by William King
“Quick! Quick!” he chittered. “All night we haven’t got!” The gutter runners moved quickly into the corridor.
Felix and Elissa lay on his palette, kissing deeply, when suddenly Felix shifted uneasily. He thought he heard the faintest of scrabbling sounds from outside the window.
He gently untangled Elissa’s arms from around him, and was suddenly aware of the area of heat and sweat where their bodies met. He looked down on the serving girl’s face. Her face was a little puffed on the left side from where the student had hit her but she really was very pretty.
“What is it?” she asked, looking up at him with wide, trusting eyes. He listened for a moment and heard nothing.
“Nothing,” he said, and began kissing her again.
Slitha bounded down the corridor. He smelled dwarf. He followed the scent, whistling commands to his fellows in the fore. Surprised by skaven stealth, speed and savagery, their weak foe would swiftly be dragged down. What chance would a mere dwarf have against the deadliest warriors of the master race? Slitha almost felt sorry that he was in the rear, the traditional position of honour any skaven leader adopted whenever possible. He would have liked a chance to be the first to sink his blade into the dwarf and offer up his soul to the Horned Rat.
They reached the end of the corridor. The stench of dwarf intensified. He must be very close now. Slitha’s heart rate accelerated dramatically. Blood raced through his veins. His tail stiffened and lashed. The claws in his feet extruded instinctively. As he made ready for combat, he bared his fangs in a snarl. The scent was very strong: they must be almost on top of the Trollslayer. His warriors lashed their tails proudly, ready to overwhelm their opponent with their numbers and savagery.
Suddenly a red mist filled Slitha’s eyes. It looked as if a huge axe had cut Klisqueek in half, but that could not be. They could not have been detected. It was impossible that a mere dwarf would have the cunning to ambush a pack of skaven gutter runners.
Yet suddenly Hrishak was squeaking in pain and terror. A huge fist had caught him by the throat. The butt of a monstrous axe cracked his skull. The thick, cloying scent of the musk of fear filled the air now. Klisqueek’s body had already started to dissolve into a puddle of black slime, as the Clan Eshin decomposition spells took effect.
Slitha looked out into a swirling melee where half a dozen of his finest gutter runners were attempting to swarm over a massive dwarfish form. His pale hairless flesh was emphasised by the black of the skaven’s cloaks. Slitha saw the huge axe swing around in a deadly arc. He heard bones crunch and brains splatter.
“Try and sneak up on me, would you,” muttered the dwarf in Reikspiel. He added a guttural curse in Dwarfish as he clove a path of red ruin through the skaven assassins. The dwarf bellowed and chanted a strange war-cry as he fought.
Slitha shuddered. The noise was enough to awaken the dead, or at least any sleeping human guards. He felt the advantage of stealth and surprise slipping away. His eyes widened with terror as he watched the dwarf complete his bloody work, cutting down Snikkit and Blodge with one stroke. Suddenly Slitha realised that he was alone, facing one very angry and very dangerous dwarf.
It was impossible to believe, but the dwarf had killed most of his brethren in a matter of seconds. Nothing in all the world, not even an assassin of Clan Eshin, could conceivably be so deadly. Slitha turned to flee but a hob-nailed boot descended on his tail, pinning him in place. Tears of pain filled Slitha’s eyes. The musk of fear voided from his glands.
The last thing he heard was the whoosh of a huge axe coming closer.
* * * * *
Despite himself, Felix untangled himself from Elissa again and looked around. What was that noise? It sounded like fighting downstairs. He was sure he could recognise Gotrek’s deep-throated battle-cry. The girl was looking up at him, puzzled, wondering why he had stopped kissing her. She opened her mouth to speak. Felix placed a hand gently over her lips. He leaned forward until his mouth was over her ear.
“Be very quiet,” he whispered. A cold trickle of fear ran through him. He could definitely hear a strange scrabbling sound coming from over by the window. Felix lifted himself off the recumbent girl and reached for his dragon-hilted sword. He slipped backwards off the straw pallet and fell into a half crouch.
