“Back!” Scrivner ordered his minion. The wizard could read the concern in Grimbold’s voice, but the dwarf had a much more important role to play in the drama unfolding around the reservoir. If he could not stop the skaven, it would be left to Grimbold to cheat them of their victory. “Do not interfere,” the wizard snarled when he saw the dwarf set down the bombs and start to reload one of his pistols. A shot at the rat ogre would only enrage him further, allowing the brute to completely break free of Scrivner’s tenuous hold. A shot at the grey seer might only wound the fiend, and make Grimbold the new target of Thanquol’s wrath. As things stood, Scrivner himself was more expendable than the dwarf.
The magister restored his attention to Boneripper, struggling to push the hulk back. Boneripper growled, snapping his fangs and flexing his claws in a primitive display of his ghastly strength. Scrivner was not intimidated by the brute’s bestial boasting; it was enough to tax his mind just keeping the monster enmeshed in his coils.
Scrivner’s fixation upon the task at hand bore tragic fruit. Too late was he aware of a new menace, lurking close by. He twisted his body around, shouting a warning, but word came too late.
With skill to match that of the wizard, made all the more impressive because it did not depend upon magic and illusion to accomplish, a black-clad shape emerged from the shadows. Snarling, the shape pounced on Grimbold, knocking the pistol from the dwarf’s hands.
Grimbold staggered, his beard darkening as blood seeped into it from a ragged wound in his chest. Stabbed in the back, the dwarf’s armour had folded like cheesecloth before the unnatural venom of an assassin’s blade. The dwarf had time to stare into the face of his killer before slumping to the ground.
Skrattch Skarpaw sneered at the dying dwarf, raising his poisoned blade for another thrust. The blow never fell. Black blood exploded from Skarpaw’s mouth as his body was bisected by a lance of darkness made solid. The assassin’s confusion and disbelief was a mirror of the expression that had filled Grimbold’s face. He looked from the magic spear that had ripped through him to the causeway. He shook his head, refusing to accept what he saw. The wizard had attacked him, voluntarily abandoning his spell against Boneripper to strike down the dwarf’s killer! Madness, Skarpaw’s brain screamed, to the last unable to understand the peculiarly human concepts of loyalty and sacrifice.
Skarpaw’s body crashed to the causeway, then rolled over the edge, sinking slowly into the cold waters of the reservoir. Only his dropped blade and Grimbold’s bleeding body gave silent testimony that he had ever been at all.
Scrivner hastily began to cast a new spell. He knew it was hopeless, and his knowledge was proven as a fierce, vice-like grip closed around him. The wizard was wrenched from the floor, the hot breath of Boneripper washing over him. He felt ribs cracking beneath the cruel pressure of the beast’s paws. Boneripper’s mutant third arm drew back, the blood-crusted length of its fist-spike poised for the killing blow. The magister spent his last moment invoking a death curse that would take his killer with him. He only hoped that the grey seer was petty enough to still use magic to finish his foe rather than allowing Boneripper’s brawn to settle the score.
Neither spell nor fist fell. Confusion showed on Boneripper’s dull features, the brute staring in perplexity at the ledge. Scrivner could tell that something unexpected had happened. Diseased cries and a stagnant stench told him what had happened without the need to look. More skaven had arrived, but these were no allies of Boneripper or his master. Easily distracted by the unexpected, the rat ogre had lost his focus.
Where a moment before, Scrivner had braced himself for certain death, now he seized opportunity. Instead of finishing his death curse, he instead wove a new spell from the grey wind of magic. The rat ogre was oblivious to his incantation, Boneripper’s dull mind instead watching his master work himself into a fit of anger. The first Boneripper was aware something was amiss was when the physical substance that had been Jeremias Scrivner seeped through his thick fingers in long streamers of darkness. The rat ogre stared stupidly at his empty paws, scratching his horn with his mutant hand.
The darkness that had become the wizard reformed into a human shape only a few feet from the immense monster. Dangerous magic, changing the corporeal into the incorporeal; Scrivner had trusted his spell only as far as he needed to escape Boneripper’s clutch. Now the wizard stood between the monster and Grimbold’s body. The dwarf had served him faithfully for many years. Scrivner would not abandon him while there was still the flicker of life in him. Not while Grimbold still might have a role to play saving the capital of the entire Empire from a hideous fate.
