Queenmaker 22-23

Chapter Twenty-Two

An hour later, I addressed the war council.

“I fucked up,” I admitted, honestly. There was no point in trying to hide it. “I underestimated the other warlords.”

In hindsight, the mistake was obvious. Cuthbert had threatened Damansara, in a bid to force me to bring my army north. It worked out in his favour, no matter what I did. If I came to defend the city, he’d have a chance to wipe me out; if I abandoned the city, it would force the city fathers to surrender and prove to everyone else that Helen’s security guarantees were worthless. Damansara would become another occupied city, like Houdon, and her factories would fall into enemy hands. If I hadn’t taken the offensive so quickly, it might have worked out for him. As it was, it had given the other warlords a chance to take the offensive themselves.

We didn’t think they could move so quickly, I thought. Or that their alliance would actually hold together long enough to let them mount a joint offensive.

I cursed under my breath. The warlords didn’t like each other very much – and how could they? They were all fighting for the crown, for the divine right of monarchy as well as the brute force of their armies. If a warlord took possession of Helen, in all senses of the word, his peers would see him as a lethal threat to their positions and gang up on him. I wondered, idly, how they planned to solve the problem this time. Whatever they did, I doubted it would last very long. But I might not live long enough to see it fall apart.

“We have a major problem,” I said. “We are up north, hundreds of miles from the capital, while they are moving their armies into position to either storm the ramparts or simply lay siege to the castle long enough to force the defenders to surrender. We are badly, very badly, out of position. Worse, we are cut off from our supply lines.”

I watched the despair and despondency run through the room and cursed again. Many of my officers weren’t aristos, but commoners … commoners whose families were now under threat. The aristos might assume their families would be held for ransom, if they were captured; the commoners had no such assurance. If the city was stormed, the streets would run red with blood. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past the warlords to make damn sure much of the population was slaughtered. They’d had too many ideas, over the past few months, about the proper relationship between the government and the governed. They wouldn’t do as they were told any longer.

“We have to act fast,” I added. It was true in any case, but I needed them working rather than thinking. It wouldn’t be long before someone decided to betray me in hopes of saving his family. The more they worked, the harder it would be to organise a conspiracy. “We are going to march back to Roxanna and lift the siege.”

Captain Withal leaned forward. “Sir, if we perform a forced march all the way back to the city the men will be in no state to fight when we get there.”

I allowed myself a wry smile. Captain Withal had been an arrogant aristo, when I’d taken command of the army and set about reforming it into something that could actually fight. He’d changed, a lot more than he – perhaps – realised. He was already on my mental list for promotion, and I bumped him up a couple of slots. There weren’t many aristos who’d acknowledge their men had limitations …

“No,” I agreed. I tapped the map on the table. “Luckily, we have two advantages. First, we have the supplies we moved to Damansara. The railway line might have been cut – if it hasn’t, I’ll be astonished – but we are not short of supplies. Second, we have supplies at the forward base here. The warlords have not – yet – captured or destroyed it.”

We didn’t know we were going to have the base, until we secured the castle and railway bridge, I thought. It hadn’t been part of my original plans. But will it remain untouched long enough for us to get there first?

“There are other possibilities, if that changes before we get there,” I continued. I let my voice rise gradually, building the atmosphere. “Regardless, I intend to force march to the city, lift the siege and bring the warlords to battle. They may have the numbers, this time, but we are fighting for our homes, our families, and our right to be free. We have beaten every warlord we have faced, because we are fighting for our people, not for a warlord’s right to bully everyone within reach. We are experienced fighters; they bully people who can’t fight back

“We will march to the city, challenge them to a fight and kick their asses so hard they’ll never recover!”

I lowered my voice. “Assemble the troops,” I ordered. It was lucky we’d moved so lightly. “We march in an hour. Dismissed.”

