Hamilcar- Champion of the Gods - David Guymer
Page 1
Backlist
Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library
~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~
THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
Various authors
Contains the novels The Gates of Azyr, War Storm, Ghal Maraz, Hammers of Sigmar, Wardens of the Everqueen and Black Rift
THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
Various authors
Contains the novels Call of Archaon, Warbeast, Fury of Gork, Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath
LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Various authors
HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
An Age of Sigmar novel
HALLOWED KNIGHTS: BLACK PYRAMID
An Age of Sigmar novel
EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
An Age of Sigmar novel
OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner
NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds
NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD
David Annandale
SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds
CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth
THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner
SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds
BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark
SACROSANCT & OTHER STORIES
Various authors
GODS & MORTALS
Various authors
THE RED HOURS
Evan Dicken
HEART OF WINTER
Nick Horth
WARQUEEN
Darius Hinks
THE BONE DESERT
Robbie MacNiven
~ LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~
CITY OF SECRETS
An Age of Sigmar novel
FYRESLAYERS
An Age of Sigmar novel
SKAVEN PESTILENS
An Age of Sigmar novel
BLACK RIFT
An Age of Sigmar novel
SYLVANETH
An Age of Sigmar novel
~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~
THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN
Josh Reynolds
SANDS OF BLOOD
Josh Reynolds
THE LORDS OF HELSTONE
Josh Reynolds
THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS
Josh Reynolds
THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer
EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: WAR-CLAW
Josh Reynolds
FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer
GREAT RED
David Guymer
ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer
SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors
REALMSLAYER
David Guymer
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter twenty
Chapter twenty-one
Chapter twenty-two
Chapter twenty-three
Chapter twenty-four
Chapter twenty-five
Chapter twenty-six
Chapter twenty-seven
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter twenty-nine
Chapter thirty
Chapter thirty-one
Chapter thirty-two
Chapter thirty-three
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Gods & Mortals’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
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.
I’m not normally one for writing dedications. I feel awkward sharing what I’m really thinking without having characters or a narrator to filter it before it reaches another human being. This novel is different. It’s my first as a full-time author, requiring me to suck it up and dredge up a few words of recognition and thanks, which is frankly the least that those who have helped make this possible deserve.
Thanks then to Guy Haley, Gav Thorpe, and Josh Reynolds for their sage counsel on making the leap and finally giving up my day job. To my girlfriend, Philippa, for not walking out when I suggested it. Thanks to Guy (again) and Justin Hill for the continuing support of the unofficial North Yorkshire freelance support group. One day we’ll actually have that get-together.
To Laurie Goulding, for buying that inauspicious story about two clanrats walking into a bar back in 2011. To Graeme Lyon and Lindsey Priestley for taking me on, through the End Times and Beast Arises and beyond.To Nick Kyme for too much to go into really, but in the context of these pages for being the one to convince me that a minor character from The Beasts of Cartha was a character people would want more of.
To Kate Hamer, who edited the Hamilcar short stories and who edited this novel and who came to love the big man as much as he loves himself (or as close as any mere mortal can get). To Toby Longworth, whose portrayal of Ciaphas Cain did so much to inform the voice of Hamilcar in this book.
And finally, of course, thanks to everyone who ever gave me a word of advice or encouragement, wrote a review or bought a book.
Especially that last one.
It’s you that made this book possible
.
‘Here we are then, brothers. Good food, good fire and a long night before you in the company of the greatest of Sigmar’s Knight-Questors. Where then to begin this tale? What was that? The beginning? That would be conventional. But I suppose even Hamilcar Bear-Eater can be conventional for just one night…’
Chapter one
I arced over the gurgling water like a zephyrgryph with his claws unfurled. The air was ice, the sky a weird shade of green, amber leaking into the night with the dawn. My face was the painful side of numb as my arms and legs paddled the thin air. All I could hear from beneath me was the creak of ice, the rush of the river and the wind slipping through my fingers. I started to laugh, my mouth thus conveniently wide for a roar of triumph as my boots slammed into the frozen slush of the Nevermarsh. Cracks spread through the frost-veined mud, but it was already hard as rock and did not break.
