by Warhammer
Here and there black roses had been placed in bowers. Their sickly sweet perfume assaulted Felix’s nostrils. Sometimes there were letters, or gifts or other mementoes from the living to the dead. An overwhelming feeling of sadness started to mingle with Felix’s earlier feelings of fear. These things were some indicators of the futility of human life. It did not matter how rich or successful the men who lay in those graves had been. They were gone now. Just as one day Felix would be. He could understand in some ways the Slayer’s desire to be remembered.
Life is written on sand, he thought, and the wind is blowing the grains away.
They chose a place near the open graves and concealed themselves behind some toppled tombstones. The smell of fresh turned earth filled Felix’s nostrils. The chill of the mist bit through his clothing. He felt patches of dampness on his britches where they touched dew-bedecked plants. He pulled his cloak tight against the cold, and then they settled down to wait.
Felix glanced up at the sky. The moon had more than half completed its passage and still nothing had happened. All that he had heard in that time was the scrabbling of ordinary rats. All they had seen were some vicious, mad-eyed vermin. There was no sign of the skaven.
Perhaps, he thought, half disappointed and half relieved, he had been wrong. Maybe they had best consider going home. Now would be a good time to leave. The streets would be deserted. Most every honest person would be safely asleep. He wiped his nose with the edge of his cloak. It was running and he knew this night outside would do nothing for his cold. He stretched his legs, trying to work the stiffness and numbness out of them when he felt Gotrek’s hand on his shoulder.
‘Be still,’ the Slayer whispered. ‘Something comes.’
Felix froze and glared out into the darkness, wishing that he possessed the dwarf’s keen senses and penetrating night vision. He heard his heart beat loudly within his chest. His muscles, locked in their unnatural position, began to protest against the strain, but still he held himself immobile, hardly daring to breathe, hoping that whatever was coming would not notice him before he saw it.
Suddenly he scented a foul and loathsome taint in the air. It smelled of rotting flesh and weeping sores, like the body of a sick man left unwashed in a hospice for weeks or years. If disease had a smell, it would be like this, Felix thought. He knew in an instant that his suspicions had been correct. In order to keep from gagging, he held the pomander close to his nose, and prayed that its spells would make him proof against whatever was coming.
A hideous figure limped into view. It resembled a skaven, but it was like no rat-man Felix had ever seen before. Here and there great boils erupted from its mangy fur, and something hideous dripped from its weeping skin. Most of its body was wrapped round with soiled bandages encrusted with pus and filth. It was emaciated and its eyes glowed with a mad, feverish light. Its movements were almost drunken; it reeled as if in the grip of a disease which interfered with its sense of balance. And yet, when it moved it sometimes did so with bursts of obscene speed, with the unholy energy of a sick man mustering the last of his strength for some hideous task.
It tittered loathsomely as it moved and talked to itself in its strange tongue. As it did all this, Felix noticed it held a cage in one palsied hand, and in that cage seethed rats. It stopped for a moment, hopped on one stringy leg. Then it opened the cage and took out a rat. Others burst free of the open door and dropped to the ground into the graves. As they fell, they leaked urine and foul excrement. When it touched the earth, for a brief moment there was a hideous, overwhelming stink that threatened to make Felix gag, and which only slowly subsided. The rats pulled themselves from the graves and dragged themselves feebly into cover. Felix could see that they left a trail of noxious slime in their wake, and it was obvious they were dying. What foul thing was going on here, Felix wondered?
The skaven capered past. Felix was surprised and appalled when the Slayer did not immediately strike it down, but instead gestured for Felix to follow and then set off on its track. It took Felix but a few moments to understand Gotrek’s plan. They were going to follow the plague monk of Clan Pestilens – for such Felix guessed it to be – back to its lair. They were seeking a path into the very heart of corruption in the Gardens of Morr.
As they followed the capering plague monk through the mist-enshrouded cemetery, Felix noticed that there were other skaven present. Judging by the empty cages they carried they had all been on the same evil errand and were now returning to their lair. Some limped along, borne down by the weight of rotting corpses – recently exhumed, judging by the earth which still clung to their grave clothes.
