The End Times | The Rise of the Horned Rat

by Guy Haley

  Queek surveyed all this impatiently from the top of part of the rubble slope created by the collapse of Karag Nar.

  ‘Careful, Queek,’ said Krug from his trophy rack. ‘He’s a wily one, that Skarsnik.’

  ‘What news?’ he said to his gathered lieutenants. ‘Grotoose?’

  ‘Nothing, great Queek.’

  ‘The fifth clawpack has found not one of the green-things, exulted Queek,’ fawned Kranskritt. Queek gave him a hard look. He still did not trust the grey seer. Only Lurklox’s insistence kept the wizard alive.

  Skrak reported the same, as did Gnarlfang and Ikk Hackflay, who had been furiously stomping from place to place in search of something to kill.

  ‘There is no one here,’ said Gritch, his assassin’s voice pitched just over the wind soughing through the dry winter grasses. There had been precious little snow that year, though it was bitingly cold. ‘The siege camp is empty. They have abandoned their attack on the gates. There is a new idol in the main square of the beard-thing city. Stone and iron, it stares-glares with skull-eyes at dwarf-thing fort-place.’

  ‘So good your scouts are. Well done! So skilled to find big stone giant, but not little things,’ Queek said. ‘What about scouts sent to the mountain halls and peaks? Where is the Skarsnik-thing, where are his armies?’

  ‘Many scouts not scurry back, great Queek,’ said Gritch, bowing low.

  ‘Queek very impressed.’

  Gritch began to protest, but Queek cut him off. ‘Big-meat ogre-things?’ said Queek.

  ‘Gone with the gold,’ said Skrak.

  ‘Fools,’ said Queek. ‘Why they so obsessed? Gold soft, useless.’ He held up his sword and looked up its length. ‘Not hard-sharp like steel. They like to eat, more than a skaven gripped by the black hunger.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they eat it.’

  ‘Skarsnik has gone then,’ said Grotoose. ‘He has fled the wrath of mighty Queek!’

  Queek rounded on him, raising Dwarf Gouger. ‘Oh no, do not be mistaken. Little imp watches, little imp waits to see what we will do. Little imp thinks he will beat Queek in very-very cunning-clever trap. But little imp will not trap Queek.’

  ‘Will he attack in the day?’

  ‘Skaven love-like the night. We scurry under the big roof now that is no roof at all. Skaven not like it, pah! But Skarsnik’s little soldiers no different.’

  Kranskritt glanced nervously up at the sun, shining pale yet still menacing through the thick cloud. ‘What do we do then, mighty one?’

  Queek wondered if he could strike the seer dead now. He could, he thought. Lurklox was not there, and he did not see Soothgnawer – nor did he think he was near, for his trophies whispered their wisdom to him, something they did not when either verminlord was close by. He refrained from acting upon his whim.

  ‘We clear the city as planned, Queek decrees! Tear it all down, break it to pieces, smash the imp-thing’s little empire on the surface as we smashed his town in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars. Then we will see if he can be tempted out or not.’

  Orders were given, and the army split into its various components to cover the vast area encompassed by the bowl sheltered by the eight peaks. Clan Skryre engineers set up their war machines near the mostly securely held skaven mountains in case of attack, while the armies subdivided further and began the work of demolishing the greenskins’ settlements. In ruined fields covered by scrubby forest, greenskin shelters were kicked down. Clanrats clambered over the crumbling dwarf city, levering stones out of the walls of rough-built huts. Warpfire teams torched entire villages of tents, while wind globadiers tossed their poisons into ruins and caves that might hold monsters. Teams of rat ogres tackled the bigger structures, clawing down idols of stone, wood and dung.

  None, however, could bring low the great idol of Gork staring fixedly at the citadel in the centre of the city. Queek followed the line of its gaze. Glints on the battlements of the citadel showed dwarfs powerlessly watching as the skaven rose up to take control of yet more of their ancestral home.

  ‘Soon, Belegar long-fur, it will be your turn,’ hissed Queek.

