01 - Grey Seer

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  Then new smells registered in Thanquol’s nose, one of which set the grey seer’s tail twitching in excitement. The Wormstone! There could be no mistaking that cold, evil smell. Kratch had recovered it! All that was left was for Thanquol to seize the weapon from his slinking apprentice while he was beset by his own enemies! It would be unfortunate not to take his time killing Kratch, but possessing the Wormstone would go far in the way of compensation.

  He was just turning to growl new orders to Boneripper when Thanquol detected a strengthening in the scent of both Kratch and the Wormstone. He abandoned his idea of using the rat ogre as a distraction, bursting into the midst of the fray in the sewer while he slipped in and stole, no, recovered, the Wormstone before anyone was aware of him. The Horned Rat had once again smiled upon his chosen prophet. He would not need to go into the sewer to seize the Wormstone or kill Kratch; both of them were coming to him.

  Thanquol motioned Boneripper to flatten himself against the side of the wall. The way Kratch’s scent was growing, the apprentice was in full flight. He wouldn’t be aware of the lurking grey seer and his bodyguard until it was far too late to arrest his headlong, craven retreat. Thanquol drew the ratskull snuff box from his robe, inhaling a pinch of the warpdust powder. Perhaps he would take his time with Kratch. Anything less might be insulting to the Horned Rat for presenting him with such an unexpected gift.

  Scurrying skaven appeared suddenly in the gloom of the tunnel. As Thanquol had surmised, their pace was so hurried that they were unaware of his scent until they were almost on top of him. Most of the fleeing vermin were first made aware of their presence when Boneripper exploded upon them in an avalanche of blood and screams. A Clan Skryre skirmisher shrieked into his gas-mask as Boneripper impaled him on the rusty metal fist-spike of his mutant arm. A pair of Clan Skab warriors crumpled into a pile of twitching wreckage as a sweep of Boneripper’s claw eviscerated them. A weedy Clan Skaul sneak howled in terror as Boneripper lifted him to his immense mouth. The rat ogre’s fangs bit down, severing the screaming ratman just beneath the rib cage. Boneripper crunched noisily on the fore section while the rest of the mutilated skaven flopped to the floor in an obscene display.

  Once certain that his enemies were fully engaged by and focused on the terror of the rat ogre, Thanquol sprang from the other wall of the tunnel. His claws locked around the throat of his chosen prey, unholy fire glowing in his eyes. There were so many spells, so many unspeakable secrets of the eldritch and the arcane he had learned over the years. Choosing the right one to send Kratch’s wretched soul snivelling from his shrivelled flesh was something it was hard for Thanquol to resolve.

  “Great and wise m… master!” Kratch wheezed, gasping for breath. “Glory-glory that your eminence live-live! We fear-sad that you die-die!”

  “I won’t be able to say the same,” Thanquol hissed through clenched fangs. “Die, snivelling traitor!”

  “Mercy-pity, kind tyrant!” Kratch pleaded. “This humble one has saved the Wormstone for you! Saved it from the real traitors!” The apprentice waved a frantic paw at Viskitt Burnfang and a pair of surviving warlock engineers. Between them, the heavy iron box rested on the floor. The Clan Skryre skaven were looking anxiously between Boneripper and the tunnel behind them, trying to decide whether to brave the mutant rat ogre or the battle they had fled.

  Thanquol’s eyes narrowed, his grip tightened. “What ‘real traitors’? Speak-squeak flea-maggot! Who attacks you and your miserable entourage?”

  “Skrattch Skarpaw!” whined Kratch. “He set upon your loyal servants as we entered the man-thing scat-stream! Mighty Thanquol, he seeks the Wormstone!”

  “Obviously, you dung-brained swine!” Thanquol cursed, dropping Kratch onto the floor. He looked past the grovelling apprentice to the hulking Boneripper. Thanquol snapped a quick command and the rat ogre relented in his savage persecution of the other cowards who had followed Kratch in retreat. The grey seer’s fiery gaze swept over the cowering ratmen, resting at last on Viskitt Burnfang. “Swear loyalty to me or die, maggot-feeding trash!”

  Burnfang held his head so low that his whiskers brushed the ground. “Of course, mighty voice of the Horned One! Burnfang has ever been your loyal-honoured servant!” The warlock engineer glared at Kratch. “I follow this slag-scat only because he claims his master is lost-dead!”

