The End Times | The Rise of the Horned Rat

by Guy Haley

  ‘This is too easy,’ grunted Kaggi Blackbeard, hewing down his fourteenth skaven.

  ‘Aye, but how long can we keep it up?’ said Hafnir. ‘How long will your muscles hold? This is not a contest of arms, but one of arms!’ he laughed.

  ‘I’m just getting warmed up,’ said Kaggi. ‘And save your puns for when you’ve a better one, Hafnir.’

  Desperate claws scrabbled over the shields held over the front rank by those in the back, as a slave forced itself through the narrow gap between shields and tunnel ceiling.

  ‘Oi! Oi! Up top!’ shouted Grunnir. The skavenslave dropped down behind the back rank. It brandished a knife, realised where it was, vented the foulest stink and was promptly chopped down for its troubles.

  ‘Woohoo! Smell that! It’s like Albok’s been at the chuf again!’ said Kardak Kardaksandrison.

  ‘You want to be up front,’ said Hafnir. ‘Fear stink. It’s all over me shield.’

  ‘It’ll take an age to clean off,’ said Gromley miserably. ‘You mark my words. Don’t get any of that muck in your beard or you’ll run out of water before you ever get it out.’

  ‘Here comes another!’ warned Hafnir.

  A second and third skaven scrambled over the shields, more intent on getting away from the crush than fighting. They found no escape. One was hewed down in midair, the other gut-barged by Tordrek and stamped to death by the Forgefuries.

  The floor became slippery with spilt blood, but the surefooted dwarfs barely noticed. The skaven were not so lucky, skidding over in the viscera of their slaughtered littermates.

  ‘Pressure’s easing off!’ shouted Hafnir. The proof of his words came as more rotting spears and rusting blades battered against the shield wall as the skaven found room to move.

  ‘Ready,’ ordered Borrik. ‘Prepare to advance!’

  The dwarfs in the front pulled their shields in tighter, while those at the back lowered them from over the front rank’s heads.

  ‘Forward!’ said Borrik. ‘Deep formation!’

  Swinging their axes, the Axes of Norr stepped forwards, mowing down skaven. As they advanced, they smoothly rearranged their formation, so that they were arranged into a block four dwarfs deep and five wide, the thane at the front in the middle. Shields overlapped to the fronts and sides, making them a walking fortress of gromril and thickset dwarfish limbs.

  ‘Charge!’ yelled Borrik.

  ‘Gand dammaz! Az baraz! Norrgrimsson-za!’ The dwarfs shouted the ancient war cry of their clan, and broke into a stately jog. They were not fast, but when they hit they were unstoppable. The skaven parted in front of them, scrabbling over each other to get out of the way. The Axes of Norr ploughed on. The stink of terrified skaven became overpowering, that sweet, old-straw smell of rodent urine mixed with something stronger and far more acrid.

  Almost as one, the remaining rats broke and fled. Borrik and his ironbreakers pursued them, still in formation, as far as the pit in the centre of the chamber.

  ‘Halt!’ cried Borrik. ‘Forgefuries!’

  Blazing bolts of energy seared past the dwarfish block, cutting down fleeing ratmen. The skaven tore at each other in their haste to escape, ripping their comrades to pieces. Many were pushed into the hole, or leapt into its fathomless depths in blind panic. Another volley went booming past. The skaven poured back down the stairwells.

  And shortly came running back out again, the fleeing, terrified rats who had just exited the room driven back into it by a fresh legion of skavenslaves.

  ‘They’re coming again,’ shouted Hafnir.

  ‘They always come again, lad,’ said Kaggi.

  ‘Pull back, lads. Back to the tunnel!’

  The dwarf formation halted and reversed, faces always to the enemy, pulping the corpses of their foes under weighty dwarf boots. Once in the tunnel mouth, they held their ground again.

  One more time the dwarfs rushed out. One more time the skaven were cast back. The fighting went on for hours, until the last assault broke, and the skaven fled. Borrik had his panting ironbreakers rest, ordering Tordrek forward with his irondrakes.

  That time, the skaven did not come again. The ironbreakers rotated their shoulders and worked aching muscles, complaining loudly that they had not enjoyed proper exercise before the skaven fled. They broke out pieces of stonebread and chuf – the hard survival cheese of their kind. A keg of ale stored by the door of Bar-Undak was broached and leather flagons passed around thirsty lips.

