But now there was more.
Terror, danger, and quite possibly madness, but oh, so much more.
That realization galvanized him, awakening him for the first time in a very long time until he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. However dark, there was wonder and mystery in the world once more, and what was better, he, humanity’s first wizard, could seek it out and experience it.
Colonel Jorge had instructed him to report downstairs to the captain for further instruction and to be outfitted as part of an investigative team. The captain had been waiting at the bottom of the stairs, as dour as ever, and wasting no time in ordering Volkohne to report to the woman with the severe bangs. Once there, she’d asked him for his uniform measurements, which he could not remember quickly enough to avoid more sour glares. Scowling beneath her burdensome shelf of hair, she tugged a completed requisition out of her typewriter and practically threw it at Milo, who realized that in spite of everything, he was smiling broadly.
Form in hand, he returned to Lokkemand, who headed out of the building without comment, Milo scrambling after him. Two blocks down the street toward the park, a small supply depot had been set up in the shell of a mortar-scoured building. A squat, canvas-back truck that had not been there when they’d passed the structure earlier sat idling in front of the building, its tailgate hanging down in what seemed naïve expectation.
Within the depot, a Blackcoat quartermaster and a colonial soldier stood at the head of a room crammed with rows of crates and boxes, a rough-topped table between them. The quartermaster was berating the colonial in a profane and impressive mix of German, Russian, and Polish. The colonial took the verbal lashing, which seemed to center around appropriate clearance and paperwork, with much grinding of his bared yellow teeth, and he seemed ready to respond in something quite contrary to the supposed spirit of unity. He stopped when he noticed Lokkemand standing there. He sized up the captain at a glance, and seeing the balance was not in his favor, turned to leave. Milo, still basking in the glow of his recent revelation, didn’t notice the sharp, low look that came into the man’s eyes as he spotted the new magician on his way out.
Lokkemand grunted an instruction for Milo to hand the form to the glowering quartermaster, a stout man with an impressive if lopsided mustache who took the paper with a huff. He scanned the missive, then raised an eyebrow and looked from Lokkemand to Milo and back before he set off among the rows of crates, muttering blasphemies and curses in several languages.
Outside they heard the truck rumble to life and then set off with a congested blat.
“Get sorted and then wait here,” Lokkemand had instructed. “I’ll send your bodyguard to collect you shortly.”
“Bodyguard?” Milo asked, emerging from the happy haze for the first time since leaving Jorge’s presence too late.
Lokkemand was gone.
So it was that Milo stood in the depot, mind aching and whirling with wonder, yet never happier. He was so lost in thought, he was nearly bowled over when the quartermaster returned and tossed a canvas bag into his chest. Fumbling like a drunken juggler, Milo just managed to keep the bag from hitting the floor, and then, realizing the bag was undone, he made another quick scramble to keep its contents inside.
“Try it all on, just to make sure,” the office grumbled in Polish. “I’ll get the rest sorted.”
Milo peeked inside the bag and saw a folded uniform, along with a bundled greatcoat. Everything was matte black. Milo would have argued that there was some mistake, but when he raised his head, the quartermaster had disappeared among the rows of crates again.
“This day isn’t shaping up so bad after all,” he mumbled to himself as he fished out the greatcoat and let it unfurl in his outstretched hands.
The Federated armies had adopted the black uniform to distinguish themselves from the colonial forces a decade ago, which was plenty of time to imprint a powerful image in people’s psyche: a tall, grim officer clothed like the Grim Reaper striding the hellish battlefield, unafraid and implacable. Milo knew, intellectually at least, that the reality was far from this prosaic creation, but it had its appeal.
With childlike haste, he put down his bag and slid into the coat.
It fit well across the shoulders and was long enough, but he was keenly aware his taut, wiry frame did not fill it out, especially through the arms and chest. All the same, it felt good. Powerful, even.
He looked into the bag and thought maybe the uniform would help make up some of the difference in the size. The thin, threadbare rags given the penal conscripts were often described as “whatever the moths couldn’t stomach,” and were mismatched to boot. Pants too short and a shirt so wide he had to fold it in on itself had been par for the course for him for months.
He shucked off the greatcoat, but he was careful to bundle it up and place it reverently back into the bag. He imagined he’d get dirty soon enough, but for the moment, he’d keep it pristine if he could.
Milo began to draw out his new regalia, grinning as he gathered the pieces in his arms: starched trousers and shirts, even a crisp undershirt that was so clean it must have been unused. At the bottom of the bag, he spied the glint of a new belt and new boots. Milo had never known a proper Christmas morning; such luxuries were rare for children with intact families these days, much less a foreign orphan, but what he felt wasn’t far from what such lucky darlings experienced.
He let the garments slide back into the bag and looked at the uniform with a giddiness he would have been embarrassed to express. He began to untuck his shirt, eager to be rid of the sweat-soured memento, when he remembered what lay in the interior pocket. It was something he could no more cast off than his own skin.
In the small receptacle that rested over his tattooed chest was a folded tarot card, scorched along one side and frayed on the other edges. Its back was a series of strange, silvery constellations on a pitch-black sky. The face of the card, or should he say faces, were better known to him than every scar that marked his frame, but he could not bring himself to look at it.
