Champion of the Gods

Chapter thirteen

‘What brings you back to the Sigmarabulum so soon, brother?’ I said. ‘Broudiccan wagered me you’d be back in the Aetherdomes in a year. I gave you eighteen months, and reminded him that Sigmar had given you the easier bits of the Ghurlands.’

Zephacleas Beast-Bane broke into a huge, gap-toothed grin wholly at odds with the sombre grouping he was a party to and the ceremonial attire at which he occasionally scratched. His hair was long and bound in thick braids, as was his beard, something which I’d often teased him over – prissying up like a Zephyri aelf maid come to watch the trooping of the Freeguilds. He puffed up his thick chest and stroked his braids lovingly, his battered, brutal features creasing still further. ‘The ladies love a man who knows how to look after himself, my friend,’ he said.

I grinned, aware Zephacleas was purposefully derailing my line of questioning with his absurd answer, but I did not care enough to challenge him. ‘Where I come from they prefer one who can kill a ghyrcat with his bare hands, and still yomp it up the mountain to the cave afterwards.’

‘I can do that.’

I snorted. ‘You? You’re practically civilized. Made for finer things.’

Turning an interesting shade of purple from the effort of containing a laugh, the Lord-Celestant of the Beast-Banes took a standing position behind Ong’s stool and strove to look severe.

The sallow figure at the Smith’s left hand sighed wearily.

‘This might just pass more easily if you restrict yourself to answering the questions posed,’ said Ramus.

I recognised the Lord-Relictor despite the fact that I’d never actually seen him without armour before. The sallow features, the monkish haircut, the desolate stare – it was all much as I would have deduced from the skull-faced helm of his mortis plate. I do him something of a disservice because the Shadowed Soul actually had a vestige of a personality, which was more than can be said of most Hallowed Knights. I had always thought of him as something of a repressed psychopath, wanting nothing more than to throw off the trappings of the warrior-devout and launch his own vindictive crusade on Nekro­heim. I respected him enormously for that and would have joined that mad venture of his in a heartbeat had he but asked, and brought twenty thousand mortal swords along with me.

Which only made the fact he never had more hurtful.

‘Why not ask the High Wind to stop blowing while you’re at it,’ I replied.

‘Interesting choice of metaphor,’ said the third Stormcast, at the Smith’s right hand. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus of the Knights Merciless, Chaos-seekers and witch-burners extraordinaire.

She was garbed in robes so white they almost called tears from my eyes. Her hair was the black of moonless skies and worn long, drawn from her face by a crown of blistered sky ice. Her sword belt was bare, as were those of the others, but unlike Ramus and Zephacleas she still held the abjuration staff of her office in one cold white hand. It’s a thing of particular beauty, Vikaeus’ staff, clad in nacre and mirrored glass, the lantern at its top ensconced like a pearl within its shell by a halo of cometry ice. Knowing how many daemons it had banished to the Realms of Chaos only added to its lustre, although the unwelcome reminder of how my own warding lantern had burned me did tarnish it somewhat. I averted my eyes, while obviously trying not to look as though that was what I was doing, but found that I wasn’t really looking at the staff anyway.

My eye was drawn to Vikaeus herself, the shape of her unarmoured figure, as if hypnotised by an arcane rune in some tome of secrets. I found myself studying her face, noticing, as I had somehow failed to notice before, the freckles that spread across her nose and cheeks like the constellations of my mortal sky.

‘What?’ she asked, testily.

I blinked, taken aback, having somehow managed to forget there were three other Stormcasts and a demi-god in the room with me.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Nothing?’

She watched me through narrowed eyes, clearly expecting something more from me than that. I fidgeted on my seat, which was suddenly no longer as comfortable as it had first looked. ‘I was… wondering what brings you to the Forge Eternal?’ I said, because the only sure form of defence is all-out attack. ‘What calls a Lord-Celestant, Relictor, and Veritant away from Sigmar’s wars?’

‘They’re here at my inviting,’ said Ong, and despite being the only one seated amongst a group of warriors twice his size, the Smith dominated the room like an unsheathed blade. ‘I’ll be asking the questions. But these three…’ Ong raised a hand from his lap, gesture enough to identify and quell the three Stormcasts stood about him. ‘They know you best. They’ll help me be the judge of your answers.’

