by Warhammer
The cell I now found myself in was practically luxurious compared to the one I had gone to such extraordinary lengths to escape. The floor was flagged and even. There was a cot with bedding, large enough for eight feet and four hundred pounds of Stormcast Eternal to lie comfortably. A plain-looking chair stood with its back to the dressed stone of the far wall. There was even a basin with taps for hot and cold running water, practically unheard of luxuries even in the rarefied echelons of the Collegiate Arcana. The bars were celestite. That was strange. The seraphon starmetal was too astoundingly rare even for the accoutrement of Lord-Celestants, but it was well-known about the celestine vaults that Grungni and his Smiths were able to source enough of the material for their own private needs. They vibrated musically. It was actually quite pleasant, but I expected it to get tiresome quite quickly.
‘A better class of prisoner then?’ I mused aloud. ‘Or a better class of captor?’
‘You’re no prisoner in my house, Hamilcar Bear-Eater.’
On the other side of the bars was a guard room, typical of the form. A single three-legged stool stood in front of a no-nonsense, steel-clad door. A duardin sat in it, slouched forwards, elbows on his knees, studying me intently and drawing the eye in kind.
The absolute size of him was oddly difficult to be sure about. He seemed to fluctuate between a roughly duardin-sized core of strength and something far larger than the room he occupied. That duardin centre was fantastically well muscled, stoking an ember of manly envy even in me, which you should know is the sort of thing I don’t admit to lightly. Even the plain workman’s leathers he wore couldn’t mask that kind of obvious power. His beard was the grey of good iron, split into two plaits that wound Sigmar alone knew how many times about his waist until they lay thicker than mail. His ruddy cheeks were blackened by soot and years, and by an implacability of expression that made him impossible to read.
‘That’s me,’ I shrugged. ‘The Bear-Eater. I talk before I think. And that’s if I think.’ I wrapped my fingers around the quietly singing starmetal and eyeballed the duardin through the bars. ‘It’s been over fifty Ghur-years since I’ve walked the rings of the Sigmarabulum. I’m sure every guest chamber in the Aetherdomes is barred with celestite these days.’
The duardin frowned. The room darkened with it, the very walls about me seeming to bow under some inward pressure. ‘Your reputation for tomfoolery goes before you, Hamilcar.’
‘Though it is an almost unheard of phenomenon, you have me at a slight disadvantage, then. Who are you?’
‘My name is Ong. I assumed you’d heard of me.’
I know a little of the duardin tongue. It’s not nearly the secret language so many of the Dispossessed clans seem to think it still is, and it’s a handy tongue to have a grasp of in Azyrheim where almost all of the bawdiest ale houses are duardin free-houses. The name meant ‘One’. My heart gave a traitorous little flutter. I did indeed know this duardin, for his name had been beaten into my armour, although not in a form that I or any Stormcast Eternal I knew of could read or speak aloud.
‘You are one of the Six Smiths,’ I said.
The duardin (the god, actually – though I suppose he must have been duardin once), Ong, produced a grimace and pushed his tongue against the gap left by a missing tooth. ‘I always hated that name, you know. It was Grungni as coined it, of course. As if he owned us. Never thought it’d catch on the way it did. Are you aught more than Sigmar’s will, lad?’
‘Some would answer yes.’
‘Aye, they would, but I didn’t ask them.’
I shrugged. ‘I’d say no.’
Ong clapped his thigh and nodded, grinning with the same meagre apportionment with which he had earlier frowned. The pressure on the chamber eased slightly and the celestite again began to sing. ‘Good answer, lad. Good answer. The right answer too, for what that’s worth. Under better circumstances, I think I’d have enjoyed having you about my Forge to put the realms to rights. Your legend around here doesn’t quite do you justice.’
‘You’ll hear a better class of story beyond Sigmaron’s walls.’
I never did understand why, but the Astral Templars aside, my fellow Stormcast Eternals never exactly took to me in the same way as the soldiers of the mortal races had.
Yet more evidence for the imperfection of the reforging process, I suppose.
‘Aye, I did hear that, but I can’t leave my Forge.’
