Kingmaker

by Rob Preece

  "Ellie,” she said.

  "I knew that. The supposed Witch-Princess Ellie. All of Lubica is in mourning at your capture by the Rissel in your hour of triumph."

  "Really?"

  Lart smirked. “That is the official word."

  "What's the unofficial word?"

  He looked hurt. “Unofficial word in our perfect and reunited kingdom? What are you thinking?"

  The more she saw of Lart, the more she was convinced he was a criminal. The lopped-off ear was probably the result of some crime. Lubica didn't have the resources to lock its criminals away and resorted to more direct action. But she'd started by being honest and she intended to stay that way. For one thing, Sergius had soured her to lying.

  "Lubica and King Sergius may find it convenient for me to be the savior of the Kingdom now that I'm in Rissel hands. I was less convenient when I was at his side, nagging him to do something for the people. I wouldn't count on any reward money from him or from his uncles."

  Lart nodded slowly. “I was afraid the wind blew that way. But a man can hope. Still, you must have friends with money."

  He didn't want to sell her to the Rissel, that much was obvious. But that wouldn't keep him from doing so if that was the only offer he got.

  "You still haven't told me what kind of price you'd be looking for."

  He shook his head, disgusted. “Gold, princess. What other reward proves as useful?"

  "I could think of plenty. Amnesty for your crimes. A new start on life. Equal taxes for nobles and the common. No more nobles stealing women to be their mistresses. After all, gold can be taken away, but rights endure."

  Lart laughed, but Ellie thought she detected a note of desire, need, in his tone. “Princess, you're a dreamer, which only makes you dangerous for simple men like me. Gold would be plenty. Unlike you, we can't afford to dream."

  "I don't have any gold,” Ellie admitted. “And I don't have friends with gold. But I can help with the other things I mentioned. If you're willing to fight for them with me."

  This time Lart's laughter sounded completely convincing. “You're telling me you want us to refuse your ransom and to fight your battles? You aren't a witch, you're completely crazy."

  Ellie waited until he stopped laughing. “They're not my battles,” she said softly. “They're your battles. I'm willing to fight them with you, but I can't fight them alone. What I can do is tell you of another world where those battles were fought—and won. And I can train those who want to fight for their freedom. And produce a bit of magical cover for those who want to keep this camp hidden from the Rissel and from the Lubica army that will soon come looking for you, whether you turn me in or keep me."

  Lart didn't look impressed by her outburst. “The Dukes were always quick to hire bandits,” he said. “They offered big promises and dangled gold like a carrot before a donkey. But they only wanted us to die for them, to test out their enemy's power before they committed their precious knights. We came here to get away from that. You may say you're fighting our battles, but what good does that do us when we're dead?"

  Ellie thought it was a positive sign that he was still talking, that he hadn't rejected her outright. And his question was dead-on. If Ellie hadn't seen the fields outside of Dinan, with the thousands of peasants slaughtered for a tactical advantages, she might have even sympathized, agreed that dying was too high a price to pay for a political cause. But this wasn't just a political cause, and people were dying already.

  "Sell me to Sergius, the Rissel, or the Dukes and the only coin you'll keep will be the coppers put on your eyes after you're executed. I'm not promising to give you anything—I'm offering to teach you how to take what should be yours by right. And once you've learned to take and defend it, you won't need to worry about me or anyone else snatching it away from you because you will have the force to keep it."

  "As if we need a woman to show us how to fight."

  They probably could fight. They'd fought since they'd been born. But they'd never learned how to win. Mark probably hadn't noticed, but she had listened to him when he went off on his history lessons. And one of the lessons was that medieval peasant revolts never succeeded. Peasants achieve temporary goals and then collapse. The nobles would wait them out, and then strike hard. She thought she could teach a different kind of warfare. As she'd proven when she'd saved Sergius's life, the old-time Samurai had plenty of lessons that worked against mounted knights.

  Things would have been a lot easier, though, if Mark and Dafed weren't busy recreating the Lubica army into this world's most sophisticated fighting machine.

  She pulled the fishhook from her pocket. “In my country they have a saying that if you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. I'm ready to teach you to claim what's yours—and how to keep it for your children and grandchildren."

  * * * *

  They didn't sell her to the Rissel that night.

  Her nose gradually became not accustomed so much as numbed to the camp's stench and she was able to force down the food they had to offer.

  It wasn't much—bits of meat mixed with some rough grain and boiled for hours—or days. Pots were never emptied or cleaned. More water, grain, and whatever game was captured were tossed into the already stewing mix.

  After days of starvation, the coarse stew tasted better than anything Ellie had ever eaten.

  When she'd finished, Lart tossed her a rough-woven blanket and a small canvas bag.

  "What's this?"

  "Magic stones. We had a witch, old Elmwood, but she died. You said you could offer magical cover."

  Fortunately, Ellie had watched Lawgrave when he'd laid protective patterns. “Yeah. I can do that."

  She spilled the stones out on the rug.

  They weren't jewels like hers had been. Instead, they were pebbles, smooth stones that looked like they'd been taken from a river. But each was carved with the same sort of rune that had been inscribed on her gems.

