by Warhammer
Sharp pains stabbed Felix’s arms and legs, bringing him back to his own predicament. Fish hooks pierced his clothes. Another bit into his bare wrist as he tried to lift his sword to cut them away. The dancing black shapes wobbled and oozed like they were behind warped glass as they wrapped him up in a cocoon of ropes.
Felix surged towards them with the slowness of a dream, the acrid smell of the drug paste filling his nose. Pain erupted all over his body as the hooks dug deep into his flesh, but it felt like it was happening to someone else. The shadows squirmed out of the way, wrapping him tighter and dragging him towards the rail. He struggled feebly, fading in and out of conciousness, and seeing the chaos around him in a series of long blinks, surrounded by moments of blackness.
In one blink, he saw Euler’s crew running in panic from skittering black shapes as big as dogs. In another blink, he saw spindly shadows carrying something wrapped in a bed sheet as the last elf warrior fought towards them through a crowd of spear-wielding ratkin. In a third blink he saw Gotrek drop to one knee, using his axe to hold himself up, the leather bag still tight around his head. In a fourth blink, he saw Claudia running out onto the decks in a nightdress, anguish in her eyes as Max tried to hold her back.
‘I saw it!’ she wailed, fighting to get free of him. ‘I saw it! Oh, gods, forgive me!’
In the next blink the night clouds were above Felix, and he felt his feet go out from under him. The disorientation made him vomit all down the front of his chest. Hard little hands were lifting him over the rail, and he saw more rising to take him as he was lowered, upside down, towards the waves.
The last thing he saw before unconsciousness swallowed him was a glinting green shape humping up out of the water like the back of a verdigrised brass whale. The beast had a huge black blowhole in the centre of its back, and skaven were crawling in and out of it like ants.
Felix puked himself awake, the rising of his gorge so painful in his raw throat that it tore him from the leaden grip of unnatural sleep. It was the worst waking of his life.
The first thing he was aware of, beyond the dripping of sputum down his chin, was the throbbing in his head. It felt like someone was slowly and methodically cutting into the back of his skull with a carpenter’s saw. His vision pulsed in time with the throbbing, going from dim to painfully bright with each thud of his heart. His mouth tasted like an orc’s armpit, and his body ached from head to foot – most particularly his arms, which seemed to be drawn back so far behind his back that he could barely breathe. His ankles throbbed too, and he couldn’t feel his feet at all. The pain of it all made him wish he had stayed unconscious.
When his vision cleared somewhat, he saw a puddle of filthy water below him, floating with what looked like a film of fur. The view did not improve when he raised his head. He was in some sort of low-roofed metal room, the walls and ceiling crawling with grimy pipes and strange brass reservoirs that sprouted taps and spigots from every surface. Every bit of it looked like it had been salvaged from a dwarf engineer’s rubbish tip. Rats fought over something in one corner.
The room was nearly as hot as the pouring room at the Imperial Gunnery School at Nuln, but as humid as a jungle of the Southlands. Water sweated from the pipes and dripped from the ceiling, and from all around came a howling, booming roar that made the room – and Felix’s head – vibrate horribly.
Then Felix heard a familiar grunt to his left. He turned his head and nearly vomited again, for the movement had triggered what felt like an avalanche of boulders inside his skull. When he could breathe and think again, he blinked away the tears and looked left.
Gotrek was beside him, his huge arms bound tightly behind him around a heavy, corroded brass pipe. His ankles had been bound as well, in such a way that his feet did not touch the ground. There were deep cuts and gouges all over the Slayer‘s body, and his beard was clotted with blood and filth. His head hung low, but Felix could see that he was conscious, and looking around the room with his single eye.
A third figure hung limply from another pipe beyond Gotrek – Aethenir. He was less battered and bloody than Gotrek, but just as covered in filth, and with a purple bruise on his left cheek that bled at its centre.
None of them had their weapons.
‘So, you live, manling?’ said Gotrek.
‘Aye,’ said Felix.
