Done assessing his state of being, Milo decided he was also done with his sudden flight.
Focusing his mind to bring his magic with the talons digging into him proved difficult, but thankfully the grip on him did not prevent him from reaching his belt. Milo drew out his pistol and aimed straight up. The creature, the Hiisi, must have felt his movement since it had enough time to look down and see the barrel leveled at it before Milo pulled the trigger.
One, two, three, the pistol barked, but before the second muzzle flare could singe feathers, the corvid horror had exploded into icy wind, the smell of rotting meat, and dozens of black-winged shapes. Where once had been a creature large enough to carry Milo off like a rabbit in a raptor’s claws, there was now only stink, chill, and the flutter of wings.
And then Milo was falling.
A raw scream tore from his throat as the treetops seemed to lunge up from the ground, eager to impale his plummeting, pinwheeling body.
Wind ride, Imrah called, sounding almost bored.
Milo tried to orient his brain, but fear was like a weighted pendulum knocking his thoughts askew with each pass.
Quickly would be best. The fetish-bound ghul sighed with irritation.
Milo felt a wave of familiar anger at her criticism, and that more than anything else allowed him to lay hold of his will and change the world around him to make reality accept him as being buoyant even as he plunged to his death.
His falling slowed until he halted only a few feet from the top of a lightning-scarred pine. As he hung there trying to right himself, he had time to study the tree. It was old and whorled with ancient wounds, and Milo thought it almost looked disappointed that he would not be adorning its branches.
“Not today,” Milo muttered, feeling as though his internal organs had just caught up with the rest of him.
Grunting and being careful to take long, slow breaths, Milo let himself sink toward the tree. Hands outstretched, he descended until he grabbed a branch that looked like it wasn’t about to break. Steady and levitating, Milo swept his eyes across the horizon and saw the breach in the forest that was Gzhatsk to his right. It took a minute longer to find the thin gap in the trees indicative of the road, the process made slower by the nagging certainty that his pistol had only bought him a reprieve, not victory.
Despite the thought, he saw no trace of the black-feathered fiend, but he wasn’t quite ready to hope that it had been scared off. He thought he would have felt some freedom under the open sky, some safety from ambush, but Milo knew that any flying creature, much less a magical one, would be far more comfortable than he was fighting in the sky.
After another moment spent considering making his sluggish way due west, Milo shook his head and began the slow, careful process of climbing down. The relative weightlessness was a great boon, and he was on the forest floor quicker than he expected.
Standing there getting his bearings, Milo felt a tug upon his mind, and he remembered the si’lat swarm he’d unleashed before his abduction. His ability to control his creation over a distance was not unlimited, and he felt his grasp on the swirling shades slowly slipping.
Had Lokkemand’s men cleared the flock of ravens? Had Ambrose and Rihyani gone with them, or were they even now braving the tempest of black wings and darker spirits?
Who was he fooling? He knew Ambrose and Rihyani were looking for him.
His mind narrowed to a needle-pointed hook, and with a sweeping grab, he snatched the thin strands of essence that bound the si’lat to him and gave them a savage twist.
RETURN
The shades resisted, straining until Milo feared they would break free, but then he felt his blood and soul humming through the connection. As long as he lived, the construct could not—would not—escape his control. In some perverse way, it was part of him.
Milo’s mind returned to the world around him, and he tried to decide where he was going. Conscripts were for fighting and dying, more the latter than the former, and as such, his training in fieldcraft amongst the penal forces was lacking. That was compounded by the fact that his youth had been spent in strictly urban environments. Milo looked at the venerable trees standing as though in silent judgment around him, and he felt the unease of being in an alien world. He was unfamiliar, unwelcome, and unprepared.
He was considering either wind riding up to the canopy again or trying some creative necromistry when he jumped at the sound of wings fluttering overhead. He whirled, cane and pistol both raised.
On a low branch of a nearby tree, the monstrous bird squatted, except it was lessened.
