Christopher G. Nuttall's Blog, page 27

Updates

Hi, everyone

It’s been a busy couple of weeks.  I’ve finished the first draft of The Prince’s War (Prince Roland’s story, The Empire’s Corps) and I’ve resolved to try and take it a little easier for this week.  That said, I do have edits for Child of Destiny and Stuck in Magic, which will be published as the start of a spin-off series (provisional title for Book 2 is Her Majesty’s Warlord), as well as a handful of other loose ends to worry about at some point.  I’ve fallen behind on my email, so I probably need to do something about that too (sorry if you emailed me and I didn’t reply.)

I’m unsure what to write next, to be honest.  I’m torn between The Cunning Man, which is a massively expanded (and third person) version of the novella in Fantastic Schools III (which could do with some review love, if anyone’s interested) and Standing Alone, which is the more or less direct sequel to Cast Adrift.  Owing to a slight mix-up, mainly my fault, any cover for Cunning will be delayed, which will give me time to edit but also slow production a little.  Let me know which one you want, please.

In other news …

I’ve been considering a weird little idea partly inspired by Barb’s Changing Faces.  The basic concept is that there’s a pair of university students, a man and woman in their twenties, who have an argument over who had it worst in the past – men or women.  A goddess/Q-type meddler overhears the argument and decides to show them what it was really like by sending them back in time (and possibly into a fantasy universe) and gender-swapping them.  The young man becomes a young noblewoman, the young woman becomes a low-ranking nobleman fostered at the noblewoman’s castle.  They rapidly find out the past isn’t a bed of roses for anyone.

I haven’t decided where to take the story yet.  Part of me wants to keep it as an intensely personal story, with the two struggling to survive and establish themselves; part of me wants to think of it as another tech uplift story and/or fantasy setting story.

What do you think?

Chris

Draft Afterword: Stuck in Magic

Again, comments are welcome.

Afterword

Back in 2000, or thereabouts, I was a member of a short-lived book club – short-lived, I have to admit, because while we were all interested in books we were not interested in the same types of books.  It was hard to find books that we were all willing to read, let alone discuss, and while it did expose me to different genres that broadened my mind a little it also convinced me that some people had takes on books that never agreed with mine. One of those takes stuck in my mind.

We were reading the first book in the Outlander series, by Diana Gabaldon.  (It was titled Cross Stitch in the UK, but I’m going to stick with the US title here.)  The basic plot is relatively simple; Claire Randall, a nurse from 1940s Britain, finds herself stranded in 1740s Scotland, shortly before the Jacobite Rising of 1945.  She is taken in by the local community, uses her medical skills to impress them, weds a young man – Jamie – and eventually becomes involved in the morass of political and personal struggles threatening to tear the Highlands apart.  It was, I thought, a good novel, but not one that interested me; Claire didn’t seem to have any real impact on history, not even introducing better medicine and suchlike.

One of the other readers, a young woman, thought it was a brilliant novel.  She liked the idea of going back in time and marrying a man from a simpler age.  I found that attitude difficult to process.  Claire fell into a world of disease and deprivation, where a person without kin had little hope of survival; a world where women, such as Claire, were pretty much the property of their husbands.  There is even a scene where Claire is physically disciplined by Jamie and while it is possible to argue that Claire deserved it, or that Jamie had no choice but to make it clear to the rest of the clan that Claire had been punished, it doesn’t mask the fact that the world of 1740 was not kind to anyone.  The idea of someone wanting to go back in time and live there struck me as absurd.  They would be throwing away both the comforts of the modern world and their own safety. 

It is always fun to romanticise the past, and how to consider how it might be changed by an influx of ideas from the future.  It would not, however, be easy to have any lasting impact (certainly if you happened to be a single person with no real proof of your story).  Our ancestors generally had good reasons for being the people they were.  Their societies were adapted to realities that we simply don’t understand.  We recoil in horror when we look back at the sins of the past – slavery, conquest, semi-rigid gender roles – without realising that our ancestors had less choice than one might suppose.  They had attitudes, shaped by their environment, that often made them seem an alien people.  It is easy to think they were very primitive and indeed stupid.  How could they take such obvious untruths for granted?  But the simple fact is that they didn’t know they were untruths and it took time, decades and centuries, for society to advance to the point they could be put in the past, where they belonged.  The world of our ancestors had no place for them.

Consider, education.  It took years, in the past, to teach someone to read and write, let alone turn them into an educated man, even by the standard of the time.  Who amongst the common-born had time for it, when they had to scrape a living from the land?  The idea of universal education simply didn’t catch on – it couldn’t – until society reached the point where it could support children in schools, instead of forcing the children to work from a very early age.  When our ancestors did something, they generally had a reason for it.

Now, what does that have to do with Schooled in Magic and Stuck in Magic?

Emily did not realise, at least for several years, that when she arrived in the Nameless World she arrived at a very high level indeed.  She had magic, which made her a de facto noblewoman; she was popularly believed, amongst the local chattering classes, to be the bastard child of one of the most powerful sorcerers in the known world.  And she was at Whitehall, a relatively safe environment compared to the rest of the world.  People were prepared to listen to her, and give credence to her words, even before she became the Necromancer’s Bane, Duchess of Cockatrice, Mistress of Heart’s Eye, etc.  This gave her enough room to introduce a handful of simple innovations, which took off like rockets and ensured some of her more radical ideas got a chance to breathe.  She had her failures – some ideas didn’t work because she didn’t know the details – but she had enough credibility, by this point, for her missteps to be overlooked. 

And, even though a sizable number of powerful people were growing increasingly concerned about her, and her impact on their society, they were reluctant to take open steps to deal with her for fear of the consequences. By the time they tried, it was too late to put the genie – they would have seen it as a demon – back in the bottle.  Killing Emily would not have stopped the revolution she (accidentally) started. 

Elliot has none of those advantages.  He is a man without magic, a soldier in a world that regards soldiers – at best – as parasites.  Worse, perhaps, he is a man – and therefore automatically seen as more threatening than the younger Emily – without any real social position at all.  He is a child of his world, just like Emily, but he’s in an environment that takes a far dimmer view of his ‘eccentricities.’  He has no rights, beyond those he can secure for himself; he has no patron, at least at first, to provide political cover and protection.  He doesn’t have the option of dispensing ideas and concepts as a farmer might scatter seeds on the ground, to see which ones sprout into life; he has to get down and dirty just to build a place for himself before he winds up dead in a ditch.  Emily can afford to take risks with people like Harbin Galley.  Elliot cannot.

I went back and forth about writing this story for a long time.  Part of it was concern about crossing wires with The Cunning Man; part of it was fear about breaking the world I’d created over twenty-four novels and four novellas.  I only decided to do it because I had the first scene rattling around in my head, demanding I write it.  I’d been meaning to try to write a serial, so I plotted out a rough story and wrote two-four chapters per month until I reached a logical stopping point.  And then I started drawing up the plans for the next book, Her Majesty’s Warlord.

I’m not sure, yet, how the next book will be written.  A serial, like this one, or a more normal project?  (One thing I discovered, when looking over the files, was that the serial format created headaches of its own.)  Nor do I know, yet, if Eliot will ever meet Emily (although I think that, one day, they probably should come face to face.)  As always, if you have any thoughts on the matter, feel free to let me know.

And now you’ve read this far, I have a request to make.

It’s growing harder to make a living through writing these days.  If you liked this book, please leave a review where you found it, share the link, let your friends know (etc, etc).  Every little helps (particularly reviews).

Thank you.

Christopher G. Nuttall

Edinburgh, 2021

Draft Afterword: The Prince’s War

This is the draft, so any comments are welcome.

Afterword

“When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?  From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.”

-John Ball

Someone – I forgot who – once complained that science-fiction writers could only imagine monarchies, that numerous stories set in the far future included monarchies that wouldn’t have been unrecognisable to our ancestors from the distant past.  Their complaint, if I recall correctly, was that there were other possibilities – direct democracy, for example, or actually workable communism – and monarchies were just plain lazy.  Leaving aside the simple observation that monarchies tend to make for better stories, even if you wouldn’t want to live in those worlds personally, the simple truth is that the human race has been governed by monarchies for thousands of years.  Large-scale constitutional democracy is actually, on a historical scale, a fairly new invention.  Indeed, monarchy appears so often that one is tempted to wonder if there is something in humanity that adores a monarch.

The historical record seems to suggest that democracies have a fairly short shelf life.  The democracy of Athens, which operated on a very limited franchise, was brought low by its own internal quarrels and weaknesses and eventually gave way to outside rule.  The Roman Republic effectively suffocated under the weight of its own empire, eventually leading to civil war and the de facto creation of a monarchy.  Peasant revolts against the European aristocracies often ended with the peasants choosing not to land the killing blow, only to be slaughtered when the aristocrats regained their nerve; the downfalls of King Charles I and Louis XVI were rapidly followed by political chaos, the rise of rulers with monarchical powers (Cromwell, Napoleon) and, eventually, the restoration of the monarchy.  Even the modern-day United States has not been immune to this trend.  President Bush43 was the son of President Bush41, while Hilary Clinton was the wife of President Clinton42; there are, as of writing, suggestions that the wives or daughters of Presidents Obama44 and Trump45 will enter politics.  If they do, their connections will both help and hinder them. 

Monarchy, a system of hereditary rule, is in fact near-universal throughout human history.  So are the problems it brings in its wake.  A king who remains in power too long will grow set in his ways, unable to change with the times.  Strong and capable kings give way to sons who are far less capable and therefore weaken – and sometimes lose – the throne.  And, of course, there is not even the pretence of democracy.  Kings claimed to be the protectors of their people – smart rulers worked hard to create the illusion all the bad stuff was done by evil counsellors, who could be sacrificed if necessary – but the idea of commoners having a say in their own affairs was effectively blasphemy.

Why did this happen?

The first king, it is often said, was a lucky bandit.  This isn’t entirely true – no one can call Augustus Caesar a bandit – but there is a degree of truth in it.  The first kings (however termed) were men who reshaped society to support their primacy, creating a network of supporters who upheld the king’s position because to do otherwise would weaken their own position.  This pattern was followed by every successful king, but also powerful figures as diverse as Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein.  The reshaping gave the aristocrats, however defined, a stake in society; it also carved out a logical and understandable chain of command and line of succession that provided a certain governmental stability.  There could not be – in theory – any struggle over the succession, once a king died.  His firstborn son would take the throne.  In practice, it was often a little more complex.  It was not until the institution of monarchy became predominant within Western Europe that the line of succession was clearly laid down and unhappy heirs still posed potential threats to newly crowned monarchs (and usurpers, such as Napoleon, found it hard to gain any real legitimacy.)

This structure went further than you might think.  It co-opted religious institutions, merchants and, right at the bottom, commoners, serfs and de facto slaves.  It was incredibly difficult for them to rise in the world, but there was – again, in theory – certain limits on how badly they could be abused.  They knew their place in the world, yet they also knew how far their lords could go.  The Poll Tax of 1381 England, for example, was sparked by the government demanding more and more taxes, taxes that were beyond the commonly accepted levels and collected with a previously known fervour.  The monarch’s representatives had broken the rules, as far as his subjects were concerned, and therefore waging war on them – to teach them a lesson, rather than destroy them – was perfectly legal.  Naturally, the aristocracy disagreed. 

There were, at least in theory, advantages to this structure.  The king was a known figure, a person who could reasonably expect to be on the throne for decades and therefore show a degree of long-term planning; the imperative to sire a heir and a spare was a clear commitment to securing the future of his holdings.  The king would have a bird’s eye view of the kingdom, as well as experience in administration and warfare, and could therefore make decisions that benefited the entire kingdom.  On paper, monarchy may seem to be amongst the better forms of human government.

The problems of monarchical rule, however, are manifold.  No human ever born can hope to absorb and process an entire country’s worth of information, even when that information reaches the monarch without being altered by his servants.  Kings therefore make poor decisions because they don’t know what’s really going on.  Second, kings are often the prisoners of their own throne.  A king cannot easily rule against his great lords, the ones who are abusing the commoners, for fear of turning them against him permanently and therefore being disposed when a new challenger arrives.  Third, a king’s sons are rarely as capable as their father because they haven’t struggled and suffered in quite the same way.  The great kings of England – Henry II, Edward I, Henry V, James VI and I, Charles II – were often followed by sons and grandsons who lacked their father’s insight.  Indeed, a heir’s failings may become apparent very early on – Henry the Young King, for example – but because of the nature of monarchy it was very difficult to remove them from the line of succession. 

