Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1)

by Aaron D. Schneider

  “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.

  “I can’t see her,” Milo hissed between the curses he spat at each whump. “Hell, I can’t see anything.”

  Ambrose was squinting at the terrain, mustache twitching.

  “We’ve got the boomers over there,” the big man growled, pointing at a ridgeline on the mountain arm that made the top of the draw. “And they’re going to be sighting us shortly if they haven’t already.”

  Milo’s eyes broke free of the tunneled view of the blasted draw, and he saw the glint of enemy arms and the shapes of men working at low-slung carts. A second later, he saw one of the carts jump and kick up dust as the mortar within belched fire and thunder into the heavens.

  He braced himself as the cratering impact hit a few seconds later, this time a few hundred meters closer than all the other strikes.

  “That’s our cue,” Ambrose said, taking Milo by the front of his coat and dragging him down the boulder-strewn slope.

  Skidding and scrambling, they managed to fetch up against a nest of rocks at the end of the draw. From where he stood, back against a sun-warmed rock, Milo saw the first of his dead soldiers cresting the hill. In the time it took him to recognize they were following in his footsteps, a shell struck the hill. Swearing in shock, Milo stared at the drifting dust and heard the patter of broken stones and bodies across the hillside.

  Before the dust had even settled, more of the dead shuffled forward, boots squelching over the twitching remains of their erstwhile comrades.

  Overhead, bullets began to fly with zipping hisses. The cracks of the rifles came half a heartbeat later.

  “Flankers to our east,” Ambrose reported as he craned his neck to take in the draw. “A ways up, but they’ll be advancing, especially if we don’t give them any return fire.”

  Ambrose nodded to the dead who had just started coming down the hill.

  “Any chance you can get them to shoot?” he asked as he scooted between sheltering stones. “Doesn’t have to be effective. Just smoke and noise.”

  Milo shook his head.

  “If I had a few hours, I might get one to be that coordinated,” he grumbled, ducking as a stray bullet skipped across the top of his boulder. “As it is, I’m not even sure how I’ve kept them with us this far.”

  Ambrose sucked his teeth and swore.

  The first of the dead was nearing their spot, one of those without a skin-coat, its features shriveled and waxy. A fragment of shrapnel or something like it had torn a ragged gash across the thing’s cheek, exposing bloodless gums and yellowed teeth. As it stumbled forward, a bullet punched through its shoulder, exiting to kick up the dust on the slope behind it. The shot must have shattered the bone since the arm hung a little lower in the uniform, but the Qareen kept coming, its slow gait undisturbed. Behind it, more of its kind were making their bullet-riddled way down the hill.

  “Well, I’ve got an idea,” Milo panted, leaning over to spy out the eastern slope. “It has a good chance to get us killed if it doesn’t work, but hey, that’s not a problem—for you, at least.”

  Ambrose gave him a stern look and then heaved a sigh as he unslung his carbine.

  “We really need to finish that conversation,” he shouted as the enemy’s fire intensified.

  “We need to survive first.” Milo laughed. “Now, get ready to run into the draw on my word.”

  To the enemy positioned along the ridgeline and the eastern slope, it was a scene of madness.

  A mob of German soldiers rushed out of cover, moving with a drunk’s rubber-jointed reeling. It wasn’t quite a charge since their weapons were still slung across their backs, but they came toward the eastern slope with a reckless energy that couldn’t be ignored. The artillery pieces scrambled to adjust their vectors, while the line infantry on the slope halted their advance. There was a stunned few seconds as the line infantry took aim, then salvo after salvo ripped into the German line.

  Bones snapped, bodies jerked, and helmets rang with puncturing fire, but still they came.

  A curtain of mortar blasts descended on the advancing mob, throwing up a storm of debris. To the horror of the enemy, those Germans thrown down flopped and heaved themselves to their feet, while those peppered by shrapnel did not even slow. Two that had been caught by the blast crawled forward on gory stumps and clawing hands.

  Suddenly faced with fearless, immortal soldiers, the enemy’s resolve wavered.

  Orders were bellowed and conflicting calls made for orderly fire and donning bayonets as the horror-stricken men sent their useless fire downwind. Eventually, someone called for a withdrawal up the slope, and instant consensus seemed to be reached that this was the best course of action. The mangled but undaunted German forces still only halfway up the rough hillside, the enemy infantry scuttled back as the artillery covered their retreat.

  In all the madness, no one noted two figures darting from cover to cover in the draw, pausing every so often to search among the dead.

  “Imrah!” Milo hissed as he slewed to another nest of jutting rocks. “Imrah!”

  The sound of the enemy venting their fearful fury on the dispatched Qareen was moving farther away, but he felt dreadfully exposed as he surveyed the draw.

  The dead soldiers lay in patches and clumps, some blasted beyond human resemblance, others looking no worse for wear than they had when they’d set out that morning. It was the sight of these unmolested corpses that filled him with the most dread.

  If the shades had lapsed like that, there was a good chance that Imrah was at best unconscious.

  “Milo!” came a hoarse bark to his right.