Placing one finger against his lips to indicate she should be quiet, he gestured for the woman to get up off the bed. She stared at him uncertainly, then followed his gaze over to the window.
That was when she screamed.
Chang Squik watched as Noi swung down on the rope. He felt almost proud of his pupil. Noi had fixed the grapnel in the guttering perfectly, then abseiled down the side of the tavern like a great spider. He had sprayed the metal bars covering the window with acid, then filed through the weakened iron like a master burglar. He reached up and gestured to the rest of the squad on the tavern roof. They fixed their ropes in position and made ready to follow Noi. Chang would be last in, as befitted the glorious strike leader. Noi kicked himself back from the wall, swinging out into space, gaining momentum to crash through the window.
The window caved in and a black-clad skaven crashed through it. It hit the floor rolling and emerged into a fighting crouch, tail lashing, a long curved blade glinting evilly in each claw. Felix didn’t wait for it to get time to orientate itself. He lashed forward with his own blade, almost catching the thing by surprise. Sparks flashed as the creature parried, deflecting Felix’s blade so that it only seared along its cheek.
“Run, Elissa!” Felix shouted. “Get out!”
For a moment, he thought the girl was too shocked to move. She lay on the straw pallet, her eyes wide with horror, then suddenly she sprang up. The distraction almost killed Felix. The moment he took to look at her was a moment he did not look at his opponent. Only the deadly whine of the skaven’s blade as it darted towards his skull warned him. He ducked his head, and the sword passed over him, coming close enough to shave a lock off his hair. Felix lashed back instinctively. The skaven sprang away.
“Felix!” Elissa shouted.
“Run! Get help!” Over the skaven’s shoulder, he could see other feral forms crowding round the window. They seemed to be struggling to force a way in, each getting in the other’s way. The window was packed with mangy, scarred skaven faces. Things did not look good.
“Die! Die! Foolish man-thing,” the skaven chittered, bounding forward. It feinted a stroke with its right blade, then lashed out with its left. Felix caught its hand just above the wrist and immobilised it. The thing’s tail snaked obscenely round his leg and tried to trip him. Felix brought the pommel of his sword down behind the skaven’s ear. It fell forward, but even as it did so it struck with its blade, forcing Felix to jump away. He bounded back across the room and skewered the skaven as it started to rise. Blood frothed from the foul thing’s lips as it died. A strange reeking stink filled the air. The skaven’s flesh started to bubble and rot.
Felix heard Elissa throw the door bolts. He risked a glance at her. She had turned and was looking at him in a mixture of horror and confusion, as if she did not know whether to leave him or to stay.
“Go!” he shouted. “Get help. There’s nothing you can do here.”
She vanished through the doorway, leaving Felix feeling obscurely relieved. At least now he wasn’t responsible for her safety. As he turned to look back he saw that the skaven he had killed was gone. It had left behind only a pool of black slime and its rotting clothing. Felix wondered what deadly sorcery was at work.
A hiss of displaced air warned him of another threat. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of several glittering objects hurtling towards him. He dived forward, aiming for the bed, hoping it would break his fall. His mouth filled with straw from the mattress as he landed. He fumbled with his left hand for his old red cloak and pulled its wadded mass up in his left fist. He was just in time. More shining objects spun through the air towards him. He brought the cloak up and they impacted in the roll of thick w
ool. Something sharp penetrated the cloth just between his fingers. Felix looked down. He saw a throwing star, smeared with some foul reddish substance, doubtless poison.
Two more skaven had extricated themselves from the mass outside the window and dropped into the room. They scuttled towards him with eye-blinding speed, evil shadows of man-sized rats, their yellow fangs glistening in the lantern-light. He knew better now than to even glance at the doorway. There was no way he could reach it without taking a blade in his back.
Why me, he asked himself? Why am I standing here half-naked and alone, facing a pack of skaven assassins? Why do these things always happen to me? This sort of thing never happened to Sigmar in the legends!
