by Guy Haley
Thorgrim stared down the aisle between the columns for a while. When he was completely sure he was alone, he stood up, gasping at the pain from his wound.
Whatever the strange power was that had settled on him had healed his armour, but not his flesh. Many dawi had seen him struck, but none had seen his armour rent. Consequently, none knew of his wound but a select few of his closest retainers and the priestesses of Valaya who had treated him. From all of them he had extracted oaths of silence on the matter. Among this select few, only the priestesses knew that it was not healing, poisoned by warp metal. He would let no one else know. If he began griping about every scratch, then how were his people to feel? Dwarfs were of adamant; nothing could break them. They needed to see that quality exemplified in him.
He gritted his teeth against the pain as he stepped from the Throne of Power, steadying himself on its dragon-head decorations for a moment before going on. He had already been weak before the wound. Writing so many grudges into the great book had demanded too much of his blood.
He went to the back of the throne and bent down. Agony stabbed him afresh and he choked back a cry. It was partly to deny the others the sight of their king in pain that he had sent them away, but mainly because Tork had been wrong. The light in the throne had not gone.
It had faded. The gold gleamed still, but only as bright as dwarf gold should. The magic had hidden itself away, that was all. Thorgrim could feel it all about him, and the king knew where it might be.
Sure enough, the Rune of Azamar was glowing with a steady light, more brightly than it had for centuries. The rune of eternity had been carved, it was said, by the ancestor god Grungni himself at the dawn of time. So powerful was it that only one of its type could exist at a time. It was also said that so long as it was whole, the realm of the dwarfs would endure. Thorgrim placed his hand upon it, and the rune’s pulsing could be felt through the metal of his gauntlets. He let his hand drop. This magic was alien to him, not of the dawi at all. But it was not malevolent. Cautious though he was in most matters, he somehow knew this for an unassailable fact.
He missed his runesmiths more than anything then. Kragg the Grim had died months ago during the Battle of the Undermines there at Karaz-a-Karak. The only other who had exceeded his knowledge had been Thorek Ironbrow, and he was also dead, slain years before. No other had their knowledge. He considered asking the younger runesmiths, or the runepriests of Valaya, or the priests of the ancestor gods, but that was a risky course of action. They would likely be as baffled as he, and the tidings would get out. In that time of threat and upheaval, there was only so much more the dwarfs could take. The last thing Thorgrim wanted were whisperings of fell powers in their king’s throne, or, perhaps more damaging, wild hopes of the ancestor gods’ return. Was this not Grungni’s own rune? Did it not guarantee the persistence of the dawi race while it was still whole? Thorgrim felt the first stirrings of such hope himself.
No one was coming. He could not risk the crash in morale that could follow the revelation of this hope being false.
He would wait and see. That was the proper dwarf way. Only when he was satisfied would he reveal this new development.
His mind made up, he wearily got into the throne. He sighed. He supposed he had better apologise to the longbeards. Tork at least needed to know what was happening.
Before he could summon his servants, a long, mournful blaring filtered down sounding shafts into the hall. Thorgrim sat forwards, listening intently. Up on the tops of Everpeak’s great ramparts, the karak horns were sounding. The immense tusks of some ancient monster, the twinned horns were blown whenever danger threatened. From the notes played by the hornmasters, the entire city could be informed of the nature and size of the enemy force.
They played ominously long and low.
The doors at the end of the hall cracked open. A messenger huffed his way up the long granite pavement to the foot of the throne. Red-faced, he executed a quick bow and began to speak.
‘My king, a fresh force of thaggoraki is moving to reinforce the besieging ratkin outside the gates.’
‘Who brings this news?’
‘Gyrocopter patrols, my liege. They report a massive horde on its way.’ The messenger’s face creased with worry. ‘They fill the Silver Road with their numbers for twenty miles and more. Clans Mors is here, Queek Headtaker at their head. Banners of the warlock clans and their beastmasters also. Clan Rictus too. They have many hundreds of war engines, my lord. Also in the deeps, my king. Traps give forewarning. Mining teams report much stealthy movement.’
