Hammer and Bolter 4

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Yes,’ Evasqeek pleaded, and squeezed his paws together so tightly that he might have been holding a throat. ‘Yes, the cave-in. We lost fifty slaves and a score of the best handlers.’

  Vass shifted comfortably on the raised litter that dominated the room. As always on these occasions he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

  ‘When was this cave-in?’ he asked ingenuously, and was gratified to smell a fresh wave of terror emanating from his victim.

  ‘A month ago, my liege,’ the mine supervisor admitted and, realising that the excuse had been a mistake, suddenly changed tack. ‘But the real problem is the indolence and treachery of slave master Skitteka. He is too soft on the slaves. He doesn’t look after them either. They keep dying from the lightest of wounds.’

  ‘I see,’ Vass said. His spies and informers had already determined that the real reason for Evasqeek’s failure was that his mine was almost exhausted. He would still need to make an example of somebody, of course, but it occurred to him that it wouldn’t necessarily have to be Evasqeek himself.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Evasqeek jabbered. ‘It’s Skitteka’s fault. He’s lazy, too.’

  ‘Then perhaps I should speak with this Skitteka,’ Vass decided. He heard a whimper from amongst the assembled throng and saw an exceptionally bulky figure trying to press itself into the floor.

  ‘You’re Skitteka I suppose?’ Vass asked. But before the skaven could reply a voice rang out. A human voice.

  All eyes turned to the slave who stood at the entrance of the audience chamber. Ordinarily the guards would have lashed the flesh from her bones for such an intrusion, but now they were too busy cowering themselves. The hungry eyes of Vass’s guard had transformed them from predators into prey.

  And so Adora padded unbidden into the audience chamber. Evasqeek watched her dumbly and felt vaguely grateful that at least attention had been turned away from him.

  His relief was to be short lived.

  ‘My Lord Evasqeek,’ the slave said, her tone perfectly pitched into the place where hope and terror meet. ‘We are sorry the tribute is late. Please forgive us. It was because we were locked up.’

  So saying she fell to the floor besides Evasqeek, pressed her head down even lower than his, and slid a ragged bundle across to him. He reached out for it unthinkingly, and as the rags loosened he was bathed in the hypnotic green glow of wyrdstone.

  It pulsed inches away from his snout, and he seemed to feel his blood boil and fizz. Desire and revulsion tore through his thoughts, and he hardly heard Vass when he spoke.

  ‘I thought that wyrdstone was supposed to be handed directly to the clan’s treasurer,’ Vass said.

  Evasqeek felt blood trickling from his snout. He licked his teeth and, eyes still on the pulsing light of the stone, said: ‘What?’

  ‘Why are the slaves delivering the stone directly to you?’ Vass asked, his tone mild. It seemed that Evasqeek would provide him with his example after all. And why not? He would do as well as anyone. He suddenly had an idea of what that example would be, too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Evasqeek said vaguely, and managed to tear his eyes away from the fragments of stone. He looked up at Adora, and although he didn’t recognise her, he did recognise Skitteka’s marking on her.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, understanding dawning. ‘Wait, this is a trick. Skitteka–’

  But at Vass’s signal the guards were already closing in. Evasqeek saw his doom waiting in the manacles they carried, and panic burst inside him. With a scream he launched himself towards the exit, clawing through his fellows as he tried to escape, but he had left it far, far too late. Within seconds he had been beaten down and chained up, transformed from the mine’s master to its most miserable captive.

  ‘It seems you have developed a taste for the stone,’ Vass said, prowling towards him. ‘But fear not. I have a mind to be merciful. I am going to feed you of much of it as you can take. And then,’ he bent down to whisper into his captive’s ear, ‘I’m going to feed you some more.’

  Evasqeek’s last coherent thought as they pinned him to the floor was one of surprise. Who would have thought that the fat fool Skitteka had the wit to set him up like this? How could he have maintained such a facade of gluttonous incompetence whilst setting these wheels in motion?

