I shivered, then grimaced as the knife grated between my ribs. Best not to remove it just yet. “You could have snuck into my tent and stabbed me while I was defenceless, lying on my face and healing up. Why didn’t you?”
She glared up at me, brimming with fierce regret. “I wanted to. I had to know first. I thought maybe you’d have a reason, an accident… that you weren’t what they all said you were. But look at what you’ve done.”
I rocked back. “Are you mad? I’m trying to save everybody here!” “By enslaving them all yourself?” she shouted. “You are the monster they all said you were, and every bit as bad as the enemy.”
I am the monster… my own words echoed back at me with a shock like I’d dunked my head into a barrel of ice-water.
A flock of bone vultures descended from the sky.
Jovian and Coira rolled away from Secca to fight them off. I didn’t move, because I knew they weren’t real. I sensed no thought or life from the illusions flapping around us, and inside her head it was full of deception. She tried to veil herself in light and then run for it.
“No,” I said. She flopped down to the snow and her magic cut off. “I am in your head now. It is pointless to try to resist.”
“Do we kill her, Chief?” Coira asked, a knife in her hand. She didn’t look entirely happy about it.
I sighed. “No. She is a magus and while this battle might be won they will regroup and be back with more daemons and who knows what else.”
“Never leave an enemy at your back,” Jovian said. “Especially one you wronged.”
I glared at him. “She is no enemy. Or rather, she won’t be when I am done with her.”
Secca’s mouth snapped open and her eyes flew wide as I opened her up to alter her memory. I burned away old links whilst forging new ones between thought and feeling and image. Most think of memory as something chiselled in stone, but really it’s far more like squishy wet clay. It was always easier to take what really happened – or at least what they thought really happened – and sculpt a few minor details to create an entirely new narrative based on the same old structure.
What she would now recall was investigating her father’s attack and finding out that her father was robbed outside of the gambling den. All sorts of scum loiter in the alleys in the Warrens so it could have been anybody. A blow from a club had rattled his skull, addling his mind (I added some lovely images of extensive bruises all over the back of his head). Nice, simple and entirely believable, as all the best excuses were. I tied that memory to all the pain she had revealed to me and made sure it was not one she would ever wish to examine carefully for minute discrepancies.
Say nothing, I advised my troops. Vaughn, you big lump, get off her.
The big man stood, and moments later Secca shuddered and blinked, then rose to her feet and frowned at her sodden robes. “What was I saying?” She stared at the knife jutting from my chest, then winced as she discovered the cut under her chin caused by Jovian’s sword. “Sweet Lady Night! What happened here?”
“You don’t remember?” I said, wheezing for breath. “Two enemy scouts attacked us. Fortunately I managed to take their minds and send them off to attack their own side before they did more harm.” It was a crap excuse, but I massaged her mind to accept it and forget it and then I carefully withdrew.
Her eyes remained glazed for a few moments, then she looked at me in horror and ran to place both hands on my chest as she studied the knife. I remained very still, fighting the urge to kick her the fuck away.
“We need a healer,” she said. “This is bad, yes very bad indeed. You mustn’t move! You, Esbanian fellow, go fetch a healer!”
Jovian looked at me for permission, his expression flat and lacking any of his usual energy. Everyone was silent.
I nodded and he hurried off to find a warden handy with needle and thread.
What was wrong with them? I peeked inside their heads and did not like what I found. What trust we had forged together was dust and ashes now. They would still do their duty because I magically forced them to do so, but for a short time there they had also wanted to. We had been, if not friends exactly, a team.
Now they saw me as the monster I was, the tyrant the Arcanum had always feared. Killing somebody was something they understood and could deal with, but this forced each of them to look inward and pore through their memories looking for my manipulations. Paranoia bloomed unchecked as their realities came unspooled in my hands. They feared they were puppets dancing on my strings.
How could I claim otherwise? It was all true.
I’d taken them from the cells of the Black Garden and bent them to my will.