  ‘Oh look at that,’ spat Gromley. ‘Look at that!’ He ran his finger along a tiny scratch in his shield. ‘Ruined! Absolutely ruined.’

  ‘Shut up and drink your ale,’ said Grunnir.

  Gromley stared mournfully from the depths of his helm. ‘It’s all right for you to say that. Nobody’s scratched your shield, have they?’ He shook his head. ‘No respect for good craft, you youngsters. Happy with umgak work, you are. Now, in my day I’d have got a bit of sympathy. But is one of you reaching for your polish to help an old longbeard grind out the damage? No. And we wonder why we’re in this mess!’

  ‘Show some respect, shortbeards,’ said Uli the Elder, the oldest of their number. ‘Let’s not let our standards slip.’

  Good natured jeers vied with heartfelt grumbles.

  At the front, Borrik conferred quietly with Tordrek.

  ‘When will they come again?’ Tordrek asked.

  ‘Too soon. We’ve been lucky. I reckon we’ve accounted for about four hundred of their lot, for not a single one of the lads.’ He sucked deeply on his pipe. ‘Good work, and greater fortune, but it can’t last.’ He called back over his shoulder. ‘Hafnir! Gromley! Get me some blackpowder.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe at the doors. ‘I reckon it’s time to get ready to stop up some mouseholes. The rest of you, we need some clear space to fight. I want these corpses shifted to one hundred paces out.’ The others gulped their ale and moved out from the tunnel, wiping suds from their beards with the backs of bloodied hands. ‘And be clever about it,’ said Borrik. ‘Don’t stack ’em – we don’t want to give the thaggoraki anything to hide behind, do we?’ He pointed the stem of his pipe at a young dwarf, barely sixty years old, who was doing just that. ‘Call yourself a Norrgrimling, Albok? Think, lad! What would your old dad say?’

  ‘Sorry, thane.’ Albok pushed over the pile he’d made with a boot. ‘Where do we put them then?’

  Borrik grinned and jabbed with his pipe stem. ‘Chuck them down that there hole.’

  Albok heaved a skaven corpse into the black, his thick arms tossing it as easily as a wet fur blanket. No sound came. Albok cocked his head appreciatively, and began to throw them in quickly.

  ‘That’s right, lads, don’t tarry. We’re not going to have long before the little furry kruti come back for another go.’

  Queek paced back and forth angrily. He struck down the messenger, drawing blood from his muzzle.

  ‘Still standing! Still standing! What squeak-nonsense Clan Skryre tinker-speaker bring to Queek? Four mountains were bombed-targeted. Only one collapse! What news of Skarsnik?’

  ‘No sign of him, O most undefeated and puissant of overfiends,’ said the messenger. ‘The other tall-rock, it also nearly gone. White Mountain-place, half size it was. My masters…’

  Queek glared at him so hard the skaven pulled his head all the way back into his shoulders. The sight of it was so pathetic that Queek laughed madly.

  ‘Stupid-meat, or brave-meat, hrn?’ Queek bounded over and flipped the Clan Skryre skaven onto his back with a footpaw. He leaned in and sniffed. ‘Stupid-meat.’

  The skaven squealed in terror, exposing his neck and spreading his arms. Queek had lost interest and walked away. ‘And you, rest of you! Why beard-things not dead?’

  ‘It stupid beard-things fault!’ said Skrikk. ‘Not mine, oh no. Seventy thousand slaves we sent…’

  ‘Thaxx
say one hundred thousand!’ said Thaxx.

  Skrikk shrugged. ‘Skrikk count, Thaxx lie. Terrible, terrible shame. And I thought him so loyal. No doubt great and fiercely intelligent Queek can see to the traitor-meat squirming beneath loyal-fur.’

  ‘Thaxx Redclaw the most loyal–’ began Thaxx.

  ‘No squeak-tellings! Beard-things!’ snapped Queek so loudly Skrikk flinched.

  ‘They are not killing the slaves quickly enough, grand one,’ said Grotoose. ‘They have chosen good spots for defence and cannot be dislodged. Our slave legions can attack on narrow fronts where they are easily slain. This is not the way to beat them.’

