02 - Temple of the Serpent

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  Thanquol closed his eyes, bruxing his fangs in frustration. Every inch of jungle the gutter runners cleared away brought him one step closer to destruction. He couldn’t expect a half-wit like Shiwan to give him anything like a reasonable amount of time to find the lost city!

  Quietly, Thanquol muttered a prayer to the Horned Rat. If his god would only help him out of this predicament, he would abase himself before all his altars. He would never again be proud and boastful, but would devote himself to becoming the most humble and obedient servant of the Horned One.

  Excited squeals suddenly erupted among the gutter runners. Thanquol half turned to scurry back to the main body of the expedition, but quickly realised the squeaks were happy ones, not sounds of fear. He turned his spin into a forwards dash, kicking aside the scrawny scouts.

  Before him, the jungle diminished into a vast clearing. The earth was paved with immense stone blocks. These in turn supported huge structures of piled stone. The smallest of these had collapsed into jumbles of broken rock, but the largest loomed over the plaza like crouching giants. They were something like the pyramids the dead-things of Nehekhara built, but with steps carved into their faces and flattened tops. In the distance, beyond the strange pyramids, Thanquol could see great mountains jutting up from the jungle, plumes of smoke curling from their volcanic peaks.

  Thanquol grinned in savage triumph. He had found the city! Here was what they had been looking for! His brilliant mind had deciphered the scrawl of the plague monks and brought them to their goal!

  “Great Shiwan Stalkscent,” Thanquol said, turning to beckon the assassin forward. His eyes narrowed with suspicion, Shiwan and three of his guards crept up to join the smug grey seer.

  Thanquol extended his claw, like a merchant displaying his wares. “Behold! The lost city of Quetza!” He couldn’t quite keep the pride from his tone.

  Shiwan stared at the ruins, then back at Thanquol. “Sure-certain this Quetza?” he growled.

  Thanquol glanced back at the ruins. He could feel his glands starting to clench again.

  Thanquol’s fears that Shiwan’s map had led them to the wrong city were quelled when the skaven descended into the wide, plaza-like expanse. Creepers and stunted little trees poked up from between the great stone blocks, vines clung to the walls of the neglected pyramids. Everywhere there was evidence of decay and abandonment. It looked like a dead city, annihilated by the ancient plagues of Clan Pestilens.

  But it didn’t smell like a dead city. The musk of reptiles was thick in the air, a pungent scent so noxious no skaven could mistake it. Thanquol remembered that according to the plague monks, Quetza had been deserted by the lizardmen, only the priests and servants of the snake-devil Sotek remaining behind. They were supposed to dwell exclusively within the Temple of the Serpent. It made sense they would take little interest in keeping up the other parts of the city.

  A sharp hiss from the gutter runners sent a thrill of excitement racing through all the ratmen. The scouts had spotted some of the hated scaly-meat! The scent in the air didn’t lie, the city wasn’t completely deserted!

  Thanquol crept forwards with the rest and stared at the weird creatures sprawled along the sunward side of a crumbling pyramid. They were shorter than the ratmen, and far thinner. Bright blue scales covered their bodies and they bore long, whip-like tails. Fanlike crests rose from the tops of their blunt, reptilian heads. They wore only scant loinclouts about their middles and jewelled armbands of gold and turquoise. The lizardmen were completely oblivious to the presence of the skaven, lounging in a kind of torpor as the sun warmed their cold bodies. Most didn’t even have their eyes open.

  It was too great an opportunity for the murderous assassins of Clan Eshin to pass up. Stealthily they climbed the face of the pyramid that was still in shadow. Relentlessly, the killers made their way up the shallow stone steps until they were level with their victims. Shiwan Stalkscent was the first to leap down upon his oblivious prey, slashing the skink’s neck so thoroughly its head went rolling down the side of the pyramid.

  The other skaven rushed to the attack now that their leader had made the first kill. Assassins fell on the sleeping skinks with ruthless abandon, their knives and swords licking out with lethal precision. Soon the side of the pyramid was dripping with the clammy blood of lizardmen. Kong’s warriors scurried to intercept the few skinks who lived long enough to scramble down the stone walls, butchering them before they could even set foot on the plaza.