And, when they become kings in their own right, they were very hard to remove.  Richard II was disposed by his own cousin, Henry VI became a pawn in the original game of thrones, Charles I had his head lopped off after a civil war and James II was replaced by his sister and brother-in-law.  The price of monarchy, in short, is periods of instability caused by kings who were not up to the task, or lacked a power base of their own (Mary of Scotland) and ambitious aristocrats manoeuvring for power.

At its core, the problem of monarchy is that it puts the primacy of the monarch and his aristocrats ahead of the interests of the entire kingdom.  The king practices – he must practice – a form of nepotism.  He must put forward men who are loyal to him personally, rather than the kingdom itself; he must use his sons and daughters as pawns on the diplomatic chess board, rather than let them marry for love (or bring new blood into the monarchy).  He must raise his sons to take his place, all too aware that refusing to grant them real power will lead to resentment, hatred and (perhaps) civil war when – if – the heir’s courtiers start pushing him to grant favours he simply doesn’t have the wealth or power to give.  The kingdom therefore becomes a collection of scorpions in a bottle, the monarchy unwilling to make any compromises for fear of where they will lead, let alone allow people to question his power, and the aristocracy unwilling to put aside its prerogatives for the greater good.  This is a recipe for chaos and revolution.  And revolution can often lead to a tyranny worse than the now-gone monarchy. 

***

Why, then, are monarchies so popular?

There’s one argument that suggests the myth – and yes, it is a myth – of the ‘Father Tsar’ is actually quite appealing, that one can find comfort in it as one might find comfort in spiritualism and religion.  There’s another that suggests a person bred and trained for power will do a better job than someone elected into their position, although both the historical record and simple common sense suggestions otherwise.  And there’s a third that says we look at the fancy outfits and romantic lives and don’t recognise the downsides.  And there’s a fourth that hints we all want to surrender our autonomy, to unite behind a single divinely anointed leader and follow him wherever he leads, rather than questioning him too closely for fear of what we might find.  Personality cults are growing increasingly common these days and those who ask if the emperor has no clothes often come to regret it. 

Personally, I think the blunt truth is that very few of us have any real idea of what it is like to live under an absolutist monarchy.  The few remaining western monarchies are jokes, compared to their predecessors.  It is easy to watch Bridgeton and debate whether or not Daphne raped Simon; it is harder to understand why a real-life Daphne might feel driven to such an action, or the consequences if she’d taken any other course.  The fancy costumes we love hide a grim reality, one better left in the past.  As the joke goes …

“My girlfriend wanted me to treat her like a princess.  So I married her off to a man old enough to be her father, a man she’d never met, to secure an alliance with France.”

There is a temptation in monarchy.  There is an entirely understandable sense that uniting behind a single man is right, particularly if that man has divine right, and if you do that man will fight for you.  But no one can be trusted with such power.  They would, eventually, be corrupted or be replaced by those who became corrupted themselves.  Those people do not fight for you.  They fight for themselves. 

And now you’ve read this far, I have a request to make.

It’s growing harder to make a living through self-published writing these days.  If you liked this book, please leave a review where you found it, share the link, let your friends know (etc, etc).  Every little helps (particularly reviews).

Thank you.

Christopher G. Nuttall

Edinburgh, 2021

Book Review: The Women’s War

The Women’s War

-Jenna Glass

The spell they were set to cast tonight had been generations in the making, built by a succession of gifted abbesses who’d seen what no one else had seen—­and who’d had the courage to act on it. It was well known that magical aptitude ran in certain families. In the Abbeys, it was similarly well known that the rarer feminine gift of foresight also ran in families, though only women who inherited that gift from both sides of their families could use it. And so the abbesses of Aaltah had set about manipulating bloodlines based on what they saw, strengthening and concentrating the abilities they needed. A love potion slipped into a client’s drink. A contraceptive potion withheld. A marriage falsely predicted to be unfruitful when the bloodlines were analyzed . . . ​The fate of the world rested on these small acts of feminine defiance.

Brynna Rah-­Malrye had completed the process by bearing Nadeen and breeding her with that repulsive Nandel princeling to produce Vondeen. Generations had labored to produce these three women—­the virgin, the mother, and the crone—­who were the only ones who could complete this epic spell.

There was no turning back, no matter how high the cost or how much it hurt.

By a rather curious coincidence, shortly before I cracked open The Women’s War I read a biography of King Richard II, who – while hardly the worst person to park his rump on England’s throne – was a mess of insecurity and paranoia that led him to make an endless series of unforced errors that eventually resulted in his cousin invading the country, then overthrowing and murdering Richard before taking the crown as Henry IV.  It is hard not to look at Richard’s career and think he must have been driven by his own personal demons, because many of his decisions were practically suicidal.  Given his early life, it would be odd indeed if the adult was not shaped by the experiences of the child, but – when that adult sat upon a throne – his shortcomings became incredibly dangerous. Richard was nowhere near as unpleasant as Delnamal, the main antagonist of The Women’s War, yet I cannot help wondering if he was the major inspiration.  If there was a wrong decision to be made, Richard (and Delnamal) made it.

The Women’s War is set in a fantasy world that clearly draws inspiration from medieval Europe (with some major differences, which will be discussed below.)  Magic is a constant presence, with magical elements that are male-only, female-only and both-genders.  Female magic is regarded as lesser and largely forbidden, outside the Abbeys of the Unwanted; women, in short, are regarded as little more than chattel, treated as property by their male guardians.  A woman can be sent to the Abbeys on a whim, where she will be pushed into de facto prostitution.  Marriages are arranged, at least amongst the nobility, for political reasons; a wife who fails to give her husband a (male) heir runs the risk of being discarded at any moment.  It is, in short, a no woman’s land.

Everything changes when a handful of women, led by the Abbess of the local Abbey, enact a ritual to tamper with the source of magic itself.  All of a sudden, women have access to far more – and different – magics, starting with a shift in reality that allows a woman to automatically terminate an unwanted pregnancy.  As the social and political implications start to sink in, and chaos spreads around the known world, the monarchy sends the surviving women into exile …only to discover, too late, that the exiles have stumbled into a wellspring of new magic, open largely (if not only) to women.  They eventually turn it into a de facto kingdom of their own, posing a threat to the established order that may trump everything the kingdoms have yet seen.

The story is centred on three different characters.  Alysoon Rai-Brynna, daughter of the king (her mother was put aside and sent to the Abbey, allowing her father to marry again), finds herself wrestling with the changed magic and trying to save her own daughters from the wrath of their uncle; Princess Ellinsoltah of a different kingdom finds herself unexpectedly on the throne when everyone above her dies in an accident, then caught in plots hatched by older and more cunning (and masculine) advisors; Delnamal, half-brother to Alysoon, starts to plunge into madness as he loses his unborn child, his hated wife starts plotting against him, his father dies, leaving him on the throne.  The three characters, and a handful of relatively minor ones, interact repeatedly, each clash triggering off the next stage of the plot. 

Alysoon is something of an atypical character, being a widow and mother in her late forties when the world changes.  She is curiously naive as a character, unable to anticipate that her mother would have told the world what she’d done (which was obvious, as otherwise the truth might not be realised until it was too late); she is reluctant to step into the light as the eventual de facto leader of the new community; she is, perhaps worst of all, unable to see the person under her prim and proper daughter until it is too late.  Ellinsoltah is a little more conventional, slowly growing into her new role; she makes mistakes, some of which come very close to destroying her, but she eventually secures her position.  Delnamal is perhaps the most conventional of the three, and a type we’ve seen before in many earlier works, yet he’s not entirely without reason.  Jenna Glass does not make excuses for him, and rightly so, but she does help us to understand him.  A person who is dealing with a colossal personal crisis, even one brought on by his own failings, is not going to respond well to hectoring from outsiders.

The Women’s War is not blind to the problems caused by the sudden change in the world, although – as all three major characters are royalty – it is hard to see what, if any, effects the crisis has on the commoners.  The sudden loss of a number of unborn children is obviously disastrous, as is the realisation altar diplomatic will have to be radically altered.  As more and more newer magic spells start to make their emergence, including spells designed to render someone important or even kill them outright, the world continues to change.  Spells designed to prevent pregnancy can and do liberate women, allowing them to have sex outside wedlock, but this isn’t a cure-all.  Ellinsoltah discovers, very quickly, that she has traded one problem for another when she consummates her relationship with her lover and this, eventually, nearly unseats her. 

It also allows women – and men – to continue research into magic, assessing how the change worked, what the shift allows people to do now, and – for some – trying to figure out a way to reverse the change.  This is one of the more interesting parts of the book, although it does raise the question of precisely why no one thought to investigate female magic more closelybeforehand.  The power to heal is also the power to kill and the implications should have been obvious. 

The book does, however, have its weaknesses.  On a small scale, Alysoon’s daughter seems to jump around a lot in the last few chapters, resulting in a shock ending that feels more than a little contrived.  Delnamal’s development as a character also jumps around a lot, leaving him veering between trying to come to grips with the crisis, then trying to tackle his insecurities, then finally jumping right off the slippery slope.  At times, Delnamal comes across as an indecisive actor, at one point convincing himself that horrific things have to be done and, at others, regretting them the instant it is too late to deal with them.

On a larger scale, the treatment of women and firstborn heirs is largely allohistorical; it wasn’t uncommon for unwanted royal and aristocratic women to be sent to convents, just to keep them out of the way, but they were hardly turned into prostitutes.  Nor was it something done on a whim.  A king who disowned his foreign-born wife because he wanted a son, as Henry VIII did, would have found it harder to find a suitable replacement as the new wife’s family would suspect the relationship wouldn’t last long enough to put their child on the throne.  A firstborn heir would be almost impossible to put aside, as it would call into question the very basis of the monarchy.  (Note that Jane Seymour, mother of Edward VI, died shortly after childbirth; she wasn’t discarded by her husband.)  Delnamal’s father would be unlikely to put his firstborn aside in Delnamal’s favour, even before Delnamal’s character flaws became apparent.  The former heir would become a civil war waiting to happen. 

(This, for example, is probably why Elsa and Anna’s parents didn’t quietly take Elsa out of the line of succession, even though it might have been the best possible thing to do.)

The Women’s War has been called ‘fantasy for the #METOO era.’  This is something of an exaggeration.  It is set in a world that is very different from our current era and still quite different to anything that existed in the past.  It presents issues that are  not entirely contingent with ours.  It avoids some issues that need to be assessed and raises issues that work in the book’s context, but don’t work outside it.  And, in places, the author stacks the deck.  The heroines have a powerful male ally, in Alysoon’s older brother, but if things had been different – for him – he might be on the other side.

The book is not like The Power or Farnham’s Freehold, where modern society is flipped upside down, nor set ten or so years after the change like The Philosopher’s Flight.  It has less to teach and illustrate for us than more contemporary books.  But, as a story set in a changing world, it works fairly well.

You can download a free sample from the author’s website here.  However, outside the US, the book is only available in hardback or paperback.

Why Boys Don’t Read (Enough)

Why Boys Don’t Read (Enough)

OK, true story.

Back in 2003, I graduated as a librarian and set out on what I hoped would be a climb to the top of the field.  (Spoiler alert – it wasn’t.)  As I waited for my final exam results, I set out on a series of job interviews at various schools and universities around Greater Manchester, one of which remained stuck in my mind.  The interviewers asked what I’d do to encourage kids to read.  And my answer was that I would offer books that were popular at the time – the example I used was Harry Potter – so kids would read books they like and thus develop the reading muscles they need to move on to other, more advanced, books.  I even suggested that the kids should be allowed to nominate library books for purchase, on the grounds they were the ones the kids actually liked.

This answer did not go down too well with them.  They seemed to think I should choose books based on their literary merit.  They found the idea of selecting books based on the likes and dislikes of a handful of kids to be wrong-headed, perhaps even counter-productive.  As you have probably guessed, I didn’t get the job. 

