The Wizard That Wasn't (Mechanized Wizardry) (2 page)

Whisp stood.  “Come on,” he said, swinging the sack over his shoulder and drawing his knife.  “Next house.”

They had just stepped into the muddy street when a husky boy came squealing towards them.  “Whisp!  Whisp!  It’s the Petronauts comin’!  What’re we gonna do?”  he screeched, sounding much younger than his fifteen years.

Whisp swallowed.  “Hide in the big bushes by the lake, like we talked about.  Tell the rest!”  The fat youth turned and ran.  The tall boy started to follow him, but Whisp put a hand on his arm.

“Just one more house,” he hissed, pointing across the steet.  “And only you and me split it.”

The other boy shook his head frantically.  “And tangle with Petronauts?  You’re crazy, Whisp.  You keep your—”

Suddenly, screams rose from the far side of the house, and the two boys whirled towards the sound.  The rest of the gang came spilling around both sides of the house in full retreat, clutching their knives and clubs like security blankets, not like weapons.  “What in the black flames are you doing—” Whisp started to ask.

Then a man jumped over the house.

The sharp smell of burning Petrolatum filled the air as the man appeared above the roof of the Bailish family hut, fire shooting earthwards from a cylinder strapped on his back.  The flame cut off, and the armored man swung his legs forward as his trajectory turned down.  He spun in midair and landed on his feet in the middle of street, his heavy boots leaving furrows in the dirt as he skidded to a stop.  The boys froze in their tracks, their escape cut off, and stared up at the hulking black-and-silver knight facing them.

“You can drop those now,” the Petronaut said evenly, his voice unmuffled by his beaked black helmet.

He pointed at their weapons, and they drew back.  All the boys were well aware of the ominous weapon barrels affixed to each of his forearms.  There was a faint whine of gears as the big man moved his arms, and a curling trail of smoke emanating from the fiery cylinder on his back.

Whisp stepped forward before his cowering friends could do what the ‘naut said.  “Come on, boys,” he snarled, dropping the bag and raising his knife.  “There’s ten of us, and just one of him.  And he won’t be so tough once we get him out of that fancy suit.”

“There must be a lot of loot in that bag to make you act so stupid,” the Petronaut said, stepping forward calmly.  The gang shrank back as he continued, shaking his head.  “A bunch of fighting-age boys like you, stealing from your neighbors while your town’s rising up in rebellion,” he chided gently.

“Their rebellion, not ours,” Whisp spat.

“The magistrates will sort that one out.  Now,” he said, leveling his arm cannons straight at Whisp’s head, his voice suddenly hard.  “Drop your weapons.”

Whisp was sweating profusely.  He looked at a point over the ‘naut’s shoulder and gave a barely perceptible nod.  The Petronaut saw the signal, and spun around just in time to see three more boys, with iron pikes and pitchforks, come charging towards him from their hiding place in the house across the street.

“Now!”  Whisp screamed, slapping heads among his gang and pointing his knife at the mechanized knight.  “Now, now, now!”  The boys roared and charged the Petronaut from both sides.

Sir Mathias Mascarpone, junior Petronaut of the Delian Reconnaissance squad, just sighed.

He pulled a cord against his breastplate, and the bottom hatch of his thrust pack swung closed.  The steam rose instead from three newly open vents about level with his shoulder blades.  He braced his legs and pushed a button on a stick strapped to his left hip.  Thrust flames shot straight out from his back, roughly at eye level with the knife-wielding boys behind him.  Their charge collapsed before it even began as the gang screamed and recoiled from the flames, though only one boy actually took a lick of fire across the face. 

The three charging in front of him, their polearms glinting wickedly in the sun, were still coming.  One boy lunged at him wildly, stabbing the iron pike towards his chest.  Sir Mathias leaned to the side and wrapped his arm around the wooden haft, tucking the pike under his armpit.  He bent at the knees and swung upwards with every ounce of motor-enhanced strength he could muster.  The pike lifted up high, nearly perpendicular with the ground, and the bewildered young man holding it found himself along for the ride.  He let go unthinkingly just before the top of the arc, and momentum carried him, like a champion pole vaulter, face-first onto the Bailish’s roof.

Sir Mathias engaged the ranine coils in his boots and leapt straight up. The other boys stumbling at the target they’d been charging was suddenly two meters up in the air, launched skyward by the pressurized coils encircling his feet and ankles.  They looked up as the wooden end of the pike cracked down against their heads with sharp, purposeful blows.  Moans filled the air and they held their skulls as Mathias dropped heavily back to earth.

