by David Guymer
Orcs and dwarfs would keep.
He had an old head to take.
Handrik’s axe tore through the ribcage of a frothing skaven warrior. He put his boot against its belly and kicked it clear. The ratmen streamed from the coming orcs only to find their escape thrown back against the collateral damage of Kazrik and Gorfang’s duel. They swirled between the two forces like a storm, biting and scratching in unthinking panic. Handrik waded into the midst of them towards his prince. He kneecapped another with the haft of his axe, then messily beheaded it. Blood rinsed his tattooed forearms.
Closing with Gorfang had proven tougher than he’d imagined. But then thaggoraki were ever their most savage when cornered. He saw a miner go down, torn to pieces by a mob of snarling ratmen. A brave dawi by his side who bore what could only be a familial resemblance gave an anguished howl and threw himself onto his kinsdwarf’s slayers, only to succumb himself as another of the ratkin pounced onto his back and sank fangs into his neck.
There were few of them left now. Most of the miners had gone with Narfi as he’d hoped they would, but too many had been caught behind. By his side, Dhunk issued a strangled warble from his ruined throat and almost split a ratkin up the middle with a rising blow from his battleaxe. Handrik stepped in behind the other Slayer and turned so they were back to back, bringing his axe up to parry as a foul orc swung its cleaver for his comrade’s back.
Dhunk grunted acknowledgement. The two Slayers courted death from all sides as the orcs flowed round them to encounter the remaining skaven, the dwarfs a harsh island of perpetuity in a torrent of decay. Handrik struggled blade to blade against an orc’s strength, finding time to scowl at the sight of the Headtaker butchering his own path through the orcs to safety. He turned the blade and shoved the orc clear. There was no time to administer the finishing blow before another green-skinned brute came bellowing for more.
He had failed. The Headtaker had escaped and he hadn’t seen so much as a scrap of beard of Thordun or of Kazador’s kinsdwarfs. Nor did he put great trust in the hope that Narfi might have found them and got them out. Fortune seldom favoured the doomed. And yet he was content. He could help earn a prince his vengeance, the grandson of his sentimental old heart; and the fall of Gorfang Rotgut would provide Handrik with a worthy doom indeed. The orc he faced went down from a meaty blow to the kidney. He mastered his surprise to deliver the killing stroke, axe severing its thick neck.
‘Priest,’ he grunted, as the follower of Grimnir spun about to set his own back to Handrik’s and Dhunk’s, a bloodied mace held at the ready. ‘You’re a welcome sight, I don’t mind saying.’
‘A fine doom you’ve found yourself, longbeard. A shame nobody will hear of it.’
‘We’ll tell them when they join us in the Ancestors’ Hall.’
The priest smiled his little smile. ‘Everybody will, eventually.’
‘Aye,’ he agreed, sending an orc to his maker in a dark spray of gore.
‘Shall we sing a song?’ Gunngeir suggested.
Handrik’s heart pounded, as though it had never truly worked before this moment. He was exhausted, but still the orcs came. He resolved to defy his doom until Gorfang was dead and Kazrik avenged. Only then would he permit himself to fall. He stood tall, realising that for the first time in days he felt no pain.
‘Aye. One of victory.’
Rain worried at Sharpwit’s snout as it emerged from his secret passage. The sky had darkened, a settling cloud lending the rocky slope a ghostly shade as day wore on into dusk. The clamour of battle from the valley below had grown fiercer as he had scurried through the tunnel. Now, standing here on the mountainside, peering down and blinded by whispering damp, even those violent sounds had become too disordered to pick apart. Like a single mist-shrouded beast almost close enough to reach out and bite.
‘Hurry-hurry,’ Dao urged behind him, voice muffled within the tunnel.
Queek was coming.
Sharpwit tried to remember how many of the bulky orc-things Queek had torn through, all the while screaming that appellation he so despised: Old-thing. He decided that he didn’t want to remember. It was making his knees shake, and he didn’t doubt that Dao would leave him behind if he slowed them any more than he already was. With a stab of panic he realised how much the assassin knew. Dao could accomplish everything without him if he wanted to.
Perhaps he was getting too old. Time could only be fended off for so long. And he was so very tired.
