Hamilcar- Champion of the Gods - David Guymer

by Warhammer

  I got my first glimpse of Frankos’ Heavens Forged.

  If the Vikaeus that Ong had conjured for my interrogation in the Forge Eternal had spoken a word of truth then there were upwards of a thousand Stormcast in the Seven Words, and by the looks of it half of them were on the Bear Road. At least a hundred and fifty Heavens Forged and their retainers marched up and down the wide road, coming in and out of larger buildings that the command echelon had apparently requisitioned to serve as garrisons and district command posts. The frontages had been draped in anvil and lightning bolt heraldry. The battlements positively glittered with amethyst and gold.

  A smaller, grim-looking detail of Liberators and Judicators stood behind a stockade at the near-end of the road, towering over a small crowd of jeering townsfolk.

  ‘This is our home,’ screamed one, a young woman with mud streaks on her face.

  ‘Those driven from the Gorwood are found homes by the conclave representative, or by the temples, while we are thrown out of ours,’ shouted another, to much grumbling assent.

  ‘Where is Frankos of the Heavens Forged?’

  ‘Where is the justice? Where is Sigmar?’

  Squaring my shoulders, I strutted towards the stockade. ‘What’s going on here?’

  The Liberator-Prime was a huge man in shining amethyst plate that looked as though it had never seen use in battle. His hair was long and red, his beard wildly unkempt. Both straggled in the wind. He had probably gone unhelmed in an attempt to put the mortal townsfolk more at ease. A worthy effort, if undermined somewhat by his divine stature and heroic build.

  ‘It’s Frankos’ orders,’ he grunted, chewing on the words and spitting them my way. ‘He needs barracks for a strengthened garrison on the main gate and outer walls, as well as the roads cleared for the movement of reinforcements.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you, brother.’

  ‘Sigmar bless you, Hamilcar,’ one of the men cried. ‘Sigmar bless you!’

  Someone in the crowd wept.

  ‘I am sure a compromise can be reached.’ I turned back to the Liberator-Prime. ‘I will escort these good folk as far as the gatehouse, let them collect whatever sundry belongings they have left in their homes. When they see the necessity of what our worthy Lord-Celestant does, I have no doubt they will be obliging.’

  I studied the Liberator-Prime’s barbarian features, but it wasn’t a face I recognised. Some of the new blood with which Sigmar had founded the Heavens Forged, then. He must have been either newly struck (for the realms had not stopped producing heroes with the advent of the Age of Sigmar) or from a retinue shifted wholesale from some other broken chamber to Frankos’ nascent command.

  He looked uncertain.

  ‘You don’t think you’d be better used on the wall, than stood here guarding against your own people…?’ I left the question hanging.

  ‘Wullas,’ he grunted. ‘My name is Wullas. Hearthshorn.’

  ‘Well, I am Hamilcar. You will have heard of me.’

  I made to push past, but the Liberator stood stubbornly in my way. My pauldron banged into his breastplate, and I watched him visibly recoil, the same surge of emotions as I had earlier seen on Frankos defacing his barbarian features. The Judicators beside him turned their heads sharply towards me. The Justicars have always had a keen sense for the evil in a man’s soul, bettered only by the gryph-hounds and Celestial dragons of Azyr. Whether that is because men and women with such an attunement are chosen for the role, or because the ability was an ingredient of their forging, I don’t know. Nor do I much care. Whatever the reason, they sensed something in me, sensed it more keenly even than Wullas Hearthshorn who was retreating, horrified, from my touch. Both of them snatched up their skybolt bows.

  I felt my expression blacken.

  I have never been quick to anger, not in any life that I recall, but I felt something in me rage at the warriors’ disrespect.

  ‘Do you not know who you face, new-forged? I fought the Barrel Kings during the Cleansing of Azyr, and spoke for the Stromfels Gargants when Sigmar himself demanded their strongholds burned. I was there as the first of the Astral Templars set foot in the Ghurlands. I fought in the Gnarlwood, and won glory there when more than half of our brothers fell. I fought single-handed against the Mortarch of Night. I slew the Great Red. I freed the untainted lands beyond the Sea of Bones from a soulblight curse and unified them all under Sigmar’s banner. One hundred thousand soldiers and wealth unseen in the Mortal Realms, united in common cause by my word.’ I tapped my boot on the cobbles. ‘You are receiving this belated education on the very street that bears my name.’ I shoved him back, sending him stumbling. ‘Who am I?’

