Into the Wild Read online

  It was nice to know that the professor was actually paying some attention, but the Cygnaran Reconnaissance Service had declared any information related to Culpin’s plot to destroy Caspia a state secret. “I’m afraid I don’t recall the event you speak of, your lordship.”

  “The CRS is slipping. It was in the broadsheets.” Baron Wynn put the wine bottle back in position where it strategically served as a paperweight before wiping his lips with the ornately embroidered sleeve of his robe. “You destroyed a city landmark.”

  “The Protectorate explosives did that,” Cleasby corrected him and then immediately regretted it. “Technically, we only set it on fire.”

  “Technically? There’s a giant blasted hole down by the docks. They’ve still not filled it in. Did General Rebald really think no one would notice?” Wynn looked up for the first time, as if waiting for confirmation about the kingdom’s intelligence apparatus, but when Cleasby just stood there, noncommittal, the professor went back to his notes.

  Cleasby glanced around the office. Baron Wynn was a respected historian, so as expected, his walls were covered in tacked-up maps of Immoren with boundaries both modern and ancient. There were rows of shelves filled with books and artifacts, and between the shelves were stacks of wooden boxes overflowing with assorted trinkets. It was really more of a haphazard storage area than a proper scholar’s office, but as a student of historical literature, Cleasby would have loved the time to browse in it. Sadly, before he could wander around to look at the interesting things, the professor suddenly started paying attention to his presence.

  “My university works closely with the Strategic Academy, and in exchange, the army is happy to loan us troops when we need them.” Wynn finished scribbling a note and then paused to study the young lieutenant for a moment.

  This wasn’t a superior officer, so he wasn’t required to stand at attention, yet Cleasby still made sure to use good posture. It always helped to make a good first impression. His dress blues were perfectly clean and pressed. Of course, his uniform was tidy because it had spent most of the last year packed in a trunk. His day-to-day outfit tended to be more practical, not to mention bullet resistant. Cleasby knew that in his dress uniform he didn’t look like much—just a thin, bookish type who appeared to be even younger than he actually was. Since he didn’t fit the dashing image of the modern Cygnaran soldier, most people mistook him for a clerk rather than heavy infantry.

  Wynn scowled, then went back to his writing. “You don’t strike me as a war hero.”

  “I never claimed to be one.”

  Since he wanted to make a good impression on such an important person—and was hoping to get a junior faculty position at this university shortly—he’d even worn his Distinguished Service to the Crown medal. The army didn’t just hand those things out for nothing. Yet from the mixture of boredom and apathy on Baron Wynn’s face, apparently Cleasby’s attempt had failed.

  “Regardless, my expedition requires you to provide for our safety. Some of the best minds in Cygnar will need protecting.”

  “It is an honor,” Cleasby lied. The 6th had just been granted some much-needed leave after a season of strenuous campaigning, and he would have much rather gone on vacation. Luckily, most of his platoon would be able to stay in Caspia, and he could staff this temporary additional duty with a handful of volunteers. It wasn’t as good as leave, but it beat being sent back to the front. “My superiors have authorized the release of one squad to assist the university.”

  “A squad… That’s, what, ten?”

  “Give or take.” In truth, he wanted to inconvenience as few of his hardworking soldiers as possible so the rest could spend some time with their families. The final number of soldiers would be whatever minimum Cleasby thought he could get away with.

  “I suppose that will do, provided the rest cut a more intimidating figure than you do.” Wynn himself was pudgy, and he scratched one armpit absently as he mulled it over. “Should we be beset by bandits or wild beasts, I expect your soldiers to throw their bodies in front of any dangers we encounter. My archeologists are rare and valuable, but the kingdom has an overabundance of common soldiers.”

  Eccentric was one thing, but rude was another.

  “Storm Knights are not common.”

  “Are you correcting me, boy?”

  Cleasby almost blurted out the first thought that came to mind, which included the phrase ignorant civilians, but no matter how insulting he might be, Wynn was not only a potential future employer and member of the nobility but a regular correspondent with the king. Cleasby forced himself to take a deep breath before continuing. “No, my lord. May I ask the nature of this expedition?”

