Champion of the Gods

Chapter one

I arced over the gurgling water like a zephyrgryph with his claws unfurled. The air was ice, the sky a weird shade of green, amber leaking into the night with the dawn. My face was the painful side of numb as my arms and legs paddled the thin air. All I could hear from beneath me was the creak of ice, the rush of the river and the wind slipping through my fingers. I started to laugh, my mouth thus conveniently wide for a roar of triumph as my boots slammed into the frozen slush of the Nevermarsh. Cracks spread through the frost-veined mud, but it was already hard as rock and did not break.

Just as well – sinking to my greaves in mud or getting into a tug-of-war for my boot was hardly the look I had been going for.

‘Yes!’

The cry exploded from my chest and I spun around with my fists in the air.

‘Let it be known that Hamilcar Bear-Eater is first across every river, first into every charge, first unto every blade!’ I bellowed.

Broudiccan’s slow handclap wasn’t quite the enthusiastic reaction that I felt the feat deserved. My second-in-command cut an imposing figure on the other side of the water, a fortress of a man in the thrice-blessed maroon and gold of the Astral Templars. His Mask Impassive, the grim facial covering of the Stormcast Eternals, was anything but; a gouge from a beast’s claw had cloven the stoic purple mask in two, leaving a disdainful aspect which suited his taciturnity to the ground.

If he thought he could leap twenty feet across ice-cold rapids then I would have very much liked to see him try.

‘Bravo, Lord Hamilcar,’ Frankos shouted through cupped hands, separated from the burly Decimator by the haggard width of a tree. ‘Congratulations on being the first of Sigmar’s Stormhosts to set foot in the Nevermarsh.’

Distinctions of age and experience counted for little within a company of immortals, but the Knight-Heraldor had always been possessed of a youthful effervescence that made me feel old. I nodded my thanks, pausing to glare at my second.

‘May the Heraldor Temples always proclaim it so,’ I bellowed back.

‘They shall, my lord,’ he cried with gusto. ‘They shall.’

Frankos was also quite unique amongst my warrior chamber in taking every­thing I said in deadly earnest. He continues to do so, in fact, even after the later reversal in our fortunes.

The sigmarite mountain called Broudiccan rumbled as the giant sighed.

His masked gaze slipped towards the frothing water.

Feral-looking birds with wicked red eyes twittered back and forth between the two banks. Their beaks were perfectly made for the stripping of flesh, the cracking of bone, and I suspected they could even chew the cure right off a man’s armour. Generally, the birds were happy enough scavenging for fish and insects amongst the densely tangled buttress roots that clawed out of the riverbank and into the water, but the Freeguild army I was leading through the Gorwood might as well have been one giant victuallers’ caravan for all they were concerned. More than one poor soldier had already lost a finger or an eye. Broudiccan swatted at one, which knew better than to test its toothed beak on sigmarite and flapped out of reach to shrill from the leafless canopy.

‘I’ll wait for the bridge,’ he grumbled, after a while.

I barely heard him over the white roar of the water, but I am a Stormcast Eternal, and my ears are sharp enough.

‘I wonder about you sometimes,’ I laughed. ‘Are you a plodding Knight-Excelsior, summoned to my warrior chamber in error?’

Broudiccan shrugged. ‘Even Sigmar can make mistakes. The pain of reforging is proof enough of this.’

‘Ha! Indeed. I remember my last day as a mortal, when I feasted with Him and ten thousand warriors in the Heldenhall.’ The memories of my mortal life were dimmer back then than they are now, jumbled like a stained glass window that had been broken and thrown back together, most of the pieces still missing, but this I remembered. ‘He has a delicate stomach. For a god.’

Frankos frowned at nothing. ‘I do not remember my final night.’

‘Parts of mine are a little blurry also. It was that aelf nectar wine. I swear there was nothing like it where–’

A racket worthy of Gorkamorka drowned me out as the rest of the army made their way through the trees.

I looked past the two Astral Templars, my sentence unfinished.

