[Thanquol & Boneripper 03] - Thanquol's Doom

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  A gang of dwarfs marched from one of the other furnaces, depositing a load of barazhunk sheets upon the growing stack at one side of the refining furnace. They saluted Klarak as they passed. The engineer had warned the workers of the dangers he expected, insisting that only volunteers remain behind to help reshape the alloy. Not a single one of the metalworkers had been lacking the courage to stay and help. It had taken King Logan and a formal edict to thin their ranks, leaving only a solid core behind. The metalworkers were willing to act as bait, but King Logan wasn’t quite so eager to risk the industry of his stronghold just to spring a trap.

  Klarak reflected upon the danger of his plan. If anything went wrong, the consequences could be dire. The smelthall had been chosen only after careful deliberation; the size and scope of its furnaces and the heavy smell of their smoke was an important aspect of Klarak’s plan. The skaven were ruled by their noses, scent was their key sense, far more vital to them than either sight or sound. Deprived of that sense, the ratkin would be disorientated. Hopefully they’d be confused enough to miss the trap until it was too late.

  There was a contingency, however—if Kurgaz could just manage to inscribe the Master Rune upon one of the barazhunk plates. In that event, should the skaven make off with their prize, there would still be a chance to stop them.

  “Looks like we have word at last,” Thorlek observed, turning away from his anvil to watch as a wiry dwarf in the livery of a royal messenger came rushing across the smelthall. The runner dashed straight towards Klarak, bowing his head when he came to a halt.

  “I bear tidings from His Highness King Logan Longblade, Sovereign of Karak Angkul and all its domains,” the messenger announced.

  “Less of the jewellery-talk and more information,” growled Horgar, more interested in hearing the tidings the messenger bore rather than who’d sent them.

  The messenger flushed, but kept facing Klarak. “The ratkin have broken into the Sixth Deep,” he reported.

  “Klarak told you they’d be hitting the Sixth Deep again when the sentry guns in the mines started to fail,” Thorlek said. Though it was true that the destruction of the sentry guns had given enough warning for the dwarf army to assemble in the threatened section of the Sixth Deep, it annoyed the ranger to maintain the fallacy that the guns themselves had malfunctioned. There was only so much patronising of Guildmaster Thori’s pride he was willing to suffer.

  “The ratkin host is being led by one of their horned sorcerers,” the messenger continued.

  Klarak’s expression became grim. The horned ratman was likely Grey Seer Thanquol, a creature he had been warned posed a tremendous threat to Karak Angkul. Against this menace, he had to balance the danger of Ikit Claw and the Doomsphere. There was no question which evil was the greater. Even if Karak Angkul was lost, Ikit Claw had to be stopped.

  “Can Thane Arngar stop them?” the engineer asked.

  The messenger nodded. “The king has sent reinforcements to bolster Thane Arngar’s command. Runelord Morag is with them and has stated he will make every effort to destroy this creature called Thanquol.”

  “Then may the ancestors smile on their battle and may their axes strike true,” Klarak said, but not without a note of uncertainty in his voice. Had he been wrong? Was Thanquol truly the greater menace? If Ikit Claw didn’t make an attempt to steal the rest of his barazhunk, then what foolishness would it be to stay here while the real battle was being fought hundreds of feet below?

  “King Logan requests the use of any troops you can spare,” the messenger said. “He fears this is but the opening skirmish in a concentrated attack to seize the Sixth Deep.”

  An ugly feeling began to grow in Klarak’s gut. “Or it could be a diversion,” he said, convinced of his theory as he made it. “Tell His Highness that I am sorry, but I still need every warrior.”

  The messenger made a deep bow, then hastened to bear Klarak’s answer to King Logan.

  “Don’t think the king is going to like you telling him no,” Kimril observed.

  “Aye,” agreed Horgar. “Maybe we should be down there in the Sixth Deep smashing skaven skulls!”

  A sharp bellow rose from the nearest of the slag pits. The top of the pit was abruptly thrown back, revealing itself to be nothing but a piece of canvas with lumps of charred ore glued to it. In the now exposed hole, five armoured dwarfs now stood revealed. A sixth dwarf scrambled up the ladder leading down into the pit. Unlike his companions, he wore no armour, only a pair of leather breeks and iron-shod boots. Swirling tattoos stained his naked torso, forming complex patterns within which was depicted the Rune of Grimnir. The dwarf’s beard had been stained a bright orange, the same colour as the long crest into which his hair had been shaved.

