintaining the army was bitterly resented, even though there was no shortage of refugees from the Blighted Lands willing to explain exactly what would happen if the necromancers crossed the Craggy Mountains (as almost happened seven years ago), and the royal soldiers themselves were loathed.

Finally, the guilds drew together skilled craftsmen and merchants and gave them privileges of the road in exchange for serving the kingdom. On paper, this was a worthwhile concept; the average craftsman, the matter how skilled, could not bring suit against the aristocracy, but the guilds as a whole shot and sometimes did. In practice, the guilds rapidly became incredibly corrupt and effectively subverted by the monarchy. A person who was not licensed to practice, or had his licence stripped, could not hope to make a legal living. It was no surprise that an underground system of unlicensed craftsmen came into being very quickly, despite the best efforts of the guilds.

The kingdom held together reasonably well for nearly two hundred years, despite stresses and strains, and until recently the monarchy had good reason to think it would survive much longer. King Jorlem IV had two sons – Crown Prince Dater and Prince Hedrick – and, after his first wife died in childbirth, two daughters with Queen Francoise, his second wife. Jorlem IV was not, however, anything like as skilled a politician as Jorlem I, and he was about to face a test unlike any monarch before him. Unluckily for him, it was a test he would fail.

Alluvia had been designed to remain stable, but it was not prepared for three socio-political blows in quick succession. First, the advent of the New Learning made it possible for dissident factions within the kingdom to communicate with each other, spreading the word as far as possible, and even to consider ways to use guns and gunpowder to counter the royal and aristocratic armies. The guilds tried to prevent the spread, but ultimately failed; indeed, many low-ranking guildsmen actively encouraged it. It was not long before political parties -some peaceful, some decidedly not – started taking shape and form.

Second, the effective defeat of the necromancers last year removed the greatest threat facing the kingdom and the king’s excuse for lavishing money on his army. It was undeniable that Crown Prince Dater had fought well in the war, and he was seen as something a popular hero, but there was no longer any incentive to maintain the military. A sizeable number of troops – experienced in the new way of war – were demobilised, and because of the growing financial crisis, found themselves cheated of the pensions and bonuses they had been promised. They were not pleased and many of them drifted into the revolutionary groups.

Third, and perhaps the most dangerous, the kingdom entered a prolonged period of drought. The aristocratic estates had never been managed particularly well – the aristocrats did not share the wealth with their serfs, who were understandably disinclined to do more than the bare minimum – and all of a sudden food production plunged rapidly. Thousands of farm workers fled the lands or joined revolutionary groups demanding the summary redistribution of land and equal rights for the workers.

This led to a prolonged period of unrest. Questioning the monarch had always been high treason. It was hard for most to break the taboo, at least initially. They responded by attacking Queen Francoise, insisting that she was directly responsible for the drought (her legal theft of commoner-owned lands had made her incredibly unpopular, as had her habit of throwing lavish parties even as the drought tightened its grip) and accusing her of deliberately undermining the kingdom. The stories grew and grew until they became truly monstrous, accusing Queen Francoise of having incestuous relationships with her stepsons, her brothers or even her father. It is unlikely there is any truth in the rumours, but they were spread and often believed widely.

It was not long before the revolutionary groups grew stronger. Initial attempts to crack down simply failed, for several reasons: the kingdom had weakened its military, numerous aristocrats thought they could profit from the chaos, and – perhaps most dangerously – disputes amongst the revolutionaries themselves. Some wanted a reformed monarchy on par with the Kingdom of Zangaria, perhaps with a few minor adjustments; others wanted to abolish the monarchy and aristocracy, perhaps driving them out of the kingdom once and for all. The situation in the country rapidly became dangerously unstable, and in many places the aristocracy lost control. It was reported over three hundred mansions were attacked and often destroyed in less than three months.

It is possible that a policy of concession and conciliation, or one of harsh repression, might have stabilised the situation. King Jorlem IV was not up to the task. He tried to do both, on one hand, making concessions and often granting the revolutionaries things they had taken – for example, complete ban on any sort of government censorship – while trying to build up the army and militia for a crackdown. It made things worse. The policy of arresting the more outspoken revolutionaries, ensured they were succeeded by people far less inclined to compromise; the policy of cutting aristocratic pensions (which were rarely paid now in any case) angered the aristocracy; the militias, supposedly under aristocratic control, rapidly turned out to be dominated by revolutionaries or sympathisers and the king discovered, too late, that he was actually reinforcing his enemies. The entire kingdom was rapidly becoming a tinderbox.

