He always still appears for me on turn 2.
Last night I turned him into a killing machine by imbuing him early on and running him around with my sovereign. By mid-game both my sov and janusek had about 100 essence and 30+ int.. with 2 fire shards I was able to fireball any single creature for about 160-180 per turn with both casters.. or use the AE fire (blanking on name atm) spell to wipe out hordes of armies.. The final part of the master quest was incredibly easy with just these two heroes dropping that AE fire spell 4 times.. game over..