  “A find of potentially vital importance has been made in the hinterlands. Some gold miners found something fantastic.” He picked up a charcoal rubbing from the disorganized mess on his desk. “These are from the site and are of rare ancient languages far beyond the understanding of that Rathleagh fellow.”

  “Earl Rathleagh of Rimmocksdale?”

  “No, his dim-witted uncle, Casner of Ironhead. But it doesn’t matter. He is of no importance.”

  The professor picked up a huge book that, when he opened it, raised a cloud of dust. He began flipping pages as he searched for something, ignoring Cleasby once again. The young officer felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Baron Wynn seemed to be a terrible person to have to take orders from. This assignment wasn’t shaping up well at all.

  “If you’ll pardon my interruption, your Lordship, my orders stated you’ll be traveling deep into the Wyrmwall Mountains. My squad is made up of heavy infantry armed with galvanic weaponry.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re Storm Knights. Our weapons shoot lightning.”

  “I know what ‘galvanic’ means. I’m a professor!” he shouted, indignant.

  “Of course, but perhaps heavily armored men throwing lightning bolts aren’t the best fit for your mission parameters in the wilds.” Every soldier thought his branch of the service was the finest, but at this point Cleasby was just hoping to get out of the assignment. “Maybe a squad of rangers or long gunners would be better suited to your needs.”

  “No. They don’t have you as an officer. Your name was suggested.”

  Maybe I should have waited until after my discharge to fill out that employment application. “By whom?”

  The professor waved his hand dismissively. “One of my assistants. The taller one, I think. He said you used to be quite the student before you enlisted. The way he spoke so highly of you suggests you’re not as stupid as most men who have no better prospects than joining the army. I’m sure the majority of your soldiers will be dullards, but this way at least one of you will be literate, and I could always use an extra secretary.”

  Cleasby tried to keep his expression neutral. Insulting his troops was like insulting his mother. “On the contrary, I’ll have you know—”

  “Ah ha!” The professor found what he was looking for in the book and copied something over to his list. “A rutting gorax disturbed my last dig site, but it says here that burrow-mawg urine acts as gorax repellent. Go get some.”

  “Burrow-mawgs?” They were vicious, burrowing predators. Cleasby had never even seen one himself, but Corporal Pangborn had told him stories about unsuspecting farmers losing limbs by accidently disturbing the nasty things while they were nesting in irrigation ditches.

  “Not the whole animals. I just need their urine. And it’ll need to be fresh, so you’ll have to collect it directly from their bladders. Two gallons should do.”

  “That sounds like a lot.”

  Then he shoved the piece of paper toward Cleasby. “Here.”

  Cleasby took the note and studied it, perplexed; the professor had terrible handwriting. “This appears to be a shopping list.”

  “Vital provisions you’ll need to procure for the comfort and wellbeing of my people. Now be gone. Our train leaves at dawn, and your men will need to carry my l
uggage. I will not be delayed by slothful soldiers too hung over to wake up on time. Scientific discovery does not wait for the lazy.”

  Back when he was a staff officer, Cleasby would have simply done as he was told and gone shopping, but then he’d wound up in the 6th, where an officer who had not played well with others had mentored him. A bit of Sir Madigan had rubbed off on him, and Cleasby had had about enough of this nonsense. “I’m not your errand boy.”

  “What?” Wynn exclaimed.

  “Allow me to clarify a few things for you, professor. My men are not dullards nor are they servants. They are soldiers of Cygnar, and the only reason you still have this fine university is because we wouldn’t let the Protectorate burn it down. My platoon has been on continual combat deployment since the invasion ended, and while most of them are getting some well-deserved rest, one of my squads has been tasked with babysitting some academics. Your academics. We’re to keep you from being murdered on your little camping trip, but beyond that?” Cleasby tossed the shopping list back on Wynn’s desk. “You will receive from us only as much respect as you deign to give. If that is unacceptable, you will just have to tell my superiors you found the Malcontents unsuitable and request some other unit to protect you.”

