03 - Thanquol's Doom

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

  Kaskitt chittered with amusement, directing a shrewd glance at Thanquol, then making a subtle gesture with his paw to his own bodyguards. The posture of the skirmishers became more relaxed, their hands drifting away from the warplock pistols slung beneath their belts.

  “Fine-good assistant,” Kaskitt laughed. Clearly he had caught the smell of Skraekual’s excessive vices and instantly dismissed the decrepit grey seer as anything to be wary of. Perhaps Kaskitt thought Thanquol had brought the other grey seer in an attempt to turn the warlock-engineer’s own trickery back upon him—to give him someone to watch and worry about so that he would relax his vigilance over Thanquol. If so, Kaskitt felt his sneaky ally had chosen a poor instrument for such deception.

  “Grey Seer Skraekual is a powerful sorcerer,” Thanquol insisted. “The Horned Rat favours him like no other! Great and terrible are the magics of Skraekual! Renowned throughout the Under-Empire!”

  A fit of coughing came over Skraekual, the priest doubling over in a trembling fit as spasms wracked his body. A shivering hand pawed across his belt until finally closing about a dried twist of blackroot. The quaking fingers dropped the hallucinogenic to the floor. Instantly, Skraekual fell to all fours, retrieving the root with his teeth. Mud caked the front of his face as he noisily wolfed down the desiccated herb.

  Caustic laughter rose from Kaskitt and his skirmishers. Even some of the foot-traffic filling Swampscratch paused to jeer at the spectacle of a decrepit grey seer wallowing in the muck like some kind of rabid mole. Thanquol felt his contempt for Skraekual swell. It wasn’t enough that the villain had abused his body and mind to the point where he was nothing but a walking mass of addictions. It wasn’t enough that he had sunk so low that he didn’t even have the wit to preserve the dignity of the grey seers. It wasn’t enough that every breath the scabby wretch took was a blight upon the glory of the Horned One. No, the scum had sunk so low that he couldn’t even evoke a bit of concern in the hearts of Thanquol’s duplicitous allies.

  Filthy, drug-addled vermin, Thanquol thought as he scowled at Skraekual’s disgusting spectacle. He took a pinch of Lynsh’s snuff from his rat-skull box to take the edge off the jeers of his fellow skaven.

  “Your help-meat has seen-smelled better days,” Kaskitt cackled. A sly quality entered his voice. “Seerlord Kritislik must dislike you much-much to send this with you.”

  Thanquol felt his glands clench. The inference was plain. Kaskitt had had Thanquol watched since they had parted company. He knew the grey seer had visited the Shattered Tower. Somehow he’d discovered Thanquol’s meeting with Kritislik. But how much did Kaskitt know about what had transpired during that meeting?

  “Kritislik does not value you much,” Kaskitt persisted. “A great-mighty hero-lord like Thanquol could do better. He could help-serve Clan Skryre.”

  Thanquol’s eyes narrowed with concern. It wasn’t the fact that Kaskitt was about to make some sort of treasonous, perhaps even blasphemous proposal to him. Indeed, he’d been waiting to hear what sort of bribe Kaskitt was going to toss his way. No, what alarmed Thanquol was the very public manner in which Kaskitt was broaching the subject. There were literally thousands of ears all around them, any one of which could bring word back to Kritislik.

  And clearly, that was the point. Whatever his own position, Kaskitt feared no reprisal by making Thanquol an offer. Conversely, by making his offer publicly, he wanted word to filter back to the Seerlord. Whatever Thanquol did, whatever his answer to Kaskitt, he would not be able to escape the fear that Kritislik would already believe him guilty of switching his loyalties. The only safe course for Thanquol would be to loyally maintain his bargain with Kaskitt and hope for the protection of Clan Skryre against any reprisal from Kritislik.

  Even so, Thanquol thought it best to make a bold display of unwavering loyalty to the Seerlord. “I am content to serve-work for the Horned One and grim Seerlord Kritislik, who is the Voice and the Might of…”

  Thanquol’s words caught in his throat, choked by a sudden clenching of his glands. Across the tunnel, the crowds had suddenly wheeled away, spurts of fear-musk rising into the air. He could see a clutch of Clan Skryre forge-rats scurrying his way, their bodies stinking of oil and steel. He gave them only a passing notice, his eyes drawn instead to the towering shape that lumbered behind them.

