by Warhammer
Lurk was not sure that this was a good idea either. Surely things could not go so easily. Surely they would meet more resistance than this? Where were the accursed human warriors? His questions received no answers. All around, buildings were beginning to burn.
Chang Squik clambered up the sheer face of the cliff leading to the palace of the human breeder, Emmanuelle. The line attached to his grapnel held firm. The heavy weight of the rune-encrusted seeing stone entrusted to him by Grey Seer Thanquol personally rested securely in the knapsack on his back. Chang Squik braced himself and scrabbled with the claws of his feet for purchase on the smooth stone of the cliff face. Things were going well. In a few more minutes he would be in position with the stone placed within the halls of the palace, ready for whatever mighty magic the grey seer had planned. He would have played his part in the skaven victory today – and gone some way towards mitigating the disgrace of his failure to kill the dwarf and his human henchman. Hopefully that painful memory was something which could be laid to rest before this night was over too.
Suddenly below him, in the distance, he heard the faint but distinct chittering of skaven war cries, and the answering screams of their human victims. Twisting on the rope he glanced back and saw the eerie glow of what could only be warpfire throwers being used in the distance. Surely the attack had not begun already? The fools were supposed to wait until he was within the palace and Grey Seer Thanquol’s plan had been implemented!
He cursed and redoubled his efforts to climb. The noise and the sight of the fire would draw human sentries and other spectators to the battlements above him. Chang Squik could ill afford to have his grapnel line discovered. All it would take would be one human with a knife to slice the black rope, and his long and honourable career would come to an end. Controlling his urge to squirt the musk of fear, the Clan Eshin assassin pulled himself upward.
The strange greenish light in the sky confirmed Felix’s suspicions that the invasion had indeed begun. He recognised the colour of the flames as being the same as those produced by the strange weapons which had destroyed the College of Engineering. Looking back, he could see fire leaping from the rooftops of blazing tenements. The college had been a separate building isolated behind the walls of its own grounds. The buildings here in this part of the city, in contrast, were packed as tight together as drunks in a crowded tavern. Many of them leaned conspiratorially over alleyways. Some were linked by high bridges far above the ground, and by supporting arches in the alleys. Most had thatched roofs and wooden support beams. Felix shivered in spite of himself. The conflagration was going to spread quickly. The city was going to burn.
Still, at least for the moment he seemed to have lost his pursuers. There was not a rat-man in sight. Better yet, he recognised this street at last and knew that he was not too far from the Blind Pig. He paused, leaning forward with his hands braced on his knees, panting for breath and shaking his head to clear the sweat from his eyes. Once he reached the tavern he would be able to put together a plan with Gotrek and the others.
Suddenly, from the mouth of a nearby alley he heard a shrieked war cry. Looking up, he saw a large group of skaven erupt out into the cobbled street. Gathering all his energy, Felix ran for his life.
Grey Seer Thanquol led his elite force of stormvermin into position. His keen grey seer’s intuition told him that directly above them was the palace. He could sense its presence. He trampled the corpse of the sewer watchman beneath his paw and allowed himself to gloat. So far the Clan Eshin assassins had done their work. Every human in the sewers who might have given away their presence was dead. By now, teams of gutter runners would be in position at the base of the cliff on which the castle rested. Hopefully, by now Chang Squik would be in position.
Thanquol produced the scrying stone from within his robes. He began to mutter the incantations which would link it to the twin carried by the leader of the Eshin forces. Now would be the time for a mighty feat of sorcery, one that would grant the skaven swift and inevitable victory. In order to perform it, Thanquol knew he would need vast amounts of power and therein lay the danger.
