‘I want to know from where, how, and the numbers they bring,’ I say. ‘So that I can know where best to stand and how long I will need to spend killing.’
‘The local tribes speak of a skaven lair,’ Xeros muses, his eyes turning inwards. ‘Somewhere to the far south, across the Nevermarsh.’
‘I do not care where they come from. Only where they are now.’
‘I have seen nothing, but I will send word to Lord-Castellant Akturus. Perhaps he has seen something in the labyrinth that will look different in light of the lady’s news.’
The Lord-Castellant of the Anvils of Heldenhammer is a grim soul without a shred of humour to his name, but the most brutal, indomitable warrior I have ever seen. Endless patrols of the gloom that surrounds the Azyr Gate seem to content him while I rule as Sigmar’s regent over these lands. It is a division of labour that suits me equally well.
‘Send him word,’ I agree.
‘What are you doing?’ Vikaeus asks as I move around the table to follow after Broudiccan and Frankos.
I do not answer.
A Lord-Relictor of the Hallowed Knights I had once known, a man almost as quick to judge as Vikaeus, had once asked what madness called me to the role of Lord-Castellant. I am impatient, intemperate and afflicted by the curse of the wanderer. Indeed, I am firmly of the opinion that no cause was ever best served by waiting. But one trait I do hold in common with the Lords-Castellant of Sigmar’s hosts – the determination to defend Sigmar’s people, and to safeguard his realm with every weapon I can bring to bear.
Outside of the keep, nets and timber scaffolding cling to every surface that is, was, or is meant to be even remotely vertical. Hammers beat on nails while children shriek, the sounds alike to those of the aetár that dwell above. New cabins rise from the ashes of the old beastman yurts, faster almost than the masons and carpenters can physically assemble them. The scents of dung and sawdust follow men about their business like begging urchins. There is a living anarchy to the frontiersman spirit that I, champion of the cosmic order, ordinarily find ironically pleasing.
But not today.
Every child’s cry is directed to me as a warning. Every effluent channel and lumber wain is a menace that draws my eyes and sets my heart to beating. I bare my teeth as I survey it all.
Vikaeus is never wrong.
Not all Lords-Veritant are created equal. All serve as the seekers and purgators of Chaos in their own unique way, but Vikaeus’ gift for prophecy is known throughout the Stormhosts. Thinking of the vision she described troubles me more than I would willingly let it.
As I clatter down the stone steps to the gatehouse, a group of tonsured Listeners in soft, muted robes try to shush me.
A fortress did not come by a name like ‘the Seven Words’ without a long story behind it. It is hewn from the Gorkoman, Ghur’s highest peak, and the seven winds of power, from enigmatic Hyish to the blackest Ulgu, all blow across its battlements. In ancient times, Listeners travelled from across creation to kneel in blustery contemplation of the state of the realms. Now only a dozen or so dare the pilgrimage. Most are human, all from Sigmaron, and they listen not for the purity of the calling but for the military advantage to be gleaned from far-flung wars in distant realms. The last word, as always, belongs to Azyr. The Celestial Realm does not speak from the sky, for its power is bound and channelled to the dolmen of stone, metal and runecraft that lies deep within the mountainous foundations of the fort. Realmgates are to the realms what roads and rivers are to the petty empires within them, and the Azyr Gate is the second most important function for the Seven Words.
I briefly consider asking the monks if they found disturbances less frequent under Uxor Untamed, but manage to resist on this occasion. There are more pressing things on my mind than baiting the Order.
‘Hamilcar!’
I look over my shoulder to see Vikaeus following me. She ignores the mortals’ admonishing looks.
‘You cannot search under every home and flagstone.’
‘I will, if that is what it takes.’ Shielding my eyes from the mountain sun, I look up to the sturdily made, if old, ballista tower that stands bestride the main gate. ‘Barbarus!’ My voice could carry over a dozen battlefields, and there is not tumult in this world to drown it out when I have a mind to be heard. The Knight-Venator turns from the view to look down to me.
His armour is decorated with feathers from a score of different birds and beasts. His folded wings crackle with frustrated Azyrite power.