  ‘You tell Queek that stupid-meat beard-things, with their slow and stupid minds, are outwitting the swiftest thinker-tinkers in all of the Under-Empire?’

  The assembled skaven looked at one another and pointed fingers. Queek squeaked loudly, stopping the accusations and counter-charges of incompetence before they could begin.

  ‘Enough, enough! Enough with slaves and weak-meat! Send in the clanrats. Call in the stormvermin. Kill the beard-things. Kill them all dead-dead!’

  ‘What of orders?’ said Thaxx. ‘What of Lord Gnawdwell’s commands?’

  ‘I do not care. Queek general here – where is Gnawdwell?’

  ‘In Skavenblight?’ ventured one.

  ‘Yes-yes, whereas Queek the Mighty here. We will win. Nothing else is important. We will destroy. Queek will show the whole world that Queek is the mightiest, the best, the most deadly! We will see what Gnawdwell says about orders then.’

  The messengers bowed several times and rushed away. The clanlords and potentates of the City of Pillars attempted a more dignified exit. Queek’s long mouth split in a hideous grin and he waved his paws at them. ‘You too, hurry-scurry! Queek not like sluggards. Loyal Ska tell sluggards what Queek thinks of slow-meat.’

  ‘Queek does not like them,’ said the giant stormvermin, ‘and I don’t like them either.’

  ‘Boo!’ shouted Queek, making as if to leap into their midst, and away they fled spraying fear musk, much to Queek’s amusement.

  The chamber was empty bar the patter of retreating paws and the smell of fear. Queek snickered to himself.

  ‘You see, Ska? This is why Queek is so great.’

  There came no reply. Ska was thankfully brief in his praise of Queek. All the bowing and scraping and insincere flattery that characterised skaven social interaction the warlord found tiresome, but Ska usually said something.

  Queek’s nose twitched. Something was wrong. A smell of old fires, rubbish and hot warpstone made him sneeze. The light leached from his surroundings, leaving everything grey. Ska was unmoving, frozen in position. He called for his guards, but they did not come.

  Movement in the unmoving world caught his eye. He did not turn to it, not immediately. Something big was in the corner.

  He spun around, leaping into the air and twisting his entire body. Dwarf Gouger leapt into his hand, and moved in a blurred arc impelled by all his weight and speed. His serrated sword came up next, aimed directly at the vitals of his giant ambusher.

  Queek crashed into the stone. The creature was not there.

  ‘Oh ho! You are as good as they say. But mighty Queek could be the mightiest of all mortal skaven, and he still would not catch me.’

  Shadows boiled all around him, darting like swarms of flies over the marshes. Queek hissed and made feints and jabs, but the darkness moved away from him, slipping around his weapons like water.

  ‘Who-you?’ he cried. His fur bristled with a fear he would not allow himself to feel. For the first time in years, his glands clenched. ‘What you want with Queek?’

  The darkness ran together and parted for an instant, affording the warlord a glimpse of a masked, rodent face, ten feet in the air, topped with three sets of horns, two straight, one curved. The ends of them were twisted into the runic claw-mark of Clan Eshin.

  ‘I am Lurklox, Shadow Lord of Decay, one of the twelve above the twelve. And what I want with you, strutting warlord, is your victory.’

  EIGHT

  The Hall of Pillared Iron

  In the Hall of Pillared Iron, King Belegar took counsel. Between the thick iron columns that gave the place its name, venerable dwarfs of many clans crowded around low tables layered with maps. The hall had been built with the same attention to detail and pride with which the ancestors had built everything. Each of the room’s sixty-four column capitals had been wrought in red iron to resemble four straining longbeards holding up the roof. The remainder of the columns were inscribed with runes inlaid with precious minerals, most picked out by rapacious greenskins, but in the more inaccessible places electrum, silver, polished coal and agate still glittered, a reminder of the hall’s former glory.

  Despite the care and craft of its making, the Hall of Pillared Iron was a foundation, a utilitarian room intended to support the finer citadel halls above. The metal in its walls and pillars allowed the citadel to reach its great and graceful height without compromising its efficacy as a fortress.

