by William King
—From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,
by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)
“What are you doing there, young Felix?” A shadow fell on Felix Jaeger. Startled, he reached for the hilt of his sword. The book fell from his lap, almost landing in the fire, as he started to rise from the overstuffed leather armchair. Looking up he saw that it was only old Heinz, the owner of the Blind Pig tavern, standing over him, polishing a tankard that he held in one huge, meaty fist. Felix let out a long sigh, suddenly all too aware of how tightly wound he was. He sank back into the chair, forcing his hand to release its tight grip on the weapon hilt.
“You’re a little tense this evening,” Heinz said plainly.
“A little,” Felix agreed. A quick glance around told him that the old ex-mercenary wasn’t going to hassle him to start working. His services as a bouncer were not needed just yet. It was early evening and few patrons were about. Normally the tavern didn’t really start jumping until well after dark. On the other hand, for the first time, Felix noticed that the Pig was much quieter than usual. Custom had definitely dropped off since last week’s skaven attack, an event which had not improved the Blind Pig’s already dire reputation.
Felix reached down and picked up his book, a cheap printed manuscript of one of Detlef Sierck’s more melodramatic plays. It had served the purpose of distracting his thoughts from the fact that the rat-men were apparently out to get him.
“It will be a quiet night tonight, Felix,” Heinz said.
“You think?”
“I know.” Heinz held the tankard up to the light, making sure he had removed every last speck of dust from the thing. He set it down on the mantelpiece. Felix noticed the way the light gleamed on the old mercenary’s bald head. Felix sighed and laid his book down on the chair arm. Heinz was a sociable sort and he just naturally liked to chat. Besides, maybe Heinz was just as nervous as himself. The tavern keeper had every reason to be. He had almost lost his livelihood to ferocious Chaos-worshipping monsters. It was only in the last few days that all the damage the rat-men had done had been repaired.
“Business has been bad since the skaven attack,” Felix said.
“Business will pick up again. Same thing happened after that murder a couple of months back The nobs will stay away for a bit but then they’ll come back. They like a sense of danger when they drink. It’s what they come here for. But we’ll see nobody this evening, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Why’s that?”
“The Feast of Verena. It’s a special night here in Nuln. Most folk will be at home, praying and fasting, making sure everything’s spic and span. She’s the patron of this city, as well as of you bookish folk, and this is her special night.”
“There has to be someone wanting a drink.”
“The only folk that will be having any fun are the Guild of Mechanics and their apprentices. Verena’s their patron too. The countess has a big feast for them tonight in her palace. Nothing but the best for them.”
“Why does the countess feel compelled to give a feast for commoners?” Felix was curious. Countess Emmanuelle was not famed for her generosity. “She’s not normally so fond of us.”
Heinz laughed. “Aye, but these are special commoners. They run her new College of Engineering for her. They’re making steam-tanks and organ guns and all sorts of other special weapons for her forces, same as the Imperial College does for the Emperor. She can afford to give them a nice dinner once a year if it keeps them happy.”
“I’ll wager she can.”
“I thought maybe you might like to take the night off and be with Elissa. I know it’s her day off. I did notice you’ve been seeing a lot of each other recently.”
Felix looked up. “You disapprove?”
“Nothing wrong with a man and a maid being together, I always say. Just making an observation.”
“She’s gone back to her village for the day. One of her relatives is sick. She should be back tomorrow.”
“Sorry to hear that. There’s a lot of sickness about. Folk are starting to mutter about the plague. Well, I’ll let you get back to your book then.”
Felix opened the book once more but didn’t turn the page. He was amazed that Heinz could be so sanguine just a few days after the attack. Felix was jumping at shadows, but he was happily polishing his tankards. Maybe all those years of being a mercenary had given the old warrior nerves of steel. Felix wished he had them too. Right now he could not help but wonder what the skaven were up to. He was sure it was nothing good.
