Kingmaker

by Rob Preece

  They were still a rag-tag bunch, but many of them had muskets now, in addition to their staves or nunchaku. And they had the confidence of a victory against regular troops.

  They'd even gained some converts from the mercenaries they'd captured and from young townspeople anxious to see more of the world.

  Ellie waited until the last of her tiny army headed out, then mounted the small horse she'd adopted, the first less than giant horse she'd found since arriving here.

  She gave the ruins of the former Rissel fortress one last look-around to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, and then nodded. It had been a small enough effort, but they had struck their first blow for freedom. As long as Ellie didn't let her think about the one ninja who'd fallen in the climb or the thirteen sentries they'd killed, she could take a bit of pride in it.

  And it had served triple purposes. They'd made their stand, letting both Rissel and Sergius know they intended to fight for the freedoms they so desperately needed; they'd gained supplies and weapons that would let them survive, train, and continue the fight; and they'd successfully added some recruits and some trained soldiers to the bandit force they'd been.

  A hint of motion down the road caught her eye just as she started to turn after her army.

  She loosened her sword—the one she'd confiscated from the officer she'd fought inside the gate—and waited. If it was a Rissel force, they were in trouble. It would take more night victories, more arms raids, and a lot of recruiting before her small force was ready to face an enemy in the field.

  Lart and Micael reined in next to her. “Small group,” Micael signed. “No army."

  "Wish I had your eyes,” Lart told Micael. “Course, there might be more behind them."

  "Something about them looks familiar,” Ellie admitted. She squinted hard thankful she'd talked her parents into laser eye surgery before her senior year in high school. Otherwise, she'd be blind now.

  As they waited, the blur of motion resolved to two figures—both riding uncomfortably.

  Micael made a grunting noise to attract their attention, and then signed, “one's a priest."

  Ellie's uneasy feeling grew.

  Her instincts recognized them before her mind did.

  She nudged her horse forward to meet two of the men who had once been her friends—before they'd abandoned her to the Rissel.

  "You abandoned me, said you had nothing to do with me.” She attired not to scream at Mark, but knew her voice came off a bit shrill. “You threw your lot in with the nobility. Why are you groveling to me now?"

  Mark shrugged. “I remember you saying the true samurai retreats when the enemy advances. How would it have helped to let Sergius arrest me too? I survived, gathered up Lawgrave, and came looking for you. We thought we'd have to rescue you from the Rissel but it looks like you took care of that yourself."

  Lawgrave nodded slowly. “Sergius has done everything he can to suppress your demand for rights, but rumors are swirling around Moray like snowdrifts. We've been searching for you for weeks, ever since Sergius had you arrested."

  Or they could be part of the pursuit. Lawgrave had been sent to spy on her once and Sergius was smart enough to send someone she had trusted, like Mark. But at least a part of her wanted to believe they were telling the truth.

  "Okay. So you're here and you found me. What do you plan to do about it?"

  Lawgrave shrugged. “I have more magic to teach you."

  "And I thought you might need some help with your army,” Mark added. “Taking over a kingdom with only a small band of felons isn't going to be easy."

  "Who you calling felons?” Lart demanded.

  Ellie sighed. “I guess I should do the introductions."

  Chapter 17

  Their army grew.

  With a truce in force, the Rissel and Sergius turned their efforts to suppressing the bandit bands that preyed on commerce. Many died. The remainder fled to Ellie.

  Acting on Mark's advice, using Lawgrave's magic to guide them, Ellie's bandits targeted raids on Rissel paymasters—and recruited a continuing trickle of frustrated mercenaries who had been denied their pay.

  They trained, replenished their arms stocks with more raids, became strong enough that no enemy dared enter the mountains with less than an army—and when they sent armies, the Lubica Free Army vanished into the forests, then sniped at the flanks and cut off any scouting parties or scavengers.

  Until the Rissel and Sergius fortified their caravans, and started using ships to send their gold.