He and the Slayer were forced to move cautiously, lurking behind tombstones, taking refuge in the shadows beneath the trees, moving from patch of cover to patch of cover. In some ways, Felix thought it was unnecessary. The plague monks did not seem as alert as normal skaven. They seemed quite mad, and often oblivious to their surroundings. Maybe their brains were as rotted as their bodies by the diseases they carried.
Sometimes they would stop for minutes and scratch themselves until they bled, or their festering scabs broke and then they would taste the pus which stained their claws. Sometimes they would pause and stare into space for no reason. At times foul excrement would belch forth from beneath their tails and they would lie down and writhe in it, tittering insanely. Felix felt his flesh crawl. These creatures were not sane even by the crazed standards of skaven.
Now at last they were making their way towards a vast mausoleum deep in the noble quarter of the Gardens. They were walking along paved pathways, between well-tended gardens. Here and there statues loomed over sundials that were useless at this hour. More and more plague monks were becoming visible, and more than once Felix and the Slayer hid themselves within the arched entrances to the tomb of some noble clan. Only when the skaven had passed did they rejoin the nightmare procession making its way deeper into the old part of the cemetery, where the largest and most tumbledown of the tombs were.
They paused at a corner and Felix noticed the skaven disappearing into the mouth of the largest and most ancient of the mausoleums. The building was built almost like a temple, in the old Tilean style with pillars supporting the roof of the entrance hall and statues of what Felix assumed were the builder’s families held in niches between the columns. Only after the last skaven had disappeared did he and Gotrek advance to the stairs leading up to the entrance.
In the moonlight Felix could see that the mausoleum was in a state of great disrepair. The stonework had crumbled, the friezes had been eaten away by the effects of centuries of wind and rain, the faces had crumbled off the statues to be replaced by lichen. It looked like the stone itself was suffering from some terrible disease. The gardens around it were wild and overgrown. Felix could not be sure but he guessed that the family who had built this place had died out. The place had an uncared-for look, as if no one had visited the place in years. By day this would be a forbidding enough place. On this night, Felix felt no great urge to look within.
Gotrek, however, bounded up the stairs as fast as his short legs could carry him. The runes on his axe gleamed in the moonlight. He grinned at the prospect of confronting the skaven in their lair. Briefly it struck Felix that the dwarf was just as mad in his own way as the skaven were in theirs – and perhaps the best thing he could do was scuttle off and leave them all to their own devices. Felix fought to bring this urge under control as they reached the doorway. He was surprised to find that there was no way in, only a blank stone wall. Gotrek stood before it, puzzled for a minute, scratched his tattooed head with one blunt finger and then reached out to touch one of the stone faces on the side of the arch. As he did so, the wall in front of them slowly and silently rotated to reveal an entranceway.
‘Shoddy work,’ Gotrek muttered. ‘Dwarf work would not be so easy to detect.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Felix mumbled uneasily and then followed Gotrek through the open entrance of the tomb.
The door sli
d silently closed behind them.
The stench was worse within. The walls were thoroughly caked with filth. Felix could feel it squelch under his hands as he fumbled his way forward through the darkness. Remembering the foul acts he had witnessed the plague monks perform made him want to vomit. Instead, though, he forced himself to follow the faint glow of the runes on the Slayer’s axe ahead of him.
Gotrek moved quickly and surely, as if he had no difficulty seeing even in the absence of light. Felix suspected that this might be the case, and that the Slayer’s vision might be as good in the gloom as it was in the daylight. He had followed the dwarf through dark places before and was certain that the Slayer knew what he was doing. All the same, he wished that he could light the lantern he carried.
From somewhere off in the distance, he heard a faint scratching sound, and he revised that thought. Perhaps a lantern would not be such a good idea after all. It would certainly warn the skaven of their presence, and Felix felt sure that their one chance of survival in the face of the rat-men’s greater numbers was to attack swiftly with the advantage of surprise. Still, if he was going to fight he was going to need light at some point, he thought. He prayed he had a chance to light his lamp before moving into battle.
