The combined strength of the Blind Host and the Legion was going to be formidable. Four to five thousand was my estimate. Nothing my two thousand couldn’t handle.
Particularly with King Augus and his aetar on my side.
What little I knew of his people was gleaned from watching their darting shapes in the sky above the Seven Words.
Despite the obvious superficial similarities to the aetherwings and star-eagles that served the Celestial armies as scouts and spies, the aetar were an entirely distinct breed.
For one thing, they are bigger.
King Augus alone had a wingspan nearly double that of a Flamespyre Phoenix, and looked as though he could have taken off with a Dracoth struggling in each talon. His neck was clad in ceremonial armour of blued steel and topaz, and a circlet sat atop the scarred plumage of his head. Part of me couldn’t help but wonder how an eagle managed to get such apparel on and off, but the impatient rap of Augus’ talons on the ground was a neat way of convincing me to pay attention.
The Eagle King gave a petulant caw.
‘The Blind Herd had spear throwers and daemon riders,’ said Barbarus, after a moment. ‘They attacked his scout and he says he will not risk the lives of his people while yours, ours, remain far away.’
I nodded, understanding Augus’ reluctance. I had died once before and I don’t recommend it.
The aetar to Augus’ left decided to contribute then, the unexpected shriek making me wince. The king shrieked back, if anything even louder and clacked his beak menacingly.
I looked at Barbarus.
‘Parents and children,’ the Knight-Venator shrugged.
The bristling younger aetar did bear something of a familiar resemblance to Augus now I bothered to look for it. If anything, the beak and talons were even larger and more viciously curved than his. Both traits that I would later learn to be characteristic of the female. Aeygar Ayr Augus, I assumed, princess of the Gorkomon. She was similarly armoured at the neck and breast, but bore no other overt symbol of royalty. Having been startled once already, I decided I should probably appraise the third aetar as well, but it showed no immediate inclination of chipping in with an opinion. It appeared to be female too, but older. Her feathers were tawny, her eyes dimmer. A carcanet of fine stones and gold hung from her neck rather than the warrior torcs worn by Princess Aeygar and her father. A thin circlet lay on her head. Ellias Ip Augus, the queen. She watched husband and daughter quarrelling with such a tragically universal weariness of spirit that I could almost remember possessing children of my own.
‘Is that the entire royal family?’ I hissed towards Barbarus.
‘I believe so.’
Nubia tapped her agreement on his helmet.
‘Quite the commitment,’ I said. ‘For them all to be here.’
‘For us, the Nevermarsh is a week of toil through hungry forest.’ Barbarus indicated the three giant, bristling aetar. ‘For them, it’s a glide. They consider a Chaos presence here to be very much their problem.’
Whatever the disagreement had been about, Princess Aeygar reluctantly backed down, feathers ruffled, refusing to meet her father’s eye. Augus glared a moment longer, beak clacking open and shut.
‘Any idea what that was all about?’ I asked Barbarus.
Barbarus shook his head. ‘When they talk amongst themselves it’s too quick for me to follow. Something about her being young and rash.’
‘Rashness doesn’t spare the old.’ My laughter ran decidedly dry as King Augus swung his belligerent bead-eyes from his recalcitrant offspring and back to me. The musty scent of warm feathers and ingrained ordure enveloped me. I coughed and rediscovered my smile, wondering only after I did so what a creature accustomed to dealing with a hard beak would make of the expression. ‘Tell him that Sigmar is grateful for his people’s aid. Perhaps this day marks the beginnings of a better friendship.’
‘He understands the lang–’
Augus’ shrill rejoinder detonated in my face.
Barbarus coughed. ‘He says he seeks no friendship with Sigmar.’
‘Thank you, Barbarus. I got that one.’
