Champion of the Gods

Chapter twenty-eight

I had no idea of the way to the Seventh Gate, of course, but as Kuphus had obligingly insisted on an escort I was only too happy to defer to Aphis’ guidance. The Judicator walked with his crossbow leading. A heavy weapon of black sigmarite, golden serpents coiled up the faux wooden finish and a bolt fizzled in the track, lighting the passage ahead of us as well as any torch. Moisture and metallic mineral crystals glittered from the walls. After about half an hour of determined walking, I opened my mouth to strike up a conversation, only for the Judicator to whisk up a hand for quiet. Taking the fizzling crossbow one-handed, he pressed back against the wall. Nassam did the same, Brychen virtually sinking into the rock.

I planted my halberd in the middle of the corridor and set my hand on my hip.

‘What is it?’ I said, making no particular effort to be quiet. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘That is what troubles me,’ Aphis whispered. ‘The Seventh Gate is supposed to be under attack.’ The Judicator nodded down the passage. The light thinned out there, the walls struggling to hold their crystalline shine. ‘The gate chamber is just around this corner.’

I frowned into the gloom.

Akturus was the nastiest fighter I’ve ever known. Even for a warrior as exceptional as I, watching the Ironheel fight was an education in weak spots, pressure points and the darker arts of comparative anatomies.

‘It could be that the assault on the Realmgate has already been broken.’

It didn’t seem very likely, even to me.

I knew what Akturus was up against, and I doubted even Akturus’ near-supernatural ability to hit below the belt would avail him against the master warlock.

‘We should send back to Kuphus for reinforcement,’ Aphis murmured.

‘And tell him what?’ I said. ‘That there isn’t any fighting?’

‘I…’ The Judicator struggled over his answer to that.

‘Come on.’

I started down the tunnel. Brychen detached from the wall to flow after me, Nassam affording the Judicator an apologetic shrug before following. After a few seconds, the sputtering bob of Kuphus’ light followed, so either his crossbow was coming after us or the Judicator had taken up the rear.

Rounding the corner that Aphis had warned of, I ducked under the lintel of a duardin-cut archway and into the gate chamber.

The crackling glow of the Judicator’s boltstorm bolt expanded to fill the space, pushing into the thick shadows. Stout buttressing columns loomed out of the blackness. The capitals shone grimly, ancestor faces carved in the duardin style, the peeling remnant of lead and tin and golden paints clinging to the effigies like hair on mummified skin. The Seventh Gate glowered over the ancient glory, a thunderstorm within a ring of stone. It could have been my eyes adapting to the darkness, but the light from Aphis’ crossbow noticeably waxed in the deluge from Azyr.

There was a pair of torches on the floor, but they seemed to have been abandoned, extinguished. The tiles where they lay were scorched black.

‘Where is everyone?’ Aphis murmured.

My thoughts exactly.

‘Look at this.’ Brychen pointed to a black mark on the ceiling, immediately above one of the dropped torches.

‘A battle was fought here,’ I said.

‘Here?’ said Nassam.

‘We lost,’ I said.

I pointed to the scorch mark on the ceiling.

If you have ever wondered how a lightning bolt carrying the soul of a Stormcast Eternal is able to pass through solid rock on its way to the celestine vaults then know that you are not alone – I am happy enough just knowing that it does.

‘Akturus was here with a Thunderhead Brotherhood of over fifty Imperishables,’ Aphis hissed. He swept the surrounding columns with his uncertain light. ‘What in this realm or any other could account for such a force without leaving even one survivor, or evidence of their own dead?’

‘Ikrit,’ I muttered.

The warlock’s power had been colossal, and that had simply been my impression from being in his presence. The thought of him in unleashed battle was terrifying, I will admit. A gnawing sensation took up in my gut. The feeling was such an unfamiliar one that I initially dismissed it as a hunger pang. It had been a full day, and no little excitement, since my last meal with Aeygar and Barbarus and the rest of the Blue Skies. It was only after it spent the next few moments knotting itself into my bowels that I began to recognise it. Fear. The novelty of the sensation made it almost pleasurable. Like the ache in your muscles after a hard-won battle. What would be more glorious, more affirming, than achieving a feat that even I wasn’t convinced I could do? Through my triumph would Sigmar again be ascendant. With custody of the warlock, Nagash and Malerion and every other wayward power in the Pantheon would return as petitioners to the God-King’s court, and it would be me, Knight-Questor Hamilcar Bear-Eater, that would have brought them there.

‘Lord, over here,’ said Nassam, interrupting my daydream.

