Reiner Blackbrick had not waged war as he wished. When he had ridden east with a Gunslinger to participate in the latest offensive aimed at driving the Eighth Legion out of the Empire of Kaleth and back beyond the border of the Duchy of Riverland, he had hoped to return home with a few battle scars to impress his various girlfriends and mistresses, a few trunks full of war booty and battlefield souvenirs to sell on the black market, and a few saddlebags full of gold coins he would have won from his fellow soldiers in games of chance held behind the cavalry stables.
Instead, what happened? He had been wounded in the first battle and this had forced him to sit out the rest of the offensive, in a border town between the Kingdom of Lothal and the Empire of Kaleth, which was getting further and further away from the front line as the large army of the Kingdom of Lothal pushed back the invading forces.
Invasion by the Empire of Kaleth was a relatively common occurrence, each year, at harvest time, the Empire would deploy one of its eight legions to make an offensive against the Duchy of Riverland. Given the superiority of the imperial legions, the Kingdom of Lothal had no choice but to reinforce its army with militias composed of peasants without military training.
Generally speaking, the forces of the Kingdom of Lothal were mostly composed of peasants recruited from all the provinces of the Kingdom. Only a few, like Reiner, possessed combat training; most of the Kingdom's nobles simply hired mercenaries or their houses possessed private military forces.
While Reiner was recovering from his injuries, he had single-handedly unmasked an Empire sorceress disguised as a priestess, and killed her before she managed to spread disease and confusion through the army. But had the army showered him with accolades and promotions for this heroic act? No. Due to the blind stupidity of his superiors, they had accused him of murdering a priestess and perpetrating precisely the crimes that he had prevented the false nun from committing.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, his arrest had coincided with a counterattack by the seventh legion which had joined the eighth legion, and the outcome of this new offensive had been so uncertain that trifles like courts martial and executions had been postponed while the conflict reached its bloody conclusion. Reiner had spent months in various cells, as he had been shuttled back and forth as the ups and downs of the war demanded. Finally, half a year after the war had ended, he ended up in the garrison prison at Smalldof Castle, a Kingdom outpost located just over the Grey Mountains in the Duchy of Riverland, far to the north of the main conflict zone, in a cell filled with riffraff of the worst sort, awaiting hanging at dawn.
No, it had not been a good war. Not at all.
Reiner, however, was not the kind of man to give up hope. He was a gambler, a follower of Sylph, the god of luck and chaos. He knew that someone shrewd with an eye for opportunity could tilt luck in his favor. He had already managed to bribe the stunned jailer with tales of the treasure he had hidden before he was arrested. The man was going to secretly get him out of prison at midnight in exchange for a share of that fictitious treasure. Now all he needed was another accomplice. The road to freedom would be long and dangerous: he would need someone to stand guard while he slept, to push him over a high wall, to watch while he stole horses, food or clothing from their rightful owners. Most of all, he needed someone to stand in the way of the authorities in order to escape if they were caught.
♦ ♦ ♦
As the sun set on the other side of the bars of the dungeon window, Reiner turned to study the rest of the dungeon's occupants and try to determine which of them might be the most suitable traveling companion.
He was looking for the right combination of skill, steadiness and credulity, qualities not easily found inside a prison. The others were exchanging stories about how they had ended up in prison. Reiner pursed his lips as he listened. Each of them was convincingly proclaiming their innocence, the stupid fools! In his opinion, none of them deserved to be there.
The engineer in the corner, a brooding giant with black eyebrows and hands the size of cheese, shook his head like a bewildered bull.
"I didn't want to kill anyone, but they wouldn't stop. They kept harassing me. Jokes and nicknames and..." His hands flexed. "I didn't strike to kill, but we were making a siege tower and I had a sledgehammer in my hand and..."
"And you're a huge bloodthirsty orc who doesn't know the extent of his own strength, that's what," interjected a burly, bald pikeman, fitted with a knob pointing forward.
The engineer's head jerked up sharply.
"I'm not an orc!"
"Easy, man," said another pikeman, as thin and malnourished as his companion was stocky. "None of us need to add to your troubles. Hals doesn't mean it maliciously. It's just that every now and then he lets his tongue get out of control."
