by David Guymer
Fisk lunged forward with a clumsy downward slash. Queek rolled his shoulder, skittering aside with dancing pawsteps. Again his enemy came, and again Queek spun away from the attack, the tip of his sword licking out to open a long gash on his opponent’s cheek. Maddened by Queek’s teasing swordplay, Fisk barrelled forward, swinging his giant sword for Queek’s neck. Grinning, Queek hopped back a pace, parrying the lunge with a deft touch from his own blade.
The over-committed warlord struggled to regain his balance, his chest an open and inviting target. Queek spun on his footpaws, his cadaverous trophies grinning as they sensed a new pretender about to join their ranks. Mid-spin, he reversed his grip on Dwarf-Gouger, shrilling in exorcised fury as its spike punched through the vainglorious sheen of Fisk’s breastplate, piercing the rat-kin’s heart in a hail of bone fragments and blood.
Laughing, Queek yanked the weapon free. Fisk’s corpse fell to its knees at his feet, held upright by a footpaw on the chest.
‘You are on your knees, friend-Fisk? Then all is forgiven, of course.’
Snickering, Queek let Dwarf-Gouger drop from his paw, ripping Fisk’s helmet clear with a flash of his claws. He positioned the serrated edge of his blade against the dead warlord’s spine. Both sets of warriors moaned as Queek sawed through the thick meat of his rival’s neck, looking away as vertebrae crunched and separated. With a yell of triumph, Queek tore the severed head from the tangle of gristle that still clung to Fisk’s shoulders, shaking it defiantly before the subdued horde.
‘Queek is greatest! Queek is fiercest! Queek is strongest!’ With a scream, he hurled the bloodied thing into the opposing ranks, the warlord’s head splatting into a clanrat’s hurriedly raised shield. ‘Who else?’ he cried. ‘Who else dare test Queek?’
Silence was his answer.
Screaming with frustration, Queek threw his gore-spattered sword to the ground, pawing wildly at his own armour with un-sated bloodlust. He swallowed the urge to charge headlong into his enemy, to slaughter them like the slaves at the gate.
Slowly, the urge subsided. He did not have to kill them all. Skaven followed strength, and no one was stronger than Queek.
‘You!’ he shouted, directing a threatening claw at one of Fisk’s warriors. The rangy rat-man stared at it as though it might spit lightning. ‘Is there a Clan Moulder quarter in this foetid hole, gutter-spleen?’
The frightened skaven nodded eagerly to indicate that there was.
‘Fetch-bring a representative. They have things I need. It is their honour to serve great Queek-Warlord today.’
Ska cowered before his warlord’s rage, wincing occasionally when his violent temper manifested in a claw stabbed into the meat of his shoulder to emphasise some particularly galling point.
‘Where-where is stupid Moulder-thing. Are beast-meddlers so addled by warp-dust and cave mushrooms that they disobey Queek?’
Wracking his brains for the words his unpredictable master most likely wished to hear, he cringed as he saw the warlord bare his fangs for a fresh onslaught.
The expected blow never fell. Something else had drawn the warlord’s ire and he glanced across at the unlikely shape of his salvation: a tall, wiry, skaven in an oily blue cloak and hood that had separated from the crowd and was padding towards them.
Queek reached for his weapons. Even far from home and in a festering backwater like Varn, assassination attempts followed his warlord like warp-hounds chased warpstone. Ska closed his eyes and prayed that somehow, someday, one of them might finally succeed.
The skaven quickly lowered his hood and prostrated himself, anxiously gesturing the warlord to lower his weapons.
‘It is merely I, oh most gruesome of victors, bane of the green-things, and slayer of a thousand dwarfs.’
Queek kept his sword firmly in paw as he answered. ‘A thousand? Your tongue offends me, Skratch. Maybe I cut it out and eat it. Queek slays dwarf-things in tens of thousands! The blood of kingdoms stains his mighty fur.’
Ska kept his own council on Queek’s extravagant boast. He wasn’t about to stick his neck out just to give the warlord a free swing.
‘Meek and unworthy Skratch meant no insult to Warlord Queek. My head-brain is too simple to keep proper tally of mighty Queek’s many glorious triumphs.’
Grudgingly, Queek released his blade, dismissing Ska with a casual sweep of his paw.