‘Know me best? These three?’ I gave a derisory bark. ‘Hardly! Ramus and I fought together once, a hundred years ago. Zephacleas? He and I have barely crossed paths since Sigmar unleashed his first storm. He had some walkover at Mandrake Bastion or somewhere like that.’ I waved my hand dismissively, which brought a wry chuckle and an eye-roll from the Beast-Bane. Of Vikaeus, I said nothing, which she noticed, and glanced at Ong with a frown. ‘Where are my Bear-Eaters?’ I declared, changing the issue and throwing up my hands as if I had just then run out of patience. ‘Where are Frankos and Broudiccan? Where is Thracius or Barbarus, Kanutus or Brakka?’

Vikaeus and Zephacleas shared a look.

‘There are gaps between these bars,’ I growled. ‘I can see you.’

‘The Bear-Eaters are not available,’ said Vikaeus.

‘What could be more important than deciding the fate of their Lord-Castellant?’

‘They fight on without you, believe it or not.’

‘I don’t believe it! Don’t tell me your much-prophesied vermintide is actually happening at last?’

‘My abilities are not on trial here, Hamilcar,’ Vikaeus answered with a sigh.

‘Trial?’ I rose out of my chair and kicked it from under me. I pointed an accusing finger at Ong. ‘Give me a trial by combat or none at all. Come on, Smith, what do you say? Man versus god, give it your best try.’

‘The Bear-Eaters aren’t your concern just now,’ said Ong, calmly, and his voice had the same effect on me as a bucket of cold water would have on a hot blade. Belligerence rose off me like steam and I sagged forwards onto the bars, dispirited. ‘Tell me what happened after you left the Seven Words.’

‘You couldn’t get even that much from Xeros and the others?’ I said.

‘Just answer my question.’

With an exaggerated sigh, I told them. Of the alliance I’d struck with the aetar, impressing King Augus with my head for heights, my casual attitude to the authority of the God-King, and my ability to swallow an eighteen-inch-long ringtail worm (a delicacy, apparently) without chewing. There were certain details I thought it best to haze over. No one needed to know, for instance, how my impending honour bout with Akturus Ironheel had brought forward my departure by a week or two, saying only that the two Freeguild regi­ments that had been ready to march at the time were more than adequate to the task.

‘Do you know how many of the nineteen hundred that marched with you returned to the Seven Words?’ asked Vikaeus, softly. If I’m honest, I hadn’t thought about it. I lifted my eyebrows to invite her to tell me. ‘Less than five hundred, led by Captain el-Shaah.’ The name meant nothing to me, but I knew how to bluff it, and did.

‘A good man and a good soldier,’ I said, squeezing a tear from my eye and rubbing it on the back of my hand. I sniffed and raised the damp fist in the rough direction of Sigendil. ‘Praise Sigmar that he wasn’t taken from us too soon.’

‘He demanded I mobilise another regiment to go after you,’ said Vikaeus.

‘The noblest of Sigmar’s people, the Jerech.’

‘Akturus was going to lead it.’

That one caught me off-guard. ‘Akturus Ironheel?’

‘I dissuaded him.’

I frowned at her. ‘You know how long I spent in that lair, don’t you?’

‘What happened when you brought Kurzog and Manguish to battle?’ said Ong, hammering that line of questioning down.

‘They outnumbered us three to one,’ I said, ‘and had a good position, on top of a hill surrounded by marsh. I went in first.’

‘Of course you did,’ said Ramus.

I cracked a grin. If there’s one thing I like better than a good battle, it’s talking one. ‘So as I said, we were outnumbered five to one…’

I told them how I slew Manguish the Bloatlord in single combat, sparing no details and creating a few more where embellishment alone seemed insufficient to the story at hand. I spoke of the timely arrival of the aetar to turn the battle in our favour, and of the skaven ambush that swung it decisively back against us again; how Augus had quit the field and abandoned us in the wake of Queen Ellias’ death. Zephacleas and Ramus both scowled at that, but Vikaeus simply nodded as if this were not news to her. The aetar had always regarded the Stormcast Eternals of the Seven Words with a blend of indifference and distrust – a step up from Beastlord Uxor who had occupied the fastness before us, but only a small one. Their disinterest had bred a certain disillusionment on our own side, and it had only been my urging and persistence that had made an alliance possible. Akturus had been against it from the start. As had Vikaeus.

