World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set

by Schneider, Aaron D.

  When he turned his eyes on Imrah’s seething figure, his gaze was clear and sharp.

  “You can throw your fits all you want, but unless you are quitting the operation altogether, you’re going to have to make do,” he said firmly, then set about clearing his table to begin working on another skin-coat.

  Imrah snarled Ghulish curses that lacked human corollaries and made several abortive attempts at storming away before coming back with a hiss.

  “Where are the bones? What did you do with them?”

  Milo turned. He would have been nose to nose with her if she was a bit taller.

  “They’re gone,” he growled. “Get over it.”

  “I’m not using my blood!” she spat. “Where are the bones?”

  “Don’t use your blood,” he shot back. “There’s enough resonance in the extra ingredients we have for you to draw essence from them.”

  “Scraps, and inefficient scraps at that,” Imrah replied in a hard, flat voice. “I’m not going to go scrapping like some scavenger. Where are the bones?”

  Milo glared at her.

  “Where are the bones!”

  “Buried,” said a voice as hard and blunt as a hammer stroke.

  Man and ghul turned to see Ambrose coming down the stairs.

  He was dusty, and grimy streaks decorated his face, which was set in a thunderous scowl. One hand clutched the bundled-up bags that had held the infants’ bones, while the other rested pointedly on an officer’s sword the big man had “appropriated” sometime since they arrived at camp. His boots hit the basement floor and he advanced on Imrah, the bundle raised in front of him.

  “There still might be some bone dust in there,” he rumbled. “You want a sniff, vulture?”

  Imrah recoiled, seeming ready to flee for her life, but Ambrose settled for throwing the bags at her feet.

  “There, get a snout full,” he said in a low, deadly whisper. “That’s the last thing you’re going to get out of them.”

  Imrah’s eyes darted to the bag, to Ambrose, then Milo, and back to Ambrose. Her face became a sneering mask even as she cringed and threw an unconvincing shrug at the bodyguard.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said with forced nonchalance. “I have ways of finding them.”

  Ambrose took one step, and Imrah flinched back.

  “Do that,” Ambrose warned icily, “and there won’t be enough of you left to do magic with. Do you understand me? I will end you, then render you down into pieces too small to bother finding.”

  Milo’s stomach tightened and his skin prickled. There was a red radiance in Ambrose’s eyes that he hoped the ghul could see. One more foolish word from her might lead to the fatal termination of this argument.

  Imrah’s gaze fell quicker than even Milo expected, and her shoulders sagged.

  “Fine.” She shrugged sulkily. “But even scraping every last bit of essence from the spares won’t be enough. That isn’t an excuse, just a fact.”

  Before Milo could speak, Ambrose had peeled back one sleeve and stretched his arm out in offering.

  “Take whatever you need,” he said.

  “Ambrose!” Milo exclaimed quickly as he stepped forward. “You don’t have to do that.”

  The guard fixed him with a powerful glare.

  “’Have to’ has nothing to do with it,” he replied pugnaciously. “If this gets things sorted and stops another war, I’m happy to do it.”

  Imrah eyed the big man through narrowed lids.

  “Do you realize what you are offering?” she asked. “Do you really understand the risks?”

  Ambrose rounded on her and shook his bared arm.

  “Do you understand that you need to shut your mouth and get to work?” he shot back. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

  Imrah looked at Milo, who could only nod.

  “If anybody knows their mind, it’s Simon Ambrose.”

  “Damn straight!” the big man shouted, ambling over to an unoccupied table to slap his arm down. “Now hurry up before I get bored and use the pigsticker on my belt to get things started.”

  23

  A Ruse

  Seven long and grueling days after the fifty corpses had been relocated for Nicht-KAT research, in the near darkness before dawn, fifty uniformed soldiers shuffled out of Bamyan, cutting south and east across a series of broken hills.

  Their movements were stiff, their faces slack, and if anyone had bothered to look closely, they would have noticed how vacant their eyes were, refusing to focus on anything. Those deeper in the column’s formation had a distinctly mortified appearance, and all manner of questions would have had to be asked.

