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.