I stumbled onto the other leg, my mouth a silent ‘O’ of surprise. ‘God-King. That hurts.’
‘I pray that this hurts twice as much.’
Discarding his spent weapons, Blackjaw threw open his coat to reveal a bare torso of corded muscle and pale white scars. A bandolier crisscrossed his chest, and from it he drew another brace of pistols. That even now, barely an arm’s length from my face, he would resort to guns disgusted me.
‘What kind of champion of the Blood God are you?’ I said, adding a slur to my words, for feigning injury is not a ruse I consider myself above. In fact, if you can conceive of a ruse that I am above, then you have a darker mind than mine, my friend.
‘Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows,’ he snarled, cocking his pistol, black eyes locked on mine.
My halberd cleaving his right hand from his wrist then came as quite the surprise.
He howled in pain and outrage, firing the pistol that was still in his left hand. The bullet glanced off my rerebrace and splintered the oak of the gunwale behind me.
‘Careful, Castle Lord.’
At the sound of that unexpectedly cheery voice, I turned my head to see Akbu, exhausted and dripping, but dragging himself and his pole arm up over the side of the ship. A similarly bedraggled band of maorai, reduced in number to about half a dozen, clambered up the netting behind him. They had swum all this way, just to follow me.
My heart swelled.
I felt as though someone had set a warding lantern in my breast.
‘This man…’ Akbu panted, trying to gesture to me but lacking the strength.
I got the gist of it.
I turned to Blackjaw, swollen with pride and bristling with Azyrite intensity. He backed away, awkwardly drawing a cutlass. It looked as though he had not needed to wield one in centuries.
I grinned, and for the first time in a long while it felt like a fit for my face.
‘Let the glory begin.’
So yes, maybe I did release the Grey King prematurely, and maybe that did have something to do with Nemisuvik’s diminished status in later years. It had lost the monster’s protection, but it had gained Sigmar’s, which had to be better, even if he was less hands-on about discouraging the ever-hungry beasts of the Stormwilds from the pontoons.
The battle had been won, and that was what mattered. Many were the sacrifices that mortal folk were asked to make in those days, and they were invariably offered more gladly when it was me who asked it of them. Thanks in no small part to my efforts in holding Blackjaw at bay for so long, the greater war for the territories of the mainland had been a triumph, my name ever-present there also alongside Broudiccan and Frankos and the champions of the Bear-Eaters. And when the victorious folk of Nemisuvik were forced to abandon the outer pontoons to the beasts, when they rediscovered the boatmaker’s craft and found themselves new homes elsewhere across the Ghurlands, they took the name of their hero with them.
That sounds like a great victory to me.
About the Author
David Guymer wrote the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two The Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he wrote the novel Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods, the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio drama Realmslayer. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.