  But soldiers shuffling toward or back from patrol or repositioning were so commonplace that no one seemed to notice. The column of fifty soldiers was summarily ignored even as they followed a tall, rangy Blackcoat, at whose shoulder walked a brute in a borrowed uniform and a native woman as they strode beyond the picket lines.

  The last sentries to see them gave them a passing glance, rubbing their eyes blearily. One might have even made a grim joke about the men walking like the living dead, but only a few laughed. They were all tired, and their watch was almost over.

  With a long sigh, they watched the forgotten fifty trudge on, rounding a rough hill before they passed from sight and mind.

  * * *

  Two miles from the closest picket line, Milo met the fey.

  “We’ve scouted out these three spots,” Rihyani explained, pointing at the map Milo unfolded. “Two shallow valleys and a draw that should provide an open enough space for the bodies to be seen and would serve as a reasonable place for an ambush.”

  Milo nodded, struggling to concentrate on what she said. The animated corpses shuffling behind them were empowered by bound shades. They’d gone willingly into the prepared bodies, but part of him had to remain focused, or the shades were liable to take their new ride out for a stroll. In the time it had taken him to talk to Rihyani, one of the dead had managed to take three sluggish steps away from the column.

  “Good work,” he said distractedly as he applied mental pressure. The dead soldier shuffled back into line.

  Imrah gave a small sniff and looked up at the fey defiantly.

  “Isn’t that a little too obvious?”

  “People make mistakes,” Milo said quickly, wanting to keep them focused on the task at hand. “Especially when they’re lost, which is how we’re trying to play this.”

  Two more shades drove their meat vessels to the side and had to be brought to heel with a spike of Milo’s will.

  Throwing a look over his shoulder, he saw that the other half of the column, those controlled by Imrah, hadn’t moved a muscle. Despite how silly and petty it was, he envied her control over the essence-enriched echoes. She clearly had enough control that she could argue with people without letting the Qareen wander. He wanted that kind of control, not just for the power of it, but also because the constant strain of course-correcting the dead soldiers was tiring.

  The truth was, he and Ambrose had suffered under the regimen of blood magic. Despite their best efforts with food, rest, and even elixirs, both of them were unnaturally pale, and their eyes were circled in bruise-colored flesh. Milo was looking almost as rawboned as the day the two had met, and Ambrose had clearly lost a few pounds, his round face becoming more angular and blocky. To make matters worse, Milo learned that the “cosmetic effect” Imrah had mentioned from overusing nightwatch was that the circulatory system began to darken beneath the skin. Twisted patches of blue-black veins and capillaries spiderwebbed his body. For the last two days of their work, Milo had avoided his reflection because it was too disheartening.

  Both men would need time to recover, but first they needed to see this done. Milo had tried to get Ambrose to stay behind and recover since there was nothing for him to do, but he’d insisted a bodyguard couldn’t guard when he wasn’t around.

  So now they stood, looking more like the uncoated corpses at the center
of the formation, eager to get the job done.

  “How will the bodies be discovered?” Rihyani asked, making it a point to look directly at Milo instead of the glaring ghul.

  “Lokkemand came through for us on that too,” Milo said, pushing the fatigue out of his voice. “He’s scheduled zeppelin surveillance of the area by midmorning. We need to get this moving so we have everything in place and we’re clear of the area before they get there.”

  “Understood,” the contessa said. “We’ll stay clear, and no flying while the airships are blundering about.”

  Milo and Ambrose looked at her with weary, furrowed brows.

  “Flying?” the big man asked.

  Rihyani smiled and cocked her head to one side.

  “Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown, with silver spots upon her wings, and from the moon, she flutters down,” she quoted in a sing-song voice, her eyes glinting the steely predawn light.

  “Shakespeare?” Ambrose mumbled with an uncertain frown.

