Emitting the most incendiary profanity in his repertoire, he slumped back to the bed of the Rollsy. He glared up at the underside of the metal lip framing the armored bed while rubbing the knot forming on the top of his head gently. He’d attempted to bed down in the cab, but the armor-encased cockpit had proven singularly uncomfortable. In the end, he’d clambered back into the bed and fallen fast asleep. As he slept away the miles and the restorative regenerated his depleted blood, somehow during his slumber, he’d managed to slide up against the front.
For some time, he stared up at the offending lip until he realized there was a distinct lack in the ambiance. The chugging rumble of the Rollsy’s engine was gone, as was the slight but distinct vibration that coursed through the frame of the vehicle. They hadn’t just stopped; the engine was off.
Still muttering curses, he pressed against the truck and slid back to blink up at the brilliant blue sky of a clear spring morning. Propping himself up on his elbows, he saw the rising peaks of the mountains, white-frosted crests emerging from the rippling waves of green that swept across the horizon.
Again, Milo felt something stir in his chest, something which cried out, “Yes!” He wished for nothing more than to climb a peak and never come back down.
Then his head throbbed, and he coughed as his painfully dry throat reminded him of the restorative’s desiccating effect. The dull, painful grip of reality returned him to the immediate situation. With a snarl and an arm thrown over the side of the truck bed, he clambered onto his feet and looked around.
For an instant, his heart seized at the sight of the empty cab, but a frantic sweep revealed Ambrose’s location and reason for stopping. The instant he spotted him, Milo was torn between crying out in shocked disgust or deprecating laughter, but since his throat was dry, only a soft croaking cough came out.
The bodyguard stood a dozen strides or so from the Rollsy on the other side of a small mountain stream which burbled so softly Milo only heard it once he knew what to listen for. The big man’s clothes were stretched out next to the stream on some large stones, while their owner stood a stride away, relieving himself against a mossy boulder. Ambrose was nude and had clearly just finished washing in the stream, his great lumpy body glistening as he dried in the cool air. Auburn hair plastered to his head, he leaned back, savoring the fluid expulsion, one hand aiming while the other raked and scratched his markedly paler backside.
In the stillness of the scene, Milo could hear Ambrose talking softly in French. Milo realized he didn’t understand because it had been too long since he took the elixir allowing him to understand all languages.
All the same, Milo held very still for a moment in a desperate attempt not to be noticed.
It wasn’t his nakedness or that Ambrose was talking to himself that sparked Milo’s desire to remain unnoticed, but that watching Ambrose like this was perhaps the only time Milo could see Ambrose with his guard down, or at least as close as the old soldier got. Even without a stitch of clothing on, the Gewehr and belted sword hung from one rocklike shoulder.
Quietly as he could, Milo fetched the elixir of tongues from his coat and administered the necessary salve to his ears. Ambrose’s words attached to their relevant meanings as he began to slide the small tin disk back into his coat.
“Not sure, either way,” the big man muttered as he rolled his shoulders in a vigorous stretch before shaking out the last of his effluent. “But I do know the boy’s only going to get more dangerous as things go on. I’m going to need your help knowing what’s what—”
Klink!
His attention divided between Ambrose and being stealthy, Milo hadn’t noticed he was putting the salve tin in the wrong pocket, and it struck the glass vials kept there. Before Milo had time to register all of this properly, Ambrose spun, the Gewehr appearing in his hands.
Reflexively, Milo threw up both hands, dropping the tin in the process, raising further clamor as it clattered on the bed.
There was a single second where Milo felt what hundreds of men must have felt throughout the last century before the Nephilim ended them with a shot, but the moment passed in a single heavy heartbeat. Then Ambrose thumped the rifle butt on the ground.
“You need to be careful about sneaking up on folk, Magus,” Ambrose muttered, resting a shoulder against the barrel of the rifle. “Could lead to messy consequences.”