  She picked one up, double-checked the rune, then set it in its place in the pattern.

  It resisted. These stones looked crude, but they held the same kind of power that her gems had contained.

  "What about our people who are out of the camp?” Lart demanded. “Will your spell keep them from finding their way home?"

  Ellie pushed another stone into place. Purple sparks told her the magic was working. “This pattern will only hide your camp from magic. Your people, and Rissel soldiers, will still be able to find it if they know where it is. But they won't be able to use their mages to locate it for them."

  "Ole Elmwood's spells were better. They hid it so well no one could find it."

  Ellie shrugged and put another stone in place. “There are plenty of patterns I don't know.” If she could get access to the library in Moray again, she could do a lot more. But the only way she would gain that access again would be to force Sergius to deliver on his promises.

  Lart spat near her feet. “I thought the famous Witch-Princess would be more powerful than that."

  "Let me get some sleep and I'll teach you power."

  * * * *

  Lart kicked her foot the next morning to wake her up.

  She rolled into him, grasped his foot before he could kick her again, and swept his other foot out from under him.

  When he fell, she followed him, gaining a choke.

  "Just waking you up,” he croaked. “Couldn't persuade the council. They want to hear you themselves."

  Ellie let him up and brushed some of the mud, dust, and filth whose origin she didn't want to know off her tunic and pants. “All right, let's talk to them."

  The council turned out to be ten criminals whose appearance was every bit as disreputable as Lart's. Only one of them had an intact body. Of the others, one had been blinded, two had lost hands, four had at least one ear removed, and two were missing feet.

  The man who looked whole signed something to Lart and Ellie guessed his secret. H
e'd had his tongue removed. It was a cruel punishment. People need to talk to live, and they need their tongue for eating and swallowing too.

  "Micael says you're worth more dead than alive,” Lart reported.

  Ellie ignored his threat. Like the bishop's army, these criminals needed to be convinced she was real, that she had things to teach them. Just magic wouldn't do the trick. She hauled out the same trick she'd used on the bishop's army. “Who's the best fighter in your camp?"

  "What possible—"

  "How do you think Sergius won his battles? It wasn't because he was the child of the Fell Prince. He won because his soldiers were better trained and led. It was I, along with my friends, who did the training and who led them. I can teach you to fight like soldiers, like winners. But first, I'll show you what you don't know."

  She projected confidence into her voice. As when she'd met Dafed, she knew she could run into someone who had studied the art of fighting, someone who was better than she. Nobody would have survived in this camp without learning to scrap. But nobody would come to a camp like this if he knew how to win.

  The sight of the man Lart finally pulled out of a tent reassured her. She hadn't met many fat people in Lubica, but this man was huge.

  "This is Breca,” Lart said. “He's the best we have."

  "Friendly fight,” she suggested. “Stop on submission."

  "No magic,” Breca growled.

  She opened her hands, showing that she'd left the stones behind, still in their protective pattern. “No magic."

  The words hadn't left her mouth before Breca charged.

  He was faster than she would have guessed. At the last instant, he swerved, avoiding the straight kick she thrust out, ducked and tried for a wrestler's hold.

  Ellie caught one of his reaching arms and yanked, then used her body to twist him.

  A hundred and ten pounds can't move three hundred pounds very easily, but the three hundred pounds can move itself and, carefully applied, the extra weight can throw it off balance. In this case, Breca was moving too fast to stop.

  He went down—but rolled into a summersault and regained his feet before she could follow up on her throw.

  Breca laughed. “Good trick. But I knew the answer."

  That roll was textbook Judo. Breca wasn't just a street fighter, he'd studied. A good big man will beat a good small woman if she lets him. Ellie needed to set the tempo of the fight.

  She went on the offensive.

  Breca was a wrestler, a grappler. Which meant that she needed to rely on striking. But she wanted to avoid hurting him. She needed these outlaws behind her, actively supporting her rather than intimidated and looking for a chance to turn her over to her enemies. She feinted high, with a fingerstrike to his eyes, and then kicked Breca in the breadbasket.

  He had plenty of fat, but her foot met with hard muscle underneath. Breca ooffed but snatched at her foot. A big man shouldn't be that quick—he almost caught her.

  She circled around, then, as he reached for her, tried a chain-punch.

  She'd learned the technique in a seminar once, back on earth—the skill fine-tuned by Bruce Lee before he'd become a movie star had helped him uncover one of the truths behind all martial arts. Each punch became a block, clearing the way for the next punch to land.

  She got through his guard, bloodied Breca's nose, and landed a hard punch to his unguarded throat. But Breca danced away before she could do more damage.

  "Fancy,” he grumbled. “Going to have to hurt you."

  "You can try."

  He approached her more slowly, using big arms and legs to protect his sensitive areas, backing her away as she threw technique after technique.

  "Breca is bigger than me, stronger than me,” she lectured Lart and the other leaders. “He thinks he's winning because he's advancing. He thinks he's tiring me out because I'm using my energy on kicks and he's conserving his."

  "If that's what he's thinking, I'd say he's right,” Lart said.

