The massive daemons flanked a silk-covered palanquin carried on the back of some great iridescent armoured beetle inlaid with gold and jewels. Once through the pass the creature lay down and folded its legs away out of sight. Their leader wore ornate robes of the most ancient design, voluminous enough to hide any physical sign of male or female and dyed the rare blue of lapis lazuli from the desert of Escharr. On their brow, above a bald scalp, sat an ornate crown of twisted red gold and rubies. To me they appeared like a dark abbot of a perverse heathen religion. The ravak bowed before them as they waited for the army to filter through the narrow pass and form up in front.
I felt queasy as the flush of previous victory dropped away like the onset of a bad case of dysentery. Whoever or whatever that was, they were the great power I had sensed within the halrúna aeromancer and I wanted nothing to do with it. Fortunately their attention was still fixated on the halrúna in the sky, studying the lay of the land.
A howl was taken up by throats that belonged to no hound ever born on this world. A pack of scaled canine daemons with blood-red eyes erupted from the enemy lines and ploughed lines in the snow towards us. They would probably catch up with us in a worrying short space of time.
“Run for your lives,” I shouted. The chances of any of us surviving this, never mind holding them for long, had dwindled to almost nothing.
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.