There had been few happy moments in his young life, and he was determined to not sully this one with aching visions and melancholy.
Palming the card, Milo began to yank his clothes off to try his new uniform. His months as a conscript had expunged any shyness about being naked long ago. The first time he had been forced to stand bare and shivering with those who would be his platoon for inspection and delousing, he’d come to accept it as one more necessity of his grueling existence. Now naked from the waist up and with his trousers unbuttoned, he didn’t have the wherewithal to be thankful that no modesty impinged on his eagerness.
The quartermaster didn’t quite see it that way, though.
“What the Devil are you doing?” the man barked as he emerged from the stacks again, dumping an assortment of sundries onto his table.
Suddenly and keenly aware of his exposure, Milo grabbed at his pants before they fell below his knees and tugged upward.
“Y-you said to try these on,” Milo stammered, gesturing with his free hand to the new clothes.
A stream of profanity curdled the air, and the quartermaster jabbed a finger toward a narrow door set in the wall left of the entrance.
“Use the room for such things,” he snarled, mustache quivering.
Blushing from forehead to the tops of his shoulders, Milo scooped everything up and darted toward the door. It swung open on squealing hinges, and though there was no electric light inside, a long, smeared window let in blurry sunlight. The pale illumination of the morning shone on a room that was little bigger than a closet. A washbasin stood opposite the window, sharing the wall with rust-spotted milk can that must have served as a chamber pot. He could smell a strong odor, sort of industrial soap and ammonia.
“And don’t come out until you’re in a respectable state. Blasted colonial savages!”
Milo closed the door behind him, blunting another salvo of polyglot abuse.
As
quickly as he could, Milo finished undressing and began putting on his uniform. As he did so, he heard the rumble of a diesel engine that sidled up next to the depot. Idle curiosity had Milo peering through the begrimed window, but he only had a vague impression of a truck through the streaked glass as he buttoned his shirt. As voices filtered from outside, he supposed that it was just some men to pick up last-minute supplies. Maybe the lambasted soldier had gone and gotten the right piece of paper.
Milo had just fitted his cap on his head, noting its pips were pentacles instead of crenelated circles, and was slipping into his greatcoat. Outside the room, there was a bellow and a heavy crash loud enough that he jumped as the coat settled over his shoulders.
Typically Milo would have been too careful to rush into the situation, but the oddness of his day combined with the empowerment of his new uniform kept him from thinking clearly. Drawing himself up straight, he threw the door open and swept into the room.
“Don’t make me ask where he is again…” a chillingly familiar voice was saying as all eyes in the room turned on Milo.
The quartermaster’s table was upended, its contents strewn across the floor, and the quartermaster was currently being roughly handled by three men in the greasy, mud-colored uniforms of penal conscripts. The quartermaster’s profane tirade had been forestalled by the trench knife one conscript held in front of the man’s face.
Three more conscripts whirled, pick handles in their hard hands. Milo’s stomach sank when he saw the man at the center of the bludgeon-wielding trio.
“Should’ve spent more time wipin’ Fritzy—” Jules began to chuckle, but the laugh died as recognition flashed in his piggish eyes. “Well, well, well.”
“Told you I seen ‘im,” called a voice from the door, and Milo recognized the verbally berated soldier from earlier.
“Shut up, Kasper,” Jules spat, his eyes roving up and down Milo’s new uniform as his lips curled. “How did a little crow like you fetch a Federal commission, eh? What song did you have to sing to get that costume, Volkohne?”
“I didn’t sing on anyone,” Milo spat, the old refrain of him being a treacherous informant sparking his anger to burn through the fear. “I never have and never will. I leave that sort of stuff to you.”
“If I’d known you knew something that valuable,” the petty thug continued as though Milo hadn’t spoken, “I might’ve taken my time in carrying out Roland’s wishes. Who knows, you might’ve lasted all the way to Metz if you sang that pretty for me.”
The mention of Milo’s one-time criminal mentor found its way deep into old wounds, but at the moment, he had to focus on more immediate threats. He felt as much as saw the two men flanking Jules edge forward, cutting off his hope of escape.
“I always knew you were stupid, Jules, but I never thought you were crazy,” Milo snapped, relying on his well-practiced skill at sounding tough when he was terrified. “You really think you’re going to kill two Blackcoats a stone’s throw from a command post and get away with it?”
Jules shrugged, his expression nonchalant even as his eyes shone with hateful triumph.
“Regiment’s moving out,” he said with a jerk of his head. “By the time they find you two, we’ll have fallen in, and if they even have a sniff of who did it, we’ll be on our way to Metz. One paper-pusher and one songbird don’t seem worth stalling a whole reinforcing regiment to me.”
One of Jules’s goons rushed forward, thinking to pounce while Milo was distracted.
Milo gave him a broken nose for his trouble and had almost managed to pry the pick handle from his grip when his companion charged in low. Entangled as he was, Milo could only try to twist away from the chopping strike to the back of his leg. The heavy greatcoat took some of the bite from the blow, but in his distraction, he lost his grip on the pick handle. He flailed after it, but gripping it in both hands, the bloody-nosed thug checked Milo hard across the chest.
