by David Guymer
This was his special secret place.
The ratties would never find him here.
Thordun crept through the grim underbelly of the Black Crag. The hold reeked of ancient decay: dried dung daubed once proud murals, orc sweat so old it had manifested as a kind of misted foulness that lingered in the air. Crumbling statues flanked the hallway as it stretched on into the distant dark. He unbuckled his holster with exaggerated care as he turned, checking to ensure that the men still followed. He wouldn’t blame them for vanishing. The eviscerated remains of the orcs and goblins that had filled the passage from Karak Azul with their stench had tested even the Slayers’ stomachs. But where would they go? Thordun doubted whether even he could make it past the lethal traps that Rorrick had guided them through. His pistol slid free as a shudder passed through him. That stretch of the Ungdrin Road was one he’d not soon forget.
According to Rorrick’s map and those dwarfish markings left intact by orcish occupation, they had emerged into the Third Deep, exactly as the Eight Peaks dwarf had predicted they would. Giving his map a cursory glance, the Slayer had smugly determined that this passage would bear them to the Mordrekk Bridge, and then to the urk dungeons and treasuries on its far side. Thordun worried that they were putting great faith in a centuries-old map and a dwarf who had died following it, but the hour was far too late to be voicing such fears now. The Slayers had forged ahead, ostensibly to scout the bridge for greenskins, but more likely out of exasperation with Thordun’s caution and Bernard’s endless griping. Thordun could blame them for neither.
He tried to envisage the bustle that must once have reigned here alongside the dwarfs of old. Gilded emissaries from the breadth of the world, master craftsdwarfs carving works of enduring beauty, traders bearing goods from the greatest empire the world had known. Iron and masterwork weaponry from Karak Azul, exotic goods steamed up the Blood River from Barak Varr, wool and fresh produce from the human caravans that crossed the mountains at Death Pass. It would all have passed the halls of Karak Drazh. Looking at the grim faces of the statues that lined the walls, he wondered what forgotten ancestors these stones depicted. He wondered what they made of their eternal vigil, watching over the relic of what some, with admirable resilience to a fallen world, still referred as the Karaz Ankor: the Everlasting Realm.
His heart froze at what he swore was the patter of distant feet, an echo that, try as he might, could not be pinned on any of his own party. He forced himself to breathe and pressed on after the Slayers, consigning the scratching at the edge of hearing to the dungeons of his overworked imagination.
He felt a tug on his cloak and turned to meet Bernard’s worried face. The man looked pale, but perhaps it was simply a lie of the torchlight. He yanked his cloak irritably from the man’s grip and set his eyes forward. ‘What do you want?’ he whispered over his shoulder, not wishing to disturb the funereal atmosphere of these ancient ways.
‘Did you hear that?’ Bernard whispered, breath clammy on the nape of Thordun’s neck. ‘Footsteps. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that.’
‘You’re getting hysterical,’ Thordun murmured, not wanting to admit he’d heard it too, that dwarfish ears were keener than men’s.
Bernard gave a nervous laugh that was fooling no one. ‘Me? You know me.’
‘That I do,’ Thordun answered coldly.
‘It’s just…’ Bernard coughed. ‘You know none of us are getting out of here, right? I say we cut our losses and get out.’
‘You were keen enough when we left Nuln.’
‘That was different.’
Thordun turned back, letting the man bear the full measure of his disgust. ‘Can your heart really be as grubby as your hands? Don’t you fear the fate you’ve earned? What awaits after death?’
‘I’ve not thought about it.’
Thordun snorted. ‘Look around. I think it’s high time.’
‘I’m sure Ranald will commend my spirit to some afterlife or other.’
‘Perhaps he will,’ Thordun ventured with a frown. He too had paid occasional respects to the god of thieves. He wondered whether that would be enough to stake a claim to his share of whatever rewards awaited Bernard Servat after death. He shook his head. ‘For dwarfs it is different. Our crimes deny the Ancestors’ Hall not just to ourselves but to all our kin. They don’t deserve casting out on my account. I’ll see them back in their place of honour.’ His jaw set, eyes gazing beyond the Slayers into a blood-shrouded distance only he could see. ‘If it’s the last act of my life.’
‘You’re making me well up, Splitter.’