  Thanquol decided now was not the time to remind Burnfang that he had abandoned the cellar—and the grey seer—before Kratch had made his own escape. As soon as Burnfang spoke, the other refuges began stumbling over one another in their hurry to echo his oath of servitude and devotion. Thanquol waved their assurances aside, recognising them for the empty breath they were. The skaven of Under-Altdorf were absolutely without honour or scruple, they’d do anything to benefit themselves, whoever they had to betray for such advancement. He would use the scum, for now, then dispose of them when they were no longer useful.

  “Gracious and merciful despot,” Kratch whined from where he had fallen to the floor. “You must hurry to save those loyal-true skaven who fight even now against your enemies!” The apprentice pointed a crooked finger down the tunnel towards the continuing sounds of conflict. “Wretched Kratch will stay behind and protect the Wormstone.”

  Thanquol swatted the unctuous adept in the snout with his staff, sprawling him across the floor of the tunnel. He was tempted to unleash the full malignity of his magic against the ratman, but he knew he would need the full might of his sorcery if he would make good his escape… and do so with the Wormstone.

  “We will face Skarpaw together,” Thanquol growled. He felt a delicious surge of satisfaction at the fear that flickered through Kratch’s eyes as he said the words. Having just quit the battle, the adept was of no mind to return to it.

  The grey seer saw otherwise. The fierce snarls of battle echoing up the tunnel had given him an idea, an idea as callous as it was cunning. And Kratch had a part to play… a very important part. More satisfying than slowly torturing the traitor to death would be to use Kratch’s destruction to ensure his own survival.

  “Back to the man-thing scat-stream!” Thanquol snarled. When the other skaven appeared to share Kratch’s opinion of returning to battle, Thanquol snapped a quick command to Boneripper. The rat ogre’s paw closed around the closest skaven, crushing every bone in his body with a single tightening of his fist.

  After that, the skaven would follow Thanquol straight into the jungle hell of Daemon-Sotek if he ordered them to. At least so long as Boneripper was close enough to enforce the grey seer’s commands.

  Skrattch Skarpaw watched as his little army continued to destroy the ambushed skaven of that preening Skavenblight upstart Thanquol. It had taken every favour bought by bribe or threat to assemble such a force, but Skarpaw did not grumble too much about squandering the resources of Under-Altdorf’s branch of Clan Eshin. If he did not capture the Wormstone for Lord Skrolk, his life would end in horror and pain. Even if he failed, a chilling thought, Skarpaw was not about to leave his carefully cultivated resources for whatever upstart succeeded him as clanleader. Better to squander them now when there was a chance they could do him some good!

  The assassin looked over his force with pride. Warpfire throwers from Clan Skryre, black-furred stormvermin from Clan Mors. From Clan Moulder had come a pair of rat ogres and nearly a hundred oversized and extremely ferocious rats. Clan Sleekit spear-rats and Clan Skaul slingers scurried at the periphery of the conflict alongside his own clan’s gutter runners and clanrats. They closed the noose tighter about Thanquol’s hapless underlings with every passing breath, choking the petty-tyranny of the grey seer with each traitor they cut down.

  So far Skarpaw had not seen the grey seer, nor picked up his scent. He had seen the grey seer’s apprentice, however, and more importantly, he had seen what could only be the box they thought to convey the Wormstone in. The scent of Thanquol’s workshops was familiar to Skarpaw; the assassin had prowled them many nights looking for an opportunity to finish th
e grey seer. The smell rising from the box was stronger, telling him that what he needed was indeed inside.

  Everything depended on the Wormstone. With it, he could force Lord Skrolk to give him the antidote to the corruption the plague priest had infected him with. He could feel the corruption even now eating away at him, sapping his strength, dulling his reflexes, clouding his mind with decay.

  Skarpaw would have his revenge upon the diseased Lord Skrolk. Once free of Skrolk’s threat, he would find a way to take the Wormstone back from Clan Pestilens. The weapon would be safer in the paws of Clan Eshin, and if he was the instrument of that transfer of ownership, Skarpaw’s status within the clan would be second only to the Nightlord and the Deathmasters. A greedy glint entered the assassin’s eyes. Why should he set a limit to his ambition?