He tried to move faster, but he was finding it difficult to breathe. His exertions were beginning to tell. He reached up for the grassy overhang and swung his legs from the tunnel mouth. He landed in the fast-flowing shallows, his crutch scraping the hard stone bed for a purchase. He shivered as the stream splashed cold over his legs. Not bothering to help the assassin out, he drew his sword and worked his way across the stream.
With footpaws on firm ground he turned with an impatient tapping of his crutch on naked rock. ‘Fast-quick,’ Sharpwit murmured to himself, not even realising that he did it. Part of him – a big part – wanted nothing more than to be away. He could easily lose himself in these hills. And the rain would be a boon. Even the scent of ten thousand terrified ratkin in the valley below fell dead on his nose.
Dao crawled from the opening like a spider, scuttling onto the lip of the rocky outcropping that reached over the stream. His black cloak clung wetly to his lithe frame as he reached down to draw their human prisoner into the fresh air.
The human reached for the swaying arm but never caught it. He flew out into the sodden sky as though fired from a gun. He crashed face first into the stream with a moan of agony. He rolled onto his back and blinked up at the sky. Ska Bloodtail leapt after him, the golden-furred dwarf draped across one shoulder. Black water fled the impact of his footpaws and he reached with an impatient snarl to haul the human to his feet. The man gnashed his teeth in pain, working to cosset the already blackening wound in his chest while Ska uncaringly yanked him upright.
‘Leave him be,’ Sharpwit ordered. The man looked as near to death as Sharpwit felt, but it would help if he didn’t know it until after he had performed his role. ‘Come-come, Ska. Hurry-scurry, quick-quick.’
On the far side of the stream, half-hidden in mist, Dao rose and leapt. The assassin cleared the stream in a single bound, landing on all fours with a muddy squelch by Sharpwit’s side. His muzzle swept the fog for hidden dangers. He looked anxious to be away and he wasn’t the only one. Without another word spoken, they scurried away over the barren rocks. Sharpwit had good reason to fear. A reason he daren’t speak aloud, at least not while Ska was in range. Queek was coming.
‘Quick-quick, Old-thing,’ Dao hissed, giving his back a shove that almost put him on his snout.
‘Worry… about… yourself,’ he panted. His limbs felt heavy, his head light, his chest an iron band around his aching heart.
Dao suddenly had a knife in his paw. Sharpwit blinked. Now he knew his senses were failing. He would have sworn the assassin hadn’t so much as twitched. ‘I think you should wait here. We run-scurry much faster without you.’
The assassin took one step forward and then froze. His muzzle snapped as if on some reflex and angled down to the serrated blade that had burst through his chest. He gasped and dropped his knife, pawing the bloody puncture as though not believing it could be true until he saw red stain his own paws.
A pair of burning eyes drifted from the fog, settling on the assassin’s shoulder like embers onto a thatched roof. ‘Queek thinks you all should wait-rest here.’ Bone crunched in a spray of blood as he twisted the sword around its length, but Dao made no sound. He was already dead. Queek took hold of the assassin’s long snout and ripped the corpse from his blade. Sharpwit watched the body tumble into the mists, forgotten, filled with a terrible sense of premonition.
‘Queek waits for this, Old-thing. Queek burns for it.’ He licked blood from his sword as he advanced. ‘Traitor-meat has the sweetest taste.’ He grinned
evilly. ‘Like honey.’
Ska moaned like a man-thing whelp terrified by the moon. The shackled dwarf-thing hit the ground with a meaty thud as Ska sank to his knees. ‘Ska is not traitor-meat. Ska is loyal-meat. I only pretended to follow. To learn his evil-rotten schemes and bring them to my great warlord.’
‘Lies!’ Sharpwit hissed, grasping desperately at his last hope, the most important ploy he’d ever had in his life. Queek had just fought an army single-handed and Ska was strong. Very strong. ‘Ska lies to you. He has always lied to you.’
‘No lies. No lies,’ Ska whimpered, scratching the warlord’s greaves in pathetic capitulation. ‘He lies.’
‘You are a mad-thing fool-fool,’ Sharpwit said, heart fluttering as his tongue finally shaped the words he had longed to utter. ‘You are incompetent and I betrayed you. For the glory of Skavendom.’ He pointed a paw towards the grovelling giant. ‘And he agreed with me. He helped me. I promised him great-great things. I promised him the Eight Peaks and kind whispers in the clanlord’s ears.’