About nineteen hundred soldiers, two of the five Freeguild regi­ments of the Seven Words, had followed me into the Gorwood. Their baggage train and camp followers amounted to about the same again although I generally deferred the small details to Frankos and the mortal generals themselves. The fifty warriors of my Chamber, the Bear-Eaters, were strung out over several leagues of woodland. The trees that grew here at the boundary of the Low Gorwood were twisted runts compared to the predatory bowers that canopied the high slopes of the Gorkomon, but no less deadly. For all my efforts, the Gorwood was – and would always be – a wild place, home to as many hungry creatures as it had been when the Beastlord Uxor Untamed had ruled these heights. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The men and women that emerged wore a collage of colours – torn, faded, chewed on – over armour of tough leather and the occasional skin. There were a few wooden or leather shields, but most carried two-handed spears, javelins or hunting bows. Despite the cold and the predations of the forest they were still laughing – Ghurites all of them, none tougher – whistling catcalls at those behind and pointing at me on the other side of the river.

Coming in behind the vanguard was a trio of ogors in tattered surcoats, hauling a bridge of coppery lumber behind them. Their faces were snarled with effort, muscles standing like boulders from a mountainside. A few of the soldiers dropped their gear to run in and help push, the ogors hissing something that probably wasn’t all that complimentary through their teeth.

I put my hands on my hips and watched them, my heart ready to burst with pride.

I loved them all.

Only slightly less than they loved me.

‘Who is first upon the Nevermarsh?’ I called out to them, thumping my breastplate. ‘He who waits upon no man, beast nor creature of Ruin.’ I thrust my gauntleted fists in the air, wringing the musty stink of bear from my cloak.

‘Hamilcar!’

Cheers rippled through the treeline. The ogors took the opportunity to draw up and wipe the sweat from their sledgehammer-like brows, before readjusting the draw-chains wrapped round their fists.

I made a grand show of pulling off my gauntlets, rubbing my hands together and blowing into them, despite the fact I have little feeling for the cold. I am a champion of Heaven, and to be of Heaven is to be as cold as starlight. And yet it means something to the common soldier to see his hardships shared. Most Stormcast Eternals, broken from humanity in order to be elevated to that space beyond, would never even have considered such a gesture. There are better warriors than I in Sigmar’s Stormhosts. I’ll not name them, and I’ll only deny saying it should it get back to them. Let’s just say I have all the fingers I need to count them. But if you think that any of them can get as much as I can from a mortal man, then I would say you have passed too many times over the Anvil of Apotheosis, my friend.

‘The winter is cold,’ I yelled. ‘The Ghurlands are dangerous. But you know cold, you know danger. Every man and woman here is a veteran of the Gorwood. You have fought beside me against beastman and skaven and orruk, yet here you all are with me still. Why?’ My breath shrouded my tattooed fist in fog. ‘Because Hamilcar Bear-Eater is your brother and your champion, ahead of you every step of the way!’

‘Hamilcar!’

The cry came back louder now, men still spilling out of the forest to hear my words.

I unhooked the halberd from its bracket across my back. The black wood of the haft scraped over my armour as I drew it. The head sang as it came free. The blade was sigmarite, forged by the first of the Six Smiths under the Auroral Tempest, imbuing the metal with the storm’s vicious power. Bands of amber and violet rippled through the blade as I turned it and held it aloft. A pair of predator birds that I had managed to trap and kill myself dangled from the head on chains. Runes of my own inscription decorated the haft. They imparted no power I know of, and I had no idea from which ice hole of my memory they emerged, only that in those days you could not leave me with a flat surface and a knife and not return to find the former filled with the strange pictograms.

I had always assumed them to be a facet of my lost life as a mortal, which would of course prove to be correct, though I never gave it much thought at the time.

‘The Nevermarsh is another challenge again. No army of Sigmar has ever crossed its border, and yet…’ I spread my arms to indicate the river running across me. The soldiers chuckled, a few of them still shouting my name. A cloaked and helmeted veteran in a glittery cuirass of leather and glass and a rash of insect bites on his browned face choked with laughter. Even I didn’t think my remark was that amusing, but I acknowledged the old-timer with the point of my halberd. I recognised him from some battle or other, and I always liked to give the impression of familiarity with every woman or man who bore the Twin-Tailed Comet in my name.