The council stood and left the tent. I watched them go, feeling cold. I’d done my best to pretend confidence – and in a straight fight, I would have bet on my men – but it was clear I had made a mistake. We were dangerously exposed, particularly if the city fell before we returned home. Or we lost our supplies … the country wasn’t hostile, not yet, but it was a grim rule of conflict that no one liked a loser. There hadn’t been time to mop up all Cuthbert’s vassals, let alone ensure the local commoners and peasants had enough firepower and confidence to keep them coming back. I had the nasty feeling we’d be coming back soon enough. Too many people would sit on the fence, when the news spread, to keep our gains under control.

And someone might betray me, I thought, again. Host and Fallows were reliable, although they both had wives back home. They were too lowly for a warlord to notice, normally, but now … who knew? If their wives were threatened, what would they do? The other commanders had relatives in danger too … Who’s it going to be?

I grimaced, despite myself. Back home, I’d had the chain of command backing me up. My authority had been legal, as well as personal. Here … it was just personal. I wasn’t even a member of the local aristocracy. If my officers lost faith in me, or thought their families were at risk, they might turn against me. I’d seen it happen, back home, to insurgent leaders who lost the confidence of their followers The outcome was rarely pretty.

My eyes lingered on the map. There was no way to avoid the simple fact I’d been out-smarted. My rival – I wondered, idly, which warlord had managed to think outside the box – had put me in a position that forced me to dance to his tune, pretty much the same thing I’d done to Cuthbert. He might even be quietly gloating about Cuthbert’s defeat … if he even knew. My army had force-marched north at astonishing speed, moving into a military vacuum. For all I knew, he thought Cuthbert was still tying me down.

We’ll have to try and ensure he keeps thinking that, I told myself. If he doesn’t expect us to return so quickly …

My mind raced. A year ago, Roxanna had been practically defenceless. The Royal Guard couldn’t have held the lines, such as they were, and the civilian population would have been helpless.  Now, the city had proper walls – and other defences – and the civilians had something to lose. Any warlord who tried to take the city in a hurry would risk losing his army, losing so many men his rivals would put a knife in his back and finish him off … hell, even if they did take the city, they’d be left with the problem of securing the peace. What would they do? Keep Helen as a puppet? Force her to marry one of them? Or … or what?

“They won’t risk taking the city unless they think they have no choice,” I muttered. “The trick is to avoid driving them to desperate measures until it is too late.”

I frowned. In theory, Helen could order me to stand down and surrender. In practice, I was pretty sure she’d never willingly give such an order. She’d have no hope of anything, certainly not freedom, if the warlords won. The best she could hope for was being locked up in some isolated tower and that wasn’t going to happen, not as long as she could be married off to someone who’d keep her under control … I snorted in dark amusement. Helen was tough. She’d make her would-be husband pay for daring to lay a hand on her.

Fallon cleared her throat. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “Can we get back in time?”

I looked at the map again, silently calculating the odds. The map wasn’t very good, to say the least, but I had marched back and forth so many times, over the landscape, that I had a very good feel for the terrain. It was going to be painful, no doubt about it … no, it was going to be an utter nightmare. I would have killed for a few hundred trucks … hell, while I was wishing, I’d kill for a few hundred tanks. Or even a dozen. The locals were a long way from producing anything resembling a tank themselves …

… Or were they?

I put that thought aside for later consideration and met her eyes.  “It’ll be tight,” I admitted. I wasn’t going to lie to my future wife, and the mother of my child. “We can do it, if we push hard.”

Fallon made a face, but nodded. “How can I help?”

I smiled, tiredly. “Can you and the other magicians open a portal back home?”

“No.” Fallon shook her head. “We don’t have anyone skilled enough to open a portal, even for a few seconds. If we hired more powerful magicians …”

“If they agreed to take our money,” I said. It had never been easy for kings to hire the really powerful magicians. Most seemed to think serving monarchs was beneath them, or that conflicts between mundanes – I supposed it was slightly less insulting than muggles – had nothing to do with the magical world. “Could we trust them if they did?”