  He saw Vass stalking towards him, the bundle of stone held in his trembling paw. As soon as he realised what was going to happen he started shrieking, froth flecking his snout as he spasmed and writhed. The guards waited for their chance then slipped ligatures around his lower and upper jaws, pulling them open to reveal the thrashing pink of the tongue within.

  ‘That’s right,’ Vass said softly. ‘Open wide.’

  And with that he started to feed Evasqeek. He pressed the stone down his throat one cancerous piece at a time. At first his victim hissed and rolled his eyes in terror. Then he started to shrill and his eyes bulged with a crazed joy. Eventually he started to change.

  Fur sloughed away. Limbs withered. A second tail grew from the melting knots of his spine, a paw blossoming from the end of it. Eyes blinked open across his disintegrating form and the claws on his feet lengthened into talons.

  Vass’s guard worked to keep pace with the transformation. They tightened some chains, loosened others. The tail was bound with leather ligatures and the eyes blinded as soon as they opened. They worked fast, concentrating on the knots and chains and ligatures that bound the monster’s form with the desperate skill of sailors adjust the rigging of a storm-tossed ship.

  Even after Vass ran out of stone the transformation continued. It only slowed after the thing that had been Evasqeek was no longer recognisable. It bubbled and hissed and mewled within the mesh of its confinement, its image reflected in a hundred pairs of horrified eyes.

  Alone in the chamber Adora regarded the horror before her with equanimity. Her eyes were as calm as a deep blue sea on a still summer’s day, and a smile played around the perfect curve of her lips. There was a faint blush in the cream of her complexion too, just as much as there might be had she just returned from a vigorous horse ride on a warm afternoon.

  Then she shook herself and, whilst her captors still gazed hypnotised at the horror that had once been their master, she slipped away as silently as a cat in twilight.

  ‘You bring me much luck, little cat,’ Skitteka mused and pawed idly at his pet. Although it had only been a few weeks since Vass had appointed him as mine overseer, he had already gained over twenty pounds in weight. Even the pads on his paws had fattened, and he had taken to slapping Adora to hear the sound echo in the great audience chamber.

  His audience chamber.

  ‘You are truly the only one deserving of this honour, lord,’ Adora told him, and in a way it was true. With Evasqeek out of the way Skitteka was the only one with a vicious enough reputation to rule his subordinates. Since he had taken over, things had certainly run smoothly.

  That was something that Adora knew that she had to change. So she said:

  ‘My lord Skitteka, can I ask you a question?’

  Skitteka slapped her playfully, the impact of his paw numbing her back. He was in a high good humour today.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he hissed. ‘As long as it isn’t a boring one.’

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ Adora said. ‘I just wondered why you keep the thing that used to be Evasqeek locked in a cell?’

  Skitteka hesitated and Adora waited for another blow, harder this time. Instead Skitteka answered her.

  ‘Vass and I decided to keep him,’ he said, by which he meant that Vass had told him what to do while he had grovelled miserably before him. ‘It’s a reminder of what happens to traitors and thieves.’

  Skitteka took a pawful of her hair and twisted it for reassurance. Adora ignored the pain and risked another question.

  ‘Very wise of you, my lord,’ she said. ‘But what does the thing eat?’

  ‘Anything,’ Skitteka said with a shiver. ‘Anything at all. And it’s always hungry. But
enough about that. Tell me what you have learned in the past few days.

  ‘Three of the slaves are planning to break through their chains and escape,’ she said, not because it was true but because it wasn’t. The three she had in mind spent every night howling and sobbing and wailing with a misery close to madness. Adora knew that unless she removed them quickly, their despair would weaken others who might otherwise prove useful.

  ‘Give their names to the guards when you get back,’ Skitteka said.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ Adora said. ‘There’s also a rumour that an army of ghosts are gathering in some of the worked out tunnels.’

  Skitteka hissed and twisted at her hair.

  ‘Ghosts? What makes them say that?’

  ‘Some of them have heard things. Seen things. It’s probably nonsense, my lord, but that’s what they say.’

