by Warhammer
‘No?’ Izak Grottle rumbled hungrily, and licked his lips.
‘No?’ Vilebroth Null said, hawking a huge lump of green phlegm onto the floor beside Lurk’s feet where it bubbled corruptly.
‘No! No! Most merciful of masters, I am but a lowly skaven. I possess not your mighty intellects and awesome powers. Any of you might expect to best Grey Seer Thanquol in combat or cunning, but not I.’
‘Then why should we preserve your life?’ Izak Grottle said silkily. ‘Why? Speak! Quick! Quick! I am hungry.’
‘Because… because…’ Lurk floundered around frantically seeking a path out of this hideous maze. He cursed the day he had ever encountered Grey Seer Thanquol or bore his messages to the human and the dwarf. Wait! That might be the answer. Perhaps in the grey seer’s own great example was the solution to his problem. ‘Because… because there is a better way!’
‘Is there?’
‘Yes. Yes. One that holds fewer risks and is more certain!’
‘You interest me, Lurk Snitchtongue,’ Izak Grottle said. ‘What is there that you can see that we cannot?’
‘Yes! Yes! Go on! Explain!’ Vilebroth Null said in his hideous bubbling voice.
‘You could use the grey seer’s own methods against him!’
‘What?’
‘He has used Jaeger and Gurnisson against you. Why not use them against him?’
There was another pause while the three great skaven exchanged glances.
‘They are certainly formidable,’ Vilebroth Null said. ‘For non-skaven.’
‘Perhaps! Perhaps they could do it!’ chittered Heskit One Eye.
‘Do you think so? They are not skaven and Thanquol is a grey seer. A grey seer!’ Izak Grottle said and banged his fist on the table for emphasis.
‘With every humble respect,’ Vilebroth Null said, ‘you have not encountered this pair. Heskit of Skryre and I have. A more wicked and dangerous set of opponents it is hard to imagine. Even I, with all my magical powers, barely eluded them.’
‘They slaughtered well over half of my company,’ Heskit said, leaving out his own part in the massacre.
‘I defer to your greater experience,’ Grottle said. ‘But the question remains: how will we get them to go after Grey Seer Thanquol?’
‘A letter!’ Lurk suggested, carried away by the sheer pleasure of plotting.
‘Yes! Yes! A letter,’ Vilebroth Null said.
‘It is fitting that Grey Seer Thanquol should be undone by the device by which he sought to undo us.’
‘But where and how will our two assassins get their chance at him?’
‘We must wait for the opportunity to arise,’ Null said.
‘And how will we write this letter?’ Grottle asked. ‘I for one have no knowledge of these primitive human runes.’
‘I have some knowledge of the human script,’ Heskit One Eye said almost apologetically. ‘I need it for reading human schematics.’
‘We must use the exact paper and pen that the grey seer uses,’ Grottle said.
‘Our friend Lurk can acquire those,’ Vilebroth Null said, smiling horribly to reveal rotting teeth.
‘And he can deliver the message too, in his usual way,’ Heskit said smugly.
‘It appears that I won’t be eating you today then, Lurk Snitchtongue,’ Izak Grottle. said ‘We need you alive. Of course, should you attempt to betray us…’
‘That will change,’ Heskit finished.
Lurk did not know whether to be glad or sorry. He appeared to have prolonged his life but only at the risk of incurring Grey Seer Thanquol’s wrath. How did he get himself into these things?
‘We’re leaving the city,’ Elissa said challengingly. She glared up at Felix as if expecting him to contradict her. ‘Hans and I. We have decided to go.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Felix said. ‘It’s a bad place to be and it’s going to get worse.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’
Felix looked around at the room they had shared during their brief time together. It seemed small and empty, and soon it would seem emptier still, once she had gone. Was there anything more to say? He really could not blame her for wanting to leave and, to be honest, he could see no real future for them together. So why did it still hurt? Why did he have this feeling of hollowness within his chest? Why did he feel this urge to ask her to stay?
