Riding Together
I floored the accelerator.
The engine bellowed—vrooooom—and the mercenaries broke apart to either side.
"Out of the way!"
"Watch it!"
One of them froze for a heartbeat under the Humvee's charge and took the hit dead on. Thud. Crack. The blow caught him square in the chest and flung him like a bowling pin.
The upper-body armor he had bought for a fortune, preparing for war, was useless against two and a half tons of steel. Neck, arms, legs—nothing was spared. He went limp and ragged, organs bursting, bones jutting out of his body, and dropped to the ground a corpse.
Splat.
The vehicle that had finished one mercenary so cleanly screamed to a stop.
A charge I had put my heart into, and I had only managed one of them.
But in the brief moment I blew past, my eyes met the Third Prince's. He stood as if hemmed in on every side.
Ah. So the traitors had caught the Third Prince after all.
A good idea struck me at once. Save the Third Prince, and couldn't I expect his backing in Drail? Even buttering up a single chief steward properly shook loose crumbs beyond belief. If I could set a prince at my back—
On Earth, business so often turned on who you knew. In this other world, that was truer still.
I hit the brakes on reflex. The tires shrieked, and I climbed out with the engine still running.
The self-moving carriage that had appeared out of nowhere and gone charging off had suddenly stopped, and the ones thrown into confusion were the mercenaries and Viscount Malic. They had expected me to keep running. Their faces asked why I had stopped.
"You traitor bastards dared lay hands on His Highness—no, even Viscount Malic's arm..."
I had been about to roar at them for attacking the viscount and cutting off his arm, but the words died in my throat. A gut feeling surged up that the mood was not what I had thought. I flicked my eyes quickly among the viscount, the mercenaries, and the Third Prince.
Somehow the viscount and the mercenaries looked like one side.
No way.
When things got complicated, the first order of business was telling friend from foe.
"I am Baron Tera, attached to this battle with the Sahara Mercenary Company. His Highness looked to be in danger, so I came at a run. You stand before His Royal Highness. All of you, on your knees."
As expected, no one knelt. They only sneered.
"That's the baron they say is a mage."
"Right. The weirdo who built a shower on the battlefield and washes every night."
Then Viscount Malic spoke, enduring the pain climbing from his severed arm.
"Be careful. That one's a mage. Best to finish him quickly."
I couldn't tell whom the words were meant for, but I knew they were not meant for the Third Prince. Which meant the friend of my enemy was my enemy.
As if to prove it, the captain of the Bloody Axe agreed.
"Don't you fret. I know well enough how to handle a mage."
At a look from the captain, his men drew daggers and flung them my way even as they charged. The blades came in fast. If I hadn't activated my magic before getting out of the vehicle, I would have been hit dead—or else flailed trying to dodge.
Body Acceleration.
The Haste spell was already active, so my agility and my eye for motion were five times an ordinary man's. I slipped aside from the flying knives and read their movements. But as if they had expected it, they surged at me, swinging the spears and swords in their hands.
Even a simple spell—Magic Arrow, say—needed a sequence to cast properly. First move the mana, then set the target's coordinates, then speak the trigger word. A spell stored in a magic item could skip the first step, but even then it took longer than an ordinary man swinging an arm or a leg.
The captain, who already knew this from long experience, let one corner of his mouth curl.
"Tricky or not, if you just don't give him time to cast, a mage isn't much different from anyone else."
An instant before the charging blades fell across his body, the eccentric mage's hand—the one he had swept behind his back—came forward again. Gripped in it was a long object none of them had ever seen.
Watching them charge, I backed off as far as I could and bought time. At the same moment I reached behind me and thrust a hand into my magic pouch, seized whatever my fingers closed on, and yanked it back out.
What came up in my hand was an AK-47.
I gripped the rifle in both hands and pulled the trigger without even bothering to aim.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!
I had no fear of missing men who were rushing me with knives and spears, so I raked the muzzle across them with confidence.
Pap-pap-crack, bang-bang-bang—!
"Guhk!"
"Krgh!"
"Aaagh!"
The sprayed rounds punched through the charging mercenaries' armor. They had come to a battlefield, so they were wearing solid protection over their torsos, such as it was. But 7.62-millimeter bullets bored straight through that upper-body armor and buried themselves. The shock of the gunfire knocked the charging men backward and dropped them.
I resettled my grip on the rifle that had just poured itself empty and looked at the mercenaries and the viscount, who were staring back with startled eyes.
"Sorry, but my magic doesn't need a cast."
