Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1), Aaron Schneider [most important books to read .txt] 📗

his head. “By the time they find you two, we’ll have fallen in, and if they even have a sniff of who did it, we’ll be on our way to Metz. One paper-pusher and one songbird don’t seem worth stalling a whole reinforcing regiment to me.”

One of Jules’s goons rushed forward, thinking to pounce while Milo was distracted.

Milo gave him a broken nose for his trouble and had almost managed to pry the pick handle from his grip when his companion charged in low. Entangled as he was, Milo could only try to twist away from the chopping strike to the back of his leg. The heavy greatcoat took some of the bite from the blow, but in his distraction, he lost his grip on the pick handle. He flailed after it, but gripping it in both hands, the bloody-nosed thug checked Milo hard across the chest.

Milo hit the wall behind him and staggered from his head rebounding off the plaster. He shook the shock off just in time to watch the compatriot slam a heavy swing into his belly. The air rushed out of him, and he gasped like a landed fish as he dropped to his knees. Something in his mind rallied and roared for him to keep fighting, and he almost managed to retake his feet when the one with the broken nose kicked him squarely in the chest.

Milo was thrown back against the wall again, his head and chest aching abominably as everything took on a dreamy, translucent quality.

“Get him up,” he heard Jules command. “Can’t get that pretty coat dirty.”

They hauled him to his feet and then pinned him to the wall by his shoulders.

“Not sure if they’ve finished the paperwork,” Jules mused as he tucked the cudgel under his arm and bent to scoop up a bayonet blade on the floor. “But do you think they’ll at least bury you in that pretty black coat?”

Milo spat at Jules, tasting blood.

The men holding him in place laughed as Milo strained sluggishly, fighting for breath and his thoughts to start moving freely again. He was supposed to be a wizard, so why now of all times couldn’t he manage some sort of magic? Milo refused to give Jules the satisfaction, but he felt something like bone-deep regret stealing over him.

So close. So close to having and being something more.

“It’s not the latrines.” Jules grinned as he stepped forward to flash the long steel blade in front of Milo’s watering eyes. “But once I gut you, I suppose you will die smelling your own filth.”

The point was brought level with his belly, and Milo willed himself to meet Jules’s leering gaze. He didn’t want to die, but if he was going to, it wouldn’t be as a coward.

“Don’t worry,” Milo hissed as he broke into a snarling smile. “Your breath is close enough to the real thing. I guess you really are what you eat.”

Jules’ nostrils flared and the muscles bunched along his arm.

There was a gristly crunch and a surprised squeal as Kasper toppled away from the doorway.

Ambling—waddling, really—into the depot was a brawny figure who made the sturdy quartermaster look svelte by comparison.

“Pardon me, didn’t see you there,” he muttered softly in a lilting accent, then looked around the room with a shocked expression. “Good gracious me, what’s going on here?”

The man was dressed in a uniform of the old Prussian style, complete with brass buttons on the faded blue fabric, all of which strained to contain his massive torso. His chest was like twin slabs of granite balanced over an iron cauldron of a stomach, as round as it was hard. His bandy limbs strained the fabric of his coat and trousers, and with every move the hulking creature made, Milo was amazed the ground didn’t shake.

“You seem to be lost,” Jules growled, brandishing the bayonet. “Can you find your own way, or do I need to help you find it?”

The interloper squinted at Jules, his eyes so deep-set they looked like old jade glittering at the bottom of a well. He rolled his jaw to one side and then the other with an audible crack, bristling mustache and sideburns twitching.

“I’m here for that one,” he said, pointing one blunt finger at Milo, his genial tone falling to a dangerous rumble deep in his cavernous chest. “Hand him over in reasonable shape, and I’ll be on my way.”

Jules looked at Milo, eyes narrowed as he used his unenviable intellect to sort out the growing complications in his plan. Kasper whimpered on the floor, gripping a leg that seemed to be pointing at an uncomfortable angle.

“Or else what?”

The newcomer shook his head and clucked his tongue forlornly.

“No or else for you, young man,” he replied, one scarred eyebrow cocking upward with a warning look. “Don’t be foolish.”

Milo couldn’t see so much as a knife on the man’s belt, much less a pistol, so his confidence was somewhere between comical and unsettling. Milo hoped for his own sake that the latter won as Jules took an aching handful of seconds to reply.

“I suppose they’ll hang me for three easy as two,” Jules chuckled, and the dark laugh was taken up by his cronies.

The bulky man let out a weary, almost sad sigh, then surged forward with a speed that was terrifying to witness and seemed impossible for his ponderous frame. He smashed into Jules, though whether with his fist, shoulder, or wide stomach, it was too fast to tell. The only thing that was certain was that Jules, a brawny fellow by most standards, went flying through the air. He collided with the man holding the knife on the quartermaster, and both of them tumbled into the foremost stack of crates in a lumpy, grunting heap.

Then things became disorderly.

Milo used the distraction to put a knee in one of his captors’ groins and swept the winded man’s leg with a stomping kick to the shin. The unfortunate thug fell back heavily, and Milo used