I turn about, backing up until I stand on the bridge and in full view of my fortress’ walls. The mortal cohorts that guard them watch me. Expectant Stormcasts in maroon and gold and a mix of animal furs only now arrive to take their places alongside them.
‘Before you stands Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’ I roar, holding my arms out wide and clenching my fists until they shake. ‘The greatest warrior to walk this realm since Sigmar in the Age of Myth!’
Whether it is true or not hardly matters, so long as men believe it. And Sigmar, they believe it.
I cup a hand to my ear as though I cannot hear them cheer.
‘Zephacleas Beast-Bane, you say?’ I scoff. ‘Who is this champion in a mask who wishes his name were…’ I thump my breastplate and shout, ‘Hamilcar!’
The battlements erupt with wild cheers and laughter. I wait for it to settle, then wave for quiet as it begins to look as though it will not do so on its own.
‘I bring fell tidings, daughters and sons.’ Silence comes then. I wait for it to fill the great emptiness that surrounds us. ‘Azyr sends warning that the foul skaven have their sights set on our new home.’ I strike the butt of my halberd on the rock and present the open gate with my spare hand. ‘See how I fear the verminous, hunchbacked, ill-begotten bastard child of the Ruinous Powers. See how I quiver before the wide-open gate of my great fortress.’
I turn my back on the wall now, drawing an enormous breath as if I might suck in the expanse of sky, and then shout as loud as I can. ‘Hear me, vermin! My gate is open! Face me. One on one or all together, it concerns me not. Best me here and my fortress stands open.’
A smattering of uncertain laughter edges down the wall behind me.
My peers believe the realms can be claimed through skill-at-arms, but I disagree. I have died once, slain by a swordsman with a monstrous ally that surpassed even my lost hounds and I in skill and strength. No. It is with reckless courage, infectious heart and brute charisma that Chaos will be put to the sword.
‘I am not moving until you show yourselves!’
My voice drains into the depthless blue. Then, there is silence. It stretches, only the howling wind and the clink of spears against armour to be heard. The men, duardin and aelves shuffle nervously alongside the solitary ogor of the Seven Words Freeguild.
Minutes pass.
‘Lord-Castellant,’ Broudiccan calls down softly from the walls, where he stands at the head of a dozen judicators of the Bear-Eaters. ‘I really don’t think that–’
There is a rustle from the undergrowth to my right, and the grasses part around a hunched and hooded figure. It is clad in armour made from rusty iron plates, patched together with inferior metals and all covered by a singed cloak. Every change of the winds’ direction brings a flinch that seems to begin in its twitching snout and spread through its entire furry body. It carries a scrap of almost-white cloth uncertainly between his forepaws.
‘Do not… do not kill-kill,’ it says, its voice something between a hiss and whisper.
I shrug, turning my halberd so that it lies point down. ‘I kill one and there will be thousands more hiding back there somewhere.’
It bobs its head. ‘Yes-yes. Many thousands.’
I can tell that its heart is not in the boast. Standing alone on a windy berm before the Lord-Castellant of the Seven Words was clearly not what it had been expecting of its day.
But therein lies the virtue of recklessness.
Even a skaven war-leader would never expect its enemy to do something as foolish as this.
‘I am Rillik,’ the skaven said. ‘Envoy and word-rat to Master Warlock Ikrit, under-ruler of the Nevermarsh, broacher of the Crystal Labyrinth of Tzeentch, he who penetrated the Hex of Hyish that clouds Tyrion’s white gates and stole into the Kingdom of Naga–’
I interrupt it with a short laugh. ‘If I recite my titles and deeds we will be here until my soldiers tire and go home, rat.’ Anxious laughter ripples through the ranks behind me. ‘You accept my terms?’
‘I–’ Its tail lashes at the undergrowth. ‘Er–’ It fiddles with the white sheet in its paws. ‘Master Warlock Ikrit accepts your challenge, but not the terms. He is uninterested in your stone-warren. He will accept-take your surrender. Alive.’
A vision of myself, caged in warp lightning and screaming, suddenly fills my thoughts. I wonder, for a moment, if I have been given a glimpse of Vikaeus’ prophecy.
I shrug it off. There can be no surrender now.
‘What can he want with me?’
‘He promise-squeak to take…’ Rillik tittered. ‘Pains. To make that clear when you are his prisoner.’ It presents its grubby sheet to me. ‘May I?’
I nod, and Rillik hoists his white rag overhead, waving it towards the bridge. I think I see something glint on the other side.
‘What now?’ I ask.
Rillik is already slinking into the undergrowth. More quickly, I note, than the skaven had emerged in the first place.
A sudden cry goes up from the watchers on the wall and I grip my halberd as though it is Sigmar’s own outstretched hand.
The skaven are coming.
Granite pounds under the clatter of metal, and sunlight turns off the red armour of the vermin. I squint as something colossal crests the bridge.
It is hunched in the manner of a rat, but taller still than I by half again. It is a golem cobbled together from the materials that scavengers might find to hand: metal plates, wooden planks, rattling chains, even stretched hides and furs are evident in its construction. One arm is a multi-barrelled firearm, with belts dribbling corrosive bile. The other ends in a spiked mace the size of my chest. A tail made of thick iron chains drags, like a ship’s anchor, on the stones behind it. It comes with a curiously hesitant stop-start gait, one leg or the other always dragging, but its speed is deceptive. As it draws nearer I realise that this is no sorcerous automaton, but a war machine piloted by a living rat. A square section of its hugely armoured torso section has been slotted with holes for a pilot to see through.
There is no break in the cheering behind me as the construct grinds and belches to a halt before me. Their voices become a chant, beaten to the time of iron ferrules on hard stone.
‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’
My heart swells. Even against this monstrosity they have no doubt.
‘Under-ruler of the Nevermarsh? He who penetrated the Hex of Hyish?’ I ask, my head tilting back. ‘I expected something bigger.’
‘Master Ikrit is too high-great to fight his own battles, fool-fool.’ Its voice is a hollow shriek, like the whistle of a steam tank. ‘You will see-smell him when you are safely in chains.’ It swings around its ratling gun, the weapon chewing noisily on its belt feeds.
Bellowing a prayer to Sigmar, I unhook the warding lantern from my belt and draw back the shutter. Golden light bursts from the relic and hammers the skaven battle construct with the radiance of Azyr. The pilot hisses and closes its mangy eyes, but its pain is merely a welcome side effect.
The light of Azyr is my shield.
Green-flecked bullets rip from the construct’s spinning gun barrels. Most spray wide, but the sheer volume of fire ensures that some at least find me. Bullets slam into the wall of light, surrounding me in golden ripples of misspent force. The noise is deafening, but I am still yelling, screaming against the pain as dozens of the poisonous lead balls punch through the shield and batter my armour.
Another Lord-Castellant might take this as evidence to the value of his helmet, but not I. With covered head, I am just another Astral Templar; I could be Vandalus Dustking or even Zephacleas bloody Beast-Bane.
But I am not just any Astral Templar.