‘Is there anything out there?’ I ask. Barbarus shrugs and shakes his head. I gesture up to the hard blue sky. ‘Fly up. I would hear of anything untoward.’
With a nod of his beaked helm, the Knight-Venator flings back his wings. A thunderclap of godly power fills them with the seven winds and drags him skywards.
‘It is not enough to run about like a painted grot from a forest fire,’ Vikaeus snarls, watching Barbarus glimmer upwards. ‘We need to take time. Think. Corral the civilians into safer areas and conduct a more thorough search.’ She brandishes her staff, the star-born lantern swaying. ‘With Akturus’ and Xeros’ support, I will uncover the skaven’s plot and drive them into the light.’
I frown. An idea begins to form in my mind. ‘There is never enough time.’ Even as I think it through, I am striding through the wheel-rutted muck towards the gates.
Men crawl over it, hammering and sawing. One half of the gate is braced with wooden scaffolds and wedged shut with timber blocks. At my approach, they look up in surprise. I wave them down. ‘Send the men home, Danneil,’ I say, addressing the shift foreman by name, for I know them all. Workmen hurry by me as I lift the locking bar and throw it easily aside.
‘Sweet light of Sigendil,’ Vikaeus curses.
The clarion ring of Frankos’ battle-horn startles the roosting aetár to flight, its wing-shadow darkening my face as I glance up. The crowds, already made aware that something is amiss by the presence of their Lord-Castellant, three ill-tempered gryph-hounds and one of Sigmar’s dreaded Chaos-hunters, murmur uneasily at the winged omen.
I turn to Vikaeus.
The sun strikes her armour, ricocheting bolts of silver and gold. Her eyes burn as they meet mine. Not with a zealot’s fire but with a blinding cold that no hardship could ever quench.
We could not be more dissimilar.
‘Conduct your search, Lord-Veritant.’ I feel the impulse to clasp her shoulders in my hands and bid her rich hunting, but my arms wisely refuse to place my hands in such peril. Instead, I pull affectionately on Crow’s beak. ‘Aid the Lord-Veritant’s search. Behave with her hounds.’ I turn back to Vikaeus. ‘I will give you time.’
Before she can ask what I intend, I push through the single working gate and step out onto the rocky berm that extends in a half-circle from the gatehouse.
Distance. Scale. All of it falls from me as if the bottom has come away from the world. A duardin skybridge arcs from the shoulder of the Gorkoman to the peak of the next. No rope or strut supports it, just a single jaw-dropping arch of mottled granite. Clouds race below, like rapids at the bottom of a deep gorge, churned up by the protruding rock of lesser peaks. The winds tear at me, as if to drag me with them, making a storm of my long hair and beard.
I walk to the bridge and peer across.
The far side is hidden by the arch of the skybridge and hazed by distance, but still, no army will cross unnoticed by Barbarus’ Vanguard chambers and the Freeguild regiments that man the walls.
The berm is unpaved yet mostly smooth. Its slope is imperceptible to the eye, but enough to see most siege engines rolling to the precipice. Scrubby vegetation and goat trails cling to the fortress walls until the mountain becomes too sheer.
I turn about, backing up until I stand on the bridge and in full view of my fortress’ walls. The mortal cohorts that guard them watch me. Expectant Stormcasts in maroon
and gold and a mix of animal furs only now arrive to take their places alongside them.
‘Before you stands Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’ I roar, holding my arms out wide and clenching my fists until they shake. ‘The greatest warrior to walk this realm since Sigmar in the Age of Myth!’
Whether it is true or not hardly matters, so long as men believe it. And Sigmar, they believe it.
I cup a hand to my ear as though I cannot hear them cheer.
‘Zephacleas Beast-Bane, you say?’ I scoff. ‘Who is this champion in a mask who wishes his name were…’ I thump my breastplate and shout, ‘Hamilcar!’
The battlements erupt with wild cheers and laughter. I wait for it to settle, then wave for quiet as it begins to look as though it will not do so on its own.
