The council of Under-Altdorf met in a large hall called the Supreme High Leader Nest. It was extravagantly ornamented with a motley collection of marble blocks and granite columns stolen from the human city above. A riotous array of colourful tapestries drooped from the walls, some of their human subjects crudely disfigured to resemble triumphant skaven warriors. The floor was a tiled mosaic of different coloured bricks while a crystal chandelier swung from the roof overhead. Thanquol was reminded of the pretentious opulence of the palace of Nuln’s breeder-queen, only on a shabbier scale. Perhaps the self-important lords of Under-Altdorf might intimidate some witless ratling from the hinterwarrens of skavendom with such a crude display, but for one who had walked the tunnels of Skavenblight, Thanquol saw it for the pathetic excess it was. The skaven of Under-Altdorf had perhaps spent too much time around humans; they were starting to adopt some of their habits.
Like the true ruling council of the Under-Empire, that of Under-Altdorf boasted thirteen seats. In a touch Thanquol found impious and possibly sacrilegious, no seat had been reserved for the Horned Rat. Instead the positions of authority had been shared out between the city’s most important clans, with the exception of Grey Seer Thratquee’s own seat. One chair was held by Skrattch Skarpaw, the Shadowstalker of Clan Eshin, with a further two seats held by his subordinates. Another chair was held by Fleshtearer Rusk of Clan Moulder. Pontifex Poxtix was the Clan Pestilens representative on the council. Other seats were held by the warlords of Clans Skab, Skaul and Mors.
The remaining seats were held by Clan Skryre, a potent display of their influence and power in the city.
Warplord Quilisk was the highest ranking of the warlock engineers, a sinister figure with a lower jaw sheathed in metal and a riot of tubes and pipes running from a complex iron pump into his chest. The other Clan Skryre representatives were clustered around him and in obvious fear of the local clan-leader.
A final, non-voting seat, was reserved for a Clan Sleekit fleetmaster, a fat, sleepy-eyed ratman with thinning fur and the smell of weirdroot about him. He affected the frilly cuffs and sleeves of some effete human and wore gaudy rings on his fat little paws. If the decadence of the meeting hall itself were not evidence enough of Under-Altdorf’s corruption, a single sniff of Shipgnawer Nikkitt would be.
Thanquol ignored the offensive fleetmaster and tried to focus his attention on Thratquee on his overstuffed chair. Thratquee’s seat, indeed those of all the council members, appeared to have been purloined from an opera house, still carrying a lingering stink of the human about them.
“Honoured clan-lords of Under-Altdorf,” Thanquol began, careful to keep one paw stroking the black talisman around his neck. He could feel the eyes of every skaven fixed on the amulet, burning with envy and fear in equal measure. “I have come to you as the chosen representative of…”
“We know all that,” snapped Viskitt Burnfang, one of Warplord Quilisk’s underlings. Burnfang was an emaciated warlock engineer with a distinct patch of black fur running across one side of his face, jarringly offsetting his otherwise light brown pelt. Burnfang had a complex network of pipes and pistons running down his arms, some arcane supplement to offset his withered muscles. “Why do the Lords of Decay send you to spy on us?”
“Because of your reckless experiments and blasphemous speak-talk!” snarled Poxtix. Bundled in his ragged green robe, only the pontifex’s decayed snout projected into the murky light, though even so reduced a sight of the plague priest’s face was revolting enough. “Repent-revile the abominations of your technomancy and embrace the festering gifts of the Horned One’s true face!”
“It is your blasphemies that bring the suspicions of Skavenblight upon us, tick-licking toad-mouse!” The vicious snarl this time belonged to Warlord Gashslik of Clan Mors, a hulking black-furred brute clad in the steely skin of a human knight. “Pushing your pestilential faith into excesses no skaven of conscience can tolerate!”
