Lucius jogged slowly northward toward his home from Freboria Castle. The rate of his return was directly determined by his mood; a quick jog, motivated by an immutable instinct to exercise, was the default, but on more introspective days, a slower pace allowed more time alone for the senior student of Applied Military Sorcery, usually abbreviated AMS at the Freborian Academy, to think.
Today was something of a middle-ground. There was no singular mental burden that slowed Lucius’s return, but the seventeen-year-old youth’s thoughts had been turned to the conditions of his life that were an uncomfortable combination of bleak and fortunate. The time of year was very likely contributory to this melancholy mood; it was early spring, and in the northern regions of the continent, where Freboria was located, this meant winter without the snow. Whatever splendor the seasonal fall of crystallized water had given to the Freborian landscapes had recently melted away, and the void left by this departure had not yet been filled by the vivacity of mid and late spring.
The aforementioned conditions of young Lucius’s life were the following. Freboria was a moderately insignificant province lying very near the northern border separating the Monarchy and the Republic. It happened to be on the Monarchy side, but this meant little politically. Provinces far removed from their respective federal capitals, and especially in the more sparsely populated north, were naturally more independent, and less aligned with whatever overarching political structure to which they formally belonged. This was a consequence of both their geographical removal from the central authority and their relative economic weakness due to a small population. That Freboria lay on the border also added to its independence. Tensions were more often than not high between the Monarchy and the Republic, both historical rivals of each other, and the border received a disproportionate amount of attention in the south, but the inconsequential north was removed from this scrutiny, and close to the border, a certain cultural continuity from one province to another had appeared, which resulted in republican and royal provinces that looked very much alike, if not indistinguishable.
In the absence of a shared loyalty to a larger governing body, however, smaller rivalries between provinces had appeared in the north, generally irrespective of any given province’s membership in either the Monarchy or Republic. Each province was, therefore, very jealous of its own military. Armed conflict almost never passed the level of the small raid followed by some plundering of the victimized village, but a mere militia was invariably deemed insufficient by the provincial government.
Lucius had been raised with these unstable circumstances as the setting of his childhood. His family was well-off by local standards, owning a fairly large farm and employing a number of field hands, but certainly did not live in the lap of luxury. Agricultural failure was a vague, ever-present threat looming over the heads of citizens of this agrarian society, and the local government’s annoyingly difficult stance concerning exportation of almost any commodity produced within its borders limited the market for surplus product.
From a young age, Lucius had demonstrated considerable talent in multiple fields, particularly with magic, and his parents had realized that his best chance for success would be to enter the service of the count of the realm. Individual enterprise was traditionally considered the domain of the female, while duty to family and state was considered the more masculine role, so, while she was younger, his sister was more likely to inherit the family estate. If he had demanded it, Lucius probably could have secured half for himself, but he had never been so inclined.
When Lucius had first met the man whom he would serve, he was surprised to behold a charming figure in his early thirties. He instantly liked him. The count was genuinely polite and kind, and possessed an appreciable faculty for thought. Lucius had decided quickly that he would serve his provincial government. He had been drawn naturally to the militaristic, and dreamed of one day being a senior officer. Given his affinity for magic, this was a wise career choice. In the industrial heartland of the continent, enchanters and magical engineers were in great demand, but in less advanced regions, warfare was considered the primary application of magic. It was true that gardeners often employed magic to coax their plants to grow a little larger and to discourage weeds in their gardens, and that local doctors who practiced a comparably primitive form of medicine used some rudimentary magic to heal wounds more effectively, but these things were considered peripheral.
So, while his geographical origins may have been humble, Lucius’s prospects seemed promising. Unfortunately, countering any happiness that may have been derived from his hopeful future loomed the death of his father. Lucius had been five, at the peak of life’s innocence, old enough to understand the love he felt for the man who had raised him, and old enough to understand the concept death, but too young to understand why his father had had to die. The shining optimism of childhood had early been replaced by the despondency of a troubled adolescence.
