by Various
Dismissing the warlord from his mind, Thanquol returned his attention to the clearing. Soon it would be dark and then the humans would go to sleep. That was when he would lead Pakstab’s brave warriors into combat.
He only wished there was a way to make Gotrek and Felix understand they had only a few hours left to live!
Thanquol reached over and snatched the far-eye from Krakul’s hand, an effort made easier since the warlock-engineer was short a few fingers. The grey seer ground his fangs together in a fit of anger.
Crickets chirruped, owls hooted, bats flittered about the trees. It was night, as black and welcoming as the tunnels of Skavenblight.
Why, then, were the humans still awake! Even worse, there were more of them! The outriders had returned after only a short time, but it wasn’t long after that more humans began to trickle into the camp. These weren’t so brightly dressed as the ones from the caravan, and they stank of dirt and manure: typical odours of the slavelings humans used to grow their crops and tend their flesh-beasts.
Thanquol didn’t care who they were or where they came from. What he wanted to know was what they were doing! By the horns of the Horned One, none of it made sense to him! The field-humans, obviously a lesser clan than the brightly dressed ones, had wandered about the camp as though they each of them were a fangleader inspecting a new burrow. The caravan humans hurried about, performing every sort of bizarre labour at the slightest command of the field-humans.
The grey seer was still scratching his ears at some of the things he had seen. There was a gangly human who could spit fire and another one that was able to stick a sword clear down his throat without skewering himself! He saw a grungy little man-thing in voluminous robes engaged in the rather despicable antic of biting the heads from live chickens. As he would soon spit out the chickenhead, Thanquol could make absolutely no sense of this particular activity. There was a pair of breeders who capered about on a thin rope stretched between two poles, displaying an agility that would have impressed even a murder-adept of Clan Eshin. He watched another human gallop around the camp on a horse, flipping and jumping all around the animal, making the grey seer wonder if some saboteur had slathered grease across the horse’s back.
None of it made any kind of sense! The field-humans would slap their hands together in moronic fashion, howling loudly and baring their teeth at the caravan-humans. Yet the threatening display only excited the caravan-humans to new efforts.
Thanquol removed the spyglass from his face long enough to scowl at Naktit. So, the humans would go to sleep once it was dark, would they!
The grey seer’s nose twitched as a new smell reached him. It was the odour of magic, crude but powerful. Forgetting Naktit for the moment, Thanquol swung back around and directed the spyglass upon the source of the aethyric energy.
What he saw made his glands tighten. Some of the brightly-clad humans were opening the door to one of the cages. Locked inside was an enormous troll! As soon as the door was open, the brute lurched out into the clearing, roaring and thumping its chest! Thanquol could only scratch his ear in disbelief. The humans were insane to let such a monster loose!
The field-humans screamed and started to scatter, but before they could get far a caravan-human wearing a broad-brimmed hat called out to them, ordering them to stop. He turned and faced the troll, drawing from the crimson sash he wore not a sword or axe or blunderbuss but a slender flute. Before the amazed grey seer’s eyes, the troll stopped, its dull eyes staring down at the little man.
Expecting any sort of horrific violence to follow, Thanquol’s wonder increased when the man began to play his flute. The troll lifted up its huge feet and began to dance!
Thanquol scowled as he heard the field-humans screeching and slapping their hands together. He focused his attention not on what he could see, but upon what he could feel. Sniffing the patterns of magic in the air, he could follow the slender strands of energy emanating from the troll. One strand led back to one of the wagons where a bound human lay hidden, his mouth tightly gagged. As he struggled, his movement struck Thanquol as peculiar, more like an idiot’s fit than the resistance of a grown man-thing.
The other strand of magic led to a dark little pavilion set aside from the main tent. Just visible at the entrance of the pavilion was an old breeder, her flesh withered, all the meat shrivelled by age. Thanquol could tell at a glance that the breeder-thing was a mage by the grey hue of her hair. It was easy to forget that human breeders sometimes developed such abilities, a sure sign of their inferiority to the skaven whose breeders’ only purpose was to make and nurse more skaven.
The breeder-witch was doing something, weaving her magic between the idiot-flesh and the troll. Whatever she was doing, it gave her control over the troll, control more perfect and precise than any cave-lurking goblin chief had ever dreamed of.