  ‘Hamilcar!’

  The answer came not from my own lips, but as a throaty cheer from the scores of townsfolk that had congregated in the street behind me. More, I saw, were wandering in from other streets to see what the commotion was about.

  ‘Who am I?’ I yelled again, spittle flying from my mouth.

  ‘Hamilcar!’

  ‘Who is the chosen son of the God-King?’

  ‘Hamilcar!’

  ‘Who goes wherever he damn well pleases, and ruination come to those who disagree?’

  ‘Ham-il-car!’

  The people screamed boisterously. A few of the bolder men and women threw stones that banged off the Astral Templars’ armour. I was left with the distinct feeling that this discontent had been fermenting for quite some time before I had stuck my boot in it.

  ‘Seize him,’ Wullas bellowed to his retinue. ‘On the orders of Lord-Veritant Vikaeus.’

  ‘Wha–?’

  There was a fluttering of wings and I looked up sharply as an aetherwing with the silvery white colouration of the Knights Merciless flew overhead in the direction of the keep.

  ‘Of all the Lords-Veritant in Sigmaron, Sigmar had to send this one,’ I snarled, watching it go.

  Wullas drew his warblade from its sheath.

  I backhanded him across the jaw before I knew what I was doing. He reeled back, and I looked at my fist in astonishment.

  I had no idea why I had just done that.

  ‘You would draw against your own, brother?’ I said, backing steadily away.

  ‘I know not what daemon inhabits your skin, Bear-Eater, but you are not one of mine.’ He grunted something to the Judicators who lowered their bows. ‘Vikaeus insists you be captured alive.’

  ‘Good of her.’

  ‘I doubt that it’s mercy.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  Wullas gestured to his Liberator retinue and started towards me, sword upraised. ‘With me, brothers. Kill him only if you must.’

  Chapter eighteen

  You’ve never seen a Stormcast Eternal at full tilt. I see it on your faces. You’re thinking of the armoured warriors you are familiar with, mortal knights in iron plate. Don’t. Cast the image of such encumbered warriors struggling towards battle from your mind. We are something other. Imbued with the might of the Cosmic Storm. Elevated by a spark of the Celestial divine. We are capable of feats no mortal being could contemplate, matching blades with the greater daemons of Chaos, or sprinting in full plate and panoply as though girded by nothing but the lightning of our creation. The closest mortal analogy for being in the path of such a warrior is to be a foot soldier before a heavy cavalry charge. Put yourself in that place. The ground shakes. You feel it in the wall of your gut. Fear takes you. All the lies you have been told, all the lies you have allowed yourself to believe, taking up your meagre arms and joining a war fought between gods, they are exposed for what they are, burned away by the Light Celestial. There is nothing you can do. Not against this. Stand firm and die. Flee and die. This is above you. It is greater.

  That is what it is to face a Stormcast Eternal.

  Tradesfolk and Gorwood refugees screamed as I peele
d off the Bear Road and tore down Warder’s Score.

  Named in remembrance of the sacred lanterns with which Akturus and I had purged this particularly narrow and winding corner of the Seven Words, it was home now to chandlers and tallow makers, taper weavers and glasswrights. They scattered as I hurtled through, upsetting carts and stalls, unfinished candles spilling across the street to be crushed into wax crumbs by the Liberators pounding on my heels.

  I flashed past a lighter’s shop, distantly heard the keeper hurling curses at the warriors behind me. The mould boy in the adjoining yard pelted them with hot wax from his stove, while his friends screamed insults that even I had never heard of.

  If my heart were not already practically aflame with the aetheric energies of the storm it was pumping, then pride would have burst it.

  A retinue of Heavens Forged pursued me through their streets, and yet without any need for an explanation the townsfolk had chosen to stand by me regardless.

