The dawn came. I was still alive. Tired, though; and a substantial breakfast with Katya didn’t help any. I told her to wake me if someone or something required me to be awake, told the draft horse to be good and plod quickly, and then bedded down in the back of the cart on a bedroll. I was asleep before the morning fog finished clearing; and when I woke again, the rosy fingers of sunset were clasping the distant trees.
Katya was sitting on a pile of blankets next to me, awake but relaxed, a row of guns next to her; both of the runed pistols, a blunderbuss, five(!) arquebuses, and the smaller pistol she had appropriated after Radu Odobescu had tried to kill me. (I was a little surprised to see that pistol. I had not seen it for a while; she hadn’t had it when I took her down from the tree.) From the looks of things, she was halfway through breaking down and cleaning a second blunderbuss.
I wondered who was driving the cart, so after exchanging a few sweet nothings with Katya, I peered forward. I could see Yuri napping contentedly on the driver’s seat, and beyond Yuri, the draft horse was plodding forward on his own. I looked back, and was reassured to discover that the rest of the army was indeed behind me. I woke Yuri and had a quick conversation with the horse. I discovered that the horse had set forth immediately upon my ordering him to plod forth, and had been obediently plodding forth in a straight line since then. He was grateful that I had gone to the trouble of helping him find his way through the woods (not quite sure what the horse meant by that), but was getting a little tired after the long march (walking dawn to dusk without a break is quite impressive).
He seemed to think we had covered about five times the distance we had the previous day, though as that number was greater than the number of hooves he had to count on, I would not place too much confidence in his precision. Horses are not noted for their grasp of mathematics or even a good sense of spatial perspective; I think it comes from having eyes that don’t look straight forward at once, but one off to each side. In my adolescence, I tried several times to teach one or another draft horse the famous theorem of Pythagoras so as to plow my father’s fields more efficiently, but that never ended well.
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When it was definitely dark, I called for a halt, and the rest of the army slowly caught up. They, too, looked tired, but worked quickly to set up camp, knowing that dark would be coming soon. Or rather, the enlisted soldiers of my force did; most of the officers were swarming me all at once. Each had some pressing issue needing my attention.
These pressing issues had evidently not been urgent enough to spur the officers into braving Katya (who was in a murderous mood and guarding me with a large arsenal of loaded guns), but now that I was awake, they were all suddenly urgent. I would almost rather they had not waited and woken me throughout the day, but I was myself feeling a little drained even after having slept the entire day. Perhaps they sensed I was tired, because they approached me very respectfully, and were full of effusive flattery.
The greybearded captain in charge of the heavy armor started off by telling me that my display of magic had been very impressive to an experienced campaigner before hemming and hawing his way around to asking me for a favor. He wanted to poach a couple of the mechanics from Captain Rimehammer’s command and train them up to be skilled combat mech commanders, but Felix Rimehammer had been keeping them too busy on repairs and maintenance, and outranked the other captain outside of combat.
The infantry captain looked like she had a complaint about an acolyte, who had re-appeared. I sidestepped her, Fyodor, the acolyte, a limping Quentin, and a fuming supply colonel (lieutenant, I corrected myself, as I wondered how he had become involved) for the moment, suggesting that we could settle various personal and personnel problems after dinner. People would at that point be in a better mood to talk to each other, and less prone to snappishness. Captain Rimehammer had a sheaf of papers for me to look over; I promised to read them and stuffed them in a coat pocket for later. Then I reached Vitold.
Vitold started off by expressing a little awe about how much ground we had covered, and how easily, before eventually getting around to the point. It saddened me a little that he felt the need to butter me up before delivering what was clearly unwelcome news. I had to push him a little for him to put it directly, and that news was that the Ehrhart was dead. Vitold had opened up the heavy boiler of a damaged mech (the one that had been breaking trail during the ambush the other day) and found a very thoroughly boiled corpse inside.
Could I see it? Well, yes, we had been driving forward at a punishing pace, so there hadn’t been time to stop and dig a grave. He had simply re-closed the boiler and moved on to other necessary tasks.
