The Warlord

WARLORD Chapter 1

This is a non-erotic isekai adventure (stranger in a strange world). Thanks to my editors, Alianath Iriad and Lastman416, for their advice and corrections. Any remaining errors are mine.

I was tired. Once again, I'd got caught up in my latest 'Defence of the Realm' campaign, and completely lost track of time. It was almost 2:45 AM. In my

own

defence, the game was absolutely addictive. It had a complex military-economic-technology system, which was deceptively easy to learn, but quite difficult to master. There were multiple possible paths to victory.

DotR (as it was known in the community) also featured cutting-edge graphics, riveting game play, and incredibly immersive diplomacy, involving complicated negotiations with beautifully-rendered AI avatars (voiced by actors), which also involved marriage alliances. I'd been tempted more than once to consummate an alliance for purely visual or auditory reasons (abetted by my imagination), rather than practical power politics.

I also played Conquest, which was PvP (player versus player). You could wage war or form alliances with up to six other people. That one was a bit less immersive, but very satisfying to win.

Okay, enough nerd talk. Again, in my own defence, I've spent countless hours listening to my family and co-workers talking sports. Honestly? Alabama beat Where's Waldo State 73-3? Athletes making more money than the staffs of entire hospitals? Baseball might be the worst. I couldn't give a rat's ass if the outfielder prevented a home run by catching the ball at the fence. 162 games in a season?

Then

playoffs? All on the way to a supposed world championship - that will be fought out again a year later.

Every

year. The Olympics or the soccer things have a better claim to my attention.

Yeah, sports is the obsession of the majority. Good for them. There are millions of people who watch teams play tag. Auto racing. Cooking shows. Talent competitions that inevitably remind me of high school. Property porn. Whatever. Don't judge my hobby. I'm not hurting anyone (except myself, with the late hours).

I like computer wargames. Strategy games. Chess doesn't get my motor running, but Global World Domination? Empires in Arms? Games have come a long way since Monopoly and Risk.

You may roll your eyes at this point (if you haven't done so multiple times already). I'm only telling you all of this because these games led directly to the most incredible adventure of my mostly uneventful life.

I saved and closed the game, and then opened my mail. It's a weird little idiosyncrasy of mine. I read my email

after

gaming. If I did it first thing in the morning, I could easily slide down the rabbit hole and spend hours answering messages instead of getting started on my working day. Doing it this way, at this time, was a sort of control mechanism for me.

When you're a natural procrastinator, you either fall far behind in your work schedule, or you make a serious effort to avoid screwing around. I'd adopted James Bond's mantra: 'Business before pleasure'. If I got my work done promptly, there would be plenty of time for gaming, without the annoyance of unfinished tasks hanging over my head.

I could also see emails from my supervisor, which often let me know that I was looking at a heavy workload the next day, or some crisis that needed immediate attention. It certainly let me know if I had to set my alarm and get up early, or if I could maybe even sleep in for an hour.

I shut down my PC, turned off my three monitors (I really only need two), and went to my tiny bathroom to brush my teeth. Lights off. Into bed. I resisted the urge to review the last few actions of my campaign, and concentrated instead on clearing my mind. Sleep was slow in coming, as usual, but exhaustion helped me keep my eyes closed.

I awoke to the dulcet tones of my alarm (programmed to play 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' from The Wizard of Oz). Without a second thought (or even a first), I tumbled out of bed.

My room was far too bright. Lacking a window to the outside, there was no way that my bedroom could be flooded with sunlight. But there it was - except that the source of the light seemed to be just outside the doorway. Was it coming from my main room (the atrium, living room, den and kitchenette combined)?

There was no light that powerful in there. I didn't own a light that powerful. I cautiously stuck my head out the doorway. All I could see was light. That wasn't right.

Just to clarify: I wasn't drunk, or hungover, and I don't do drugs. So this had to be some kind of non-pharmaceutical hallucination, or a dream.

I sat back down on my bed, and reached for my phone. It was dead, of course. Deader than a door nail. Yet I always plugged it in to recharge while I gamed. Had I not done that last night? I must have. But now I couldn't google 'How can you tell if you're dreaming?'.

Sometimes, I can be very pragmatic. With my phone dead, it wasn't going to do me any good to sit on my bed naked (and trust me, it's a sight you don't want to see). So, finally, I put on my work clothes: track pants, comfortable bunny slippers, and a faded old Foreigner t-shirt. Ah, the joys of working from home.

