Headtaker

by David Guymer

  ‘Dao, send half your sneaks ahead-down. We go right into the dwarf-thing’s heart and will find no more unguarded tunnels.’

  The assassin peered over the edge, pointing out individuals from the group and directing them down. Wordlessly, they obeyed, spooling out rope from coils beneath their black cloaks. The first to go wrapped the rope under his left thigh and over his right shoulder and backed towards the ledge as Dao himself checked the line was secure. The gutter runner snarled, possibly in prayer, and threw himself tail first from the precipice and rappelled down the sheer chasm.

  Sharpwit watched approvingly as the remainder of the advance team followed suit. It was said that the training Clan Eshin agents received was intended to instill loyalty and fellowship as well as martial skill. They were a model that all Skavendom should follow.

  ‘How far do they fall-drop?’ Dao asked.

  ‘Far. Likely they need climb the last by paw.’

  Dao nodded as though he had expected as much but revealed nothing of his thoughts. Mental discipline was said to be another trait of the Eshin.

  ‘Come-come,’ said Sharpwit. ‘Now we find our way down.’

  ‘You will not be joining us down the hole?’ Dao asked, innocently.

  Sharpwit sneered. ‘You are no fool-fool, Dao. Do not try-seek and test me. I play these games far longer than you.’ He laid his paws against the walls, seemingly at random, and began sliding his touch along their cold length. These passages had not been trodden in an age.

  ‘You could wait-rest here. Let Dao do what he does well-best and keep clever Warlord Sharpwit from danger.’

  Smiling to himself, his back to the assassin, Sharpwit’s paws didn’t cease their questing. ‘You try to frighten me? I have the ear of Nightlord Sneak, I treat with Deathmasters. What could Fang Dao say to frighten me?’ He turned, treating the assassin to a grin filled with fell black fangs.

  The assassin met his gaze, sizing him up as perhaps only an adept of Clan Eshin could. ‘You are not as feeble as you seem, are you?’

  Sharpwit smiled but said nothing. He pressed his muzzle back to the wall. Trembles from distant cannon-fire passed through the stone like ripples.

  ‘What do you find-seek?’ asked the humbled assassin.

  ‘A way down. I squeak-say already.’

  ‘Through solid rock?’

  ‘I thought you were expert on dwarf-things.’ Sharpwit broke into a laugh. ‘But then Razzel says that too. I weep for the skaven race.’ His paw passed over a patch of wall that felt different to the rest. It looked identical, but it had been years since Sharpwit had trusted to his sight. ‘Watch, Dao. Maybe learn something.’

  With that, Sharpwit pushed forward, the rock giving way beneath his paw until his arm was buried within the wall up to the shoulder. He cackled. ‘Dwarf-things think themselves so clever. Clever enough perhaps, but not to fool Sharpwit.’ He grasped about until his paw settled on what he sought: a metal lever, cool to the touch and as long as his wiry forearm. He tugged but it was locked. Spitting a curse, he gave it another yank but the lever didn’t shift. He withdrew his paw. The lever had been designed for stronger arms than his.

  ‘Dao. Pull the lever.’

  The assassin stared at the depression as though he expected it to sear the flesh from his bones on contact. He cast about for an underling to perform the task.

  ‘Now!’

  Dao squirmed in discomfort, looking first at the wall and then at Sharpwit before finally reaching a decision. He sidled closer to the wall, throwing one last imploring look at Sharpwit and receiving short shrift before daintily sinking one claw into the aperture.

  Sharpwit thwacked the assassin across the rump with his crutch. ‘Quick-quick! Or I tell Sneak that Dao is a coward-rat scared of holes in walls.’

  Holding his breath, Dao drove his arm deeper, finally relaxing as his paw found the lever head.

  ‘Yes-yes, good. Be convinced-sure you have the proper lever. One to left is to summon. It is longer. One to right is to send up or down.’

  ‘I have it.’

  ‘Good-good. Now, pull-pull.’

  Thick muscles pulled taut beneath black fur. The assassin grimaced as he fought against the stubborn lever.

  ‘Pull-pull, pull hard.’

  Dao grunted, feeling the arm shift the merest inch. He pulled back his dye-blackened lips into a snarl and gave everything to haul the damnable thing until it could go no further. There was a throaty clank, as of metal being withdrawn into metal, and a whir of machinery as Dao collapsed, panting.

