03 - Thanquol's Doom

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

  A new fear filled Thanquol’s heart. Not the fear of his rampant and crazed display of magic. That was over and done and he would recover from that. No, it was the realisation that he was once again blind and stifled by the ratbane. And there were still several angry skaven scattered about the tunnel.

  His enemies would be blind and unable to use their noses, but the vermin still had their ears to work with! Exhausted, his body taxed to the limit by his sorcery, Thanquol could not keep from gasping at the air, could not stifle the frantic pounding of his heart. No, the cowardly mouse-lickers wouldn’t need to see or smell him to find him and take advantage of his helplessness!

  A flash of cruel inspiration came to Thanquol. Between gasps, he snarled words to Boneripper. “Tear-crush all rat-flesh comes near-close!” he growled, ensuring his voice was loud enough for the other skaven to hear… and appreciate.

  A few moments later, there was a flurry of activity in the dark. Thanquol heard the pathetic mewing of a ratman an instant before the dull crack of a spine being snapped in two echoed through the tunnel. The smell of blood and fear-musk accompanied the crash of the body against the floor. After that, the other skaven kept their distance.

  Fool-meat! Did they think Thanquol did not have contingencies to deal with their petty scheming? He would never have stepped so brazenly into their trap without taking the proper precautions. Let them try to blind him and stuff his nose with ratbane! He had the colossal Boneripper to protect him! A rat-ogre rebuilt by Clan Skryre’s remarkable techno-sorcery! An unliving juggernaut who could see in absolute blackness and who had no nose to be smothered by ratbane fumes!

  “I tell-say for Boneripper to kill-slay all-all!” Thanquol threatened, then hastily called out to his bodyguard to stop when he heard the automaton lurching into motion. Unthinking obedience was becoming a bit of a nuisance.

  “Bring-fetch Rikkit Snapfang!” the grey seer commanded. “Tell him that Grey Seer Thanquol will take-have words with him!”

  There was a satisfying rush of feet when Thanquol made his demands as the lurking warriors fled up the tunnel to carry his words to their warlord. The effect of hearing who they had so stupidly thought to ambush had filled their black hearts with fear. No ratman would dare defy the will of Grey Seer Thanquol!

  “Boneripper! Stop-stand! No more kill-slay!” the grey seer grumbled as he heard the rat-ogre lumbering after the retreating skaven.

  The workshop of Klarak Bronzehammer was a flurry of activity. Every smelter and kiln was glowing with heat, pushed almost beyond endurance by the production demands he had placed upon them. His aides raced about the workshop like frightened grobi, rushing from smelter to anvil and from anvil to slack tub.

  Klarak paused on the threshold, letting himself adjust to the sweltering heat. He watched with admiration as his aides hurried about their labours. No need to impress upon them the urgency of the task he had set for them. They knew that Klarak never asked anything of them without good reason.

  Horgar Horgarsson was working the bellows of one of the forges, keeping it at the white-hot glow that was necessary for the smelting of barazhunk, his steam-work frame lending him the strength to maintain the fires. Thorlek had shed his customary furs and pelts, standing bare-chested and covered in sweat as he pounded away at one of the anvils, folding and refolding the near-molten alloy until it achieved the tenacity Klarak required.

  Two other dwarfs laboured in Klarak’s workshop. One was a wizened old longbeard, his floor-length grey beard plaited into three tails and stuffed into the broad belt he wore. Azram Steelfoot was among the most venerable dwarfs in Karak Angkul, older even than Runelord Morag. One of the hold’s lorekeepers, the historian had benefited from the innovative engineering of Klarak Bronzehammer when one of his eyes had started to fail him. The left side of Azram’s face now bore the fruit of Klarak’s invention, an augmetic device of multi-faceted lenses and clockwork gears that now served the dwarf in place of his wasted eye. The lorekeeper’s gratitude had been boundless and firmly indebted Azram to his benefactor. Hence the old historian was here, inspecting each beam of barazhunk for imperfections before allowing it to be placed on the pile awaiting transport into the lower deeps.