‘This is it,’ said Thorgrim, clenching his hand. ‘This is it! Bring me my axe! Thronebearers! Everguard! Marshall of the Throngs, call out the dawi of Karaz-a-Karak! We skulk no longer behind our gates! Open the Great Armoury. Take out the weapons of our ancestors. Let them sit in prideful peace no longer! Dawi and treasures both to war! To war!’
As the king lifted his voice, more horns played out their alarms from the many galleries of the Hall of Kings. Within minutes, the entire city was abustle, called to the final battle.
The electric flea-prickle of the skitterleap tormented Thanquol from horn curl to tail tip, and then the sensation was gone. He clutched his robes about him with the sudden chill.
From Nuln to Lustria to the man-thing place of Middenheim, Thanquol had followed Lord Verminking. He had been dragged about the world only half willingly, skitterleaping unimaginable distances. He did not trust the verminlord, because he was not a fool. Thanquol knew he was being used. He was arrogant enough to think initially that he was the master in his relationship with the Verminking, but wise enough to quickly reach the correct conclusion. Thanquol was merely a pawn in the mighty daemon’s game.
Once he had accepted that, everything did not seem so bad. Surely it was no bad thing to serve the most powerful rat in existence after the Great Horned One? And he was learning a great deal from the creature. More, perhaps, than Verminking intended to teach.
He examined their new location. It was an unusual place for a meeting, thought Thanquol, but the symbolism was hard to miss.
Even with its head blasted to rubble, the statue of the ancient dwarf-thing was enormous. Once this great stone king would have watched over the Silver Road Pass, an image of the strength of the dwarf kingdom. Now, in its ruin, it made rather the opposite statement.
‘They come,’ hissed Verminking. ‘Be silent, be deferential, or even I will not be able to protect-keep you!’
Clouds of shadows blossomed all around Thanquol and Lord Skreech. Ten more verminlords towered over him, gazing down, their ancient eyes gleaming with malice.
‘Why-tell the little horned one here?’ asked one of two diseased Lords of Contagion among their number.
Not knowing what to do, Thanquol gave the sign of the Horned Rat and bowed low before each. This seemed well received by the entities. Only the two foulest-looking of them gave tail flicks of displeasure.
‘You know why, Throxstraggle,’ answered Verminking, his own twin tails flickering menacingly. He glared intently at the greasy rat-daemon for a long moment before continuing, addressing the circle of verminlords. ‘We asked-bid you here so that we all agree. The Council of Thirteen decree is that the clan that delivers the dwarf-king’s head name-picks the last Lord of Decay. We are as one on this agreement, yes-yes?’
This was news to Thanquol. From Verminking’s feet he tried to gauge the reaction around the circle. Most of the verminlords bowed their heads in assent. A few of them looked irritated and abstained. It was with some pride that he noticed that none of the verminlords had horns as twisted or as magnificent as did the mighty Lord Skreech.
‘We are but eleven in number – where-tell is Lurklox?’ asked one, a grossly inflated parody of a skaven warlord.
‘Here,’ said a voice from behind them. Thanquol startled, but was pleased not to have leaked out anything regrettable.
A black-shaded Lord of Deception joined the circle, its face masked and body hidden in curling shadows. ‘As we anticipated,’ it said in a whispering voice, ‘the end of the dwarf-things approaches.’
‘All goes to plan-intention?’ asked Verminking.
‘What plan-intention?’ said a white-furred verminlord of inconstant appearance. ‘We agree-pledge that Clan Scruten will be reselected to the Council. This is our plan.’
Again, general indications of assent from the circle, with some dissension.
‘Quite right, we all declared it to be so. Why fret-fear?’ said Verminking reasonably.
‘My candidate is ready. Tell-inform me how the head will be won, and how it will be delivered to Kranskritt.’
‘You doubt our purpose?’ said Lurklox.
‘Lord Skreech takes new-pet Thanquol with him everywhere. He is a grey seer. I suspect-think Lord Skreech intends to gift-give the head of the long-face-fur to him.’
Verminking bristled. ‘You doubt my word, Soothgnawer?’
Soothgnawer laughed. ‘I would be a fool weak-meat to give any credence to your words at all.’