The Petronaut felt a sharp pain along the side of his ribcage and wheeled around, retreating several steps.  Whisp’s knife had a few drops of blood along its rusty edge.  The boy had found a seam in Sir Mathias’ armor.  The Petronaut winced and lifted his arm, trying to take stock of the cut.  If he hadn’t moved so soon, that knife would have made it a lot deeper.

Whisp tossed his knife from hand to hand, a knot of half-a-dozen boys still standing behind him with frightened faces and raised weapons.  “Get the firebounder,” he shouted, leading the charge.

Two clods of earth exploded in quick succession in front of the gang, spraying them with filth.  As they halted, confused, another armored Petronaut raced into their midst.

Sir Kelley was leaner than Sir Mathias, and several centimeters shorter, but he managed to radiate more menace through that sharp black visor than a whole squad of Mathiases could ever muster.  The barrels on his wrist were smoking ominously from the lethal rounds he’d just fired, and he carried a long black baton with grim purpose.  He whipped the baton into Whisp’s stomach, then, when the youth doubled over, slammed him into the ground with a blow to the back of the skull.  The baton kept moving in vicious black arcs, blurring with speed as each blow led directly to the next one, exploiting openings with ruthless precision. 

A few short seconds later, Whisp and four other boys lay on the ground, unmoving, and the last two were on their knees with their hands laced behind their heads, trembling with fear.  Sir Kelley looked down at them coldly, sliding his baton into a sling low at his hip.

Sir Mathias clenched his teeth in pain as he stepped forward.  “Looters, Sir Kelley,” he reported.  “Thanks for your help.”

“If you really needed it, you should be ashamed of yourself,” the senior Petronaut said in his clipped voice.  He pulled a flat disk from a pouch on his belt and tossed it in the air.  It burst seconds later in a cluster of white sparks.  The conventional troops they were traveling with would be here soon to cage up the subdued looters.

“Any sign of the target?”  Sir Kelley asked.

“We’ve cleared the last of these houses.  Still nothing.”

“Then that lake house on the island is the only one place left to look,” Kelley said, flicking his visor up.  His green eyes were hard. “Get a messenger back to Lundin, and let’s put an end to this.”

Lundin was preoccupied with his thoughts as he pulled open the brocaded flap to the Viscount’s pavilion.  He ducked his head to enter, nearly bumping the thin-faced captain trying to exit.  They both stopped short. Lundin waited for her to pass, and she expected him to plow forward; but when each saw the other hesitating, they started forward again simultaneously.  This time, Lundin’s muddy boot scraped the captain’s foot, leaving a brown streak on her dark armor. 

“After you, please,” Lundin said, raising his hands and taking a huge, embarrassed step backwards.  The tent flap, which he was no longer holding, swung into the captain’s face.  He lunged forward to catch it, overreached, and stubbed his fingers on her heavy shoulder guards.

After scrabbling for a proper grip on the tent flap, the captain swept the heavy black-and-crimson fabric aside and stormed forward, her helmet askew.  Her blazing eyes judged him top to bottom in a single glance, and Lundin immediately felt ten centimeters shorter.  “Sorry, sir,” Lundin said weakly.

“If you people had a uniform, you’d be a disgrace to it,” she spat.  “Now salute your superior.”

Lundin saluted frantically.  The captain stormed away.  Lundin followed her with his eyes, holding the salute with a wavering hand.  When she was out of sight, he lowered his hand and very gingerly pulled the tent flap open, checking both directions before ducking inside.

A spherical oil lamp, suspended from the beams in the ceiling, cast orange light over the dozen men and women in the Viscount’s pavilion.  It was whale oil burning up there, and in the lanterns hanging closer to eye level.  The meager supply of petrolatum requisitioned for this simple campaign was needed for more important things than light, like operating the man-sized computing box in the corner.  Lundin was cheered up to see his fellow technician, Samanthi, in her usual sprawl at the base of the machine, unscrewing a defunct vacuum tube as the Abacus continued to whir and click.   A black-and-gold officer with a dark beard stood over her with his arms crossed, trying very hard not to look befuddled.  Lundin smirked at the sight. 
The Petronauts might not have uniforms
, he thought,
but we’ve got toys nobody else even knows how to play with.

