by David Guymer
‘Is Tinker-rat done with squeak-talk?’
‘Um… yes.’
‘Then go away now.’
The warlock gaped, frozen. A gentle shove in the back from Peekrit made him start, and he suddenly remembered himself, grovelling low. His snout scraped a shallow furrow into the dirt as he backed away until, pride gone, he turned tail and pelted for all his fur was worth. Peekrit and the skavenslaves hurried after him, the sounds of an anxious scuffle breaking out as soon as the fleeing skaven were out of sight as each battled not to be the last to flee the lair of the Headtaker.
Sharpwit’s lip twitched nervously. It was below his station to scurry and hide with the rest of the rabble, but that didn’t keep his tail from twitching with terror as the warlord’s undiluted attention now fixed on him. His knees weakened in an unconscious desire to show humility but he restrained them, instead leaning forward onto his crutches.
‘Good-useful you stay, Old-thing. Queek itches to feast on dwarf-meat and is lots-much to do.’
Sharpwit lowered his muzzle, willing servility to radiate from every gland. ‘Anything, warlord.’
Queek gestured at the black-furred skaven that had followed him in. The muscular warrior wore a haunted expression, the look of one who has traced the path fate has laid before him and numbed himself to the horrors that await.
‘New-Ska,’ Queek ordered. ‘Go through paper-stuff with Old-thing. It is boring, like Old-thing.’
‘New-Ska?’ Sharpwit asked.
‘Yes-yes,’ Queek muttered, returning to Sharpwit after apparently listening to something the dwarf skull in the near corner had to whisper. ‘New-Ska is faithful-strong friend of Queek.’
The skaven looked hopelessly towards Sharpwit. His broad shoulders sagged despairingly and he offered a glum nod.
Sharpwit studied Queek’s hapless attendant carefully. Queek was obviously so attached to his muscle-bound brute of a subordinate that his mind couldn’t fully accommodate the loss. Well, that just made the next little titbit he had to wave in front of the lion’s jaw all the more tantalising.
‘Does almighty Queek not know that Ska Bloodtail still lives?’
‘He what?’ Queek stood stock still. The madness in his eyes momentarily coalesced into a single point of focused clarity. Sharpwit quailed before its intensity. Queek bounded forward, dragging the bent old skaven from his feet to meet the warlord muzzle to muzzle. ‘You say-squeak Ska alive?’ The warlord took his shoulders in his paws and shook them roughly, as though truth were a thing that could be shaken free. ‘Where is he? Where is Ska?’
Sharpwit squeaked, tasting blood where he had bitten his tongue. ‘I hear-say Grey Seer Razzel found him. He rests in the stormvermin barracks in Deadclaw.’
Queek let Sharpwit drop. He threw his gaze from side to side as though seeking counsel on this unexpected development. ‘White-fur?’
Sharpwit nodded stiffly. ‘He is safe-well and awake. You should go-see.’ Sharpwit cringed, worried he had pushed too hard.
Queek barely noticed, nodding absently. He turned to New-Ska as if seeing him for the very first time. ‘Who are you? Give-give papers to Old-thing!’
The black-furred warrior bowed gratefully, dropping the stack of papers at Sharpwit’s feet and dashing for the tunnel before the warlord could change his mind. Sharpwit bent to pick up one of the documents, a ratskin parchment that was thick with the claw-scratch writings of the skaven language. Sharpwit sneered. It would surprise him to learn that Queek could read, much less write.
He looked up to find that Queek was gone. Either the warlord didn’t think Sharpwit worthy of a dismissal or, more likely, he had simply forgotten he was there. He let the parchment fall. Sharpwit would attend to them later.
The trembling mound of muscle and hanging flesh that had once been a fierce warrior of Clan Rictus whimpered softly through broken teeth. Sharpwit started towards it. The rhythmic clatter of his sticks on dusty ground resounded between the gruesome assembly of totems and trophies. The thing raised a shredded stump, the evidence that it had once been a skaven’s head becoming apparent only when it opened to reveal a row of cratered, bleeding gums. A whisper of hot air passed its lips. Sharpwit’s stomach turned, unable to avoid a spasm of sympathetic pain in his own jaw. Still grimacing, he leant closer, realising that the poor creature was trying to speak. He strained his hearing but the wet babble could not quite congeal into words. It might have been…
‘Help me.’
