Hamilcar: The Hardest Word
Hamilcar Bear-Eater, greatest hero (in his own words) of Sigmar’s armies, is the latest in a long line of castellans to hold the critical yet precarious stronghold of the Seven Words. With skaven threatening, Hamilcar can conceive only one sure way to hold the Seven Words – to challenge the entire horde to single combat.
From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.
Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.
But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.
Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creations.
The Age of Sigmar had begun.
A mural of the two-headed orruk war-deity, Gorkamork, covers the rock in age-blanched chalk. Beneath, the granite is stained with black, yellow and faded pinks, the marks left by a succession of lords of destruction and Chaos. Gorkamork is the largest but not the most recent. Several layers of runes and glyphs adorn the mural, proclaiming the greatness of their lord and his god, but none of them claim this throne room now.
The visiting Lord-Veritant looks up at the painted wall, disapproving. But I like the wall. It is a tapestry of my enemies’ defeats, a thousand years old, and there is something about it that reminds me of my mortal home.
When Vikaeus is Lord-Castellant of the Seven Words, she can decorate as she pleases.
‘Do not haunt my doorway, Lord-Veritant,’ I say. ‘I will stand for no ceremony here.’
‘The doorway is not yours, you self-aggrandising fool. You guard it for Sigmar. Like a dog.’
With a scrape of her boot and a wind-ruffle of a cerulean cloak, she turns to me. The phrase ‘Ice Queen’ leaps unbidden into my mind.
I do not immediately disavow it.
Her armour is the white and blue of the Knights Merciless. Her mask is an expression of bitter spite, which I am relieved to see she carries underarm. The Knights Merciless are known for donning war-masks only when in hostile lands, or in the dispensation of Sigmar’s judgement. Her long black hair is drawn back from her forehead and worn in a tail. Her skin is like marble, though no artisan of Azyr ever worked on a material so hard.
I beckon impatiently.
Her footsteps clank on bare stone as she walks down the aisle towards my throne. A pair of gryph-hounds with beaks clad in blessed sigmarite, their neck scales picked out with runes of abjuration, snarl at her heels. My own companion, Crow, uncurls from the beastman pelts piled at my feet and barks a warning that echoes between the crumbling arches and columns.
It appears that even our hounds share a mutual dislike.
‘What brings a Lord-Veritant to the House of the Seven Words? Chaos retreats on every front, for Hamilcar Bear-Eater is as decisive as he is vigilant.’
She halts ten strides away and plants the staff bearing her Lantern of Abjuration, the symbol of her office, into the ground with a resounding clang.
‘I have crossed the Chamonic Gate and been admitted to the crucible pools of Molybdenos. I have spoken with the Prophet Argent, and conferred with the oracles of the Sigmarabulum. I have seen a skaven as old as the world, his paws in the secrets of the gods. His tail is a serpent of probing shadows and in my visions I see it winding close about Sigmar’s neck.’
I scratch my bearded chin. It is oft remarked that Sigmar and I share a likeness, and it is true, the resemblance is uncanny.
‘So why come here?’
‘I see a rising vermintide. It begins here. And I have seen you, Hamilcar. You appear in my visions most frequently of late.’ I smile importunately, but she douses it with a frown like ice water. ‘I see you caged in a storm of unholy lightning, screaming as you are broken, piece by piece.’
I lean back, the totems and trophies that bedeck my purple war-plate clinking as I shift position. ‘You are certain it is me? You are certain it is my fortress?’
‘Even if my visions were less clear,
I glance up to the Lantern of Abjuration, a cage of comet ice that encircles the top of her staff.
‘They are here already,’ she continues. ‘Though I know not where, nor how they mean to enter a bastion of Sigmar.’
‘My fortress is impregnable,’ I say with irony, glancing up at the mural and its long legacy of capture and loss. I grasp the arms of my throne, rising from the seat in a creak of heavy armour and hanging mail. Crow yawns and stretches, and I kick him good-naturedly from under my feet. He chews at my greave in turn.
‘With me, Lord-Veritant.’
I throw aside the broken doors, still damaged from when I hurled the previous Castellant from his throne room, and stride out into the hall.
Rubble litters the old tiles, though most of it has been swept into messy piles away from the central aisle. The walls gape onto wispy clouds, and the occasional dash and shade of an aetár, the great eagle-kin, startles the gryph-hounds. The seven mortal winds whisper with seven mortal voices.
Down innumerable flights of duardin-cut stairs, Vikaeus and I find our way to the calefactory that the knights of the Bear-Eaters have commandeered for their own.
The chamber has no windows. Skins of beastmen and animals are thrown over the floor, the table and the backs of chairs. The hearth is cold, but simply being out of the wind is enough.
My second, Decimator-Prime Broudiccan, pauses, mid-sentence into an exaggerated tale about his battles with the sankritt on the Sea of Bones, a jug of something warm in his scarred and tattooed fist. His chair scrapes as he stands. Frankos and Xeros Stormcloud, clad in black armour and bands of skeletal decoration, both look attentive.
‘Rally the Stormhost,’ I command Frankos.
The Knight-Heraldor rises immediately. Dragging his battle-horn from the table, he hurries from the chamber. Broudiccan glances at Vikaeus, but does not ask. His knotted brow knots all the harder. The Decimator is a man of grave heart and few words, which is why he serves me so well.
