Hamilcar: The Age of Enlightenment

‘Hamilcar!’

With a fierce shriek, Aeygar trimmed her wings and banked us left. Her shadow rippled across the battlements beneath us, and I shared in the aetar’s joy at her speed and power as she outpaced it. The air, as it generally was in this part of Ghur, was both humid and warm, and smelled distinctly of boar. The banners of about forty Freeguild regiments blustered in her downwash. I don’t recall now any of the banners I saw there that day. But someone clearly recognised me.

‘Hamilcar!’

After the first voice had flung my name into the air, it took wings of its own.

‘Hamilcar! Hamilcar! Hamilcar!’

It became a chant that swiftly raced ahead of us.

I grinned broadly and pumped one fist in the air.

The walls quaked in response. Excelsior warpriests grew strident in their prayers. Collegiate battlemages more daring in their castings. Crossbows spat with more zing. Even the batteries of Greywater greatcannons seemed to belch out greater volumes of smoke and fire, and who knows, maybe even did some damage amidst the chainrasp hordes and spirit hosts streaming across the causeway bridges from the Unchained Lands.

‘Soldiers of Sigmar!’ I yelled. ‘Cease your prayers, for they have been answered. The God-King sends you Hamilcar!’

I nudged Aeygar with my knees to descend and circle back.

The aetar craned her long neck to regard me regally.

‘Ahem.’ I coughed into my gauntlet. ‘Around and back, princess. If you don’t mind.’

She threw her beak wide and shrieked.

‘What are we waiting for, lord?’ said Nassam.

Despite his quiet state of polite terror, the Jerech man was as immaculately turned out as always. The short trousers he wore were neat, and somehow more-or-less white in spite of the bug splatter that was something of an unavoidable hazard when travelling in Ghur. His breastplate was a piece of polished quartz, two inches thick and alive with colours. His sleeves were pinched at the wrists with jewels. His fingers were ringed. His turban was neat, as though it had been tied just then, with a disc of gold and amber pinned to the front. His bushy moustache was lightly greased, a trick we had picked up from the lowland nomads that was supposed to keep biting insects at bay.

I looked as though I’d fallen out of bed and into an armoury.

‘Keeping them hungry, my friend.’ I pointed to where a Scourge fleetmaster in dark armour draped in sea dragon scales appeared to be in charge. ‘There, Aeygar. Put us down there.’

With quick, strident wingbeats, Aeygar descended to the parapet, scattering a unit of Darkshard crossbowmen and a grim company of aelf halberdiers wearing black helmets and mail. Her long talons scraped on the stonework as she shuffled, acclimatising to the new sense of being earthbound, and then flung out her wings as if to stretch. Their span rivalled the battlement itself, interfering with the Helstorm rocket crew embedded in the battery tower to my left. (And a good thing too – the thing is a death trap!) The blued steel and platinum scales of her torque dazzled in the light, the circlet on her aquiline brow a thread of starsilver.

Lifting her long neck to the sky, she issued a shriek of such bellicosity it would probably have split ordinary, unwarded stone.

‘All right, princess,’ I muttered as I dismounted. ‘Now you’re just showing off.’

She cocked her head, looking at me askance, and gave an innocent crow that I wasn’t buying for a second.

Nassam hurriedly climbed down.

‘This wall’s a shade on the small side for the both of us, my lady,’ I shouted back up. ‘Why don’t you go and see what you can do from the air.’

With a twinkle in her eye, Aeygar turned, stepped up onto the merlons and launched herself back into the abyss.

Her hunting cry lingered on the muggy air.

‘Stay behind me,’ I said to Nassam.

Bladegheists and glaivewraiths surged over the walls as though the fortifications weren’t emblazoned with twelve-pointed stars and blessed starwater: a spectral torrent of limbs and hooded ghost-faces, of manacles and scythes and massive tomb blades, attacking with the frenzy of a dying man seeking life.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a battle as much as the next barbarian king. But with the dead it’s all so… soulless. No rabble-rousing cheers. No rambling speeches. No tears of frustration or screams of triumph. The dead don’t posture their way through the first hours of a battle declaiming past glories, or describe in grisly detail the fate that awaits your skull before its dutiful conveyance to the Skull Throne of Khorne.

Call me old fashioned, but if you don’t have any of that then I don’t see how you’re supposed to know that you’ve been in a battle.

Suddenly, a behemoth dropped onto the walls from on high.

It flapped its tiny wings, ignoring the aelf halberdiers who swept in to engage it, before propelling itself at me with a ferocity you don’t expect from a creature of Death.

I spun my halberd from the wrist, meeting every blow of its spirit sword with sigmarite blade or ironoak shaft. But the war machine was relentless. Every blow ground me back. Supernatural hate had been beaten into the baroque armour that encased its skeleton. Spirit energies seethed from between its bones. It was as tall as three big men, with the strength of twenty.

Which, by my estimation, made it equal to about one and a half Hamilcar Bear-Eaters.

‘Is that the best you’ve got?’ I bellowed, and bared my teeth, more to put on a proper show of it for the aelves fighting for their lives around me than for my attacker’s benefit. It didn’t care, did it?

It came at me, heedless of my taunting.

I parried desperately as I gave ground.

‘If I was fighting a rat ogor or a yhetee, I’d probably be dead by now.’

With a furnace-like bellow, it brought its sword crashing down. I angled my halberd to take it, braced my body. I grunted as brute impact force bent me to one knee, but the follow-up swipe then swung above my head.

‘I’m always a little slow before Nassam has made his first pot of qahua.’

Dropping the lower hand from my halberd, I drew the arm back, and punched the abomination hard in the ribcage. Armour broke. Bone splintered. I took hold of an exposed rib, my gauntlet thrice-blessed and innate love of the cold keeping the chill of eternal rest at bay, and pulled. It boasted a tatty set of wings and phenomenal strength, but its weight was committed to me: I was going down and it was damn well coming down with me.

Its shoulder crunched into the parapet, and I gave a little pull on its rib to ensure its skull ground in right after it, and from there I kneed, punched and butted the thing for all I was worth.

A tremendous bang punctuated my heroic efforts and the construct collapsed on top of me.

