by David Guymer
He had seen a doomwheel before. His knowledge of the dwarfs had proven invaluable to the great Claw’s original invention, coming as it did from a patchwork of dwarfish materials and experimental designs. But entropy was the essence of the skaven condition, its innovation was never static, and this device bore scant resemblance to its predecessor. A pressure release valve here, a great copper rod of mystifying purpose jutting like a flagpole from the generator there, a pair of oak barrels lashed together and crudely wedged between the pilot’s foot-pedals and the wheels. Sharpwit recognised the klinkarhun markings on the old wood. The stolen barrels of dwarfish ale. From drilled holes in the barrels’ flanks, transparent tubing fed the amber liquid down into the wheels. He doubted the dwarfs would approve. Their precious ale, brewed with care to ancient recipes and stored untouched for centuries, now just feed for rats.
The fate of us all, come the end.
Fizqwik scurried through the working clanrats and pressed himself to the wide frontage of the wheel, a loving sigh escaping his lips as he caressed its spiked surface.
‘This is… marvellous,’ said Sharpwit, desperately contriving a scheme to extract some credit for its creation. It seemed the engineer did know a thing or two after all. Hardly Sharpwit’s fault for missing it, not when he acted like such an idiot.
The engineer snickered and took hold of the wheel studs, using them as a ladder to scramble to the control chair. So enthroned, the warlock sank into the leather with a squeal of delight, immediately setting about pulling levers and twisting knobs like a whelp at play.
Sharpwit took a wary step from the warp lightning projector. Just in case.
‘Old-thing!’
Sharpwit yelped in fright, spinning around and planting his back to the hull of the Doomwheel as Queek Headtaker strode up the slope towards him, severed goblin heads smacking wetly at his thighs. Sharpwit stared at them, transfixed. Every time he thought he’d adjusted, Queek found a new level of horror to ascend…
‘Old-thing is alive. How sad.’ Queek glared past the wheel, roundly untouched by its genius. ‘And Tinker-rat too.’ The warlord looked furious, tiny white flecks darting across his blood-mad eyes. ‘What is this, Tinker-rat? Is this where Queek’s weapons go?’
The warlock laughed, a terribly false sense of security granted by his lordship over such an engine of power. Not much use when it wasn’t on yet, Sharpwit thought.
‘This is more useful-better than warpfire throwers and ratling guns. You are blessed-lucky. You get to be first to watch-see the Kwikwheel.’ The warlock laughed again, bouncing excitedly in his seat as he mashed another button on his control board.
Queek glared at the blissfully oblivious warlock, before turning the full force of his hatred upon Sharpwit. ‘Do you see the green-things? Or has age taken that sense from you?’
‘I see them,’ Sharpwit replied.
Queek licked his lips. ‘And does Old-thing hear them?’
Sharpwit listened, hearing nothing but guttural cries above the constant hammering.
‘You hear it? How bad-much they wish to die-die?’
‘Yes-yes,’ Sharpwit agreed carefully. He had learned something from Ska Bloodtail. ‘But there are lots-many.’
‘Queek also has lots-many. And he has Queek.’
Sharpwit looked out from their high vantage point. He took in the greenskin hordes, the drain that was his pass into Black Crag, the beginnings of a scheme to turn all of this to his needs creeping cautiously into his mind. All he needed was something mad enough to draw away a few thousand battle hungry orcs. He bobbed obsequiously. How fortunate…
‘I would advise a strike-charge from the east. That way,’ he added, pointing up the valley away from Black Crag. ‘Their numbers cannot then be turned all at once.’
Queek studied the layout of the opposing force. ‘A good plan, Old-thing.’ He turned back, mad face split by a hyena grin. ‘So many good plans. Be sure your head does not grow too full. It might come off.’
Sharpwit gulped. ‘Many thanks, most grateful one. Perhaps you lead the first charge from the east? A second force then waits to catch-trap their flank as they turn to you.’ Leaving the western approach empty for me to slink by and leave you to die, he almost yearned to add.
Queek looked east. His gaze tarried overlong on the giant. His expression remained neutral as his scent, but Sharpwit was convinced the mad warlord was feeling something a saner rat might recognise as fear.
