by Warhammer
‘You were calling out for someone called Broudiccan,’ he said, in a flat tone that made it plain that this was not an invitation to discuss it further. ‘I thought you were going to bring the guards.’
I scoffed, silently cursing my body for its aches as I stiffly set it upright. Had I not been a King of the Winterlands? The Winterlands had once had hundreds of them, of course. Kings, that is. Still, even reforged, you’d have thought that my body would have been more accustomed to lying on undressed stone.
‘I don’t know how you stay in such high spirits,’ said Barrach. ‘The warlock must be going easier on you than he did on me.’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said, cheerfully. Despite my admittedly well-earned reputation for vainglory, I knew the difference between inspiring by example and simply inspiring.
‘How do you still smile?’
Practice, same as anything, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. ‘Hope.’
‘Hope.’ He sneered for a moment, then fell into an aggressive, brooding kind of quiet.
I hadn’t told him in so many words, but I was actually passingly familiar with his people. I’d never seen them myself, of course – the green skin would have been an immediate giveaway otherwise – but as soon as he’d recovered enough to start talking in whole sentences, I’d recognised his stories of home. His tribe had once been native to the high slopes of the Gorwood, and had weathered the Age of Chaos in service not to Sigmar but to a Ghurite sylvaneth of, I’d imagine, some considerable power. I wasn’t about to call a man out on worshipping a treekin, as I’d probably put my faith in crazier things than that as a mortal. Better a slightly suspect axe than no axe at all, I say. Sigmar had left the Mortal Realms to look after themselves for hundreds of years, nobody was arguing otherwise, and beneath the heady summit of Mount Celestian there existed a great wilderness of gods and goddesses, demi-gods, greater daemons, zodiacal god-beasts and beings both ancient enough and powerful enough to live as gods and command the worship of men. I didn’t know which of those applied to our sylvaneth, for I’d come across her only in the last moments of her sickness. And that would have been after I’d slain the berserk Treelord that had slaughtered her followers and driven the remainder into the Nevermarsh.
I could see why hope would be the sort of word he might sneer at.
‘You’re a warrior, aren’t you?’ I said.
He grunted. ‘How can you tell that from in here?’
‘I can tell.’
I sensed the darkness unclench slightly. ‘I was more than just a warrior. I was Champion of the Wild Harvest.’
I tapped on my head, hard, because he needed to hear it. The scabbed over reminders of Ikrit’s most recent efforts brought out a wince of pain. ‘Being a warrior isn’t about what’s in here. We’re trapped. Unarmed. Underfed. Injured. My people will probably never find us, and neither will yours. Zephacleas will probably be named Lord-Commander of the Astral Templars and make me call him “lord”.’ I tapped my forehead again. ‘That’s what this says.’ I lowered my hand to my chest and tapped on my heart with my middle finger. ‘This is where heroes live. And it’s too stupid to care about any of that. It says that I’m going to kill Ikrit with my bare hands, and that you and I are going to fight our way out of this place together.’
Barrach snorted, the first real laugh I’d heard from him in our weeks together, and the smile it bid from me was equally unforced.
‘Does it say when?’
‘Soon.’
‘You’re a rare one, Hamilcar. You were a champion to your people too, I think.’
I waved, immodestly. ‘Every so often someone tries to raise a statue, but I always talk them out of it.’ I angled my face so that its profile might better catch the luminescence of the walls. ‘Can you imagine this in marble or gold?’
Barrach laughed. ‘My sister always told me I thought too highly of myself. I can’t think what she’d make of you.’
The affection in his voice was as clear as stars on a black sky. I found myself closing my eyes, as if I could feel the light against my face.
‘Is she a warrior too?’
‘In a way. She’s a priestess of the Savage Maiden.’ I’d never heard the name, but assumed that he referred to the god-sylvaneth who had died in my arms about a year before. I was pleased to see that his people had taken the small matter of her death well in their stride. He appeared to shake his head, remembering something. ‘We fought like spring and winter. Everything I did displeased her.’
‘Older or younger?’
‘Older. And didn’t she always remind me of it.’