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When we opened up the boiler, the corpse was in a rather nauseating state. I steeled myself and took a closer look, puzzled.
“That’s not Ehrhart,” I told Vitold.
He looked at me blankly. I explained the obvious, patiently.
“The arms are too short, for one, even accounting for the state of the connective tissue. I doubt Ehrhart would have fit inside the boiler Second, I don’t recall having seen that tattoo before, and I would have noticed it. Third, that’s a wooden foot. Fourth, look at the teeth – they very clearly belong to a much younger man, or one who’s had better dental care in his life.”
There were more subtle physical differences that could be easily overlooked, but those were all grossly obvious at a glance.
“If you say so,” Vitold said, dubiously. “I never saw him without boots on.”
Neither had I, but a wooden prosthetic simply isn’t very flexible, unlike a mechanical prosthetic, giving it a characteristic effect on the gait of the user. They are much cheaper, though.
“You haven’t seen him around, have you?” I asked.
“Not since we were having dinner with the Loegrians. At first, I figured he was just sleeping off a hangover, then I forgot about it with all the excitement.” Vitold seemed glum. “You sure that isn’t him?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Positive,” I told him. “There’s not even a passing resemblance between the two of them. Go and check if he’s just napping out of sight in one of the wagons somewhere, I’ll deal with this. If we have one missing mechanic and one unexpected corpse, we have two mysteries to resolve. The mysteries may well be related, though.”
Extracting the remains from the boiler, examining them more closely, burying them, and then flushing out the boiler to clean it was a sequence of unpleasant tasks that I couldn’t imagine a regular colonel (let alone a real general) lowering themselves to do. I simply couldn’t bring myself to dump the job on someone else, and I felt vaguely responsible. Whoever had killed this man, whoever he was, his death was ultimately somehow at least a little bit my fault.
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In fairy tales told to children, when there are two rivals for a maiden’s hand, there are three things you can rely on. First, she only loves one of them. Second, only one of them deserves her love. Third, at the end of the story, only one of her suitors will be alive and free, with the other having been killed, eaten, sucked into the netherworld, imprisoned by the Mongols, fired out of a mortar, committed suicide, exiled after a horrid embarrassment, mysteriously disappeared after being rude to some little old peasant lady, et cetera. At this point in the story, the remaining suitor will both be loved by the maiden and deserve her hand in marriage. Then they get married and they live happily ever after.
I now understand the irritation some adults show when children beg them to entertain them with fairy tales. It had been a long night; because I had slept through the day, I did not sleep much in the night, and in the brief few hours I did sleep, I dreamed of a poor innocent man dying a dozen awful deaths, several involving steam engines. I tore myself away from them just as the sun began to peek through the branches, and heard a phrase that belonged in a fairy tale:
“And who stands as your second in the resolution of this grievance?”
It was a high and clear voice. The infantry captain I had placed in charge of the infantry. My eyes went from half-lidded to fully open, and I pinched my arm to make sure I was awake and not simply dreaming up another way for the one-time thief to die. What was going on?
“Vitold Szpak, ma’am. Lieutenant of the mechanics.” Fyodor Kransky’s voice.
Katya made a puzzled sleepy noise as I went from horizontal to sprinting in the space of a heartbeat, dashing off in the direction of the voices.
“Very well, gentlemen,” continued the infantry captain, and began to count.
Lieutenants Kransky and Gavreau were walking away from each other, stiffly, each holding a pistol. The cavalry lieutenant moved more stiffly than the artillery lieutenant, being still injured from the battle with the ogres, but not by much. Two other lieutenants – Ragnar and Vitold – were present, both looking a little apprehensive as I approached. The two of them together had less worry between the two of them than the young weather-witch, who was anxiously biting her nails. The infantry captain was holding a handkerchief out. There were several other soldiers standing around, one of them holding an engraved and padded (but presently empty) box.
“Stop!” I shouted this word with the intent for it to sound authoritative.