  Wynn stared at his list in dismay. “But who will fetch my buckets of burrow-mawg urine?”

  “Send one of your assistants. May I suggest whichever one who recommended me for this assignment?” Too late, Cleasby realized that he’d just insulted one of the few people who could veto him getting a position at this university. He cursed himself for his inadvertent honesty, but the moment to reconsider had passed. Of course, there were other universities who might hire him, but they weren’t as prestigious as this one…or they were slowly decaying into the swamps of Corvis.

  “You can’t talk to me like that. I have tenure. How dare…” The professor’s mask of outrage cracked and a smile crept from beneath. He began to chuckle. “I’m sorry, I can’t keep this up.” Wynn suddenly laughed until it turned into a wheeze. “Oh, you should see the indignant look on your face, lieutenant.”

  It seemed there were other people in the room, concealing themselves behind one of the bookshelves—Cleasby realized it when they began laughing as well. Had he just been the butt of a joke? “I don’t understand.”

  “It really is hard to be so pretentious. Despite my reputation, I’m not that horrible.” The baron had to wipe one eye. “Hell, Cleasby, I don’t mock soldiers. Thirty years ago I was in the Royal Navy until I slipped off a mast and threw out my back. But where’s the fun in being nobility if you can’t pull a lieutenant’s leg once in a while?”

  “One of my corporals is of noble birth. You have no idea,” Cleasby muttered, so annoyed that he could feel his face turning red.

  “No offense intended. I had to test you. I can’t abide a yes-man.” Wynn leaned back in his chair and shouted toward the eavesdroppers. “Come out from there, you two. Lieutenant Cleasby, I believe you already know one of my assistants.”

  A man and a woman appeared from behind the shelves. She didn’t seem to find the situation funny, but the man seemed to think Cleasby’s discomfort was vastly amusing. It had been a long time, but Cleasby recognized the man’s face from his days at Corvis University.

  “Pickett?”

  “Cleasby, old friend,” the tall, broad-shouldered man answered as he came over to shake hands. Back at Corvis, Dalton Pickett had always been the confident, handsome, charming one of their group, popular with everyone but most notably the female portion of the student body. “The last time I saw you was that graduation party at Matilda’s Pub.”

  “Considering how much you drank that night, I’m surprised you remember anything.” Cleasby grinned. This was unexpected. Pickett was from an upper-class family, and Cleasby had come from a working family, but after Cleasby had saved him from failing a few classes, they had become good friends. Pickett had taken Cleasby under his wing and had been almost like an older brother to him.

  “The memories are rather fuzzy. I seem to recall you getting all fired up about something, giving an impassioned speech about knightly honor, and marching off to join the army.”

  As Cleasby recalled, the thing he’d been “fired up” about had been that their nation had been invaded by skorne raiders, and he and his fellow students had been absolutely powerless to do anything about the barbarian raiders who’d marched right through Corvis.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “The boys and I made a betting pool over how long you’d live,” Pickett said.

  “Did you win the pool?”

  “I’m the only one who picked a number greater than one month, so yes.” Pickett turned to the professor. “I told you Cleasby would do.”

  “Blame Pickett here for the harassment. He begged me to do it.” The professor seemed to be enjoying himself. “When I asked your commanding officer this morning if I could borrow you, he warned me that King Leto himself once described you as a painfully honest man. I’m glad to see His Majesty’s assessment was correct.”

  “Pickett was always good at amusing himself. Some things never change.” Cleasby was embarrassed but relieved. Being the victim of a prank was better than having to work for an obnoxious nobleman. The other assistant hadn’t spoken yet, but she was nervously jittering about, obviously eager to interrupt. She struck him as the impatient sort. Cleasby nodded politely at the woman. “Nice to meet you, Miss…?”

