Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (classic books for 11 year olds .txt) 📗

of its attackers. As a result, even the worst pockets of resistance did nothing to rob Milo’s forces of their strength as they marched inexorably to the river.

Mounted on his tireless steed, Milo, with Percy clinging to his back, rode at the head of the loping horde. The Qareen’s hooves clattered over cobbles and hunks of rubble as it galloped through streets that were even more hellish than before. Bullet casings scattered in their wake, some rolling through pools of blood seeping from broken bodies. In a few places, small fires somehow found fuel to sputter and crackle. Flashes of his protean memories from the first night he saw Petrograd burn played in Milo’s head, but he shook them off with a snarl.

FORWARD

His command played like a spider’s tune across the thousands of ethereal strands that bound his army to him. The strain of keeping so many shades mastered was more than he’d feared, but having something at which to direct their violent nature kept him one step ahead of losing control. At this point, it was not so much commanding as channeling the hateful animus, and though he felt a brutal, grinding pain behind his eyes, he pressed on.

They were so close now. At this rate, they would swing wide of the Winter Palace and whatever force remained there and make for the bridges. Once they crossed, Milo could utterly expend his force in destroying the Resonator. Locating and eliminating Zlydzen was secondary, but Milo was almost certain the dwarrow would be with his beloved machine.

That suspicion was confirmed in the worst possible way when Milo reached the street leading to the bridge Roland had taken to the Resonator’s island.

The vanguard of his forces, mounted on various vehicles, had begun to cross the bridge, while the bulk of the army on foot formed a packed throng behind the outriders. Small-arms fire from buildings across the river peppered the shade-bound, but flesh wounds were of little concern to the bloodthirsty creatures. Return fire from Milo’s forces was sporadic and unorganized, but he didn’t bother to change that. They needed to cross and get to the machine.

As the undead horse cantered around the edge of the massed soldiers making their way onto the bridge, Milo stared across the length of the bridge and saw a trio of squarish shapes sidling over to block it. Astride one of the crawling behemoths was a squat figure that could have only been dwarrow.

“They gave him tanks,” Milo muttered in surprise before a trio of 5.7-centimeter Maxim-Nordenfelt cannons bellowed. The forwardmost vehicles on the bridge came apart in eruptions of broken men and twisted metal. One shot lanced through one truck, only to plow into a car before cratering a section of the bridge. The fractured remains of automobiles and bodies hadn’t even finished falling to the deck and the river below when machine guns began to chatter. Heavy 7.92-millimeter rounds filled the air, perforating the light vehicles and the frontrunners of the forces on foot. The bodies of men crumpled, only to be trampled under the press of shade-bound still clamoring to charge.

The cannons fired again, and the few remaining members of the automotive vanguard crashed into and over the mangled remains of their comrades.

“Those are German tanks!” Percy shouted in alarm, his fingers tightening painfully on Milo’s shoulder as the other hand pointed at the mobile bulwarks. “They’re German, aren’t they?”

“Yes, A7Vs,” Milo growled, then freed his shoulder with a savage twist. “Now shut up unless you have something useful to say.”

The shades sprang free of bullet-chewed hosts, but there weren’t any spare bodies near at hand. Like salmon swimming upstream, the specters tried to rush across the bridge, but even those who didn’t expend themselves crossing the distance discovered that they found few hosts. It seemed whoever or whatever was guarding the bridge were not soulless.

Some of the freed shades attempted to burrow into the occupied bodies around them, and those that weren’t immediately rebuffed set the bodies to tearing themselves apart. In the space of a few seconds, hundreds had fallen, and the advance stalled.

WITHDRAW

SEEK COVER

RETURN FIRE

The commands rippled out, and the shade-driven struggled to comply. They were packed together, and the limits of flesh were an ill-understood frustration to them. Nearly as many fell in the floundering withdrawal as in the initial onslaught, as Zlydzen’s forces continued to gnaw at his stumbling army. The shade-driven hunkered in whatever cover they could find and opened fire in sporadic pockets with no coordination and little precision. Their shots rattled off the tank armor or kicked up brick dust in the occupied buildings, and Milo was uncertain it would have made any difference.

Looking beyond the tanks, Milo saw the Resonator looming like an ugly mountain glittering with malice. So close, so very close.

“Milo!” cried a voice above him. He was thrown bodily to the ground, Percy coming down on top of him. As the breath was driven from his lungs by the American’s weight, Milo spied the flash of silver-white hair. A second later, a 5.7-centimeter shell blasted through the Qareen horse as though it were offal in a paper sack. Milo raised an arm over his head as gobs of dry, chunked flesh and splinters of old bone rained down around him.

“Get off,” Milo wheezed as he attempted to free his arms from under Percy’s bulk.

“Sorry about that,” Percy replied with a nervous, almost manic chuckle as he clambered off Milo, but he kept low to the ground. A glance showed they’d fallen behind what might have once been a decorative wall. They were screened from lighter arms, but if the tanks shelled the spot, they’d be paste in seconds.

“Move!” Milo snarled as he twisted onto his belly and began to crawl along the wall toward an embankment of debris that must have been the home or business the wall had been attached to. Percy followed, muttering something about his suit as his belly dragged over the cracked and jagged ground.

They reached