Railroad Rising: The Blackpowder Rebellion

by J. P. Wagner

  Those were not safe thoughts to express aloud, so he got up and followed Private Harrad to the king , who sat on a couple of coats, his back propped against a sack apparently stuffed with another coat or two. His outstretched legs were covered by a pair of coats in lieu of blankets. He held his sheathed sword in his left hand, and with his right twiddled at the gold knot on the cord which, in battle, would be wrapped around his right wrist. The expression he turned on Carrtog was fierce.

  “Your Majesty?” Carrtog said respectfully.

  “Humph! So you’re the young soldier from nowhere who has taken command of my Gentlemen?”

  “With respect, Highness, I did ask first who was the most senior of those left on their feet. None of them seemed willing to put themselves forward, so I gave what directions I thought were proper. I’m quite willing to turn the command back to you, Highness.”

  “Are you indeed? And what payment were you expecting? A wandering man, armed, and skilled at the use of those arms, but with no marks to show you belong to anyone’s army, or under hire to anyone. That would make you a mercenary, and no mercenary does anything except in expectation of payment.”

  “I did not expect a reward, Highness. Let me introduce myself. I am Carrtog, third son of Gwahalad, son of Dlestan of Tsingallik. And I do seek to hire on as a fighting man though I know not where.”

  The king straightened a little and a quick flicker of pain twisted his face. “Dlestan of Tsingallik? He served my father well in the late war. Though I believe he took our part because our numbers were more favorable.” He snorted, briefly, “But then any leader would prefer the side with the better numbers,” he looked up at Carrtog. “You were calling ‘Tsingallik for the king’ if my mind recalls properly. That suggests I can put my trust in you, and yet, the people of Tenerack cheered me when first I arrived before things turned ugly.” He narrowed his eyes, “How far then do I trust you?”

  Then the king shook his head. “Hmph, listen to me. This bash on the head has turned my thinking foolish; it seems hardly likely that you would have been fighting on my side merely to give yourself the opportunity to do me ill. No, I think you had better go forward as you’ve begun. When we reach safety, we’ll see to what reward you merit. Though positions among my Gentlemen are filled months, perhaps years, in advance. Unless you are carrying a recommendation from your grandfather particularly asking for such a position…”

  It occurred to Carrtog that he ought to have asked for better letters than he had. “No, Highness, all I have is a letter of introduction from my grandfather’s Master of Arms.”

  The king grimaced. “Intent on making your way without playing on your grandfather’s reputation, then? So be it. It may make finding a place for you a little more difficult. But that all depends on our surviving this debacle. What do you think of the attempt to take me hostage? A near thing, was it?”

  “Yes and no, Highness. It was too complex for the way they handled it. Certainly they did well at subverting the building crews, but they had no opportunity to practice the actual kidnapping. That meant that when the train started to move, apparently a little sooner than was expected, no one was ready to improvise.

  “Furthermore, they hit the spell turning the railway car into a glider too suddenly, leaving the men who had not been able to get off with no choice except to hang on to the glider, which in turn was fatal to the glider’s attempt to fly.”

  “A flight we were lucky to survive. You have thought all that out, have you? I don’t think I dare let you get away, young man, whatever political battles I have to fight in my court.”

  “Father?”

  The two of them looked up to see the princess approach. Carrtog scanned her face for indication that she might need another pain-killing spell to bolster her against the ache of her splinted arm.

  “You need to rest, Father.” There was determination on her face as well as concern but it seemed she was handling the pain well enough on her own.

  The king smiled. “She’s right, Carrtog of Tsingallik, if one assumes that we’re going to survive this thing. You will also need your rest, particularly if we assume that the rebels will find us before our own people. You have done well today. Continue to serve me well, and I shall do well by you.”

  “I did only my duty, Highness.”

  Carrtog bowed first to the king and then to the princess, and went back to his place, the spot from which he could oversee his small force. They were not likely to face an attack while it was dark, not in this kind of country, rough and hilly, with patches of evergreens, and the snow that hung about in shady patches reminding one that winter was not far in the past. He recognized, though, the breadth of difference between ‘not likely’ and ‘impossible.’

  Twelve hours was the maximum time for the ward-spell to maintain its full power, after which it would begin to weaken. He would then be required to make the decision as to whether or not to replace it.

  They all lay down to get what rest they could, save for those who had the first watch.

  It seemed only shortly thereafter that a sound as of several hundred faint brass bells sounded in his head. Enemies had crossed the line of the ward-spell.

  Chapter 3

  “Take positions!” he shouted, “They’ve just passed the wards!”

  With very little wasted motion the surviving soldiers, who resembled beggars wrapped in extra garments against the cold, took up positions around the king.

  Having so few soldiers, Carrtog had them all take up covered positions around the camp. Now, having a direction from which the enemy were coming, he quickly shifted two of the men into other positions he had previously noted on the side of the camp from which the enemy were approaching, then took his own position among them.

  “Have any of you had experience with the Grove of Battle?” Carrtog asked of the men around him.