* * * * *
Grey Seer Thanquol leaned against the huge bulk of the Screaming Bell. He gazed malevolently around the vast chamber and out at the teeming sea of ratty skaven faces. All around him Thanquol sensed the surge of activity, smelled the packed mass of the assembling skaven troops in the surrounding tunnels. All the warriors of Clan Skab were here, reinforced by contingents from all the great and powerful factions in skavendom. It was good to be away from the sewers, to be back here in the Underways, the subterranean highways linking all the cities of the Under-Empire. It was good—but right now he could take no pleasure from it. He was too angry.
He fought the feeling, reminding himself that somewhere, far overhead, the humans went about their business, ploughing their fields, chopping their forests, unsuspecting, not knowing their days of dominance were nearly done, that soon their city and then their Empire would fall beneath the iron paw of skaven military genius. Not even these thoughts cheered him up or helped dispel his rage.
He ran a talon over the bell, drawing forth a slight ringing tone, still seeking to control his anger. The bell swung slightly at the grey seer’s touch, and the carriage on which the ancient artefact sat groaned as it moved. The seething magical energies within the bell comforted Thanquol a little. Soon, he told himself, he would unleash these enormous forces against his enemies. Very soon, he hoped, but right now he was filled with a terrible, all-consuming rage and he needed to find someone to vent it upon.
Chang Squik grovelled in the dirt before him, waiting for the grey seer to decide his fate. It had taken nearly a week for Thanquol to locate him. The would-be assassin sprawled face down in the shadow of the great bell. His tail lay flat. His whiskers drooped despondently. The leader of the gutter runners continued to mutter pathetic excuses about how he had been betrayed, about how the targets had been warned of his otherwise irresistible attack, of how they had used vile sorcery to slay his warriors—above all, about how it had not been his fault. Near the assassin stood Thanquol’s lieutenants, hiding their mouths with their paws to cover the sound of their mirth.
Thousands of faces peered up at Thanquol, eager to know what he would do next. It was not often that they got to see one of the mighty abase himself. Thanquol let his glance rest on each of the warleaders. They squirmed under his inspection. Their tittering stopped. None of them wanted to be the focus of his anger—which was unfortunate for them, because one of them was going to be.
The grey seer looked at the representatives of Clan Moulder, Clan Eshin, Clan Skryre and Clan Pestilens. All of them were his to order about, at least until his replacement, Warlord Vermek Skab, arrived. And that was not going to happen. Thanquol had prepared a little surprise for the warlord. Skab would never reach this place alive. The thought made his tail rigid. And yet…
Yet, despite all this power under his control, he could not get this one dwarf killed.
Anger and fear bit at the base of his stomach. Gotrek Gurnisson and his worthless human henchman were still alive. It beggared belief! How could this be?
It was almost as if he, the great Thanquol, was under a curse. He shuddered at the very thought. Surely the Horned Rat would not withdraw his favour from one of his chosen? No, he told himself sternly, that was not the real reason why the dwarf was still alive. The real reason was the worthlessness of his underlings.
Thanquol bared his fangs and allowed his rage to show. The accursed gutter runners had failed him. By th
eir sheer incompetence, they had let the dwarf and the manling escape. Thanquol had a good mind to have Chang Squik hung up by his tail and flayed alive. Only his fear of possible reprisals by Clan Eshin kept him from ordering his bodyguards to seize the gutter runner.
Rumour had it that Squik was a favoured pupil of Deathmaster Snikch himself. That being the case, such straightforward vengeance was out of the question. But, Thanquol thought, there was more than one way to skin a rat. Someday he would make Chang Squik pay for this monstrous failure. Thanquol’s problem right now, however, was to find a way to safely vent the killing rage that was on him, without making powerful enemies in the process. He lashed his tail in frustration.
Thanquol glared at Izak Grottle. The monstrously obese skaven lounged on a palanquin born by rat-ogres. The Clan Moulder pack-master had arrived this very morning, keen to take part in the triumph that was sure to follow this great offensive. He and his retinue had scuttled along the Underways from the skaven secret base at Night Crag in the Grey Mountains.