‘Go if you want to,’ Thordun snarled, shooing the man with his pistol. ‘I’ve not forced you to anything. You followed me from Nuln for the gold. As if you would ever retire.’
‘I might’ve, if you’d kept your word.’
‘If I kept my word!’ Thordun spluttered. ‘You expect me to apologise to you?’
Bernard didn’t answer. His hand closed over the hilt of his short sword. Thordun swung up his pistol, thinking the man intended to strike, but Bernard wasn’t looking at him. In fact he wasn’t looking at anything much at all, his eyes roving in their sockets like canaries in a cage. Thordun heard his own shout as it echoed down the hall. He hunched his shoulders, wincing each time the words returned to taunt him. As if the immortal stone of his ancestors spoke out in judgement of his carelessness.
‘Nice one, Splitter,’ Bernard muttered, pulling the blade free. ‘Tres bien.’
As though Bernard’s movement was a signal, the hall shivered to the draw of steel and suddenly Thordun was ringed by resigned looks and dully reflected torchlight. As though his company had always suspected it would end this way. He pinched his lips worriedly. Karak Azul had infected them all.
An echo reached them, bouncing from statue to statue around the pool of firelight. Bernard turned to his motley crew. One by one they offered token shrugs, shaken heads. He puffed out his cheeks and let out the air in a nervous whistle. ‘I think we’ve got–’
‘Grungni’s hairy back, what’s keeping you?’ Rorrick thundered from the darkness of the tunnel ahead, hammer in the grip of one scabrously tattooed fist. The Slayer waved his hammer back the way he had come. It caught the light strangely. Thordun suspected it had already tasted blood. ‘A handful of grobi on the bridge,’ Rorrick gasped, catching his breath before continuing. ‘But it’s ours now.’
‘That’s good,’ growled Bernard, a wary eye on the passage behind them. ‘Why the fuss?’
Rorrick pulled at his scabs, looking far more anxious than a Slayer should. ‘We might not keep it long.’
Sharpwit’s head rose above the lip of the chipped marble basin, lifting further to peer into the darkness. Fifteen years and it had barely changed, the same stillness, the same faint smell of garlic that should surely have expired centuries ago. It had been fifteen years. Lives had been lived, schemes borne fruit, rivals crushed, yet where was the evidence of that, right here where it all begun? He wriggled further out, coming up between a pair of copper ladles and a whisk that nuzzled against his snout like whelps welcoming their mother’s return. Just as they had before. A nauseating sense of déjà vu flushed his bowels. He gave his head a violent shake to clear it, sending the whisk clattering to the floor. Reaching back into the passage, he drew up his crutch and sword.
His eye shrank from the sudden illumination. The blade’s blue glow threw the ancient kitchen into spectral light. Shadows chased after shadows, fleeing over pebbled surfaces and dark oak cabinets, gathering in resentful huddles behind the utensils that hung untouched from brass pegs.
Grasping the marble in his claws, he hauled himself up and over the lip, flopping gracelessly down onto the lacquered tiles in an aching heap. With a grimace, he reached under his back and extracted the whisk from where it dug into his kidney. The thing seemed destined to haunt him.
Claws scraped over stone from the sink behind him. A clank of metal echoed softly from the depths, like a bell tryin
g to ring only to be silenced at the last. He crawled back as the well of shadow cupped within the marble sprouted a pair of obsidian-black horns, then a white-furred muzzle and a pair of frightened red eyes, bulging wide as though terrified by the ghost of the Horned Rat that he appeared to be.
‘Razzel.’ Sharpwit creaked upright as the grey seer set his claws to the stonework and ingloriously wiggled his backside free. ‘I am pleased-glad you arrived safe-well.’
Razzel’s tail whipped angrily above his horned crown, depositing the brass-bound ash of his staff into an impatient paw. Filthy water puddled beneath him. ‘Is that so, hmmm?’ He pounced, horn chimes making a weary effort at the Horned One’s praises as his claws scratched the tiles. ‘No thanks to that tin-headed, cog-eyed, tinker-fool, I think. Look-see.’ Razzel spun, showing Sharpwit the streak of charred cotton and blackened fur running – on his back, naturally – from the nape of his neck to his tail. He swung back, tail thrashing in anger. ‘Clan Skryre will pay through their copper-glazed eyeballs for this when we are safe-back in Skavenblight!’