‘Toskitt very brave. Sharpwit is here, Toskitt. Tell me what you tell to Queek.’
Toskitt moaned, trying to shake his head even as the action caused him pain. ‘Nothing,’ he whispered.
Sharpwit grinned cruelly and, such was the way the skaven recoiled, he fancied the evil glow of his warpstone fangs was perceived even by Toskitt’s sightless eye sockets. ‘Why do I not believe you? It hardly matters. Queek knows you would say anything. You probably point a claw at everyone before Queek finished. He won’t know what to think.’
Toskitt struggled to reach out for him. Flesh hung from his arm as though it had been savaged by wolves.
‘But if Queek leaves you alone with me and he comes back and finds you dead? Well, maybe then it be easy-clear who sent you.’
‘Please–’
‘Hsssh, Toskitt,’ Sharpwit soothed. ‘Queek must trust Razzel, then maybe Razzel can have faith in Queek. Azul-Place will fall. You die for the greater good of Skavendom, brave Toskitt.’
Sharpwit stepped back, lifting one crutch so it rested on Toskitt’s heart. The skaven sobbed, begging and pleading, as Sharpwit pressed forward. Even at this point, the skaven clung desperately to life. Death would be deliverance. And how many skaven could claim to have made such a contribution in their short, frantic lives as Toskitt would in death?
The stake-like point burrowed into the skaven’s trembling hide. It wasn’t quick and it wasn’t painless. Toskitt’s feeble screams didn’t die until well after the spear reached the end of its slow journey and perforated the walls of his desperately beating heart. Sharpwit wheezed as Toskitt’s body relaxed into death’s embrace. He tugged his stick free and rested on it wearily. He wasn’t a young rat any more.
An itch beneath his spine made him turn. Three pairs of sightless eyes followed his progress – watching, judging, remembering. He shivered. With cold reason, he sought to exorcise the queasiness settling in his gut.
He was being a fool. The Headtaker was mad.
He could not truly share the secrets of the dead.
Chapter Five
Handrik sat on the lip of a two-wheeled cart hitched to a pair of sturdy pit mules. Everywhere, hurrying dwarfs struggled into their armour, many still bleary eyed from the festivities of the previous night as they ran for their musters. The halls rang to the pounding of hobnailed boots and the remnant echoes of the last great blast from the Thunderhorn. The thrill of excitement was palpable. But, thought Handrik, no excuse for shoddiness.
‘Call that axe sharp, lad?’
The young clansdwarf who had been targeted for Handrik’s ire pulled up sharply at the rebuke. The royal blue of Karak Azul was worn with pride over tough, dwarf-forged chainmail. ‘What’s your name, lad?’
‘My name is Bagrin, sir. Bagrin Threkkson.’
‘Pass up that excuse for a weapon, Bagrin.’
The clansdwarf did so, and Handrik lifted it to the light. The illumination cast by the ceiling glimstones trembled with the thundering of so many feet and Handrik studied the reflected light as it played across the axe’s edge before experimentally shearing a grey hair from his beard. He frowned.
‘I’ve suffered the butts of thaggoraki spears with a keener edge than this. I’ll be keeping an eye out for you later. I expect to find this axe sharp enough to take the head off a troll by the time we reach Black Crag.’
‘Yes, venerable elder.’
Handrik shooed him away, and the dwarf stowed his axe at his belt as he hurried off to join his clan’s muster.
The day after the Feast of Grungni: a damned poor day to go to war.
But he couldn’t help but share a measure of excitement. For fifteen years now, the peerless industry of the Iron Peak had been bent towards this one goal. The Black Crag would be purged and vengeance exacted on the squatter king. Cannon had been cast, axes forged by the thousand, beardlings tempered by battle into hardened warriors. Today was the day of grudgement. Karak Azul stood ready, and Handrik Hallgakrin was not about to let a sore head and some trifling wound keep him from a battle that would be remembered until long after the mountains themselves crumbled to the wind.
‘Handrik!’ cried a voice in oddly accented Khazalid.
Handrik glanced over his pint’s foaming head to see Thordun easing his way between the purposefully flowing clansdwarfs. The young dwarf waved his wide leather hat over his head in a bid to attract his attention.
