The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2), page 43
Sir Kelley wrestled with something deep inside, his arm raised and pointed at the wolf-headed ‘naut. Taking in a breath through his helmet, he shifted his arm four centimeters up and three to the right precisely, and clenched his fist.
A sound like tinkling glass rang through the air.
Sir Ulstead froze, his arm drifting down. One wicked eye was still beaming golden light towards them. The other was shattered and dark. The Caravan ‘naut toppled sideways, majestic and ponderous, like a hundred-year oak ripped from its roots. His body echoed against the tiled floor.
The garden was still, except for the noise of battle in the great hall next door. Potshots and sniping from the the Caravan side were met with a thunderous outpouring of Delian musket fire in disciplined volleys. Screams and cries hung chillingly in the air. The heavy frantic sounds of footsteps in retreat clomped up the great staircase and echoed through the hallways. For Torvald’s beleaguered garrison, it was only a matter of time.
Sir Kelley lowered his arm. He looked at Lundin through his sharp, inscrutable visor. Lundin could see Elia and Martext safely outside, their arms waving in the air as they cheered. But even with Greatsight, all his attention was on the lean black ‘naut at his side.
“Well?” Sir Kelley said, his voice harsh and mechanical through the suit.
Lundin wet his lips. “Sir?”
“Do I get a ‘thank you’ for saving your miserable life?”
He blinked. The sunlight was streaming through the broken ceiling, shattering into rainbows against the fragments of glass.
“Thank you for saving my miserable life, Sir Kelley,” he said quietly.
Kelley looked at him through his helmet. The senior ‘naut stood, grunting with pain, and dusted the dirt off his armor. He rapped Lundin on the head painfully with his metal knuckles. “That’s a start,” he said, loping towards the door.
Lundin pushed himself to his feet. Rubbing his head, he followed his former boss out into the sunlight.
Epilogue
Iimar’s golden robes were torn and muddied. His handsome face was wet with tears. “We are undone,” he said again.
Dame Hanah watched the shifting lantern light as it cast shadows on the inner walls of her tent. The wizard and his honor guard had caught up with them after sprinting through the woodlands for hours. A waterskin set out for Iimar was still untouched. In his agitated state, convincing him to sit down had been ordeal enough.
She leaned forward on her stool. “You’re certain, then, that Torvald has been taken.”
“We stayed near the keep as long as we dared. We heard every last shot until we could bear no more.”
“Was Torvald taken?”
“He may have been butchered, for all I know! Spheres forgive me. I left him in alone that room. I doubt he even moved to defend himself.”
“Agreed,” Hanah said thoughtfully, tapping her fingers against her cheek. “Why would he?”
The wizard gaped at her. “Surrounded by his enemies, and the dishonor of certain capture? Why would he not?”
“What did he say to you, before he sent you on?”
“He must have been raving. The attack was Providence; this was his path to the Throne; I was to tell you what he’d done.
“Dame Hanah?” Iimar the Enchanter looked at her, perplexed, as she pushed herself to her feet.
“To strike a blow takes bravery. To open yourself up to one takes true courage,” she said, a sad, proud light in her hazel eyes. “What a King he will be.”
“Only if we rescue him first,” Iimar said, exasperated.
“The handsome, well-loved heir is robbed of his succession by archaic rules and power-hungry Regents. He is forced into exile. When he dares to spread charity to the common people through his Golden Caravan, the Regents storm his castle, slaughter his followers, and haul him away in chains.
“Can you bear the thought of such a man tossed into the dungeons, or strung up on the gallows?”
“No, by the Spheres! Of course not!”
“Then you’ll dedicate your every breath to seeing him free again?”
“Yes!”
The wizard was on his feet, pressing himself close to Dame Hanah’s face, his eyes alight with desperate conviction. She looked at him, her silver hair twinkling in the lantern-light.
“So will everyone else who hears the story,” she said with a smile.
*****
“The burning King of Delia, huh?” Samanthi rested her arms against the wall of Fort Campos and looked out towards the sunset. The northwestern corner was supposed to have the best view of the fading star; and it was magnificent, as long as you didn’t look down at the masonry, which had taken some serious shelling in the attack a week earlier and had yet to be fully repaired.
Lundin rubbed his arms, nodding. “He’s got an army out there. Old Delians. Svargath.”
“He’s got normal idiots on his side too,” she said, sighing. “That’s what worries me most. Eventually, a bad guy runs out of soldiers. But idiots just keep growing back.”
“Yeah.”
A breeze blew past. It was Auloi now; the summer was moving on towards fall, and the evening winds weren’t as warm as they used to be.
“How’s your squad?” Samanthi asked, a little too loud, staring out into the trees.
Lundin sighed. “Well, Willl with three L’s is long gone; north with the other rebels, as far as we can figure. Dame Miri is fine, no matter what you throw at her. I think Elia is still asleep in our old loft. And I can never figure out Martext—”
“You like them?”
“I.” He rubbed his hands against each other. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m their senior tech. I may not deserve to be, but I am. And so the least I can do is to like them.”
