by William King
No matter how cunningly he stalled his masters on the farsqueaker, he knew that word of Fritz von Halstadt’s death would get back to them eventually. Every skaven force was full of spies and snitches. It was only a matter of time before the news of his scheme’s failure reached Skavenblight. By then Thanquol knew he had better have some concrete successes to report.
“We have news… change of plans… we send army to Nuln… when ready …ttack city…” The Seerlord’s words made Thanquol’s ears rise with pleasure. If an army was being dispatched to Nuln, he would command it. Taking the city would increase his status immeasurably.
“Warlord Vermek Skab will command… render him all …sible assistance…”
Thanquol bared his teeth with disappointment. He was being replaced in command of this army. He sniffed as he considered the matter. Maybe not. Vermek Skab might have an accident. Then Grey Seer Thanquol could rise majestically to claim his full and rightful share of the glory!
Thanquol’s nose twitched. The billowing cloud of smoke from the machine almost filled the chamber now, and Thanquol was pretty sure that the device was not supposed to be emitting great showers of sparks like that. The fact that two of the warp engineers were running for the door wasn’t a good sign either. He considered following them.
“I have foreseen the presence… ill-omened elements in your future, Then… I predict disaster for you unless… do something about them.”
Suddenly Thanquol was rooted to the spot, torn between his desire to flee and his desire to hear more. He almost squirted the musk of fear. If the seerlord prophesied something then it had almost as good as happened. Unless, of course, his superior was lying to him for purposes of his own. That happened all too often, as Thanquol knew only too well.
“Disaster, lordly one?”
“Yes… see a dwarf and a human… destinies are intertwined with yours… you do not slay them then…”
There was a very loud and final bang. Thanquol threw himself off his stool and cowered on the floor. An acrid taste filled his mouth. Slowly the smoke cleared and he saw the fused and melted remains of the farsqueaking machine. Several dead skavenslaves lay in its midst, their fur all charred and their whiskers burned away. In one corner a warp engineer lay curled up in a ball, mewling and writhing in a state of shock. Thanquol was unconcerned about their fate. The Seerlord’s words filled him with a great fear. He wished he had been able to speak with his superior a little longer, but alas, he had not that option. He raised his little bronze bell and tinkled it.
Slowly members of his bodyguard entered the chamber. Clawleader Gazat looked almost disappointed to see him alive, Thanquol thought. Briefly the idea that the warrior might have sabotaged the farsqueaker crossed Thanquol’s mind. He dismissed it—Gazat did not have the imagination. Anyway, the Grey Seer had more important things to worry about.
“Summon the gutter runners!” Thanquol squeaked in his most authoritative tone. “I have work for them.”
For a moment silence fell over the chamber. A foul smell made Thanquol’s whiskers twitch. Just the mere mention of the dreaded assassins of Clan Eshin had caused Clawleader Gazat to squirt the musk of fear.
“Quick! Quick!” Thanquol added.
“Instantly, master,” Gazat said sadly and scuttled off into the labyrinth of sewers.
Thanquol rubbed his paws in glee. The gutter runners would not fail, of that he was assured.
Felix unlocked the door of his chamber and entered his room. He yawned widely. He wanted for nothing more than to lie down on his pallet and sleep. He had been working for more than twelve hours. He put the lantern down beside the straw-filled mattress and unlaced his jerkin. He tried to give his surroundings as little attention as was possible, but it was difficult to ignore the loud moans of passion coming from the next room and the singing of the drinkers downstairs.
The chamber wasn’t good enough for paying guests, but it suited him well enough. He had occupied better, but this one had the great virtue of being free. It came with the job. Like a minority of old Heinz’s staff, Felix chose to live on the premises.
Felix’s little pile of possessions stood in one corner, under the barred window. There was his chainmail jerkin and a little rucksack which contained a few odds and ends such as his fire-making kit.