‘You’re going with Hans?’ he asked, just to hear some words. She looked at him coldly and crossed her arms together under her breasts defensively.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to try and stop us, are you?’
She seemed almost to want him to say yes, he thought. ‘It’s not very safe outside the city right now,’ he said.
‘We’re only going back to our village. It’s less than a morning’s walk.’
‘Will they take you? I hear that people from the city are being stoned and shot with arrows if they go near villages and farms. In case they have the plague.’
‘We’ll survive,’ she said, but she sounded less sure of herself. ‘Anyway, it can’t be worse than it is here, with the plague and the gangs and the rats and all. At least back in the village they know us.’
‘They certainly know Hans. I thought you said the elders hated him.’
‘You would cast that up, wouldn’t you? They’ll take us back. I’ll tell them we’re going to be married. They’ll understand.’
‘Are you? Going to be married, I mean.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘Oh Felix, what else am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life being pawed by strangers in bars? Going about with footloose mercenaries? It’s not what I want. I want to go home.’
‘You need any money?’ he asked.
Suddenly she looked a little shifty. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d best be going. Hans is waiting.’
‘Be careful,’ he said, and meant it. ‘It’s not a safe city out there.’
‘You should know,’ she said. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him passionately on the mouth. Just as he was about to take her in his arms, she broke free and made for the door.
‘You look after yourself now,’ she said, and he thought he detected a glimmer of tears in the corner of her eyes. Then she was gone.
It was only afterwards, when he checked the loose floorboard, that he discovered the purse of money Otto had given him was gone. He lay on the bed, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. Well, he thought, let her have the money. The chances were he would not live long enough to spend it himself.
Grey Seer Thanquol glanced around the chamber at the assembled skaven captains. His burning gaze seemed to defy anyone to speak out. No one did.
Lurk counted the commanders present. All of the Clan Skab leaders were here, plus Izak Grottle, Vilebroth Null and Heskit One Eye. Chang Squik, the Clan Eshin assassin, skulked in one corner, glaring occasionally at Lurk with hate-filled eyes. He had not forgotten what Lurk had said about him on that long-ago day when the grey seer had humiliated them both in front of the whole army.
The grey seer threw his arms wide. Trails of fire followed his paws as he gathered magical power. That got everyone in the room’s attention, Lurk thought. Suddenly all eyes were riveted on Thanquol as if, with a single gesture, he might choose to annihilate anyone who did not look at him. That was certainly a possibility, Lurk thought. If he recognised the signs correctly, the grey seer had consumed an awful lot of warpstone powder.
Lurk shivered and continued to chew on the foul herbs that Vilebroth Null had given him to abate the plague. He fought down the urge to check within his breastplate and make sure the parchment and quill he had stolen from Thanquol’s private stock were not sliding into view. He knew that nothing would draw attention to him quicker. He reassured himself that they were there. He could feel the nib of the pen poking into the tender fur beneath his armpit.
‘Tonight is the night you have all been waiting for!’ Thanquol sai
d.‘ Tonight we will smash-crush the humans once and for all. Tonight we will invade the city and enslave all the occupants. Tonight we will strike a blow for the Under Empire and the skaven nation that will long be remembered!’
Thanquol paused impressively and glanced around the room once more, as if waiting for an interruption. No one dared to speak, but Lurk saw Null, One Eye and Grottle exchange glances, before looking at him. He hoped for all their sakes that the grey seer had not noticed. He glanced nervously at Thanquol, but fortunately the grey seer seemed to be caught up in the flow of his own mad eloquence.
‘We will grind the humans beneath the iron paw of our massed skaven army. We will carry them off into inevitable slavery. Their wealth will be ours. Their city will be ours. Their souls will be offered screaming to the Horned Rat.’
Thanquol paused once more and Izak Grottle found the courage to ask the question that Lurk could tell had been on everyone’s mind.
‘And how is this to be accomplished, great leader?’