Precisely which spark lit the fire has been hotly debated since. It was clear that something was going to happen. The Crown Prince’s army – perhaps the only loyalist military left in the kingdom – was making its way back to the capital city. Rumour insisted the king, egged on by the Queen, was going to crush his enemies. The daily protest marches and rallies were growing worse with every passing day, the revolutionary leaders not even bothering to hide any longer. The secret police made an attempt to arrest one of the leaders – Althorn, Son of Tyler – that sparked off a riot, which rapidly became a full-scale uprising. Precisely how much planning was done for revolution has never been disclosed, but it is clear there had been some. The city’s defences were overwhelmed very quickly, the Royal Family was captured after a bid to escape, and the entire country exploded into revolution. The vast majority of the aristocracy either fled or died trying to defend their estate.

The first revolutionary government took shape surprisingly quickly. It secured control of much of the country and obtained the allegiance of most of the other revolutionary factions. It was not, however, able to secure foreign recognition, nor was it able to openly challenge the Crown Prince’s army. Nor could it solve all the problems facing the country immediately. The high hopes and ideals of the original revolutionaries started to fade rapidly as they tried to grapple with the problems the former government had left them. It seemed quite likely that the Crown Prince, reinforced by troops from Red Rose (he was betrothed to Princess Mariah), would crush the revolution.

The government struggled to prepare the country for war. Troops were raised and trained with modern weapons. Revolutionary ideology was exported to the surrounding kingdoms, in hopes of encouraging revolutions that might prevent an invasion of Alluvia. Land was formally redistributed, and equal rights granted to all, and – perhaps most dangerously of all – the king was beheaded. While this did allow the Crown Prince to claim he was now the rightful king, it also ensured the revolution could not compromise any longer. It was going to be war to the knife.

At this point, the Alluvian Revolution intersected with the Void War. Lady Emily, who was inadvertently responsible for the revolution and thus regarded as a revolutionary hero even though she had barely visited the country, was asked to meditate, to try to come up with a compromise that would prevent an immensely destructive war. Unknown to her, the chaos was deliberately being encouraged by the Sorcerer Void, who wanted a distraction to keep the Allied Lands busy while he prepared his coup. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The revolutionary council was badly disrupted and a number of members were killed, as was Prince Hedrick, while King Dater was forced to head to Red Rose instead of trying to retake his kingdom; he would later die in the Void War, after fathering a legitimate child on Queen Mariah. However, the revolution proved to be more permanent than anyone had thought and a new council took control, led by Jair. He had effective monarchical power, but styled himself merely the First Citizen. It is not clear how much authority he allows his subordinates.

It is tempting to believe that the revolutionary government will effectively self-destruct. I am not convinced. Many of the original revolutionaries, the ones who might challenge Jair openly, were killed in the fighting. The rightful here to phone is still a baby (and the fate of the princesses, second and third in the line of succession, remains unknown). The aristocracy has been broken and scattered. The remaining factions are either openly supporting the new government or have too many other problems of their own to worry about challenging it. To all intents and purposes, as far as we can determine, Jair has a free hand.

I believe it is only a matter of time before he seeks to export revolution to the neighbouring kingdoms.

I remain, with respect,

Your loyal servant.

OUT NOW: The Firelighters (A Learning Experience VII)

The universe is not a very nice neighbourhood. 

The strong races rule the galaxy, doing as they please; the weak are enslaved or driven from their homeworlds or simply exterminated by the ruling powers.  The Solar Union’s only hope of survival is to master GalTech, and improve upon it, before the Galactics realise the human race is no longer trapped on a primitive world, at the mercy of any spacefaring race who stumbles across it.  But GalTech keeps its secrets close, and time is not on humanity’s side.

But there is one hope.  On a primitive world, enslaved by a far more advanced race, there is a research lab with the keys to galactic technology, offering the promise of unlocking everything if they can be captured and returned to Sol.  And so a highly-trained team is dispatched to steal the tech at all costs, even if it means setting the entire planet ablaze …

Read a Free Sample, then download from Amazon (US, UK, CAN, AUS, Universal) or Books2Read!

OUT NOW – The Demon’s Design (Schooled in Magic 25)

Emily is back!

