by Warhammer
‘I am too sore to be dead,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s pleasant to re-enter the world of the living and be greeted by such a beautiful face.’
‘There’s no time for flattery, Max Schreiber. The skaven are still here and upstairs a battle rages. We need your help.’
‘Tis always the way,’ he grumbled, pulling himself slowly and painfully to his feet. He brushed himself down, disgusted at seeing how soiled his golden robes were. ‘No one wants to know a wizard... until they have a problem. Then it’s different.’
‘Herr Schreiber, have your wounds rendered you insane?’
‘No, Ulrika. I’m just attempting to lighten the situation with a joke. You’re a lovely woman, but if I may say so your sense of humour is not your strong point.’
‘Just get on with it, Max.’
‘And thank you for saving me. I owe you for it.’
‘You owe me nothing. Just get out there and start casting spells – like you did the other night.’
He nodded and then a sudden serious expression flashed across his face. ‘The grey seer is gathering its powers, and they are immense. I have never felt the winds of magic swirl and flow so turbulently. I wonder what new evil it is up to.’
Grey Seer Thanquol felt the power surging within him. It was like a snake in his belly, in his chest, fighting to get out. He had consumed an enormous amount of warpstone, enough to have caused lesser skaven mages to explode or devolve into primordial ooze but he was Thanquol. He was the greatest of the grey seers, the mightiest of mages, the supreme sorcerer of the skaven people. Nothing was beyond his powers. Nothing.
Control yourself, he thought. Think. Think. He knew only too well the feeling of extreme self-confidence that filled the habitual warpstone user at such moments as this. Indeed, he believed that most skaven sorcerers had moments of utter grandiosity mere heartbeats before the warpstone led them to their final doom. He was not going to be one of them. It was true that like all grey seers, he had a healthy regard for his own abilities but he was not going to allow the potent raw Chaos stuff to drown out his sense of self-preservation. A sense that was, at this very moment, asserting itself and letting him know that he needed to cast the spell and vent the power now, before it consumed him. It was difficult to do so with so much raw sorcerous energy coursing through his veins and the ecstasy of unlimited power bubbling in his brain, but he knew that he must do it or his doom was certain.
Slowly he forced himself to recite the words of the potent incantation he had devised. One by one he reconstructed the intricate maze of paw gestures that would focus the magic. As he moved his arm, streamers of pure magical energy followed his talons, as if he were slashing holes in the very substance of reality, which in a way, he supposed, he was. He moved his arms in ever-wider gestures; he shrieked the potent syllables of the incantation ever louder. As he did so, a nimbus of light played round his body. Raw magical energy began to leak from his eyes, his snout, his muzzle and the lower extremities of his body. He felt the power roiling back and forth in his gut like acid and knew that he was involved in a race against time, that if he did not complete his spell soon, the power would rip him apart. The part of his mind that was not caught up in the complex mystic geometry of the spell swore that never, ever again would he consume so much warpstone.
He rushed through the last potent syllables of the incantation and made the final paw gestures. Slowly at first a writhing mass of green tendrils extended themselves from his body. Then one by one, the filaments reached out and up, seeking the airship. Thanquol felt his whole body tingle with vibrant energy as they did so. His fur stood on end and his tail was fully extended. His whole body was uncannily sensitive. The faintest kiss of air on his fur felt like someone was rubbing him down with a wire brush. It was painful and yet not unpleasant. He forced himself to concentrate once more, to see each tentacle of energy as an extension of himself, a thing that he could control, that he could feel through as if it were his paw tips.
He extended the web of his power. The spell was a giant claw with which he could grasp the airship and immobilise it. Now those foolish dwarfs would learn the folly of opposing Grey Seer Thanquol, mightiest of mages, master of all magics. He would take their puny airship and crush it. He would smash it to pieces and cast it to earth. He would...
No! What was he thinking? That was the warpstone dust speaking. He would merely immobilise the airship and let his minions take it. Yes. That was it. Concentrate, he told himself. Don’t lose sight of the goal now that it is almost within your grasp.
