“Pretty much,” Ambrose muttered as he tied off one string and shuffled over to tie off the other.
“And who is that fool going to be?”
“Well,” the big man began as he stepped back from the affixed grenade and gave Milo a level look, “I’d be a pretty poor bodyguard if I expected you to be the one to set off the suicide trap.”
Milo shook his head.
“You don’t have to do that, Ambrose.”
The bodyguard scowled.
“After all this, you’re going to make it hard on me?” he rumbled, crossing his big arms over his chest. “Milo, someone’s got to set this fireball off, and pretty as I am, I’m not the poor bastard who was born with magic up his trousers, so spare me all that rot. It has to be me.”
Ambrose turned his back to his ward, pretending to check the lengths of the strings as he muttered, “There’s always the chance I somehow come back, and if I don’t...well, I suppose it was a long time coming.”
Milo sighed and reached into his black coat.
“Simon?”
“What?” the bodyguard asked fiercely, turning on his heel with eyes blazing.
“You don’t have to do this,” Milo said, shaking a vial filled with black sand. “Because I’ve got someone else dying to do the job.”
Ambrose’s eyes widened, and he made several attempts to form a coherent sentence before finally throwing his hands in the air and wagging his head.
“Witches,” he growled in disgust as a smile crept below his mustache.
“Come and get us,” Milo growled under his breath as he gripped the rail running across the top of the zeppelin.
Despite the reality of losing his grip and subsequently his footing and then sliding off the airship to certain doom, Milo only had eyes for the fang of rock in their path. By his amateur evaluation, they were minutes from passing the summit, and right on schedule, a tongue of murky filth as wide as a football field and three times the length lapped its way up the mountainside.
“Keep coming,” Milo muttered. “Almost there.”
Despite his fixed gaze, not all of him was present for the unnerving spectacle.
In the back of his mind, he kept the shades animating the Si’lat under tight control, especially the squirrely little thing in charge of the grenades. Besides the one who kept getting curious about grenade rings, Milo had set the other two animate clouds of black sand to watch the controls as the pilot had instructed. Milo wasn’t sure if both were required, but it looked like a two-person job to make sure all the instruments and knobs and levers and other such remained just as they were. That and shades were relatively simple things, and Milo’s confidence in directing them was suspect.
Still, their presence below meant Ambrose stood next to him, glaring at Kimaris’ ascent.
“Where does something like that come from?”
“Hell?” Milo offered. He was half-joking, but the look on Ambrose’s face conveyed that such things were no laughing matter.
The guard shook his head and adjusted the straps on his parachute with his free hand.
“Are you sure these things will work from this height?” the big man asked as he eyed the pack suspiciously.
“No,” Milo admitted as he ran his thumb along one of his own straps. “But I figure they couldn’t hurt.”
Ambrose’s gaze wandered to the valley floor passing beneath them.
“I think I’d rather blow myself up,” he muttered, the words nearly stolen by the whistling wind.
“You and the Si’lat can still switch places,” Milo said, jerking a thumb at the hatch. “You better hurry, though.”
Ambrose’s mustache twitched against the wind as he scowled at Milo.
“You know, you think you are a whole lot funnier than you actually are.”
Milo raised a hand to his ear and gave an exaggerated shrug.
“What was that? Couldn’t hear you over the sound of trying to save your life.”
Ambrose rolled his eyes, and both fell silent as Kimaris reached the peak, wrapping around the horn of rock and straining up into the open air. They were seconds from passing over the monstrosity-laden zenith, and for an instant, Milo feared they weren’t going to be close enough. His mind scrambled as he wondered what they would do as the zeppelin barreled by. Looking past the peak he’d been fixated on, Milo learned exactly what would happen when he saw a white-crowned mountain rising barely a few miles from its smaller brother. At this altitude and speed, they would amble past the crucial point and the smash into the taller mountain five minutes later.
Milo nearly said something to Ambrose, but he spied something strange happening just below them.