  “Thomas Hood,” Rihyani said, her voice and smile gentle and refreshing despite the correction. “Though from the way both you and the Magus look, I judge Mab hath not been with you for some time.”

  “Fair to say,” Ambrose agreed, a grin breaking out beneath his newly grown mustache.

  Milo stared at the two of them, unsure if it was fatigue or ignorance that kept him out of the exchange but not liking it either way. He absently wondered if this was what jealousy felt like, but the reflection was broken by Imrah’s snarled interjection.

  “I thought we had a schedule to keep?” the ghul said sharply, eying them all balefully. “Enough poetry.”

  “Right,” Milo said. straightening and gesturing at the map. “Imrah will take the easternmost location, this draw right here. Ambrose and I will deposit the rest of them along these two valleys. Rihyani and the fey will be in a holding pattern around this north and west hill, which is where we will rendezvous.”

  He looked at each of them to confirm they understood before he began to refold the map.

  “If everything goes according to plan, we’ll hold there until we can confirm the zeppelins are inbound. After that, we’ll head back to camp. Might even celebrate if Ambrose can rustle us up any booze Lokkemand hasn’t drunk.”

  There were tense chuckles from Ambrose and Rihyani. Imrah’s expression remained flat and hard.

  “I can’t work miracles,” Ambrose warned. “But I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all any of us can do,” Milo said. “Now, let’s move out.”

  * * *

  A rock turned under Milo’s foot, and he stumbled forward to bark his shin on a jutting lip of stone. He swore when he nearly lost his footing a second time and muttered further profanity under his breath as he rubbed his battered leg.

  “This all seemed a lot simpler on the map,” Milo growled, then gave a frustrated snort as he felt four of the Qareen lagging behind as they tried to climb the steep sides of the valley behind them. Mumbling vitriolic oaths, he hammered down with a flex of focus, and the shade-powered corpses fell back in line.

  “Almost there.” Ambrose held out a canteen.

  Milo accepted it and took grateful slurps as he looked at the twenty-some corpses coming to a staggering halt a few feet away.

  “When I signed up, I never thought this was what I’d be doing.” Milo sighed as he handed back the canteen. “But I suppose I didn’t expect to last more than a few days in the trenches, so all’s well, right?”

  Ambrose nodded, took a drink, and wiped his mouth on the back of his arm.

  “Very cheerful way of looking at it,” he commented and gave Milo a wink. “Though ‘signing up’ sounds like a rosy way of saying you were conscripted into a penal regiment.”

  Milo shook his head, climbed to his feet, and opened his surcoat. In the chill early hours the coat had been nice, but after a few hours of clambering and the sun breaking over the horizon, it was uncomfortably warm.

  “Except I did sign up,” Milo said. “The Leipzig Werk-Strafrechtlich I was in, well, they put out the all-call for anyone willing to sign up. I put in my name as soon as my shift was over.”

  Ambrose gave a long whistle as he capped the canteen.

  “You were a Strafie before this?” he said, shock in his tone. “You must have been a naughty young boy to get plopped in there.”

  Milo nodded.

  “The worst.” He sighed again and gave a slight groan as he stretched. “Let’s keep moving.”

  They trudged on for a while, the dead scuffing along behind them, occasionally stumbling but always righting themselves with jerky marionette movements. Before long, they crested a rise and were looking down on the first valley.

  “You know,” Milo puffed as he wiped his sleeve across his forehead, “you still owe me an explanation of that whole resurrection business.”

  When Ambrose didn’t immediately respond, Milo turned around and saw the big man looking out over the ranks of the dead.

  “Something wrong?” Milo asked, taking a step back toward him.

  Ambrose frowned, his gaze fixed on the way they’d come.

  “Thought I heard something,” he muttered and adjusted the carbine on his shoulder. The truncated rifle had been another acquisition, along with the sword on his belt. Milo had offered to ask Lokkemand for goods from the quartermasters, but Ambrose had only laughed and said he preferred to do his own shopping.

  “Are you sure you aren’t trying to avoid the subject?” Milo pressed.