  Skitteka shifted, his whiskers twitching in thought. Adora pretended not to watch. She had almost invented something a bit more tangible for Skitteka to send his guards chasing after. Orcs perhaps, or some other monsters. But as always, it seemed, she had judged Skitteka’s gnawing anxieties correctly.

  ‘Something to investigate,’ he mused, beady eyes darting around the empty spaces of the chamber. ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing definite…’ Adora began, then trailed off.

  Skitteka, catching something in her tone, forgot about ghosts and fixed his attention on her.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, and twisted one of her ears. Pain screamed as the flesh came close to tearing. Adora ignored the white-hot agony and spoke with a perfectly contrived hesitancy.

  ‘The guard Tso-tso,’ she began. ‘Whenever I am near him, he and his friends stop talking. It is almost as though they are suspicious of me.’

  Skitteka released her ear and chittered with agitation. Tso-tso! He should have known that he was a traitor. He was capable and respected by the others. He no doubt had his own designs on Skitteka’s position. Well, he would see where those would get him.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, and absent-mindedly tossed a gobbet of meat onto the floor in front of Adora.

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ she said and scuttled over to claim it. She ignored the rotten iron taste of the raw flesh just as studiously as she ignored the provenance of it. Her gag reflex almost betrayed her as the first torn-off morsel slithered down her gullet, but she massaged her oesophagus and thought about how close she was. How terrifyingly close.

  ‘I heard it took Tso-tso over three days to die,’ one of the guards said to the other.

  ‘Three days, yes,’ his companion replied.

  Their conversation died. Their tails writhed. Their nostrils wrinkled. Something banged against the iron-bound door behind them and they both leapt into the air. When they landed they turned towards the cell they were guarding. The iron held firm, and the heavy beams that held it shut remained intact. But was that a new crack in the timber?

  ‘Our shift must be over by now,’ one of the guards chittered. ‘Must be, must be.’

  ‘It’s that cowardly scrunt Kai,’ the other agreed, fear turning to hatred within the black orbs of his eyes. ‘He’s always late.’

  Something heavy slid against the door. It seemed to bulge beneath the guards’ terrified gaze, yet it still held firm. For now at least.

  ‘Look,’ said one. ‘Why don’t I go and get our relief? You can stay here while I’m gone.’

  His companion didn’t deign to reply. He merely hissed with annoyance. Their concentration was focussed so intently on the door that they didn’t hear the footsteps padding up behind them.

  ‘Permission to speak, my lords,’ a voice said. The guards shrieked as they spun around. When they saw that it was a slave their terror blossomed into rage, and they scrabbled for their whips.

  ‘I have a message from Lord Skitteka,’ Adora said. ‘It is very urgent.’

  ‘Speak then,’ one said, paw still closed around the hilt of his whip. ‘Speak, speak.’

  ‘My lord Skitteka requests that you go to his audience chamber immediately.’

  ‘What for?’ the two guards said in perfect unison, their voices sharp with suspicion.

  ‘He didn’t tell me,’ said Adora.

  The guards exchanged a troubled glance.

  ‘But who will guard–’

  This time the sound that came from the cell was not an impact but a series of squelches, as though something was being dismembered. Something big.

  ‘He wants both of us?’ one of the guards asked hopefully.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ Adora said. ‘And I am to wait here until you get back.’

  The guards looked at her. If the thing escaped she wouldn’t be anything more than a morsel for it. But so what? That was gloriously, wonderfully, tail-liftingly no longer their problem.

  The two guards took a final look at the door then skittered off. Adora waited until they had disappeared around the corner before she turned to the door.

  Three thick wooden beams had been slotted into holes cut into the stone on either side of the door. A lump of ancient iron and battered timber, it rested on crude iron hinges each as big as Adora’s head. The hinges were rusty and the door was heavy, but it opened outwards so that was alright. The thing within would have no problem opening it. No problem at all.

  As she tested the weight of the first of the beams that held the door closed, she heard something slither behind it. It would be waiting for her when she freed it, of that she was sure. Waiting hungrily.

