“Damn!” Milo barked before proceeding into a few more picturesque descriptions.
“Quiet,” Ambrose muttered distractedly as he cocked his head to one side, squinting.
“Pardon me,” Milo grumbled caustically as he bent to retrieve his knife. “Do you hear something?”
Ambrose’s brow wrinkled with annoyance, but he didn’t respond until somewhere to the west, there was the faintest crackle, like a chorus of tiny thundercracks. Milo saw a few of the soldiers along the walls of the fortress moving to the higher points of the complex equipped with tripod-mounted field glasses, locations dubbed observation posts.
“Is that gunfire?” Milo asked, feeling the hairs on the backs of his arms starting to stand up, his brain racing through scenarios.
Ambrose nodded and moved toward the wall where he’d left the gear and weapons he always kept close at hand.
“Several rifles, and a pistol or two as well,” the Nephilim said. “From the sound of it, the fire is one-sided, men firing together with fair discipline and coordination.”
Milo wanted to ask how he could tell that from a few muffled pops, but he knew better than to waste time questioning Ambrose about such things.
“People training with firearms?” Milo asked. “A local militia, maybe?"
Ambrose’s cocked eyebrow and the frown he gave Milo were clear indications of what he thought of the idea.
“That or someone is under attack,” Ambrose growled as he slung his rifle over his shoulder and checked a bandoleer hung with rifle magazines. “And they aren’t firing back. You know anyone coming our way that might be a high priority target that wouldn’t carry firearms, at least not modern ones?”
Milo had already scooped up his skin-coat and had his hand out for the raptor-crowned cane.
“Rihyani would have ridden the wind, don’t you think?” Milo asked, taking up the cane and moving toward the motor pool parked outside the fortress’ gate. Ambrose was still tugging things into place as he ambled after his charge, seeming at ease as his big hands worked quickly.
“Maybe they stopped over for a rest, or maybe one of them got wounded by a lucky shot from the ground,” Ambrose proposed as he stumped after Milo. “Point is, we need to get there quickly.”
Milo was already pelting toward the Rollsy before Ambrose finished his sentence.
The British armored Rolls-Royce had been captured in the fighting in Macedonia some time ago, and by a long winding path, it had found its way into the service of Lokkemand and his entourage. It was hardly an inspiring sight, with a ramshackle aesthetic and a drab paint job of heavy gray. Much of the original armor was gone, replaced by cheap, crudely fabricated pieces in the field, and the armored driving cabin had been decapitated. As such, the driver was exposed from above, and whoever manned the machine gun directly behind the front seat, a venerable water-cooled MG 08, had his whole upper body exposed.
But the engine in the rugged automobile, free of much of the old armored bulk, could roar across the rugged hills to the west better than anything else in the motor pool.
A quicker-thinking sentry on the wall ducked into the guardhouse, having seen the pair run for the Rollsy, and hollered down as Milo climbed into the gunner’s nest.
“Keys, Magus!” the soldier cried as he tossed them into the air.
Milo caught them despite the sting of their descent from the top of the fortress wall.
Without delay, he bent and shoved the keys into Ambrose’s hand as the Nephilim clambered into the driver’s seat.
“We’re headed straight west,” Milo shouted up, his words almost swallowed in the wakening roar of the Rollsy. “Tell Lokkemand, and I’m sure he’ll send a bunch of you after us.”
“Very good, sir,” he hollered back. “Will do.”
Before Milo could say anything more, Ambrose had them tearing across the bridge and racing toward imminent violence.
* * *
The sun was dying in shades of vermillion and violet as they vaulted over the last hill to the scene of the ambush.
The attackers were so intent on pouring fire into a copse of trees that Milo’s and Ambrose’s arrival was a shock. The crack of rifle volleys stuttered to a halt as the Rollsy skidded down the hill. Now Milo could see what they were up against. Two staggered lines, each ten strong, had been creeping down the slope, with five-man wings advancing along either flank. They were men in common Georgian dress, chokhas and tall boots, but the rifles in their hands were not local arms. They looked like combat rifles, but none Milo had ever seen.
