Champion of the Gods

Chapter twenty

The fortress eyrie of the aetar. A soaring bastion of rustling motion and constant noise. And I was the first of my kind to see it. Or so I thought at the time.

The great eagles nested in hollows gouged out of the high walls by aetar claws, made homely with found things. Scraps of cloth. Fur. Feathers. Even bits of armour. I counted hundreds, far more than I would have expected to find given the dozen or so knights that King Augus had been so loath to loan me for the battle against the brayseer. With a hundred aetar knights, Augus could have owned this region of the Ghurlands, from the southern tracts of the Never­marsh to the mysterious Sea of Scales beyond the mountains to the far north – had he wanted it. They chirped and cooed in their roosts. Scratched their claws. Nibbled at the rock. Ruffled their feathers. Flapped their wings in annoyance and in pleasure. Boisterous young males, identified by their smaller beaks and straighter claws, pinwheeled through the air before their roosts, coming together in collisions of heads, explosions of feathers and squawking. If anyone came away from these displays a winner, I wasn’t sure who, but the pointless bravado struck a chord with me nonetheless.

While the rookeries dotted the mountainside, they faced out onto a glorious expanse of blue emptiness. The aetar had no use for battle­ments or gates. The sky was their moat. The mile upon mile of unassailable rock beneath their talons was their wall. Even I, acclimated to the glories of the Mortal Realms and the infinities of Azyr, stared out in wonderment.

At the sound of a joyous shriek coming my way, I dragged my eyes from the spectacle for the arrival of a powerful aetar female. Her chest plumage and neck were armoured in blued steel and topaz, glittering in what was left of the amber sun. Wings extended to their colossal span, she descended onto an artificial perch that jutted from the rock face at an angle about twenty feet above my head.

The ‘ground’ of the aetar’s fort, I should add, was a shelf of rock about as wide across as I am tall. The eagle knight who had plucked me from the Gorkomon had at least been thoughtful enough to deposit me on one of the stretches less completely stained by moult and droppings.

The aetar stretched her wings luxuriously as she deliberately stamped clawed feet on the perch, shuffled sideways, then delivered a shriek that could have turned a man’s hair white.

‘It is good to see you too, princess.’

She bobbed her head and cawed.

‘Of course I recognised you. You’ve the war harness of a queen, and as well curved a beak as any this side of the Seventh Gate.’

Aeygar puffed out her feathers in pleasure.

While it’s fair to say that I didn’t understand one word out of her beak, I’ve always had a knack when it comes to dealing with people, whatever wild or wondrous form they come in. I could natter with a Treelord like a native, and send the spirit away happy hours later without ever uttering a true word of Sylvan. It’s not like flight to a Prosecutor, or a Lord-Veritant’s sense for corruption; there’s no gift to it. It’s about being interested in people, enough to care, and – as with every­thing in this life – throwing yourself at it as though you mean it.

I got the gist.

‘It was your retainers that picked me up, I suppose.’

Her beak went up and down, which I didn’t think was an aetar mannerism but rather her attempt at a nod. I was touched.

‘Thank you. My hands were starting to get a little tired.’

She cawed, amused.

‘How did you know Vikaeus was after me?’

She leapt up from her perch, flapping her wings flaccidly, landing with a razoring caw that sounded like a wooden spoon being rattled about inside of a saucepan.

‘Good eyes. Even for an aetar.’

She gave a shriek, ruffing her neck feathers again.

‘Kind of you,’ I said. ‘But the king never allowed me up here. Not even in exchange for a reciprocal visit to Highheim.’ An offer I had no means of honouring, of course, but by the time he was in Azyr I was confident that an aggrieved aetar king would have been someone else’s problem.

Aeygar’s head tilted until it was almost completely sideways. I couldn’t decipher the gesture, but I felt an unfamiliar pressure beneath my ribs, a faint memory of a time when a woman had looked at me with the same mixture of superiority and fondness.

I sighed.

