The mage looked at the newly unsealed page from the wax notebook.
I had destined Maxum Blunt to be the founder of a great military academy to help elevate commoners to officers. To open this school has been his dream for twenty years. In my now disrupted plan, he would be starting his academy in a few months. The path ahead of him after this interruption is far to branched to tell where he would have been in a month.
If you can get his military expertise on your side, you will be able to take your revenge before the liquid unlife kills you. If you fail to get his help your soul is not likely to survive your revenge. I would like to think if you help him build a school, he will help your revenge.
The next page shall be revealed when the head of a scout is brought to you.
The mage tucked the wax notebook into his harness. It was next to his grimoires and pistols. One had belonged to a gate captain. Scab had sorted through the prisoners taken from the former lords' estate. He had presented him with the cavalry commanders' saber and pistol. They had been added to the arsenal under his cloak.
He picked up a jar in the lab and began to commune with the mind inside.
"Not having arms and legs is uncomfortable," thought the voice. "I can feal you. I assume you are the mage and not a dead man. You that pail fucker in the fagitey cloak who tried to brain me with the backside of a musket?"
"I am the mage yes," responded Albie almost confused by the audacity of the head in the jar. "I am Albie Miller the moon mage. You are Sergeant of Arms Maxum Blunt the man who turned a crowed of scumbags into an army."
"You fight like a dead man," responded the old man. "What do you want, why can't I feel my legs?"
"You can't feal your legs because you are now just a head stuffed into a jar kept animated by mage blood," responded the mage. "I want for you to train my army."
"Your army?" asked Maxum. "You mean that mass of dead men? They don't seem the type to need teaching. They shoot about as well as could be expected and follow orders better than any living man ever could. The only thing holding them back is their leadership. So, the thing keeping them from being a real army is you farm boy."
Albie sent the sensation of being eaten alive to the old soldier.
"Ahh!" screamed the old soldier mind. "The fuck was that. The fuck was that farm boy?"
"You are a head in a jar," responded the mage. "The only thing you will feal from in there is what I allow you to feal. Therefore, if I want you to feel like you are being eten alive you will feal like you are being eaten alive. Now will you help me or are we getting back to feeling deaths. I'll let you know I have touched the border between this life and the next. I have suffered three hundred deaths and can bring them all to bear against you."
"Try me you little shit," I've been a soldier for twenty-five years. Fought three wars and watched thousands of men die and personally killed hundreds. I have been starved, frozen, burned and sick half to death but none of that killed me. Your little mind game won't work on me."
The mage inflicted his deaths upon the old soldier who endured. The old man could not be broken and realizing the game without explanation sent feelings of his own. Exhausted from marching cold, sick, and underfed for days and then fighting a battle right after. The mind-numbing boredom of standing still at attention for hours at a century post with only the scorching sun to keep you company. The dread of being told to assault a city wall and the eternity of knowing that tomorrow was going to be a hard battle but having to wait until tomorrow for it to begin. The sorrow and guilt of watching friends and subordinates die all around you. Eating around a campfire with five less friends you had to bury yourself. Watching people, you love die year after year as you get older.
After wat felt like hours of torturing each other both men felt like they could hurt the other no more than they already could. Albie stood panting as the blood in Maxums jar boiled.
"Call it a draw kid?" asked the old man.
"Fine," responded the mage. "I never thought that I would meat something able to resist me. I guess that means I will have to bargain with you. What do you want to teach me war?"
"To start want you to let my men go," responded Maxum.
"Where you the ones who scoured the villages?" asked the mage.
"No," responded Maxum. All of Brands men were busy taking the city. If someone was going from village to village it was either the royal guard or the garrison from the boarder fort. Either way not us."
"I have caught most of the men who got outside the wall," responded the mage. "I can't afford to let a hundred men go. Not if I am going to march on the royal castle. I can maybe stop the pursuit, but my children are having a lot of fun chasing down the rest."
"Can you let my fellow grenadiers go?" Thought the old man. "The other yellow coats who came into this city with me. The ones that are left can you let them live?"
"That is not to great a loss," thought the mage. "I have been told we have a few in captivity already waiting for processing. As long as they are willing to not get in my way I don't mind letting a few go."
"Do it," ordered the old man.
"Will you teach me military tactics if I do?" asked the mage.
"I will consider teaching you something," responded the old soldeir.
"I have been told you wanted to start an academy," Commented Albie.
"I was promised I would be able to open one once this mission was complete," responded the old soldier. "Once we got here, I began to have my doubts that this mission was never going to end or would end badly for me."
"I think you have noticed but my children are becoming smarter than I ever imagined," commented Albie. "The rats taught themselves how to use muskets. Do you think you could teach them? Given time I am sure they will become something fascinating and will need good teachers to carve out a place in the world."
The old mans brain paused and began to run things over in his head. The idea contemplated. The absurdity of it teaching rats to march verses the idea of being the one who taught a hole species how to fight.
"I shall teach the rats fighting," declared Maxum. "If you let my grenadiers walk away. Healed mind you. I won't let you send them away crippled. I also want you to let them fill a sack with treasure. I promised this would be the last campaign they had to fight. You also don't seem to have a use for it."
"It's a deal," agreed Albie. "But if you go back on you word, I will trade whatever is left of my spirit to hunt them down wherever they might try to run and destroy everything in my way to do so."
"I am not some backstabbing noble," responded the old man.