"Is that how you got here?" asked Reiner. He liked the look of that pair, vigorous peasants skilled at hard labor, and wanted to know more about them. "Is it that your mouths dug a hole you couldn't fill with your fists?"
"No, good sir." Replied the thin pikeman. "We are completely innocent. Victims of circumstance. The Baron who led us..."
"A half-witted oaf who couldn't even get out of bed without a map" interjected Hals.
"Our lord" repeated his friend "was found with a pair of pikes stuck in his back, and somehow the officialdom ended up blaming us. But as the very coward was fleeing from a charge at the time, we believe he was killed by the Imperials."
Hals laughed ominously.
"Yes. The Imperials."
In the shadows near the door, there was a chuckle. A guy with white teeth and long sideburns gave them a wide grin.
"No need to make up stories, boys," he said in an accent noticeably from the south, from the Republic. "We're all in the same boat, aren't we?"
"And what do you know?" growled Hals. "I suppose you're pure as the driven snow, why are you here?"
"A misunderstanding," replied the fellow with the long sideburns. "I sold some arquebuses I found to some boys. How would I know the Kingdom is so fussy? How would I know they don't like their militiamen using firearms?"
"Kingdom soldiers don't need those trinkets, you thieving mercenary," interjected a knight who was sitting near the door. "Only good spears and trusty swords."
Reiner eyed the knight warily. He was the only one of noble blood in the dungeon besides himself, but Reiner did not feel there was any affinity between them, Reiner regarded firearms as the evolution of crossbows and bows. The knight was tall and strongly built, with unruly blond hair and piercing blue eyes, a hero through and through. Reiner was sure the guy did the military salute even in his sleep and shit.
"You seem awfully enthusiastic for a man who has been thrown in jail by his Kingdom" he commented dryly.
"It was a mistake that will no doubt be rectified" replied the gentleman. "I killed a man during a duel of honor. That is not a crime."
"Someone must have thought it was."
The knight waved a hand indifferently.
"They say it was a little boy."
"And how did he earn your antagonism?"
"We were playing at stringing a tent peg with the point of the spear as we galloped past. The imbecile crossed my path and made me miss."
"A criminal offense, no doubt," said Reiner.
"Do you mock me, sir?"
"Not at all, good gentleman. I would not dare."
Reiner looked past the knight, where stood a lanky archer, a dark-haired little man more handsome than dashing.
"And you, my boy, how does one so young get into a situation like this?"
"Yes," Hals interjected. "Did you bite your nanny's tit?"
The young man looked up with flashing eyes.
"I killed a man! My tent mate. He..." The boy swallowed spittle. "He tried to get his hands on me. And I'll do to any of you what I did to him if you try anything like that!"
Hals bellowed with laughter.
"A lovers' quarrel then?"
The boy jumped to his feet.
"Take that back."
Reiner sighed. Another exalted one. It was a real pity. He liked the boy's brio. An undaunted sparrow in a nest of hawks.
"Easy, boy," said the skinny booby. "It was nothing but a joke. Leave him alone, Hals."
A tall, thin figure stood by a wall, a nervous-looking gunner with a neatly trimmed beard and wild eyes.
"I abandoned my catapult. The Fireballs of the imperial mages were falling from high in the sky. A supernatural fire. It was coming for me. I..." He shuddered, dropped his head, then sat back down abruptly.
For a moment, no one spoke or looked anyone in the eye.
"At least this one is sincere." thought Reiner. "Poor guy."
In the cell was one more man who had neither spoken nor seemed interested in the conversation: a squat, neat guy wearing the white canvas jacket of the field surgeons. He remained seated facing the wall.
"And you, " Reiner called to him. "What was your blunder?"
The others looked at the man, relieved to be distracted by something else after the gunner's embarrassing confession.
"Come on, sir," Reiner insisted. "All of us here are dead men. No one will reveal your secrets."
But the man said nothing, just dropped his shoulders more and continued to stare at the wall.
Reiner shrugged and leaned back against the wall to look again at his cellmates and consider what alternatives he had.
The gentleman, no: too excited. The engineer, neither: too fussy. The pikemen, maybe, though they were a fine pair of scoundrels.
The sound of footsteps on the other side of the cell door interrupted his thoughts. They all looked up. A key turned in the lock, the door creaked open and in walked two guards followed by a sergeant.
"Get up, scum," he said.