by Warhammer
Cryax crunched over the body of his rat-ogor, his ice-rimed eyes intent on me.
The currents of battle drove a pack of clanrat warriors squealing into the space between us. Cryax snatched a clanrat up in his jaws, bit the screaming ratman in half, and flung the pieces over his shoulders. Vikaeus levelled her sword towards me, her staff held high. She blazed like a star-goddess, a divine creature of vengeance.
‘You cannot flee Sigmar’s judgement, Hamilcar.’
‘Come here and get me, Vikaelia!’
Even as I yelled it, a drover-engineer in spiked armour (designed, I expect, to make the wearer less appetising to his charges) snapped a charge-rod into the backs of a pair of half-machine rat-ogors until they gave in and lumbered towards the Lord-Veritant.
‘Hamilcar!’ she screamed at me before she and Cryax disappeared under a sheet of warpfire from one of the rat-ogor’s fist weapons.
I spun away.
I was sure that she’d be fine.
Then I saw something that stopped me short.
‘Broudiccan.’
The Lord-Castellant held his ground at the centre of a ragged crescent of Heavens Forged Paladins. Thunderaxes and stormstrike glaives took a fearsome tithe of the endless hordes being flung at them, matched only by the castellant’s halberd of the huge warrior himself. The Imperishables’ approach to warfare might have been as alien to me as Lord-Ordinator Ramhos’ approach to castle-building, all squares and lines and structural members, but the Astral Templars still did it the old-fashioned way. The way that Hamul of the White Spear would have recognised it. The Heavens Forged were no different. Every warrior before me was the hero of his own saga, turning his or her god-like vigour and unbound strength to their own glory with only half a nod towards ‘victory’ or the survival of their brothers and sisters. If it appeared to the uninitiated as if the Paladins were tearing every sinew in the defence of their Lord-Castellant then it was only because someone – and this had Frankos of the Heavens Forged drawn all over it – had had the presence of mind to put them next to him before the fighting had begun.
The ground before the Decimators and Protectors was heaped high with skaven dead, a corpse moat ten feet wide and five deep that would have been impressive were it not also grim testament to how far the skaven’s rabid ferocity and sheer numbers had driven the Paladins back.
As I watched, I saw a Decimator dazzled by the glaive-routines of a shock-vermin cog-pack a dozen strong before finally going down. Another fell to a sniper’s bullet. I snarled upwards as the lightning bolts bearing the two warriors back to Azyr blew the circling airships aside.
Broudiccan bellowed for more from his Paladins. More strength. More courage.
He was good, but he was no Hamilcar Bear-Eater.
I started towards them, only to feel my legs waver at the first step. The encroachment of an all-too-familiar evil had made them freeze. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it dread. Not exactly. Not unless pushed. But unease washed through me like the icy breath of a frost-drake. My guts knotted, tugging on my insides, as if to pull away from me and towards some titanic outward force.
I looked in that direction.
The battle fell away from me. Scales fell from my eyes.
I gripped my halberd as though it was the last implement of pure sigmarite in the Mortal Realms.
Ikrit had joined the battle.
Chapter thirty-two
Encased in armour of gold and bronze and iron rust, the master warlock stood a head taller than even his largest warriors. The air cooked where he strode, engulfing all but him alone in a haze of raw heat and brutalised power. The cobblestones beneath his tread cracked and steamed, as though bearing the weight of a being many times his physical size. Whether it was the broken glass trail that linked our damaged souls or some divine gift of his, the warlock sensed my presence as I had sensed his and turned. Frenzied clan warriors scurried on between us, oblivious to the witching glare of his lensed eyes that passed over them. Death leapt from his eyes to mine, and it was only by the turbulent energies of the storm in my veins that I was able to resist the explicit command of his gaze to cease living.
Ikrit’s jaws parted in what might have been a snarl. Diamond-edged teeth flared with a faint corona of trapped Azyrite light, and the sight of that pure energy on his decaying lips purged my muscles well and truly of any lingering paralysis.