The most dangerous collection of tomes of eldritch lore in the world lies buried under Whitehall, its existence known only to a select few.  They hold secrets long lost, from foretelling the future to tapping into powers far beyond human ken. But now those books have been stolen, forcing Emily to chase the thief across a world ruined by war and teetering on the brink of further conflict before the books can be opened, read, and used to unleash a nightmare …

But it may already be too late.  As dark powers start to stir in the ruins of the post-war world, and inhuman eyes watch from the shadows, Emily must find an answer to an impossible question.  How can she win against an enemy who can see her every move before she makes it?

Download a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase from: Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AUS, Amazon Can, Amazon Universal Link, and others HERE.

And you can read more of Emily’s adventures here, or read more stories set in the same universe as part of the collections here!

Snippet – The Land of Always Summer (Mystic Albion/The Stranded II)

An Earth-born girl in a magic world, a Magic-born girl looking for evil magicians on Earth … what could go wrong?

Prologue: England, 1605

Cecil, Lord Burghley, sensed the messenger coming before the mounted rider galloped up to the gates, showed his credentials to the guards and was shown straight into the mansion. The gossamer-thin wards protecting the estate were nowhere near as powerful as they had been during the reign of King John, the Wars of the Roses, Henry VIII and Mary Tudor, but there was still enough magic left to alert him to newcomers. It was a far cry from the days in which estate was practically invisible, magic making it difficult for the monarch to take notice of its existence, but it was still something. And yet, he could feel them weakening with every passing day. It would not be long before the magic was truly gone.

His heart churned as the messenger was escorted along the corridor to his study. The days in which magicians had been powerful and influential were gone. Magic was flowing out of the world, the brief flowering under Elizabeth Tudor proven to be nothing more than a false dawn. Elizabeth had had court magicians and alchemists and others but her successor – James VI and I – loathed and feared magic with all the hatred of a man confronted with something he didn’t understand. The burners – the witch-hunters – were already on the prowl. Cecil knew himself to be relatively safe, as long as his family served the crown. Others were not so fortunate. Those who had dawdled too long before stepping through the gates were doomed now, as the burners did their grisly work. Wise women, cunning men, and ladies who happened to be merely inconvenient, when large estates were at stake, were being denounced and murdered. It did not matter that most of the victims knew nothing of magic. King James had commanded that witches be wiped out, and his henchmen intended to oblige.

And in trying to destroy the fake magicians, Cecil reflected grimly, he may destroy us as well.

He cursed under his breath. King James was a religious fanatic. His loathing of magic was so profound that Cecil feared what the king would do, if he found out there were practising magicians within the English aristocracy. The alliance between aristocrats and the folk magicians, the hidden communities of common-born magicians, had been born of desperation. If they hadn’t had everything at stake, Cecil knew the alliance would never have been made. It had once suited his people to pretend the other group didn’t exist. Now, they had to work together or die together.

The doors opened. The messenger was a young man, too young to understand the gravity of the message he bore. Like Cecil himself, he had grown up in the secret world of aristocrats who dabbled in magic, a world it suited many people to pretend didn’t exist, a world threatened by the decline in magic and the king’s determination to destroy it. And yet he had no idea what would be lost, when the magic went away for good. Cecil wondered, despite himself, if the young messenger was not one of the lucky ones. He would never feel the lack of magic in his veins. He would never grow old as a cripple, all too aware of what he had lost.

“My Lord,” the messenger said. Cecil knew what the messenger was going to say before he said it. He had been an aristocrat long enough to recognise the expression of a man who feared his master was going to blame the messenger for the message. “I come from Gatehouse.”

From York, Cecil mentally translated. The first and last of the gates lay there. And if you have come so quickly …

The messenger visibly swallowed. “My Lord, the gate has closed.”

Cecil said nothing for a long cold moment. In truth, he had feared that he might have left it too late for far too long. There had been seven gates in total and four of them had closed the moment Elizabeth Tudor breathed her last. Two more had closed the following year, leaving only one gate between the mundane world and the realm of magic Anne Boleyn had found for her people. Cecil could have crossed the gate at any time, but he had thought it more important to organise the exodus before the burners could discover and destroy the gate. In truth, he admitted in the privacy of his own mind, he hadn’t wanted to give up the power and prestige that came with being one England’s foremost men. His ancestors had not climbed their way to the top, simply to have their achievement casually discarded by their descendent.

I would have had to start again, he thought. The English aristocracy, magic or not, was nothing special on the far side of the gate. They would be equal to commoners, forced to rise and fall based on merit rather than blood. Their vast estates simply did not exist in the other world. The power and prestige they had used to compensate for the decline in magic would be gone. And what would I have become, if I had been forced to rebuild the family from scratch?

