Champion of the Gods

Chapter twenty-nine

The skaven were, as you’ll remember, abroad in the High Gorwood in force well before the opening of Ikrit’s Arcway beneath the Seven Words, and I emerged from the catacombs to find the fortress under siege from above as well as from below. The old fort had weathered the two-pronged assault about as well as I would have expected.

Skaven rampaged through the twisting lanes in packs of a hundred or more. They kicked in doors, pried slates from roofs, dragged women, children, and men screaming into the streets, butchered the livestock that grazed on the grassy outcroppings with equal malice and no apparent distinction.

From the vicinity of the keep, thunder still rumbled. The growls of Dracoth. The reports of storm-infused lightning hammers and ­volleystorm crossbows.

Paladins of the Knights Merciless, godlike and aloof in shining white armour, scattered any muster of strength with repeated charges of their Fulminators and Tempestors. If the cries of those in the wards praying for deliverance penetrated their helmets’ icy veneer, then they betrayed no sign of caring.

Fighting spilled through the rest of the city.

From the Ironweld compound, gunfire crackled. The fortress manse of the conclave representative stood fast yet, as did a number of temples to the more redoubtable divinities of the Gorkomon (Sigmar and Gorkamorka, primarily) and at least half of the five Freeguild garrisons. Outposts of resistance in a sea of slaughter.

Every­thing else was screams and burning.

The fiercest fighting was centred around the main gatehouse.

As I watched, a great wheeled engine thundered down the Bear Road, repeated blasts of lightning from its fork-like projectors shredding the buildings to either side, before ripping itself apart, a seething ball of rapidly disintegrating skaven engineering rolling through the unmanned Freeguild stockades towards the Morkogon gate. The Heraldors’ horns sounded an incessant call to arms. The tattered banners of the Heavens Forged and of Lord-Celestant Frankos himself flew there, jewels of amethyst and curls of gold glinting still under the deluge of rust and rot and verminous fur. A ramshackle fleet of paddle-driven airships circled the embattled fortifications, skaven gunners scampering the weather decks to pour fire over the Astral Templars. The killing was as indiscriminate as it was deadly, but the masters of the skaven ruinfleet clearly considered a few hundred slaughtered clanrats to be fair exchange for one Azyr-bound stab of lightning.

The storm energies of a Stormcast warrior chamber aroused fully to war was an awesome spectacle, even to one such as I. Thick clouds and sudden downpours broke from blue skies. Mighty winds hammered the airships, disrupting their formations, forcing the overseers of the rowing decks to crack their whips lest their craft be dashed against the rocks of the Gorkomon.

A clarion voice rang out from the bastion wall.

‘Die, unclean vermin. Burn on a pyre of your own scabrous bones!’

Lightning speared the sky in half, carving through the hull of an airship and blitzing east to west along an overrun section of rampart. Skaven squealed, going up in tiny little flares of igniting fur. There was a creak, as of roasted bones, and a large part of the wall collapsed. ‘How dare you, heathen rats. Your ungodly souls are unworthy of the stones of this Free City. Your cairn shall be storm cloud and wind alone. The stench of burnt flesh shall be your sole remembrance.’ Another crack ripped the sky asunder, this time calling forth a volley of lightning that bombarded the entire length of curtain wall, reducing it to rubble despite the clear absence of so much as a clanrat within fifty feet.

I groaned, feeling my high spirits deflate.

Lord-Relictor Xeros Stormcloud still had that effect.

‘Was it asking too much of Sigmar for him to stay dead?’ I muttered. ‘Not for all eternity. Just a decade or two. If anyone has flaws in their spirit to warrant another pass through the soul-mills then it’s the Stormcloud.’

‘Ikrit has yet to show his own claws,’ said Brychen.

The priestess stood on the causeway steps beside me, inhaling deeply of the fresh air that gusted endlessly towards this high point from the seven corners of the aetheric cloud. The hollies clambering over her armour lattice fluttered violently against it.

‘What makes you say that?’ said Nassam.

‘Because the wall is still there,’ said Brychen.

‘Most of it anyway,’ I added. ‘No thanks to the Stormcloud.’

‘I see,’ said Nassam.

The Jerech looked at me guiltily, as if he felt the burn to my face and the cracks in my armour were partly his fault. None of it was anything that the lifting of a divine geas and six months in the ­Aetherdomes of the Sigmarabulum having my whims catered to by aelven maidens wouldn’t remedy.