  A chittering cry of agony betokened the brutal demise of some of Thanquol’s minions, incinerated in an instant by a blast of warpfire from one of the Clan Skryre weapon teams. Their bodies were little more than charred skeletons even before they crashed to the floor, the sickly sweet scent of burnt meat and fur billowing across the brick-walled confluence of human tunnels that formed the scene of Skarpaw’s triumph. The master assassin twirled his whiskers, imagining the moment when he would be free.

  Suddenly a new scent drew Skarpaw’s attention, a smell that was far from unfamiliar to him. The apprentice Kratch had fled up the skaven tunnel when the ambush had sprung. Now the wretched creature reappeared, leading the less than eager cowards who had fled with him. Skarpaw was pleased to see that the iron box was still with them. He was less thrilled to see that Kratch’s master had finally seen fit to enter the fray. Grey Seer Thanquol marched behind his apprentice, always pushing the miserable adept before him. Beside the grey seer lurched his enormous rat ogre, the mutant Boneripper. As the beast emerged fully from the tunnel and straightened his bulk in the higher ceiling of the sewer, even Skarpaw felt a thrill of fear rush through him. The brute was gigantic, dwarfing even the immense rat ogres he had procured from the beastmasters!

  Eager to enter the battle a moment before, Skarpaw found himself hanging back, snapping orders to his underlings. Let them take the risks, he would keep himself apart from the fray, the better to adjust to changing tactical situations. Once Boneripper was brought down, then Skarpaw might take a more direct role in the combat. Unless of course it looked like Thanquol still had some magic left.

  Thanquol cursed through clenched fangs. The craven idiot Kratch hadn’t told him the half of it! This was more than simply an ambush by Skarpaw and the cloaked killers of Clan Eshin, more than some diseased union between Eshin and Moulder! He saw warriors from all of Under-Altdorf’s major clans converging on the last hapless clusters of loyal skaven guarding the mouth of the tunnel. He smelled conspiracy! An obscene collusion between all of the clans of Under-Altdorf to destroy him and capture the Wormstone for themselves! Thanquol’s eyes narrowed with hate. There was only one skaven capable of forging such an alliance! Skarpaw was just a figurehead—the real villain was that senile scum Thratquee! Well, if Thratquee thought he was going to build his heretical “New Skavenblight” on the bones of Thanquol, the corrupt old rat was stupider than a sack of goblins!

  “We must flee-flee!” Kratch whined as Thanquol pushed him forwards, toward the battle line. The adept vented his glands as Skarpaw’s rat ogres made particularly gruesome work of some surviving Clan Skab warriors.

  The grey seer snarled at his underling. “Grow a spleen, coward-meat!” he snapped, pushing the frantic apprentice a few steps further. Thanquol glanced over his shoulder to make certain that Boneripper was still beside him. “We must fight-conquer or die-die!” Thanquol spat, stamping the butt of his staff against the floor for emphasis. As he did so, a warplock jezzail roared from somewhere in the darkness, its warpstone bullet exploding the skull of a Clan Skaul sneak only a few feet behind Thanquol. Instinctively, the grey seer dropped into a crouch, shielding himself with his apprentice’s body. Kratch struggled to free himself from his mentor’s fierce grip.

  “It is hopeless!” Kratch whined.

  Thanquol struggled to raise the ratskull snuff box to his nose, somehow maintaining the box and his staff in the same paw. The intoxicating burn of the powder sent iron flowing through his veins, subduing the fear flooding his system. The fiery sensation calmed the grey seer’s instincts. His eyes were smouldering pools of blood flecked with gold when he glared into Kratch’s face.

  “I will use your power, apprentice-pupil,” Thanquol said, his voice a sinister murmur. “Your power joined with my own,” he added with a malicious chitter.

  “Used to fuel horror.” Thanquol’s staff began to glow with a green light. More warplock bullets sped for the grey seer but they were knocked aside by the unseen power of his magic.

  “Used to feed carnage.” Thanquol’s staff was now a blazing sliver of green fire, its talismans and charms dancing in a dank wind that snapped and crackled through the fur of every skaven it touched.

  “Used to call hunger into the bellies and brains of the traitor and the heretic!” Now Kratch could feel the grey seer’s power devouring his own, pulling strength from his very soul to feed its own ravenous need. The apprentice felt himself wilting, as though his spirit were being torn from his flesh. Around him, the fighting had ceased. Every skaven, both friend and foe, was drawing away from the two grey seers, their fur standing on end, their glands venting as their every sense recoiled from the malign power of Thanquol’s sorcery.