It was a terrifying thought. Merrie England was a precisely ordered society. A man was born into his place and would stay in his place, unless he was very lucky or unlucky, until the day he died. Very few rose above their birth and fewer still made it stick. It was the way of things. A farmer was born to be a farmer, a blacksmith was born to be a blacksmith … there was something fundamentally wrong with trying to change the place God had given you, when you had been born into this sinful world. Had not Cecil’s own family defeated the upstart Earl of Essex, when he had sought to rise above his station? Had not …?

The messenger shifted uncomfortably. “My Lord?”

Cecil frowned, realising he had let the silence go on too long.

“That is tragic news,” he said. It was, he conceded. The commoners trapped on the near side of the gate would never see their families again. No one was quite sure what manner of being Anne Boleyn had summoned, or what she had done to bargain with it, but they had been cautioned it could not be repeated. Go to the kitchens. Tell the cooks I said to feed you. I’ll send when I need you.

The messenger bowed, then retreated.

Cecil stared down at his desk. It really was tragic news … and yet, it was also an opportunity. The common folk were doomed, either through the lack of magic or the king’s forces hunting them down, but the aristocrats could go on. They knew how to hide themselves in the warp and weft of society, to use what little magic remained to keep the king and everyone else from noticing what they really were. It was one thing to accuse a random woman from a nameless village of being a witch, quite another to aim such a charge at a powerful nobleman and expect it to stick. And besides, if the fortune-tellers were correct, the kingdom was on the verge of a major upheaval. Who knew what he could do, if he took advantage of the crisis to blend his people even further into the government?

But it would mean betraying the common folk, Cecil thought. It would mean …

The plan took form in his mind. The betrayal cost him a pang, but it would be a small price to pay for the survival of his people. The common folk could die. There would be no place for them in the new world order. And he knew where many of the remaining common-born magicians were, here and now. If he betrayed them to the burners, if he convinced the burners that they had burnt them all …

Quite calmly, he summoned the messenger and issued his orders. One door had closed; another, one he had never considered, had opened. It would come with a price, but it was a price he was prepared to pay. And he would do anything to ensure the survival of his family.

The old world was dead. The new world was about to be born.

And all it would cost him was a simple, bloody, betrayal.

Prologue II: Mystic Albion, Now

It was rare for the six princesses of Mystic Albion and the Merlin, Headmaster of Gatehouse, to meet in person. Both law and custom were clear that they had to remain in their domains as long as they were in power, save for the equinox celebrations, unless the matter was truly urgent. But what, the Merlin asked himself, could possibly be more important than the first contact between Mystic Albion and OldeWorld in centuries? They had thought – they had known – that the gates were gone. In hindsight, perhaps they should have wondered if the gates were merely closed.

No one could have expected a trio of students to accidentally open one of the gates and fall through, he told himself. Hiram of Hardwick – Brains, to his friends – was an up and coming genius, and Richard of Eddisford and Helen of Burghley were no slouches either, but it seemed improbable that they could have accidentally jumped to OldeWorld. If he hadn’t known it had happened, he wouldn’t have believed it himself. And no one could have expected them to make it home either.

It was fascinating, and terrifying. The Merlin never given much thought to developments in OldeWorld after the gates had closed. There was no way to know what had happened since 1605, and no way to return to OldeWorld. They had thought it impossible. And yet, it was now clear they had been wrong. Three students had fallen into OldeWorld; two had returned, bringing with them a native magician from OldeWorld and news of other magicians – unfriendly magicians – on the far side. The Merlin wasn’t sure what to make of their detailed descriptions of OldeWorld’s technological and sociological development, and some of their stories were just unbelievable, but it hardly mattered. What mattered was the simple fact that contact between the two worlds was now proven to be more than just a dream.

“There has been no major public reaction,” the Princess of Londinium said. “But that will change.”

The Merlin could not disagree. The incident at Gatehouse – in hindsight, the side-effect of the gate being triggered briefly – could not have been covered up, even if he had wished to try. Too many students had seen or felt the earthquake that had threatened the entire school, if only for a few short moments. Too many adults had heard from their children about the disaster, then followed it up with the staff. News had spread across the entire country before the staff had even begun to work out what had happened. They hadn’t even grasped the full truth before the portal had reopened, briefly, to allow two of the three missing students to return. And now it was only a matter of time until panic set in.