  It was not a fight, it was a slaughter, the sort of one-sided conflict every skaven dreamed about. Thanquol even lent his own small contribution to the massacre, sending a bolt of black lightning crackling from his staff to incinerate a tiny skink trying to escape the attack by climbing over the top of the pyramid. The little creature was nothing more than a blackened husk when its smoking body came rolling down the face of the pyramid.

  Thanquol exulted in his casual abuse of magic. He gave Shen Tsinge a smug look, but became a bit more conciliatory when Goji growled at him. It would be just like the slinking sorcerer to have his rat ogre take a bite out of the grey seer and then claim it had been an accident.

  The skaven rushed from the slaughter, their blood up, eager to continue the havoc they had started.

  Thanquol thought at first Shiwan had made a mistake allowing his troops to indulge their bloodlust so recklessly, but now he grudgingly appreciated the master assassin’s craft. Excited as they were, his troops weren’t hesitating at every turn and crossroad, trying to sniff out any lurking danger. No, instead they were sprinting straight towards their goal—the immense pyramid that loomed at the centre of Quetza.

  There seemed little danger it could be the wrong place to go. Even the most dull-witted of the skaven could sense the power emanating from within those stones. The steps of the pyramid were laid out to resemble a giant snake crawling down from its flattened roof and its stairs were inlaid with polished gold that glimmered in the sunlight. No neglect or decay had been allowed to affect this place. Every ratman in the expedition knew the colossal structure was what they had been looking for: the Temple of the Serpent.

  The Prophet of Sotek would be somewhere inside, waiting for the daggers of Clan Eshin to end his wretched existence. They would bring his skin back to the Nightlord and Sneek would reward them all once his alliance with Nurglitch became a reality.

  Of course, Thanquol rather hoped to secure a greater amount of the credit and the reward for himself. Towards that end, he hung back as the Eshin warriors made their rush towards the pyramid. He had seen Shiwan do the same and understood the callous way the skaven leader was using his followers. It would only take one knife to end the life of Xiuhcoatl, the serpent-priest. He was using the charge of his followers to lure out any guards the lizardmen might have protecting the pyramid. While they were busy fighting his troops, Shiwan would be free to sneak inside the temple and kill Xiuhcoatl. It was a cunning plan, but Thanquol didn’t appreciate being lumped in among Shiwan’s disposable assets. He made a conscious effort to stay close to the master assassin in whatever was coming.

  Strangely, no scaly troops emerged from the ruins to block their path as they rushed towards the temple. Thanquol braced himself for the whistle of arrows and the cough of blowguns as they raced past the tumbled heaps of collapsed buildings, but nothing answered his fear. Could the rest of the temple’s guardians truly be as witless as the ones they had already killed? Or, perhaps, the ones the assassins had slaughtered were the sum total of all the temple’s minions? Maybe Xiuhcoatl was already dead, perhaps he was even the tiny skink Thanquol had blasted with his magic!

  The dark, cave-like opening at the base of the pyramid yawned before them now. A different smell was in the air, a stronger scent than the lizard-stink of the city. It was the loathsome scent of serpents, a smell that had even Shen Tsinge spurting the musk of fear. There was no smell more terrifying to the skaven, a scent that was imprinted upon their psyche from a time when they were still more rat than r
atkin. The stench killed the bloodthirsty enthusiasm Shiwan had so craftily exploited. Now the skaven stared fearfully at every shadow and cringed against each other in little huddles of shivering fur.

  Shiwan snarled, showing his fangs to his underlings. The master assassin lashed his tail, frustrated by their mindless terror. He took a bold step towards the opening, then reconsidered. Angrily, he snapped a command to Tsang Kweek. The backstabber laid into a pair of his gutter runners, cuffing the scouts about the ears and snapping his fangs at their necks until they reluctantly scampered towards the darkened opening.

  As soon as the two scouts entered the passage, they squealed in alarm. It was a quick sound, it had to be because an instant later arcs of scintillating light engulfed the two ratmen. An instant of blinding white and the skaven were gone, leaving behind only little piles of smouldering ash.

  Shiwan stared in horror at the sight. To appease his leader, Tsang sent another set of scouts forward, but these were annihilated in the same way as their comrades.