  Then, things started to get hungry. The mountains make a good hiding place, but they are horrible for growing things.

  Three months after their first raid, Mark called a council.

  Ellie, Lawgrave, Lart, Micael, Mark, and the captains of their small army gathered outside of Ellie's shelter.

  A light drizzle kept them wet and miserable and the mountain temperatures were falling as autumn deepened its hold on the countryside.

  Lawgrave had always been gaunt, but Mark looked like a haunted shadow of his former self. Dark shadows under his eyes showed how much sleep he'd been missing. Ellie hadn't spent much time with mirrors lately, but she suspected she didn't look any better.

  They had won every battle they'd fought, but they were losing and she couldn't think of a thing to do about it.

  "Our success is killing us. We're too big to subsist on hunting and raids,” Mark said. “This isn't working."

  "But we need an even bigger force if we want to have a chance against Sergius,” Ellie argued.

  Mark nodded. “People on our Earth have done this. There's a system for guerilla success, a timetable. It's time for us to take territory and hold it, and not just these mountains. We need to have someplace permanent to station and shelter before winter hits."

  Ellie wasn't so sure. Their army was still undertrained, under-weaponed, and missing any hint of a siege train or engineering corp.

  Mark unrolled a map and jabbed a finger on a black dot. “Harrison."

  Drops of something between condensation and a real rain gathered on the map as Ellie and the others stared at it. Wet or not, the map didn't offer any suggestions.

  From what Ellie could see, Harrison City offered only one advantage. It was fairly close.

  It was a dangerous, even desperate plan. If they won, enemies would ring them—with the Rissel to the north and Sergius to the south. And it was the seat of the Duke's power—where the bulk of his army had been stationed before he and Sergius had integrated their forces. If they were successful in taking the city and the province, they'd have to hold it against a Duke who knew people there, knew the secret paths, and had trained over the hills, fields, and alleys of the region.

  She explained that to Mark. If they had to take territory, surely they should go for something harder to reach. Somewhere protected from enemy attack.

  "We'll have the advantage of interior lines,” Mark said. “They'll have to guard against attack in multiple locations. Besides, Harrison City has hundreds of smiths whom we could put to work improving our weapons. And it's an agricultural region. We could feed the army."

  Feeding hundreds of training soldiers was a huge problem.

  A woman alone could live in the desert or the mountains with little problem. There are always grubs to dig, fish to catch, or small game to hunt. There is plenty of firewood to gather from where it has fallen from winter storms or summer drought.

  A band of a dozen or less can feed itself even more easily, relying on division of labor and on their ability to hunt for larger animals.

  Two hundred men and women stretches the capacity of even the most lush forest. Animals learn to stay away, or die. Firewood gets scarce. Water becomes polluted with human waste.

  But a thousand people are a city—and their army had gotten that big. A thousand people become a locust-like plague, draining the land for miles. Noise and the movement of continual training scared away all animal life within five miles of their camp. Over
hunting thinned even more distant parts of their mountain. Firewood became scarce, even with continual tree cuttings and the use of fresh and smoky wood in the fires rather than hot-burning dry wood.

  "Why Harrison?” she demanded. “We started out attacking the Rissel and everyone can agree with that. We can hit them again. Plant evidence that Sergius is behind the attacks and let them go to war with each other."

  Mark smiled. “You know we tried that, Ellie. Their mages let them see through our schemes. So far, we've only served to tighten their alliance."

  Ellie looked around the group of men, and a few women, who had become her friends. Whatever she decided here, she was going to put all of them in danger. Some of them would die.

  "Look at me, Mark. I want you to tell me that this is what we need to do, that we have a chance. That it'll be worth the price."