The presence of a sorceress made Thanquol reconsider the wisdom of the planned attack. It was always dangerous to risk the powers of an unknown wizard, even if it was just a breeder-thing. If he had an apprentice to send out to cast spells and draw the witch’s attention, he would have felt better.
A cruel smile flashed upon Thanquol’s verminous face. Lowering the spyglass, he turned towards Krakul. Few among the warlock-engineers had true magic, and he rather doubted that Krakul was one of those who did. However, many of the contraptions crafted by Clan Skryre mimicked magic in their effects. Surely enough to trick a stupid breeder-witch!
‘Brave-wise Krakul,’ Thanquol said. ‘I give you the honour-glory to lead the attack.’
Krakul looked like he’d swallowed one of his own spanners. The warlock-engineer looked about him, as though hoping there was some other skaven named Krakul standing nearby.
‘Great and holy Thanquol the Terrifying!’ Krakul squealed. ‘I am not worthy of such distinction. I am only poor-small tinker-rat–’
‘Stop whining,’ Thanquol snapped. ‘You’re going.’ He drew upon the smallest measure of his sorcery, causing his eyes to take on a ghoulish green glow. ‘Or would you rather stay?’ he hissed. Krakul didn’t have any real magic, but Thanquol certainly did. It was perhaps wise to remind him of that fact.
‘Take the clanrats and attack from the right,’ Thanquol ordered. ‘Naktit’s scouts will come from the left. Once you have the man-things’ attention, Pakstab will lead the stormvermin and strike the centre.’
‘Where will you be, invincible one?’ Pakstab asked, his tone not quite as servile as it could have been.
Thanquol smoothed his whiskers. ‘I will stay here and ensure nothing goes wrong with your plan.’ Now that so many unforeseen complications had become part of the situation, Thanquol felt it was time to distance himself from responsibility for organising the attack. After all, these were Pakstab’s warriors. Why shouldn’t the warlord shoulder the responsibility if they couldn’t adapt to changes on the battlefield?
Pakstab glared murderously at the grey seer, his fingers twitching about the hilt of his sword. The warlord glanced past Thanquol at the imposing hulk of Boneripper. Grinding his fangs together, Pakstab relented. Turning away, he began squealing orders at his underlings. If he was expected to lead the attack, he was going to make sure there were plenty of skaven around him to do the brunt of the fighting. It was exactly the sort of cowardly, selfish scheming Thanquol had come to expect from a greedy, grasping thug like Pakstab. It was unfortunate for Greypaw Hollow that there was no leader of Thanquol’s calibre ruling the warren, a leader with the cold resolve and iron self-control to set aside his own desires for the betterment of all skavendom.
The grey seer drew a sharp intake of breath as his eyes fell upon one corner of the clearing. Most of the field-humans had gathered to watch the dancing troll, giving Thanquol a better view of the rest of the space. Now he could see a burly dwarf standing beside a pile of boulders, an immense hammer in his thick hands. Judging by the broken stones around him, the braggart had been showing off his brainless physique, smashing rocks for the entertain
ment of the field-humans, glutting his drunken ego on the empty-headed praise of buffoons and churls!
Gotrek Gurnisson! Well, this was the last time he would interfere in Thanquol’s affairs!
Spinning around, the enraged grey seer snapped commands at Boneripper. ‘Kill-burn-slay!’ Thanquol shrieked at the skeletal rat-ogre, the warp-tooth fitted to the sorcerer’s ear pulsing with power as it transmitted his fury to the hulking automaton. Without hesitation, Boneripper reared up and charged out from the forest, hurtling towards the clearing like a warp-fuelled avalanche.
Squeaks of shock and dismay rose from the bushes and underbrush. The creeping skaven warriors of Greypaw Hollow weren’t in position yet. They wailed against losing the element of surprise when Boneripper charged past them, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for massacring the humans without a fight. Many of them turned tail, ready to scurry back to their dark burrows.
