Warhammer Anthology 12

by Death

  The one-eyed skaven bowed with all proper obeisance. Qit Rin chittered at the rest of the gutter runners, and led half of them away down the slope. Skulk Fellpaw gave Sneeq a curious look as he passed, almost defiant. The assassin made a mental note to punish his lackey even more harshly at the next opportunity.

  The gutter runners moved stealthily through the night, with only the most essential squeaks, and soon they were a black stain flowing into the broader shadows within the valley. Sneeq watched them go, certain of his plan’s success. By seizing the weapons himself, he could deliver them to Qik directly, bypassing the warlord. The seer could claim credit for the victory, and his protection would prevent Glut from making any reprisals before the assassin was safely back in his clan’s territory.

  It was only a matter of time now. Of all of his underlings, Qit Rin was by far the most competent and deadly. Together they had slain the fearsome ogre brothers of Rotgut Peak, and beheaded the five clawleaders of the treacherous Clan Skitr. Their current task would be like taking a femur from a pup. Sneeq leaned out over the ridge, and eagerly awaited the signal of his inevitable triumph.

  Werner Grunhelm took another pull from the flask of Kislevite vodka he kept in a fireproof canister on his belt, and ordered the volley gun crew to give the crank another three turns. The crew complied with aggrieved moans, still bitter at being roused from their tents for a live firing exercise in the middle of the night. On the last turn one of the crew lost his grip, causing the pawl to slip and launching the gun decks into a series of wild gyrations that nearly tore the weapon apart.

  ‘You incompetent scum!’ Grunhelm bellowed. The engineer pulled his repeater rifle from the holster on his back, and fired a volley into the air. ‘Get the damned mainspring wound properly, or I’ll lash you to the barrels as an example to the next damned crew!’

  Seeing the way the reflected torchlight burned in the engineer’s eyes, the crew threw themselves back into turning the crank. Grunhelm shook his head, muttering curses under his breath. He’d never had such trouble with the crews back in Nuln, that much he was sure of.

  The very thought of his home city was enough to make the engineer take another drink of vodka. Even now, his peers were drowning the progress of Imperial science in a tide of mediocrity and ignorance, while he had been relegated to this backwater campsite, trying to improve designs that had been obsolete a century ago while he kept the so-called crew from banging on the damned guns with large rocks.

  At least they seemed competent enough to fire the guns in battle. The camp had been attacked by beastmen twice recently, and both times the guns had managed to see their attackers off before they could reach the camp proper. Despite this, most of the camp was in a state of near panic. Although they had more than enough supplies and ammunition to hold out until reinforcements arrived, the sheer number of the monsters had everyone worried.

  There had been whispers in the camp that the attackers were not beastmen at all. Some dared to claim that they were skaven, vile ratmen that dwelled underneath the Empire in a twisted mockery of mankind. Most dismissed these claims as lunatic heresy, but the rat-like appearance of their foes had leant the idea a great deal of strength.

  Grunhelm did his best to ignore the rumours and keep drinking. He’d been at the Battle of Nuln, twenty years ago, defending the College of Engineers from the monsters that had swarmed over the city. When he dreamed, he could still recall the red gleam in their eyes, and the sharp, yellowed incisors that had torn out old Luftig’s throat

  Grunhelm dismissed the memories with a long swig from his flask. ‘Right, lower the elevation, five degrees,’ he said. ‘Look sharp, damn you, we haven’t got all night.’

  The crew adjusted the device quickly, and moved a respectful distance away from the weapon as Grunhelm inspected their work. Satisfied, the engineer nodded. ‘Good enough,’ he acknowledged. ‘You, light the taper. The rest of you, five steps back. Quickly now!’

  One of the crewmen nervously put a torch to the fuse as Grunhelm and the others jogged a short distance away. In moments, the torch carrier joined them at a somewhat quicker pace. Behind him, the mainspring engaged and turned the barrels of the Helblaster in a lazy arc as the fuse burned down towards the gun.