My face softened, my smile growing brittle, though I wasn’t sure why. ‘I… I had an older brother. Three of them. I think. I… don’t remember much about them.’
But Barrach wasn’t listening.
‘The skaven came during the festival of midwinter, when the warriors plant our blades in the earth for the Season of War. I think it was her they came for. My sister.’ His gaze became distant. ‘I held them off. Long enough for her and her sisters to escape. They only took me because I was all that was left. They didn’t want to return to Ikrit empty-handed, I suppose.’
‘How did your sister manage to escape?’ I asked. ‘The assassin that came for me, Malikcek, he doesn’t seem the sort that it would be easy to get away from.’
A thin smile glinted at me from the dark. ‘We have our ways. The Gorkai are not easily found.’
I remembered the grassy woman that I thought I’d seen observing me from the foot of Kurzog’s Hill before the battle, but it didn’t seem important enough to mention at the time.
‘The warlock wants to make himself into a Stormcast Eternal,’ I said, snorting at the sheer audacity of his hubris. And trust me, nobody knows more about hubris than I do. ‘And he’s going to pick me apart until he thinks he knows how to do it. What would he want with you, or your sister?’
‘You really do think a lot of yourself. Are all Sigmar’s warriors like you?’
‘Oh no,’ I said, and no greater truth has ever been spoken.
‘Well–’
The creak of an iron door cut short his explanation.
He glanced at me and I nodded, motioning him back from the bars and out of sight. Milk Scar was more neglectful than cruel, drawing some amusement from the torment of his charges, but only where doing so required the minimum of actual effort on his part. I could just about see Barrach’s outline, an emaciated but still muscular shade hovering just behind the bars. The skaven would still be able to smell him of course, but if you think a Stormcast Eternal looks impressive then you should try smelling one through a skaven’s nose. Their attention would be wholly on me.
Milk Scar strutted between the rows of empty cells, keys jangling against his belly. He sniffed the air. His two henchrats chittered amongst themselves, apparently annoyed at finding me already awake and upright as if I’d made them carry their spears all this way for nothing. The nearest was clearly debating whether to stab me anyway, for the sake of his routine. Milk Scar shook his head and cuffed the ratman over the back of the head, then squeaked and gestured to me.
The henchrat scurried forward with the familiar bucket of odorific swill.
I patted my belly mournfully. ‘Alas, I’m still full from that mouthful of offal I was able to hold down yesterday.’ I held out my hands, ready to be cuffed. ‘I can’t wait to get started, I think Ikrit was really starting to get somewhere.’
Milk Scar snarled at his henchrat, then at me. ‘You think you are brave, Bear-Eater. You are a barking dog. Yes-yes. All yap and no fangs. I expected more fight-struggle from the great Bear-Eater.’ He bared his teeth at the luckless henchrat, who quickly discarded his bucket to drop my manacles on the floor by his footpaws and pole them through to me on the butt-end of his spear.
My sunrise.
I slid them
over my wrists and walked to the bars where the ratman deftly fastened the pins. Milk Scar backed away, well beyond the reach of any lunging arms. Meanwhile, the other skaven dropped to his haunches to fasten my foot irons and lock them. By the time he had finished the first skaven was done with my wrists and was picking up the connecting bar from a loose pile of kit on the ground. I raised my shackles to allow him to feed the bar through the eyelet in my foot irons and connect them.
‘Stronger, you say, Barrach?’
‘Much,’ the answer grunted back at me from the shadows.
‘No squeak-talking,’ hissed Milk Scar.
‘Barrach…’
‘What now?’
‘Catch something for me.’
Yanking my hands from the forepaws of the ratman that was still fiddling with my shackles, I snatched the connecting rod from him. Before he had a chance to do much beyond squeak in alarm, I’d popped it from the eyelet in my foot irons and rammed Milk Scar in the chest with it. Hard enough to hurt, I’m sure, but I’m not in the business of spite for its own sake. I leave that sort of thing to the Celestial Vindicators. The blow punted the bulky ratman back and sent him tottering into the arms of an equally surprised-looking Barrach. The henchrat next to me snatched for the rod, only to give a muffled squeal of surrender as I broke every bone in his snout with a squeeze of my free hand.