His questing fingers of power touched the airship’s cupola. Thanquol shrieked. He felt as if he had been scorched. What wickedness was this? What evil sorcery was at work here? He watched the streamers of green light retreat from the airship at his command. Of course, the airship was protected against Chaos magic. It needed to have been since it had flown across the Wastes. Gingerly Thanquol sent the streamers flickering back again. He knew he had time. What seemed like minutes to him in his exalted state were mere heartbeats to others. His questing tendrils played over the cupola and retreated. It was no use trying to grasp the airship there. It was well protected. He extended his reach to the gasbag. Success! It was not shielded. No! Correction. Parts of it were. The bits that held turrets. Suddenly as he ran his power over the lower part of the gasbag he sensed a familiar, and yet somehow subtly changed presence. It was Lurk! He detached one streamer of energy to grasp his wayward minion, catching him in mid-leap. The rest he continued to weave around the unshielded parts of the gasbag, anchoring the airship in place.
No! What was happening! Why was he starting to rise from the ground! This was not supposed to... Wait! He had it. Thanquol alone could not anchor the airship. His weight was insubstantial compared to the mass of the flying ship. A moment’s consideration told him exactly what he needed to do to bind himself to the earth.
As quick as thought he created more streamers of warpstone energy and sent them burrowing deep into the ground, questing downwards like the roots of some sorcerously swift growing plant. Now he was locked in place. Now he had the leverage to pit himself against the airship’s engines. He exerted his power once more.
Instantly he felt himself being drawn back to earth again, and the airship with him. This was more like it. He was a giant! He was a god! With his magic he was going to pull the Spirit of Grungni right out of the sky. He had it hooked like a fish on a line, and now all he needed to do was reel it in. There was nothing any of those pitiful fools could do to stop him.
Extending his power to the fullest, he slowly but surely began to pull the airship to the ground.
Felix watched in astonishment as a mass of shimmering streamers of light surged up from the doorway of the mansion, curling round the tower like serpents until eventually they engulfed the airship. For a moment, the fighting stopped and all eyes were drawn upwards to watch the sorcerous spectacle. For an instant the lights touched the cupola and withdrew, but only for a moment were they thwarted. Almost immediately they encircled the gasbag of the balloon. Felix could see the skin of its surface flex and he wondered whether the skaven intended to rip the bag asunder and destroy the airship.
Seconds later it became apparent that this was not the grey seer’s plan. Felix’s mouth gaped in astonishment as slowly but surely the Spirit of Grungni was drawn downwards towards the ground. The skaven had ceased to retreat, so awe-stricken were they by this display of the grey seer’s powers. It looked all too possible that the airship was going to be captured.
It seemed as if the airship, and with it the proceeds of the expedition to Karag Dum, was doomed.
THREE
BATTLE!
Ulrika and Max Schreiber raced through the cellars. All around her were the freed prisoners. Some were armed with weapons taken from dead skaven guards, others were arming themselves with cudgels made from broken chairs, old tools and kitchen knives. Ulrika was not reassured.
‘How many?’ she asked her father.
‘About thirty who can fight. About fifty all told.’
‘So few?’
‘So few.’
‘Do you think our patrols will return in time?‘
‘We must not count on it.’
‘What is going on above?’
‘You would know better than I, daughter. I have been down here all this time.’
‘Mighty magics are being unleashed,’ Max Schreiber said. ‘I fear the skaven are going to capture the airship. I suspect that may have been their plan all along.’
‘They must be stopped.’
‘How? We could not stop them last night when we held the walls and had a hundred armed men. How can we do so now?’
‘We must find a way, daughter.’
Max Schreiber smiled. ‘We have an advantage now that we did not have last night.’
‘And what’s that?’ asked Ulrika.
‘They will not be expecting us.’
‘By Taal, Max Schreiber, you have a gift for looking on the bright side,’ boomed Ivan.