  There was fury on Mordin Grimstone’s face as he stalked towards Klarak Bronzehammer. “The Sixth Deep!” the slayer roared. “That vermin Thanquol is attacking the Sixth Deep!”

  Horgar shifted about, moving to place himself between Mordin and his master. Sternly, Klarak waved his bodyguard aside. The engineer stared into Mordin’s hostile gaze. The dwarf had taken the slayer oath almost the moment he’d left the war council, vowing to destroy Grey Seer Thanquol and atone for his brother’s death. To the bitter Mordin, nothing else would wash away the disgrace which held him in its grip.

  “You insisted on joining us,” Klarak told the enraged slayer.

  Mordin’s expression became livid, his hand closing about one of the hand axes tucked beneath his belt. “I came because you told me the greatest danger would be found here! Only it isn’t! Thanquol is down there and I’m up here!” The slayer ripped the axe from his belt and threw his arm back as though to deliver a blow with the keen-edged blade.

  Klarak didn’t move, just continued to gaze into the slayer’s eyes. “The danger is the greatest here,” he said. “In that, I told you no lie. What the ratkin want is here and they will come for it.” The engineer shifted his gaze, watching the clepsydra.

  “I don’t care about the ratkin!” Mordin swore. “I only care about avenging my brother!”

  Returning his gaze to Mordin, Klarak’s face became bitter. “Then you are the most wretched zaki who ever took up the slayer oath,” he swore, the fury of his voice taking his assistants by surprise and shocking even Mordin. “If the ratkin succeed here, then the entire Karak Ankor may be threatened! Every dwarf, woman and child in the Worlds Edge Mountains! But all Mordin Grimstone can think about is his own shame! Where is the sense of duty that led you to Karak Angkul to warn us of the skaven threat? Where is the dwarf who understood that loyalty to his people comes before loyalty to his pride?”

  Slowly, the fire ebbed in Mordin’s eyes. Gradually, the slayer lowered his axe.

  “Do not fear,” Klarak said, his tone becoming sympathetic. “You may yet get your chance. The ratkin do not fight honourably. Just because they have sent some of their horde into the Sixth Deep doesn’t mean that’s where they intend to make the real fight.”

  “A diversion?” Mordin grumbled, suspicion in his eyes.

  “I’m certain of it,” Klarak replied. He pointed to the clepsydra. The water in the tubes was visibly agitated now, indicating powerful and persistent vibrations in the ground below.

  A vicious grin spread across Mordin’s face. The dwarf ripped a hair from his crest and split it across the edge of his axe.

  “Best get back to your place,” Klarak advised. “Even the ratkin know enough to be suspicious if they see a slayer working over an anvil.”

  Mordin nodded. “All right,” he said, “but remember: Thanquol is mine!” The slayer turned on his heel and quickly sprinted back to the slag-pit, hooking the edge of the canvas with his axe as he jumped down into the hole. A moment later, the camouflage was tugged back into place.

  “Valaya!” exclaimed Kimril. “I thought he was going to split your skull! You must be as crazy as he is to talk to a slayer like that!”

  “I just encouraged him to keep things in perspective,” Klarak said,
shrugging off the concern of his friends. “Whatever oaths he has made, Mordin Grimstone is still a dwarf. Just because he’s shaved his head doesn’t mean he’s forgotten his duty.”

  “Still, to take such a chance…”

  “Enough,” Klarak decided, waving his hand. “We have more important things to worry about.” He watched as the violence being exhibited by the clepsydra continued to increase.

  “Any moment now we’ll be receiving guests,” the engineer warned. “Let’s make sure we’re ready for them.”

  Stone shrieked as parts of the smelthall’s floor began to melt. Wisps of foul-smelling smoke rose from the melting stones and an unholy green glow began to shine through the fractured granite. The dwarfs at the furnaces drew back in alarm, shifting a little closer to where each had secreted his own weapon.