It sounded like my personal kind of hell. ‘Why not?’
‘Busy.’
‘Then let me out of here, and I’ll show you all the best drinking halls in Azyrheim.’
‘After Sigmar has rid the Mortal Realms of Chaos. Maybe.’ This struck me as the godly equivalent of ‘when Aqshy freezes over’. The Smith’s frown deepened. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Feel?’ I felt as though there was a gaping hole somewhere in my chest, not that it was any business of his. ‘You put a bear in a cage and ask him how he feels?’ I rolled my wrists and made fists, my intention being to show how strong I felt, laugh it off, but some ligament of the soul, unconnected to any muscle, twanged and drew my face into a grimace.
Ong leant forwards. ‘What?’
I tried to smile. ‘If you weren’t right here in the room with me I’d say you hadn’t done your best work here.’
The Smith didn’t react to the insult. He reminded me a little bit of Ikrit in that respect, the way he would hold himself apart and grill me, uncaring of the answers I gave. But it was no dearth of emotion that made Ong inscrutable: it was the depth of it. Ikrit aspired to be a god. He masqueraded as a god. The Smith was a god. The thoughts inside his head passed a long way beyond my notice, and what he felt had an equivalent gulf of travel, and had to be powerful indeed, before it would show on his face.
‘What makes you say that?’ he said
‘It hurt. More than usual. And I feel…’ I hesitated, unsure what to say to get me out of here and back to Ghur the fastest. I settled for, ‘Different.’
Ong eased back on his stool, big hands clasped over his big knees. ‘I’ve never received a warrior in my Forge as broken in spirit as you were. The lords-arcanum almost threw you out, you know, before you even got near to my Anvil. They’d never seen anything like it, actually thought you some trick of the Dark Powers. Nor would it be the first time they’ve tried to sneak a corruption into the Forge Eternal.’ He held up his forefinger and thumb, an inch apart, the calluses almost touching. ‘This close to returning to the Cosmic Storm, lad, that’s where you were. Maybe you’d have preferred that. Many would. But we are what we are, and we do as that demands of us.’
I shrugged. It was all the opinion I had on any of that.
‘Remake the fallen,’ Ong pronounced. ‘That’s my task here. Repetitive, aye, it can be that, but never dull. You, though.’ He shook his head, pulling back his lips and sucking in through his teeth. ‘You can’t make right what isn’t all there. So my mother used to say.’
‘You had a mother?’
‘Once.’
I grunted. We had that in common.
It didn’t make me feel especially godly.
‘I’m not one for buttering words, Hamilcar Bear-Eater, I don’t get a lot of company down here, so I’ll just lay it out for you. I couldn’t reforge you right. Nor even close to right, since we’re being honest with one another. Only to the best of my ability, and that sits ill with me.’
‘I feel fine,’ I lied.
‘You ain’t anywhere near to fine. I wouldn’t allow an arrowhead to leave my Forge so imperfect.’
Every word he spoke was a pump at the bellows, drawing the air out of the room. I took a step back from the bars and spread my arms.
‘Come in here with me and we’ll talk about imperfect.’
Ong’s stolid frown cracked and he gave a dour chuckle. ‘Under better circumstances, aye. But when w
as then ever better than now. Never, I think.’ The false mirth faded and the walls again darkened, curving inwards to enclose us. ‘I take pride in my work. I’ll not have you walking the orrery bastions of Sigmaron bringing shame on me.’ He jabbed his thumb into his chest. ‘There’s a reason that I’m called “Ong”.’
‘So Sigmar doesn’t know I’m here?’
‘Reforging a warrior’s a tricky process, particularly after the first time. Can take days.’ He shrugged. ‘Can take centuries.’
‘Centuries?’
I didn’t know much about the affairs of gods, and I didn’t much care, but the idea of spending a hundred years or more in that airless cell had me practically scrabbling at the walls right then and there.
‘Release me to the Castellan Temple now. I’ll bathe in snow water, eat my own weight in meat, drink ’til I pass out, and then forget this conversation ever took place.’
