God of Broken Things

Chapter 20

This body tired so easily compared to my own, and that scrawny thing I called home was more unfit than any magus’ body had a right to be with magic to call on. My calves burned and a stabbing pain under my ribs suggested something was ready to burst out in a spray of blood. The back of my throat seared with bile and my breath rasped in and out of the helmet, the restricted airflow suffocating. This whole body ached like I was too big for its skin, and maybe I was at that. The prisoner kept pace with me against his will, but was having a far easier time of it than I was.

Most of these locals were fitter and faster than this underfed body that had spent time in the depths of the Black Garden, but others faltered and fell by the wayside due to wounds taken in the fight. They doubled over heaving for breath or limped along clutching bleeding thighs. I left them to it and kept on running, terrified that what was behind us would catch up – and I didn’t mean that stupid pack of dog-daemons.

The slowest among us screamed as the creatures reached them, although fortunately the pack of daemons seemed to prefer hunting individuals, bringing them down and savaging until their prey was dead, before moving onwards. It bought us time to reach the next ambush point.

Five or six had fallen before the valley narrowed once more.

I ran through and then stumbled to a stop among the gathered Clansfolk, my legs like a newborn colt’s and my bearded face and back drenched in steaming sweat. My stinging eyes scanned the icy cliffs on either side but saw no trace of Eva or her wardens.

The Clansfolk formed a battle line as the daemons howled towards us. They readied swords and shields and roared their defiance. The daemons were faster and would cut us to pieces if we kept running, so a pitched battle it was.

I joined them with my axe in hand, the freezing steel biting my fingers. The Skallgrim prisoner I kept out of the way behind us, sat in the snow and unable to move.

They came at us in a disorganised mass of slavering fury – teeth bared and bloodied. Ten paces from us I loosed my magic, a battering ram of unsubtle power that pitched three scaled snouts down into the dirt and left them dazed and drooling.

I winced as my skull throbbed with unaccustomed pain: this body could not handle so much magic roaring through it. My guts churned as their temperature rose. Muscles twitched and bone creaked inside me as changes began with fearsome swiftness.

No time to dwell. I swung my axe but mistimed the blow, gouging a trench in the daemon’s shoulder rather than smashing the scaly canine’s brains in as I’d intended, but it proved enough to knock it back a step.

The man to my left went down with a daemon gnawing on his throat. The woman to my right brained one with the rim of her shield and rammed a blade through its eye to finish it off.

The enemy was fast and vicious but no match for the ferocious hillfolk and their cold steel. I roared as my axe came down again, this time cutting off a paw and caving in its flank. The fangs of another beast fastened on my left forearm and it wrenched me to one side. My axe fell.

No choice but to use more magic, tweaking fleshy bits and reinforcing muscle. My heart thundered, straining to burst from my ribs. Blood gushed down my beard and bubbled across metal eyeslits. I punched the fucker in the eye, right-handed hammer blows that reduced scaled face and knuckles both to bloodied scraps of flesh and bone.

A hand on my shoulder – the woman from before staring at my hand. “Yon beastie is dead. Best see to your wounds a’fore the plague spirits get in.” She shuddered. “Too late – already turning black, so it is. Those things must be venomous.”

It wasn’t venom. My bloodied right hand was darkening as black plates began spreading across it – my spiritual taint had followed me here to this body and was feeding on the bloodshed.

Then the internal pain hit. I pulled back and distanced myself a little from this body; losing some fine muscle control was a small price to keep it to a dull and ghostly ache. This thrall could not last much longer. The heart would soon burst under the strain, and if not I would have to see it burned myself. An overdose of magic was flooding its blood and bones, far too much for any unGifted body to cope with. The Worm of Magic was gleefully twisting its insides and I didn’t want to wait and find out what monstrosity would be left behind when it was finished.

“Run on,” I gasped. “Take this prisoner safely back to camp and straight to Magus Edrin Walker to interrogate.” I went into my captive’s head and made the necessary adjustments to his orders. My skull was being pounded like an anvil.

“That black-hearted tyrant?” she gasped. “I want no truck with the likes o’him.”

I grimaced and clutched my right hand as the blackness oozed up the wrist. “Oh, it’s far too late for that. You see, you’ve been palling about with me all this time. I did say I was something like a druí.”

She hissed and stepped back, clutching a small charm bag tied to her belt. Fat lot of use that superstitious nonsense would be against me.

I doubled over and vomited blood. “Cockrot. This body is coming apart at the seams but I can still buy you time. Maybe I’ll even get to a hundred.”

She backed away, pale and terrified. “Take him with you. Or else.”

She swallowed and nodded, grabbed the prisoner and ran.

I watched her go as nausea warred with pain in a three-sided battle with a rising ecstasy. The pain was turning to pleasure, a sure sign that the Worm was almost done making a monster out of a man. I was so deep inside this body it might as well be my own, and it was beginning to dawn on me that inhabiting it came with mental and magical dangers I hadn’t considered.

As the Clansfolk retreated I staggered to my feet and found my axe again. Blood ran down my arms and made the grip slippery, but this body would soon be dead whatever I did. Its soaked clothing was beginning to freeze and it shivered uncontrollably, so even if it survived the battle, it could not survive the cold.

I spat blood and bile and scanned the cliff walls. Still no sign of Eva. Where were they? I was in no state to find out using magic. This body’s best use was facing the enemy to learn what I could before it expired. It would certainly hurt, but they couldn’t kill me… or so I hoped. It was all guesswork at this point.

