Milo could only think of one reason for that.
“I’ll see what’s going on,” Ambrose called over his shoulder. “You two ought to make sure your contingencies are in order, Magus, sharpish!”
“Contingencies?” Rihyani asked, staring into Milo’s face from where she’d landed on the floor.
Milo was up on hands and knees, with one arm reaching over Rihyani’s shoulder and one leg between her thighs.
“Uh, yes,” Milo said, acutely aware that he was having a hard time forming precise thoughts. “I, uh, I’ll need your help.”
“Sort of hard to do anything like this,” she said with a glance down the length of his body. “Or at least anything practical.”
He flushed and started to rise, a half-formed, half-meant apology on his lips, but Rihyani hooked her arm around his neck. For a second, he thought she was trying to use his body as leverage to pull herself up, then he felt her cheek against his and her lips at his ear.
“I love you,” she murmured. “Don’t forget that.”
Milo froze, Rihyani hanging from his neck as her supple legs entwined his thigh.
“The timing is awkward,” he said, his voice sounding breathless and peevish to his ears.
“You brute!” she hissed and nipped playfully at his earlobe. “That’s not how a lover responds to his beloved!”
Milo blinked, suddenly aware of how close she was, how much of her body he could feel pressed against him, and what she most certainly could feel pressed against her. It was absurd given the circumstances but had death and danger not been so near at hand, he wasn’t certain what he might have done.
Or rather, he knew exactly what he would do, but he was determined not to think about it.
“I love you, too,” he said, dizzy from the emotional rollercoaster he’d been on for the last few minutes. “But I will need your help to pull this off.”
Rihyani lowered herself back onto the floor and gave an immense roll of her eyes.
“What can I do for you, my love?” she asked with a sigh.
“Camouflage,” Milo said as he climbed to his feet with a grunt.
He bent and offered his hand, which the fey took kindly enough despite her efforts at pouting.
“To hide the train?” Rihyani asked, brows arching in doubt.
“Not for the outside,” Milo said as he pulled her to her feet. “For the inside.”
Standing eye to eye with him, the fey continued to look at him doubtfully. Then her eyes widened, and a sly look crept over her features.
“Especially the third and fourth car?”
Milo nodded, giving her a devious grin.
6
These Messages
Milo was standing at the end of the fourth car when Ambrose shuffled down the passage at gunpoint. The rain-lashed German soldier behind him couldn’t see the expression stamped across the big man’s face as he frog-marched the bodyguard down the aisle, gun pressed to his head.
“This better work,” encapsulated his feelings well enough.
The other patrons in the car sat very still, most not daring to look up from where they huddled in their seats. They were a motley collection of travelers, ranging from men in drab business suits to a pair of old women in the vibrant apron dresses common in the most rural parts of Belarus. They were bystanders, non-combatants suddenly and frightfully aware that they were caught up in a conflict not their own.
One or two whispered prayers with bowed heads while others leaned over children, offering what fervent if feeble protection their bodies could afford.
Despite this absolute inoffensiveness, or perhaps because of it, Milo watched the sodden soldiers shuffle behind Ambrose’s warden’s jeer, threatening the passengers. They hissed and snarled and carelessly swept their rifles this way and that, laughing as people cringed and lurched away. One even reached out with the barrel of his rifle and began to knock the hats off of those he passed. As the tormented stole frustrated and fearful glances at the bully, he snarled in German, “Look down, pig!” before moving on to another target.
Milo gritted his teeth, willing himself to maintain his composure.
Not yet, he thought. Just a little longer.
This plan may not be feasible, Imrah offered, and the wizard ground his teeth all the harder as Ambrose came to stand in front of him, the rifle barrel still pressed to his head.
“Look who came for dinner,” Ambrose said and bit back a curse as the rifle barrel was jabbed hard against the back of his head.
“Shut up,” the big man’s escort spat, glaring past his captive at Milo.
Milo’s temper flared, and the plan nearly failed then and there.
“Be careful,” Milo said, distilling his anger into a tone as cold and sharp as a flensing knife. “If you're here for me, you know I could kill every last one of you with a single word.”
The eyes of every soldier in the column in the aisle swung to Milo, and for a moment, no one dared to move.
“You’re not going to do anything as rash as that,” said a familiar voice in crisp German.
Milo looked at the front of the car, where the officer with the curly dark mustache from the general staff meeting stood watching him with glittering eyes. In the uneven light of the general staff conference hall, Milo hadn’t noticed that the man’s eyes seemed greedily amphibian. He might have been a handsome man of middle age if not for those bulging, glassy orbs watching the world as if everything might be his food. A twisted imitation of a smile wormed its way across the officer’s face as he continued to leer hungrily at Milo.
“You won’t do that because I have soldiers in the next car ready to kill every civilian present if things get out of hand. Do you understand?”
To illustrate the point, the soldiers in the compartment turned and leveled their rifles at the rows of seated civilians. The innocent gasped and shivered but stayed where they were, trembling and crouching.
Milo tightened his grip on his cane as his thoughts whispered to Imrah within.
Both compartments. Are we sure this will work and not get us killed in the process?