Lucius’s father had always planned for Lucius to join the count’s military, and his untimely death had left Lucius’s mother resolute in this stance, unwilling to go against her late husband’s wishes. The conditions of his father’s death had likewise made Lucius willing to go along with this plan; his father had been killed during a raid, likely more an accident than anything else. When pillagers from a neighboring province had appeared outside the village, he’d, along with many others, seized his underdeveloped firearm and shot warning bullets at the invaders. One looter was injured, and this prompted a general charge. Because he held a weapon, Lucius’s father had been assaulted with the goal of incapacitating him. Such bandits were motivated by a sense of provincial glory and, more than that, by greed. They were not motivated by any blood-lust, and deaths were uncommon in such attacks, but Lucius’s father had sadly passed away.
Lucius was slowed by more than the weight of his thoughts. As dull a time of year as it was, the sun was setting, and even the late Freborian March looked appealing at this time of day. A wall of trees lined the road to the right, but on his left, a pasture stretched out over a gradual slope at which the road was at the bottom. In fact, the road has been made along a miniature valley between two moderately sized slopes, and to his right, a creek flowed in the same direction as he ran, which was happily downhill. The pasture was dotted with small, unevenly spaced hills on the face of the larger slope, and these cast shadows that were like moth holes in the golden fabric of the field’s light brown grass. Adjoining fields were separated by thick, grayish-brown walls of brush, their monochrome occasionally broken by evergreen cedars. Rising up from the brush and reaching toward the sky were the twisting branches of tall elms.
These fields held horses, all of which were of a rugged breed for which the northern provinces of both the Monarchy and the Republic were well-known. Industry was almost non-existent in these areas, and most farming was done for subsistence. The surplus crop that was produced was usually sold to a buyer somewhere fairly nearby in the north, usually in the same province. The modest farms of the northern regions could not compete with the sprawling and efficient plantations in the more temperate south, so most of the capital that came into the relatively closed economy was from the sale of these horses unique to the area. This was so much the case that if counts were more jealous of anything than their militaries, it was their horse breeders and their horses. Most breeding facilities were financed by the local government for this reason. This practice was a notable exception to the prevalent system of mostly unregulated capitalism, the other exception being the tariffs mentioned earlier, and so demonstrates the importance of these horses. Many times, they would be the target of the raids.
As the sun continued to descend, the western sky took on the hue of a blushing cheek. It was for such subtle, daily pieces of beauty, often unnoticed by people who didn’t look, that Lucius cared so greatly. Continuing on, Lucius sensed two sparrows in a poplar ahead. As he passed, they burst from the tree and flew toward some woods to his left. They were only two dark, darting silhouettes in the fading light of sunset.
The sun completed its decent, and the temperature likewise dropped, but Lucius, wearing a warm overcoat and, more useful, using an insulation spell, was unaffected. Besides this, he was finally at the end of his driveway. The jog up to the house was short, and he was soon at his door, which unlocked itself at his touch.
The house, built of both stone and wood, in which Lucius lived may have fallen short of being a mansion, but it was certainly larger than most of its neighbors. There were two floors and both were rather expansive. Spacious rooms were less efficient to heat, but a combination of coal and magic, both of which were readily available, sufficed. A number of Lucius’s acquaintances envied his home, but Lucius disliked it. The size combined with its general emptiness, for its occupants were only three, gave it a somber feeling of hollowness.
The house was quiet, but from a few rooms away, and through a few walls, Lucius could hear the faint but pleasing notes of a piano. It was, no doubt, being played by his sister, who had only fourteen years, but was already showing considerable musical talent. Lucius was unfamiliar with the piece, but after a few moments of listening, he was able to identify the key as c sharp minor, his favorite. When he’d been younger, a music teacher as the Academy had identified Lucius as having absolute pitch, and said that his coordination and sense of rhythm would make him an excellent musician. But while he had an appreciation for music, Lucius could never be moved to trade time practicing his magical ability for time practicing the violin, and so one flower had been allowed to bloom while the other wilted.
Once out of the anteroom and into what was a combination of a family room and an informal dining room, Lucius greeted his mother, assuring her that he’d had a satisfactorily pleasant day, and, not having any books of which to dispose, continued through the large room toward the back door. Textbooks were expensive, but advanced magic textbooks contained information advanced enough to be worth retaining as a resource, so he’d bought his own copies for use at home, and used the Academy’s set at school. This meant he didn’t have to carry them back and forth, which would have been inconvenient.