Just as well – sinking to my greaves in mud or getting into a tug-of-war for my boot was hardly the look I had been going for.
‘Yes!’
The cry exploded from my chest and I spun around with my fists in the air.
‘Let it be known that Hamilcar Bear-Eater is first across every river, first into every charge, first unto every blade!’ I bellowed.
Broudiccan’s slow handclap wasn’t quite the enthusiastic reaction that I felt the feat deserved. My second-in-command cut an imposing figure on the other side of the water, a fortress of a man in the thrice-blessed maroon and gold of the Astral Templars. His Mask Impassive, the grim facial covering of the Stormcast Eternals, was anything but; a gouge from a beast’s claw had cloven the stoic purple mask in two, leaving a disdainful aspect which suited his taciturnity to the ground.
If he thought he could leap twenty feet across ice-cold rapids then I would have very much liked to see him try.
‘Bravo, Lord Hamilcar,’ Frankos shouted through cupped hands, separated from the burly Decimator by the haggard width of a tree. ‘Congratulations on being the first of Sigmar’s Stormhosts to set foot in the Nevermarsh.’
Distinctions of age and experience counted for little within a company of immortals, but the Knight-Heraldor had always been possessed of a youthful effervescence that made me feel old. I nodded my thanks, pausing to glare at my second.
‘May the Heraldor Temples always proclaim it so,’ I bellowed back.
‘They shall, my lord,’ he cried with gusto. ‘They shall.’
Frankos was also quite unique amongst my warrior chamber in taking everything I said in deadly earnest. He continues to do so, in fact, even after the later reversal in our fortunes.
The sigmarite mountain called Broudiccan rumbled as the giant sighed.
His masked gaze slipped towards the frothing water.
Feral-looking birds with wicked red eyes twittered back and forth between the two banks. Their beaks were perfectly made for the stripping of flesh, the cracking of bone, and I suspected they could even chew the cure right off a man’s armour. Generally, the birds were happy enough scavenging for fish and insects amongst the densely tangled buttress roots that clawed out of the riverbank and into the water, but the Freeguild army I was leading through the Gorwood might as well have been one giant victuallers’ caravan for all they were concerned. More than one poor soldier had already lost a finger or an eye. Broudiccan swatted at one, which knew better than to test its toothed beak on sigmarite and flapped out of reach to shrill from the leafless canopy.
‘I’ll wait for the bridge,’ he grumbled, after a while.
I barely heard him over the white roar of the water, but I am a Stormcast Eternal, and my ears are sharp enough.
‘I wonder about you sometimes,’ I laughed. ‘Are you a plodding Knight-Excelsior, summoned to my warrior chamber in error?’
Broudiccan shrugged. ‘Even Sigmar can make mistakes. The pain of reforging is proof enough of this.’
‘Ha! Indeed. I remember my last day as a mortal, when I feasted with Him and ten thousand warriors in the Heldenhall.’ The memories of my mortal life were dimmer back then than they are now, jumbled like a stained glass window that had been broken and thrown back together, most of the pieces still missing, but this I remembered. ‘He has a delicate stomach. For a god.’
Frankos frowned at nothing. ‘I do not remember my final night.’
‘Parts of mine are a little blurry also. It was that aelf nectar wine. I swear there was nothing like it where–’
A racket worthy of Gorkamorka drowned me out as the rest of the army made their way through the trees.
I looked past the two Astral Templars, my sentence unfinished.
About nineteen hundred soldiers, two of the five Freeguild regiments of the Seven Words, had followed me into the Gorwood. Their baggage train and camp followers amounted to about the same again although I generally deferred the small details to Frankos and the mortal generals themselves. The fifty warriors of my Chamber, the Bear-Eaters, were strung out over several leagues of woodland. The trees that grew here at the boundary of the Low Gorwood were twisted runts compared to the predatory bowers that canopied the high slopes of the Gorkomon, but no less deadly. For all my efforts, the Gorwood was – and would always be – a wild place, home to as many hungry creatures as it had been when the Beastlord Uxor Untamed had ruled these heights. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The men and women that emerged wore a collage of colours – torn, faded, chewed on – over armour of tough leather and the occasional skin. There were a few wooden or leather shields, but most carried two-handed spears, javelins or hunting bows. Despite the cold and the predations of the forest they were still laughing – Ghurites all of them, none tougher – whistling catcalls at those behind and pointing at me on the other side of the river.