They’d dominated the field before firing salvo after salvo into the trees where the fey must have been, and despite the pause, they were eager to reassert themselves. He had just enough time to turn the MG 08 on their firing line splayed across the far hill.
The heavy rounds left the short, stocky barrel in a hail of death, stitching a line of rent earth and scattering attackers in its wake. They dove and scrambled into whatever dimples and brush they could find. Milo had only nominally been instructed in the use of the machine gun, and he didn’t believe he was going to put them down with one. He just needed their heads down and their return fire scattered.
As though in answer to an unspoken prayer, a bullet zipped through the air to Milo’s left, and another rang off the plated forequarter of the Rollsy.
Milo pumped out a few bursts of fire in response, but the results were far less impressive with his targets hunkering down and the vehicle plummeting downhill. A second later, the copse came between him and the attackers.
Milo swung his eyes back to the front with no obvious targets and realized there was no way they were going to get the Rollsy between the close-growing trunks. Ambrose, apparently coming to the same conclusion, swung the vehicle to the left and went thumping along the tree line.
“Do you see them?” Ambrose bellowed over the roar of the engine.
Milo squinted between the trees, searching for the radiant creatures or maybe the dark blotches of their heavy traveling cloaks. Fallen limbs and underbrush whipped by, and they were nearly halfway around the copse and heading toward the enemy when Milo began to wonder if they’d misjudged the situation and the fey weren’t here. It still raised the question of why well-armed Georgians were assaulting a patch of trees, but Milo felt the tension mounting in the back of his neck.
Ambrose was going to have to swing them around soon, or they’d plow right under the enemy’s sights, and scattered or not, they would be in a much better position to fire down on the open-topped car.
“I can’t see ‘em,” Ambrose shouted, doing his best to alternate between keeping the Rollsy under control and searching the trees.
“Maybe they need a sign,” Milo shouted back, letting go of the MG 08 and scooping up his skull-topped cane.
“What?” Ambrose replied, stealing a glance over his shoulder.
“BURN!” he said in reply, and two darts of green witchfire lanced skyward and detonated in twin bursts of stinging light above the treetops.
“Magus, down!” Ambrose roared as he swung the car around in a chugging uphill U-turn.
The ambushers’ flankers sent a flurry of shots at the Rollsy as Milo did his best to flatten himself inside the gunner’s nest. Two rounds clanged off the boot, while the rest buried themselves in the churned earth behind the roaring automobile.
Milo thought about hopping up and swinging the machine gun around, but as he was working himself up to it, he spied something amidst the trees—a shimmer, then a flash of silver light between the blackening trunks in the decaying sunset.
“Milo!” a clear voice rang out, and she strode toward him like an elfin queen in an enchanted wood. The bullets hissing through the air and the roar of Rollsy’s laboring engine only made the scene all the more surreal.
“There they are!” Milo shouted, reaching over in his crouch to slap Ambrose’s blocky shoulder while the other hand pointed into the wood. “Right there!”
Ambrose twisted to follow Mil
o’s finger, then a terrible humorless smile split his broad face.
“Hold on!” he howled as he whipped the wheel over and they darted between two trees with scant centimeters to spare.
Milo let out a wild whoop of excitement that transformed into a wail of terror as tree after tree leaped into their path and Ambrose yanked the Rollsy over to avoid impact by a hairsbreadth. In some mad see-sawing path, the bodyguard threaded the three-ton vehicle through the needle’s eye over and over.
When they finally pulled level with Rihyani in the heart of the copse, Milo felt like his whole body was a series of jellied lumps held together by rubber bands. Limp and nearly boneless, he tumbled free of the vehicle to smack into the loamy ground.
“Somebody call for a rescue?” he groaned, his head lolling upward as Rihyani came toward him.
Her fingers were thin and as strong as tines of steel as she gripped him by his coat and hauled him to his feet.
“My hero!” She laughed and lunged forward to plant a fierce kiss upon his lips.