Lucius was dressed in the dark gray robe customary of a student of AMS. Considering Freboria’s distance from the cultural and intellectual centers of the Monarchy’s society, its Academy’s educational system was impressive. Most boys and girls were able to attend because attendance was very cheap. Tuition was paid by the provincial government, so only the money for transportation, meals, and supplies had to be supplied by the families of the students. The quality of the system had been explained to Lucius once by his primary magic instructor, Master Rapposelli. Basically, the academies in more urban areas turned out plenty of adept mages, and the new generation was always putting pressure on the old. As mages aged, it was natural for research to replace application, and for a number of wizards, a term applied often to older, more experienced mages, teaching was an easy choice of profession. The rate of population growth, standard class sizes, the time required to educate a new generation of mages, and the ages at which wizards generally retired or switched careers all combined to create a slightly unbalanced situation. When all the math was done, any given academy or university would be producing, on average, just more than enough mages who in three or four decades would become teachers to replace its current staff. This meant that the slight surplus of wizards wishing to be teachers pushed a few out into the less developed provinces. Eventually this imbalance would right itself; one day, there would simply be too many professors, and the career patterns of the population of wizards would have to change, but the imbalance was so slight that this would take much time, and in the intervening time, the rural provinces had nothing to do but benefit from the surplus.
Bows had, within the last century and a half, finally become obsolete, and Lucius did not carry one. Instead, he was required to train in proficiency with a firearm. Smooth-bore breach-loaders were the guns of the day. Somewhere, an intelligent gunsmith who dabbled in aerodynamics and was sufficiently familiar with the mathematics of fluid mechanics was beginning to experiment with carving twisting grooves into the inside of gun barrels, but such things were on the edges of technological advancement, and not yet used by anyone but a few idealistic experimenters. It had been common sense, however, to move the mechanism for loading the gun to the back so that more bullets could be fired in a smaller amount of time.
Lucius’s gun was kept, along with his staff, in a cabinet at the far end of the living room. Every other day, he was given time to practice at the Academy and to have any errors in his technique corrected by a master, but today had not been such a day, and so he had kept it at home. He almost never took his staff to class; he was rather proud of his ability to channel magic without the use of a wand or staff to aid him, and could handle even the more powerful spells for which many of his classmates required such tools. Today, as usual, he extracted only the firearm from the cabinet and continued out to the backyard. The sun had set, but the twilight persisted, still unwilling to surrender to night.
Although he did not daily at school, he was expected to, and did, practice his marksmanship daily at home. Before beginning, a quick and simple spell created a steady cross-breeze for which he would need to compensate, and which would help him practice. Lucius shouldered the firearm, his light blue eyes instantly aligning themselves with the iron sights. The first shot, from eighty meters, hit fourteen centimeters to the left of the bull. This was not too bad, but he could do better. Lucius reloaded, took aim, this time more sensitive to the strength of the cross-breeze, and fired again. This time, he was within nine centimeters. Practice continued like this for about five minutes, with Lucius at length coming within about five centimeters of the bull, but not hitting it. He would have continued, but ammunition was limited, so he, in what was a sort of ritual unto itself, took thirty seconds to disassemble his piece, sixty to clean it, and thirty to reassemble it. The bullet holes in the target closed themselves automatically and magically. He went inside to replace his gun in its cabinet, and then returned to the yard. He would next practice magic, and today, his staff would be worthwhile.
At present, the focus of Lucius’s magic lessons was the manipulation of his environment as a whole. Spells fitting into this theme included the crosswind he had created, a spell to warm or cool an area, and even a spell to cause the air around the caster to vibrate at a selected pitch. This last spell was actually oddly similar to the warming spell. All of these were, as far as the necessary state of mind when casting, fairly related. These spells listed as examples were also all very elementary, and adept magic students could usually master them by the age of eight. To warm up, Lucius caused the air to hum with each pitch of the a minor scale one after another.
The first spell which required practice was one for static electricity. Simply causing a bolt of electricity to jump from one object to another was an easy task, but this spell was meant to cause the entire area around the caster to become charged.