“They may see this as a chance to open relationships with our cousins on the far side,” the Princess of Salisbury said. She was the oldest of the princesses, yet perhaps the most optimistic. “Their technology” – she struggled over the strange foreign word – “has apparently developed in directions we did not anticipate.”

“How could we?” The Merlin had read papers speculating on how OldeWorld would develop without magic. They had assumed, perhaps optimistically, that King James and his successors would rule over a stagnant world. Without magic, there were limits – they had thought – to how far the world could go. “We did not anticipate that they would have an … industrial revolution.”

He cursed under his breath. The students had brought back a great deal of information, but it was very limited. There were vast gaps in their knowledge, questions that remained unanswered … and probably would remain so unless they reopened the portal. The Merlin was not sure that was a good idea. He wanted to know what had happened, in the centuries since the last gate had closed, but he was also afraid of what contact would mean for his society. The students had seen enough of OldeWorld to know that it was both terrifyingly advanced and frighteningly degenerate. He had heard plenty of exaggerated stories from his students, but these stories had the ring of truth that so many others lacked.

The Princess of Edinburgh tapped the table. “I suppose there is no reason to make a quick decision,” she said. “They can’t get to us.”

“Our students were able to open a portal,” the Merlin reminded her. “The magicians on the far side might be able to do the same.”

“And they are not friendly,” the Princess of Canterbury said. “They were intent on preserving the magic for themselves.”

“Their very limited magic,” the Princess of Edinburgh said. “They lack the power to open a portal to our world.”

“They may find a way to do it,” the Merlin said. It was a basic rule of magic that you could do almost anything if you had enough power. OldeWorld might be lacking in raw power, but if there had been no magic on the far side of the gate his students would never have been able to make it home. “Our students might have accidentally showed them the way.”

“Careless,” the Princess of Canterbury said. “They should have anticipated the possibility.”

The Merlin shook his head. “I went through all the research notes, after the first earthquake,”  he said. “The equations check out. There was no reason to think, even with the advantage of hindsight, that mapping out the magical topography would accidentally reopen the closed gate. There are no grounds to punish them.”

“What’s done is done,” the Princess of Salisbury said. “We just have to deal with the consequences.”

“There is another problem,” the Merlin said. “Helen of Burghley.”

“She made her choice,” the Princess of Canterbury said. “If she chose to stay in OldeWorld …”

“Her parents do not agree,” the Princess of Londinium said.  “They want her home.”

“And do they want us to reopen the gate, just to get her home?” The Princess of Canterbury spoke quietly, but firmly. “Even if we did, how could we be sure of finding her?”

“We couldn’t,” the Merlin said, flatly. “The gates open to the corresponding location in OldeWorld. There would be no way to be sure of anything, from her location to what else might be waiting for us on the far side.”

“Her family is bringing intense pressure to bear on me,” the Princess of Londinium said. “They may be able to have the issue debated in council.”

The Merlin sighed. The princesses had considerable power to act without reference to their councils, but that power had limits. If Helen’s family made a fuss, and demanded their daughter’s immediate return, it would be difficult to keep them from putting the matter before the City Council and demanding results. It was hard enough keeping them from demanding punishment for the two students who had made it home. They were arguing that Helen had been uninvolved in the project, and from what Richard and Brains had said, that was true.

It may be unfair for her to suffer because of their project, he thought. But the world is not fair.

“Then I suggest we play a waiting game,” the Princess of Canterbury said. “There is no immediate danger. We can continue to research the gates and figure out how to reopen them at will, preferably somewhere nicely isolated from the rest of the world. At that point, we can determine how best to proceed. It’s possible that this was just a freak accident.”

“It’s also possible that is merely the precursor of something much worse,” the Princess of Salisbury said. “We just don’t know.”

“And Helen?” The Princess of Londinium looked unimpressed. “What do we do about her?”

“She will have to survive on her own, for the moment,” the Princess of Canterbury said. “There is nothing we can do to help her until we know how to reopen the gate safely.”

The Merlin winced. It was hard enough moving from one community to another. It would be much harder to move from Mystic Albion to OldeWorld, where there was no magic and the rules were so different that it would be easy to wind up in very bad trouble indeed. Helen was far from stupid, but she had had no experience moving between communities until she wound up in OldeWorld. Could she blend in? Or would she be exposed very quickly? There was no way to know.

“It seems we have consensus,” the Princess of Londinium said. “We will play a waiting game.”