I wasn't sure, though, if I was ready to face the light. And there was one morning ritual I wasn't going to be able to avoid, dreaming or not: I had to go. Do people pee in their dreams? Do they shave? Because that's what I did next.

Then I realized that I'd procrastinated enough. It was time to walk towards the light. I experienced the most incredible feeling, as my entire body shivered - except that the sensation began in my scalp, and only reached my feet a full two seconds later.

I didn't expect to stub my toe - or to fall forwards, off-balance. I landed heavily, on my knees. It hurt a lot more than it should have. But then, I hadn't fallen on my well-worn carpet. Instead, I barked my knees on what felt like a block of stone.

Yes. I literally almost landed on my face. I was on my hands and knees on a hard, semi-smooth stone floor.

For some reason, my initial reaction was that I'd just gone through a Star Trek transporter. I knew right away that I wasn't in my apartment anymore.

Both of my knees were probably badly bruised. My dignity took a bit of a hit, too, since I also realized that I wasn't alone.

I was in a completely different room - or chamber, I suppose - which looked medieval: it had stone walls, partially covered by tapestries, with narrow windows. There were torches in sconces set at intervals, though unlit at the moment.

There were three women standing a short distance away. They wore long dresses, covered by outer robes of a heavier fabric. Brocade? The one in the middle stood a little in the advance of the others.

She was evidently the oldest. Her long, thick, dark brown hair was partially pinned up on either side of her head, giving her the appearance of wearing a crown, with long, loose braids hanging over her shoulders. Her outer robe was of burgundy and blue, with gold trim. She wore a blue scarf as well.

To her right was a younger, shorter girl. She had hair so black that it was practically blue. I noticed that her robes were all blue, trimmed with gold. She had huge brown eyes, and very fine features.

On the other side was a taller woman, whose blue robes were partially covered by a piece of scale armour, made of leather and metal. Yeah - I can identify that sort of thing. This third woman was handsome, rather than beautiful, and had blue eyes. I also noted the fact that her armour looked pristine; it wasn't entirely decorative, but she hadn't seen any fighting in it.

The older woman in the centre nodded her head.

- "Welcome, Warlord." she said.

Okay. I have to admit that I knelt there like an idiot. My mouth was probably open. Remember that I was wearing track pants (overdue for the laundry), fuzzy slippers, and a faded concert t-shirt more than two decades old. No, it wasn't my best look.

And just so you know: my best look wasn't all that great anyway. I'm tall, at 6'4", but overweight. I may not be morbidly obese, but most people would describe me as big and fat. And ugly. I don't kid myself. My last girlfriend was nine years ago, when I was 16. Okay, she was also my only girlfriend.

These were definitely strange thoughts to be having as I knelt like a doofus on a stone floor in front of three beautiful ladies in Medieval costumes. The first thing that occurred to me to do was to stand up.

- "Umm... hello. May I ask where I am?"

- "You are in Dahlia." said the older woman. She must have seen the look of simple incomprehension on my face. "In the Decapolis. I am Rona Hadyk."

Decapolis. Deca for ten, and polis, the Greek word for city. Or city-state. But she wasn't speaking Greek. Her unaccented English was perfect. That is,

relatively

unaccented. There were no regional giveaways, and certainly no foreign flavour to her words.

They might have been actresses in some kind of Renaissance fair. Or on a movie set. But wouldn't they have reacted differently to the sight of me popping out of thin air right in front of them - not to mention landing on my ass? They didn't appear to be surprised at all. Disappointed, maybe, but not surprised.

Plus Rona Hadyk had called me Warlord. Just like the game I thought I'd played for far too many hours. I got the definite feeling that I wasn't in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

- "Thank you, Mrs. - umm... Lady Hadyk. Do you have any idea how I came to be here?"

She blinked. "We petitioned the Gods, asking for a way out of our predicament. They answered our call by sending us a strategist without equal."

A strategist without equal? I swear that was what she said.

- "Uh... me?"

- "You are a peerless warlord. Undefeated in the defence of the realm. Victorious in every single campaign of the Empires in arms."

My mouth fell open again. How did she know the names of the games I played? Defence of the Realm? Empires in Arms? But did she know that they weren't PvP? When I played them, I was only fighting the AI. Even on the highest difficulty settings, it was only a matter of time before an even moderately experienced player prevailed against artificial intelligence.