  As he’d come to expect from this lot one spoke up diffidently, “Here, Sir,” while the rest wore expressions of varying degrees of blankness and confusion.

  “I’m going to set up a Grove of Battle around us. Among its main features is the ability to conceal us and reveal the enemy. Be ready to take advantage of that, but don’t expect too much of it.”

  He took up a previously charged pistol and pointed it at the sky, calling out the incantation. The pistol held no ball, only powder and a loose clump of wood-slivers and similar debris.

  He squeezed the trigger and the wheel shot sparks into the priming. The charge went off, flinging a mass of flame and sparks into the sky.

  As the sparks began to settle, a grove of evergreens sprang up around them. He heard the muttering of his troops; this was visibly powerful magic.

  He hoped they did not depend too much on it; it might be that someone among their attackers might know a stronger spell, one that would show them a safe path through the Grove, or worse, one that would whiff the Grove out of existence. The best they could hope for was the momentary advantage while their attackers worked out their own best tactics.

  There was movement out in the Grove beyond his line of defenders, Carrtog raised another specially-charged pistol; this one had a smaller charge of powder behind five balls. “Fire when you see a decent target!”

  Speaking an incantation, he himself fired.

  The pistol bucked ferociously and four of the moving figures out in the Grove went down. Hah! The Accuracy Spell was more effective than he’d hoped. It guaranteed at least three out of five hits, and four meant luck was on his side today. Might it also mean that the Grove would be particularly effective as well, today?

  He let go his pistol and drew his sword, then took his dagger in his left hand. From the look of things, unless the Grove was very effective, the enemy would soon overwhelm his tiny group of fighters; surrender, however, was not an option.

  He wished he’d had more power to put into the Grove. His previous experience sa
id that the attackers were in for a tough time working their way through the Grove as he had cast it. They might force their way through the tangle, and still like as not come back out on the far side of the Grove, within a yard or two of where they’d gone in.

  He even knew of a man who’d gotten lost in one of his Groves, only to find his way back out when the power upholding the Grove failed. That was not a happy memory. The man was half-mad when they found him, and though he did recover somewhat, he was never fit for much after that. Certainly, he had been an enemy, determined to kill Carrtog and all his fellows, but this punishment had seemed extreme; death, he thought, would have been preferable.

  Keep your mind on this battle, Carrtog.

  One of the enemy who had made their way through came right at him, thrusting his sword at Carrtog as he came.

  Carrtog parried it and put his dagger into the man’s gut. A moment later another stumbled out of the Grove, eyes wide and staring.

  Carrtog feinted a thrust toward the man’s eyes with his sword, and when the other’s sword came up to parry, he brought his dagger up at the rebel’s side.

  The enemy managed to get his own dagger in the way. Carrtog thrust his sword at the fellow’s throat. The rings of the man’s gorget parted with the force of the thrust.

  As the fellow went down, Carrtog had time to note that the gorget had been patched, but poorly.

  Carrtog kept his eyes on the Grove while he reloaded a pistol. He noted that several of the other soldiers were following his example, and he also noted that at least one of them had a fresh wound, though it didn’t seem serious. As he worked, he recalled the staring eyes of the enemy who’d managed to come through. Obviously, they’d seen strange things in there. The Grove was clearly having an effect.

  For a long while there was no more action. He wondered if someone on the other side was working on a spell that could be used for finding their way through a Grove of Battle.

  Unlikely, but not impossible. Upon coming on a Grove the sensible thing to do would be for the attacking force to pause long enough for the leader to poll his men to see if anyone had such a spell; on the other hand, the sensible choice was not always the first one that came to mind.

  There was a flicker of movement out there in the brush, “Here they come again!”

  A moment later a storm of pistol-fire broke out somewhere beyond the Grove. What on earth were they shooting at? They wouldn’t be able to see the defenders from there.

  He swung his pistol up to aim at the flicker of movement and suddenly the man appeared, running toward them.

  Before he could squeeze the trigger, one of his men fired and the attacker went down.

  Behind that one, men began coming through the Grove in twos and threes, This is it, Carrtog thought, They’ll overrun us this time, for sure.

  He fired his pistol, then took up his sword and dagger. There followed several hurried minutes of ringing, clashing blade-work, ending with one man mortally wounded in front of him, another badly hurt, and a third approaching him with great caution.

  More men came pouring through the Grove; they must have found someone with a spell after all. Even as that thought went through his mind, he realized that these new arrivals were attacking the men in front of Carrtog’s position. The distance was near enough that he could hear people shouting “For King Bornival!” This sort of thing was vital on battlefields like this, where friend and foe might be intermingled, and uniforms might be non-existent. And yes, there was a figure, recognizable by his movements. “Yakor!”

  Carrtog’s remaining attacker approached with a careful series of feints, never committing himself wholly.

  Carrtog himself fenced cautiously in return. Even though help had arrived, it was no time to get careless; it would be stupidity to let himself get killed or wounded just as the rescuers had come.

  And one of the arriving rescuers was coming up behind the rebel. Carrtog crowded the man a bit and his opponent, hearing the sound of someone behind him, panicked.