But I still stand by my answer.  If you want kids to read, or do anything really, you have to present them with books that actually encourage them to read.

A few weeks back, a friend of mind pointed me to an article entitled ‘Boys Don’t Read Enough.’  The general gist of the article is that girls do better at reading than boys and it tries to offer a handful of explanations, but none of them are particularly convincing.  They tend, I think, to avoid the fundamental problem.  Adults are not children and therefore adults have a skewed idea of what children actually read.  Nor do they understand that children, even the cleverest of children, have a very limited mindset.

You can argue, for example, that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory defended slavery.  An adult might argue that the Oompa-Loompas are effectively slaves, and (at least originally) racist stereotypes.  A child wouldn’t know or care about the underlying issues – his mind would, hopefully, be swept into a world of wonder and mystery that combines chocolate with the sense that bad people get what they deserve.  (He wouldn’t care about the fridge horror in the fates of the four bratty kids either.)  Or you could argue that Dumbledore is a very dodgy character indeed in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (he left a one-year-old on a doorstep, for crying out loud) and the Dursleys are, at best, neglectful and, at worst, outright abusive.  Again, a child wouldn’t care about such details.  The whole story is more about a young boy who steps into a whole new world. 

One can also argue, if one wishes, that these books have little literary merit.  But that doesn’t matter.  The point is that the books appeal to kids.

But, throughout my schooling, I was frequently forced to read books that bored me, irritated me or generally frustrated me.  Bill’s New Frock was supposed, I believe, to teach us boys how different life was for girls.  I found it boring and silly.  Stone Cold was depressing as hell, as was Brother in the Land.  Oliver Twist (the condensed version) was interesting, but it was hard to draw a line between myself and Oliver.  The further the gap between me and the characters, the harder it was to feel for them.  Z for Zachariah started well, but grew harder to follow as the story progressed.  I’m not sure why I felt that way, at the time.  I do wonder, in hindsight, if it had something to do with the main character growing more and more feminine before things went to hell.  As an adult, I don’t blame her for crushing on the newcomer and considering marriage; as a child, it was just tedious. 

In some ways, I think that is an issue.  My mother had an old Girl Guide Annual I used to read.  The stories I liked best were the ones the heroine could be swapped out for a hero without severely altering the plot. It’s easy to say that stories about people who are different promote empathy, and perhaps they do, but it’s also easy to turn those stories into moralistic bore-fests.  It doesn’t help, I think, when people feel forced to read them. 

I think, judging by my experience, that young boys want exciting stories of action and adventure, not tedious lectures or inappropriate morality.  It is easy to blame Enid Blyton for not living up to modern-day standards on everything from race to gender roles, but Blyton died in 1968!  Her books are often simplistic and, looking back at them, it is clear there were aspects that could have been reasonably criticized even at the time.  And yet, what does that matter to a young reader?  Blyton’s stories have clear heroes and clear villains and even the more complex ones are still quite simplistic at heart.  They draw readers into their world in ways few modern stories can match.

Nor does it help when people over-think such matters.  Reams of paper and ink have been wasted debating ‘the problem of Susan,’ in which Susan Pensive is denied heaven for growing up, embracing her adult life and doing her best to forget Narnia.  Lewis is condemned for this by people who think too much and yet too little.  On one hand, Susan is not in heaven for the very simple reason she’s not actually dead!  On the other, more thoughtfully, the Narnia books were written for young boys and Susan, from the perspective of the target audience, is actually the least interesting female character.  She occupies the role of older sister, mother-figure without actually being the mother; she’s the kind of person a young boy would regard as boring, if not an outright opponent.  She’s neither the tomboy-type (like Lucy and Jill) nor the fascinating enemy (like Jadis).  She just is.

If you want young boys to read, you have to offer them books keyed to their interests and tastes – their real interests, not the interests you think they should have.  And that means acknowledging, right from the start, that those interests will be different from both young girls and adults of both genders.  Do not force them to read books that bore them, annoy them, or slander them.  Let them shape their reading habits so they develop their reading muscles, then proceed onwards to more meatier works.  I look back at some of the stuff I read as a kid and I roll my eyes.  Did I really read that crap?  Yes.  I did.  And it helped me develop the skills to read more. 

If you want boys to read, give them books they want to read.

OUT NOW – The Zero Secret (The Zero Enigma X)

A thousand years ago, an empire died.  No one knew why.  Not until now.

Seven years ago, Caitlyn “Cat” Aguirre – the first of the magicless Zeros – was kidnapped and taken to the ruins of the Eternal City.  There, she discovered the dread secret behind the collapse of the Thousand-Year Empire, a secret she knew she didn’t dare share with the world.  But now, with strange sightings and energies emitting from the ruined city – and a darkening political situation back home – Cat has no choice, but to return to the dead city. 

And what she finds there will change everything …

Download a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase from the links here: Amazon, Books2Read.

Also, download Fantastic Schools III, featuring a whole new Schooled in Magic tale, from Kindle Unlimited HERE.

Snippet – The Prince’s War

Prologue

From: An Unbiased History of the Imperial Royal Family.  Professor Leo Caesius.  Avalon.  206PE.

It is extremely difficult to trace the history of the Imperial Royal Family – as it became known – past the final stages of the disintegration and the early days of the Unification Wars.  Part of this, of course, is an inevitable result of the wars and their attendant devastation; a great many records were lost and/or deliberately destroyed during the fighting.  Certain factions, particularly during the opening stages of the conflict, believed that it would be better to erase the past so the human race could stride forward into a brave new future, and therefore set out to capture or destroy as many records as possible.  Others simply ignored the danger of historical erasure, and revisionism, until it was too late. 

But a far more significant problem was caused by the newborn Imperial Household’s determination to legitimatise its position.  There were no shortage of academics willing to take thirty pieces of silver – or, more practically, lands and titles – in exchange for creating largely or entirely fictional genealogies for their patrons to use as propaganda.  The results were quite remarkable.  The First Emperor was hailed as the direct descendent of such figures as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Elizabeth Tudor and many others, ranging from Albert Einstein to George Washington and Joe Buckley.  Links were drawn between him and nearly every figure of consequence, to a truly absurd degree.  He was not only the sole heir to every kingdom on Old Earth, but also lands that simply never existed, including little known fictional kingdoms such as Gondar, Narnia and Wakanda.

This had two unfortunate – and entirely predictable – effects on academic enquiry.  An unwary student, more intent on getting a good grade rather than actually think about the material in front of him, might not notice the inconsistencies and frank impossibilities, such as a marriage between Queen Elizabeth Tudor of England (1533-1603, PSE) and Shaka Zulu (1787-1828, PSE), a marriage that would have been unlikely even if the two hadn’t lived and died nearly two hundred years apart.  A more perceptive student, on the other hand, might realise there were just too many discrepancies to be accidental and come to the conclusion that the whole field was irredeemably damaged beyond repair.  Such students would either leave of their own accord or, if they alienated their academic supervisors, would be pushed out or simply sidelined.  The Imperial University’s administrators knew very well there were fields of enquiry that could not be touched, not without angering their patrons.  What was the life of one student compared to the whole university?

Perversely, the truth is better than the fairy tale.  The First Emperor – whose name was largely stricken from the records, to be replaced by a decidedly impersonal title – was a high-ranking military officer during the early years of the disintegration.  Realising the endless wars were futile – his autobiography makes no mention of the burning ambition that was a mark of his career – he convinced a number of his fellows to mount a coup, seized control of the government and then embarked upon a series of increasingly sophisticated military campaigns to bring the rest of the settled worlds under his control.  He was more than just a naval officer, it must be noted; his skill at convincing former opponents to join him, or at the very least not to oppose him, was quite remarkable.  When he took the title of Emperor, he rewarded his followers by making them Grand Senators.  They in turn rewrote history to make it appear they had always been part of the rightful ruling class.

Whatever else can be said about the First Emperor, he did his work well.  By the time his son succeeded to the Imperial Throne, the empire was on a solid footing and could easily survive a handful of weak or clumsy rulers.  There was enough of a balance of power, the ruling class felt, to ensure both a degree of stability and a certain amount of social mobility.  It should have endured forever.

It did not.  It took years – centuries – for decay to start to take hold, but it did.  A trio of weak emperors allowed the Grand Senate to take more and more power for itself, then – worse – failed to play the different factions within the senate to right the balance of power.  Social mobility slowed to a crawl, the successive emperors losing much of their influence as they were increasingly dominated by the aristocracy.  Many of them lost themselves in mindless hedonism, whiling away the hours with wine, women, song and pleasures forbidden even to the aristocracy.  The handful who tried to reclaim their birthright were swiftly slapped down by the new rulers of empire.  Emperor Darren II was assassinated – it was blamed on terrorists, but the act was clearly ordered by the aristocracy – and Empress Lyudmila was held prisoner by her unwanted husband, then murdered when she produced a heir. 

By the time the Empire entered its final days, the Imperial Throne was occupied – to all intents and purposes – by Prince Roland, known to the public as the Childe Roland.  He was officially declared a great moral and spiritual leader, but the reality was somewhat different.  Prince Roland – the Grand Senate hadn’t been able to decide on when he should be formally crowned – was, by the time he entered his teenage years, a useless layabout.  The only good thing that could be said about him, it should be noted, was that he’d not fallen as far into depravity as some of his ancestors.  It was generally believed that it was just a matter of time.

The Commandant of the Terran Marine Corps, in a desperate bid to turn the situation around, made use of the Corps’s long-held power to appoint bodyguards to the Imperial Household and assigned Specialist Belinda Lawson to take care of the prince and, hopefully, make a man out of him.  She was rather more successful than one might expect, knocking some sense into the nearly-adult prince, but it was already too late.  Earth collapsed into chaos and it was all Belinda could do, along with the prince, to escape.  The Empire died and, as far as anyone outside the Corps knew, Prince Roland died with it.  In reality, he was transferred to a Marine Corps starship.

This was, as far as the Corps was concerned, an awkward position.   Roland was the legal ruler of the known galaxy.  However, practically speaking, he ruled nothing.  The Empire was dead and gone.  The Corps could not recover even the Core Worlds, already blighted by civil war, let alone the rest of the settled worlds.  Roland was an Emperor without an Empire; an unfinished young man who might be an asset but might equally become a burden.  And that left the Corps with a serious problem.

What – exactly – were they going to do with Prince Roland?

Prologue II

Sarah Wilde awoke, in pain and darkness.

It wasn’t the first time she’d awoken in a strange place, her head throbbing as she tried to recollect what she’d been doing the previous evening.  The sorority motto was practically “one evening in heaven, the next morning in hell” and she knew from bitter experience, after a year at Imperial University, that it was more than technically accurate.  She and her peers had consumed vast amounts of everything from alcohol to mood-altering drunks in pursuit of mindless hedonism, all the while doing as little actual studying as they could get away with.  It wasn’t as if the professors cared.  Sarah had heard, from one of the more radical student activists, that the staff preferred their students to be zonked out of their minds.  It kept them from considering how little they actually learnt at the university.

She kept her eyes closed as she quietly accessed the situation.  She was lying on a hard stone floor … a relief, given how many times she’d woken up in a stranger’s bed.  The air stank … she didn’t want to think about what it might be.  Her clothes were rumpled, but in place.  Her body was aching.  Her wrists … a flash of alarm shot through her as she realised something cold and hard was wrapped around her wrists.  Her hands were firmly bound behind her back … she heard someone moan, the sound far too close for comfort.  Her eyes snapped open and she looked around in panic.  She was in a cage, surrounded by cold metal bars.  And she wasn’t alone.

Her memory returned in a flash.  There’d been a protest march.  She’d gone because it was the popular thing to do, not out of any real conviction.  She didn’t understand the issues, nor did she really care.  She’d joined the marchers and then … her memories were scattered, so badly jumped she wasn’t even sure they were in the right order.  There’d been bangs and crashes and flashes of light so painful she’d thought she’d been blinded and then … and then nothing, until she’d woken up in a cell.  Her heart sank as she looked from face to face.  She didn’t recognise anyone within eyeshot, but they were all clearly in the same boat.  They’d all been arrested.

