A deep, velvety voice came from the silhouetted figure at the threshold. “Don’t bother with that one, Father. Jesus didn’t go to the cross for the likes of him, I think.”
“What took you so long?” the wretch snarled with a forceful will Father Bunin wouldn’t have thought possible given his condition.
“I came as soon as I could,” the apparent business associate said as he stepped into the house. “But it took some time to find a vehicle that wasn’t being used. That plan of yours is extensive.”
Emerging from the shadows was a shockingly handsome man with dark, smoldering eyes and tattoos crawling up either side of his neck. One ink-scrawled hand raked through wavy locks of golden brown grown long in the front but shorn to the skin on the sides. Instead of the rugged, homespun attire common to most of those dwelling around Petrograd, this man wore a fine suit like a businessman from a bustling metropolis might wear.
It took Father Bunin a moment, but he recognized the man as a leader of one of the legions of bandit bands plaguing the area. The priest had only seen the man at a distance during one of his scavenging expeditions, but the forces the man commanded, as best as the priest could guess, were more like an army than roving thugs—hard-eyed killers, united by one that even such men could respect.
“What happened to you?” the bandit chief asked with an amused chuckle. “You weren’t pretty before, but this new look is beyond the pale.”
“Shepherd harridan,” the wretch spat. “Her and that pet sorcerer. They didn’t just do this, but they turned the marquis against us, too.”
The chieftain, who’d begun to look at the burnt home with a mildly annoyed expression, perked up at that and turned an approving smile on the disfigured fellow.
“You limped all the way from Tiflis like that? I’m impressed.”
The wretch didn’t seem to appreciate the compliment.
“Just kill this fool and get me back to my workshop. I still have much work to do.”
The bandit frowned as he spared a pitying look for the dumbstruck priest.
“He’s a well-meaning fool. A simpleton with some hand-drawn icons at the edge of the city. Really, there’s no need to kill him.”
For one moment, Father Bunin thought about running, trying to escape. However, given what the man had said he must know about the chapel, Father Bunin’s only chance of escape, assuming they didn’t gun him down immediately, was to flee the area, and he knew he wouldn’t.
Instead, he decided to draw out his simple wooden cross and begin to pray where he was, on his knees.
“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
“He’s seen too much,” the wretch rasped as he shifted himself against the priest’s pack.
“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”
The bandit frowned, cutting an angry glance toward his mutilated partner before staring down at the kneeling priest
“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses.”
“Get it over with!” the wretch snarled, air whistling through his absent nose.
There was a metallic click, and Father Bunin looked up into the black eye of a pistol barrel. He forced himself to look past that abyss over the wrist sporting a skull and orthodox cross into the dark gaze of the young man holding the weapon.
“As we forgive those who trespass against u—”
The pistol barked, and the last priest in Petrograd fell to the scorched earth.
If you’re looking for another double fisted tale of war, magic, and bloody conspiracies in the grim alternate history of the War to End All Wars, the story continues in Wizard Born, book 3 of the World's First Wizard series.
Author Notes - Aaron Schneider
October 19, 2020
Dear Reader,
Wow, already book 2, and book 3 (Wizardborn) is coming in just a few weeks.
Let’s hope you all can handle the short wait, and maybe even convince some other folks that Milo has something to offer. We may find it difficult to gather together, but we can certainly gather online to savor what, I hope, is a good book.
In the meantime, we’ve all got to keep living in this world that seems ready to tear itself apart at the drop of a hat or the scrape of a pen on a ballot. I pray by book 3 we’ll see peace and rest for the coming Christmastide, but in the meantime, I’ll ask us all to remember something, whatever our convictions.
Remember the words of G.K. Chesterton.
“Charity means pardoning the unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.”
Be seeing you soon dear readers.
Aaron D. Schneider
Wizardborn
World’s First Wizard Book 3
Yeah, I burned like a witch in a Puritan town
It lit me
It was a good dream
—Lit Me Up, Brand New
No course was open to me save to leap, with eyes self-bound, into the yawning abyss of the future.
—Vathek, William Beckford
Blood-Curdling Story
That story is creepy,
It's waily, it's weepy,
It's screechy and screamy
Right up to the end.
It's spooky, it's crawly,
It's grizzly, it's gory,
It's the awfulest story
(Please tell it again).
—Falling Up, Shel Silverstein
I devoutly dedicate this book to my wife, my darling, my dueling partner, and the peg o’ my heart. Nothing I’ve ever done of consequence has always been with your love and support. Love you, babe.
— Aaron
Prologue: Fidite Nemini
Of all the tragedies that had strutted their hour upon the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, none were as heartbreaking as the sight of the theatre as the warlords shuffled in. It had been nearly two decades since the premiere theatre of Moscow, perhaps of all of Eastern Europe, had opened for a show, but in the meantime, the Bolshoi had been ill-used.