‘Not true,’ Ska sobbed. ‘I would never betray my most fearsome, most terrible, most–’
‘Enough!’ Queek glared at them both. Sharpwit shuffled back. His heart raced away from him, like a stone dropped into a deep well. His paw bunched into a fist over his chest. He couldn’t help but wonder just how much life he’d bought himself. The warlord turned his sword on Ska. ‘Up-up, idiot-meat.’
Ska obeyed without question, wiping tears from his black fur with one massive fist. He loomed over his warlord, sniffling in the rain. ‘I didn’t–’
Queek whipped up a claw to seal the skaven’s babbling lips, uttering a soothing purr. ‘Queek knows.’
‘What?’ Sharpwit snapped. No skaven could be so forgiving. No spawn of the Horned Rat could be such a fool! ‘He is traitor-meat, you half-witted, soft-spleened excuse for a warlord. Kill-Kill!’
‘Queek does not listen to old-things.’
‘Fool! I was twice the warlord you were.’
The warlord turned to face him and Sharpwit shuffled further back, chasing pebbles from the heels of his footpaws.
‘Queek does not care.’
‘You would let this fool-rat live? Whether he meant it or not, he did betray you. The stupid do not deserve to survive.’
Queek lifted his sword and Sharpwit pulled up his own shimmering blue steel. The two points sang in unearthly greeting.
‘Stupid, you say? Stupid like plotting against the Headtaker?’
Sharpwit drove a darting feint past Queek’s ear, the blade beginning to split only to snap into one as he pulled it back. The blade felt heavy. Even breathing had become a trial by fire. His vision wavered and darkened, his heart thrumming with a distant, painful rhythm. Somehow he managed not to fall. ‘You think… you think any beyond your own scrap of hill knows or cares who you are? You think in fifty years any will remember?’
Queek nonchalantly nudged aside the magical blade on his own mundane steel. Dwarf Gouger spun menacingly through the fingers of his off-paw. ‘All fear Queek,’ he returned with conviction. ‘All will forever fear Queek.’
‘You are impossible, mad-thing,’ he screamed. ‘You do not know the meaning of forever. Look at me! I am still alive and already forgotten!’
Leading with Dwarf Gouger, Queek leapt forward. Sharpwit batted the maul aside, but his parry held no strength and the warlord barged through it, swinging an elbow that struck him under the jaw. His muzzle snapped up. He felt a tooth loosen and he staggered back, stabbing his crutch into the moist earth to steady himself. Swaying, but unbeaten, he wearily levelled his sword to guard once again.
Queek circled through the downpour. The warlord was in no hurry, intent on savouring every last moment of pain.
Snarling blood, Sharpwit’s tongue probed his broken tooth. Saliva fizzed like boiling sugar at the touch of warpstone. He had exhausted every avenue but the most desperate. Did he dare? Even now he doubted whether the risk was worth it. There were worse things in life than death.
Queek feinted left. Sharpwit shuffled back and snapped his jaw to ward him off, the fang loosening still further. He coughed, chest heaving, and made a tired lunge of his own that Queek rolled and beat aside on his vambrace with a carefree smirk.
Sharpwit snarled, mind suddenly made up. He would tempt any fate to wipe the smirk off that arrogant whelp’s face. He hastened back, enticing Queek to come after him, all the while sealing his lips tight and sucking hard. The tooth popped free and fell onto the back of his tongue. He bared his remaining fangs and snickered, rolling the refined lump of warpstone between his back teeth.
He would have a few minutes of strength at best, but he had been the fiercest warrior in Skavendom in his prime, and perhaps those few minutes would be enough.
‘You always were the trusting fool, Queek. You always underestimated me. Well no more.’
He bit down.
