Champion of the Gods

Chapter twenty-two

Leechwood pine is a moist and sappy wood. Though I don’t feel the cold as such, I do appreciate a good fire, and leechwood isn’t your wood for that. It’s challenging to light at all, and when it does take, the flame it gives is low and smoky and reeks of freshly spilled blood. It made the Freeguild captain appear darker skinned and more haggard of dress than he had a right to be. The crystal and glass of his wargear wavered in and out of amber and red, and the black of the sky.

‘What are you doing out here in the Gorwood, el-Shaah?’

‘You remember my name, lord?’

‘Of course.’

Hamuz looked into the struggling campfire and flushed with pleasure. ‘After your attempted scaling of the Gorkomon, we fled for the lower wards. Broudiccan let us go. More interested in you than us, and he didn’t have the numbers to chase us both.’

‘He lives?’

‘It would take more than these men here to take him down, lord.’

I grunted. Truer words…

‘I knew it’d only be a matter of time before the Lord-Veritant came looking for us. After what we did. Standing up to them like that.’ He stared into the fire. I could see that he was still buzzing from the excitement of what he had dared to do. A battle with a small skaven horde had nothing on standing against the avatars of your own god. With a shiver, he lifted his head and turned it towards the second fire.

The engineers sat there alone, tending Banu. Apparently, the naming of a cannon by a master gunner is a timeless and honoured Ironweld tradition, in much the same way that psychopaths have always named their knives. Banu, I later learned, was a Jerech word meaning Little Girl, which I think proves my point nicely. Surprisingly few bodies littered the ground between us. The Gorwood had seen to that.

Aeygar’s anxious coos trembled from the darkness nearby. I couldn’t see her, but I knew that spending a night on solid ground was not her idea of an adventure.

‘We thought we’d leave the fortress and try to find you,’ Hamuz went on, then smiled ruefully. ‘I hadn’t expected you to find us. On an aetar.’

The other men around the fire murmured their appreciation.

‘It’s all about trust,’ I said, winking at Hamuz as the gloriously moustachioed man to his left passed him a cup of something hot.

His name was Nassam, and I recognised him as the soldier who had led the charge to retrieve Barbarus after the Errant-Questor had been shot down. I’d assumed him to be some sort of lieutenant, but his role seemed to be something more akin to a manservant, similar to the armed retainers kept by some amongst the Astral Templars. When not wearing his greatsword hat, he was also a mender of clothing, a barber of some skill and the brewer of a superb cup of qahua, the latter of which Hamuz el-Shaah was enjoying now. Even I found the burnt, bitter odour strangely enticing.

The soldier on my right side passed me a leg of meat.

I sniffed it. Horse, I think. It smelled as though it had been preserved by salting, but after an hour’s roasting over a leechwood fire it was so bloody you could have convinced yourself that it had just stopped kicking. Hamuz was a veteran of the Gorwood. He had to know all the tricks. My mouth watered, well and truly taken in.

I tore off a chunk of meat.

I made a face, the shapes surrounding the campfire chuckling.

‘What in Sigmar’s name…?’

Nassam showed white teeth beneath the black depths of moustaches and beard. ‘Horse.’

I turned and spat what was left in my mouth as far from the fire as I could expel it.

We had horses in the Seven Words, of course. Where the settlers of Azyr go, they take the same pets and livestock and burden beasts that you can now find all over the Mortal Realms. The so-called ‘Gorwood Horse’ is something else. It refers to the ambulatory life-stage of the stelx plant, which, though slow and liable to seed, were preferred by the more naturalised draughtsmen on account of their flesh being one of the few things too foul-tasting even for the denizens of the Gorwood to abide. A regiment like the Blue Skies would never leave their garrisons, even if forced to do so in a hurry, without a side or two. Rubbing it over your wargear twice a day was the only sure way to keep the native wildlife from eating the metal.

I ruefully accepted the offer of a cup of black qahua, swilling the bitter-tasting brew around my mouth, then spraying it over the fire.

The flames leapt hungrily. Aeygar squawked in alarm, her feathers rustling, while the soldiers whooped and laughed, covering their eyes against the licking flames. I chuckled along with them, a pleasant fuzziness in my breast, wondering if a mortal troop had ever, or would ever, dare pull something like that on a Vandus or an Akturus.

I downed the qahua and tossed Nassam his cup back.

Probably not.

My laughter faded as I watched the greatsword struggle to catch the hot cup, the others playfully shoving him and laughing.

It was then I realised.

They felt no aversion to me.

