The Battlemage by Taran Matharu
“You’ll be second lieutenants,” Fletcher said, trying to keep his excitement from his voice. “But you’ll be given command of a squad each. If you’re willing to accept those terms, I’ll be honored to have you.”
“We would!” Genevieve laughed, and then Fletcher found himself with a mouthful of red hair as the young battlemage gave him a tight hug.
“Thank you,” Rory said, holding out his hand.
Fletcher extricated an arm from Genevieve’s hug and shook the proffered hand warmly. For the first time, he felt as if Rory and Genevieve had truly forgiven him for almost killing Malachi in the tournament. He hadn’t realized how heavily that guilt had weighed on his conscience until that very moment.
“If I may be so bold,” Rotherham said as Genevieve released Fletcher and wiped a tear from her eye. “You’ll be needing a sergeant or two to whip these troops into shape. Show them the ropes, as it were. I’m an old hand, been fighting since I was a nipper. Would it be presumptuous of me to recommend myself to the position?”
The grizzled veteran seemed to squirm under his gaze as Fletcher considered him. Fletcher owed him, certainly, and he needed a sergeant to relay Rory and Genevieve’s orders. And he was an experienced fighter. He’d know every trick and shortcut the troops would take. Why not …
“All right then, sergeant it is,” Fletcher said, clapping Rotherham on the shoulder and walking out into the savannah. “Just know that Sir Caulder will be our sergeant major, and you’ll be taking orders from him. That goes for you too, Rory and Genevieve: Sir Caulder outranks the both of you.”
Fletcher resisted the urge to turn and catch the look on Rotherham’s face. The old man must have been passed over for promotion a thousand times in the military. Only a choke of surprise gave him a clue to the man’s reaction.
“Now let’s have a look at our troops,” Fletcher called, striding through the tall grasses to where the soldiers were training.
They had been spread into a circle, and Sir Caulder had paired two off to fence against each other. The fighters battled not with their poleaxes but instead with weighted quarterstaffs, simple wooden poles that had a heavy lump of wood affixed to the end, to imitate the poleaxes’ weight, length and balance.
“Good lad, Kobe,” Sir Caulder was shouting, for the young soldier had just swept his opponent’s feet from under him with the pole and now held the wooden block to his throat. “Use every part of the weapon. The haft and butt are as useful as the tip.”
Kobe smiled and held out a hand to help his opponent up. Fletcher recognized the downed fighter as one of the convicts: a skinny, bucktoothed lad with acne scars on both cheeks. The boy ignored the proffered hand and scrambled to his feet. He spat at Kobe’s feet and stalked off.
Kobe shrugged and saluted Sir Caulder instead, before joining the circle.
“At ease, lads,” Sir Caulder called, spotting Fletcher approaching. “Take a breather.”
The troops gratefully collapsed to the ground, many gulping at water flasks. Their faces were coated with sweat from the day’s exertions, and Fletcher suspected Sir Caulder had been training them since early morning.
“Bless my soul and damn my eyes, is that Rotter?” Sir Caulder cried, limping over to the foursome.
“Wait, you know each other?” Fletcher asked. Then he realized. The gasp of breath from Rotherham had been at recognizing Sir Caulder’s name, not his promotion.
“Too right I bleeding know him,” Rotherham said, laughing with delight. “We’ve been thick as thieves since we were nought but little lads. Served in the same regiment for a time too, before the old git got airs and graces and became Lord Raleigh’s bodyguard.”
“Less of the old git,” Sir Caulder said, prodding Rotherham with his hooked hand, “I’m only a few years older than you.”
“What are the chances!” Genevieve laughed.
“You know what they say,” Rotherham said, embracing his long-lost friend. “There’s old soldiers and bold soldiers but no old bold soldiers. I reckon we’re the two exceptions.”
“Hah, maybe one of us,” Sir Caulder said. He turned to the two new officers and winked at them.