The Bolshoi had not been afforded the dignity of a placid, dusty decrepitude as the Russian Empire crumbled. There had been meetings held in its concert hall, some public and others more clandestine. There had been vandalism, some more artistic than the rest, with scrawled tragic poetry sharing sections of the wall and floor with crude, anatomically impossible pictograms. There had been treasures and decor and furnishings ransacked for reasons ranging from posterity to fuel for the hearth. There was even evidence of creatures having taken shelter in the place from the feces-encrusted roost in the blackened chandelier to the nesting pile of detritus from which rodent eyes gleamed.
Larger but no less feral occupants had been cleared out along with most of their filth in preparation for the meeting.
The roof was still intact, though for the past few years, a growing stain had spread like a seasonally swelling inkblot worked in beige and brown. With that had come damp that had crept and wept across the walls and balconies until they were woolly with molds and other less easily classifiable forms of life. The only place that could accommodate the meeting was the central floor. Most of the seats were in disarray, having been destroyed or gnawed by scavengers, and in places, the carpet had been stripped away, leaving the bare boards. Such bare spots near the occupied orchestra pit had seen even the boards gnawed to splinters, and through those jagged gaps on the unsound floor could be glimpsed the dark and glistening depth of the stygian basement.
To avoid plummeting into the depths, what seats could be salvaged had been dragged into the center of the hall. Here they formed a three-quarter ring, and to this ring came warlords, commanders of armies, patriots, and murderers. Each man had left his contingent of soldierly bandits without, having been permitted only one attendant at the meeting. Some had chosen their attendant as a tool of intimidation, being escorted by hard-handed and cold-eyed killers, while ot
hers were accompanied by men whose skills were strictly secretarial.
They fell into separate but roughly equal camps as their attendants shuffled their seats to one side or another. The two tribes eyed each other warily, one band muttering imprecations against “traitorous Whites,” while the other hissed and spat at the “godless Reds.” After the opposing congregations were seated, some time was spent in muted choruses of denouncement, but it never reached beyond that.
Finally, realizing that they’d been whispering amongst themselves for some time, a spokesman emerged from each faction. For the Reds, it was a bushy-haired man with spectacles on his prominent nose and a mustachioed goatee around thick lips. Apparently no one had bothered to tell him he looked positively Mephistophelian, or perhaps that was the point. For the Whites, it was a tall, long-featured man with a dark mustache whose crisp uniform accentuated his thin, straight figure.
The men eyed each other, the Red speaker seemingly intent on boring holes through the other man with his piercing stare, while the White viewed his opponent as something to be brushed off his brightly polished boots.
“So why did you call us here, Trotsky?” the White asked in a drawling voice pitched to express how little he cared. “Did you want us to see one more thing this rebellion has cost us?”
To illustrate the point, however mildly spoken, the White swept an arm to indicate the putrefying balconies and the verminous orchestra pit.
“Trying to remind us how great this revolution of yours is?”
For a moment, Trotsky bristled so fiercely that his bushy hair began to quiver, but with a supreme effort, he quelled his obvious wrath. One hand rose and very carefully adjusted the glasses across the bridge of his nose, while the other gripped the front lapel of his overcoat with affronted dignity.
“The losses of this war weigh on us all,” the Red said, stiffly at first, but warming to the speech as he went. “But the reason I called us all here has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the future.”
Rustling among the Whites was greeted by indignant glares from the Reds, but no one contested the point.
“By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard what has happened with Stalin,” Trotsky continued, ignoring the leers and unsympathetic comments from the Whites with his dignity intact. “I’m sure you’ve also heard about the construction project in Petrograd.”
There were more muttered exclamations, but these were far less energetic and far more uncertain. They’d been too busy waging war on the members of the opposite faction and occasionally each other, but word had still reached them, though not with its meaning understood. Yes, they’d heard, but even if they believed, the information did not lend itself to understanding. After all, why would anyone waste valuable resources on building anything in a blasted pit like the fallen capital of the Russian Empire?
“I thought you said this meeting was about the future?” the White asked, a lazy smile making a half-hearted attempt at mimicking his mustache. The Whites around him nodded and chuckled deep in their chests. “Do you plan to delay until the winter snows fall and collapse the ceiling on us all?”
Trotsky sniffed but did not take the bait, turning slightly instead to make it clear he was addressing all present.
“We have good reason to believe both of these incidents were the direct result of German meddling in Russian affairs. In the face of our great nation falling under the control of the black-coated heathens, it seemed to be high time we came to some sort of understanding.”
The Red turned sharply to his counterpart and arched an eyebrow.
“Does that serve as an explanation, Wrangel?” he hissed. He rocked back a little on his heels as he hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his greatcoat.
Wrangel, who was much taller than Trotsky and seemed even more so given his gaunt frame, glared down his nose at the Red and seemed prepared to say something particularly unkind. Finally, his shoulders bowed a little more, and his gaze became distant. His chin rose and fell slowly, to the obvious consternation of several of his fellow whites.
“You may be a godless little Jew, but you aren’t wrong,” Wrangel declared with a retiring sigh. “The Germans and their legions of treacherous conscripts are circling like wolves.”
