by Warhammer
Soon, his spies told him, the breeder the humans called the Elector Countess would be giving a masked ball, in a futile effort to distract her court from their troubles. If the palace could be taken with all the human nobles inside, then the human army in Nuln would be left leaderless and easy prey to the skaven assault. If the raid could be timed so that the two attacks were combined, so much the better. On the night the skaven took the palace, the city would also fall in blood and terror. Perhaps, with their chief breeder in Thanquol’s clutches, the humans could even be induced to surrender.
It would have to be done soon, if he was to have any hope of success, but at least here was a chance that he could snatch victory from the slavering jaws of defeat.
Before that, though, he had another slight problem. He would have to negate the protective spells surrounding him so he could leave his chamber and begin giving orders. With a long-suffering sigh, Grey Seer Thanquol began the incantations that would let him out from inside his own pentagram.
Felix Jaeger kicked a huge fat rat from underfoot, sending it flying through the air to land in a midden heap. It turned and immediately began to devour the foulness in which it lay. Felix watched in hopeless disgust and despair.
The rats were everywhere, eating anything that was edible and a lot that was not. There were thousands of them, possibly millions. At times, whole streets seemed to be nothing but a seething sea of vermin. His employer, Heinz, had heard tales that they had taken to devouring babies in cribs and small children who got too close to them. Huge packs of the vile beasts flowed across the city streets, and the cats and dogs were too terrified to stop them.
The only good thing was that the rats appeared to be mysteriously short-lived. It looked like they aged months within a few days. But when they died, the rats’ corpses lay strewn like some hideous furry carpet across the cobbles. It was not natural. In fact, the whole thing stank of skaven sorcery and Felix wondered if there was some evil purpose to it.
The city of Nuln appeared to be under a curse, Felix thought. The air smelled of sickness and disease, and human flesh burned on great pyres in the square outside the Temple of Morr. Whole tenement buildings had been boarded up, and turned into tombs. Felix shuddered when he thought of the mouldering corpses of the dead within them. Even worse, though, were the thoughts of those who had been entrapped there alive, victims of the plague who no one wanted to help. There were hideous rumours circulating of people recovering from the plague, only to die of starvation There were worse tales of cannibalism and folk feasting on flesh from the corpses of their family and friends. It was a horrifying thought. And it made Felix think that Sigmar and Ulric had turned their gaze from this city.
Ahead of him he heard the rumble of wheels and the tolling of a bell. He stepped aside to let the plague cart pass. The driver was garbed all in black and his face was hidden by a skull mask and a great peaked cowl. On the back of the cart, an acolyte of Morr swung a censer of incense, presumably to protect him from the plague. It was like watching Death himself ride through the doomed city, accompanied by his servants. Felix could see the rotting corpses piled high on the backboard of the vehicle. The bodies were naked, already stripped of their valuables by their families or bold scavengers. Rats gnawed at the bodies. As Felix watched he saw one tear out an eyeball, and devour it whole.
The plague carts moved constantly through the streets, bells tolling to announce their presence, summoning those still strong and healthy to dispose of the bodies of those who were not. But not even the plague carts were safe. If they stopped for a moment, the rats were upon them, fighting each other to feast upon the corpses.
Felix’s belly grumbled, and he pulled his belt a notch tighter. He hoped the others were having more luck in their foraging for food than he was. He had found nothing to eat on sale that had not been contaminated by rat droppings, and even that was being sold for ten times its normal price. Some citizens were getting rich from the ruination of this mighty city. There were always those, he thought, who could find profit in even the most dire of situations.
He wished that Gotrek would give up his mad desire to remain in the city. He had already considered slipping away himself, joining those hosts of the poor and the lowly who had snatched up their few possessions and departed. He had not done so for several reasons. The first and best of them was that he would not desert his friends. The second was a desire to see this thing through to its end. He suspected that soon the dire events would reach their climax, and at least part of him wanted to find out what would happen.
