The cry was punctuated by the report of a rifle, and Milo saw the earth kick up on the slope to his right the barest heartbeat before he heard the ripping hiss of the bullet passing over his shoulder.
Absently, Milo noted that the farmer must have been a good shot to have gotten so close. His pace didn’t slow but he began to weave, certain it wouldn’t matter but desperate to avoid having the back of his head proven right after all. Trampling wheat in his wild escape, kernels and chaff flew up behind him in a moonlit silvery spray.
It might have been picturesque if the crack of another rifle shot hadn’t shattered the stillness.
This shot came even nearer, zipping by close enough that Milo gave a cry as a sharp ripple of air slashed his ear in the bullet’s wake.
“Just my luck,” Milo whined with a panting snarl as he crested the hill. “I got the village deadeye!”
He plunged down the other side of the hill, glad for the dark stand of the trees looming at the edge of the field. With the hill between him and the rifle, he felt the artificial buoyancy of the alchemical drug coming back. He couldn’t bring himself to cheer, but a smile spread over his face even as his breath became ragged.
“Almost in the clear,” he rasped.
Then he heard the baying of the dogs and heard their sleek bodies shooting up the wheat-crowned slope. He’d be lucky to make the tree line before they were on his heels. He was going to have to decide how much of his power to display to get out of this mess, and that was assuming the marksman-farmer didn’t pop over the top of the hill and blow his head off.
Milo swore as he heard canine growls coming up fast behind him.
This night was not going as he’d expected, and he imagined the drugs had given him a rosy idea of his odds.
Milo, scratched and battered, slid from the back of his unliving steed as dawn’s fingers worked their magic across the gray sky.
“That could have been worse,” he muttered as he straightened, feeling sinews creak as bones popped and clicked. “But then again, it could have gone much better.”
The Qareen horse, nothing more than bones woven with leathery cords of sinew, stared forward without comment. The shade that animated the corpus was one of the most docile and compliant entities Milo harnessed thus far, something that had seemed essential for what basically amounted to a vehicle. To Milo’s relief, despite this placidity, the animate had proven more than capable of driving its vessel at incredible speeds. Without the concerns of breath or muscle fatigue, the Qareen had torn through the countryside back to Shatili once Milo had finally managed to slip away from the dogs.
“All right.” Milo sighed as he unslung the canvas bag from his shoulder and drew its mouth wide. “In you go.”
The sigils inked inside the mouth of the bag flared with green light, and Milo felt a vague inhaling pressure from the bag. His soul felt it more than his skin, something like a gentle current brushing against his spirit.
The effect on the undead horse was far more dramatic.
Coming apart like a cheap children’s toy, the Qareen’s sinew unwound, sliding into the bag with a dry hiss. The sinew was still coiling inside when the bones danced apart from each other and tumbled into the bag, turning end over end. The bones deposited themselves in the sack, many of them vanishing inside a container that was shorter than their length. The weight of the sack barely increased as the enchanted remains slid into the ensorcelled container.
In less than half a minute, where once a skeletal animate had loomed, there was nothing but some muddy hoofprints.
“I’m sure that will get old someday.” He chuckled softly, then winced at the stabbing pain in his head.
The nightwatch was wearing off.
When was the last time he’d slept?
Milo’s stomach twisted and his heartbeat quickened; he couldn’t remember. That wasn’t good.
Nightwatch was a wonderful and potent stimulant, but extended use had its risks, not the least being a sudden loss of consciousness and even bodily trauma when it ran out. This was exactly why he’d adjusted the formula to give him a pointed reminder when it was wearing off. He’d told himself it was put in as a reminder to go get some rest, but lately, he’d been using it as a signal to take more of the stuff.
Now he wasn’t sure if he hadn’t slept in days or weeks, but either way, he needed to get inside and take something before the full effects of withdrawal set in.
Shatili, a small village in the Khevsureti highlands of Georgia on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, was largely untouched by time. Settled in a gorge carved by the Argun River, it would have been little more than a few simple hovels and homesteads except for the fortress complex that thrust up from the earth like a dragon spine. The Argun forked around the sheer-sided constructions of stone and mortar whose foundations predated the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. This was the face of the defiant little hamlet, a bastion in a land familiar with war, and it had been Milo’s home and laboratory for the past eight months.
When Lokkemand brought their contingent of Nicht-KAT up from Afghanistan, Milo had assumed they were heading further north, but they never made it past the Greater Caucasus Mountains. As they started to pass into Chechen territory, which was nominally held by a coalition of German and Ottoman forces, word had come for them to find a place to rest and wait. The captain had said the situation was “fluid,” so they’d settle into the defensible village to wait for word from Colonel Jorge, but when winter struck the mountains and they were trapped in Shatili for months, no word