He threw the cloak over the head of the oncoming skaven. It writhed in the tangle of woollen folds. Felix ran his blade through it. His razor-sharp sword cut through flesh like butter. Black blood soiled the garment. Felix struggled to pull the blade free. The second rat-thing took advantage of his preoccupation and sprang forward, both blades held high, swinging downwards like butcher’s cleavers. Felix threw himself backwards; the blade came free with an awful sucking sound. He landed flat on his back, his sword clutched in his hand. He raised its point and the flying skaven impaled itself on it. As it fell, its weight pulled the blade free from Felix’s grasp.
Damn, he thought, rising to his feet. Weaponless. The point of his blade was visible, protruding from the skaven’s back. He was reluctant to touch the foul beast with his naked flesh but he had no choice if he wanted the blade. His cloak was already starting to flatten as the skaven decomposed with terrifying rapidity.
Too late! More skaven leapt in through the window. There was no time for any qualms. He picked up the skaven sword and charged. The sheer fury of his rush took the skaven by surprise. He cleaved one’s skull before it could react and disembowelled another with his return stroke. It fell, trying to hold in its ropy guts with one claw, even as it attempted to strike Felix with the other.
Felix hacked at it again, severing the limb. He cut around him in blind fury, feeling the terrible shock of impact run up his arm from every blow. Slowly, though, more and more skaven pressed into the room, and remorselessly, defending himself as best he could every step of the way, he was pressed back towards the wall.
Heinz looked up in surprise as Gotrek stomped into the bar. In one hand he held his blood-smeared axe. His other huge fist clutched a dead skaven by the scruff of the neck. The thing was decomposing at a frightening rate, seemingly undergoing weeks of decomposition in moments. Gotrek glared around at the surprised bouncers with his one good eye and dropped the body. It squelched and formed a puddle at his feet.
“Bloody skaven,” he muttered. “Whole bunch of them lurking just outside the privy. Too stupid to know dwarfs have good ears.”
Heinz moved over to stand by the Trollslayer. He looked down at the pool of rot with a peculiar mixture of fascination and distaste written on his features.
“That’s a skaven alright.”
Gotrek looked up at him in surprise “Of course it was a bloody skaven! I’ve killed enough of them in my time to know what they look like by now.”
Heinz shrugged apologetically. Then he swivelled on his heels as a scream emerged from the top of the stairwell. Heinz looked up in surprise at the partially clad form of Elissa appearing at the head of the stairs. The girl looked pale with terror.
“Felix!” she shouted.
“What has Felix done, girl?” he asked soothingly. She threw herself at him. He enfolded her shivering form with his brawny arms.
“No. They’re trying to kill him. Monsters are trying to kill Felix. They’re in his room!”
“Has that girl been taking weirdroot?” a bouncer asked placidly.
Heinz looked over at Gotrek and the rest of the bouncers. All his earlier forebodings returned. He remembered the scrabbling in the cellars. He could see that the dwarf was having the same thought as he was.
“What are we doing standing here?” Heinz roared. “Follow me, lads!”
This was better. This was more like the old days.
Felix knew that he was doomed. There was no way he could fight all these skaven. There were too many of them and they were too fast. If he had been wearing his chainmail shirt perhaps he would have some chance of surviving all those stabbing blades. But he wasn’t.
His foes sensed victory and advanced. Felix danced in the centre of a whirlwind of stabbing blades. Somehow he managed to survive with only a few nicks and scratches. He found himself standing beside his bed. Thinking quickly, he kicked the lantern over. Oil spilled out onto the straw and lit it. In an instant, a wall of flame separated him from the rat-men. He reached out and grabbed the nearest one, hurling it into the flames. The skaven shrieked in agony as its fur caught fire. It began to roll around on the floor, howling and squeaking. Its fellows leapt back to avoid its blazing form.
Felix knew he had bought himself only a moment’s breathing space. He knew now there was only one chance. Doing what the skaven least expected, he dived directly through the flames. Heat scorched his flesh. He smelled the stink of his own singed hair. He saw a gap in the skaven line near the door and dived through it, almost slamming into the corridor wall. Heart pounding, breath rasping in his lungs, blood pouring from a dozen nicks, he raced for the head of the stairs, as if all the hounds of Chaos were at his heels.