Aeygar, meanwhile, had stepped off her perch and spread her wings, gliding into an oddly graceless landing on the filth-encrusted ground before me. She hopped awkwardly from foot to foot, claws scraping at the griping rock in unease. With a softly trilling warble, she lowered her head to the ground, long neck angled upwards like a ramp.

‘For… me?’

She issued the exact same warbling note and despite every­thing I’d just done and been through to get here, I laughed.

‘Better than being borne in your talons, I imagine.’

She shuffled and cawed, tapping the ground with her beak.

‘Apology accepted.’

I took a handful of the soft feathers at the back of her head, tugging on them to make certain that my weight wasn’t going to hurt her before swinging my leg over her shoulders. She didn’t even seem to register it. She reared up sharply, almost throwing me from her back before I could grab a second fistful of feathers. Then she was turning to face the wall of sky, wings thumping, powerful muscles shifting beneath the seat of my armour.

One step.

Two.

And then we were aloft.

I bellowed for the joy of it. There were many godly feats and supernatural acts I had performed in Sigmar’s name, but flight had never been one of them. Keeping a firm grip on Aeygar’s feathers, I leant over and looked down past her working wings. The rock shelf I had been standing on shrank as though it were being absorbed into the mountain, and I looked up again, laughing uproariously at the aquiline bewilderment that greeted this unprecedented thing – a Stormcast Eternal bestride the back of an aetar princess – from the warmth of their rookeries. I waved to them.

‘Who needs to waste decades questing across the Mortal Realms for a solargem, or risk their neck to impress a wild Dracoth with his purity? Not Hamilcar Bear-Eater – friend to all peoples of land and sky!’

The princess shrieked and it too was a cry of joy.

I think that she was enjoying the attention almost as much as I was.

With slow, powerful strokes of her wings, she bore us upwards. Past rookeries and hollows, month-old chicks clamouring to see the fabled Hamilcar Bear-Eater only to be called from the edge by frantic shrieks from their mothers. Higher. The young males I had seen from the ledge squalled about us. The presence of the princess amongst them only strengthened their ardour and intensified their displays, swallowing us both in a storm of beaks and feathers and amorous cries.

I felt I had to ask.

‘Are you not already promised, princess?’

She gave a tilt of the head that struck me as uncharacteristically coquettish for a creature that could have ripped both arms from my body.

‘Really? At your age?’

With an irate squawk, she hauled us sharply upwards, leaving the increasingly hot-tempered flock behind us. There was a hole in the ceiling of the fortress eyrie, a jagged shaft about fifty feet long.

And beyond it – the very roof of the Ghurlands.

The air was so clear you could have imagined Alarielle bathing in it. Assuming that your imagination, like mine, runs that way. I took a long, deep breath. It was thin, and so shockingly cold that it actually burned to breathe, but I was a Stormcast Eternal and mortal child of the Eternal Winterlands, so believe me when I say that I’ve known deeper colds than this in my day. It smelled of frost, and of wind that was pure from having never sullied itself with the touch of earth. I was so high now that I had actually stopped thinking about the ground as a part of this world. I looked up at the raw summit of the Gorkomon. The great peak was narrow enough here that I could view it all in one glance. It was clad in ice, luminous and amber in this exalted place, this world without shadow.

A cleft had been dug into that ice.

It resembled the aetar rookeries I’d seen below, only far, far larger. Stained glass and coloured silks littered the rocky shelves and ledges, ivory and jewels, silver and gold. As the Seven Words was a hodgepodge of architectural styles from two Ages of the realms and a hundred different races that had briefly (and unwisely) claimed it for their own, so too were the nesting materials of the royal aetar. Gemstones engraved with duardin runes sat next to bullgor ivory figurines, mountain aelf filigree and spiderfang silk sculpture. In a few years I expected that there’d be a storm gladius or a set of Prosecutor wings in amongst the royal collection.

Elite eagle guard, their beaks and feathers decorated with fearsome war paint, flew endless loops about the eyrie. Dozens more roosted under the foot of the cleft, ruffling their wing feathers like old campaigners shaking rain from their cloaks.