“Rory, Genevieve, nice of you to join us. I hope you’ve not forgotten my training.”
“No, sir,” Rory said, tapping a rapier at his belt. “We’re ready to get in the thick of it.”
“Well, you won’t be just yet—we’ve a few weeks to go before we take our position in that mountain pass up there.” Sir Caulder pointed at the sierra of peaks beyond the ruins of the Raleigh mansion.
Fletcher peered at the mountains, trying to spy where the pass might be. There seemed to be a point where the peaks curved inward on each side in the shape of a U, with a dip in the very bottom. Now that he looked at them, the mountains seemed very near. He shuddered at the thought of how close they were to the orc jungles. He needed his men to be ready sooner rather than later. Who knew when Lord Forsyth’s troops would abandon their posts?
CHAPTER
43
“ALL RIGHT, MEN, pay attention now!” Rotherham snapped.
It was dusk, and Sir Caulder had finally finished his lesson with the recruits, allowing them a moment to wolf down venison sandwiches before returning to what had become their training field—the old lawn of the Raleigh mansion.
“I will demonstrate the proper way to load and fire a musket,” Rotherham continued. “An elite soldier can fire four shots in a single minute. It can be done, and I shall prove it. I shall fire five.”
Rotherham unslung his musket, a weapon identical to the soldiers’ in every way. He lifted it to his eye and swung the weapon until he found a target—a mushroom-covered tree stump.
“A musket will be able to hit a five-inch target at fifty yards, around the distance of that log over there,” Rotherham said, squinting down the barrel. “When shooting at a group of enemies, we will open fire at more than twice that, but I’ll be damned if you won’t be able to pick your targets once they get in range. Sir Caulder, start the minute when I fire.”
Sir Caulder nodded, holding up a pocket watch.
Rotherham shouted, “Now count with me. One!”
He fired in a belch of white smoke, and the log shivered as a bullet splintered its center. Fletcher’s eyes widened as Rotherham’s hand flashed, tugged a paper cartridge from a pouch at his side, and then tore the end open with his teeth. He tilted a dash of the black powder within into the firing pan of the musket, then down the end of the barrel it went. The ramrod rattled out of its slot beneath the muzzle, rammed it down once, twice. Then it was back in its place and the gun was wedged into Rotherham’s shoulder, his hand tugging back the hammer of the gun. One heartbeat. Boom.
“Two!”
The stump jumped as another musket ball hammered home, and the whole process was repeated again. Fletcher grinned at the wily old veteran, his hands practicing the motions that had been drilled into him for the better part of a decade. The air was filled with the smell of brimstone, the smoke drifting across the recruits who watched Rotherham in awe. Now they joined in the counting with gusto, their voices echoing across the plains, a chorus to the bang of musket fire.
“Three!”
Another shot whipped into the wood, glancing off and throwing up a cloud of dirt. Rotherham never faltered, spitting the paper from his mouth and loading once again. His movements were almost mechanical, his fingers nimble and fast as he worked the gun like a musical instrument.
“Four!”
His target was in tatters, raw wood hanging ragged in a mess of splinters and sawdust. Surely a minute had passed by now. But no, Sir Caulder was still staring at his stopwatch. Rotherham was sweating, but his hands moved unerringly. The ramrod rattled down the barrel and then, just a split second after Rotherham had fired his fifth and final shot, Sir Caulder shouted.
“Time!”
The soldiers whooped and clapped, some coughing at the smoke that still billowed in a haze around them. It had been a fea
“I gave him an extra second,” Sir Caulder whispered, sidling up to Fletcher. “But it sure inspired the men, eh, lad.”
“That it did,” Fletcher said, watching as his soldiers got to their tired feet and congratulated their sergeant. “Don’t tell him; he’d be disappointed.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sir Caulder said, grinning as the old veteran grudgingly accepted the recruits’ praise. “He and I fought side by side in many a battle, and he’s pulled my bacon out of the fire more times than I can count. He’ll make an excellent sergeant.”