  The last of Klarak’s company was a short-bearded, dark-haired dwarf busying himself with feeding coke into the forge Horgar was using. Despite the length of his beard, however, Kimril was no beardling, having almost two centuries under his belt. He’d shorn his beard long ago as a token of respect and fealty to the father of his wife, Thane Borin of the Nogardsson clan. In those days, Kimril had been a tradesman, making his living transporting cargo to and from Karak Angkul. Then, while he was away on one of his trips, his wife took ill. She never recovered from her lingering sickness, though Kimril had spent every coin and favour owed to him on physicians and healers. After her death, he had taken up the physician’s staff, becoming the most accomplished doctor in the dwarfhold.

  Still, the tragedy of his wife’s death hung heavy on Kimril’s heart. He blamed the conservatism of dwarf medicine for her slow decline and had devoted himself to finding new cures, however untraditional they might be. The physician’s mindset had made him something of a pariah in the hold and a natural dwarf to accumulate the friendship of Klarak Bronzehammer.

  Together with Kurgaz Brightfinger, these four dwarfs made up Klarak’s Iron Throng. They had adventured far and wide with their master, but always the road led them back to Karak Angkul.

  Thorlek was the first to notice Klarak’s return. The ranger set down his hammer, a wide smile splitting his face. “I was beginning to think you were leaving all the fun to us.”

  The other dwarfs paused in their work to greet the gold-bearded engineer. “I had the idea that perhaps Guildmaster Thori had finally managed to give him the cogging he’s been asking for all these years,” quipped Kimril, wiping his hands on his soot-stained apron.

  “That old grobi-fondler doesn’t have the beard to even try,” Horgar said. He closed his armoured hand into a menacing fist. “And if he did, he’d trip and fall all the way down to the Sixth Deep.”

  “That would be something to see,” Azram said, adjusting the lenses on his iron eye so he could focus on the figure of the engineer as he entered the workshop.

  “Guildmaster Thori means well,” Klarak reprimanded his aides. While he applauded their enthusiasm and loyalty, sometimes he worried that they forgot to show the proper respect to their elders and superiors. “He is right to be cautious about moving forwards too fast and too recklessly. Remember the horrible abuses the dawi-zharr have put their technology to.”

  Mention of the abhorred Tainted cast a pall upon Klarak’s aides. Each of them remembered the corrupt dwarfs of the Dark Lands and the monstrous things crafted by their abominable daemonsmiths. It was an image no dwarf could forget and which no dwarf could consider without a twinge of guilt and a flash of hate.

  “The beams are almost done,” Kimril said, breaking the tension. “Do you think King Logan will let them be used?”

  “More to the point, will Minewarden Grundin?” Thorlek observed.

  “King Logan has already agreed,” Klarak stated. “Minewarden Grundin is under a grudge for being improperly prepared to repulse the ratkin from the lower deeps. He won’t make any obstruction to our plans.”

  Horgar clapped his metal-sheathed hands together. “Then barazhunk is going into the mines. The filthy thaggoraki will break a few teeth trying to chew through this!”

  Klarak’s expression was dour. He was thinking of all that could still go wrong with his plan and the dreadful warning he had received from Altdorf.

  “We’ll get barazhunk into the mines,” he said, “but we don’t want it to stay there.” His friends stared at him, each wearing a look of confusion. “Things have changed,” Klarak told them. “The ratkin menace is greater than any of us thought it could be. We need a trap to catch the rats leading these vermin.

  “And barazhunk is going to be our cheese.”

/>   Bonestash was a sprawling warren consisting of hundreds of miles of winding tunnels, chambers and burrows. There was no rhyme or reason to the layout of the settlement, it had expanded as need had dictated, chasing deposits of warpstone, water sources and food supplies. The staple diet for the warren was largely based upon the cave squigs and giant beetles cultivated by the large numbers of goblin slaves they kept, but the skaven weren’t above adding the occasional dwarf and the frequent goblin to their meals. The only crop they used as a supplement was a sort of bread-like fungus that seemed quite partial to skaven pellets as fertiliser.

  The warren was thriving, if not exactly prospering. No less than thirty brood-mothers were actively producing litters five times a year, a statistic Rikkit seemed especially proud of. Thanquol could guess the reason. The slithery little villain was expanding the treasury of his warren by selling some of his extra population on the side. Most likely Clan Skaul, Thanquol decided. The drug-peddlers were always looking for ways to expand their numbers and they’d certainly be interested in pups sired by strong Clan Mors warriors. Moreover, Skaul had certain opiates that would increase the fertility of female skaven. Seerlord Kritislik had patronised them quite heavily in his efforts to develop a strain of brood-mother that would only birth horned pups.