“Not sure which I’m more afraid of,” Milo confessed, hand still raised. “The weapon in your hand now, or the one you were holding a second ago.”
Ambrose threw back his head and trumpeted a bawling laugh that echoed up the slopes and back. He rocked back, leveraging the rifle in one hand while slapping his bulging, thickly thewed stomach with the other.
“Best hope it never comes to that.” He snorted before hoisting the rifle over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of either.”
“Don’t suppose I would,” Milo said as he slowly lowered his hands. “Now, do you plan to arrive at the church like that, or can we get on our way?”
Ambrose chuckled as he looked himself over, then strode toward his clothes.
“Suppose no one’s virtue is at risk.” The big man chuckled. “But I'd hate to be the cause of some nun’s broken vows all the same.”
Ambrose scooped up his clothes and trundled across the stream to the Rollsy. He tossed the garments halfway over the cab door for a quick inspection. This close, Milo saw the vast network of scars covering the big man’s flesh. Self-conscious in his staring but unable to look away, Milo assessed that there didn’t seem to be a place on the man that was not a finger length away from three or four other scars. They were varied as well, from the dark, cloven lines of slashes to the raised keloidal scars of burns. Some rolled and shifted with his muscular bulk, while others seemed fixed deep in his flesh, so they barely moved.
“You live long enough like I have, you collect some souvenirs,” Ambrose said without looking up from inspecting a hole in the leg of his trousers. “A few fun stories among them, but most are stories of being a fool or unlucky.”
Milo looked away, embarrassed to have been caught scrutinizing the man so blatantly. Then a thought occurred to him, and curiosity overcame his shame.
“But when you came back from Kimaris killing you, you healed everything,” Milo said, pointing at Ambrose’s face. “You didn’t just grow back the essential parts. You don’t even have scars from it.”
“What’s with all the other decorations?” Ambrose offered.
Milo nodded as his eyes charted a path between a puckered scar on the big man’s belly through to a matching scar in the back.
“As far as I can tell, which isn’t much, mind you,” Ambrose began as he pulled his undershirt on. “When I do the whole die-and-come-back bit, I get put back together just as I was before the thing that killed me happened. Everything that came before and everything that comes after, so long as it doesn’t drop me, stays.”
Milo nodded and took one last look at the ragged seam of scar tissue above the clavicle and a circular scar that must have been a gunshot wound under the arm. Those and over a hundred others were wounds that Ambrose had survived.
“Any of them still bother you,” Milo asked.
Ambrose nodded as he carried on the business of getting dressed.
“A few,” he muttered as he tugged on his trousers. “I’ve learned to live with the aches and pains. Some of them even help me know when I’m hurt because if I can’t feel them sawing on my nerves, I know I must be in bad shape.”
“To live is to know pain,” Milo mumbled. “Only the dead know peace.”
“Cute.” Ambrose sniffed. “Especially given you know that’s not always the case.”
Milo felt an odd chill and shook his head to dispel the thought of glinting eyes and teeth.
“Maybe.” He turned his eyes to the western horizon. There was nothing but the green-skinned Caucasus Mountains in spring, but Milo knew that somewhere beyond one of those rises wa
s Tsminda Sameba, a church that Rihyani had said would help save her.
“How much longer?” he asked, turning back as Ambrose was buttoning up his collar.
“Another eight hours,” the bodyguard said as he ambled toward the back of the bed, where fuel cans had been arranged and bound by a length of rope. “Maybe less. We’ve made fairly good time, considering there is nothing like a decent paved road in this country.”
Milo gave a low whistle when he realized that meant he’d been asleep for nearly twenty-four hours. He supposed that explained why he was refreshed if a little sore. Looking down at the Nephilim, he found himself thankful that it seemed the half-angel viewed sleep as recreational interest, enjoyed when possible but hardly necessary.
Ambrose, having clambered up to grab two fuel cans, gave a strong sniff, then swung a frown toward Milo.
“Seeing as we’re having such a good time,” he said in an exaggeratedly delicate tone, “maybe you’d like to take advantage of the stream over there too.”