  “Clemency Horner. Field archeologist.” She was several years older than he was, redheaded, freckled from the sun, stout of build, and nearly as tall as Pickett. While Pickett was dressed like an instructor, Horner’s rugged work clothes were patched, faded, and there was dirt beneath her fingernails. “Around here, we like to say that these two handle the books, and I handle the picks and shovels. I’ll be in charge of the laborers we hire in Ironhead Station. Your men will be watching out for mine.”

  “Why, exactly?” Cleasby asked. The professor and Pickett exchanged grins of excitement. Wynn quickly handed him another piece of paper, this one covered in charcoal rubbings. Cleasby glanced at it. “I hope this isn’t another request to extract bodily fluids from savage animals.”

  The professor shook his head. “These runes were taken from the ruins just discovered in the Wyrmwall. Do you recognize the language?”

  Back during the days he’d been hanging around Pickett, Cleasby’s area of expertise had been historical literature, a field of study that was entirely useless in his current duty of wrangling Storm Knights, but Cleasby seldom forgot anything. “This is ancient Molgur.”

  “Very good. And these?” Wynn handed him another.

  “Molgur. From the style, an extremely old variant,” Cleasby said without hesitation.

  “One of the oldest on record,” Pickett said. “But what about the other language alongside of it?”

  Truthfully, he had no clue, and because he wanted to secure a position here, he was hesitant to guess incorrectly. “I’m unfamiliar with it.”

  Pickett looked a little smug—he obviously knew something Cleasby didn’t—but Horner came to Cleasby’s defense. “That’s not surprising. It’s an obscure alphabet, hypothesized to be a written version of the extinct language spoken by the precursors of the Clamorgan people.”

  “We have samples of it from all across western Immoren, but no scholar has ever been able to translate it before,” the professor explained. “There are many ancient records in this language languishing in storage at various libraries, their contents a mystery.”

  “Hmmm. From the format, these appear to be the same things, repeated.”

  “Correct.”

  “And that’s never happened before,” Cleasby said. “These are from the same site?”

  “Indeed, lieutenant. They’re from the same stone. And from what I’ve been told, there are many more like this.”

  “With parallel passages to Molgur, it would provide a key. You could finally translate all of those
ancient records.”

  “I told you he was clever, professor,” Pickett said.

  “Indeed, Lieutenant Cleasby, this is a potentially tremendous find that could revolutionize historical research. That’s why we’re throwing this expedition together in such a rush. The local baron there is an ambitious sort but… Well, I’ll deal with him in time. Politics are my problem, not yours. I intend to survey this site, and if it pans out, then we’ll fund a more permanent excavation.”

  Cleasby couldn’t help but grin. It was this sort of pursuit of new knowledge that had drawn him to an academic career in the first place. If it hadn’t been for the war, this would be exactly the sort of thing he’d be doing right now. This had just gone from being a terrible, boring assignment to an exciting one.

  “My associates get to be enthusiastic because I’m the one who has to handle our logistics,” Horner said as she walked to a nearby map. She pointed at a red pin that had been stuck to the southwest of Ironhead Station. “Our problem is the location. I’ve done digs from the Gnarls to the Bloodstone Marches, and I’ll tell you there are places within our borders that can be just as wild as anything in western Immoren.”

  Cleasby checked the map. The pin was in the middle of Cygnar, far from any border. The biggest rail lines in the country ran right through it. The region was the source of most of Cygnar’s coal and iron and was an industrial powerhouse. “Ironhead Station is a big city. You wouldn’t expect an area so close to it to be very dangerous.”

  “The ruins are in the wildest part of Mansgrave Province. They were only discovered because some miners were cutting a road. This is one of the most sparsely populated areas in the whole of Cygnar. The site is less than twenty miles off a Steelwater Rail Line, but that line passes through a whole lot of nothing first. The map doesn’t give you an idea of just how rugged these mountains are. This whole area here,” Horner moved her finger around the red pin, “has only a handful of tiny villages. The locals have constant problems with wild beasts.”

  “Though I asked for the army’s help, I believe Horner is overestimating the danger,” Wynn said as he came around the desk to join them at the map. “Frankly, I think this will be more of a grand adventure.”