The Eagle King stamped, scratched, swung his head, ruffled his feathers, the Knight-Venator and his amethyst-feathered familiar struggling to keep up. ‘He says he is old enough to remember the time before Sigmar. He watched the armies of Chaos and Destruction fight over the Seven Words. Five hundred years and no sign of Sigmar. He doesn’t celebrate the…’ he paused as though the words he had been bidden to speak were distasteful, ‘…the Man-God’s return to Ghur now. He’ll not perish with the beasts of the mud when he retreats once again.’
I smiled thoughtfully up at the old bird. I was starting to like King Augus.
‘I have enough friends anyway, and so does Sigmar. We are both hunters, Augus. Let’s hunt the Chaos beast together.’
The Eagle King made a grating caw that sounded like a bolas being swung over a warrior’s head and lowered his beak to me.
I had seen the aetar warrior display before, generally performed at outrageous altitude and speed, high above the balcony window of my chambers in the Seven Words’ keep. I understood that it was how the male aetar demonstrated their virility and prowess to potential mates and prospective rivals. Only hatchlings performed it on their feet, and I understood the very public concession that King Augus was offering to me now.
I butted my forehead against his beak, improvising a little with a comradely roundhouse across the wing. ‘That’s how the Bear-Eaters do it,’ I explained, in answer to his startled squawk.
Aeygar and Ellias, at least, both looked well amused.
Throwing his head back to issue a harsh hunting call, King Augus beat his colossal wings. It felt as though the Lord of the Aetar had just conjured a great hand from the air to bend me to my knees. I resisted, watching as first Augus, then his queen and his princess hauled themselves into the air. The latter threw me a parting look, which I interpreted as apologetic.
Children, indeed.
‘He says he’ll wait on your signal,’ Barbarus shouted over the shrieking of eagles and the hammering of their wings.
‘Is there a message you would have me bear back to Akturus?’ said the black-armoured Prosecutor behind me. He was looking up, shielding his mask’s eye slits against the low sun as he watched the army of the aetar take wing.
If I’m honest, I had quite forgotten he was there.
‘Tell him I’ll be back to beat him as black as his armour before he even knows it.’
Chapter three
The gentlest whisper of snow drifted between me and what I would later come to remember as Kurzog’s Hill. It was so unexpectedly pleasing that I had to stop for a moment to admire it before my army went and spoiled it. The hill was surrounded on all sides by a delta of small bogs. They were frozen over, lucent pools of amber beneath the intermittently setting sun. Sword grasses and spiny weedfronds grew to the height of men along the maze of paths that branched between them, rattling their sabres at the wind. For a second, I thought I saw a woman with a spear, watching my army from the grass. The Gorwood was a vast and uncharted wilderness, and I knew that there were a number of native peoples, like the aetar, who had never welcomed nor accepted Sigmar’s rule. Before I could dwell on it further, the figure was gone and I decided that it had been a trick of the breeze.
The strident cacophony of bone horns, pan pipes, war gongs, and man-skin drums drew my gaze upwards.
The Blind Herd brayed from the hilltop. Insults, I imagined, but a lack of familiarity with the Dark Tongue inoculated me somewhat against their sting. A smattering of ungor skirmishers armed with slings and javelins were getting their hooves wet, but most of Brayseer Kurzog’s bigger beasts had been positioned on the hilltop and looked determined to remain there. I counted about fifteen hundred gors, with a couple of barely restrained bullgors just to make my life more interesting. A small herd of centigors and a single tuskgor chariot waited on one flank. The beastherd bleated and jeered from behind the thinly spread line of the Legion of Bloat. Noisome champions of the God of Plagues, the blightkings’ armour was buckled where bloat or corrosion had caused the plates to warp. Pus leaked from cracked metal and fluid sores. Flies choked the air above scabrous, maggoty helms, and the hillside upon which they waited with grave acceptance of the coming battle was littered with the shrivelled corpses of flowering weeds. For all that the Plague Knights looked one solid push from collapse, I knew from experience that there were few things in the realms tougher than a devotee of Nurgle. They felt neither fear nor pain, they did not tire, and so close had they grown to death that it took a frightening amount of violence to finally push them over.