King Logan had always believed Klarak’s position that great good could come from casting aside the cumbersome restrictions of tradition. Now, he was not so sure. Klarak himself had said Ikit Claw was drawn to Karak Angkul only to steal the alloy he’d created, that without the alloy the skaven Doomsphere would be impossible to complete. Klarak had saved Karak Angkul, but perhaps without the engineer’s recklessness, the hold would never have been threatened to begin with.
It was a grim thought, but one which the king could not cast aside. He watched Horgar Horgarsson and Thorlek and Kimril, the only survivors of Klarak’s Iron Throng, standing in mournful silence about their dead master. Horgar and Thorlek had acquitted themselves well in the battles against Skarbrand and the skaven. Kimril had served with equal honour tending the many injured in the battle in the smelthall. King Logan felt the weight of the decision he would need to make. It left a bad taste in his mouth, but the duties of kingship were not always pleasant.
Klarak would be buried with the honour of a fallen hero. The dwarfs of Karak Angkul would demand nothing less. But then the engineer’s name would be stricken from every record. His inventions would be confiscated and handed over to the Engineers’ Guild for proper testing and evaluation. His workshop would be dismantled and its apparatus locked away.
Only in one place would the name of Klarak Bronzehammer linger. It would be found in the Book of Grudges, charged with the misfortunes which had nearly destroyed Karak Angkul. The debt against him would not be cancelled until the heads of Queek and Ikit Claw were set before the Silver Throne and until the horned pelt of Grey Seer Thanquol was pinned to the Ruby Gate.
As he made the decision, King Logan knew how Klarak’s surviving friends would react. Their master had no clan to redeem the grudge laid out against him, so they would take up that task as their own. They would not rest until the spirit of Klarak Bronzehammer could enter the Halls of the Ancestors with honour.
King Logan shook his head as he observed the three dwarfs standing over Klarak’s bier. Perhaps his decision was not such an imposition. After the cowardly way Thanquol had struck down their master, revenge against the grey seer was written upon the face of each of them.
Whatever hole Thanquol had crawled into, King Logan was certain the friends of Klarak Bronzehammer would find him.
The stink of death was all around Grey Seer Thanquol as he picked his way through the deserted tunnels of Bonestash. Any skaven left alive by the vengeful rampage of the dwarfs were long gone, fleeing into the Underway to seek refuge at some other outpost of the ratkin. There was no sign of the dwarfs either; they’d withdrawn all of their warriors to reinforce the defenders of the Fourth Deep. The only sign of life in the entire network of tunnels and burrows were the slinking rats nibbling at the dead skaven scattered throughout the warren.
Thanquol gave the noxious vermin a sharp kick when one of them tried to gnaw on his toes. Spitefully, he expended some of the magic still flowing through his veins. With a squeak of surprise and pain, the inquisitive rat exploded in a burst of fire and smoke.
Immediately, the grey seer regretted his action, a headache pounding against the inside of his skull. After taxing his sorcerous powers to skitterleap far from the halls of the dwarf-things, Thanquol knew better than to place any strain upon his magic. He blamed the irrational hate and viciousness of the dwarfs for setting his nerves on edge. It was their maniacal vindictiveness that had caused him to abuse his powers, casting such powerful spells without the proper preparations and ceremonies. It was a testament to his mastery of the arcane arts that even under such distressing circumstances he’d been able to successfully evoke the aethyr and bend it to his will. A lesser skaven would have teleported himself smack into the centre of a stone wall. But where such a feckless wretch would have perished, Thanquol had succeeded, rematerialising in the dank passages of Bonestash.
In case the Horned Rat had played some small part in his escape, Thanquol made the sign of the Horned One with his claws and mumbled a prayer of gratitude. Just to be on the safe side, he struck down a creeping rat with the edge of his staff, offering its blood to the Blood God. After all, there was just a chance Skarbrand’s essence was lingering close and there was no sense antagonising the daemon needlessly.
His prayers made, the grey seer began scurrying down the cramped tunnel. It would be a long journey back to Skavenblight and a far from pleasant one. He had no slaves to carry provisions for him, no guards to protect him from goblins and spiders and the multitudinous other terrors of the underworld. Worse still, he didn’t even have enough warp-tokens to buy what he needed. Indeed, considering the warpstone shards he’d used to fuel his spells, he was more destitute now than he had been when he left Skavenblight!
Thanquol gnashed his fangs at the thought. Angrily he pointed his finger at a black-furred rat picking the eye from the skull of a stormvermin. The rat burst apart in a flash of green light. The grey seer groaned as he felt his headache worsen.
They were all to blame, those scheming cowards who had thought to exploit the renown of skavendom’s greatest hero! Kritislik and Ikit Claw, Queek and thrice-damned Skraekual, Snikch and that decapitated maggot Rikkit…
Thanquol’s thoughts broke off in mid-curse. Rikkit Snapfang! Of course! That greedy little weasel would never have come back to Bonestash without good reason. He must have had an excellent one to take his problems to Queek Headtaker and risk getting his head lopped off. Even more if he was going to try and play Queek’s army against the weird science of Ikit Claw. Granted, even with the unpredictability of Clan Skryre’s corrupt inventions, Rikkit knew he would be facing the awesome sorcery of Thanquol upon his return. It would take a lot to make a ratman take such a risk.
