[Thanquol & Boneripper 02] - Temple of the Serpent

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

  Warplock pistols cracked, swimming skaven shrieked as the occupants of the other boats ensured their vessels would not suffer the same fate. Carefully, Thanquol edged away from the longboat he had been paddling towards. He saw a huge dorsal fin glide past him, watched as an armoured ratman desperately trying to tread water was jerked under, vanishing into a watery ring of blood.

  A cloaked assassin rose from the bottom of the longboat, a blowgun clutched in his paws. Thanquol could not see the ratman’s face beneath the shadow cast by his hood, but he could see the skaven swing around to face him. With a quick motion, the assassin brought the blowgun to his lips. Thanquol’s fur crawled at the sight, remembering how near such a weapon had come to killing him in Skavenblight.

  Despite the sharks in the water around him, he clenched his eyes tight and dived beneath the surface.

  Desperately Thanquol clawed his way through the bloody sea. He could smell the sharks frenziedly tearing at their prey all around him. It was a reek that sent stark terror pulsing down his spine. He felt his lungs burning for want of air as he blindly swam through the water. Something brushed against his arm. Frantically he lashed out at it with his claws. When he discovered his target was covered in fur, he grabbed it, holding it in a terrified embrace. Thanquol tried to climb the body of the skaven he gripped, then opened his eyes in horror as he found there was nothing attached to the leg he held.

  The last of Thanquol’s breath escaped in a terrified burst of bubbles. Frantic, he followed them to the surface, gasping for air as his head bobbed above the blackened waves. Almost as soon as he broke the surface, a whistling sound whizzed through his ears. A dart shot over his head, so near to his skin that Thanquol could feel his fur ripple in its wake.

  Behind him, Thanquol felt the sea undulate with violence. He turned himself about to watch as an immense shark thrashed in the water. After a few moments, the monstrous fish rolled onto its back, its eyes rolled into the back of its head, a poisoned dart protruding from its snout.

  Thanquol glanced back at the longboat. It was being swarmed by terrified skaven, desperate to escape the sharks. He could make out the shape of the cloaked assassin whose shot had saved him from the shark. The wretch didn’t seem happy about it, breaking his blowgun across his knee before turning with a long dagger to help fend off the ratmen trying to swarm into the boat.

  There was no personal scent to the assassin, like most of his kind the identifying glands had been surgically extracted. Thanquol tried to fix the killer’s appearance in his mind. It was no easy task—the skaven of Clan Eshin all looked alike to him. When a ratman treading water nearby cried out before a shark dragged him under, Thanquol decided he’d studied the assassin long enough.

  Ensuring he had a firm hold on his staff, Thanquol paddled towards the sandy shore.

  “Dung-chewing flea! You read-say map wrong-wrong!” Shiwan Stalkscent snatched the mouldy map from the paws of Shen Tsinge. The sorcerer bared his fangs at the master assassin, but waved a placating hand at his rat ogre when the brute began to move towards Shiwan.

  Thanquol reclined beneath a palm tree, quietly eating the weird yellow fruit he’d confiscated from a pair of gutter runners. He was rather enjoying watching the Eshin big shots fall out among themselves. There was something deeply satisfying about watching his enemies tear into each other. He only hoped their argument would come to blows sooner than later. Given the Eshin penchant for poison, the expedition would quickly have a few less leaders if that happened.

  It had been a long, taxing voyage to Lustria from Sartosa. They’d kept the human crew alive for most of the voyage, using them to crew the ship. The voyage, however, had been a bit farther than they had planned on. It had taken only a few weeks for the skaven to exhaust the provisions in the hold. Then they had started using the humans to supplement their diet. Only a few days and the skaven had exhausted that food source. Fortunately, Tsang Kweek, head of the gutter runners, had the cunning to have his ratmen watch the pirates. They had managed a reasonable enough job of sailing the ship when the last pirate was butchered. Even so, it had taken a further two weeks to sight land. By then, the skaven were just finishing off their emergency-emergency food supply, the skavenslaves Shiwan had brought from Skavenblight.