  Sharpwit stepped away from the wall as the sound rattled on. Somewhere, deep within the clever masonry of the dwarfs, wheels were spinning and heavy-duty chains older than the Under-Empire rumbled towards the Fifth Deep bearing a lead counterweight – forged undoubtedly into the stern countenance of an ancestor, for all that none would ever see it – in their wake. He moved closer to the shaft and peered cautiously upwards. He took a sniff. The cry of sheared stone and overworked metal ricocheted down the walls of the shaft.

  ‘Away-back from the ledge,’ he squeaked, obeying his own command. ‘Away-back.’

  An enormous stone platform, at least three feet thick and too vast in diameter to discern, hove into view, its descent grinding to a shuddering halt. It locked smoothly into place and Sharpwit couldn’t help but marvel. If he hadn’t just witnessed the floor appear, he would never have believed that it hadn’t been present all long. The joint with the rest of the passage was seamless, the tall statues that ringed the platform aligning perfectly with the faces in the accompanying hall.

  Sharpwit shook his head. So very clever.

  With this contraption in his paws, he could have positioned warriors on every level of Karak Azul as high as the Fifth Deep. The dwarfs would not have folded, he knew that. They were a stubborn race who almost revelled in adversity, but the skaven would not have been forced to assault an entrenched line and Kazador would have seen his forces split. Would he have defended the ancestor shrines on the Sixth Deep? Or would he have dispatched his finest to the burial chambers of the Eighth or the treasuries of the Seventh? It was all moot now. He cursed Queek and his childish thinking, rejoicing in the same breath that the Headtaker was no longer his problem. He hoped the Horned Rat choked on that one.

  ‘Onto the platform,’ he commanded, waving the slinking skaven forward. ‘Dao, one must stay to work the lever.’

  Dao dropped his muzzle, pointing out a scrawny ratkin stood nearest to him. ‘You. Go work the lever for Sharpwit-Warlord.’

  The skaven scurried from the platform with a posture that bespoke profound relief. Sharpwit stabbed his claw at another of the gutter runners, a silent and brooding presence with a heavy hemp net over his broad shoulders. ‘And you. Make sure he does not run-scurry.’

  Sharpwit, Dao and the remainder of the gutter runners assembled around the lip of the platform. The adepts fidgeted nervously, but Dao himself had regained his composure. The assassin crouched low, legs braced like willow saplings so he would not be unbalanced by any sudden movement of the floor. His ears and eyes roved ceaselessly in search of danger.

  Sharpwit snarled at the gutter runners they had left behind. ‘Twist the right-paw lever, quarter turn to right and then pull-pull.’

  The gutter runner did so, twisting the lever clockwise before pulling it back down. Sharpwit looked sideways at Dao.

  Dao bared his fangs. ‘I loosened for him.’

  The platform lurched, spilling all but Dao from their feet. Sharpwit swore as the level began to descend noisily. He stabbed his crutches into the trembling floor and pushed himself onto his feet. None of the gutter runners offered a paw in aid.

  Grey walls ground upward, twinkling with baubles of quartz, pyrite and feldspar as the mineral seam smeared lazily across his vision. The gutter runners gripped the floor on all fours. Dao stood hunched, his body seemingly motionless as he swayed in perfect harmony with the vibrations of the platform. Sharpwit turned his back on them all
, resting on the support of his crutches. Not far now.

  The platform crashed into its Ninth Deep terminus. This time Sharpwit kept his feet, but the shockwave shook his insides like jelly. A team of hunched, black-clad shapes greeted them as Sharpwit hobbled gladly from the shaft. The tunnel was almost identical to the previous. Perhaps the dwarfs themselves could tell the different ancestor statues apart, but he could not.

  One of the gutter runners from the advance party came to prostrate himself before Sharpwit and Dao. His slender blade was bloody. Sharpwit ignored the skaven and pressed deeper into the tunnel. It seemed the statues here were possessed of two shadows. Gutter runners slunk behind them in watchful positions of wariness.

  He sensed Dao and the remainder of the Clan Eshin team on his tail. The tunnel ran only a short way before ending in a stout, iron-banded portal. The last gutter runner sat cross-legged before it, tail coiled about his waist and twitching in time to the actions of his paws which fished a multi-pronged instrument into the door’s locking mechanism. Either side of the working ratkin lay two dead dwarfs. One lay face down, a stab wound in the back, while the other sat upright against the wall. His head lolled to one side, tubes showing glistening and white where the dwarf’s throat had been slit.