“And study our new student,” the Princess of Caernarfon said. “We will learn a great deal from watching how she adapts to our world.”

 The Merlin nodded. “I have already started her on magic lessons,” he said. “She has a great deal to learn too. As do we all.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

Chapter One: Mystic Albion, Now

Janet sucked in her breath.

The air seemed to sparkle with magic. Her fingers tingled with raw power as the magic hummed through the air. She had never felt so alive, so happy, to be anywhere near a school in her entire life, but then she had never been a particularly apt student. Now … her fingers twitched, her tongue twisting oddly as she spoke the magic words. She didn’t know what they meant, which she had been cautioned would be a major problem until she learnt to speak the language like a native, but it didn’t matter. She could still work magic.

Her fingers twisted as she shaped the spell. The power built and built until it felt as if she was holding a small thunderstorm in her hand. Light flared as the spell tightened, a twisting ball of magic taking shape and form in front of her. Sweat prickled down her back as she finished the spell, twisting reality right in front of her. It felt like a dream, like a wonderland she couldn’t quite believe existed. She had pinched herself so often, in the first few days, that her power arm was bruised and sore, yet she hadn’t woken up. She still wondered, at times, if she wasn’t in a coma, dreaming of wonders while her body was trapped in a hospital bed, but it was growing harder and harder to worry. The new world around her was just too bright. It had to be real.

The magic flared one final time, then died away. Janet found herself staring at an image of herself, a perfect three-dimensional reflection. She shook her head in disbelief. The girl in front of her was a strange mixture of familiar and very alien. She had always had long brown hair, which she had a habit of chewing when she was nervous, and a slightly dumpy frame, but she had never dared wear wizarding robes in her entire life. She had simply never had the confidence to do anything of the sort. Now … there was a hint of confidence in her eyes that startled her, every time she saw it. It came, she supposed, with having actual power of her own for the first time in her life. If the girls who had picked on her at school saw her now …

I could turn them into frogs, she thought. She had been cautioned that using spells with bad intentions could backfire – seriously – but part of her couldn’t help thinking how wonderful it would be to turn her former tormentors into small hopping things. Or slugs. It would be a vast improvement. I could make them leave me alone.

The magic flickered. Janet felt a flash of panic and reached out with her mind, solidifying the image. It turned slowly, displaying her back and rear before the eyes came around to face her again. The face was subtly different. Janet frowned as she studied the image. She had always been a plain girl, and not the sort of plain girl who would turn into a supermodel if she were given a makeover, but now the image looked prettier, in a manner she could not quite describe. She was striking, without ever seeming to change. It took her a moment to realise the spots she’d hated so much were gone.

She blinked as she heard the sound of someone clearing her throat. “You are using too much of your inherent power to fill in the gaps,” Madame Justinian said. “And the image is no longer a reflection of yourself.”

Janet jumped, and tried to hide it. She had almost forgotten Madame Justinian was there, sitting on the other side of the table and watching her through calm blue eyes. The elderly woman spoke calmly, yet there was something her voice that made it difficult not to take her seriously. Perhaps it was magic. Janet had seen the older woman cast spells that were so far beyond her that she feared she might never catch up, perhaps even far beyond Richard and his peers. She doubted Madame Justinian would ever have any difficulty keeping control of a class. She had enough raw power to intimidate even the rowdiest students from York.

“I lost control,” Janet confessed. “And then I tried to fill in the gaps.”

“That’s what went wrong,” Madame Justinian said. There was no condemnation in her tone, but Janet couldn’t help flinching. Her teachers back home had rarely given her any personal attention and they had never been particular patient with any of their students. Janet was all too aware that Madame Justinian had taken time out of her busy schedule to mentor her. “You are trying to do too much, too quickly.”

Janet nodded, chewing on a strand of her hair. There were three types of magicians: Heads, Hearts, and magicians who combined the two. A Head would put his spell together piece by piece, as if it were a complex mathematical equation; a Heart could make things happen simply by wishing them to be so. They had their strengths and weaknesses, she had been told; magicians who combined the two could use one set of attributes to make up for the weaknesses of the other. Magicians like her …

It’s like learning maths, she told herself. You have to show your working as well as coming up with the right answer.

