Stuck in Magic CH16

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Chapter Sixteen

If you watch a movie about young men becoming soldiers, you will almost inevitably find yourself watching a training montage of clumsy oafs becoming skilled men.  You’ll watch days and weeks compressed into a few minutes, with problems smoothed out almost before you notice they were there.  I’d never liked such montages, because they are often dangerously deceptive.  The real world is rarely so obliging.

And yet, three weeks slipped by almost without me noticing.

We fell into a routine, of sorts.  I put the recruits through their paces, time and time again, and expanded the training routine as they learnt to obey orders.  I divided them into groups and made them compete, or work together against other groups.  They got better over time, as I had expected, although I wound up expelling two men to the guardhouse for gross incompetence and outright malice.  A couple of others tried to challenge me, when they found the training a little too rough: I knocked them both down, then spoke encouragingly to them.  They weren’t doing too badly, given that I’d put the entire program together from memory and improvised to cover the gaps.  I’d known recruits who’d done a lot worse.

I smiled as I led them into the training hall.  The muskets lining the walls were the latest in military technology, which wasn’t saying much by my standards.  The pistol I wore at my belt – sooner or later, I’d have to show it to the gunsmiths – was a far more accurate weapon.  They were crude, imprecise and – even after a few hours of practice – I hadn’t been able to load and fire the weapon more than twice a minute.  We were going to be firing in rows, taking turns to fire, reload and fire again, just to maintain a steady rate of fire.  And the smoke was going to be appalling.

As long as we put out enough musket balls, I thought, it shouldn’t matter.

I sighed, inwardly.  I would have sold my soul for a dedicated gunsmith.  I had a friend who’d spent his entire life quietly stockpiling the tools to make guns, so he could arm himself when – if – the government confiscated his giant arsenal of firearms.  I wished he’d been with me.  He would have been very helpful.  I’d heard of terrorists in caves hammering out AK-47s.  If I could have done that, we could have pumped out enough firepower to take the world.

“This is a musket,” I said.  I doubted they’d seen firearms, let alone handled them.   The weapons had yet to take off.  “Your musket is your best friend on the battlefield.  You are going to take very good care of your musket and, in exchange, it will take very good care of you.  You will learn to fire it, to clean it, to have it ready at all times … you will even take it to bed and sleep with it.”

I ignored the sniggers.  “And when it breaks, you will fix it,” I added.  “I’ll be teaching you how to do that too.”

The musket felt uncomfortably fragile as I held it up.  I’d ordered bayonets for the men – they could become makeshift pikemen if the enemy got too close – but I’d left them off.  They had to get used to carrying the muskets, before I let them march around with edged weapons.  There would be just too many injuries.  I’d tried to arrange a permanent healer, but it was simply too expensive.  The chirurgeons – the closest thing the locals had to doctors – were little better than butchers.  I knew more battlefield medicine than they – I’d nearly killed one for not observing proper sanitation – and I hadn’t done more than the basics.  Calling myself a medic would be stolen valour, only worse.

“You will get used to firing the muskets as quickly as possible,” I said.  “We won’t worry too much about accuracy, at the moment.  The idea is to put out as many bullets as possible and let them impale themselves on our guns.”

There were more sniggers.  I rolled my eyes, then talked them through loading, firing and cleaning the musket.  They took the weapons as Horst and Fallows handed them out, then did their best to follow me.  They were almost completely unfamiliar with even the concept of firearms.  I had to rebuke one trooper for peering down the barrel and another for pointing his musket at one of his comrades.  I drilled them mercilessly, hammering the laws of firearms safety into their heads and handing out punishment duties for those slow up on the uptake.  I didn’t want to lose anyone to accidents, not when we might be going to war at any moment.  Rupert had told me, in confidence, that the political situation was deteriorating.  It added a certain urgency to our efforts.

“Your muskets will be inspected every day,” I informed them, once I thought they had the hang of it.  They hadn’t fired a single shot, not yet.  “Anyone with a dirty musket will be required to spend his free hour cleaning it.  Anyone with a broken musket will be paying for a new one.”

I ignored the groans running through the room.  I’d hired a proper accountant to collect the men’s wages, which I’d convinced Rupert to raise every time the men completed a training cycle, and keep the money safe under heavy guard.  It was a more trustworthy system than the local banks – apparently, they did everything they could to convince people to put their money into the banks and then worked hard to convince their customers not to take the money out – although it was fraught with risks.  I’d threatened the accountant with a slow and painful death if anything as so much as a single cent went missing.  I silently blessed whoever had introduced numbers and double-entry bookkeeping to this world.  It made keeping an eye on the accountant so much easier.

We might have to set up a more trustworthy bank, I thought.  The wealthier citizens kept most of their money at home, making it harder to convince them to invest.  But that’ll have to wait for a while.