And, perched on a berm of rock – less a few feathers than when I saw him last, greyer about the eyes, more sinewy in pinion and claw, but no less majestic in splinted mail and royal crown – was King Augus himself.

He spread his wings in greeting, one lord of his people to another, and called.

Bringing us into one of the many petitioners’ perches that protruded from the royal eyrie, the princess dipped her head to her father. He cawed in greeting. Aeygar bobbed her head lower and, taking the hint, albeit reluctantly, I dismounted.

I patted her neck in gratitude and looked around. The perch wasn’t much, but the aetar are massive birds and it was more than enough for me to stand on. And if nothing else, I do have a head for heights.

‘Hamilcar?’

Sat at the base of the perch was a familiar winged figure.

Barbarus. Self-proclaimed King in the Sky.

The feathers stuck in the Knight-Venator’s hair looked in even wilder disarray than usual, and the paint on his dark skin had been allowed to run. Even Nubia, the indigo-feathered star-eagle perched on the scuffed sigmarite of his pauldron, looked unusually ruffled. No doubt anticipating the eventual downfall of the Seven Words, his helmet had been wedged in amongst the collage of Augus’ pickings, the reddish-brownish (I never did look into the exact name for the colour) plume of the Bear-Eaters spilling over a brass chalice decorated with jewels and what looked like a troggoth-skin rug.

He stared up at me as though he was seeing a nighthaunt.

From the look of him, they visited him often.

‘Is it really you?’ he murmured.

‘Would Sigmar forge two of these?’ I spread my hands dem­onstratively and grinned, but it faltered at his dishevelled state. ‘What happened to you? Why aren’t you wearing the white of the Heavens Forged?’

The Knight-Venator scratched at the claw marks on the rock between his thighs, reluctant to meet my eye. ‘Sigmar did call me to the muster, but I refused it. I refused to forsake the aetar, not after what we led them to on Kurzog’s Hill. Perhaps it was partly out of grief for you, but Augus’ loss moved me. I swore to him that he’d have vengeance, for you and for Ellias, and bring the skaven responsible back here to be eviscerated at the king’s pleasure.’ His words scratched to a whisper. ‘I became Errant-Questor.’

I didn’t quite know what to say.

‘It’s been five years, brother.’

We were both silent a while.

I cleared my throat.

‘Find anything?’

He glared, but was unable to hold it. His eyes slid off me.

‘You seem different,’ he said.

It was the least offensive thing that a Stormcast Eternal had said to me since the tree priestess, Brychen, had stabbed me in the neck. It came from a place of defeatism and self-absorption, but I was touched all the same.

Before I could think of anything to add, Augus issued a piercing shriek and thumped his wings.

Aeygar straightened in her perch, as did the attending eagle guard. I followed their example and straightened my back and shoulders. Barbarus, however, simply sat where he was, face down, Nubia fussing about him in an erstwhile attempt to render the Errant-Questor respectable.

The king slowly raised then stamped his feet, head bobbing and weaving as he hawked and cried.

I heard a tapping sound and turned to see Nubia pecking at Barbarus’ gorget.

‘He says that he had heard our kind could not stay dead,’ Barbarus translated, wearily, his gaze fixed glassily on whatever place it had exiled itself to. ‘He says that it is against nature and the laws of Ghur. He says…’ He snorted, a smile threatening to crack his haggard features. ‘He says that he will make an exception in your case as even before the Man-God remade you in his image the… the…’ He frowned over some untranslatable sequence of swaying head motions and croaking squawks, ‘the taker who stalks the sky above the sky could not lay its claws on you.’

I dipped my head, defacing that show of modesty only somewhat with an enormous grin.

‘You flatter me,’ I said.

Augus turned his shining, plate-like eyes to me. His beak opened soundlessly. The feathers at the back of his head bristled.

