Uncanny Magazine Issue 28: MayJune 2019 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, magazine
Publisher: Uncanny Magazine
Published: 2019-05-06T22:00:00+00:00

Christopher Caldwell is a queer Black American living in Glasgow, Scotland with his partner Alice. He was the 2007 recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship to Clarion West. His work has appeared in FIYAH, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and Strange Horizons. He is @seraph76 on Twitter.

Corpse Soldier

by Kameron Hurley

Everything started here:

A broad plain of yellow grass, the stalks crushed and smeared with blood, and the sounds of dying men—yes, all men—sobbing and praying to the rusty pink sky. The high grass hid their forms and faces. They were bodiless voices, as if ghosts already, rising above the field like ashes to heaven.

Nev had his fist in his own wound, pressing hard to staunch blood that flowed free as a spring rill, pumping across his breast with every heartbeat. He used his other hand to claw himself towards the sounds of the dying men. Not to save them—no—not to help them—no—but because he hoped they were not quite as doomed as he. He hoped they carried six more breaths instead of his two. He wanted to become them, to steal the last of their conscious moments, to take harbor within their mangled, broken bodies and mend them with the fire of his corpse-jumping soul. He had to find a form that would house his soul for another day, another hour, another breath, until he could jump again, and again, into his promised immortality.

But for now, in this moment—Nev needed just one more breath.

And he did not have it.

That’s when he heard the little girl singing.

Nev’s life after that day in that bloody field, after the war, after he fled the guild that once protected his immortal soul from superstitious mind clerics and osteomancers, was no easier. No matter how far he ran, or how many times he changed his face, Nev could not escape his past, and the sound of the little girl singing while he bled out. His old masters would inevitably find him and remind him of his obligations to the Body Mercenary Guild. They knew what sort of person he really was. They knew what had happened on the field that day.

They knew about the girl.

And what he had given her.

“Name and occupation?”

“Nevarius Plum,” Nev said, and not for the first time, he felt the urge to say he was a scribe, or perhaps a tax clerk, because it seemed so fitting to the current name he used. Body mercenaries like him should have had names that inspired fear and awe in the presence of the foes whose faces they would soon wear. But names didn’t always make a person, however much weight they gave on first impression. He had once known a man in the guild called Torgenson Bold. Torg perished on the field during his first skirmish, screaming and blubbering like a colicky newborn babe.

It wasn’t about the name—it was about the soul. Nev chose names that reflected the soul he wanted to show the world. The soul he aspired to.

“And occupation?” the

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