Panting, I climbed out from under what was, now, a heap of bones.

The construct’s skull was a mess, spread over about eight feet of rampart. I climbed on top of it as though I’d just scaled the Algavr, the mightiest of the Mortal Realms’ mountains, and rammed my halberd into its back. I twisted the blade, just to be sure, and spirits fled up from the ruptured cavity, screaming through my beard and hair as they tore back to their master.

Morghasts, those constructs are called. Harbingers. Arcai. I’ve never figured out how to reliably tell the difference. But I’ve rarely heard of them travelling far from the side of Nagash or one of his generals. His Mortarchs. I remember when there were only three.

He has more now.

I watched the spirits’ flight, trying to see where they were going.

‘We’ve spoken before about stealing my thunder, Nassam.’

‘I know, lord.’

‘Since you’re here, you can put the kettle on.’

Whether the destruction of the morghast had been decisive or coincidental, the assault on the wall seemed to be ebbing. It would not let up completely. It never would. Not until we were all dead or there were no more carcasses left in the Unchained Lands to throw at us. It was as though every dead thing in Ghur had risen to beset this place, which, given the condition of the Mortal Realms after the Great Necromancer’s most recent, grandiose cry for attention, wasn’t a possibility I could dismiss out of hand.

But it would be a while before the necromantic generals could muster their wayward spirits into a concerted assault.

‘I would, lord, only…’

The Jerech stowed his smoking pistol, but could not move aside swiftly enough for the hugely armoured warrior behind him, who placed one massive gauntlet on the man’s shoulder and brushed him lightly to one side. He was a Liberator, I think, although it wasn’t so easy to tell. He was an Anvil of the Heldenhammer. Warriors of that Stormhost, as you may know, have always had a tendency to dress like lord-relictors.

The warrior stopped before me.

He looked me up and down.

After coming all this way, he apparently had nothing to say.

I smiled for the benefit of the mortals watching, but then I saw the chamber emblem on the warrior’s shoulder.

My heart sank.

‘Come with me,’ he said, his rasping voice the sound of pages being torn from a prayer book and burned.

I thought about reminding the warrior that I was an ordained Knight-Questor, able to go where I wanted and ignore whom I pleased, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I recognised the shoulder device.

I knew the Stormcast who commanded here.

My day was already ruined.

I had fought alongside the Anvils of the Heldenhammer before. Recently, even. And as it goes they have never bothered me as much as certain other Stormhosts who, for the purposes of this tale, shall remain nameless. They’re a morbid, insular bunch, which means that, with the occasional exception, they tend to keep their odder tendencies to themselves. They also profess little interest in personal glory, which is a large part of the reason that Lord-Castellant Akturus Ironheel, my old Seven Words sparring partner, and I were able to get along so famously.

But there are few Strike Chambers with as black a repute as the Imperishables.

None of them had a commander who put chills through me quite like Lord-Celestant Settrus.

He ignored me completely as I was led in to his commandery. My new Liberator friend bowed stiffly and withdrew with a hint of undue haste that was only noticeable if you were looking to see it.

I knew better than to expect a hearty reception from my brothers in the Stormhosts. My soul had been damaged during my recent adventures in the Nevermarsh, and anyone with the spark of Azyr in theirs could feel it. Some knew it more keenly than others, but for any Stormcast Eternal I had become discomforting to be around. As a result I had become something of a wanted man in Sigmaron (a misunderstanding, of course, although I’ll save that story for another time) and if the Imperishables had known of it then my freedom would have been forfeit. And possibly my life as well. The Six Smiths had always wanted me back alive, but I would have sooner made them kill me than go willingly back into the cage they’d crafted for me.

Yes, the fact that death just meant going back the scenic route hadn’t escaped me, although Ong of the Six had warned me there was a good chance my next death could be final.

So that was good news.

Fortunately for me, while news can travel quickly through the Realmgates, a few steps into the vast expanse of what I like to call ‘the real world’ beyond the Free Cities, it moves more like aetherquartz.

I’ve visited cities where I’ve had to be the one to explain how Chaos had conquered the Mortal Realms.

If Settrus knew what had befallen my soul, then he was playing a long game.

The Lord-Celestant was bent over a table, examining the blurred boundaries of what appeared to be a map of the fortress, but which, helpfully, was as difficult to look at as the castle itself had been from without.

According to the (now I think about it, somewhat hazy) legends of Aeygar’s people, the Unchained Lands were a formation of the Ghurite Hinterlands that had never settled, that had instead broken free to migrate inwards. I’ve heard some people argue that the Unchained Lands are alive. In the Ghyran Jotunberg, and the Junkar of the Heldenline, there is certainly precedent for such mammoth creatures. But I’m not convinced. Some people will always look on Ghur, in all its savagery and strangeness, and explain it as the doings of something semi-intelligent and predatory. Which is true only of most things. It had been the ancient aetar, supposedly, who at Sigmar’s behest raised the fortress here.

Whatever enchantments had been set upon the castle, they seemed to be at work not just on the physical stonework, but even on secondary allusions to it elsewhere.

Now, as much as the Arcanum Optimar has made armchair archmages of us all, I don’t know my Everblaze Comet from my Storm of Shemtek, but the power behind a spell like that had to have been formidable. Godlike. Certainly beyond the powers of the aetar. It occurred to me that this was probably why Aeygar’s people had lost the fortress their ancestors had built. Its own enchantments made them forget. Of course, why anyone would want a castle they couldn’t see or find again was a mystery to me.

At least, it was at the time.

I cleared my throat.

Settrus ignored me. See this paper? his aspect seemed to suggest. This paper is more important to me than you think you are.

I felt myself unconsciously deflate.

After what was, to me at least, an uncomfortably long silence, he looked up.

The white helm on his black armour looked like a skull without actually attempting to portray one. There were round slits for the eyes, but no eyes within, just black whorls, as if the sigmarite thrice-blessed was the sanctuary not of a man but of a Shyishan underworld under the temporary protection of Azyr. The harness itself was a tomb fit for a golden king. Hieroglyphics adorned the dusty black plates. Elaborate serpents wound up the arms and legs, and a fabulously crested asp fanned up from the dark ridge of sigmarite that ran behind his neck to present a halo. Settrus and his Imperishables, and indeed all the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, were intimately associated with the Realm of Death, but I had no idea who, or what, any of them had been in life.