Boneripper must have smelled Scrivner as he took shape once more. The rat ogre stopped staring at his empty hands and instead glared at the magister. Drool glistened as the monster roared his rage.
The rat ogre started to rush towards Scrivner, but then his roar was drowned out by an even more monstrous sound. The entire cavern shook, the air burst into golden light. The wizard shielded himself with his cloak as ice erupted from the reservoir in bursts. Impossibly powerful magic had been unleashed, sorcery both awesome and reckless, the wild raw malevolence of absolute destruction. He knew he was fortunate that such a spell had not been unleashed upon himself, for there was no curse or charm or protective talisman known to mortals that could have withstood it. It was like the fist of an angry god smiting down from the heavens or up from the hells.
When the aftershock of the arcane blast had dissipated enough for Scrivner to focus his thoughts again, he saw Thanquol staggered on the next causeway. He saw the newly arrived skaven; green-robed plague monks, rushing forwards at the command of their putrescent leader. At the head of the chittering host were a pair of hulking rat ogres, festering kin of Boneripper’s breed. True to Scrivner’s prediction, these were no allies of the grey seer. Indeed, they seemed oblivious to the wizard in their haste to settle with Thanquol.
Scrivner lifted Grimbold from the ground, moving him just in time to prevent the dwarf from being crushed underfoot by Boneripper as the monster thundered past. With a brain too small to hold Scrivner’s illusions, he was intelligent enough to recognise the peril threatening his master. Like a loyal dog, Boneripper was rushing to protect Thanquol from his enemies.
It was not fear for Thanquol that caused Scrivner to shout orders to his men, commanding them to attack the plague monks. It was a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Thanquol would use the Wormstone if given the chance. The plague monks, however, might do much worse. Scrivner knew about their fiendish ability to create new diseases and ways of distributing them. Given a chance, they might not only use the Wormstone, they might be capable of replicating the spells that had created it. They might be able to make more!
Boneripper ploughed through the swarming mass of plague monks, smashing and crushing them with his monstrous claws. The diseased ratmen refused to break, chittering and snarling as they leapt upon their hulking attacker. Rusty daggers sank into the rat ogre’s leather hide, staves of worm-eaten wood splintered against his bones, yellow fangs ripped at his flesh. The monster’s charge floundered as plague monks threw themselves at him with lunatic abandon. Before he had taken more than a dozen steps onto the stone shelf, Boneripper’s shape vanished beneath a clinging, clawing mass of ragged green robes and leprous flesh. Even the mutant’s prodigious strength faltered before the onslaught. He stumbled, dropping to one knee. A plague monk shrieked as he was crushed by Boneripper’s shifting weight, but the wretch’s maniacal brethren gave his fate passing notice. Chanting their obscene prayers to their vile god, the plague monks struggled all the harder to bring their prey down.
Rescue came from an unexpected source. Shots rang out, blasting clinging ratmen from Boneripper’s body. Scrivner’s minions had heard their master’s command and rushed to attack their new and horrific foes. Plague monks turned to meet the renewed assault by the humans, snarling their vile shrieks as they surged towards the scaffold. Crazed skaven wielding sm
ouldering censers of rusted iron led the charge, the pestilential fumes spewing from the foul incense almost visibly corrupting their wasted bodies as they scurried to the attack.
Theodor Baer held the survivors of Scrivner’s band together, ordering them into a rough skirmish line. Those few who still bore loaded pistols fired into the diseased throng, spilling another pair of ratmen onto the ground. The filthy stink of incense and disease reached out to the men, threatening to engulf them in a fog of plague and decay.
Suddenly, the charging ratmen were lost beneath a shroud of darkness, a cloak of shadow that descended upon them like a falling curtain. The diseased ratmen howled and whined, shrieking and chittering in confusion and frustrated rage. Some, confused by the supernatural darkness, rushed too far forwards, choking as they entered the cloud of noxious fumes spewing from the heavy flail-like censers. Less inured to the smoky filth than the censer bearers, these ratmen writhed on the ground, coughing and bleeding as the fumes overwhelmed their disease-ravaged bodies.