Wait. A weird thought struck me: was I somehow

inside

a game? No, that didn't make sense. No game had the power to light up my apartment and make me trip and fall on my knees - which still hurt.

- "I, umm... I'm not sure that I'm the one you're looking for."

- "Are you not the Warlord Daniel Graham?"

- "Well, that's my name... ah, except for the Warlord part."

Lady Hadyk nodded emphatically. "Then you are the one we have been waiting for. The strategist we were promised. And our need is dire." Then she frowned. "But I am remiss. May I present my daughter, Stephanie Hadyk?" The beautiful girl with the blue-black hair sketched a brief curtsy. "And my niece, Deondra Hadyk." The woman in armour inclined her head.

- "I look forward to working with you, Lord Daniel."

- "Thank you. Umm... your need is dire?" I don't know why I picked that out of everything Lady Hadyk had said, or why I chose to repeat it.

- "Indeed. May we show you?"

- "I, ah... yes. Of course." No, I don't know why I said that, either. Go with the dream? Humour the crazy people? What else was I supposed to do?

The three ladies led me down a short hallway, through what looked to be a dining room, and into an adjoining room, which was dominated by a large table. There were pairs of armed guards at the exits, who wore mail armour and steel helmets, and carried spears. There was also a trio of servants, with their hands clasped together in front of their bodies.

- "Here is our best map." said Lady Hadyk.

It took a bit of an effort not to look up at her in disbelief. A map? This was more of a diagram. There were ten dots on the paper, or parchment, each with a name written above or below. The dots were spread out more or less evenly from left to right, though their positions varied from the top to the middle or bottom of the page.

Amaranth. Bryony. Caladium. Wait - were they in alphabetical order? Dahlia, Eglantine, Flax... Flax? Who names a city Flax? Goldenrod, Hyacinth, Ivy and Jacaranda. Weren't most of these flowers? Or plants, at least?

This wasn't a real place. Maybe I

was

inside a game. Or some kind of artificial construct, at least, designed by a florist or a botanist.

- "Ah... who named the cities?" I asked.

- "They are not cities." said Rona Hadyk. "We call them Production Centres. But to answer your question, the names were granted by the Gods."

- "Production Centres?"

- "We have arranged a tour of Dahlia, so that you will understand. But we thought that you would prefer to see the strategic situation, first."

- "Yes. Of course."

- "There were originally ten families, each in control of a Production Centre. Each family is led by a Matriarch. But after several wars, with shifting alliances, four families came to dominate. We hold Dahlia, Flax and Hyacinth. The Morcars control Caladium, Eglantine and Goldenrod. The Balabans own Amaranth and Bryony, while the Shorrs have Ivy and Jacaranda."

That meant that the Balabans held the western edge of the map, while the Shorrs were on the eastern side. The Morcars had the central position in the north; the Hadyks held the centre-south.

"In my time as Matriarch, we have allied with the Shorrs, or with the Balabans, depending on the situation. But now the Morcars have persuaded both families to ally with them - against us."

- "Are the cities... pardon, the Production Centres - are they roughly equal?"

- "They are perfectly equal, in terms of production capacity." said Deondra, the woman in armour.

- "What is it that they produce?" I asked.

- "Why... everything. Food, resources. Troops and armaments. Horses."

Shit. Their situation was worse than dire: they were doomed. Assuming that the alliance against them held, the Hadyks were outnumbered 7 to 3. They didn't need a warlord; they needed a diplomat. Or to put it another way, they didn't need me; they needed a miracle. Failing that, they needed the cheat codes. Was it only because I was a gamer that I was thinking this way? I was treating this crazy situation - and the three ladies - as if they were real. Or, if not real, at least as if they had some sort of internal logic and consistency.

- "Would it be possible to see another map? One that shows the topography?"

- "Topography?" said the Matriarch.

- "Geographical features. Lakes and rivers, forests and mountains. Major obstacles."

Rona looked at Deondra, who looked confused.

- "There are no rivers, Warlord." said the younger woman. "We have very small lakes. Ponds, really. There are streams, and small clusters of trees. We have hills, but no mountains."

Unbelievable. "May I ask what lies just beyond the edges of the map?"