‘I bring fell tidings, daughters and sons.’ Silence comes then. I wait for it to fill the great emptiness that surrounds us. ‘Azyr sends warning that the foul skaven have their sights set on our new home.’ I strike the butt of my halberd on the rock and present the open gate with my spare hand. ‘See how I fear the verminous, hunchbacked, ill-begotten bastard child of the Ruinous Powers. See how I quiver before the wide-open gate of my great fortress.’
I turn my back on the wall now, drawing an enormous breath as if I might suck in the expanse of sky, and then shout as loud as I can. ‘Hear me, vermin! My gate is open! Face me. One on one or all together, it concerns me not. Best me here and my fortress stands open.’
A smattering of uncertain laughter edges down the wall behind me.
My peers believe the realms can be claimed through skill-at-arms, but I disagree. I have died once, slain by a swordsman with a monstrous ally that surpassed even my lost hounds and I in skill and strength. No. It is with reckless courage, infectious heart and brute charisma that Chaos will be put to the sword.
‘I am not moving until you show yourselves!’
My voice drains into the depthless blue. Then, there is silence. It stretches, only the howling wind and the clink of spears against armour to be heard. The men, duardin and aelves shuffle nervously alongside the solitary ogor of the Seven Words Freeguild.
Minutes pass.
‘Lord-Castellant,’ Broudiccan calls down softly from the walls, where he stands at the head of a dozen judicators of the Bear-Eaters. ‘I really don’t think that–’
There is a rustle from the undergrowth to my right, and the grasses part around a hunched and hooded figure. It is clad in armour made from rusty iron plates, patched together with inferior metals and all covered by a singed cloak. Every change of the winds’ direction brings a flinch that seems to begin in its twitching snout and spread through its entire furry body. It carries a scrap of almost-white cloth uncertainly between its forepaws.
‘Do not… do not kill-kill,’ it says, its voice something between a hiss and whisper.
I shrug, turning my halberd so that it lies point down. ‘I kill one and there will be thousands more hiding back there somewhere.’
It bobs its head. ‘Yes-yes. Many thousands.’
I can tell that its heart is not in the boast. Standing alone on a windy berm before the Lord-Castellant of the Seven Words was clearly not what it had been expecting of its day.
But therein lies the virtue of recklessness.
Even a skaven war-leader would never expect its enemy to do something as foolish as this.
‘I am Rillik,’ the skaven said. ‘Envoy and word-rat to Master Warlock Ikrit, under-ruler of the Nevermarsh, broacher of the Crystal Labyrinth of Tzeentch, he who penetrated the Hex of Hyish that clouds Tyrion’s white gates and stole into the Kingdom of Naga–’
I interrupt it with a short laugh. ‘If I recite my titles and deeds we will be here until my soldiers tire and go home, rat.’ Anxious laughter ripples through the ranks behind me. ‘You accept my terms?’
‘I–’ Its tail lashes at the undergrowth. ‘Er–’ It fiddles with the white sheet in its paws. ‘Master Warlock Ikrit accepts your challenge, but not the terms. He is uninterested in your stone-warren. He will accept-take your surrender. Alive.’
A vision of myself, caged in warp lightning and screaming, suddenly fills my thoughts. I wonder, for a moment, if I have been given a glimpse of Vikaeus’ prophecy.
I shrug it off. There can be no surrender now.
‘What can he want with me?’
‘He promise-squeak to take…’ Rillik tittered. ‘Pains. To make that clear when you are his prisoner.’ It presents its grubby sheet to me. ‘May I?’
I nod, and Rillik hoists his white rag overhead, waving it towards the bridge. I think I see something glint on the other side.
‘What now?’ I ask.
Rillik is already slinking into the undergrowth. More quickly, I note, than the skaven had emerged in the first place.
A sudden cry goes up from the watchers on the wall and I grip my halberd as though it is Sigmar’s own outstretched hand.
The skaven are coming.
Granite pounds under the clatter of metal, and sunlight turns off the red armour of the vermin. I squint as something colossal crests the bridge.