‘You never saw the ambush coming?’ Vikaeus asked.

‘That’s why they call it an ambush,’ I explained with exaggerated patience.

‘You didn’t scout around the hill or the surrounding marsh before committing two whole regiments and your entire warrior chamber to a full-frontal attack?’

I shrugged, making it look nonchalant. ‘I didn’t have much daylight left. You know how it can be in Ghur, you think you’ve got an hour and then suddenly the sun’s galloping over the horizon.’ Zephacleas was nodding sagely, as I knew he would. ‘I couldn’t give Kurzog the chance to slip away under cover of darkness.’ Coming off the top of my head as it did, I was fantastically proud of that justification. I was hardly going to tell them that Broudiccan had argued for sending Illyrius and his Vanguards around the hill and I’d overruled him in favour of a straightforward head-on assault. ‘I would have done the same thing,’ said Ramus.

‘And I,’ said Zephacleas.

‘It is certainly in his character anyway,’ said Vikaeus, with distinctly milder praise than the others.

‘This took place before his capture,’ said Ong.

‘You make it sound like my fault,’ I said.

‘Why you?’ Vikaeus asked.

I spread my arms theatrically in a ‘who else?’ sort of gesture that had Zephacleas covering his mouth to smother a laugh.

I winked at him.

‘They did try to take you personally during their earlier attack on the Seven Words,’ said Vikaeus.

‘Stop trying to call it an attack.’ I waggled my finger at her. ‘You can’t say your prophecy came true that easily. It was a raid at best, and I was the only one that did any real fighting.’ I had challenged the entire horde to single combat and won, sort of, which did more for my reputation around the fortress than every other triumph before that put together. ‘I was just in the right place at the right time.’ Now I thought about it, though, Ikrit had spouted some nonsense about choosing me because I was predictable and easily trapped, but I decided to keep that to myself.

Nobody knew how to talk down their foes like Hamilcar Bear-Eater.

‘And what d’you know of the one that took you?’ said Ong. ‘The assassin.’

I didn’t answer that one right away. There was something about the way the Smith put it that made me think he knew at least part of the answer to it already. ‘His name was Malikcek.’ I held the demi-god’s gaze as well as I could, but it was like waiting for a reaction in the face of a moon. If the name meant anything to him he didn’t show it.

‘And he managed to take you?’ said Zephacleas, with heart-warming disbelief.

‘My back was turned.’

‘Take this seriously,’ Ramus sighed.

‘He was as good as anyone I’ve ever fought before. Strong and quick. He killed Broudiccan.’

Zephacleas tightened his fist and made the sign of the hammer against his chest. He must have known already, but I appreciated the gesture.

‘Much is demanded…’ Ramus began.

‘Stop talking now, or forever live with the consequences,’ I said, glaring.

‘What happened to you after your capture?’ said Ong.

I took a deep breath, primarily for effect, before continuing. I told them every­thing that occurred to me about the skaven lair and the warriors within it, and of the warlock master, Ikrit. Again, I watched Ong for a reaction to the name, but he gave none. While Ong remained impassive throughout my tale, however, the three Stormcast Eternals grew progressively more animated as I spoke.

‘He sought to recreate the Divine Storm?’ Ramus snarled, before I had even come to the part of my escape.

‘Such an act cannot go unpunished,’ said Vikaeus. ‘Do you remember anything about where the warlock’s lair might be found?’

‘It was a mountain. Somewhere beyond the borders of the Nevermarsh.’ I remembered hearing Aeygar’s cry, somewhere in the sky, looking for me, so however far the lair must have been it was not wildly beyond the reach of the Seven Words.

Vikaeus turned to Ong before I could speak.

‘I will lead my Exemplar Chamber and every warrior Akturus can spare into the Nevermarsh. We will find the mountain and bring the entire peak to the ground.’

I felt my thoughts drift and found myself watching her lips very closely as she spoke. There was something about hearing her harangue the Smith for bloody retribution that took me back.

‘No, you won’t,’ said Ong, flatly, as though that were that, drawing my attention firmly into the present. ‘We’re not done here just yet.’