  “Steady!” Klarak bellowed, his voice carrying above the sound of crumbling stone. The engineer gave only passing notice to the glowing craters forming in the floor, his eyes locked on the still violently quivering clepsydra. “Hold your places!”

  From one of the glowing craters, a pair of chittering skaven emerged, the foremost holding a weird pronged instrument not unlike an oversized tuning fork bolted to the end of a long spear. Between the prongs of the fork, a fist-sized chunk of glowing black rock had been fitted, dark energies sizzling about its carved surface. Heavy hoses of ratgut and leather ran from the oversized spear, connecting it to the massive generator lashed to the back of the second ratman. Both skaven snickered with amusement as they saw the stunned dwarfs.

  From the pit the warp-grinder had gouged from the floor, a rabble of verminous creatures sprang, loathsome skavenslaves, their skinny bodies covered in scars and sores, crude spears and rusty knives clenched in their paws. They sprang into the smelthall with an eagerness born of terror. Before the last of them had cleared the hole, there came a groaning rumble and the pit collapsed in upon itself. The skaven did not twitch as the squeals of their trapped kin rose from the rubble. Instead they flung themselves towards the nearest dwarfs, a slavering pack of fangs and claws.

  Other warp-grinders cut their way into the smelthall, disgorging scores of emaciated skavenslaves into the chamber. The dwarfs at the furnaces dived for their weapons, drawing a wild array of axes and hammers. The sight of weapons made the slaves hesitate, forcing the warp-grinders to goad them onwards with snarled threats.

  “Steady!” Klarak called out once more, still watching the clepsydra. Now the water was sloshing about so violently that it had almost been whipped into foam. There was no need to explain his call for patience, however. Every dwarf in the smelthall could feel the quiver in the earth, not unlike the tremor of an earthquake.

  The dwarfs at the furnaces were now beset by the slavering skavenslaves. While the ratmen engaged the metalworkers, dying upon their vengeful hammers, the warp-grinders circled around the melee, seeking to assault their enemies from the rear.

  “Cowardly cheese-thieves!” Thorlek snarled. The ranger drew one of the steam pistols Klarak had armed him with. The engineer set a restraining hand on his friend.

  “We can’t interfere,” he said, the words bitter as wormwood in his mouth. “We can’t do anything that will make the ratkin suspect a trap. They mustn’t warn their master.”

  One of the warp-grinders successfully completed its circuit of the melee. The strange machine whirred into life, a nimbus of green light gathering about the stone fitted between the forks. As the energy gathered, it was drawn out by the forks, crackling and sparking in a blaze of electricity. Chittering with sadistic amusement, the warp-grinder’s wielder thrust it towards the back of a dwarf. The victim cried out, his scream wailing through the smelthall. He crumpled to the floor, a ragged hole melted through his torso.

  “Klarak!” shouted Horgar. “We have to stop them!”

  The engineer shook his head. “We’ll get our chance,” he said, pointing to a pack of slaves charging towards their own position. “But until their chief arrives, no shooting. We don’t want them scurrying away and warning the rest.”

  The injunction was hardly popular among Klarak’s bold-hearted comrades, but each of them understood the necessity of his warning. Firming their holds upon their weapons, the dwarfs made ready to meet the enemy.

  “Keep them off Kurgaz,” Klarak said, gesturing with his thumb at the runesmith. Unlike the rest of them, Kurgaz had made no move to arm himself. Instead, he was still set upon his task of engraving.

  “No thaggoraki is getting past me,” Thorlek swore.

  “Bad as you smell, they’ll probably take you for one of their own,” Horgar laughed.

  Thorlek might have replied to the insult, but at that moment he was too busy separating a ratman from his head. Other slaves flung themselves at the rest of the dwarfs. Horgar smashed one down with his hammer, cracking its skull in a dozen places, then broke the spine of a second in his metal hand. Azram slashed the legs out from under another ratman, breaking its neck with a kick of his boot when the maimed skaven tried to bite him. Kimril took his walking stick, breaking it open to reveal a slender gromril blade. Plying the stick like a Cathayan spear-fighter, he dropped three more of the scrabbling ratmen.