Lucius focused on the area in front of him. The air seemed to start to sparkle, there was a faint glow on the ground, and there was a quiet, hissing, static noise that faded after about a minute. Lucius extended his arms and tried again. This time, bright blue arcs of about a third of a meter illuminated the dark scene and were accompanied by a louder crackling sound. This phenomenon intensified for a few minutes and then abruptly stopped. This was progress, but earlier he’d been able to do much better. He took a few steps farther out into the yard, closed his eyes, and allowed a burst of willpower to flow through himself. There was a loud crack. He opened his eyes, focusing on extending the spell. Much like before, he was surrounded by arcs of electricity, but their lengths were growing more quickly. This was why Lucius loved magic. He had reached an apex of subjective power. He was the instrument of this powerful transformation of magical energy into destructive electricity. As he stood reveling in the glory of this accomplishment, the sphere of lightning around his body grew still brighter, louder, denser, and more grand. There was no reason it could not continue, and it did, becoming an unnatural sounding roar, and so bright that it hurt his eyes and forced him to close them again. Finally, Lucius relaxed, and the chaos of sound and light vanished.
In battle, there was no use for an unmoving wall of electricity. Projectiles and most spells could penetrate it, and it served no offensive purpose, but the act required extreme attunement with the caster’s environment and an ability to mentally control a complex natural phenomenon, and was therefore a useful exercise. Attunement to one’s surroundings was one of the three central dimensions employed by a mage when casting a spell. The other two were focus, or a sort of single-mindedness, and raw emotion, and the localized lightning spell required appreciable amounts of these as well. Lucius concluded his practice with a few more, less demanding spells, and then reentered his house.
Back inside, Lucius’s mother was just beginning to prepare an appetizing supper of squirrel, potatoes, and string beans. Meat was not an ever-present dish at the supper table, but Lucius had killed several squirrels a few days ago, and they could be protected from spoiling with a quick enchantment. Two were consumed by the family every day, and this would be the last day for them.
Everyone was expected to help cook, so Lucius set about preparing the squirrels, his specialty. The food was ready and the table set within twenty minutes. The family ate quietly, each person politely exchanging compliments about the food. While friendly, the members of the family did not have a great much in common, and there was little to discuss. Afterwards, sometimes friends would be invited over to play games like poker, backgammon, or chess, but tonight was not such a night, so Lucius listened to his sister practice the piano for a while before retiring to his room, where he read an excerpt about a small war fought two hundred years from a history textbook for school and studied a few chess problems in a book he’d borrowed from the Academy library. When he worked on these, he would lean over his desk, furrow his brow, and bury his left hand in his black hair as he always did when thinking deeply. His face was fairly symmetrical, with fair cheeks, a hint of an aquiline quality to his nose, and a shallow brow that gave him a look of honesty. Once he’d solved a few problems, he went to bed.
It was around eleven o’clock when Lucius awoke to a distant but pervasive ringing. It was the castle’s alarm; there was a raid. Lucius had donned his uniform in moments. Downstairs, he grabbed his gun and staff, dashed out the door, and mounted his courser, Volator. The horse was very well bred; he was strong enough to be able to force its way through difficult terrain, but because mages like Lucius did not wear heavy armor, he did not have to be bulky, and therefore possessed agility and great endurance. Lucius would have loved to be able to ride him to school, but he was needed at home for farm work, and Lucius was lucky enough to be able to ride him when hunting.
On Volator, it took only a couple minutes to arrive at the village surrounding Freboria Castle. Already, gunshots were echoing across the area. Lucius had cast a night-vision spell on himself as he’d ridden, and the scene was easily discernable. Lucius had defended against raids in the past, and had even ridden on one. The first thing to do was to scan the scene for the count’s banner. This would look exactly like the provincial flag, with one exception; one of the x marks on the field was replaced by an o. When the count was present on the scene of the battle, a mage’s first responsibility was to protect him. Failing to find the banner, Lucius began looking for the flag that marked the location of the highest ranking officer on the field. This too was a trivial variation of the provincial flag, so as not to give away the locations of important persons. Once he’d found it waving a ways to his right, near the outskirts of the village, Lucius began riding toward it. The senior officer, who happened to be Anthony Rapposelli, a Colonel, identified Lucius as he approached.
“Lieutenant Atratus!” he addressed Lucius, for these were Lucius’s rank and surname. “I am glad to see you here so quickly, but must ask that you turn around. This is almost certainly a diversionary attack. Go back north and see what you can do to prevent them from raiding the horse farms. I’ve sent Lieutenant Leeds in the same direction; you may encounter him. There should be a few foot soldiers down there too.”