  "The Rissel and Sergius will be like that when they come after us. Big, strong, and confident. But that's what opens them to defeat."

  She exhaled, released volition, let her body control the fight. Her body, honed since babyhood by training in her father's studio, knew more about martial arts than her conscious mind could remember. Without the throttle of conscious volition, her strike came faster, harder.

  She wasn't hurting Breca, yet, but she surprised him. He took an awkward step back.

  For a split second, his legs crossed.

  It was a mistake. Breca had probably never faced an opponent quick enough to make him pay for it and so he didn't recognize it.

  Ellie jumped. She connected with a roundhouse to Breca's kidney, a second to his windpipe, then, using her kicks to physically climb his body, she wrapped the first leg around the back of his throat.

  She linked her ankles, then pressed both knees against Breca's thick neck cutting off the flow of oxygen to his brain.

  After about three seconds without oxygen the brain starts to shut down and Breca knew it. Rather than wait for unconsciousness, he threw himself at the ground, trying to land on top of Ellie.

  She'd been counting on that move. She twisted as he fell, added her own weight to his.

  If she just wanted to win, she could have shifted a knee to his throat. His own weight would have crushed his windpipe and ended the fight.

  But Ellie wasn't all that confident about her ability to perform an emergency tracheotomy, or about Breca's chances of surviving the almost inevitable infection that would set in if he suffered a serious injury in this disease-infested camp.

  Instead, she caught the hand he reached out to catch himself and slow his fall.

  He was so strong, she wouldn't dare pit even her entire body against the strength of his left arm. Instead, she pressed the heel of her palm against his thumbnail, driving it straight back into his hand.

  He'd been counting on that hand for a breakfall and their combined four hundred plus pounds of weight didn't quite knock the wind out of him, but it did jar him for the instant she needed to crank down on her grip.

  He waved his arm, trying to get it away from the painful hold but she used his thrashing to reposition her legs around his neck and cranked down once more.

  He tried to roll, but she pushed harder on his thumb.

  He collapsed, but even then he hadn't given up. He heaved in a second effort Ellie wouldn't have believed possible.

  This time, he succeeded in rolling over. But it wasn't enough. Her legs were still in position, squeezing down on his throat and carotid artery.

  One second, he was fighting for everything he was worth. The next, his entire body went limp.

  Ellie released the pressure and rolled to her feet. She didn't take her eyes off the man—she didn't think he was faking his unconsciousness but she couldn't be one hundred percent certain.

  He moaned, pulled himself up on his elbow, then sank back to the ground.

  She turned back to the council. “Winning isn't just a matter of being strong, although that is important.” She forced herself to speak slowly, smoothly as if she wasn't suffering from an adrenaline overload and didn't feel like joining Breca on the ground panting for breath. “Winning is a matter of applying pressure where the enemy doesn't expect it, of using misdirection to keep the enemy off balance, and of continuing until your enemy admits defeat.

  She'd never know whether she heard something behind her, caught a flicker in one of the councilmen's eyes, or whether some sixth sense of martial artists kicked in but she reacted, shifted her weight and spun around.

  Breca's knife cut a silver arc through the air as he drove it in.

  She'd thought she'd found in him another martial artist, someone whose appreciation for the art transcends the narrow question of win or loss. Unfortunately, she'd been wrong. She'd failed in the lesson she was trying to impress on the council. Breca hadn't admitted his defeat and now he was trying to kill her.

 
; She edged to her left, grasped Breca's rapidly descending knife hand and, instead of the hopeless effort of blocking his strong attack, added her weight to his, accelerating his knife into his own thigh.

  The sharp knife cut through his leather pants, through fat and muscle, and lodged deep in the bone.

  Breca gave her a disgusted look, then collapsed.

  "What do you think? she demanded. “Has he learned his lesson or should I let him die?"

  * * * *

  The council was anxious to hear her ideas.

  She smiled at the talk about gold, but she kept steering the conversation back to their goals. What kind of world did they want to leave for their children?

  With her guidance, they thrashed out a list of demands. No imprisonment without trial. No peasant should be forced to work in a noble's estate without pay. No villager should be killed for the crimes of a neighbor or family member. A man could only be accused of treason for speaking against the current King or government, not by his words from before that government came into being. The practice of allowing a nobleman to have sex with any peasant woman in his domain must end. Monasteries shouldn't be landlords. Their lands should extend no further than the monks themselves can work them.

  It shocked Ellie that most of their demands were so reasonable. She insisted that they add freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and a parliament of the people to be elected with the power to establish taxes and control spending. No taxes without the people's consent. If the nobles wanted to add a house of lords, that was their issue. She wasn't especially sympathetic.

  The council shook their heads, certain that they were working on a crazy wish-list that had no chance of fruition.

  When they'd run out of steam and started listing more earthy goals like free beer and shorter winters, Ellie cut it off.

  She found some sheets of vellum, wrote up the demands, and made three copies. She and the council signed them, then Ellie returned to her blankets, set the documents in the midst of the magical stones, and cast.

  One of the parchments would be delivered to Sergius in his royal palace. One would find the Rissel ambassador wherever he might be. Ellie kept the third because she suspected they'd need it.