  Thanquol took a bite of his confiscated fruit, wondering if perhaps it might not taste better with the fleshy yellow shell peeled away. He wrinkled his nose at the strange idea. Then again, it wasn’t the first strange idea he’d had. There was his conviction that one of the assassins had tried to kill him while the sharks were eating the slow, lazy skaven. Nor had that been the only incident. A falling spar had nearly split his skull only a day out from Sartosa. Then there had been the time he’d been on deck at night and been knocked over the rail by someone he didn’t see or smell. Only by the grace of the Horned Rat had he managed to grip the hull of the ship and climb his way back onboard.

  They’d blamed that accident on an uppity pirate, but their efforts to explain away how he had been nearly smothered while he slept and thrown into the hold with the humans had been a good deal harder. If he hadn’t awakened in time, and if he hadn’t hidden a few nuggets of warpstone in his cheek pouches, the vengeful pirates would have killed him with their bare hands. As it was, it had taken every ounce of his cunning and his sorcery to keep them off him before he was finally discovered three days later.

  Someone, it appeared, wasn’t too happy about the Nightlord’s decision to send him on this expedition!

  Thanquol bruxed his fangs together, glaring at the little group of ratmen arguing over the rat-hide map. Any one of them might be the one! Or why did it need to be only one? Yes! It could be a conspiracy, a subterfuge being plotted by two of them! Maybe more! Maybe they were all in on it!

  The grey seer worked his tongue to extract the last, miniscule portion of warpstone from his cheek pouch. He could swallow it, draw on its innate power and fuel a spell of such magnitude that all of the Eshin leaders would become nothing but a bloody smear on the sand!

  He blinked his eyes and shook his head, moving the bit of warpstone back into the corner of his mouth. Yes, he could blast all of his enemies at one go, and then what would he do. He’d still be a thousand food-stops from home, surrounded by impenetrable jungle, shark-infested water and a few hundred Clan Eshin warriors that might not take too kindly to his extermination of their leaders—however justified. Reluctantly, Thanquol let the murderous vision fade and cocked his ears forwards to listen to the argument unfold.

  “Maybe it wrong map!” Shen Tsinge hissed, shaking his staff at the cloaked assassin. He spun and pointed a slender claw at Tsang Kweek. “Maybe you steal map to wrong place!”

  The leader of the gutter runners bared his fangs, his fur bristling at the insult. “We take-snatch map from plague priest!” Tsang protested. The brown-furred ratman was a wiry, emaciated creature beneath his cloak, taking pains to keep himself trim enough to crawl up a drain-pipe or wriggle through a chimney. “Him say is for Pestilens come-take Lustria from snake-devil! Him say-squeak much-much,” he added with a low snarl, his thumb working along the back of a serrated dagger.

  “Pirate-man maybe lie?” offered the hulking Kong Krakback. The black skaven was in charge of Eshin’s clanrat warriors, a brutish monster who wore segmented armour in preference to the cloaks and robes of his assassin masters. The huge skaven leaned on his fang-edged glaive, its edge pitted with little copper rings and other protective talismans.

  “Man-thing no lie-lie!” snapped Shiwan. “I say-tell he not die-die he land ship right place!”

  “Maybe man-thing know you lie-lie,” Shen observed. “Maybe he think-know we eat anyway.”

  Sullenly, Shiwan swept his cloak tight around himself, his tail lashing angrily against the sand. Immediately, the assassin’s whiskers started to twitch. Forgetting the bickering of his ratkin, he bent down and scratched at the sand. There was a sinister gleam in his eye as he rose, his claws curled around a rusty piece of iron.

/>   “Man-thing metal!” Shiwan hissed in triumph. He tossed the decayed bit of iron into the sand, nearly hitting Shen Tsinge’s feet. The sorcerer scowled and picked up the rotten piece of rust. He sniffed at it, then, with a suspicious glance at Shiwan, gave it an experimental lick.

  “Man-thing metal,” the sorcerer agreed. His eyes narrowed and his tail lashed behind him as he stared at Shiwan. “What you sniff-scent?”

  The master assassin wiped a drip of ooze from his nose and grinned threateningly at the others. Proudly he held up the ratskin map. His claw tapped a mark upon the inked surface. “Map show man-thing place. Find man-thing place, find-find where on map we are!”