He fixed me with that eyeless gaze.

‘Why have you come?’

That was Settrus. No preamble. No greeting. Voice like gravesand running through an hourglass.

I took a step inside, although moving against that stare is one of the hardest things I will ever do. I once saw him make a slann blink.

‘I was hoping to ask you the same question,’ I said.

‘Why I came?’

I snorted, not entirely comfortable. ‘No. Why I came.’

The Lord-Celestant stared at me a while longer.

He gestured to the table map. ‘Do you see this, Bear-Eater?’

‘More or less.’

‘When I first set foot in this citadel the page was blank. Day by day the magic fades. I can almost see it now. So it is with the keep itself, and the minds of those who, in days past, once knew of it.’

I crossed the chamber to join the Lord-Celestant in his appreciation of an essentially blank piece of paper. The not-quite-there lines made my head ache.

‘It doesn’t look like much.’

‘Soon.’ He looked up from the map. With no more than the width of a table between us, the intensity of his gaze was startling. ‘What do you know of this place?’

I leant forward. ‘Nothing.’

‘It is a Stormvault.’

I whistled.

Of course I had no idea what a Stormvault was, but it seemed the appropriate response to the sombre gravitas of the Lord-Celestant’s tone. As a storyteller myself, I understand the importance of a willing audience.

I’ve learned a thing or two since then though, so allow me to explain…

The Stormvaults were constructed by Sigmar in the Age of Myth. Holdfasts for some of the more terrible artefacts his explorations of the Mortal Realms unearthed. Dungeons for vanquished beings too potent even for the God-King to destroy outright. And when you think about some of things that Sigmar did outright destroy in his time, then you start to realise that ‘potent’ has a different meaning for Sigmar than it has for you and me.

‘What’s inside?’ I asked.

Settrus looked at me, nonplussed. ‘You would ask me that?’

‘How can you stand there and not wonder?’

‘The secret was hidden by Sigmar’s decree. The power of his writ may fade with the Necroquake, but we are the Stormcast Eternals, emissaries of his storm, and bound forever by his law.’

I nodded. My god-given authority to ignore orders without having to creatively misinterpret them first had not yet got old. I ached to know what this Stormvault held. But disagreeing with Settrus just wasn’t done. To his face, at least.

‘The Imperishables yield to no one,’ Settrus went on. ‘We will outlast Death.’

Now, I enjoy a little bravado. But the moment you realise the person genuinely means it is when it ceases to be amusing.

The Lord-Celestant studied me.

‘Your raiment has changed since our last encounter.’

I held up my arms, tilted my head back so my beard would not obscure the device on my breastplate, and grinned. ‘The finest suit of bastion plate from the smithies of Sigmaron.’

‘You have changed.’

‘I am Knight-Questor now.’

‘And the God-King delivers you to me?’

He extended his hand across the table. I hesitated a moment, surprised more than anything, before offering mine. We gripped forearms.

Apparently it’s in the manner of warriors. To be honest, I only started to do it because everyone seems to expect it.

The dark wells of Settrus’ eyes seemed to wobble in their steady swirl and he released me sharply.

I’ve witnessed some horrors in my time, but seeing the Lord-Celestant of the Imperishables take a backward step ranks highly amongst them.

‘I will take your timely arrival as an omen from Sigmar,’ he said

‘Probably wise,’ I said, forcing a grin.

‘You will fight with us.’ It was, I noted, not a question.

‘I’ll… fight,’ I said, easing back from the table.

Settrus turned back to his invisible map.

I couldn’t get outside fast enough.

Nassam hurried after me, the scuff of his sankritt leather boots drowned out by the echo of my sigmarite thrice-blessed on ancient stone. My greater-than-human stride forced the Jerech into an awkward trot, making my pace appear far more nonchalant than it actually was. I was breaking at least half a dozen of Sigmar’s oldest and mightiest rules just by trying to find the Stormvault, but you cannot put the Bear-Eater in a castle and point to him the door he cannot open. The lure for me was twofold. I could glimpse an ancient treasure, perhaps even a weapon, and wait there for whatever minion Nagash had commanded here to come to me, for the vault’s treasure was surely what they sought.

I could just wait this out, kill him or her, and claim all the glory.

The difficulty, of course, lay in finding something expressly engineered to be hidden even from the gods.

If I had an advantage it was that the power of obfuscation was obviously failing, and that the castle itself was not large. The bustle and din of its soldiers filtered like the dust of ages through the columns of the pristine, almost consecrated spaces of its inner halls. I found myself wandering in silent amazement that Settrus and his warriors could have been two hundred strides hence and never been tempted to venture this far.

And therein lay my second, arguably greater, advantage.

Whether it was conscious or unconscious, the Imperishables avoided this part of the keep. I could tell by the muddy footprints, equipment and general scuffing that was evident everywhere else but here.

The inner courtyard was a grandly colonnaded hall, designed for a more enlightened age and, one imagines, eagles. Aetar soared through dizzying frescoes, their flights encircling the golden apex figure of Sigmar.

Over the later panels, the aetar gradually diminished in prominence and number. Sigmar no longer appeared. Humans replaced them. By their appearance, garb and predisposition towards being depicted in poses of prayer, I assumed them to be flagellants. In one large scene, a thousand-strong congregation bore an old woman through the Stormvault’s radiant gates. She was wearing chains. Some kind of Ghurite spirit deity or demigoddess of the land, I imagined. I had encountered the like myself. A wayward power that Sigmar had been unable, or for some reason unwilling, to recruit to his Pantheon or destroy out of hand.

The halo that had been drawn above her head, however, made me wonder.

The air before me trilled with gentle power.

Sparks came off my fingers.

I had a third advantage that those I meet are often prone to overlook. I am, when all is said and done, a champion of Sigmar. My intentions towards the Stormvault were more-or-less pure.

Nassam breathed deep.

‘Do you smell that, my lord? The air is so sweet. So pure.’