In order to acquire enough mystical energy to power the spells that he needed to perform, Thanquol would have to consume an enormous amount of warpstone, and that had its dangers. This was not the mild, refined stuff which made up his snuff. No, this was the pure product, the very essence of magic, concentrated and purified by skaven alchemists. It was a substance capable of providing its user with awesome power, but its use carried equally awesome dangers. Many grey seers had been driven over the edge into madness by the corrosive effects of the substance on their sanity. Others had been reduced to mindless Chaos-spawn by its mutating effects. Taken in large enough doses by those of insufficiently strong will, warpstone could devolve its user into a formless, amorphous thing.
But what was that to him, mightiest of grey seers? Thanquol was a practiced user of warpstone, was capable of consuming it in gigantic quantities without ill effect. The things that happened to all those others could not happen to him. Definitely, positively not…
For a moment, brief niggling doubt flared in Thanquol’s mind. What if there was something wrong with the warpstone? What if it were not pure but contaminated with other stuff? Such things had happened. What if Thanquol were not as strong as he believed? Mistakes in dosage were always possible. But only for a second did the grey seer hesitate, before his natural confidence in his own mighty abilities returned. He was not one to flinch from the dangers of warpstone. In fact, he admitted to himself, he rather enjoyed it. He reminded himself of this as he reached into his pouch and put the first luminous piece of warpstone onto his tongue. It tingled even as he consumed it. Now memories of his long-gone youth came back to him. He recalled his initiation into the use of warpstone.
No, thought Thanquol, there was nothing to fear here. So thinking, he began preparing himself, making himself ready for when the correct time came to cast the spell which would grant his forces victory.
Ahead Felix could see the lights of the Blind Pig. A wave of relief passed through him. If the tavern did not quite represent safety, at least it had to be better than this nightmare chase through the darkened streets with a horde of shrieking rat-men on his trail. He could see Boris and Stephan and a host of their companions standing in the street, shielding their eyes as they studied the distant fires.
‘Beware! Skaven!’ Felix shouted and saw them all reach for their weapons. In moments, swords glittered in the half-light of the burning city. From inside the tavern a number of armoured figures spilled out into the gloom. Felix was relieved to see the massive squat figure of Gotrek among them. There was something enormously reassuring under these circumstances about the massive axe clutched in his hands.
Felix raced up to the warriors as they braced themselves for the skaven attack. Behind him the skaven, unwilling or unable to give up the heady rush of the chase, came on like an avalanche of fur and fury.
Felix made his way through the throng to stand beside Gotrek. The Slayer had the usual look of mad joy in his one good eye that he always got before combat.
‘I see you found our scuttling little friends, manling,’ he said, running his thumb along the blade of his axe until a bright red bead of blood appeared.
‘Yes,’ Felix gasped, struggling to get his breath back before the combat began.
‘Good. Let’s get killing then!’
Doctor Drexler looked around him. Something was very wrong. Many of the warriors had gone to the battlements to look at the fires and not come back. Ostwald had already herded the women back into the ballroom. Messengers had been rushing to and fro between Ostwald, Countess Emmanuelle and those outside. Something was very definitely happening and he needed to find out what it was. If he had not known better, he would have sworn that Ostwald had ordered the orchestra to play louder to drown out the sounds of the disturbance.
That must be it, Drexler thought, knowing that he had guessed the truth. Something was hap
pening and in order to forestall a panic, Hieronymous was covering it up. He glanced around at the others present, and adjusted his mask. Most of the people in the ballroom consisted of ladies of rank, together with a sprinkling of hangers-on, toadies and those simply too drunk to leave the hall. Of course there were footmen present, and a few guards too, but the situation was not very reassuring. He glanced across at Ostwald, not wanting to divulge the connection between them but filled with curiosity about what was going on. The secretary was garbed as a wood elf warrior, complete with bow. Drexler walked up to him, still nibbling at a savoury.
‘What has happened?’ he asked.
‘Some disturbance in the town, Herr Doctor. Arson and possibly worse. With Her Serenity’s permission, I have ordered troops from the barracks to quell the problem.’
‘Nothing wrong in the palace then?’
