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

A rock turned under Milo’s foot, and he stumbled forward to bark his shin on a jutting lip of stone. He swore when he nearly lost his footing a second time and muttered further profanity under his breath as he rubbed his battered leg.

“This all seemed a lot simpler on the map,” Milo growled, then gave a frustrated snort as he felt four of the Qareen lagging behind as they tried to climb the steep sides of the valley behind them. Mumbling vitriolic oaths, he hammered down with a flex of focus, and the shade-powered corpses fell back in line.

“Almost there.” Ambrose held out a canteen.

Milo accepted it and took grateful slurps as he looked at the twenty-some corpses coming to a staggering halt a few feet away.

“When I signed up, I never thought this was what I’d be doing.” Milo sighed as he handed back the canteen. “But I suppose I didn’t expect to last more than a few days in the trenches, so all’s well, right?”

Ambrose nodded, took a drink, and wiped his mouth on the back of his arm.

“Very cheerful way of looking at it,” he commented and gave Milo a wink. “Though ‘signing up’ sounds like a rosy way of saying you were conscripted into a penal regiment.”

Milo shook his head, climbed to his feet, and opened his surcoat. In the chill early hours the coat had been nice, but after a few hours of clambering and the sun breaking over the horizon, it was uncomfortably warm.

“Except I did sign up,” Milo said. “The Leipzig Werk-Strafrechtlich I was in, well, they put out the all-call for anyone willing to sign up. I put in my name as soon as my shift was over.”

Ambrose gave a long whistle as he capped the canteen.

“You were a Strafie before this?” he said, shock in his tone. “You must have been a naughty young boy to get plopped in there.”

Milo nodded.

“The worst.” He sighed again and gave a slight groan as he stretched. “Let’s keep moving.”

They trudged on for a while, the dead scuffing along behind them, occasionally stumbling but always righting themselves with jerky marionette movements. Before long, they crested a rise and were looking down on the first valley.

“You know,” Milo puffed as he wiped his sleeve across his forehead, “you still owe me an explanation of that whole resurrection business.”

When Ambrose didn’t immediately respond, Milo turned around and saw the big man looking out over the ranks of the dead.

“Something wrong?” Milo asked, taking a step back toward him.

Ambrose frowned, his gaze fixed on the way they’d come.

“Thought I heard something,” he muttered and adjusted the carbine on his shoulder. The truncated rifle had been another acquisition, along with the sword on his belt. Milo had offered to ask Lokkemand for goods from the quartermasters, but Ambrose had only laughed and said he preferred to do his own shopping.

“Are you sure you aren’t trying to avoid the subject?” Milo pressed.

Ambrose didn’t respond. Milo saw the animated soldiers halt and decided to start sending them down into the valley.

“MOVE,” he commanded, and the shade-fueled Qareen made to stumble down into the valley.

Milo looked back and saw Ambrose had stopped staring back the way they’d come, though a frown was stamped on his face. He stepped clear so the dead could pass as he gathered his thoughts.

“It’s hard to explain,” he began. “In some ways, it’s a bit like a dream because I know things for certain as soon as I get there.”

“There?” Milo asked, sparing a thought to drive a wandering shade back on course.

“There being the place I go when I die,” Ambrose said, scratching his cheek. “At least where my, uh…”

“Soul?” Milo offered.

“Yeah, that will work. Soul.” Ambrose grunted with relief. “I’m so used to dealing with blunt hard cases that saying the word seemed silly. Forgot I was talking to a witch.”

Milo wanted to correct him and say magus, but the big man was already uncharacteristically uncomfortable. More than half the dead had already shuffled past in the time it had taken him to say a few words.

“Anyway,” Ambrose continued, “my soul gets to where it always goes, and somehow I know I’m dead. I just know it.”

“Like in a dream.” Milo nodded encouragingly.

“Exactly! It’s always the same place. First time it happened, I was confused because it was just bad luck, you see, me getting killed. It was 1844, late summer in Morocco, and I was a veteran fighting man, but that wasn’t any use when a frightened horse—”

A dull whump carried faintly on the air, followed by a distant whistle.

Ambrose froze and looked at Milo, his eyes blazing with a savage light.

“I knew I heard something,” he roared as he spun and gazed back the way they’d come. “Artillery fire.”

Milo fought the instinct to duck as his eyes swept across the truncated horizon created by the mountainous terrain.

“Are they shooting at us?” he asked, hating that he couldn’t put a little more iron into his voice. Of all the horrors of the trenches he’d been bracing himself for, artillery was the most horrible. The thought of a sudden, messy, and inglorious end descending from on high took away every last shred of war’s glamor for him.

“No,” Ambrose said with a snarl, his ears pricking up as another whump and keening whine sounded. “They're a good way off...and right where I put Imrah’s band.”

Milo swore savagely.

“Rihyani said she scouted the areas!”

“Armies move, and you could hide whole regiments in these overgrown gullies,” the big man spat. “What’s the order?”

For a split second Milo froze, suddenly realizing that everything—the operation, the future of the war, and the future of human relations with the supernatural—rested on him. It was a crippling and awful realization, and it slammed into the magus like a knockout punch. What should they do?

Two rounds of artillery fire, one chasing the other, carried on the air, and Milo uttered his best combination of colorful