The final reason was simple. He had heard tales that the local nobles had quarantined the city, and that archers were shooting those who tried to depart by the public highways. Many of the barges which had set sail from the docks in the past two desperate weeks had returned, reporting Imperial naval ships on the river sinking any vessel which tried to pass them.
Perhaps a small band moving by night could slip through, but Felix did not want to try it without Gotrek. The lawless lands around the city would be even more dangerous now with all the local soldiers and road wardens enforcing the quarantine and bands of armed men robbing any refugees.
Law and order had already broken down in parts of the city inside the walls. By night gangs of looters roamed the streets searching for food, helping themselves to anything that wasn’t guarded by armed men. Only two nights ago a mob had broken into the city granary, despite the presence of several hundred soldiers. They had broken down the gates only to discover that the place was empty, filled only with the skeletons of the rats which had gorged themselves on the grain and then died.
A group of feral children was watching him with hungry eyes. One of them was roasting a dead rat on a spit. Normally he would have tossed them a coin out of pity but twice in the past few days he had almost been assaulted by such gangs. They had only turned back, discouraged, when he had drawn his sword and whipped it through the air menacingly.
He remembered the words of Count Ostwald. The city was indeed under siege, but it was a siege of a most horrifying type. There were no siege towers. No weapons had been brought to bear except hunger and disease. There was no enemy which could be sought out and battled. Despair was the foe here, and there was no sword with which it could be fought.
Ahead of him lay the Blind Pig. Outside it lolled several men-at-arms, mercenaries who had billeted themselves in the inn because they knew it and its owner, and stuck there now in a mass for their own protection. Felix knew them all and they knew him, but even so they watched him warily as he came closer. They were hard men who had decided that since they could not outrun the plague, they might as well be comfortable while they waited for it to strike them down. The Elector Countess was offering double pay to those who helped keep the peace by reinforcing her guards and the sadly depleted city watch. These men were earning their extra pay.
‘Any news?’ one of them asked, a burly Kislevite giant known as Big Boris. Felix shook his head.
‘Any food?’ asked the other, a sour-faced Bretonnian everyone called Hungry Stephan.
Felix shook his head again and stepped past them into the inn. Heinz sat at the table beside the fire, warming his hands. Gotrek sat with him, glugging back an enormous stein of ale.
‘Looks like it will be rat pie for supper again,’ Heinz said. Felix was not quite sure if he was making a joke. ‘Young Felix has come back empty handed.’
‘At least you still have beer,’ Felix said.
‘If it were dwarf ale we could live on it and nothing else,’ Gotrek said. ‘Many a campaign I’ve fought with nothing in my belly save half a barrel of Bugman’s.’
‘Unfortunately, it’s not Bugman’s,’ Felix said dryly. Since the food shortages began, the dwarf had taken to reminiscing constantly and in a most annoying manner about the nutrient powers of dwarf ale.
‘More skaven have been seen,’ Heinz said. The city guard clashed with them in the Middenplatz last night. They seemed to be foraging for food as well,
or so the guard claimed.’
‘Most likely want to make sure we’re starving,’ Felix said sourly.
‘Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen soon,’ Gotrek said. ‘There’s something in the air. I can smell it.’
‘It’s beer you smell,’ Felix said.
‘I hear Countess Emmanuelle is throwing a big fancy dress ball,’ Heinz said with a grin. ‘Maybe you’ll be invited.’
‘Somehow I doubt it,’ Felix said. He had not heard from the palace since he had been summoned by Ostwald two weeks ago to explain the burning of the Black Ship. Of course, since then, all those mansions on the hill had become fortified camps, as the rich and the blue-blooded isolated themselves in an effort to escape the plague. Rumour had it that any commoner even setting foot on those cobbled streets was shot on sight.
‘Typical of your bloody human nobles,’ Gotrek said and belched. ‘The city is going to the dogs and what do they do? Throw a bloody party!’
‘Maybe we should do the same,’ Heinz said. ‘There are worse ways to go!’
‘Anybody seen Elissa?’ Felix asked, wanting to change the gloomy direction this conversation was taking.
‘She left earlier, went for a walk with that peasant lad… Hans, is it?’