  Milo dared a look around his rocky cover and spied Ambrose waving him over from a narrow crease in the earth. Taking a furtive and futile look around, he sprang from cover and raced toward the shallow gully, certain either a bullet or a shell was headed his way.

  He threw himself flat, sliding the last few feet into the earthen crevice, to come down next to Ambrose. The big man crouched over a small form, rifling through his pack for bandages.

  Imrah lay on the ground, her breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. Patches of dark ichor blotted her ravaged clothes, and one arm was a mangled mess that flexed and twitched with feeble movements that violently twisted Milo’s stomach. On the same side as her wounded limb, the skin-coat had been rent from crown to clavicle, so Milo could see her jagged teeth and wrinkled throat moving with every breath.

  “Hang in there,” Ambrose said, his voice unnaturally calm as he drew out clean strips of cloth and a length of leather cord. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

  Shuffling around, the big man moved to her dangling arm and nodded at the spot he’d just vacated.

  “Over there, Magus,” he said, his voice still smooth and even as he set to work. “Just hold her hand and let her know we’ve got this under control.”

  Milo shuffled over and took Imrah’s limp hand in his. He tried to form words, but his throat knotted up, refusing to work. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but the lie refused to come.
>
  Imrah’s half-human, half-ghul gaze swung over to him, her eyes sliding in and out of focus.

  “My...coat. Milo, my...coat…”

  “It’s okay,” the magus said, the words sounding dead and flat even to his ears. “I’ll...I’ll make you a new one when we get back.”

  She shook her head, the movement frighteningly boneless.

  “No...inside. Inside...my coat.”

  Feeble as her grip was, Milo felt her drawing his hand toward her wounded side.

  “Inside…” she wheezed, and her gaze sharpened for an instant as she croaked, “Kimaris comes!”

  The ghul princess collapsed in a senseless heap.

  Ambrose swore, and Milo looked over and saw him struggling to fashion a tourniquet with the leather cord as he blotted ichor away with the bandages.

  “Damnation,” he muttered softly. “Can’t tell which part of this mess is her and which part is the skin-coat.”

  Milo stared at the gory body, trying not to let his mind linger on any one detail too long, but something caught his eye. He spied a curl of seemingly human flesh hanging near the collarbone like the eared dog page of a book. At first, the grotesque sight nearly convinced his stomach it was time to vacate, but then he remembered a vaguely similar sight in the sitting room just outside the Bashlek’s court in Ifreedahm.

  Inside...my coat.

  Gripped by a sudden realization, Milo grabbed the flap of flesh and began to pull.

  “What are you doing?” Ambrose cried, his cool demeanor fracturing under the horrific sight of the flesh peeling back like paper.

  As the flap folded over, Milo saw seams across the expanse of ichor-splotched skin. Freeing his hand from Imrah’s unconscious grip, he shoved his fingers into the pockets and nearly recoiled in horror as his whole hand slid into a space that could not have been contained in the slim pouch. Forcing himself to remember Imrah’s hints about extra-dimensional spaces, he kept groping around until his fingers slid across something made of rounded glass. There were clinks as he gathered everything he could, and when his hand emerged from the enchanted pocket, he held three small vials.

  Milo wasn’t certain, but he willed himself to believe they contained the ingredients he had seen her use when she regrew her hand before court.

  “Get her mouth open,” Milo instructed as he yanked the wax seals from each vial.

  Ambrose complied, though he nearly lost a finger when she snapped in unconscious reflex.

  Hoping he wasn’t about to turn his teacher into an alchemical bomb, Milo emptied the ingredients into her mouth. As an afterthought, he sent a small pulse of his magical focus after them as they passed through her gaping teeth.

  For a single eternal second, nothing happened, then Imrah’s chest ceased to rise as her body went limp, flattening against the ground.

  Milo stared numbly as Ambrose shook his head slowly and slid an ichor-stained paw across his forehead.

  Then, so suddenly both men lurched backward, Imrah gasped and coughed. A wet hacking sound came from her throat, then she rolled to one side to expel blue-black globules. She tore Ambrose’s failed tourniquet off since her arm had begun to steam and mend itself. The skin-coat still hung in tatters of fleshy fringe around her forearm and elbow, but within seconds, the whipcord sinew had returned. Imrah flexed her claws experimentally.

  With a snarl, she sat up unassisted and turned her bifurcated gaze on the humans on either side of her. For a moment, only her familiar irritation was present, then her eyes widened with fear.

  “You need to get out of here,” she rasped, her human voice edging toward gravelly buzz of ghul tones. “Now!”

  “We all do,” Ambrose said, shoving his remaining bandages back into his pack. “Nice work, by the way, Magus.”

  “Can you stand?” Milo asked, tentatively putting a hand on her shoulder for support.

  “You don’t understand!” Imrah wailed, twisting away from his touch. “You need to get out of here! Just leave me and go!”

  “Not going to happen,” Milo said firmly.

  From somewhere up by the ridgeline, there was a piercing scream.

  “You don’t understand,” Imrah repeated, looking from one to the other. “Oh, Iblis, please just go! Now, before it’s too late!”