  A loud roar echoed through the valley as the Helblaster fired, sending up a bright plume of flame and smoke. Grunhelm grinned in spite of himself as he saw the barrels continue to turn, without any hint of slowing, warping or jamming.

  ‘Take a good look, you lot,’ he told the crew, as the second rack of barrels turned into place. ‘That’s what proper engineering looks like.’

  Another roar of the volley gun, and another turn of the barrels. This time, as the barrels turned, Grunhelm thought he heard a high-pitched noise coming from the targeting range. It sounded like someone screaming in agony, but in too high a pitch: like a child, or a rat

  The barrels locked into place a final time, and the Helblaster discharged its final salvo. When the echoes died down, Grunhelm strained his ears, but could detect nothing.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ a crewman asked. Grunhelm silenced him with a swift motion of his fingers. After another ten heartbeats spent listening, Grunhelm drew his rifle and motioned for the crew to follow him. He’d only heard the cries for a few moments, he told himself. They couldn’t possibly be what he feared they were. Still, he had to be sure.

  The engineer and his crew crept down the valley, keeping low to the ground. The deeper they went, the more sinister the shadows around them became. They walked over the shredded remains of target dummies, straw guts and wooden bones strewn across the landscape by the Helblaster’s fury.

  Finally, after they’d almost reached the outer limits of the gun’s range, Grunhelm called a halt, feeling thoroughly relieved that they had found nothing. He took another drink from his flask, and was about to have the men return to the volley gun when one of the crewmen cried out.

  ‘Yeugh,’ he said, lifting his boot off the ground with a disgusted expression on his face. He had stepped in a puddle of black tar, of a consistency and odour both foul and unfamiliar to the engineer.

  Grunhelm bent to make a closer inspection of the substance. As he did so, he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and spun sharply towards the eastern slope of the valley.

  He saw nothing there, save shadows. A light breeze drifted through the valley, and Grunhelm watched the scrub along the valley’s slopes sway in response. Surely that was all the movement there was.

  The engineer felt an uncomfortable heaviness in his stomach that had nothing to do with the vodka. ‘Back to the camp, all of you,’ he said.

  ‘Sir, what–’

  ‘Just move,’ Grunhelm snapped, casting one last wary glance along the valley walls as they turned to go. ‘And watch the shadows as you go, if you value your lives.’

  Sneeq sat on a rock at the edge of the valley, gnawing his tail impatiently. Qit Rin’s signal was long overdue. The foolish vermin had likely run off at the first scent of danger. Admittedly, Sneeq had nearly done so himself when the manthings had fired their weapons. Only the knowledge of a certain, painful death should he do so had kept him in place.

  The assassin spotted movement below, and was about to take the figure in the neck with a throwing star before he recognised Skulk Fellpaw. The diminutive skaven made his way quickly up the side of the valley, carrying a lumpy parcel under one arm. As he approached, Sneeq noticed that the gutter runner smelled strongly of black powder and the musk of fear.

  ‘Report now!’ Sneeq said. ‘Where is Qit Rin’s signal? Why does he delay my triumph? Speak!’

  ‘Forgive me, most murderous master, but Qit Rin cannot signal anyone. The humans somehow discovered our approach, and

  ’ Skulk opened his bag and let its contents spill out onto the ground. Sneeq recognised Qit Rin’s brass eyepatch within the puddle of black slime, as well as a round lead ball that he suspected was the cause of his minion’s demise.

&n
bsp; Sneeq let out a loud squeak of frustration, snatched up Qit Rin’s eyepatch and hurled it back down the valley. He had never trusted the stupid vermin, and now his incompetence had cost him many warptokens worth of minions. No, worse than that! With only half a team of gutter runners left, he could not hope to carry the manthing weapons back to the warren before they were missed.

  ‘What should we do now, Master Foulblade?’ Skulk asked. Sneeq fixed him with a baleful glare, and considered killing the impudent skaven on the spot. But no, he might need all of his remaining gutter runners if he was to have any hope of success.

  ‘The cannons, where are the manthings that fired them?’ he asked. Skulk pointed back into the valley, between the weapons and the manthing tents.

