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

“Only thing we can do,” he growled, his mouth working before his mind had even recovered. “Go save the cranky bitch!”

By the time they’d closed on the draw where Imrah and her squad were bound, even Ambrose was puffing, while Milo was concerned he was in danger of collapsing. Despite their panting and wheezing, both men noted that the crack of rifles had been added to the artillery fire.

“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