  Thanquol’s eyes gleamed with an insane light. Bloody froth spilled from his mouth. When he spoke, his words were black with his own stagnant blood. “Power to summon-call the Black Hunger!”

  With the grey seer’s maddened shriek, grisly ribbons of power burst from the head of his staff, stabbing into all who stood before it. The eyes of each creature the green vapours struck glazed over, blackening as they filled with blood, as all intelligence shrivelled. Skaven, rat ogre or giant rat, one and all were struck down, their senses and minds drowned beneath one overwhelming urge, one all-consuming need. The verminous throng burned with a terrible hunger, a hunger that could only be sated with warm, dripping flesh!

  Skarpaw’s army disintegrated into a snarling mob of frenzied beasts, biting and clawing at their own, casting aside weapons and intelligence in the grip of their primal, cannibalistic hunger. Clan Moulder packmasters leapt onto the back of their rat ogres, ripping and tearing at their leathery flesh with fang and claw. Clanrats worried at the throats of gutter runners while Clan Skryre skirmishers cast aside their complex, fantastic weapons to gnaw the entrails of their own fallen.

  Kratch could only dimly see the gory display, his senses fading as Thanquol’s spell consumed more and more of his essence. It became an effort of concentration to make his heart beat, to bring air down into his lungs. The adept’s limbs trembled, his bones feeling impossibly heavy beneath his flesh. He imagined he could feel his eyes slithering back into the pits of his skull. In his ears, he thought he could hear the sardonic laughter of the Horned Rat.

  Suddenly, Kratch could feel an incredible surge of strength flow into him. His failing spirit swelled, filled almost to bursting. The adept fought to control the sheer force rushing into him, trying to prevent it from burning out his mind and soul. He could feel the reins of control and command seeping into his own bones, feel himself become connected to each and every creature whose brain Thanquol had filled with the Black Hunger. He struggled to keep the same frenzy from flowing back into himself, even as he understood the dire consequences should he try to banish the spell. Every one of the survivors would descend on him in a vengeful mob.

  From the corner of his eye, Kratch could see Thanquol’s grin of triumph.

  “Quick-quick!” the grey seer snarled at his followers. “We must flee-scurry!”

  Awed by the hideous brutality of Thanquol’s magic, the depleted members of his entourage needed little encouragement to obey. Carefully skirting the orgy of feral ca
nnibalism the grey seer’s spell had unleashed, the few dozen ratmen scampered down the brick-lined tunnels. Thanquol hurried after them, Boneripper’s ever present bulk loping beside him. The grey seer caught the scarred stump of Skrim Gnawtail’s tail, pulling the Clan Skaul spy back towards him.

  “Not back to Under-Altdorf,” Thanquol warned Skrim. “They are our enemies! All of them! It was the council that set that ambush!”

  “Where-where, mighty one?” Skrim asked, quivering with fear and anxiety.

  “Somewhere away from the traitors!” snapped Thanquol. He stabbed a clawed finger at the arched ceiling overhead. “Somewhere up there, where they can’t find us.”

  Thanquol gnashed his fangs together in a fit of vindictive fury. “I will announce myself to Under-Altdorf when I am ready. In my own way.”

  Kratch struggled to control the force of Thanquol’s spell, as much a victim of its power as any of the maddened wretches tearing and chewing their way through the skaven army. The adept’s mind seethed with his mentor’s treachery. Transferring the focus of his spell from himself to Kratch, Thanquol had doomed his apprentice to a slow and creeping death. The arcane forces Kratch was trying to control would rip through him, twisting his flesh and mutating his soul into something spawned in the blackest pits of nightmare. Kratch railed against such an ignoble end, yet every sight of the ripping gnawing mob swirling around him made him only more determined not to break the grey seer’s magic. So long as the spell remained, that long did Kratch remain at the eye of the storm. As soon as he broke the spell, he would become part of the storm, defenceless against the clawing, biting, mindless swarm.

  A warplock fired from somewhere beyond the melee. Kratch crumpled to the ground, his head bloody. As he fell, he could feel the magic evaporate. Kratch ground his teeth together, waiting for the swarm to descend upon him. It was almost a minute before he dared to open his eyes.