The spell of darkness did no more than delay the charge of the plague monks, however. Lost in a frenzy of bloodlust and hate, the acolytes of Clan Pestilens were not so easily provoked into fright as the hapless minions of Thanquol had been in the basement of the Orc and Axe. They used their keen sense of smell to pursue their prey through the murk, emerging on the other side of the wizard’s spell in a snarling mass.
Scrivner’s agents had not been idle while the plague monks were blinded, however. Instead of holding their skirmish line, as soon as the wizard’s spell had struck, the men turned and fled back onto the scaffold. With as much haste as their weary bodies could summon, the men ran, retreating before the vengeful mob of ratmen chittering for their blood.
Such was the maddened bloodlust of the plague monks, they scarcely paused as they scrambled onto the wooden scaffolding to give chase. Ratmen were knocked from the rickety wooden platforms by the reckless haste of their comrades and the press of the frenzied mob behind them. Their shrieks as they fell into the cavern were all but lost beneath the obscene chanting and hungry chittering of those who swarmed across the scaffolding, hot on the heels of their enemies.
Another sound was also lost to the ears of the snarling pack. Designed to support the weight of a few men at a time, the scaffolds groaned and sagged beneath the scrabbling mass of plague monks. Ropes snapped, boards splintered. Too late, some of the plague monks sensed their peril. Fear swept through the swarm of green-cloaked fanatics, transforming into panic as the less desiccated skaven began to vent their glands. No longer did they pursue the tiny band of humans who were climbing onto the stone ledge at the far side of the reservoir. Instead they fought and clawed and pushed to reach the safety of the near ledge, to find refuge from the wooden platforms that creaked and buckled beneath their paws.
Few of the plague monks reached the security of the ledge before, with a titanic groan, the first section of scaffolding broke and tumbled into the chasm. The dissolution of one section aggravated the distress of the others. The plague monks wailed and screamed as the entire scaffold broke away, carrying the swarming fanatics with it as it toppled hundreds of feet to the rocky slope below.
Upon the shelf, Boneripper tore the last stubborn plague monks from his body, smashing them into gory paste upon the floor. The rat ogre, blood dripping from hundreds of cuts and bites, pounded his paws against his throbbing chest, creating a drum-like report. He wiped blood from his jaws, his beady eyes squinting at the ragged survivors from his assault and the ill-fated chase onto the scaffold. The plague monks shivered, frozen with fear. Only their blister-faced chieftain seemed unfazed by the menace of the rat ogre. Calmly, Lord Skrolk clapped his leprous hands together and pointed a shrivelled claw at Boneripper.
Two gigantic shapes turned at the plague lord’s summons, their rheumy eyes fixing upon Boneripper’s mangled bulk. Nox and Pox lumbered away from the causeway, leaving Thanquol to the plague monks who had already crawled out ahead of them. Like roaming wolves, the two diseased rat ogres circled their prey, their blackened teeth grinning from behind their crusty lips. They were not so far gone to the ravages of pestilence and plague that their tiny brains had forgotten the pleasures of life; such as an enemy wounded and outnumbered, just waiting for their fangs to close about his throat.
Nox growled, a sound like the wheeze of a dying mammoth. The rat ogre’s snarl drew Boneripper’s attention, the mutant brute roaring his own defiance at the decayed abomination. Nox, however, made no move to close with Boneripper. A vile cunning lingered in the disease-ravaged minds of the plague-ogres.
As Boneripper turned towards Nox, Pox charged the mutant’s back. The plague-ogre’s thick arms wrapped about Boneripper’s body, crushing him in a bear hug that pinned his limbs against his sides. Pox’s slobbering mouth worried at Boneripper’s neck, shredding his flesh and soaking the abomination’s muzzle in the mutant’s dark blood. Boneripper shrieked in pain as the plague-ogre’s fangs gnawed into him. He tried to twist his head around, to slash Pox with his horn. The plague-ogre ducked the clumsy attack, shifting his grip and sinking his fangs into Boneripper’s shoulder.
