Now, ordinarily, I have precious little time or patience for temporal authority. I prefer to seize command myself where I can, or work further down the chain and act as though higher authority were not there if I cannot. The elder chiefs of Nemisuvik, however, took their duties commendably casually. Their ceremonial meeting place was a hut right there in the Katuunak pontoon, but they tended to convene wherever was warmest and driest, and happened to be offering food.
As the siege had drawn on however, I had seen them more often standing vigil on the gabion-walls with the maorai than sitting on a blanket humming to the ocean for guidance. I had been greatly impressed by them, truth be told, and naturally they had been impressed by me.
I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. ‘I just saw a monster that would give a Dracoth nightmares eat a woman. You didn’t think to mention it when I arrived?’
With a reluctant sigh, Nanook gestured back with his head. ‘Come with me, Castle Lord.’
With that, the elder chief turned and shuffled off with his guards. With an impatient frown, I went after him. While I wanted to press him on the monster right away, I had a finely honed sense for an old man being bloody mysterious, and held my silence.
In any case, he didn’t take me far.
Our destination was a modest timber-framed building, waterproofed in stretched grey hide that looked as though it had been flayed from the allopex at about the same time that Dracothion was plucking Sigmar from the ruins of Mallus. Smoke puffed from the gill-windows, but it was of the ‘there’s something on the hearth’ kind rather than the ‘your house has been hit by a burning skull’ kind, so I stood by as Nanook pushed in the flap and entered.
As was customary in Nemesian dwellings, regardless of size, there was a single room. Furnishings were sparse, limited to blubbery skins on the floor and some twinkly things dangling from the ceiling, turning idly in the smoke from the hearthpot. For a people who made their homes in the coldest, wettest place in the Mortal Realms, they overcompensated enormously when it came to their homes.
Even I swooned slightly.
Two old mortals were already bent around the stewing hearthpot, but because no gathering of the elder chiefs would be complete without some humming and muttering, a third observed the ritual formalities from a mat in the corner. The first two supped contentedly at bowls of fish broth, as if the bloodreavers of Khorne were not knocking their city down around their heads. It made me want to shake someone. Instead, I took the bowl that was offered me, as Nanook took that offered him.
The Nemesians set great store in perseverance, and in generosity, and Hamilcar Bear-Eater never turns down free food.
Nanook sipped gingerly, while I took my bowl of broth in a single outsized hand to down it in one slug, fishy lumps and all. Wiping my mouth on the back of my gauntlet, I tossed the bowl back to the elder who had passed it to me. He caught it deftly, belying his years, for I swear that the Nemesians do not age like other men. The Stormwilds batter them until they are dried out, preserving them like some kind of brown cheese until they consent to up and die. His name was Pak, of the Taloyak Pontoon. The other seated beside the hearthpot was Hitta. Unless my ears deceived me, the woman muttering in the corner was Jissipa.
‘Is anyone going to tell me what I just saw?’ I said, as Pak and Nanook took seats by the hearthpot. ‘I am a Lord-Castellant of the Astral Templars, and I would know every inch of the fortress I am tasked to defend.’ The better to argue for conducting the fight outside of it, usually. As far as I’m concerned walls are good for nothing but impeding a real man’s swing. Of course, that had never been an option in Nemisuvik, so in truth I had not pressed my responsibilities in that regard too closely.
The gathered chiefs looked at Nanook.
‘He saw Angujakkak,’ he explained.
‘The Grey King surfaced?’ said Hitta. Her voice was like an old rope, crusty with salt and smoke.
The others’ eyes brightened momentarily, and not with the fire.
‘He has not lain yet,’ said Nanook. ‘There was a fight on the promenade. A crowd rushed the guards to entreat the King. One woman made it.’
The elders muttered into their soup. I couldn’t tell if it was a prayer for the deceased woman, or just elderly harrumphing.
‘People,’ said Pak, with the same tone of voice that you might say idiots. ‘They can be stupid as slugfish.’
‘They are desperate,’ said Nanook.
‘No excuse,’ said Hitta.
I snapped my fingers, releasing a tiny spark of Azyr into the drowsily lit hut. ‘I’m waiting.’
‘Forgive us, Castle Lord,’ said Nanook. ‘We never have visitors. It is not something we know how to explain, because it never needs to be said. Angujakkak pulled the first men here, so our legends tell us, to where the currents of the Stormwilds shelter and provide. You have seen that we have no boats of our own.’
I had noticed.
Had I spotted one then I would have been on it and paddling towards Blackjaw’s flagship quicker than you could recite the names of the Six Smiths. After the first few days of my stay I had actually tried to build one. Nemisuvik possessed no shortage of materials, or things that float, but it turns out that boatbuilding is harder than it looks.
‘The beast looks hearty for a thousand years or more,’ I said.
The elder chiefs shook their heads.
‘No, Castle Lord,’ said Nanook. ‘He is the fourth. Every few hundred years, the King will grow large enough to break the nets that hold him.’
‘You mean it will get bigger?’
Nanook shrugged. ‘When he breaks the nets he will be big enough, and then leave.’
‘But not before laying the egg,’ said Pak.
‘And a new cycle begins,’ Hitta finished.
‘Well, he’s more than big enough to smash a hole in Blackjaw’s fleet.’ I shook my head. ‘Any bigger and he’d be entering into Godbeast territory.’
Godbeasts, or Zodiacal Monsters, depending on the pretentiousness of the scholar you’re speaking to, are monstrous constellations of the Mortal Realms. Think of them like realmstone, the way that celestium, gravesand or warpstone soaks up the properties of their respective realms. Still with me? Good. Godbeasts are the same. Vulcatrix who slew Grimnir, Drakatoa who trapped Gorkamorka for hundreds of years, and of course the great Dracothion himself – all of these are Zodiacal Godbeasts, mighty enough to defy gods, and many of them even sat in the Highheim with Sigmar’s divine pantheon in the good old days. I didn’t know for certain if Nemisuvik’s Grey King was quite in that class, but it was close enough for me.
‘He and his ancestors have been our guardians for two thousand years,’ said Nanook. ‘He protects us from the predators of the Stormwilds even as he draws them to defend our walls, but he is still a wild monster, Castle Lord. He will not be bidden by us, or by you.’
‘You didn’t see him on the promenade,’ I said. ‘Trapped, surrounded by armed men and women. A wild beast would have run amok. Trust me, Nanook. I’m an Astral Templar, and I know beasts. It should have been a slaughter. The monster has bonded to you somehow, to this city. I can smell it.’
The old man frowned, thoughtfully. ‘Still, it cannot be.’
‘There has been no laying,’ said Hitta, leaning closer to underlight her wizened, fat-smeared features. ‘If Angujakkak leaves without first laying, then it will be the doom of Nemisuvik.’
I pointed angrily. At what, I don’t recall, but since we were surrounded it probably doesn’t matter. ‘The bloodreavers are going to be the doom of Nemisuvik!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Nanook, equanimously.
I let my head sink into my hands and growled under my breath. Perseverance and bloody equanimity. I wish I knew how they did it. Could they not be furious or frustrated like me, terrified like an ordinary human being?