‘Let’s go up and see what we can do. At least in the confusion there may be a chance to escape.’
‘There will be no escape, Max Schreiber. This is my ancestral home. I will not abandon it to some stinking, gods-poxed ratmen.’
‘I can see why you get on so well with the dwarfs,’ said Max Schreiber. ‘You’re all as stubborn as hell.’
Felix Jaeger watched in awe as the grey seer dragged the Spirit of Grungni earthwards. One small skaven was engaged in a contest of strength with an enormous vessel and he was winning. The dwarfs were not going to be beaten quietly though. The engines of the airship roared and Felix could tell from the angle of the fins that whoever was at the controls was trying to get the ship up. The streamers of energy left a glittering after-image on his field of vision. It was an incredible display of magical power, one of the greatest he had ever seen.
‘Best get down there and kill that skaven magician,’ said Gotrek.
‘A good plan,’ said Snorri.
An idiotic plan, Felix thought. All we have to do is fight our way through a small skaven army and confront a sorcerer who is capable of plucking an airship from the sky. On the other hand, he could think of nothing better himself. The airship represented their best hope of escape and if it were captured or destroyed, they were doomed.
‘Let’s get on with it then,’ Felix said with no great enthusiasm.
Now is the moment of my triumph, thought Grey Seer Thanquol. Now all skaven will bow before my genius. Now the Council of Thirteen must recognise my accomplishments. He felt capable of reaching up and pulling the moons from the sky and the stars from the heavens. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. Morrslieb, the lesser moon, was said to be made of a gigantic chunk of warpstone. If he could grasp it, then...
No. Best stick to the matter at hand. First he would capture the airship then he would seize Morrslieb. And if he could not reach it with his spells perhaps he could fly there in the airship. Fully formed, a plan of awful majesty appeared in Thanquol’s mind. He could use the airship to fly to the moon and mine all the warpstone he would ever need. It would be an achievement unsurpassed in all the annals of skavendom, and surely his reward must be a place at the Council table. At the very least. Perhaps the whole Council would bow before him, and recognise him as the greatest of all servants of the Horned Rat. Such was the magnificence of his vision that for a moment, Thanquol was lost in contemplation. Only when he felt the strands of his power slipping away was he drawn back to reality by the realisation that first he would have to land his fish before any of it would be possible. He threw himself back into the struggle with renewed ferocity.
Lurk was not happy. In mid-leap he had been caught by one of those huge streamers of energy and tossed all over the sky in a deranged frenzy of movement. He had long known how potent the grey seer was but never till now had he shown such full evidence of his might. Was this some sort of revenge by Grey Seer Thanquol for his disloyal thoughts? Had Thanquol been aware of Lurk’s ideas concerning him all along? Did he plan to end Lurk’s torment by dashing him into the ground?
‘No-no, master!’ he gibbered. ‘Spare your loyalest of servants. I will serve you faithfully all of my days. Blast those other foul vermin. They hate you. I do not. I have always done my best for you!’
If Thanquol heard Lurk’s earnest prayers, there was no sign. Filled with fear, Lurk watched the ground rise to meet him.
Ulrika put her sword through the back of the skaven cowering in the hall, and went to the window to look at the source of the eerie glow. She had never seen anything like it. The horn-headed skaven mage floated in the air about twenty strides above the ground. It was anchored to the earth by hundreds of streamers of light, and with hundreds of others it was drawing the straining airship down.
Beneath it, hundreds of skaven muzzles pointed at the sky. They stood frozen in awe, watching their master at work. Beside her she heard Max Schreiber mutter, ‘By Sigmar, how does it contain all that power and not explode? It must be consuming pure warpstone, and yet it still has not died.’
‘What?’ she asked.
‘That thing out there is filled with the raw stuff of Chaos. It is using it to power its spell. It should not be possible for any mortal thing to be doing this but it is. I have no idea how.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if you applied your mind to the idea of killing it,’ Ulrika suggested.
‘I am not sure I have the strength.’