  The idol was as tall as a giant, but much more massive, its crude arms and legs made of monoliths stacked on top of each other and chained in place in crude approximation of orcish anatomy. A huge boulder with crude eyeholes hacked into the face topped it off, a separate jaw of wood hanging by more rusty chains from its face. It looked as if it should be pushed over easily, but would not fall. Warpfire splashed off the rock and iron. Warp-lightning crackled across it without effect. More powerful explosives were sent for. All the while the idol hunched there, apish and insolently strong as the day wore on.

  Still Skarsnik did not come.

  From his position atop the parapets of Howlpeak, Skarsnik watched the skaven go about the business of wrecking orctown. Fires burned everywhere.

  ‘They is behaving like they own the place, burning our houses down,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Old Belegar is probably loving every bit of this.’

  ‘Should we go and get them now, boss?’ said Kruggler. Crowds of orc and goblin bosses hung around him, the lot of them sheltering under nets and swags of cloth covered with dust and dyed grey to hide them from the skaven’s eyes.

  Skarsnik snapped his telescope shut; the skaven weren’t the only ones to steal from dwarfs. ‘In a minute, Kruggs.’ He swept his hand out towards the eastern peaks. ‘We’ll wait until they’re nice and spread out, then we’ll attack, smash the centre, rout the rest and have a nice big ratty barbecue.’

  ‘I is not for waiting!’ grumbled Drilla Gitsmash, king of the Dark Lands black orcs. What with his thick accent, he was almost unintelligible behind his heavy, tusked visor. ‘We should get out there and smash ’em good now. I is not for waiting!’ he repeated.

  ‘Oh yes you is, if you want to win,’ said Skarsnik, looking up at the black orc as if he weren’t twice his size and four times his weight, before re-extending his telescope and turning back to the view. ‘But if you wants to go out there on your own and get chopped up to little itsy bitsy pieces, then go ahead. I is sure my boys could do with a laugh. No?’ Drilla said nothing. ‘Good idea that. Best to wait until we’re all going out. Is everyone in position?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ said Kruggler.

  ‘Tolly Grin Cheek?’ This was not the original supporter of Skarsnik from way back, but the fourth murderous goblin to bear the name, and the facial scars that went with it.

  ‘He’s up behind them, boss.’

  ‘And that Snaggla fella? Not sure about him. Tell you, spiders is fer eating, not riding – and what’s this nonsense about some spider god? How many gods are there, boys?’

  ‘Gork and Mork,’ said one. ‘That’s four.’

  ‘Five?’

  ‘Definitely more than one!’

  ‘One,’ grumbled Drilla. ‘Mork don’t count.’

  ‘There’s two!’ said Skarsnik, his voice becoming shrill. ‘Two. Gork and Mork. Not three, or lots, or twenty-two thousand.’

  Goblin faces creased in pained confusion at the mention of this incomprehensible number.

  ‘I told you, boss, I fought wiv some of them forest boys up north in the Border Princes,’ said Kruggler. ‘They is real sneaky. Morky as you like. You’ll love it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Skarsnik. He gave the vista one last pass with his telescope. He squinted at the sun. Noon, as near as he could reckon it. Not good for his night boys, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘Now or never,’ he said. ‘Positions, lads. And get the signal to Duffskul sent!’

  Skaven passed under Duffskul’s nose. From the shoulder of the idol he was looking right down at the top of their pointy little heads, and some of them looked right back at him. He pulled faces at them and laughed at how close they were. They couldn’t see him, couldn’t smell him, didn’t know he was there at all. They milled about, trying one thing after another
to destroy his idol, arguing over how it had got there. Duffskul knew the answer to that, of course.

  It had walked.

  It had taken him ages to ride it back down from old Zargakk the Mad’s wizlevard cave, way up over the Black Crag. A risky journey, but funnily enough, he hadn’t been bothered by anyone at all on the way back.

  A single puff of smoke, black as a night goblin’s robes, rolled up into the sky over the tumbled parapets of the Howlpeak’s Grimgate. Duffskul laughed. He did a little dance. He whispered horrible things in the general direction of the skaven.

  And then he did his magic.

  ‘What-what is that noise?’ said the skaven warlock nearest to the idol’s foot.

  ‘What noise?’

  ‘Deaf-deaf, you are! A scream-shriek, getting louder.’ The pair of them looked left, looked right and all around them, turning in circles to find the source of the rapidly loudening cry.

