by David Guymer
‘Aww, chief.’
‘Just sort it out, ’fore I sort you out.’
‘Yes chief,’ Leekey moaned, shuffling to his feet, Codgrub and Thiknut breaking into a squabble to peek at his abandoned cards. ‘Its nuffin’, chief.’
‘You ain’t even lookin’’ Skiblit returned, without bothering to look up.
Grumbling, Leekey tiptoed closer to the grille, as nervous as Skiblit about things that lurked in the dark.
The grille gave one more crash that had Leakey screaming and the rest of them in giggles. The mirth choked when, with one last calamitous note, the grille crashed inward. The flagstones split under the weight, only Leekey’s nervous reflexes sparing him a busted toe. The goblin hopped back and stared down at his feet, counting his blessings one to ten in the wriggling digits a snotling’s fart from a quarter ton of ancient metal. Rank air washed up from whatever dank hole that grating had fed. It stank of dead water and old sweaty rock, it smelt like wet rat.
‘Oh, crud!’
Leekey was still staring, struggling somewhere between five and six, most likely, when his upper body exploded, plastering the gaping goblins with sticky red gore. The blast was so loud it seemed to physically shake the walls. Leekey, living up to his name even in death, finally stopped spurting and toppled over. Skiblit vomited his breakfast onto the flagstones. The opening spewed green smoke like that from a shaman’s pipe, dancing devils shaping into snarling red-coloured ratties. Codgrub and Thiknut were down in a blink, still trying to draw their own steel as rusted blades carved them up faster than his eyes could follow. More were coming through. He caught the wink of copper in firelight, a black and white furred thing with a whirring hat. It noticed him notice it and flashed its teeth, brilliant white against the shadow like a shaman’s bones cast into a fire’s embers to prophesy blood. It sighted him down a monstrous gun barrel and he looked back, mesmerised by the weird green eye that spun of its own will in its copper socket.
He drew his gut-sticker, for all the good it was going to do. ‘What’re you waitin’ for?’ He turned to Gumrot, terror ratcheting his voice to an astonishing pitch. ‘Open that door!’
‘This does not look-smell like the City of Pillars.’
Sharpwit smirked. In his infinite wisdom, Fizqwik had entrusted Sharpwit to lead him to the safety of the Clan Mors stronghold. After his original guide had clumsily tripped, fallen and tragically impaled himself through the throat on Sharpwit’s crutch of course. ‘We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,’ he replied straight-facedly.
‘If you are lost-lost, I will have-take you for weapon practice.’
‘Not lost,’ Sharpwit bowed. They had surfaced in an old ale cellar, though it might now quite easily be mistaken for one of the feeding pens of Hell Pit. Meat and gristle clung to the walls like ticks to a skaven’s fur, broken spears indistinguishable from severed arms, such was the indiscriminate lashing of blood. One of the goblins still lived, that much was apparent from its screams, although Sharpwit doubted it was overly thankful for that. Spindly green arms thrashed, its body hidden behind a pair of clanrat warriors, their muzzles ripping into its warm flesh, only spurred to greater heights of feeding frenzy by its tortured howls.
He limped through the green-tinged smog and coughed. He had explicitly told Fizqwik not to fire his weapon down here, but could the fool resist? No, no he could not. He took a deep, shuddering breath, euphoria rushing into his blood with the warpstone-tainted air. He felt young again, powerful. His claws clenched around his crutches, as if he could crush them with his bare paws, cast them down and walk. He gritted his fangs and fought the dulling effect of the warpstone fumes. The wave ebbed and he sagged against his crutches with the return of every momentarily forgotten ache. He groaned, hip audibly cracking as he attempted a forward step. Some of the trappings of age he had no need to exaggerate. Perhaps a little addlement would be no bad thing.
The goblin had stopped screaming. The last echoes of its death tingled in Sharpwit’s ears, clinging to life, to memory, to that last record of its pitiful, soon forgotten, existence. What was its name? What actions had it taken that had left the world changed? Did any still live that would remember? Or was every poor wretch that could have answered accounted for in this miasma of viscera? Life was so transient, so fragile.
He waved his paw through the cloying fumes and looked for Fizqwik, locating the engineer by the whirring sound of his helmet. ‘This is an old-lost dwarf-thing tower built-made to watch Death Pass. Many millennia old, but dwarf-things, they build to stay.’ He turned slowly around, getting his bearings, pointing an arm due east. ‘That way is the City of Pillars, and that way…’ He pointed in the opposite direction, coincidentally the position of a heavy oak door. He hobbled slowly towards it. ‘That way is Black Crag.’