A flight of mineral-encrusted granite steps wound up to the Seventh Gate, turning a half circle so that the portal’s thunderous glare was directed towards the chamber’s wall rather than the entrance. The Jerech was crouched down by the bottom step. The shadows there were unnaturally deep, beneath the turned face of Azyr. Aphis swung his crossbow light towards it, excavating something metallic and black from the darkness. The golden fang of an asp glittered.

‘Akturus!’ Aphis cried.

‘He’s alive,’ said Nassam.

‘He would be,’ I said. ‘Ikrit wanted the lantern.’ I swore. ‘We’re too late.’

‘Then we should kill him now,’ said Brychen. ‘Before the warlock can use his light.’

‘I will murder you before you can even make the attempt,’ said Aphis, rounding on the priestess and bringing up his crossbow.

Brychen’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks in the light beam. ‘I gave the Bear-Eater the same mercy.’

‘She did,’ I grunted.

I didn’t exactly enjoy talking about it.

‘The lantern’s still here,’ said Nassam.

‘Wait, what?’ I said.

The Jerech looked up, pulling on the black sigmarite lantern that was, indeed, still hooked to Akturus Ironheel’s belt.

‘What in Sigendil’s light is going on here? Why would Ikrit leave it behind?’

‘Maybe you frightened him off, lord,’ Nassam suggested.

I looked at him, incredulous. ‘Really?’

The Jerech, however, seemed entirely straight-faced.

I appreciated the vote of confidence.

‘Or perhaps Akturus Ironheel injured the warlock,’ said Aphis. ‘Enough to drive him from the fight. He could have lost consciousness some time afterwards.’

‘Step away from him, Nassam,’ Brychen said, staring up into the ceiling vaults with inhumanly dark eyes. ‘Something smells rancid here.’

A titter of quiet laughter echoed back from the stone ceiling.

Aphis’ crossbow jerked up.

‘Your instincts are good-good, tree-thing. You make dangerous prey.’ I felt a wind brush through my hair, and when the voice returned, it was from behind me. Aphis’ crossbow lurched back around. ‘But not so good that she cannot sense-smell a trap before her foot is inside it.’

Brychen glanced my way and arched an eyebrow as if to mime, ‘Again?’

I scowled. ‘Malikcek.’

‘Did you think-think you had smelled the last of me?’ There was another titter and a breath of movement, the sense of something flowing from wall to wall. ‘No-no. Our game has been too enjoyable by far.’

‘This is no game,’ Brychen hissed.

There was a slow creak, as of timbers settling after a hard storm, and the priestess’ entire upper body began to glow. Amber light streamed through the latticework of her armour, and Malikcek slunk into the leafy shadows cast by her trappings with a snicker.

‘Games, yes-yes. There can be no winning for me. No losing. What is left then but how I play-play the game?’

‘He’s mad,’ Nassam murmured.

I agreed, but didn’t answer.

The assassin’s sanity was no doubt in a secure box somewhere in Ulgu.

‘Ikrit thought he could trap-hold you in his lair, Bear-Eater. Cut you open at his leisure. But I knew better. You are too good. Like me. Dead and returned. You live for the game.’

‘I have heard enough,’ said Aphis. I could see the dark eyes behind his mask roving in search of a target. As one of Sigmar’s Justicars, his senses would have been as sharp as mine, if not sharper. He saw nothing. ‘What happened to Akturus’ Thunderhead Brotherhood?’

The darkness chittered in mockery.

‘Squeak-ask instead what happened to my warriors? Or do you think so high of me, that I could overcome so lots-many of Sigmar’s finest without help?’

A swirl of movement deformed the brilliance of the Seventh Gate.

At first I thought it was something coming through, a figure clad in the black of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, but the figure was too small, hunched over, more malicious than any Stormcast Eternal by far.

‘A thousand of Ikrit’s most expendable vermin I sent-hurried through the portal-gate to Azyr-place. The minions of the Man-God will kill-slay them very soon.’ Malikcek cackled. ‘And when it is finished-done, what then?’

‘They’ll seal the Realmgate,’ I breathed, aghast.

‘Vermin,’ Aphis spat, then pointed his crossbow and fired.

Malikcek parted before the crackling quarrel like fog before a bolt of lightning.

His laughter, when it came again, echoed from every darkened corner at once. Every vault and column. Every lingering shadow. Every graven image joined him in his mirth.

‘Go, Aphis,’ I said, the Judicator stubbornly reloading. ‘Through the Realmgate to Azyr. Whatever happens, you can’t allow the wardens of Azyrheim to close the Seventh Gate.’

‘You cannot expect me to leave my Lord-Castellant here with you.’