Coming in behind the vanguard was a trio of ogors in tattered surcoats, hauling a bridge of coppery lumber behind them. Their faces were snarled with effort, muscles standing like boulders from a mountainside. A few of the soldiers dropped their gear to run in and help push, the ogors hissing something that probably wasn’t all that complimentary through their teeth.
I put my hands on my hips and watched them, my heart ready to burst with pride.
I loved them all.
Only slightly less than they loved me.
‘Who is first upon the Nevermarsh?’ I called out to them, thumping my breastplate. ‘He who waits upon no man, beast nor creature of Ruin.’ I thrust my gauntleted fists in the air, wringing the musty stink of bear from my cloak.
‘Hamilcar!’
Cheers rippled through the treeline. The ogors took the opportunity to draw up and wipe the sweat from their sledgehammer-like brows, before readjusting the draw-chains wrapped round their fists.
I made a grand show of pulling off my gauntlets, rubbing my hands together and blowing into them, despite the fact I have little feeling for the cold. I am a champion of Heaven, and to be of Heaven is to be as cold as starlight. And yet it means something to the common soldier to see his hardships shared. Most Stormcast Eternals, broken from humanity in order to be elevated to that space beyond, would never even have considered such a gesture. There are better warriors than I in Sigmar’s Stormhosts. I’ll not name them, and I’ll only deny saying it should it get back to them. Let’s just say I have all the fingers I need to count them. But if you think that any of them can get as much as I can from a mortal man, then I would say you have passed too many times over the Anvil of Apotheosis, my friend.
‘The winter is cold,’ I yelled. ‘The Ghurlands are dangerous. But you know cold, you know danger. Every man and woman here is a veteran of the Gorwood. You have fought beside me against beastman and skaven and orruk, yet here you all are with me still. Why?’ My breath shrouded my tattooed fist in fog. ‘Because Hamilcar Bear-Eater is your brother and your champion, ahead of you every step of the way!’
‘Hamilcar!’
The cr
y came back louder now, men still spilling out of the forest to hear my words.
I unhooked the halberd from its bracket across my back. The black wood of the haft scraped over my armour as I drew it. The head sang as it came free. The blade was sigmarite, forged by the first of the Six Smiths under the Auroral Tempest, imbuing the metal with the storm’s vicious power. Bands of amber and violet rippled through the blade as I turned it and held it aloft. A pair of predator birds that I had managed to trap and kill myself dangled from the head on chains. Runes of my own inscription decorated the haft. They imparted no power I know of, and I had no idea from which ice hole of my memory they emerged, only that in those days you could not leave me with a flat surface and a knife and not return to find the former filled with the strange pictograms.
I had always assumed them to be a facet of my lost life as a mortal, which would of course prove to be correct, though I never gave it much thought at the time.
‘The Nevermarsh is another challenge again. No army of Sigmar has ever crossed its border, and yet…’ I spread my arms to indicate the river running across me. The soldiers chuckled, a few of them still shouting my name. A cloaked and helmeted veteran in a glittery cuirass of leather and glass and a rash of insect bites on his browned face choked with laughter. Even I didn’t think my remark was that amusing, but I acknowledged the old-timer with the point of my halberd. I recognised him from some battle or other, and I always liked to give the impression of familiarity with every woman or man who bore the Twin-Tailed Comet in my name.
‘This is where our enemies seek to hide from us, so this is where we hound them. We will run them to the ground, my friends. We will kill them, we will butcher them, and we will feed their bloody carcasses to the carniferns of the Gorwood!’
The bank erupted with a mighty cheer.
‘For Sigmar!’
‘Sigmar!’
‘For the God-King!’
My voice was the coming of thunder. I held the final syllable until my throat was hoarse and my body shook with passion.
I rehoused my halberd, leaving my fist raised in salute.
The men would all be warm now. If my Vanguards were right about the position of the hole that our enemy had found to hide in, and they generally were, then I expected the fire I had put in the soldiers’ bellies to last them until it was needed.