Within her searing aura, he made out a smudge of darkness, skin, olive brown, and long dark hair ornamented with some kind of gold. Tears began to fill his eyes as he found the glittering lines of powdered gold drawn from the corners of the woman’s eyes. One of the Rays of the sun-king. He gave her a pained grin.
Crow, he held by the scruff to settle his growls.
‘The sun-king, Joraad el Ranoon, eternally glorious king of earth and sky, commands the surrender of your arms,’ she said.
Hamilcar rubbed his eyes and frowned. Sarmiel had not prepared them for that.
In addition to her armour, the woman bore an emerald-hilted tulwar, though it was belted in a scabbard of jewelled silk and could only have been ceremonial in function. Hamilcar squinted to the guards. He had counted about fifty outside, but if there had been any more waiting inside he could not tell, and one gold-armoured figure blurred into another here. How they saw him, he couldn’t fathom.
He supposed they got used to it.
‘You don’t draw the teeth from a bear and expect it to behave.’
Broudiccan snorted, and clutched his massive thunderaxe possessively.
‘Weapons are not permitted in the presence of the sun-king,’ the woman said.
‘Perhaps we should oblige them in this,’ Thracius counselled.
‘Am I able to speak to el Ranoon directly through…?’ Hamilcar waved vaguely over the blankly starring thrall. ‘This? An evil you are ill prepared for rides before us. Trickery is his weapon. Even your great citadel cannot be counted a haven. We are here to defend your kingdom, to test the sharpness of the vampire’s wits on Hamilcar’s blade.’
The woman’s eyelids fluttered, as if the host sought to wake but couldn’t. ‘The sun-king will settle for your blade, Lord-Castellant, if your followers will submit to having their weapons bound to the sheaths.’
Hamilcar conceded. He tossed his halberd to a barely visible Solar Guard and with a nod of assent bade Broudiccan stow his axe. The woman waved a gauntleted hand — the light in its path cut to daggered purples and greens — and called for silk for binding.
‘Divine majesty.’ A captain of the Solar Guard crouched to one knee as men moved amongst the glowering Astral Templars bearing bolts of silk, then bowed his head to the Ray as though he addressed his king in person. ‘The crowds have been cleared from the Solar. My men have secured the plaza and the legions return the people to the city.’
‘You have done well.’ Her eyes rolled backwards for a spell, the attentions of the puppet-lord momentarily elsewhere, and then the dolorous clangour of gongs and horns sounded from the ramparts.
Hamilcar squinted towards the high windows. Treating with a sovereign power was one part fine words to nine parts theatre.
And Hamilcar Bear-Eater knew theatre.
‘I was not advised on any further ceremony.’
The Ray nodded, as if to herself, then backed away. The pain in Hamilcar’s eyes receded appreciably. A few paces back she drew her ornamental blade from its sheath. It was a beautiful thing, as if drawn whole from the heart of a star.
‘The return of Sigmar and the elder pantheon has been awaited for centuries. Their disappearance was never explained to us.’ She lowered her head, and raised her sword flat across her palms to be kissed by the light that poured through the windows. ‘The people will not stand idle. Better they remain ignorant of what passes between us. I am the sun-king of Jercho, imposter, and Sigmar is dead to me.’
Hamilcar bellowed as the woman swung for him. He raised an arm. Sparks tore from the sword’s curved blade and it slid down the angle of his vambrace. A twist, a shove, and he threw the mortal off. She spun once before she landed, light spearing from her as though a cut diamond had been flicked across the face of the sun, any idea of pursuit discouraged with burning pins to the eyes. With a grunt, Hamilcar pulled up. Pain turned his face behind the shade of his own pauldron, eyes narrowed to tear-filled slits.
Dull things in their glorious plate, the Solar Guard moved in.
There was a reluctance to their step, but they came anyway, a reminder of why Hamilcar had always despised biddable warriors, served up in gold.
Whatever orders they had been given it was clear they had been told to execute them quietly, for without a cry or an oath they drew back their polearms and charged. Hamilcar was not about to oblige them their desire for silence.
Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he was loud.
With a bellow that caused the panelling on the gates behind him to rattle and the imprisoned moon dragon of Jercho to shift in its chains, he backhanded an incoming polearm from his chest, then drove his elbow into its wielder’s helmet with force enough to crack the man’s skull against his spine. Thracius shattered another’s breastplate with a punch that threw him into the wall. The Liberator Prime beat on his breastplate and roared. Disappointment had made him wrathful, and Hamilcar was almost glad that he did not have a weapon. With an inchoate beast-sound Thracius dragged a knight from his comrades by the point of his polearm, then dashed him against the ceiling.
Even unarmed, the Stormcasts were proving more than the elite warriors of Jercho had been prepared for.
With the courage of one who bore no share of danger, the Ray exhorted her faltering soldiers to press that attack. ‘They are unarmed. Bring down one, just one, and the sun will shine forever on you all.’ Her blade wove a dazzling pattern of sunsteel and diamond. It was a struggle just to look at her. Crow drew onto its haunches to leap for her, only for Hamilcar to throw his arm down across him like a barrier.
‘Down.’
The woman laughed coldly. ‘As the sun forever shines, so is Sigmar prideful.’
‘I am not Sigmar. Though the resemblance is marked.’
The thrall leapt forwards. Hamilcar unclipped his warding lantern just as the woman came within reach. The heavy sigmarite shutters struck her a mighty blow across the jaw, and she hit the floor like a pouch of gemstones. Hamilcar walked towards her recumbent form, rubbing his eyes, as Broudiccan and Thracius saw to the last of the Solar Guards.
‘Could Mannfred have worked his claws so deep so soon?’ asked Broudiccan. The giant Decimator was on one knee, looking over his shoulder as he sat an unconscious knight against the wall.
‘Mannfred would have known better. He would have sent more men.’ Blinking quickly, he turned to the downed woman. ‘Tell me why—’
Before he could finish, a knife appeared in the woman’s hand. Hamilcar drew back, but then, eyes glassed by distance, she ran the knife across her own throat. A red line appeared, and the glaze in her eyes cleared as the controlling spirit chose that moment to forsake her body. Its parting gift was a few moments of horrified incomprehension as the woman spluttered and gagged and clawed at Hamilcar’s boot as if he had the power to save her. And then she was still.
Hamilcar clicked his tongue.
He had died one time too many to be moved by barbarity now.
‘Whatever the reason, the sun-king wants us dead.’
‘Agreed,’ said Thracius.
Broudiccan spat on the ground as he rose. ‘And they say that Chaos never reached here.’
‘Chaos doesn’t always march with an army,’ said Hamilcar. ‘You can travel the seven realms to the farthest winterland and still find that Chaos got there first.’
‘Then we remove its stain from our boot heel,’ said Broudiccan, grimly.
‘Agreed,’ said Thracius.
Hamilcar and his brothers looked up to see Crow pacing restively before the electrum panelling of a heavy wooden door. The gryph-hound stared at Hamilcar. Intelligence and aggression in its eyes. Hamilcar grinned.
Retrieving his halberd, Hamilcar kicked the doors in. They smashed outwards and splintered against the walls of a corridor. Immediately, he recoiled. It was a blistering desert of pastel stone and points of gold without colour or finish, such was the unnatural intensity of light that blazed through its enormous windows. Despite the pain in his eyes, Hamilcar marvelled. No army could storm the sun-king’s citadel and prevail. No agent or saboteur could make it this far and navigate any further undiscovered.