‘What is it, young Thordun?’ he asked. The dwarf’s grim look was enough to know that his news would not be good.
‘The king refused me permission to go to Black Crag. The loremaster tells me no more hired swords will be sent after the king’s family.’
‘I suspected he might,’ Handrik sighed, waving down Thordun’s angry retort as it formed. He drew another sup of ale before deigning to proceed. ‘My hopes were with you, truly they were. You’re a dwarf of these halls, and you seemed keen. I’d hoped Kazador might be moved by your passion.’ He grunted and took a sip of his tankard. ‘A fool’s hope I suppose, but you can’t fault an old greybeard for trying. You’re just too late. Kazador’s patience with sell-swords and glory hunters has run thin. And now the throng of the Iron Peak will be settling its own scores.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘As it should.’
From his high vantage, Handrik’s gaze swept the gathered throng. In his youth, he had lived through the Great War. He had been an Ironbreaker, oathsworn to the defence of the hold, and it had been his lot to be left behind, but he still remembered. It had been a time of trial, but also one of triumph. A time when whole pages were torn from books of grudges, and when new volumes needed binding simply to keep pace with the accumulated wrongs. It had been the greatest coming together of the dwarf kingdoms since the War of Vengeance and, even though the throng of Karak Azul claimed allies from throughout the Karaz Ankor, the comparison was unfavourable.
He sighed. Such was the way of things.
Thordun appeared disconsolate. ‘I’ve come so far. To fail now, without even making it to Black Crag…’
‘Chin up, lad. I seem to recall a fresh-faced beardling trying to impress on me how he’d come for honour rather than gold. Was that true, or just the ale talking?’
‘It’s true,’ Thordun said firmly. ‘It’s just… I doubt the men I travel with will be so charitable.’
‘Umgi,’ Handrik scoffed, spitting out the word like a curse. ‘Never trust them, lad. I’ve yet to meet the man who could hold an oath any better than they hold their ale. Scant better than elves in my book. But if you’re that worried about them, know that Kazador is staying true to his promised reward. He intends to split the prize between all who bring warriors to his cause. Nine men will not put the fear of their foul gods into grobi hearts, but they’ll earn you your share. It’ll be yours to split as you wish.’
Thordun looked about, pinching his lips in thought. The icons of fourscore clans and more waved above the helmeted heads of the dwarfs, stern faces forged in gold and iron and bronze. ‘It’ll not be the king’s ransom I promised, but I’m sure they’ll agree. It’s better than nothing to show for such a journey.’
‘Good on you, lad. Now hurry. We wait only on the king.’ He gestured to a rune-banner held aloft above a silver sea, the warlike countenance of the ancestor, King Lunn, fashioned in bloody copper. He raised his voice to shout over the growing din. ‘Gather your men and seek out Thane Hrathgar of Karak Eight Peaks. He could use a strong body or two.’ He made the twinned axe of Grimnir across his chest. ‘Grimnir lend your arm strength.’
‘And yours, Handrik,’ Thordun returned, bowing hurriedly before dashing away.
Handrik leant back to refill his cup a second time. The Ekrund brewery wasn’t what it used to be. Must be all those grobi pissing in the aquifers. There was a time when three pints of Ekrund Brown would have had his head spinning, but it hadn’t so much as blunted the edges of the pain in his spine. Downing the ale in one go, he gritted his teeth and leapt from the back of the cart. Nothing more than willpower kept him from collapsing to his knees. He gripped the haft of his battleaxe with white-knuckled steel and wiped his beard of spilled ale. He tossed the empty flagon into the back of the cart. He heard it rattle like a stone dropped down a shaft. Handrik Hallgakrin would not be wheeled into battle like spare cannon shot or a trenching shovel.
For Hallar, for Kazrik, for all the others.
And no pain would compare to that.