But outwardly, I chose to suffer like a hero.

‘That’s where we’ll find him, though,’ I said.

‘Why is that, lord?’

‘Because that’s where Xeros is, and if Broudiccan learned just one thing from me in a hundred years as my second-in-command then it would have been to keep that maniac close.’

‘If that is where the prey is, then that is where we must go too.’ Brychen was already gliding down the steps.

I grunted to Nassam to go after her.

The square at the bottom of the stair was like a charnel pit, a mass grave for the enemy’s anonymous dead. But these bodies had belonged to no one’s enemy. Dropping to one knee, I swept blood-matted hair from a woman’s face. The pale, fish-eyed gaze of a corpse stared sightlessly back up.

Azyrite settler and Ghurite native, everyone in the Seven Words had understood the precariousness of their existence. Their walls were porous. The land was hostile. But they had known all that. Or had they? The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether anyone would have chosen to build a life and raise a family from the harsh rock of the Gorkomon if they had really believed any of that.

Had they not simply believed that the Bear-Eater would protect them from it all?

A low growl rose from my throat.

‘They are dead,’ said Brychen. ‘They belong to the worms and the insects now.’

Anger filled me. Not the righteous wrath of a warrior of Heaven, but the unthinking fury of a man who had known life, and felt loss. Had I been the sort of man who thought about such things, then I might have wondered if this was the reason that Sigmar allowed his Stormcast Eternals to be denied such memories.

A crash sounded from one of the adjoining streets.

To me, it was the sound of something snapping inside my mind.

My head pulled around, like a dog catching the scent of prey, and, with a bark of anger, I broke towards it.

The narrow street was littered with wooden debris and gore. Upended carts. Butchered dray beasts. All the little things of frontier life, all strewn over the rough set grey cobbles. The sound that had drawn me had come from a weathered stone building, a pack of skaven fifteen-strong armed with heavy-bladed cutlasses and hatchets furiously hacking into the wooden shutters that blocked the windows. Every splintering blow brought squeals of delight from the ratmen’s foam-slicked jaws and screams of terror from those hidden inside.

The nearest clanrat turned, whiskers atwitch as I strode towards him, opening his mouth to squeak a warning only to issue a breathless mew of pain and horror as my halberd split his belly and splattered out of his back. His silent mouthing became a witless shriek as I hoisted him up into the air. Skaven blood trickled through the runic engravings of the haft to pool under my thumb. Another warrior rounded on me. I kicked him in the chest. Ribs snapped and he broke hard against the shutter, achieving with his own shoulder blade what he’d been trying to do with his sword.

The rest squeaked in alarm.

I must have been quite the avenging spectacle. Clad in amethyst and gold. Blood-drenched. Hair wild. Bedecked in emblems of savagery, and with one of their own shrieking as his entrails slowly unwound down the shaft of my weapon.

Dull eyes widened. Ears flattened against scraggy heads.

‘This is the Free City of Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’ I bellowed. ‘Those who dwell within do so under my protection. Those who would threaten them are mine to butcher and defile as I see fit. Behold me, vermin, and then behold yourselves. Nothing but a slow death and a spike awaits you here!’

With a squeal of terror, the skaven to the rear of the pack spun and fled. The rest followed in brisk order, scrambling over the wall that surrounded the little yard and tearing up the street after their leader.

I bellowed after them, shaking my still-squealing banner.

‘Tell your brethren – the Bear-Eater does not surrender the Seven Words!’

Planting the butt of my halberd on the ground, leaving the skaven up there to bleed out, which he was making excellent progress on, I heard the sound of a locking bar being lifted and a door being opened.

‘Lord Hamilcar?’

A thickly bearded Ghurite man peered through the crack between door and frame, fear in his eyes, but wonder in his tone. As soon as my eyes crossed his, he turned back to address those still inside. ‘It’s Hamilcar. Lord Hamilcar has come back.’ I heard the word ‘Hamilcar’ being passed around as the door was pushed wide. The Ghurite stepped out. An old leather jack strained on its ties around a robust frame, an heirloom matchlock pointing up at the sky. He had old Freeguild tattooed all over him, possibly even literally, but as you know, I never did learn to read. More men and women, at least a score and a half of them, poked out after him, all armed with pickaxes, hunting bows or stonecutting hammers. Even the children.

I glanced over my shoulders as further doors and shutters were cast out, more people stepping out into the street.

