by Warhammer
He fought the feeling, reminding himself that somewhere, far overhead, the humans went about their business, ploughing their fields, chopping their forests, unsuspecting, not knowing their days of dominance were nearly done, that soon their city and then their Empire would fall beneath the iron paw of skaven military genius. Not even these thoughts cheered him up or helped dispel his rage.
He ran a talon over the bell, drawing forth a slight ringing tone, still seeking to control his anger. The bell swung slightly at the grey seer’s touch, and the carriage on which the ancient artefact sat groaned as it moved. The seething magical energies within the bell comforted Thanquol a little. Soon, he told himself, he would unleash these enormous forces against his enemies. Very soon, he hoped, but right now he was filled with a terrible, all-consuming rage and he needed to find someone to vent it upon.
Chang Squik grovelled in the dirt before him, waiting for the grey seer to decide his fate. It had taken nearly a week for Thanquol to locate him. The would-be assassin sprawled face down in the shadow of the great bell. His tail lay flat. His whiskers drooped despondently. The leader of the gutter runners continued to mutter pathetic excuses about how he had been betrayed, about how the targets had been warned of his otherwise irresistible attack, of how they had used vile sorcery to slay his warriors – above all, about how it had not been his fault. Near the assassin stood Thanquol’s lieutenants, hiding their mouths with their paws to cover the sound of their mirth.
Thousands of faces peered up at Thanquol, eager to know what he would do next. It was not often that they got to see one of the mighty abase himself. Thanquol let his glance rest on each of the warleaders. They squirmed under his inspection. Their tittering stopped. None of them wanted to be the focus of his anger – which was unfortunate for them, because one of them was going to be.
The grey seer looked at the representatives of Clan Moulder, Clan Eshin, Clan Skryre and Clan Pestilens. All of them were his to order about, at least until his replacement, Warlord Vermek Skab, arrived. And that was not going to happen. Thanquol had prepared a little surprise for the warlord. Skab would never reach this place alive. The thought made his tail rigid. And yet…
Yet, despite all this power under his control, he could not get this one dwarf killed.
Anger and fear bit at the base of his stomach. Gotrek Gurnisson and his worthless human henchman were still alive. It beggared belief! How could this be?
It was almost as if he, the great Thanquol, was under a curse. He shuddered at the very thought. Surely the Horned Rat would not withdraw his favour from one of his chosen? No, he told himself sternly, that was not the real reason why the dwarf was still alive. The real reason was the worthlessness of his underlings.
Thanquol bared his fangs and allowed his rage to show. The accursed gutter runners had failed him. By their sheer incompetence, they had let the dwarf and the manling escape. Thanquol had a good mind to have Chang Squik hung up by his tail and flayed alive. Only his fear of possible reprisals by Clan Eshin kept him from ordering his bodyguards to seize the gutter runner.
Rumour had it that Squik was a favoured pupil of Deathmaster Snikch himself. That being the case, such straightforward vengeance was out of the question. But, Thanquol thought, there was more than one way to skin a rat. Someday he would make Chang Squik pay for this monstrous failure. Thanquol’s problem right now, however, was to find a way to safely vent the killing rage that was on him, without making powerful enemies in the process. He lashed his tail in frustration.
Thanquol glared at Izak Grottle. The monstrously obese skaven lounged on a palanquin born by rat-ogres. The Clan Moulder packmaster had arrived this very morning, keen to take part in the triumph that was sure to follow this great offensive. He and his retinue had scuttled along the Underways from the skaven secret base at Night Crag in the Grey Mountains.
Grottle tried to hold Thanquol’s burning gaze but could not. He looked away and ran a paw over the largest of his bodyguard of rat-ogres, a creature so massive that it made the late and unlamented Boneripper look small. The creature bellowed its pleasure as Grottle fed it a tasty titbit of human fingers. Behind Grottle, other packmasters and their beasts stood waiting. Thanquol decided that he would spare Grottle. He did not doubt he could destroy the fat one. He was not so sure that he could survive an attack by the outraged beasts if they got out of control. Anyway he could not blame the recently arrived packmaster for the failure of last week’s attack.