  Thanquol was beginning to appreciate the idea of looting Rikkit’s treasury. There was every reason to suspect the blood-brained war-rat had skimmed quite a bit for his own purposes before sending along his duty to Clan Mors. The best part was, if he wasn’t supposed to have it to begin with, then he couldn’t squeak about it when it was taken from him.

  Still, there was the problem of Ikit Claw to worry about. The Chief Warlock was up to something and, against all reason, Thanquol didn’t think it had anything to do with stealing Rikkit’s warp-tokens. It also made Thanquol wonder if there might not be more advantage to be gained trying to ferret out exactly what the Claw was up to.

  Unfortunately, Thanquol knew it would be an up-burrow battle to get Rikkit or any of his clawleaders involved in any plot against Ikit. They already thought the grey seer had been bought and paid for. From the first moment Rikkit had gotten a sniff of Thanquol’s scent, he’d considered him nothing but a lackey of the Chief Warlock.

  It was all the moronic automaton’s fault! A big hulking abomination that shouted “gift from Clan Skryre” with every gear and gizmo bolted to its ugly bones! Thanquol had been right to be suspicious when Ikit had so graciously allowed him to take Boneripper with him on his way to treat with Clan Mors. One sniff of that mechanical brute and every skaven in Bonestash thought Thanquol was up to his neck in Clan Skryre bribes!

  If it had been true, Thanquol might have been more at ease, but he was barely tolerated by the tinker-rats and Ikit Claw wasn’t inclined to lift a whisker to help the grey seer. Worse, the Chief Warlock kept making extravagant demands on their hosts. He’d appropriated one of the largest chambers in the warren for his own uses, necessitating the relocation of a dozen brood-mothers and their pups. Then he’d started plundering the stores of timber and material Rikkit had squirrelled away, taking everything into his new lair. Finally, there had been calls for hundreds of slaves to be handed over to the Clan Skryre expedition. Instead of acting like the mercenary hirelings Rikkit had been expecting, Ikit Claw was conducting himself like a conquering warchief!

  With Clan Skryre keeping almost entirely to the chamber Ikit Claw had appropriated, Thanquol and Skraekual were left to fend for themselves among an increasingly hostile population. Or at least Thanquol was. Skraekual appeared to have smoothed over a good deal of the resentment directed at him, no doubt by spinning elaborate lies about his fellow grey seer’s association with the Claw and intentions to spy on Clan Mors.

  Thanquol was no stranger to being in the unenviable position of being caught between two hostile factions. However, this was the first time he couldn’t see a way of playing the one against the other and gaining some benefit from the infighting. The presence of Skraekual only made it that much worse. The scurvy flea-monger always seemed one jump ahead of him, poisoning the water before he could reach the stream.

  “Horned Rat guard-keep me from the intrigues of fool-flesh!” Thanquol grumbled. The scheming maggots were so involved in their own plots that they had completely forgotten the real enemy. They had all come here to drive the dwarf-things out of the halls above Bonestash. Why couldn’t any of these idiots remember that? And why couldn’t they do it soon so they’d have something beside Grey Seer Thanquol to be plotting against?

  Thanquol stared out across the pack of clanrats marching through the main run of Bonestash. The cave he had appropriated for his own use was ideally located to keep a careful watch on the activity of the warren, situated above a pit that opened into the very heart of the settlement. There had been a bit of disagreement with the previous owner, a decidedly impious belly-sniffer who didn’t seem to appreciate that it was his sacred duty to defer to the will of a grey seer. Boneripper had sorted him out though, which was what the trash-sifters would be doing next time they came around to scavenge through the tunnels.

  The warriors of Bonestash were a fine breed. Many burly black-furred stormvermin among their numbers, which was always a promising sign. The dwarfs of Karak Angkul must be unusually tough or Rikkit Snapfang unusually stupid for them to be having such trouble taking the stronghold. Thanquol was willing to bet on either.