‘Akturus would give the same order were he conscious, and you know it. I think you know that I can’t go. And Kuphus would have shot Brychen first and asked questions later, so what do you think the Paladins of Azyr will do?’

‘What about him?’ said Aphis.

Nassam looked up.

‘A mortal?’ I said. ‘With a thousand skaven warriors between him and the Stormcast Eternals?’

Aphis scowled in indecision.

‘Tick-tock. Tick-tock.’ The edges of the chamber cackled mercilessly. ‘How long will a thousand clanrats last against a fortress filled with Sigmar’s best-best, I wonder?’

‘I am going,’ the Judicator shouted back, shouldering his crossbow. ‘I am going.’

‘Nassam,’ I said. ‘Go with him.’

‘Yes, lord.’

There was no argument: this, in a nutshell, is why I’ve always preferred leading mortal soldiers over Stormcast Eternals.

The Realmgate spasmed as first Aphis and then Nassam stepped through. Lightning bolt discharges of Azyr blue cut away the shadows to reveal the creature shrouded amongst the rafters like a gargoyle. As soon as the two warriors passed, however, it was gone. The darkness closed back in, almost physically pushing Brychen and me together until we stood back to back. I gripped my halberd two-handed. I heard Brychen’s living spear hum as she spun it.

‘Just we three,’ Malikcek hissed from hiding. ‘As it was on the mountain. Do you remember? Long-long ago it feels now. This time there will be no interruption. This time we will know-see which of us is best.’

I scowled into the darkness.

And I thought I liked to talk myself up before a fight.

‘Come on then, Malikcek. Show me what you’ve got and I’ll tell you if it’s enough to finally end the Bear-Eater.’

‘You will regret-rue your courage.’

The assassin burst out of the darkness in front of me.

My first instinct was to recoil, but I suppressed it. All of my will, my anger at the injuries to my pride that this skaven had inflicted, went into ignoring his knives and instead thrusting my halberd through his heart. The assassin evaporated before my blade with a snicker. As I’d known he would. I stepped in, spinning even as he reappeared behind me, reversing my grip and stabbing back with the haft. Malikcek squealed in fury and exploded into a tornado of black cloud, the occasional glimmer of steel or skaven feature taunting my blade. I hacked at it, but my halberd passed through. The assassin tittered as the shadow storm blew itself out. I roared. From behind me, there came a thunk and a splitting of wood as Malikcek’s knife sank into Brychen’s spear. She pushed him off, the assassin dissolving and streaming back into the shadows before I could turn around.

‘Hehehehe,’ he squealed, launching himself out of nothing, inches from my face.

‘Do we outnumber him?’ I bellowed, hacking, slashing, scissoring blades driving me back so hard that I couldn’t even think of returning an attack of my own. ‘Or is it the other way around?’ I saw an opening and scythed my halberd through the cackling mirage of an assassin.

The blessed sigmarite of my halberd couldn’t cut him. The breathing wood of Brychen’s spear passed straight through.

‘He bleeds like any creature of this realm,’ Brychen hissed, already winded. ‘I have seen you hurt him.’

‘I am the Bear-Eater,’ I yelled, watching the shadows as they fled from me before reforming in the lee of one of the giant duardin columns. ‘There is but one true immortal here!’ Taking my halberd two-handed like a quarter-staff, I charged at the assassin with a roar. Malikcek blocked with both knives held overhead, then kicked me in the knee with sigmarite-breaking force. I dropped onto the knee and he spun, smashing a footpaw through the side of my face that had me spitting blood and seeing stars. I must have blacked out for a split-second because the next thing I knew I was face down on the flagstones.

‘Squeak-say it. Malikcek is best.’

‘The greatest beast in the wood does not need to display its fangs,’ said Brychen. I looked up from the floor. Malikcek turned his black, partially transparent snout. The priestess extended her open palm towards us. ‘Every other creature will already fear its might.’ With the furious buzz of a vespis swarm, the twittering of a flock of flesh-eating birds and the roar of a ghyrlion, amber-hued light lanced from her fingertips.

Malikcek flailed, shadows boiling off the rat-shape within, and tripped over my prone form. He burst into the dark, dissolving back safely beyond the cone of the priestess’ light, striking his blades together as though sharpening a knife for carving.

‘This game is over-done. Malikcek wins.’

‘The game is a cycle,’ Brychen corrected. ‘There are no winners.’

