God of Broken Things

Chapter 18

If you’ve never been carried on a stretcher downhill through slippery ice and uneven clumps of snow, feeling every step and bump like a knife to the back, and then had your gaping flesh sewn back together by ham-fisted butchers, well, I can assure you it is far from fun. It was downright humiliating – especially when you are meant to be this fearsome and powerful magus in charge of a whole army. Balls.

I concentrated on making the pain go away. It was not mine; it belonged to some other unlucky wretch. The stabbing pains faded to a dull ache but I didn’t want them gone entirely. Pain was the body’s way of warning you something wasn’t right and I didn’t want to start leaping about and burst my stitches and then have to go through it all over again.

Inside my tent, I lay face down on soft furs and cursed all gods, spirits and daemons. Fuck the Arcanum. Fuck the druí. And fuck the Scarrabus with a hot poker! All I wanted was some peace and quiet but oh no, they all had to go off and play their world-conquering games of fuckwittery. Was a single evening relaxing by a crackling fire with good food, good beer and good company really too much to ask for?

My brooding was interrupted as the tent door flapped back and let in a gust of chill air. I turned my head to see Eva enter, armoured in full war plate. “How are you feeling now?” she said.

I grunted and buried my face back into the fur. At least being a magus I didn’t have to worry about plague spirits rotting the wounds.

Her freezing gauntlet planted itself on my bare back. I yelped and flinched away, then yelped again as my stitches pulled.

“It’s just a little kitty scratch,” she said. “Don’t be a baby.”

I bit my lip to stop the insults flying. What complaints could I possibly hurl at her? Not without getting a slap on the back anyway. To her this really was just a flesh wound. “I hate you so much,” I growled.

“Hate you more,” she replied. “You might be annoying but I admit that was a decent plan. Now I can head on out and we can start slowing them down without getting picked off by hordes of flying daemons. It is a better start to the campaign than I had hoped for.”

I turned my face towards her, groaning as my back pulled tight. “Give me a hand up.”

“Not a chance,” she said. “If you rip those stitches open out in the field then you might bleed to death. It would be a shitty, pointless death for the magus who took down the Magash Mora and killed a god, wouldn’t you say? And more pertinently, you would be a great inconvenience to me if I had to drag you back here again. I don’t have the time or people to spare on being your nursemaid.”

I hated it when she spoke sense. “But you might need the mighty Edrin Walker to haul your sorry arse out of the frying pan.”

Her single eye just glowered at me, packing in a surprising amount of disdain despite the mask.

I cleared my throat. “Ah well, arrogance aside, who knows what else is waiting for you out there. It sticks in my craw that I’ll be laying here like a butchered hog while you are off fighting for your life.”

She shrugged, oiled steel whispering. “Things are as they are. If we cannot change something then it is best to accept it and stop complaining. Nobody wants to hear our whining. We must meet this challenge head on.”

I grimaced. “I can’t just loll here like a drunken lord, I need to do something useful.”

She cocked her masked head, green eye flicking down across my wounds. “Well, do you have to be there physically? I know you can communicate at a distance. Could your magic serve as a secure and swift method of communication?”

I suddenly had a far better idea than mere communication. I reached out to my one remaining thrall and entered what was left of his mind: an empty burnt-out hall devoid of all independent thought and personality. I had done a thorough job and it made him an empty ale cup just waiting to be filled by my particular brew of foamy goodness. I ordered him to come to me, and as he walked towards the tent I concentrated on feeling the pull of his muscles and blood pumping with a slow and heavy thudding. I poured myself into his brain and body…

Light flashed in my eyes and I stumbled in the slush, almost falling onto the beaked axe hanging from a loop on my belt. I was dressed in rusty chain and matted furs and the rancid stench of months-old sweat was in my nose. I stared at my large and filthy hands, the fingernails long and black, then around the makeshift camp we had formed on a rise now almost free of snow. Everything was subtly different, the colours a shade duller and hazier than usual. I reached the tent and much to Jovian and Vaughn’s surprise, said: “Good job with all the guarding,” then entered before they got over their shock at the mute thrall suddenly speaking.

Eva turned, hand darting to the hilt of the blade at her hip. “It seems I really can do better than that,” I said, my voice deep and gruff and manly. This body was that of a warrior’s, not a skinny bony thing like my own, and it only took a trickle of magic from my own body to sustain my presence.

Jovian peered through the tent flap, looking first at me and then the real me. I winked with both bodies and he swiftly retreated, looking a little green about the gills.