‘This is where our enemies seek to hide from us, so this is where we hound them. We will run them to the ground, my friends. We will kill them, we will butcher them, and we will feed their bloody carcasses to the carniferns of the Gorwood!’

The bank erupted with a mighty cheer.

‘For Sigmar!’

‘Sigmar!’

‘For the God-King!’

My voice was the coming of thunder. I held the final syllable until my throat was hoarse and my body shook with passion.

I rehoused my halberd, leaving my fist raised in salute.

The men would all be warm now. If my Vanguards were right about the position of the hole that our enemy had found to hide in, and they generally were, then I expected the fire I had put in the soldiers’ bellies to last them until it was needed.

‘A good speech, lord,’ Frankos shouted to me.

I could almost sense Broudiccan’s eyes rolling.

‘Go and aid with the bridge,’ I told the Heraldor. ‘You’re as strong as any ogor, brother.’ One hand on the pommel of his broadsword, Frankos bowed low, his white crest bobbing in the frozen muck. I called after him as he departed. ‘Be sure that it’s good and flat. I would hate for Broudiccan to fall off.’

I chuckled to myself, Broudiccan still wearing that disdainful look of his.

Now ordinarily, these sullen spells were precisely the reason I chose the Paladin for my second. The long silences gave me more room to talk, but a man can only bear so much.

‘Spit it out, brother,’ I barked.

‘It is nothing.’

‘With you, it’s never nothing.’

The big Paladin grumbled. ‘You are like a boy on his first hunt, lord.’

I smiled wistfully. ‘You remember your first hunt?’

‘No.’

‘Nor I mine.’ I cocked a grin as though he had just made my point for me. ‘Every time is the first now. The realms are so vast, the enemy so numerous. It is always new.’

‘You are a Lord-Castellant, not an Azyros or a Venator to go seeking out new dangers.’

I blew out through my lips. ‘The best defence…’ Broudiccan’s eyes narrowed reproachfully, and I motioned towards the Freeguild further uphill, dragging the bridge towards us with renewed vigour. ‘They will work faster knowing I’m here on the far side. I don’t forget my calling, brother.’

Frankos had joined the labourers as I spoke, jostling in between the ogors and taking up some of the chain to help pull.

‘He is a bad influence upon you,’ said Broudiccan.

I laughed at that. ‘I suspect most would say it was the other way around.’

‘I have known Frankos longer than you. He is perfectly incorruptible. You, on the other hand, will do anything for an audience.’

I frowned across the water, but Broudiccan had nothing more to add. Frankly, I should have been astonished to have got as many words out of him as I had, but I was justifiably distracted by what happened next.

Lightning struck earth a few feet from where I was standing.

Not an actual lightning bolt, of course. Deliverance from the Celestial Stair remained as possible as it ever had been during the Realmgate Wars, but it had become rarer in those days as Sigmar’s wars spread his attention thinner. Azyrite energies crackled and burst as the Prosecutor furled his wings then stood. His armour was the black of freshly dug soil, richer in gold even than my own, and embellished with images and inscriptions as one would a tombstone. It put me in mind of the mortis armour worn by Xeros Stormcloud, my Lord-Relictor, who had earned his war name for the black mood that followed him wheresoever he chose to darken with his tread. Or so I chose to believe, and tell all who ask.

Despite having just risen, the Prosecutor dropped again to one knee. ‘Lord-Castellant, I bear an urgent missive from my lord, Akturus.’ His delivery smacked of some ritual phrasing, the effect only slightly ruined by the breathlessness that came with a long flight from the Seven Words. He presented a tightly furled scroll, sealed with a flickering Azyrite rune.

The scroll fizzled under my nose.

Now, it has never been any secret that I find the written word disturbing. Trapping a man’s words and thoughts, his soul even, on parchment or tablet still seems to me like witchcraft and I avoid it where I can.

An awkward second passed between us in which neither moved or spoke.

‘Urgent was Akturus’ word, lord,’ said the Prosecutor, the formality of his address slipping. ‘Not mine.’

I sighed.