Grey Seer Razzel almost leapt clean out of his fur as Sharpwit’s scratched and wrinkled nose emerged from the tunnel and into his burrow. Seeing who it was, the grey seer settled back onto his stool. His tail coiled nervously about the leg of the dark wooden table he sat behind. Drumming his claws on the hard surface, he strained to peer over Sharpwit’s head, breathing a deep sigh of relief at the reassuring sight of his albino guard. The giant warrior could have been more inspiring, but the recent disappearance of the second and last of his comrades from Skavenblight had bequeathed him an expression of perpetually paranoid anxiety. Razzel barked at the albino warrior as it glanced over its shoulder for the fiftieth time. It straightened as though stung, shuffling from the entryway and glaring balefully around the room with the safety of a dirt wall at its back.
Sharpwit smirked, taking in the grey seer’s less than salubrious abode. The table at which he sat was cracked down the middle and spotted black with insect dung. The burrow itself, already cramped without the addition of three skaven bodies, was possessed of a perplexing and not at all pleasant odour that almost certainly arose from the black beans that spilled from the mould-ridden sacks piled up against the bare earth walls. Perched between the sacking, rats followed him with warily glittering eyes.
‘So, this is where the great Razzel tremble-hides?’
Razzel snarled, but didn’t move. His stillness was uncanny, his myriad charms and chimes muffled to a whisper by the lack of motion. ‘The prophet-seer of the Horned Rat does not hide.’
‘Do not pout-sulk, chosen one,’ Sharpwit sneered. ‘You tried to rid the world of Queek and you failed. This time you are one lucky traitor-rat. By now you should be walking dead-meat but, like my patron, I do not discard useful things. I fix-mend for you. Can Razzel forget his little games and be useful?’
‘The Council chose me to lead, not you! How dare you–’
‘Be silent!’ Sharpwit squeaked and the easy authority in his tone had the grey seer doing precisely that.
The silence stretched before Razzel asked sulkily: ‘How do you fix-mend?’
‘No matter.’ Sharpwit limped forward, taking the second stool at Razzel’s table. The grey seer had arranged his meagre furnishings to ensure his guests exposed their backs to the entrance. Sharpwit tried to appear comfortable, but his skin crawled in protest. ‘But if ever you are asked then squeak-say that, in kindness and contrition for your grave misunderstanding with Queek, it was you that help-healed Ska Bloodtail.’
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‘Why would I help that worm-brain offal-meat? I kill-kill if I can.’
‘You will not!’ Sharpwit snapped. ‘And your other storm-vermin stands watch-guard to be certain-sure no other has same idea.’
Back to the wall, the albino noticeably relaxed. He sagged into his halberd as the crippling tension released his muscles.
‘You order my guards?’
‘Yes-yes,’ Sharpwit hissed. ‘They are not Razzel’s playthings. They are gifts of the Council and protecting Ska will help. Queek-Warlord has an… unhealthy attachment. He will be easier to control with Ska alive.’
Unable to help himself, Sharpwit twisted on his stool to peer back into the tunnel. No dark shape swam through his mist-shrouded sight and he could hear nothing but the comforting babble of thousands of skaven living out their short, pointless lives. Reassured, he turned back to Razzel. The grey seer was nervously flicking his claws at the brass chimes that fell in bunches like rotten fruit from his horns, listening to their dull notes.
‘I ask again, Razzel. Can you be useful?’
‘Grey Seer Razzel!’
‘I find-sniff your hiding hole, Razzel. You want Queek to come-find, also?’
Razzel paled even further than natural as he considered. He smiled slyly and Sharpwit was abruptly reminded of how unstable and perilous an ally the grey seer could be. ‘I know things. Things you and Queek do not. Things you find most useful to hear, hmmm?’
‘Yes-yes? What do you learn-smell?’
Razzel tittered, setting his chimes to jangling. ‘Why would I tell mangy Old-fur? Razzel finds a tasty-treat, why should I share, hmmm? Maybe I just tell Queek and have no need for you.’
‘You could try. But maybe Queek would kill-slay on sight. Maybe a clever grey seer would get on the warlord’s good side first.’
The grey seer looked sullen, but only for the briefest of spans before the obvious excitement at his information beset him again and he burst into a fit of manic laughter, leaning across the table to confront Sharpwit with his mad eyes. ‘The dwarf-things, they leave. Even now their armies move.’ He laughed again, his mind basking in the darkness of his god’s favour. ‘We will kill-smash with ease. Even the warriors mad-Queek left behind will not be needed. Easily they will die-die. Their souls will strengthen the Great Horned Rat for his return.’