The huge, twisted avian was now human-sized and had it stood on the ground, Milo doubted the top of its feathered head would reach his chin. More than being humanoid in size, the creature now seemed closer to human in shape as well. Its wings resembled elongated arms tipped with fingers, no less, and the legs had changed direction so that it now sat on the branch with feet dangling over the forest floor.
The head cocked to one side, round black eyes staring and inscrutable before the malformed beak opened.
“Funny!” it cried in a harsh and braying attempt at Russian. “Funny little man!”
Milo glared at the creature, eager to launch lead and eldritch energies at it but hesitating as it continued to watch him. If it wanted to kill him, it didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, and since he felt the si’lat swarm seething toward him, he decided he would take advantage of this.
“So, you don’t seem in a rush to kill me anymore,” Milo called without relaxing. “Does that mean you’d rather talk than fight?”
The corvid creature twitched its head to the other side and back again before its feathered shoulders bunched into a sort of shrug.
“Maybe,” it squawked and continued to stare.
Slowly, Milo lowered his pistol, half-expecting to be rushed by an unseen attacker. When no attack came, he lowered the cane, planting it in front of him as he slid his Luger into its holster.
Do you have eyes on it? Milo asked, one hand resting lightly on the eagle skull.
Yes, Imrah replied, though he felt something like a crack in her stoic presence. But Hiisi are not to be trusted.
“Depends on what I have to say, huh?” Milo replied, chuckling a little, but he froze when the bird suddenly stiffened. Milo thought he’d caused offense and was scrambling to think of an apology when the crow’s beak gaped wide and it let out a grating screech of laughter.
“Yes, yes,” it squawked, taloned feet dancing in mid-air as it chortled like a hideous child. “Depends on the answers. Answers for Borji.”
The wizard frowned, struggling to keep his edge as he watched the buffoonish antics of the creature sitting in the tree. Could this be the same monster that had snatched him up and borne him away?
“Borji?” Milo said, determined to keep talking. He sensed that the si’lat swarm was a minute out, maybe two. “Is that your name?”
The raven-thing did a quicker and less raucous version of the ugly laughing routine. Milo was fairly sure it was answering in the negative, but nothing much about the creature made sense, and Imrah’s warning was still fresh in Milo’s mind.
He couldn’t afford to take anything for granted.
Do you want me to cook the cretin? Imrah offered. Milo felt the fiery energies build in the raptor’s skull until his fingers felt sweaty where they rested on the cane.
Not yet, Milo thought, watching as the little bird-man hopped up to stand on the branch and then sprang into the air.
“Black sand nice trick,” it croaked as it beat its wings in an ungainly flutter. “Lempo will peck this from your brain. Some day!”
Milo flinched as the creature—Lempo?—darted between the tree branches and out of sight.
“Well, that was one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever had,” Milo muttered as he rolled his bruised shoulders and heard a series of clicks. “But at least I can get back to the others.”
Don’t move, Imrah warned, the words ro
lling up to Milo’s mind like an icy waterfall in reverse.
“What is it now?” he groaned, looking through the trees for whatever new madness awaited him.
Straight ahead, Imrah whispered to his mind. Don’t panic and run.
Milo stared between the tree trunks and was about to demand the ghul be less vague when he noticed the deepening darkness moving toward him. It took Milo a moment to realize how large it was, not because of the darkness which accompanied it, but also because his mind was rebelling at the silence of its advance. Whatever was coming had to be at least as massive as a draft horse, long-bodied and hulking, but there wasn’t even the rustle of evergreen needles as it came. Nothing that big should be so quiet, and Milo felt a prickle of fear on the back of his neck as the primal corners of his brain sounded the ancient alarm: PREDATOR!
Milo gripped the cane in both hands, squeezing the unyielding stone in his clammy palms, an anchor to counter his hammering heart. Where was the si’lat? Would it even matter?
“Borji, I assume?” Milo called, proud that there was only the barest tremble in his voice.