  Frantically, he knocked Carrtog’s sword out of line and jumped to the right rear, trying to turn while he did so. Carrtog thrust once, violently, right through an attempted parry by the man’s dagger.

  A moment later, he was standing over the fallen body, leaning on his sword. The man coming up lowered his sword slightly, but remained watchful; after all, Carrtog was not wearing the uniform of the king’s Gentlemen.

  “You are?” he demanded.

  “I am Carrtog, third grandson of Dlestan Lord of Tsingallik, and I fight for King Bornival.”

  The man was still wary, “You do, eh? Can someone vouch for you?”

  The fellow was obviously an ordinary townsman with some amount of military training. Carrtog wasn’t surprised the man was leery about taking anybody’s word for much of anything, he’d likely witnessed a bunch of rough-looking types hijacking a train and kidnapping the king.

  “Hold up, Druthan, put up your sword! That fellow’s my master, and a good supporter of the king!”

  Carrtog glanced over at Yakor who was coming up behind the other fellow.

  It was just like his companion to have gotten a band together to come out after them and to have learned most of the important names on the ride.

  “Good to see you, Yakor, I wasn’t sure how long we’d be able to hold out.”

  “Nonsense, sir! The moment I smelled your magic on that Grove, I knew we were in plenty of time. From what I could see by the tracks and the casualties out there, less than a dozen out of something over a score managed to get through. Only problem would’ve been if one of that lot had a spell to get them through the Grove, and if they’d had it, they’d’ve used it already.”

  “You smelled my magic on the Grove? Gods above, Yakor, you’re always saying things like that, but you never explain them!”

  Yakor shrugged and grinned, “If I tried to explain it, you wouldn’t understand the explanation.”

  “And you always say that, too!”

  Yakor only grinned the wider, “Because it’s true. Anyway, what kind of situation do we have here, sir?”

  Druthan was looking from one of them to the other and finally he slipped his sword back in its scabbard.

  Carrtog gestured around to the battlefield where men were taking care of each other’s wounds and stripping the enemy dead of any useable weapons. “Those bits and pieces of shaped wood that you see scattered around are the remnants of a glider partially formed by magic. I don’t know what you know of gliders, but the Chief smith on grandda’s steading was interested in flight and used whatever spare time he could find to test them, and he was willing to talk. From what I recall, gliders have a limited range of flight. Those people you just rescued us from arrived within a day of the glider’s crash, which means that their base is nearby, so we had best get ourselves back to town as quickly as possible.” As they spoke, he led Yakor a little way apart from the townspeople. “Who’s in charge of the group from the town?”

  Yakor grimaced. “Near as I can make out, there’s a fair crowd of people who’d have helped the rebels, but are just a little bit annoyed that the rebels didn’t see fit to ask them. What we’ve got is several of the leading people in the town out to rescue the king and every once in a while one or another of them will express their claim to be in charge.”

  Carrtog nodded. “We’ve got a lot of men battered up badly in the crash. Any means we use to get them out of here is likely to make their condition worse, but can you imagine the sort of treatment they’ll get if we leave them here for the rebels to find?”

  Yakor’s expression went grim, “You’re right, that’s the worst of a bundle of bad choices. How did you come to be in charge of the king’s Gentlemen?”

  “I was willing to stand as advisor to a senior man, but with their captain dead none of them were willing to take on this mess, for which I can hardly blame
them. That left me to give the orders and try to keep us alive until you showed up with the rescue party.”

  Yakor’s eyebrows went up, “Expecting a lot, weren’t you?”

  Carrtog grinned, “As you’d said, you wouldn’t want to go back and tell my grandfather that you’d lost me and didn’t try looking for me.”

  “Huh! Perhaps facing your grandfather doesn’t sound so terrible after all.”

  Carrtog glanced around to be sure he and Yakor were still alone.

  “Don’t be so grouchy, I’m about to introduce you to the king as the man who saved his royal hindquarters.”

  “All right. But I’ll tell you right here and now that I’d just as soon not have the king take too close notice of me. A lot of things can come of it, most of them bad.”

  Carrtog grinned, “If I don’t introduce you, he’ll think I’m trying to hog all the credit. That would put a limit to my ability to rise in his service. He’d even refuse to let his daughter marry me.”

  Yakor gave him a sharp look, “I hope you’re joking! kings don’t marry their daughters to nobodies, even if those nobodies have saved their royal hide.” Then he chuckled ruefully, “But trust you to make a go of it anyways. Fine then, let’s go talk to the king.”

  The king was sitting up, watching them approach, his face carefully expressionless.

  “Highness, this is my companion, Yakor, who urged the townspeople to put together this party to come to our rescue.”

  King Bornival nodded, “Well done, Yakor. As you see, your noble master has managed to keep us alive until you arrived. What sort of reward do you think I should give him?”

  “Me, Highness? I hardly think it’s my place to say, Highness.”

  The king frowned, “I’d say it’s your place to answer if your Sovereign asks a question.”

  “Ah…, Yes, Highness. In that case I’d say to give him a small bag of silver and your thanks.”