My brother Stormcasts could sense what had been done to me, even if they could not understand how fundamentally I had been diminished or why it was that I repelled them. But not the Blue Skies. Not the mortals. I was still Hamilcar Bear-Eater to them, the saviour of Jercho, hero of the Seven Words, and they loved me as openly as any Champion of Order could hope for.

And I loved them too.

In my own way.

The fire shrivelled back down. I found myself staring as it popped and crackled. Almost like a chitter.

‘What did you say?’

Hamuz looked at Nassam, then the man to his right, and gave a tentative shrug.

I looked over my shoulder, a slow itch crawling down my spine.

The fire had bleached my night vision, but I could still see the faint amethyst halo of Barbarus, sat on the loam at the light’s edge. He was hunched over, working with fingers and knife and Nubia’s chirping guidance to repair the damage to his wings. The star-eagle looked up occasionally to glare at me, eyes twinkling indigo and red in the firelight, as though this was my fault. It was, but I wasn’t going to take that from a star-eagle. The Errant-Questor was ostensibly keeping watch, although I would put my faith in Aeygar and Brychen over the King in the Sky in that duty any day.

At the thought of the Wild Harvest priestess I rubbed absently at the thick ring of sigmarite around my neck. I didn’t know much about what she was capable of, but somehow I doubted there were too many skaven capable of getting the drop on her.

Of course, I could think of one or two.

With a sigh I turned back to the fire, as if I might find truth there.

Barbarus was just avoiding me.

I was wondering what that made me. Was a god without worshippers just a fickle power in the aether? Could an orator without an audience still be said to have a gift with words, or was he just another madman in a realm full of them with a penchant for talking to himself? I was the Bear-Eater. A force of nature. A gale from Azyr. I wasn’t a man, I was a totem. With Sigmaron itself barred to me, what was that worth? The knights of my own chamber could not abide my presence. A totem to whom? Was burnishing my legend amongst the mortal folk of the other seven Mortal Realms enough for a champion of my stature?

I thought about it for a time, then shook my head.

Even with the great outpouring of souls following the opening of the Gates of Azyr – the reverse migrations of the displaced over a hundred years – the population of Azyrheim alone was still greater than the entirety of the other seven Mortal Realms combined. I had no interest in being half a hero. I was Hamilcar Bear-Eater. All in, or nothing at all. The thought of adapting to my new condition barely even occurred to me. I would find Ikrit and see myself made whole: I would be the hero of Azyrheim again.

I glanced again at Barbarus. Afterimages from the fire swam about the Errant-Questor like phoenix feathers. Sigmar had warned me that other divinities had despatched champions of their own to capture Ikrit.

He might have mentioned that some of his own warriors were amongst them.

I frowned across the clearing.

Ikrit would face judgement in Azyr, as Sigmar had tasked me. If Barbarus, Brychen or anyone else wished it otherwise, then they’d soon learn why the name ‘Hamilcar Bear-Eater’ was interchangeable with boldness and resolve across half the known realms. Hyish and Ulgu still being largely unexplored at this time…

‘You keep looking at him.’

Without my noticing, Brychen had emerged from wherever she had wandered off to after the battle and creaked down beside me. I’d assumed that the priestess had been offended by the fire and found somewhere in the wood to sit. She was a tree-worshipper, after all. But she stared into the smoky offering with a rapacious fascination, as though there was something affirming at play in the consumption of dead wood by the flame.

The Jerech that had been sitting there shifted out of her way, suddenly interested in the murmured conversation going on to his other side.

The priestess turned to me, her eyes a luminescent green.

‘Why?’

I could have just ignored the question, and probably should have, but it wasn’t in my nature to keep quiet on a subject – particularly when the subject was myself.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ I said.

‘The old wood does not understand why it must burn.’ She glanced in the direction of Aeygar. ‘The sheep does not understand the eagle.’

‘Good for them.’ I thought about it. ‘I suppose.’

‘We are neither wood nor sheep. I am the woodsman. I am the shepherd. And you…’ She looked at me archly. Shadows stretched down from her chin and the arms folded over her knees as she straightened, leaving her skin oddly discoloured. Like a browned leaf. ‘You are not a thing of nature at all.’

I grinned. ‘Hardly. I’m the walking extension of a god, an avatar of the Eternal Storm. There is nothing more natural than Hamilcar Bear-Eater in this wood tonight.’