Thanquol blinked at the quarrelling clan leaders and tried to inject a greater volume and authority into his voice. “Masters of Under-Altdorf, I come here in the name of…”
“You should snarl!” roared Warlord Staabnash of Clan Skab. Shorter by a head than his rival from Clan Mors, he was if anything twice as broad, so swollen with muscle that his bronze armour seemed ready to burst every time he moved his massive frame. “You and your toe-stabbing runt-stickers have been sucking up to Poxtix and his fanatics like they were your mother’s teats! How convenient that your warriors should happen to save this maggot-eater’s pelt last Vermintide when he dared preach his heresies in the scrawl and the clanrats rose up in pious indignation!”
“I come to Under-Altdorf…”
“Muscle-brained orc-fondler!” spat one of the Clan Skryre leaders, a twitchy creature in red robes who had somehow managed to burn off his ears as well as all the fur on top of his head. “We know who was behind that riot! I am sure Clan Skab did not shed any tears when our warpfire thrower workshops were burn-wrecked! Not after you were told your bid for our weapons was low-low!”
“The Lords of Decay have sent me…”
“My clan knows those weapons well, death-peddling grub-biter!” Skrattch Skarpaw rose from his chair, menacingly fingering the array of knives he wore across his chest. “They ended up in the paws of Clan Skaul so they could attack the dojo of my night runners!”
There was silence a moment, then the eyes of the council of Under-Altdorf shifted to Naktwitch Nosetaker, the local head of Clan Skaul. The scrawny ratman with the reddish-hued fur puffed idly at a ratskull pipe and blinked at his scowling contemporaries.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Naktwitch said with a purely human shrug of his shoulders.
The comment caused the council chamber to erupt into a dozen arguments, each voice trying to hiss down the other. Thanquol ground his teeth together, then settled back while he waited for the bickering leaders to quiet down. This was the hierarchy of Under-Altdorf? These were the skaven who thought they could make their city the new Skavenblight?
A cunning gleam entered Thanquol’s eyes as he leaned against one of the columns and crossed his paws. Such enmity between the clans could serve him even better than any unity of purpose. He could play each rivalry for all it was worth. He wouldn’t seek to curry favour with any of the clan leaders. Let them seek to earn his favour! Each would seek to outdo the other trying to support Thanquol, giving the grey seer far more resources than he could draw from any single clan. It was a prime situation to exploit, and if some small part of what was generously donated by the clans went to rebuild Thanquol’s diminished personal fortune rather than achieving the Council’s mission, well that was simply something the Lords of Decay didn’t need to know about.
Thanquol was just beginning to feel quite pleased with himself as the hissing, snarling music of the clan leaders swirled around him when he happened to glance at old Thratquee. The elder grey seer wasn’t participating in the bickering of his fellows. No, he was instead being quite silent. Just sitting back in his chair, his gaze fixed on Thanquol, watching every breath the younger seer took, observing every twitch of his tail and flicker of his whiskers.
Thanquol couldn’t hold that stare. It felt too much like Thratquee was trying to look inside him, to let those old eyes burn a hole right down into his soul.
The bright glow of kerosene lamps shone down upon a long marble-topped table. Fluted columns flanked a circular chamber, supporting the domed ceiling high above. Tiered seats formed a semi-circle around a sunken pit, making it seem almost like the stage of a small amphitheatre. It was upon this stage that the marble table reposed, and around it, two figures moved with all the care and precision of the most rehearsed thespian.
One of the figures was old, a full white beard compensating for his bald, liver-spotted head. He carried himself with a pronounced stoop, but with the dignity of a man of position and authority. His rich clothes were obscured by a crude smock of white that covered him from neck to kn
ee, providing only the most scant glimpse of the finery beneath.
His companion was also in white, but her garments were of the softest fabrics, flowing robes that might have been spun from snow. The image of a heart dripping a single bead of blood was embroidered upon the breast of her robe, picked out in yellow thread. About her neck, she wore a silver pendant displaying a dove. She was not so old as her associate, but the stamp of time had already seeded silver in her long, dark hair, and little wrinkles spread away from her deep, sombre eyes.
The object of their attention was spread out across the table. It had been the carcass of a mid-sized dog, though now it had been dissected into its component parts. Standing in a surgical theatre in Altdorf’s prestigious university, it would have been strange for the two examiners to know that their subject had only the night before been killed while menacing a little girl deep in the city’s worst slum.