It is hunched in the manner of a rat, but taller still than I by half again. It is a golem cobbled together from the materials that scavengers might find to hand: metal plates, wooden planks, rattling chains, even stretched hides and furs are evident in its construction. One arm is a multi-barrelled firearm, with belts dribbling corrosive bile. The other ends in a spiked mace the size of my chest. A tail made of thick iron chains drags, like a ship’s anchor, on the stones behind it. It comes with a curiously hesitant stop-start gait, one leg or the other always dragging, but its speed is deceptive. As it draws nearer I realise that this is no sorcerous automaton, but a war machine piloted by a living rat. A square section of its hugely armoured torso section has been slotted with holes for a pilot to see through.
There is no break in the cheering behind me as the construct grinds and belches to a halt before us. Their voices become a chant, beaten to the time of iron ferrules on hard stone.
‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’
My heart swells. Even against this monstrosity they have no doubt.
‘Under-ruler of the Nevermarsh? He who penetrated the Hex of Hyish?’ I ask, my head tilting back. ‘I expected something bigger.’
‘Master Ikrit is too high-great to fight his own battles, fool-fool.’ Its voice is a hollow shriek, like the whistle of a steam tank. ‘You will see-smell him when you are safely in chains.’ It swings around its ratling gun, the weapon chewing noisily on its belt feeds.
Bellowing a prayer to Sigmar, I unhook the warding lantern from my belt and draw back the shutter. Golden light bursts from the relic and hammers the skaven battle construct with the radiance of Azyr. The pilot hisses and closes its mangy eyes, but its pain is merely a welcome side effect.
The light of Azyr is my shield.
Green-flecked bullets rip from the construct’s spinning gun barrels. Most spray wide, but the sheer volume of fire ensures that some at least find me. Bullets slam into the wall of light, surrounding me in golden ripples of misspent force. The noise is deafening, but I am still yelling, screaming against the pain as dozens of the poisonous lead balls punch through the shield and batter my armour.
Another Lord-Castellant might take this as evidence to the value of his helmet, but not I. With covered head, I am just another Astral Templar; I could be Vandalus Dustking or even Zephacleas bloody Beast-Bane.
But I am not just any Astral Templar.
‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’
Through it all though, I have breath enough to yell my name.
‘Hamilcar!’
The construct’s gun empties with a whine of empty, spinning tubes. I kick the construct in its torso section, even though my warding aura dims. It is huge, but Sigmar’s Stormcasts are no featherweights. The war mach
ine totters from me, its heavy tail curling and scraping underfoot.
With space enough to swing, I spin my halberd one-handed until it blurs. I pick my moment, stabbing at the vision grille, then pull back, twirling the haft again and striking the cutting edge through the belts of its gun-arm. Unspent bullets spill to the ground like ball bearings and scatter for the precipice. The pilot squeals in outrage. My halberd’s blade spits purple sparks as it parries the skaven’s steam-powered mace. Once, then twice. It is too big simply to block and I do not try, instead knocking it off target with timed strokes. By the third, my arm is ringing. I strike the mace-head with all my strength, hard enough to twist the entire war engine around, only for its massive chain-link tail to keep it balanced.
The backswing crunches into my breastplate. Working against its own momentum robs the blow of power, but there is enough left in its arm to crack the sigmarite and hurl me into the curtain wall.
I test my ribs with a big breath and stumble back along the wall until I am well out of its reach. Nothing is broken, and the restorative power of my lantern is already repairing my bruises.
At the same time, the skaven walker circles around, snickering.
A gap opens up between us.
‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’
I hear a crack and a fistful of granite explodes from the wall near to where I stand. A greenish curl of powder rises from the far side of the bridge.
I confess to being just a little impressed. Only a genuine marksman can miss by only a foot from upwards of six miles away.
‘One on one or all together,’ the war machine’s pilot cackles. ‘You squeak-say that it concerns you not.’
Even though it hurts my ribs, I have to laugh.
More shells burst in the wall around me. A titter rings from the skaven’s speech pipes. But I will make this work for me. Every Lord-Castellant knows the secret to a good defence.
I hurl myself at the skaven machine with a cry, my toecaps leaving the earth as I leap through the skaven fire, and bring my halberd slamming down onto the construct’s hunched shoulders.
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