Brychen joined me at the lakeside.
‘Is that the weapon that burned Malikcek?’
I nodded. ‘Not just him.’
‘We need it,’ she said, simply.
I frowned over the burning shimmer of ice. ‘Too bad.’
She looked me up and down. ‘Your armour looks as though it covers almost all of you.’
I rapped knuckles on my forehead and winked to Nassam. ‘Only the bits that need protection.’
‘I think you can make it,’ she said.
‘You think?’
‘The trees sleep out the season. They will produce their pollen again only with the coming of the first snows.’ She lifted her gaze to meet mine. ‘How well do the Stormcast Eternals bear the cold?’
I gave a laugh, clapping her shoulders hard enough to splinter her armour. It regrew with a creak of stretching plant life as I subtly massaged my hand. ‘One day I’ll take you to the Eternal Winterlands of Azyr. Then I’ll ask the same question of you.’
Behind us, Aeygar shrieked and flapped her wings, stirring air into the fug of seed pollen and buzzing wildlife.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘I’ll not have you dipping your claws in there, not for me. Hamilcar Bear-Eater fights his own battles.’
She squawked again, but quieter.
I shook my head. ‘Snatching my lantern from the ice without touching it would take some skill. Nubia might have been able to do it, but if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, you’re much bigger than a star-eagle.’
She clawed at the ground, beak lowered.
‘I know. But you can keep watch from the air. If anybody can spot Malikcek before Brychen or I, then it will be you.’ In truth, I doubted whether even the aetar princess would have been able to pierce the assassin’s peculiar form of obfuscation, but I wasn’t strictly lying. If anyone could do it, then it would certainly be her.
Aeygar bobbed her head, issued a shrill call, then with a paddling of her wings pulled herself back up into the sky.
I found myself unusually underawed by the feat. Had the air been any thicker, I think I could have walked on it.
‘Keep your head above the surface, and you should be fine,’ said Brychen.
‘Head up, mouth shut,’ I repeated. ‘I tell aspirants to the castellant temple the same thing before they face their first trials.’
‘Probably,’ she qualified.
‘Hamilcar spits in the eye of “probably”.’
Unfastening my belt, I tossed my halberd at Nassam. He claimed it with as much grace as he had my qahua cup the night before, which is to say it almost speared him through the chest and decapitated Hamuz. With exaggerated care, as though handling a live serpent that also happened to be a sacred relic, he clutched the weapon in both hands.
‘You can do it, my lord,’ said Hamuz.
‘I expect Sigmar left the lantern here for you to find,’ said Nassam, with a faith that, in other circumstances, some other Stormcast Eternal might have found stirring. The Jerech soldier had never met Sigmar (or so I assumed), but it did sound like exactly the sort of thing that the God-King would try to pull on me.
I am thinking of how he sent the Steel Souls into the Garden of Nurgle – twice.
Fixing my jaw, I waded into the lake.
‘Ghal Maraz, that’s cold!’
On the bank, Brychen looked smug. Ignoring her, I waded in deeper.
Whatever liquid the lake was made of, it didn’t move or feel like water. It clung to my armour as my boot went in, lapping up the greave as though trying to climb it before oozing back down. Ripples fanned out from my legs after a short delay, moving with a crystalline creak that sounded like a gryph-charger moving across too-thin ice.
‘Remember,’ Brychen called out to me. ‘The surface of the lake looks smooth, but the mountain beneath is not. The ice will be deeper in some places than others.’
I made no effort to keep the grimace from my face.
My thrice-blessed plate had already started to sing with the cold. With every deliberate step, I heard it splinter and creak. The frozen burn reached even my wool underlayers, and into the bone and muscle of my leg. Cold, though – bitter and unnatural as it surely was – was one thing I knew I could always bear. I felt no prickling sense of invisible tiny creatures crawling up the inside of my leg in the chill. Only a slowly rising numbness.
The feeling was familiar, almost comforting.
I remembered long hunts. Lying in wait. Buried in snow. Shivering in ice. Waiting for a storm petrel to return to her nest, and to my spear. For the mournfang herds to pass on their migratory trails.
The memories ached and creaked like the ice around me, just as thin.
I pushed myself away from them.
Now wasn’t the time.
Taking a deep breath, as if I could breathe body mass up from my legs and into my chest, I pressed on.
The way dipped. Ice lapped languidly up to my girdle plating. Cold pinched through the warming layers into my groin, my hips, questing into my belly from below. Still down. The ice slurped as high as the great bear emblazoned in gold on my pectoral plate. I tilted my chin away from the radiant cold and pushed on. A little further.
‘It’s too far out,’ yelled Hamuz, his voice reedy and faraway. ‘Come back.’
‘Never,’ I muttered.
A submerged stone, or something like it, slid under my boot as I put my foot down. My foot rolled over it and I started to pitch forwards. The mirror-perfect ice threw up a snarling reflection as I tipped towards it, back bent to hold my face above the surface for as long as possible.
‘My god! Hamilcar!’ Hamuz cried.
My other boot thudded to the lake bottom just as the ice ground as high as my gorget.
I let out a relieved breath. Had it been mere water then I would have been splashing around half-drowned by now. But the eerie semi-liquid I was wading through was as thick as treacle and colder than the bleakest outer reaches of Azyr.
Half frozen, I managed to straighten up.
The ice slimed back down my breastplate to chest height.
‘Nothing to it,’ I called, biting back on a snarl.
‘Then hurry up,’ said Brychen. If I could hold my teeth together without them chattering I would have ground them. ‘If Malikcek attacks now then I will have to face him alone.’
‘Nonsense,’ I managed to gasp, my chest wall freezing slowly rigid. ‘You have two of the finest warriors in Sigmar’s Freeguild there with you.’
‘And Aeygar,’ said Nassam.
‘And Aeygar,’ I acknowledged.
‘Nearly there then, lord,’ said Hamuz, reluctantly. ‘But take it slowly. Ignore her.’
‘Hamilcar heeds all advice,’ I stuttered, splashing and crunching my way towards where my lantern lay on the ice. ‘And ignores only that which he disagrees with.’ It was not far from me now, encased in the not-quite-liquid, a faint light bleeding through the crystal packing. I bared my teeth, remembering how the lantern had been unshuttered, burning Malikcek and me both, when I’d dropped it. The light did seem to have been somewhat diminished by five years of unceasing operation. Freeze-thaw damage to the glass, I supposed. It would take a few million times the five years it had been lost here in the ice to dim the light of Azyr.
Either way, I was grateful.
It was probably the only reason I wasn’t already screaming in agony.