Fallon shrugged. “Probably not,” she said. “But the warlords will have the same problem.”

I nodded curtly. We were a long way from the Blighted Lands, and it was hard to tell which stories were reasonably accurate and which were nothing more than utter nonsense, but everyone seemed to agree an army had stepped through a set of portals and into a necromancer’s backyard. I liked the idea of being able to take an army into the enemy’s rear myself, but … it was just another thing I didn’t have.  Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

They can’t do it to us either, I told myself. One thing was clear. The invading army hadn’t needed to set up portal crystals at both sides. Unless they’d sneaked through the Blighted Lands … for all I knew, it was possible that was exactly what they’d done, but I had to assume the worst. If the technique becomes common knowledge …

“I need to talk to Cuthbert,” I said. “Go back to the other magicians, tell them they are not to send any messages back to the city, not without my authorisation.”

Fallon blinked. “Why …?”

I grinned. “We’re going to convince the warlords we’re still laying siege to the castle.”

My eyes returned to the map. The warlords hadn’t used chat parchments to coordinate their forces … as far as I knew. I’d be surprised if Cuthbert didn’t have a parchment to chat to his peers, although … he didn’t have magic. The chat parchment would have needed a magician to operate it, to write the messages … my lips quirked. We had taken a bunch of prisoners and if the magician was amongst them …

“The courier network is fucked,” I said. There’d be horses in Houdon and Damansara, of course, but the locals wouldn’t trade with a warlord’s courier. “Assuming a message was sent the moment the castle fell, on horseback, it would take several days – at best – for it to reach the other warlords.”

“Unless they have a magician stationed somewhere nearby,” Fallon pointed out.

I nodded, although I doubted it. The vassals back home had been reluctant to let magicians, even magicians with so little magic they could barely use the chat parchments, into their estates. I didn’t blame them, not really. They didn’t want to be micromanaged by a monarch who lived hundreds of miles away, and didn’t have any real sense of how the estate really worked. I’d found micromanaging maddening myself, back home, and I’d done what I could to make sure my subordinates had enough freedom to do what needed done, without me looking over their shoulder. Cuthbert’s vassals would be even more reluctant to sign up to a chat parchment network, and he’d had far less power to compel them. The last thing he needed was one of his vassals reaching out to Helen, to see if he could switch sides.

“It’s worth a try,” I said. It was quite possible the warlords hadn’t realised we already knew they were on the move, let alone laying siege to the city. It was difficult to account for instant communications, if you had no real experience with them. God knew, the insurgents back home hadn’t realised just how much our satellites and drones could see … not until it was too late. “If we can convince them we’re sitting here, fat and happy and waiting for Cuthbert to concede …”

The thought haunted me as I made my way to the makeshift stockade. Cuthbert had been given a space of his own, a consideration that owed more to his ability to cause trouble rather than respect for his rank. I suspected he was already planning his official complaints. Men of his rank were rarely imprisoned, and if they were they were treated with kid gloves. The prison was more like a glorified hotel room, with room service and everything else a guest could want … save for freedom. Here … he had nothing to complain about, as far as I was concerned.  He’d shown far less considerations for his victims.

His eyes narrowed as I entered. “You heard, then?”

“I had wondered why you were so insistent the castle hold out,” I said. I kept my distance. Cuthbert didn’t look intimidating, not compared to me, but the most dangerous man I’d ever met had looked completely harmless. “A shame you didn’t tell Bravo, right?”

Cuthbert scowled. “That traitorous asshole …”

“A mercenary and a traitorous asshole?” I smirked. “How’ll he ever get a job with a record like that?”

My smile grew wider. Cuthbert had been playing for time … what a shame, I reflected, that he hadn’t bothered to share his plans with Bravo. The mercenaries had assumed they were heading for a futile last stand, or perhaps an undignified death by starvation, and acted accordingly. But he could hardly have risked telling them anything. They might have betrayed him, if they’d still surrendered …

Not that the timing would have worked out any better, I thought, tiredly. But it very nearly worked.