“Yes sir!” was the only necessary response. Lucius could have predicted this command, but regulations still dictated that he present himself to the commanding officer for orders. The lieutenant performed quick about-face and raced to the north, shooting condensed and quickly-flying fireballs at any raider he noticed near his path. Lieutenant Bentley Leeds was ranked second in a class of only five senior sorcerers at the Academy, making Lucius his sole academic superior. The quick-witted Leeds would be good company.
As the din of battle receded into the distance, Lucius slowed his horse to a light, quiet canter. Any raider attempting to steal horses from their pastures would have to be stealthy, and the only way to combat a stealthy opponent was to be stealthy oneself.
The whole situation was an odd sort of pseudo-warfare. The battle at the town had seemed violent, but so far, there had been no casualties reported. A few horses and valuables were not worth death. By the end of the affair, it was likely a few would have lost their lives, but not many, and theses deaths were usually accidental.
As the approached the central estate of a wealthy horse breeder, Lucius dismounted. There were only two very large ranches in the area, and Lucius did not sense Bentley in the area, so he was probably near the other. The first thing to do was to ensure that the proprietors and ranch hands had established an effective defense of the area.
To this end, Lucius entered the house after announcing himself. The family who owned the ranch was well armed, and explained that their two eldest sons and seven ranch hands were stationed at intervals along the perimeter, along with guards in the stables, where almost all of the horses were. This was satisfactory, but Lucius warned that an attack on the stables would be likely. It was also possible that there would be an attempt at arson; these were not uncommon, and in the same vein, during the enemy’s retreat, it would be necessary to guard against an attempt to burn the crops.
From the owners of the horse ranch, Lucius also learned that there had been a few foot soldiers deployed to the area, and that these were combing the nearby woods. It seemed sensible to do a similar thing, so after leaving, Lucius rode to the north end of the far pasture, dismounted again, and walked Volator into some brush, where Lucius covered him with sticks, leaves, and the like. The horse was trained to remain quiet and still, and if set upon, to make an uproar, so Lucius did not risk having his own horse stolen.
The sorcerer then began a quiet but quick walk south again toward the large farmhouse and stables, this time concealed by the trees and bushes that served to separate one field from another. If there were raiders hiding in wait, and if there were any raiders in the area at all, they certainly were hiding in wait, for there had been no cry from the house, then this would be the best area in which for them to hide.
Lucius was almost half of the way back when he heard shouts from the stables followed by hoof beats on the road. Looking out across the pasture, he could faintly discern Leeds riding toward the voices. In another moment, there were gunshots, and then much more yelling in the distance. It appeared that raiders had been lying in wait, but they’d attacked before they could be discovered. Atratus sprinted toward the stables, only to see three men sprinting toward him. They carried guns, but were clearly fleeing someone behind them. Lucius waited for two to pass, then ran out of the darkness and tackled the third, who was quickly bound and left to be found by the pursuing ranch hands.
Lucius then called toward the road. “Leeds! Head across the field and cut those two off!” He heard the hoof beats veer of the road, but they approached him rather than the raiders.
“Bentley! What are you doing? They’re escaping!” This was, in fact, was most raiders did, but it was considered good form to capture a few prisoners to be interrogated or bartered for any valuables stolen.
The hoof beats were upon the young mage. For a moment, a mix of confusion and fright struck Lucius. Why was this rider continuing toward him? Was he in danger? He was certain it was his friend Bentley, but then, what if it were not? He turned and looked up at the approaching rider.
It was Bentley. “What are you doing? They’re running that way!” Lucius was again pointing northward.
“They’re not important. You should call your horse. We need to move back toward the town.”
Lucius did call his horse, but he still had questions. “Why toward the town? Our job is here.”
“Do you hear that?” Bentley asked.
Lucius was still for a moment. The yells in the distance had not stopped. Rather, they’d begun to resemble screams, and an unfamiliar pulse was audible now. There was a blunted, percussive quality to it.
“It’s marching! But what could it be?”
By this time, Volator had arrived by Lucius’s side, and he mounted swiftly. The two then began to ride southward without a break in the conversation.
“Well, I’ll bet that the raiders haven’t gained discipline so suddenly. There’s only one real possibility, and we are at war, after all.”