  ‘I hear now!’ said the second, exactly half a second before a goblin smashed itself to paste yards from their position. All that was left was one twitching foot, a shattered pair of canvas wings, and the echoes of its scream.

  Only then did the skaven, born and bred in a world with comfortably low skies, think to look upwards.

  Goblins were arcing through the heavens in long lazy curves, swishing their wings back and forth like birds. The illusion was impressive. One could almost think a goblin could fly, so at home the doom divers seemed in the clouds.

  They were, unfortunately for the goblins, as aerodynamically gifted as boulders, and their flights lasted only marginally longer. Unfortunately for the skaven whose regiments they steered themselves onto, they did about as much damage as boulders too. A goblin’s head was uncommonly dense, especially when crammed into a pointed helmet.

  ‘Look-look!’ The second skaven tugged upon the sleeve of the first.

  ‘Yes-yes, I see! Flying green-things, very peculiar.’

  ‘Not there,’ he said, grabbing hold of his colleague’s head and pointing his gas-masked face at the head of the idol, their field of vision being somewhat restricted. ‘There!’

  The skaven looked up at the idol. The idol, eye-caves glowing a menacing green, stared back.

  ‘Waaaaaghhhhhh!’ the idol shouted.

  The skaven shrieked as a heavy rock foot ground them out of existence.

  Atop its shoulders, Duffskul whooped. By way of reply, the mountains and ruins of Karak Eight Peaks resounded to the blaring of horns and the clanging of cymbals, the roll of dwarf-skin drums and the tuneless squeal of the squigpipes.

  With a rapid clacking, the Grimgate swung open, splitting the grimacing orc-head glyph painted over the ancestor runes in two.

  Out marched legions of greenskins. They headed right for the centre of the city.

  ‘All right, Mini-Gork, I believe we’ll be needing to go thataway!’ said Duffskul.

  With rumbling strides accompanied by the grinding of rock, the Idol of Gork swung about and set off towards the enemy.

  ‘He is coming! Green-imp shows his hand-paw! Foolish green-thing. Loyal Ska, sound the advance!’

  Skaven cymbals clashed, and the entirety of Queek’s first clawpack rose up from its hiding places. Forming rapidly into claws, the elite of Queek’s army made a wall of strong, armoured ratmen across the widest of the Great Vale’s shattered boulevards.

  ‘Forward!’ shouted Ska. ‘Forward for the glory of Queek! Forward for the glory of Clan Mors! Forward or I’ll kill-slay you myself!’

  Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins were off first, the fangleader eager to prove himself. Queek had had his eye on the skaven ever since he had raided Belegar’s lower armouries months ago, taking enough dwarf armour to equip his entire claw, changing their names from the Rustblades to the Ironskins afterwards. From the speed he set off at, he evidently felt Queek’s scrutiny upon him.

  Lightning blasted skywards from the ground, bursting goblins apart in the air. Some got through, some of those shattered the scaffolds the lightning cannons were mounted upon, and so the goblin doom divers and the best of Clan Skryre occupied one another.

  ‘That’s good, that is,’ said the dead dwarf king Krug. ‘Stops them from smashing your lads up.’

  Queek hissed irritably. ‘Of course, Queek knows this. It is all part of Queek’s plan!’

  Down the slopes of the mountain, innumerable hordes of goblins poured. Queek glanced nervously around the mountain bowl, across the city and out beyond where the lower reaches of the further peaks were hazy. His eyesight was as good as any skaven’s, which is to say at distance, not very good at all. But he saw no sign of movement elsewhere, and heard no sound of battle.

  ‘Ska!’

  ‘Yes, masterful Queek.’

  ‘Send messengers. Be sure to warn our lieutenants. This is not the fullness of the green-things’ force.’

  Ska nodded, detailing his own minions to fulfil the orders.

  Meanwhile, Skarsnik’s vanguard were jogging forwards to form a broad front. Queek ordered the slaves ahead, and with a terrified chittering, caused as much by the snarling packmasters at their rear as fear of the enemy, they surged across the mounded ruins of the dwarf city towards their greenskin foe. As the slaves neared, the goblins laughed loudly and shoved out whirling fanatics towards them. Queek had seen this so often by now that the tactic no longer held any surprises for him, but he remained wary of them. They spun round and round, laughing madly, hefting giant metal balls at the ends of long chains that should have been impossible for a goblin to lift.

