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Sergeant Aetheras peeked over the lip of the ditch and got a bullet pinging close for his trouble. "Yes, just an easy medical supply drop off to a friendly village, won't need the whole platoon for it," he muttered to himself as he slid back down and sand sifted onto his neck. "Should have know better and now you're in it for sure."
Then he yelled to his trooper, "Rollins, you doing okay so far?" The look he got back said volumes, and not a single word was fluffy or nice in the least.
The ditch they were hunkered in was just deep enough for the two of them to kneel when they popped up over the edge, not deep enough to keep the dust and sand showering around them as bullets pinged and thumped into the dirt just over their heads. The embankment near the village now held a few dozen of Comrade Kalashnikov's finest example of small arms engineering with hard eyed young men putting them to their intended use. And that use was working rather well at the moment.
Aetheras looked over to his corporal and yelled, "Ammo check."
Cpl Rollins peeked over the edge of the ditch and yanked his head back just as the dirt thumped and sand showered his helmet. "Only three mags left," he said. "We're not going to make it out of this one, are we?"
"We radioed in for help, the gunships will be here soon." The sergeant tried to make it sound like a sure thing to bolster his corporal's confidence and knew he was failing.
With a worried and angry look, Rollins yelled back, "If our message even got out.
You didn't get a roger on the fire mission, did you?"
"Not really," Sgt Aetheras confessed. "At least they don't have mortars or we wouldn't be here to worry about them. We'll conserve until the last minute then think of something."
Cpl Rollins huffed and said, "Think of something? There's not even a bush for two hundred meters, there's at least three dozen of those lunatics up there with a clear line of fire and the rest of the squad is back at the rally point. What makes you think there's something we have left in our bag of tricks?"
Sgt Aetheras thought hard but knew everything he'd heard was spot on. There was no way they were going to get out of this one. "Just conserve your ammo. Single shots at good targets only. If you're into praying now might be the time." He watched as Rollins thumbed the selector to single fire, popped up and took a few shots just to keep the enemy honest.
When Aetheras took his turn popping up he saw something like ten of them were approaching their position from ten directions, fanned out between the embankment and the ditch, alternating a low crawl with fast sprints then going back to ground, far enough apart that the two grenades remaining would do little but make a nice bang. And since no prisoners had ever been taken in this valley on either side, this was going to be their final show. There was only one thing left to do.
"I want you to get an eye up and see how far away they are, how much time you think we have left," Aetheras yelled.
"Right Sarge, but it ain't gonna be much."
As Rollins peeked over the edge of the ditch, Aetheras reached into that special pouch no one knew about and pulled out his wand. "Hope there isn't too much trouble over this," he muttered quietly to himself as he fingered the familiar wood.
"Rollins, get your head down. I'm going to try something." When Rollins ducked he peeked up and inched his wand over the embankment, pointed and said,
"Confundus," and ducked back down. A second later he peeked up, saw three still running and pointed his wand. "Confundus," was sent then pointed his wand at a couple head-sized rocks. His wand pointed he said, "Engorgio," along with a silent charm to give them the idea they had arms and legs, giving them a push to send them flying across the open dirt pan.
"Open up on the embankment," Sergeant Aetheras yelled and both went full auto until the magazines were empty, dropped them and slapped in new ones. "Time to run,"
he yelled, pulled Rollins close and pointed his wand at the two of them.
"Obscurus," he said, grabbed and yanked Rollins up out of the ditch and ran like the devil was on him, all the time holding Rollins' arm with his. As he ran he looked down to check his charm to see no shadow was being cast by either of them. That was a good thing.
Five minutes later they were hunkered behind a rock and shadows were cast from their bodies once again. "Well, it lasted long enough," Aetheras muttered. He elbowed Rollins and said, "Let's get a move on. We have a kilometer to go to the rally point. Think you can manage to run that far?"
"Right now I'd run an Olympic record if that's what it takes to live through this day." Sweat beaded on his forehead above very wide, wild looking eyes.
"Let's go," he said and the two of them took off, running around a small hummock of rocks and dirt then hoofing it up along a wadi with gear thumping their bodies.
An hour later, sweaty and dirty as usual, he reported in, telling the platoon leader about the ambush and getting pinned down, putting up suppressing fire then running as fast as they could.