He turned his attention to the rotting form of Vilebroth Null, low abbot of the plague monks of Clan Pestilens, who stood alone, well apart from any other skaven. From within the abbot’s cowl, pus-filled, fearless green eyes met his own. Thanquol instantly dismissed the idea of venting his rage on the diseased one. Like every skaven, he knew that the plague monks were quite mad. It was useless to antagonise them. Thanquol let his gaze slide slowly aside. The plague monk triumphantly blew his nose on the sleeve of his mouldering robe. A huge bubble of foul green snot swelled on his wrist and then burst.
Next in line was the armoured form of Heskit One Eye, master warp engineer of Clan Skryre. One Eye was small by skaven standards, dwarfed by his retinue of jezzail-armed bodyguards. Thanquol was still angry with him for the explosion of the farsqueaker. He suspected some sort of assassination attempt there, though, in truth, it seemed unlikely that Clan Skryre would be behind it. Intentionally blowing up one of their own precious devices to kill an enemy was not their style. Thanquol decided to spare Heskit. He was not in the slightest bit influenced by the fact that the bodyguard’s long-barrelled rifles could shoot the wings off a fly at this range. No, not in the slightest.
He knew he couldn’t punish these ones. They were too powerful. Their clans were too influential and he needed them to spearhead the attack on the mancity. Still, he had to kill someone, both to re-establish his own authority and for his own pleasure. It wouldn’t do just to let them all off. It was not the skaven way.
An example had to be made.
One by one he turned his gaze on the Clan Skab warleaders. They were all present now, save for Warlord Vermek Skab himself. All wore the red and black livery of their clan. Each also had the single scar running from their left ear to their left cheek which was the badge of their clan. Each of them was as proud as a skaven could be, the unchallenged master of a host of vicious warriors, yet each of them hurriedly looked away when the grey seer met their eyes. They knew of his foul temper by reputation. Even Tzarkual, the gigantic leader of the stormvermin, would not face his wrath. He studied his feet like a small runt facing discipline from his elders.
Good, thought Thanquol. They were cowed. He took a pinch of warpstone snuff and watched them quake. Bright, mad visions of horror and carnage skittered through his brain. He puffed with self-confidence, convinced that at this moment he could face one of the Council of Thirteen and triumph. As always, the drug-induced confidence receded after a heart-stopping moment, leaving the afterglow of pure, Chaos-induced power searing through his veins. Quickly, before the heat could fade, he selected a victim. He stabbed out a pointing talon at Lurk Snitchtongue, the weakest of the warleaders and, not coincidentally, the one with least allies both here and back in Skavenblight.
‘You find something amusing, Snitchtongue?’ Thanquol demanded in his most intimidating high-pitched chitter. ‘You think something is very funny, perhaps?’
Snitchtongue licked his snout nervously. He bobbed his head ingratiatingly and held up his empty paws. ‘No! No, great one.’
‘Don’t lie. If humour there is in the abject failure of the mighty gutter runners, please share it. Your insight may prove most useful. Come! Speak! Speak!’
The skaven on either side of Lurk backed away, cautiously putting as much distance as they could between themselves and their doomed fellow. In moments Lurk found himself standing in an open space twenty feet across. He glanced over his shoulder, seeking some way to escape, but there was none. Not even his personal bodyguard would stand nea
r him with the grey seer staring angrily down. Lurk shrugged, lashed his tail and put his hand on the hilt of his blade. He had obviously decided to brazen it out.
‘If gutter runners failed it was because they were too subtle,’ Lurk said. ‘They should have attacked head-on, in a massed rush, blades bared. That is the skaven way. That is the Clan Skab way.’
Chang Squik glared across at the skaven warrior. If looks could kill, Lurk would have left the chamber in a casket. Thanquol was suddenly intrigued by the situation. Here was an opportunity to twist the assassin’s tail with no possibility of reprisals against himself. The grey seer decided that he would let Lurk live for a few moments longer.
‘You are saying that you could have handled the situation better than your brothers of Clan Eshin? You are saying you could succeed where trained gutter runners of mighty Eshin failed?’