‘Don’t try to intimidate me, lad. I’m not some hardlucked tinkerer looking to eke out some prospect in the Ghurlands, there to be browbeaten by some near-immortal I made.’ He thumped out those last words on his chest, and the walls and ceiling grumbled with him. The shadows cast by the bars of my cell pirouetted and stretched.
I held his stare, refusing to be cowed.
‘It’s for the good of the Stormhosts that you’re here. And if I do ever need to explain to Sigmar why you never emerged from the Forge, and don’t think you’re so important to him that I ever will, mind you, then I’ll answer him truthful – and believe you this, Hamilcar Bear-Eater, he’ll take my word on it. He’s a wise god, is Sigmar. He knows that when it comes to this Forge that Grungni and we Smiths know best. Until I can figure out what’s been done to you, and how to fix it, you’re going nowhere.’ He waved his hand vaguely. ‘I can’t guarantee you won’t break up into lightning the minute you’re beyond the Sigmarabulum, maybe take a whole command echelon and a ward of Azyrheim with you as you go.’
‘And how long will that be?’
‘Until I know more, I’d just be guessing.’
Ong stood up, shrinking and hardening as he did so, locking onto the form and size of an abnormally muscular duardin even as he walked towards the door behind him. The knock coincided perfectly with his arrival, and he opened it onto three Stormcast Eternals.
A young duardin stood with them. He said nothing, but his eyes carried a crackling intensity that was almost as terrible to look at as the demi-god Smith upon whom he waited. Perhaps even more so. The duardin nodded and withdrew, much to the apparent relief of the three Stormcast Eternals that had accompanied him. They filed inside.
Pulling up my chair and turning it backwards like the show-off I was, I planted myself in it. ‘You’ve surpassed yourself, Ong,’ I said. ‘You’ve managed to put all my favourite people into one room.’
Chapter thirteen
‘What brings you back to the Sigmarabulum so soon, brother?’ I said. ‘Broudiccan wagered me you’d be back in the Aetherdomes in a year. I gave you eighteen months, and reminded him that Sigmar had given you the easier bits of the Ghurlands.’
Zephacleas Beast-Bane broke into a huge, gap-toothed grin wholly at odds with the sombre grouping he was a party to and the ceremonial attire at which he occasionally scratched. His hair was long and bound in thick braids, as was his beard, something which I’d often teased him over – prissying up like a Zephyri aelf maid come to watch the trooping of the Freeguilds. He puffed up his thick chest and stroked his braids lovingly, his battered, brutal features creasing still further. ‘The ladies love a man who knows how to look after himself, my friend,’ he said.
I grinned, aware Zephacleas was purposefully derailing my line of questioning with his absurd answer, but I did not care enough to challenge him. ‘Where I come from they prefer one who can kill a ghyrcat with his bare hands, and still yomp it up the mountain to the cave afterwards.’
‘I can do that.’
I snorted. ‘You? You’re practically civilized. Made for finer things.’
Turning an interesting shade of purple from the effort of containing a laugh, the Lord-Celestant of the Beast-Banes took a standing position behind Ong’s stool and strove to look severe.
The sallow figure at the Smith’s left hand sighed wearily.
‘This might just pass more easily if you restrict yourself to answering the questions posed,’ said Ramus.
I recognised the Lord-Relictor despite the fact that I’d never actually seen him without armour before. The sallow features, the monkish haircut, the desolate stare – it was all much as I would have deduced from the skull-faced helm of his mortis plate. I do him something of a disservice because the Shadowed Soul actually had a vestige of a personality, which was more than can be said of most Hallowed Knights. I had always thought of him as something of a repressed psychopath, wanting nothing more than to throw off the trappings of the warrior-devout and launch his own vindictive crusade on Nekroheim. I respected him enormously for that and would have joined that mad venture of his in a heartbeat had he but asked, and brought twenty thousand mortal swords along with me.
Which only made the fact he never had more hurtful.
‘Why not ask the High Wind to stop blowing while you’re at it,’ I replied.
‘Interesting choice of metaphor,’ said the third Stormcast, at the Smith’s right hand. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus of the Knights Merciless, Chaos-seekers and witch-burners extraordinaire.