Suddenly Felix wished he hadn’t asked.
Lurk Snitchtongue glanced around the gloomy chamber and controlled the urge to squirt the musk of fear. It took a mighty effort for he could never in all his life recall being cornered by three such fearsome skaven. He stifled a cough and fought to hold back a sneeze in case either would draw attention to him, but it was no use. Those three sets of malevolent eyes were drawn to his shivering form like iron filings to a magnet. Vilebroth Null, Izak Grottle and Heskit One Eye all stared at him as if he were a tasty morsel. Particularly Izak Grottle.
Lurk wished his body would stop aching. He wished his paws would stop sweating. He wished the pain that threatened to split his skull would go away. He knew that they would not. He knew that he had the plague and he knew that he was going to die – unless Vilebroth Null did as he had promised and interceded for him with the Horned Rat.
Truly, Lurk thought, he was caught with his tail between the cleaver and the chopping block. The only way he could save his life was by doing what the terrifying plague monk leader said. Unfortunately, Vilebroth Null wanted him to betray his master, Grey Seer Thanquol. Lurk shuddered to think of the consequences should that formidable sorcerer find out what had happened. The wrath of Thanquol was not something any sane skaven cared to face.
The three skaven put their heads together once more and started to whisper. Lurk would have given anything to know what they were talking about. On second thoughts, considering they were probably discussing his fate, he might conceivably be able to live without the knowledge. Lurk cursed his own weakness. He had known he was in trouble when he saw who had been waiting in the chamber that Null had led him to. He knew then, all too well, that the weeks of negotiations the abbot had alluded to had paid off, and two of the most powerful factions of skavendom were arrayed alongside Clan Pestilens.
In that secret chamber, far from eavesdroppers and shielded by Null’s potent sorcery, Heskit One Eye and Izak Grottle had been waiting. As soon as he saw them, Lurk had known the game was up. Under Null’s prodding he had told them everything. He had explained that Thanquol had somehow learned of their schemes (leaving out only his own part in their discovery) and he had told them, too, of the messages Thanquol had sent to their arch enemies, the human Jaeger and the dwarf Gurnisson. It went without saying that these lordly skaven were outraged by what they saw as the grey seer’s despicable treachery.
He had sensed their murderous rage in the air and done everything in his power to avoid being the focus of it. He had heard all about the gory details of Clan Skryre’s Excruciation Engines, and many times he had shuddered at the tale of how Grottle liked to consume his enemies’ entrails before their very eyes while they still lived.
In order to avoid this fate, he had wracked his mind for every little detail he could remember, to convince them that he was co-operating thoroughly. The prospect of immediate painful death overcame any reluctance caused by the thought of what Grey Seer Thanquol might do to him in the future. And, in one small, cunning and deeply hidden part of Lurk’s mind, it occurred to him that if these three could be made angry enough to take vengeance on Grey Seer Thanquol, then Thanquol would be too dead to take any revenge on him in turn.
He was pretty sure now that he had succeeded. Heskit One Eye had gnawed his own tail in rage as Lurk explained how the grey seer had sent explicit details to their enemies concerning Clan Skryre’s plan to invade the College of Engineering. He had even fabricated a few convincing details of how the grey seer had laughed and gloated about how his stupid enemies would soon fall into his trap. Well, thought Lurk, Thanquol most likely had.
Izak Grottle had become so outraged he even spluttered out a mouthful of food when Lurk explained how Thanquol had told him that the fat fool would never suspect his idiotic plan to smuggle a secret weapon into the city on a converted barge would be betrayed by Thanquol’s cunning.
Vilebroth Null called down the curse of the Horned Rat on his rival when Lurk told him how Thanquol, jealous of the favour their god had shown the abbot, decided to remove a dangerous rival by revealing the whereabouts of his secret lair in the human cemetery to his two most trusty agents on the surface, Gurnisson and Jaeger.
‘Are you certain the grey seer is in league with those two?’ Grottle demanded. ‘Absolutely, definitely certain?’