Kimaris’ cloudy bulk began to darken as it gathered itself. The magus remembered the sight of its cresting wave looming higher and higher over Imrah, and then they were over the peak, the gelatinous monstrosity hidden from view.
Then a rope as thick as a truck strained upward. The slime was compacted to give it strength and rigidity, but Milo could still see the tortured forms writhing within the compressed layers. In horrified awe, he watched it strain up over them, then sprout the acid-eaten faces of the grotesque chorus like a rash of pustules.
“THE PRINCE IS NIGH!” they shrieked thinly as the tendril swayed and then descended upon the zeppelin.
Gripping the rail, Milo and Ambrose skittered across the hull of the airship as the tendril slapped down, buckling the forward portion of the blimp several feet inward. The entire airship shuddered and both men lost their footing, boots skidding and scrambling as they held on with both hands. With wide, terrified eyes, they looked up and saw the tendril constricting, wrapping around the airship as it drew more of its bulk up from the peak.
The zeppelin listed hard from the sudden burden, but the protesting engines kept the craft plugging forward. As it moved clear of the peak, Kimaris came with it, a shrinking flag dangling from the airship as it began to spread over the surface.
“Move!” Milo shouted as the metal beneath their feet groaned and rumbled.
Hand over hand, they made for the rear of the ship even as the nose of the zeppelin began to bow forward. A few seconds later, they were fighting not just the wind, but the incline of the vessel as it began to plunge toward the valley floor. It seemed they wouldn’t have to worry about the mountain after all, but as more of the slime began to spread across the surface of the blimp and into the compartments below, Milo felt a shift.
Milo drew on the connection with the Si’lat in the vessel’s bridge and drove them to apply their efforts to the instruments. He couldn’t sense that they were having any success at first, but little by little, the zeppelin leveled out and then began to climb a little. Under his feet, he felt the trembling skin of the blimp, and wondered if its structural integrity, already sorely tested, would hold out.
Only one way to find out, he told himself as he hauled another hand up the rail.
“Incoming!” Ambrose shouted from behind him, and Milo turned around as the stolen carbine opened up. Looking just past his bodyguard, Milo saw not only the advancing waves of hungry mucus pocked with shrieking faces but also the towering manifestation of Kimaris. The glittering mockery of a human form rode the crest of the oncoming wave like the figurehead of a ship, chin up and arms thrust out behind it. Ambrose’s shots pattered uselessly into the gray tide, and a round that struck the figure’s featureless face only spread a spiderweb of cracks across the hardened surface that quickly vanished as the jelly within swelled to push everything back into place.
Milo swung his eyes to the stern of the airship. They had only a few dozen meters to go, but at this rate, the tide would overtake them before they covered half that distance.
It was time for something drastic
“Fire in the hole!” Milo howled as he swung around and pointed the raptor skull past Ambrose and toward the figure.
“BURN.”
Twin comets of emerald fire lanced down the length of the zeppelin, on target
to bury themselves in the figure’s chest. With unholy quickness, the figure coiled and leapt clear of the tidal slime, which writhed and shriveled where the bolts scorched and burned.
The wave lost cohesion as the flames hissed and emitted contrails of acrid steam. Kimaris sought to smother the agonizing sorcery with its bulk. Milo might have crowed with victory as he and Ambrose continued their retreat, but behind them, he heard the figure land on the blimp with a clang. Glancing behind even as he continued to clamber across the blimp, Milo saw it begin sprinting toward them as the rest of the monster continued its crawling advance.
“It’s coming too fast,” Ambrose said, slinging the carbine over his shoulder and drawing his sword. “Go now. I’ll hold him off!”
In defiance of the trembling surface beneath its feet or the wind whipping across the surface of the blimp, it raced after them like a sprinter fresh from the blocks. Its spry feet dented the metal skin of the blimp, each step like a hammer stroke, raising a terrible clamor as it closed on them.