Fizqwik snarled, but it was a belated cover. Sharpwit read the scent of his fear all too well. ‘How close-near is Black Crag?’
‘Close enough.’
‘Can you guide us back?’
Sharpwit shrugged. A corpse lay in the open doorway where it had tried to flee, the back of its head burst open like an egg. The skull was a mess of sticky black tendrils and indistinct pink mush. He could tell it was the back only because of the orientation of its arms and legs. He stepped over the body and out onto a staircase that spiralled upward, lichen sprouting tentatively from cracks in the ancient stonework. He drew a breath of cool uncorrupted air before the warpstone haze drifted out to claim that too. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Fizqwik amidst a milling crowd of his warriors. All of them were watching him, hanging on his next breath, the weak ever craving the paw of the strong, a natural law as inviolate as death. And what did the strong crave? He smiled grimly, pain crippling his chest as if the weight of years was a vice over his ribs. The clanrats cowered from the misinterpreted display of glowing fangs.
They wished to stay strong.
‘I can,’ he hissed. ‘But I won’t.’
Fizqwik stepped forward. ‘You take us away-back or I–’
‘Or what?’ Sharpwit snickered. ‘You think you find your own way back? Then go run-crawl. Maybe you distract the dwarf-things coming after us.’
‘I hear-scent no dwarf-things,’ said Fizqwik sulkily. ‘I think you lie.’
‘Of course they follow-chase,’ Sharpwit snapped. It was unlikely, but too much honesty was a poor trait in a leader. He had been careful, doubling back and leading them several times down side tunnels, ostensibly to throw off any pursuers but with the not inconsiderable dual benefit of ensuring Fizqwik and his lackeys were now thoroughly lost. After all, there was no such thing as being overly cautious. ‘Do as you are told and maybe you will come away safe-well.’
Fizqwik looked back into the sewer, anxiously nibbling his lower lip, his blurry outline hunched, defeated. ‘What do you want?’
Sharpwit snarled, warplight writhing through the poisonous cloud.
What did the strong want?
‘I want songs sung of my deeds. I want my name whispered with dread and loathing for a thousand years.’ Sharpwit coughed chestily, lungs coming apart like the hide of an ancient mummy. It had been a long trek from Karak Azul and his body trembled from the effort. He glared at the vermin of Clan Skryre, praying they couldn’t see it. ‘But that will not happen, will it? I must settle for glory for Skavendom and perhaps, centuries from now, when the immortal Council of Thirteen recalls the fall of Azul-Place, one may remember the name Sharpwit.’ He turned away, limping tiredly for the stairwell. ‘Come-come,’ he squeaked over his shoulder. ‘We go up-top. I want-need your eyes.’
The stairwell was a ruin, the crumbling masonry layered and re-layered with crude greenskin glyphs depicting claws, fists, skulls, whichever tribe enjoyed temporary dominance over the rest. For now, that was definitely Gorfang Rotgut’s Red Fangs, their symbol daubed in all sizes over every stretch of wall. Sharpwit moved slowly, his crutches seeking out unbroken ground with which to haul his frame painfully upwards. Ment
ally, he berated himself for not sending Fizqwik or one of his clanrats up first. Whether through weariness or the idiot engineer’s warp-fumes he’d neglected to consider that a greenskin or two might have escaped the massacre down below. It would be just like Fizqwik. If a goblin were to stab him now, the warlock would probably even protest it an accident. He was tempted to insist Fizqwik take the front, but the pebble-strewn staircase was too treacherous underfoot to manoeuvre one skaven past another – not without affording the warlock ample opportunity to engineer another ‘accident’. That left nothing for it but to press on and pretend he’d meant to take the lead all along.
After a few dozen turns, the stairs reached a once-grand threshold, the way framed by a pair of stern ancestors long surrendered to the weeds. Hardy nettles sprouted around their ankles; purple mosses crusted their lips and their eyes; roots opened fissures that ran their granite cheeks like tears. For the first time since departing Skavenblight, Sharpwit stepped out beneath an open sky. It felt oddly reassuring. The sky was the colour of charcoal and an aggressive wind struggled with his fur. The stones were damp, discoloured grey, holding close the scent of yesterday’s rain.