  That had been then. The upper chambers were mostly toppled by centuries of war and earthquakes, among them the magnificent Upper Throne Room, whose wide windows and fine art made it the mirror to the Great Throne Pinnacle in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars in the first deep. Unique in all the dwarf realms, at the height of the Karaz Ankor the twinned thrones had represented Karak Eight Peaks’s mastery of the worlds under sky and under stone. Of these two hearts, one was rubble and the other had been occupied by a succession of foul creatures.

  So low had the dwarfs of Karak Eight Peaks sunk that the Hall of Pillared Iron was their greatest hall. Magnificent though it was, as grand as Belegar’s throne looked when viewed down its aisles, the Hall of Pillared Iron was a support. Might as well call a single stone block all the temple. Belegar had refused to have it completely restored, lest the dwarfs of Karak Eight Peaks forget why they were there, and become content with scraps.

  Drakki was speaking, addressing his king and his advisors. Brunkaz Whitehair, the oldest dwarf in the hold, was beside him. His beard was so long it looped three times in a complicated plait about his thick gold belt.

  ‘At Bar-Undak the Norrgrimlings are taking casualties. The endless stair is being overrun, half the Zhorrak Blue Caps are dead. Valaya’s quay has fallen, our warriors there falling back to the base of the citadel.’

  ‘The Undak?’

  ‘Still running clear,’ said Drakki. ‘But how long will that continue? The thaggoraki poisoned the river once – now we’ve lost the quays at the headwater, they could easily do it again.’

  ‘Buzkar,’ swore Belegar. He looked from map to map, searching for a sign of hope, some weakness in the enemy he could exploit, some dawi strength he could call upon.

  He spread his hands over a portion of the map, caging it protectively in his fingers. ‘Kvinn-wyr still holds strong. So long as we hold the mountain, our people will have somewhere safe to stand. We’ve got the gyrocopter eyries at Tor Rudrum. As long as we have them, we can stay in touch with the other holds. Above all, the citadel is safe. Perhaps it is time to abandon the first line of defence and make our next stand at the Hall of Clan Skalfdon,’ said Belegar. He pointed to a great hall in the first deep below the citadel, three quarters of a mile from the collapsed east halls, where many lines of communication intersected. ‘Beat them back there and they’ll think twice about trying to crack the hold.’

  ‘There’s not time to fortify it,’ said Brunkaz. ‘We need to dig in there, or it’ll be a slaughter.’

  Belegar laughed. ‘The only slaughter I’ve seen in recent weeks is that of the ratkin! We’ve slain so many I could carpet the east road all the way to the Uzkul Kadrin in vermin fur.’

  ‘Aye, true enough,’ conceded Brunkaz, although his expression made clear his distaste at covering good dawi stone with ratskin. �
��But these aren’t dregs we’re facing – that part’s done with. Belegar, you know how they work. The Headtaker is sending in his clan warriors and stormvermin. Our lads are worn down, and we’ve lost a good number. They’ll not last until the defences are ready.’

  ‘They’ll have to,’ said Belegar firmly.

  ‘There’s no time, my king,’ said Brunkaz.

  ‘There’ll have to be time, or we’ll not get the other lines finished!’ snapped Belegar.

  Drakki cleared his throat, politely interrupting before grudges began to sprout like grobi in a damp cave. ‘And what of the way into Kvinn-wyr?’

  ‘That at least is in hand,’ said Belegar. ‘Dokki,’ he called over to an engineer hard at work over his own maps.

  ‘My king?’

  ‘How’re the preparations at the Arch of Kings going?’

  ‘Give me three weeks and the dawi I’ve got, or sixty more engineers and two days and I’ll have the fort back in dawr order. Before that…’ He sucked in his breath and clucked his tongue. ‘You’ll be lucky if it’s before the end of the month.’

  ‘This is the Eternal Realm! Surely we have time,’ said Belegar. ‘What about Kolbron Feklisson’s miners?’

  ‘Ah! Here we have less dire tidings,’ said Drakki, brightening a little.

  ‘We’ve retaken the western foundries?’ said Belegar hopefully.

  ‘Er, no. The miners have lost the foundries, but are still holding the eastern entrance.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ said Belegar hesitantly, fully expecting the worst. He was rewarded with it.

  ‘For now, my lord. They’re going to be encircled here and here – it’s only a matter of time,’ said Drakki, tracing a series of halls on the map. ‘We’ve rumour of thaggoraki tunnelling teams at work behind them.’