I nodded. ‘Sigmar once stood here.’

‘May I ask a question, lord?’

‘As many as you like.’

‘Why are we here? Should we not be pursuing our quest, or aiding in the battle above?’

‘Fear not, my friend, the God-King would give some sort of sign if we were to go astray.’

Nassam nodded, believing every word out of my mouth as though it were hand-blessed by the arch-lector. The only downside to this, as I would later discover, was that he remembered everything too. Like all the best lies, however, it was based on truth. A Knight-Questor’s geas ruled him completely and despite my outward bluster and free-spiritedness, I don’t think I could take any action that did not in some way serve Sigmar’s purpose for me.

Fortunately for the Mortal Realms, I have always been extraordinarily good at convincing myself, and others, of what is and is not Sigmar’s will.

‘Are we not disobeying Lord-Celestant Settrus’ orders?’ he said.

‘Fear not, Nassam. I am a Knight-Questor, unbiddable even to Lord-Celestants.’ Particularly if the Lord-Celestant in question wasn’t there to stop me. ‘You will be safe from censure with me.’

‘But–’

I put my finger to my lips.

Nassam obediently fell quiet.

‘Ready your weapon.’

‘But–’

‘This is the resting place of a potent artefact or the prison of a terrible beast,’ I growled. ‘I know not which, but judging from the art that surrounds us, I think it safe to assume the latter.’

Reluctantly, the Jerech drew his greatsword.

I drew my own halberd from the bracket on my backplate.

A wooden portal lay ahead of us, man-sized, utterly inconsequential amidst the gilt and grandeur of the hall, and yet divine instinct drew me towards it. I extended my hand to the door. I felt nothing. Or, at least, nothing more overt and extraordinary than oak grain and old, polished brass. I looked at Nassam and caught him watching me rather than the door. I bared my teeth in a savage grin. Alone, I might have persuaded myself at the last moment to obey at least this one of Sigmar’s laws and turned around, but with the Jerech there with me, there was no way I would change my mind now.

And people ask me why I keep him around.

I pushed open the door, and stepped through.

Impossible machinery whirred.

A cosmic orrery of grand scale filled the central vault, concentric rings of brass and starsilver turning relentlessly about a central orb, a whooshing, grinding motion, akin to a sigmarite warblade pressed to the grinding wheel of the gods. It radiated heat. Not the muggy warmth of the Unchained Lands, but a white heat that purged the mind and turned thoughts to smoke. Liquid metal sluiced through buried channels. Glowing runes hissed. There were no guys or supports. As far as I could tell it floated under its own power. The way a moon did. And yet for all its size and power and waning influence, it was a challenge to dwell upon directly. The rotation of the rings was profoundly hypnotic. The runes’ heat stung my eyes and made my eyelids droop.

I knew the handiwork of Grungni’s disciples when I was stuck in a room with it.

But I almost forget! The vault contained one last object.

It was a bed.

An apse.

A throne with rings on the arms for chains.

I’m still not entirely certain what it was.

An old woman sat on the low dais at the foot of it, her head resting on what appeared to be an aetherdown cushion. She was garbed in pale, shapeless linens. Light chains trailed the short distance between the... let’s settle on chair, and her ankles and wrists. It was the woman from the frescoes whose internment had brought about such rejoicing. The one for whom this Stormvault had been constructed and its magic lain. It could be no other. She didn’t stir as I entered. Were it not for the raw hum of piety in my teeth, I might have imagined her long dead.

I held my hand out to bid Nassam behind me as I inched towards the chair.

The woman lifted her head towards me.

Her eyelids fluttered open.

I cried out, scalded. Her eyes were rheumy and tired, but they burned with a glory that would have bent even a warrior-devout like the Steel-Soul to one knee.

‘Who are you?’

‘Lord!’ Nassam cried, charging to my side, only to fall to his knees with a whimper as the woman graced him with her gaze. His greatsword fell from his fingers with a clatter of toughened glass.

With a crinkling of ancient fabrics, the woman straightened.

Her light appeared to shrink.

She sighed, her voice becoming smaller. ‘You interrupt my prayers.’

‘What…?’ My mouth worked as though Sigmar had ordered me to read the entire Great Library of Sigmaron. ‘What are you?’

She smiled tiredly. ‘An impertinent question to ask a lady.’

I took a cautious step towards her, wary of her light returning full force. ‘My name is Hamilcar Bear-Eater, Knight-Questor of Sigmar Heldenhammer, the God-King of Azyr and of the Mortal Realms. My lady.’ I bowed. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of me.’

‘I have been here, in this vault, for an age of the world.’

I knew that.

But I still thought it possible.

‘How times change,’ she whispered, apparently to herself. ‘Once, Sigmar would scour the realms for those who would serve as his champions. Now it would seem he simply makes his own.’

‘You are one of the Devoted?’ I asked.

‘Ansira was my name. High priestess of the temple at Ambersand. The highest seat of the cult in all of Ghur.’

I looked at the machinery around me. ‘Then why did his followers imprison you here?’

The woman, Ansira, snorted. Her intent was probably to appear contemptuous, but tears shone in her eyes before she could close them. When she opened them again, she, too, was looking up into the spinning chambers of the cosmic orrery. ‘A Penumbral Engine. Built by Grungni, although the design was not his. I do not know who bears that honour.’ She looked down. ‘The faithful ask no questions. For all that I took this seat willingly, I was a prisoner.’

‘Why?’

‘Where were you back then, Hamilcar Bear-Eater, Knight-Questor of Sigmar Heldenhammer, God-King of Azyr and of the Mortal Realms? You ask the questions I never thought to.’

I shook my head.

That had not been my intent.

Serving Sigmar is a blessed gift, one that any man or woman should be honoured to hold. I’ve never been able to figure out why anyone would give their strength to any god but him.

‘You are probably unaware of an event or two from the last few dozen centuries,’ I said. ‘The Great Necromancer, Nagash, in your time Sigmar’s ally and brother, has unleashed a plague of dark magic upon the Mortal Realms that–’

‘The Shyishan Necroquake,’ Ansira sighed. ‘Yes, I know. The Arcanum Optimar. The Time of Tribulation. The Age of Chaos.’ In spite of the waves of molten heat issuing from the cosmic orrery, she shivered, suddenly seeming very old and very frail indeed. ‘My internment within the Penumbral Engine was not the peaceful slumber that I had envisioned or was promised by the Smiths of Grungni.’