I studied him for a long cold moment. Helen was unlikely to show Cuthbert any mercy. He had committed treason … and lost. His army was broken and scattered, his treasury was in my hands, his vassals were abandoning him and his serfs were rising in revolt … even if we lost the coming battle, Cuthbert was thoroughly screwed. His peers wouldn’t put him back in his place. They’d kill him, then divide his lands between them.

“I have an offer,” I said. “Assist us and your life – and your family – will be spared.”

Cuthbert glowered. “Your mistress will let us live?”

“I’ll give you enough gold to live, then an escort to the nearest border,” I said. “What you do after that is up to you, as long as you never return to Johor. If you do …”

I drew a finger across my throat. “Interested?”

“Maybe,” Cuthbert said. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“You don’t,” I said, bluntly. “But you’ve already lost everything that made you a threat.”

Cuthbert reddened. I hid my amusement with an effort. Cuthbert didn’t have a royal bloodline, or anything else he could use to garner support from other kingdoms. Sending him into exile was a calculated risk, but I suspected he’d be unable to return to reclaim what he thought was his. His former vassals would be the first to put him to death, fearing the revenge he’d wreak for betraying him. Helen might not even know he’d returned until long after he was quietly murdered.

“If you refuse to cooperate, you’ll be executed no matter who wins the war,” I reminded him, dryly. “If you cooperate, your life and your family’s lives will be spared.”

He made a face. I suspected I knew what he was thinking. He was no physical coward – I couldn’t blame him for fleeing Houdon – but the thought of losing his children unmanned him. They were all he had now, and they’d be murdered if he refused to cooperate. Helen wouldn’t let them live, not after everything their father had done …

“Fine,” Cuthbert said. His shoulders slumped. It looked genuine, but I intended to keep a very close eye on him anyway. It was unlikely he was loyal to the warlords cause – insofar as they had one – yet better safe than sorry. “What do you want me to do?”

I grinned, and told him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Is getting him to help a good idea?”

I reminded myself, sharply, that subordinates asking questions wasn’t a bad thing. Horst had known me long enough – he’d been my superior, when we’d first met – to have no qualms about calling me out if he thought I was doing something stupid. But it didn’t help, this time, that I had doubts myself. Cuthbert had good reason not to betray us, true, yet there was no guarantee he wouldn’t. Some men could only be pushed so far before they pushed back, even if it cost them everything. They didn’t care if it killed them, as long as they died with their hands around their enemy’s throat.

“It’s a calculated risk,” I said. The warlords must have met in person – and, according to Cuthbert, used chat parchments to coordinate their operations. They knew each other well enough, I feared, to spot a fake, even if they used magicians to relay their words. The slightest mistake could be disastrous. Using Cuthbert was galling, but better than the alternative. “We don’t want them knowing we’re marching south. Not yet.”

My mood darkened. “And besides, we have his family.”

Horst showed no visible reaction, not entirely to my surprise. The concept of using a man’s family as hostages, with a declared intention to kill them if he stepped out of line, was revolting to me … but just a fact of life on this world. Aristos exchanged hostages all the time, hiding the cold reality of their worlds behind a façade that everyone pretended was real. I wasn’t sure if I could bring myself to carry out my threat, if Cuthbert broke his side of the deal. It was one thing to kill men in combat, quite enough to kill women and children in cold blood. But as long as he believed I would, he wouldn’t test me.

“If you’re sure,” Horst said. “Did he tell you anything useful?”

“Yeah.” Cuthbert had been a gold mine of information, once he’d started talking. The warlords had planned their operations carefully, timing it as best they could. Cuthbert had haggled hard for his share of the booty, in exchange for luring us north, and his peers had promised him Warlord Aldred’s old territories, as well as Damansara. It had to be maddening to know he’d done everything he’d been asked, yet someone else would reap the rewards. “We’ll just have to see what use we can make of it.”