He almost lost his balance as he put his weight forward and there was nothing there. Recovering himself, he realised that he was on a stair heading down. This was indeed a large mausoleum. Whoever had built this place had certainly spent a lot of money, he thought. And why not? They were going to spend eternity here, or so they had thought.
Ahead of them now he could hear a loud chittering. It sounded like the skaven were involved in some obscene ritual. A faint glow of greenish, sickly light illuminated the corridor ahead. It looked like they were about to confront the rat-men in their lair.
Vilebroth Null cackled as one of his leprous fingers broke off and fell into the bubbling cauldron. It was a good sign. His own plague-eaten flesh would help feed the spirit which lurked there and strengthen the brew that would soon bring death to his enemies. The Cauldron of a Thousand Poxes was at once a sacred relic and a weapon for Clan Pestilens, and he intended that it would fulfil both purposes at once.
From his pouch he took out a thick handful of warpstone dust and threw it into the great vat. His remaining fingers tingled from the warpstone’s touch and he licked them clean, feeling the tingling transfer itself to his tongue as he did so. He licked his gums so that some of the dust would contaminate the abscesses and ulcers there and perhaps make their contents even more contagious.
Null hawked a huge gob of phlegm into his mouth and then spat it into the thick soupy mixture for good measure, all the while stirring with the great ladle carved from the thigh bone of a dragon. He could sense the pestilential power rising from the cauldron the way an ordinary skaven might feel the heat from a fire. It was as if he stood in front of a mighty conflagration of toxic energies.
He breathed deeply, pulling the heady vapours that rose from the mixture into his lungs, and instantly was rewarded with a thick, treacly cough. He could almost feel his lungs clogging with fluid as the corruption brewed there. It was a just reward, he thought. His plans were going well. The tests were almost complete.
The new plague was as virulent as could be hoped, but most importantly it was his. He had used an old recipe but had added the new secret ingredient himself. Forever afterwards among the faithful of Clan Pestilens it would be known as Null’s Pox. His name would be inscribed in the great Liber Bubonicus. He would be long remembered as the originator of a new disease, one that would ravage the furless ones like a ferocious beast of prey.
With every night, the brew grew thicker. With every new plague corpse added to the mix, the disease grew stronger. Soon, he judged, it would be ready. Already bodies suffering from the symptoms of the plague had been returned to the cemetery. He gave humble thanks to the Horned Rat for the inspiration which had made him seek out a hiding place where he could observe the results of his handiwork. And where else could he find such a rich source of contaminated bodies to drop into the brew!
Tomorrow night, he would dispatch his agents to drop contaminated rats into the wells, and through the roofs of the great abattoirs where the humans slaughtered their meat. After that, the plague would spread most swiftly.
He added more of the corpse roses to the mixture. These were his final secret ingredients to the brew. There were no finer and no stronger ones to be found. They grew on plants whose roots dug through the flesh of corpses. They were ripe and strong with accumulated death energies.
He breathed deeply of the scent of corruption and peered out with his filmed eyes at his followers. They lay sprawled across the ancient human death-chamber, twitching and scratching, coughing and hawking like the true members of Clan Pestilens they were. He knew that each and every one of them was united in their sincere dedication to the cause of the clan. They were filled with the sort of brotherhood which few other skaven could understand. Not for them the endless intrigues and the constant scrabble for advantage. They had sought and found abnegation of self in true worship of the Horned Rat in his most concrete form: the Bringer of Disease, the Spreader of Plague.
For each and every member of the clan knew that their body was a temple which harboured the countless blessings of their god. Their rotted nerve endings no longer felt the pain, save occasionally when they felt ghostly echoes of their suffering, like someone hearing the tolling of a distant bell while drowning in deep water. He knew that other skaven thought them mad and avoided them, but that was because other skaven lacked their purity of purpose, their total commitment to serving their god. Each and every plague monk present was prepared to pay any price, make any sacrifice to reach the goals of clan and deity. It was this commitment that made them the most worthy of all the Horned Rat’s servants, and the most suitable leaders of the entire skaven people.
