Which, by my estimation, made it equal to about one and a half Hamilcar Bear-Eaters.
‘Is that the best you’ve got?’ I bellowed, and bared my teeth, more to put on a proper show of it for the aelves fighting for their lives around me than for my attacker’s benefit. It didn’t care, did it?
It came at me, heedless of my taunting.
I parried desperately as I gave ground.
‘If I was fighting a rat ogor or a yhetee, I’d probably be dead by now.’
With a furnace-like bellow, it brought its sword crashing down. I angled my halberd to take it, braced my body. I grunted as brute impact force bent me to one knee, but the follow-up swipe then swung above my head.
‘I’m always a little slow before Nassam has made his first pot of qahua.’
Dropping the lower hand from my halberd, I drew the arm back, and punched the abomination hard in the ribcage. Armour broke. Bone splintered. I took hold of an exposed rib, my gauntlet thrice-blessed and innate love of the cold keeping the chill of eternal rest at bay, and pulled. It boasted a tatty set of wings and phenomenal strength, but its weight was committed to me: I was going down and it was damn well coming down with me.
Its shoulder crunched into the parapet, and I gave a little pull on its rib to ensure its skull ground in right after it, and from there I kneed, punched and butted the thing for all I was worth.
A tremendous bang punctuated my heroic efforts and the construct collapsed on top of me.
Panting, I climbed out from under what was, now, a heap of bones.
The construct’s skull was a mess, spread over about eight feet of rampart. I climbed on top of it as though I’d just scaled the Algavr, the mightiest of the Mortal Realms’ mountains, and rammed my halberd into its back. I twisted the blade, just to be sure, and spirits fled up from the ruptured cavity, screaming through my beard and hair as they tore back to their master.
Morghasts, those constructs are called. Harbingers. Arcai. I’ve never figured out how to reliably tell the difference. But I’ve rarely heard of them travelling far from the side of Nagash or one of his generals. His Mortarchs. I remember when there were only three.
He has more now.
I watched the spirits’ flight, trying to see where they were going.
‘We’ve spoken before about stealing my thunder, Nassam.’
‘I know, lord.’
‘Since you’re here, you can put the kettle on.’
Whether the destruction of the morghast had been decisive or coincidental, the assault on the wall seemed to be ebbing. It would not let up completely. It never would. Not until we were all dead or there were no more carcasses left in the Unchained Lands to throw at us. It was as though every dead thing in Ghur had risen to beset this place, which, given the condition of the Mortal Realms after the Great Necromancer’s most recent, grandiose cry for attention, wasn’t a possibility I could dismiss out of hand.
But it would be a while before the necromantic generals could muster their wayward spirits into a concerted assault.
‘I would, lord, only…’
The Jerech stowed his smoking pistol, but could not move aside swiftly enough for the hugely armoured warrior behind him, who placed one massive gauntlet on the man’s shoulder and brushed him lightly to one side. He was a Liberator, I think, although it wasn’t so easy to tell. He was an Anvil of the Heldenhammer. Warriors of that Stormhost, as you may know, have always had a tendency to dress like lord-relictors.
The warrior stopped before me.
He looked me up and down.
After coming all this way, he apparently had nothing to say.
I smiled for the benefit of the mortals watching, but then I saw the chamber emblem on the warrior’s shoulder.
My heart sank.
‘Come with me,’ he said, his rasping voice the sound of pages being torn from a prayer book and burned.
I thought about reminding the warrior that I was an ordained Knight-Questor, able to go where I wanted and ignore whom I pleased, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I recognised the shoulder device.
I knew the Stormcast who commanded here.
My day was already ruined.
I had fought alongside the Anvils of the Heldenhammer before. Recently, even. And as it goes they have never bothered me as much as certain other Stormhosts who, for the purposes of this tale, shall remain nameless. They’re a morbid, insular bunch, which means that, with the occasional exception, they tend to keep their odder tendencies to themselves. They also profess little interest in personal glory, which is a large part of the reason that Lord-Castellant Akturus Ironheel, my old Seven Words sparring partner, and I were able to get along so famously.
But there are few Strike Chambers with as black a repute as the Imperishables.
None of them had a commander who put chills through me quite like Lord-Celestant Settrus.
He ignored me completely as I was led in to his commandery. My new Liberator friend bowed stiffly and withdrew with a hint of undue haste that was only noticeable if you were looking to see it.
I knew better than to expect a hearty reception from my brothers in the Stormhosts. My soul had been damaged during my recent adventures in the Nevermarsh, and anyone with the spark of Azyr in theirs could feel it. Some knew it more keenly than others, but for any Stormcast Eternal I had become discomforting to be around. As a result I had become something of a wanted man in Sigmaron (a misunderstanding, of course, although I’ll save that story for another time) and if the Imperishables had known of it then my freedom would have been forfeit. And possibly my life as well. The Six Smiths had always wanted me back alive, but I would have sooner made them kill me than go willingly back into the cage they’d crafted for me.
Yes, the fact that death just meant going back the scenic route hadn’t escaped me, although Ong of the Six had warned me there was a good chance my next death could be final.
So that was good news.
Fortunately for me, while news can travel quickly through the Realmgates, a few steps into the vast expanse of what I like to call ‘the real world’ beyond the Free Cities, it moves more like aetherquartz.
I’ve visited cities where I’ve had to be the one to explain how Chaos had conquered the Mortal Realms.
If Settrus knew what had befallen my soul, then he was playing a long game.
The Lord-Celestant was bent over a table, examining the blurred boundaries of what appeared to be a map of the fortress, but which, helpfully, was as difficult to look at as the castle itself had been from without.
According to the (now I think about it, somewhat hazy) legends of Aeygar’s people, the Unchained Lands were a formation of the Ghurite Hinterlands that had never settled, that had instead broken free to migrate inwards. I’ve heard some people argue that the Unchained Lands are alive. In the Ghyran Jotunberg, and the Junkar of the Heldenline, there is certainly precedent for such mammoth creatures. But I’m not convinced. Some people will always look on Ghur, in all its savagery and strangeness, and explain it as the doings of something semi-intelligent and predatory. Which is true only of most things. It had been the ancient aetar, supposedly, who at Sigmar’s behest raised the fortress here.
Whatever enchantments had been set upon the castle, they seemed to be at work not just on the physical stonework, but even on secondary allusions to it elsewhere.
Now, as much as the Arcanum Optimar has made armchair archmages of us all, I don’t know my Everblaze Comet from my Storm of Shemtek, but the power behind a spell like that had to have been formidable. Godlike. Certainly beyond the powers of the aetar. It occurred to me that this was probably why Aeygar’s people had lost the fortress their ancestors had built. Its own enchantments made them forget. Of course, why anyone would want a castle they couldn’t see or find again was a mystery to me.