  I whooped as I rattled fully armoured round a tight bend.

  An old woman, face wrapped in a scarf, pinched by the wind, pushed a handcart filled with animal dripping for tallow out of a gate and into the street.

  I roared as I veered round her, hearing her shocked expletive as she drew back into her yard just in time to avoid being crushed by Wullas. The Liberator-Prime smashed her handcart to smithereens and splattered his immaculate war-plate with fat.

  Under other circumstances I would have found it funny, but someone was going to get killed.

  I bared my teeth, the wind whistling through the gaps as I thought.

  About a hundred yards ahead of me, the score took a sharp bend around the jutting rocks of the Gorkomon. A gulch of about ten to fifteen feet separated the cobbles of Warder’s Score from the next meandering shamble of rooftops.

  I leapt it with ease, landed heavily into a roll and immediately resumed running, tearing off to the left, away from the gate and back towards the horizon-obliterating enormity of the Gorkomon.

  Wullas sailed over the gap behind me, haloed in red hair and lightning discharge from his unsheathed warblade. He landed on his knees and rolled, coming up after me in a sprint. He was good, but then I would have expected no less. He was a Stormcast Eternal. Better, he was an Astral Templar.

  ‘Surrender,’ he snarled. ‘There’s nowhere for you to go.’

  Now I knew he was new-forged. There were a thousand ways out of the Seven Words, and they were just the ones I knew about.

  The row of rooftops ended abruptly in a sheer slab of Gorkomon.

  I ran into it and pushed off, using the borrowed momentum to hurl myself clear over the street and the crowds stood in it, gaping. I didn’t bother with a landing, instead banging onto the opposite rooftop on my back. I rolled like a log, roofing slates breaking under me, until I ran out of push.

  I looked back.

  I’d been hoping that Wullas would have been so hard on my heels that he’d just slam into the rock face, but I’d overestimated his ability to keep pace with the Bear-Eater. He was far enough behind that all he had to do was angle himself to the roofline and throw himself over.

  He bellowed, legs scissoring the thin air, then crunched into the roofing slates two-footed.

  I rolled out of the way as he struck with his warblade. The lightning-charged sword tore a hole in the roof, powdered slate and mould spores falling over the screaming family huddled in their one room below. Somewhere in the ward a hand bell was clanging for the Freeguild. Some patrolman screamed out in the mistaken belief that the skaven were inside the fort.

  I kicked Wullas between the legs, but as he was fully armoured my toe-cap thudded hollowly against it. He grunted, drew back his arm to strike me again. I got fingers around his wrist before he could angle it properly. He snarled down at me, but whatever bewitching power my soul held over my brother Stormcast it was less debilitating second time around. We struggled for a moment until I heard the thump, thump, thump of his Liberators joining us on the roof.

  A look of triumph displaced the warrior’s scowl.

  I wasn’t having that.

  With a roar, I threw all my strength into Wullas’ shoulder, rolling us both off the roof and into the street below.

  The ground was not a great distance away, but I made sure that he hit it first. My bastion armour slammed into him a moment later, winding him enough for me to drive my fist through his teeth and smack the back of his head against the road. Cracks splintered out through the already broken cobbles and the Liberator-Prime’s eyes blazed once with lightning before rolling back in their sockets.

  I bared my teeth, heart thumping, as I wound my arm back to finish him off.

  Townsfolk pointed and screamed. I hesitated, looked at my bloodied fist, then at the man beneath me. I staggered to my feet, working towards a sprint as Wullas’ enraged Liberators began jumping down.

  We were not in the gladiatorum now. I would not fight myself bloody, then emerge onto the Sigmarabulum all smiles to trade bragging rights for a night of ale out of Makvar’s or Gardus’ or Imperius’ war chests.

  And yet, something in me had wanted nothing more than to smash Wullas’ skull into the ground.

  Ikrit hadn’t broken me – he’d made me more me than I’d been in two hundred years.

  Another street swept past me on my right. Gor Lane. A switchback of scattered housing all the way to the Morkogon Gate. I caught something out of the corner of my eye as I charged past, people scattering. It was white and muscular, loping towards me like a great cat in pursuit of some foundering prey beast. I heard a warbling cry and risked a look, just as the gryph-hound leapt.