I’d taken the Clansfolk.
I’d taken the wardens.
And I controlled them all, forcing them to obey my commands. I considered making changes to their minds, to force them to accept what I had done, even approve of it… but no, they were totally correct. I looked downhill to the wardens mopping up stragglers, and at all the bodies scattered across the bloodied snow – witnessing my handiwork. What would my old friend Lynas have said about my actions? I had enough of a conscience left to feel… not ashamed, because I still thought what I did was necessary, but regret. I had lost control and drifted into the whirlpool of tyranny. Had Secca not shocked me out of it I might have been consumed.
I tried to take a deep breath and gasped with pain as the blade shifted. Pink bubbles frothed around the wound and caused Secca to fuss over me. Coira was eyeballing me, her scarred smile seeming more like a scowl. She’s alive isn’t she? I said to her. Would you rather I had killed her?
She turned away rather than answer, but I felt her fear and disgust all the same.
I could not continue this way. My Gift was cracked and leaking and it was impossible to keep people out. It was growing harder not to meddle in their minds as my powers grew – with but a thought I could change their memory and correct my mistake.
It was so very tempting. I knew my weaknesses and I was deeply selfish. It would begin with small things, necessary things, but that was a slippery slope and what was merely convenient now would eventually become necessary. What did it matter? It didn’t really hurt them after all…
I was a monster.
They had made a grave mistake giving me an army. If by some miracle we survived this I would need to take myself away from people and live in the wilds. I could not be trusted.
When Jovian returned with the healers I welcomed the pain of them drawing out the dagger. It was a quick and hasty battlefield surgery and less than neat, but I was a magus and this little prick would not be enough to put me down. As long as I didn’t try to run or fight I would be fine – I laughed at my own joke. I would never be that lucky.
If the enemy didn’t get me then somebody else would stick a blade or arrow in my back if they realised what I had done to them.
CHAPTER 31
After the savaging we had given them an hour ago, the Skallgrim were far more cautious with the next attack. The hulking mailed forms of their biggest and best advanced under shields painted with emblems of many tribes. Their more numerous halrúna fared better against Cormac, Bryden and Vincent. Our stronger and more refined magic still slipped through here and there, flame torching and stone skewering screaming men. Aeromancy was less suited to offence but it was terrifying to see your friends go down gasping for breath that would never come and wondering if you would be next.
The Skallgrim approached to ten paces from our line before dipping shields and unleashing a hail of throwing axes. The lighter-armoured Clansfolk took the brunt of it, but didn’t break. If anything it only served to further infuriate them as the Skallgrim charged, trying to buckle our lines and push us back to allow more of them to flood through the narrows and bring their huge numbers to bear.
A trio of mageborn war-leaders in exotic Esbanian plate cuirass, gold-chased helms and mail stepped forward to challenge Eva. They exchanged a flurry of blurred blows, their half-formed Gifts o
ffering magical strength and speed that allowed them to fight her evenly. Almost. She wore one down and a kick launched him through the air to come to a crunching stop behind their lines, his steel breastplate bearing her footprint. He didn’t get back up. The other two had their hands full trying to dodge Eva’s mighty war hammer. Their physical prowess was impressive but a single hit from her would end them.
I clutched my chest and wheezed for air while studying the vicious melee below, every breath accompanied by burning pain. I refused to control our forces this time. Secca had been right about me; I had been using them as tools instead of people with hopes and dreams of their own. Instead, I spread myself through the army, feeling their pain and panic, and their gasping last breaths.
I saw through their eyes, everywhere at once. Instead of forcing them into a brutal killing rage I concentrated on saving their lives, on aiding rather than controlling. The human eye sees more than the brain can process all at once – but that did not apply to me, I was in them all, the centre of a buzzing hive of angry bees borrowing from one to give to another. The strain of my presence in so many minds was like being tied to a thousand horses pulling in all directions, with some whining entitled highborn idiot whipping the frothing beasts to get them to pull harder.