That question left them even more flummoxed.

- "Nothing, Lord Daniel."

- "The world is flat, then? And what happens if you travel south from... Flax? Do you fall off the edge of the world?"

Now the three ladies looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had.

- "No, Warlord. You come to the Wall."

- "The Wall. I see. And the Wall covers all four sides of the world?"

Apparently it did. So we had a flat, featureless rectangle, with production centres instead of cities. I was still trying to figure out how I'd gotten here. There didn't seem to be an immediate way out. And yes, I'd already pinched myself. Twice. I wondered if I went to sleep here, would I wake up at home? In the meantime, I might as well listen to what the Hadyk ladies were telling me.

"When did the war begin?" I asked.

Again, the women looked confused.

- "War was declared two days ago." said Deondra. "Hostilities will begin in three or four days." She said it the same way you would explain to someone that it gets dark at night because the sun goes down.

- "I apologize, ladies. I know nothing of your world beyond what you've told me so far. I was not prepared to be... summoned. I had no idea what was about to happen when I woke up this morning in my own... realm. You will have to explain just about everything."

- "Where should we begin?" asked Lady Rona.

- "How big is your army? Where is it stationed? What types of troops do you have? And what do your enemies have?"

The matriarch nodded. "Come this way, Warlord."

We left the map room, and turned down a hallway. It was darker here, as there were no windows, but there were lamps hanging on the walls. Deondra collected one of them. At the end of the hall, we came to a large door guarded by four spearmen. Actually, I was surprised to see that two of the guards were clearly spearwomen.

- "You have female fighters?"

Deondra answered. "Yes. Of course."

- "How many of the soldiers are women?"

- "Half. Exactly half."

Lady Rona produced a large key, and unlocked the door. It was a thick wooden door, reinforced with bands of wrought iron. Two of the guards had to help their matriarch to push it open.

Deondra went in next, and used her lamp to light four torches in their wall-sconces.

I'm pretty sure that my mouth fell open again.

There wasn't much in the room. Bare stone walls. Bare stone floor. A curious table with a thick, solid base. An alcove concealed behind a thick blue curtain. And a fiery corona of light that made me think of Stargate SG-1.

Imagine a cloudy oval mirror about eight feet high and four feet wide (at its greatest extent), wreathed in a corona of shifting, swirling white flames tinged with blue.

- "That is our Portal." said Rona.

- "Portal." I said. "What does it do? Is it a gateway of some sort?"

- "Yes. It allows us to travel from one Production Centre to another."

- "How long does it take? How many people can use it?"

- "It takes only a moment. As many people as you wish, I imagine. I've never heard of a limit."

- "So, theoretically speaking... could you use the Portal to smuggle troops into your enemy's citadel?"

Deondra laughed at that. "If only! No, Lord Daniel: we can only travel to production centres that we control. You can take a servant or two. But peons alone cannot use the Portals."

- "Peons?"

- "Our soldiers. Our servants."

- "Ah." I didn't much like the sound of that. Peons, as far as I'm concerned, is a semi-derogatory term used to describe low-ranked labourers - or it's just another word for pawns.

- "This is our Touchstone." said Lady Rona, as she approached the odd-looking table. I followed her there, and found what looked like an overlarge keypad, with strange symbols instead of numbers.

- "This is where we can choose which units to produce in Dahlia." said Deondra. She pointed at the symbols one at a time. "Heavy infantry. Light infantry. Archers. Light cavalry. Heavy cavalry."

Archers. So they were a pre-industrial society. Pre-gunpowder, anyway.

- "Produce? How does that work?"

- "I don't know, Lord. We press the button, and they appear on the parade ground."

- "Wait -

people

just appear?"

- "Not people. Peons. But yes. In units of 100."

- "Armed and armoured?"

- "Yes."

- "And how many units can you produce?"

- "That depends on the type of troops selected. We are limited to 100 points per turn, per production centre."

- "Turn? There are turns?" This was sounding more and more like a game. The three Hadyk ladies seemed to be real people, but their world appeared to be no more than a computer program.

"Could you back up a bit, Lady Deondra? Explain to me how war works here. You can keep it very simple - as if I was a child."

Deondra was an impressive woman. She was tall and attractive, but she also had charisma. Now I was impressed by how quickly she marshalled her thoughts, and then presented me the information I needed in a simple, well-organized manner.