Sarah swallowed, hard.  It wouldn’t be that bad, she told herself.  The cops would realise they’d made a mistake soon enough.  She’d heard stories of being arrested, stories told by activists, that made it sound like a grand adventure.  She heard someone being sick behind her, coughing and spitting to keep from choking on their own vomit.  An adventure?  She promised herself, numbly, that she’d never go to another protest march as long as she lived, not after she’d woken in a cell.  The activists could find someone else to march in their protests.

Someone catcalled.  She looked up and through the bars.  There was another cage on the far side of a walkway, crammed with male prisoners.  They looked savage … she shuddered helplessly, trying not to draw attention.  The bars didn’t seem solid any longer.  She lowered her head, wishing for water … wishing it was just a nightmare, wishing she could wake up in her own bed.  She heard banging and crashing in the distance and forced herself to look, just in time to see two uniformed women marching towards them.  They were banging their truncheons on the bars, waking the prisoners from their slumber.  Sarah groaned in pain as the noise grew louder.  She wanted – she needed – them to stop.

The women stopped in front of the cage and peered at the prisoners.  “You,” the leader said, jabbing a finger at a girl in a tattered pink dress.  “On your feet.”

The girl shook her head.  “I want my lawyer.”

“Hah.”  The guards laughed.  “She wants a lawyer.”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late.  The lead guard pointed a flashlight-like device at the protesting girl.  Her entire body jerked, twisting unnaturally.  She screamed in pain, then collapsed in a heap.  Sarah stared in horror, unable to understand what had happened.  It was … it was unthinkable.  It was beyond her imagination.  It was …

The guard pointed at her.  “You.  On your feet.”

Sarah forced herself to stand, despite her fear.  The guard beckoned her forward, through the cage door, then shoved her down the corridor.  Sarah tried to keep track of their movements, as they frogmarched her through a string of unmarked corridors and elevators that went up and down seemingly at random, but rapidly lost her bearings.  It occurred to her she was being marched in circles, just to confuse her, although it seemed pointless.  The building was just too big.  She wondered numbly just where they actually were.  She hadn’t seen any large police station within the university sector, not on any of the public maps.  But she’d also been told there was a great deal that was never put on the terminals.

They shoved her into a small room and pushed her onto a stool, then stepped back.  Sarah looked up and saw a man sitting behind a desk, his eyes on a terminal in front of him.  He looked bored and harassed, his face suggesting he no longer gave a damn about his job or anything.  She shivered, despite herself.  She’d seen that expression before, on the maintenance staff who kept the university running.  They seemed to loathe the students they served with a white-hot passion.  She had always wondered why they didn’t look for better jobs elsewhere.

The man spoke in a bored monotone.  “You have been convicted of public disorderliness, taking part in an unlicensed political rally and various other charges.  Your appeal has been filed, reviewed and rejected.  The original conviction stands.  You have been sentenced to involuntary transportation.”

Sarah blinked.  It was hard to follow his words, but …  “I … I want a lawyer.”

“You have already been convicted,” the man said.  His tone didn’t change.  “You were caught in the performance of illegal activity.  The state-appointed lawyer made a valiant attempt to defend you and your comrades, but the evidence was damning.  The appeal was unsuccessful.  You have been sentenced to …”

“I …”  Sarah swallowed, hard.  “It was … you can’t do this!”

“You were caught in the performance of illegal activity,” the man repeated.  “You have been convicted.”

Sarah stared at him in shock.  It … she’d heard rumours, sure, about what happened to people who stepped too far out of line, but she’d never taken them seriously.  No one she knew really believed them.  The police were a joke.  It was …

The man didn’t wait for her to speak.  “Your contract has been sold to the New Doncaster Development Corporation.  You will be transported to New Doncaster shortly, once the remainder of the involuntary transportees have been processed.  You may make a choice.  As a young and presumably fertile woman, you may marry a farmer on the planet and assist him in developing his territory.  If you agree to this, the corporation will forgive the debt you owe them.  If you …”

Sarah found her voice.  “I don’t owe them anything!”

“They bought out your contract,” the man said.  “They own you.”

“You can’t own a person!”  Sarah tried not to raise her voice, but it was hard.  “Slavery was banned under the constitution …”

“You’re a convicted criminal,” the man said.  “You have to pay your debt to society.  The corporation has bought your contract and is offering you the chance to repay them …”

“By marrying a man I’ve never met and …”  Sarah found it hard to put her thoughts into words.  “It’s barbaric!  My parents …”

“Are no longer part of the issue,” the man said.  For the first time, she heard a hint of exasperation in his voice.  “The corporation owns you.  You can repay your debt, in the manner they suggest, and the slate will be wiped clean.  Or you will find yourself on contract duty when you reach the planet, which could be anything from working in the fields to slaving in a brothel.  You would be well-advised to accept their terms and strive to make it work.  This is the one chance you’ll get.”

Sarah shook her head.  “I’m not a slave!”

“The corporation owns you,” the man said.  “Maybe you are not legally a slave.  The fact remains they can treat you as one until you repay their debt.  Choose.”

“I can’t …”  Sarah tried to protest.  “I don’t know …”

“Choose,” the man repeated.  “I have no more time.”

Sarah pinched herself.  Nothing happened.  It was … it was a nightmare.  She’d only gone to a protest march!  It wasn’t as if she’d done something really wrong.  And yet … she recalled hearing, somewhere, that Earth was so overpopulated that the sentence for just about anything was deportation, unless one had a really good lawyer.  She wanted to demand her rights, as a free citizen, but … tears prickled in her eyes as she realised she wasn’t a free citizen any longer.  She was property.  She’d been sold to the highest bidder.  Her family would never see her again.  Would they ever know what had happened to her?  Would they try to come looking?  Or would they simply wind up arrested and deported themselves?  Or …

Cold anger burnt through her as she gathered herself.  She’d survive, she vowed.  She’d build a new life for herself … no, she’d make the corporation regret it had ever enslaved her.  She’d make it pay, even if it cost her everything.  She’d make it pay.

“Very well,” she said.  She needed to play dumb, for a while, until she knew what was really going on.  And then she’d find a way to take advantage.  “I’ll do as the corporation says.”

And then, her thoughts added silently, I’ll make them pay.

Chapter One

Marine Boot Camp, Merlin

The woods were dark, oppressive.

Roland, once Prince Roland of Earth and now Receipt Roland Windsor of the 7th Training Regiment, kept his head down as the squad picked their way through the trees.  Visibility was terrifyingly variable, streams of light broken by pools of shadow that made a mockery of his enhanced eyes.  The trees were large enough to conceal infantrymen below, their branches easily big enough to host a sniper or two.  He swept his rifle from side to side, all too aware the enemy could be lurking anywhere.  The mission had to be completed successfully.  He wanted – he needed – to progress.  He couldn’t go to the Slaughterhouse until he convinced his instructors that he could become a full-fledged marine.

Take it seriously, he told himself, sharply.  You don’t want to get into shit because you were woolgathering when you needed to watch for trouble.

He inched around a tree, then darted to the next one.  The mission was relatively simple, they’d been told, but the simplest things were often the most complex.  The training company – broken down into squads – had to make its way through the forest, flushing out the enemy positions before they could rally and counterattack.  Roland was tempted to wonder if they’d been sent on a wild goose chase – he’d heard shooting, yet they hadn’t seen the enemy – but he knew better.  The fact the enemy hadn’t greeted them with a hail of fire was almost certainly a bad sign.  They were probably dug in somewhere further into the forest, waiting for the recruits to stumble into their trap.  Roland cursed under his breath as he paused, listening carefully for the slightest hint of movement.  It was hard to be sure.  The local wildlife was just too loud.  A drunkard could pass unnoticed against the din.

Goddamned insects, he thought.  He wasn’t sure who’d thought to introduce the tiny bugs to the training ground, but it was a stroke of evil genius.  The clattering bugs provided all the sonic cover a hidden enemy force could want.  If only we could get rid of them,

Recruit Walsh stepped up beside him, her face pale.  Roland glanced at her, then held up a hand to signify she should remain behind as the rest of the squad advanced.  They were dangerously spread out, and he was tempted to suggest they closed up, but he knew it would be asking for trouble.  Their uniforms were supposed to make it hard for the enemy to detect them, yet hard wasn’t the same as impossible.  A single drone, orbiting so far above them even his enhanced eyes couldn’t see it, would be enough to call fire down on their heads, if they slipped up and showed themselves.  Better to remain spread out until they knew where there targets actually were.  He nodded to the others, then resumed the advance.  If he drew fire himself …

Nothing happened.  The treeline remained quiet.  Roland frowned.  He wouldn’t be happy if someone hit him – the instructors would be very sarcastic, even if he hadn’t fucked up – but the rest of the squad could unleash hell on their opponents.  It would be better to know the worst at once, he thought, rather than remain in ignorance of the enemy positions.  The training ground was huge, easily large enough for an entire army to remain hidden if it wished.  Roland kept his eyes open as the squad moved up to join him, but there was nothing.  It was all too easy to believe they were completely alone.

Or we’re lost, which puts us on track for promotion to lieutenant and a court-martial, he thought, with a flicker of amusement.   He’d no idea why so many marines seemed to believe their lieutenants couldn’t read maps – his first exercise in map-reading had been a disaster, yet he’d gotten better at it with practice – but it didn’t matter.  There’s no way we can simply march out of the training ground and get hopelessly lost.

The squad continued to advance, pushing through the trees and avoiding the handful of half-baked trails within the woods.  Roland couldn’t tell if they’d been made by animals or humans, although they’d been taught to stay off the paths as much as possible. A smart enemy would have their mortars already zeroed on the path, ready to unleash hell the moment their targets came into view.  Unless … sweat continued to trickle down his back as the trees opened suddenly, revealing a grassy valley with a farmhouse and a pair of barns at the bottom.  It looked deserted, but that was meaningless.  The enemy could be using it as a base.  They had to clear it before they continued the advance.

He glanced at the rest of the squad, then led the way forward at a run.  Their uniforms were designed to provide a certain amount of concealment, but he’d been cautioned not to rely on it.  The human eye was attracted to movement, even if it couldn’t make out what was actually moving.  Roland had heard cautionary tales of defenders who’d been so keyed up they’d fired at shadows.  He’d thought the stories were absurd until he’d been on guard duty himself.  It had worn him down so much he’d nearly fired on a friendly convoy.  And that would have landed him in real trouble.

Roland reached the side of the farmhouse, unhooked a flashbang from his belt and hurled it through the window, looking away as the grenade detonated.  The flashbangs weren’t actually lethal, at least under normal circumstances, but anyone caught in the blast would be too busy projectile vomiting or trying not to collapse to worry about the intruders.  He counted to five, then allowed Walsh to heft him up and through the window.  He landed neatly, weapon raised and ready.  The room was deserted.  There weren’t even any tripwires that might be linked to IEDs or other surprises.  He frowned as the rest of the squad joined him, then carefully led the way through the rest of the house.  It looked oddly polished, for a building in the middle of a training ground.  That worried him, although he wasn’t sure why.  The corps was known for its attention to detail.  The instructors would have gone to some trouble to make sure the building looked as though it had been abandoned in a hurry.

“Search the barns,” he ordered, as they completed their sweep and hurried outside.  “Quickly.”

His heart pounded as they glided through the remainder of the farm.  The farmhouse was nice and rustic, but it might also be a trap.  They hadn’t had time to search it thoroughly.  He checked his threat detector and saw nothing, but it wasn’t reassuring.  There was an ongoing war between the techs who designed early warning and detection technology and the insurgents who tried to come up with ways to fool it.  It was quite possible they’d missed something.  The instructors were ruthlessly pessimistic.  If there was even a slightest chance someone would be hit, they’d be hit.  There was no room for the luck of the draw on the training ground.

Hard training, easy mission, Roland quoted, silently.  Easy training, get the shit kicked out of you on a real mission.

Recruit Singh caught his eye.  “It’s clear, sir.”

Roland nodded, turning his eyes towards the far side of the valley.  Anything could be hidden within the trees, anything at all.  He was tempted to call in and ask for support, perhaps even an update from the drones, but he knew it would be pointless.  They’d been cautioned not to risk any sort of contact until they encountered the enemy, just in case.  His superiors would not be amused if he risked contact just because he needed his hand held.  They’d be very sarcastic.