A head poked out from the room next door. He recognised the bald pate and lambchop whiskers of Baron Josef Mann, one of the Blind Pig’s most dedicated customers.
“What the hell is going on out there?” the old nobleman shouted. “Sounds like you’re performing unnatural acts with animals.”
“Something like that,” Felix retorted as he sprinted past. The old man saw what was following him. His eyes went wide. He clutched his chest and fell.
Chang Squik glanced out round the doorway and gnawed the tip of his tail in frustration. It was all going wrong. It had all started going wrong from the moment that fool Noi had swung in through the window. In their enthusiasm to be part of the kill, the rest of the pack had all tried to get in behind him at once, all eager to claim their share of the glory. Of course their lines had become entangled, and they had all ended up clutching the window sill and each other and frantically trying to scuttle into the room. Several of the idiots had fallen to their deaths on the hard ground below. Serves the fools right too.
It was ever the fate of great skaven captains to be let down by incompetent underlings, he thought philosophically. Not even the most brilliant plan could survive being executed by witless cretins. It was starting to look like his entire command consisted of those. They could not even kill a single feeble manling, even with all the advantages of surprise, numbers and superior skaven armament. It made him want to spit with frustration. Personally he suspected treachery. Perhaps rivals in the clan had sent him a bunch of ill-trained louts in order to discredit him. All in all, that seemed the most likely explanation.
Briefly Chang considered taking a hand in the fray himself, but only briefly. It was glaringly obvious to his superior intellect what was going to happen next. The entire tavern would be roused and his underlings would soon encounter stiff, and very likely fatal, resistance.
Let them get on with it, Chang thought. They deserve whatever fate befalls them.
He slid back into the room, petulantly threw some of the manling’s clothing on the fire to add to the blaze, and then leapt out the window. He caught the climbing line easily in one hand and swarmed up the side of the building to safety.
Already he was considering what would be the best way to report this minor setback to Grey Seer Thanquol.
* * * * *
Heinz grunted as something slammed into him. He almost toppled backwards as the weight hit him.
“Sorry,” said a polite voice that Heinz recognised as belonging to Felix Jaeger. “I was having a little trouble back there.”
Throwing stars whizzed past Heinz’s ear. The smel
l of burning filled his nostrils. He looked down a corridor crowded with scurrying rat-men. A cold fury filled him. Those cursed skaven were trying to burn down the Blind Pig and rob him of his livelihood! He pulled out his cosh and made to rush forward. He need not have bothered. Gotrek pushed him to one side and charged headlong into the throng. The rest of the bouncers advanced cautiously behind him. From the far end of the corridor, various nobles and their bodyguards emerged and slammed into the skaven from the rear. Terrible carnage began.
It was all over very soon.
Felix sat in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket and shivering. He looked across at Elissa. The girl smiled back at him wanly. All around, the bouncers hurried upstairs with buckets of water, making sure that the fire did not spread from Felix’s room.
“I thought you were very brave,” Elissa said. There was a look of complete doting admiration in her eye. “Just like a hero in one of those Detlef Sierck dramas.”
Felix shrugged. He was tired. He was riddled with dozens of cuts and bruises. And he knew now that the skaven were definitely trying to kill him. He didn’t feel very heroic. Still, he thought, things could be worse. He reached out and put an arm around Elissa’s shoulder and drew her to him. She snuggled in close.
“Thank you,” he said, and for a moment the girl’s smile made everything feel more worthwhile.
NIGHT RAID
“It is a frightening thing to be sought by enemies unknown, invisible and untraceable, who can strike at you when they will without fear of vengeance or punishment. At least, I found it to be so. If my companion shared these feelings, he never gave any sign of it to me. Indeed he seemed rather to enjoy the situation—which I suppose was natural enough, given that his avowed purpose in life was to seek a violent death. Yet I was worried. The attack on the alehouse had left me shaken, and the knowledge that somewhere out in the night an implacable foe was lurking did nothing to calm my fraught nerves. But it seemed that we had allies as well, who were determined to aid us for their own unfathomable purposes.”