‘There always are.’ Hamilcar thumped his breastplate with a clenched fist, making one of the nearby spearmen start. ‘There is only ever one of Hamilcar.’ The granite-white gryph-hound, Crow, that padded alongside him growled in apparent assent, or perhaps in hunger as it considered the soldiers of Jercho.
‘Think of what might be achieved if these people can be returned to Sigmar’s fold,’ said Thracius, last surviving Prime of his Liberators, his armour sand-polished and aglow with Sigmar’s energy, his manner characteristically ebullient. ‘Look upon Jercho’s wealth. And these towers, so grand, earthly twins to those of Sigmaron herself! Two Mortal Realms have I waged holy war upon, Hamilcar, and never seen the like of Jercho — a nation of city-states, as yet unmarred by the Age of Chaos. Their confidence and power would be a boon to Sigmar’s, equal to anything we have achieved in Ghur thus far.’
Ever restless, Hamilcar’s mind turned back.
He had been dispatched to the Realm of Beasts to reconquer the cities of the Carthic Oldwoods and oversee their resettlement in Sigmar’s name. He had succeeded, for Hamilcar always succeeded, only to see that great work undone as one by one those cities fell to marauding bands of ogors, the orruk hordes of the Great Red, and then, the deathblow, to the undying legions of Mannfred von Carstein.
It had been Mannfred that had slain him, in the final battle for once-mighty Cartha, and the ignominy of his defeat lingered more than the appalling injuries required to slay one as mighty as he. He was troubled, more often than he would admit, by dreams of that day. He would awake, clad in sweat, his halberd gripped so fiercely that if the dreams did not cease then one day even blessed sigmarite would snap. A lesser immortal would have broken, but it was not often that the gods forged men of Hamilcar’s mettle. Aware, as a god must be, of the evil that plagued his greatest champion, Sigmar had granted him swift catharsis, giving him the vanguard of the bladestorm that had driven Mannfred from the Sea of Bones and, in alliance with the hosts of Arkhan the Black, broken the back of the Great Red. The quest to bring the vampire to heel went on, and, though it had aggrieved Lord-Relictor Ramus of the Hallowed Knights, there was none better than Hamilcar to pursue it.
It was not about vengeance. Nor was it even about restitution; in his heart he knew that the memory of his death would be with him to the end of days.
He was a hunter, and the vampire was his prey.
‘The Hammers of Sigmar and the Celestial Vindicators claim the realms for Sigmar,’ Broudiccan grumbled, ‘while we battle half-sentient lizard people for an arid waste that no one desires and one worthless night-walker that time forgot to slay.’
‘This is where the glory will be, brothers,’ Hamilcar declared.
‘What makes you so sure?’
Hamilcar spread his arms, his armour shining under the bright sun. The answer was so blindingly apparent that he did not need to speak it. He laughed instead, clapping Broudiccan on the pauldron so sparks of lightning played through the fingers of his gauntlet as he pushed his brother on.
Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he is not greedy with his glory.
The Knight-Heraldor, Frankos, sounded a note on his long, curved horn, the standard of the Knight-Vexillor held proudly aloft as Hamilcar and his best marched into the Plaza Solar.
The great plaza of marble and tinkling fountains was set in the sultry wind-shade of the citadel’s ramparts. They were immense. The white stone of the walls was dazzling. The arrowslits were framed with gold. Fantastical banners of bright and daring colours fluttered against the bright blue sky, but the Solar itself felt no wind. The ornamental fountains sounded a note of coolness, but heat pressed down like a mailed fist.
Frankos’ herald faded into the still air. Silence fell, breathless, with a clatter of sigmarite as Stormcasts shifted in their armour for relief from the heat.
Shielding his eyes, Hamilcar looked up the huge curtain walls to where a robed man with a bald head stood with his lips to a trumpet of gold-plated ivory. And there, on the highest rampart, surrounded by his banners and servants and beneath a shaded canopy, was the throne of Joraad el Ranoon.
The sun-king.
The king of Jercho was clad in a loose banyan of green silk, the hem and sleeve decorated with a chequer pattern of white and green. His arms were heavy with jewelled torques, his neck wound with heavy necklaces of gold. A golden mask that emitted rays like those of the sun covered his face in full, and a crown sat upon his head.
Joraad leaned forward and his voice, when he spoke, boomed from all around, hundreds of voices, echoing from the fine statuary and feminine caryatids of the Solar.
Hamilcar turned his gaze to see the men and women arrayed in royal livery above the square. He had been told of this. The Rays of the sun-king: bonded by ritual magic to the will of their lord.
‘I, Joraad, heir to the reign of Ranoon, regent of Jercho and king of earth and sky, welcome the embassy of Sigmar to my throne. Come in peace, brothers long lost, returned to us now by the blessings of the gods.’
A stilted breeze stirred the high banners. Hamilcar licked the salty dryness from his lips and squinted over the silent crowds. He had been expecting a cheer, a dutiful applause. Something.
‘Why does he sit in shade while we bake?’ Broudiccan murmured. ‘Is he the sun-king or is he not?’
Chuckling at his brother’s bleak humour, Hamilcar stepped forward. He let the quiet linger a moment longer. Then he took a deep breath; his lungs swelled, his diaphragm dropped.
Broudiccan and Thracius took a step back.
‘And Sigmar’s greeting to you!’ His voice was a hammer beaten against the shieldwall of the sky. The pennants above the castle gatehouse fluttered. He looked up to the sun-king, eyes narrowed and shot through with red by the noon glare. ‘We are the eternals of Azyr, and by the might of Sigmar we have returned!’
The sun-king peered down, nonplussed, appearing to remonstrate with one of his many fan-waving attendants, then waved a hand covered in rings towards the gatehouse and some garrison commander out of sight.
‘Here we go,’ Broudiccan muttered grimly as the gates creaked apart in a rattling of chains and a golden crack of light.
A block of half-masked soldiers encased in full plate armour of flawless gold and wielding wickedly curved polearms marched forth. A column with a rank of ten seamlessly became two columns with a rank of five, the marchers splitting to assume positions either side of the gate. A mighty bang reverberated about the Solar as two-hundred men of the Solar Guard smacked the butts of their weapons into the ground, turned forty-five degrees to left or right, and then stamped their boot to the flagstones.
The gryph-hound, Crow, lashed his tail.
Hamilcar rubbed the beast’s heavy beak to soothe him. ‘You heard the king.’ He turned to Broudiccan and Thracius with a grin. ‘He asked us to come in peace.’
The sealing of the gates actually brightened the gatehouse considerably. Natural light poured in through tall, outwards slanted windows, then burned like fire across the doors’ gold and electrum panelling. The walls were that same pitiless white. Hamilcar grimaced and held up a hand as a woman in jewelled armour approached through the files of Solar Guard, bent light streaming from her armour’s faceted edges in a dazzling spray of colours.
‘I had expected to be welcomed by General Sarmiel el Talame,’ he grunted. ‘It was his legion that treated with us in the border deserts of the sankrit. He was the one who arranged this audience once we had explained your city’s danger.’
The woman did not answer.
Everything about her spoke of remoteness, light without warmth.
Steeling himself with a deep breath, he turned to look directly at her.