Milo’s body recovered from its flaccid state with remarkable alacrity, and when she finally pulled away her dark lips, he found his feet under him and one arm around her waist.
“That was unexpected,” he muttered, wishing he could make a wittier riposte. He felt saying nothing would be worse.
“Quite.” The fey contessa grinned ferociously before shoving away from him easily. “Now come on, we’re not out of this yet.”
Still a little staggered he spun around to see if Ambrose had seen what happened. Unfortunately, Ambrose seemed more concerned about the oncoming soldiers and survival and seemed to decide that such a situation required more than his Gewehr 98 rifle. Half the mountings that bound the machine gun to the Rollsy had been unfastened, but the big man seemed to have run out of patience.
Muscles bunched in like a nest knotted ropes across his shoulders and arms, and then with a metallic plink, the gun came free. A second later, the ammo hopper was ripped free in a similar fashion. Milo gawked at the display of power but was still unsure how he could wield the cumbersome weapon.
“Ambrose?” Milo called tentatively.
“Half a moment,” he muttered. More quickly than seemed reasonable, he looped some cabling from the gunner’s nest around his neck and the barrel of the gun, then held the MG 08 in his right hand with a belt of brass-cased rounds coiling into the hopper in his left hand.
Ambrose turned to the magus, his face set in a grim frown, not a sign of strain across his frame.
“Yes?”
Milo gaped and then heard Rihyani shouting behind him.
“Just be careful!” Milo shouted and turned back to follow the fey.
“You do the same,” the big man growled, then set off in a heavy-footed lope.
Milo would never have called himself an empathetic man, but by God, he felt bad for whoever ran into the Nephilim first.
6
The Monsters
Milo rushed to follow Rihyani but found himself nearly running past where she knelt next to the large trunk of a lightning-split tree.
Next to her, nearly at Milo’s eye level even on his knees was the Bronze Colossus, his hands pressing down on the belly of the Green Lady. His fingers were dark with emerald blood, and the air was thick with the scent of crushed lavender.
“She’s bleeding,” the giant gasped, his herculean features unnaturally bent into numb shock. “Why is she still bleeding?”
The Green Lady’s breathing was shallow, and her skin paled more with each heartbeat. More than mere death, Milo felt like he was watching the death of a star or ocean, the eternal fading impossibly but inexorably in front of him.
“Milo,” Rihyani said sharply to draw his attention. “Is there anything you can do for her? Our charms of mending aren’t working.”
“It’s cold,” the Green Lady sobbed. “So cold. What’s happening? Beli, hold me.”
Her trembling hands reached toward the metal-skinned titan.
Beli raised a stained hand to stroke her cheek.
“I’m here, my love,” he rumbled, his voice choked with despair, before turning accusing eyes to Rihyani and Milo.
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” he snarled, his words as hot as furnace sparks. “Do something!”
Milo snapped out of the grip of the tragic scene and reached into his coat, snatching up the healing unguent after a second of scrambling.
The Green Lady gasped and shuddered, rivulets of brilliant green liquid running from her lips.
“Milo, hurry,” Rihyani pleaded as somewhere out in the distance, the chatter of the MG 08 echoed beyond the trees.
Milo tore the wax seals from the vials with his teeth and knelt near the wounded fey’s abdomen.
“Move your hands,” Milo instructed, holding the vial at the ready as he drew his focus into a searing point of will.
“You better know what you are doing, ape,” the colossus warned, his voice simmering like molten metal. “If your witchery harms her—”
“Beli!” Rihyani snapped, her voice reverberating with wrathful command. “Do as he says.”
Beli shot Milo one more warning look before his hand came away.
Milo nearly froze at the sight of so much blood welling, but his burning will cried out to be unleashed. With a sure hand, he pressed down to stretch the wound open wide, drawing a cry of pain from the Green Lady as the other hand emptied the vial into it. Blood clung to the unguent, but driven by his will and the burning essence imbued from Milo’s own body in its preparation, it burrowed deep into the wounded flesh.