It is not a question of power but focus. Make certain you excite but don’t ignite.
Milo looked at Mayr’s goons, their expressions slack, almost bored, and terror gripped him.
What if they’ve been hollowed out like the Soviets?
Then focus will be even more important. Now, attend to the situation before you are shot.
Milo hadn’t realized he’d been ignoring Mayr, who had not only been talking to him but now had a pistol in his hand and was walking toward Milo as his soldiers shuffled to one side of the aisle or the other. The passengers forced into proximity with the menacing Germans cowered back in their seats.
“Don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve,” Mayr growled as he came to stand in front of Ambrose, pistol held out at waist level. “I promised the Reich that you would be a valuable asset, but I’m afraid no one will believe me if you go all moonstruck anytime guns are involved.”
Ambrose gave a low growl and shifted to shield Milo from the pistol. Mayr looked at him as though just seeing him.
“Please move,” he said in a brittle, polite tone, twitching the barrel of the pistol to one side. “My business is with the warlock, not his imp.”
“You’re not worth the effort some devil took to wipe you from his ass,” Ambrose snarled back, one hand curling into a fist while the other settled into a claw.
Mayr met Ambrose’s stare, and as was the case with any mere mortal, he quickly looked away, but the man would not be so easily cowed. Shaking his head with a sigh, he ceased pointing his pistol at Ambrose and Milo and instead turned and held the pistol in the face of a small girl sitting next to her mother. Both were dressed in traditional Belarusian attire, and when the pistol was leveled, the mother hid her daughter’s face against her patterned apron. The child made small snuffling sounds as she shook against her mother, while the woman glared up at Mayr in tearful defiance.
“I feel that things are getting out of hand,” Mayr said flatly. “Perhaps you should convince me otherwise.”
Milo rested a hand on Ambrose’s shoulder and drew him back so they could trade places.
The big man resisted but finally looked at Milo and then beyond him. His eyes narrowed with predatory focus.
“Batch moving up five,” he reported in a clipped whisper as Milo shuffled past him. “They’re mine.”
Milo wanted to tell the bodyguard to not do anything so risky, but then he was standing in front of Mayr, who was pointing a pistol at the back of a girl's head.
“Well, I’m not dead,” Milo said with a practiced swagger as he gave Mayr a dismissive once-over. “So you must not want to kill me.”
The smile that spread under Mayr’s mustache was cold enough that Milo was amazed his voice didn’t fog in front of him.
“I do very much want to kill you,” Mayr said icily before turning his head to gaze at the cowering passengers. “As I’d like to purge the world of every one of these subhuman sheep and the parasites that cling to them. Even their would-be defenders, the simpering English and the limp-spined French, deserve only the shallowest graves history can afford.”
He glared at the mother who defied him with her stare, and Milo could practically see the hateful calculations playing out behind the man’s cold-blooded eyes. The wizard harnessed his will in preparation for what would come next and wished he could offer up a prayer, but nothing came to mind.
“But all things in good time.” Mayr shrugged, and in one fluid movement, holstered the pistol at his hip. “I’m not here for that sort of thing today.”
“Then what are you here for?” Milo asked and nodded to the man’s damp coat. “Besides enjoying the weather.”
Mayr eyed his dripping sleeves and gave Milo a small, self-assured smile.
“Well, obviously I’m here to recruit you, my little warlock,” Mayr said as though the wizard were a very silly schoolboy. “The Reich doesn’t necessarily need a creature like you, but you could certainly make certain aspects of our operations far more productive.”
Milo blinked, for an instant certain that he misunderstood.
“Well, your pitch could use some work,” Milo said, crossing his arms as he stared into the toadlike eyes that watched him. “But more than that, you seem to have forgotten yesterday evening where you called me a Slavic savage and a motherless Russian or something along those lines.”
Mayr flapped his hand at the words and shook his head before resuming his condescending tone.
“If you’re going to let that bother you, it won’t be easy working together,” Mayr said with a roll of his eyes. “I know you’re not like the rest of the parasites, that you’re a different sort altogether, but appearances must be kept up. If I hadn’t spoken up at that meeting, some might have gotten the wrong idea.”
“Wouldn’t want them to think you weren’t a raging xenophobe, would we?” Milo said with mock understanding. “That would be awful.”
Mayr again shook his head and waved his hand even more aggressively as though trying to dismiss an unwelcome smell.
“I don’t blame you for your ignorance of our organization and its purpose,” Mayr said, reaching up to flick rainwater from his mustache. “The nature of our operation has required secrecy, but now that we are preparing to take a great leap into the future, I feel we can start to lift the veil, as it were, and reach out.”
Milo looked pointedly down the aisle at soldiers still training their rifles on the seated civilians, then gave Mayr a long look.
“This is your idea of reaching out?” Milo chuckled, gesturing with his cane at the pistol on the officer's belt. “Again, your pitch needs work.”
Mayr shrugged and took a step back toward his soldiers.
“I want you to understand what we are offering, whatever your choice may be. Join us, and you buy yourself time to carve a place in the new world order as we build a better, purer world through ruthlessness and strength. Stand against us, and discover that nothing and no one is safe from our wrath. Think of all you have to lose, all that we could take from you if we become your enemies.”