Fuck those guys, and fuck these Skallgrim pricks with a hot poker! An axe swung toward a warden’s head. I bid him duck and had the woman next to him stab the exposed hand, severing fingers.
A knot of Clansfolk fell back before a heavily armoured Skallgrim war-leader with an enchanted axe, the runes flaring bright as it cut through swords and spears. A woman slipped on ice; opening a gap in our line. He roared and stepped forward, axe raised. Then he paused, befuddled as I fogged his mind. The woman’s hand found her way to her sword and it bit into his knee. He fell screaming and the woman rose, her boot kicking in his teeth.
Block right – cut left!
Parry and riposte! A bearded warrior reeled back gurgling on blood.
Lean backwards! Steel whipped past her face.
Slip your foot back! Just in time for a blade to miss the knee…
I flitted across the battle, an invisible ally with a thousand eyes and hands, coordinating the defence with unnatural efficiency. The army began to fight with the precision of an artificer’s machine. I could still feel the magic dwelling inside them even if they couldn’t – tiny sparks of life and power reaching out to me, begging to be used. The Worm of Magic urged me to take it, but I would not be what Secca had tried to kill me for, not again. Our forces steadied and pushed them back towards the narrows.
A flight of arrows fell on our forces as the Skallgrim sought to break our momentum. Some bore great war bows and took aim at Cormac on the hill to the left of the valley and loosed at me on the right. Vaughn hefted a shield in front of me and grunted as arrows thudded into it. “Safe as Coira’s virginity, chief.”
She scowled, and thoughts of bedding him or stabbing him flitted through her mind, undecided as to which she would prefer. Maybe both.
The enemy line split in two to let an abomination though – a fleshcrafted creature bred for war. It advanced on all fours like a beast and then rose up on two enormous cloven hooves, a hairy giant three times the size of a natural human, with legs like tree trunks and skin covered with hard plates of chitin like an insect. Instead of hands it bore spiked steel balls embedded into bone.
The Clansfolk froze at the sight of the thing, but the wardens levelled spears and swords and charged. After the attack on Setharis they knew they had to put it down in the dirt hard and fast. A few arrows struck home but might as well have been bee strings.
It bellowed and lumbered ahead, a swipe from its spiked steel fist rending a warden into red raining bits.
Vincent? A little help here?
He heard me and a second later the hairy man-beast erupted into a pillar of flame. A spray of water suddenly doused the flames as a halrúna ran up behind it. The creature shook its scorched head and roared in anger. Ah shite, aquamancers were deadly even half-trained. A warden clutched his chest and fell, then another, their hearts ruptured.
Eva was still engaged with the enemy vanguard of elites and Vincent and Bryden were locked in magical battle with another two halrúna. Cormac was… I couldn’t find him for a moment.
Then I found his corpse. Through his shocked guard’s eyes I looked at the arrow jutting from his eye socket. A shitting lucky shot! The halrúna aquamancer turned his eyes on Eva. Magically hard as her knight’s body was, it would be little defence against her heart bursting from the inside out.
I took matters into my own hands. The great fleshcrafted brute had been twisted from its origin as a Skallgrim child, but the structure of its pain-addled mind had changed little. I directed its anger onto its own side. Its spiked fists took the aquamancer’s head off, then began wreaking havoc on its own lines before being felled by a dozen wounds. The enemy fell apart and retreated in disarray back to the narrows.
We clustered around the fires, and had some breathing room to bandage wounds and stuff food and water down our throats. They would be back, and we were all but worn out.
Eva climbed up to meet me, drenched in blood and dripping unidentifiable shreds of her enemy’s flesh. Her armour was dented and gouged and the steel haft of her great war hammer had a distinct bend from its brutal work. Even the finest and heaviest of weapons could not endure her enormous strength for long. She removed her helm and breathed easier, despite the steel mask she wore underneath.