The old man stepped away from the table, wiping his hands on his smock. He shook his head in consternation. “I am at a loss,” he finally confessed, throwing up his gloved hands. “I can’t say how this cur died, nor what horrible disease so thoroughly ravaged its body.” He gestured at the hound’s skull and the marks left by Theodor Baer when he brought down the animal. “These injuries for instance,” he said. “I cannot decide if they were made ante-mortem or post-mortem. Everything about this creature is simply wrong, Leni!”
Leni Kleifoth, the woman in white, nodded her head sympathetically. “I share your confusion, Professor Adelstein. The affliction this poor animal suffered is nothing known to the Temple of Shallya. I thought at first,” the priestess suppressed a shudder and a haunted look crept into her eyes. “I thought at first it might… might be the work of… of the Fly Lord, loathed be his name.”
Professor Adelstein’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “You had every reason to believe such. The ways of the Ruinous Powers are infinite and horrible.” He stepped back to the table and removed a glass jar from the marble top. Inside was one of the hideous worms that had infested the carcass. “I’ve examined this thoroughly. Whatever it looks like, it isn’t a worm! I don’t think it was ever even alive, not as we understand life. It isn’t a thing of flesh and ichor. Do you know what it is composed of?” The professor paused for emphasis before speaking his discovery.
“Dust,” he said. “That’s all it is: dust!”
Leni stared intently at the strange thing that looked like a worm. Dust! But how could it be simple dust? How could dust corrupt an animal in such a gruesome fashion! Why would dust mould itself into a semblance of life! She felt a chill pass through her. The temple of Shallya was devoted to combating the myriad diseases and afflictions that plagued mankind, even the daemonic fevers sent by the Fly Lord. This was something else entirely, something beyond her experience, perhaps even beyond the experience of her entire order.
“No common dust,” the professor continued, pacing behind the table as though conducting one of his lectures. “I’ll grant you that. It is a strange, weird sort of dust, like nothing I have seen before. But it is dust.”
“What does it mean?” Leni asked, her voice a grim whisper.
Professor Adelstein’s look became as sombre as that of the priestess. “You know who wanted us to examine this carcass,” he said. “That alone should tell you what it means. Something dark and terrible is at work in this city.”
Skrattch Skarpaw crept through the gloom and murk of the old burrow system. Abandoned generations ago when the underground river had flooded and drowned its inhabitants, the tunnels still carried a musky reek of death. The assassin kept to the thickest shadows as he made his way through the dripping corridors and half-flooded chambers. He was careful to keep his feet beneath the water, trying to offset any betraying splash that might carry through the darkness. The assassin paused many times, feeling the current of the air with his whiskers. He stifled the impulse to twitch his tail in amusement. The current was blowing towards him, carrying his scent back into the sprawling network of Under-Altdorf and away from the one he had come here to find.
Arrogant and insulting, the message Skarpaw had received evoked the ratman’s deepest ire. Only a fool would provoke one of Clan Eshin’s most savage killers to such anger, and Skarpaw was not one to suffer fools. He would add the insulter’s pelt to that of the skavenslave who had acted as his messenger, a vivid reminder to any others who thought to dishonour Skarpaw and his clan.
The assassin’s whiskers twitched as he caught a new smell beneath the musky death-stink. It was the scent of mangy fur and festering sores, the smell of mouldy rags and rusty metal. Clan Pestilens! He should have expected some fanatic from the disease-worshipping cult to be behind such madness. Pontifex Poxtix would be short a few followers after this night’s work. Maybe Skarpaw would send the plague priest the heads of his deranged followers as an example of Clan Eshin’s prowess.
Skarpaw lifted his head. Even to his keen eyes, even knowing what he was looking for, he couldn’t see the slightest sign of the menace prowling above him on the roof of the tunnel. Trained in the arts of stealth and murder by the hidden masters of Cathay, the team of black-clad killers who formed the triad were Skarpaw’s most potent warriors, living weapons that struck from darkness and melted back into the shadows before the most wary skaven could draw a breath. Steel climbing claws were fitted about their paws, allowing them to find purchase even in the slippery rock of the abandoned tunnels. Even if some quick-eared sentinel did detect Skarpaw’s approach, his foes would expect the assassin’s guards to be around him, not above him.