I gripped my halberd until my knuckles whitened.
‘I’m going to–’
The outraged bellow of a Dracoth cut me off just as I was about to get started.
I looked over my shoulder to see Cryax and Vikaeus hacking and trampling their way through the skaven horde. The other Concussor was still caught some way behind, but closing the gap determinedly.
‘I know-smell this one from our dream,’ said Ikrit.
‘My dream.’
‘You like-like her smell.’
‘I don’t need to hear that from you.’
‘I know-see what you need. We are connected now. Let me help-help.’
The warlock raised his giant metal claw, curling in the stiffly jointed digits until only one remained, pointing at me. The skaven around him suddenly flopped to the ground, grasping at their throats and gasping. Then they shrivelled, their flesh ageing a thousand years as if their perishing were fuel for the dark purple and green flames that enveloped the warlock. An amethyst bolt lanced from Ikrit’s paw. The skaven in its path fell by the score, slain instantly, their souls banished from their bodies and drawn in to empower the sorcerous bolt still further. I reached instinctively for my warding lantern, a little burnt flesh be damned! But I was too slow.
It lanced over my head.
I spun around with a cry, and a blast strong enough to have brought down the wall of a stormkeep hit Cryax in the chest. His sigmarite peytral, that’s the chest-plate to you and me, cracked. I heard ribs break. Flayed skaven souls broke from the amethyst firestorm in a screaming torrent, ripping away frost-white scales and armour plates as the mighty Dracoth was tossed to the ground like an emptied aleskin. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus was hurled from the saddle. She rolled along the ground, arms flailing, losing her staff, but by accident or sheer indomitability of will managing to keep hold of her sword.
I lost her to the melee.
‘Vikaelia!’
Part of me wanted to run to her. A powerful and still growing part. But the better part, that which I had promised Hamuz el-Shaah would always remain dominant, held true.
I turned to Ikrit.
‘Sigmar has reforged me as Knight-Questor. He has charged me with your banishment to Sigmaron, and I will see it done.’
I had expected a sneer, a cackle, a disappointed shake of that mechanical muzzle, but the warlock appeared to take my threat entirely at face value. ‘I will go-scurry to Azyr-place, storm-thing. One day. When I am strong enough. Too strong for your God-King to stop me take-stealing it from him.’
‘What could you want with Azyr?’
‘There is a throne in the mountain-place you call Highheim. It will be mine.’
Ikrit ran at me.
Clad in rusted plate, he didn’t look as if he should be able to move anywhere like that fast, but the air seemed to be complicit, drawing aside as if giving him a free run while the ground itself propelled him forward.
Without waiting for him to make the distance, I threw myself at him with a roar.
My halberd crashed down onto the shoulder joint of his armour. It was like striking a shard of the Mallus, thinner than my finger, denser than worlds. The shock of hitting it threw back my arm. Sparks of energy with at least six different colours crawled over my halberd blade. At the same time Ikrit grabbed the device on my breastplate. I must have been twice his height, yet he lifted me off the ground like a broken toy. I backhanded him across the jaw, snapping his head back, then brought my elbow hamme
ring down into the joint of the arm that held me. It collapsed under the blow and released me. I backed quickly away. My halberd continued to bleed a rainbow as I spun it warningly between us.
Ikrit cocked his head.
The ground beneath me trembled.
I looked down, just as the cobbles beneath my feet broke open, green shoots ripping free of the earth beneath. They whipped for me, one of them finding an ankle and dragging it down. Had I simply been caught while standing then that would have been bad enough, but it snared me as I had been pedalling back from the warlock and sent me crashing down onto my back. More creepers erupted from the broken ground, lashing around my arms, legs, waist and neck before I had a chance to rise.
‘Do not fight-struggle, Hamilcar. You should know-learn by now. Things become painful when you struggle-fight.’ Lightning surged through the creeping vines. I howled in pain and the warlock chittered, watching me writhe, before dismissing the spell with a twitch of his whiskers. ‘Give-give the lantern.’