Milo hit the wall behind him and staggered from his head rebounding off the plaster. He shook the shock off just in time to watch the compatriot slam a heavy swing into his belly. The air rushed out of him, and he gasped like a landed fish as he dropped to his knees. Something in his mind rallied and roared for him to keep fighting, and he almost managed to retake his feet when the one with the broken nose kicked him squarely in the chest.
Milo was thrown back against the wall again, his head and chest aching abominably as everything took on a dreamy, translucent quality.
“Get him up,” he heard Jules command. “Can’t get that pretty coat dirty.”
They hauled him to his feet and then pinned him to the wall by his shoulders.
“Not sure if they’ve finished the paperwork,” Jules mused as he tucked the cudgel under his arm and bent to scoop up a bayonet blade on the floor. “But do you think they’ll at least bury you in that pretty black coat?”
Milo spat at Jules, tasting blood.
The men holding him in place laughed as Milo strained sluggishly, fighting for breath and his thoughts to start moving freely again. He was supposed to be a wizard, so why now of all times couldn’t he manage some sort of magic? Milo refused to give Jules the satisfaction, but he felt something like bone-deep regret stealing over him.
So close. So close to having and being something more.
“It’s not the latrines.” Jules grinned as he stepped forward to flash the long steel blade in front of Milo’s watering eyes. “But once I gut you, I suppose you will die smelling your own filth.”
The point was brought level with his belly, and Milo willed himself to meet Jules’s leering gaze. He didn’t want to die, but if he was going to, it wouldn’t be as a coward.
“Don’t worry,” Milo hissed as he broke into a snarling smile. “Your breath is close enough to the real thing. I guess you really are what you eat.”
Jules’ nostrils flared and the muscles bunched along his arm.
There was a gristly crunch and a surprised squeal as Kasper toppled away from the doorway.
Ambling—waddling, really—into the depot was a brawny figure who made the sturdy quartermaster look svelte by comparison.
“Pardon me, didn’t see you there,” he muttered softly in a lilting accent, then looked around the room with a shocked expression. “Good gracious me, what’s going on here?”
* * *
The man was dressed in a uniform of the old Prussian style, complete with brass buttons on the faded blue fabric, all of which strained to contain his massive torso. His chest was like twin slabs of granite balanced over an iron cauldron of a stomach, as round as it was hard. His bandy limbs strained the fabric of his coat and trousers, and with every move the hulking creature made, Milo was amazed the ground didn’t shake.
“You seem to be lost,” Jules growled, brandishing the bayonet. “Can you find your own way, or do I need to help you find it?”
The interloper squinted at Jules, his eyes so deep-set they looked like old jade glittering at the bottom of a well. He rolled his jaw to one side and then the other with an audible crack, bristling mustache and sideburns twitching.
“I’m here for that one,” he said, pointing one blunt finger at Milo, his genial tone falling to a dangerous rumble deep in his cavernous chest. “Hand him over in reasonable shape, and I’ll be on my way.”
Jules looked at Milo, eyes narrowed as he used his unenviable intellect to sort out the growing complications in his plan. Kasper whimpered on the floor, gripping a leg that seemed to be pointing at an uncomfortable angle.
“Or else what?”
The newcomer shook his head and clucked his tongue forlornly.
“No or else for you, young man,” he replied, one scarred eyebrow cocking upward with a warning look. “Don’t be foolish.”
Milo couldn’t see so much as a knife on the man’s belt, much less a pistol, so his confidence was somewhere between comical and unsettling. Milo hoped for his own sake that the latter won as Jules took an aching handful of seconds to reply.
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“I suppose they’ll hang me for three easy as two,” Jules chuckled, and the dark laugh was taken up by his cronies.
The bulky man let out a weary, almost sad sigh, then surged forward with a speed that was terrifying to witness and seemed impossible for his ponderous frame. He smashed into Jules, though whether with his fist, shoulder, or wide stomach, it was too fast to tell. The only thing that was certain was that Jules, a brawny fellow by most standards, went flying through the air. He collided with the man holding the knife on the quartermaster, and both of them tumbled into the foremost stack of crates in a lumpy, grunting heap.
Then things became disorderly.
Milo used the distraction to put a knee in one of his captors’ groins and swept the winded man’s leg with a stomping kick to the shin. The unfortunate thug fell back heavily, and Milo used his newly freed hand to jam a thumb into the other one’s eye. The man screamed and instinctively twisted away, letting Milo come away from the wall. No longer pinned down, he gave the reeling, half-blinded man a hard shove that sent him staggering right into the path of the advancing form of the big interloper.
The man, who he had only now put together as his bodyguard, grabbed Milo's would-be captor by the arm and gave a short, sharp twist. There was a wet snap, and the man’s arm bent at a wholly unnatural joint. The man gave a thin, shrill scream and the arm hung useless, the pick handle tumbling free. The bodyguard scooped the bludgeon up, and with a nod, tossed it to Milo.
“Be a good boy and clean up after yourself,” he instructed the man staggering to his feet, one hand cradling the damaged goods between his thighs.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 4