A low growl echoed through the forest, as wet as a torn throat and echoing from a depth somewhere under the Styx. Every instinct in Milo urged him to run, but his fingers tightened around the cane until his knuckles popped and his palms throbbed.
“YOU ARE BRAVER THAN MOST,” howled a voice that belonged in a nightmare. “AND THAT IS THE ONLY REASON I WILL EXCUSE THE INSOLENCE OF THAT NAME THIS ONCE.”
Between the trees, Milo saw huge red eyes advancing. The huge creature paused, and he received the impression of something vaguely lupine standing in the unnatural shadows. A snout beneath the glowing eyes parted to speak, and Milo saw the glint of fangs as long as his hand.
“I have many names, whispered with fear through ages by heroes and gods. I am the one your kind feared as they huddled around stolen fire and he who you still worship with your walls and torches.”
Milo swallowed heavily but then heard a faint rustle at his feet.
He stole a glance downward, hoping it just looked like he was losing his nerve, and he smiled to see the tiny filaments of black grit coiling at his heels. The si’lat had found him. His shoulders squared and his heart steadied.
“I’m going to need to know what to call you,” Milo said as he prepared his mental focus to unleash his summoned weapon. “Do you have a shorter name or title?”
The monster within the dark pressed forward until its huge head breached the shadows. Jaws that could have snapped him in half hung open so he could count each tooth that could have ended his life. Milo wasn’t sure that this thing looked like a wolf so much as a terrifying impression of what a wolf might look like in Hell.
“Borjikhan shall do, little monkey,” it rumbled. “I had Lempo bring you here that you may bear my will to your kind.”
“I’m squarely on the tall side for my kind,” Milo shot back as he felt the bulk of the si’lat swarm settle across the ground around him. “But if you’ve got something to say, I’m listening.”
Borjikhan sniffed the air and narrowed its red eyes at Milo, clearly sensing the change in him. Its lips curled back from the fangs in a smile that beamed with a sadist’s joy.
“If any of your kind comes to these hovels or to the woods beyond,” it began, the words resounding less from its throat than its vast chest, “the lives of every human in a hundred miles will be forfeit. These lands now belong to the Hiisi of the first wood, and we will brook no challenge.”
Milo felt Imrah seethe within the fetish in his hands and remembered her words about Zlydzen’s connection with the Hiisi of the First Wood. Given that the monstrous creature was issuing a warning rather than killing him, it seemed likely it hadn’t been briefed on him by the dwarrow. Milo had a hard time believing that there wouldn’t be a standing order to mangle his person on sight.
“What happened to the people of Gzhatsk?” Milo asked.
A thick chuckle bubbled from the monster.
“Set foot in that mausoleum, and you’ll soon find out.”
From somewhere behind Milo, a distant but familiar voice bellowed between the trees.
“MAGUS!” Ambrose shouted. “MAGUS!”
Borjikhan snarled, and even with the si’lat secretly arrayed around him, Milo felt like his knees gave out.
“Perhaps an object lesson will impress upon you the severity of this command.”
One huge paw reached out from the shadows, revealing black fur that smoked with shadows as claws like sickles sank into the loamy earth.
“MAGUS!” Ambrose hollered again, his voice closer and ragged with desperation. “MILO!”
Wrath, righteous and blazing, blossomed in Milo’s chest and rushed through his veins like liquid fire. The air brushing his skin felt cold, but only because of the heat of his anger. This beast bragged about its mass murder and then decided to maim and kill Milo’s friend to make its point. His anger increased to a deep and terrible rage.
“How dare you?” Milo snarled as the si’lat rose around him in curling tendrils.
The wizard’s mind commanded the si’lat at his feet, not with the precise instructions, but with a raw instinct that set the bound shades to quivering. The black coils wrapped around Milo and drew him upward even as more of it rose around him. The coils lengthened and stretched until they were vast black wings whose wicked points could have gripped a tank end to end with ease.
Borjikhan snapped his jaws with a force that sounded like a thunderclap, and spittle flew from its fangs as it hissed, “My patience wears thin, little man.”