‘Come and take it, Ikrit. Or are you afraid I’ll bite?’
‘I like-like you, Hamilcar. You remind me of… life. I do not want-wish to hurt you again.’
I made a dismissive snort. ‘You think that hurt?’
The warlock’s armoured jaws clanked silently open and shut, which I was taking for laughter, or at least the physical manifestation of the idea of laughter. ‘I was a living rat once. I lived in a place other to this. A gone place. All over that world I travelled, seeking knowledge, power. I found-learned immortality of a sort.’ With the lighter gauntlet of his left paw, he indicated to his undead, armour-plated frame. ‘But not like this. True immortality. The power to die and come again. That you gift-gave to me.’ His eyes flashed with the madness of power. ‘And to remember. Many things I had forgotten. One day… One day I hope-want to remember my real name.’
He crouched over me with a squeal of joints and set his heavy claw over the lantern where it was hooked to my waist.
‘I knew that Sigmar would resist me. I knew it would do damage and was prepared. Yes-yes. I knew. That is why I made certain-sure to take a Lord-Castellant. For the lantern-light.’ He looked down, snarling. ‘But Malikcek let you escape-flee.’
‘If it makes you feel better, he’s dead now. I killed him.’
Alright, it had been Nassam that had killed him, but Ikrit didn’t need to know that, did he?
‘That you are here now squeak-told me that already. He was good-good at what he did for me, but a god must outgrow even his mightiest servants.’
‘I have been in the presence of a god or two lately. You don’t walk on the same plane.’
‘You hope-hope to goad me? Anger withered from this flesh a hundred lifetimes ago.’
He pulled the lantern hard, twisting the loop handle out of shape and snapping my belt. It came away in his oversized claw.
‘It’ll hurt,’ I warned.
‘The dead do not know-feel pain. Not as you understand it.’
‘It’ll probably kill you too.’
‘I am already dead. I have been dead-dead for thousands of years.’ He pulled his gaze from the lantern to look down on me. ‘There are those in your own Pantheon who would stop-think before facing me alone. What madness possessed you? To think that you could best-slay me?’
With a growl of effort, I lifted my head from the ground. The vines that held me dug into my flesh, groaning as they thickened to counter me.
‘I’m about to tell you something that you can never share.’
Ikrit leaned in. His voice was husky and low. ‘Never-never.’
‘I am Hamilcar Bear-Eater. I always win because I am never alone.’
The warlock looked puzzled for a moment, then sneered. ‘Vikaelia? Bringing her and her warriors with you was a smart-clever trick. But the Veritant-Lord is as fearsome to me as you are. They are nothing. Two more warriors will be swallowed-killed by the numbers of my great-great horde.’
‘Two warriors? I assumed warlock engineers could count if nothing else. Look again.’
With my head fixed to the ground, I glanced aside with my eyes.
From the shattered buildings to either side of us, bowmen and handgunners of a rejuvenated Freeguild poured fire onto the Bear Road. I recognised some amongst them from the men and women I had seen on my flight through the Seven Words, and heard my name being shouted like a rallying cry. From every side street, back alley and gutted shop front, leather-armoured soldiers and lightly armed civilians pushed into the flanks of the skaven horde. I thought I caught the glitter of Nassam’s quartzsword amongst them, but there were too many of them to be certain.
‘Mortals,’ said Ikrit, in the same tone with which one might dismiss ‘insects’.
With a quip of my eyebrows, I gestured behind me.
The warlock hissed in displeasure.
‘No,’ Ikrit hissed.
‘Yes,’ I grinned.
It was Akturus Ironheel.
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the rhythmic, almost mechanical tread of his Liberator shield walls closing off the road behind me. A few flashes from the Lord-Castellant’s warding lantern had patched him up nicely, and thanks to my efforts in the catacombs, the Imperishables had had a few warriors to spare. I heard the terrified squeals of skaven warriors falling between the relentless advance of the Imperishables and the weapons of the Freeguild and Heavens Forged.