Maybe there is a little of the Bladestorm in me after all. I’m not proud of it.
I let the stricken ratman slither down the bars. His comrade, though, hadn’t waited to see if he was alive or dead before bolting back down the passage, squealing his verminous little lungs out. I scowled after him, looking back to see Milk Scar hanging nervelessly against the bars of the opposite cell. His creamy white eyes bulged from their sockets. His tongue flopped out of his jaw, already turning blue. Barrach eased his bicep from the ratman’s throat.
‘Season of White Rest it might be, but that felt good.’
I snapped my fingers to get his attention. I would have clapped, but I was at a disadvantage on that score. ‘The keys.’
He blinked at me, confused, before my words hit home. ‘Keys. Keys. Yes!’ He dropped to his haunches, still holding Milk Scar’s neck in a lock, and fumbled around for the fat skaven’s keychain. The ardour of freedom made his hands shake and for a moment I actually thought he was going to drop the things, but at last he managed to get them free and into the lock of his door. He looked up at me.
‘You let them torture you, every day, until I was strong enough to escape. Why?’
‘I am a Lord-Castellant,’ I said, solemnly, as if that explained everything. It didn’t, of course, but it did cover the fact that I needed his help as much as he needed mine while at the same time definitely implying that I saw him as a warrior rather than another of Sigmar’s lost souls to be saved.
As I’d expected, the key stopped shaking after that.
Not bad for five well-chosen words.
I gestured with my fingers for the keys. ‘While it’s still the Season of White Rest.’
Chapter eight
The clanrat ran at me with a squeal, spear lowered, like a Freeguilder recruit on the training fields determined to murder a straw dummy. I disarmed him with a turn of my wrist, then riposted with an open hand that broke his neck and flung him ten feet back down the passage. He probably would have gone at least ten feet more had his body not been rising at the same time and struck the tunnel’s low ceiling.
Barrach looked duly impressed.
‘Which way?’ he said
A thoughtful warrior would have been made cautious by his defeat at Kurzog’s Hill, but I was not that warrior.
‘Just follow me,’ I said, already striking off down the tunnel and giving the spear I’d plucked out of the clanrat’s paws a practice twirl. Or as much of a twirl as was possible given the height of the ceiling and width of the passage anyway, which looked more like a knock-off duardin time piece trying to chime the hour. But I was in buoyant mood. There was an enemy in front of me, an adoring warrior behind me, and a weapon in my hand. It’s safe to say that I was firmly back in my element.
‘Ham-il-car! Ham-il-car!’
It’s possible that I got just a little overexcited.
I smashed into the mass of skaven coming at me with a roar.
I say ‘coming at me’ quite loosely of course, as I doubt whether they had any idea who I was or even that I was there at all. They were just scrabbling down the wrong tunnel at the wrong time, with far too many furry bodies behind them to turn away now. They squealed shrilly as I punched, kicked, head-butted, grabbed, twisted, gouged and even, when space allowed, stabbed my way through. I’d like to pretend that there was some skill to any of it, but to be honest I’ve waded through blizzards with the exact same waving routines of my arms and legs as I performed through that deluge of skaven warriors. Brute strength was my weapon, brute confidence my armour, and invulnerable as that ordinarily proved to be I still managed to suffer my share of scrapes before the flow slackened off enough for me to push into a more-or-less empty tunnel.
I looked around, straining my eyes in the dark. The alarm must have passed far enough back for the skaven to dart down side tunnels or to start circumventing the dungeon passages altogether. I sniffed at the sour tang that had impregnated the air.
‘The fear scent,’ said Barrach.
I crafted a grin that could have outshone the night sky of Azyr. ‘I just call it the skaven scent.’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Barrach gestured to the angry lattice of scratch and bite marks that had ruined my gambeson.
After several weeks of captivity, it was as closely bonded to my body as any artifice of the Six Smiths was to my soul, believe you me.
‘They’ve barely even broken the skin,’ I said.
‘At least let me take the front.’