‘White-fur will attack from the east,’ Queek said, slightly hoarser than usual. Sharpwit found the warlord’s natural trepidation reassuring. He was just another skaven after all. ‘I take flank charge. I take it where best-most fighting will be.’
‘As Queek says,’ Sharpwit replied.
‘And Old-thing will hold the tower.’
‘I will?’
‘Yes-yes,’ Queek said, menacing with every fang. ‘Queek not trust the new-meat of Clan Rictus. Fresh from City of Pillars and smelling all shiny. Queek holds them back with Old-thing. Old-thing likes Rictus-meat, yes-yes?’
Sharpwit cringed, seeing in Queek’s cunning smirk the pulped corpse of a Clan Rictus assassin. Why had he ever taken the blame for that? Razzel had hardly been worth it.
‘You look-watch from up high,’ said Queek. ‘When Queek says go you go, yes-yes?’
Sharpwit bowed low. Queek looked over his prostrate form to the tower top, his muzzle cocked to one side with an absent grin. Fascinated by wind on ivy or a shade of nothing it seemed, as usual.
‘Is windy up there, Old-thing. Be sure-safe you do not fall.’
Damp, snarling ratmen crowded the ridgeline. The filthy swarm bristled with swords, blunt spears and rusty implements of dubious utility, all intermingled with only a passing nod to any concept of order. Some bore shields, mouldered wood bossed with sigils of Clan Mors and the Great Horned Rat. Those few unfortunates were badgered to the front to face the greenskins charging up the slope towards them like a wave. The nervous chittering of the skaven warriors was overwhelmed by the roar of the oncoming greenskins.
Ska Bloodtail shoved his way through the back ranks, eyes firmly ahead on Queek’s banner, which was held, naturally, by Queek himself. A blood-smeared pole was locked in place on his back-plate, a scrap of dwarf-hide snapping at the mountain wind. The smell of the opposing army made him feel ill. He was many things, but fearless was not one of them, and neither was he stupid. A frontal assault in a pitched battle offended every sense he had. But he would sooner wrestle a daemon with his bare paws than disobey Warlord Queek.
‘Do you have it?’ Queek asked as he came near. The warlord was surrounded by a jostle of clawleaders, the lesser skaven moving respectfully aside as Ska joined their number.
‘Yes,’ he replied, handing over the odd metallic device in his paw. It was a flat rectangle, patterned with something akin to silver, tufts of wiring frayed from each end where he had torn it loose.
‘Did Tinker-rat see you take-snatch?’
‘No.’ He spread his paws to indicate his self-made armour. ‘I find my own way around a workbench.’
‘Good-good.’ Queek gripped the object in his gauntlet, turning to look up at the old bald-fur in his tower, the shadow of a smile playing over his lips. ‘Queek has had enough of these small rats and their scheming. Is time they learn why Queek is warlord.’ He spirited the object into the dark blood-soaked recesses beneath his warpshard breastplate. ‘Tell Tinker-rat attack at once.’
‘Yes-yes, mighty Queek.’
‘And Ska.’
‘Yes-yes?’
‘When Tinker-rat is away, join White-fur’s diversion. Make sure he does not run.’
‘I will,’ he said, pleased.
‘And Ska.’
‘Your will, most thorough one.’
‘Make sure he dies too.’
This time it was Ska’s chance to bare his fangs. ‘With pleasure.’
Chapter Fourteen
The valley was a crucible of thunder, filled to
overflowing with cracked, raucous cries, the beat of drums, of feet, of steel. The heavens had parted and rain streamed down, slapping at hard edges and harder skulls. The scene was deadened beyond that grey veil, as though something preferred that Sharpwit not see. But he heard all. He felt almost godlike high up in his tower, the valley and all its creatures laid out for his pleasure. He had merely to raise one paw and watch his puppets dance.