The warpstone cracked in his mouth. It scalded his tongue, and he had to force himself to swallow. Agony prised open his throat and forced its way into his belly. He closed his eyes, clenched his paws, stumbled blind, but he could feel the strength as it pumped through his veins. His heart raced. His gut roared like a warpstone furnace. This must be how the grey seers felt. No wonder some became addicted. His one eye snapped open to show him Queek truly for the first time. Colours long forgotten stormed into the eye that the dark magic had temporarily restored. The red of the warlord’s armour, the black of his fur, the white of his fangs; each the most vivid colour he could ever recall and each as stark against the grey sky as they were against each other. Sharpwit was still marvelling at this when he noticed he had dropped his crutch. His legs thrummed with willing strength. He flexed his paws as he looked down at it, then laughed, swinging his muzzle back to the bemused warlord.
‘No more.’
Queek lunged with a rising snarl and this time Sharpwit met it full on. Their blades clashed. For a split second they grappled, arms entwined, long enough for Sharpwit to enjoy the shock on Queek’s face before shoving the warlord back with a shriek of unshackled fury.
Queek took no time to settle, hurling himself back into battle with an outraged squeal. Sharpwit ducked, parried, retaliated, Queek’s twin weapons an impossible blur of speed and skill as he somehow kept the shifting blue blades at bay. To his annoyance, Queek started to snicker. It sounded genuine too; the mad creature was actually enjoying this.
Sharpwit threw himself onto the warlord’s weapons. Whether the fury he had waited so long to unleash had overcome him or whether it was simply the warpstone in his blood, at that moment he couldn’t care whether he lived. So long as Queek died. Perhaps this was the final distillation of the skaven condition, for a good skaven always made sure another went first.
He battered through the warlord’s defence, his own blade taking the worst of the damage, though not before Dwarf Gouger had opened a great rip down his biceps. Queek fell under him and he howled, stabbing at the warlord’s back before he could rise. He threw his strength into it, made it count, blade flaring blue as it responded to his murder-lust. The blade split, each shimmering point thrust into the joint between the plates guarding back and shoulder. The impact as ensorcelled blades met warpstone steel shuddered through his arm, seven blades vibrating as one. The weapons screamed together, giving off a dense vapour as green-black dust from Queek’s armour gnawed at its length, and he fell back. A mote landed on his paw and began to sizzle. He hissed in pain, but didn’t allow himself to let go. He wanted to scream at the unfairness.
Queek rolled to his feet, shaken but angry. He reached a paw around his back to feel the trench that Sharpwit’s weapon had gouged into his back-plate. The paw came back with glittering warpstone hissing at his claw. With a snarl, he started forward, sword sweeping up into a strike intended to split Sharpwit up the middle. Sharpwit moved to counter, only to find the flesh of his paw melted to the handle of his sword. He screamed, and Queek screamed with him, as the warlord’s bl
ade sheared through his wrist. He fell back with a cry, his treasured weapon spinning clear with his paw still attached.
Queek snickered. Blood spattered his muzzle.
His blood, Sharpwit realised with a giddiness that could only be a consequence of the fluids streaming from the stump of his right arm. He clutched what was left of it to his chest, feeling his body empty, suddenly desperate to cling on to every last scrap of life. His legs were asleep. He slipped in a pool of his own blood and onto his back, not even feeling the punch of solid rock that greeted his fall. His head spun. Like an offering to the gods, his sword lay beside him. Strange that he should see so many blurring blades now that it lay still.
‘You are not… not nearly so good as you think, mad-thing.’
‘Does the dead-thing talk?’ asked Queek, twisting to display his ghastly trophies. The desiccated human hands strung from the trophy rack waved once in farewell. Or in welcome. ‘Squeak to fellow dead-things. Ask them how good is Queek.’
‘You have achieved nothing. Do you not see? Nothing. We scurry through time, like the rats in Fizqwik’s wheel. Over and over the same mistakes. I am glad to be done. I am sick of it.’
‘What was that, dead-thing? Queek was somewhere else. Somewhere interesting.’
‘We steal so much from the dwarf-things, more than any care to admit, but never that. Respect for what is past. I think the Horned Rat prefers his children blind or we would surely have the world now. And he knows we would betray even him if we could.’
‘You admire the dwarf-things.’
Sharpwit gave a shuddering sigh. ‘It would be nice… to be remembered.’
Queek knelt on the sparse earth and bent to gather Sharpwit’s sword. The warlord levelled it to his neck. Sharpwit held his breath, not daring to swallow, as Queek leant in close enough for their eyeballs to touch.
‘Queek will always remember you.’
Thunder rumbled.