  Klarak Bronzehammer didn’t wait for the skaven to come to him. Vaulting over his anvil, he pounced upon the oncoming pack like an enraged lion. His strong fists smashed out, cracking snouts and breaking ribs. The engineer’s objective wasn’t to kill the ratmen, but simply to debilitate them as quickly as possible. He rushed past his crippled enemies, intent upon the warp-grinder crew beyond them. Already the warp-grinder was trying to circle the combatants, to come upon the rear of the fray.

  The crew saw Klarak as the engineer broke the leg of the last slave standing between himself and the warp-grinder. Frantically, the ratmen activated their weapon, setting energy crackling from the stone and dancing about the prongs of the fork.

  Before they could fire, Klarak threw himself into a long dive, his momentum carrying him past the two skaven. He turned his dive into a roll, tumbling past the warp-grinder. As he came back to his feet, the dwarf sprinted back towards his comrades.

  Laughing wickedly, the ratman operating the warp-grinder raised his weapon, prepared to unleash the corrosive energy against his fleeing enemy. A squeal of terror from the skaven behind him, the one lumbered down by the heavy generator, brought the other ratman up short. Turning his head, he saw arcs of green lightning crackling about his comrade’s body and the ratman frantically trying to adjust the dials on the sides of the generator. A torn hose flopped obscenely from the side of the generator. The operator stared stupidly at his now inert warp-grinder, then squeaked in horror as he understood what had happened. In diving past the warp-grinder, Klarak had ripped the hose conducting energy into the weapon. With nowhere to go, all the energy was building up inside the generator!

  The warp-grinder operator turned to flee almost the same instant the damaged generator decided to explode.

  The destruction of the warp-grinder sent the last surviving slaves attacking Klarak’s comrades scurrying away in retreat. The ratmen stumbled and slid as the floor continued to quake. Suddenly, a green glow began to rise from the ground a few hundred yards away. The dwarfs watched with a feeling of dread as the stone started to melt, creating a pit easily ten times as vast as the holes carved out by the warp-grinders.

  Across the smelthall, the embattled metalworkers suddenly found themselves alone. With their master coming, the skaven withdrew, forming into a tight knot of squeaking flesh that eagerly cheered the underlord whose brand they bore.

  The shriek of dying stone shuddered the walls of the smelthall, setting chains swaying and gantries rocking. A great stream of foul smoke billowed upwards as a giant metal snout erupted from the floor. Shaped like some immense gemstone, the metal snout crackled with the same green energy as the much smaller warp-grinders. To the destructive energies had been added a cruel mechanical augmentation. Rings of metal teeth circled the snout, rotating
in opposing directions at an almost blinding speed. A pair of mammoth-sized ratmen pushed the immense drill upwards, its wheels clattering on the jagged lip of the hole. The rat-ogres had suffered horribly under the ghastly influence of arcane science: each of them had had their arms replaced with metal hooks that had been bolted into the back of the drill and crude engines had been inserted into their bellies, glowing with the eerie green resonance of warpstone. Rusty smokestacks were stapled to their backs, belching the fumes from their mechanical stomachs. A ghastly ratman wearing an insect-like mask sat on a little chair between the rat-ogres, throwing levers and turning wheels as he directed the drill onwards.

  Behind the drill, a swarm of ratmen came scrambling into the smelthall. These weren’t naked slaves but armed clanrats, each skaven bearing a notched sword or spiked mace in his paw. Upon their shields, the symbol of Clan Skryre shone and the fur of each ratman bore the brand of Ikit Claw. Small packs of strangely garbed ratmen scurried after the clanrats, wearing heavy coats of ratgut and leather, their faces enclosed within strange bug-like masks, their paws hugging big ratskin bags to their chests.

  Bringing up the rear of the invasion were still more weirdly equipped skaven, some of them bearing oversized multi-barrelled guns while others lugged bulky contrivances that looked like the nozzles of pressure hoses. Still others of the weapon specialists were carting huge brass tubes upon their backs and wearing the insect-like face-masks. As the specialists fanned out, moving to support the onrushing clanrats, a small cadre of robed ratmen appeared, their bodies draped with belts and wires, their backs fitted with metal harnesses from which mechanical dendrites arched menacingly over their shoulders.