  Shiwan’s declaration excited the other skaven leaders. They all knew how rare humans were in Lustria. There were a thousand things in the jungle that would kill a human faster than a Clan Eshin blade. A human settlement of any size was an incredible rarity in the jungle. A landmark they could use to get their bearings and sniff their way to the lost city of Quetza.

  Tsang Kweek snapped quick commands to his gutter runners. Lean and thin, the gutter runners had formed the bulk of the swimmers at the beachhead and had suffered the heaviest casualties from the sharks. They were eager to prove their worth and forestall worse treatment from the assassins and Kong’s warriors. It was not a question of loyalty or duty, but simply a question of survival.

  The gutter runners fanned out along the beach, sniffing at the sand. Sometimes one would start digging at the earth, scrabbling at some buried scrap of metal. Each discovery formed a pattern and soon the skaven had a definite idea from where in the jungle the trail of rusted junk had started.

  Shiwan snarled the order for the expedition to follow Tsang’s scouts into the jungle. Whining their feeble protests, the warriors and assassins got to their feet and scurried into the trees.

  Thanquol leaned in the cool shade of his palm and watched them go. For a fleeting instant, he hoped they had forgotten him. Then he turned his eyes back to the shore, watching badly chewed bits of skaven roll in with the tide. He listened to the raucous calls of jungle birds, sniffed the evil smell of reptiles in the air. Anxiously, the grey seer licked his fangs.

  Of course he could not desert the brave Clan Eshin in their time of need! Why their leaders couldn’t even read a simple map! If there was to be any chance of success on this mission, they would need his impartial and selfless guidance. That would be the only way to spare them from the Nightlord’s wrath. It would be a dangerous undertaking, but Thanquol was not one to shun his obligations merely because they might prove hazardous.

  Tucking his staff under his arm, Grey Seer Thanquol dashed after the last of the warriors.

  He tried not to look too undignified as he raced to catch up.

  * * *

  Thanquol’s fur was plastered to his skin, his robes clinging to his body like the wet rags used by ratwives to smother malformed whelps. The grey seer swatted irritably at the nasty blue fly trying to bite his neck. All considered, he must have lost a quart of blood to the abominable insects. It had been sorely tempting to draw upon his power to ward off the biting bugs, but he decided such a display of magical prowess might be unseemly. Besides, that slinking mage-rat Shen Tsinge was conserving his powers, and that made Thanquol doubly keen to husband his own.

  His fur bristled as he watched the scabby little sorcerer. No trudging through the muck and mud of the jungle for him! Oh no, not when he had a big strong rat ogre to lug his mangy skin around for him! The sorcerer was cradled in the brute’s arms like a favoured whelp nuzzled against a breeder. Thanquol could swear the villain was dozing. Dozing while the rest of them suffered and sweated and fought off all the filthy vermin the jungle could throw at them. Leeches! Mosquitos! Poisonous spiders! Blinding clouds of gnats! Snakes!

  Thanquol’s fur crawled as he thought of the snakes. The loathsome things were everywhere, watching them with their unblinking eyes, sniffing at them with their forked tongues. He’d lost count of all the hideous snakes they’d seen. Little ones the colour of man-thing blood that could kill a skaven with a single flash of their fangs. Big ones that dropped down from the branches to coil around a ratman and crush his bones in their coils. Flat ones that flew through the trees like great scaly ribbons. Most horrible of all had been the giant one with a head on each end. Fortunately that monster had been content to eat two gutter runners and then slither back into the scummy stream it had been hiding in.

  He returned his angry gaze to Shen Tsinge. Of course the sorcerer didn’t have to worry about snakes, not up there in the arms of his rat ogre! Thanquol studied the monstrous brute. From head to foot the beast was as black as an assassin’s cloak and the immense claws on both its hands and its feet were covered in steel. The monster wore a necklace of skulls around its neck: skulls of dwarf-things and man-things and green-things, but mostly the long, narrow skulls of skaven. The threat was obvious.

  Goji, the sorcerer had named his bodyguard in typical excessive fashion. Clan Eshin must have trained the beast for some time: it moved with a speed and agility that belied its bulk, and when it moved it did so without a whisper of sound to betray it. Even Tsang’s gutter runners seemed clumsy beside Goji as they scurried through the jungle.

