Without waiting for him to make the distance, I threw myself at him with a roar.
My halberd crashed down onto the shoulder joint of his armour. It was like striking a shard of the Mallus, thinner than my finger, denser than worlds. The shock of hitting it threw back my arm. Sparks of energy with at least six different colours crawled over my halberd blade. At the same time Ikrit grabbed the device on my breastplate. I must have been twice his height, yet he lifted me off the ground like a broken toy. I backhanded him across the jaw, snapping his head back, then brought my elbow hammering down into the joint of the arm that held me. It collapsed under the blow and released me. I backed quickly away. My halberd continued to bleed a rainbow as I spun it warningly between us.
Ikrit cocked his head.
The ground beneath me trembled.
I looked down, just as the cobbles beneath my feet broke open, green shoots ripping free of the earth beneath. They whipped for me, one of them finding an ankle and dragging it down. Had I simply been caught while standing then that would have been bad enough, but it snared me as I had been pedalling back from the warlock and sent me crashing down onto my back. More creepers erupted from the broken ground, lashing around my arms, legs, waist and neck before I had a chance to rise.
‘Do not fight-struggle, Hamilcar. You should know-learn by now. Things become painful when you struggle-fight.’ Lightning surged through the creeping vines. I howled in pain and the warlock chittered, watching me writhe, before dismissing the spell with a twitch of his whiskers. ‘Give-give the lantern.’
‘Come and take it, Ikrit. Or are you afraid I’ll bite?’
‘I like-like you, Hamilcar. You remind me of… life. I do not want-wish to hurt you again.’
I made a dismissive snort. ‘You think that hurt?’
The warlock’s armoured jaws clanked silently open and shut, which I was taking for laughter, or at least the physical manifestation of the idea of laughter. ‘I was a living rat once. I lived in a place other to this. A gone place. All over that world I travelled, seeking knowledge, power. I found-learned immortality of a sort.’ With the lighter gauntlet of his left paw, he indicated to his undead, armour-plated frame. ‘But not like this. True immortality. The power to die and come again. That you gift-gave to me.’ His eyes flashed with the madness of power. ‘And to remember. Many things I had forgotten. One day… One day I hope-want to remember my real name.’
He crouched over me with a squeal of joints and set his heavy claw over the lantern where it was hooked to my waist.
‘I knew that Sigmar would resist me. I knew it would do damage and was prepared. Yes-yes. I knew. That is why I made certain-sure to take a Lord-Castellant. For the lantern-light.’ He looked down, snarling. ‘But Malikcek let you escape-flee.’
‘If it makes you feel better, he’s dead now. I killed him.’
Alright, it had been Nassam that had killed him, but Ikrit didn’t need to know that, did he?
‘That you are here now squeak-told me that already. He was good-good at what he did for me, but a god must outgrow even his mightiest servants.’
‘I have been in the presence of a god or two lately. You don’t walk on the same plane.’
‘You hope-hope to goad me? Anger withered from this flesh a hundred lifetimes ago.’
He pulled the lantern hard, twisting the loop handle out of shape and snapping my belt. It came away in his oversized claw.
‘It’ll hurt,’ I warned.
‘The dead do not know-feel pain. Not as you understand it.’
‘It’ll probably kill you too.’
‘I am already dead. I have been dead-dead for thousands of years.’ He pulled his gaze from the lantern to look down on me. ‘There are those in your own Pantheon who would stop-think before facing me alone. What madness possessed you? To think that you could best-slay me?’
With a growl of effort, I lifted my head from the ground. The vines that held me dug into my flesh, groaning as they thickened to counter me.
‘I’m about to tell you something that you can never share.’
Ikrit leaned in. His voice was husky and low. ‘Never-never.’
‘I am Hamilcar Bear-Eater. I always win because I am never alone.’
The warlock looked puzzled for a moment, then sneered. ‘Vikaelia? Bringing her and her warriors with you was a smart-clever trick. But the Veritant-Lord is as fearsome to me as you are. They are nothing. Two more warriors will be swallowed-killed by the numbers of my great-great horde.’
‘Two warriors? I assumed warlock engineers could count if nothing else. Look again.’
With my head fixed to the ground, I glanced aside with my eyes.
From the shattered buildings to either side of us, bowmen and handgunners of a rejuvenated Freeguild poured fire onto the Bear Road. I recognised some amongst them from the men and women I had seen on my flight through the Seven Words, and heard my name being shouted like a rallying cry. From every side street, back alley and gutted shop front, leather-armoured soldiers and lightly armed civilians pushed into the flanks of the skaven horde. I thought I caught the glitter of Nassam’s quartzsword amongst them, but there were too many of them to be certain.
‘Mortals,’ said Ikrit, in the same tone with which one might dismiss ‘insects’.
With a quip of my eyebrows, I gestured behind me.
The warlock hissed in displeasure.
‘No,’ Ikrit hissed.
‘Yes,’ I grinned.
It was Akturus Ironheel.
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the rhythmic, almost mechanical tread of his Liberator shield walls closing off the road behind me. A few flashes from the Lord-Castellant’s warding lantern had patched him up nicely, and thanks to my efforts in the catacombs, the Imperishables had had a few warriors to spare. I heard the terrified squeals of skaven warriors falling between the relentless advance of the Imperishables and the weapons of the Freeguild and Heavens Forged.
‘I still command-rule in the air,’ Ikrit snarled. ‘My airships will–’
He was cut off by a terrific shriek and an explosion high in the sky, as an armoured body half again as massive as a Stardrake tore through the hull of one of the Skyre clan airships. Bits of wood and flailing bodies rained over the battlefield as the eagle knight chomped on the larger airborne pieces, scattering the debris with an almighty beat of its wings. Ikrit stared up in horror.
‘No-no.’
I chuckled harshly. One benefit of being lashed to the ground was having a fine view of what was happening in the sky.
‘I always knew that Augus liked me.’
Ikrit turned from the battle for the air and glared down at me. ‘You think me beaten? You think I want-need my army. I will make-build a new army.’ He held up my lantern. ‘I need-want only this.’ He stood with a squeal and turned to walk away, only to stop abruptly when a viperish green shoot broke through the road beneath his footpaw to wind about his shin. He looked down at it, then back at me. ‘This is your doing as well?’
Breaking free of the earth behind the warlock like a particularly vigorous weed, Brychen drove her spear between his shoulder blades.
‘No,’ said the wild priestess. ‘It is mine.’
It snapped in two. The warlock staggered towards me, chittering annoyance, as the priestess cast aside the broken halves to sprout another with a thicker haft.
‘This power is not yours to command,’ she said, radiating anger like coloured light from a flower. The verdant growth that covered me pulsed and shrank back into the earth. Buds swelled and burst, throwing a sickly floral scent over us all as exploratory shoots lashed around Ikrit’s iron claw, dragging it towards the ground and binding my lantern tightly in its palm. ‘It is time for it to be returned to the soil.’