‘Then things do not look good.’
‘You have a gift for understatement, my dear.’
Felix watched Gotrek descend the ladder. With one arm the Slayer held the rungs, with the other he wielded his axe like a club, dropping it down on the skulls of any skaven below him. By sheer ferocity Gotrek managed to reach the bottom and clear a space around the base of the ladder. Moments later Snorri joined him. Seeing no other option, Felix began his own descent.
A roar from above him told him that the gyrocopter had returned for another pass. Felix watched a bomb hurtle towards the hovering grey seer. The fuse timing, always a tricky thing at best, was not good, and the bomb went hurtling past Thanquol to explode amidst the skaven. Once more aware of their peril, they tried frantically to hurl themselves aside only to be blown asunder by the dwarf explosive.
Felix shuddered, thinking just how easy it would be for one of those bombs to go astray and catch himself, Gotrek and Snorri in the blast. It did not bear thinking about. Instead he threw himself forward hacking desperately to right and left, trying his best to smash a path through the massed ranks of skaven to the place where Grey Seer Thanquol hovered. Although what he was going to do when he got there eluded him.
Grey Seer Thanquol opened his mouth and roared with only slightly crazed laughter. His senses had expanded with his power. He saw himself as a towering giant looking down on the insects below him. His spirit form was as large as the airship with which he grappled. He was a being of awesome proportions. Surely, he thought, this must be how the Horned Rat felt when he gazed down into the world of mortals. Perhaps it was an omen, a harbinger of things to come. Perhaps there would be no limits to Thanquol’s destiny. Perhaps he could stride where no skaven had strode before and scale the very peaks of godhood. Certainly at this moment, with the warpstone coursing through his veins, it all seemed possible. There was nothing he could not do.
He was the master of this situation now. Nothing was going to stop him. Not even his accursed nemesis, Gotrek Gurnisson, or his devious henchman, Felix Jaeger. Finally after all these long months of effort he was going to achieve complete victory over them. How sweet that feeling was!
Wait! What was that? He glanced down and saw the gyrocopter flash past. He noticed the bomb that just missed him and exploded among his troops, sending their souls spiralling upwards to join the Horned Rat. How dare they attack the Horned Rat’s chosen emissary on earth? He would show them. Quick as thought he reached out with his tentacles
of power and swatted the gyrocopter like a man might swat a fly. Unfortunately he was a tad too slow to catch the fast moving craft and his blow missed.
Only incidentally did he become aware of something sticking to one of his tentacles. Of course. It was that rascal, Lurk. Briefly, Thanquol considered smashing his errant henchman into the ground as a punishment for his failures but then, through the psychic link that allowed him to perceive through his energy streams, he became aware of the gratifying way Lurk was swearing eternal obedience to him, and more, he was suddenly aware of the changes that had overtaken his minion, of the warpstone coursing through his body, and the way it had been altered. This was something worth investigating. He took a moment to place Lurk not too gently on the ground and returned to his efforts to swat the gyrocopter.
It proved frustratingly elusive. Still, he thought, the sheer satisfaction of smashing it would be its own reward.
Felix watched in horror as streamers of light impacted on the gyrocopter. The small flying machine began to break up, its parts tumbling headlong through the air, to smash into the ground killing more skaven. A huge cloud of steam and smoke erupted from the broken vehicle’s engine. It was followed by a massive explosion, the blast of which sent him tumbling headlong. He guessed that the stock of bombs on the gyrocopter had just gone off. Skaven screams told him the dwarf pilot was not the only casualty.
Overhead the other gyrocopters flashed. One down, three to go, thought Felix.
‘What do we do?’ Ulrika asked. ‘You’re the magician. This is your field.’
‘There is no way any mortal form can contain that amount of power for any great length of time. It’s possible that its owner will be consumed by it. It’s also possible that the power contained within whatever it is he is eating will be exhausted, and he will lose his strength. If he weakens I might be able to disrupt his spell. Other than that...’