  The sounds of battle came through most clearly now. He could hear screams and war-cries, the chittering of skaven multitudes whipped into death frenzy. Above it all, cannon roared like dragons in an ancient sky.

  And Sharpwit had his paws in their nest.

  ‘Fast-quick Eshin-thing. Is time we take the Ninth Deep for the glory of Skavendom.’

  Fizqwik ventured his snout from the crater that had been the site of his warplock jezzails. The cannonball hadn’t left a scrap of fur. Even the spume of eviscerated skaven remains had never fallen back to earth. Every drop had been mopped up by the cloud of ash that hung over the battlefield. He stared upwards, lost in a momentary fascination of this alchemical phenomenon and how he might turn it to the removal of bloodstains from his workshop floor.

  It had been quick thinking of a paramount degree that had concluded in his hasty relocation to the rear once the cannonade had diverted its aim from Queek’s mad charge through the centre towards his own position. It was hardly his own fault if lesser minds could not keep up. He crawled a little way further over the lip of the earthen parapet and set his precious warplock musket under his body. His ears still screamed to the whistle of phantom shells, but there were no more explosions, no plumes of pulverised rock or short-lived screams. He stuck a claw in one ear and wiggled it.

  He began to laugh. The guns had stopped.

  He scurried the rest of the way from the hole and snatched his weapon from the ground. All around him, shell-shocked clanrats emerged blinking from their own pits and furrows. Through supreme cleverness and guile he had survived where the idiot Queek had not. And now it would be Fizqwik who delivered the Council of Thirteen a famous victory.

  ‘Forward, brave minions! Kill-kill!’

  Queek squealed, exultant, mashing the face of the prone dwarf into paste, striking over and over with the spike of Dwarf Gouger until the flattened mess above its neck had combined inseparably with the pulverised rock upon which it had breathed its last.

  ‘Queek greatest!’ he screamed. ‘Squeak-tell who is greatest, dwarf-thing!’

  The dwarf said nothing and Queek screamed once more as Dwarf Gouger struck again, its ensorcelled spike splitting deep into the rock. Dwarf-things with hand-axes and shields fought back to back, all cohesion abandoned to the chaos of battle as their numbers thinned and scarlet-armoured stormvermin swept to envelope them. He had been so close. Even now he could see Kazador’s garlanded white fur. He saw him look his way.

  Face me if you dare.

  ‘Ska! Cut a path. See-hear how Kazador challenges Queek.’ He scowled as stormvermin continued to streak by him, thrusting the serrated blades of their halberds at the dwarfs, and not one of them paying heed to their warlord. ‘Ska!’ he yelled again. Damn that worthless underling and his ineptitude. Queek would do it himself.

  ‘Rat-king! Headtaker! Stand and meet your doom.’

  A dwarf strode towards him. A grey beard spilled from the face of a tall horned helm from which ruby-red runes glowered with quiet power. A huge warhammer crackled blue-white in his heavy iron gauntlets. The horns reminded him of White-fur.

  ‘Queek hate-hate stupid White-fur!’

  ‘Your madness will trouble Karak Eight Peaks no longer. Face me if you dare.’

  Queek hissed. Hearing those words spoken aloud jarred his senses, as though two disparate realities had suddenly collided into one, imbuing both with hyper-realism. Colours became vivid as though shackled before hidden stars, scents sharpened, and the clatter and roar of battle pitched to crystal clarity. He could see every whisker on the dwarf-thing’s face, smell the oil on his armour and the rank hatred that crusted in its pores like salt from old sweat.

  He tittered. ‘What you think, dwarf-thing, should Queek kill-kill?’

  The dwarf scowled. ‘If you believe you can. Come meet the Hammerhand.’

  ‘Queek does not speak-squeak to you, dwarf-thing.’

  Moving with ferocious alacrity, he leapt in for the quick kill. He revelled in the sudden panic in the dwarf-thing’s eyes as he witnessed his speed, the painful realisation of the mighty warlord that he faced. The foreplay was almost as joyful as the final ecstatic eruption of life, that little death that preceded the greater, the bloody finality of defeat.

  His sword clanged against the dwarf’s hammer. Electric sparks flared as Queek measured his strength against that of his foe. Shoving the dwarf’s weapon aside, he spun in its wake, Dwarf Gouger arcing for the greybeard’s head. The dwarf jerked back just in time, Queek’s maul shearing a horn from his helm like a hot wire through cheese.