Gotrek looked up at him. Trails of bright green mucus ran from his nose and the corners of his mouth. ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
Flashes of the fight on Euler’s ship returned to Felix’s mind as he tried to work out why Gotrek would say such a thing – rat faces and ropes, Max and Claudia shouting, the elf warrior fighting shadows, claws pulling Felix over the side.
‘The others,’ he said. ‘What happened to them? Do they live?’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘Alive or dead, they’re better off than we are.’
‘Eh? Why?’
‘Because this will be worse than death.’
Aethenir jerked awake with a cry of fear, then lifted his head and blinked around. ‘Mercy of Isha,’ he moaned as he took in their surroundings. ‘What hell is this?’
‘It’s a skaven submersible,’ said Gotrek.
‘A… a what?’ asked Aethenir.
‘A ship that travels underwater.’ Gotrek snorted contemptuously. ‘Damned vermin stole the idea from the dwarfs, and got it wrong, naturally – powered by warpstone instead of black water. I’m surprised it hasn’t exploded.’
‘Skaven again?’ said Aethenir. ‘But what do they want?’
Before Gotrek or Felix could answer, splashing footsteps made them all look up. Through a circular opening on the far side of the metal chamber came a figure out of a nightmare. It was a skaven – the oldest Felix had ever seen – and decrepit beyond imagining. Felix had seen undead who looked healthier. It was skeletally gaunt, with gnarled hands and matchstick arms sticking from the sleeves of its dirty grey robes. Its paper-thin flesh was stretched skeletally across its angular, spade-shaped skull, and its snout seemed to have rotted away, the area around its nostrils nothing more than a gaping hole of black, corrupted meat. Horrible cysts and warts grew from shrivelled, scabrous skin gone mostly bald with mange. Only a few clumps of wispy white fur clung to its head and arms.
It limped towards them with the aid of a tall metal staff topped with a glittering green stone. A retinue of other skaven followed it. Four big white brutes in polished brass armour, a crouching, scurrying ratman clad head to toe in black, a round, pop-eyed skaven that tottered unsteadily after the rest and seemed to have no tail, and behind them all, ducking to pass through the room’s low round opening, a huge albino monster of the kind that Felix and Gotrek had fought when the skaven had attacked them on the beach. It went and sat in a corner, scratching itself. Aethenir moaned when he saw the thing.
The ancient skaven glanced at the high elf and paused. It muttered a question to the skaven in black. The assassin bowed obsequiously and replied in kind, motioning from Felix and Aethenir and back with nervous paws and pointing to their hair.
The old skaven raised its head and hissed a laugh, then snapped its gaze back to Gotrek and Felix. Its laughter ceased as if it had never been. It limped forwards and looked them up and down with glittering black eyes that contained all the life the rest of its body seemed to have been drained of.
‘So long,’ it crooned in a voice like a broken flute, as it smiled at them both with cracked yellow fangs turned brown with decay. ‘So long I have waited for this day.’
TWELVE
Gotrek lunged forwards, snarling savagely, the violence of his motion making the pipe creak at its joins.
Felix strained forwards too, shouting as fury boiled within him. ‘What have you done to my father, you filth?’
The ancient skaven leapt back from them, squeaking with alarm, and the rat ogre stood, rumbling dangerously and looking around. The seer turned to its minions and screeched in its own language, pointing a trembling claw at Gotrek.
‘
Answer me!’ shouted Felix. ‘What did you do to my father?’
One of the armoured guards backhanded Felix across the cheek with a mailed gauntlet as the black-clad assassin hurried towards Gotrek, taking a coil of thin, grey rope from its belt. The blow snapped Felix’s head around and made his head ring with agony. He could feel blood trickling down past his ear. He decided he would wait to ask any more questions about his father until he had the ancient skaven at sword’s point.
‘Loose me, you skull-faced bag of sticks!’ Gotrek grated.
He snapped at the assassin with his teeth as it wound the rope tightly around his chest and shoulders and the pipe, and the old skaven squealed orders from a safe distance. Aethenir stared around at all this as if it might be some strange nightmare.