I snorted. I was with her there.

She looked down at her hands. ‘I was not young when I entered this place. I had risen to command the cult in Ghur. I had lived two hundred years. But I was healthy. My faith kept me strong.’ She raised her hands to me. They were wizened and they trembled. ‘See what my servitude has brought me. And I felt it all.’

‘You still look fair to me, my lady,’ I said.

‘Gallant. Is that your task from the God-King, Knight-Questor? To flatter me?’

‘No.’ I tapped on my breastplate. ‘That is from me.’

In spite of her blatant misery, she smiled.

‘The Penumbral Engines took great power,’ she said. ‘And faith… faith was my power. Or so it once was. That was why my own followers entombed me here within this vault. That was my task from the God-King.’

‘I fear your task is done. I am told that the Necroquake has damaged the Engine irreparably.’

‘I only wish that it had. At least then I would not have to agonise over my choice.’

‘What do you mean? What choice?’

‘Can you not see for yourself? The orrery continues to turn. The Penumbral Engine works as well now as the day the Great Maker set it from his forge.’ She was silent a moment. ‘Nightmares of death stirred me. They were strong enough to wake me, breaking my connection to the Penumbral Engine. Long enough for me to break free from it.’

‘But why…’ I said, genuinely unable to comprehend it. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

Ansira laughed a quiet, miserable laugh.

Nassam looked up from the bow he had been crouched in for about ten minutes. ‘Can you not return to it, sainted one?’

‘Never,’ said Ansira. Her voice was like slate. Brittle, but, from another angle, also hard. Black as the skies of Ulgu at night.

‘The lords of undeath that assail us will forget why they attack,’ Nassam pressed. ‘The siege will lift. The God-King’s treasures will be hidden again as he intended for them to be.’

‘I said no,’ said Ansira, her aura briefly flaring, and Nassam swiftly signed the hammer and averted his gaze with a muttered prayer. I winced. ‘If I had known then what it was I submitted to, the millennia of pain that awaited me. No. No. What loving god would abuse his faithful so?’

This was a question that only a Stormcast Eternal could properly answer.

‘I know the torment you speak of.’

I recalled the splitting of thunder, my physical body breaking under the blows of hammers, the better parts of myself falling from me as sparks, impurities of mortality to be beaten from the instrument of blessed sigmarite that the work of the God-King demanded me to be.

There are Stormcasts who embrace the storm with as much abandon as I profess to and they are, to a man and woman, all fools.

‘I understand,’ I said

‘You think so?’

‘Yes, my lady. Sigmar…’ I gritted my teeth and glanced at Nassam. A silent instruction that the words I uttered now were a secret to remain forever within the confines of the Stormvault, ‘…demands much of those to whom much has been given.’

‘I can see what he has given you, Knight-Questor. You are tall, strong, mighty. A panoply to match your fine body. Look at me, Hamilcar. What has this god of ours given me that he can demand so much?’

I waved my hand as though this should be obvious. We were getting closer towards my element here. Settrus and his Imperishables could fight until the Old Ones came home, but I could wrap up the whole affair right then and there.

All I had to do was convince a high priestess of Sigmar where her devotion lay.

‘He has given you a purpose.’

She snorted.

I blinked, taken aback.

‘And what purpose?’ she said.

‘You have kept one of his greatest secrets here, my lady. And spared the realms the ruin of those who would misuse it.’

‘Are you a fool, Bear-Eater. Or is it merely an act?’

‘My… lady?’

She shook her head sadly. ‘The realms have been brought to ruin so many times while I’ve slept that I have lost count of the times. The two Great Waaaghs! of Gorkamorka. Another so-called ally and brother of the God-King. Then Chaos. The wars of Death.’ She rested her head back upon her cushioned seat. ‘Ambersand no longer even exists. My temple was crushed under the foot of the Great Green God not a hundred years after my confinement. So tell me, wise one, what exactly has my torment saved the Mortal Realms from?’

‘You can’t know how much worse things might have been.’

‘Believe me, Hamilcar. I have had a long time to imagine.’

‘Do you even know what the Stormvault contains?’

‘A weapon.’

My eyebrow lifted.

‘Take it if you want,’ Ansira muttered into her cushion. ‘I no longer believe that it matters.’

My fingers flexed of their own volition. They were tempted. Awfully tempted.

‘Lord Hamilcar would never betray the faith of the God-King,’ said Nassam.

I frowned. But he was probably right.

‘Sigmar has blessed you with long life,’ I said. ‘Longer than most mortals could imagine. Who else can say they have served their god as long or as well? Even for an immortal like me, the realms are too full of dangers for us to expect the span that you have seen. Even if much of it has been visions of horror, you must have seen as well the embers of hope. With the help of his faithful it was Sigmar who did this. Return to the Penumbral Engine, and as Hamilcar Bear-Eater stands before you now you’ll live to see the return of a Golden Age to the Mortal Realms.’

‘Eternal life is a cruel gift to bestow on one in constant pain. Is that something Sigmar would do? Or would you think that the hallmark of his nemeses within the Dark Pantheon? Look at me, Bear-Eater. Look at me. If you came upon a warrior of yours in this state, would you not deliver them mercy?’

‘But you have power, my lady.’

‘The power to do only his bidding. The power to suffer forever in his name. To a conviction I no longer share. My power came from my faith, so if, in my heart, I deny him, do I still have power?’ She closed her eyes. I think she wept anew. ‘Leave me, Bear-Eater. I will not be persuaded.’

‘But–’

‘You waste your gifts arguing with an old woman. Even if you could somehow persuade me, it would do you no good.’

‘Why not?’

Her smile was brief and broken. That of a lifelong captive gifted one last day in the sun before her end. ‘Because I do not have faith.’

A rumbling crash from somewhere above us reverberated through the vault. We weren’t so far from the walls that we couldn’t hear the screams. The orrery spun on, regardless. I took its cue and tried to ignore it.

