His pulse still throbbing behind his eyes, Milo quietly began to draw the chain to himself where he lay on the floor. This wasn’t the escape he’d planned, but he supposed it would have to do.
The chains were free, and he had the entire length looped between his hands when the soldiers both drew their bayonet blades from the belts. Milo, who’d begun to climb to his feet, froze where he was, his heart stopping. He was certain both were about to spring on him like patricians upon Caesar.
“Be careful,” one said as he rammed his blade between the slats of wood. “We don’t want to jostle something and crush her inside.”
The other nodded and wedged his knife between the planks, then together they began to pry upward. The nails they’d driven in hours earlier were long and protested with hard cracks and squeaks.
“We need to hurry!” the other panted, and he grunted as the nails began to give way.
Milo crept forward, crouched to spring with the chain garotte between his hands. He was ready when the train lurched over a dip in the terrain and Milo’s impromptu weapon jangled.
Both soldiers paused in their prying and turned to goggle at Milo, who sprang upon the nearest even as he turned.
Milo got the loop over the man’s neck easily and pulled back hard enough that he heard bones click in his throat. He and the soldier pitched back together, the soldier unsure of which he preferred to do: breathe or beat Milo to a pulp.
The wizard twisted his body, trying to sink the chain deeper as punches were driven into his ribs and stomach. Things were, as usual, not going as planned. He’d expected to secure a tight grip and snap the man’s neck, but the target was stronger and thicker-necked than he’d anticipated.
Milo looked to see what the other man was doing as a bayonet clattered to the floor and the man’s feet came up. Like some putrefied revenant, Ambrose had emerged from the box and wrapped a massive paw around the man’s throat.
There was a gristly crunch, and the soldier fell from Ambrose’s fingers like a limp puppet. Seeing Milo grappling on the floor, Ambrose climbed out of the box as the smell of him swept through the compartment.
Eyes watering and face sweating, Milo gave a sharp grunt as he twisted and heaved himself up and onto the remaining soldier’s back, chains still wrapped around his fist. The man tried to scramble free, but Milo hauled back, stopping his flight. He planted his foot on the guard’s back and pulled like a longshoreman hauling on a mooring line.
There was a strangled squealing sound from the soldier, then a resounding pop. Milo felt the man go limp under him and let the chain go with a gasp, his hands bloody and the muscles of his back and shoulders burning.
Staggering back, he slumped against the wall of the compartment.
“Not bad.” Ambrose nodded and scooped up the first corpse like he was made of straw. With a soft grunt, he parked the body across the open box while the other hand reached in to peel away the false bottom.
“Thanks,” Milo muttered as his chain-savaged fingers began to grope in his pockets for the key to his shackles.
“Want to take bets on what they’re building out there?” Ambrose asked as he drew out his pack, then Milo’s satchel. “My money’s on it being like one of those mind-control organs, only on a tank or something.”
“Really?” Milo laughed and then swore as the key fell from his blood-slicked fingers.
“Damn, help me out, please,” he growled as he flexed his torn digits. “I’ll be able to think better with these things off me.”
Ambrose fetched the key from the floor and had Milo free in short order. He was still rubbing his wrists when Ambrose held out the satchel.
“You got a better idea?” he asked after Milo took the case and before holding out the fetish cane. “Let’s hear it, and then you can put some money where your smart mouth is.”
Milo took the cane and felt the icy thoughts of Imrah coiling across his mind.
You need to repair your hands, she instructed archly, and he could almost hear her disgusted sigh. Why do you insist on handling problems like a ruffian?
Because I am one, he thought and reached into his satchel for a prepared batch of healing unguent.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.” Milo chuckled as he dabbed his fingers with the elixir. “You think we’re lucky enough for it to be as simple as some silly vehicle we could sabotage?”
Ambrose’s mouth settled into a grim line beneath his mustache.
“No.” He sighed as he checked the breach of his Gewehr. “I don’t suppose we are that lucky.”
A flex of focus and Milo’s fingers were set to mending as the unguent smoked and the smells of jasmine and formaldehyde rose to compete with Ambrose’s charnel house stink.