* * *
Dusk was approaching once again, casting a warm, orange glow across the land. The men were lined up and given targets at a distance of fifty feet—moss-laden flagstones long discarded from the explosion all those years ago. Rotherham had at first had them go through the motions of loading without real ammunition so as not to waste it, but after an hour of correcting their technique he felt they were ready to begin firing with real cartridges. Now Fletcher, Rory and Genevieve stood to the side, watching the proceedings.
“Make ready,” Rotherham shouted. There was the click of thirty-eight hammers being pulled back.
“Present.” Thirty-eight muskets were raised and seated in thirty-eight shoulders. Fletcher looked down the line, seven guns appearing lower due to the dwarves’ height difference.
“Fire!”
A wall of noise hit Fletcher’s ears, smoke blasting out in great gouts of white. Musket balls peppered the flagstones, but Fletcher counted no more than a dozen puffs of dust from the targets. The remainder scattered off into the tall grasses beyond, or smacked into the earth a few feet away.
“Load!” Rotherham barked.
There was the clatter of weapons and frantic movements as the men reached for cartridges and tore at them with their teeth.
Fletcher counted under his breath. Fifteen seconds ticked by before Rotherham shouted.
“Make ready!”
It was a shambles. Most of the men were still ramming their shot down the barrels, and even the fastest were still prodding at their ramrod slots, trying to slide the rods into place.
“Present,” Rotherham yelled.
No more than a handful of muskets were raised.
“Fire!”
A pitiful three shots scattered into the long grass, followed by a pinwheeling ramrod from a shooter who had forgotten to remove it from the barrel. Not one bullet hit its target.
Rotherham sighed, running a worn hand across his face.
“Shocking,” he growled. “Marksmanship, pitiful. Loading, dreadful. You will meet me here every day at sunset for practice. And we will continue to do so until you can fire at least four shots in a single minute. You will be the best, gentlemen.”
“It’s only our first time,” the pockmarked convict complained.
“If you did this on a battlefield, the orcs would have you for breakfast,” Rotherham snapped, rounding on him. “Your very survival depends on how quickly and accurately you can fire that musket.”
The recruits looked at their feet, ashamed.
“But don’t you worry,” Rotherham said, his voice suddenly cheerful. “We’ll have you turning tree stumps into sawdust in no time. Dismissed!”
The soldiers groaned with relief and stomped back toward the town hall, leaving Fletcher alone with Rory, Genevieve, Sir Caulder and Rotherham. They waited until they were alone.
“You’re going to need more ammunition for our training,” Rotherham said apologetically. “It’s the best way to learn.”
“You’ll have it,” Fletcher said. “But I’ll need you to give me the names of your eight best shooters. They don’t need to be fast, just accurate.”
“For the rifles?” Rotherham asked.
“That’s right.”
“Athol showed me on the ride over,” Rotherham said, scratching his chin. “I already have a few in mind. Sharpshooters are always useful; they can pick off the front-runners in a charge and take out enemy scouts or sentries as the case may be.”
“Good,” Fletcher said. “Sir Caulder, you may have the afternoon for training.”
“Fine with me,” Sir Caulder replied. “I’ll have them trained up soon enough. I’ll have ’em learn how to counter spears, clubs, macanas, cavalry, you name it. Just give me a few weeks with ’em.”
“We have until those men protecting the mountain pass leave,” Fletcher said, looking out at the sierra. “Then we’ll just have to hope the orcs don’t make a run at us.”
A chill ran down Fletcher’s spine. He had told Khan he was a Raleigh. The albino orc knew that these were his ancestral lands. If he was seeking revenge, this was the first place he would attack.
“Get them ready,” Fletcher said, shuddering despite the warmth. “We might be fighting sooner than we think.”
CHAPTER
44
THE DAYS SEEMED TO BLUR together as the training began in earnest. Fletcher, Rory and Genevieve would take the soldiers out onto the plains early each morning to train them in maneuvers—marching, turning, forming and reforming into varying ranks in quick succession.