The assassin hauled at Gotrek’s ropes until Felix saw the thin strands bite deep into the Slayer‘s flesh, drawing blood in places, then it tied them off and backed away. Gotrek struggled but couldn’t move an inch. With a grunt he seemed to resign himself to his situation, conserving his strength.
The old skaven breathed a phlegmy sigh of relief, and stepped forwards again, gazing at them triumphantly.
‘My nemeses,’ it whispered. ‘At last I have you in my claws. At last you will pay for all the indignities you have heaped upon me.’ It hissed, like steam from a kettle. ‘Horribly, you will die, yes-yes, but slowly, slowly. First, you will pay for all the long years I have suffered by your cruel schemes.’ The mad ratman’s eyes shone with wild glee. ‘For every defeat, a snip-cut. For every setback, a blood-bruise. For every misery, a bone break.’ It stepped closer, its tail and its frail limbs twitching with fevered excitement, until Felix could smell its acrid breath with each whispered word. ‘You will beg-beg for mercy, my nemeses – but to no avail.’
‘But…’ said Felix, completely at a loss. ‘But, who are you?’
The ancient skaven stopped. It blinked and stepped back. ‘You… you know me not?’
Felix looked to Gotrek questioningly.
The Slayer shrugged. ‘They all look alike to me.’
Felix turned back to the skaven and shook his head.
The ratman staggered back, eyes rolling, and collided with its tailless servant. The servant squeaked and the ancient whirled on it, swiping at it with its staff and spitting shrill abuse. The servant cringed back, then scurried unsteadily out of the chamber, leaving the old skaven screeching after it. The rat ogre lowed anxiously and thumped the deck with its huge paws.
The skaven spun back towards its captives again, shaking with rage and tearing at the few tufts of fur on its skeletal head. ‘Madness! Madness! Can it be possible that you do not remember me? Can it be possible that you have masterminded my failure-fall by accident? Did you not destroy my works in the Nuln warren, oh those many years gone by? Kill-killing my plague priests, burn-smashing my gutter runners and my engineers, killing even my first gift of Moulder?’ It clenched its paws in rage. ‘Close-close I came to killing you then, in the brood queen’s burrow. But for that cursed man-mage, my torment would have ended before it had begun!’
Felix gaped, wide-eyed, remembering. This was that skaven? The ratkin sorcerer who had attacked them during Countess Emmanuelle’s costume ball twenty years ago? The one Doctor Drexler had saved them from? It was impossible! Surely skaven didn’t live that long. It had been ancient then. How old must it be now? And what sustained it?
Felix glanced at Gotrek. The Slayer was glaring at the skaven with new loathing, and straining harder against the cruel ropes.
The skaven paid neither of them any attention. It continued gibbering away, pacing back and forth before them, its limbs and tail atremble, lost in its memories. ‘Did you not then follow me north, foiling my every attempt to capture the earth diggers’ flying machine? Did you not twist-taint my servant-slave and turn him against me when you flew to the Wastes? Did you not rip-take the machine from me when my magic had it in its grip?’ The creature clutched its forehead. ‘Impossible! Impossible that you do not know me! Impossible that all is by chance! My whole life! My whole life!’
With a whimpering wail, the old skaven began to scrabble furiously at its robes, checking pockets and sleeves, and finally raised a small stone bottle in its shaking paws. It pried out the stopper, tapped a mound of glittering powder in the hollow between its thumb and foreclaw, then inhaled it through the ragged wet hole that served it as a nose.
For a moment after it had ingested the stuff, the skaven shook even worse than it had before, and its escort of armoured troopers took a nervous step back, but then, with a final seismic shake, the tremors stopped and it stood straight, taking a deep, if thready, breath.
It turned back to them, calm and composed, a stream of blood and mucus trickling unnoticed from its nose-hole as it glared at them with eyes that blazed with green fire. ‘If that is the case, then my shame-rage is even greater, and therefore so will be your suffering. You will know agony-fear that no overdweller has ever endured, and yet by my magic you will heal to be tortured again-again, until you share all of my torture despair–’
‘Ah, your pardon, ratkin,’ said Aethenir, his voice quavering. ‘But, does this mean that you have captured me by acci–’
‘You dare to interrupt?’ squealed the skaven, snapping around. ‘I am speak-speaking, miserable prick-ear!’