She stared down at her hands. She had put the spell together carefully, but it had started to fall apart and she had tried, unintentionally, to patch together the holes. It wouldn’t last long, she had been cautioned, once she took her mind off it. Heart magic was powerful, but rarely lasted; Head magic was weaker, yet tend to linger far longer than its counterpart. It was funny, she reflected sourly, how she had so much power and yet no real awareness of how to use it. Proof, perhaps, that it was not all just a figment of her imagination. If it had all been a dream, she wouldn’t have had to work to get control of her powers. She would have had to do nothing more than snap her fingers to make things happen.

“I don’t understand what went wrong,” she said. “Why …?”

She ground her teeth. It was galling to admit that she was no more than a newcomer, despite being sixteen years old. She hadn’t been so ignorant since she had gone to school for the first time, and even then she had been able to talk! Here … she felt a flicker of sympathy, suddenly, for the students who had immigrated to Britain and found themselves dumped into a school system that was profoundly unsuited even to native-born students. Even when they spoke the same language, they lacked any understanding of how society really worked. The youngest student at Gatehouse knew so much more than her that she sometimes feared she would never close the gap.

“You have been studying the language for a week, more or less,” Madame Justinian said. “I expect it will take you several months, at the very least, to achieve enough fluency to patch up the holes in your spellwork.”

“Several months,” Janet repeated, as the last of the magic faded away. She wasn’t sure she could do it in several years. She had never tried to master any language, and the handful of French lessons she had had at school had left her profoundly unequipped to speak the language to a native, and she was starting to suspect she had no talent for languages. It didn’t help that there were enough differences between English on Earth and English on Mystic Albion for her to fear that she was missing something every time she spoke to someone new. “How long do I have?”

“You have promise,” Madame Justinian said. “And you have time.”

Janet felt a rush of affection. The teachers back home had been little more than timeservers. They had done the bare minimum and little more. She supposed she couldn’t really blame them – they had no authority to punish students for everything from not doing their homework to bullying other children and making it impossible for them to learn anything – but it was still frustrating, in hindsight, to realise how far she could have gone if she had had a little support. Perhaps she should have been one of the rowdy kids. It was astonishing just how much care and attention were lavished on them.

She sobered. She had no idea what would become of her when she graduated … if she ever did. Gatehouse had taken her in, when Richard and Brains had brought her to their world, but it was clear the school didn’t quite know what to make of her. She had imagined it would be like Hogwarts, with students studying magic and preparing themselves for their future careers, yet … it was nothing like that. It was … different. What sort of career could she have in a world of magic? Harry Potter had been eleven when he had gone to Hogwarts and his peers had been as ignorant as himself. She was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and her peers were so far ahead of her …

If Steve was here, she thought, he’d be an archmagus within a week.

She felt an odd little pang of homesickness. She had grown up on an estate, and she had hated every last bit of it, but she had loved – loved – her mother and brother. The thought of never seeing them again was terrifying … she wondered, not for the first time, just what Steve and Helen were doing on Earth. And their mother … Janet hoped Steve had told her that Janet had decided to travel to another world … Janet felt a surge of guilt. The opportunity had been one she could not let slip by, yet she had left their mother without even taking the time to say goodbye. There had been no time, but she still felt guilty. And who knew what was happening on the far side of the gate?

“You are doing fine, for someone who did not believe magic was real for years,” Madame Justinian said. “It is not wise to judge your development against the development of someone who grew up in this world and spent years studying magic and magical languages before coming to school. You will have enough time to learn to master your powers.”

Janet blushed. She had been praised by her mother, but her teachers had rarely had anything to say to her, good or bad. She had been one of those girls who passed unnoticed, neither pretty enough to draw the eye of men old enough to know better nor rowdy enough to draw attention from older female teachers. She had never have the nerve to act out, or to experiment with boys, or anything. There had seemed no point in working hard. She had been sure she would never get out of the estate. And now she was in a whole new world.

“Thank you,” she stammered.

“It is no more than the truth,” Madame Justinian said. She stood, brushing down her dark green robes. “We’ll meet again tomorrow morning.”

Janet nodded and watched as her teacher left the chamber. It was funny; she was sensitive to magic, yet she needed to train herself to understand what she was sensing. Richard had taught her a few lessons, showing her how to feel out her own body and magic so she could sense someone casting spells on her, but he had barely scratched the surface. There was so much to learn and so little time. Janet wanted to know everything, from the basics to the magics so advanced that very few magicians studied them, yet she felt as if she were getting nowhere.

