Champion of the Gods

Chapter twenty-seven

You are probably expecting a corridor of rushing stars, a roar of cosmic noise – if so, then prepare to be as underwhelmed as I was at stepping through Ikrit’s portal. There was a ripple across the surface of the portal that I barely even felt, and then before I’d so much as realised that I’d gone anywhere I was stepping out into pitch darkness, looking for a step that was unexpectedly not actively spinning away from my boot, and fell flat on my face, Hamuz on top of me. I took in a deep breath of rock. Ghur. I would have recognised it anywhere.

I would probably have kissed that rock were it not for the battle currently being fought over it.

As battles went, this one didn’t present a lot to look at, a rutting blackness of antlered heads and armoured, animal shapes, illuminated by the occasional spark of blade on blade. A brilliant flash of lightning pushed back the darkness for an instant, replacing it with something more blinding, but not before giving me a glimpse of a shattered wall of Liberator shields, the gaps in their formation plugged by desperate Judicators, fighting off the Skyre clans’ elite with storm gladius and crossbow stocks.

Wincing at the throbbing ache behind my eyes, I started to push myself up, just as Brychen and Nassam fell out of the portal behind me. A single warpstone bullet split the rippling skein from which we’d come and struck Brychen in the back. Her armour cracked and she cried out, arms going up as she crashed to the floor. Nassam dropped immediately to her side, but she waved him off, already getting up. Looking over her shoulder she scowled at the split bark.

‘Warpstone bullet,’ she snarled.

‘Stopped by wooden armour?’ said Nassam, amazed.

‘Says the man wearing glass.’

‘It’s crystal.’ The Jerech self-consciously brushed dust from his immaculate harness. It glittered sporadically in the lights of Azyr battle. ‘And a bit of leather.’

I set Hamuz neatly on the ground by the portal. I’d seen him back to his home realm. That felt like something. Not much, perhaps, but more than most got in exchange for the sacrifices they gladly gave. For a moment we remained like that, staring at each other, as if waiting for one of us to say something.

‘I’ll make sure your daughter gets a piece of the Allpoints, captain,’ I murmured. ‘She’ll have a horn off the Everchosen’s crown.’

‘We should leave him,’ said Brychen.

‘I am leaving him.’

‘You look like you are taking root.’

‘Get moving,’ I snapped at her. ‘There’s an army behind us.’

‘There’s an army in front of us,’ Nassam chipped in helpfully.

Brychen frowned over the sporadically flash-lit cavern. ‘Underground again. Is it too much to ask for a taste of open sky?’

‘It’s still up there,’ I said.

Clenching her fists, the priestess opened her mouth and groaned. The sound came from the bark of her vambrace rather than her mouth, however, and in a rupturing creak of emergent life her hand suddenly sprouted another spear.

‘Nice,’ I said, and meant it.

‘The snake in the forest litter we will be, then. The lightning bolt that strikes the solitary tree.’ She raised her spear in the air, the wooden point bursting into a molten amber that bathed the battlefield in its savage glow. ‘Destruction comes for you,’ she shrieked, bounding towards the embattled skaven. ‘With poison and fire, and hatred in her veins.’

Twirling my halberd, I strode after her.

I wasn’t going to let a mortal priestess take all the glory. Not with Akturus’ Imperishables right there.

‘Hamilcar returns to the Ghurlands!’ I hacked down a bleating bestigor just as Brychen flung herself onto a clanrat warrior’s back and ripped out his spine. She sent a lance of amber through the heart of another, leapt forwards and impaled a bullgor through the mouth with her dripping spear. I kept pace with long strides, hacking and yelling, finishing off the fuming bullgor for her with a hewing stroke of my halberd. She glared at me as I shouldered past. ‘Brothers and sisters of the Storm Eternal, stand fast. This battle is won.’ I hammered my halberd into the cogwork shoulder of a shock-vermin as it sought, wisely, to spin out of my way. ‘Because Hamilcar Bear-Eater joins it.’ A bestigor lowed and swung at me with a cleaver. I broke its shin with a sharp kick, then did the same to its jaw as it dropped neatly into the rising uppercut from my warding lantern. ‘Rejoice, and let the heavens hear your praises.’

‘Sigmar,’ I heard one of the Imperishables breathe. ‘He has come back.’

I thought that I recognised the voice of the Judicator who had first welcomed me to the Seven Words. His tone was, if anything, even more awe-struck than it had been then.

‘Yes, brothers,’ I shouted, before adding simply. ‘Yes.’

‘More on the way, lord,’ said Nassam, safeguarding my back by swinging at whatever came close to it with a giant glass sword.

‘Let them come!’ I thundered. ‘Let them all come. Let Ikrit know that here is where Hamilcar stands.’ I looped my halberd overhead, messily decapitating one bestigor and cracking the antlers of another behind me with the ferrule. ‘I am coming for you, warlock!’ I bellowed with every kill I made and every forwards step I took. ‘The God-King’s judgement comes for you on storm-forged sigmarite!’