‘Indeed,’ said Aethenir. ‘But, er, as your feud appears to be with my companions and not myself, perhaps you could be so gracious as to let me return to the ship upon which–’
‘What do I care for your wishes?’ screamed the seer. ‘You are mine-mine to do with as I please!’ It limped to the elf, looking him up and down and stroking its cankered chin. ‘It was an accident that you were taken, yes-yes. Your misfortune to have yellow fur like the tall one. But never-never have I experimented on a prick-ear. Never have I put one through my mazes, or fed one with poisons. Never have I cut-snipped its flesh and examined its organs.’ It leaned in, its ruined nose almost touching the elf’s high-bridged one. ‘You will be the first.’
Aethenir flinched away, gagging, as the skaven turned from him and chittered furiously at its escort.
‘Just like an elf,’ snarled Gotrek out of the side of his mouth. ‘Only thinking of himself.’
‘I do not think of myself,’ said Aethenir, as one of the armoured guards scampered out of the room on the old skaven’s orders. ‘But of my duty. Did I not promise Rion that I would let nothing stop me from righting the wrong I have caused?’ He ground his teeth. ‘I must recover that terrible weapon or the destruction of Ulthuan will be upon my head. Surely a dwarf will not begrudge me doing all that I can to restore my honour?’
‘Elves have no honour to restore,’ snarled Gotrek.
Just then the old skaven turned back to Aethenir, its eyes gleaming. ‘What-what? Terrible weapon? What is this?’
The elf’s eyes went wide as the ratman advanced on him. ‘I… I know not what you mean. I said nothing of any weapon. You misheard me.’
‘I did not mishear,’ said the skaven. ‘No-no. I heard perfectly.’
Just then the tailless skaven returned, a box under one arm which appeared to be made entirely of bone, etched all over with crude-looking glyphs. The little creature hurried to the ancient, making trembling obeisances, and held out the bone box with quivering paws.
The old skaven turned the clasp of the box, which looked to have been fashioned from a human finger bone, and opened the lid. Inside it, Felix could see a terrifying collection of steel and brass tools, none of them very clean. The ancient ran a claw over them, then selected one and held it up. It looked like a scalpel, but with a serrated edge, and it was orange with rust. The skaven turned towards the high elf, showing its teeth in a travesty of a smile.
‘Now, prick-ear,’ it hissed. ‘Now you will tell-tell what I misheard.’
Felix had to admit that Aethenir held out much longer than he expected, but in the end he cracked, just as Felix had feared he would. He remained stro
ng through the knives and the saws and flames and the collar that fit over a finger and increased pressure on it with a screw until it snapped. He had even kept silent when they had fixed a cage around his head and filled it with diseased rats, murmuring only some endlessly repeated elven cantrip that allowed him to remove himself into some interior chamber of the mind so that the excruciations of his flesh did not reach him.
Felix looked away when torture began, though hearing the sounds was nearly as bad as watching. The clever skaven was serving a dual purpose with its treatment of the elf, extracting information while at the same time attempting to build terror in the hearts of those who would next face its ministrations. Felix couldn’t speak for Gotrek, but the ploy was working on him. With every moan and scream that came from the elf, cold dread dripped into Felix’s heart. He could feel every cut, anticipate every twist of the screw. He wanted to scream, ‘Tell him! Tell him!’ to make it stop.
Of course, it would be worse when the skaven started on him and Gotrek, for the seer wanted no information from them. There would be nothing they could tell it to make it stop. Their torture itself was the creature’s goal, and Felix could think of no way to escape it.
It was when the wizened ratkin attacked Aethenir’s mind directly, dabbing a glowing paste of warpstone in his held-open eyes and then blasting him with spells that brought the poor elf screaming out of his mental stronghold, that he finally broke, whispering and weeping words in the elven tongue that Felix was glad he couldn’t understand.
‘Make them stop,’ he whimpered finally to the skaven sorcerer. ‘Make them go away. They are eating my knowledge… eating it.’