Ska moved away, baring his teeth to discourage his inferiors from looking to him for orders. Making a show of polishing his blade with an old man-skin cloth, he pricked his ears to listen.
‘I received your message rat,’ said Queek, his whispered voice pitched high with excitement. ‘Before twelfth bell, last moon. It is here? You are sure-sure?’
‘Yes-yes. Sure as sure. Smell and hear and see. It is here.’
Queek leaned in, close and menacing, his muzzle pressed against the frightened scout. ‘You are certain it is still here? Varn-lair has lots-many dangers.’
Skratch gulped, answering with a vigorous nod.
With a grin, Queek shoved the scout away and bounded back to his milling warriors, bossing them into action with a vicious enthusiasm.
Ska’s eyes narrowed as he studied Skratch. The skaven fidgeted constantly, running his tail through his paws as his eyes tried to be everywhere at once with a hyperactive paranoia. Skratch’s twitching gaze met his and the scout squeaked in alarm, burying his muzzle in his cowl as he scurried away. Ska watched him disappear into the assembling ranks.
What treasure had Skratch unearthed in this abyssal place? And why was he sharing it with the warlord? Whatever the answers, Ska intended to find out.
Pleasant images of power and riches were still bright in his mind when Queek’s baleful visage brought a stab of fear to his chest, fearful that the warlord might read something traitorous in his scent? It was impossible, he reassured himself. The great and merciless Warlord Queek knew he had no servant as unswerving in his loyalty as Ska Bloodtail!
Karak Varn was vast, and it was empty – devoid of anything that moved but shadows, the black shapes flitting across the distant walls like carrion crows circling a tiring lamb. For the hundredth time since ascending that first stair, Queek wished he’d brought along more of his warriors. Skratch had urged caution, citing the legions of goblins and worse that haunted the sunken shell of Varn that might be disturbed by a large force. But the voices had whispered ‘What has the dark to challenge the all-conquering Queek?’ and he had listened.
Now he felt decidedly naked. Aside from the single Clan Moulder packmaster and his swarming rats, he had only Ska and a score of his fiercest stormvermin to throw between himself and danger. He tried to remind himself that he was Queek the Fearless, but it was difficult to be so dismissive of a threat that seemed to exist only in his mind, tickling the hairs at the back of his nostrils with the bitter scent of fear.
‘Ska,’ he whispered, his voice seeming caged, locked and buried beneath the oppressively cavernous space. ‘Take front-front. Great Queek shall watch the rear.’
Warily, Ska crept to the front of the mob where Skratch lingered on all fours, darting from side to side with his snout raised to the stagnant cross-draughts.
Queek took a sniff of his own and instantly regretted it. Green-things.
His nose wrinkled in disgust. The whole place stank of them. He didn’t know how Skratch could find his way through that. Queek certainly doubted whether he could find his own way back. Pitch darkness was nothing, but the high ceilings were adorned with dwarf glimstones and, although most had faded and died, some shone with an intermittent brightness that threw the hall into stark brilliance one moment, only to plunge it into utter blackness the next. The constant strobing rendered sensitive skaven eyes as good as blind.
‘Skratch,’ he whispered, fumbling in the strange dark-light. ‘Skratch, are you there?’
‘Here-here, most devi
ous of warlords.’
‘Where do we go-sneak?’
‘A stair, oh feared conqueror of mountains. It take-bring to what dwarf-things call “the Fifth Deep”. We much-much close to surface now.’
Queek snarled and sent the scout away, fondling the leather grip of Dwarf-Gouger. He wished he’d taken his chances with the goblins. It seemed that time itself expanded to fill the vast hall... or was it simply the light confounding his senses? He ground his teeth in hatred of the dwarf-things. No one else would be so stupid as to build rooms so huge for a people that were so small!
A curt reprimand to Skratch for taking them on such a terrible route was on the tip of his tongue when suddenly two monstrous giants loomed out from the glare.
Queek screeched and leapt behind one of his stormvermin, but as the light faded to a more comfortable level he realised it was merely two mammoth granite statues flanking the entrance to Skratch’s stair. He took a deep breath, soothing his ego by breaking the stormvermin’s nose with his fist. ‘You stand in Queek’s way-path. Why do I suffer Ska to train you so poorly?’