  Its jaws clamped over my wrist, its weight dragging us both to the ground.

  My pauldron hit the ground first. Then my face. Blood splattered. My own speed sent my body tumbling forward over the cobbles, only for the savage anchor of the gryph-hound’s beaked jaws to drag me back. I screamed as my full armoured weight yanked on my shoulder socket. The gryph-hound ripsawed from side to side on my arm. It dragged me back. I stuck my boot heels into the cracks between the cobbles, but it was too strong. Powerful muscles rippled under the snowy white feathers of its massive forelimbs and thick neck. I slid myself around so as to kick the dumb beast in the head, knowing that I had mere seconds of grace before the Liberators caught up to me and my quest was finished before it had even begun.

  Recognition hit me like a troggoth with a grudge.

  I recalled the scruffy-feathered foundling that I had seen scavenging around the Aetherdomes of the Sigmarabulum after my return from Cartha, plagued by nightmares, my own hounds slain. Eyes as bright and wise as Sigmar’s own. Feathers like Winterlands snow. I remembered nights curled up against the cold, journeys across bog and desert and oceans of bone. The battles we fought together at their end.

  ‘Crow. By Sigmar.’

  In answer to his name, the gryph-hound yanked on my wrist and twisted. I screamed, spots exploding through my eyes.

  ‘It’s me, Crow!’

  ‘Here, Crow.’

  Letting go of my arm with a snarl, Crow padded round me, flicking his twin-forked tail and clacking his beak.

  ‘Surrender yourself to me, Hamilcar.’

  I turned, sprawled on the cobbles and hoarse from screaming, and looked back to the junction with Gor Lane. A giant in purple and gold sigmarite stood in it.

  Broudiccan.

  His immense shoulders were draped in a cloak bearing the anvil and storm heraldry of the Heavens Forged. His helmet plume was white. His Mask Impassive, no longer dented by the scowl that he had diligently preserved in it for over a hundred years, was pristine. Reforged. In place of the monstrous starsoul mace with which he had proven so unstoppable, and which had received more prayers of thanks from me than Sigmar ever had, he wielded a halberd. And in the other hand, a warding lantern.

  ‘You are
Frankos’ Lord-Castellant now?’ I said.

  ‘Lord-Castellant Broudiccan Stonebow, of the Heavens Forged.’ His voice was resonant, as if echoed by an empty shell of armour before emerging from his mouth slit.

  ‘And Crow?’

  The gryph-hound opened its beak and hissed at me as if I were a stranger. Coming from my boon companion of over a hundred years, that cut deeper than beak or claws.

  ‘I come seeking no approval from you.’

  He lowered his halberd like a barrier, bidding the pursuing Liberators to stop.

  They did.

  ‘Hamilcar never surrenders,’ I said, grinning fiercely. ‘You should know that.’

  Broudiccan was quiet for a moment. His mask turned down. ‘I do. I think. I remember dying on a nameless hill for your pride.’

  ‘It had a name.’

  ‘A name you gave it. A name to embellish your legend.’ He swung his halberd, striking sparks from the cobbles and forcing me to scramble backwards. ‘You always considered yourself the greatest among us, Hamilcar Bear-Eater. Prove it now. Let us settle this as champions.’

  The growing evil in me did yearn to test my skills against Broudiccan’s, but do you recall when I said I could count the Stormcasts who could best me on the fingers of my hands?

  Broudiccan’s name is number four.

  Self-interest won out, but it was close fought.

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘You fear being bested.’

  ‘I won’t fight you here, brother. Not in anger. Not like this.’

  ‘Brother? You mistake what we had for friendship. You were my lord and I was your second. You were an embarrassment to the reputation of the Astral Templars.’

  I knew that these words he spoke were a product of the Smith’s hammer on poor Broudiccan’s soul, distorting and destroying his memories. He wept when Sigmar returned him again to my service, some years later. Wept. Even so, they struck harder than any blow from a starsoul mace or a castellan’s halberd ever could.

  I was still reeling from them when someone behind me yelled.