  He could not see their connection with his slave legions directly. The bodies of weak-meat tossed high in the air by the goblins’ swinging balls informed him of when it happened anyway.

  ‘Pick up speed! Hurry-scurry!’ shouted Queek. The Red Guard broke into a jog, their wargear clattering. ‘Mad-thing green-things will come through, kill-slay slaves – we must be through before they can turn and chase Queek!’

  Queek’s elite burst through their screen of slaves, hacking down those who did not get out of the way. The goblins had advanced some three hundred yards from the Grimgate, filling the wide road and spilling into the ruins either side. The city here had been much reduced, piles of rubble with twisted trees poking out from them or greened mounds showed where once workshops and homes had stood. It made for difficult ground to fight over.

  The town sloped downwards from Queek’s position, following the contours of the Howlpeak. Above was the still-open Grimgate. Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins pushed their way out of the slaves there, slightly ahead of Queek’s formation. From his vantage, Queek saw the broad, bloody lanes through the skaven created by the fanatics. These wobbled in uncertain lines, some looping right the way back round towards the goblin lines. The casualty numbers were horrendous, but all were slaves and of little worth. Queek snickered; they had performed their role excellently. The fanatics were falling one by one, smashing into low walls, dropping from exhaustion, or becoming hopelessly tangled with the slaves, their miserable deaths aiding the skaven cause far more than the ratkin ever could in life.

  The slaves were thinned by panic, fanatics, bow-fire and doom divers. Clanrats came through them to support their general. Poisoned wind globadiers ran before them, approaching perilously close to the goblin lines before heaving their spheres of gas into their foes’ tight-packed ranks.

  Queek sniffed the air. The wind was rank with greenskin. Neither his nose nor his eyes could pick out Skarsnik. ‘That way!’ he shouted, pointing directly at the centre of the greenskin force. ‘Come-come, quick!’

  With a fierce cry, the Red Guard ran forwards. They burst through their screen of slaves and into the goblin vanguard, where they hacked their way through two mobs of goblins in short order. Queek’s view of the battle became restricted. He heard rather than saw the charge of Hackflay’s Ironskins, and the following clanrats. The first lin
e of goblins bowed under pressure, nervous of the stormvermin carving their way through and the masses of clanrats coming next.

  Deeper into the greenskin army Queek pushed, spinning and leaping, effortlessly felling the feeble warriors. Another goblin regiment parted before him, throwing down their shields and crooked spears rather than face him. His Red Guard skidded to a halt, momentarily cowed by the massive mob of black orcs they saw on the other side.

  ‘Oi! Squeaker!’ shouted their leader, a massive brute of an orc. ‘I’m gonna have you!’

  The black orcs executed a flawless turn to the left, and charged.

  ‘Kill-slay them all!’ squealed Queek. ‘Breeding rights to the three who kill most big-meat!’

  Spurred on by his generous offer, Queek’s Red Guard broke into a run. The two elite units met with a clash of metal that drowned out all else.

  These were no goblins, but the ultimate orcs, bred by magic in the slave pits of Zharr-Naggrund. They smashed down the Red Guard with their huge axes. The Red Guard duelled with them, seeking to keep the black orcs at arm’s length with their halberds. The skaven felled a good number, but there were many, and they were fearless. The Red Guard’s advance ground to a halt. Their leader pushed his way forwards, levelling his massive two-handed axe at Queek.

  ‘Come on then, Headtaker! I’ve heard a lot about you. Nonsense, I reckon.’

  The greenskin’s accent was outlandish, but Queek understood. He replied in the beast’s own language.

  ‘Come die then – always space for more trophies for Queek!’

  The orc roared and charged, bowling over a Red Guard who got in the way and trampling him down into the dirt. Queek spun round, allowing the orc to pass him, then smashed the spike of Dwarf Gouger through its chest. The orc made a noise of surprise. Queek finished it with a thrust through its visor slit with his sword, skewering the orc’s small brain. It fell over heavily.