I didn’t have to wait long. With the two ravak in the lead, the giant beetle-borne palanquin lumbered down the valley towards me. It was followed by a long tail of Skallgrim warriors blowing horns and thumping shields in a savage, rhythmic beat. What a fool their leader was to come at the head of their army. Eva’s ambush would hopefully destroy them.

An enormous magical presence brushed my mind. The fuck? That was… that was my magic! Except, it was far weightier than my own, strong as I was.

Oh.

Fucking.

Shite.

I suddenly needed to piss. Badly.

That dreadful presence inside the palanquin could only be one thing: another tyrant. And an elder magus at that.

I greet you, Edrin Walker. The voice blasted against my mental defences like a signal-horn held to my ear.

The thoughts were shaped in Old Escharric with inflections of superiority of power and position, the way a master would speak to a servant. It also dripped with Scarrabus stain. I had felt this mind once before, back when I delved into the Scarrabus mindscape through the unfortunate Rikkard Carse’s mind.

He, and it was a he apparently, was an infested tyrant, and the very host of the Scarrabus queen too. It was nightmare fuel for the rest of the world.

Sod the risk, I had to warn Eva. If I could find their minds up there then so could the enemy. It didn’t matter to a tyrant if they couldn’t see with eyes, but I had the advantage of knowing they were there already.

My skin burned all over, and something burst with a wet pop inside my chest, but I found my allies’ minds as masses of nervousness hiding out of sight.

The enemy leader is an elder tyrant, I projected. Run now. The greater the distance the more ground they have to search for you – run before they take you! After a moment of panic Eva leapt into action, signalling our allies on the far side of the valley and then fleeing with her wardens.

Can you hold them? she asked.

I shrugged in my mind. They wouldn’t get far if I didn’t, so we were about to find out. Oh hello there, I said to the enemy tyrant. Are you the big blue bugger I spotted earlier? The one too lazy to walk? I swallowed and gripped my axe tight. The weapon would be useless here, but its solid presence did comfort me.

You dare talk to me in such a manner you ignorant wretch?

If he knew my name you would have imagined he might have known what to expect from me.

Sure I do. You Scarrabus-vermin have the mind of a gnat if you thought I would be polite about it. In what world would I ever give a crap about being polite to parasites?

There was a moment before realisation kicked in. Ahhh, no, ignorant one. Your thinking is false. You have the highest honour of speaking to the great Abrax-Masud. Bow before me and I shall let you serve me. That name was supposed to mean something, dripping with expectation. If you do not bow you will serve me all the same, as a slave.

I scratched my gore-crusted beard. What, old Abrax from Masud Lane? Pretty sure you were a cobbler, so why are you here in fancy robes? A little old to be playing dress-up are we not? All I could do was still him and keep his attention on me to buy time for the others to escape.

He slapped me with immense power and my mind rocked from the blow, almost torn from this dying body entirely. And yet I could feel that for him it was a mere tap. I burrowed in deeper and held on tight.

I am Abrax-Masud, the last living magus of immortal Escharr, the greatest seat of learning this world has ever known.

I could feel the sincerity in his thoughts. Bollocks on a hot plate, he really was an elder magus, the oldest in existence if he spoke truly, and would be capable of wielding godly power by any reckoning. He would likely be an adept of most known magics, and perhaps a few other arts lost in the fall of Escharr. Oh well, if you dip a toe into cold water you may as well jump right in and get it over with.

Escharr, what those crappy old ruins with architecture that look like children stacked a bunch of blocks? It was about as immortal as my stinky old boots. Pah, greatest seat of learning? You are badly out of date. The Great Library at Sumart in Ahram holds more lore than your shitty little empire ever created. I hear they even have an entire building full of woodcut illustrated sex manuals. I mean, really, did your lot of crusty old farts ever boast anything like that?

And then he killed me.

I looked down at the smoking hole through my chest, confounded and confused. Fucking elders and their fucking magic. He howled with incandescent rage – quite literally igniting the silk palanquin around him.

As this body pitched forward into the snow I tried to flee back to my own, but his power grasped a trailing part of me and held on. He came for me; a raging inferno. The world grew dim and dark as the body I currently inhabited slid towards death, heart stopping, brain starved of blood. Black tendrils of nothingness reached for me, trying to drag my mind down into death along with the flesh.

The cliff above Abrax-Masud exploded, showering the army with massive boulders. Granville stood proud at the jagged edge of the cliff, bushy eyebrows lowered in concentration as he pierced the ravak and Skallgrim with spikes of stone. The proud fool had stayed behind to cover the retreat. Men died screaming, punctured and crushed by stone. The entire valley trembled as more debris hurtled into the path of the army. Even as I danced with death it was awesome to behold. A spear of stone shot towards the burning palanquin.

Abrax-Masud was not afraid of mere fire or stone, but he didn’t care to test his immortality against the death overtaking this body. He let go of me. Granville screamed as the air ripped him from the earth and tore him limb from limb, scattering the spurting pieces all over the army. Me, I escaped by a whisker, with only the chill of oblivion in me and death’s dank breath caressing the back of my neck.

I sat up gasping for air and drenched in cold sweat, back in camp and back in my own body, stitches and all. That had been far too close for comfort. I wrapped my clumsy gloved hands around myself and rocked, trying to forget that cold, dark embrace.

Eventually it dawned on me that if the Scarrabus Queen and its host were here in the Clanholds, then just what the fuck did they have waiting for the Arcanum army at the enemy’s supposed stronghold of Ironport?