by Rob Preece
"So if we're going to do something,” Ellie concluded, “we'd better do it now."
"Not now. Now we drink. Tomorrow we plan. Thursday we'll have to do something."
* * * *
A good plan should be simple, have clear milestones, and allow a fallback position if it is unsuccessful.
Their plan had none of these elements.
Dafed and Ellie, along with four of Dafed's fellow sergeants, snuck into Moray an hour after sunset on Wednesday. Mark stayed back in the army camp watching over Lawgrave, who was comfortably sleeping away the effects of a glass of wine spiked with a local drug that seemed identical to opium.
The city gates closed with sunset, but Dafed had trained most of the guards. One of those guards dropped down a line and Ellie and the sergeants swarmed up.
Inside, they split up. Two of the sergeants went to spring Arnold and his sisters. Ellie, Dafed, and the other two headed straight for the keep.
The bishop used a combination of foreign mercenaries and martial monks to guard the keep so Dafed couldn't use any of his contacts to get inside. Instead, they bowled over the guards at the front door, tied them up, and left the two sergeants to guard their way out.
She'd sparred with the King in his personal chambers and she led Dafed straight there.
Two guards at the door saw them coming and took off.
"Not the best security,” Dafed muttered. They were the first words either of them had said since they'd reached the city wall. “If we were assassins, Lubica would have a new king about now."
"As it is, we've got about one minute until we're covered in the guards they'll summon."
Dafed put his shoulder to the door, burst through, and tossed the king over his shoulder. “Mission one accomplished. Ready for mission two?"
Ellie knew they should bolt and run. But they wouldn't get another chance this good. She nodded.
Sergius looked like an oversized baby slung across Dafed's back. “Put me down, idiot"
"Shut up, King.” Dafed's bass rumble would have inspired fear in a much braver man than the King. “We need you, but we don't need you conscious."
"I'll meet you at the front gate,” Ellie said.
"Right."
He jogged off, the King, now silent, still slung over his shoulder.
Ellie veered toward the throne room.
It should have been empty. With the king absent, no one had any reason to be there.
She disarmed the two guards who stood outside, giving each a knock on the head that she hoped wouldn't result in permanent damage, and burst through in time to see the bishop, sitting on the throne, wearing the king's crown.
"Big ambitions, your excellence?"
The man gobbled at her. “What are you doing here?"
"We're going to fight your war for you, but we need something."
"What's that?"
She drew her katana and thrust it toward the bishop's head. At the last minute, she gave her wrist a slight flick, caught the crown off his head, and flipped it to herself. “This."
Chapter 5
"A king is crowned with the consent of the church, the nobility, and the army,” Ellie shouted to the gathered troops. They weren't sure what was going on but they looked to be in a lot better spirits than they had the last time they'd been gathered together—three days earlier when the bishop had appeared with his latest miracle.
"Baronet Arnold and I represent the nobility. Father Lawgrave represents the church. Most importantly, you are the army. Prince Sergius has months ago reached his age of majority. The time for regents is over. Do you consent to Sergius being crowned as your king?"
The roar of approval was a bit tentative, but the sergeants weren't just being polite here. They put their boots and swagger sticks into it, bringing some authentic sounding enthusiasm from the soldiers.
"Father Lawgrave has anointed Sergius with the holy oil. As the representative of the senior line of the royal house, I now crown him."
She lifted the crown.
When she'd picked it off the bishop's head the crown has seemed merely a hunk of jewelry. Now, though, it had a motion, a direction of its own—like one of the gyroscopes she'd played with as a child.
She moved it along the path it chose, ignoring the purple sparks that flew from it, and pressed it over the reluctant King's forehead.
"You are now King. Anointed, crowned, and ruling. The regency is ended. All regents who refuse to lay down their arms are in revolt against their lawful king and are deemed traitors. What are your instructions, your majesty?"
Sergius might not have wanted this, but he was smart. By crowning him, Ellie had changed the rules. Even though the coronation ceremony might take more from Mark's classes on Imperial Rome than from authentic Lubica tradition, none of the uncles could afford to let crowned King Sergius live.
She and Dafed had backed Sergius into a corner. They'd have to win together, or all face execution. The plan was risky. If they lost, they'd all have to die. If they won, Sergius might punish them for forcing him to take the chance. For now, though, Sergius didn't have anyone else to turn to.
And they'd explained that to him, in great and gory detail.
"Soldiers.” Sergius used his enormous voice to address the assembled army. He looked every bit the king, encased in brightly shining steel and gilt armor, the crown radiating a purple magic glow. “Bring our enemies to heel. Crush the rebellion that tears at our Kingdom. And root out the Rissel invaders who attempt to impose their law over the sovereign people of Lubica."
The cheering this time was far more genuine. Soon enough the soldiers would remember that they were being sent out against an army that outnumbered them ten to one, but for now, the relief of being set in motion was a relief.
"Next thing, we need to figure out how to pay them,” Dafed whispered to her. “I have a bad feeling the bishop isn't going to be footing the bill."