  Boneripper suddenly rose from where it was crouched at the entrance of Thanquol’s cave. The grey seer turned around with irritation. There were two ways into the cave, one being the pit, the other being a hole that connected to one of the warren’s tunnels. Since taking up residence he’d positioned Boneripper to watch the main hole, the logical route for any intruder to come. However, the rat-ogre was again showing that annoying trait of interpreting its orders a bit too broadly. There was a pile of thirty rat carcasses lying in the corner, and a fair number that were too squished to dig out of the doorway. Thanquol wondered how much it would cost him to have Clan Skryre upgrade whatever it was rattling about inside Boneripper’s skull.

  This time, however, the intruder was a bigger kind of rat than the common vermin Boneripper had been dispatching. Displaying a tattered cloth bearing the symbol of the Horned One upon it, a lone skaven poked his nose inside the cave.

  “Stop-stand,” Thanquol ordered Boneripper. The hulking brute subsided, sinking back to its crouching position with a hiss of steam and a groan of gears.

  “Grey Seer Thanquol,” the suitably intimidated ratman spoke. “I have been sent-ordered to bring-lead you to meeting-talk.”

  Thanquol’s fur bristled at the words. He was no slithery lackey to be taking orders! If someone wanted to seek his counsel, then they could damn well come to him! He wasn’t about to go scampering off to see them. It was beneath his dignity.

  “Who sent you?” Thanquol demanded, displaying his fangs.

  The messenger spurted the musk of fear. “Warlord Rikkit Snapfang and Chief Warlock Ikit Claw,” he said. “They both seek-want your advice-wisdom for attack-battle.”

  Thanquol smoothed his whiskers with his paw, lashing his tail in amusement. So the two flea-scratchers had finally come around, had they? They had come to realise the limits of their intelligence and wanted the mighty Grey Seer Thanquol to bail them out of their troubles. Well, he might consider it if they made their appeal with due humility and deference to his rank. And, of course they’d have to placate him for the indignities they had subjected him to. That shouldn’t take more than Boneripper’s weight in warpstone though.

  Thanquol glared at the messenger. “What are you gawping at, filth-fur!” He gathered up his staff and sword from beside his nest and motioned for Boneripper to get up. The grey seer strode towards the shivering messenger. “Hurry-scurry, dung-breath! Take-lead me to this meeting!”

  Chapter VIII

  Grey Seer Thanquol bruxed his fangs and glowered menacingly at the skaven he had been coerced into following int
o the dwarf mines. Scabby, flea-bitten clanrats bearing splintered spears and rusty goblin swords. They were the mangiest pack of mouse-chewing rejects he’d ever had the misfortune of commanding, and he included the time Seerlord Kritislik had put him in charge of a litter of horned ratling pups! These sorry specimens of malnutrition and inbreeding wouldn’t last five seconds against the dwarf-things!

  Of course, that was the point. It was all a conspiracy to get rid of him! Ikit Claw and that conniving little tick Rikkit Snapfang were jealous and afraid of Thanquol’s vast intellect and natural leadership. They didn’t care a pellet about taking the dwarfhold, they just wanted to get him out of the way! It was selfish traitors like them who had prevented the skaven from conquering their enemies and overwhelming the surface world! If just a few of the leaders of skavendom would set aside their personal ambitions and work towards the betterment of the Under-Empire, nothing could stand in their way!

  But, then, few skaven had the brains to learn from Thanquol’s own selfless example. The trouble now was to figure out a way to extricate himself from this predicament. Preferably before they walked into dwarf axes or the ghastly shooting machines Rikkit had described so monstrously during the war council. There probably weren’t enough clanrats to hide behind if Thanquol stumbled into that kind of firepower.

  The war council! Bah! More like the “let’s have Grey Seer Thanquol take care of all the dirty work we’re too mouse-spleened to do ourselves” roundtable! He had never met a more conniving, cowardly bunch of maggots! And these vermin called themselves warriors!

  Rikkit Snapfang was still out of sorts because he had petitioned Clan Skryre for a few warlock-engineers to help him clear away these shooting machines that were causing him such trouble. The Chief Warlock himself was a bit more Clan Skryre than he had bargained for and he was openly afraid of Ikit Claw’s presence in his warren. The sub-chiefs and clawleaders under Rikkit were no better, alternately fawning over and cowering before the fearsome Claw.