  Growling, the dwarf reset his helm. Queek tittered mercilessly at his earnestness. ‘What is the matter, dwarf-thing? Queek thinks you want-wish to join dwarf-kin Krug on Queek’s spike, yes-yes?’

  ‘Damn you and your abominations, Headtaker.’

  The dwarf came swinging, his hammer leaving a train of sparking blue afterimages as it fizzed through the air. Queek skipped away, parrying and dancing as the dwarf came stubbornly on, always missing by a whisker. Queek felt his hairs tingle and stand erect as they absorbed the charge imparted by the dwarf’s wildly swinging hammer. Queek tittered as though tickled. The sensation was arresting, as if he were being pulled into the sky by tiny blue faeries. He snapped his jaws at one of the dancing lights, the sparking mote popping delightfully on his tongue.

  The dwarf saw little to amuse him, storm clouds settling over his eyes as he lunged with an upward swing. Queek curved his spine back as the mallet whisked beneath his snout, his tail catching his falling weight before uncoiling like a spring to fling him back at his enemy. The dwarf swore as he shifted his hammer to block Queek’s strike, but he was slow as a corpse from the grave and Dwarf Gouger bored deep into dwarfish rune-plate and drank deeply of the blood that issued forth, spilling in runnels to the ground. His weapons blurred as they reaped a bloody harvest of dwarf flesh.

  ‘Make fae-things dance for Queek, dwarf-thing!’

  The dwarf panted raggedly, his hammer held resolute even as the life ebbed from him. He shook his head grimly. ‘All that has been lost. To you. A mad rat. Do you even realise what you do?’

  Queek spread his arms as if offering an embrace. ‘Come-come. Be with Queek.’

  The dwarf studied the mad skaven, beginning to laugh even as Queek sprang with a velocity that blurred action and reaction into a single scarlet blur and strangled his gallows mirth in a cry of horror. His hammer swung too late, catching the warlord on the edge of his pauldron with the wooden shaft as he was borne to the ground. The pair rolled through the earth as clawed skaven footpaws and iron dwarf boots stomped around them, locked in their own private struggles. Queek didn’t see. They were distant things, small and lacking in consequence.r />
  He felt the dwarf-thing fading and clutched him tightly to his breast, forcing his bearded and bloodied face into his breastplate.

  ‘There, there, dwarf-thing. You are with Queek now.’

  The dwarf struggled, coughing harshly as he inhaled a lungful of warpdust shaken loose from Queek’s armour. Suddenly, his struggles grew more acute. He thrashed and jerked in Queek’s hold, green-black foam spilling from his nose and mouth, choking his cries to an agonised gargle before that too drowned in the mucilage of his melted lungs. The dwarf’s body shuddered one last time and went still, his eyes rolling white into his sockets.

  Queek lifted back the dwarf’s head. He was peaceful, content, sublime.

  He lowered his muzzle to the dwarf’s lips. ‘Now Queek will kill-slay Kazador. You watch-like very much, Queek thinks, yes-yes.’

  He looked up.

  The dwarfs were advancing, shields interleaved into a milling engine of death. At the centre came Kazador atop his iron shield, armour and wide helm gleaming like a full moon in a fire-choked sky. His hammer smote down skaven by the dozen as his ranks advanced with iron discipline by his side. The king bestrode the conflict like a colossus, more machine than mortal; cold, hard and utterly beyond death.

  Queek shrieked his challenge. He would prove that that was not so!

  His cry was lost in the scrum as the vengeful dwarfs closed to the blast of horns and trumpets, the ground between them and Queek turning into a slaughterhouse. Ratkin were still charging unawares, even as others attempted to flee. The survivors of Hrathgar’s clansdwarfs stood like solitary islands in that churning sea, arms that didn’t know the meaning of weariness hacking out at newcomers and lategoers both.

  Queek threw his gaze about in a rage, settling on a burly pair of brown-furred rats that bore between them a great sloshing barrel connected by a hose and bellows apparatus to a bulky cannon in the paws of the foremost skaven. Their fur was lank with the effort of jogging all the way from the strike tunnels with their cumbersome equipment and heavy, flame-retardant overalls.

  ‘Flame-burn,’ Queek hissed, gesturing at the skaven and dwarf-things alike that stood between him and Kazador. ‘Fire. Quick-now.’