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 was 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.