My plan had worked perfectly. Which, given my typically shitty luck, is when everything went wrong.
Not all daemons flew, but then not all daemons needed to walk between there and here in this realm. Some could leap through the shadows and travel through their own strange realm to emerge elsewhere…
My enhanced senses gave me a split second warning before stone spikes shattered and obsidian claws the size of knives ripped through fur and cloth on my back and the skin beneath. Without that warning it would have torn out my spine. I spun and fell, landing badly, bones shrieking with pain as my blood splattered the snow all around.
The shadow cat was the size of a horse. Impenetrable blackness boiled from its fur as those burning green eyes focused on me, lusting to kill with a very personal malevolence. I had thought the entire pack dead, but apparently this one had not been present to be slaughtered at the hands of the traitor god.
I lashed out with my mind as I had with the bone vulture.
The shadow cat hissed and shook its head. The mental structure of every creature was different and my magic scrabbled to find a way in.
I’d bought only enough time to lift my right hand up to ward it off before vicious fangs crunched down. I wasn’t sure who was more surprised when its fang pierced the leather glove and then broke. Inky blood gushed over the exposed black iron plates covering my hand.
A thrill of bloodlust and power as my hand drank in the daemon’s magic-rich lifeblood. Hungry! the familiar voice of Dissever howled in the back of my head. That dark daemonic spirit had been slumbering ever since it escaped its imprisonment in my spirit-bound blade. The taint left in me was awake and it wanted blood.
My fingers clenched of their own volition, piercing the shadow cat’s jaw with inhuman strength and sharpness. It roared and tossed its head, shaking me like a ragdoll, ripping my sleeve to pieces. My hand refused to let go. Had I been a mundane human I would have died.
Eva saved me from having my entire arm ripped off. She was much smaller than the daemon but twice as fierce. She shoulder-charged it to the snow, her magic-wrought strength beyond even that of the great daemonic cat. Her sword plunged deep into its flank and then ripped out in a glistening arc of darkness.
My hand plunged deeper into its flesh, feeding as the thing died and dissipated to black mist. With the surviving bone vultures in full retreat back to their Skallgrim masters, that left Eva staring at my exposed arm. The taint was visibly spreading and black iron plates rose to cover all the skin halfway up my forearm. I couldn’t move it at all, though it could still feel.
“Hide that,” she whispered as she flipped me onto my front and applied pressure to the wounds running down my back.
I hissed, and then used my mental skills to deaden my own sense of pain. “How bad is it?”
Her mask made it difficult to tell what she was feeling, but her eye glared accusingly. “A lot of stitching needed but your back will be fine in a couple of days. Lucky you heal fast even for a magus.” I kept my hand hidden as she waited for a medically-trained warden to bring her bag and patch me up like an old coat so I didn’t bleed out.
“That plan went far better than I thought it would,” Vincent said, still grinning from his earlier misadventures. He dusted ash and charred bits of daemon from his robes. “Dozens of daemons dead at our hands and Scarrabus destroyed. Not even a scratch on me.”
I glared up at him until his stupid grin vanished.
I’ve said it before, and will hopefully never have to say it again, but I fucking hate shadow cats. Almost as much as I hate people.
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…