  Sneeq reached into his cloak and pulled out a warpstone-lensed telescope. He’d acquired the device along with the head of a Clan Skryre warlock who had tried to cheat him on a fulfilled contract. Looking through the tube, Sneeq saw the valley floor through the green haze of the warp lenses. Each living thing was picked out in a vibrant white outline, making them as obvious as if he could scent them himself.

  He could see a strangely-dressed human walking out of the valley and towards a large tent, followed at a discreet distance by what he assumed were crew slaves. They were moving without haste; presumably they believed that all of their attackers were dead. The human in the lead wore heavy goggles, and carried a variety of small mechanical devices that reminded Sneeq of the trinkets that the warlock had carried around with him. With an adjustment of the lenses, Sneeq could pick out the manthing’s white facial fur, and recognised his target from the crude drawing Glut had presented him with.

  The assassin’s eyes began to sting and water, as they always did when he looked through the telescope too long. He saw the human’s features blur through his tears, and felt his tail stiffen at the sight.

  The assassin stuffed the telescope back into his cloak and turned to Skulk. ‘If you wish me to spare your miserable life, Fellpaw, find a white-furred sentrything and bring me its head.’

  Skulk nodded quickly, obscenely pleased to be forgiven so easily. ‘And what will you do, most merciful of masters?’

  Sneeq bared his fangs in a wicked grin. ‘I will take the rest of the gutter runners into the manthing camp,’ he said. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a pup. Now begone!’

  Skulk scuttled away with gratifying haste. Sneeq gathered the remaining gutter runners, and soon they were in the camp, running swiftly from tent to tent. The humans had retired for the night, although Sneeq still kept his minions at a prudent distance from the large tent that the engineer and his crew slaves had entered. He had no desire to bring his gutter runners anywhere near the engineer, lest they slay him before he could order otherwise.

  As he passed each tent, Sneeq would creep up to the entrance, listening and sniffing for the telltale signs of an occupied burrow. Those he discovered to be empty he searched, looking for the specific devices that would identify his goal.

  The first three tents he looked into lacked anything of interest. The fourth was a provisions tent, containing bread and meat and the rotted, yellow milk that the manthings seemed to enjoy so much. Sneeq stuffed a handful of the meat into his mouth and moved on.

  Sneeq found what he’d been looking for in the fifth tent. This one was set apart from the others, and contained a variety of odd trinkets wrought in metal and wood, many of which moved seemingly of their own volition. A voluminous shelf contained heaps of papers covered in harsh scribblings. As Sneeq watched, what looked like a bird made of sheet metal craned its head back and let out a thin, high-pitched wisp of steam through a slit in its neck.

  The assassin doused the torch burning just outside the tent’s entrance. ‘Stay on guard!’ Sneeq ordered his gutter runners, and he entered the tent, closing the flap behind him before he began rummaging through the engineer’s possessions, searching for anything a manthing engineer might conceivably wear. Glut had given Sneeq a description of the engineer, but he had likely never seen the human in person, relying instead on second-hand descriptions from spies in Qik’s surviving forces. It was unlikely that the warlord would recognise a fake.

  Sneeq gnashed his teeth, and restrained himself from simply smashing the manthing’s possessions. He hated the deception, mainly because it was unlikely to fool Glut for long. Still, he only had to deceive the warlord long enough to be far away when the truth was discovered. And it wouldn’t really be his fault if Glut accepted the wrong head. Clearly the warlord should have provided a better description.

  Sneeq opened a large drawer and began tossing its contents onto the floor. He suspected he would have little time to find what he needed.

  Grunhelm sat in one corner of the common tent, nursing his flask carefully and poring over his notebook of the day’s tests. The crewmen had opted to sit on the opposite side of the tent. Grunhelm suspected they thought he’d gone somewhat mad after the attacks, which suited him fine. Generally the engineer preferred to avoid company, having found no one in the camp who could speak intelligently on any subject of interest to him. Granted, it had mostly been the same in Nuln, but there at least he could take some satisfaction from stumping his so-called learned colleagues.