‘Lord?’ said Nassam.

‘But when I entered,’ I said, ignoring him, my eyes fixed on the old priestess, ‘you told me that you were praying.’

‘I was,’ she said, and with her eyes closed she smiled. ‘I was praying for death.’

As if in response to that dire pronouncement, the great aetar-made walls shook. The air grew hot, the arcane machine that whirred around us seething as master rune after master rune exerted against some inimical working of magic. Now, I’m no sorcerer, as I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, but I’m as much a creature of the Cosmic Storm as I am a warrior of flesh and blood. Even I could sense the great tide of undeath that that casting had set loose. I heard the clatter of hooves, screams getting closer. A potent wielder of Shyish was approaching, his full attentions turned upon the Stormvault at last.

And not before time if you ask me.

Nassam turned to me. ‘Lord?’

‘Wait here.’

I opened the portal and stepped back out into the hall.

The far end wall was gone, along with most of the ceiling. Whether it had been felled by sorcery or by artillery I didn’t know, and both are equally low forms of warfare in my estimation. A malevolent amethyst fog pressed through the breaks in the masonry like a primordial creature of Death, the surviving wards on the blessed stone hissing as the fog smothered them one by one. Human warriors in quartered liveries of burgundy and gold screamed in terror as they fled the encroaching mist. And worse. As I watched, hexwraiths, armoured skeleton knights riding on aethereal steeds, galloped from the Endless Spell, a foam-crested wave of vague horse forms upon which scythe-wielding warriors were cast against the broken Freeguild.

I felt terrifically selfish and unworthy of the soldiers’ sacrifices just then.

Nassam was right. In my heart, I knew I should have been out there with them when the attack had come.

There was more than one Champion of the God-King in this fortress.

From where I was standing, there were hundreds.

‘Warriors of Sigmar, to me!’ I bellowed, stepping fully into the inner courtyard and waving my halberd above my head. ‘The Bear-Eater stands here! Retreat to the Stormvault!’

A shriek split the air. I looked to the jagged rent in the ceiling fresco.

The sight both lifted my heart, and then spitefully crushed it.

Aeygar tumbled out of the sky, her golden body entwined with that of a ghastly skeletal drake. The two behemoths bit and tore at one another. The aetar princess outspanned her undead rival almost twofold, but the rising strength of undeath had given it undue weight. Its bones were black iron and indestructible to any mortal blow. Powerful spirit energies boiled from the sockets of its skull, and from between the gaps in its bones. It was a creature I knew well.

I breathed its name as though uttering it aloud would cost me my soul.

‘Ashigaroth.’

Its presence meant one thing.

Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Being a Pain In My Neck, sat high in the abyssal’s saddle. With a wave of his pale hand, a gout of insubstantial fire washed over Aeygar. The eagle shrieked. Her armoured torque glowed white hot. Ashigaroth sank its teeth into her neck, buckling the enchanted metal scales. Aeygar raked furiously with talons the length of sword blades. Precious metals rained to earth as the eagle screeched mournfully. Ashigaroth trumpeted as she pulled herself from its clutches and withdrew, shaking the Stormvault to its foundations.

I watched the princess depart, but all I could think of was death. The jaws of the abyssal on my chest. Crushing the life from me. The lure of the spirit hosts in its gullet. Pulling me under as Death sought to devour me. Even as the tug of Sigmaron pulled against it. The promise of oblivion versus the agonies of Reforging.

Even now, I’m not sure I got the better deal.

I gulped down a breath, used it to compensate with a roar of my own.

‘To me,’ I yelled, stepping forth as though I had never before known fear, to behead a hexwraith and usher fleeing soldiers through the door behind me. Bellowing in fury, I swung at the fleeting shade of a dread knight. It bled into the mists from whence it had threatened to strike, and my blade swept through it, two more warriors ducking under the sweep of my arm and escaping inside.

I bellowed against the rising tide, chainrasps scratching at my sigmarite greaves, spirit hosts pulling on my beard, and only when it became clear that no lesser a being than Sigmar himself was still alive out there did I step back into the Stormvault myself. I tried to haul it shut behind me but the pull of the dead held it fast. I walked backwards to give myself room to fight, twirling my halberd in readiness.

About two-score human spear- and bowmen had escaped the slaughter and had mustered with Nassam in an almost instinctual circle of protection around Ansira. The old priestess was recumbent on the dais, head in the seat of her chair, unsurprised and apparently unmoved by the approach of our demise. With all of that being so, I found myself somewhat envious of her ability to rally the shattered Freeguilds to her.

I was going to have to up my game.

‘Whatever comes through that door!’ I bellowed, turning towards it with my halberd gripped two-handed. I bared my teeth. ‘Face it without fear, for Hamilcar will be facing it first and he will show you how it’s done.’

Bolts of Azyrite energy blitzed the open doorway, and in spite of my bravado I covered my eyes and retreated from the shrieks of the twice-slain.

There is, I suppose, some irony in the fact that the only power I truly fear these days is that which flows from the same source as my own.

Lord-Celestant Settrus and a Thunderhead Brotherhood of Imperishables swept into the Stormvault even as I drew my hand from my reddened eyes. The Liberators pivoted on the heel, locked shields, and planted them on the ground with a clang. The Judicators then turned, automata following the same clockwork routine, laying boltstorm crossbows on their brothers’ shoulders and volleying the corridor with lightning.

Settrus strode towards me.

Then past.

He dropped to one knee before the cosmic orrery and signed the hammer across his breast. ‘Sigmar, Lord of Heaven, forgive this unworthy trespass.’

His gaze slid across the moving wonder of the Penumbral Engine before settling on the old woman.

She returned it quite evenly.

I loved her, I think. Just a little bit.

Settrus’ fist tightened around the grip of his hammer. ‘Who is this? And how did she come to be in here?’

‘I think they actually built it around her,’ I said.

‘I do not understand you.’

‘It means she has protected this Stormvault far longer than you or I have been around.’

Settrus took a moment to scrutinise the spinning orrery.

He was as much a Lord-Ordinator as I am a Knight-Incantor, but this, as I know, is no reason to refrain from professing unwavering certainty on a subject upon which countless lives would ultimately depend.