  ‘Good,’ she told herself.

  Adora wedged her shoulder beneath the beam and lifted it, freeing one end from the stone slot in which it had rested. Then she dropped it and sprang away as it thudded onto the floor. The noise echoed down the passageway. When the echoes had gone there was silence on the other side of the door.

  Ignoring the twist in her stomach Adora removed the second beam, letting it tumble to the floor next to the first. When she stooped to remove the third an almost paralysing sense of reluctance came over her. She had seen the creation of the thing that had been Evasqeek, and beside it all the horrors down here paled into insignificance. There was wrongness to it, a terrible, life-hating wrongness.

  ‘Good,’ she repeated, lifting her chin and gazing defiantly into space. ‘Then it will serve my purpose.’

  Without giving herself any more time to think she wrestled the final bar free and stepped back from the door. It was as well that she did. No sooner had the last bar been lifted than the horror within hurled forward. Iron and wood shattered as it impacted on the stone wall and the thing which had been Evasqeek emerged.

  Adora tried to scream, but her throat had locked tight. Her knees had locked tight too, and even though instinct screamed at her to run, run, run damn it, she remained frozen as the thing slithered and lurched towards her.

  It had grown during the dark weeks of its captivity. Now it was three times the size of the creature it had once been, and a confusion of pseudopods and limbs grasped greedily at the world about it. The eyes that dotted its form like so many bullet holes swivelled towards Adora and then she was screaming, and she was running, and she had never been so terrified in her life.

  The thing chased her and although that was what she had wanted all along she wasn’t happy about that. Not any more, no, not one little bit. For the first time she understood how all of those that had died around her had been able to give up on life.

  But she was still Adora. Even as panic gripped her she made sure that the thing remained behind her as she followed the route she had decided upon. This was her one chance to escape, her only chance. And, she decided, she would take it just as surely as a dropped cat will land on its feet.

  The guards had just closed the hatch on the last of the slaves when Adora burst in on them. Although they were used to having Skitteka’s pet sidling around they had never seen her like this, fleeing and terrified and suddenly dangerous looking.

  ‘In the hole with you,’ one of them said and pointed to the trap door
that led down into the oubliette. He went to lift it and Adora had a terrible vision of what would happen to the trapped mass of humanity below if the thing behind her got down amongst them.

  ‘Run,’ she told him and hit him straight armed. He tumbled backwards, shrilling in outrage as he drew his weapon, but then the thing which had been pursuing Adora was upon them.

  Their squeals echoed after her as she ran, adrenaline burning within her. After a while she slowed down and eventually forced herself to stop. The sound of the struggle behind her had already died away, and she had no doubt as to who had won. She rubbed the sweat from her face, ran her fingers through the slick of her hair, then circled back around to the oubliette.

  The thing had already gone, searching for new victims. The remains of those it had left behind lay scattered around the chamber, torn and dismembered. Adora rolled a head away from the trap door, lifted it, and pushed down the ladder. A ring of terrified faces looked up at her, squinting in the light she had let into their darkness. She looked down upon them and smiled, the radiant expression framed by the golden halo of her hair.

  ‘Glorious news,’ she told them. ‘Today the gods have given you the chance to take your vengeance.’

  With that she threw the rat-featured head of the guard down in amongst them. They looked from Adora to the head and then back again. And then with a collective cry that sounded more like the roar of a wounded beast than anything human they swarmed up the ladder, made fearless by the miracle they had witnessed.

  Had Skitteka led the battle against the thing which had been Evasqeek, it might have gone better. Without the confusion it might have been lured into a place where it could have been attacked from all sides at once, or where it could have been pushed down a mineshaft or crushed beneath falling stone.

  But Skitteka hadn’t led the battle against the horror. Instead he had driven his underlings towards it, hiding behind their desperate savagery until they had finally overwhelmed it. Their victory had come at a terrible cost. The remains of a score of guards had been smeared throughout the mine, and dozens of survivors lay shattered and broken amongst them.