‘How? How indeed! By a plan at once simple and yet staggeringly cunning. By a use of force and sorcery which will be talked about down the ages. By overwhelming ferocity and superior skaven technology. By–’
‘By what precise means, Grey Seer Thanquol?’ Vilebroth Null interrupted. ‘I humbly suggest that, like every skaven out of runthood, we are all familiar with the general methods of attack.’
For a moment Lurk could tell that Thanquol was weighing up the pros and cons of blasting the plague monk into his component atoms for his insolence. He was glad when prudent skaven caution won out and the grey seer continued to speak.
‘I was just coming to that, as you would have discovered had you not interrupted me. We will attack through the sewers. Each of you will lead your assigned force to a point marked on the map.’ With this, the grey seer indicated the complex mass of symbols inscribed on the large sheet of parchment hanging behind him. Many of the assembled leaders leaned forward to see where they would be sent.
‘I do not see your rune on this plan,’ Heskit One Eye said. ‘What will you be doing, grey seer?’
Thanquol glared at him with burning red eyes. ‘I will be where you would expect your leader to be, performing the most difficult and dangerous of tasks.’
Silence fell over the assembled skaven leaders. This was not in point of fact where they would have expected their leader to be at all. They would expect him to be safely in the rear directing operations. The warpstone Thanquol had consumed appeared to make him talkative. He spoke on, into the silence.
‘I will be leading the crowning attack. I will lead the assault by our stormvermin which will seize the palace of the breeder, Emmanuelle, and capture all of the city’s rulers. Tonight they are having a ball, one of their purposeless social events. I will fall on them by surprise and have them all in my paw. Leaderless, the humans will surely fall to our attack.’
There were more murmurings from the assembled skaven. It was a good plan, and a bold one. Lurk wondered if any of the others saw what he saw. The grey seer had chosen his place in the assault carefully. By managing this bold stroke, by capturing the human leaders, he would assure himself of the lion’s share of the glory. Further, it would undoubtedly be a lot safer attacking a bunch of humans and their breeders dressed for a ball than fighting massed troops in the city.
‘Such a position is too dangerous for a leader of your great cunning,’ Heskit One Eye said. ‘It would be a tragedy if the genius of Thanquol was to be lost to skavendom. To prevent such a tragedy, I will lead this assault. I will shoulder the terrible risks.’
Lurk covered his mouth with a paw to prevent a snigger escaping; at least one other skaven had realised what was going on.
‘No! No!’ Izak Grottle said. ‘I and my rat-ogres are ideally suited for this task. We will overwhelm all–’
Grottle’s words were drowned out by the shouts of all the other skaven volunteers. Thanquol let them call out for a few minutes before silencing them with a gesture.
‘Unfortunately, it will require my potent sorcery to effect entrance to the palace. I must be present.’
‘Then I will gladly lay down my life to guard you,’ Izak Grottle said, obviously determined to be present to share in the triumph.
‘And I,’ Heskit One Eye said.
‘And I,’ shouted every other skaven present, save Lurk.
‘No! No! I appreciate your concern, brother skaven, but your leadership will be required on other, no-less-critical parts of the battlefield.’
It was obvious that Thanquol intended to share his glorious triumph with no one. The assembled war leaders subsided into disappointed chittering.
‘I have here a route map, and a schedule for each of you, inscribed with precise instructions. All of you, that is, except for Lurk Snitchtongue. I would have a word with Lurk in private.’
Lurk felt his heart start to race, and it was all he could do to prevent himself squirting the musk of fear. Had the grey seer found out about his plotting with the three clan representatives? Was he about to enact some terrible revenge? Was there any way Lurk could avoid this meeting?
He turned desperate eyes on his three co-conspirators and saw that they glared at him evilly. If looks could kill, Lurk knew, those three would have put him in a coffin. They feared he would betray them to save his own skin – and of course they were right.