‘Then she can do so again,’ he said.

Ansira shook her head. ‘No.’

‘You will.’

‘No.’

The Lord-Celestant took a step towards her, his gaze practically drilling into her. ‘You will.’

‘There is nothing you can threaten that will be worse than what I have known. I am old,’ Ansira wailed. ‘I have already given Sigmar so much. Why can’t you just let me die?’

Settrus made a sound of disgust and looked away.

‘Sigmar has commanded it, and so it must be–’

‘They are here!’

The shout came from the corridor.

An explosion of purple-edged fury took out the Liberator shield wall and most of the doorframe, and threw the bodies inwards, the immediately slain breaking down into lightning before they hit the ground.

‘You prayed for death,’ I roared, turning my head to Ansira. ‘I think death heard, my lady, but not death alone.’

‘Warriors to me,’ Settrus commanded.

‘Freeguild to me!’ I roared.

‘Give no ground,’ Settrus went on. Even then, in the face of battle and next to me, the Lord-Celestant did not raise his voice. He would not concede the dead even that much. ‘Let the ground give. We who have claimed death will yield it nothing.’

The surviving Liberators re-formed into a short line with their Lord-Celestant at its centre. They hoisted shields as one, as a wedge of heavily armoured, definitely corporeal foot knights rushed through the ruined archway. They came in spiked and fluted armour, night black and deep, deep purple. Batwing motifs, which I now know heralded them as household knights of the Shyishan state of Carstinia, adorned helmets and rondels and pinned cloaks to pallid necks. They hissed as they sprinted at the Liberators, delivering challenges in accordance with some chivalric code and attempting to transfix them with the glare of bloodshot eyes. They crashed into the Liberators as though someone had thrown a bucketful of swords at a shield wall. They were blurs of speed, centuries of blade skill allied to vampiric strength, and the equal of the Liberators in every way but numbers.

In that they bettered them at least four to one.

Nassam, meanwhile, rushed to my side with about fifteen spearmen in tow. Freeguild-trained greatswords served as honour guards to their generals and heroes, and, adorable as that was, that remained his first instinct in battle.

‘Defend the old woman,’ I told them. ‘Leave this to Sigmar’s own heroes.’

Something altogether mightier than a vampire forced an entrance through the doorway rubble. A pair of morghasts. The arcai type, I was sure, armed with black-bladed halberds half again as long as mine. The harbinger type that I had faced earlier were assassins, constructed to the sole end of ensuring the Mortal Realms knew that Nagash was unhappy about something. The arcai were the bodyguards of the God of Death and his generals, and rarely ventured far beyond their sight.

As if to congratulate me on my knowledge of Shyish, Mannfred von Carstein strode in between them like a nobleman on a summer stroll.

The Mortarch was unnaturally tall. His head was bald with a ridged brow, his face bestial and far from human. His eyes were dominated by the whites, no iris or pupils, and the canines were huge in his mouth. He was armoured as his knights were, in ridges of black plate. Gothic shoulder guards flared back from his breastplate, batwings ribbed with gold, and stamped in turn with rondel pieces in the shape of chiropteran skulls. In his right hand he carried a long sword. In the other, a long-handled glaive with a curved sickle edge. Both weapons were surrounded by nimbi of unsubtle killing force. Skeletal runes on the two weapons, and on the Mortarch’s armour, sucked the life energy out of the room.

‘Mannfred!’ I bellowed, driving every spark of belligerence and charisma in my being into those syllables, and struck my halberd’s ferule on the ground. ‘We meet again!’

The vampire turned to me, and I felt the awesome tonnage of centuries that lay behind those death-white eyes. He had grown in power since the years we had spent stalking one another across the forests of Cartha and the Sea of Bones. The renewed patronage of his master and the Arcanum Optimar had been good to him.

But then, I hadn’t exactly been sitting on my hands since the Realmgate Wars either.

‘Bear-Eater,’ he snarled.

Bellowing at the top of my lungs, I launched myself at the smirking Mortarch.

It was not all bluster. The armies of Death depend on their figurehead the way those of the Kharadron rely on their endrin – take it away and things start falling. If I could slay Mannfred von Carstein then I could decapitate his army and live to boast about it afterwards.

This is what I call win-win.

I swung my halberd like a headsman’s axe. Had it connected it would have cloven the vampire in two and, as messy as that would have been, I would have been more than happy with that. As it was, Mannfred yielded. He bent like a snake, upper body twisting away from me even as his legs stayed rooted, his sword whipping back across his body to meet the descending blade. Our weapons clanged, locked, and we held that pose for the span of a heartbeat, snarling in each other’s faces, testing each other’s strength.

He struck me an uppercut that lifted me from the ground like a toy soldier.

The back of my shoulder plate crunched into the cosmic orrery. I bit my bottom lip with the impact. I had a moment to appreciate the power of the machine I had just hit as it spasmed through me, just as one of the outer spheres sliced across my arm and flung me sideways.

I must have gone a dozen feet, over the heads of the melee certainly, but somehow Mannfred was there waiting when I landed.

His glaive arced down for me. I rolled. The cruel blade gouged into the rock, an inch from my face. I sprang quickly to my feet. Mannfred saluted me with a dip of the head and a flourish of his sword, his glaive humming as he spun it lightly about the wrist.

He was playing with me.

Gripping my halberd two-handed, across my body like an oar, I went at the bloodsucker with both ends.

With an effortless twirl of his glaive and the occasional back-step he parried blade and butt, his smirk widening all the while.

‘I have missed you, Hamilcar. Unlife has hardly been the same since Sigmar called off your hunt for me. The Hallowed Knights did not take the same pleasure in our chase.’ A dizzying combination of sword and glaive reversed us, turned me onto the back foot. An up-swing from the glaive broke open my guard. The halberd’s shaft went up, over my head, my chest open. ‘I appreciated that.’ His sword darted out for my heart.

It struck the flat of Settrus’ hammer.

The Lord-Celestant’s cloak sparkled, killing forces earthing themselves through his armoured frame and rippling out through his sigmarite warcloak.

