Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (best color ereader .TXT) 📗

in the courtyard, running through a blades drill, folding a closing parry into a diagonal elbow into a draw cut, when Ambrose paused mid-attack. Milo, on sheer opportunistic instinct, sprang forward, feinting the parry before smashing an elbow across the big man’s jaw. At that moment, Milo realized every time he’d struck the Nephilim, the blow had been rolled with. Distracted as he was, Ambrose did not bow with the blow, and Milo realized he might as well have struck a brick wall.

Pain shot through his elbow, and the knife tumbled from his numbed grip.

“Damn!” Milo barked before proceeding into a few more picturesque descriptions.

“Quiet,” Ambrose muttered distractedly as he cocked his head to one side, squinting.

“Pardon me,” Milo grumbled caustically as he bent to retrieve his knife. “Do you hear something?”

Ambrose’s brow wrinkled with annoyance, but he didn’t respond until somewhere to the west, there was the faintest crackle, like a chorus of tiny thundercracks. Milo saw a few of the soldiers along the walls of the fortress moving to the higher points of the complex equipped with tripod-mounted field glasses, locations dubbed observation posts.

“Is that gunfire?” Milo asked, feeling the hairs on the backs of his arms starting to stand up, his brain racing through scenarios.

Ambrose nodded and moved toward the wall where he’d left the gear and weapons he always kept close at hand.

“Several rifles, and a pistol or two as well,” the Nephilim said. “From the sound of it, the fire is one-sided, men firing together with fair discipline and coordination.”

Milo wanted to ask how he could tell that from a few muffled pops, but he knew better than to waste time questioning Ambrose about such things.

“People training with firearms?” Milo asked. “A local militia, maybe?"

Ambrose’s cocked eyebrow and the frown he gave Milo were clear indications of what he thought of the idea.

“That or someone is under attack,” Ambrose growled as he slung his rifle over his shoulder and checked a bandoleer hung with rifle magazines. “And they aren’t firing back. You know anyone coming our way that might be a high priority target that wouldn’t carry firearms, at least not modern ones?”

Milo had already scooped up his skin-coat and had his hand out for the raptor-crowned cane.

“Rihyani would have ridden the wind, don’t you think?” Milo asked, taking up the cane and moving toward the motor pool parked outside the fortress’ gate. Ambrose was still tugging things into place as he ambled after his charge, seeming at ease as his big hands worked quickly.

“Maybe they stopped over for a rest, or maybe one of them got wounded by a lucky shot from the ground,” Ambrose proposed as he stumped after Milo. “Point is, we need to get there quickly.”

Milo was already pelting toward the Rollsy before Ambrose finished his sentence.

The British armored Rolls-Royce had been captured in the fighting in Macedonia some time ago, and by a long winding path, it had found its way into the service of Lokkemand and his entourage. It was hardly an inspiring sight, with a ramshackle aesthetic and a drab paint job of heavy gray. Much of the original armor was gone, replaced by cheap, crudely fabricated pieces in the field, and the armored driving cabin had been decapitated. As such, the driver was exposed from above, and whoever manned the machine gun directly behind the front seat, a venerable water-cooled MG 08, had his whole upper body exposed.

But the engine in the rugged automobile, free of much of the old armored bulk, could roar across the rugged hills to the west better than anything else in the motor pool.

A quicker-thinking sentry on the wall ducked into the guardhouse, having seen the pair run for the Rollsy, and hollered down as Milo climbed into the gunner’s nest.

“Keys, Magus!” the soldier cried as he tossed them into the air.

Milo caught them despite the sting of their descent from the top of the fortress wall.

Without delay, he bent and shoved the keys into Ambrose’s hand as the Nephilim clambered into the driver’s seat.

“We’re headed straight west,” Milo shouted up, his words almost swallowed in the wakening roar of the Rollsy. “Tell Lokkemand, and I’m sure he’ll send a bunch of you after us.”

“Very good, sir,” he hollered back. “Will do.”

Before Milo could say anything more, Ambrose had them tearing across the bridge and racing toward imminent violence.

The sun was dying in shades of vermillion and violet as they vaulted over the last hill to the scene of the ambush.

The attackers were so intent on pouring fire into a copse of trees that Milo’s and Ambrose’s arrival was a shock. The crack of rifle volleys stuttered to a halt as the Rollsy skidded down the hill. Now Milo could see what they were up against. Two staggered lines, each ten strong, had been creeping down the slope, with five-man wings advancing along either flank. They were men in common Georgian dress, chokhas and tall boots, but the rifles in their hands were not local arms. They looked like combat rifles, but none Milo had ever seen.

They’d dominated the field before firing salvo after salvo into the trees where the fey must have been, and despite the pause, they were eager to reassert themselves. He had just enough time to turn the MG 08 on their firing line splayed across the far hill.

The heavy rounds left the short, stocky barrel in a hail of death, stitching a line of rent earth and scattering attackers in its wake. They dove and scrambled into whatever dimples and brush they could find. Milo had only nominally been instructed in the use of the machine gun, and he didn’t believe he was going to put them down with one. He just needed their heads down and their return fire scattered.

As though in answer to an unspoken prayer, a bullet zipped through the air to Milo’s left, and another rang off the plated forequarter of the Rollsy.

Milo pumped out a few bursts of fire in