Naturally, then, the Celestial beasts had never had much truck with me.
Cryax swung its armoured head towards me and snorted, a preternatural cold freezing the moisture in the air and causing it to fall as ice.
I drew quickly back out of sight, armour clanking softly on stone, cursing under my breath.
‘Strike it until it sunders.’
I was tempted to just march up there and bluff my way through, on the off-chance that Vikaeus had not shared the reasons for her pursuit of me with her Extremis Chamber. A few self-congratulatory backslaps and a bellowed welcome here and there had seen me this far through the keep, after all – but somehow I doubted whether the Knights Merciless would fall for it as readily as the keep’s mortal soldiery and servants had. And the longer I thought about it, which is why thinking for too long about anything is rarely a good idea, the more I appreciated that Vikaeus would have had no need to explain why she was hunting me in order to let her warriors know that she was hunting me.
They were called the Knights Merciless for a reason, after all. A Knight-Excelsior might burn an innocent’s house down to destroy a corruption in the wood or the stone, but only a Knight Merciless would make sure the innocent was still inside.
Lacking a better option, other than trying to force myself through the arrow slits, which hardly qualified as better, I was about to follow through on that first impulse and brazen it out when I saw the mortal steward that had just admitted Vikaeus walking towards me.
I looked quickly around and saw the smaller door behind me that led to the servants’ stairs.
‘Dracothion’s breath.’
The woman walked past my hiding place without noticing me and continued on to the door. She was clad in the purple doublet and trews and steel breastplate of an armed retainer of the Astral Templars. Not all Stormhosts had the same custom of taking on the best and the fiercest of the mortal Freeguilds – in fact, most didn’t – but we always saw it as a way of keeping alive certain traditions that would have eventually died if they had been left in the care of the immortals. It was obvious to me that, consciously or not, most selected men and women that reminded them in some way of themselves. This woman was grey-haired, but there was a firmness of muscle to her still and a martial pride in her carriage. I knew her, or a younger version of her.
‘Nalys,’ I hissed. The name arrived with me just as she pulled on the latch. One of Barbarus’ chosen ones. Prideful then, fearless and loyal.
‘Lord Ham–’ she began, before my hand could smother her mouth. ‘Why are you hiding in a corner of the disarming chamber?’ she hissed, after I’d drawn my hand away.
‘The ways of the Stormcast Eternals are not for mere mortals to follow,’ I said, smiling. As I’d hoped she smiled along, assuming that it was just me fooling about at one of the other chambers’ expense, as usual. ‘I need you to do something for me, Nalys.’
The retainer straightened. ‘Name it, lord.’
‘See those warriors out there?’
The mortal craned her neck back around. ‘The Concussors. Yes, lord.’
‘I want you to tell them that Vikaeus’ audience with Frankos and Akturus is going to take longer than she had expected. Tell them to stable the Dracoths and return here to wait for her when they are done.’
‘And is it going to take longer, lord?’
‘The trick to making people believe in you is to believe in yourself, Nalys.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Believe it…’
‘Yes, lord. I will, lord. Her audience is going to take longer than expected.’ Sucking in a big breath, the armsman stuck out her chin and marched back towards the front gate.
I was counting on the fact that the Knights Merciless, like most Stormcast Eternals, would have forgotten the retainer’s existence the moment she had stepped out of their eye line. With any luck they wouldn’t notice that she was coming from the servants’ stair, whereas Vikaeus had departed by the main doors. I crossed my fingers. I was probably worrying over nothing. They probably wouldn’t even recognise she was the same woman as before. I watched from hiding as Nalys relayed my message. After a brief back and forth, which my heart spent most of firmly in my mouth, they turned their mounts about and headed back into the wind.
I grinned as I watched them leave.
Stormcast Eternals, and exalted heroes like the Paladins of the Exemplar and Extremis Chambers are the worst for this, have always underestimated the worth of the mortals amongst them.
I crossed Nalys’ path as I made for the now unguarded door. She winked at me. I thumped the sign of the comet against my breastplate. And then we were off on our separate ways.
The low sun and stinging wind stabbed my eyes the moment I stepped outside.
To my right, the two Concussors were leading Cryax and their own mounts by the bridles towards the stables. Built by visiting duardin masons in the Azyri style, and to Dracothion scale, the stone outhouse looked more like a fortress than the keep it was attached to. It was well kept, but empty. Quiet, save for the desolate scratch of a single stable boy’s brush. Neither the Imperishables nor the Bear-Eaters – nor the Heavens Forged, apparently – benefitted from the might of any Celestial beasts in their number. The stables had been constructed on Vikaeus’ order.
To my left, the rock of the Gorkomon rose sheer and impenetrable, breaking through the Seven Words’ meandering inner fortifications, buildings clinging to it all the way down to the outer walls and the Morkogon Bridge.
The front door.
My way out.
I hurried down the granite steps and through the inner bailey, waving casually to the duty watchmen, who waved cheerfully back as I ran under the portcullis and into the wards. I clattered down worn steps. Hurtled along fiercely sloping streets. Street vendors and townsfolk, beggars and urchins, haunted-looking souls that must have been war refugees from the Gorwood outposts; they clogged the narrow lanes like moss in a gutter. None of them so much as pulled a leg out of my way as I barrelled through them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
‘Hamilcar is here!’
‘Praise Sigmar for you, Hamilcar!’
‘Tell the vermin that the Ward of Akenfel sent you with their blessings, Hamilcar.’
Akturus or Vikaeus would have walked down the same streets and found them suspiciously deserted, but for me the crowds came in force. At every street corner they mobbed me. Out of every pile of stones dedicated to Sigmar or Gorkamorka, or to the scores of local deities to wind and tree whose worship persisted, they flocked. Under the warmed terraces of every blacksmith and brownsmith and shoer of horses, they rejoiced in my name.
‘Hamilcar. Hamilcar. Hamilcar.’
I cast a furtive glance back towards the keep.
My plan to slip out of the fortress unnoticed was not exactly falling within the vague outline I had plotted for it.
Responding to the acclaim with a painted grin and the occasional flexed bicep – for some appearances need to be maintained – I pushed through the adoring crowds as quickly as I could. I waded through a hundred or so well-wishers, gathered outside a building fronted with the emblem of the Grand Conclave where soldiers and officials were parcelling out food, and onto the one real road in the Seven Words, which the first occupiers from Azyr had endearingly called the Bear Road. The cobbles were broken and clotted with weeds, flanked by crumbling stonemasonry that rolled down the steep incline towards the gatehouse. Beyond that massive piece of stonework, designed and built by Lord-Ordinator Ramhos of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the horizon bristled with peaks. The dark stone and crag ice of the Morkogon loomed largest, its goliath bulk studded by the occasional stray cloud.