Felix threw himself down on the bed and pulled his old, tattered woollen cloak over himself. He made sure his sword was within easy reach. His hard life on the road had made him wary even in seemingly safe places, and the thought that the skaven they had recently encountered might still be about filled him with dread.
He recalled only too well the huge corpse of the slain rat-ogre lying at the foot of the stairs in von Halstadt’s mansion. It had not been a reassuring sight. Somehow he was unsurprised that he had heard nothing at all about the fire at von Halstadt’s mansion. Perhaps the authorities had not found the skaven bodies, or perhaps there was a cover-up. Right now, Felix didn’t even want to consider it.
Felix wondered how men could ignore the tales of the skaven. Even as a student he had come across scholarly tomes proving that they didn’t exist, or that if they had ever existed they were now extinct. He had come across a few references to them in connection with the Great Plague of 1111 and of course the Emperor of that period was known as Mandred Skavenslayer. Yet that was all. There were innumerable books written about elves and dwarfs and orcs, yet knowledge of the rat-men was rare. He could almost have suspected an organised conspiracy to cloak them in secrecy but that thought was too disturbing, so he pushed it aside.
There was a soft knock at the door. Felix lay still and tried to ignore it. Probably just one of the drunken patrons lost and looking for his room again, he told himself.
The knock came again, more urgently and insistently this time. Felix rose from the bed and snatched up his sword.
A man could never be too careful in these dark times. Perhaps some bravo lurked out there, and thought a sleep-fuddled Felix would prove easy prey. Only two months ago Heinz had found a murdered couple lying on bloodstained sheets a mere three doors away. The man had been a prominent wine merchant, the girl his teenage mistress. Heinz suspected that the merchant had been slain by assassins on order of his harridan of a wife, but claimed also that it was none of his business. Felix had got his new tunic all covered in blood when he dumped the bodies in the river. He hadn’t been too thrilled about having to use the secret route through the sewers either.
The knocking came a third time, and he heard a woman’s voice whisper, “Felix.”
Felix eased his blade from its scabbard. Just because he heard a girl’s voice didn’t mean that there was only a girl waiting for him out there. She might have brought a few burly friends who would set about him as soon as he opened the door.
Briefly he considered not opening the door at all, of simply waiting until the girl and her friends tried to batter the door down then he realised quite how paranoid he had become. He shrugged. Since the deaths of Hef and Spider and the rest of the sewer watch he had every reason to be paranoid. Still, was he going to wait here all night? He slipped the bolts and opened the door. Elissa was waiting there.
She looked up at him nervously, brushing a curl from her forehead. She was very short but really very pretty indeed, Felix decided.
“I… I wanted to thank you for helping me earlier,” she said eventually.
Felix thought that it was a bit late for that. Couldn’t she have waited until the morning? Slowly, though, realisation dawned on him. “It was nothing,” he muttered, feeling his face flush.
Elissa glanced quickly left and right down the corridor. “Aren’t you going to invite me in, I wanted to thank you properly.”
She had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss his lips. He stood there dumbfounded for a second then pulled her into the room and slammed the door, slipping the lock into place.
As his henchling Queg reached twelve in his muttered count, Chang Squik of Clan Eshin twitched his nose and sampled the s
mells of the night.
Strange, he thought; so like the stinks of the man-cities of Far Cathay and yet so unlike. Here he could smell beef and turnip and roast pig. In the east it would have been pickled cabbage and rice and chicken. The food smelled different but everything else was the same. There was the same scent of overflowing sewers, of many humans living in close proximity, of incense and perfume.
He opened his ears as his master had trained him as well. He heard temple bells tolling and the rattle of carriage wheels on cobbles. He heard the singing of drunks and the call of the night watchmen as they shouted the hour. It did not trouble him. He could not be distracted. He could, if he so wished, tune out all extraneous sound and pick out one voice in a crowd.
The skaven squinted out into the darkness. His night-vision was keen. Down there were the shadowy shapes of men and women leaving the taverns arm in arm, heading for brief liaisons in back alleys and squalid rooming houses. Chang did not care about them at all. His two targets were in the building that humans called a tavern.