Vikaeus bowed her head stiffly.

I went on, but there wasn’t a great deal left to say after that. The failure of Ikrit’s machine, my flight, my fight with Malikcek on the snow. I told it all with a brevity that left the Stormcasts who knew me more troubled than anything that I actually had to say. It was understandable. Ordinarily you’d have had to gag me to stop me talking about myself, but I was growing quite bored of this entire exercise.

‘And you are certain that he was trying to kill you?’ prodded Ramus, trying to elicit just a little aggrandisement from my lips.

‘Call it a feeling,’ I said.

‘Would he not have returned you to Ikrit alive?’ he said.

‘I don’t think he likes Ikrit very much.’ Ikrit had told me something about this, which I remembered, but I was getting a bit too stormy under the skin to be as obliging as the Lord-Relictor might have liked. ‘If Malikcek thought he could survive without Ikrit’s help then he would. He’s certainly not above giving his master a sly knife in the back when he thinks he can get away with it.’

Ong nodded slowly, considering that. It was his first obvious reaction to anything I’d said since Vikaeus and the others had entered. ‘Could come in useful.’

‘Good. Can I go now?’

‘Not yet.’

I scowled.

‘So he killed you?’ said Ramus, persistent as a plague drone at a window, as always.

‘No.’ I dragged my gaze from the granite solidity of the Smith. ‘That was a woman who just happened along.’

‘She just happened along?’ said Vikaeus.

I made a show of looking around my cell for the echo.

‘Think about it, Hamilcar,’ said Ramus. ‘If this woman was in the area, then if we can find her people we might just find your warlock.’

‘They’re nomads,’ I said, dismissively. ‘She’d followed me all the way from Kurzog’s Hill, I think. She wanted to get into the skaven lair herself and find her brother. He was a guest of Ikrit’s too.’

‘And she killed you?’ said Zephacleas.

‘Not man enough to be killed by a girl, brother?’

The Beast-Bane shrugged. I got the impression that he was starting to tire of this too.

‘Either way, she distracted Malikcek long enough for me to use my warding lantern. It burned me too, of course, but I was a dead man on that mountain anyway, and it was all I had to hand that could touch him.’ I shrugged. ‘And then she killed me. To stop me and my thrice-blessed falling back into Ikrit’s claws.’ I stopped talking for long enough to take in everyone’s expression. Aghast. Even Ong looked stony.

‘I don’t hold it against her,’ I said. ‘I would have done it myself if she hadn’t come along when she did.’

‘It’s not that,’ said Vikaeus.

Ong leant forwards, resting elbows on his knees, and sitting his bearded chin on a perch of his fingers. ‘Your own light burned you?’

‘Did I not mention?’ I’d skipped over that on purpose, of course, and kicked myself for letting it slip then. ‘Ikrit had been tinkering with it for weeks. He probably broke it somehow.’

‘It is not so easy to tamper with the works of the God-King,’ said Ramus.

‘If only,’ I said, with feeling.

‘And yet it burned Malikcek as it was meant to,’ said Ong. ‘It left this mortal woman unharmed as it was meant to.’ He studied me with an intensity I didn’t like.

‘Enough!’ I slammed my fists against the bars, briefly upsetting the star-metal’s calming trill to a higher register. Warriors without peer that they all were, Ramus and the rest didn’t bat so much as an eyelid between them.

Ong belatedly arched an eyebrow.

‘I am a Lord-Castellant of the Astral Templars and you will send me back to my Bear-Eaters.’ I gripped the softly vibrating celestite and growled. ‘Before I’m forced to raise my voice.’

Zephacleas glanced at Ong. ‘You haven’t told him?’

‘Told me what?’ I said.

‘Yours was a hard reforging,’ said Ong. ‘You had to be passed through the soul mills many times before you were in a fit state to be cast to the Forge Eternal.’

The Beast-Bane looked apologetic, which wasn’t a favourable expression on that smashed brick of a face. ‘You’ve been dead five years, brother. The Bear-Eaters are no more.’

My mouth hung open for a beat.

This was the sort of thing that happened to men in nightmares.

‘No,’ I hissed. ‘I don’t believe it. Even if it has been five years.’

‘It is true,’ said Ramus.