“What do you make of that?” she asked, nodding to the storm clouds to the north. They were dissipating and turning grey. Lightning flashed only rarely now, the spirit-storm swiftly draining of ferocity. Even the great spirits of the Clanholds could not keep that level of violence up forever.
“We’re running out of time,” I replied. “But we only have to hold until tomorrow morning and then those glory-seeking bastards of the Free Towns Alliance will haul our arses from the fire.”
“It will be close,” she said. “How are you doing? You look like shit.”
I laughed, then gasped from the pain thanks to a hole between my ribs. “It’s no more than I deserve.”
“Perhaps,” she said, tapping her forehead. “I know what you did.”
I hung my head and hid my face behind unruly hair. “This is war, Walker. Atrocities happen. In the past I have ordered dozens of wardens to their certain death to win battles. This is little different.”
“It’s very different,” I protested. “I took away their choice.” She shrugged. “None of us have any choice here and now. It’s fight or die. If any wished to run I would cut them down myself.”
I lifted my head. She meant it.
Horns sounded.
Eva sighed and slipped her helm back on. “There will be no more rest for us I think. Prepare yourself for a long and gruelling wait for dawn. Let us hope that the spirits can hold Abrax-Masud and his ravak off for a little longer.”
As the battle wore on until evening the Skallgrim came at us in relentless waves of hacking steel, sometimes accompanied by those swift and ferocious daemons shaped like dogs, or brutal tusked boars with barbed quills jutting from their backs – boaram if I remembered the sketches in Byzant’s old scrolls correctly. One wave was accompanied by another huge flying lizard, but Bryden took great pleasure in clipping its wings and sending it head first into a cliff. I could grow to like that boy. High up on the snow-bound hillsides, Clansfolk played lethal cat-and-mouse games with those few Skallgrim scouts able to find their way to the top of the treacherous icy slopes in one piece. Sooner or later some would return to their leaders with details of safe routes up. It was only a matter of time before we would be forced to retreat under a hail of arrows from on high.
We were being ground down by constant attack while the Skallgrim warriors could switch out and rest between assaults. Our lines bent and buckled under the pressure. Secca’s illusions distracted and blinded, muddling their attacks each ti
me, buying our soldiers time to rally and for Vincent’s fires to fall where most needed. Without Arcanum magic we would have broken quickly.
As the sun dipped behind the Clanholds, the burning light pierced through the storm clouds gathered by the spirits, heralding the end of their aid. Abrax-Masud was once again free to come forth and conquer. The assaults slowed as night descended, but we all knew this was temporary.
I eased myself down onto my knees in the packed, bloodstained snow next to Eva and Bryden, swigging stale water and trying to wash away the taste of blood. It was pointless; the scent of bloodshed filled the entire valley and tainted everything with its metallic taste. I took the wooden box from my pack and counted my remaining wards. “Is it time?”
Eva looked up at the night sky. The broken moon, Elunnai, was visible through drifts of thickening cloud. It looked like a blizzard was imminent. “They’ll use the blizzard for cover,” she said. “Their war leaders will seek to break us and open up the route south before Abrax-Masud reaches them and shows the depths of his displeasure. He does not seem the forgiving sort.”
“Flames in the night will reveal them to our archers,” I said. I sensed Eva smiling on the inside, looking forward to surprising them.
I summoned Adalwolf and Andreas from coterie guard duty with orders to set our remaining wards down in the narrows where they would do the most damage.
Eva noted I’d kept three behind, including a ward I made with Bryden. If I could see her face behind her mask – if it had still been intact – I was sure she would be quirking an eyebrow at me. “Always keep something back for an emergency,” I said, shrugging. She seemed to think it sensible.
As the blizzard blew in and fat flakes began to swirl around us, war drums began to beat again in the night. Eva stood, offering me a hand to haul my broken and bloodied body back to its feet. My back and ribs were agony but it was far less that she suffered every single day, so I kept my mouth shut instead of complaining.
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