Mayr gave the woman and child he’d threatened a pitying look.
“Better to run with the wolves than cower with the sheep, no?”
Mayr’s face lit up with an idea, and a tight, cruel smile opened under the amphibian’s hungry stare.
“Don’t,” Milo warned, but that only made Mayr’s smile wider.
“Oh, come now.” Mayr chuckled darkly. “I think it will serve as a perfect lesson about who we are and what we are capable of.”
“Do—” Milo began, but Mayr drew his pistol with startling speed and snapped off two shots, punching gory holes in the child’s back and her mother’s face.
Fear and outrage should have erupted across the car in the wake of the pistol’s crack. Children should have wailed as men and women screamed and shouted in terror and anger, yet no voice was raised. There was a deathly stillness across the entire car.
Milo felt Rihyani’s will ripple through the Art she’d stretched across the car, and a grim smile spread across his face. It was time; no turning back now. Mayr and his soldiers stood looking around the car for a moment, suddenly unsure as every cowering face turned to them with a dead-eyed stare, the woman and her daughter among them.
“It's your turn for an education,” Milo said, his razor focus raking across his slumbering horrors. “Now you will see who I am and what I can do!”
* * *
The soldiers opened fire as Rihyani released her illusion in a befuddling eruption of broken images.
The car was revealed to be empty of passengers or seats or anything but a drift of black grit. The soldiers began shooting despite this, rifles going off in a crazed series of blasts that chased the fractured visual stimuli Rihyani had spread around them. Glass shattered and shots gouged and ricocheted about the interior as the rain and wind began to pour in. Mayr was shouting something, but it was lost as an incredible shivering buzz filled the car.
At Milo’s command, a storm of si'lat emerged like an abominable locust swarm from a mad sea and broke through Rihyani’s now-dissipating illusion, engulfing the soldiers. Not bothering to take concrete shape, the necromist creation swept over the terrified bullies, making a mockery of their attempts to fight back as it drove them toward the front of the car.
Like men trying to grapple with an attacking swarm of bees, the Germans screamed and swatted and reeled, but their antics only allowed the flurry of black grit to gouge and rasp exposed flesh with greater speed. Every way they turned and every movement they made opened new avenues of attack as the shade-driven particles slid under clothing and dug into orifices.
They began to huddle and press against the door to the next car, but if they hadn’t been tearing at their own eyes, they might have realized that there was no safety beyond it as the soldiers left there faced another colossal si'lat.
Milo stood, sweat beading his brow as he sought to keep his creations in check. He heard movement behind him and Ambrose’s bellicose roar, but he couldn’t be bothered to turn around. The si'lat required all his attention lest they fly free and kill every enemy at hand. A typical si'lat was more than capable of killing a man and ripping him to shreds in short order, much less these huge expansions, but Milo didn’t want to kill everyone on the train.
He wanted to send a message, which he supposed would be easier if there were any to carry it.
Behind him, Milo heard the bark of a gun firing an instant before the viewport at his back exploded in a crash of broken glass. Then a man screamed, but the sound seemed to move quickly away from the train before ending abruptly. With the viewport gone, rain and wind sent shivers over Milo’s back, and his mind was nearly knocked off point by the sudden chilling stimulation.
Focus, Imrah growled, and the wizard could feel the cane trembling in his hand.
Milo had herded animated c
orpses before, but this was something else entirely. The shades within practically exploded to inflict themselves on the world around them. Inside each, he could feel the bound soul wells like throbbing dark stars. Without the intimate connection his blood gave the magic and the assistance from Imrah, Milo knew he wouldn’t be able to control the living, slashing storms of sable sand.
There were further sounds of smashing glass, and Milo looked up to see the soldiers hurling themselves out the windows. The si’lat chased them, tearing off strips of cloth and flesh as they fell screaming. As the sand left to chase the fleeing Germans, he could see more of the car.
One of the soldiers lay on the floor with a trench knife buried in his chest. Another looked like he might have fallen asleep, but Milo knew better since he saw the man’s face and arms scoured until pink-stained bone gleamed in the lights of the car. Milo felt a twinge of sympathy for the men and then noticed the one with the knife in his chest was the sadist who had walked along knocking hats off. He turned away.
True, the hats and their wearers had all been part of Rihyani’s masterful illusion, but the soldier hadn’t known that, had he?
As he considered and more of the si’lat swarm slid from the car into the night, Milo saw that there was one more figure left in the car with him. Legs out before him, Mayr leaned against the battered train car portal. His face looked like he’d tried to shave with broken glass, and blood dribbled freely from a freshly broken nose whose shattered bridge pressed jaggedly against the skin.
The toady’s eyes were so swollen and moist that Milo wondered if the slimy things would pop free and roll away. Instead, they looked up at Milo and widened, then Mayr fumbled for his pistol with si’lat-gnawed hands.
With a flex of his focus, he gathered what remained of the black storm into a tendril that snared Mayr’s fumbling hand. The treacherous officer screamed as the fractured edges of the condensed grit sawed into his flesh.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 72