“So, how are we making our exit again?” Ambrose said as he peeled off the befouled uniform and its gore-plastered fetishes. With two heaves and a grunt, he plopped both bodies into the box and threw the discarded uniform on top of them before replacing the lid. He looked up from fishing his clothes out of his pack to see what Milo was doing.
“We’re going out with a bang,” Milo said softly as he drew a vial out of his satchel. What looked like a miniature storm cloud twisted and sparked behind the glass.
“You do like blowing things up,” Ambrose grumbled as he tugged on his trousers.
“Us ruffians have simple tastes.” He chuckled to himself as he held the vial up to his eye. “Ready whenever you are.”
13
These Misfortunes
The dark of the night was pierced by a rush of blue and green flame.
Less than ten miles south of Petrograd, a train rolling down the last intact railway in northern Russia saw one of its cars burst into unnatural flames. From the edge of the scorched city to the forests beyond, the burning car could be seen rumbling on like some demonic carnival attraction. For years to come, the few desperate souls clinging to survival in that desolate place would claim they saw strange, fearsome faces twisting in the bewitched fire, and they whispered that God had sent his judgment of the unholy construct being fashioned in Petrograd.
Others whispered it was because the last saint of Petrograd’s blood called out for vengeance.
Those who stood guard over Petrograd and its ramshackle foundries had less fanciful theories, mostly involving spies and traitors, but soon their theories would be whispered as confusedly as those of the scavengers around their fires.
Whether it was divine judgment or bitter sabotage, all human eyes were on the flames, and none noticed the two forms darting between the trees to get clear of the wounded iron behemoth. In a stand of trees, those same forms hunkered down and waited for the last of the train to pass.
In that deepening gloom, they held their breath and then smiled as a silvery shape as pale as a ghost alighted on the branches above them.
“Enjoy the show?” The broader shadow chuckled after a glance upward.
“We don’t have time for that,” the silver shape hissed. “We need to move now!”
“What do you mean?” the thinner shadow asked as he stepped into the moonlight, revealing Milo’s thin, scarred face. “They can’t be coming after us already.”
“Not the Russians,” said the silver specter as it descended and became Rihyani in the moonlight beside Milo. “Hiisi are moving through the woods. I had to wind-ride higher and higher to avoid the airborne ones, but they are teeming in these woods.”
Milo swore and stared between the night-blackened tree trunks. The broad shadow shuffled forward with a few choices phrases of his own, then it was Ambrose glaring out across the darkened wood.
“So, Zlydzen’s got them acting as watchdogs then,” Ambrose rumbled, then froze with his head cocked to one side. Milo and Rihyani froze as well, trusting the Nephilim’s unnatural acuity.
“Damn, they’re fast,” Ambrose snarled, and he jerked his head at the railway behind them. “I can hear something—several somethings—running after that train. Only a matter of time before
one of them figures out they should check back this way.”
“Then we better get going,” Milo murmured. He looked at Rihyani. “What is the lay of the land?”
“I spotted a road cutting through the wood parallel to the track,” the fey said, pointing one long finger eastward between the trees. “If we reach that, we can follow it to a small clearing in the forest that is near the outskirts of the city.”
The Hiisi will pick up your scent from the wind, Imrah told him. Once they have it, they will find you.
“That’s not helpful,” Milo growled, and he shook his head as Ambrose and Rihyani looked at him quizzically. “Come on, let’s move.”
Without another word, they took off through the dark.
* * *
By nature, Rihyani and Ambrose were unhindered by darkness. Milo had applied nightsight before they’d leaped from the train. Yet being able to see in the dark did not render them omniscient about all the dark-shaded forest’s hazards. Roots still threatened to snare rushing feet, and branches still lashed passing faces. The promise of a horde of primal horrors on their trail did nothing to ease them, and things became even more difficult as they crashed down a slope and began slogging across wet ground.
A boggy strip of land swollen by recent rains stretched before them. Beyond it, Milo spied the break in the woods where the road lay.