“Walker?” I heard the hesitant note of horror and disgust in Eva’s voice.

I nodded, greasy shaggy hair falling around my bearded face. This body itched all over, hunger gnawed its belly, and one broken tooth throbbed with raw pain. I had forgotten just how weak it felt to be merely human, with all their bodies’ weaknesses. Physically I wouldn’t be any more use than one of her wardens but I wondered what else I could do. From inside this body I reached out to Eva’s mind.

She flinched back. Out! “I guess that works too.”

She was not exactly impressed. “The next time you do that without my permission I will hurt you so badly you will be screaming for a week. You can touch my mind in an emergency, but try anything else and whatever trust we have built together turns to ash. If you want to play the tyrant then I will treat you like one.” Her gaze dipped to the sword at her hip.

I swallowed – in two bodies at once – and nodded. “I apologise. It won’t happen again.”

“It better not,” she replied. “You have abused my trust once, when you opened yourself to me and touched my face. I am not the forgiving and forgetting sort.”

I fled my thrall’s body and slunk back to my own brutalised flesh. “Nor should you be,” I groaned. “I’m sorry. I fucked up. I’ve spent ten years alone only caring about myself, and it’s been… difficult adjusting to being back home. It’s not an excuse, but there it is.”

She remained silent for some time. “It is not my job to educate you.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s all on me to become better, not on everybody else to tolerate me and tell me when I step out of line. I’m not a child. I am trying.”

She grunted. “See that you continue to. Well, let us say no more about it.” She edged around my motionless thrall, disgusted as much by what he was as the rancid stench.

“Stay safe,” I said. “I’m not sure how far or for how long I can reach out to help you.”

“I’m sure I can manage a few smelly, bearded heathens,” she replied, stepping out of the tent and preparing her parting shot. “Hopefully they will all prove as foolish as you.”

Thanks, Eva. Still, it was not undeserved.

She left to lead a small chosen force out onto the icy rock to blunt the nose of the Skallgrim advance. Me, I got to lie here under guard until my wounds closed enough that I was no longer a liability.

I slipped back into my thrall’s mind and decided to join her for as long as I could. But first I needed to wash this stinking barbarian body before it made me throw up. I left the camp to locate an icy stream and peeled off my furs and mail, layers of congealed grease and mouldering skin coming off with it. Had I been in my own body with a nose not used to the stench I might have gagged. This one was not in the best of health, but that wasn’t terribly surprising given he hadn’t washed since Black Autumn.

I stepped into the water and gasped as the cold burned against my ankles. As I hastily began scrubbing with water and grit, the stream darkened with filth. While washing, I couldn’t help but think of Eva and Jovian’s reaction to what I was doing. The perverse morality of wearing another human body was not lost on me, but nor did I really care if I was brutally honest. He had attacked Setharis and paid the ultimate price. If this body could help protect Eva then I felt no guilt about riding it to destruction.

I knew I was sliding closer towards the monster that the Arcanum always feared I would become, but needs must, and like me, any Docklander would put pragmatism far above morality. Morality and ethics didn’t fill your belly with food. Which is not to say what I was doing was not creepy as all fuck…

I dunked his head into the water and frantically scrubbed at the greasy hair, but moments later I couldn’t take the cold any longer and ran for dry clothing. I dressed, hefted my axe, and then went to join Eva’s expedition north.

She had decided to leave the heavy infantry here while taking thirty wardens armed only with bow and spear and fifty local Clansfolk warriors who knew the lay of the land and all the secret cattle rustling paths. Cormac, Granville and Bryden were to accompany us, though after our battle with the daemons none looked especially pleased about leaving the safety of our camp. I had to admit, Cormac did look rather fine today. Had he trimmed and oiled his lovely bushy red beard?

That brought me up short. I looked over the men and women readying to march north – but mostly the men. Then it dawned that this particular body I was wearing had a beard fetish. As much as I wore this body, it seemed to also influence my thinking in return. The flesh remembered pleasure and pain and movement of the muscles, but precious little else as fluids gushed about and the various organs did all the things I had no real knowledge about.

An untidily-bearded warden blocked my path as I sought to approach Eva. “Piss off, idiot mute. Head on back to your own degenerate magus.”

My fist slammed into his face before I could think about it, sending the warden sprawling in the dirt with a split lip. He lay dazed and bleeding.

These muscles remembered exactly how to punch with maximum force, and were far more proficient than I had ever been. Apparently this body was used to reacting to aggression with extreme violence, and the merest twitch of muscle had set it off. Magic influenced the body and the body and its Gift influenced the magic, that much was common knowledge, but no magus had truly explored the role of the mind on the other two – how could they without slipping on a new suit of meat?