He did not know why the honourable grey seer had selected these two, out of all the inferior souls in this city, for inevitable death. He merely knew it was his task to ease the passing of their souls into the maw of the Horned Rat. He had already offered up two sticks of narcotic incense and pledged their immortal essence for his dark god’s feast. He could almost, but not quite, feel sorry for the doomed ones.
They were there in that tavern, under the sign of the Blind Pig, and they did not know that certain doom approached. Nor would they, for Chang Squik had trained for years in the delivery of silent death. Long before he had left the warm jungles of his eastern homeland to serve the Council of Thirteen in these cold western climes, he had been schooled to perfection in his clan’s ancient art of stealthy assassination. While still a runt, he had been made to run bare-pawed through beds of white hot coals, and snatch coins from the bowls of blind beggars in human cities. Even at that early age he had learned that the beggars were often far from blind, and often viciously proficient in the martial arts.
By the time of his initiation he had become proficient in all forms of unarmed combat. He was a third degree adept in the way of the Crimson Talon and held a black belt in the Path of the Deadly Paw. He had spent twelve long months being trained in silent infiltration in the jungles, and a month in fasting and meditation high atop Mount Yellowfang with only his own droppings for food.
Since that time he had killed and killed again in the name of the Council of Thirteen. He had slain Lord Khijaw of Clan Gulcher when that mighty warlord had plotted the downfall of Throt the Unclean. He had served as personal assistant to Snikch when the great assassin had killed Frederick Hasselhoffen and his entire household, and he had been rewarded with one-on-one instruction by the Deathmaster himself.
Chang Quik’s list of triumphs was long, and tonight he would add another to it. It was his task to slay the dwarf, Gotrek Gurnisson, and his human henchling, Felix Jaeger. He did not see how he could fail.
What chance had a one-eyed dwarf and his stupid human friend against a mighty skaven trained in every art of death-dealing? Chang Squik felt confident that he could take the pair himself. He had been almost insulted by Grey Seer Thanquol’s insistence that he take his full pack of gutter runners.
Surely the dire rumours of this dwarf were exaggerated. The Trollslayer could not possibly have slaughtered a unit of stormvermin single-handed. And it seemed well nigh unbelievable that he could have slain the rat-ogre, Boneripper, without the aid of an entire company of mercenaries. And, of course, it was impossible that this could be the same dwarf who five years ago had slain Warlord Makrik of Clan Gowjyer at the Battle of the Third Door.
Chang exhaled in one long controlled breath. Perhaps the grey seer was right. He had often proved to be so in the past. It was simple prudence to assign the task of slaying the dwarf to Slitha.
Chang would slay the human, and if there were any difficulties he would race to the assistance of his henchling’s squad. Not that there would be any difficulties.
Queg stopped counting at one hundred and tapped his superior on the arm. Chang lashed his tail once to show that he understood. Slitha and his team, with the clockwork precision which characterised all skaven operations, would be in position at the secret entrance to the tavern by now. It was time to proceed.
He loosened his swords in their scabbards, checked to make sure that his blowpipe and throwing stars were ready at paw, and whistled the signal to advance.
Like a dark wave, the pack of gutter runners surged forward over the rooftop. Their blackened weapons were visible only as shadowy outlines in the moons’ light. Not a weapon clinked. Not an outline was visible. Well, almost.
Heinz made his last rounds of the night, checking the doors and windows of the lower floor to make sure they were securely barred. It was amazing how often thieves tried to break in to the Blind Pig and steal from its cellars. Not even the reputation for ferocity of Heinz’s bouncers could keep the desperately poor and alcoholic denizens of the New Quarter from making the attempt. It was quite pathetic really.
He made his way down into the cellars, shining his light into the dark corners between the great ale barrels, and wine racks. He could have sworn he heard a strange scuttling noise down here.
Just his imagination, he told himself.