‘I still command-rule in the air,’ Ikrit snarled. ‘My airships will–’
He was cut off by a terrific shriek and an explosion high in the sky, as an armoured body half again as massive as a Stardrake tore through the hull of one of the Skyre clan airships. Bits of wood and flailing bodies rained over the battlefield as the eagle knight chomped on the larger airborne pieces, scattering the debris with an almighty beat of its wings. Ikrit stared up in horror.
‘No-no.’
I chuckled harshly. One benefit of being lashed to the ground was having a fine view of what was happening in the sky.
‘I always knew that Augus liked me.’
Ikrit turned from the battle for the air and glared down at me. ‘You think me beaten? You think I want-need my army. I will make-build a new army.’ He held up my lantern. ‘I need-want only this.’ He stood with a squeal and turned to walk away, only to stop abruptly when a viperish green shoot broke through the road beneath his footpaw to wind about his shin. He looked down at it, then back at me. ‘This is your doing as well?’
Breaking free of the earth behind the warlock like a particularly vigorous weed, Brychen drove her spear between his shoulder blades.
‘No,’ said the wild priestess. ‘It is mine.’
It snapped in two. The warlock staggered towards me, chittering annoyance, as the priestess cast aside the broken halves to sprout another with a thicker haft.
‘This power is not yours to command,’ she said, radiating anger like coloured light from a flower. The verdant growth that covered me pulsed and shrank back into the earth. Buds swelled and burst, throwing a sickly floral scent over us all as exploratory shoots lashed around Ikrit’s iron claw, dragging it towards the ground and binding my lantern tightly in its palm. ‘It is time for it to be returned to the soil.’
Ikrit looked over his shoulder at the priestess, his expression blank. ‘I am dead-dead. Many times over I have been given-fed to the black earth. Rarely does my buried form lie still. Death always conquers Life. In the end.’ Ribbons of entropic energies coursed the vines that held his gauntlet pinned. They withered, turned yellow, then black. The embrittled stalk husks fell off him like dust from a coat of armour as he turned. ‘Always.’
The look he gave Brychen was a thunderclap that hurled the priestess back into the melee on a comet tail of splintered armour and blood.
I didn’t watch her go.
I didn’t wait to see her land.
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As I had instinctively known during my brief, albeit unwitting, altercation with Sigmar in the Forge Eternal, there was no way I was going to defeat Ikrit with strength alone.
Sucker-punch and surprise would be my weapons here.
I threw myself at the warlock while he was still facing the other way. My halberd carved a searing arc towards the wrist joint of his gauntlet. A black wind billowed about Ikrit’s body and carried him out of my reach. The halberd whistled past his midriff. He hissed his displeasure. I reversed my grip, roared, the muscles across my upper body bulging as I struck back with the butt. The sigmarite ferrule countered the weight of the entire foot-long blade. It could crush conventional plate and shatter immortal bone. Ikrit didn’t give it the chance. A whoosh of warpflame from his gauntlet flicked me contemptuously aside.
The ichorous green jet was severed almost as soon as it had been unleashed, warpflame dribbling from the nozzle to hiss off the cobbles.
It had been a playful shove, a jepard batting a doomed animal between its paws.
Surprise had not served me nearly as well as I might have hoped.
‘Fool-fool,’ Ikrit hissed. ‘After all you have seen you still challenge me.’
At the warlock’s gesture the ground between us shuddered and fell away. The road tore itself in half, noxious fumes gasping from the rent in the earth, swallowing clanrats and Freeguilders alike. ‘I need-want no army!’ the warlock squealed, shrill with power. ‘The very earth of the realm answers my summons-call.’ A nimbus of multi-hued energies encompassed him as he extended a gauntlet. ‘I am the Ur-Rat, the Rat-That-Was. You will kneel-die!’