She turned her palm up to the ceiling and as she did so the two wooden torches that I had seen lying on the ground (and frankly, forgotten about in all the excitement) burst into flame. The assassin squealed at the sudden light to either side of him and covered his eyes. Seeing his distraction, I drew my feet beneath me and charged. Even half blind and robbed of his shadows, the Deathmaster was a more gifted killer than I’d allowed for. He struck the inside of my halberd with his left-hand knife and tried to force the blow wide. He was twice as strong as any skaven assassin had a right to be. But I was a Stormcast Eternal. I was stronger.

I pushed through the attempted parry and drove my blade into the flesh and blood of his shoulder.

‘You have faced the Bear-Eater and you have lost!’

The assassin’s shriek of pain rose to become a rush of air, his body billowing up towards the ceiling.

It became a shriek again.

Black eyes glinted evilly from a black hood.

‘Only with your tree-thing witch to aid you.’

‘We are not ghurzelle displaying our horns.’ Brychen straightened with an obvious effort. ‘We are hyenae ripping apart a freak of nature.’

The priestess might have been impervious to the assassin’s taunts, but I felt my pride nettled.

‘I have this from here,’ I told her.

‘He is still dangerous.’

‘This is the fight for which I was forged. Stand back, priestess, and watch what the pinnacle of Sigmar’s creation can do.’

‘He is toying with you.’

Malikcek chittered as he drew himself into the darkness, his verminous form expanding to envelop the entirety of the ceiling.

‘She is not wrong, Bear-Eater. Cat and mouse is the game we play. You are not the cat.’

With a hiss of inrushing air, the assassin imploded.

I started back instinctively. It almost certainly saved my life. Malikcek exploded into my face with knife, teeth and whip-tail, all awhir with a rabid energy. The injury to his shoulder and the consequent loss of a blade in no way diminished the ferocity of his attacks. He didn’t seem to tire. He didn’t even seem to breathe insofar as I could tell. Every­thing that I had left to give went into matching him, blow for blow, and it still wasn’t nearly enough. Step by step, parry by bone-jarring parry, he forced me back.

‘You are the mad-fool, here. Not I.’

‘How so?’

‘You need-want to ask? Who is Malikcek? He is nothing. He is not master here.’

‘Ikrit? What of him?’

Malikcek cackled as he eroded my guard and slammed me against the wall. ‘There are two lords-castellant in the Seven Words. And the other is not Hamilcar Bear-Eater.’

I stared through Malikcek’s shadowy muzzle and into nothing. My own stupidity was suddenly so glaring it stole every­thing else’s light.

Broudiccan.

Ikrit was in the Seven Words, and I’d let him trick me. Again.

He was going after Broudiccan.

I didn’t even notice as Malikcek palmed aside my halberd and hammered an elbow into my breastplate. Fractures splintered through the sigmarite, a matching set of fissures spidering into the dressed stone behind me as my backplate and head smacked into it. The breath rushed out of me, and I wheezed down the wall to the floor.

I never even saw the deathblow coming.

Luckily, it wasn’t coming for me.

Dawn came from the direction of the Realmgate. The white-hot brilliance of Azyr’s billion suns scoured the gate chamber clean, shadows withering to bright light before the cosmic power of the Celestial. With tears running down my face and soaking my beard, I rolled over and scrambled blindly for shelter. My fingers touched the base of a column and I dragged myself behind it.

‘My brother Hamilcar is not alone in neglecting the presence of a Lord-Castellant,’ came Akturus’ dust-dry voice.

I gasped aloud, a strange mingling of exquisite pain and relief, and looked back around the column, only to recoil from the white wall of light and pain.

‘Now for the jugular,’ said Brychen, untouched by that storm of light.

Leaves rustled through the aether, and then a second light reared up like an amber bear to challenge the Azyri newcomer for its kill. Shielding my eyes, I forced myself to look back out. The light burned, but it was no longer as terrible as I had feared. I thought back to what Malikcek had said to me, back in Ikrit’s burrow, about how the Azyr light of a warding lantern might mend our damaged souls. Could he have been right? How faithful a restoration could it produce with half the pieces still lost to another’s body? Perhaps that would be good enough for Ikrit, but not for me.

Malikcek writhed in agony, suspended in mid-air like a black moth between two plates of coloured glass, one amber and one blue. The assassin steamed, growing ever more distinct as the opposing lights burned the shadow from his flesh.

The silhouette of a man wobbled towards the captive assassin.

My eyes trembled. I refused to let them blink.

‘Allow me, lord,’ said Nassam.

‘Glorious Highheim,’ I called back. ‘What are you doing here? I sent you through the Seventh Gate.’

‘You did, lord. But you didn’t tell me not to come back.’

I laughed, as the Jerech hacked his greatsword down.