‘Not as far as I know, but I have ordered the guards to double-check.’
‘Let us pray to Sigmar that it is only some looters. Things have been dreadful recently.’
‘I fear the worst,’ Ostwald said, looking up as another courier approached. Drexler agreed. Somewhere nearby his sorcerously trained senses told him that powerful magic was gathering.
Chang Squik cursed and ducked for cover. The place smelled like a reeking midden. Looking around with his dark-accustomed eyes, he could tell this was, in truth, a human privy. Well, there were worse places to hide, he told himself, but this was not going to help his mission.
He knew it was no use. He was not going to make it to the great chamber above the ballroom that he and the grey seer had agreed on. All of the stolen maps of the palace he had studied and still carried in his head told him this. He just did not have the time to get there and, even with his supreme skills at sneaking and skulking, he doubted that he could find his way, unseen, through the mass of humans crowding the palace corridors and heading to the battlements in search of a view of what was going on below. This place was just going to have to do.
He took the knapsack from his back and reached within. The heat and the glow produced by the seeing stone told him that he was only just in time. Perhaps even a little late. He wondered how long the grey seer had already spent glaring out into the darkness of the inside of his pack. He shuddered when he thought of the wrath of Thanquol, as he squatted down, pressed his nose to the side of the stone, and gave the thumbs-up sign.
Felix ducked the swipe of a jagged scimitar and lashed out with his sword. His blow took the skaven beneath the ribs, and cleaved upwards in search of its heart. The skaven gave an eerie high-pitched shriek, clutched its chest, and died. It fell to the ground even as Felix withdrew his blade from its chest.
Felix glanced around at the swirling melee. To his right he saw Heinz dash out the brains of a skaven leader with the cosh he held in his left hand, while he fended off the attack of another skaven with the blade he held in his right. Boris and Stephan fought back-to-back in the teeth of the tide of rat-men. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Gotrek’s bellowed war cry.
Right at this moment, it was difficult to tell how the fight was going. The mercenaries seemed to be holding their own against the skaven, and the battle seemed to have attracted the attention of others. Humans were pouring out of the nearby tenements. Some clutched bedpans and pokers and other improvised weapons. Others carried swords and blunderbusses and other, rather more useful-looking, instruments of destruction. It seemed that the citizens had decided that they would rather meet their end in battle with their foes than be burned to death in their homes. That was good, thought Felix, for the mercenaries needed all the help they could get as more and more skaven were being drawn through the blazing streets to the sound of battle.
Even as he stood there, a severed head came flying out of the gloom, spinning, spilling blood from disconnected arteries, spraying all those below it with a shower of black raindrops. It arced straight toward Felix and he batted it aside with his sword. Salty black fluid splattered his face and he fought the urge to lick his lips to clean them. Looking down he saw that the head belonged to a huge skaven warrior.
He wiped his face with his cloak quickly, worried that something might take advantage of his blindness and stab him. Shaking his head he moved forward cautiously to where he could hear Gotrek shouting. Ahead of him he could see an enormous ruck. The Slayer stood poised atop what first Felix took to be an enormous mound of bodies but swiftly realised was a plague cart. A wave of furious skaven scrabbled to reach him but were being hewn down by the awesome power of the Slayer’s axe.
In the distance, looming over the great mass of lesser skaven, Felix could see a huge wedge of creatures he had come to think of as rat-ogres. Gotrek obviously saw them too, for he dived from the top of the plague cart into the seething sea of skaven. Within moments, his flickering axe had left a wall of broken and dying bodies all around him as he thrust his way towards the giant monsters that were his goal. Felix debated for only a moment whether to follow him and then pushed forward, shouting: ‘Follow me, lads! Let’s kill some bloody rat-men.’
As he hacked to left and right, he hoped the mercenaries were listening and following, otherwise he and Gotrek were in for a hard time when they closed with the rat-ogres.