Eva’s wardens closed ranks around her. The spearman nearest me levelled the point at my chest.

Fuck off, I told him. “Righto,” he said, and wandered off as the other wardens looked on in disbelief.

Eva turned and grimaced. “Leave me; this one is Edrin Walker’s aide.” The way she emphasised that last word left me in no illusion that she would be most displeased if I horrified them by revealing who was really behind this face. These people had no real need to know about that, and if they already thought my mental trickery was worrying then this would be an utterly nightmarish situation for them. They would not be in the right mind to do their job.

“Hello,” I said cheerily as I wandered over to her. “I’m here to watch your back.”

She sighed. “Yes, because you have proven so good at watching your own.”

I pouted. “Unfair.” “But accurate,” she replied. “If you are sticking around then you will be polite and obey the orders of the magi, as befits an unGifted warrior.”

I smirked.

She pinched the skin on the back of my hand between two steel-clad fingers. “Can you feel that?”

“Ow! Yes!” I was so deep inside this body it felt every bit as painful as if it were my own.

She looked shrewdly pleased. “Good… good.” “Ah. I will play the part.” “I thought you might.” She looked me up and down, noting dirty furs and rusted mail. “For the sake of the gods, go find a helmet or…” she shook her head like I was an imbecile.

I took her advice and using my particular skills of persuasion, acquired a spare pothelm and arming cap from a quartermaster only too happy to please, donned the cap and then stuffed the slightly overlarge helm on top. I didn’t much like my vision being restricted to slits and holes in a faceplate but it wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe.

With the foreplay over with, Eva proceeded onto the main event – war. Bryden, fifteen wardens and twenty Clansfolk headed towards a small goat track climbing up towards the hills on the east side of the valley. Sadly Cormac and his lovely lush beard went with them. I grimaced and bit my own… his… no, this body’s cheek. This was all wrong. I didn’t. Like. Beards. Like. That.

Eva, Granville, myself, the other fifteen wardens and thirty angry Clansfolk headed up a steep and slippery escarpment leading to the west side of the rise above our camp. The assembled warriors kept glancing at me curiously, until I realised that none of them currently wore their helms. After all, we were not in combat or anywhere near the enemy… I flushed and removed it for now, tying it to my belt with a leather thong. Much better.

For a day and night the Clansfolk led us along their secret paths either side of the valley – time was far more important than sleep or safety. It was a gruelling and dangerous hike navigating narrow moonlit ridges across rocky crags by the meagre light of shuttered lanterns. Two of our men slipped down scree slopes and broke their legs. We had no time to spare and were forced to leave them behind to crawl back to camp on their own. My borrowed body grew weary and slow with shocking swiftness – this crushing tiredness was what it was to be a mundane human. Eva and Granville powered on until dawn as the rest of us flagged. How did normal people cope with this fatigue on a daily basis? I dared not try to work my small talent with body magic on this borrowed flesh – or even if that was possible. I didn’t yet know it well enough to try to tinker with it, and it was far, far less resilient than my own Gifted form. Exploding it might prove bad for morale.

As we drew closer to the advancing enemy snaking through the valley we shed men at key narrow points suitable for ambushes. They began to work on the boulders, digging their bases free from earth and stone ready to be shoved down to crash on any people and daemons passing below, and with any luck start a small avalanche to block the pass for a time until they dug it free.

Just before dawn we took position at the narrowest point between Dun Bhailiol and Kil Noth. We secured armour, pulled on helms and gauntlets, readied weapons and waited beneath a jagged ridge for the enemy to march right into our trap. Eva kept watch on the skies for daemons, a heavy war bow ready in her hands. One eye or not, she was still the best shot we had.

I nodded to a scarred woman next to me dressed in Dun Clachan plaids. She grinned back, feral and furious. “I’ll take six heads afore we send them scurrying back to their ratholes. What about you, big man?”

I thought about it. “Couple hundred I reckon.”

Her grin widened and she clapped me on the back. “That’s the spirit! Good to have a goal right enough.”

I was being deadly serious.

A light blinked on and off from the other side of the valley. Eva signalled back, flicking her lantern shutters open and closed in a pre-arranged sequence. We were ready to strike from both sides of the valley. Granville rolled up the sleeves of his fine robe and placed his hands on the stone to allow his magic to gain a better feel of it. He smiled and I knew we were ready to wreak havoc.