Soon all the other clans would realise this. Soon this new plague would bring the human city of Nuln to its knees, even before the mighty verminous hordes entered its precincts. Soon all would bear witness that the triumph belonged to Clan Pestilens, to the Horned Rat, and to Vilebroth Null, the humblest of the great horned lord’s chosen servants. Soon he would be established as the only vessel suitable to bear the Horned Rat’s word. It would be fitting, for although he was but the humblest of the Horned Rat’s servants, he knew where his duty lay, and that was not true of all skaven in this devolved age.
He knew that many of his fellow rat-men had lost sight of their race’s great goals, and had lost themselves in the pursuit of self-aggrandisement. Grey Seer Thanquol was an example of just such a tendency. He cared more for himself and his status than he did for the overthrowing of the Horned Rat’s enemies. It was disgusting behaviour for one who should have been among the most dedicated of the great god’s servants, and Vilebroth Null humbly prayed that he would never fall into similar error.
He felt sure that, had Thanquol known about this experiment, he would have forbidden it, simply out of envy of one who possessed knowledge of powers beyond his limited imagination. That was why they had to scurry to the surface in secret and perform their rituals without the grey seer’s knowledge. The great work must progress despite the machinations of those who would prevent it. After the success of this plague, the foolish edicts of the Council of Thirteen would be repealed, and Clan Pestilens could show its true power to the world. And those like Grey Seer Thanquol who would seek to prevent this most sacred of the Horned Rat’s works would be made to grovel in the dust.
Perhaps it was true, as some whispered, that Thanquol was a traitor to the great skaven cause, and should be replaced by one more humbly dedicated to the advancement of his people. It was an idea that certainly deserved the scrutiny of lowly but devoted minds.
Null opened the cage which lay close at hand, reached in and pulled out one of the large grey rats. It bit him viciously, drawing some of his black blood, but Vilebroth Null hardly felt the sharp teeth cleave
his flesh. Pain was a near-meaningless concept to him. He closed the cage and left the other rats scrabbling within.
Taking the subject by the tail and ignoring its frantic struggling, he lowered it into the brew. The creature struggled as its head entered the foul liquid. Its eyes gleamed madly and it scrabbled frantically with its claws to try to keep itself above the surface. The abbot of plague monks took his other hand and pushed it down until its squeals were drowned out by the liquid entering its open mouth. He held it under for so long that its struggles almost ceased and then he drew it up again, still dripping, and set it down on the floor of the vault.
The rat sat there for a moment, blinking in the light, as if unable to believe that it had been reprieved. Null scooped it up and threw it into the second cage, where the newly treated rats were. It sniffed and vomited. Vilebroth Null scooped up some of the warm sickness and tossed it back into the cauldron. Soon the cage would be full and he would dispatch one of the brothers to release them in the cemetery, there to begin the spread of the new plague. And tomorrow, they would be sent far and wide through the city.
From somewhere Vilebroth Null heard coughing. In itself that was not unusual. His followers were all blessed with the symptoms of many diseases. No, there was something about the tone of the coughing. It was different from that of a skaven. Deeper, slower, almost human-like…
Felix cursed and tried to stop coughing, but it was no use. His lungs were rebelling against the foul stench from within the vault. Tears streamed from his eyes. He had never smelled anything quite so foul in all his life. It was as if the combined essences of all stinks in all the sickrooms he had ever smelled were assaulting his nostrils. He felt ill just breathing it, and he had to fight down the urge simply to run off and vomit.
The sight of what was going on in the burial vault had not helped settle his stomach either. He had glanced into a chamber illuminated by the eerie glow of warpstone lanterns. In one long chamber, a dozen or so of the foulest and most leprous-looking skaven he had ever seen lolled amidst the opened sarcophagi of long-dead nobles. Great stone coffins lay flat on the chamber’s floor. Their lids had been removed and their contents scattered. Skulls and bones lay everywhere. Among them lay skaven, enervated and ill-looking, sprawled in pools of their own pus and vomit and excrement, gnawing at the bones of the dead. At the far end of the room, the sickest and most evil-looking skaven Felix had ever seen stirred a vast cauldron which rested upon a blazing fire, pausing now and again only to spit in it or add some foul rotting meat torn from a worm-eaten corpse.