Milo’s voice, amplified to shake the heavens by the Art, drowned out the coming threat.
“You’ve had your say, now I’ll have mine!” Milo thundered. “You may be an ancient horror with names and stories stretching back into forever, but let me tell you who I am.”
The pinions became black lances, plunging in front of Borjikhan and driving it back between the trees as the magus advanced, glaring furiously.
“I am Milo Petrovich, Magus, Slayer of Demons, Crusher of Tyrants!” he declared, his chest swelling as though ready to split with the power of the words. “Orphan and Prince, I was oppressed so I would crush oppressors, and if you ever think to threaten me or mine again, all your names and all your stories will be forgotten. Your tale will become that of one more monster I defeated!”
The si’lat, driven by the fire in his blood, ripped across the tree trunks, sending the lupine terror bounding back in a hail of smoldering splinters.
“You’ve made your threats, and I’ve made my promises,” Milo growled, looking down his nose at the red eyes glaring up at him. “Now retreat to your den, lick your wounded pride, and hope we never meet again.”
For a moment, Milo thought it would attack, but Borjikhan gave an unconvincing snort of derision and snapped its jaws one more time.
“I will remember this,” it growled.
“I’m counting on it,” Milo spat, his black pinions rising in menacing promise. “Now go!”
Borjikhan gave one final snarl, then like a patch of smoke on the wind, it was gone.
It took a few moments for the heady mixture of righteous wrath and power to leach from him, but it did, and with a long sigh, Milo bid the si’lat swarm lower him to the ground. Feeling drained and parched, he struggled to draw the si’lat back into its bound form. He finally managed it, though his shoulders had begun to bow.
He was sliding it back into its case when he felt eyes behind him and saw Ambrose and Rihyani staring at him.
Milo looked back to the savaged trees behind him and back at the shocked expressions of his friends.
“Sorry.” He shrugged as he trudged over to them. “A little dramatic, but I guess I’m getting a little sick of bullies.”
Ambrose and Rihyani kept staring for another heartbeat, and Milo felt a swelling pang of loneliness. Had he gone too far?
Rihyani’s arms went around him and her mouth, hungry and tender
, met his. The loneliness melted, and for a moment, Milo couldn’t think but just was, and was with her. When they came up for air, Rihyani gave that achingly beautiful laugh that made him believe he would love her forever.
“You were amazing,” she said before crushing him in another embrace.
Milo looked over her shoulder at Ambrose and saw the big man smiling at him.
“Well, I’m not going to kiss you for it.” Ambrose chuckled. “How about I raid Lokkemand’s stores for a hero’s feast, eh? I know you’re hungry.”
“Always.” Milo laughed and allowed himself to be drawn into another kiss.
9
These Expectations
“It would’ve been great if Lokkemand had seen your little display,” Ambrose muttered as they rolled into the camp outside Sergio-Ivanoskye. “It probably would make this next part easier.”
“I doubt it.” Milo yawned, knowing he should be more concerned than he felt. “Lokkemand’s never lacked appreciation for my power.”
Ambrose snorted as the kubelwagen pitched and yawed over the mounded earth that broke up the approach to the central palisade ring.
“Just lacks a healthy fear of it,” Ambrose said, his mustache doing an anxious little dance.
Milo shrugged, recognizing that fatigue was contributing to his nonchalance rather than any sort of maturation where the captain was concerned. He didn’t have the energy to hate him.
“I think he’s terrified of your power,” Rihyani shared as Schultz slung the kubelwagen around to park in front of the wooden wall. “He understands better than most what you are capable of, and it scares him to no end.”
It was Ambrose’s turn to shrug.
“It makes a sort of sense,” he muttered as he stood and stretched. “What do you think, Magus?”
Milo shook his head as he rose and managed to pour himself out of the kubelwagen onto the muddy ground. Right then, he felt that Lokkemand could have hated him for his eye color, and he couldn’t have cared less. He was hungry and tired and wanted nothing more than to fill his belly and then collapse.
Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) Page 11