“Together!” Milo shouted, adjusting his grip to midway down the magical cane. “I’ll get him airborne, you spit him!”
Ambrose met Milo’s eyes and knew better than to argue.
Milo sent out a rapid series of witchfire bolts in a flurry of mental focus he would have doubted possible before that moment. Most flew wide of the mark and sailed across the sky like fireworks; just as well since there was no slime on the surface of the blimp to keep the burning missiles away from the hydrogen bladders behind the thin metal. The last few bolts streaked toward the racing figure’s head, and true to form, it leapt into the air, this time turning the movement into a pounce.
Ambrose was waiting, thrusting upward with the blade as the figure descended. The needle point met the hardened skin, flexing for the barest moment and then plunged through the thing’s chest until it sank halfway down the length of the blade. The figure writhed like a bug on a pin, one fist crashing into Ambrose’s face, smashing his nose out of alignment and shooting blood through the air.
Despite the ringing blow, the big man kept his grip on the hilt, twisting it hard as he threw his weight against his attacker.
The figure absorbed the shove with a ripple across its form and snapped back to chop one hand across the blade. When the edge of the descending hand met the spine of the sword, the blade snapped, and Ambrose was thrown off-balance, only to be snared around the throat by a huge crystalline hand.
Ambrose lashed out with the splintered blade and basket hilt, stabbing and punching, but the blows only created cracks that were quickly mended. With inhuman ease, it lifted Ambrose off his feet and shook the big man like a doll.
Behind the looming figure, the encroaching slime swelled to allow the gruesome faces to emerge like dark-crowned boils.
“BEHOLD THE PRINCE!” they cried, keening over the engine and the wind. “BEHOLD THE MIGHT, THE GLORY, THE—”
“Behold this!” Milo roared in defiance as he twisted around the rail like a pool shark making a trick shot.
Two lances of emerald flame sprang from the raptor’s sockets, passing within inches of Ambrose before burying themselves in the figure’s belly.
The avatar of Kimaris lost its grip on Ambrose, and it was all Milo could do to snatch the big man’s arm as he began to slide down the edge of the blimp. Ambrose gripped Milo’s arm feebly, still stunned, and they hung there as the figure, kindled by Milo’s attack, tumbled backward head over heels. By the time it splashed into the seething layers of slime coating the ship, it was blazing in flames of green. The chorus screamed, the disjointed, viscous sound of the drowning damned.
“Nearly there,” Milo growled, hammering home the last of his mental fortitude.
Drawing strength from the staff, he hauled Ambrose up to the rail as the big man came to his senses. Bowing their heads against the wind and the screams of Kimaris’ maddened choir, they scrambled the last several meters. Behind them, the murky tide roiled and raged, a spout of flame still gnawing at it even as another wave gathered.
Magus and bodyguard reached the rear of the zeppelin as the tsunami of slime filled with screeching faces launched toward them.
The men looked toward the edge of the zeppelin and back at the oncoming breaker from hell.
“Together!” they shouted in unison and leapt as one.
Kimaris’ wave broke just behind them as the men began their skidding departure down the zeppelin’s rear and into the open air above the valley. As they tumbled free, cartwheeling in a nauseating spin, Milo let the last Si’lat pull the pins.
There was a rumble half a heartbeat before a massive fist of flame punched up through the very center of the zeppelin, enshrouding it in flame. Less than a second later, secondary detonations from burning shrapnel and gouts of immolating gas set off the other bladders and ripped through the vessel. In the blink of an eye, the airship had become a second sun, blazing over the valley.
In that inferno, the blaze did not just kiss Kimaris, it embraced the horror like a lover, and together they burned and writhed. The chorus ceased, their torment finally snuffed out as they burned with their captor over the valley.
As this singular dawn rapidly approached its noon, two small figures fluttered through the air, their canvas chutes blazing above them. They’d been too close, and the heat had been too intense. They had just enough time to look up and see their desperate gambit play out before they plunged to their deaths on the rocky earth below.