  The thing was gigantic, easily twice the height of a skaven and nearly as broad. It smelled of warpstone and blood and death, all mixed with the scent of old bones and new steel. Looming over the cowering crowds of skaven, it marched across the tunnel like some primordial titan, each step gouging a fresh crater in the muddy floor.

  Once, it had been a rat-ogre. Only so fierce and enormous a creature could have provided the thick bones which served as its framework. Fleshless, polished clean by time, the heavy bones glistened in the flickering warplight of the tunnel. Short thick legs supported a massive, bulky trunk. Long skeletal arms depended from broad shoulders. The chest cavity had been reinforced with plates of steel, wires and tubes running in crazed disorder from machinery hidden behind the bare ribs to sink into metal rods bolted into each arm and leg. A third arm jutted from the creature’s left side, but where the others ended in massive paws of bone and claws of steel, this arm ended in a monstrous nozzle from which a long slimy hose emerged to connect with an iron-banded barrel fastened to the creature’s back.

  “A gift-bribe,” Kaskitt chittered, sweeping his paws in a grand gesture. “A token-present of Clan Skryre’s appreciation.”

  The strange, ghastly abomination continued to stomp its way towards Thanquol, finally halting a few steps away. It stared down at the shivering grey seer, tiny warp-lights glowing in the sockets of its huge, rat-like skull.

  “For… for me?” Thanquol stammered, half ready to scurry back to the Shattered Tower if the hideous machine-monster took another step.

  “Spent much-much to steal bones of Thanquol’s rat-ogre from man-things,” Kaskitt explained. “Cost much-much to automate dead-thing.”

  Thanquol peered more closely at the hideous construction. He could see the iron bands holding the skull together where it had been cleft in half by a mighty blow. Instantly a thrill of terror coursed through his glands. The ginger-furred dwarf-thing! That thrice-damned Gotrek Gurnisson! As vividly as though it were yesterday he could picture the dwarf slayer confronting him in the tunnel beneath the nest-home of Fritz von Halstadt. Some treacherous mouse-spleened flea had betrayed Thanquol’s brilliant scheme to use the hapless human as his ratspaw to bring the man-thing warren of Nuln under skaven control. The dwarf and his man-thing pet, Felix Jaeger, had been waiting for Thanquol, manically attacking him in a frenzy of unprovoked and unwarranted violence before the grey seer could call up a spell that would blast them into cinders. Only the selfless devotion of his rat-ogre, the first to bear the name of Boneripper, had saved his life. While Boneripper was stopping the dwarf’s axe with his head, Thanquol was able to effect his speedy, if undignified, escape.

  The grey seer ground his fangs together. There would be a reckoning between him and that pair! By the Horned One, he would yet have both their hides to cover his floor! He would have his revenge upon the cowardly slayer and his companion, such a revenge that all skavendom would quiver in admiration when they heard of it! He’d make their names a byword for torture and suffering! He’d give their bones to his pups to chew! He’d bottle their blood and drink it every time…

  Shaking his head to clear the delicious images of vengeance from his mind, Thanquol stared at the hulking bone-ogre with a new appreciation. Twitching his nose, he realised he could now smell the scent of his first and favourite bodyguard lingering beneath the stink of Clan Skryre’s techno-sorcery.

  “I thank you for your gift,” Thanquol told Kaskitt, enjoying the nervous look Skraekual directed at him as he did so. If everything he did was going to be reported to Kritislik anyway, then it would pay to exploit the situation to its fullest. Besides, even the Seerlord would think twice abou
t toying with him now that he had such a formidable, magnificent bodyguard.

  Kaskitt bobbed his head in obvious pleasure. “This is the finest automaton to emerge from our laboratories,” the warlock-engineer explained. “Powered by a warpstone heart that will keep it moving for thirty moons before replacement. The bones have been hard-made with layers of warpstone dust. The arm,” and here the engineer’s eyes glistened with malicious appreciation, “conceals a small warpfire thrower, fill-fed from cistern mounted on its back.” Kaskitt bared his fangs with murderous glee. “Burn-slay many dwarf-things,” he promised.

  The warlock-engineer removed a curved sliver of warpstone deeply scratched with Queekish markings and bound about with a bizarre array of wires. “This warptooth will let you command the rat-ogre,” Kaskitt explained, demonstrating how one of the wires could be coiled about the ear. “Anything you squeak-say while wearing the warptooth will be listen-heard by the rat-ogre.”