If in doubt, bluff it out.

‘Read it to me as we go.’ I turned my back, picked a direction from the frostbitten scabgrass and sand-coloured rushes of the Nevermarsh in what I was sure was an authoritative manner and started walking.

‘Yes, lord.’

The sounds of hammering and sawing and the strains of an ogor working song faded quickly as I strode into the marsh, swallowed by the chirp of predatory birds and biting insects. I idly swatted at a few. Largely out of habit. Most things in Ghur would try to eat you one way or another, but there wasn’t much out there that would willingly make a meal out of the storm-fused flesh and blessed sigmarite of a Stormcast Eternal.

The realm’s erratic sun was just pushing over the horizon, kissing every leaf and frond with amber lips. It was beautiful. From behind me, there came a faint crack as the Prosecutor broke the lightning seal and unrolled the scroll.

‘Brother Castellant,’ he read aloud. ‘Praise Sigmar, for he has noted your abrupt absence and seen fit to reinforce the Seven Words until your prompt return. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus Creed did arrive this morn at the head of the Drakwards, Exemplar Chamber of the Knights Merciless, to–’

I grumbled under my breath, missing whatever it was that the Prosecutor said next.

Vikaeus and I had what you could call a history.

She thought me foolhardy and arrogant. Actually, she still does, and nor is she exactly wrong. Foolishness and arrogance are two of my finest qualities, virtues to which too few amongst the Stormhosts can lay claim. I, for my part, have always been underwhelmed by the Lord-Veritant’s much vaunted gift for prophecy. While it is true that she accurately prophesied the coming of the White Pox to the Valdenmoor, and foretold of Skulla Gashamna’s ascension to daemonhood months before Lord-Ordinator Vorrus Starstrike read it in the stars, her warnings of my imminent self-inflicted demise had thus far all come to naught.

‘Still waiting for that vermintide she foresaw swallowing the Seven Words, I imagine,’ I said.

‘The Lord-Castellant did not impart that detail, lord.’

‘I bet he didn’t. Did he impart anything else?’

‘Yes, lord. He asked me to tell you that he prays for your swift return, and to remind you that the slight raised against his honour still stands.’

I said nothing to that.

Akturus Ironheel commanded a warrior chamber known as the Imperishables, a force numbering some four hundred souls. As a Lord-Castellant, we were equivalent in rank, but utterly dissimilar in character. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the Stormhost to which the Imperishables belonged, were a force of black repute, assembled from the heroes of empires long-dead and hammered into being while the Mallus turned under a darksome phase.

Or so their lords-relictor claim, and good luck to them, for no one knows better the power of a fearsome legend than I.

‘It was meant in jest,’ I said. ‘He enjoys it.’

‘He has already prepared the ring for ritual combat, lord. All of the Seven Words are eager for your return.’ It could just have been me, but I was certain I heard a smirk in the winged warrior’s voice.

Akturus might have preferred sitting in a castle to taking one, and despised the untamed Ghurlands as much as I hated being bottled up in the Seven Words, but he was the most vicious and underhanded fighter I have ever had the misfortune to cross in all my centuries of war. I swear, he knew the weaknesses of aegis armour and the pressure points of a Stormcast Eternal’s body the way a Lord-Castellant should know bricks and mortar.

And he was touchy about the honour of his war name, as I had recently learned.

‘Not nearly as eager as I am,’ I said, though I would have rather challenged the entire Drakwards Exemplar Chamber than entertain Akturus in the ring. If there’s one thing people admire more than a victor, it’s a bold loser, and being batted around the Seven Words by a Dracoth or two would at least be a moral triumph of sorts.

The Prosecutor chuckled, which I took as more comradely than mocking. It was easy to forget sometimes that the Imperishables were as human beneath their armour as I.

I sighed. I supposed that my reputation could afford to suffer a knock or two, taken in good spirits.

Suddenly, I stopped walking, holding up my hand as I stared into the endless marsh. It was called the Nevermarsh for a reason.

‘The thought occurs. I have no idea where I’m going.’

The Prosecutor gestured back the way we had come. ‘This way, lord. I am not the only bringer of news.’