‘First there is a victory to win, most malfeasant of messiahs.’ Sharpwit bobbed low, circling away from the sorcerer’s prideful temper. Razzel’s eyes followed him, narrowing as they settled on the sword.
‘Where did you find that?’
Sharpwit angled himself so the sword fell between them. ‘Not important.’
Razzel’s eyes darkened, snout flaring as though his skull would burst. ‘I squeak-say what is important!’ He thrust out a paw. ‘Let me hold-smell. The Council places me in charge, not you.’
‘Not this time,’ Sharpwit hissed, emboldened by the faintest scrabbling of paws from the tunnel behind the grey seer’s back. ‘You are a blind prophet. You lead your children to the cliff face. This time you will listen and do as I squeak-say.’
Razzel gawped, too stunned to react, but that wouldn’t last. He extended a hellfire-blackened claw as though to skewer a bug. ‘You… you…’
Sharpwit’s paw tightened around his sword’s grip. What was taking Fang Dao so long?
‘You…’
Razzel’s mind was still grasping for exactly which of the Horned One’s hells Sharpwit had condemned himself to when the basin at his back emitted a long drawn-out screech before wrenching clear of its fixture. Razzel shrieked, leaping back as some great force heaved the marble bowl out onto the tiles, the limestone shattering under the massive weight. Ska Bloodtail panted in the sink’s blown-out ruin. Foam flecked his muzzle from the effort of hauling his bulk through the narrow channel, black fur and dented armour splattered evenly with grime. Struggling and failing to draw his leg from the hole, he kicked furiously at what remained of the granite fitting until the stone finally crumbled and the giant storm-vermin staggered free.
‘Ska? What are you doing here?’
The fangleader shuffled from the ruined opening, hunched shoulders scraping streams of grey dust from the ancient dwarfs’ ceiling. He gestured wearily at the grey seer before his arm dropped back to his waist, both paws quivering on his hips, snatching every breath as though each was more urgent than the last. ‘Eshin-sneak, he say… he say Razzel to come here.’
‘And Queek tells you, look after, Grey Seer Razzel, yes-yes?’
Ska regarded him with suspicion. ‘Yes.’
Sharpwit waved his sword paw with false modesty. ‘Queek keeps few secrets from me.’ Even if he might intend to. He turned back to Razzel as two more figures emerged from the now gaping tunnel. The mute albino stepped to his master’s side, dripping wet and miserable but at least silent, his bulky halberd strapped by a scrap of cloth to his back. Fang Dao, damn his tardy hide, flowed from the darkness like a physical extension of the albino’s shadow.
‘Razzel,’ Sharpwit said, waving a paw over the grim stones. ‘We are in Black Crag. Tell me how is our man-thing.’
‘What man-thing?’ Razzel returned with apparently genuine confusion.
‘The man-thing,’ Sharpwit repeated sharply. ‘The man-thing from Azul-Place who you were explicitly told to follow and make sure comes to no harm.’ His voice grew shrill as he limped forward. The seer backed away and stumbled into the footpaws of his own bodyguard. ‘The man-thing that is central to everything, the man-thing we cannot afford to lose, the man-thing you stole before leaving me to die!’
Razzel spread his paws innocently. ‘I left you in the paws of the Horned Rat.’ He nodded enthusiastically as though exhorting a congregation to acts of piety. ‘All praise the Great Hor–’
The sorcerer’s praises ended in a crack and a squeal as Sharpwit’s crutch splintered against his shin. Tears sprang from the seer’s eyes, like spring water from the deserts of Araby in response to some miracle, and he collapsed whimpering into the arms of his albino guard.
‘One more time, Razzel. Can the chosen count to one? Let me demonstrate.’ He sheathed his glowing sword beneath his belt and held up a fist, one clawed finger upheld. ‘One more time only, I will ask. Where is the man-thing?’
‘I lost him,’ Razzel squeaked.
‘You lost him?’
‘Yes-yes, he leaves. He leaves with other man-things, I don’t know where. Is hardly my fault if stupid man-things cannot do as they are told.’
‘You lost him.’
Calmly Sharpwit bunched his finger back into his fist and spun around, pulling free his sword.