I frowned, inwardly. The warlords had divided the spoils – before even winning the war, something that was going to come back to haunt them – but they hadn’t exchanged hostages or anything else, beyond solemn oaths, to ensure they kept their word. Cuthbert had been vague on precisely what was going to happen to Helen … no matter what, only one of the warlords could marry her. I suspected they hadn’t thought that far ahead. It wasn’t an unreasonable mistake. If they’d given me five years to train and equip the army, I’d have kicked their collective behinds with one hand tied behind my back.

“They don’t trust each other,” I told him. “We can use that against them.”

The thought made me smile as we walked to join the army. It had assembled – with a great deal of grumbling, which I had quietly ignored – and confiscated every horse, wagon and manpowered cart we’d been able to find. It was going to look more than a little ramshackle, I thought, but it was unlikely we were going to face any real opposition until we neared Roxanna. Cuthbert’s men were too scattered and there wasn’t anyone else likely to stand in our way. That might change, if the city fell and everyone else started trying to make deals with the warlords, but for the moment we were reasonably safe. I’d ordered the pickets out anyway, just to be sure. If I was wrong, we might wind up in some trouble.

I kept my face under tight control as I faced the men. They were all volunteers, not unwilling conscripts from aristocratic estates or mercenaries. They were free men, or at least as free as anyone got in this world. Democracy might be a joke, in most places, but they had rights and they’d all chosen to sign up. They couldn’t be ordered around as if they were slaves and yet … I winced, inwardly. Back home, I’d been lucky. I hadn’t had to fear a war in my backyard. My family had never been in danger from the enemy … I wondered, numbly, what I would have done if the Chinese had invaded America, and I’d been forced to retreat with the army, leaving my family behind. I’d read a book with that premise, years ago. It had been absurd … here, it wasn’t. Far too many of my men had family under siege. I couldn’t blame the men for worrying about their safety.

“They think we’re stuck here, out on a limb,” I said. It would have been true, if Cuthbert had held out a few more days. “They think they have us beat, that they can take the city and reap the rewards. And they’re wrong!

“We are going to march back to the city, we’re going to kick their asses and we’re going to end this war once and for all,” I continued. “It is time to march!”

The army started to move, slowly. I turned and led the way, part of the lead group. Behind me, the section leaders were organising the remainder of the army, trying to keep the infantry in some kind of formation. The pickets were spreading out ahead of us, watching for possible threats. I’d sent messengers ahead, to Houdon and Damansara, ordering them to prepare supplies for the army. I hoped they’d both cooperate. Cuthbert had told me, more than once, that none of the free cities would be allowed to keep any semblance of freedom, once the war was over. They’d been burnt too badly to risk it happening again.

It’s a shame we can’t share his correspondence with the world, I thought. We’d searched Cuthbert’s private files and removed everything, including a number of letters he’d been cautioned to destroy. Not all were particularly interesting – apparently, he’d been writing erotic letters to a handful of young noblewomen – but some of the political messages were dynamite. We can make sure they are printed and distributed, once we no longer need to pretend he’s still under siege.

I glanced back at the castle, wondering if it would still be in our hands when the fighting was over. I’d left a small garrison to man the walls, and protect the wounded, but I couldn’t spare enough men to ensure the castle remained near-invulnerable. There’d been no time to do more, either. The locals had no interest in letting us dictate the shape of the post-war world and I had neither the time nor the inclination to force them to do as I wished. I just hoped they could hold out, if it all went to hell. Given time, I told myself, the spread of modern firearms would make overt tyranny impossible.