‘He says he thought for many risings and settings about what he would do with you when you returned.’ The aetar king emitted a hiss that caused his throat to tremble. ‘You who spoke so eloquently of kinship, you who persuaded his queen and daughter that the fight against Manguish and the brayseer was his fight.’

Aeygar cut in with a shriek and a wing-flap, but her father silenced her. His shriek was louder. His wingspan greater.

‘We are both hunters,’ I said, when they had quietened enough for me to be heard. ‘Sometimes the beast gets you.’

The king’s eyes caught the waning sunlight. A flash of amber, alien and inscrutable.

‘He says he likes you,’ said Barbarus. ‘That was what stayed him from turning his wrath on the Seven Words. That and… and my oath to him.’

I thought of the strength I’d seen gathered in the eyries below us, remembering how neatly just one of Aeygar’s eagle guard had despatched an entire Prosecutor retinue and a Knight-Azyros.

I decided that Augus and the aetar were the sort of enemies that the Seven Words could do without.

Augus shuffled along his perch.

‘He says that it didn’t matter anyway,’ said Barbarus. ‘Even with the Legion of Bloat destroyed and the Blind Herd defeated, the skaven will scour your fortress bare with no help from him. He has seen many stake their claim to the fort below.’

‘You know about the skaven?’ I asked.

For all of Akturus’ scribery and parchmentcraft, the Lord-Castellant of the Imperishables had been able to tell me precious little of the skaven’s numbers, whereabouts, or intentions.

Augus cawed.

‘He says he sees much that our own winged scouts cannot,’ Barbarus said, and frowned, properly, at the not-so-implicit criticism of his skills. ‘They range further. Their eyes are sharper. They are at home in the sky where ours will always pine for the earth.’ He snorted, animated, briefly the arrogant King in the Sky I’d known before all of this. ‘Or so he believes.’ The king hopped on the spot, launching into a blistering tirade. ‘He says the skaven are more numerous than any mud-dweller army he has tracked before. Dust on the wind. Their attack will come in days. The Seven Words will fall.’

Barbarus turned to face me directly. His eyes were ringed by dark circles that I had initially, and mistakenly, taken for kohl. ‘He is most certain.’

‘And will the aetar help?’ I said, addressing my words to the king.

He gave a throaty caw.

‘He asks why he should.’

The aetar made some grating noises and bob-gestures that Barbarus was slow to translate.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Place names and people,’ said Barbarus, giving his head a shake and forcing Nubia to hop across to the opposite pauldron with an aggrieved chirp. ‘They don’t always translate easily. The best I can come up with is “Ice-Queen” and “Tomb-Snake”.’

‘Vikaeus and Akturus,’ I said, after a moment’s thought.

‘He says that in spite of his warnings, they encroach too far on his eyries. Every day he must chase off more of their winged knights. He likes you, Hamilcar. You always respected him and what was not yours to control. Those now in charge below do not. Cannot.’ Barbarus’ expression became cloudy. ‘Sigmar seeks only to take, to remake all that he finds in the way that he sees as heavenly. As he did with you. He says he doesn’t like Vikaeus or Akturus. They are Sigmar’s things. They know only the storm.’

‘And… I don’t?’

Augus shook his head.

I pursed my lips, faintly troubled by that, but shook it off with a shrug. It really is as easy as that, if you let it be. I hadn’t deliberately attempted to scale the Gorkomon in order to petition for the aetar’s aid, but I was here now, and Augus was a powerful friend.

If a friend he was.

‘Then forget the skaven,’ I said. ‘Let Vikaeus and Akturus deal with them. I’m only interested in their leader, Ikrit.’

At my utterance of the name, Augus hissed. His eagle guard took up the sound in earnest, surrounding me with a needling hum of noise.

This time Barbarus spoke up for himself.

‘If we knew where the warlock was then I wouldn’t be here now. Augus would have taken his vengeance and I would be Knight-Venator again, wearing the storm-struck anvil of the Heavens Forged.’

