Stuck in Magic 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Harbin is dead?” Rupert looked conflicted. “I … what happened?”
“He died well,” I said. “He died in the midst of the fighting.”
It was true enough, I supposed. He had been leading a frontal attack into the enemy defences when I’d put a bullet through his skull. I’d written detailed reports of his death, trying to establish an unquestionable narrative as quickly as possible; I’d flattered the dead man in ways that would make Saddam Hussein blush. I had a feeling that, here, the reports would be regarded as nothing more than his due. Harbin’s family had been trying to paint him as the victor of the first engagement ever since they’d realised the battle had been a decisive victory.
Rupert frowned, unconvinced. I kept my thoughts to myself. Rupert knew – had known – Harbin. He knew Harbin had been a coward at heart. He knew … I wondered, idly, if Rupert would guess the truth. A smart man might quietly keep it to himself, silently relieved Harbin had bit the dirt before he’d had a chance to really screw us; Rupert was smart, I knew, but his experienced was very limited. He might blow the whistle without realising it would do more damage to the war effort than anything Harbin could do.
I let him consider the matter as I watched the army marching into Barrow. Rupert had pushed the men hard, but it had still been several nervous days before the troops had hove into view. We’d liberated the town and the surrounding farms, but the rebellions further away had either stalemated or simply collapsed. The serfs didn’t have the firepower to win in a hurry, nor the supplies to keep their former masters penned up until they ran out of food and surrendered. I’d drawn up plans for systematically smashing the fortified manors and tiny castles, one by one, but I was all too aware that would be taking my eyes off the prize. The warlord had refused to surrender or even consider asking for terms.
“I suppose he died well,” Rupert said, reluctantly. “And his family will be pleased.”
“They’ll credit him with winning the battle,” I said. It might even be true. The charge had certainly broken whatever was left of the enemy morale. “We’ll name a castle or something after him.”
Rupert smiled, rather thinly. “Let’s not go that far.”
I grinned, then left him with his thoughts and headed over to assess the marching army and reorganise the struggle. The makeshift logistics system had held up better than I’d expected, although we were still on a shoestring. We simply couldn’t source most of what we needed from the liberated territories, not in a hurry. I had no doubt blacksmiths and craftsmen, free of the prying eyes of their former masters, would start churning out cannon and muskets and everything else, but that would take time. I’d done what I could to kick off assembly-line manufacturing, rather than tiny little cottage industries … I shook my head. It was going to take years for the idea to really catch on. The craftsmen had been strongly against it right from the start.
Fallon smiled at me as I passed her tent. “The city has promised reinforcements,” she said, holding out her chat parchment. “And they’ve declared a day of mourning in honour of Harbin’s death.”
I nodded. It stuck in my craw to honour a man I knew to have been a rapist, a rape-enabler, a tactical disaster and all around entitled piece of shit, but it was a small price to pay for keeping the truth buried. By the time it came out, if it ever did, there would be so many people invested in the lie that the truth would hopefully be lost without trace. I doubted anyone would even come close to guessing the truth. The muskets were so inaccurate that even if someone realised Harbin had been shot in the back, they’d assume it was a hideous accident rather than deliberate murder. The best shot in the musketeers, bar me, couldn’t have been sure of hitting the broad side of a barn …
“We’ll hold a parade in his honour, when we get home,” I assured her. “Right now, we have to continue the war.”
Fallon bowed her head. It occurred to me, an instant too late, that she might have realised the truth. Women tended to be very perceptive, much more perceptive than men gave them credit for. Women’s intuition was nothing more than the subconscious mind putting together clues the conscious mind couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge. Fallon certainly knew what kind of person Harbin had been … she certainly knew I’d had excellent reason to arrange a little accident for him. And … she might have access to magic she could use to dig up the truth. The thought hadn’t occurred to me, when I’d shot the bastard. The only upside, as far as I could tell, was that the battlefield had been contaminated by the other magician. It might made any sort of forensic activities difficult.
They might not even figure out what actually happened, I told myself. There was no need to panic. Not yet. Even if they work out he was shot, they’d have problems understanding precisely how it happened.
I tasked Fallon with a handful of messages, then continued marching through the ever-growing camp. The cannoneers were emplacing their weapons, preparing the town to stand off an enemy counterattack; the infantry were digging trenches, in some cases churning up the enemy trenches we’d destroyed, and assisting the locals to rebuild their town. I was mildly surprised the former serfs were cutting down trees and fixing the damage, although I suppose it was a way of demonstrating their new ownership. I hoped it would last. We could, and we hopefully would, kill the former masters – or, at the very least, drive them into exile – but the city fathers were already arguing over the proper distribution of the spoils of war. I hoped that didn’t get out of hand. The serfs would be happy to work with us, I was sure, but not trade one set of masters for another.