Like a seed springing to life, it mended and knit flesh together, devouring spare blood and dead meat as it spread. Milo took the gory hem of the fey’s garment and swept away the blood pooling on the skin to better watch and impel the unguent to work faster.
Before their very eyes, the wound began to shrink, and the Green Lady’s pained whimpers quieted.
“Thank Arawn.” Rihyani sighed. “Oh, praises, she’s okay.”
The wound had shrunk to no more than a pinprick, and Milo felt the urgent threat of his regenerative work overflowing the mended flesh. Like cutting a taut string, his will severed the essence from the ingredients. The backlash of unrooted energies crackled through the magus’ body like a live current, and he bit back a scream of pain. As quickly as it had come, it passed.
“Meinir, my heart.” Beli sobbed and bent to kiss her forehead before turning to Milo. “Thank you, Magus.”
“Glad to help,” Milo said, suddenly feeling self-conscious under the giant’s earnest attention. “I’m glad I got here in time. Did they shoot her out of the air?”
“I’m not sure what happened,” Rihyani said, wincing as a stray bullet cracked off a tree a dozen meters from them. “We were wind-riding as usual, and suddenly we felt the currents turn against us. I still don’t understand how it happened, but we knew we had to descend, and as we did, there was a gunshot—”
“Something’s wrong!” Beli cried, then Meinir’s body arched upward, and a weak cry slipped between her lips, along with more blood. With a lurch of his heart, Milo looked down and saw the wound coming apart like a torn seam, blood flowing freely.
“What is happening!” Rihyani sobbed, darting to the dying fey’s side. “Milo, what is happening?”
Milo opened his mouth to answer but then snapped it shut. He didn’t know.
Hunkering down, he held a hand over Meinir’s wounded belly and felt a pressure, almost a tangible force pressing back. It was like another will, different from the resistance a shade might give, but it was strangely distant like a voice coming from a long way off.
“Magus, explain!” Beli roared, and only an outstretched hand from Rihyani kept him from seizing Milo by his collar. “Why is this happening?”
Milo’s mind fractured with a million different theories, terrors, and insecurities. He wasn’t a doctor; he barely understood anatomy, and necromist healing was his weakest discipline.
“I-I don’t know,” Milo admitted, holding up his hands hopelessly. “Something is keeping the wound from closing, even forcing it open.”
They all stared helplessly at each other until a drawling gravelly voice sounded at Milo’s back.
“Hot damn, you can’t tell I didn’t put her to bed now. That’s ten Lincoln skins you owe me, hoss.”
Milo’s daily dose of omnitongue, an elixir that let him understand all languages, relayed the meaning of the words, even as his ears bore the auditory assault of American English. Milo whirled in time to have the rusted bore of a six-cylinder revolver shoved in his face.
“Easy, partner,” warned the ragged voice belonging to the man holding the pistol. “Don’t go gettin’ yourself killed before I can put some money on it.”
Milo nearly choked on the smell of chewing tobacco, cheap whiskey, and oil smoke that seemed to radiate from the man who held the gun on him. He was short and slight, with a rangy bow to his legs and a hawkish face that was so filthy it was hard to know what was stubble and what was dirt crusted across his face. Eyes, jaundiced and bloodshot, met his glare with a wild stare while his mouth was split into a wide grin to display brown teeth and a few flashes of gold.
Milo broke off his glare at the leering face, noting first the worn and drooping cowboy hat and then the cracked and peeling buckskins. Milo stared at the hanging fringe for a second, his mind unwilling to come to grips with what he saw even as he squinted at gnarled hanks dangling along the small man’s arm.
“Oh, you like that, hoss.” The gunman chuckled, blasting Milo with his malignant breath as he flapped an arm to make the not-fringe dance. “Barked each one of them scalps, a collection of sorts. Every one dead at my hand.”
Milo gulped and fought back the bile rising in his throat as he realized the tassels were withered strips of scalp sporting the forelocks of their previous owners. A deep, abiding rage blossomed in his chest.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 39