  Shiwan rounded on Thanquol and the grey seer cringed when he saw the fury in the master assassin’s eyes. Perhaps staying close to him hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  “Lizard-magic!” Shiwan snapped, pointing a trembling claw at the four piles of smoking ash. “Fix-fix, quick-quick!”

  Thanquol thought about protesting the assassin’s orders, but something about the way his hand was clenching his knife made the grey seer decide that might be a bad idea too. Timidly, Thanquol started to shuffle towards the cave-like opening. His slowness began to vex Shiwan. A snarled command and the grey seer found himself surrounded by some of Kong’s warriors, each of the burly skaven pushing him forwards when he hesitated. Shen Tsinge and Goji followed behind them. The sorcerer was keeping just close enough to Thanquol to claim any credit for anything the grey seer managed to do, but far enough back to avoid any danger to himself.

  Thanquol was really coming to hate that craven mage-rat and his brainless rat ogre.

  The aura of power was heavy around the door. Thanquol could actually smell the magic rippling through the very stones of the temple. It was a malignant, hostile sort of magic, magic that was somehow aware in its own right. He’d never encountered anything quite like it, except perhaps when he’d helped Clan Moulder exterminate the army of the Chaos Lord Alarik Lionmane.

  Studying the way the lines of power were concentrated, Thanquol could find nexus points set into the walls of the corridor. They were something like the conductors the warlock-engineers of Clan Skryre used to harness warp-lightning. He could see that the glyphs on the stones set at these nexus points were different than those that adorned the blocks around them. He shivered as he saw the crude representation of a giant snake swallowing a skaven repeated over and over. But it did give him an idea exactly what the purpose of the stones were and why there were no guards trying to keep them out of the temple.

  To prove his theory, Thanquol swung around and seized the cloak of the warrior-rat standing behind him. Before the clanrat could recover from his surprise, Thanquol pushed him forwards and sent him staggering into the tunnel. Like the gutter runners, the warrior shrieked once and then was reduced to a pile of ash.

  “It is as I thought,” Thanquol declared in his most imperious tone. The warrior-rats snarled at him, but backed away. They still had enough respect for the grey seer’s powers that they didn’t want to attack him while he was looking.

  “What you think-think, bone-skull?” Shen hissed. Goji licked his fangs as he heard the annoyance in his master’s tone.

  Thanquol strode towards the sorcerer, pleased he had irritated the mage-rat. Shen had no idea what Thanquol had learned. He wondered if the sorcerer had ever even heard of guardian wards, magical sigils that were designed to destroy anyone they recognised as intruders. For the first time in a long time, Thanquol had something the sorcerer wanted—knowledge. And he was going to make Shen pay dearly to get it.

  “I know much-much,” Thanquol grinned and for once he ignored the way Goji growled at him. Shen wouldn’t let his monster touch him. Not now.

  “I know you flea-bitten whelp-cutters aren’t getting anywhere near this place without my help,” Thanquol stated.

  Shen Tsinge glared daggers at him, but Thanquol could tell from the sorcerer’s posture that he was beaten. Shen knew Thanquol wouldn’t be so bold in his approach unless he was certain he was right.

  Abruptly, Shen Tsinge was waving his hands wildly before him, gnawing on a chunk of warpstone as he did so. Thanquol could feel the sorcerer summoning power and his own magical attunement made him aware of the protective nature of Shen’s spell. Quickly, Thanquol dived behind the sorcerer, sheltering between Shen and the towering bulk of Goji.

  The world around the two mage-rats exploded into a pillar of fire. Gutter runners and clanrats close to them were immolated in the blast of magical flame, their shadows burned into the side of the pyramid. When the flames faded, Thanquol’s gaze was drawn up the shallow stone steps set into the wall. He blinked in disbelief at the aura of sorcerous might swirling around the creature that stood upon the structure’s flattened roof.

  The creature was a skink, his scales the same dark blue as the lizardmen Shiwan and the assassins had killed. The crest that rose from his head was a brilliant red, however, and he wore a more elaborate robe-like garment that was looped over one shoulder, bound about his waist by a golden belt. His arms gleamed as sunlight reflected off the golden talismans and rings he wore. In his hand, the reptile held a massive staff tipped with a great golden icon—the stylised head of a fanged serpent.