Thanquol dissuaded the warriors from their cowardly retreat with a show of force. Summoning the might of the Horned One into his body, harnessing the aethyric currents around him, the grey seer pointed his staff at the closest of the fleeing ratmen. A crackle of green lightning leapt from the head of the staff, coiling about the retreating stormvermin, cooking him inside his armour. As the smouldering ratman crashed to the ground, Thanquol’s magically magnified voice thundered over the clearing.
‘All-all fight-kill!’ Thanquol roared. ‘Kill much-much or suffer-die!’
The threat turned the frightened skaven around. By now Boneripper had reached the clearing. The carnage it was causing among the hapless humans helped to further bolster the fragile courage of the ratmen. Squeaking their war-cries, the verminous horde descended upon the caravan.
Thanquol lashed his tail in frustration. That idiot Boneripper! Stupid, brainless oaf of a scrap-heap! Couldn’t it tell when he wanted it to do what he said and when he didn’t? The brute had spoiled the ambush by its moronic interpretation of its master’s outburst!
But was it Boneripper’s fault? Might that treacherous tinker-rat Krakul have done something to the rat-ogre, changing it from Thanquol’s clever, loyal, unquestioning bodyguard into a lumbering dolt with only the vaguest semblance of intelligence? Yes-yes, that certainly sounded probable! It wasn’t so long ago that Ikit Claw had unreasonably developed some paranoid ideas about Thanquol and tried to kill him. It was more than coincidence that Krakul was of the same clan as the Claw!
Thanquol yipped in alarm as another idea came to him. Hiking his grey robe up above his knees, he dashed towards the clearing. The timing of Krakul’s treachery had spoiled the perfect ambush, opening the possibility that Gotrek and Felix might escape! And now it occurred to him that this might be Krakul’s real purpose. Thanquol had long known that there had to be someone using the two insufferable interlopers against him. Neither one of them was clever enough to continually be interfering in the grey seer’s schemes. There had to be a traitor, a villain from the lowest dregs of skavendom whose pride and arrogance couldn’t abide the greatness of Thanquol’s genius. It was another skaven who kept thrusting the pair in his way!
It was up to Thanquol to see that his enemies were taken alive, that they might confess who it was that had…
Again the grey seer yipped in alarm. The mangled body of a stormvermin went flying past him, almost bowling him over as it went tumbling into the bushes. A second body crashed to earth almost at his feet.
Thoughts of traitors and vengeance abated as Thanquol began to appreciate his surroundings. In his haste, he’d scurried well ahead of the main body of Pakstab’s warriors. He was in the clearing, under the tent, with a frightened mob of humans rushing about, screaming and wailing in abject terror.
Unfortunately, the troll wasn’t frightened of the skaven. It had stopped dancing, too. Instead it had lumbered out and intercepted the boldest and most eager of the stormvermin. With decidedly un-troll-like deliberation, the monster brought its scaly fists pounding into one ratman after another, each powerful blow smashing a furry body into ruin.
Thanquol froze as the ugly brute turned towards him. The musk of fear spurted from his glands as the troll opened its jaws wide, roaring at the grey seer. The monster’s hand tightened about the squealing clanrat it held, breaking every bone in the skaven’s body. The fearful display forced Thanquol into action. Drawing upon his sorcery, he pointed his staff at the troll, sending a blast of malignant magic full into the monster’s face.
Wisps of black smoke rose from the troll’s head as the spell crackled across its flesh. But the brute didn’t fall. As the smoke cleared, it glared at Thanquol. The scaly, blackened skin of the monster’s face may have been scorched by his magic, but already the incredible regenerative powers of the troll were undoing the damage. Before Thanquol’s eyes, the burned skin began to heal. Snorting and huffing, the troll lumbered towards the skaven sorcerer.
‘Boneripper!’ the grey seer squeaked as the troll swung at him. The monster’s tremendous fist smashed into the ground Thanquol had been standing on before making a frantic leap for one of the posts supporting the tent. He wrapped his limbs about the post, clinging to it as though it were the mast of a sinking ship. A sideways glance showed him the troll using its other hand to pull its fist from a crater that had punched clear down to bedrock. His glands spurted fear-musk as he considered what such a blow would have done to him had it landed.
‘Boneripper!’ the sorcerer shrieked again. He wasn’t certain if his bodyguard heard him; the range of the warp-tooth which controlled the rat-ogre had never been explained to him. Worse, there was the possibility that Krakul had done something to limit Thanquol’s control. He should never have trusted that snivelling scrap-rat!