He scowled as the squad prepared to resume the advance.  His fellow recruits didn’t know him as anything other than Roland Windsor, a young recruit keen to be the best of the best, but his instructors knew who he’d been, only a few short months ago.  Roland didn’t blame them, not really, for having their doubts about him.  He looked back at himself when he’d been the Childe Roland, Heir to the Imperial Throne of Earth, and violently cringed.  He’d been a spoilt little brat, a mindless pleasure-seeker who’d drunk and drugged himself constantly just to starve off the boredom of life … he shuddered when he remembered everything he’d done, to people who didn’t dare say no.  He’d been trapped in a gilded cage and he hadn’t even known it, not then.  He’d been a puppet who couldn’t even see the strings!

His eyes swept the distant hills, although his thoughts were elsewhere.  Specialist Belinda Lawson, a Marine Pathfinder, had saved his life and soul.  She’d swept into his palace and transformed his life, knocking some sense into his head … too late to save the planet, perhaps, but not too late to make a man out of him,  Shame swept over him as he remembered how he’d tried to get her into bed, as if she’d be interested in a overweight princeling who could barely lift his own weight.  And she was dead … or worse.  His superiors – his new superiors -hadn’t been entirely clear on what had happened to her, but he feared the worst.   She would have come to see him, wouldn’t she?  He wanted to believe she would have come.

Perhaps you were just another assignment to her, his thoughts pointed out.  You were surrounded by people who were paid to keep you happy and dumb, people who didn’t give a shit about you.  She might not have given a shit about you either.

He tensed, suddenly, as he heard the sound of rotor blades in the distance.  A helicopter swept low over the hills, heading straight towards them.  Roland swore as he saw the weapon pods hanging under its stubby wings; antitank rockets and heavy machine guns that would punch through his body armour as though it wasn’t even there.  The training brief hadn’t mentioned helicopters … not directly, at least.  The instructors had a habit of throwing unpleasant surprises into the mix, just to make sure the recruits knew their intelligence, no matter how much the spooks vouched for it, couldn’t be taken for granted.

“Take cover,” he shouted.  “Hurry!”

The sound grew louder as he hurled himself into a ditch, near the farmhouse.  His mind raced as he saw Walsh take up position near the treeline.  The farmhouse might have been a trap after all, although not in the way he’d thought.  There could be someone on the hillside with a low-tech telescope, linked to a simple telephone line … he sucked in his breath.  His instructors had warned him, time and time again, that just because something was outdated didn’t mean it was useless.  A pre-space telescope and telephone wire would be pretty much impossible to detect unless the marines got lucky.

He stayed very still as the helicopter thundered over the valley, the rotors chopping through the air.  Insurgents had learnt to fear the ugly aircraft a long time ago, all too aware the pilots could rain down death on them from overhead in relative safety.  It took a great deal of luck to take down a helicopter without MANPADs or other heavy weapons, luck the umpires wouldn’t grant in a training exercise.  Roland gritted his teeth, hoping the helicopter pilot would assume they’d gotten into the treeline before the aircraft got into position.  Between the camouflage and the local wildlife confusing the craft’s sensors, they might just get lucky.

They know we can’t have gotten that far away, he thought.  It didn’t look as though the helicopter was carrying a squad of troops, but appearances could be misleading.  The aircraft was big enough to carry six or seven men in addition to the pilot and gunners, if they didn’t mind getting very friendly.  Roland himself had been crammed into tiny aircraft with his peers several times, during the last few months.  And they might think they have us pinned down …

The helicopter fired a machine gun burst into the trees.  Roland frowned, unsure what the gunner had seen.  None of the shells had gone anywhere near the recruits, not unless he’d misjudged where the other two had hidden.  Perhaps they’d seen a fox or something move and fired on instinct or … perhaps they were just trying to intimidate the recruits.  It might work out for them.  Roland didn’t dare move, which meant they’d be pinned down right until the exercise ended or they were caught by the bad guys and humiliated … he peered towards the treeline, wondering if there was already a line of enemy troops moving towards them.  It wasn’t as if they had to worry about being seen.

He frowned.  He could hit the helicopter with a rifle-launched grenade, if he could get up and take aim before the craft blew him to atoms.  But … he didn’t have time.  Roland knew, without false modesty, that he was one of the fastest gunners in the training company and even he didn’t have enough time to take out the helicopter, not unless something happened to divert its attention.  His mind churned.  He needed a diversion.  If he did nothing, they were screwed.

A plan occurred to him.  He put it into action before he could think better of it.  He signalled Walsh, instructing her to send a microburst message to their superiors.  The messages were supposed to be undetectable and untraceable, but he knew the helicopter would have the very latest in detection gear, manned by people who knew precisely what to look for.  The aircraft rotated rapidly, bringing its machine guns to bear on Walsh.  Roland didn’t hesitate.  He rolled over, slotted the grenade into place and fired it at the helicopter.  It went through the gunner’s hatch and detonated inside.  A moment later, the helicopter rose into the sky and vanished.

Got you, Roland thought.  The boot camp was supposed to be realistic, but even his instructors drew the line at using real bullets and grenades.  The helicopter was officially dead now and would remain so until the exercise terminated.  You’ll be buying the drinks when we finally get some leave …

He tried not to feel guilty as he stumbled to his feet and looked at Walsh.  She wasn’t dead, of course, but her training suit had locked up.  She would remain immobile until the exercise ended or, depending on timing, the umpires collected her and put her on the sidelines.  She’d be hopping mad afterwards, Roland reflected as the other two joined him.  He promised himself he’d make it up to her, if he could.  He would almost sooner have preferred to be ‘killed’ himself.  At least he would have volunteered to serve as a human sacrifice.

There was no time to discuss it with her, he told himself, firmly.  She’ll understand.

He gritted his teeth as they resumed their march through the trees.  He’d been told, when he’d been a child, that it was his duty to look after the empire as a whole, rather than the individual people within it.  He hadn’t realised, until much later, that it was a form of manipulation, that one could justify almost anything by insisting it was for the good of the empire.  What was a single life compared to the uncountable trillions who made up the empire as a whole?  It was nothing more than a number, perhaps even a rounding error.  It was hard to argue that a single life mattered …

And yet, Walsh was a friend.  He knew her.  He knew she’d had hopes and dreams of her own before Earthfall.  He knew she wanted to be a marine, that she’d joined the training company in hopes of making it to the Slaughterhouse.  She was a living breathing person, a friend and a rival, a comrade and an enemy … no, never an enemy.  They might have been on opposing teams, from time to time, but they weren’t enemies.  He respected her and the rest of the company in a way he’d never respected anyone, back when he’d been the Childe Roland.  And she was going to be mad at him in the aftermath of the exercise.  She was probably going to punch him in the face.

Which is no more than you deserve, his thoughts mocked him.  If someone had done that to him, without his permission, he would have been livid.  Belinda would probably have kicked you in the nuts.  It was bad enough when you tried to cop a feel …

He pushed that thought out of his mind and forced himself to keep going, heading towards the enemy position.  Time was running out.  They had to flush the enemy out before the umpires called a halt, before … he wondered if he’d be ordered to retake the training section again.  He’d done some sections of boot camp twice now, at the whim of his superiors.  Roland wasn’t sure if they were testing his patience, if they thought he’d tell them he wanted to quit if they didn’t let him complete boot camp and advance to the Slaughterhouse, or if they just wanted to be sure he knew everything he needed before it was too late.  The Slaughterhouse was the final test, as far as the corps were concerned.  And he was damned if he was failing.  He owed it to Belinda to succeed.

Singh made a gesture as he peered around a tree.  Enemy in sight.

Roland nodded, pushing his thoughts and doubts aside.  They’d located the enemy lines.  It was time to make war.  He’d worry about the rest afterwards …

… And yet, as he braced himself for the advance, he couldn’t help wondering if he really had what it took to become a marine.

Weird Story Idea

So …

There are some kids who go to magic school in an alternate dimension – think Whitehall rather than Hogwarts.  Something goes spectacularly wrong and they find themselves dumped on Earth instead.  The good news is that they have magic still; the bad news is that they don’t have enough to reopen the portal and get back home.  They get very lost until they discover, through one of their friends, that they can tap the electric power grid to power their spells and reopen the portal. 

(I have the vague idea that the school’s alpha-bitch will be knocked down a peg or two because her magic is greatly reduced in our world, leaving the harder-working students with an edge.)

The discovery brings forth a new threat – a gang of rogue wizards on Earth, who have been secretly preparing an invasion of the magic world (they’re responsible for the portal accident, indirectly), and they try to stop the kids.

How does that sound?

Chris

Stuck in Magic 29-30

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Well, at least they’re not demanding we give back the castle to a dead man,” Rupert said, an hour later.  We’d spent the time dictating messages to Fallon, then listening as she repeated their messages back to us.  “That would have been awkward.”

I grinned.  Fallon giggled.  The city fathers had been shocked, according to her, when they heard what we’d done.  They hadn’t even realised we’d continued the offensive, even though it had been part of the plan.  Going on until we hit something so hard we had to stop made perfect sense, as far as I was concerned, and we’d kept going until we won the war.  Warlord Aldred’s former subordinates might try to declare independence, or try to offer homage to another warlord, but it didn’t matter.  Right now, they lacked the firepower to do more than irritate us.  The rebel serfs would keep them penned up until we could smash their castles one by one.  Kuat had fallen.  I had no doubt the others would be even easier to destroy.

Rupert smiled, tiredly.  “We still have orders to wait for the princess,” he said.  “By then, hopefully, the council will have decided what they want us to say to her.”

“They do keep changing their minds,” Fallon agreed.  She glanced at the parchment.  “Right now, they’re asking about securing our new territories.”

I unfurled a map and studied it thoughtfully.  “We’ll position scouts along the roads leading to the neighbouring warlord territories,” I said.  The nightmare was a united advance on multiple fronts, perhaps three or four armies heading straight to the city, but I doubted the warlords would manage to coordinate such an offensive.  They’d need to build a modern army first, giving us time to tighten our defences and send more agents into their lands.  “If they start an attack, we’ll know about it.”

Fallon wrote a message on her parchment.  I felt a shiver running down my spine as the words faded and vanished, as if they’d never been.  I’d never had that reaction to radios or computers … I frowned as Fallon read the reply out loud.  To my eyes, the chat parchment was blank.  It was hard not to feel we were being conned.  We’d busted an insurgency cell, back in the Middle East, whose leader had faked messages from a multinational network to keep his subordinates in the fight.  I knew Fallon wasn’t lying to us and yet it was hard to believe she could see something I couldn’t.

I turned my attention back to the map.  “We’ll place a garrison here, just to make sure someone doesn’t try to take it from us, then split the army and deploy cannoneers to the rest of the castles.  If they surrender, they can leave without a fight; if not, we can blow their walls down and they can die in the ruins.  The quicker we eliminate them, the better.”

“The city fathers want you to detach half the army and send it back home,” Fallon said.  “I think they’re getting worried.”

“We can do both,” I assured her.  “And thank you.”

Fallon nodded, dropped a curtsey and hurried out the room.  The communicators had taken over a handful of chambers, although personally I’d have preferred to keep them in the camp outside the walls.  We were still searching the castle with the aid of the former servants, liberating prisoners from the cells, capturing records and logging every last item of value within the walls.  The latter would probably have to be sent to the city, although I was pretty sure a number of smaller items had already been pocketed by my men.  I sighed, inwardly.  I didn’t want to encourage looting and yet … it wasn’t going to be easy to stop.  Few, if any, people had qualms about stealing from a dead warlord.  God knew he’d been stealing from everyone within his reach.

Rupert smiled at me, then winked.  “She has a crush on you, you know.”

I scowled.  It had been a long time since I’d lain with anyone and right now, in the flush of victory, my body was instant on reminding me just how long it had been.  Fallon was young and pretty and … I cut off that line of thought before it could go any further.  She was young enough to be my daughter, more or less, and she’d grown up in a society I didn’t really understand.  It would be safer to visit an upper-class brothel, when I returned to the city, although that carried risks of its own.  The last thing I wanted was a fantastical STD.

“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” I growled.  I cleared my throat as I studied the map.  “What do you think the princess actually wants?”