Razzel wrapped both paws around the albino’s biceps and struggled to pull himself up onto his broken leg, succeeding only in scrabbling on the tiles like a wounded blindfish hauled out from the deep. ‘The Horned Rat provides,’ he squealed, desperately. ‘Have faith in him, Sharpwit, in his chosen!’
‘Ska,’ he said, setting his crutch between them like some demarcation of neutral ground upon which to hammer out a truce. Standing before Queek’s right paw, Sharpwit was struck by how truly massive he was. He reached only up to Ska’s collar. Ska’s pieced-together gromril breastplate distended his already monstrous frame to such a degree it was an astonishing testament to his strength that he could even walk. ‘That thing that Queek-Warlord tells you to do.’ He tilted his head back towards the still-raving sorcerer. ‘Do it now.’
Ska looked over Sharpwit’s shoulder, then back down at Sharpwit himself. Sharpwit sensed muscles pull against bone, the way one feels the subtle precursors to an earthquake.
‘Now?’
Sharpwit nodded.
Pushing Sharpwit forcibly aside, Ska strode towards the grey seer. The sorcerer’s gibbering upped in urgency and he shoved out his staff as if to ward off a fox. Ska froze, expecting the fires of damnation, but received nothing more terrible than the metallic kiss of brass on gromril. He batted the staff aside, vambrace cracking it in two at the middle. Razzel shrieked in renewed terror and the albino let him flop from his arms, diving for the fangleader with a whistled snarl.
The albino’s teeth gnashed for Ska’s face, snapping down only inches from his snout with Ska’s paw gripped tightly around its jaw. Claws blunted on gromril plate as the albino drooled helplessly from its pinioned maw. The albino’s eyes widened as Ska’s other paw took a firm hold between his legs. The pale warrior gasped as Ska heaved, driving him up, head crashing through the stone ceiling. Ska roared as though his voice itself was a bludgeon, powdered rock drenching his shoulders as the albino slammed over and over into the hard rock of the Third Deep until its pale legs stopped twitching. He tossed the dusted corpse aside, sending it thumping into the wall, rolling back onto the floor tiles amidst a clatter of brass-handled utensils.
‘Ska!’ Sharpwit squealed. Razzel was scrambling across the ruined floor. Brushing aside the layering of dust, his paw found his staff. Sharpwit cast for something to hide behind, finding nothing more suitable than the hulking stormvermin himself.
Razzel tittered madly, power coursing through his body, and started to rise. The grey seer suddenly squealed in agony, the beginnings of a sorcerous chant coming apart like the bones of his broken paw as Ska Bloodtail leapt f
orward and stamped down on his fingers. The sorcerer mewled, pawing lamely at his staff. Ska shrugged off the masonry that had fallen about his shoulders and reached down with one paw to haul up the broken wizard by his neck.
‘Help-help any time, Dao,’ Sharpwit hissed.
The assassin materialised at his back. Sharpwit jumped and bit his tongue.
‘You seemed fine,’ the assassin whispered coldly.
Letting an angry snarl express his displeasure, he turned to Ska. ‘Bring-bring the great prophet-seer.’
Ska dragged the grey seer through the rubble, letting him dangle at Sharpwit’s level like a white-furred doll, footpaws hanging free, bleeding slowly out.
‘Grey Seer Razzel, most pretentious of prophets. Bland-fur, blank-mind, whatever is to be done with you?
The sorcerer whispered, his devotions beyond hearing, but then Sharpwit doubted they were meant for mortal ears.
‘I asked once whether you can be useful.’ The seer didn’t respond, didn’t let up in his prayers. ‘Do you remember what you squeak-said?’ Still nothing, unless one counted a feeble paw scratching at the arm about his throat. ‘Yes-yes, you said.’ He leant forward until his eye was almost touching Razzel’s. ‘Call me fool-fool, but I think you are still useful. Am I wrong?’
Razzel suddenly snapped back to life. ‘No-no! Not wrong, wisest and most forgiving of old ones.’
Sharpwit grinned nastily. ‘Queek never did like grey seers.’ He gestured to Ska who happily unburdened himself of his load, the unsupported sorcerer practically collapsing in upon himself at Sharpwit’s feet. He planted his crutch between the fingers of the seer’s crushed hand, levelling his sword to his nasal bridge, watching the seer’s eyes roll together to meet at its glowing point.
‘If you guess how long I have looked forward to this, I promise to make it fast-quick.’