  Thanquol listened as the excited warlock-engineer elaborated every nuance of the morbid machine-beast, Kaskitt quickly losing himself in zealous aggrandisement of Clan Skryre’s technological wonders.

  The grey seer paid little attention to Kaskitt’s explanations. He gazed up at the fleshless skull of his new bodyguard, revelling in its horrifying appearance.

  “Boneripper,” Thanquol hissed. “I shall name-call you Boneripper.”

  Chapter V

  “Always spare a sniff for Skraekual.” Thanquol kept his voice restrained to a conspiratorial whisper. Not low enough that the other grey seer couldn’t hear him, of course. If Kaskitt Steelgrin didn’t start getting worried about Skraekual, then it would serve Thanquol’s purposes almost as neatly to have Skraekual worried about the warlock-engineer.

  Kaskitt’s eyes narrowed behind their lenses and he scratched at the wires sewn into his skin. He peered intently at the stooped figure of Skraekual as he crept down the narrow tunnel. He tried to affect an attitude of aloof unconcern, but Thanquol noticed that Kaskitt’s nose was twitching just the same.

  Since the warlock-engineer’s extravagant gift, Thanquol had done his best to ingratiate himself with Kaskitt. Not that he felt any real gratitude to his benefactor, of course. Indeed, providing him with such a lethal instrument of destruction as a mechanical Boneripper simply proved that Kaskitt was as much of a delusional slack-wit as Skraekual. Thanquol was rather looking forward to the time when he could turn the tables on Kaskitt and have his gift peel the hide off the fool’s bones!

  Until then, however, it behoved Thanquol to play up to the moron. He was the very model of an appreciative, fawning lick-spittle, a toady for every crackpot idea Kaskitt mentioned. Why yes, of course Kaskitt Steelgrin was the greatest warlock-engineer in the Under-Empire. He was so much more brilliant than opportunists like Ikit Claw and Gnawlitch Shun. It was a crime that Warplord Morskittar hadn’t recognised the immense genius of Kaskitt Steelgrin and elevated him to the heights of Clan Skryre’s hierarchy.

  It grated on Thanquol’s pride to flatter the delusional little tick. Kaskitt was a worm, a nothing that would be smashed flat the second he popped his head out of his hole. The only thing to do was to exploit the idiot’s delusions and make certain to be far away when disaster struck. Or, if possible, make a deal with Kaskitt’s enemies before disaster struck.

  Before then, however, Thanquol intended to get rid of Skraekual. He wasn’t sure what the other grey seer’s secret mission was, but clearly it couldn’t be anything of great importance. Seerlord Kritislik would never have entrusted anything valuable to such an undependable wretch. Skraekual was so debilitated by the pandemonium of drugs coursing through his veins that half the time the hophead wasn’t even capable of forming a complete sentence, much less carrying out some nefarious scheme. Obviously Kritislik was becoming slack-witted to dispatch something like Skraekual on anything of consequence. Perhaps it was time for Thanquol to look seriously into furthering Seerlord Tisqueek’s ambitions to become the Supreme Seerlord. Certainly Kritislik’s lapses in judgement and inability to differentiate between a useless, worn-out drug addict and a valuable, loyal and courageous servant like himself boded ill for Kritislik’s continued reign over the other seerlords and the Order of Grey Seers.

  Thanquol took a pinch of snuff from his rat-skull, chittering happily as the fiery hint of warpstone scorched his nostrils. Skraekual! That loathsome little flea was an itch he would scratch very soon. It was taking all of his craft to work on Kaskitt’s paranoia, but by degrees he was starting to convince the warlock-engineer that the other grey seer was a threat. Taking the tack that Skraekual was actually a spy for Warplord Morskittar seemed to yield the best results. Every time Kaskitt was about to dismiss the decrepit grey seer as a worthless addict, Thanquol would pose the question: where did Skraekual manage to find the warp-tokens to indulge his vices?

  Thanquol stared at the walls of the tunnel. They were of close-packed earth braced with timber and rathide. The marks of shovels and claws could still be seen scarring the passage, obvious sign that there had been a collapse some time in the recent past. They could kill Skraekual and bury his body in the wall and nobody would find him for months. By then, Thanquol was certain, not even Seerlord Kritislik would care what fate had overtaken the mouse-livered scum.