“Spheres, Lundin, don’t be so effusive.”
“No, I do. I do like them.”
Samanthi turned to him. Her brown eyes were bright with a dozen different things. “You ever miss the Recon squad?” she asked.
He looked back at her. The sun was setting crimson and gold through the trees behind her.
“Absolutely,” he said, quietly.
Samanthi nodded. She looked to the side, developing a sudden interest in the turrets to the south.
“It’s just that. Scuttlebutt is, the Board of Governors might want to expand the mechanized wizardry project, seeing as Torvald’s army cares about it so much. They might even want to make it its own squad.”
“A whole squad?” Lundin’s jaw dropped. “With a seat on the Board, and everything?”
“If this is the wave of the future, nobody wants Delia to get blindsided.”
“But the Board has always hated the idea of adding new squads.”
“Well… so maybe they’d just fold whatever squad was currently the smallest squad into the new project, you know? Especially if the squad that was currently the smallest had a kind of huge, broad, impossibly vague mission?”
Lundin’s heart started beating a little faster. “Something the other squads did anyway,” he agreed. “Something like ‘Reconnaissance?’”
“Something like that,” Samanthi said idly. She looked sidelong at him.
“What do you think, senior tech?” she said. “Do you think there’s room in your project for a few more hands?”
Lundin looked at Samanthi. His face started to glow.
“You two are ridiculous,” Mathias said.
They both wheeled on him. He grinned up at the techs, his long wavy hair flowing down his shoulders as he stood on top of the repair scaffolding.
“You’ve got to come to Haberstorm Hall,” he said. “Dame Miri’s going to kiss Sir Kelley on the lips if he can juggle five scarves at once.”
The techs looked at each other.
“He can’t,” Samanthi said.
“She won’t,” Lundin said.
“But can you take that chance?” Sir Mathias said, his brown eyes pleading.
“You’re the burning ridiculous one,” Samanthi said, shooing him away. “We’ll be right there.” The big ‘naut slid down the scaffolding and took off across the courtyard at a run.
“I think—” Lundin began.
“Senior tech?”
“Spheres, Martext!” he said, pressing his hand to his chest. The bespectacled tech tilted his head, perched on top of the scaffolding. “You people know that there is a staircase up here, right?”
“Sir Mathias said this was more fun,” Martext shrugged. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I finished cataloguing the scrolls and notes we brought back from the keep. You know, all the documents about Enchanting. And.”
“...uh-huh?”
“They’re pretty comprehensive,” he said. Martext took a long time to get the next words out. “They’re an incredible resource, Horace. You were right to want to stop for them.”
The two men looked at each other. “That’s it,” Martext said, starting down the scaffolding.
“Hey, Martext?”
He froze. Lundin looked over the wall at him, sorting out what he wanted to say.
“You know how Dame Dionne assigned you to make life easy for me?”
The other man nodded.
“Well, you’ve been terrible at that. So bad, in fact,” he said, putting his hands in his belt loops, “that I would be happy to send a letter to Dame Dionne and get you reassigned. I’ll suggest you get your own department, or some other punishment befitting the severity of your failure. What do you say?”
A quiet, bright smile crept over Martext’s face. “My own department? That’s pretty cruel, senior tech.”
“Well, that’s me. Pretty cruel.” Lundin looked down. “Should I write that letter in the morning?”
He drummed his hands against the scaffolding, lost in thought. “Burn me,” he sighed at last. “Let me sleep on it.”
“Fine,” Lundin said. “It’s only right that the offender should have time to fully contemplate and appreciate the depth of his shortcomings, and the cosmic rightness of the punishment—”
“Overdoing it,” Samanthi whispered, poking him in the shoulder.
“Sleep on it,” Lundin said. “And, uh, Martext? Thank you.”
Martext flicked a finger away from his head in salute and sank out of sight, shaking his head.
“I’m waiting for the next one to pop up,” Lundin said, peering down.
“Bunch of burning prarie dogs,” Samanthi said, her eyes flashing with amusement.
They both stared down at the flagstones.
“We should go down—” he said.
“Whatever happens, Lundin,” she whispered at last. “I want you to know that the next time you get kidnapped? I want to be right there with you.”
He frowned. “I don’t want to get kidnapped again,” he said.
Samanthi opened her mouth, then closed it. She nodded several times, clenching her jaw.
“Right. Absolutely,” she said. “Just as I would much rather work with you than be kidnapped with you.”
“Right. Me too,” he said, smiling.
“Right.”
They looked at each other.
“Will you just go down the burning ladder?” Samanthi burst out. “If I miss seeing Sir Kelley catching squares of silk I’ll never forgive myself.”
Lundin let her go down first instead. He sighed as he looked out into the sunset past the trees. Muffled cheering rang out behind him, as the Petronauts and the soldiers celebrated inside the fort. There was plenty to celebrate, of course. The Golden Caravan was on the run. Prince Torvald was in their custody. And I brought my team home safely. His throat tightened up. Spheres. I promised to lead them home, and I actually did it. All his pride and relief was concentrated in a little ball just above his lungs. It caused him physical pain with each breath. He wiped his eyes hastily with the back of his hand, so Samanthi wouldn’t see.