Grottle tried to hold Thanquol’s burning gaze but could not. He looked away and ran a paw over the largest of his bodyguard of rat-ogres, a creature so massive that it made the late and unlamented Boneripper look small. The creature bellowed its pleasure as Grottle fed it a tasty titbit of human fingers. Behind Grottle, other packmasters and their beasts stood waiting. Thanquol decided that he would spare Grottle. He did not doubt he could destroy the fat one. He was not so sure that he could survive an attack by the outraged beasts if they got out of control. Anyway he could not blame the recently arrived packmaster for the failure of last week’s attack.
He turned his attention to the rotting form of Vilebroth Null, low abbot of the plague monks of Clan Pestilens, who stood alone, well apart from any other skaven. From within the abbot’s cowl, pus-filled, fearless green eyes met his own. Thanquol instantly dismissed the idea of venting his rage on the diseased one. Like every skaven, he knew that the plague monks were quite mad. It was useless to antagonise them. Thanquol let his gaze slide slowly aside. The plague monk triumphantly blew his nose on the sleeve of his mouldering robe. A huge bubble of foul green snot swelled on his wrist and then burst.
Next in line was the armoured form of Heskit One Eye, master warp engineer of Clan Skryre. One Eye was small by skaven standards, dwarfed by his retinue of jezzail-armed bodyguards. Thanquol was still angry with him for the explosion of the farsqueaker. He suspected some sort of assassination attempt there, though, in truth, it seemed unlikely that Clan Skryre would be behind it. Intentionally blowing up one of their own precious devices to kill an enemy was not their style. Thanquol decided to spare Heskit. He was not in the slightest bit influenced by the fact that the bodyguard’s long-barrelled rifles could shoot the wings off a fly at this range. No, not in the slightest.
He knew he couldn’t punish these ones. They were too powerful. Their clans were too influential and he needed them to spearhead the attack on the mancity. Still, he had to kill someone, both to reestablish his own authority and for his own pleasure. It wouldn’t do just to let them all off. It was not the skaven way.
An example had to be made.
One by one he turned his gaze on the Clan Skab warleaders. They were all present now, save for Warlord Vermek Skab himself. All wore the red and black livery of their clan. Each also had the single scar running from their left ear to their left cheek which was the badge of their clan. Each of them was as proud as a skaven could be, the unchallenged master of a host of vicious warriors, yet each of them hurriedly looked away when the grey seer met their eyes. They knew of his foul temper by reputation. Even Tzarkual, the gigantic leader of the stormvermin, would not face his wrath. He studied his feet like a small runt facing discipline from his elders.
Good, thought Thanquol. They were cowed. He took a pinch of warpstone snuff and watched them quake. Bright, mad visions of horror and carnage skittered through his brain. He puffed with self-confidence, convinced that at this moment he could face one of the Council of Thirteen and triumph. As always, the drug-induced confidence receded after a heart-stopping moment, leaving the afterglow of pure, Chaos-induced power searing through his veins. Quickly, before the heat could fade, he selected a victim. He stabbed out a pointing talon at Lurk Snitchtongue, the weakest of the warleaders and, not coincidentally, the one with least allies both here and back in Skavenblight.
“You find something amusing, Snitchtongue?” Thanquol demanded in his most intimidating high-pitched chitter. “You think something is very funny, perhaps?”
Snitchtongue licked his snout nervously. He bobbed his head ingratiatingly and held up his empty paws. “No! No, great one.”
“Don’t lie. If humour there is in the abject failure of the mighty gutter runners, please share it. Your insight may prove most useful. Come! Speak! Speak!”
The skaven on either side of Lurk backed away, cautiously putting as much distance as they could between themselves and their doomed fellow. In moments Lurk found himself standing in an open space twenty feet across. He glanced over his shoulder, seeking some way to escape, but there was none. Not even his personal bodyguard would stand near him with the grey seer staring angrily down. Lurk shrugged, lashed his tail and put his hand on the hilt of his blade. He had obviously decided to brazen it out.