He limped to the ramparts of the dwarfish watchtower, permitting the ancient stone to share his footpaws’ burden with his blessing. The wind was cold and forceful as it swept down from the encircling peaks. Sharpwit shivered in its icy claws and gripped the ledge more tightly. Every instinct squealed at him to scurry back to the stairwell and hide. He felt as though some stone giant had him by the tail, dangling him over the howling immensity of the glacially carved valley of Death Pass. The great spire of Black Crag dominated the valley, standing alone as though shunned by nobler peaks of less black repute. Dark as shale, the orc stronghold rose, sinking its jagged fang into the roiling sky.
His stomach turned, and not through vertigo. The stronghold’s gates, reinforced and patched together in inimitable orcish fashion, were thrown wide, rowdy brutish warriors spilling from its black pits. Their guttural chants carried on the wind like the threat of thunder. The massive orcs shoved each other, shouted insults, only too happy to fight each other were it not for the even more massive chieftains that spat, snarled and smacked their charges into order. Behind them, the steep escarpment of the opposing face of the valley swarmed with scrawny, black-cowled figures, goblin archers squabbling over the most favourable spots as deep banks of spears marched down to join their larger kin.
He peered into the bellicose mob. Being prepared for the crush of disappointment made its advent no less welcome. On the orcs’ side of the pass, a clear sliver of shallow water trickled down the foothills, past the gates of Black Crag from a high mountain lake. It had been warm and sunny when Sharpwit had last seen it, long-haired ponies grazing on the rough grass, he and his kin fresh from the City of Pillars to scout the hidden passages beneath Black Crag. He had been unused to the surface then. The lack of walls and the sky’s vastness had been oppressive, but he had still found what he looked for: an old dwarf drainage shaft, barely wide enough for a skaven to slither through. But he had been bigger then, black-furred, sleek, proud as he was arrogant. He had little doubt he could get in that way again – until he saw it. The stream sprouted goblin spears like poisonous toadstools.
Sharpwit tore his gaze from the greenskin masses, ears pricking at some fevered activity, tracking back to the gates of Black Crag as something huge stooped to pass beneath it. Sharpwit closed his eye, convinced it had finally succumbed to senility. Now, at the most inopportune time conceivable! Leaning out, he opened his eye for a second look. It was enormous! A monster, albeit man-shaped, and garbed in patchwork clothing. It was heavily bearded with a circlet of black hair around a balding pate and a dark mat of hair prickling from the V-shaped collar around its neck. Sinking meekly behind the rampart, Sharpwit watched the giant move eastward up the pass, long legs carrying it deceptively swiftly without a care for those fleeing its path, its footfalls driving tremors into the earth and rudely gesticulating goblins higher into the foothills. He shuffled nervously to soothe the ache spreading from his clenched glands, grateful for the wind that blew the musk of his fear south and away from green-thing noses.
A loud twang reverberated between the slopes as a strangely garbed goblin with a long spiked helm was catapulted from the battlements of Black Crag. It flung out its arms and flapped, unconvincing red wings stitched between arms and body. It rose higher as it caught the wind coming in off the Worlds Edge Mountains. Its plaintive wail faded as, despite its furious efforts, the gust bore it west to the sea. Sharpwit tracked its flight some way, catching a smudge as it rose above a distant eyrie. He stared at it for a long moment, willing it into focus. It was no use. This was a seeing world, scents ripped clean on the wind, sounds strengthened and distorted by the mountain peaks. He could not have been more out of place if the trees sprouted claws and fire rained from the sky.
He summoned Fizqwik, the engineer scuttling from the stairwell to join him at the ledge. He looked queasy, peering down into the belly of Death Pass, or perhaps it was the thousands of bloodthirsty greenskin savages that had upset the warlock’s stomach. Sharpwit pointed out the dark shape. It hovered over the mountaintops like a dark cloud or a vast flock of black-winged birds, but neither struck Sharpwit as particularly likely.
‘A dwarf-thing flying machine.’ The engineer was practically salivating, a distinct look of longing erasing his earlier unease. ‘It moves away from us.’
A gyrocopter. A wonder of dwarfish machine-craft. It made sense that many of the dwarfs’ ancient observation posts and relay stations should still be in service, secure in their unbreachable bastions of sheer rock. The smudge receded into the distance. Probably to bear news of this greenskin army to Karak Azul, or possibly to Barak Varr, his directional sense up here was hopeless.
Sharpwit strained through the fog of his own eye onto the vastness of Black Crag. ‘What do the green-things aim at? Do they see us?’