Many of the whites nodded gravely along with their ad hoc champion, but a few clearly did not appreciate his sudden commiseration with the Reds.
A stout officer sputtered beneath an outward-sweeping mustache that looked ready to engage a bull horn to whiskers.
“My intelligence reports say Stalin cooperated with the Germans,” he declared, shooting a narrowed glare at the Reds before angrily turning to scowl at Wrangel. “How do we know this isn’t some ploy by the communist vermin to get us to lower our guard?”
“Because leaving the scattered corpses of our armies in the Caucasus Mountains is a pretty stupid way to win the war, Yudenich,“ Trotsky rebuked before Wrangel could reply. “Stalin took more of our strength than any of us cares to admit, and it was irrevocably broken in Georgia.”
Yudenich’s mustache writhed as though ready to strike, but Trotsky glared through his spectacles undaunted.
“If you have intelligence about Stalin and the Germans, it must corroborate what I am saying,” the smaller man snapped before turning back to Wrangel. “We can keep suspecting and killing each other, but it will only be that much easier for the blackcoats to come along and pick us apart if we do that.”
Again, Wrangel looked as though nothing would please him more than to sneer in the Red’s face, but an absolute weight bore down on him, and he could only nod.
“I would see you all dead in a ditch, but not if it means those savages become our new masters,” he said, turning to his constituents with a measuring eye. “I don’t think any true Russian would want such a thing.”
The emphatic phrasing combined with the tall man’s relentless stare cowed the other Whites, even Yudenich. Some muttered similar sentiments of wishing ignominious death on communists, but not if it meant German boots on their throats. Most nodded silently.
Satisfied, Wrangel turned to regard Trotsky coolly but without challenge.
“I assume you have something in mind?”
Trotsky nodded again as he and all the Reds stared in shock. For all their wild hopes, none had thought the Whites would be won over so easily. Many had declared days ago that the royalist snobs would rather see Russia in ashes before they worked with the Bolsheviks. It seemed that Trotsky’s statement that their country was already in ashes had been more successful than even he had dared to hope.
“Well,” Trotsky said, wiping off his glasses pensively to buy time, “the first thing we need to do is secure our western borders and co-opt the supplies headed to Petrograd. I’m sure we could all make use of what is being funneled there.”
Several heads on both sides nodded in unison before noticing and stopping with juvenile alarm.
“Do you know what is being built there?” Wrangel asked, a frown spreading across his face.
From above them, a deep, velvety voice reached down to brush every man’s ear like a descending silken noose.
“The future,” the voice said, and every man present looked upward at the royal box in the center of the theatre’s back wall.
Standing over them like an emperor grinning down into an arena was a tall, powerfully built young man. He was brutally beautiful, his pulchritude accentuated by ink scrawled across his skin. The tattoos were displayed by his half-open shirt and rolled sleeves, and he held his silver suit coat over his shoulder like a regal cloak.
“The future of warfare and therefore the future of mankind is being built in Petrograd,” the newcomer declared, managing to meet the eye of every upturned face without deigning to move an inch. “A future you are going to help build.”
Several voices cried out at once to know the man’s identity, and some of the attendants drew pistols and pointed them at the royal box. Trotsky and Wrangel exchanged concerned looks bef
ore turning to regard the man standing above them. Despite several weapons aimed at him, he didn’t seem concerned, and that alone gave the two leaders pause.
“You seem quite confident about our cooperation,” Trotsky called to the man, his tone flat and neutral. “Yet, none of us seems to know who you are. A rather odd way to begin a partnership, don’t you think?”
The stranger looked down at the Red spokesman and displayed a wolfish smile.
“I’m not sure I said anything about cooperation. Did I?”
The first canister rolled across the floor then, releasing jets of orange-yellow vapor as it went.
Horror robbed most of the men of the first few vital seconds, and panic stole the rest. Hurried shots scored and pitted the balcony beside the stranger or punched dusty holes in the ceiling. The man didn’t budge an inch, his fingers not even tightening on the crumbling scrollwork beneath them.
Those who hadn’t wasted time shooting or succumbing to fear had run for the exits, but that proved as ineffectual as the other options when brutes in gas masks emerged like specters from the thickening fog, clubs and canisters in hand. A few hard strokes and the runners were sent stumbling back with broken jaws and flattened noses.
More canisters with brilliant hissing contrails spun into the gathering until the main floor was thick with yellow fog. Men screamed and more shots were fired wildly, but they only bit into walls and the moldering seats. The armed men stood, breath rasping through their protective gas masks, and watched the figures inside the murky cloud contort and spasm as their screams grew fainter.
There was a splintering crash, and a biblical wave of chittering rodents rushed out of the fog. Some still bore the gas on their fur like tarnished motes of gold. Many of them collapsed spasming, while others, frenzied with pain, bit and tore at their brethren, but all were carried along in the verminous tide that sought to escape the poison. Even as high boots shuffled away from the coming torrent of rodents, the eyes of the masked men swept up to the man still watching the scene below. In a second, it seemed, all made the same decision.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 65
