Anger filled me. Not the righteous wrath of a warrior of Heaven, but the unthinking fury of a man who had known life, and felt loss. Had I been the sort of man who thought about such things, then I might have wondered if this was the reason that Sigmar allowed his Stormcast Eternals to be denied such memories.
A crash sounded from one of the adjoining streets.
To me, it was the sound of something snapping inside my mind.
My head pulled around, like a dog catching the scent of prey, and, with a bark of anger, I broke towards it.
The narrow street was littered with wooden debris and gore. Upended carts. Butchered dray beasts. All the little things of frontier life, all strewn over the rough set grey cobbles. The sound that had drawn me had come from a weathered stone building, a pack of skaven fifteen-strong armed with heavy-bladed cutlasses and hatchets furiously hacking into the wooden shutters that blocked the windows. Every splintering blow brought squeals of delight from the ratmen’s foam-slicked jaws and screams of terror from those hidden inside.
The nearest clanrat turned, whiskers atwitch as I strode towards him, opening his mouth to squeak a warning only to issue a breathless mew of pain and horror as my halberd split his belly and splattered out of his back. His silent mouthing became a witless shriek as I hoisted him up into the air. Skaven blood trickled through the runic engravings of the haft to pool under my thumb. Another warrior rounded on me. I kicked him in the chest. Ribs snapped and he broke hard against the shutter, achieving with his own shoulder blade what he’d been trying to do with his sword.
The rest squeaked in alarm.
I must have been quite the avenging spectacle. Clad in amethyst and gold. Blood-drenched. Hair wild. Bedecked in emblems of savagery, and with one of their own shrieking as his entrails slowly unwound down the shaft of my weapon.
Dull eyes widened. Ears flattened against scraggy heads.
‘This is the Free City of Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’ I bellowed. ‘Those who dwell within do so under my protection. Those who would threaten them are mine to butcher and defile as I see fit. Behold me, vermin, and then behold yourselves. Nothing but a slow death and a spike awaits you here!’
With a squeal of terror, the skaven to the rear of the pack spun and fled. The rest followed in brisk order, scrambling over the wall that surrounded the little yard and tearing up the street after their leader.
I bellowed after them, shaking my still-squealing banner.
‘Tell your brethren – the Bear-Eater does not surrender the Seven Words!’
Planting the butt of my halberd on the ground, leaving the skaven up there to bleed out, which he was making excellent progress on, I heard the sound of a locking bar being lifted and a door being opened.
‘Lord Hamilcar?’
A thickly bearded Ghurite man peered through the crack between door and frame, fear in his eyes, but wonder in his tone. As soon as my eyes crossed his, he turned back to address those still inside. ‘It’s Hamilcar. Lord Hamilcar has come back.’ I heard the word ‘Hamilcar’ being passed around as the door was pushed wide. The Ghurite stepped out. An old leather jack strained on its ties around a robust frame, an heirloom matchlock pointing up at the sky. He had old Freeguild tattooed all over him, possibly even literally, but as you know, I never did learn to read. More men and women, at least a score and a half of them, poked out after him, all armed with pickaxes, hunting bows or stonecutting hammers. Even the children.
I glanced over my shoulders as further doors and shutters were cast out, more people stepping out into the street.
‘Hamilcar is back.’
‘The Bear-Eater will rout the vermin, you’ll see.’
‘We’re saved.’
I even saw a few current Freeguild uniforms amongst them.
I couldn’t blame them for abandoning their garrisons to defend their families. Kuphus or Akturus might have, but not I. They were only human, and I remembered what that felt like. I wondered if we were really so different. Was I not guilty of the exact same offence by being here instead of chasing after Ikrit as Sigmar’s geas demanded of me?
‘We have to go,’ Brychen hissed, behind me, as if aware of my thoughts. ‘If we do not then Ikrit will capture your friend, Broudiccan.’
Raising a clenched fist in salute, I grinned maniacally for the hundred or so men and women that had gathered to see me.
‘Men and women of the Seven Words!’ I yelled, only to have my words answered by a roar of relief and defiance that brought my burnt skin out in goose bumps. I opened my hand as if for quiet, but I didn’t call for it or wait for it. I didn’t want quiet. I wanted their anger. ‘Seven Words!’ I screamed. Another bloody cheer, louder this time than the first. I shouted over them. ‘I will fight for you, but even I cannot hold our city alone. That is right. Our city. Yours and mine. Fight for your homes. Fight for your lives. Fight here, now, and Hamilcar Bear-Eater will fight with you!’
The mortals thrust old and improvised weapons in the air and gave a tumultuous cheer. ‘Hamilcar!’
I took an enormous breath.
The realmsphere stood still.
‘HAMILCAR!’
The strength of their return ovation was empowering, as if belief alone could render sigmarite impregnable. There was a part of me, even back then, that was wise enough to realise that for every ten stupid things I’d ever convinced myself were excellent ideas, nine would have been birthed on the heady crest of a wave like that.
‘We’ll fight!’ I yelled. ‘And we’ll win! For Sigmar and the God-King!’
‘For Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’
‘This house of stone is a distraction,’ Brychen hissed. ‘No different to Malikcek.’
‘These are Sigmar’s people,’ I said, speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear.
‘Sigmar has cast his people freely across the Mortal Realms. If we do not end Ikrit here, do you think these will be the last to suffer?’
I frowned.
It wasn’t that they were Sigmar’s people as much as that they were my people.
‘He slaughtered my people too,’ Brychen went on. ‘He murdered my brother, polluted our sacred grounds, stole the gifts of my goddess. This does not end for me until I have fed his dead body back to the earth.’
‘I will not abandon my people.’
‘Then this is where our two winds blow apart.’
‘Don’t be so drama–’
I turned to face her but, much to my chagrin, the priestess had simply left. Nassam, at least, was still there, his massive quartz greatsword held in two hands and resting against one shoulder. I narrowed my eyes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he must have combed his moustaches during his brief sprint from the square. Shaking my head, I turned back to the crowd.
I reasoned that as long as I was the one seen saving the Seven Words then it really didn’t matter if Brychen got in there first. I still had Sigmar to satisfy, of course, but one problem at a time – that was the Bear-Eater approach to war.
‘Go then,’ I shouted after her. ‘I will join you by the pyre of skaven dead that I will raise over the Morkogon gate when my city is saved.’ A boisterous cheer went up at that, and I saluted them with my halberd. The skaven warrior had long since ceased struggling. I knew that I was getting a little carried away, but none of my many great victories had been achieved by doing what sensible heads would have done in my place. Would Gardus have charged headlong into the stronghold of Uxor Untamed with just fifty warriors at his back? No, he would not. Would Vandus have had the foresight or the common touch to get himself euphoric on fungus beer, accidentally start a war with the Skarabrak lodge, only to then wake the next morning with a sore head and fifty thousand moonclan berserkers ecstatically avowed to Sigmar’s cause?