The answer was clear and bright in Thanquol’s mind. Rikkit had left a stash of wealth behind when he fled. A cache of warpstone big enough to put some steel into the coward’s spine! The same treasure that had lured Kaskitt Steelgrin into making the journey from Skavenblight!
Thanquol hesitated, staring down the tunnel which would lead him back to the Underway and a dangerous, ignominious return to the Under-Empire. He glanced back over his shoulder at the corpse-strewn warren of Bonestash. If he was Rikkit Snapfang, where would he hide his treasure? Of course, it was a difficult thing for a skaven of Thanquol’s brilliance to try and imitate the intellect of a half-wit mouse-chewer like Rikkit…
Uttering a bark of excitement, Thanquol turned and dashed off through the winding corridors of the warren. If he was a spineless rat like Rikkit, he would have taken his treasure with him when he fled! The moment Ikit Claw had started taking over, he would have gathered his warpstone and headed for Skavenblight. Since Rikkit had tried to get Queek to come and reclaim the warren, obviously the warlord had been unable to recover his treasure. And that meant he’d hidden it in a place constantly under Ikit Claw’s observation, a place that afforded him no chance to steal in and get his loot.
There was only one such place! The great storage cavern where Ikit had assembled his woefully defective Doomsphere!
Thanquol raced through the narrow corridors, leaping over dead skaven and darting around fallen boulders. It took him a moment to recognise the smell of the cavern over the lingering smells of dwarf-scent and the ill vapours of the Doomsphere’s dissolution. Yet, after a bit of scrutiny and some guesswork, he reached the half-collapsed chamber. He ground his fangs together as he looked over the destruction. The dwarfs had put the cavern into some semblance of order, rolling aside many of the rocks in their morbid mania to take away their own dead.
Thanquol glanced fearfully at a particular boulder. No mistaking that one, it had come very near to smashing him. The grey seer lashed his tail in annoyance, angry at the twinge of fear he felt. Well, the damnable thing wouldn’t hurt him now! He’d use it as a marker to maintain his bearings while he searched the cave.
Scurrying across the cavern, Thanquol didn’t quite reach the boulder before his eyes caught a gleam of metal off to
his right. Instinctively, he sprang back, raising his staff to beat in the brains of whatever scavenger was lurking down here.
Bitterly, the grey seer lowered his staff. What he’d seen was simply the steel armature of his late bodyguard. The rat-ogre stood frozen in place, its paws broken, its bones chipped, its mechanics dripping oil and fluids. Clan Skryre’s vaunted science! Bah! This shoddy contraption hadn’t even the sense to lay down when it died, or the decency to have some meat on its bones to feed its hungry master!
Imperiously, Thanquol strode towards the unmoving rat-ogre. It was annoying to him that the brute should be standing there like it was. He didn’t like having the gruesome thing looking down at him with its empty eyes. A good kick would solve the problem, and there might even be a few bits of warpstone left in its fuel tanks.
As soon as he came within five steps of the rat-ogre, the brute shuddered into life. Boneripper’s crouched body straightened itself and green lights blazed from the sockets of its skull. A hiss of warpsteam erupted from the rat-ogre’s damaged engine.
Thanquol scrambled for cover, diving behind his boulder. The frightened grey seer peered out from behind his refuge, staring wide-eyed at Boneripper. The huge beast stood where it was, its shoulders shuddering as the vibrations of its mechanics pulsed through its bones.
What was the monster waiting for? Why didn’t it attack?
Slowly it dawned on Thanquol what Boneripper was waiting for. Lashing his tail in anger, the grey seer stood up and brushed the dirt from his robes. Stalking towards the rat-ogre, he swatted its fleshless snout with his staff.
“Bone-brained tick-popper!” Thanquol snarled at Boneripper, striking it again. In mute silence, the rat-ogre bore its master’s abuse, waiting patiently for the grey seer to give it orders.
Panting, his anger spent, Thanquol leaned against his staff and glared up at the skull-faced rat-ogre. “Boneripper! Find-search warpstone!” he commanded.
Obediently, Boneripper began shifting the rubble, searching for the treasure its master coveted. Thanquol watched his bodyguard toil away, uncaring for the toll its exertions were taking upon its already damaged mechanics. Either the brute would find Rikkit’s treasure or it would break down.
The grey seer accepted both possibilities. If Boneripper did break down, he would at least be able to recover the warpstone from its fuel tanks.
About the Author
C.L. Werner was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story in Inferno! magazine. His Black Library credits include the Chaos Wastes books Palace of the Plague Lord and Blood for the Blood God, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.
Visit the author’s website at: www.vermintime.com
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[Thanquol & Boneripper 03] - Thanquol's Doom Page 34