He stepped over the mewling rat-man to examine the statues. They had once represented dwarfs, but their long beards were chiselled down, their stern countenances defaced with orcish features while their mailed torsos had been daubed with green-thing filth. Queek’s whiskers shivered with disgust.
‘Come-come,’ Skratch chittered. ‘Stair is long-far.’
Long-far. That was an understatement. A lonesome dripping echoed up – or possibly down? – the length of the stairwell, an intermittent torture that made his tail ripple with pent up rage. It felt like an age since he had last eaten, his gut sending vengeful spears of pain into his fur. It was a shame he had so few warriors – the heavy-set stormvermin would go far. But he had what he had, so he suffered with merely vandalising the mosaics that shadowed them insufferably up the walls of the stairwell. It was some kind of repeating, symmetric pattern of gold and silver squares that transformed into entirely new forms when viewed from another angle. It was disconcerting and pointless. The dwarf-things had an eye for the grandiose; they liked to build things to endure. It was a racial failing that he could never understand.
He was just beginning to entertain the notion that he surely couldn’t need all of these stormvermin, when the faintest tickle of cleaner air crept into his nose. An excited squeak from Skratch, several turns above his head, confirmed that the end was in sight. Queek tried to hide his relief, but his muscles seemed to boil beneath his fur like the bubbling warp-forges of Clan Skyre.
The skaven burst from the stairs with palpable relief. Queek winced as he rubbed feeling back into his thighs, hopping from footpaw to footpaw to keep his muscles from seizing. He watched as his so-called elite practically folded in on themselves as they collapsed onto the cracked white marble tiles. He shook his head contemptuously as the pride of Clan Mors lay sprawled on the cold stone.
He closed his eyes, the pulsing glimstones like weeping blades in his temples. At least the stench was bearable. The damp too seemed to have subsided into the sordid depths of Karak Varn – the horrific, cloying moistness that seemed to infect even the shadows themselves had been gratefully abandoned to the lower deeps.
He turned to his warriors. ‘Rest-rest now. But keep moving. Any who can’t walk when we away-go will be food for others.’
His look of scorn was dragged away from the splayed figures as Ska Bloodtail picked his way through the maze of limbs and discarded gear towards him.
‘I suggest we eat-rest. No slaves anymore and still see-scent no green-things.’
‘Green-cowards hide-hide,’ declared Queek. ‘They hear-smell Queek is here. I am like monster of story-tale to fearful green-things.’
Ska said nothing, and Queek snarled. He jabbed a claw at his lounging warriors.
‘Feed-feed then. Give all they can stomach. We have living meat soon enough.’
Licking his lips curiously, Ska padded away, wondering what the warlord had meant. Was it then some living thing they sought? A bound daemon perhaps or some escaped Moulder experiment that would pulverise his enemies? A dragon’s hoard? His heart pumped cold at the thought. Maybe the beast would choke on Queek while Ska made off with its treasure…
Thoughts skirted his brain like mice around a tainted cheese as he walked amongst his rat-men, drawing hunks of salted goblin hide from his pack and tossing them to the starving warriors. There was no great love for the vile meat but the ravenous skaven swallowed it enthusiastically enough. Even the hunter rats turned their noses up at the tuberous lump of gristle and viscera set before them, circling it warily as if it might pounce.
Continuing his rounds with an exaggerated nonchalance, Ska made a wide circle towards where Skratch sat apart. The scout glanced up expectantly as Ska fished in his pack.
‘So-so,’ began the fangleader, his paw still buried in the satchel. ‘You know what Queek-Warlord hunt-seeks. You tell him to come for it, I hear. Why not squeak-tell? Ska can keep secrets.’
Skratch eyed the bag longingly, a pale rope of saliva swinging from his open jaws. With an expansive gesture, Ska withdrew the last piece of meat, noticing how the starving skaven’s eyes chased after it like a hypnotist’s medallion. He shaved off a thin sliver and dangled it enticingly from his claw. Skratch grabbed it and gobbled it down before his paw had even finished moving.
Ska watched the scout swallow, hungry eyes immediately returning to what remained in his paw. Ska jiggled it with a hiss of laughter. ‘Tell-tell. What does Queek-Warlord seek in this foul place? What is so important he leaves green-things un-killed?’