A wagon rattled past, a handful of men riding topside. They’d swap places with the marching infantry soon enough, ensuring everyone had a chance to rest while still being on the march. I told myself I would keep marching as long as possible, to make it clear to the men that I wasn’t asking them for anything I was unwilling to ask from myself. I’d have to rest sooner or later, I knew, but … sweat beaded on my forehead as the temperature rose, forcing me to take a swig from my canteen. I hoped the men hadn’t ditched their supplies, or eaten them ahead of time. I’d done the latter myself, as a young recruit, and paid for it.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, I reminded myself. The trick to marching long distances was not to think about just how far you had to go, but to keep picking up your feet and putting them down again. If only we had modern transport …

A horseman cantered up to me. “Sir, the special convoy has split off,” he reported. “They’re on their way.”

“Good.” I was too tired to say anything more. “Resume the patrol.”

I gritted my teeth as I kept walking, trying to set a good example. The special convoy was taking the hostages to a place of relative safety, well away from the army – and Cuthbert. I didn’t think he’d risk doing anything stupid, not when keeping his side of the bargain was his only hope of getting himself and his family out of certain death, but … men couldn’t always be relied upon to do the rational thing. If the hostages were somewhere else, beyond his reach, there’d be no way for him to find and recover them. Probably.

The march went on and on. We stopped to make camp at nightfall – roll call revealed we’d lost surprisingly few men, most of whom trickled in after dark – and resumed the march in the morning. The days started to blur together, even as we stopped near Houdon for our supplies – I was careful to keep most of the army out of sight; I wasn’t convinced we’d wrinkled out everyone who’d collaborated with the occupiers – and headed onwards. We’d be back later, if we won the coming battle.

Without the warlords, it should be easy to lay down more railway lines, I told myself. Next year, we’ll be able to move troops to the nearest railhead, rather than marching from one end of the country to the other.

I kept the army at a safe distance – again – as we reached Damansara. The city was as loyal as we could wish, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t enemy spies within the ever-growing population. Cuthbert wasn’t the only warlord who had designs on the city. They wanted the factories, and the skilled craftsmen … or, perhaps, simply to steal their designs and pass them on. In hindsight, exchanging a cottage industry for a semi-modern assembly line system might not have been the best decision, although it had saved our bacon only a few short months ago. If nothing else, it had encouraged the locals to stand and fight for their newly-gained wealth.

“We’ve heard little from Roxanna, just rumours,” Rupert Drache told me. We’d met at the garrison outside the city. I wasn’t prepared to risk going inside the walls, not now. “The railway line has very definitely been cut.”

“And no one is trying to fix it,” I muttered, darkly. The railway was primitive, by any reasonable standards, but it was designed to be easy to repair. A lone blacksmith could hammer out replacement components in a few hours, if he wished. “Do you have any idea where the break is?”

“No,” Rupert said. “If they wanted to slow you down, though, they’d take down one of the bridges.”

I nodded in agreement. Replacing a bridge would be tricky, if not impossible without an engineering crew. The Union had made the process an exact science, during the Civil War, but I hadn’t had time to do anything of the sort. And that meant …

“I’ll send scouts ahead, see if we can sniff out the breach,” I said. “What’s the word on the streets?”

“Right now, everyone is pleased you defeated Cuthbert,” Rupert said, in a tone that suggested quite a few people were displeased. Lord Gallery would probably be quite happy if Cuthbert had blown my brains out, even if it meant the city falling to another warlord. “But that might change if they work out what’s happening down south.”

“We’ll skip the party this time,” I said. The city fathers would be relieved, even though they wouldn’t show it openly. “We’ll be back after we win.”

Rupert smiled. “I’m not supposed to let you have any of the supplies,” he said. “So I’m going to sit in my office and whistle very loudly while you take them.”

I smiled back, then hurried to organise the transfer. The supplies belonged to us … mostly. I wrote a formal receipt for everything we’d taken that wasn’t, with a promise to pay in gold and silver. Damansara would hardly be starving or defenceless, in any case. There were so many firearms on the streets I suspected the city fathers were quite nervous, not without reason. Their rule relied on a monopoly of force and they no longer had it. It was just a matter of time before someone took his gun and shot an aristo in the streets.