He was getting old, starting to hear things. Even so, he went over and checked the secret door that led down into the sewers. It was hard to tell in this light but it looked undisturbed. He doubted anybody had used it since he and Felix had dumped those bodies two months back and saved everybody quite a scandal. Yes, he was just getting old, that was all.
He turned and limped back to the stairwell. His bad leg was playing up tonight. It always did when there was going to be rain. Heinz smiled grimly, remembering how he’d got the old war wound. It had been stamped on by a Bretonnian charger at the Battle of Red Orc Pass. Clean break. He remembered lying there in the bloody dirt and thinking it was probably a just payback for spiking the horse’s owner on his halberd. That had been a bad time, one of the worst he had faced in all his years of soldiering. He’d learned a lot about pain that day. Still there had been good times as well as bad during his career as a mercenary, he was forced to admit that.
There were occasions when Heinz wondered whether he had made the right decision, giving up the free-spirited life of the mercenary companies for the life of a tavern keeper. On nights like this he missed the camaraderie of his old unit, the drinking round the campfires, the swapping of stories and recounting of tales of heroism.
Heinz had spent ten years as a halberdier, and had seen service on half the battlefields of the Empire, first as a lowly trooper and later as a sergeant. He had risen to captain during Emperor Karl Franz’s campaigns against the orc hordes in the east. During the last Bretonnian scrap he had made enough in plunder to buy the Blind Pig. He had finally given in to old Lotte’s promptings to settle down and make a life for the two of them. His old comrades had laughed when he had actually married a camp follower. They had insisted she would run off with all his money. Instead the two of them had been blissfully happy for five years before old Lotte had to spoil it all by going and dying of the Wasting Sickness. He still missed her. He wondered if there was anything to stay here in Nuln for now. His family were all dead. Lotte was gone.
As he reached the head of the stair, Heinz thought he heard the scuttling sound again. There was definitely something moving down there.
Briefly he considered calling Gotrek or some of the other lads, and getting them to investigate, then he spread his huge hands wide in a gesture of disgust. He really was getting old if he would let the noise of some rats scrabbling round in his cellar upset him. He could just imagine what the others would say if he told them he was scared to go down there himself. They would laugh like drains.
He drew the thick cosh from his waistband and turned to go back down. Now he really was uneasy. He would neve
r have drawn the weapon normally. He was too calm and easy tempered. Something definitely did have him spooked.
His old soldier’s instincts were aroused, and they had saved him on more than one occasion.
He could still remember that night along the Kislevite border when he had somehow been unable to get to sleep, filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. He had risen from his bed and gone to replace the sentry, only to find the man dead at his post. He had only just roused the camp before the foul beastmen attacked. He had a similar feeling in the pit of his stomach now. He hesitated at the top of the stair.
Best go get Gotrek, he thought. Only the real hardcore drinkers were still in the tavern by now. The rest were asleep, under the tables, in the alcoves, in the private rooms, or else gone home.
There it was again, that skittering sound, like the soft scrabble of padded claws on the stone stairs. Heinz was definitely worried now. He pulled the door closed and turned, almost running down the corridor until he came out in the main bar area. A handful of the bouncers chattered idly with a few of the barmaids.
“Where’s Gotrek?” Heinz asked. A burly lad, Helmut, jerked his thumb in the direction of the privies.
Slitha reached the head of the staircase and flung the door open. So far, so good. All was going like a typically well-oiled Clan Skryre machine. Everything according to plan. They had entered the tavern undetected; now it was simply a case of searching the place until they came upon the dwarf and killed him. And furthermore killed anything else that got in their way, of course.
Slitha felt a little irritated. It was typical of his superior to take the easy task. They had already found out where the human Jaeger slept, and their leader had taken the task of killing him for himself. Surely that was the only explanation. It could not be that the great Chang Squik was afraid of an encounter with the Trollslayer. Not that Slitha cared. When he dispatched the feared dwarf it would simply reflect all the more to his credit. He gestured for his fellows to go in first.