‘Muster the mortal levies,’ I tell him.
‘What shall I tell them?’
‘That Hamilcar stands with them.’ I hold out my hand and Broudiccan, with a rare smile, picks up my halberd from the rack and tosses it to me.
‘That will please them,’ he says, nodding respectfully to the Lord-Veritant before following Frankos out.
‘What is it, Hamilcar?’ Xeros asks, but his dark eyes rove between Vikaeus and me.
‘A vermintide is coming, Lord-Relictor,’ says Vikaeus. ‘I came from Sigmaron with all haste, but the attack may come at any time.’
‘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.
‘
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 with the seven winds and drags him skywards.
‘It is not enough to run about like 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 tears 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
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, ‘
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 his 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
‘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. ‘
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 me. Their voices become a chant, beaten to the time of iron ferrules on hard stone.
‘
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.
‘
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 machine 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.
‘
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.
The blow smashes a smoke stack in half, causing it to splutter and cough. I duck under the swinging mace and elbow the construct under the heavily scaffolded armpit joint. It does no damage, but raises a hollow clang from inside the machine, which, judging from the tooth-grinding, claw-scratching and body-writhing sounds coming from inside, discomforts its pilot greatly.
The sniper fire trails off.
A few stray shots continue. Either the sharpshooters possess supreme confidence or they do not care either way if their master’s champion should be hit instead.
I keep close to the war machine, regardless.
The skaven lunges for me, meaning to crush me against the wall with its weight, but I am easier on my feet and slip out of its way. I strike the flat of my halberd into its back as we part ways. A harrowing squeal issues from the machine as brakes are applied and gears shift, only the drag of its tail keeping it from ploughing straight into the wall without me.
I grin.
My halberd hums as it gains speed. The construct swings its useless gun-arm, but I avoid it, stepping behind the mechanical beast. ‘Sigmar, lend me strength!’ I turn my halberd’s path downwards, letting my lantern clatter to the ground as, at the last instant, I take the haft two-handed for maximum power.
God-forged sigmarite shears through steel like a lightning bolt, severing the war machine’s tail from its body at the first and thickest link in the chain.
The skaven squeals in outrage as it comes about. It raises its mace and brings it crashing down. I jump back and the skaven’s mace smashes into the ground. Aftershocks run through the stone and shake me off balance as soon as my feet are on the ground. A jab from the construct’s gun-arm is enough to knock me down.
I hear a gasp from the walls as the war machine lifts its mace for the death blow.
It is a ridiculously overconfident move, baring one’s body to an opponent in that way, however finished he may appear. I understand confidence though, and nothing breeds it in a skaven like a winning position. Or an armoured war machine nine feet tall.
I swing around my halberd so the ferrule that reinforces the wooden haft’s base wedges against the construct’s eye grate. With a heave, I punt its intended blow over me and into the fortress wall. Its gun-arm whirls as it finds itself over-committed and tail-less and, slowly, it begins to pitch forwards. Using my halberd again, I give it one final nudge, driving its torso into the wall as I tuck my knees into my chest and roll back from underneath it.
The pilot squeals as the construct tips onto its side and grinds agonisingly down the fortress wall. I plant my boot on its mace arm, pinning it down, and hoist my halberd like a standard for my watching men.
‘
I turn to look across the gulf to the far peak, surprised that the snipers’ efforts have not picked up again now there is no danger of accidentally hitting their own. I strain my eyes, waiting for the distinctive cloud that will warn me of the shot before I hear it, but see nothing.
‘Gallant of you, Master Ikrit,’ I mutter under my breath.
The crunch of boots on loose ground turns me round.
The sight of Vikaeus’ Veritant mask is instantly chilling, more so than all the hard looks and icy disdain her flesh could ever convey. Her judgement blade is drawn, both its serrated edge and her pearl-white armour sprayed with blood. I can hear screams from the city behind her, but they are some way off and appear to be contained. The smell of burning is faint on the winds too. Crow squeezes through the open gate beside her. He is carrying something wet in his mouth. Rather than greet me, he sinks onto his belly beside the downed war machine and curls up to gnaw on his bounty. It is a skaven arm.
I lower my weapon.
‘You managed to foil the skaven’s intended plan?’ I ask.
Vikaeus’ mask simply stares, as if incapable of speech.
‘So,’ I answer for her, ‘Hamilcar is no fool after all. With his sweat and valour did he distract the verminous hosts long enough for you and Akturus to find their point of attack. Come, now, you can say it.’
There is a splitting, crunching noise as Crow breaks into the marrow.
Vikaeus drives her still wet blade into its scabbard. ‘Your recklessness will return to haunt you one day, Bear-Eater.’ Her voice resonates from behind her mask. ‘My vision is far from played out.’
Without another word, she turns and walks away.
I frown down at Crow, who is gorging on skaven flesh. An increasingly desperate scratching emanates from the war machine beneath my boot. I close my eyes, hoping that the battering of the Seven Winds on my face will distract me from how Vikaeus’ words trouble me.
‘Very well,’ I mutter, once I am confident she is gone. ‘You don’t have to say it. I hear it is the hardest word.’
About the Author
David Guymer is the author of the Iron Hands novel