Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

information and assurances that you’ll be handsomely rewarded by both sides. Would seem worth the risk.”

Milo dragged his eyes from camp as the last of the riders sped into the hills, plumes of dust glowing red in the light of the fires. Down below, squads of soldiers were performing as fire brigades, with middling success thus far.

“Information?” Milo rolled the word, as though it felt strange on his ashen tongue. “I thought these were a bunch of bandits, not trained soldiers? And what do you mean by both sides?”

Milo turned around and saw that his bodyguard was ambling over the boulder-strewn hilltop, looking for all the world like an animate hulk of stone in the silvery light. He went over to one of his lumpy brethren and seemed about to have a serious conversation.

“Hey!” Milo shouted, striding after the big man. He felt the pistol in his hand, its rounds shamefully unspent as the camp burned below. “Did you hear me?”

“Shhhh, keep your voice down, Magus,” Ambrose hissed as he turned, scowling. “The raiders should be gone, but we don’t want to attract any attention in the dark, now do we?”

Then he turned back to the rock and addressed it in a low, indignant tone.

“Not from any proper folk.”

A surge of anger and confusion gripped Milo, and without much thought, he laid a hand on the big man’s shoulder to haul him around. Milo realized too late that he may as well have tried to get the hill to turn.

“Stop your hissy-fitting,” Ambrose chided, still glaring at the rock. “And put that pistol away before you hurt yourself.”

In a fit of temper, Milo nearly pressed the barrel of the Luger to the big man’s thick skull to show his displeasure and get some attention, but he wisely thought better of it. Cursing incoherently, he secured the weapon with a shove and a snarl.

“What the hell is going on?” he snapped.

“Our rendezvous is late,” Ambrose muttered, turning from the rock and squinting across the hilltop. “Unless Lokkemand got it wrong, and I wouldn’t put it past the jaeger snob.”

Milo’s head spun, and he turned back to see the slowly shrinking glow of the camp. Pieces began to click into place with stomach-turning alacrity, and Milo turned back to Ambrose, who still seemed preoccupied with the local geological deposits.

“You mean, this was some sort of setup?” Milo asked, numbness creeping up in the wake of the realization. “Lokkemand planned this.”

Absently, the bodyguard nodded.

“A bit flashy for my taste, but it removes any reasonable doubt that we both died in the fires of the raid,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Enough scorched corpses down there that any attempts at identification by General Staff’s bloodhounds should be satisfied or at least frustrated to the point of surrender.”

This last thought seemed to appeal to him, and a low chuckle passed his lips.

“Men—soldiers—died down there,” Milo said. He wished he sounded more horrified, but the insulating dissociation already had him. “Now you are telling me they died for me?”

The lack of feeling, the cold shell that had been his armor for years, was almost as painful as accepting the burden and promised no relief or closure. He wanted to rail, to scream, even to weep for the men, but instead, he stared mutely at Ambrose, his question hanging in the air.

“Wasn’t it some Prussian who said soldiers’ lives are the currency officers must spend to purchase victory?” Ambrose asked with a shrug of his huge shoulders. “Seems like something the boys from the 33rd would appreciate. Good soldiers from what I could tell.”

“Dead soldiers,” Milo muttered, his shoulders sagging.

“Not so many,” Ambrose said. “And besides, ours but to do and die, right?”

Milo looked at his bodyguard with a mix of confusion and irritation, the only things he could feel at the moment.

“What?”

Ambrose, for the first time, looked abashed, his cheeks plainly colored, even in the moonlight.

“It’s from a poem.” He grunted and shook his head. “Never mind.”

Milo was about to say something caustic about poetry or perhaps ask what they were supposed to do now that they’d faked their deaths. He never got the chance since two shadows detached from the boulder Ambrose had been staring at. Milo’s voice deserted him as the long, stooped shapes with gleaming pale eyes lunged forward, too-long limbs outstretched.

One alighted on Ambrose’s broad back, and the big man gave a pantherish twist that saw both him and the living shadow rolling across the ground. The other landed on Milo and bore him to the ground, where cold, sharp fingers cut into his arms.

Instinct kicked in, and Milo’s feet and fists lashed out against rubbery flesh that took the abuse without effect. Milo had an impression of many teeth snapping in front of his face, then breath like an offal pit in summer lapped against his face.

“Hold still, meat!” a voice rasped next to his ear. “Hold still, or I’ll tear out your throat.”

Too terrified to reason, Milo redoubled his efforts, managing to twist one hand free and grope for the pistol at his belt.

The fanged shadow hissed words in a tongue old and wicked before changing its grip to take Milo by the head. A dull thrill shot through Milo when he got both hands free to try for his pistol, but the thought was dashed out of his head when the shadow beat it against the stony ground.

The first impact sent stars spinning through his vision, and the second left him limp, with the world tumbling around him.

He vaguely recognized he was being dragged, and he raised his battered head to see where they were going. A cleft that had not been in the boulder before yawned wide as the shadow dragged him toward the waiting dark. Between the thin legs of his abductor, Milo could just make out a set of stairs glinting bone-white in the moonlight, plunging from the heart of the boulder into the darkness of the earth.

6

An Introduction

Milo’s passage down the stairs and through the dark