Verminking dipped his head in appreciation of the compliment. ‘Be easy. Thanquol has been very useful, very cunning. He will win great reward for his efforts, but…’ He looked down. ‘His place is not to be on the Council. We need his many talents elsewhere.’
Thanquol inwardly shrank. Until the fateful words were said, he had felt privileged; now he felt like a serving-rat. He kept up his outside appearance of interested confidence, behaving as if he often attended gatherings of such august personages, but inside he seethed.
‘Is this true, little grey-fur? Tell me the truth! I will know otherwise.’
Several of the giants crowded over him. Thanquol’s glands twitched. ‘Mighty lords! The fine and most infernal Lord Skreech Verminking has not told me of any plans to gift-grant me the fine and high most honourable exalted station of a seat among the Thirteen.’ This was exactly the truth. Verminking told Thanquol very little, only revealing his intentions when the outcome was already unfolding.
Soothgnawer sniffed the air as Thanquol spoke, then stood straight.
‘He speaks the truth, the precise truth, although he is very much disappointed to hear he will not sit beside the other little Lords of Decay. Very wise, very clever not to tell the little one of your plans, Skreech.’
‘The wise and cunning Thanquol knows everything he needs to know,’ said Verminking.
Thanquol looked up to the verminlords talking around him. That they could smell untruth and knew the mind of any skaven was an established fact. But it suddenly dawned on him that these gifts did not work upon each other. To all intents, in their own company they were as reliant on bluff and double-dealing as any other skaven. He wondered how. He wondered if he could possibly replicate their methods…
Thanquol remembered this for later use. Already ideas were forming. He wasn’t yet decided on how he could wring an advantage out of this information, but he would. He was certain of that.
TWENTY-FIVE
Queek’s Glory
Queek was old. He felt it in his stiffening limbs. He saw it in the grey that grizzled the blackness of his coat all over, a coat once sleek and now broken with dry patches, whose coarsening fur revealed pink skin crusted with scurf.
Decrepitude surprised him suddenly, coming on swift as an ambush. He had thought to suffer a slow decline, nothing like this. Only three years after his great victory at Eight Peaks, and look at him. Beyond the limits of his arms’ reach, his sight grew dim and unreliable. Through the mists of age, the marching lines of his army blurred into one mass, losing colour around the edges. His smell and hearing remained sharp, but into his limbs a weakness had set, one that made itself more apparent with every passing day in the numbness of his fingers and the stiffness of his joints. The cold made it worse, driving him into frequent murderous rages that his troops had learned to fear.
It was always cold now, no matter where they went. It had been since the night the Chaos moon had burst, circling the world with glittering rings that obscured the stars. In the mountains it snowed all year round.
So much had happened. The swift victory Gnawdwell had wanted had not come. In many places the Great Uprising had not gone to plan, and the Great War against the dwarfs dragged on and on. The land of the frog-things and lizard-things had been annihilated, most of Clan Pestilens along with it, while in the lowlands in the ruins of the man-thing’s lands, the skaven conquered, only to fracture along clan lines. Such was the way of skaven. Alliance with the followers of Chaos had come, a move that made many on the Council, Gnawdwell included, deeply uneasy.
That was politics, and it was not for Queek. During that time Queek had fought the length of the Worlds Edge Mountains, destroying dwarf strongholds one by one, and exterminating their inhabitants wherever they were to be found. Clan Mors had grown rich on the plunder.
Finally, Queek had been ordered to Beard-Thing Mountain-place, where all attempts to take the dwarf capital had failed. Gnawdwell, inscrutable as always, continued his attempts on Queek’s life, simultaneously releasing the full might of Clan Mors and ordering it to go to Queek. Queek had not been back to Skavenblight in the years since their last meeting, wary of Gnawdwell’s intentions, but for the time being Queek seemed to be in his lord’s favour. All Clan Mors’s allies and thralls, from the Grey Mountains, Skavenblight and beyond, came with the Great Banner of Mors. Karak Eight Peaks had been emptied, leaving it an empty tomb for the many warriors who had fallen there in the long years of war.