I marched them out of the fort and onto the firing range.  My old instructor would have been outraged if he’d seen it, but it would have to do.  I’d stuck poorly-carved wooden shapes the far end of the range, intending to symbolise advancing infantry and charging horsemen.  They weren’t that detailed, but they didn’t have to be.  We were going to be blowing them to hell repeatedly.  Besides, I didn’t want to remind anyone that we were training against cavalry.  The warlords were probably watching us.

“Watch carefully,” I said, after outlining the rules of range safety.  I hefted my musket, demonstrated how to load the weapon, took aim and pulled the trigger.  There was a loud BANG, followed by a cloud of smoke.  I gritted my teeth.  The musketmen were likely to be blinded by their own firing, at least as long as the smoke lasted.  I wasn’t sure what could be done about that.  “Now, in pairs, try it yourselves.”

I forced myself to remain calm, wishing – not for the first time – for modern weapons and trained instructors.  The recruits were eager, particularly after what I’d shown them, but the muskets were completely new.  I watched as they tried to fire, then scrambled to reload.  It was painfully slow.  A troop of cavalry charging towards them might overwhelm their position before they managed to fire a second round … I told myself, firmly, that sheer volume of fire would be enough to stop the horses in their tracks.  It would, too. 

The men were disappointed when I called a halt to the shooting and formed them into lines for battlefield drill.  The concept was simple enough, although – like so many brilliant ideas – harder to execute than it looked on paper.  One row would fire, then kneel to reload while the second row fired; the second row would then kneel too while the third row fired … I hoped, given time, that we’d be able to pump out six volleys within a minute.  And yet, the smoke was going to be a real problem.  I reminded myself this universe had magic.  Perhaps there were spells to generate wind, to blow the smoke away from our eyes.

“Good work,” I said, finally.  They’d picked up the idea very quickly.  It would take days – perhaps weeks – of practice before they did it instinctively, but I was fairly sure it would come in time.  I’d spent the last three weeks drilling them to take orders.  “Now, back to the barracks for our pre-dinner run.”

I allowed Horst and Fallows to take command – they were coming along well, although I was afraid to leave them unsupervised for too long – and headed towards the officers’ quarters.  Rupert was living there permanently, learning his trade – in theory – from Harris.  I pitied him.  Harris wasn’t my idea of a good commanding officer, or anything really.  He certainly hadn’t shown anything like as much care for his men as Rupert, let alone the average West Pointer.  I’d met conceited newly-minted officers who thought they knew everything who’d been more thoughtful than our general.  I couldn’t wait for Rupert to take his place.

Rupert was waiting for me in the stables.  “Sergeant.”

“Sir,” I said.  Our working relationship was a little odd.  I could give him advice, but only in private.  Thankfully, he wasn’t trying to exercise direct command over the training units or it would have gotten a little sticky.  The recruits weren’t stupid.  If they saw an officer who didn’t know what he was doing, they’d hold him in contempt.  “Did you have a good day?”

“It was interesting,” Rupert said.  I was fairly sure that was a lie.  I’d advised him to study logistics, on the grounds he was a better organiser than a tactician, but logistics were boring right up until you realised your war effort depended on them.  “And I’m looking forward to our ride.”

I followed him to the horses and mounted up.  I’d let him teach me how to ride, local style – it wasn’t something I’d mastered back home – in the hopes it would let him keep some of his pride.  The aristocracy were all expected to be master horsemen, including the younger women.  Rupert was pretty good at riding, even though he’d never considered joining the cavalry.  And he wasn’t a bad teacher either.

The air smelt cleaner as we cantered away from the garrison and the city beyond.  We weren’t allowed to re-enter the city, not without special permission.  I was fairly sure Rupert was bored.  Normally, the aristocracy could come and go as they pleased, but Rupert’s enemies would make sure he kept his distance.  I’d done what I could to offer friendship to him, at least in private, although it wasn’t easy.  We had grown up in very different societies.  It was easy to forget, until it suddenly wasn’t.

I shook my head as I kept riding, allowing him to correct me from time to time as I surveyed the lands around the city.  Damansara’s precise borders beyond the walls were a little vague, something that made no sense to me until I realised it gave the warlords a considerable amount of influence over the city without having to make their hostility so overt no one could avoid taking notice of it.  Personally, I thought it was silly.  Someone sidling into attack range might not have hostile intentions, but it was still dumb to let them get so close without making sure of them.  I ground my teeth in bitter memory.  There’d been too many times in Iraq we’d had to wait to be hit, even though we could have killed the attackers before they got close enough to hurt us.  Here, at least, the rules of engagement were a little more sensible.