  Xiuhcoatl! The Prophet of Sotek! Thanquol stared in horror at the object of their mission. He had imagined some slovenly, naked savage whose sum total knowledge of magic was to brew a few poisons to keep his enemies away. Not in his wildest fears had he imagined his enemy would be like this! He could almost see the snake-devil’s coils wrapped protectively around the lizardman, guarding him against any who would dare strike him. It would take the Horned Rat himself to defeat such a mighty foe.

  Unfortunately, Shen Tsinge seemed to have the same idea. The sorcerer pushed Thanquol forward. “Call upon the Horned One to save us!” he squeaked in terror.

  Suddenly the arrows Thanquol had been expecting earlier began to clatter against the stones around them. He took his eyes away from Xiuhcoatl long enough to see blue-scaled skinks swarming over the tops of the ruined buildings all around them, tiny bows clutched in their claws. More of the creatures were pouring down the streets carrying javelins and holding blowguns to their mouths.

  “The Horned One helps those who run fastest!” Thanquol snarled, pushing Shen down and racing away from the temple. He could hear the sorcerer hurling curses on his head, but doubted if Shen was enraged enough to send Goji lumbering after him. The sorcerer was going to need the rat ogre to make his own escape.

  Fleeing skaven were all around Thanquol now. For a brief moment, Kong had tried to muster his warriors into formation to oppose the lizardmen. Any thoughts of making a stand evaporated however when the skinks came rushing at them. They herded a pair of big ugly reptiles before them, ghastly things with red scales and huge sail-like frills running along their backs. The reptiles hesitated before charging into the massed skaven, instead opening their jaws and spitting a stream of flame full into the faces of the ratmen. The only thing that allowed any of Kong’s warriors to escape was the fact that the salamanders had stopped to eat the burning flesh of the skaven they had killed and no amount of goading from their handlers could get them to move on.

  Thanquol felt his heart thundering in his chest as he dashed down the broad street. The expedition was in full rout, gutter runners and assassins sprinting past him on every side. The grey seer cursed every skaven that ran ahead of him, knowing that each one meant one less body between himself and the arrows of the skinks. He earnestly hoped that if he fell in this blighted place, the Horned Rat would remember to punish the vermin for their cowardice!


  Panting with exhaustion, Thanquol darted down one of the side streets, thinking that perhaps the lizardmen would ignore a lone skaven and instead concentrate upon the group as a whole. He ran along the deserted street, sticking close to the walls, reassured by the feel of something solid against his whiskers. Behind him he could hear the sounds of battle and knew that at least some of the expedition had been caught. Once again, he prided himself upon his wisdom and foresight.

  Suddenly a pair of skinks appeared around the corner before him. The ugly monsters lifted blow-guns to their scaly lips and took aim. In a panic, Thanquol pointed his staff at them and sent a bolt of warp-lightning sizzling through them. The ambushers fell, smoke rising from their charred husks. It was a satisfying result, but the pounding ache in his skull wasn’t. He hadn’t had time to prepare himself for such a spell and—moreover—hadn’t had any warpstone to ease the effort.

  Thanquol staggered away from the wall, reeling dizzily as he tried to focus his senses. As he left the protection of the wall, he heard something crash behind him. His reflexes were quick enough to see something dark leaping across the rooftop. A huge stone block had fallen into the street, a plume of dust rising from it.

  Angrily, Thanquol ground his fangs together. The skinks didn’t wear black cloaks! And the stone didn’t fall! It had been pushed! If he hadn’t moved away from the wall when he did, he would have been crushed beneath it!

  Red fury banished the last of Thanquol’s headache. He had thought it strange that two skinks should be waiting for him so far from the main battle. Now he understood—his would-be murderer had lured them here to ambush him. When they failed, he had tried to murder Thanquol himself.

  It was a cold, crafty sort of plan. Either way, no one would be able to say he had been killed by another skaven. Thanquol remembered all the other attempts on his life since his return to Skavenblight and throughout the voyage to Lustria. He thought also of a cold, crafty skaven who had been prepared to use his entire expedition as a diversion so he could sneak into the temple.