‘Some ambassadors we turned out to be,’ said Thracius, sorrowfully.
‘Ambassadors.’ Hamilcar gave a snort. ‘Describe me thus again and I’ll rinse your mouth with sand.’
Broudiccan adjusted the sit of his dented helm and regarded them both sourly.
‘The sun-king seeks to thwart our great task and now he will pay for his crime. Such is the rule of Hamilcar!’ Hamilcar turned to his men, lifting his voice, and holding his halberd high. ‘We will bleed him, brothers. And give his kingdom to Sigmar!’
‘To Sigmar!’ they bellowed in return.
‘Hamilcar!’ he roared back at them, until the names were interchangeable.
His heart beat faster than the continuing medley of the sun-king’s horns and gongs as Crow tore off down the corridor. Hamilcar powered after him, the ground-eating stride of a demigod, his warriors close behind. Joraad could be anywhere, but he would know exactly what was loose in his citadel. Through a door and the corridor became another, great open space, its windows washing it with molten gold. Hamilcar staggered, another blow to eyes that were still raw. There was a gargling cry from ahead, short-lived, then a slam of gryph-hound against metal, against stone wall. Hamilcar stepped over the savaged Solar Guard and into a staircase. It was marginally darker inside, luminous rather than blinding, dark enough to see provided one shared the sight with superimposed images of his eyeballs’ veins.
The Astral Templars clattered down the stairs.
Hamilcar broke open another door.
It was some kind of receiving hall. A large wooden table was arrayed with nuts, dates and cured meats, presented as artworks on golden platters. Sunlight fell through slanted windows like taffeta ribbons, along with a natural breeze. A marble statue of womanly splendour poured water into a font from a horn of plenty. The cool chuckle of running water was a delight, so unexpected that Hamilcar almost charged right through the door and into the table.
The spread teetered on its platters.
His stomach stirred in sudden interest.
The Sea of Bones had been a journey to tax even the limitless constitution of the Stormcast Eternals and he had taken little but water and salted sankrit since. With an act of will that impressed even himself he ignored the growls of his stomach to focus on those of Crow, and the pound of armoured footsteps approaching from the other door across from the far end of the table.
‘Judicators, left and right.’
With exaggerated cutting gestures of his hand he directed the Judicators to either side of the long table, then leapt onto it two-footed. The elaborate vittle sculptures descended to the floor with a crash. He kicked aside a pyramid of dates that had somehow remained standing and twirled his halberd. The Judicators’ boltstorm crossbows sparked and whined as bolts of azyrite energy materialised in their tracks, fizzing against aetheric strings that were suddenly taut.
‘Loose on my order,’ Hamilcar bellowed, for there was no warrior who could not be improved by heeding the example of Hamilcar. ‘I claim the city of Jercho for Sigmar. The fewer of its people I have to kill, the greater will be his prize.’
With a crashing of gold-barred timbers, a phalanx of leather and bronze-clad common soldiery fell through the far door. ‘Hold!’ roared Hamilcar, and the mortal legionaries checked back in disarray at the monstrous visage he must have presented.
Pushing and cussing, a slightly bent old man draped in black silks with light silver vambraces and coif forced his way up from the rear ranks. ‘Is this the same legion that crushed the sankrit at Heliopalis, first through the breach at Anatoly? If I didn’t know better, then I—’ The newcomer hesitated as he saw Hamilcar up on the dining table. Without tearing his eyes away, he too gestured his men to stand down. With clear relief, they did so. ‘Lord-Castellant,’ he said.
Hamilcar might have laughed. He hadn’t even been as pleased to see the man when he’d first stumbled into him, blind with thirst, lost and half-mad from a sun that never set.
‘Sarmiel! Praise whoever you like for you!’
The Jerchese general did not return Hamilcar’s welcome. ‘There were reports of fighting in the gatehouse.’
A shrug. ‘That was us.’
‘I vouched for you before the sun-king himself. Do you know what that means? A dozen Solar Guard are dead!’
‘At least twice as many still live. Is that the work of invaders?’
Sarmiel hesitated at that, Hamilcar saw. He already doubted the truth of his reports or he would have come in fighting and to hell with explanations.
That was all the opening Hamilcar needed.
He had mastered his rhetoric in debate with the God-King himself, the Sigmarabulum crowded to its rafters by the admiring folk of Azyr, there to witness a bout between champions. They were a dozen spear-lengths apart, Hamilcar and the mortal man, but he lowered his halberd and extended a hand in friendship.
‘You remember the day we met. You remember what you said to me? I know you do because you had to tell me again after you had given me water and I became sensible.’
A nod. ‘That to have crossed the Sea of Bones you could only have been sent by Sigmar.’
‘You had me at your mercy. Now I have you at mine.’
His halberd tinked as its blade touched the flagstones.
Sarmiel appeared to sag in surrender. No sooner had he done so, however, than the stoop he had been carrying seemed to evaporate off him. He sheathed his sword with a shake of the head. ‘I doubt I could stop you anyway. Not with this lot.’ A glare at his men.
‘I didn’t want to be the one to say it.’ Hamilcar grinned.
‘I knew something was amiss when el Ranoon removed me from your honour guard. No. Before then. Since he moved his court to the Moon Palace.’
‘Moon Palace?’
‘It is where the first sun-king imprisoned the night.’
Hamilcar and Broudiccan shared a look.
‘Take us there.’
Hamilcar did not even realise he had been asleep.
He gasped, fighting with nothing, arms bulging as he fought to drive the… something from his breastplate. There was a pain in his heart. Black iron cracked his ribs like the shell of a nut and dug for the soft beating pulp within. With a roar he lashed out, his halberd having somehow found its way into his hand, and clove at the Abyssal’s neck. The splitting of stone and the crack as it hit the ground broke the dream logic, and he blinked the bloody image of his murderer, Ashigorath, back into nightmare.
In its place came the prattling of a fountain, the click and chirrup of insects, the rustle of leaves. Moonlit petals crept over the ledges of windows that faced in from no part of the fortress that Hamilcar could remember seeing. He held his chest and drew a deep breath. The air was jasmine-scented, as cool as dead iron. He looked back to the steel-barred portal that el Talame’s key had seen them past.
‘Here is where the night is bound,’ said the old general. ‘And everything that goes with it.’
‘Fitting,’ Hamilcar grunted.
Broudiccan and the others said nothing. Hamilcar knew no fear. They knew better than to doubt it.
The fountain he had heard was a few score yards from the portal, in a column of moonlight that the trees seemed to have twisted themselves to avoid. He walked to the basin. Kneeling, he splashed cool water into his face. As the ripples cleared, he saw himself looking into a face that he almost recognised: the tawny beard, scuffed by serried lines of scars, the thorny branch tattoo that swirled around his eye.