And some would deserve it too, I reflected. Rupert was a good man, and Helen was at least trying to be a good monarch, but they had their limits. They wouldn’t do anything that involved giving up any of their power … and the others were even worse. If some kindly soul assassinated Lord Gallery …

We resumed the march two hours later, after Rupert and I had agreed on a cover story. I hoped he wouldn’t get in too much trouble, when the city fathers found out what we’d done. They might throw the book at him, or they might be quietly relieved. If Helen won, she’d be grateful; if the warlords won, they’d blame everything on Rupert. I hoped he had the sense to run if the warlords did win … it wouldn’t save the city, but it might save him.  Or so I hoped.

The march got harder. The lands between Damansara and Roxanna had always been little more than scrubland, even with the new-fangled irrigation measures, and there were few places to stop for water. The sun beat down ever harder, a handful of men falling out of line with sunstroke or simple exhaustion … some were probably faking it, I thought, although their comrades were very good at sniffing it out and handling it themselves. I didn’t really approve of barracks room justice, but in this case I was prepared to turn a blind eye. If too many infantry faked sunstroke, real victims would go untreated until it was far too late.

“The line is clear until the supply depot,” Horst reported. He was switching between riding and marching, with the rest of us. “Where did they cut it?”

They might not have cut the line at all, I thought, coldly. If they just sealed off the city, they could keep any locomotive from leaving …

“Perhaps very close to the city,” I said. “They’ll want the railway for themselves, if they win.”

My blood felt cold, despite the heat. The modern world had too many tools for population control … and far too many were dangerously subtle, so subtle it was difficult to be sure they were being used. Shoving a gun in someone’s face had the advantage of being blatantly obvious; shadow-banning and deplatforming were often subtler forms of tyranny. Here … I wondered, suddenly, what would happen if the warlords won. They’d build up the railway network and use it to ship troops from trouble spot to trouble spot, crushing revolts before they could turn into rebellions. The world had been changing before my arrival – the mysterious Emily had laid the groundwork for massive social change, good and bad alike – but there was no guarantee of a happy ending. The bad guys might win instead.

Imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever, I reminded myself. But even the KGB got tired of keeping the boot on indefinitely.

I shivered. Iran had still been going strong, when I’d been swept into a whole new world. Saudi Arabia was still a going concern, despite vast numbers of pundits predicting its collapse into chaos or theocracy … even more of a theocracy. Communist China, too, had been on the rise. We’d all assumed we’d be fighting the Chinese by now … and perhaps we would have, if 9/11 hadn’t started a very different war. I wondered just what was going on, back home, then shrugged and dismissed the thought. I’d spoken to a dozen magicians and none of them even knew about alternate worlds, let alone how to travel from one to the other. This world was going to be my home for the rest of my life.

And if the warlords win, I won’t slip into the darkness, I promised myself. I had catches of money in hidden places, enough to fight an insurgency if I had no other choice. I’ll take them on and make them pay.

I breathed a sigh of relief as the depot came into sight, unmolested by our enemies. There was no way to be sure they didn’t know we were coming, but … even if they did, they had to have overestimated how long it would take us to get home. Their men were unwilling slaves, prone to deserting the moment their superior’s back was turned; my men were volunteers who knew what was at stake. No matter the enemy’s numbers, I would always bet on free men to carry the day … particularly once we started the psychological warfare offensive.

“Order the men to fall out and rest,” I said, quietly. The section leaders would have to organise the supplies, and distribute them to the men, but the common soldiers could have a quick nap. “And then get the pickets out, sweeping the countryside. I want to know where they are before they realise we’re here.”

I looked at the depot and smiled. A single locomotive was sitting on the tracks, waiting for orders. I guessed the crew had joined the guards, rather than head onwards or risk returning to the city. Lucky they hadn’t, I told myself. If they’d been caught and interrogated, the enemy would have discovered and stolen – or destroyed – the supplies.

My lips quirked.  I had had an idea.