‘Yours was never a large chamber,’ said Vikaeus. ‘More of a Brother­hood that never disbanded. A personality cult. Heldenhammer, you didn’t even have a Lord-Celestant. And with you, Broudiccan and Xeros all slain in short order…’

‘Xeros fell?’ I couldn’t say why, but that news cheered me just a little.

‘Those who survived fight in the livery of the Heavens Forged now,’ said Ramus.

‘Never heard of them,’ I muttered. ‘Whose war-name is that?’

‘Frankos,’ said Vikaeus.

‘Frankos?’

She nodded.

‘He blows my trumpet!’

‘You will have to find another warrior to do that from now on, because he is Lord-Celestant Frankos of the Heavens Forged now.’

Don’t misunderstand me: Frankos was as fine a choice as any to take command of the Bear-Eaters in my absence. He had a breezy confidence that reminded me a little bit of myself, while his apparent youthfulness endeared him to the common soldiers in a way that few Stormcast Eternals could ever dream of or even wish for. But I was feeling quite cuckolded, and publicly, over this development, which wasn’t putting me in the most charitable of moods towards my younger replacement. After all, in a century and a half of warfare and all the long decades of campaigning before the Gates of Azyr were cast wide, Sigmar had never made me a Lord-Celestant.

‘When I received this summons, Frankos all but begged to be allowed to attend in my place,’ said Vikaeus.

‘You dissuaded him, I see.’

‘I did.’

‘Of course you did.’

‘Things go badly in the Gorkomon, Hamilcar. The skaven and their allies have overrun every outpost, camp, and trail lodge in the Gorwood. Their attacks on the Seven Words itself worsen by the day. The fortress relies entirely on the Azyr Gate for its reinforcement and supply now, but wars rage across the mortal realms and there is little additional aid that Sigmar can spare to one of Heaven’s farthest-flung bastions. Even with the Heavens Forged and the Imperishables strengthened with additional conclaves we barely hold the outer walls.’

‘Just how big are the Bear-Eaters…’ I gritted my teeth. ‘…the ­Heavens Forged now?’

‘Over five hundred swords.’

This got better and better. ‘All the more reason to send me back,’ I said.

‘You are one warrior, Hamilcar. Do you honestly think that you would make the difference?’

She could have been speaking of any warrior, but the words hurt me more than they should have. More than the same truism coming from Ramus or Zephacleas or even Ong would have managed. I swelled my chest, folding my arms over it as if to obscure the conspicuous wound she had landed on me.

‘Are we talking about the same Hamilcar Bear-Eater?’

‘I’m sorry,’ grunted Ong. ‘Believe that or don’t, it’s up to you, but you’re not going anywhere until I decide what’s to be done with you.’

‘How many times do I need to say it – I’m fine.’

Before the god could answer, Vikaeus struck the ferrule of her staff on the ground, the shutters of her abjuring lantern falling away to let the Light Celestial burn through the encrusting rings of ice. It speared through the celestite bars, making them sing, and driving me back from them with a roar of pain. I tripped over the chair that I’d just kicked over, tangling with it as I fell. With no greater warning, the light was shuttered again, leaving me gasping in agony on the floor of my cell.

‘A little warning next time, lass,’ said Ong, in the same tone that I might have used had someone lit a pipe in my bath chamber. ‘You left your sovereign at the door.’

‘I knew that his light could not harm you,’ said Vikaeus.

Ong’s brow furrowed. Storm clouds gathered. ‘Well, however it was done, it does seem to about settle it, doesn’t it?’

Unpeeling myself from the ground, I tottered back towards the bars. I gripped them and stared at my judges and accusers, my so-called brothers and sisters, with what I intended to be naked ferocity, but which my scorched hair and bloodshot eyes probably rendered closer to lunacy. ‘Then send me alone. No warrior chamber. I’ll be an Errant-Questor. I’ll go after Ikrit and Malikcek myself, and never go near another stormhold until they are both dead.’

‘Errant-Questor,’ Ramus mused, as though it was something he was surprised to have never considered before. ‘Interesting.’ I’d known that the Shadowed Soul would be intrigued by that before I’d said it. He would have taken the vows himself had he not allowed his desire for vengeance to become confused by duty and guilt.

‘I don’t see you as the solitary type,’ said Vikaeus, slowly.