She leaned back in her chair, centring herself. Her body felt … different … these days, a strange sensation that she couldn’t quite put into words. It felt as if she had grown a new organ, one that was part of her and yet new and alien. She hadn’t felt so strange since she had gone through puberty, when her body had changed rapidly despite her fear and trepidation of the future, but then she had known what was going on. Her mother had had no trouble explaining what was happening – and what was going to happen. Here … she was unique. There was no one else in Mystic Albion who didn’t at least know about magic. The vast majority of the population could perform a few simple spells.

Janet let out a breath, then forced herself to stand. The chamber would be needed by someone else soon enough. She allowed her eyes to wander along the bookshelves, crammed with books written in languages she could neither read nor speak, then shook her head as she headed for the door. She had never considered, back when she had been writing bad fan fiction, that there would be a language gap when Hermione Sue went to Hogwarts. A upper-middle-class girl growing up in 1990s England would not speak Latin and might not have any real understanding of French or German or any other language with ancient roots. She would have to learn before she could start reading ancient tomes.

The door opened. She walked through and made her way down a long staircase to the lower halls. Gatehouse was an immensely big castle, bigger than anything she had seen on Earth, and it somehow managed to be bigger on the inside. She had been told the building helped people get to where they wanted to be, but she had yet to figure out how to convince the building to help her. The passageways seem to shift, completely at random, so frequently that there was no point in trying to memorise the interior layout. It was disorientating. Some parts of the building were very much like the castles she had seen, others were more like schoolrooms or even nursery playrooms. It had amused her to discover that some of the more advanced classes were held in the latter, the students trusted enough to be allowed to sit in the circle or study on their own. Janet found it hard to understand, but it clearly produce results. The students were more well-rounded than anyone she had met on Earth.

It helps that the staff can expel troublemakers, she thought. There weren’t many rules in Gatehouse, or so she had been told, but the few that existed were enforced. If someone goes too far, they get the boot.

A bell rang as she made her way into the hall. Students, released from class, flowed past her, laughing and chattering as they hurried to the dining halls or the door or even the great outdoors. Janet stared from face-to-face, drinking in the sheer … happiness of students studying what they wanted to study. There was so much joy in the air. She had to bite her lip to keep the envy from showing on her face. The girls and boys surrounding her were practically glowing with life, compared to the students she recalled on Earth. There was no strict dress code, no pressure for anyone to conform. There were students wearing robes, or trousers, or outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place in a carnival. Some were showing bare flesh, others were buttoned up from head to toe; he smiled, despite herself, as she saw a girl wearing a dress made out of living flowers. Older Students – adults dropping in for further education or a handful of lectures – seemed a little more restrained, rather than trying to regain their long-gone childhood. It was an improvement on the older students she’d seen going to the local university. They had always struck her as creepy.

Her skin prickled. Students were looking at her. It was an uncomfortable sensation. She had never wanted to be the centre of attention, but she was the one and only student from Earth – OldeWorld – at Gatehouse. Richard and Brains were notorious enough, from what she’d heard, and many students were avoiding them, yet her …? No one seemed quite sure what to make of their mysterious transfer student. Janet wondered if they were laughing at her, or pitying her. The kind of casual cruelty that had been so common in her old school was missing here – and she certainly didn’t miss it – but she didn’t want them looking down on her either. She wanted to have a fair chance to prove herself.

The crowd faded away as she kept walking. Most of the students would be heading outside, she guessed, or going to the dining hall for lunch. It was difficult to wrap her head around a school dining hall that actually served decent food, even though she has been at Gatehouse for a week. The catering at her old school had been done by a company that also catered to jails, which explained a great deal about the quality of the food. Gatehouse’s cooks didn’t have much imagination, from what she had seen, but they cooked very good food. She had often found herself going back for seconds, something that had never happened back home.

She smiled, despite everything, as she reached the dorms and private bedrooms. The air was heavy with magic, protective spells buzzing around the doors as she walked past. Janet felt her legs twitch, unpleasantly, as she passed too close to a handful of doors, the spells trying to convince her to walk faster. The students valued their privacy. Janet understood, all too well. She had had little back home.

This is your home now, she told herself, as she knocked on Richard’s door. And you don’t know if you will ever see Earth again.

Richard opened the door. “Come in,” he said. “How were lessons?”

“I make progress,” Janet said, giving him a tight hug before drawing back and carefully stepping into the chamber. She had to be careful where she put her feet. The room Richard shared with Brains was as messy as always, the desks piled high with papers and magical components scattered over the floor. She had wondered, the first time she’d seen it, how they could bear to live in such a mess. “But I have an awful lot to learn.”