Dealing with the mercenaries was not all that hard. A body under Haste did not easily give ground to men charging in, and I could pour bullets into them as much as I liked.
When the situation flipped, the Third Prince mustered what strength he had left and attacked the mercenary captain. At the end of a duel in which both staked their lives, the prince—his flank opened in a deep cut—finally took the captain's head.
"Urgh."
Corpses of dead mercenaries lay scattered all over the ground. The only one left was Viscount Malic, one arm gone, rigid with fear.
I put the rifle away and drew a shotgun in its place. Just in case. Wary of my surroundings, I approached the Third Prince. Blood was dyeing his waist, and the stain was spreading. The bleeding looked serious.
"Are you all right? That wound?"
"Ah. Thanks to you, I made it through. This... do not concern yourself."
The Third Prince reached into his robes and drew out a wooden case smaller than a palm. When the lid opened, a glass bottle wrapped in cotton and cloth came into view, filled with a purple liquid. He pulled the cork and drank. A faint light then seeped from the blood-soaked flank.
Something that healed an external wound in an instant?
Aphago, hanging at my neck, satisfied the curiosity.
"A top-grade potion. Quite an expensive article. Then again, for someone of a prince's standing, carrying a bottle is hardly unusual."
"Is it expensive?"
I had asked Aphago, but the Third Prince seemed to take it for a mutter to myself and answered.
"Well. I wouldn't know the price myself."
"Ah. No, Your Highness. I was only talking to myself."
"In the past, one bottle was five hundred gold coins. I couldn't say whether the market has risen since."
Holy— Twenty-five thousand grams. Then again, watching how fast that wound had just closed, a price like that made sense. One of those meant buying a life.
"The treasure vault of the underground dungeon is lined with things far grander than this. Should you only sign the contract, all of it would become yours."
Aphago shoved a formal contract at me at every opportunity. A top-grade potion was tempting, yes, but I was not the sort to be taken in by something like that.
Still—if he had been carrying something like that, would there have been no need for me to step in? Probably not. I had watched the fight with the mercenary captain for a moment, and judging by the hit he had taken in the flank, there likely hadn't been time mid-battle to pull that out and drink it. Which meant I could fairly consider my own contribution substantial.
Pleased with that thought, I glared at Viscount Malic.
"The mercenaries are all down. Viscount, just what reason did you have for attacking His Highness? It's time you confessed properly."
"S-spare me. I'll do whatever you say, just my life, please..."
Before he could even finish—
Shwik!
I threw myself aside from a cutting rush of air that came from behind. Fortunately the slash passed me and went for Viscount Malic.
Shk!
The viscount's neck, severed in a single stroke, flew through the air and fell.
Thump.
"Ah. No."
I turned to find the Third Prince sliding his sword back into its scabbard.
"A traitor cannot be left alive."
"But still, we needed to know why he was after Your Highness..."
I caught myself mid-sentence. Damn.
Why would a viscount drag the Third Prince all the way to a battlefield like this just to kill him? That meant someone else wanted the Third Prince dead—someone of high enough station to entrust a job like that to a noble of viscount rank. Even this far, it was the classic plotline of a power struggle. And the standing rule was that anyone who got mixed up in a fight for power, generation after generation, never came out of it looking good.
The Third Prince taking the viscount's head might mean he already had a rough idea who was behind it. And that he had not wanted me to hear it.
Then the prince's bleak voice continued.
Certain, then. Damn it.
The one mercy was that he didn't seem inclined to kill me in Viscount Malic's place and silence every witness. I thought back to the sword he had just swung. Once or twice, the triple-layered Iron Skin vest would probably stop it. The problem was whether I could even hit a prince with a gun. At least I had already switched to the shotgun. That was some comfort.
Thinking that, I eased backward a little. In politics, the best policy was to keep as much distance as possible.
"Then, since Your Highness seems recovered, I'll be on my way."
"Hm? You're leaving?"
"Yes. Truth is, when the main force collapsed earlier I was fleeing—no, retreating. I mean to return to Drail as I am."
"Splendid. I'll come with you."
Ah, damn it.
Before I could invent an excuse, the prince was already walking toward the Humvee.
"Ah. Well. There are slaves inside with me, so it may be too unclean for a prince of your birth to ride. Please."
"It can't be helped. As you can see, the horses are all done for. I'll impose on you a little. You don't mind, do you?"
I wanted to say no. But I still hadn't learned how to throw a refusal at royalty, and I couldn't resort to force either. In the end I went to the prince waiting before the rear door and opened it for him myself.