Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

to go running for help. It had to not only surprise but intrigue them, something they didn’t expect.

Start knocking again, Milo instructed as an idea came to him. Not hard, but make it erratic or frantic sounding.

Milo felt Ambrose’s indecision, but the murky emotions hadn’t begun to clear before a soft, irregular thumping began inside the box.

Milo pressed his will outward even as he noted the watchful soldiers glaring at him and the box. They were hearing something they didn’t expect, and that made the application of the Art much easier.

“Help! Help me, please!” said a soft feminine voice inside the box. “They put me at the bottom! I can’t breathe! Help!”

Milo forced his eyes wide and stared at the box, then looked at the soldiers with his mouth hanging open in stunned shock.

“I think there’s someone in there!” Milo called over the hum of the train on the tracks. “Someone’s still alive.”

The guards locked eyes across the compartment, but Milo interrupted the conference with more illusory pleas.

“Help! I can’t breathe! Help!”

The cries were followed by pained retching and gasping.

“I think she’s dying!” Milo cried, sending out a wave of the Art to stoke fear and concern. As the final spur, he drove in a flashing mental image of a little fair-haired girl with wide, tearful blue eyes trapped in a box of rotting meat. It was not delicate work as with Captain Franks, but given the emotional tumult he hoped to create, it didn’t need to be.

For a second, Milo felt a lurch in his stomach as he wondered if the likes of Reich loyalists had enough humanity to be moved by a desperate young girl’s cries. His fears were put to rest as both men slung their rifles over their shoulders and scuttled between the shelves to where Milo stood.

“Up against the wall,” one snarled at the magus, his eyes fixed on the box, where the knocking sound was growing fainter.

“She’s getting weaker,” the other guard said, brow knotting as his eyes bulged. “She can’t last much longer!”

“Get up against the wall!”

Milo was thrown bodily against the wall of the compartment, but his chained arms played out the slack so they nearly came out of their socket. The tension dragged him hard to one side, and he lost his balance. Milo cried out with dismay a second before his head bounced off one of the metal shelves on his way to the floor.

Thus distracted, it was only reasonable that his efforts to maintain the crying child staggered to a stop. The only thing that remained was Ambrose tapping at a frenzied pitch, and even dazed on the floor, Milo could tell the effect this had on the soldiers was dramatic.

“She’s dying!” one cried in a wild voice that bordered on sobbing.

“Shut up and help me!” the other snarled, and together they began hammering the padlock fastening the chains around the box with their rifle butts. Their frenzied beating became a strange counterpoint to Ambrose’s knocking, then with a sharp twang, the lock sprang open. They abandoned their rifles to begin hauling the chains off of the box, casting the excess behind them.

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