Cryax crunched over the body of his rat-ogor, his ice-rimed eyes intent on me.
The currents of battle drove a pack of clanrat warriors squealing into the space between us. Cryax snatched a clanrat up in his jaws, bit the screaming ratman in half, and flung the pieces over his shoulders. Vikaeus levelled her sword towards me, her staff held high. She blazed like a star-goddess, a divine creature of vengeance.
‘You cannot flee Sigmar’s judgement, Hamilcar.’
‘Come here and get me, Vikaelia!’
Even as I yelled it, a drover-engineer in spiked armour (designed, I expect, to make the wearer less appetising to his charges) snapped a charge-rod into the backs of a pair of half-machine rat-ogors until they gave in and lumbered towards the Lord-Veritant.
‘Hamilcar!’ she screamed at me before she and Cryax disappeared under a sheet of warpfire from one of the rat-ogor’s fist weapons.
I spun away.
I was sure that she’d be fine.
Then I saw something that stopped me short.
‘Broudiccan.’
The Lord-Castellant held his ground at the centre of a ragged crescent of Heavens Forged Paladins. Thunderaxes and stormstrike glaives took a fearsome tithe of the endless hordes being flung at them, matched only by the castellant’s halberd of the huge warrior himself. The Imperishables’ approach to warfare might have been as alien to me as Lord-Ordinator Ramhos’ approach to castle-building, all squares and lines and structural members, but the Astral Templars still did it the old-fashioned way. The way that Hamul of the White Spear would have recognised it. The Heavens Forged were no different. Every warrior before me was the hero of his own saga, turning his or her god-like vigour and unbound strength to their own glory with only half a nod towards ‘victory’ or the survival of their brothers and sisters. If it appeared to the uninitiated as if the Paladins were tearing every sinew in the defence of their Lord-Castellant then it was only because someone – and this had Frankos of the Heavens Forged drawn all over it – had had the presence of mind to put them next to him before the fighting had begun.
The ground before the Decimators and Protectors was heaped high with skaven dead, a corpse moat ten feet wide and five deep that would have been impressive were it not also grim testament to how far the skaven’s rabid ferocity and sheer numbers had driven the Paladins back.
As I watched, I saw a Decimator dazzled by the glaive-routines of a shock-vermin cog-pack a dozen strong before finally going down. Another fell to a sniper’s bullet. I snarled upwards as the lightning bolts bearing the two warriors back to Azyr blew the circling airships aside.
Broudiccan bellowed for more from his Paladins. More strength. More courage.
He was good, but he was no Hamilcar Bear-Eater.
I started towards them, only to feel my legs waver at the first step. The encroachment of an all-too-familiar evil had made them freeze. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it dread. Not exactly. Not unless pushed. But unease washed through me like the icy breath of a frost-drake. My guts knotted, tugging on my insides, as if to pull away from me and towards some titanic outward force.
I looked in that direction.
The battle fell away from me. Scales fell from my eyes.
I gripped my halberd as though it was the last implement of pure sigmarite in the Mortal Realms.
Ikrit had joined the battle.
Chapter thirty-two
Encased in armour of gold and bronze and iron rust, the master warlock stood a head taller than even his largest warriors. The air cooked where he strode, engulfing all but him alone in a haze of raw heat and brutalised power. The cobblestones beneath his tread cracked and steamed, as though bearing the weight of a being many times his physical size. Whether it was the broken glass trail that linked our damaged souls or some divine gift of his, the warlock sensed my presence as I had sensed his and turned. Frenzied clan warriors scurried on between us, oblivious to the witching glare of his lensed eyes that passed over them. Death leapt from his eyes to mine, and it was only by the turbulent energies of the storm in my veins that I was able to resist the explicit command of his gaze to cease living.
Ikrit’s jaws parted in what might have been a snarl. Diamond-edged teeth flared with a faint corona of trapped Azyrite light, and the sight of that pure energy on his decaying lips purged my muscles well and truly of any lingering paralysis.
I gripped my halberd until my knuckles whitened.
‘I’m going to–’
The outraged bellow of a Dracoth cut me off just as I was about to get started.
I looked over my shoulder to see Cryax and Vikaeus hacking and trampling their way through the skaven horde. The other Concussor was still caught some way behind, but closing the gap determinedly.
‘I know-smell this one from our dream,’ said Ikrit.
‘My dream.’
‘You like-like her smell.’
‘I don’t need to hear that from you.’
‘I know-see what you need. We are connected now. Let me help-help.’
The warlock raised his giant metal claw, curling in the stiffly jointed digits until only one remained, pointing at me. The skaven around him suddenly flopped to the ground, grasping at their throats and gasping. Then they shrivelled, their flesh ageing a thousand years as if their perishing were fuel for the dark purple and green flames that enveloped the warlock. An amethyst bolt lanced from Ikrit’s paw. The skaven in its path fell by the score, slain instantly, their souls banished from their bodies and drawn in to empower the sorcerous bolt still further. I reached instinctively for my warding lantern, a little burnt flesh be damned! But I was too slow.
It lanced over my head.
I spun around with a cry, and a blast strong enough to have brought down the wall of a stormkeep hit Cryax in the chest. His sigmarite peytral, that’s the chest-plate to you and me, cracked. I heard ribs break. Flayed skaven souls broke from the amethyst firestorm in a screaming torrent, ripping away frost-white scales and armour plates as the mighty Dracoth was tossed to the ground like an emptied aleskin. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus was hurled from the saddle. She rolled along the ground, arms flailing, losing her staff, but by accident or sheer indomitability of will managing to keep hold of her sword.
I lost her to the melee.
‘Vikaelia!’
Part of me wanted to run to her. A powerful and still growing part. But the better part, that which I had promised Hamuz el-Shaah would always remain dominant, held true.
I turned to Ikrit.
‘Sigmar has reforged me as Knight-Questor. He has charged me with your banishment to Sigmaron, and I will see it done.’
I had expected a sneer, a cackle, a disappointed shake of that mechanical muzzle, but the warlock appeared to take my threat entirely at face value. ‘I will go-scurry to Azyr-place, storm-thing. One day. When I am strong enough. Too strong for your God-King to stop me take-stealing it from him.’
‘What could you want with Azyr?’
‘There is a throne in the mountain-place you call Highheim. It will be mine.’
Ikrit ran at me.
Clad in rusted plate, he didn’t look as if he should be able to move anywhere like that fast, but the air seemed to be complicit, drawing aside as if giving him a free run while the ground itself propelled him forward.