Lundin wrinkled his nose as a truly unique smell assailed his nostrils.  The wizard—Jelma?  Jilmat? he couldn’t remember—was hard at work on the other side of the pavilion.  ‘Work’ for a wizard, of course, involved drawing shapes on the floor in colored sand, kneeling inside your artwork, lighting some incense, chewing some suspicious mushrooms, and muttering to yourself for upwards of twelve hours.  Occasionally, you might wail, stomp your feet, or remove an article of clothing.  (Jellmap here was down to a filthy vest, tiny cloth shorts, and about six bracelets on each tanned, wiry arm.) A wizard’s real work began when, after half a day of spellcasting with no concrete result to show from it, you had to feed your clients enough manure to convince them you still deserved your ridiculous fee.  Fast talking: that was where the real magic was.

Lundin coughed from the incense, and frowned as he saw a series of four white disks hanging from the beams above the Viscount’s table; more wizardly décor, no doubt.  He didn’t give the wizard another glance as he walked to the commander.  Lundin understood perfectly well the need for ‘protective spells,’ since the peasants theoretically had some magic on their side in this campaign; but it was still damned hard to take the moaning Mr. Jailrat seriously.

“Mister Lundin, was it?”  Viscount LaMontina looked up from his maps as Lundin approached.  Half a dozen other serious officers stopped their strategizing to look at Lundin, and he had no trouble remembering to salute this time.  The Viscount gave him a prompt salute in reply, and Lundin settled back down.  LaMontina was a year or two younger than he, actually, though as far above Lundin in the social strata as Earth was from the eighth Sphere.  But something about LaMontina put Lundin at ease, more so than anyone else in the camp.  The man was broad-shouldered, a fine specimen of military stature, but with a babyish face and a smile that looked almost sheepish when it crept into view.  Right now, LaMontina had his brows furrowed in a serious, commanding fashion, and the protective body language of the older officers betrayed only a trace of indulgence.  Quashing this rebellion was his first independent campaign, an obvious test bestowed on him by the Regency Council back in Delia.  Everyone here—including Lundin—wanted the earnest young commander to succeed.

Lundin arranged himself into a facsimile of parade rest and put on a serious face.

“What news from the Petronaut detachment?”  LaMontina asked, his voice quiet and firm.

“Sirs Kelley and Mathias are doing well, Your Grace.  A wounded, uh, corporal from the detachment reported that the peasants have been completely routed in the west, and the lakeside homes are clear.”

“Did they find a pentacle?”  A balding commander with beaded grey mustaches interjected.

“No sign of enemy wizardry yet.”

All the officers murmured at that.  LaMontina’s face fell ever so slightly, behind the façade of command.  He tapped a finger meditatively on the rolled-out map, drumming on the green island in the center of the lake.  “As feared, then, their wizard must be here.”

“Preparations to storm the island will be redoubled,” an officer said, gesturing to a black-clad courier, who bowed curtly and slipped away.

“The corporal said they’d cross the lake in ninety minutes,” Lundin reported, eyes flicking from face to face.  Everyone looked so concerned; you’d think he’d just reported that the Army been routed, not the peasants.  So what that there was a single wizard still unaccounted for?  Were these hardened military men and women as superstitious as all that?

LaMontina traced a finger around the island on his map.  “A great deal can happen in ninety minutes,” he whispered.  “If only there was a way to make landfall sooner.”

Lundin wracked his brain, eager to offer help to the young commander.  An idea struck him. “Your Grace?  The Petronauts, Sirs Kelley and Mathias, might be able to thrust across the water before the rafts, depending on the distance and their ‘tum reserves,” Lundin offered. “Lead the charge, you know?”

“A kilometer from shoreline to this promontory,” LaMontina said, touching the northeastern edge of the island. 

Lundin did some quick calculations in his head, and nodded.  “They’d have to return on the rafts, but could almost certainly make it across.”

 As the implication of Lundin’s words sunk in, the murmuring silenced.  The Viscount stood, his officers giving him space as his wide eyes searched the technician’s face.  “A one-way trip into the teeth of the enemy’s defenses,” he said, “in advance of conventional support.  Would your masters consent to such an endeavor?”

Lundin looked back at the young commander.  “If you say it’s necessary, Your Grace, to neutralize that wizard in time,” he replied quietly, “I’m sure you only have to give the order.”