I was tempted. It would take time for the skaven to muster sufficient courage – or for the fear scent to tickle the right whiskers – for any of the lair’s real warriors to start considering an escaped Stormcast Eternal their problem. I expected the reprieve to be brief even so, and the thought of Malikcek, or even Ikrit himself, being roused to my recapture made my skin come out in sweats. I ground my teeth and looked at the ceiling, heavenward, furious with myself for my body’s fear.
Misreading the expression entirely, Barrach scowled.
‘I’m still a Champion of the Wild Harvest. I can fight for my own freedom.’
‘I know you can.’ I shrugged, and tried to smile to make light of it. ‘And you will.’ I pointed back down the passage. ‘Don’t think that the skaven will only come at us from the front.’
Barrach clenched his fists in frustration. ‘Alright. What’s your escape plan?’
I had a plan, but whether it could be called an ‘escape’ plan largely depended on your definition of ‘escape,’ and mine was considerably broader than I expected Barrach’s to be.
‘Just stay close. Watch my back, and follow me.’
Holding my spear short, just below the blade, I hunched low and crabbed forwards at about as close to full-tilt as I could achieve. I mentally clocked the landmarks that Milk Scar’s daily traverses of the lair had familiarised me with as I hurried past them. The side tunnel from which came the waft of cooked meat. The clamour of a flesh market echoing through the ceiling. A succession of urine-stained scratch posts pointing this way and that. Some I ignored, some I followed. I couldn’t read the scratch-writing, obviously, and I suspected that half of the information was conveyed by scent anyway, but even I couldn’t slavishly observe the same route every day for a month and not have something of it sink in.
On the wobbly wood-planked causeway spanning Ikrit’s infernal hell-foundries, we met the first real resistance to our escape.
The rope bridge was barely wide enough for two of the bronze-armoured skaven warriors to cro
ss safely. Or for three to cross unsafely, and so naturally that’s exactly how the skaven tried to do it. I bellowed a challenge across the chasm as they clanked towards me.
They moved in lockstep, their armour plated with dirt-caked cogwheels that ticked like the gears of a music box as they walked. Sigmar, but I hate these things. It was as though I was facing a single animate thing of brass and steel that had grown and absorbed these living rats rather than individual skaven warriors in armour of their own design. They squeaked and chittered like any rodent though, even as they lowered their wire-pronged glaive-like devices as one. A weirdly greenish energy rinsed the weapons’ copper hafts, causing the wires to stiffen and the blades to incandesce.
I bellowed loudly as I ran to meet them.
‘I fought in the purges of Azyr, and in the first battles of the Realmgate Wars. I have tasted the blood of Mortarchs and shed the souls of lords of Chaos. Run away, rats. You barely qualify as sport to me.’
I was taking a lot on faith that Ikrit wanted me back in my cell alive. More than he wanted a few hundred of his warriors, anyway.
Let this be a lesson to you about relying overmuch on faith.
The warrior in the middle of the front rank issued an angry squeal as he dragged his glaive out of position and jabbed it towards me. A bolt of dirty lightning blasted from it, passing nearer to my shoulder than my favourite chamber serf would dare scrub with a sponge, leaving blistered skin that crawled with residual warp power. I made a fist against the pain and roared as I ducked into the crackling thicket of humming blades.
‘I’m Hamilcar Bear-Eater. I am the storm!’
And in the most precarious position possible, where the mid-section of the bridge swayed with every crude gesture and mistimed breath, the shock-vermin and I came together.
My spear pierced the rat I had panicked through the chest and exploded from his back, into the throat of the warrior directly behind him. I made to tear the weapon free, but over the last hundred years or so I’d grown accustomed to handling the finest weaponry that a semi-divine Smith could craft, and neglected the fact that I was working with something I’d filched from a skaven corpse. The bottom of it snapped away in my hand, leaving me facing a hundred shock-vermin with a mouldy stick. I stove in a warrior’s helmet with said stick, splintering it completely and robbing me even of that, before wading in with my fists. The bridge bucked beneath us like a wild Dracoth, dislodging about a score of the skaven here and there before the survivors had the chance to huddle into the middle and hang on.