  Ambrose didn’t respond. Milo saw the animated soldiers halt and decided to start sending them down into the valley.

  “MOVE,” he commanded, and the shade-fueled Qareen made to stumble down into the valley.

  Milo looked back and saw Ambrose had stopped staring back the way they’d come, though a frown was stamped on his face. He stepped clear so the dead could pass as he gathered his thoughts.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he began. “In some ways, it’s a bit like a dream because I know things for certain as soon as I get there.”

  “There?” Milo asked, sparing a thought to drive a wandering shade back on course.

  “There being the place I go when I die,” Ambrose said, scratching his cheek. “At least where my, uh…”

  “Soul?” Milo offered.

  “Yeah, that will work. Soul.” Ambrose grunted with relief. “I’m so used to dealing with blunt hard cases that saying the word seemed silly. Forgot I was talking to a witch.”

  Milo wanted to correct him and say magus, but the big man was already uncharacteristically uncomfortable. More than half the dead had already shuffled past in the time it had taken him to say a few words.

  “Anyway,” Ambrose continued, “my soul gets to where it always goes, and somehow I know I’m dead. I just know it.”

  “Like in a dream.” Milo nodded encouragingly.

  “Exactly! It’s always the same place. First time it happened, I was confused because it was just bad luck, you see, me getting killed. It was 1844, late summer in Morocco, and I was a veteran fighting man, but that wasn’t any use when a frightened horse—”

  A dull whump carried faintly on the air, followed by a distant whistle.

  Ambrose froze and looked at Milo, his eyes blazing with a savage light.

  “I knew I heard something,” he roared as he spun and gazed back the way they’d come. “Artillery fire.”

  Milo fought the instinct to duck as his eyes swept across the truncated horizon created by the mountainous terrain.

  “Are they shooting at us?” he asked, hating that he couldn’t put a little more iron into his voice. Of all the horrors of the trenches he’d been bracing himself for, artillery was the most horrible. The thought of a sudden, messy, and inglorious end descending from on high took away every last shred of war’s glamor for him.

  “No,” Ambrose said with a snarl, his ears pricking up as another whump and keening whine sounded. “They're a good way off...and right where I
put Imrah’s band.”

  Milo swore savagely.

  “Rihyani said she scouted the areas!”

  “Armies move, and you could hide whole regiments in these overgrown gullies,” the big man spat. “What’s the order?”

  For a split second Milo froze, suddenly realizing that everything—the operation, the future of the war, and the future of human relations with the supernatural—rested on him. It was a crippling and awful realization, and it slammed into the magus like a knockout punch. What should they do?

  Two rounds of artillery fire, one chasing the other, carried on the air, and Milo uttered his best combination of colorful curses.

  “Only thing we can do,” he growled, his mouth working before his mind had even recovered. “Go save the cranky bitch!”

  * * *

  By the time they’d closed on the draw where Imrah and her squad were bound, even Ambrose was puffing, while Milo was concerned he was in danger of collapsing. Despite their panting and wheezing, both men noted that the crack of rifles had been added to the artillery fire.

  “The more, the merrier,” Ambrose snarled as he gripped Milo’s hand to drag him over a patch of broken stones. “Good thing it’s not just the two of us.”

  Behind them, the line of dead soldiers formed a meandering trail. Milo had given up trying to keep them together, but they were following in a relatively cohesive direction.

  “We’re...going to...need... something,” Milo wheezed as he doubled over.

  The thumps of artillery fire—lighter horse-drawn guns Ambrose had stated some time ago—was now close enough that Milo jumped each time. Through sweat-bleared eyes, he looked down from the hillock and saw bursts of earth where the enemy shells struck. The ground had been so broken and pocked even before the bombardment of the last half-hour, it was hard to tell what they were aiming for besides wanton destruction. Milo thought he spotted dark stains on the rocks that might have been the remains of the corpse soldiers. Wandering clouds of dust made the scene and its actors all the harder to see.