‘Hamilcar is back.’

‘The Bear-Eater will rout the vermin, you’ll see.’

‘We’re saved.’

I even saw a few current Freeguild uniforms amongst them.

I couldn’t blame them for abandoning their garrisons to defend their families. Kuphus or Akturus might have, but not I. They were only human, and I remembered what that felt like. I wondered if we were really so different. Was I not guilty of the exact same offence by being here instead of chasing after Ikrit as Sigmar’s geas demanded of me?

‘We have to go,’ Brychen hissed, behind me, as if aware of my thoughts. ‘If we do not then Ikrit will capture your friend, Broudiccan.’

Raising a clenched fist in salute, I grinned maniacally for the hundred or so men and women that had gathered to see me.

‘Men and women of the Seven Words!’ I yelled, only to have my words answered by a roar of relief and defiance that brought my burnt skin out in goose bumps. I opened my hand as if for quiet, but I didn’t call for it or wait for it. I didn’t want quiet. I wanted their anger. ‘Seven Words!’ I screamed. Another bloody cheer, louder this time than the first. I shouted over them. ‘I will fight for you, but even I cannot hold our city alone. That is right. Our city. Yours and mine. Fight for your homes. Fight for your lives. Fight here, now, and Hamilcar Bear-Eater will fight with you!’

The mortals thrust old and improvised weapons in the air and gave a tumultuous cheer. ‘Hamilcar!’

I took an enormous breath.

The realmsphere stood still.

‘HAMILCAR!’

The strength of their return ovation was empowering, as if belief alone could render sigmarite impregnable. There was a part of me, even back then, that was wise enough to realise that for every ten stupid things I’d ever convinced myself were excellent ideas, nine would have been birthed on the heady crest of a wave like that.

‘We’ll fight!’ I yelled. ‘And we’ll win! For Sigmar and the God-King!’

‘For Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’

‘This house of stone is a distraction,’ Brychen hissed. ‘No different to Malikcek.’

‘These are Sigmar’s people,’ I said, speaking loudly enough for every­one to hear.

‘Sigmar has cast his people freely across the Mortal Realms. If we do not end Ikrit here, do you think these will be the last to suffer?’

I frowned.

It wasn’t that they were Sigmar’s people as much as that they were my people.

‘He slaughtered my people too,’ Brychen went on. ‘He murdered my brother, polluted our sacred grounds, stole the gifts of my goddess. This does not end for me until I have fed his dead body back to the earth.’

‘I will not abandon my people.’

‘Then this is where our two winds blow apart.’

‘Don’t be so drama–’

I turned to face her but, much to my chagrin, the priestess had simply left. Nassam, at least, was still there, his massive quartz greatsword held in two hands and resting against one shoulder. I narrowed my eyes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he must have combed his moustaches during his brief sprint from the square. Shaking my head, I turned back to the crowd.

I reasoned that as long as I was the one seen saving the Seven Words then it really didn’t matter if Brychen got in there first. I still had Sigmar to satisfy, of course, but one problem at a time – that was the Bear-Eater approach to war.

‘Go then,’ I shouted after her. ‘I will join you by the pyre of skaven dead that I will raise over the Morkogon gate when my city is saved.’ A boisterous cheer went up at that, and I saluted them with my halberd. The skaven warrior had long since ceased struggling. I knew that I was getting a little carried away, but none of my many great victories had been achieved by doing what sensible heads would have done in my place. Would Gardus have charged headlong into the stronghold of Uxor Untamed with just fifty warriors at his back? No, he would not. Would Vandus have had the foresight or the common touch to get himself euphoric on fungus beer, accidentally start a war with the Skarabrak lodge, only to then wake the next morning with a sore head and fifty thousand moonclan berserkers ecstatically avowed to Sigmar’s cause?

No and no and no again.

Only Hamilcar.

‘When every last skaven in the Seven Words is dead!’ I yelled.

‘When they’re dead!’

‘Hamilcar is back!’

‘What now then, lord?’ said Nassam, as though we’d just arrived in an unfamiliar city and he was uncertain whether ale or lodgings should take precedence.

‘The Seven Words are home to five thousand soldiers and almost thirty thousand civilians,’ I told him. ‘We rally them all. We arm them. And then we drive the skaven from our walls.’

A voice interrupted me.

‘That is not a plan, Hamilcar Bear-Eater,’ called Vikaeus, freezing my heart stiff. ‘It is a prayer.’