The thought cheered me as we galloped through villages and hamlets, cantering past fields – some showing signs of dehydration – and over bridges that struck me as a little pointless.  I could have waded though the rivers below with ease.  The city needed to sink some boreholes quickly, to search for underground reservoirs, or start and irrigation program.  I’d tried to suggest it to Rupert, as well as a dozen other ideas, but they’d gotten nowhere.  Rupert was a wealthy young man, with extensive connections, yet … he didn’t have anything like enough power and influence to get things done.  I wondered, idly, if what the city needed was a dictator, someone with the authority to get things moving.  It would have been so much easier, during the war, if we hadn’t had to get authorisation from Washington before doing pretty much anything.

I dismissed the old bitterness – it was unlikely I’d ever see home again – and concentrated on assessing the landscape from a military point of view.  The soil was hard, barren in a number of places; I doubted we could force an advancing army to pass through a bottleneck.  Hell, there was nothing stopping the warlords from sending their cavalry on a slash-and-burn mission through the fields.  Normally, they wouldn’t be able to destroy the fields beyond repair – that was far harder than most people thought – but here … I wasn’t so sure.  The farmers were permanently on the edge.  If they were killed, or driven away from their fields, it might be enough to prevent the farm from being saved.  I cursed under my breath.  The city was in a deadly trap.  We’d have to break out before it was too late.

We, I thought, with a flicker of amusement.  When did it become ‘we’?

Rupert slowed his horse.  “You’re being very quiet.”

“I’m just considering how and where the war is going to be fought,” I said.  There was no point in pretending there wasn’t going to be war.  The warlord was just piling on the pressure, trying to find something the city couldn’t give him.  Frankly, I wasn’t sure why he was bothering to come up with an excuse.  It wasn’t as if any of the other warlords – or the king – was willing or able to stop him.  “How much longer do we have?”

“I wish I knew,” Rupert said.  He glanced north, towards the warlord’s lands.  “He has a small army under his permanent control.  He could be advancing towards us tomorrow.”

I doubted it.  The warlord’s power rested on his ability to raise and deploy troops.  If those troops were lost, the warlord’s power would be lost too.  I’d never met any of the local warlords, but I’d met their counterparts in Afghanistan.  They’d been reluctant to fight to the finish, even when the enemy was on the ropes, for fear they would be finished too.  And the hell of it was that they had a point.

“They’re demanding that we hand over more serfs,” Rupert added.  “And we can’t.”

“No,” I agreed.  The warlord might be smarter if he turned a blind eye to the runaways, but … I shook my head.  It wasn’t going to happen.  There were just too many messages going back and forth.  A successful runaway would tell his friends and family that he’d found a home and work in the city, encouraging them to flee too.  “We just can’t find them.”

“They’re getting better organised,” Rupert agreed.  “They don’t want to be sent back and who can blame them?”

I nodded.  It wasn’t uncommon for immigrants and expats to put together private self-help networks, particularly those who knew the local government and population were either hostile or likely to become so, and once those networks got established they were extremely difficult to take down.  The immigrants were often unwilling to cooperate, while excluding anyone who wasn’t an immigrant themselves.  The former serfs could hide themselves in the big city, burrowing deep into the slums.  The City Guard didn’t have the manpower to root them out.

Not unless they show themselves too obviously, I thought.  And even then, it’s just a drop in the bucket.

I allowed myself to consider, briefly, recruiting some of the former serfs.  They’d make good soldiers.  They were already used to hard physical labour – they’d grown up on farms – and they didn’t dare let themselves be captured.  Recaptured.  And yet … I shook my head.  It would be considered a provocation.  The idea would have to wait until the local government conceded it was in a fight to the death.

Provoking the war to happen at a time and place of our choosing might work, I considered, but the longer we can put it off the better.

We chatted happily as we wheeled about and started to ride back to the fort.  Rupert talked about tactics – he’d been studying the old books – and I was happy to discuss them with him.  Some lessons were timeless – I intended to write down all I remembered from Sun Tzu and his fellows – while others were pointless.  The cavalry, king of the battlefield, was going to be dethroned soon.  Once machine guns were developed, they’d be slaughtered as easily as the French at Agincourt.

“Harris is planning to retire soon,” Rupert said.  “And then I’ll be the general.”

“You need to keep studying,” I said.  Sir Joseph Porter had been better qualified, although not by much.  His position had been purely administrative and everyone knew it.  “And we need to build up a staff.”

I smiled as Damansara came into view, twinkling lights shining on the walls as the sun slipped below the horizon.  It was easy to believe, from a distance, that the city was a wonderland of peace and prosperity, a civilised oasis in a world of violence and brutality.  It looked safe and tranquil and utterly timeless …

The war started two weeks later.