  Mark closed the distance between them, intruding into her personal space. “What are you looking for, Ellie? A guarantee? We're a group of peasants with a leavening of deserters. Half our men are still only armed with sticks, for goodness sake. Of course we can lose. But if you didn't believe in what we were fighting for, you shouldn't have started the fight in the first place. You've got magic jewels. You can go home. I'm going to stay here, though. On our Earth, I was a nobody, doing nothing any idiot couldn't do. Here, I'm making a difference. There, they probably replaced me with another guard within three hours first missing me. Here, I'm special, doing something important. But even if I was nobody, contributing nothing, these men and these women have committed themselves on our word, our promise. And I'm not going to let them down."

  He turned on his heel and stomped back to the map. “We don't have a hope at any sort of siege so we'll need to infiltrate. Your ninja will leave first, enter the city and find hiding places. The rest of the army will follow. If we're lucky, we'll be ready to attack in ten days. But we won't be that lucky. We'll have to improvise. Still, it's a chance. If we stay here, we starve."

  Despite his obvious fatigue and the gaunt look on his face, Lubica had been good for Mark. He'd tanned, toned his muscles, and developed a confidence that no mall security guard was likely to possess. Her magic had pulled Mark from a life of obscurity into a world where he could truly succeed, using all of the knowledge he'd gained from studies that were mostly worthless dilettantism back on Earth.

  Ellie hated to admit it, but Mark had turned out sexy.

  She shook her head, trying to clear away that nonsense. Lubica was filled with sexy guys and she had time for exactly none of them.

  * * * *

  Lart sent word out through the camp and a trickle of volunteers started to show up—men and women who came from Harrison or the small villages around it. The Army would need their knowledge of geography and the politics of the working people to have a chance.

  The army assembled to see the Ninja march out and Lawgrave came panting up from somewhere dragging a cloth-covered something behind him.

  Ellie stiffened. There was no mistaking that shape. The priest was coming at her with a sword. When a priest starts carrying a sword, it was time to watch out.

  She caught herself before she drew on him. This was Lawgrave, the man who had taught her magic. If he wanted her dead, he would have used magic to do it, not a sword. In fact, he'd probably have used her own magic, simply let her set a pattern wrong and boom.

  "I've been casting for this for weeks now,” he admitted, between pants. “I thought it would be worth it, though, if I succeeded."

  He pulled the sword from the bundle of cloth.

  Her katana.

  He made a major production out of presenting it to her and Ellie noticed that he'd embedded a couple of dimension stones into its hilt.

  She could almost feel the buzz over the camp when those purple waves of energy came pouring out of the sword as he passed it to her.

  She grasped the pommel and let the energy surge through her body, then knelt to touch the ground.

  This wasn't the crown—the last thing Ellie wanted was to be Queen of this country. But Lawgrave had imbued the weapon with the same type of magic that filled the crown, flail, and hammer that Sergius had been presented with. She didn't know what the magic would do, but she did know that her sword was now even more than the Japanese antique it had been when her father had discovered it in some World War II veteran's estate sale.

  She wasn't a big one for prayer, but she closed her eyes for a moment of concentration. Then she stood, drew the sword from its scabbard, and raised it over her head. Waves of purple energy poured from it, yet, unlike the other magic she'd participated in, the magic seemed to imbue her with strength rather than drain her.

  "Lubica is the land of my birth.” Ellie spoke softly, yet she knew her voice carried to everyone who had assembled to watch the Ninja leave. Tears streaked down her cheeks to blend with the moisture from the steady trickle from the sky. “The land of all of our births. I up take this restored and strengthened sword as a promise to create a new Lubica, a better Lubica where rights are the possession of the people rather than capricious favors of the kings."

  It was over-the-top stuff. But if they were going to march to battle, put their lives at risk, they needed to keep things simple. And Ellie was too emotionally overwhelmed by the return of the sword to really care that she was overacting.

  Ellie lowered the weapon and kissed it. Not that she usually got romantic about hunks of metal, but this was a big deal. It wasn't just the only memento she had from her father, it was a sign.