Then there were the more complex formations—making a schiltron to protect from mounted attack, where the men would fall into a circle, the front ranks bristling with poleaxes to skewer the charging beasts, while the back ranks fired indiscriminately into imaginary approaching cavalry.
Another tactic was an ordered retreat, when firing teams would provide cover for one another as they fell back in groups of five. In skirmishing, the men would scatter into a loose formation to make themselves harder targets for falling javelins. They also practiced disciplined charging, designed so that a wall of men would crash into their opponents in a single wave.
Under Fletcher, Rory and Genevieve were given a team of fifteen soldiers each to train, with an equal split of dwarves, elves and humans. The remaining eight were selected by Rotherham to become riflemen, and he trained them separately every other morning, until they could shoot a jackalberry out of a tree at a hundred yards and could hit a trunk three times out of five at four hundred. Their marksmanship was practiced on moving targets, and every night the colony would dine on the fruits of their endeavors—sizzling steaks of agile gazelles, long-horned oryx, and on one night even a single, heavyset buffalo that fed the entire population of Raleightown on its own.
In the afternoons, Sir Caulder trained the recruits until they were coated in sweat, honing their skills until Fletcher barely recognized the sun-bronzed soldiers as they battled one another in the heat of the afternoon. The men soon learned to fear Sir Caulder; those who faced him walked away limping with red welts across their arms and faces. Even so, the men were becoming a formidable force, their practice weapons blurring with the speed and ferocity that they attacked one another. There were more than a few bruises by the end of each training session, and Fletcher amazed the soldiers by healing each wound as if he were wiping away a stain.
As for the evenings, the colonists began to know the hours of the day by the intensity of gunfire, and knew the sun was setting when silence fell across the plains once more. Fletcher made sure that he, Rory and Genevieve were as practiced as their own soldiers in the art of musketry, and though they slept each night with aching shoulders and skinned knuckles, all of them could fire four shots every minute, like clockwork, by the end of the first month. It was a relief when Rotherham declared the men ready, but then came the firing strategies.
They were to fire by rank: the first rank firing and kneeling as they reloaded, the second standing and firing next to provide a blast of musket balls into the enemy every seven seconds. Platoon fire, where five men would fire at a time down the line of infantry, provided a constant buzz of bullets whipping into the enemy.
By the end of that first month, the soldiers were well accustomed to milita
So Fletcher sent trade convoys to sell the game in Corcillum’s markets, packing the meat in barrels of salt. As for the timber, Fletcher had the men cut, trim and part the trees far out in the savannah, and drag the wood back in makeshift sleds. He joined in every task, making sure that he worked harder than any of them, earning their grudging respect. Before the second month was out, the men had shed all of their puppy fat, and their bodies were as lean and hard as hunting dogs. Even Kobe and his skinny compatriots became layered in cords of muscle, and Fletcher had never felt stronger in his life.
Now that the soldiers were weighing in, Raleightown soon had enough timber to complete all its own repairs and building projects, and fresh logs of ebony eventually found their way onto the trade convoys. Under Berdon’s and Thaissa’s guidance, houses were completed swiftly, and the colonists moved in. Soon the church became their dining hall and meeting place, with new glass in the windows and great long tables of black wood filling it from wall to wall.
Fletcher began to look forward to each night, where the happy buzz of conversation flooded the room and he could lose himself in their contentment. He and Berdon had converted the old blacksmith’s into their own home and they would spend every night reminiscing over old times and making plans for the future.
With every trade convoy’s return, gold and supplies came with them, and Fletcher divided the proceeds fairly between the workers and himself. Noticing the profits, soon new products began to emerge from enterprising colonists. Exotic fruit was plucked by the bushel from the wild trees and sold beside their meats. The first bales of wool from their small herd of sheep soon joined them, though attacks from lions and jackals had reduced their fledgling flock by three already.