And they have better weapons now, I reminded myself. Anyone who takes them for granted is going to regret it.
I kept myself busy as more and more reports came in. The revolts were spreading, some serfs taking up arms while others simply downed tools and walked away from the land. Hundreds came to join us in Barrow, while the remainder started to head back to the city. They’d probably find it a great deal easier, now we’d scattered the patrol and shattered the warlord’s grip on his southern lands. The city wouldn’t be sending any more serfs back to their former masters, not now. They’d voted to abolish the whole cursed practice shortly after our first victory.
Horst met me as I started to walk back to the command tent. “The men are ready to continue the offensive.”
I nodded, silently pleased that Horst and his peers had come along so well. I’d worked hard to keep them in line, rewarding the ones who did well and busting the failures – or bullies – back to the ranks, but I was still uneasily aware the system was very far from solid. I needed more experienced NCOs … I didn’t have them. There was something so ramshackle about the arrangement that my old drill instructors would have been utterly horrified, then start screaming for me to be court-martialled and kicked out on my ass. And yet, I had to admit it was working better than I’d expected. Victory had a habit of encouraging people to paper over the cracks in the edifice.
“We’ll continue the march shortly,” I said. Warlord Aldred was based at Kuat, a castle that was supposed to be impregnable. If the reports were even halfway accurate, and hadn’t grown in the telling too much, I could see why the locals would see it that way. “Have there been any major issues?”
“Not matter,” Horst said. “There were a handful of men who ate unripe fruit and got sick; a couple more who harassed the locals and got forced to run the gauntlet, but nothing else worth mentioning.”
I had to smile. Horst wouldn’t have said anything, back when we’d been guardsmen, if his peers had stolen from the shops and stalls. It had been one of the perks of the job. I made a mental note to keep an eye on the situation, just in case he slipped back into old habits. Horst was no fool – and he was being paid very well to uphold the new standards – but he might start to slip. It wasn’t easy to get rid of bad habits, not when they’d been allowed to fester for years. I’d known a man who kept swearing mighty oaths to give up the booze, but rarely managed to keep himself from drinking longer than a week or so.
The thought nagged at me as I toured the lines, spoke briefly to a handful of men I remembered – Napoleon would have been proud of me – and inspected the guns. The army looked more like a mob than anything organised, although it was largely an illusion. Their uniforms were dirty, their faces unshaved … I wasn’t too concerned. A unit could be good or it could look good, but rarely both. I’d sooner the former than the latter. My men would stand, unbeaten and unbowed, when a fancy unit would break and run. I glanced at a handful of flasks, gave their wearers a sharp look that told them to be careful, then turned away. As long as drinking didn’t get out of hand, I’d turn a blind eye. And if it did, the drinker and whoever had supplied the drink would wish they’d never been born.
It was growing darker when the messenger found me. “Sir, you’re wanted in the command tent!”
“I’m coming,” I said. Command conferences had been a great deal less acrimonious since Harbin had fallen. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
A large horse, wearing the most elaborate caparison I’d seen since we’d marched out of the city, stood outside the tent. I frowned as I studied the heraldry. I was no expect – the local aristocrats had a dizzying series of sigils and coats of arms – but the presence of drawn swords was clear proof the messenger represented a warlord. Warlord Aldred? I couldn’t imagine any of the others sending a message to the army, not when they’d find it easier to send the messenger directly to the city itself. If, of course, they knew what was happening. It was unlikely they realised how far and how fast we’d advanced, although it was impossible to be sure. They could be using chat parchments too.
I pushed the flap aside and stepped into the tent. Rupert sat in his chair, facing a young man – he was barely entering his teens – wearing a fancy outfit that had clearly been designed for a much older man. The unkind part of my mind whispered he looked like a purple and gold grape, before hinting the young man had been sent because his master feared he’d be executed the moment he rode into the camp. It was hard to believe the messenger was someone important. He wasn’t even old enough to shave!
Which might be meaningless here, I thought. He speaks with his master’s voice.
The messenger’s eyes flickered over me, then turned back to Rupert. “My Lord?”
Rupert kept his voice mild. “You have a message?”
“Yes, My Lord.” The messenger sounded as if his voice hadn’t broken yet. “My master wishes to inform you that His Majesty has commanded a formal truce, between the forces of Damansara and himself, and that his daughter has been dispatched to meditate a permanent treaty of peace. He proposes that your forces hold your positions until a settlement has been agreed.”