I succeeded well enough that the soldier carrying the box (a large ox-like man particularly notable for his steadiness and even temperament) flinched, dropping the box. The young weather-witch, who evidently hadn’t noticed my approach, jumped, her head momentarily the highest in the crowd. Yuri, who had been racing to catch up with me, stopped so quickly he tripped over his own paws and fell over.
Having gotten their attention, I spoke in a conversational tone. “There will be no duel. I thought I expressly forbade dueling.”
The captain twisted her foot uncomfortably, much like a child caught with paintbrush in hand and a half-painted sheep not a dozen yards off. She paused, licked her lips, and then added to the impression by adopting a pleading tone. “Sir, last night, I thought you said you wanted us to settle the matter permanently…”
“I did,” I said. “I should have been more explicit.” I noticed the weather-witch edging slowly away, and speared her in place with a look. “You’re at the center of this matter, girl. Stay.”
She froze and turned white.
“I’m not going to shoot you, girl. I want to settle this without anyone dying, and that includes you.”
I looked at all four lieutenants in turn. Ragnar looked embarrassed. Vitold gave a shrug, silently announcing he didn’t feel responsible for the situation. Both Fyodor and Quentin managed to mix relief and indignation in equal parts.
“Girl,” I said, deliberately trying to sound like a disdainful village elder. “Pick one.”
She looked back and forth, her gaze flitting between me, Lieutenant Fyodor Kransky of the artillery, and Lieutenant Quentin Gavreau of the cavalry. She stammered and started a couple times, blurted out that she couldn’t, and then broke down into tears.
At that point, I realized she was being honest. Unlike the fair maidens of the fairy tales, she really did like both of them, and she just had no idea how she might pick just one of them. She had very little life experience to draw on, and that life experience had been spent in training to become a white-cloak rather than in a normal childhood and adolescence. Which meant … well, I felt bad for her, and a little guilty for making her cry.
I lowered my voice.
“Captain, if you would … um … ” I gestured at the crying girl, hoping that the captain could deal with settling her down.
“You two, come with me,” I said, pointing at the two would-be duelists, walking them towards the privacy of the command tent.
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I met Katya hobbling the other way with her crutch, looking like a very unstable red-headed gun rack. She had hung quite a collection of firearms around her neck, shoulders, waist, and arm, ready to try to assist me with whatever had gotten me so alarmed. I slipped my arm around her waist, steadying her, glad for her loyalty and dedication even if I wished she would take it a little easier on herself. The degree to which she had recovered from her injuries was astonishing, but she still needed to rest and recover.
In the command tent, we had a frank discussion. Which is to say, I talked angrily at the two fretful lieutenants for quite some time until I began to notice myself repeating some of my earlier statements, then asked the both of them about their feelings on the topic; naturally, both of them claimed an interest in the young woman, and both claimed to be acolyte’s sole beloved suitor.
I didn’t want to seem unfair to either of them. I was tempted to declare the girl off-limits to the both of them, but I doubted that would work and I needed some way of breaking the impasse that didn’t leave one or both of them feeling resentful. Then I looked over at Katya, seated next to me, and at the nest of guns and straps that mostly obscured her torso from view.
“In the battle with the ogres, both of you served valiantly and well.”
I reached over to Katya and drew the two runed pistols out of their holsters.
“You, Quentin, led the charge that broke them. You, Fyodor, landed a most impressive shot with a rocket, leaving them ready to be broken. Both of you can say you have earned these guns.”
The runes glimmered as I turned them over in my hands.
“They are a matched pair, and it would be a shame to separate them. Today, I give them to one of you, as a matched pair. The other will remain free to court the young woman, for however long her path parallels ours. However long that may be.”
They looked at each other hesitantly for a moment. Then Quentin stepped forward to claim the pistols.
When I walked out of the tent, Katya murmured to me, very quietly:
“That was a very nice thing you did. But those were very nice pistols you just gave away.”
She let out a wistful sigh. I gave her hip a consoling caress and silently resolved to buy her something nice when we arrived in town.