A sickly light glimmered in the darkness ahead. Skarpaw’s lips pulled back in a feral smile. This would be easier than he thought. He drew the weeping blade from its scabbard, a sweat of poison dripping from its serrated edge. One cut from such a blade would finish even a plague monk, however many contagions the fanatic had invited into his flesh.
The musky smell intensified as Skarpaw crept forwards. Above him, he could smell the eagerness of the triad as they hurried along the roof, eager to begin the killing. Briefly, Skarpaw entertained the notion of allowing his minions to settle the affair for him, then he remembered the condescending lines he had read upon the ratskin parchment and his rancour rose once more. He’d cut the flea’s tongue from his mouth and feed it to him!
The greenish light now revealed a small chamber. Skarpaw could see a clutch of plague monks gathered about the far end of the chamber, their robes frayed and decaying. At the centre of the chamber, upon a crude dais that helped it rise above the level of the water, a throne-like seat of old bones had been set. Upon that seat rested a figure as abhorrent as anything Skarpaw had ever seen. Even the assassin was repulsed by the swollen boils that disfigured the seated ratman’s face, by the sickly green taint to his flesh and the thin patches of fur that yet sprouted from his diseased hide. The tattered robes the ratman wore were heavier and thicker than those of his minions, ugly symbols stitched across the border of the long cowl that framed his face. A heavy book bound in skavenhide rested in the monster’s lap while his claws played absently with the tiny copper bells that dangled from a long wooden staff.
Skarpaw’s eyes were drawn to that staff, widening as he saw the spiked metal globe that topped it. The green light was coming from openings in that globe, forming a pungent fog as it billowed away from the throne, caught by the current in the air. The assassin had seen the plague censers of Clan Pestilens before and knew their potency on the battlefield. The biggest troll, the most stubborn dwarf, none were immune to the toxic fumes of the plague monks. He started to back away, deciding that perhaps it would be best to allow the triad to do the job for him after all.
Then Skarpaw felt something slide against his leg. The assassin’s head snapped around, staring at the dimly seen object bobbing on top of the water. It was the bloated carcass of a rat, and it was far from alone. Having spotted one, now Skarpaw’s keen eyes could pick out dozens. The assassin realised with horror something he had observed
but failed to appreciate during his vengeful passage through the tunnels. Every corner of Under-Altdorf was swarming with rats of every size and shape. They formed an important part of the skaven diet. But the old, flooded tunnels had been devoid of them. Now Skarpaw understood why.
Before the assassin could retreat, he heard a moaning gargle drip down from the ceiling of the chamber. He watched in horror as first one, then another of the triad killers plummeted from the roof, their bodies swollen with corruption. The musky death stink! It wasn’t some lingering stench left by the drowned skaven, it was the pestilential fumes rising from the seated plague priest’s staff!
As the last of the triad splashed to the chamber floor, Skarpaw felt his chest starting to burn from the inside. Whatever had struck down his killers, he had been exposed to it just as much. Realising he was already dying, the assassin lunged forwards, snarling his defiance. If he could not escape, then neither would his murderer!
Skarpaw’s feet drove through the flooded chamber, a savage hiss pushing through his clenched jaws. The assassin raised the weeping blade clutched in his paw, intent upon burying it in the sneering, diseased face beneath the priest’s cowl.
The assassin’s strength deserted him before he covered half the distance. Skarpaw sank to his knees, his sword slipping through claws too weak to grip it. Spots danced before his eyes and the chamber refused to stay in focus. His head sagged against his chest, bloody foam flecking his mouth.
Suddenly a fierce grip closed about the back of his neck and raised his head. Skarpaw felt something slimy and cold pressed against his lips, felt something like molten ice race down his throat. Slowly his bleary vision began to clear. He found himself staring into the warpstone eyes of the disfigured plague priest. The sneer was still curling the monster’s face as he backed away from the recovering assassin and resumed his seat upon the morbid throne.
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