A nightbird shrieked in the treetops. Lundin looked up at the trees, realizing anew just how small even a place like Campos was amid the looming wooden hulks on all sides. The feeling in his chest subsided as he felt the rough stonework under his hands. The shadows in the Tarmic were visibly lengthening. Soon, it would be impossible to see anything in motion out there; impossible to know what was coming their way until it was knocking at the fortress gates.
He shuddered, unexpectedly cold in the late summer wind. With one last look out into the darkening forest, Horace Lundin climbed down to the ground below.
About The Author
“In [The Wizard That Wasn’t], Rovik demonstrates his skill... convincing and realistic multidimensional characters... rich drama and intrigue... the dialogue is witty and fast-paced.
I truly enjoyed Rovik’s work.”
—Indie Book Blog Database
“It's always a pleasure to discover a new indie author who knows how to tell a good story... If you want to see what it looks like when dieselpunk-fantasy is done well, get a hold of this one.”
— Mike Reeves-McMillan, author of City of Masks
*****
Ben Rovik is the author of the Mechanized Wizardry series and the related short story collection Petronaut Tales. Ben is also a published, award-winning playwright (writing as Ben Kingsland), and spent many years as an actor before finally deciding to settle down into a sensible career: steampunk novelist. He’s one of ten people who graduated from Johns Hopkins University with no intention of becoming a doctor. He lives in Maryland with his wife, daughter, two cats, and a great deal of wine.
Email: benrovik@gmail.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BenRovikBooks
Blog: http://benrovik.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @benrovik, #MechWiz
Other Petronaut Tales
Arm’s Length
Sir Roland of the Bulwark squad has a suit built to take enormous punishment so his comrades don’t have to. When the Delian schooner Granite comes under attack from two corsair clippers, Roland and his tech are duty-bound to defend the sailors and civilians on board. But keeping the pirates at arm’s length is going to take some unorthodox measures…
Ebook for $2.99
*****
Aloft
Junior technician Ensie Thalanquin is the odd girl out in the Aerial squad. When she falls for a civilian machinist, can they keep a relationship afloat despite the differences in their backgrounds, the meddling of their superiors, and the pressure of a dangerous flight test a few short weeks away?
Ebook for $2.99
Sample from The Fate Of The Faithful
Book Three of Mechanized Wizardry
War is coming to the city of Delia. Traitors from the kingdom's past have joined forces with the armies of Svargath, the sprawling theocracy across the mountains, to bring the battle to Delia's streets.
As the war's first skirmishes begin across the Anthic Thrust, Horace Lundin and the Petronauts race desperately to keep Delia's edge in the newly developed discipline of Mechanized Wizardry. Delia's spellcasting machines just might let them stave off the massive offensive; but only if the other side doesn't master the new technology first.
Lundin, Samanthi, Sir Mathias and Sir Kelley leave the city on a quest for the building blocks of magic. Their success might keep the war from spiraling out of control, but their failure might mean the end of the Crown they serve.
*****
Seven hundred years ago, a man and a woman climbed into heaven. No one in Svargath had been happy ever since.
Homst had never asked for happiness. He rubbed a hand up and down his arm, thinking the motion might distract him from the cold. It didn't warm him, but the coarse linen did abrade his skin in a diverting manner. That was the best he could hope for, for the rest of his life: that one pain or another would distract him from the greatest pain of all, the one that would never heal.
The pain of being ordinary.
Water lapped against the side of the barge as its great waterwheels churned through Lake Vaal. None of the eighty men and women packed shoulder to shoulder in the depths of the boat had anything to say. The raspy cough from a woman astern was the only human sound.
Homst looked around the hold at his countrymen. He caught the eyes of another man whose eyes were shockingly blue against his ruddy face and black beard. The man returned his stare with weary disinterest. He had no reason to welcome Homst’s attention, or to defy it.
Once, there was such a fire inside us, Homst remembered, studying the man’s features. Inside each of us. We were all so sure that we were walking in the footsteps of the Vanished; that we, personally, would find the trail they’d left behind; that we would be the first to leave this world and join them at the Zenith.
He ran a hand over his face. They all knew differently now.
Homst rubbed his pigskin shoes against the floor. The vessel was as marbled with grime inside as it was out. He remembered the gray spatter of frost and dirt on the metal hull as they’d led him up the gangplank. The beams above him were also filthy, rusting at the seams and sticky with soot from the coal boilers. The boilers were a rumble just at the edge of his hearing, though he could feel the monotonous reverberations they sent coursing through the hull.
Boots on the ship’s ladder caught his attention. One of their handlers was descending into the hold, the wicked tendrils of her flail leading the way. There was no need for her to have the weapon drawn; the human cargo had long since abandoned the impulse to resist. It was a different story two years ago, when a barge like this was taking us in the other direction, Homst thought. But could you riot against the passage of time? The change of the seasons? Would even the mightiest rage keep an apple from rotting in the sun? The answer was always no. They understood that now.