  “What are you talking about?” Ambrose asked, the first edge of suspicion sharpening his tone. For the first time since they arrived, the air was not being rent by mortars, and even rifle fire was slackening. Ambrose rose from his crouch to survey the enemy positions.

  “Milo, please!” Imrah moaned, one human hand and one ghul talon gripping his open surcoat. “You need to run!”

  Milo looked down at her and saw a struggle of guilt, fear, and anger writhing behind her mismatched eyes. His stomach sank toward his heels.

  “I called to it,” she gasped, her gaze beginning to twist slowly toward the ridgeline. “When I first came under attack. I’m sorry.”

  “What are you talking about?” Milo demanded, yanking her hands off his coat.

  “Mon Dieu!” Ambrose gasped, and by instinct, Milo heaved to his feet to see what was going on.

  Sweeping across the ridgeline and flowing down the rockface toward the eastern slope was a vast undulating tide. Its muddy gray surface glistened as it rolled down over the hillside, rippling layers speckled with discolorations across its filmy membrane. Dark patches at varying depths in its translucent form bore the shapes of men, horses, and things less recognizable. It rolled down from the saturated ridge to lap across the enemy line. Men vanished, screaming beneath grasping, smothering waves.

  On the air was a heavy clinging stink of stale sweat and burnt ammonia.

  “Come on,” Milo shouted, breaking the spell of the horror’s appearance as he hauled Imrah to her feet. “We need to run!”

  Ambrose shook his head, tearing his gaze away to stare numbly at Milo for a second before giving another whiskery toss of his head and nodding. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder and snatched up his carbine with a seamless economy of movement.

  “Imrah, move!” Milo shouted, pulling on her arm, but she wrenched back, nearly knocking him over.

  “No, it’s too late,” she cried, reaching up to dig at the ragged edges of her rent skin coat. “Just stay here.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” he bellowed, pointing up the slope to the slime flood scouring the eastern slope. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Just stay here and be quiet,” she instructed, turning toward the gelatinous horror. With a sickening, wet wrench, she tore the skin-coat off her head so the vacant remains of a woman’s face hung like a hood from her shoulders.

  “Milo,” Ambrose rumbled at his shoulder. “We need to get out of here now.”

  Milo nodded, his mind freewheeling even as he watched his teacher advancing toward the monster, arms outstretched.

  “Okay,” Milo murmured, something twisting hard inside his ribs. “You’re right.”

  They turned to run, but their feet refused to comply as nerveless fingers gripped their ankles with dead weight. The dead soldiers at their feet tightened their grip, curling around their legs, even as more rose from the ground to stagger forward, hands outstretched.

  “I told you to stay put,” Imrah called over her shoulder as she kept advancing toward the eastern slope.

  To Milo’s and Ambrose’s horror, the foul tide turned and rushed down to meet her.

  24

  A Gambit

  Milo waited for the living sea of filth to sweep Imrah away, determined to witness her last moments before his own time came.

  Yet, just as the cresting wave of caustic jelly was about to swallow the ghul, it halted before her. A glistening wall of murky protoplasm rippled and shone as its previous victims, men and horses, twisted and rolled lazily within its depths.

  “Kimaris!” Imrah cried, raising her arms over her head. “Commander and master of legions, I call you to treat with me!”

  The gelatinous depths
heaved and wriggled, and then from the quavering wall of jelly emerged the bile-gnawed faces of the slime’s prey. Most were human, some were ghul, and a few were horses, goats, and dogs, all in varied states of digestion. The wall of dripping heads opened their mouths in unison to raise a sodden, quavering chorus.

  “BEHOLD! BEHOLD!” they cried in choking, trembling ecstasy. “THE PRINCE ARRIVES!”

  Imrah stood motionless as the center of the expanse before her grew convex. The forming bubble swelled, then with a wet pop, it collapsed, revealing a figure within.

  Tall and slender, with an androgynous aesthetic of elegance, the figure seemed to be composed of the same substance as the sea that birthed it, but shaped and hardened to a glassy smoothness. It might have seemed an impressive sculpture, but floating within its polished form were bits of viscera, meat, and bone. Turning its smooth face to look down on the ghul before it, the figure gave the slightest nod of acknowledgment.

  “BEHOLD THE PRINCE!” the chorus cried. “THE PRINCE BEHOLDS YOU!”

  “You have served well,” Imrah said, to which the figure raised its chin. ”Now I bid you return to the deep and wait for my call once more.”

  The figure turned its head to one side, then slowly turned and pointed at Milo and Ambrose.

  “THE ENEMY IS UPON THE FIELD!” the gnawed faces warbled excitedly. “THE PRINCE RIDES TO WAR!”

  Pseudopods of slime crept forward on either side of Imrah, inching toward the corpses that held the magus and the bodyguard in place.

  “Imrah!” Milo shouted in warning.

  “Kimaris!” the ghul princess snarled, turning a withering gaze on either side of her before glaring up at the figure. “I am the one who freed you! I am the one who healed you! I am the one you serve!”

  The pseudopods retracted, and the figure raised a hand to its chin as though deep in thought.

  “THE PRINCE WILL HEAR THEE!”