Skratch shook his muzzle piteously, trapped between hunger and fear.
Angrily, Ska opened his own mouth wide to sink his fangs into the glistening flesh.
‘Wait-stop!’ whined Skratch, anxiously drumming his claws on the floor tiles. With an arrhythmic, jerking motion, the scout glanced about. Evidently satisfied nobody was about to kill him, he opened his paw for Ska’s food.
Ska held onto it, a fatty white paste beginning to ooze between his claws. He lashed his tail in delight. ‘Tell-tell first. Tell and you eat-eat. Then you help me kill-kill old Queek and maybe we split-share treasure.’
Skratch cringed, continuing to cast nervous looks over his shoulder every few seconds. Summoning the jittery scout’s attention the best way he knew how, Ska slammed his gauntlet through the floor tile. He raised his paw, meeting Skratch’s gaze. He grinned. He had the runt focussed now.
‘Tell-tell,’ he repeated, ‘and we share-share.’
‘Ska doesn’t understand,’ moaned Skratch. ‘The thing Queek seeks… is not a thing he share.’
Ska listened as Skratch laid out the warlord’s purpose and, with a vicious grin, handed the scout his promised reward. Maybe there was no treasure, but disposing of Queek might turn out to be a simple matter after all.
Ever deeper into the hold, Skratch led them; ever closer to the surface through one vertigo-inducing hall after another. Queek’s head spun from the vastness of it all. The one small mercy he clung to was that the damnable glimstones had disappeared, ushering them into blessed blackness. Chances were they had been pried loose and stolen by goblins. The simple-minded green-things had a magpie-like fascination for that which sparkled.
His claws tensed and relaxed almost with a will of their own. He needed blood on his paws. That was all.
He followed Skratch through yet another immense, vaulted chamber, this one littered with the iron skeleton of some kind of industry. The looming, metallic shadows had been peeled away, layer by layer, until their rusted innards spilled across the tiled floor. A pained squeak broke the silence as the packmaster trod on some ancient nail. He sneered at the muffled sniggers that broke out around him, exacting his rage on the cowering hunter rats in a torrent of vicious lash strokes.
Queek watched as Skratch pattered fir
st one way and then another, lifting his nose to the air as he tried to find his way.
‘Admit it,’ growled Queek. ‘You are lost.’
‘Not lost, not lost,’ protested Skratch, quickly disappearing behind one of the listless hulks, only to be forced back into Queek’s sight with a panicked squeal by an avalanche of falling metal that boomed throughout the eerie machine graveyard like thunder.
Queek winced as the rumbling echo took an age to die. If there was a single goblin left anywhere in Karak Varn, they could not have failed to hear that.
‘You clumsy, dwarf-pawed imbecile! Look-smell where you go!’
Skratch burrowed through the scrap heap, more of the rusted remains trilling across the floor in response to his movements. Queek watched a spiked little wheel clatter across the floor towards him. He stamped on it with a snarl.
‘A tunnel, imperious master,’ said Skratch, his tail sliding anxiously up his leg. ‘Up-up, it goes.’
‘I grow tired-bored of this traipsing, Skratch. I want kill-kill. Tell me we are close.’
Skratch nodded eagerly. ‘Close, mighty warlord. Kill-kill, very soon. But some sneaky sneak has been this way. Tunnel blocked to stop Skratch finding, but Skratch’s nose cunning-good. Humbly, suggest I scout-scout ahead. Can’t warn enemies we come-come with clumsy clattering.’
Queek bit his tongue on what he thought of the scout’s position on clumsiness.
‘Fine-fine,’ he spat. ‘We wait here. Quick-hurry, or it goes bad for you.’
‘No!’ squeaked Ska, earning himself a cuff across the muzzle.
‘Queek is warlord. Queek says no or yes.’
Ska bobbed his head deferentially. ‘Yes-yes, imperious master. But Skratch should not go alone. What if danger? Perhaps strong Ska should protect him.’
Queek studied his fangleader, eyes filled with suspicion. His trophies whispered to him.
‘We see-smell them together,’ observed one. ‘What do Ska and Skratch say-squeak when think-think Queek not hear?’