As the war leaders trooped forward one by one to receive the grey seer’s blessing and their final instructions, Lurk prayed to the Horned Rat to preserve him.
Felix wandered around until he arrived at his brother’s townhouse. He was not surprised to see that it was locked and guarded. He was surprised to find that Otto and his wife had not fled the city, and furthermore that the guards recognised him and allowed him to pass.
Otto waited in his study to greet him. He was still working, inscribing things in his ledgers and writing dispatches that might never be received, intended for other branches of the Jaeger businesses. Felix was strangely proud of him at that moment. It took a great deal of courage to continue to work under these trying circumstances.
‘What can I do for you, Felix?’ Otto asked, without looking up.
‘Nothing. I just came by to see how you were.’
‘Fine!’ Otto gave a wan smile. ‘Business is booming.’
‘Is it?’
‘Of course not! Rats are eating the stock. The workers are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. The customers are dying of the plague.’
‘Why haven’t you left town?’
‘Someone has to remain and look after our interests. This will all pass, you know. Disturbances always do. Then there’ll be the business of rebuilding. Folk will need wool and timber and building materials. They’ll need luxury goods to replace what’s been looted. They’ll need credit to buy it all. And when they do, Jaegers of Altdorf will still be here.’
‘I’ll bet you will.’
‘And what about you?’ Otto asked, looking up at last.
‘I’m waiting to see the end of this all. I’m waiting for the skaven to show themselves.’
‘You think they will?’
‘I’m sure of it. I’m certain that this is all their doing somehow.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
Felix looked at his brother long and hard. ‘Can you keep secrets?’
‘You know I can.’
Felix decided that it was true. In his business Otto would need a great deal of discretion.
‘What I’m going to tell you could get me hanged or burned at the stake.’
‘What you and the dwarf did in Altdorf could get you that already. You’re a long way from the capital, Felix, and I’m not going to turn you in.’
Felix guessed that was true, and somehow he felt a need to tell someone exactly what had happened. So he told Otto the full tale of his encounters with the skaven, from the first day in the sewer to the last battle on the barge. He omitted nothing, including his duel with von Hals
tadt. Otto looked at him with an expression that went from incredulity to seriousness to, finally, belief.
‘You’re not making this up, are you?’
‘No.’
‘You always did take those hero tales you read too seriously, little brother.’
Felix smiled and Otto smiled back. ‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘What is it like, living in one?’
‘Not what I expected. Not what I expected at all.’ Felix decided it was time to say what he had come to say.
‘Otto – I think you and your wife should leave the city. I think the skaven are going to come soon, and that things will not be pleasant.’
Otto laughed. ‘We have armed servants and this house is a fortress, Felix. We will be much safer here than in the country.’
Felix knew his brother well enough to understand that there would be no persuading him. ‘You know your own business best,’ he said.
Otto nodded. ‘Now come eat, man. I can hear your stomach rumbling from here.’
‘What is it, mightiest of mages? What do you require?’
Lurk Snitchtongue bowed and scraped before Grey Seer Thanquol, searching for the words that would save him. He felt sure that the grey seer’s supernatural powers had enabled him to see Lurk’s treachery and that now he was going to be punished. The terrible glow of warpstone still filled Thanquol’s eyes, and Lurk could almost sense the dark energies that seethed within him.
‘It concerns Vilebroth Null,’ Grey Seer Thanquol said with an evil smile.
Lurk felt his musk glands contract. He would have spoken then but his tongue was tied. It felt like it had suddenly stuck to the roof of his mouth. All he could do was nod his head in a guilty fashion.
‘And Heskit One Eye,’ Thanquol said, his malevolent grin stretching still further.
A plea for mercy stuck in Lurk’s throat. He tried to force it out but it just would not come.
‘And Izak Grottle,’ Thanquol added. His burning eyes held Lurk pinned to the spot.
The smaller skaven felt like a bird paralysed before the gaze of a serpent. He nodded again and fell to his knees, paws clutched before him in a gesture of abasement.