"Get some chow and rest up," the officer said. "We'll send a patrol out tonight to see if we can spot the guys that tried to get you, but I doubt we'll see anything. All rats go to their holes after a good crap in someone else's bivy."
They grabbed food packs and water and Aetheras wandered out in the compound for some shade, finding Rollins right alongside him. He expected him to wander off to the hutch to call home or to wind down some, not tag along with him.
"Can you tell me what really happened out there?" the corporal asked when they sat down.
"Like I told the Lieutenant..." he started.
"Sarge, I respect you but don't lie to me. We were covered five ways from Sunday, there wasn't a bit of cover for two hundred meters, we had no suppressing fire aside from one mag of five five six each so don't try to put that bull down my throat.
What happened out there? I heard you say something and I think I saw you point something at them then I know I saw you point it the two of us then we were running like mad. There was no fire on us, no grenades, no bullets, nothing. That just don't happen.
But something did happen and I have a right to know."
"You think you have a right to know you're alive, troop? That you do. Nothing else."
"Between you me and the latrine, what did you really do," Rollins asked.
Aetheras took a long pull from his canteen. Maybe the fantasy of unbelievable truth would satisfy him. "I confunded the lot of them with a widespread jinx from my magic wand, charmed a couple rocks to look like us then made us invisible so we could get away. What else do you think I did?"
Rollins gazed at him a long time then calmly said, "I don't know what confunded means but whatever, it slowed them down. And you did make us invisible. I didn't see my shadow when we were running. Funny how things like that stand out when your butt is in the grinder but I know what I saw. You looked down and so did I. We were invisible, really invisible."
The corporal took a couple bites and washed it down with bug juice from his flavored water bottle. "Now I suppose everything I saw was something I shouldn't have seen so if you tell me to, I'll never tell another soul about it. You're a wizard, aren't you?
Just like in all the old kid's stories and they're a secretive lot so that'll stay with me too.
I'm just glad to be sitting here wondering about how I'm still alive after getting jumped like we were."
Aetheras spooned a bit of food into his mouth and chewed. "Yes, we are a secretive lot and whatever happened out there can never happen again. We all agreed a thousand years ago not to interfere. It's a good rule that I broke to keep us living for another day."
Rollins gave a quirk of a smile and said, "But if you can really do magic, why not use it? You could save lives."
Aetheras put his spoon down and looked Rollins in the eye. "I have a wand, you know that now. No one else can ever know about it. If it were to get out there'd be all kinds of hell to pay and I'd be before the Council looking at life in prison."
A long pull on his water bottle and he went on, "As for why we're forbidden to get involved in that way, if I have a wand don't you think there are others out there with wands? What if we lined up on both sides of a war and fought it out to the last Muggle,
that's one of you, the last Muggle alive? Does that sound like something that would solve a lot of problems? One thing it would solve would be the secret part as there wouldn't be enough non-magical people left after a war like that to worry about. When you people were used up we'd turn against each other. It's the warlord engagement scenario. It's been studied and gamed out and every time it leads to total destruction of both our societies."
Another long pull of water and he thought of how best to make the warning clear,
decided on a touch of fear then said, "Best thing to do is forget anything that happened today other than we ran like sin with the devil on our tails. If you can't do that I'll have to report you to the Council and they'll find you, alter your memory and you'll never know that you had ever met me. If they don't send the best to do it, there'll be irreparable brain damage. Then they'll come find me. Better just to forget this day ever happened,
Rollins. Best for everyone."
Both took another pull of water. Rollins was silent for a minute then said, "Seems like you and me just had a regular patrol, got whacked and hightailed our butts outta there. Like you said, best for everyone."
Aetheras nodded. "You know, when we get back to the world, look me up. We'll have a beer and think back to this day. And never say a word about it."
Rollins nodded back. "Never say a word about what?" and grinned.
A/N: Just a quickie. I find the bounds between Magic and Muggle worlds to be very interesting. Can the Wizarding world live without the Muggle world? Just how much dependance is there? Where does all the food and clothing come from when wizards don't do farming or weaving cloth? Also, don't watch HORNS and try to write HP fiction. The experience is best defined as weird. It makes tales like this happen.