The dwarf realms had been reduced to but one, the mightiest, the greatest. Karaz-a-Karak, Everpeak, as dwarfs and men respectively called it. Beard-Thing Mountain, as the skaven called it. A name supposed to convey their contempt, but uttered always with fear. Under skies perpetually darkened and striated with the sickly colours of wild magic, the skaven marched to bring their four thousand-year war with the Karaz Ankor to its end.
‘This whole pass stinks-reeks of dwarf-thing,’ said Queek, sniffing tentatively. His tail twitched. The scent of the dwarfs had become inextricably linked with bloodshed in Queek’s mind, and thus with excitement. It never failed to arouse his sluggish pulse, to excite his aged heart.
‘What does the mighty warlord expect it to smell of?’ said Kranskritt haughtily. The presence of Ikit Claw made the grey seer arrogant. Despite the long enmity between their clans, the two of them were knot-tailed much of the time, constantly tittering and squeak-whispering just out of Queek’s earshot, or so they thought. Queek’s hearing was better than he let on.
Queek growled by way of reply. He was in no mood to bandy insults with the seer. Kranskritt still smelt youthful to Queek, granted unnaturally long life by the Horned Rat. Even those grey seers without alchemical or mechanical aid could be known to reach the ridiculously advanced age of sixty. Not like Queek. Queek was old, he felt it. Kranskritt could smell it. Weakness.
‘It will smell of burrow and home soon enough,’ said Ikit. ‘We will smash the beard-things and take their heads. No more dwarf-things! All done. All ours.’
‘This is true. Once enough failures accrue, they call for Queek. No one is better than Queek at killing dwarf-things. Queek will end this siege. Queek will win this war!’
The dead things on his back wailed and gibbered. What they said now made little sense. When their utterances became intelligible, what they said made Queek’s fur crawl. Their voices never ceased. The long periods of quiet he had once enjoyed were no more. Even when the verminlords were close, which had been rarely of late, they did not stop their racket.
‘Not without my help,’ said Ikit. He too, under his mask of iron, had aged better than Queek. Queek could smell the long-life elixir on him. ‘I am the pre-eminent slaughterer of dwarf-things. They call me here to finish it – you are only to help.’
‘Yes-yes,’ said Queek sarcastically. ‘Queek hear many times of great Ikit Claw’s impressive victory over orange-furs of Kadrin-place. I hear the flesh of the dead so poisonous after Ikit Claw’s masterful plan not even trolls would eat it, and even now, three cold-times since big death there, the air is still deadly to breathe. Very good plan, making such a fine mountain-holdfast uninhabitable to skaven clan-packs. Very clever way of denying living space to Clan Skryre’s enemies.’
‘And the dwarf-things,’ said Ikit, his voice ringing inside his iron mask. How Queek had grown to loathe that voice.
Queek found the warlock engineer even more irksome than the grey seer, although he was secretly relieved that the warlock’s clanking pace allowed him to walk more slowly. Ikit’s war engines were impressive, even if it annoyed him to admit it to himself. A lesser clan might scrape together enough warptokens to buy one or two lightning cannons from Clan Skryre. A greater clan might have a dozen. In the siege train of their army there were hundreds, dragged painstakingly through tunnels and mountains to assail this last enduring rock of the dwarf-things. No other warlord clan could access such materiel. As a result of Gnawdwell’s manoeuvring, Skryre and Mors were open allies. The supply of sorcerous machines had been cut off to all other clans. Clan Eshin had not been drawn into the pact, but provided Queek’s army with their warriors anyway. Clan Moulder backed all sides, so consequently many of their creatures, and specifically the newer rat ogre weapon-beasts bred in conjunction with Clan Skryre, supported his troops. With Skryre came the larger part of Clan Rictus’s clanrats. From Rictus, Ikit Claw had his own bodyguard, the Clawguard, war-scarred stormvermin as large and imposing as Queek’s own Red Guard. At Queek’s back went one of the largest skaven armies ever to brave the surface.
‘The fate of more than the dwarfs depends upon this war,’ said Kranskritt. ‘Remember, O ignoble and most devious warlords, whoever takes Thorgrim-Whitebeard’s head will win the seat on the Council of Thirteen. Most assuredly it will be I, and Clan Scruten will regain its rightful place.’