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.”