Something else heard him, however. Turning its head upwards, the troll glared at Thanquol. There was a chilling intelligence in the monster’s eyes, a keenness of hate that he’d never seen any troll exhibit before. Frantically, Thanquol pawed at his robe, seeking a piece of warpstone to fuel another spell – a spell strong enough to overcome the troll’s regeneration.
Bellowing its rage, the troll charged towards Thanquol’s post. The grey seer squeaked in terror, the sliver of warpstone slipping from his paws. He watched as the glowing green stone hurtled downwards, seeing his last hope of survival falling with it.
Suddenly, Boneripper’s skeletal bulk was between Thanquol and the oncoming troll. The rat-ogre’s piston-driven arms closed about the troll’s enormity, crushing it in an embrace of steel and sinew. The troll flailed about in Boneripper’s grip, trying to tear its way free.
The two monsters might have stood there all night, immovable object against irresistible force. But Thanquol had other ideas. Baring his fangs, glaring at the troll’s ugly visage, he snarled an order at Boneripper: ‘Burn-slay!’
Obediently, Boneripper lifted its third arm, pressing the nozzle of the warpfire projector against the troll’s skull. There was a tremendous flash of light, a resounding boom and a thunderous crash that knocked Thanquol from his perch. The grey seer smashed to earth, moaning as the impact rattled his bones.
When his head stopped ringing, Thanquol darted a look over at the troll. It was dead now, only a smoking stump of neck rising from its shoulders. Boneripper’s warpfire had burned the monster’s head off! The threat to himself vanquished, Thanquol looked for his bodyguard. The explosion had thrown Boneripper to the ground, its third arm nothing but a jumble of twisted metal and shattered bone. The rat-ogre didn’t move, even when Thanquol snarled an order at it to do so.
Wonderful! The slack-witted dolt had destroyed itself! Surely it should have understood not to use its warpfire at such close quarters! By the Horned One, what could have possessed the lummox… But, of course, it was Krakul and his treacherous meddling with Boneripper’s mechanisms! When Thanquol got his paws on the filthy maggot-chewer…
The grey seer forgot about Krakul when he spotted two figures rushing at him from across the clearing. Thanquol’s empty glands clenched as he recognis
ed the hated Gotrek and Felix! His paw drew another shard of warpstone from his robe, popping the sorcerous rock into his mouth, sending magical energy coursing through his veins. He could cast a quick spell that would get him a hundred miles away, far from Gotrek’s murderous axe and Felix’s flashing sword!
Only… the dwarf wasn’t carrying his deadly axe. He was still lugging around that huge hammer. It was the human who was brandishing an axe, but a far smaller one than the weapon of Gotrek Gurnisson.
It was a trick! That was why they weren’t using their usual armaments! That was why Felix had grown so tall and muscular, why the dwarf had changed his tattoos and added a ring of metal studs across his brow! They knew the mightiest sorcerer in the world, the most favoured disciple of the Horned Rat, a genius so insidious that even the Lords of Decay trembled in his presence – they knew that there was no hope of resisting their unconquerable foe! They had taken these stupid measures to try and disguise themselves, as though anyone could hide from Thanquol’s wrath!
Thanquol stretched forth his paw, the malignity of his magic erupting in a blast of terrific force. The pulsation of raw aethyric energy sizzled across the clearing, causing grass to wither and cloth to burst into flame. The head of the human’s axe dripped to the ground in a molten mess, the wooden heft of the dwarf’s hammer became a mass of fire. Thanquol chittered in triumph as his hated enemies stopped their crazed charge and stared stupidly at their ruined weapons!
‘Die-die now-now!’ Thanquol hissed, unleashing a withering blast of green fire against his foes. Their screams fell silent as their bodies boiled beneath the fury of his sorcery. The grey seer cackled wildly as he watched his enemies writhe and twist in the malignant flames.
He had dreamed of this moment for so long! There was no restraint now, no thought of interrogation and torture, just utter destruction – the extermination due to these low creatures who had dared trifle with his greatness! He grinned savagely as he watched the agony blazing in the eyes of his dying enemies.