“Almost there,” he growled, drawing one boot out of slurping mud as he searched for something to plant it on. As he did, there was a queer reflection in a pool of standing water beside him; for a second, it was as if the entire pool blinked under the dappled moonlight.
Milo’s arms and neck prickled with gooseflesh.
“Then we get to run for our lives on solid ground,” Ambrose groused as he forged ahead, his heavy tread sinking him up to his knees in places. “Just lovely.”
“Less talk, more walk, boys,” Rihyani called from up ahead, where she stood poised on a small patch of knotted grass. With a bound and the barest flutter of her will, gentle currents bore her to a toppled tree several meters away.
Milo blinked, sweating and yet cold from the icy mud. Had he seen a dark shape slither beneath the surface of the water?
“Easy for her to say,” Ambrose puffed as he tugged a foot free with a popping sound. “Damn pixie!”
Milo planted the tip of his cane in a patch of damp sod, scrambled onto the firm spot, and swept his gaze around him. He wiped sweat from his eyes, trying to press outward with his will to sense anything as he searched the inky pockets of water dotting the way to the road.
“Milo, what is it?” Rihyani called to him, and he turned, struggling to find words as his gaze kept roving.
The words died in his throat as he saw Rihyani staring at him, her back to a dripping monstrosity.
Fleshy whiskers twitched and swung to the side as its massive jaws gaped, revealing ridged gums studded with fangs. Bulging eyes glowed like ghostly lamps above a mouth wrinkled to accommodate the widening maw, turning its expression into a perverse smile. Thick webbed claws attached to swollen arms with rubbery folds stretched toward the fey as though inviting her into an embrace.
“RIHYANI!” Milo screamed, but the monster was already in motion.
Thankfully, so was she.
Talons raked the soggy tree as the huge jaws snapped shut on empty air with an audible smack. Rihyani was in the air riding willed currents, her fingers extending into dark sickles as her eyes flashed over bared fangs.
“COME TO TSAR’VODYANOY, MY SWEET!”
The sound was the chuckling of a thousand drowned throats at the bottom of a well—deep, thick, and viscous. Rihyani hissed in response but was forced to dart up to the canopy as the monster heaved its glistening bulk in a pounce. Webbed claws clapped centimeters beneath Rihyani’s feet, and a hideous burbling chuckle resounded from deep in its chest.
The Gewehr barked, and Tsar’Vodyanoy slapped back down on the tree trunk with a crunch, its slimy belly opened with a black oozing wound. Ambrose worked the action on his rifle with furious speed, punching hole after hole in the creature as it turned heavily to him. Compared to the terrifying display of strength and mobility it had demonstrated, its movements were slow and clumsy now. Milo dared to hope that the bulky creature had worn itself out.
When another burble rippled out of the horror’s flesh, Milo knew they had no such luck. The burble grew into a roar.
“TSAR’VODYANOY WILL HAVE YOU SOON TOO, CHUBBY LITTLE PIG!”
“Why wait?” Ambrose bellowed as he rammed another clip into his Gewehr.
Tsar’Vodyanoy’s drooping facial tendrils slapped together as it shook its great head, chuckling in its water-logged voice. With a shrug of its huge sloped shoulders, it swung back to find Rihyani, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Now, now, play fair, my sweet,” the creature croaked, glowing eyes sweeping left and right in search of the fey.
Ambrose had begun firing again, and Milo decided to add his contribution.
FREEZE
Frozen darts punched into the ichor-dribbling wounds Ambrose’s bullets had opened, and wherever they bit, razor-sharp crystals of black ice formed. Rubbery flesh distended and split as more spurs of ice jutted from the tears, and with a tremendous groan, Tsar’Vodyanoy rolled over on its side and slid into the muck. With a burst of plopping bubbles, it sank beneath the surface of the pool.
“Is it dead?” Milo asked as he struggled forward to get a better look around the fallen tree trunk.
“Let’s make sure!” Ambrose growled and sprang atop the trunk with his rifle still at his shoulder. The Gewehr fired twice, and the water stirred beneath the heavy rounds.