Milo squinted at the bodyguard, who grinned sheepishly back as the magus bent his head to take a quick smell. What greeted him was striking enough that without another word, he hopped down from the bed and began shedding clothes as he made for the stream.
The stream was clean, clear, and heart-stoppingly cold. With a gasp, he felt his skin erupt in gooseflesh. Despite the initial shock, it felt good to rinse away the days of sweat, blood, and other strong scents that had accumulated on his person. At its deepest, the stream only came up to his knees, so Milo had to stoop and plunge his shivering arms in to draw out water in cupped hands.
He’d slapped a double handful across his face when he noticed Ambrose had approached a bar of soap in one hand and a small towel in the other.
“Thanks,” Milo said, taking the soap and starting a lather on his chest and underarms.
“No problem,” Ambrose muttered, his gaze roving across Milo’s chest and shoulders before he pointed at a crudely tattooed cottage resting on a taloned foot on Milo’s left arm. “Any of those still give you trouble?”
Milo looked at his own tapestry of old wounds and ink, each a bittersweet memory. He remembered the days when he believed he was part of a band of brothers, when he’d felt they were bound together in a pact of defiant hope. For all the hurt and fear that had come after, he couldn’t help but see the old marks and remember the few good times in his short, ugly life.
Then his eyes settled on the skull on an orthodox cross on his wrist, and he felt a sharp, hot sting in his chest. Nostalgia became bitter ash at the back of his throat, and he spat into the stream.
“A few,” he muttered and went back to washing.
12
The Unlikely
Tsminda Sameba was a romantic’s phantasm, sprung from canvas into the real world.
Sitting atop a high hill before the steep slopes of Mount Kazbek, its steeple and separate belltower made it look as though it was a gatehouse perched before the arduous trek to the white-headed peak. The track up to the church wound a penitent’s grueling path in a series of switchbacks and a final looping spiral to the courtyard of the church. This final run around the church was dotted with votive alcoves crowned with crosses, clutching icons to their stony bosoms. The entirety of the scene left both men muted in wonder and trepidation as the Rollsy chugged up to the courtyard. A wall of stacked stones ran alongside the courtyard channeling foot traffic, if there had been any, from the courtyard to a smaller stone-paved platform that led to the church doors.
A black-garbed man built like a low-slung ox stomped out of the church doors, waving his hands furiously at them as he skirted along the wall.
“You didn’t tell me you had family here,” Milo quipped as the Rollsy slowed to a stop.
“You noticed the tell-tale family coloration, did you?” Ambrose chuckled as the man came storming up to the cab, black beard bristling as his dark eyes glowered furiously at both of them.
“This is no place for soldiers!” he shouted, only partially out of anger since the wind and the Rollsy engine made a conversational tone impossible. “Turn this car around and head back down the way you came.”
The man planted himself firmly in front of Milo’s door, arms crossed over his broad chest. Milo couldn’t open the door without hitting the man, which he assumed was precisely the idea.
“Hardly hospitable, Father,” Ambrose called in Russian, turning off the engine as he half-rose in his seat to face the irate man. “What about a little Christian charity for weary travelers?”
“Not priest, deacon,” the man said in broken Russian. “Need things to go village now!”
With a jab of his finger, he pointed down the hill at the village of Gergeti, which Ambrose and Milo had been keen to avoid lest their presence cause a stir. A few men dressed like German soldiers might lead people to assume a German force was moving through the area, and while the agreement between Germany and Georgia had held thus far, Milo’s errand was too important to take chances.
“Deacon.” Milo spoke up, the elixir he’d learned in Ifreedahm granting him the ability to be understood in any language the hearer spoke. “We don’t mean to intrude, but we are looking for someone. A word, and we’ll be on our way.”
The deacon turned to Milo, bushy eyebrows raised in surprise as he looked the magus up and down.