Thanquol glared into his scrying crystal. His head swam. His brain felt aflame. The power of the warpstone flowed through his veins like a drug. It made him feel dizzy and wonderful at the same time. At this moment, he felt sure he could perceive the underlying pattern of mystical forces focused on the crystal. He concentrated harder on making the thing work.
At last the darkness had cleared. At last he could see the leering face of Chang Squik. It appeared that the Clan Eshin assassin had reached his objective. Good, Thanquol thought. About time. He could barely contain the enormous mass of warpstone-fuelled mystical energy which boiled within him. He felt so saturated with power that it seemed that at any minute he might explode. His head swam and his vision blurred; everything seemed to swim around him. Frantically he tried to remember the syllables of the spell he had memorised so long ago in that great black book in the Accursed Library.
For a long moment the words eluded him, squirming and sliding just out of reach of his thought processes. Thanquol bit the insides of his cheek until he tasted blood. The pain seemed to sharpen his wits, for eventually the words came to him. He opened his lips and the syllables of his ancient language seemed to vomit forth from his mouth, ejecting with them a roiling cloud of dark, magical energy.
Thanquol’s heartbeat accelerated to levels he would not have believed were endurable. His heart thumped wildly in his chest and his breathing was ragged and choked. He knew he was losing control of his spell and fought to rein in the flow of power before it destroyed him. Brain-blasting visions danced through his mind, and he knew that his seer’s gifts had been driven to incredible new heights by the unprecedented amounts of warpstone he had consumed. Briefly his consciousness seemed to leave his body and scenes flickered through his mind in swift succession.
For a moment his spirit hovered over the city and he had a panoramic view of all that was happening. Below him the streets blazed with fire and violence. A river of skaven raced through the city, killing all that were in their path. Here and there they had encountered pockets of armed resistance where human garrisons or just the mobs of citizens had taken to the streets in defence of their homes. He saw swift, savage scuffles and giant rats devouring the corpses of man and skaven alike. He saw burning buildings and broken bodies. He saw the whole of the great ancient mancity of Nuln in flames.
Thanquol’s attention was drawn to one particular struggle which suddenly leapt into focus when he recognised two alarmingly familiar figures. The dwarf and the human, followed by a disciplined pack of human warriors, were hacking through the skaven warriors towards the hulking bodyguard of Izak Grottle. In his trance state, Thanquol could see the roaring rat-ogres – and the appalled look on the face of his henchling Lurk as he contemplated the prospect o
f imminent violence. He saw the mad eyes of Vilebroth Null glaring into space as if he sensed the presence of some disembodied watcher. It looked very much to the grey seer like his plan was working and the interfering twosome were about to destroy his bitterest rivals.
Good, he thought, let them! Thanquol would brook no others claiming an unfair portion of his glory.
He saw Heskit One Eye bark instructions to his jezzail-equipped bodyguards and saw the long-barrelled rifle swing to bear on the dwarf. No! No, Thanquol thought furiously. None of that! With an almost imperceptible flicker of his thoughts, he touched the sniper’s mind. Its fingers curled on the trigger but its warpstone bullet went wild, smashing into the skull of a rat-ogre, almost killing the brainless beast. The thing roared and went wild, surging forward into the skaven troops from the rear, killing as it went.
Thanquol felt dizzy and realised that he was losing himself in his spell. His power was bleeding away and, if he intended to accomplish what he wanted, he had better do it soon. With a wrench he sent his spirit soaring back towards the castle. He funnelled it into the link with the scrying stone and looked out once more on Chang Squik. Suddenly, with a snap, he was back in his own body again and the words of the spell were tumbling from his mouth.
He concentrated with all his might, bringing to bear all the relentless discipline of his many years as a grey seer and the spell swiftly returned to his control. In the air before him, the dark cloud shimmered and parted, revealing a rift in space running from the point just in front of where Thanquol stood to the ground around Chang Squik’s scrying crystal.