“If gutter runners failed it was because they were too subtle,” Lurk said. “They should have attacked head-on, in a massed rush, blades bared. That is the skaven way. That is the Clan Skab way.”
Chang Squik glared across at the skaven warrior. If looks could kill, Lurk would have left the chamber in a casket. Thanquol was suddenly intrigued by the situation. Here was an opportunity to twist the assassin’s tail with no possibility of reprisals against himself. The grey seer decided that he would let Lurk live for a few moments longer.
“You are saying that you could have handled the situation better than your brothers of Clan Eshin? You are saying you could succeed where trained gutter runners of mighty Eshin failed?”
Lurk’s jaws snapped shut. He stood for a moment, considering the implications of that last statement, seeing the trap that the grey seer had prepared for him. If he openly criticised Squik, he would make an enemy of the powerful gutter runner, and doubtless take a knife in his belly as he slept. On the other paw, he also obviously realised that he had been singled out to face the grey seer’s wrath no matter what. He knew it was a choice between immediate and inevitable death—or possible doom in the future. He rose to the occasion like a true skaven warrior.
“Maybe,” he said.
Thanquol giggled. The after effects of the warpsnuff still dizzied him. The rest of the skaven present echoed their leader’s amusement with great roars of false chittering laughter.
“Then perhaps you should take your warriors to the mancity above and prove it, yes.”
“Indeed, great one,” the warleader replied. His voice sounded relieved. He had a slim chance of living after all. “Your enemies are as good as dead.”
Somehow Thanquol doubted it, but he did not say so. Then he cursed himself for his leniency. He had allowed Snitchtongue to wriggle out from under his paw and not blasted him into a thousand pieces as an example.
At that moment, a runner entered, puffing breathlessly. In the traditional cleft thighbone of a human he carried, he held a message. Seeing Thanquol he immediately abased himself before the grey seer and prodded the bone forward.
Thanquol was tempted to blast him for his insolence. There was a fine old skaven tradition of killing the messenger who brought bad news to be kept up, but at this moment Thanquol did not even know that the news was bad. Curiosity got the better of him and he pulled the parchment from the stick. He noted that the corners were creased and it had obviously been well-pawed.
No surprises there, then. Doubtless every spy between here and Skavenblight had bribed the messenger so that he could look at what he carried. That, too, was the skaven way. Thanquol did not care. He had established his own
codes, cunningly concealed within deceptively innocuous messages, in order to keep his communications secret.
He looked down at the blocky runes scrawled in a strong skaven paw. The message read simply: The package has been delivered. A sense of triumph filled Thanquol and dispelled his earlier anger. He fought to control his sense of exultation and keep his pleasure from his face. He looked down at the messenger and sneered, knowing above all that appearances must be kept up and an example must be made.
“This message has been opened, traitor-thing!” he snarled and raised his paw. A sphere of greenish light sprang into being around Thanquol’s clenched fist. The messenger cringed and tried to beg for mercy but it was too late. Tentacles of hideous dark magical energy leapt downwards from Thanquol’s paw to encircle the doomed skaven’s body. The bands separated themselves and flowed around the messenger, swimming through the air in the way that eels swim through water, with a horrible sinuous wriggling. After a few moments, the bands of energy lunged inwards, stabbing through the skaven’s body, boring through the flesh and emerging darker on the other side.
Again and again they stabbed inwards, stripping away flesh and muscle and sinew. Again and again the messenger let out high-pitched, agonising screams. The smell of the musk of fear mingled with the scent of blood and the ozone taint of the spell. In a matter of seconds only a stripped skeleton stood before Thanquol. After a heartbeat it collapsed into a pile of bone. The ribbons of magical energy flowed together, somehow consuming each other as they did so, until there was nothing left of them. The whole assembled skaven host let out a great sigh of wonder and disbelief at seeing their grey seer demonstrating his power in this satisfying manner.