Lurk’s jaws snapped shut. He stood for a moment, considering the implications of that last statement, seeing the trap that the grey seer had prepared for him. If he openly criticised Squik, he would make an enemy of the powerful gutter runner, and doubtless take a knife in his belly as he slept. On the other paw, he also obviously realised that he had been singled out to face the grey seer’s wrath no matter what. He knew it was a choice between immediate and inevitable death – or possible doom in the future. He rose to the occasion like a true skaven warrior.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
Thanquol giggled. The after effects of the warpsnuff still dizzied him. The rest of the skaven present echoed their leader’s amusement with great roars of false chittering laughter.
‘Then perhaps you should take your warriors to the mancity above and prove it, yes.’
‘Indeed, great one,’ the warleader replied. His voice sounded relieved. He had a slim chance of living after all. ‘Your enemies are as good as dead.’
Somehow Thanquol doubted it, but he did not say so. Then he cursed himself for his leniency. He had allowed Snitchtongue to wriggle out from under his paw and not blasted him into a thousand pieces as an example.
At that moment, a runner entered, puffing breathlessly. In the traditional cleft thighbone of a human he carried, he held a message. Seeing Thanquol he immediately abased himself before the grey seer and prodded the bone forward.
Thanquol was tempted to blast him for his insolence. There was a fine old skaven tradition of killing the messenger who brought bad news to be kept up, but at this moment Thanquol did not even know that the news was bad. Curiosity got the better of him and he pulled the parchment from the stick. He noted that the corners were creased and it had obviously been well-pawed.
No surprises there, then. Doubtless every spy between here and Skavenblight had bribed the messenger so that he could look at what he carried. That, too, was the skaven way. Thanquol did not care. He had established his own codes, cunningly concealed within deceptively innocuous messages, in order to keep his communications secret.
He looked down at the blocky runes scrawled in a strong skaven paw. The message read simply: The package has been delivered. A sense of triumph filled Thanquol and dispelled his earlier anger. He fought to control his sense of exultation and keep his pleasure from his face. He looked down at the messenger and sneered, knowing above all that appearances must be kept up and an example must be made.
‘This message has been opened, traitor-thing!’ he snarled and raised his paw. A sphere of greenish light sprang into being around Thanquol’s clenched fist. The messenger cringed and tried to beg for mercy but it was too late. Tentacles of hideous dark magical energy leapt downwards from Thanquol’s paw to encircle the doomed skaven’s body. The bands separated themselves and flowed around the messenger, swimming through the air in the way that eels swim through water, with a horrible sinuous wriggling. After a few moments, the bands of energy lunged inwards, stabbing through the skaven’s body, boring through the flesh and emerging darker on the other side.
Again and again they stabbed inwards, stripping away flesh and muscle and sinew. Again and again the messenger let out high-pitched, agonising screams. The smell of the musk of fear mingled with the scent of blood and the ozone taint of the spell. In a matter of seconds only a stripped skeleton stood before Thanquol. After a heartbeat it collapsed into a pile of bone. The ribbons of magical energy flowed together, somehow consuming each other as they did so, until there was nothing left of them. The whole assembled skaven host let out a great sigh of wonder and disbelief at seeing their grey seer demonstrating his power in this satisfying manner.
Thanquol raised his paw and gestured for silence. In a moment all was calm, save for a few coughs from the back rows.
‘Lament, skaven! Tragic news!’ Thanquol said, and even the coughing stopped. ‘Mighty Warlord Vermek Skab is dead, killed in a terrible accident involving a loaded crossbow and an exploding donkey. We will have the traditional ten heartbeats of silence to mark the return of his soul to the Horned Rat.’
Immediately all the skaven started to talk among themselves. The chitter of conversation only fell silent when Thanquol raised his paw again and let the warning glow reappear around his talons. All of them sensed the menace in the gesture and went quiet. None of them wanted to be the next to be consumed by those terrible wiggling bands of energy.
‘Now we will prepare for the next phase of the master plan,’ Thanquol said. ‘In the sad absence of Lord Skab, I must reassume control of the army of conquest.’