  Kaskitt’s skirmishers trooped down the tunnel, their backs bowed beneath the weight of their sinister weapons. Hordes of leather-coated technicians and engineers scurried between the columns of fighting ratmen, their arms laden with a bewildering variety of esoteric apparatus. Ranks of emaciated skavenslaves brought up the rear, labouring under heavy sacks of provisions. No threat of the slaves sampling their burdens. Each of them knew that when the rations fell short, the difference would be made up in fresh rat meat.

  Boneripper’s metal muscles whirred as the hulking monster lumbered after its master. Thanquol felt a rush of satisfaction as he watched the warlock-engineers part to allow the immense bodyguard to pass. Even these ratkin, the very ones who had built it, were afraid of Boneripper. They were wise to fear, because their foolish master had placed control of such a terrifying weapon into the paws of the most dangerous skaven in skavendom!

  It was tempting to order Boneripper to start tearing apart Kaskitt’s minions. The rat-ogre would wreak havoc upon the closely-packed vermin, leaving Thanquol free to unleash his mighty sorcery against Skraekual and Kaskitt. He would turn the two maggots into burn-marks on the wall of the tunnel! He would send their souls shrieking into the black abyss of Kweethul the Abominable! He would visit upon them the wrath of the Horned Rat and rip their innards with his own claws!

  Thanquol smacked a paw against his horn, the sharp pain helping to fight down the murderous visions blazing through his mind. It was easy to forget how potent old Captain Lynsh’s warp-snuff was. There must be a high content of warpstone in it to affect a connoisseur of Thanquol’s experience and constitution in such a manner. He scowled at the little rat-skull box, once again considering dumping out its contents. He cast a withering glance at the skaven around him. If he did that, one of these maggots would just pick it up and use it himself. Why should Thanquol let some undeserving ratkin gain such a windfall? Besides, he wasn’t Skraekual. He had an iron will. He could dispose of the wretched stuff any time he wanted and would do so just as soon as he was alone.

  The tunnel ahead soon branched out into a much wider corridor. Unlike the crumbling rat-run they had been traversing, the new corridor boasted walls of solid stone supported by great balustrades of granite. Each of the skaven uttered a little squeak of relief as he passed from the tunnel into the stone passage. The new passage did not bear the crude marks of claw and pick, but was a carefully engineered and skilfully constructed corridor, part of the ancient dwarf Ungdrin Ankor, the subterranean road that once connected all the far-flung dwarfholds. Since the decline of dwarf civilisation, many stretches of the Underway had fallen to greenskins and other creatures of the dark. Whenever possible, the skaven had incorporated stretches of t
he Ungdrin Ankor into their own Under-Empire. No amount of prideful propaganda could prevent the ratmen from appreciating dwarf craftsmanship and the longevity of their constructions. It was rather refreshing to scurry down a tunnel one knew wasn’t going to come crashing down about one’s ears.

  Thanquol shoved his way through the scrabbling mass of verminkin pouring out from the tunnel, just as eager as any of them to be quit from the earthen passageway. Boneripper lumbered after him, easily forcing a path through the press of furry bodies. Thanquol considered just letting the rat-ogre clear the way for him, but then decided it would be beneath his dignity to allow a mere lackey to go before him.

  Besides, he was having too much fun smacking his staff into the noses of those skaven too slow to get out of the way of the mighty Grey Seer Thanquol.

  A tug on the sleeve of his robe brought Thanquol spinning around. His staff whipped down, missing the face of the skaven who had accosted him by mere inches. If Skraekual’s nose hadn’t rotted away years ago, there would have been a most satisfying whack. It was just another example of the thousand ways the other grey seer was getting under Thanquol’s fur.

  “Mind-watch what you squeak-speak,” Skraekual hissed. “Kritislik order-say you are decoy-meat, not Skraekual!”

  Thanquol bared his fangs at the other grey seer. Who was this hophead to dare reprimand the greatest mind in skavendom! He’d feed the little weasel his own spleen!

  Lips curled back over yellowed fangs. There was an uncomfortable focus about Skraekual’s usually bleary eyes and a hint of menace in his usually stooped posture. Thanquol cast an anxious look around to see if any of Kaskitt’s rats had noticed the threatening change that had come over Skraekual. Unfortunately, it seemed they were too focused on getting out into the dwarf passageway to pay any notice to Thanquol’s distress.