‘Of course, mightiest of Moulders. He forced me, on pain of hideous death, to deliver notes to them and they always responded to his instructions, did they not? I can only conclude that either they are in Grey Seer Thanquol’s pay or–’
‘Or what?’ Vilebroth Null burbled.
‘No. The thought is too hideous. No true skaven would stoop to–’
‘Stoop to what? To what?’
‘Or he is in their pay!’ Lurk said, amazed by his own powers of invention. This set off another burst of outraged chittering.
‘No! No! Impossible,’ Heskit One Eye said. ‘Thanquol is a grey seer. He would never submit to taking orders from any but another skaven. The thought is ludicrous.’
‘And yet…’ Vilebroth Null said.
‘And yet? And yet?’ Izak Grottle said.
‘And yet it is indisputable that Grey Seer Thanquol had been in touch with the surface dwellers, and had betrayed our plans to them!’ Null said. ‘How else could they have got wind of our schemes? How else could such magnificently cunning plans have failed?’
‘Are you seriously suggesting that Grey Seer Thanquol is a traitor to the skaven cause? Seriously?’ Izak Grottle asked, showing his terrifyingly huge fangs in a great snarl.
‘It’s possible,’ Lurk dared to add.
‘All too possible, I fear,’ Heskit One Eye said. ‘It is the only explanation for why the grey seer would interfere with our mighty machinations, when all we were attempting to do was further the skaven cause.’
‘And yet the human and the dwarf are his enemies too. By all accounts they almost killed him in the lair of the human, von Halstadt.’
‘And he sent the gutter runners against them,’ Vilebroth Null added. ‘That was a true contract. Chang Squik still spits when he thinks of his failure.’
‘What if Grey Seer Thanquol is cunning enough to use his enemies against us?’ Heskit One Eye said excitedly. ‘He pits them against us. He cannot lose! He thwarts a rival or we kill his sworn enemies for him.’
There was a moment of silence in the chamber, and Lurk knew that whatever else his enemies thought of the grey seer, they had suddenly gained enormous respect for his cunning. On consideration, he had to admit that he had too. Whatever flaws he might possess, it was hard to dispute that Grey Seer Thanquol was possessed of all the qualities of a truly great skaven.
‘Even so, even allowing that Grey Seer Tha
nquol possesses devilish cunning, he has still betrayed us to the enemy! That is beyond dispute. He has revealed our hidden plans, and the hidden plans of our great clans to the enemy,’ Izak Grottle said. ‘Grey Seer Thanquol is a traitor and an enemy of all our peoples.’
‘I agree,’ Heskit said. ‘A traitor he most certainly is. And more – he is our personal enemy. He has acted against us all once and almost caused our deaths. Perhaps he will be more successful with his next attempt.’
All three of them shivered when they thought of the daemonically clever intelligence which worked against them. Lurk could see the fear written on their faces, and in the nervous twitching of their whiskers.
‘I humbly suggest,’ Null said, ‘that it might be the will of the Horned Rat that we remove Grey Seer Thanquol from his command of the army, and send him to make his explanations to the Council of Thirteen.’
‘I heartily agree with your sentiments. Heartily!’ Izak Grottle said. ‘But how are we to accomplish this? The traitor remains in command of almost five thousand Clan Skab warriors while our own forces are but a shadow of what they once were.’
‘Doubtless as the traitor planned,’ Heskit said.
‘Doubtless,’ the other two agreed simultaneously.
‘There is always assassination,’ Heskit suggested.
‘Possibly! Possibly!’ Grottle said. ‘But who would take the chance that the Eshin might be deluded enough to report the request for such a thing to the traitor himself?’
‘We could do it ourselves,’ Vilebroth Null said.
‘Grey Seer Thanquol, despite his known treachery, is a lamentably powerful sorcerer,’ Heskit One Eye said. ‘We might fail and we might die!’
All three shuddered and then, as one, all three pairs of eyes turned on Lurk. He quivered to the soles of his paws, for he knew what they were thinking.
‘No! No!’ he said.
‘No?’ Heskit One Eye said menacingly, reaching for the butt of his pistol.