‘Sigmar’s impression of what is natural, perhaps, but there is nothing “eternal” in the Gorwood. There is only predator and prey. And even that can never be constant. Infirmity. Calamity. This is what nature is, and what it brings.’ She sighed and turned back to the flame. ‘There is always something bigger, younger, fiercer. Dominance is illusory, and always temporary.’

‘You’re talking about Ikrit,’ I said.

She hissed. ‘Even after the loss of the Maiden we thought that we ruled these woods. The brayseer and his predecessors never troubled us in our own lands. Then the warlock came, killing and enslaving. He was the fire that strikes in summer. He was the predator that enters new territory and finds no rival there.’

‘Until now,’ I said.

‘Praise Sigmar!’ declared Hamuz, to much cheering and clapping from the Jerech.

Brychen smiled sweetly. Like a poisonous flower. Her teeth were black and sharpened to points.

‘You remind me of my brother,’ she said to me. ‘He thought the seasons turned around him as well.’

‘He told me something similar,’ I smiled, rubbing thoughtfully at my beard, pulling out the occasional stringy bit of stelx. ‘You haven’t told me yet what you’re doing out this far from the Nevermarsh.’

‘The skaven burned down our temples, massacred my people, murdered my brother. The Maiden teaches us hardship, but the warlock goes too far. The fields have been burned, the weeds have flourished, but now it is the reaping time.’ She clenched a fist, her wooden armour creaking. ‘I have drawn Ikrit’s roots this far, and soon I will pull him from the earth that harbours him.’

‘You as well, then?’ I said, casting another glance at Barbarus and Nubia.

So much for the solitary life of the Knight-Questor.

I leaned in closer to the priestess. ‘You weren’t sent after Ikrit by a god, were you?’

‘The Maiden doesn’t ask. She takes. And those she leaves behind grow all the taller and stronger for it.’

I could think of another good reason why the Maiden wouldn’t be asking any more favours, on account of her dying in my arms years before, but I took the priestess’ point.

‘Good,’ I mumbled. My quest was complicated enough with just Sigmar and Grungni’s Smiths involved. Once the likes of the Everqueen and the Undying King started throwing their champions into the mix then I just knew things were going to get difficult for me. This would be prescient, as it turned out, but a tale for another time. ‘Maybe, then, we can help each other.’

‘Maybe we can.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any luck finding him yet.’

‘If I had then we would not be talking. There are times when it feels as though he has been swallowed by the realmsphere. His power distorts the ghurlines, like a great eagle upon a tree that cannot bear its weight. I see the realm bowing and the leaves where they fall, but of the beast itself, nothing.’ Her voice grew angry. ‘I had been hoping to shadow one of his war bands, to unearth some clue in their idle chittering and their careless spoor, but so far…’ She glanced between Hamuz and me. ‘Then someone killed them all.’

Hamuz began to chuckle before it dawned on him that the priestess might not be joking. He coughed and slurped on his qahua.

‘In perseverance we endure,’ Brychen sighed. ‘I will find another claw of the great beast to follow. There is no shortage, if you have the eyes to look.’

Aeygar issued a muted caw of agreement.

‘We were journeying to Ikrit’s lair,’ I said, frowning at the aetar’s siding with the Wild Harvest priestess.

‘You would be wasting your time,’ said Brychen. ‘I wished to retrieve my brother’s body and return him to our hearth trees, and so ventured inside myself after I had dealt with you.’ She spoke so straightforwardly, you could almost overlook the fact that she was talking about driving a spear through my neck. Almost. ‘I found no trace of him there, or of Ikrit, only a handful of skaven still lurking in the darkest burrows. I slew them all.’

‘I think he’s still there,’ I said. I thought of the vision I had had back in Sigmaron, of pulsing, liquid darkness. Cocooned. Buried. ‘I think he’s hidden somewhere, recovering his strength.’

The princess issued another quiet crow.

‘That’s right,’ I said, waving my finger at the priestess. ‘He’s not in the Gorwood. Not with the entire strength of the aetar scouring it for him.’

‘You understand her?’ Brychen asked, surprised.

‘Can’t you?’

‘Of course I can. I am just surprised that you appear to be able to.’

Ignore the bird-thing. Listen to the Gorkai.

I blinked, looking around for the source of the voice.

‘What did you say?’

‘Lord?’ said Hamuz. I happened to be facing his way.

Was I hearing things now? Was this the next stage of my deterioration until gibbering infirmity and dissolution took hold? I frowned down into the fire and resolved that I would never pass out of the realms that way. I would capture Ikrit and see myself restored, or I would fail in the most spectacular manner I could achieve.