* * * *
For the next week, Mark scurried around the camp getting the blacksmiths to help him design and build some bayonets for the crude muskets the soldiers used. Ellie spent the week working magic with Lawgrave.
Lawgrave took his teaching seriously. He gave her a leather-bound volume similar to the one her mother had kept her diary in but blank, and had her trace each pattern into it as she memorized them.
She finally got up the nerve to question him after the third day. “Why haven't you used your magic to escape and go back to the bishop?"
Lawgrave simply didn't smile, ever, and she really couldn't count the slight uptick of his lips as an exception to that rule. “The king is head of the church, God's regent on earth. Why should I go to the bishop when I am near the king?"
"But we crowned him. You and I. It's not like it was done in the great Moray cathedral."
"What matters is that he has been crowned."
"What if one of the uncles crowns himself?"
Lawgrave shook his head glumly. “That would be bad. But it wouldn't make him king. You know enough magic by now to see this. The coronation tied Sergius to the land and the land to him? So long as Sergius keeps his word and rules for the people and the land, only his death or flight from the kingdom will free the land to seek another king."
There was more to this magic than Ellie had realized.
Actually, once Lawgrave got her into intensive training, she found out there was a lot more to the magic. For one thing, there were rules. The basic rule seemed to be conservation of energy. Lifting an object by magic took as much energy as lifting an object with her body. Lawgrave didn't exactly pooh-pooh using magic in warfare, but he reminded her of its limits. Even Ellie's passage through the dimensions hadn't been an exception. It doesn't really take much energy to move two people between dimensions because there isn't a lot of real movement going on. Sure, twenty-first century physics might claim that it would take an infinite amount of energy to open a dimensional barrier, but closing it back would return that energy. The dimensional stones acted as
a catalyst skipping that infinitesimal moment of infinite energy demand. According to Lawgrave, all of the energy actually used had come from her—her efforts in forcing the stones into their position had built an energy potential—much like tightening a spring would. The combination of physical exertion on the stones and her mental strength supplied enough energy to accomplish whatever trick she tried. The stones worked as focal points, concentrating that energy on a task.
After three days of simple patterns, Lawgrave laid out some twigs on a flat stone. “Start a fire,” he commanded.
"I don't know how."
He shrugged. “A real mage doesn't just follow directions, she learns to feel for magic's logic. If you can't do that, you'll never be more than a drudge. And someone more capable is going to take those ancient stones from you."
Ellie didn't have much to remember her parents by and she didn't intend to give up her stones to anyone.
She thought over the patterns that Lawgrave had taught her. Each of them involved a source/destination pair that was somehow symbolic of, and affected through contagion with the beginning and end of the spell. Thus, in that first spell, the blue stone had represented the mostly water Earth, the green the dries planet they now found themselves on.
For fire, she picked one of the twigs as source and a bit of ash as destination.
The rune-engraved stones themselves, she placed in the protective patterns—using Lawgrave's four wards rather than her mother's Celtic knots. That part was easy. So was the single pentagram that focused her power.
She started to lay out a second pentagram but Lawgrave stopped her. “Think about the energy here."
"It takes energy to start a fire.” She knew that much physics. A match is the stored energy of a chemical reaction. The striking motion generates the heat needed to initiate the chemical reaction. That chemical reaction starts the fire. But she didn't have a match. She'd need physical energy equivalent to the entire match, not just to the striking motion.
She explained all of this to Lawgrave, certain he wouldn't understand.
He nodded. “And the fire is an extension of that chemical reaction. Think about this. The wood wants to burn. What is wood, after all? It's sunshine that the power of nature accumulates in the form of a tree. The sunshine wants to return as heat and light. The energy is there. The stones act as catalyst. It takes very little energy to create that first flicker of flame. But the spillback can be substantial."
He'd explained about spillback but it hadn't made much sense to her. It still didn't, but she had a nasty suspicion she'd find out what he meant. Soon.
"Okay.” A single pentagram it was. But she still had to figure how to create a fire. Purpose was where every pattern differed.
But magic has laws. A fire is hot, so she used the red and yellow stones.
A fire reaches upward, so she built the pattern upward from the source.
As she pressed her stones into place, she felt the resistance that meant she was doing something, that her body's energy was being transformed into magical potential.
Lawgrave said nothing.
She put the last stone in place with a bit of effort although nothing compared to that involved in dimension-crossing.
The twigs burst into flame.
Ellie shivered. For just an instant, she'd felt like she'd walked through the refrigerator section in her old neighborhood grocery store.
"You felt the spillback?"
"Cold?"
He nodded. “Your energy was heat but it released more heat. So you felt the cold. If you'd used more pentagrams to add focus, it would have been colder and your twigs would have turned into ashes before you could have used them for a real fire."
He placed a few more twigs on the rapidly burning fire. “Now put it out."
She raised a booted foot to stomp on the thing.
"By magic."
"Oh."
He'd taught her to gather the stones together each time she cast a spell rather than attempt to build pattern from existing pattern so she did that.
Switching the source/destination objects was easy. And she'd gotten good at wards and focal pentagrams.
But creating new patterns was hard. And putting out a fire wasn't obvious.