At the far eastern end of the line skaven rushed down the hill like a flood. The tower trembled at the shock of so many paws scrambling by, the rustling of their squalid rags audible even at its top, their chittering rising to a crescendo of challenging squeals. Razzel and his albino guardian led from the rear, obvious as white lilies in a muddy field. The grey seer squeaked orders and encouragements, brandishing his staff and urging the sinning vermin to greater glory before the Horned Rat. The orcs, rather than awaiting the charge as a dwarf line would have, started to barrel forward themselves, racing up the slope to meet the skaven as quickly as their ape-like legs could carry them. Sharpwit shook the moisture from his fur, smiling as he watched.
Orcs. So delightfully simple.
Their mouths were wide, great pits of hate filled with jagged fangs, barbaric war-cries tearing from their throats, the whole din swallowed into one furious mess of screams and scampering claws. It might all have led a lesser schemer to miss the subtle shift of movement at his back, little but a shadow in the otherwise evenly pattering rain. Not turning, he snarled down through the rain. Queek was a speck of scarlet armour packed into a block of stormvermin. If Queek wanted him dead he should have seen to it himself. But then Sharpwit had always striven to be underestimated.
‘How long have you been there?’ For what felt like a long time there was no answer. He strained his ears. No breath, no heartbeat but his own, no unconscious rustle of fur on rag to betray an amateur out of their depth. Just that patter of cold rain on cold flesh.
‘Since you squeak-talk with Queek,’ came the answer at last, cold as death on the mountains. Sharpwit smiled grimly and slowly turned. He knew that voice.
The assassin, Fang Dao, stood with weapons drawn. A semicircular blade wept poison in each paw. His black cloak glistened wet, swept over his right shoulder to free his favoured left.
‘If it helps,’ Dao whispered in that same cold tone, ‘you were much-much better warlord than Queek.’
Sharpwit sidestepped from the battlement as the assassin came closer. He circled warily, crutches skittering loosely on the rain-slicked stone. The shrieks and thunder of battle faded, his world shrinking to this circle of rocks and weeds. ‘How does that help?’ he spat. ‘If you think that, do something about it.’
Dao cocked his head in a shrug. ‘Queek does not pay Clan Eshin to think.’
Sharpwit hissed at the killer. He had had enough. Enough of grovelling and playing the grateful weakling to these runtish waifs and mad-thing strays that would have been ill-deserving of a chain in his slave chattels when he had been young.
Fang Dao advanced with deadly assurance. He thought he scented a defenceless old-thing, the easiest warptokens he would ever earn his masters.
Fang Dao was wrong.
The assassin leapt, pouncing from a standing start like a striking adder. Weeping blades flashed through the rain for his chest. Sharpwit slid aside, a shard of black sweeping by. The assassin dropped into a roll, springing onto his forepaws and vaulting into the air. His tail whipped beneath his twisting body as it hung for a split second. A twinkle of gold. Sharpwit ducked as a throwing star whistled by his ear, just as Dao landed on all fours, blades clattering against stone, weeds shrivelling and turning black at the touch of Clan Eshin poison. Dao lingered for a whisker before driving to his feet and charging once again.
Weeping metal came in a blur of silver and black, a storm of death from every direction and none. Steel gouged splintered chunks from Sharpwit’s crutches as he fought to match the assassin blow for blow. He may have lost the speed and the strength of old but the years had, if anything, only added to a skill at arms that was already formidable. He fought with a precise economy of motion, wasting no more energy than was needed to ensure that he was simply never where his opponent’s swords fell. But he knew that it would still be him who tired first. Spotting the glimmer of an opening, he stabbed out instinctively, only for the assassin to jink aside at the last moment.
The assassin seemed to bend around the weapon, as if Sharpwit fought a shadow. The assassin hurdled his swinging crutch, body twisting mid-flight, black robes snapping like death’s jaws. Sharpwit saw the kick just as it flashed before his eyes. It smashed dead into his jaw, sending him flying with a broken squeal, blood spraying like a contrail. He crashed over the parapet, neck snapping into empty space, body careening after it only to be arrested at the very last by the reflexive looping of his tail between the crenellations. He slammed to a standstill, knocking the air from his lungs. His bloodied gums opened silently, miming pain, the protest of a freshly animated corpse. He watched, head hung upside down, left crutch pinwheeling down into the aptly named Valley of Death.
