The shock-vermin were already spinning and twirling towards me. They reminded me of the wandering troupes of aelven wardancers that would occasionally grace the cities of Azyr. There was the same alacrity and grace, the same singleness of purpose. But where the aelves honed their spectacular abilities through centuries of practice and an inhuman understanding of their fellow dancers, these vermin acted out of a clockwork intensity, a routine plotted and set for them by another.
Still, it was effective.
My halberd moved as though it belonged to the same system, barely keeping up with the five of them. I felt the muscles in my arms begin to throb. Sweat gathered in the furrowed frown across my brow.
One of the shock-vermin squealed as a carnifern suddenly leant in, strangling the warrior in suckervines and hoisting the struggling ratman up into its foliage. I counted my blessings and fought on against the remaining four. Then the ground burst open beneath another, a writhing mass of puckered, blood-soaked roots ensnaring two more, and it started to dawn on me that something was going on. A wooden spear erupted from the chest of one of the ensnared skaven. His armour whirred, hacking his glaive through the grasping roots, only for the butt-end of a spear to smash enough cogs to kill him. The other shrieked and squealed as the bloodroots dragged him underground.
A woman clad in a loose-fitting lattice of stiff bark plates and barbed hollies stared at me from the other side of the torn ground.
‘You?’ she said.
‘You!’ I returned.
‘I thought I killed you.’
I grinned. ‘Wouldn’t be the first.’
The final two shock-vermin ran at me together. They were still quick, and fought exquisitely as a pair, but while five warp-lightning-powered skaven warriors had been about my limit, two were well within my gift.
I rammed my halberd through the first’s gut before he could react. I made to follow through on the second only for the woman, Brychen, to toss what looked like a flower stem in his muzzle. He blinked in surprise, and I was about to laugh at them both when the ratman suddenly squealed, dropping to the ground and clawing at his snout as flesh-eating flowers started sprouting from his fur.
I looked away with a grimace as he collapsed into a steaming pile of armour, flesh mush and pungent blooms.
I saw a skavenslave with an ammunition drum attached to a torn belt fleeing into the Gorwood. The engineer that had downed Barbarus was on the ground, surrounded by dead skaven and slurping roots, Nubia frenziedly clawing the ruin of his face. I heard a cheer, naturally assumed it was for me and turned towards the Blue Skies in time to see the warlock standard-bearer fall over with one of Barbarus’ arrows sticking out of his neck. He took his arcane standard down with him.
The Ghurite energies that had been emboldening the skaven’s black little hearts began to unravel.
‘I am here for Ikrit,’ Brychen hissed.
The cannon boomed out once more, followed by an ungodly shriek as Aeygar dropped low enough to shake the branches. That was enough for the skaven. They broke for the forest, leaving their dead behind like leaf litter.
‘Hamilcar!’ yelled Hamuz el-Shaah, and the cry went up among the Blue Skies. I saw Barbarus look at his bow and then at the dead around him in confusion. ‘Hamilcar has come to save us!’
Brychen arched her eyebrow at me.
I clapped my hand on her shoulder.
She brushed it off irritably.
‘Ikrit is going to regret the day he crossed the two of us,’ I said.
Chapter twenty-two
Leechwood pine is a moist and sappy wood. Though I don’t feel the cold as such, I do appreciate a good fire, and leechwood isn’t your wood for that. It’s challenging to light at all, and when it does take, the flame it gives is low and smoky and reeks of freshly spilled blood. It made the Freeguild captain appear darker skinned and more haggard of dress than he had a right to be. The crystal and glass of his wargear wavered in and out of amber and red, and the black of the sky.
‘What are you doing out here in the Gorwood, el-Shaah?’
‘You remember my name, lord?’
‘Of course.’
Hamuz looked into the struggling campfire and flushed with pleasure. ‘After your attempted scaling of the Gorkomon, we fled for the lower wards. Broudiccan let us go. More interested in you than us, and he didn’t have the numbers to chase us both.’
‘He lives?’
‘It would take more than these men here to take him down, lord.’
I grunted. Truer words…
‘I knew it’d only be a matter of time before the Lord-Veritant came looking for us. After what we did. Standing up to them like that.’ He stared into the fire. I could see that he was still buzzing from the excitement of what he had dared to do. A battle with a small skaven horde had nothing on standing against the avatars of your own god. With a shiver, he lifted his head and turned it towards the second fire.
The engineers sat there alone, tending Banu. Apparently, the naming of a cannon by a master gunner is a timeless and honoured Ironweld tradition, in much the same way that psychopaths have always named their knives. Banu, I later learned, was a Jerech word meaning Little Girl, which I think proves my point nicely. Surprisingly few bodies littered the ground between us. The Gorwood had seen to that.
Aeygar’s anxious coos trembled from the darkness nearby. I couldn’t see her, but I knew that spending a night on solid ground was not her idea of an adventure.
‘We thought we’d leave the fortress and try to find you,’ Hamuz went on, then smiled ruefully. ‘I hadn’t expected you to find us. On an aetar.’
The other men around the fire murmured their appreciation.
‘It’s all about trust,’ I said, winking at Hamuz as the gloriously moustachioed man to his left passed him a cup of something hot.
His name was Nassam, and I recognised him as the soldier who had led the charge to retrieve Barbarus after the Errant-Questor had been shot down. I’d assumed him to be some sort of lieutenant, but his role seemed to be something more akin to a manservant, similar to the armed retainers kept by some amongst the Astral Templars. When not wearing his greatsword hat, he was also a mender of clothing, a barber of some skill and the brewer of a superb cup of qahua, the latter of which Hamuz el-Shaah was enjoying now. Even I found the burnt, bitter odour strangely enticing.
The soldier on my right side passed me a leg of meat.
I sniffed it. Horse, I think. It smelled as though it had been preserved by salting, but after an hour’s roasting over a leechwood fire it was so bloody you could have convinced yourself that it had just stopped kicking. Hamuz was a veteran of the Gorwood. He had to know all the tricks. My mouth watered, well and truly taken in.
I tore off a chunk of meat.
I made a face, the shapes surrounding the campfire chuckling.
‘What in Sigmar’s name…?’
Nassam showed white teeth beneath the black depths of moustaches and beard. ‘Horse.’
I turned and spat what was left in my mouth as far from the fire as I could expel it.
We had horses in the Seven Words, of course. Where the settlers of Azyr go, they take the same pets and livestock and burden beasts that you can now find all over the Mortal Realms. The so-called ‘Gorwood Horse’ is something else. It refers to the ambulatory life-stage of the stelx plant, which, though slow and liable to seed, were preferred by the more naturalised draughtsmen on account of their flesh being one of the few things too foul-tasting even for the denizens of the Gorwood to abide. A regiment like the Blue Skies would never leave their garrisons, even if forced to do so in a hurry, without a side or two. Rubbing it over your wargear twice a day was the only sure way to keep the native wildlife from eating the metal.