‘Never mind.’ I glanced across at Brychen. ‘How far is the mountain from here anyway?’

‘A few days,’ said Brychen. ‘But I can move through woodland and marsh as you cannot. For your army? Weeks. Maybe more.’

‘Princess Aeygar can cover that ground more swiftly than you can,’ I said, feeling the need to defend my quest’s honour.

‘And yet she cannot bear the entirety of the Blue Skies,’ said Barbarus, turning slowly to face the campfire. Stormcast hearing is uncannily keen. ‘Nor can we leave them here to the skaven while you continue on your quest.’

In actual fact that was exactly what I’d been planning on doing, but I couldn’t very well argue for it now and let Barbarus look like the hero.

‘You’re right, of course.’ I bit my lip, as though thinking. ‘You should remain here with them. Your wings are damaged, and I suspect that we will be too heavy for Aeygar to carry both of us.’ I saw the shadowy outline of the princess’ beak open, as if to say something, and so hurriedly carried on. ‘If we leave at first light then Aeygar can have us there and back again before nightfall. You’ll not even notice we were gone, brother.’

‘If this is some ploy to claim all the glory for yourself…’ Barbarus growled.

I put my hand over my heart in a convincingly wounded ‘who, me?’

‘You can’t go alone,’ said Hamuz.

‘I’m touched by your concern, but it’s misplaced. There’s nothing in this realm that Hamilcar Bear-Eater cannot handle, but, should there be something…’ I turned towards the looming shadow of the princess. ‘Well, they will have Aeygar to deal with.’

The princess cawed, menacingly.

‘I’ve not seen the tunnels you’re talking about, lord, so with all due respect, do you think the aetar will be able to join you below? If it’s all the same with you, then I will join you.’

I should have just said no. I know that. The Freeguild captain had no place where I was planning on going, but where others took providential signs from timely storms and falling stars, I have always seen my god in the heart of his people. He was bold enough to want to come, so let him come. Who was I to deny such honest courage?

And I couldn’t say that I would not appreciate having someone to talk to on the way.

‘I will go too,’ said Brychen.

‘I thought you said it was a waste of time?’

‘And it will be. But with an aetar’s wings it will not be a waste of much time. And if I did miss something, if there is any chance at all, then it is worth that much.’

I felt a chittering in my ear and turned again towards the fire.

Nothing but shadow awaits you there, Bear-Eater. I am long scurried.

I focused on the flames until my eyes started to tremble. I kept my voice low. ‘Who are you?’

Fire flickering. A crackling laugh.

The better part of your soul.

‘Who is that?’ said Brychen.

I blinked, disoriented, and looked up, but it seemed that the priestess had been talking to Hamuz, rather than hearing the strange voice that spoke to me. In answer, the Jerech captain turned his shoulder to show off the glassmark glittering against the scarred muscle of his bicep.

‘My daughter,’ he said.

‘You have a daughter?’ I said.

‘Yes, lord.’ Hamuz brightened even as he said it. ‘She will be seventeen this winter.’

‘In Jercho?’

‘No, my lord. She was born here. I met my wife in Azyr. She is Gorkomon, in temper if not in blood.’

The men around the campfire gave knowing chuckles.

Suddenly I did not feel so at one with them as I had. Even in my life before this one I had never been blessed with children. It was not something I could share with them.

‘We’ve been in the Gorwood seventeen years?’ I said.

The Jerech chuckled, assuming I was joking.

My gaze drifted back to the fire. It was not speaking to me now. I had never, before that moment, truly considered that my actions could have… consequences. I wondered what would become of Hamuz’s family because he had chosen me over Frankos of the Heavens Forge?

What would Vikaeus and the Knights Merciless do?

Better to go back-back. Surrender yourself.

‘It’s a long time since I heard from my conscience,’ I murmured to myself. ‘But I don’t remember it speaking like a skaven.’

‘Bear-Eater?’ said Brychen.

I could tell from her concerned tone that she sensed something amiss with me, but her sense would have probed no deeper than that surface ripple. The gods alone held the power to fashion mortal souls, to shape them into forms more useful or pleasing to their designs as you or I might work leather or clay, but not even they possess the art to peer inside and know a soul. I was getting the feeling that my soul was somehow scattered between two bodies, mine and Ikrit’s, but it was still just one soul, impermeable to even the most gifted of scryers.

Ignore me, then. I do not want-need you now. But do not squeak-say you were not warned.

‘He’s there,’ I told her, staring a challenge into the heart of the fire. ‘I know it.’