  "Some of you think we've been fighting already. You're wrong. Until now, we've been raiding. Stealing a bit of what is rightfully ours from the thieves who hold it. But tomorrow, we begin the real fight. Look around you and try to remember the man or woman beside you. Because some day, your grandchildren will ask you what heroes you knew from the days of the glorious rebellion—and you'll want to tell them their names. Remember those who were here at the very beginning. And when you speak, the young men and women will fall silent and listen. They'll say, ‘Oh, he was there for the march on Harrison. She was there when they stopped being bandits and became the Army of Freedom.’”

  Right, so she was channeling Henry V. What girl wouldn't go for the tortured Kenneth Branagh? Even so, she thought her ex-bandits needed this, deserved this. Because they were taking a terrible risk—and the rewards were really not so much for them as for everyone else in the nation.

  * * * *

  "You can't go with them.” Mark had his hands on his hips and Lawgrave backed him up—although Ellie thought the priest looked ready to run.

  They had gathered in a small barn only a few miles from the Harrison City gates and Mark suddenly became difficult.

  Ellie shook her head. “Micael and I command the ninja. And the ninja are our infiltrators. Of course we'll go first."

  They were a scruffy group. About a hundred soldiers, eighty men and twenty women, had survived the months of training, assassinations, guerilla attacks, and discipline that had gradually transformed them rough bandits to hardened killers.

  All looked grim. None looked like they were paying any attention to the confrontation, but Ellie knew they were intently focused on it.

  "You're our general,” Mark pleaded. “We can't afford to lose you in battle."

  She shook her head. “You're the general. I'm just a fighter."

  "We have lots of fighters,” Lawgrave said. “And only a few mages. You could be more helpful if you stayed with us, used your spellcasting to protect the entire army."

  Once that had been true. But their recruits had included a number of mages. Surprisingly, some of the mages had come from Rissel itself.

  Ellie had been nervous about them at first, but she and Lawgrave had tested each before admitting them to the army. Apparently the religious extremists who controlled Rissel had banned most forms of magic, driving mages underground or hounding them to death. Living with bandits seemed a price many were willing to pay for their magic.

>   "Micael and I are going to lead the ninja,” Ellie repeated.

  Mark laughed, but without a lot of humor. “If I'm the general, how come you don't follow my orders?"

  "Because I'm the returned princess, of course."

  He shook his head but Ellie ignored that. She brushed off her farm-girl-in-her-going-to-town outfit and climbed back in the wagon.

  "If you get caught—"

  "If I get caught, you'll continue on without me. I'm just one soldier in this army. This isn't about me, Mark.” It had taken her a while, too long, to realize that. But she saw it now. “My parents died because Harrison wanted to preserve the feudal system that grinds peasants and workers into the ground. But I'm not doing this to avenge my parents anymore, or to avenge them in a way that matters. I'm fighting to change that system and build something new. A lot of us are going to die in the fight, but we're fighting, and dying, for something that will outlast all of us. Now that the ideas have been planted, I'm just decoration. If I die, you'll have a martyr to the cause. If I live, your worries didn't matter after all."

  Mark wanted to continue the argument but Ellie ignored him, checking the costumes of the first band of ninja getting ready to leave.

  She and the other ninja weren't dressed in their ninja outfits, of course.

  Instead, they wore the uniforms of just about any trade they could imagine. Chandlers, butchers, coopers, blacksmiths and fishermen. Farmers, of course. And mercenaries. Because only the nobility and mercenaries could carry weapons. The ninja had trained to make weapons out of whatever they found, to hide their swords in walking sticks, and to take their enemy's weapons from them, but it was always easier and better to use a familiar weapon—and one that hasn't been compromised by the need for stealth.

  Ellie turned her katana over to one of the ersatz mercenaries. Now that Lawgrave had recovered it, she felt awkward letting it out of her sight, but her disguise was that of a farmer's daughter being brought into the city in hopes of finding a husband. A longsword would make the disguise a bit unconvincing.