I snorted. “Oh. He does, does he?”
The messenger looked, just for a second, as if I’d committed some hideously indecent act in public. “Yes, My Lord.” He addressed his words to Rupert, not to me. “His Majesty commands it and we must obey.”
He held out a scroll. Rupert took it, then nodded. “The guard will escort you to somewhere you can wait,” he said, as he unfurled the scroll. It was written in Old Script, not a single English letter to be seen. “You’ll have our answer shortly.”
I waited until the messenger had left, then frowned. “What does the letter say?”
“The same thing, except more floridly,” Rupert said. “King Jacob of Johor has declared a formal truce, ordering both sides to hold their positions and wait for his daughter to arrive so she can handle the negotiations. And it would be treasonous for us to refuse.”
“Shit.” I forced myself to think. “Do we know the letter really came from the king?”
“It has the royal seal.” Rupert held it up for me to see. “The magic woven into the seal makes it impossible to duplicate, let alone forge.”
I wasn’t so sure, but there was no time to worry about it now. I’d wondered what the warlord would do, now we were deep within his lands. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d gone running to the king. Bullies always ran, if you hit them hard enough. I had to admit it was a neat solution. Twist the king’s arm to force him to order us to stop, then draw out the negotiations long enough to rebuild his army or simply cut our supply lines and starve us out. It would work too. The lands we held couldn’t feed the army, not for very long. We might lose the war without fighting another shot.
“They sent the message directly to you, not to Damansara,” I said. I was fairly sure that was true. If the city had gotten the message, they’d have relayed it to Fallon or one of her peers. “That’s … interesting.”
Rupert studied the scroll. “They’ll have sent a copy to the city,” he said. “It’ll just take longer for their messenger to reach the walls.”
I nodded, slowly. Messengers were meant to be inviolate, but – right now – no one was doing more than making a pretence of following the rules. I could see a messenger, galloping down the road, being waylaid and killed by a gang of runaway serfs, or perhaps even one of my patrols if they mistook the messenger for a spy. And yet … my thoughts churned. The warlord was clearly trying to buy time. It couldn’t be allowed.
“We have to press on,” I said. “There’s no choice.”
Rupert gaped at me. “Defy a direct order from the king?”
I snorted. “And how much power does the king actually have?”
He said nothing. I didn’t blame him. It was never easy to admit the emperor had no clothes, even when it was blindingly obvious. The king didn’t have the power to compel his nobles to do a damn thing, not when they didn’t want to do it. As long as the warlords remained united in their quest to keep the monarchy weak, that was never going to change. Damansara couldn’t rely on the king to do anything to help them, not when the warlords had the king under control. If we stayed where we were, or retreated back to safer territory, we were effectively conceding defeat.
“This is just a ruse to buy time,” I explained. “He’ll force us to expend our food, then retreat in a hurry or start taking food from the locals. Either way, he wins.”
Rupert met my eyes. “And when the city fathers order me to bend the knee to the king?”
I grinned. “The message can’t reach the city for at least another two days, right? They’ll need that long just to get the message, longer still to decide if they want to accept the king’s orders. We can use that time to press the offensive ourselves. We’ll arrive at his door before he has a chance to do anything, even if he realises we’re coming. And then we’ll crush his castle and win the war in one fell swoop.”
My smile widened. “And we can even send back a message offering to discuss terms,” I added. “It’ll keep him from realising we’re on the move …”
Rupert shook his head. “We can’t afford to break the laws of war too openly.”
I sighed, inwardly. I understood the importance of keeping the laws of war. At the same time, I also understood the importance of making sure everyone else kept the laws too. I had no qualms about misleading someone who’d tried to mislead us …
“Then tell him you’ll consult with your superiors,” I said. “They’re not expecting you to make policy for the entire city, are they?”
“You are.” Rupert smiled, but there was no humour in it. “If this goes wrong …”
“Victory has a thousand fathers,” I told him. I understood his reluctance. Rupert and his family had a great deal to lose if everything came crashing down. And yet … there was no middle ground, no space between victory or death. The warlords knew, now, how dangerous the cities could become. They’d be quick to garrison the others if they had a chance. “Defeat … you can blame everything on me, if you like.”
“Believe me, I will.” Rupert shook his head. “And they won’t accept it for a second.”
He stood. “I’ll tell the messenger that we’ll discuss the terms, then send a messenger of our own back when we’re done,” he said. “And … if you’re right, we’ll be on top of him before it’s too late.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. If we lost, we’d be declared rogue. “We’ll begin the march at dawn.”