In that moment of embraced inevitability, neither man cried out. Both magus and bodyguard smiled, basking in Kimaris’ ruin.
So busy were they in savoring the works of their hands that neither noticed the radiant forms racing toward them, riding fast and free on the wind.
25
A Novelty
“Have you heard what they are calling you?” Lokkemand asked, sipping from a canteen, his glass of schnapps untouched.
“I typically don’t listen to what people call me,” Milo said with a shrug as he finished his own glass. “It’s rarely flattering.”
Lokkemand nodded and secured the cap on the canteen before dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief. They were alone in the tent, most of the files, maps, and typist materials already packed. The war was moving beyond Bamyan, with Epp leading the offensive toward Kabul.
“It is actually funny,” Lokkemand said, reaching inside his coat and drawing out a cigarette tin. “I’d be worried about it being a breach of operational security if it wasn’t already making its way into all the dirty jokes and drinking songs.”
Flipping the tin open, he held it out to Milo, who took one with a grateful nod.
“All right, I’ll bite,” the magus said, the cigarette hanging from his lip as he fished out his matchbook. “What are they calling me?”
Lokkemand waited the tantalizing seconds until they’d both lit their cigarettes before answering, “Der Zauber-Schwartz,” the captain intoned through a haze of smoke. “Though I’ve already heard a few shortening it to the pet name of ‘Zauber.’”
Milo coughed on a throatful of smoke and took a moment to gather himself.
“What?” he wheezed, watering eyes bright with alarm. “They're calling me the ‘Sorcerer in Black,’ and you don’t think that’s cause for concern!”
Lokkemand chuckled, sending out tufts of smoke.
“Well, that’s not the only thing they are calling you, just the most flattering. There’s Verbrannt’Hex and Feuergeist. Things only get more imaginative from there.”
Milo stared incredulously as the cigarette smoldered in his hand.
“I’m not sure how that is supposed to make me feel better. I thought the fey worked their magic so the men wouldn’t remember what they saw.”
“Oh, their memories were suitably modified, but don’t you see?” Lokkemand snorted. “You're on your way to becoming a legend, a myth amongst the ranks of the fighting men of the German Army. What’s the one thing all myths have in common?”
Milo
rocked back as he realized the captain’s point, savoring a long toke.
“They’re not real.” He sighed out a stream of hazy blue-gray.
“Exactly.” Lokkemand smiled, then picked up the glass of schnapps and held it under his nose. “We couldn’t have asked for a better cover if we’d fabricated it on purpose.”
Milo nodded, tapping ash into the empty schnapps bottle.
“What about the photos and other recordings? They were on a reconnaissance mission after all, and we didn’t search them before escorting them off the zeppelin.”
“Duly confiscated by Nicht-KAT,” the captain said as he flapped his hand dismissively, cigarette tracing wisps of smoke. “All packaged and on their way back to Berlin.”
“To be examined by experts? Studied”? Milo asked with a raised eyebrow. “Presented to the general staff?”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Lokkemand laughed bitterly. “No, I imagine the colonel will peruse them briefly, but he is a busy man, and unless there is something exceptional, he’ll mark them to be locked away until some distant, unreachable date.”
Milo popped the expended cigarette into the bottle, where it went out with a damp hiss when it met the dregs of the schnapps.
“An enormous sentient jelly monster that killed hundreds isn’t exceptional?”
Lokkemand and Milo locked eyes through the haze of tobacco smoke.
“You’re special, Milo, no denying it,” the captain said, leaning to one side to stub out his cigarette on the gravel floor. “But you’ve only scratched the surface of this world. Savor the victory, then brace yourself for the next plunge.”
Milo crossed his arms, letting the words digest.
“Also, pack warmly.” Lokkemand grunted as he leaned forward to deposit the stub. “We’re headed north.”
“Not following Epp on his glorious conquest of India?” Milo asked. “Isn’t that what every true German would kill for?”
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 31