“There is no one here but the priest, me, and one another deacon,” he said, curiosity stealing some of his bluster. “We have no business with soldiers, so you must be in the wrong place. If you are really looking for someone, you would be better off talking to those in the village. Please, go back down now.”
“We aren’t soldiers,” Milo said as he stood up and swung one lanky leg over the cab door. “And we’ll be off as soon as we can. We need to ask about someone and have you or the priest point us in the right direction.”
The deacon eyed the magus warily but took a single step back so Milo could dismount without standing nose to nose with him.
“Tell me who you are looking for, and I’ll tell you if I have anything to say,” he declared with a shrug of his shoulders. Despite his attempt at unruffled control, Milo didn’t miss how the man eyed Ambrose’s Gewehr.
“We were sent by the contessa,” Milo said, meeting the burning eyes under the man’s beetled brows. “She told us to come here and ask to see the marquis.”
The deacon stood for a long time, staring at Milo as the wind whipped across the worn paving stones of the courtyard. Milo held the man’s gaze, fighting the sudden and dominating urge to scratch his nose as the faintest smell of incense reached his nostrils. Behind him, the Rollsy creaked as Ambrose shifted impatiently in the cab.
“Wait here,” the deacon said before turning on his heel and walking back to the church.
With a relieved grunt, Ambrose threw himself out of the cab and set about stretching his back as he eyed the double doors and the paned windows above. The stones were centuries old and looked it, their surfaces pitted and chinked. Despite this, though, he could easily pick out the details and decorations graven there. Standing in its presence was like standing before a sleeping titan whose foundations rested beyond the ken of time, even though intellectually, both men knew the place couldn’t have been more than five hundred years old.
“What do you think the odds are someone starts shooting us while we stand here?” Ambrose asked, throwing a quick look around the area. “If it was me, I’d also have put a sharpshooter over in that belltower to hit from two different angles.”
Milo eyed the belltower that stood separate from the church, a rounded tower where open archways would project sound and serve as excellent sniper nests.
“That is assuming these are a batch of militant priests stockpiling for some ill-fated crusade,” Milo said as he silently told himself to stop searching the belltower for the glint of sunlight on a scope. “Not a bunch of surly old hermits using the religion as an excuse to hide from a world that’s never done anyone any favors.”
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Ambrose clucked his tongue and gave his head a wag.
“I’ll admit that mine sounds paranoid,” he said, shuffling behind the cover of the Rollsy’s armored hood. “Yet somehow yours is even sadder.”
Milo shrugged and defiantly stayed where he was, scuffing a boot against a paving stone.
“It’s a gift,” he muttered and looked up as he heard the groan of the church doors swinging open.
“What, being wrong?” Ambrose grunted as he nodded at the deacon, who was returning with another man in black, both carrying rifles.
Milo planted the cane in front of him and controlled the urge to lash out in waves of crackling green fire. He imagined that if the men had intended to shoot him, they would have done so from the cover of the door. This was a show of force, demonstrating that they were armed and weren’t afraid to use those weapons on soldiers if need be. At least that was the show they were putting on.
Milo put on his best ingratiating smile and held up his hands in a slow, easy manner.
“Good deacon, there is no need for—”
The ox-shouldered deacon’s rifle thundered, and Milo winced as he heard the shot zip over his head.
Milo realized that perhaps this wasn’t as much of a show as a demonstration.
“How do you know of the marquis?” the deacon growled as he chambered another round.
Milo looked at the two men, searching for how to explain.
The other man in black was slighter, taller, and older, with a gray beard on a face that seemed graven in stone. A look into his flinty black eyes told Milo that one wrong move and he wouldn’t be firing warning shots. Surreptitiously following the man’s aim, Milo could tell the man’s rifle was trained on Ambrose on the other side of the Rollsy. Milo didn’t doubt his bodyguard was hunkered down with his own rifle trained over Milo’s shoulder. As unyielding as the men seemed, Milo didn’t doubt Ambrose could drop both of them in short order.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 46