“Aldred wanted her to tell us to go home, disband our army and let him kick our backsides a few times,” Rupert said.  We’d found the warlord’s private letters, along with everything else, when we’d searched his quarters.  It was strange to realise that a man who’d had no qualms about twisting the king’s arm – he hadn’t been even remotely subtle about it – had also been a patron of the arts and a moderately gifted poet himself.  “What she wants?  I don’t know.”

I nodded as I turned my attention to organising the aftermath of the war.  I didn’t really want to send a sizable chunk of the army home, even if they took a route that just happened to take them past a number of castles that needed to be reduced if they refused to surrender, but I didn’t have a choice.  The city fathers had to be thinking we were dangerously loose cannons, although we’d won the war.  They might not be openly churlish about it, not when public opinion would be firmly on our side, but they’d certainly do something to clip our wings.  It was just possible they’d order us to concentrate on raising and training new recruits while giving combat commands to more reliable officers.

The hours went quickly.  I checked the pile of captured gold – it looked like a dragon’s hoard – then arranged for it to be returned to the city under heavy guard.  I allowed a detachment of former serfs to raid the warlord’s armoury, taking a few hundred swords, spears, crossbows and suits of armour that looked hopelessly outdated, along with thousands of arrows.  It amused me to discover that the warlord had actually had his very own cannon, although he’d made no attempt to put it into service.  The design was badly outdated, but it could still have hurled a cannonball into the city’s walls.  I was sure his neighbours would be building up their own forces as fast as they could.

Fallon caught me as I returned to the castle, after inspecting the troops.  “We have orders to send the aristocratic prisoners back to the city,” she said.  “They want them back immediately.”

“I’ll see to it,” I said.  The warlord’s wife, mistresses and remaining children had been kept under guard too.  I wasn’t sure what, if anything, we could do with them.  I didn’t want to execute them in cold blood and yet, leaving them alive would cause all sorts of problems in the future.  “And then …”

She stopped as the chat parchment vibrated in her hand, more proof – if I’d needed it – that the original concept had come from my world.  Or one very much like it.  “Sir … the princess has been kidnapped!”

I blinked.  “What?”

“Her carriage was waylaid.” Fallon didn’t look up from her parchment.  “They took her and rode off …”

I led the way back to the throne room and ran to the map table as she gabbled out more details.  The princess had been within the dead warlord’s lands when she’d been attacked and taken by a band of … of who?  I shuddered as the implications dawned on me.  The warlords had refrained from insisting the princess marry one of them – willingly or not – because there’d been a near-perfect balance of power.  Anyone who tried to take the princess, and thus the crown, would be promptly targeted by the others.  But now, with Aldred dead, the northern warlords might just try to snatch the princess, force her to marry one of them and declare themselves the heir to the throne.  I felt sick.  If they took her, if they raped her, she’d have no choice but to marry the rapist.  It would be the only way to preserve her reputation.

Bastards, I thought.  What sort of fucked up society forces a woman to marry her rapist?

“If they take her …”  Rupert’s thoughts were clearly going in the same direction.  “We have to save her.”

I ran my eye down the map, silently calculating the possibilities.  The mystery kidnapper would have sent cavalry, perhaps even mercenaries, rather than coming in person.  He would have wanted to maintain a degree of plausible deniability, even if everyone knew what had happened.  I did my best to think like a total shithead intent on taking the princess – and her title – by force.  If I’d been trying to do it, I would want to get the princess to my castle as quickly as possible.  We’d heard a report that Warlord Cuthbert had moved to his castle on the border … it wasn’t much to go on, but it was all we had.

“If she’s being taken to Cuthbert,” I said as my finger traced a road on the map, “they’ll have to gallop down here.”

It made sense, I decided.  Cuthbert was the strongest warlord in the north, now we’d crushed Aldred.  He might just think he could get away with kidnapping the princess and marrying her by force.  Any of his peers who wanted to do something about it would have to fight their way through our territory first … he might just get away with it, if we gave him the chance.  I had no intention of letting him get away with anything.  The city fathers might not give much of a shit about the princess, or the throne, but Cuthbert was already a threat.  He’d be much more of a problem if he wound up with royal authority as well as his own considerable forces.

“We’ll stop him,” I said.  The idea of saving a royal princess was appealing.  “Rupert, you stay here and get the army ready to secure the border.  Fallon, you’re with me.”

Fallon didn’t object as she followed me down the stairs and out to the campsite.  My skirmishers were already to go, the cavalrymen leaping into their saddles as we hurried towards them.  I noted with some amusement that the common-born skirmishers and the aristocratic cavalry were actually getting along, now they’d won a victory together.  Harbin would be rolling in his grave.  I smirked at the thought as I barked orders, then climbed onto the horse myself.  Fallon sat behind me as we raced away from the castle, her arms wrapped around my chest.  I did  my best to ignore her.

My mind churned as I picked up speed.  My logic made sense, yet … what if I was wrong?  It wasn’t as if the kidnappers had to go down the main road, even if it was the quickest route to the border.  Hell, Cuthbert wasn’t the only suspect.  I couldn’t see any of his subordinates kidnapping the princess without his approval, which wouldn’t come, but what about the southern warlords?  They’d have to admit what they’d done eventually, once the marriage was duly solemnised, but by then it would be too late.  The princess would be theirs and everyone would pretend there’d never been anything wrong with it.

Sweat prickled down my back as we galloped onwards.  I’d studied the map carefully.  If we picked the right crossroads, we should find ourselves ahead of the kidnappers … I tried not to think about the dangers of someone else taking the princess.  What if it had been a serf faction?  They had motive to hate the royals too, without any compelling reason to keep the princess alive.  I’d heard horrifying tales of what happened to aristocrats who fell into commoner hands.  The viciousness was appalling.  And who could really blame them, when the aristocrats were so relentlessly savage to their serfs?  They didn’t even see the serfs as human.

We reached the crossroads and swung around, cantering south.  My heart started to race as I mentally checked the timing, again and again.  There was just no way to be sure … we could have missed them, or gone the wrong way, or simply set off on a wild goose chase.  What if … I wondered, suddenly, if we were being lured into a trap.  The princess’s life didn’t mean that much to the warlords.  They might just feel it was time to partition the kingdom between them and to hell with the legitimate royal family.  Alexander the Great’s successors had done pretty much the same thing.

I heard a shout ahead and raised my head.  A handful of horsemen were galloping towards us.  I snapped orders, sending the cavalry ahead while the skirmishers hastily dismounted and formed a line.  The enemy troops – they had to be hostile, now the remainder of the aristocracy were cowering inside their castles – didn’t slow down.  I gritted my teeth as they crashed through the cavalry, punching through the gaps in their formation rather than trying to stand and fight.  They didn’t have much of a choice – the terrain on each side of the road wasn’t good for horses – but it was still alarming.  There was a very real chance we’d kill the princess, completely by accident.  I was entirely sure everyone would assume it had been deliberate. 

“Target the horses,” I ordered.  I’d already told the skirmishers what to do, but I wanted to be sure they understood.  “Fire!”

The muskets barked as one.  The enemy line shivered and came apart, turning into a ragged mass as a number of horses hit the ground hard.  The remainder kept coming.  I reached for my pistol, all too aware I was running out of bullets, as the muskets fired a second volley.  The enemy broke, trying to scatter in all directions.  I saw a figure slung over a horse, hands tied behind her back.  I swore under my breath.  The chief kidnapper was going to get away.  I was a good shot, with the best weapon in the world, and yet I was unsure I could shoot out the horse’s legs or put a bullet through the beast’s head.  That only worked in bad movies and worse TV shows.

Fallon waved her hand.  I saw light splash around the horse’s feet, an instant before it shuddered to a halt.  The rider flew out of the saddle and crashed into the ground.  I didn’t need to check to know he was dead.  His neck had clearly been snapped by the impact.

I dismounted and hurried over to the horse.  The beast was quivering, struggling against an invisible force.  I felt another shiver of disquiet as I pulled at the ropes, undoing the bonds tying the princess to the saddle.  They hadn’t cared about her comfort – she would have cramps soon, if she didn’t already – but they might have saved her life.  The ropes had kept her from being thrown off the horse too.

The princess stared at us.  Someone had stuffed a gag in her mouth, as well as everything else.  I did my best to look reassuring as I cut her hands free, the best sign we could give that we were friendly, then helped her remove the gag.  The bastards had nearly choked her.  I looked at the dead men, wishing I could kill them again.  They hadn’t had to treat her so roughly.

She coughed.  Fallon offered her a canteen of water.  I studied the princess with interest as she sipped the water, then started to massage her limbs.  I’d expected, I was discomforted to realise, something akin to a Disney Princess, but Princess Helen was clearly out of her teenage years.  I mentally tagged her as being in her late twenties or early thirties, with light chocolate brown skin, dark hair and a figure that was more solid than willowy.  She looked tough, I thought.  Her arms were strikingly muscular. I had the feeling she would have made a good soldier, if she’d been born in a better society.  Warlord Cuthbert – or whoever had ordered the kidnapping – might have made a dreadful mistake.

“My thanks,” she said, finally.  Her voice was stronger than I’d expected.  “And who are you?”

I hesitated, unsure how to answer.  “We’re from Damansara,” I said.  It wasn’t as if she’d recognise any of us.  The monarchy seemed to prefer to pretend the cities didn’t exist.  “We heard you’d been kidnapped and came to rescue you.”

The princess looked surprised, although she hid it well.  I guessed she’d been caught by surprise by the sheer speed of our advance too.  Her kidnapper had probably assumed we’d be too busy fighting Warlord Aldred to do anything about him.  And that Aldred would be in no state to protest either. 

“You won the war?”  Princess Helen sounded unconcerned, as if the matter was of no import to her, but I could tell it was an act.  She was clearly far more intelligent than she wanted to let on.  Being her father’s only child meant she couldn’t afford to pretend politic s were something that happened to other people.  “What happened?”

I grinned as I motioned for one of the cavalry to loan the princess his horse.   “It was very simple,” I said.  We’d tell her the full story later, once we returned to the castle.  “We came, we saw, we conquered.”

Chapter Thirty

Five days after the battle, we returned to Damansara.

The city greeted us with a massive party.  They’d known we’d beaten the warlord before, in a handful of skirmishes, but now the threat from one warlord, at least, was gone for good.  The warlord was dead, the remainder of his family put into permanent protective custody; there were other warlords, of course, but they were no longer feared.  My men were the heroes of the hour, telling tall tales about how they’d single-handedly won the war when they weren’t dancing in the streets.  The old stigma of being a soldier was gone.  It was suddenly fashionable to be in the army, or to date a military man; my troops had no trouble, no trouble at all, finding willing partners.  I had the feeling things were definitely going to change for the better.

It was strange, a day after we returned, to attend Harbin’s funeral.  I stood in the crowd and watched as aristocrat after aristocrat paid tribute to Harbin as a great war leader and the hero who practically won the war on his own.  It was hard to resist the temptation to stand up and point out that Harbin had been a coward and a rapist who’d only led a charge because his own people would have turned on him if he hadn’t, but I forced myself to keep my mouth shut.  Harbin was dead.  I’d shot him in the back of the head myself.  And I’d gotten away with it.  There didn’t even seem to be a hint of suspicion there was anything even slightly untoward about his death.

My eyes sought out Gayle, on the far side of the ceremony.  Her face was a blank mask.  Harbin had tried to rape her, only to have the whole affair swept under the carpet by heavy bribes and heavier political pressure.  I wondered what she was thinking.  Did she think Harbin had died well?  Or did she think he hadn’t died soon enough?  He would have cost her everything, from her reputation to her chance of making a good match, if he’d managed to actually go all the way.  If I’d been in her shoes, I would have been plotting Harbin’s death well before some kindly soul put a bullet in him.

I frowned inwardly as I noticed Princess Helen standing next to Fallon, who’d been appointed as her semi-official guide and bodyguard.  The princess had spent the last few days asking hundreds of questions, listening to the answers and then asking more questions.  I’d met police and military interrogators who were less capable of spotting evasions and half-truths and pushing through them to get to the truth.  Rupert had admitted, privately, that he found the princess rather intimidating.  It didn’t really help that she occupied a vague spot between being a women, and thus socially inferior, and being a royal princess who was the only realistic heir to the throne.  I’d looked up the genealogy.  It made very little sense to me, but – as far as I could tell – Helen was the only clear heir.  Everyone else … if she died, or was put aside, there was going to be a major struggle for power.  The warlords would take sides and the uneasy truce would be shattered beyond repair.