He felt a tugging on his sleeve and turned to see Fizqwik gazing away from the greenskin army and into the clustering, snow-blown peaks to the south. Shrill, chittering voices blew north with the wind, the stamp of bare claws on rock, the scent of musk, of fear, a tantalising breath on Sharpwit’s whiskers before it was snatched away on the wind. He felt Fizqwik’s grip on his arm tighten.
‘Headtaker.’
Queek stood within a natural bowl of rock, shielded from the wind that whistled overhead. Green-thing corpses lay in various states of dismemberment around a campfire over which a pot was starting to boil over. Water spat over its sides to drop hissing into the flames. Queek regarded the dead contemptuously. Most had died before Queek’s stormvermin had even caught up with him.
‘Where is Big-meat, green-thing?’
The Headtaker bared his fangs at the blanched goblin head jigging on the point of a spear at the whim of his left paw. ‘He hides, green-thing,’ he replied in a lisping falsetto, answering on behalf of a second listing head on his right, this one spit on a reddened shaft from throat to eye socket. ‘He filled with fear-horror of Headtaker.’ The heads smacked together, duelling for Queek’s favour, offering little more amusement in death than they had in their last instants of life. He discarded them with a snarl, staring reproachfully at the bleeding skirt of greenskin heads, sewn into his mail by their pointy ears. They rustled, they slapped, they bickered and fought, they whispered appreciative words: Queek is greatest, Queek is strongest. But on this one matter they were stubbornly silent.
‘Ska! Where is Big-meat?’
Ska’s bulk descended onto one knee with a rustle of metal, surrounded by corpses as though he sowed green-things in hopes of a bumper crop in later seasons. Queek pondered that. He wondered if it would work.
‘I do not know, most unbeatable Queek.’
‘Find Queek more green-things. This cannot be all.’
‘Queek is most insightful,’ Ska grovelled. ‘A foraging party. No more.’
Queek drew his swo
rd, suddenly captivated by the green-thing blood as it dried. ‘What do you wait for?’ he snarled. ‘Find Queek more!’
‘Scout-sneaks squeak of more,’ Ska said, pointing out across the feverishly ploughed field of beheaded corpses to a craggy rise. Grass clung to the dark, rain-smitten rock in tufts, yanked every which way in the wind. ‘Big-big army masses in the valley. Scouts say maybe it outnumbers ours.’
Queek sneered. ‘Frail-meat sneaks. They exaggerate always. They hope Queek will cower and run from little green-things. Is that what Ska thinks Queek will do?’
‘I think they do not exaggerate this time,’ said Ska, diplomatically. ‘They showed me. I never see so many.’
Queek peered into the distance, into a half imagined realm of blood and screams, home to all the green-things he could kill. Ska would never suggest Queek run away, but it was obvious he was thinking it.
This is good news, whispered Krug. Only Gorfang could have brought so many warring tribes together. He will be leading them. His head will be yours.
‘Queek does want-want Big-meat’s head,’ he mused. He chivvied his underling from his servile pose with his bloodied sword.
‘Show Queek these green-things.’
The clanrats of Skryre had been busy. While Sharpwit and Fizqwik had been bearing witness to the paucity of the Horned One’s favour, they had somehow extricated the warlock’s belongings from the sewer and dragged them up onto the sodden grass beside the tower. The skaven scurried to and fro with the apparent purpose of assembling stacks of rusted iron sheets so another could shift it elsewhere. Sparks flew from sputtering warp-torches, the hilltop thick with enthusiastic banging and the scent of solder.
A dark, lumpen form was already taking shape. A squat machine brooded between the petals of the torn open crate, like a wind-up flower of a warlock’s dreams, rusted nails scattered like pollen, nestling in the grass in ambush for unwary footpaws. At the centre of that assembly, a pair of giant wheels rose, a chaotic amalgam of wood and metal that scratched and chittered with the thousands of warp-addled rats imprisoned within its mighty frame. Warplight leaked between crude joints, plates of scrap iron compelled by the blackest of techno-sorceries into unholy union with bronze and other, stranger alloys: gleaming surfaces that offered no reflection; materials that seemed one moment in one position only on second glance to have moulded a claws-length to the left; metals that glowed with shifting spectra that unsettled even Sharpwit’s colour-blind eye. Pincer-like warp lightning projectors stabbed from the hubs, connected by thick bundles of naked cabling to a generator seated behind a padded seat that bristled with levers and controls high above the two wheels.