Seeing Pox launch his attack, Nox rushed the besieged Boneripper, rabid froth bubbling from his diseased jaws. The plague-ogre raised a clawed hand to slash open Boneripper’s belly, but the blow never fell. Boneripper slashed at the monster with his tail, driving the spiked steel ball Thanquol had nailed to the tip of the rat ogre’s scaly tail against the knee of the plague-ogre. Nox gibbered in pain as his knee exploded beneath the strike, the bones of his lower leg shattering as the plague-ogre’s full weight pressed down upon them. Nox smashed against the floor, fangs snapping from rotten gums as his face smacked into stone.
Startled by his fellow’s alarming distress, Pox failed to remember his earlier evasions of Boneripper’s horn. The steel-capped sliver of bone scraped across the plague-ogre’s face, bringing treacly blood spurting from a deep gash that ran from forehead to chin. Pox reared back, instinctively recoiling from the source of his wound. Boneripper’s mutant arm, unrestrained by Pox’s crushing hug, stabbed at the plague-ogre’s head. The monster released Boneripper and staggered away, clutching at his blood-soaked face.
Boneripper sniffed at the putrid eye impaled upon his fist-spike, then growled his own challenge to the plague-ogres. Slowly, the mangled monsters lurched after their foe, snarling their own savage defiance. Beast against beast against beast, there could be no quarter in such a struggle; the only measure of victory would be the cold still bodies of the vanquished.
Jeremias Scrivner stared down into the bloody face of Grimbold Silverbeard. There was more shame than pain in the dwarf’s eyes as he stared back. That changed as the wizard’s palm slapped against his grisly wound. The dwarf gritted his teeth as he felt the magister’s magic pour into his body.
“I am no healer,” Scrivner warned him. “Against the poison of the skaven, even a healer might be of no use. But my magic will slow the ratkin’s venom.”
Grimbold nodded, fumbling at the straps of his apron. Tearing it loose, he exposed a set of bandoliers that criss-crossed his chest. More of the curious metal bombs were secured to the loops of the belts. “Th… the fuses… will burn… even in… the water.” The dwarf grinned, an effect ruined by the blood staining his teeth. “No time… to set them… proper. But I know… where they will do the job!” A grim laugh rumbled from the dwarf’s throat.
Wizard and dwarf looked up as they were joined upon the causeway. Johann Dietrich had not followed Theodor Baer across the scaffold. Something more terrible than skaven and monsters had seized the smuggler’s mind. He pointed at his torn shirt, at the crawling things he could see just beneath the surface of his skin.
“Why didn’t you tell me!” Johann demanded.
“Would knowing have made any difference?” Scrivner answered coldly. “There is nothing that can be done.”
“But I should have known!” growled Johann. “You should have told me!”
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“Count it a blessing, manling,” coughed Grimbold. “It’s not every one learns the hour of his death. It’s not every one can make his last minutes such to make his ancestors proud.”
Scrivner pointed at Johann. “Crawl into a hole and die, or stay and help avenge your brother. The choice is yours, but choose quickly.”
Before Johann could even think about the wizard’s words, the shadows seemed to reach out and surround the magister. Scrivner’s figure darkened until it was indistinguishable from the blackness around him. Then, as man and shadow merged into one, both slowly faded into nothingness.
Grimbold shook his head sadly and started to drag himself across the causeway, leaving Johann alone with his thoughts and his decision.
Grey Seer Thanquol watched with horror as Skrolk’s abominable minions charged the causeway. Even the onset of Boneripper’s valiant attack had not been enough to break their diseased determination. Worse, the stupid rat ogre had allowed himself to become embroiled in a scuffle with Skrolk’s disgusting beasts, leaving Thanquol alone against the plague monks.
Thanquol managed to rise to his feet, leaning heavily on his staff for support. His head was spinning, swimming with colours and sounds only he could sense. His guts felt on fire, his limbs still shook as muscles twitched and shivered. Too much power used unwisely had left the grey seer as helpless as a whelp.
It was fortunate, then, that the last of his own underlings did not appreciate just how helpless their tyrannical leader was. If they had, they would certainly have abandoned him, or perhaps even tried to gain some favour with Clan Pestilens by delivering Thanquol to Lord Skrolk. However, the grey seer’s awful displays of sorcery had impressed upon his minions the magnitude of his power, filling their hearts and minds with a lingering fear.
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