  The tent was crowded with off-shift sentries, nursing mugs of ale and a sense of companionship before they had to go and relieve the men currently watching the perimeter. Even with artillery-deadened ears, Grunhelm could hear the drift the conversations were taking:

  I saw one of the beasts go running into a great rathole

  One that tried to stab me had whiskers and a tail, on my oath

  Heard they almost sacked Nuln years back, but the Countess’s men hushed it up

  That last came up more often than Grunhelm cared to hear. If he’d wished, he could have told the men a great deal more about that battle than they would want to hear. But then, that was the last thing he would ever wish to talk about.

  Skaven, he thought. Why did it have to be skaven?

  He’d never understood before why the ratmen’s invasion of Nuln had been forgotten, chalked up to a mutant uprising supported by beastmen. He had even, for a time, spoken out about the matter publicly, until a senior professor had taken him aside and told him in no uncertain terms that any further talk of skaven would land him in one of the Countess’s dungeons.

  ‘The people of the Empire have enough to fear,’ the old lecturer had told him. ‘Elven reavers, orcish incursions, marauding beastmen, not to mention the Northern barbarians. Talk of rats gnawing away at the Empire’s foundations can only lead to panic and civil unrest.’

  ‘But we all saw the damned things!’ Grunhelm had protested.

  The professor had smiled rather sadly at that. ‘We saw what the Countess says we saw. Or else,’ he added.

  Grunhelm had understood the words well enough, but never the reasoning behind them. And so he had lost himself in his work, and when that hadn’t been enough he had lost himself in drink as well, until he’d finally caused enough trouble that the senior faculty had sent him out here, where he could rot without bringing undue shame upon the college. Only fitting, he supposed, that the skaven had followed him here.

  The engineer stood up on unsteady legs and left the tent. He’d had enough of bad memories for one evening. Best to return to his tent and wait for morning to come.

  Skulk Fellpaw crept into the camp at last. In one paw he carried his notched and rusty blade; in the other, a dirty sack containing the head of one of the manthing sentries. None of the sentries they’d killed had possessed the correct colour fur, and he’d finally been forced to kill another one to carry out Sneeq’s orders.

  At the thought of the assassin, Skulk’s fur bristled. His master had neglected his obvious talents for years, passing him over for reward and advancement time and time again. Granted, he had suffered more than most skaven from the jealousy of his rivals. He had repeatedly been given tasks that would be certain death to any lesser being. But h
e had survived! Wasn’t that a truer measure of his prowess than success?

  Warlord Glut, at least, had seen his potential. The warlord had called him into his thronechamber shortly before the mission. On first seeing the obese skaven, Skulk had feared that he would simply be devoured alive. Instead, Glut had shared with him a most surprising revelation.

  ‘Your master is a traitor!’ Glut had snarled, spraying chunks of slave through his teeth. ‘He seeks to abandon his assigned task to save his own worthless hide. He is a coward and a dishonour to his clan!’

  Skulk had barely believed his ears. Despite his hatred of the assassin, Skulk had to grudgingly admit that he had never failed to complete a contract.

  ‘My spies have told me of you, Fellpaw,’ Glut had continued. ‘Foulblade has treated you as poorly as he seeks to treat me. Watch him close-close! Ensure the manthing dies, and I will see that you gain the prestige you so wrongfully lack.’

  How could Skulk refuse such an offer?

  Of course, he’d seen no reason to move against the assassin if he didn’t have to. It had been a stroke of luck that he’d led Qit Rin’s team into the range of the manthings’ weapons, spoiling Sneeq’s attempt to avoid the engineer. Unfortunately the damnable assassin had thought of another way to wriggle out of the contract with Glut.

  Skulk idly hefted the sentry’s head, wondering what he should do next. As he did so, he looked to his left and nearly squeaked out loud in alarm. It was the manthing engineer!

  The gutter runner froze in alarm, but he needn’t have worried. The engineer was heading away from him. Skulk traced the human’s path with his eyes, and saw at the end of it a darkened tent. His keen eyes picked out the shrouded forms of gutter runners pacing around the tent, keeping watch.