Right now, too many warlords are stunned by what we’ve done, I thought.  But that will change soon enough.

The funeral continued, until it ended with a parade through the streets.  I kept my face under tight control as I mentally listed all the things I needed to do, now Rupert and I had enough power and clout to get things done.  Better sanitation, better water supplies … I hoped I could raise newer regiments, armed with better weapons in a bid to stay ahead of the warlords.  We didn’t have any hope of keeping them from using gunpowder weapons themselves, let alone magic.  The secret had gotten loose well before my arrival.  I’d just made it worse by proving gunpowder weapons weren’t just a fad.  The genie could no longer be put back in the bottle.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Harbin’s corpse was cremated, then turned to walk back through the streets.  The party would go on and on, as if the war was the end of war itself, but I couldn’t afford to believe that it really was the end.  We’d beaten one warlord; the others would unite against us soon enough, once they had newer weapons of their own.  Boris and his peers would have to help me send agents into their lands, armed with the secret of gunpowder and the simple truth the warlords could be beaten.  We’d already started to recruit new soldiers from the liberated serfs.  Some of them, I was sure, could be sent into enemy lands to undermine their rulers before they started to pose a threat to us.

A servant met me as I returned to city hall.  “My Lord, your presence is requested in the meeting room.”

I nodded – I’d been forced to endure a number of meetings with the city fathers over the last two days, all of which had veered between insane optimism and deep despondency.  They seemed unsure if they wanted to keep the captured lands, some seeing it as a chance to expand their own holdings at the warlord’s expense and others seeming convinced it would be needlessly provocative.  I wasn’t surprised to note that none of them gave a damn about the serfs who worked the land.  Given time, that would change.  They’d have to realise the serfs were armed now, armed and dangerous.  Trying to put them back into chains would merely plunge the city’s military into a nightmarish quagmire.

My heart twisted as I followed the servant up the stairs and into the meeting room.  It was heavily warded, as secure as magic could make it.  I wasn’t sure if the wards would keep out something as mundane as a tape recorder, let alone a smartphone, but it would be a long time before the locals had to worry about anything along those lines.  I blinked in surprise as I saw Fallon, standing guard outside the door.  She wouldn’t have done that for just anyone.

She smiled at me, charmingly.  “Her Highness is waiting for you.”

I nodded.  “Thank you.”

Princess Helen was seated in a chair, I noted as I entered the room.  She stood and looked me up and down, then nodded to a slightly smaller chair.  I sat, resting my hands on my lap as I studied her thoughtfully.  The princess would never be taken for pretty, but she had a very definite presence.  Her eyes flickered towards the far corner.  Gayle sat there, her back to us.  I guessed she was a chaperone.  The princess’s reputation would suffer if she was alone with a man.

Which makes it harder for her to have any private discussions with anyone, I thought, sourly.  They’re deliberately trying to hamper their future queen.

The princess looked me in the eye.  “Where do you come from?”

I blinked at the question, then shrugged and trotted out the story I’d given Rupert only a few short months ago.  A traveller from a far-distant land who’d become a mercenary, then a guardsmen, then finally entered Rupert’s service … it wasn’t entirely untruthful, although I’d made sure to leave out all the interesting details.  The princess didn’t seem impressed.  She probably heard so much bullshit in her life that she was pretty good at detecting when someone was trying to mislead her.  I wasn’t lying that badly, but I was fairly sure she wouldn’t see it that way.

She smiled, humourlessly.  “And the truth?”

I found myself answering the question before my mind quite realised what I was doing.  I told her about Earth, I told her about how I’d arrived in Johor, I told her about Jasmine and the Diddakoi and how I’d eventually found myself working as a guardsman before entering Rupert’s service.  The words just spilled from my mouth … I realised, too late, she’d used magic.  A wave of anger shot through me, followed by fear.  The protections I’d purchased from Carver and his ilk hadn’t kept her from enchanting me.  If I got out of the meeting alive, I resolved, they were going to regret it.

It was hard to focus enough to pick my words properly.  “You put a spell on me!”

The princess held up her hands.  “Technically, I wove the spell into my words, but the effect is much the same,” she said.  She sounded oddly relieved.  “Gayle and I had a long chat about you.”

Her voice hardened suddenly.  “They’re going to kill you.”

I blinked, one hand dropping to my pistol.  “Who?”

“Lord Galley is leading the charge, but there’s a bunch of others.”  Gayle turned to face us, her voice grim.  “Some of them think you’re a rogue element, a mercenary who cannot be wholly trusted.  Others think they don’t need you anymore.  And others … they think you have an unhealthy influence over Rupert.  Father is particularly concerned about your relationship with him.”

Her lips twisted in distaste.  “The rumours have been spreading for weeks,” she added, after a moment.  “You don’t so much have his ear as you have your hand on another part of his anatomy.”

I shook my head in disbelief.  They thought Rupert and I were lovers?  The local attitude to homosexuality had always struck me as odd – being a top was fine, being a bottom was not – but I didn’t swing that way and, as far as I knew, nor did Rupert.  There was no way to be entirely sure, of course.   I hadn’t seen him spend much time in the brothels, but that proved nothing.  He was rich and well-connected enough that he could probably get anything he wanted, just for the asking.  He wouldn’t have any trouble finding someone who was discreet …

“It doesn’t matter what they believe,” Princess Helen said, briskly.  “All that matters is that they intend to get rid of you.”

“Ungrateful bastards,” I muttered, heedless of who might be listening.  My mind started to race as I considered what to do.  Could I round up my troops and launch a coup?  I doubted it.  The units that might be loyal to me personally were garrisoning the occupied lands … there was no way I could get them back in time before the hammer fell.  “What do they think I want to do?”

I shoved the question aside as I forced myself to think.  I’d kept my salary in my office … I could go back, get my hands on it, then grab a horse and run.  I knew a lot more about the lay of the land now.  I could try to head west, to see if I could find the other cross-dimensional traveller, or simply see if I could make a name for myself in another city.  They’d know what I’d done for this city.  They might take me on, now I’d proven myself.  It would be a great deal easier if I didn’t have to explain every little detail to minds that had been ossified by disuse.

A thought struck me.  “Does Rupert know?”

“As far as I know, no,” Gayle said.  “There aren’t many people who know.”

I looked at her, sharply.  “How do you know?”

Gayle met my eyes, an unusually forward gesture for a young aristocratic woman.  “I have ears,” she said.  “And so do some of my friends.”

“It’s astonishing what people will say in front of you, if they think you’re just a young woman with nothing between her ears,” Princess Helen said.  Her voice was cold, but there was a hint of anger that shook me.  The princess was hardly a teenager, yet there were still people who treated her as a child?  “It is sometimes useful not to be taken seriously.”

I nodded, slowly.  Gayle and her friends might come from rival houses, but … it struck me, suddenly, that young women would have every interest in pooling information.  They had so little power of their own that they needed information to make the best use of what they had, to gain some influence before it was too late.  Their families might be rivals – Rupert and Harbin really had been rivals – but they still needed to work together.  I felt a pang of pity.  It wasn’t fair.  Gayle and her peers could have been so much more.

“Thank you for the warning,” I said, finally.  I briefly considered going straight to Rupert, but … it would be pointless.  It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to choose between his family and me.  I thought he liked me – and I’d done my best to become a father or older brother figure to him – but he wouldn’t put his family ahead of me.  “I …”

“Come with me,” the princess said.  “Let me hire you.”

I stared.  “You want me to come with you?”

Princess Helen let out a sigh.  “My father is a good man, but he is weak.  He doesn’t have the military force to bring the warlords to heel.  His forces simply cannot stand up to them in open combat, which means that – as long as the warlords work together – they can humiliate him any time they like. When I take the throne, it won’t get any better.  They’ll keep blocking prospective husbands, which means I won’t have a heir of my own.  That needs to change and, thanks to your victory here, I might have time to actually make things change.”

“And you think I can do that for you,” I said.  I wasn’t blind to the simple fact she had interests of her own, but … they meshed with mine.  For the moment.  It was difficult not to believe her warning about the city fathers, not when Gayle backed her up.  I knew them well enough to believe they’d try to put a knife in me, as soon as I outlived my usefulness.  “Do you think they’ll let me go?”

“I’m planning to depart tomorrow, before they start pushing for me to leave,” Princess Helen said.  “You’ll join me in my carriage.  I’ll tell them, once we’re on the way, that you have agreed to enter my service.  Your former master will be compensated and the remainder of the city will breathe a sigh of relief.  As far as they’ll know, you don’t have the slightest suspicion they’re going to kill you.  They won’t think of you returning to extract revenge at some later date.”

“And if you want to,” Gayle added, “please remember that I helped you escape before it was too late.”

I looked at her, thoughtfully.  “If you don’t mind me asking, how do you two know each other?”

“We exchange letters regularly,” Princess Helen said.  She winked at me.  “We don’t talk about anything secret or sensitive, not as far as any of the menfolk can tell.  But we can develop relationships that come in handy from time to time.”

I frowned.  I had a feeling that wasn’t the whole story.  I also thought I wouldn’t never know the rest of it.  But it didn’t matter.

“I want to invite a few people along, later,” I said.  “Is that possible?”

“Fallon has already agreed to join my service,” Princess Helen said.  “The others … you might have to recruit them later, once you’re safely away from the city.”

I nodded, thinking hard.  The princess was telling the truth.  Probably.  I knew Gayle well enough to understand she’d have some interest in repaying the debt she owed me, even if it meant risking a clash with her father or brother.  And … the city fathers really were a bunch of ungrateful bastards.  I had no trouble at all believing they’d turn on me the moment they thought they didn’t need me any longer.  Telling lies about my relationship with Rupert would probably make it harder for him to object, later.  Bastards.

My mind churned.  I didn’t have to go with her.  There were other options.  I had enough money to go almost anywhere I wanted, from Zangaria to Heart’s Eye.  I could make a new life for myself there.  And yet … she wasn’t fool enough to use me, praise  me and discard me.  Probably.  She’d need me – or someone like me – for the rest of her life.  It wouldn’t be easy to take the throne, let alone rule effectively.  She was right.  She did need an army of her own.

“Very well.”  I stood and bowed.  “It will be my honour to enter your service.”

“And it will be mine to accept you,” Princess Helen said.  “Together, we will change the world.”

End of Book One

Stuck in Magic 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I covered my eyes, hastily, as the ground shook violently, great clouds of dust and smoke rising up from the walls.  It was glorious!  The magically-reinforced walls were warped and twisted, great chunks of stone crashing to the ground despite the spells woven into the building.  The blast had clearly reached further into the castle than I’d expected … I snickered as I realised the enemy wards had actually deflected the blast deeper into the castle, rather than redirect the force back at us.  They really hadn’t expected such an attack, I decided.  The idea of undermining a castle’s walls wasn’t new, but cramming gunpowder into the mine and detonating it under the walls was.

“Musketmen, sweep the walls,” I barked.  The enemy soldiers were stunned.  We had to take them at a run, before it was too late.  “Cannoneers, target the inner keep!”

I nodded to Rupert as the cannons started firing again.  A handful aimed canister shot into the shattered walls, hoping to kill anyone who’d survived the blast, while the remainder directed cannonballs into the inner building.  I was unsure if they were as heavily warded as the outer wards, but it didn’t matter.  We’d breached the walls.  A smart enemy would be trying to surrender now, to get the white flag into the air before we plunged through the walls and into the keep.  If they refused to surrender, we would be quite within our rights to kill everyone inside the building without even trying to take them prisoner.

They’ve nowhere to go, I thought, as I rallied my skirmishers.  All they can do now is hurt us as much as possible before we kill them all.