The rain had stopped.
His eyes widened in sudden horror at the black-clad shape that filled his sky.
Cloak ruffling in the wind, the assassin dropped.
Ska Bloodtail had never witnessed such brutality.
Clanrats beyond counting surged down the mountainside into the waiting, eager jaws of the orcs. They had wanted to stop. That much had been plain. Screams had torn across the line, the grim paw of realisation settling onto their shoulders as cunning, craven eyes saw up close the horror they charged into. They had dug in their claws, squealing for deliverance as the weight of bodies bore them to oblivion. The orcs roared with laughter as the skaven rushed them, laughing still as they hacked into their furry hides, laughing all the harder as they went down beneath a tide of claws, fighting until the last drop of blood fled their brutish bodies.
Ska stuck devoutly to the rearmost ranks – he had been instructed to keep close to Grey Seer Razzel, after all – but all concept of neat ranks and clever schemes had been obliterated in that first bloody instant of carnage. An orc thumped through the press, green hide beaded with rain, bellowing a war-cry in its animal tongue. Ska parried its cleaver on his rune-axe, its wild lunge leaving it unbalanced, and spun it around with a shove towards the grey seer. A halberd appeared between its shoulder blades as if conjured by the power of the Horned Rat. It grunted, powerfully muscled arms grasping forward for its killer before it finally acceded to death and fell. Ska snarled at the albino stormvermin, the strange-looking warrior withdrawing its blade and immediately casting about for fresh threats to its wellbeing.
Razzel peeked around the albino’s arm at the twitching corpse. ‘Kill-stab again. Better safe than dead-dead.’
The sorcerer extended a paw and unleashed a gout of warpflame over orcs and skaven both. Orcs screamed and beat at their chests as the flames devoured their unfeeling hides, their agonies a blessed gift to the Horned One.
And much appreciated as well by His humble servant, Ska Bloodtail. He backed away from the slaughter with all the courage the skaven of Clan Mors had the right to expect in their leaders. He would have given anything to be back in the City of Pillars. Compared to this madness, he’d take Skarsnik’s twisted little mind any time. The goblin warlord always struck where he was least expected and, given Queek’s hunger for that head over all others, that invariably meant someplace Ska Bloodtail was not.
A tremor passed beneath his footpaws, beaten gromril plates rattling at their chains. He looked up as the ground shook again. Louder. Closer. Razzel lowered his staff, gawping slack-jawed over his shoulder, face drawn with a horror that could not be faked. Ska turned, neck tilting back, further back, jaw hanging empty to the rain. He tried to shout a warning, managed a high-pitched whine that was quickly choked as if his own throat sought to do him a mercy.
Rain swirled around a massive form like seabirds at a cliff face
, orcs squalling at its feet, rising so high into the grey that the phantom shape at its heights could only be inferred as shoulders and head. Ska swayed for balance as a foot came crashing down. The orcs slapped the massive foot with their weapon flats and jeered. Skaven slunk back, clinging on all fours to the mud as though expecting it to be snatched from under them. Trembling eyes darted from the screaming orcs to the oncoming behemoth, a creature in such defiance of logical scale that the thought hadn’t yet occurred to flee. But that was only a matter of time.
‘Run-flee and die!’ Ska squeaked, for his own benefit as much as the wavering clanrats. It was hardly inspiring. The mighty Bloodtail certainly didn’t look, or feel, nearly so fearsome now. ‘Razzel!’ he shouted. The sorcerer didn’t answer, stunned to insensibility. Ska summoned him back with a morale-boosting slap across the muzzle. ‘Grey Seer,’ he said again as the skaven nursed his jaw, eyes locked immovably on the coming giant.
‘We must flee,’ Razzel whimpered. He clutched at his staff as though hoping to hide behind it, tail laid flaccidly behind like a drugged worm.
‘Queek says you fight.’
‘Lunacy!’ Razzel hissed, something of the old self-assurance flickering in his eyes. ‘The Horned Rat commends his children for their cunning and guile. Forget the mad-thing. We find another way.’