When they reached the boundary of the town, it was clear that Leeds was right, as unexpected as the situation was. There was a battalion of Republican soldiers marching through! Whatever battle there had been, it was over. Had it wanted, Freboria may have been able to defend itself from a single battalion, but the battle would have been bloody, and there was no real reason to fight. So the Republic had arrived. Rule by the Republic would not be any different from rule by the Monarchy. The count would remain in power. If the Monarchy wanted Freboria, the Monarchy was welcome to fight for it.
Bentley was the first to notice the count’s flag above the lower roofs.
“We should make our way to him. He’ll probably be going to sign some treaty, and when he does, there won’t be any danger, but in the mean time, there are probably still a few stragglers from the raid who could attack him,” Leeds suggested.
Lucius nodded in agreement, and the two began riding toward the banner. Suddenly, there was an explosion, and another man on horseback, came out of the town riding at a gallop, chased by cries of “Assassin!” He was wearing a brown work shirt, had a dark face and brown hair, and was riding a roan horse.
Atratus looked up just in time to see the count’s banner falling to the ground. His heart was flooded with panic. A woman was running out of the town. Lucius stopped her.
“Is the count dead?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
This was all it was necessary to hear. It was now Lucius’s turn to lead. “Come!” he shouted to Bentley. “We must follow him!”
The two were off instantly. “This is awful! That man must be caught!” Lucius felt desperate. A tragedy had just occurred. The specifics were not completely certain to Atratus at the moment, but there had been a raid from a neighboring province. Not long into it, the Republicans had arrived. The turmoil caused by this army had catalyzed the three raiders Lucius had seen earlier to charge the stables before they were ready. On a larger scale, it had forced a general retreat of the raiders. The count had exited the castle to meet the Republican commander and to sign a treaty, but on his way through the village, he’d been assassinated by one of the last raiders to leave the town who had seen an opportunity to create instability.
The assassin was following a road leading north, but after only about half a mile, the trail turned to the right and looped across a large field, turning first east and then south-east. As the pair rode, they could see in the distance a mass of lights that marked the mass of retreating raiders. Between the pursuers and the raiders, it was possible to see intermittently a dark outline representing the sorcerers’ quarry. The case continued, but after a few more minutes, it was clear that the assassin had joined the group of fleeing raiders.
“Do we turn back?” Bentley asked.
“We can follow them. I could pick out the murderer.”
“But wherefore? The deed is done.”
“Freboria is going to be an awful place to live now. Don’t you know the count had no heir? There will be a power vacuum. There’ll be fighting. When a crime like that is committed against my homeland, I want vengeance.”
“The Monarchy will appoint a new count in the absence of an heir.”
“Hah! Freboria isn’t part of the Monarchy anymore.”
“Then what of the Republicans? They’ll keep order.”
“In their practice of allowing the local government to remain in place in insignificant provinces like this, they’ll look for someone with something of a legitimate claim whom they can endorse. As I said, there’ll be fighting. Anyway, this isn’t an occupying force. These soldiers are just passing through. They’re probably part of a larger operation. They don’t have a vested interest in our stability, and even if they did, they don’t have an opportunity to ensure it.”
“What about…”
Lucius lowered his eyes. He knew what Bentley meant. He reached a hand into his pocket and withdrew a blue stone.
“Mother!” Lucius was talking into the stone. It was in fact a two-way communication device that Lucius carried with him in case he needed to contact his family. It picked up sounds and transmitted them magically whenever it was being held.
After a short time, there was a response. “What is it?”
“The count has been assassinated. I’m following the killer. He’s riding out of the province, though…”
“Pursue him. Avenge the count.”
“Ok.” Lucius looked back up at Bentley. Bentley was also an orphan, though he’d lost both parents. He’d been raised in an orphanage until two years ago, when he’d begun working in a clockmaker’s shop as an assistant in exchange for a bed. He had no family.
“Shall we continue, then?”
Leeds nodded.
But the chase only lasted ten more minutes. The two had just fallen into a nearly silent trot a sustainable distance behind the group when a yell arose from both sides of them. They had been too focused on the pursuit, and had let down their guard too much. The night grew darker, the stars faded, and the moon vanished into a swirl of faces.