Ong nodded his agreement. ‘I was barely able to put you back together again the last time. I don’t know what’ll happen to your soul should you be killed again.’

‘Then I won’t get killed. We all win.’

‘No, lad. No. I’ve got to see if what this mad warlock’s wrought can be undone, or if there’s a flaw in you all that’ll need to be changed in later Strikings.’

‘I’ll not wait out the Age of Sigmar as a prisoner of the gods,’ I hissed, knowing how Ramus, at least, would take those words. I extended my hand to him. ‘Help me.’

The Lord-Relictor’s face was torn although not, apparently, quite badly enough. ‘Forgive me. But if a reforged soul should display a flaw then it is the task of the lords-relictor to catch it before it can do harm. My duty in this matter is clear.’

I shifted to Vikaeus, but my words suddenly dried up in my mouth. She regarded me in turn, a man struck stupid by the beauty of a woman as men like me have been since before the World-That-Was, without recognising the emotional sledgehammer that had just struck me in the gut or even (which was worse somehow) noticing it at all.

Now you are probably wondering what it would eventually take for me to realise what Vikaeus had been to me in life. You are thinking that Hamilcar Bear-Eater is a champion fool as much as he is one of Azyr, and you would be in some fine and celebrated company if you did so, believe me. But you have to remember that these feelings were as unfamiliar to me as they were to Vikaeus. Much easier to dismiss them as arcane fancies, scattered through my memories for some fell purpose of Ikrit’s than to acknowledge them for what they were.

‘You… wish me to intercede with the God-King on your behalf?’ she said hesitantly, scrutinising my face like an autist faced with a Mask Impassive. ‘I cannot. Ong is right to fear what has been done to you, but Sigmar is compassionate, and he has always held you in peculiar esteem. I fear he would not judge you as objectively as he should.’

I worked my tongue in a bid to moisten my mouth, maybe even remind it how to talk.

That left Zephacleas.

‘Don’t even ask,’ he said.

‘I’m a child of ice wastes and wild stars,’ I said. ‘You can’t keep an animal like me in a cage.’

With a rumbling sigh, the Beast-Bane walked towards my cell. He held up his hand and grunted as I took it in mine, the muscles of our arms bulging as we each pitted our strength against the other’s grip. A strange look of discomfort crossed his face as my hand edged his down, and he drew his hand sharply away.

‘And he calls me imperfect,’ I said, throwing a nod towards the seated Smith.

‘Get better, brother,’ Zephacleas said, still staring at me, but with a drifting tone that implied he suddenly wished to be elsewhere.

‘If I get any better then Sigmar will need to make room for me in the gold chair.’

Zephacleas’ smile was equally contrived, but we are Astral Templars – lying to each other about what we’re really feeling is part of what we do best.

I glanced unconsciously towards Vikaeus.

‘We will find a solution,’ she said.

‘You can’t just…’

‘We’re done here.’

Ong’s voice struck like a gavel as he rose from his stool, the three Stormcast Eternals dissolving into crackling zephyrs as he did so before dispersing onto the aether winds. I stared at the after-image that Vikaeus had left in the air, a longing that I couldn’t explain pulling on my chest.

‘What did you do to them?’

The Smith gave a snort, puffing out his chest and stuffing his thumbs under his belt. ‘You think I’d just invite those three into the Forge ­Eternal? No one gets to see the Six Smiths, lad, not even the lords-arcanum of the Sacrosanct Chambers. That’s one of Sigmar’s rules, and doesn’t he have plenty of them.’

‘But…’ I gestured pointedly to where the three warriors had just been.

‘More of the soul gets lost to the Anvil than you’d think,’ said Ong. ‘More than Sigmar would like you to think, that’s for sure. Enough to make a passing forgery from what’s left behind.’ He shrugged. ‘The storm remembers.’

I felt myself deflate, feeling as low as I had when I’d first found myself so utterly alone in Ikrit’s dungeon. ‘Nobody knows I’m here, do they?’

Ong puzzled over me for a moment, as though a piece of ore had just claimed it was lonely.

‘Nobody outside these walls.’

I looked up at him, my light-sore eyes hardening into a glare. ‘Don’t get too used to my company, Ong. It’ll take more than a demi-god to keep Hamilcar Bear-Eater down.’