I raised my hand, feeling the air shake as my troops braced themselves.  They looked eager to get to grips with the enemy … that wouldn’t last, I was sure.  House-to-house combat was never fun, even if you had body armour and microscopic drones and all the other toys that had been tried and tested in the Middle East.  Urban warfare cut the advantages of modern technology down to almost nothing … I told myself not to be so pessimistic.  The enemy didn’t have AK-47s or IEDs or anything along those lines either.

“Follow me,” I shouted.  It was hardly professional, but I didn’t give a damn.  “Charge!”

The men cheered as I led them towards the smoking remnants of the mine, musket balls cracking over our heads as the musketmen sought to cover us.  My ears ached as I plunged through the crater, then scrambled up the far side and into the castle, eyes sweeping from side to side for potential threats.  It looked like the building had been torn right open by the blast; walls scorched and battered, doors lying on the floor in ruins.  I led my men onwards, directing half of them to seize the upper levels while the remainder held upon the breach to allow more and more invaders to enter the castle.  If the defenders weren’t going to surrender, they’d have to muster a counterattack before we solidified our foothold and started to take the rest of the castle.

I led the way down the corridor and stepped into a mini-courtyard, looking as if someone had screwed up the plans when the castle had been put together.  There was hardly any space for anything, as far as I could tell.  I heard a shout a moment later and saw men boiling out of the far door, urged on by someone remaining safely at the rear.  I raised my pistol and shot him, then barked orders to my men as the attackers started to slow in confusion.  My men opened fire a second later, musket and flintlock balls tearing though the attackers and sending them crashing to the ground.  Another man appeared, waving his hand to snatch a fireball out of nowhere and hurl it at me.  I blinked at it, stunned, then ducked sharply as it shot over my head and crashed into a far wall.  An instant later, another fireball burned his head to a crisp.

I looked back.  Fallon was standing there, looking pleased with herself.  My lips moved soundlessly.  I hadn’t expected her to follow me.  She really shouldn’t have followed me.  And yet, she’d saved my life.  If she could do that … I nodded to her – this was neither the time nor the place for an argument – then started barking orders again as reinforcements kept flowing into the castle.  We needed to push onwards before the defenders started to rally again.

“Surrender,” I bellowed.  My parade ground voice was loud, but practically lost amidst the din of battle.  “Surrender and your lives will be spared!”

I heard some angry muttering behind me.  I ignored it.  I didn’t particularly want to sack the castle.  I certainly didn’t want my men to get into bad habits by raping and slaughtering what remained of the castle’s population.  If they were prepared to surrender, I’d accept it instead of forcing them to fight to the last.  The warlord himself shouldn’t live past the fighting – my ancestors had had no shortage of problems when the old ruling caste hadn’t been uprooted and destroyed – but there were innocents in his castle.  Even his men were only following orders.  Here, it excused everything.

We charged across the courtyard and crashed into the next building.  A man stepped out of the darkness and swung a blade at me.  I darted back, wishing I’d spent more time on my swordsmanship, then shot him through the head.  I should have brought an axe instead, something I could use without spending weeks in training … I put the thought out of my head as more and more men blocked our way, forcing us to clear them out with musket balls, swords and makeshift grenades.  It was damn lucky, I reflected as we pushed onwards, that the warlord had frittered away most of his time.  The castle was hard enough to take, even though we’d broken the walls.  If he’d taken the task seriously, we might have been in real trouble.

Darkness fell as we pushed our way further into the castle, crying out for them to see sense and surrender.  I gritted my teeth, directing my men to light torches even though it posed a very real risk of giving away our positions.  The fighting was growing increasingly chaotic, I knew; I was losing control, if I’d ever really had it.  We crashed into a small hall and encountered a bunch of terrified servants, men and women who stared at us in fear.  I detailed a handful of men to escort most of the servants out of the castle, back to our lines.  The remaining two looked … reasonable.

I met their eyes.  “Where is Aldred?”

They stared at me, caught between fear of us – the invaders – and their masters.  I reached into my pouch and produced a handful of gold coins, holding them out to them.  Someone gasped behind me.  It was more gold than they’d seen in their entire lives, I was sure.  They had to be wondering if I’d take their answers and simply slit their throats, rather than actually keeping my side of the deal.  And yet … there was enough money, resting in my palm, to let them start a new life somewhere well away from their former master.

“He’s in the throne room,” one of the servants stammered.  “I … I can take you there.”

“Good.”  I passed him the coins, ignoring the other servant’s sputtered protests.  He’d had his chance.  “Lead on.  And no detours along the way.”

The servant nodded and led us down the corridor, then pushed a tapestry aside to reveal a hidden door.  I clutched my sword tightly in one hand as we stepped into a darkened passageway, all too aware we could be walking straight into a trap.  The servant passageway – I’d seen them in Rupert’s mansion – was just too narrow for us to walk in anything other than single file.  I promised myself I’d bury my sword in the servant’s back, if it turned out he was trying to con us.  He wouldn’t get away with it.

I felt the air shifting, slightly, as more cannonballs crashed into the keep.  It was hard to believe, despite the noise, that we weren’t alone within the castle, that we weren’t trapped within a confined space.  I’d never been claustrophobic, but it was still a relief when we reached the upper floor.  The servant stopped beside a heavy wooden door and tried to open it.  It didn’t budge.  The bolts on the far side, I realised after a quick inspection, had been firmly shoved into place.

The servant started to stammer.  “Sir, I …”

“It’s quite all right,” I assured him.  I would have been more concerned if the hidden door hadn’t been bolted.  “What’s on the far side?”

“His lordship’s bedroom,” the servant said.  “He … ah … uses the tunnels to see his mistresses.”

Mistresses, I thought.  How many does he have?

“Tell me about the layout,” I said, keeping my voice hushed.  The walls were thick, but there was no guarantee we couldn’t be overheard.  “What’s on the far side.”

I listened, then nodded to Fallon.  “Open this door.”

Fallon pointed a finger at the door.  I felt my ears pop, an instant before an invisible force crashed into the wood and blasted it open.  I would have preferred something a little more subtle – the noise had been loud enough to be heard for quite some distance – but beggars can’t be choosers.  I jumped through the wrecked door, looking around for possible threats.  The chamber was incredibly gaudy, gold and purple everywhere.  Purple was the royal colour, if I recalled correctly.  Having so much of it here was a clear sign the warlord had his eye on the throne, as well as absolutely no taste whatsoever.  I’d have been embarrassed to rest my head on his bed.  I was pretty sure he didn’t have anyone willing and able to tell him his room looked dreadful.

He’s a warlord with a habit of chopping off heads, I thought, as another round of cannonballs crashed into the walls.  No one is going to say anything even mildly critical to him if they can help it.

I glanced at the men, then led them forward into the next room.  A maid stared at us, her eyes uncomprehending, then dropped to the ground in a faint.  I had the feeling she was faking it, but I didn’t have time to check.  Instead, we hurried over her body and straight onto the next room.  Warlord Aldred sat on a golden throne, every inch a pretender to the real throne; a handful of men in fancy uniforms were pressed against the far wall.  The warlord’s presence pervaded the chamber.  I was sure he would have made a bid for the kingship if he’d thought he’d get away with it.

He stood, drawing his sword.  I studied him thoughtfully.  His paintings weren’t particularly accurate, I noted; he was neither fashionably thin or so fat he might as well be a danger to shipping.  His body was thick, but most of it looked to be muscle.  He carried his sword as if he knew what to do with it.  I was pretty sure he did.  Rupert had been taught how to use a sword from birth and his birthplace was reasonably civilised.  Aldred had grown up knowing that anyone, even his nearest and dearest, could become an enemy at the drop of a hat.

It isn’t an excuse, I told myself, firmly.  I could understand why everyone from Hitler and Stalin to Saddam and Castro had done the horrible things they’d done, but understanding didn’t bring forgiveness.  Quite the opposite.  And even if was, there would still have to be a reckoning.

The castle shook again.  The space between volleys was growing longer.  I’d told the cannoneers not to shoot off all their powder and balls, just in case we needed to make a fighting retreat to Barrow or Furness.  And yet … I shook my head.  The battle was over.  It had been over from the moment we’d broken the walls.  They should have surrendered.  Right now, there weren’t many people left to surrender.

I met the warlord’s eyes, trying not to wince.  This was not a man who accepted, even for a moment, the possibility of defeat.  This was not a man who’d surrender, no matter how much he told himself it was just for tactical advantage.  He wouldn’t so much as pretend to give up, although it would save hundreds of lives.  He had a wife and a family and if the fighting continued, they’d be killed.  Or worse.

“The battle is over,” I said.  I doubted it would make any impact at all, but I owed it to myself to try.  The warlord was doomed.  The shattered castle was clear proof his power had been broken beyond repair.  “If you surrender, you will be treated well.”

He snarled and raised his sword.  I saw his point.  No one was going to ransom him.  His former subordinates would sell out for the best terms they could get, while the remainder of the warlords carved up his territory between them … they’d wage war on us, I was sure, but it would be too late to save Aldred from defeat and destruction.  The best he could hope for was his family being allowed to go into exile, but it wasn’t likely to happen.  His former peers wouldn’t want his son to grow up into a future thorn in their side.  They’d probably have the entire family quietly killed.

“I mean it,” I said.  “You can take your money and go into exile and …”

Aldred lunged at me.  He really did know how to use his sword.  I blocked his first swing, more by luck than judgement, but he just kept coming.  I thought I was stronger, although it was hard to be sure.  His blows kept hacking through my defences, my hands aching as he crashed his sword into mine time and time again.  A man of honour, I reflected, would have kept fighting with an unsuitable weapon, even though it meant certain death.  I wasn’t that much of a man of honour.  I pointed the pistol at Aldred – his eyes went wide as he realised I was going to deny him a honourable death – and pulled the trigger.  His body crashed to the floor and lay still.

“It’s done,” I said.  I looked towards the other men.   None of them had moved, perhaps fearing the wrath of the winner if they tried to intervene.  “Surrender now and you get to live.”

They bowed their heads, then went to tell their men to surrender.  I allowed myself a moment of relief, before issuing orders of my own as the fighting died away.  The noble prisoners would be kept in the camp, under heavy guard, while we decided what to do with them; the soldiers and guardsmen would be invited to join our army, unless they were guilty of war crimes and atrocities.  It was going to be a legal headache to sort out.  Back home, there were no excuses for war crimes; here, merely following orders would be enough to get a free pass.

Besides, saying no to the mad dictator back home is a good way to commit suicide, I reflected.  I’d met too many people who thought they could deter war crimes … without realising it was pretty much impossible without a force both able and willing to come down on the perpetrators like a ton of bricks.   And you’d get your family slaughtered as well.

I shrugged – maybe the worst of the worst would make a daring escape before we had to make some decisions about them – and then grinned as Rupert stepped into the room.  He shot a sharp look at Fallon, who winked at him, then turned to me.  I smiled at his expression.  He looked like someone who’d been convinced he was about to lose a rigged game, only to come up trumps after all.  I understood.  If we’d lost the battle, it would have been wise for the pair of us to loot the war chest and start running.  We certainly wouldn’t have been welcome back home.

The thought surprised me.  When did Damansara become home?

“We won.”  Rupert looked at the throne and the body, perhaps making sure it really was Aldred, then sat on the floor.  “What now?”

I looked through the window.  The castle was effectively ruined.  It would take weeks, if not months, for it to be repaired.  I figured we could turn it into a garrison, if we wanted to expend the time and effort, or simply tear down the remnants and leave it as nothing more than a pile of rubble.  It wasn’t as if Kuat was still impregnable.  We’d proven it wasn’t, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“Now?”  I shrugged.  “We finish liberating the rest of the slaves, chase their former masters into exile if they don’t want to fight and be killed, then scatter garrisons throughout the lands as we raise troops for the next war.  We won.  It’s over.”

“And start arguing over who gets what,” Rupert predicted.  “They’ll already be dividing the lands up, back home.”

“As long as they remember the serfs aren’t serfs any longer,” I said.  I was pretty sure the serfs were arming themselves with everything within reach.  They couldn’t expect mercy if they fell back into enemy hands.  “They won’t agree to put down their guns and trade one set of masters for another.”

Fallon pulled her chat parchment from her pocket and frowned.  “My Lord, we just got orders to remain in Barrow and wait for Princess Helen.”

Rupert and I looked at each other.  A moment later, we started to laugh.