She put a few red stones near the source, then shaded them toward blue for cold.
A few purple sparks told her she was doing something, but it didn't feel complete.
So she added green for the living things the fire was burning.
The effort grew immensely so she knew she was on the right track.
Finally a tan for the color of unburned wood.
She manhandled the last stone into place—and was on fire herself.
Heat coursed through her body like a sudden fever.
Lawgrave poured a pot of cold water over her. “You see? The energy could not be destroyed. So it all became spillback."
She fell to the ground and moaned. Lawgrave's trick of dumping water on her had kept her from burning up, but she still felt sick. One thing for sure, she was going to be careful using a trick like that on enemy cannons. If putting out a little fire like hers could create spillback like that, putting out gunpowder explosions was a magical trick that she'd just as soon keep in the box.
"With hundreds of mages, the spillback can be shared, contained, and even shifted into the earth,” Lawgrave said. “The Rissel have hundreds of holy monks. They can do what we can't. Now get up. You have more magic to learn and the time is getting short."
She started to follow him, but stopped and stared. The fire hadn't just gone out. Several of the twigs had sprouted tiny green leaves and one had rooted itself in the ground. This magic was powerful stuff. And she had blackmailed Sergius into leading an outnumbered army against trained forces with hundreds of warrior mages.
They were in serious trouble.
* * * *
A week after the coronation, Ellie and Dafed called a council of war. They met in an open space outside the king's tent. The company captains, Sergius, Lawgrave, Ellie, Mark, Dafed, and Arnold quickly disagreed about strategy, tactics, and, of particular importance, when and how they'd be paid.
"We should retake Moray.” Arnold pounded his saber hilt into the conference table. “The bishop is in rebellion against Sergius as much as any of the Dukes. And he's weaker and closer."
"And he's got money,” Dafed said.
"Excellent thinking.” Sergius said. He shifted uncomfortably in his camp chair. “We need a base of operation. Also, the throne room is far more comfortable than these drafty tents."
Retaking Moray had a distinct appeal. And Arnold was right. It would be the easiest target. But it didn't feel right to Ellie.
"If we attack the city, what will it prove?” she demanded. “The citizens will resent you because of the destruction and we'll lose at least some of the army. And maybe we'll get caught up in a siege."
"But at least we won't have an enemy behind us when we march,” Dafed reminded her. “And we need the money the bishop has. If we just sit here, we'll be caught between the bishop and the Dukes."
Mark shook his head firmly. “If we take the city, there'll be looting and rape."
"That's war,” Dafed said.
Ellie shook her head. The bishop and the city will come around when we have our first successes. They have no choice since none of the Dukes will trust him again. If we attack Moray, we'll simply kill our own soldiers and the garrison force. Do we really want to tie up our army guarding a city that can't feed itself, that's under a blockade, and that is angry about the rape and murder that will inevitably result from the capture?"
"But we're too weak to attack Sullivan or Harrison,” the King reminded her. “Let alone the Rissel."
Ellie had spent most of her time learning magic but she had also read through her medieval tactics book. “We'll be concentrated while they'll be dispersed."
"That hardly sounds honorable.” That was Arnold, but it could have been the King. Both seemed to
have strange ideas about warfare.
"There's nothing honorable about getting killed,” Dafed said. He used his shortsword to point at the map—to Dinan. “The Rissel have occupied Dinan for ten years and use it to bring in mercenaries and haul out loot. They've turned over nominal control to Sullivan but they're still using it. If we free it, we'll have a port, which means tax revenues. We can also capture some of their loot. Which means we can pay our soldiers."
That last argument finally brought Sergius and his faction of young nobles around. Capturing Moray might pay the soldiers for a few weeks, but the capital just didn't generate a tax base for continued employment. With thousands of government employees, it was a net consumer rather than a net producer.
In Dinan, they had a target. Now they needed a plan.
Mark wanted to wait—he'd finally gotten the blacksmiths to agree on a bayonet that could affix to the army's existing muskets but, so far, they'd only made a couple hundred of the things. In a month, he figured he could equip most of the army, which would mean replacing pikemen with firepower.
"If we wait, you'll have your bayonets but nobody to carry them,” Dafed told Mark. “Besides, the men don't trust a knife on the end of a musket. A real pike has some length. Your bayonet-men will get stuck before they are within range."
Mark shook his head but didn't argue any longer.
"We'll march tomorrow,” Ellie said. Not that anyone had died and made her general. But someone needed to make the decisions and the longer they waited, the more obvious it would be that the soldiers weren't getting paid.
* * * *
Of course they didn't march that next day. That day the army packed.
They marched the day after.
Much to the disgust of the nobility, Ellie insisted that they pack their armor and heavy warhorses and patrol ahead armed with pistols and sabers rather than lances.
Arnold and Sergius argued, but Dafed and the other sergeants backed her up.
Mark had turned the mercenary cavalry into dragoons and equipped them with the first of his bayonets. Mercenaries make their living with weapons and, while concerned about the loss of pike protection, this group wasn't afraid to try something new. Not if it meant getting paid.