I thought back on the dream that I had awoken to prior to my escape from the Forge Eternal. I had felt myself cocooned in the rancid flesh of a corrupt seed pod, a discordant Life song twisted out of harmony and muffled by the cushioning fibres of the seed. It had felt too vivid to be a dream, mad even for me – and in any case, I was almost certain that I had already been effectively awake by that point. What, then, if it had not been a dream at all? It would not be the first time that I had experienced a vision that had turned out, invariably with hindsight, to be prophetic. What if the thing that Ikrit had attempted to steal from me had been too large, too securely held, to be taken intact? What if he had been forced to resort instead to crude vandalism to take that which he had desired, leaving a broken trail of my soul essence that now connected my spirit to his… and vice versa. An unpleasant thought if ever I’d had one, and believe me, I’d had them.

‘He’s been lying low,’ I said. ‘Cocooned somehow, and recovering. I think I injured him badly in my escape from his lair.’

The dried paint daubing Barbarus’ features cracked as he slowly grinned. ‘And now he shows his tail again, and Sigmar sends you after him.’ He thumped my pauldron with some of his old vigour. ‘Yes. Good. So long as your quest does not interfere with mine, Bear-Eater.’

I should point out here that there is no formal hierarchy amongst the Knights-Questor. By our very nature we operate outside of the command echelons of the Stormhosts, so to create a whole set of new ones just for them would have been to totally miss the point. But even so, it struck me as obvious that those specifically chosen for the role by the God-King had to outrank those who had assumed the role for themselves.

Simple, cosmic order.

I decided to proceed on that basis.

‘I don’t know where Ikrit is, and neither does the God-King, but I know where he was. After the battle at Kurzog’s Hill he took me to his lair. I saw it briefly from the outside when I escaped. And so did she.’

I pointed at Aeygar.

Augus bristled and delivered a shriek that had the princess shuffling along her perch in surprise.

‘I heard you in the sky,’ I shouted, raising my voice enough to silence them both, and to bring the watching eagle knights into shrieks of contention. ‘You were searching for me, but the snow was falling too thickly for you to see me. I didn’t see you either, but I recognised your voice above me.’

The king threw his daughter an enquiring squawk. She shrieked back and the two fell into a belligerent hopping about and drumming of wing feathers that I would have recognised as an argument in any species.

‘Apparently the princess sought you without his consent,’ said Barbarus.

‘Apparently,’ I agreed.

Aeygar cocked her head thoughtfully, a gesture that Augus greeted with an ear-destroying shriek. I looked again to Barbarus.

The Errant-Questor had gathered up his helmet and was standing up.

‘She says that if she is permitted to go with you, then you can help her retrace her flight to where Ikrit’s lair might be found. He says that it’s too dangerous, and that he’s done doing Sigmar’s work for him. She then asks if he wants the skaven and their flying machines ruling over the Seven Words.’ Barbarus’ eyes sparked with new lightning as he slid his helmet back over his head and looked up to face the enraged King Augus. ‘Only it is not Sigmar’s work, is it? Not for me. It is yours. And I renew my pledge to you now, that you, and not the God-King, will have the warlock.’

I glanced across at him. ‘There’s my King in the Sky.’

Augus swung his head from side to side, gripping his perch tight in his claws as his wings beat in a fury.

Aeygar lifted off, hovering for a second before falling back to her perch with a shriek.

‘Yes,’ I shouted. ‘Let her. Ellias was her mother too.’

Augus quietened down, glaring at his daughter, then at me, then hung his head.

Barbarus nodded once. ‘He says that it was Ellias who convinced him to listen to Aeygar, and to give Sigmar one more chance. She was the wise one. He was only ever beak and claws.’

I snorted at that. ‘Me as well.’

The king of the Gorkomon looked sorrowful, the wind carrying through his feathers. He looked too tired to disagree with anything then.

As I said, I know people.

‘I can find him,’ I said. ‘Let Aeygar help me. What happens after that is out of all our hands.’

He gave me a hard glare.

Then lifted his beak into the air and shrieked.