‘I cannot,’ I said, honestly.
‘It sets a black precedent.’
‘You fear that other mortals will attempt the same.’
The brilliance sighed. ‘We all were mortal once. Even Nagash was once a living man, if you can believe that now. I am told this Ikrit is almost as ancient, even if for the moment he lacks our power.’
‘Told by whom?’
‘My brother and sister gods despatch agents of their own to capture him and his assassin. In secret, of course, but little transpires in the realms that the stars do not observe. Malerion has pursued him longest. Decades, at least.’
‘As has his own Horned Rat.’
‘Indeed?’ Sigmar turned to me, and I winced. His genuine surprise was like a tsunami wave, violent and unexpected. ‘No one else tasked with bringing in this quarry knows him as well as you can claim to, Hamilcar, for good or ill. It will be I to claim the warlock, and it will be you that brings him to me.’
I nodded, rising from my knee, but keeping my head bowed.
‘Why the deception, sire? You are the God-King. Why come to me in disguise?’
‘You are best-placed to find Ikrit first, Hamilcar, but I cannot have it known that you are on this quest. The injury that has been done to you is too great. It would weaken the resolve of the Stormhosts if it were to become known. When Ong finds you missing he will come to me, and I will claim ignorance. The Smiths are proud. Better for them to believe you headstrong and resourceful than that I work to the common good behind their backs. I will have no choice but to send hunters after you.’
I snorted. The hunter had not yet been reforged who could bring down Hamilcar Bear-Eater.
‘Where should I begin?’
‘Ghur.’
I nodded. I still had allies there that I could call upon. I was thinking of Frankos, Akturus. Perhaps even el-Shaah.
The radiance before me splintered around the sharp edges of something metallic as the God-King held forth a weapon. It was a halberd. It was my halberd. I held out my hands, palms flat, as Sigmar laid the haft across them. Closing my left hand to grip it, I ran my right along the shaft towards the blade, reacquainting myself with every notch and carving the way a blind man would a trusted staff.
‘You remade it.’
‘Ong thought it unsalvageable. I found another Smith.’
I did not enquire further, which I regret now, but at the time I could not have been any less concerned with the internecine struggles of the gods. Standing stiffly, as though I had been crouched in obeisance for a thousand years, I gave the weapon a practice twirl, stabbing finally at the armour dummy, holding the long-handled weapon unwavering in one hand.
‘As good as new,’ I said. ‘First forged under the Auroral Tempest.’
‘A more belligerent storm does not exist in Azyr.’
‘I am glad you did not insist on a Questor Warblade. I don’t think I would feel the same warrior with any other weapon.’ I lowered the halberd’s blade point to the flagstones.
‘What is it? You have doubts.’
‘Never.’ Despite what I said I touched the fingers of my left hand to my breast. The position matched about as closely as I could hazard to the injury in my soul. But how do you even go about explaining such things to a god? It was my god that addressed me now though, not Ong, and I felt that I owed him something of the truth. ‘I have been remembering things from my old life. Feeling things.’
‘What manner of things?’
I thought of Vikaeus in her Day armour and grew inexplicably defensive.
‘Things.’
A smile shone upon the God-King’s face, sunlight glimpsed through a break in the storm. The burn it inflicted on me was fleeting and light, an uplifting trill of power that cascaded between my ears and in the palms of my hands.
‘Then perhaps what Ikrit has given you is not wholly a curse.’
I smiled back at him. I was helpless to do otherwise.
‘Then I am ready.’ I threw the fabulously ornate helmet that Sigmar had given to me over my shoulder. I would wear the armour with pride, but the God-King himself could not make Hamilcar Bear-Eater cover his face with a helmet.
Knight-Questor Hamilcar Bear-Eater, I thought.
Lord-Celestant Frankos of the Heavens Forge didn’t sound nearly as impressive to me now.
‘Send me back, sire.’
‘And so that is the story of how I knocked out Sigmar Heldenhammer, and incidentally of how I came to be named Knight-Questor. Now pass me that cup, mortal. Recounting my triumphs is thirstier work than winning new ones. What is that? Speak louder, friend. You want to hear more of that tale?
Very well, there is still some night left…’
Chapter fifteen
One of these days, I am going to sneak a body out of Azyrheim, and it is Sigmar I will be going to for help moving it.
Sigmaron is without any doubt the mightiest fortress in the Mortal Realms. Perhaps in any of the realms that float in the aetheric cloud this side of the Great Nothing. Raised at the dawning of the Age of Myth and extended and fortified over aeons, it eclipses such pretenders as Hammerhal or Nagashizzar in every conceivable aspect. Its strength can be rivalled only by the molten fury of the Brass Citadel of Khorne, or the madness-inducing structures of the Impossible Fortress. ‘Impregnable,’ then, is a word that fits neatly alongside it. And yet neither the storm golems that stand sentinel of the Forge Eternal nor the Paladin Conclaves that patrol the walls and grounds of Sigmaron even noticed my passage. The Freeguilder companies that warded the First City below – tens of thousands of men-at-arms in a city of untold millions – simply waved me past. Even the star titans that watched over the Realmgates, capable of sniffing a single corrupt thought from a puritan’s mind, let me pass unchallenged.
I took a deep breath of the stale, subterranean air and grinned as I started down the marbled steps.
If you’d told me just six months ago that I would return to the Seven Words and be glad to see the place, then I would have laughed, and cut your ale ration for a month as a precaution.
The two Judicators in basalt-black armour at the bottom of the flight lowered their boltstorm crossbows.
‘Sigmar,’ breathed one. ‘He has come back.’
‘That’s right, brothers. Knight-Questor Hamilcar Bear-Eater walks amongst you.’
The Realmgate snapped shut behind me, the sudden quenching of its link to the Celestial Realm plunging the underground chamber into a wobbly, torch-lit darkness. I stood with arms spread to better display the magnificence of the armour that Sigmar’s gift had bestowed upon me.
‘Summon the Heraldors and Vexillors of your chamber that they might proclaim the good news to every ward of the fortress and into the wilds of the Gorwood beyond. Have the Angelos Conclaves take wing, and carry the word to all who shelter from their skaven oppressors.’ Fists clenched, I shouted to the cavern’s distant walls, bringing a flutter from the torches. ‘The Bear-Eater. Has. Returned!’
As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw that the torches were held by a pair of Liberators, behind the Judicators, who carried them in their off-hands in place of shields.
One stepped towards me. His black helmet was almost invisible in the dark, torchlight crawling over the golden edging and the strange pictographic symbols that decorated his gorget.
‘Sheathe your warblade, my friend,’ I cried. ‘Look past the magnificence of this holy war-plate if you are able, ordered for me alone by the God-King himself, and see that it is I, Hamilcar.’