‘Step!’ someone yelled, which seemed an incongruous sort of thing to be shouting in the middle of a fight. There was a resounding bang from somewhere. ‘Step!’ And another. The bestigor I had been reaching for obligingly rammed itself onto my blade. It lowed furiously. ‘Step!’ The clot of fur and flesh ahead of me gave way before a wall of black cartouche shields. Too tightly packed even to raise their arms, skaven and beastmen died as warblades stabbed out from behind the shield wall.

I lowered my halberd.

The battle was over. This was the bit that came after, the slitting of throats and the spearing of chests; some of those in need of finishing off just happened to be upright and holding weapons.

‘Loose!’

A flurry of boltstorm bolts thrummed over the shield wall. Every­thing within six feet of me suddenly dropped, a quarrel crackling from some part of their anatomy. One of the Judicators aimed his crossbow at Brychen, his stormsight clearly less than convinced by the green-skinned priestess with the amber-tipped spear and the bloody face.

‘She’s human,’ I barked, my voice hoarse from shouting. ‘And a ward of the Bear-Eater.’

‘I am most certainly not,’ she hissed.

‘Ignore her!’

‘Breach!’

The shield wall parted down the middle. The Liberators to my right took a step to the right, while those to the left went left. I ushered Nassam through and glared pointedly at Brychen until the priestess lowered her spear and stalked after him. I turned, backing up as the Arcway disgorged a fresh wave of beastmen and skaven, the occasional volley of gunfire cracking off the walls, the ceiling or a Sigmarite Shield. The shield wall crashed back together behind me, and I left the Imperishables to do what the Imperishables were renowned for doing.

Standing still.

‘You must have some nerve, Hamilcar.’ A Judicator-Prime walked towards me, identified by an ornate headdress that resembled a pair of golden serpents spilling down the sides of his helmet.

‘I do, brother. And then some. But don’t toast my victory just yet, for we have seen what lies on the other side of the portal and the warlock is holding his best until last.’

‘Toast your victory?’ The masked warrior sounded incredulous.

‘I said “don’t”.’

‘If not for you then we would have had Freeguild to call upon. Instead they are fortified in their barracks, or they were the last time we received a runner from the Seven Words.’

Brychen looked at me. ‘What did you do?’

I ignored her. ‘Is the Seven Words under attack too?’

‘Not that I have heard, but that means little now.’ The Judicator-Prime glared passingly over Brychen and Nassam, somehow finding something to disapprove of in the immaculately turned-out Jerech soldier, before looking me up and down. ‘My name is Kuphus, and you should know that Lord-Castellant Ironheel has issued commandments for your capture.’

Nassam moved in front of me. ‘Over my stilled heart.’ His scowl eased, and he dipped his head to the towering Judicator-Prime. ‘Lord.’

‘On the order of the God-King,’ Kuphus added.

‘It’s alright, Nassam,’ I said. ‘I wanted to find Akturus anyway.’

‘You did?’ asked Kuphus.

I shrugged.

Kuphus looked uncertain. ‘Well… the Lord-Castellant stands guard over the Seventh Gate. A large force of skaven and their foul allies broached the catacombs before my brotherhood were able to locate the entry portal and block the passages.’

I sympathised.

The catacombs had always been the Seven Words’ weak point. Or should I say weakest point? Had it not been for the Azyr Gate, and the archaeological mystery of their construction and continued expansion, then the whole network of passages would have been collapsed years ago. The Imperishables had been tasked wholly to their defence. That they had outnumbered my Bear-Eaters by eight to one tells you all you need to know about the catacombs’ vulnerability, and their importance to the God-King.

But only one of us got to sit in a throne.

‘The Lord-Castellant despatched conclaves to guard the main exits to the fortress,’ Kuphus went on. ‘But he remained in person to hold the Gate.’

That made sense.

Hold the Seventh Gate and you hold the hope of reinforcement from Azyr. Lose it, and the Paladins of Sigmaron would have absolutely no hesitation in slamming that gate shut and throwing away the proverbial key before risking any grand scale incursion into Azyrheim. It sounds too harsh to be believable, but believe me I have seen whole nations, hundreds of thousands of souls, forsaken for less. Much as Sigmar himself had once been driven to abandon the entirety of the Mortal Realms. Without the Realmgate, the Seven Words wouldn’t stand for a month – even without a skaven horde at the gates. It simply couldn’t feed and provision itself.

It was obvious that a zero-sum tactician like Akturus would hold it in person.

And if someone like me could deduce that, then so could Ikrit.

Bringing the warlock to battle before the portal to the Eternal City had a pleasing practicality to it. It would save me the bother of having to drag him too far. I smiled, distantly, imagining the approving roar of the free folk of Azyrheim as I paraded the captive warlock through the Sigmarabulum on our way to the Celestial Stair.

‘Bear-Eater,’ Brychen snapped.

‘I’m just getting my breath back,’ I said, irritably.

‘Hmmmm.’

‘I will send a warrior to escort you,’ said Kuphus.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I protested. But not too hard. I don’t know what I would have done had the Judicator-Prime rescinded his demand.

‘I insist,’ said Kuphus, firmly.