She was garbed in robes so white they almost called tears from my eyes. Her hair was the black of moonless skies and worn long, drawn from her face by a crown of blistered sky ice. Her sword belt was bare, as were those of the others, but unlike Ramus and Zephacleas she still held the abjuration staff of her office in one cold white hand. It’s a thing of particular beauty, Vikaeus’ staff, clad in nacre and mirrored glass, the lantern at its top ensconced like a pearl within its shell by a halo of cometry ice. Knowing how many daemons it had banished to the Realms of Chaos only added to its lustre, although the unwelcome reminder of how my own warding lantern had burned me did tarnish it somewhat. I averted my eyes, while obviously trying not to look as though that was what I was doing, but found that I wasn’t really looking at the staff anyway.
My eye was drawn to Vikaeus herself, the shape of her unarmoured figure, as if hypnotised by an arcane rune in some tome of secrets. I found myself studying her face, noticing, as I had somehow failed to notice before, the freckles that spread across her nose and cheeks like the constellations of my mortal sky.
‘What?’ she asked, testily.
I blinked, taken aback, having somehow managed to forget there were three other Stormcasts and a demi-god in the room with me.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Nothing?’
She watched me through narrowed eyes, clearly expecting something more from me than that. I fidgeted on my seat, which was suddenly no longer as comfortable as it had first looked. ‘I was… wondering what brings you to the Forge Eternal?’ I said, because the only sure form of defence is all-out attack. ‘What calls a Lord-Celestant, Relictor, and Veritant away from Sigmar’s wars?’
‘They’re here at my inviting,’ said Ong, and despite being the only one seated amongst a group of warriors twice his size, the Smith dominated the room like an unsheathed blade. ‘I’ll be asking the questions. But these three…’ Ong raised a hand from his lap, gesture enough to identify and quell the three Stormcasts stood about him. ‘They know you best. They’ll help me be the judge of your answers.’
‘Know me best? These three?’ I gave a derisory bark. ‘Hardly! Ramus and I fought together once, a hundred years ago. Zephacleas? He and I have barely crossed paths since Sigmar unleashed his first storm. He had some walkover at Mandrake Bastion or somewhere like that.’ I waved my hand dismissively, which brought a wry chuckle and an eye-roll from the Beast-Bane. Of Vikaeus, I said nothing, which she noticed, a
nd glanced at Ong with a frown. ‘Where are my Bear-Eaters?’ I declared, changing the issue and throwing up my hands as if I had just then run out of patience. ‘Where are Frankos and Broudiccan? Where is Thracius or Barbarus, Kanutus or Brakka?’
Vikaeus and Zephacleas shared a look.
‘There are gaps between these bars,’ I growled. ‘I can see you.’
‘The Bear-Eaters are not available,’ said Vikaeus.
‘What could be more important than deciding the fate of their Lord-Castellant?’
‘They fight on without you, believe it or not.’
‘I don’t believe it! Don’t tell me your much-prophesied vermintide is actually happening at last?’
‘My abilities are not on trial here, Hamilcar,’ Vikaeus answered with a sigh.
‘Trial?’ I rose out of my chair and kicked it from under me. I pointed an accusing finger at Ong. ‘Give me a trial by combat or none at all. Come on, Smith, what do you say? Man versus god, give it your best try.’
‘The Bear-Eaters aren’t your concern just now,’ said Ong, calmly, and his voice had the same effect on me as a bucket of cold water would have on a hot blade. Belligerence rose off me like steam and I sagged forwards onto the bars, dispirited. ‘Tell me what happened after you left the Seven Words.’
‘You couldn’t get even that much from Xeros and the others?’ I said.
‘Just answer my question.’
With an exaggerated sigh, I told them. Of the alliance I’d struck with the aetar, impressing King Augus with my head for heights, my casual attitude to the authority of the God-King, and my ability to swallow an eighteen-inch-long ringtail worm (a delicacy, apparently) without chewing. There were certain details I thought it best to haze over. No one needed to know, for instance, how my impending honour bout with Akturus Ironheel had brought forward my departure by a week or two, saying only that the two Freeguild regiments that had been ready to march at the time were more than adequate to the task.
