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

None of them wanted to be responsible for Lokkemand’s death, much less their own, but Ambrose had a gun in their commander’s face. Every instinct honed in the mud and blood of the War told them unequivocally what the only answer could be.

It would take only a moment before one of them overcame his fear, or at least succumbed to the conditioning beaten into him, and men died needlessly.

“No one needs to die today,” Milo croaked, one hand massaging his chest. “I know the enemy is here, but that isn’t a reason to pack up and leave. We need to reconnoiter, to assess the best way to go after their commander and his connection to the Guardians.”

Lokkemand stopped glaring at Ambrose to look down his nose at Milo and sniff contemptuously.

“Oh, now the Americans are not the primary concern, are they? My laziness is no longer responsible for your incomplete victory?”

Milo straightened painfully and nearly rebuked the captain for his taunt, but with a weary wheeze, he folded and bowed his head instead.

“You were right and I was wrong,” he said softly but with enough volume to be heard across the courtyard. “The Americans were a third party, and they don’t seem to be connected with the Guardians.”

Lokkemand’s smile at Milo’s words was cold and sharp, without a hint of humor.

“I’m so glad you’ve come to this understanding, but it’s too little, too late.” He sneered. “All of this is too little too late. You weren’t here when the enemy rolled to Tiflis, and without you, we had no hope of slowing his advance. Now the Georgian Bolsheviks are in power, the country is enemy territory, and the Transcaucasian Federation is on the brink of civil war.”

Milo stared, mouth hanging open at the revelation of so much changed in so short a time. The captain leveled his accusation in condemning terms.

“Your errand has expanded the War into once-peaceful nations and resulted in the end of Nicht-KAT. Is this the kind of magic you perform, Magus, because I’m not sure this is what Colonel Jorge was hoping for?”

“Still don’t see any reason for you to run scared,” Ambrose said flatly, his cheek pressed against the stock of his rifle. “The situation has changed, but initiative and leadership are what an officer uses to overcome these situations. New challenges mean new tactics.”

Lokkemand turned his withering gaze back on Ambrose, and for a moment, it was as though he wasn’t under the scrutiny of a gun barrel.

“I don’t need a lesson in leadership, deserter,” he hissed. “And there is only one tactic. When a superior enemy force knows your position and makes clear their intent to wipe you out, you retreat. It’s not heroic and it’s not glorious, but it is sound and wise.”

“How do you know they know we are here?” Milo asked.

Lokkemand laughed, and it set Milo’s teeth on edge. He’d had quite enough of men laughing at matters devoid of humor.

“The Georgian command knew, and more than that, a message was delivered by local Bolshevik sympathizers this morning. I think some of them were the same men I paid off because of your nightly excursions. Any foreign forces still within Georgia within the week will be considered invaders and killed to a man.”

Milo felt a pang of guilt accompanying the ache in his chest, but it was a distraction from the gnawing in his mind at the mention of the Bolsheviks. The marquis’ enigmatic words of the enemy commander’s connection with Milo, combined with nightmarish memories of the night he’d met Roland, would not be ignored.

“Did you expect this was going to be easy?” Ambrose taunted as he squinted down the Gewehr. “An officer leads his men to accomplish their mission. He doesn’t run when things get complicated.”

Lokkemand’s nostrils flared, and the look he gave Ambrose might have set any other man ablaze with its intensity.

“An officer doesn’t throw his men’s lives away needlessly,” Lokkemand snapped back. “Blood is the currency of war, but I never spend it freely. You were gone when we needed you, and now the mission has failed; it is simple as that. Maybe you couldn’t have stopped what happened, but we’ll never know because you. Weren’t. HERE.”

Lokkemand’s eyes were back on Milo, and he felt the weight of the whole courtyard’s gaze settling on him.

“Do we know who the enemy commander is?” Milo asked, hating how weak and small his voice sounded in his own ears.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard the Bolsheviks howling it drunkenly across the countryside,” the captain spat sourly. “The name of Joseph Stalin has been toasted by every Marxist within a hundred miles.”

Milo stared, and Ambrose raised his head from his rifle.

“Yes,” Lokkemand intoned grimly. “That Joseph Stalin.”

“The Butcher of Petrograd?” Ambrose muttered as he lowered his rifle, and the entire courtyard seemed to take a breath.

“The same,” Lokkemand said, unable to hide that his body relaxed. “Seems he’s recovered much of the strength he lost fighting the Whites in Omsk but couldn’t make peace with the Reds like Rokossovsky and Zhukov. He’s come back home to start over.”

“And the Georgians just let him?” Milo asked.

“What choice did they have?” Lokkemand said, his tone sympathetic. “Nearly a third of the people agree with the madman’s socialist principles, and the rest realize he only got here by marching through German-held territory, showing he’s either strong enough to defy us or that we are secretly in allegiance with him. It doesn’t matter which. He’s here, and we need to leave before we’re rounded up for execution.”

Milo took a moment to look around and stare into the face of every man in that courtyard. There was anger and fear and despair in each face, in their eyes and the set of their jaws. Some of them were brave men, some were not, but all of them were broken. To expect them to carry on wouldn’t only be wrong, it would be pointless, and he knew it. The thought of facing what lay ahead without