‘With great respectfulness, Grey Seer Thanquol, such is not the case. As senior skaven here, my duty it is to assume command.’ The booming voice of Izak Grottle filled the chamber. ‘Clan Moulder had provided many warptokens to finance this expedition and I must see that they are spent wisely.’
‘What nonsense is this?’ Vilebroth Null inquired. The words bubbled phlegmishly from his ruined throat. ‘If any is to command here, it should be me. To Clan Pestilens will go the honour of overthrowing the mancity. We have great plans! Great plans! It is our secret weapon that will destroy the human city!’
‘No! No! I disagree,’ chittered the reedy, high-pitched voice of Heskit One Eye. ‘The siege machines of Skryre will make victory possible and so to Skryre should fall the leadership. Naturally, as the ranking representative of Clan Skryre I will now assume my duties as supreme commander.’
‘This is a vile usurpation of Clan Moulder’s privileges,’ Izak Grottle roared. The rat-ogres, hearing the anger in his voice, bellowed with barely suppressed fury. The sound of their wrath echoed around the cavern. ‘Mutinous behaviour cannot be tolerated! No! For the good of the force, warn you I must that one more word of such treachery and my warriors will execute you instantaneously.’
The jezzail teams around Heskit swiftly brought their weapons to bear on Izak Grottle. ‘Your warriors? Your warriors? There speaks a mad skaven. By what right do you name the warriors of my command your troops?’
‘Both of you are trying my patience,’ Vilebroth Null burbled. ‘Seeing my two senior lackeys bickering in such a runtish manner cannot help but demoralise my army. Cease such treacherous behaviour at once or face the hideous and inevitably fatal consequences.’
Null flexed his paws menacingly and suddenly there was a package of filthy stuff in his hands. No one present could doubt that it was dangerous. The plagues of Clan Pestilens were famously deadly.
Grey Seer Thanquol looked on in baffled rage and barely concealed glee. He half hoped that the various leaders would come to blows, that violence would erupt and that these upstarts would slaughter each other. Unfortunately, until circumstances proved otherwise, he had to assume that he needed all of their help to overthrow the man-city. So it was time to put a stop to this nonsense.
‘Brother skaven,’ he said in his most diplomatic voice. ‘Consider this. Until the coming of Vermek Skab, the Council of Thirteen placed me in command of this army. Since Vermek Skab is sadly no longer with us, the leader’s place in the rear must still fall to me by edict of the council. Of course, if any of you wishe
s to challenge the council’s ruling I will notify them of this at once.’
That quietened them, as Thanquol had known that it would. No skaven in his right mind would even hint at the possibility of disobeying a direct edict from the council. The dread rulers of the skaven race had a long reach and their punishments were swift and certain. By invoking the council’s authority, Thanquol knew that he would ensure the obedience of all present until such a time as they could check back with their clan’s rulers and representatives on the council. Hopefully in that time Thanquol would have brought the mancity to its knees.
‘Of course, you are correct, Grey Seer Thanquol,’ Heskit chittered. ‘It is only that, as your second-in-command, I felt that these others were overstepping the bounds of their authority.’
‘I know not how Heskit can claim to be your second-in-command, grey seer, when all know my respect for you is boundless, and my devotion to your cause without limit,’ Izak Grottle said.
Vilebroth Null merely coughed enigmatically and said: ‘It pains me to see these overbearing oafs challenging your rightful authority, grey seer. Surely the power of my clan and my proven dedication to your person must mean that I rank second here.’
‘I have yet to decide who the Underleader will be. I must retire to my burrow to contemplate strategy.’ So saying, he descended from the bell carriage and the seething sea of skaven parted before him. Thanquol felt satisfied for the moment that he had the challenge to his leadership under control.
This was more like it, thought Thanquol. Let them bicker over who gets the scraps. The glory will belong to me.
As was only right.
Lurk Snitchtongue crouched down in his favourite hiding place, a small cave above a long narrow gallery far from the main Underways. He was worried as only a skaven of a naturally nervous disposition could be. He knew that he had only days to make good on his claim to be able to destroy the dwarf and the human who had humiliated Chang Squik, or else he would suffer the same fate as the messenger from Skavenblight.