Milo scrambled over the tree as Ambrose leaped into the pool. The big man waded through ankle-deep water before his boots squelched in mud. Two stomping turns revealed nothing but muck and marsh.
“Not dead then,” Milo spat, and his head began to swivel left and right.
“Not quite,” came the chuckle from behind him.
He spun in time to see huge jaws about to envelop him. By reflex, he drew on the physical empowerment of his cane and made to leap back. His footing on the ichor-smeared trunk betrayed him, and his legs went out from under him as he tumbled backward. Tsar’Vodyanoy’s mouth clamped down on the space he’d been in with a loud snap, but its huge bulk was already sending it churning forward.
Milo hit the pool behind the tree, and the aquatic horror’s face came down on top of him. He felt something dense and knobby bounce off his back—Ambrose?—and then it drove him through the mud. More by luck than skill, his fingers gripped around the horny lip of the upper jaw and his feet planted themselves along the bony rim of the lower jaw. Necromistic magic rushed through his muscles and along every bone as he held on for dear life.
The gleaming eyes narrowed at him over a mustache of flailing feelers.
“THE SCRAWNY ONES CRUNCH SO WONDERFULLY,” Tsar’Vodyanoy roared gaily as it hefted its head up and stretched its jaws wide.
Milo stretched like he was on a rack, every tendon singing a song of agony, but he held his place over the yawning mouth. If he relaxed even for the blink of an eye, he’d flop down into the maw and it would be over, but with Imrah pouring energy into his sinews, he could hold.
A hellcat’s shriek sounded as Rihyani sprang from whatever illusion she’d hidden behind to fall upon the monster’s head. Talons raked it, piercing rubbery flesh and puncturing the gleaming eyes, but Tsar’Vodyanoy kept burbling merrily as it threw its head from one side to the other.
“NOW THIS IS FUN!” it chortled as it spun and flailed its limbs at something Milo couldn’t see. Without warning, it plopped down and rolled across the marshy ground.
Between the plunges in frigid black water and being raked through mud, Milo heard a pained scream and the sickening crunch of bones breaking. The monster whose face he was riding rose and tossed something into a nearby pool. With another shake of its head, Rihyani, who was back for another attack, was thrown as
ide.
The creature’s head reared back as it continued to try and dislodge Milo, and he saw Ambrose’s broad body floating face-down.
“ONE DOWN, AND WHAT A MEATY TREAT HE’LL BE.”
The jaws yawned wide again, and for a moment Milo, enraged and trapped, stared down the gullet of the creature. The charnel stink wafting up was like the putrid gush of a hundred floating corpses in the world’s foulest bog, but Milo grinned savagely into the miasma.
Dragging one hand across the jagged lip, Milo opened a gash in his palm. Tightening until his fingers ached with his other hand, he extended the hand into the mouth and sent a stream of his blood over the rows of fangs and down the undulating throat.
“HAHA! CRUNCHY, YOU ARE TEASING TSAR’VODYANOY!”
Milo managed to yank his hand back as the jaws snapped shut. Again he held on for dear life, using all his fortified strength to keep his feet and hands where they were.
At the same time, his mind, working at a frenzied, second-stretching pace, narrowed to a lethal bolt of focus and dove after the trail left by his blood. As he’d hoped, the essence-laden fluid had been sent down to the creature’s belly, where a host of corpses stewed in brackish juices. His essence mingled with the slumbering deathly energies of the bones, and Milo felt the flickers of the hovering shades.
He shoved aside his fear and trepidation about the wild shades and his blood called to them, acting as a catalyst and binding agent. The energies rushed into the decrepit bodies, some only skeletal claws or grinning jaws, but all sprang to unnatural animation at Milo’s command. Stoking their frenzied energies, Milo set them loose upon Tsar’Vodyanoy’s innards, clawing, gnawing, and jabbing with shattered bone spurs.
The monster groaned and began to sink to the ground. Milo looked down and saw black effluence welling up from the throat.
“You are what you eat,” Milo snarled into the glowing eyes. “And what you are is dead, fish-face!”
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 80