  Thanquol bristled and snorted his amusement at all the wasted time and expense Shen Tsinge had squandered to train his rat ogre. What good was a quiet bodyguard? What use was it to have a hulking engine of destruction that could daintily pick its way through the jungle? A rat ogre was something to be used to scare underlings and terrify enemies! Shen Tsinge obviously had not the slightest clue about rat ogres!

  The grey seer quickly moved behind a pair of clan-rat warriors as the scouts ahead came scampering back. He could smell the excitement in their scent. His keen ears soon picked out their hasty report. They had found something ahead!

  Carefully, the column followed the scouts back along the trail they had carved through the jungle. For some time, the ground had been growing less solid. Now it fell away into a full-fledged swamp. Gnarled mangroves thrust themselves from the scum-coated water, clouds of insects buzzing above the filth. Sandbars protruded through the muck, forming a twisty, broken bridge across the morass. Immense green crocodiles lounged upon the sand bars, basking in the sunlight dribbling down through the trees.

  All of this Thanquol saw and smelled in an instant, then his attention was drawn like all of the other skaven to the ugly stone tower rising from a small island. The structure leaned crazily out over the swamp, many of its stones having collapsed and fallen into the mud banks around it. The rusted mouth of a cannon protruded from the single window that could be seen. Above the broken wooden gate that fronted the tower, a set of human bones had been fixed above the archway with mortar. Thanquol recognised the shape they formed. It was the same as the Black Mary had flown, a skull above two leg bones. The grey seer wondered if it was possible if the men who had built the tower and the pirates whose ship they had taken could have belonged to the same clan.

  Some of Tsang Kweek’s gutter runners started towards the tower, a suggestion of greed in their scent. The smell was picked up by Kong Krakback’s warriors and the bigger skaven started scurrying after the small scouts.

  Grey Seer Thanquol started to move forwards as well, determined to mediate any dispute over treasure for the good of the expedition—and a nominal percentage. His nose twitched as a new smell struck it. A cold shiver crept through his spine and it was an effort to control his glands. This was no scent even the keenest assassin would know. It was a smell only those attuned to the world of magic could know. Thanquol had last smelled such a foul taint when he had fought the necromancer Vorghun of Praag. It was the stench of the darkest of sorcery, the sickening reek of the undead.

  Thanquol pondered his options, then carefully made his way back towards the jungle. Let the Eshin upstarts walk into trouble! It would serve them right for all the indignities they had forced upon him! Besides, someone among that murderous rabble was try
ing to kill him. Maybe he’d get lucky and whatever evil was hanging about the tower would take care of his unknown enemy for him.

  Shen Tsinge’s eyes were not quite as closed as Thanquol had supposed them to be. Far from dozing, the sorcerer had been watching all of his comrades, and most particularly the grey seer. When he saw the crafty gleam creep into Thanquol’s eyes, the sorcerer dropped down from the arms of Goji. Shen sniffed at the air. His fur bristled at what he smelled. He stared accusingly at Thanquol, then scrambled forwards to warn his clan of their danger.

  * * *

  It was too late. The foremost of the skaven had already reached the tower. As the first ratman leapt from the sand bar to the crumbling face of the island, a shadowy figure shambled out of the darkness inside the tower. It looked something like a human, but its clothes were nothing but shreds of cloth hanging from starved bones. The skin was green with rot, blistered and split by the jungle heat. Spots of bone protruded from the decaying flesh and maggots crawled in what little meat remained. Beneath the tattered remains of a captain’s hat, a desiccated skull glared at the ratmen.

  One of the gutter runners squeaked in terror as he saw the apparition, scrabbling backwards in such haste that he stumbled into the scummy water. The other gutter runner bared his fangs and hurled a pair of knives into the approaching human. The blades sank deep into the man’s chest, transfixing his heart. The man didn’t even seem to feel their impact, but took another shambling step towards the gutter runner.

  Now terrified like his comrade, the ratkin turned to flee. But as he did so, a rotten fist exploded from the ground beneath him and seized his foot in a cruel grip. The gutter runner writhed in agony, hacking desperately at the imprisoning hand. Though fingers snapped beneath his blade, the hand refused to release him. The skaven wailed, pleading with his kin for help. Too late he saw the rotten shadow of the captain fall across him. The mouldering zombie raised the rusty cutlass it carried and brought it slashing down.