‘My name is Settrus,’ he announced, in a voice that brooked no contradiction, ‘Lord-Celestant of the Imperishables, and I command you die.’

Mannfred flinched.

The Mortarch of Night actually flinched.

His dismay lasted about a second. And then he started to laugh. If I had hoped it to be the peculiar mode of his demise then disappointment was as swift and unerring as a star-fated arrow from a realmhunter’s bow.

He punched Settrus in the chest, crushing the sigmarite breastplate around his fist, and tossed the Lord-Celestant aside.

‘Oh, Sigmar,’ he cried. His laughter became screeches of merriment. ‘What advantage do you seek to gain from this sleight of hand?’ His smile was predatory and wide as Settrus struggled back up, breath rasping through at least one ruptured lung. ‘You lie, thief. You are not the king whose name you bear! If you were he, then I would be slain already.’

‘Hamilcar!’

My bellow drew the vampire’s attention from the injured Lord-Celestant, and I lunged at him like a wild man from the Everwinter, dropping my halberd shaft over his shoulders and pinning him between it and my body. His feet kicked up off the ground as I bent backwards and pulled. He gnashed his fangs. I grinned.

Settrus, one hand cosseting his chest, hefted his warhammer grimly.

In light of the events that followed, my memories of the fight are understandably somewhat hazy.

I think we were winning…

I slid down the wall of the vault, my body aching as though I’d been run over both ways by a gryph-charger. The rough outline of a fist had been hammered into my armour in several places. I groaned, my head ringing with the faraway sounds of thunder. Settrus, meanwhile, struggled in a chokehold. Mannfred lifted the Lord-Celestant the way a knight might raise a goblet to his king, ignoring the Imperishable’s kicks to his chest and crushing the warrior’s gorget in his grip.

‘To Sigmar,’ Mannfred laughed, his mild manner betrayed by the animal hiss in his words. ‘Do not consider me ungrateful, cur, for holding this Stormvault safe for my return.’

He looked away from the helpless Lord-Celestant.

Only two of Settrus’ Liberators were still fighting, backed into a corner by the furious Carstinian blood knights. The Freeguild had been massacred attempting to fend off the two arcai. Nassam and a couple of spearmen were all that were left, resolutely defending Ansira’s dais, as well as the bowmen pestering the bone behemoths with arrows.

Mannfred gestured wearily towards the priestess.

‘Kill the woman,’ said Mannfred. ‘Break the machine. Ransack the room. Whoever presents me with the Witchglaive of U’hor can count upon a thousand years of my esteem.’

The vampiric knight nearest to the machine hastened to obey.

Settrus’ grip on Mannfred’s forearm suddenly tightened, forcing the Mortarch to look him in the eye.

‘That which Sigmar forbade shall never be wielded.’

Mannfred dangled the Lord-Celestant like a piece of meat. ‘And how do you intend to prevent it, nameless wretch?’

‘I… command you… die.’

With his one free arm, the Lord-Celestant reached up and thrust a hand into the cosmic orrery.

His scream, then, was the first and last time I ever heard him raise his voice.

The spinning spheres took his hand off at the wrist. His head snapped back, and he howled. Blue fire erupted from the mouth and eye slits of his helmet. The breath of Dracothion. The Apotheosis fire of the Stormcast Eternals. Mannfred dropped him with a scream of his own. He flapped his hand, flinging droplets of metal from what had previously been a gauntlet all over the floor. But Settrus did not fall. He hung there, cruciform, like a Celestian Vortex, lightning spitting from him as his body dissolved. Where bolts struck the Penumbral Engine it juddered. The room spun. Suddenly I was standing. My halberd in the other hand. Mannfred dragging himself backwards towards the door. Another bolt hit. Another leap forward. I was on the ground. Mannfred on top of me, red-eyed and bestial, ripping at my gorget with his teeth. An arcai dashed Nassam into the wall. The next moment the Jerech was beside me, putting bullet after bullet into Mannfred’s body. My memory was in pieces. Settrus was the only constant to that room then as Sigendil is to us all. Lightning poured out of him. His cries grew. He was no longer a man, nor even the shape of one. He was lightning. The fires beneath his helmet began to waver.

And still, he would not submit.

‘He is not strong enough for this,’ I heard Ansira shout over the storm.

‘Watch!’ I yelled back. ‘Settrus is the strongest soul I know. He can survive any–’

With a final scream the Lord-Celestant broke apart.

Lightning sprayed to the eight corners of the cosmos. Blood knights dropped instantly to ash. Morghasts lost their animating power and became lifeless bone. Mannfred crumpled like a set of clothes with no wearer, red steam rising off his bones as lightning arced across the Penumbral Engine, bored into the walls, and made the entire mountain shake.

I took a rather nasty sunburn too, let me tell you.

‘Settrus?’ I bellowed.

But he was gone. Really gone. Deep down, I knew that. Broken into a billion pieces to feed the Penumbral Engine with a few lost and stuttering seconds of faith. Grungni himself could hammer at what was left of him, but until Khorne grew tired of blood, nobody was putting him back together after that.

‘His power was a gift,’ Ansira wept.

What she must have endured to keep the Penumbral Engine running for so many centuries was brought home to me with Settrus’ end. I was awed by it. Had my muscles not been so stiff I might have bent the knee, as Nassam had been wise enough to do from the outset.

‘If Sigmar could have driven the engine with his own power then he would have.’ She shook her head. ‘So much sacrifice.’

‘It is all right, my lady. I have it from here.’

I advanced unsteadily to where Mannfred scrabbled in a pool of his own blood and howled like an injured wolf.

‘No,’ she said, sadly. ‘You don’t.’

I glanced back to see her ease Nassam’s protective arm from hers and then lift herself far enough to ease back into her iron chair.

‘No, my lady. You don’t have to.’

After seeing for myself what had happened to Settrus, I understood what the Penumbral Engine demanded of her.

I took a step towards Mannfred, halberd up like a sealing spear.

‘You can win this battle,’ she said, crossing her arms over her chest with a clink of chain, ‘but Sigmar would keep this fortress forever.

‘Only I can do that,’ said Ansira.

And closed her eyes.