“How much do you say it would be worth?” Johann asked, backing his brother’s play.
Kempf glared at both of the Dietrichs. “If, and I say if the thing really is wyrdstone, there’s no saying how much it is worth.”
“How do we see if it is wyrdstone?” Hans asked.
Kempf looked like he had just swallowed something bitter. “I know people…” he began.
“Who?” prodded Johann. It would be like the little weasel to keep everything to himself and leave the rest of them hanging in the wind if he got the chance. Even Kleiner wasn’t stupid enough to let Kempf keep anything secret.
“I could take it to Doktor Loew, the alchemist,” Kempf said after a moment. “He’d know.”
Hans nodded. “A good plan,” he agreed. Then he drew his dagger. Before any of the other smugglers could react, Hans smashed the edge of his blade against the brittle rock, knocking an inch-long sliver from its side. “But what if we don’t take the whole stone to him? I think that would be safer, don’t you? We wouldn’t like your Dr. Loew to get any queer ideas about stealing the whole thing from us. We take him a little piece and maybe we can keep him honest.”
“What about the rest of it?” asked Mueller.
Hans looked around the small cellar for a moment, looking for a place they could hide the bulky rock and its unnatural glow. His gaze finally settled on an old wine cask that had been in the cellar before the building above was even called the Orc and Axe. It had been cheap to begin with and over the years it had soured itself into pungent vinegar. Hans pointed to the barrel and all the smugglers smiled at the suggestion.
“I suppose you want me to lug it over there?” grumbled Kleiner.
The taproom of the Orc and Axe was filled almost to bursting by the time the smugglers emerged from their hasty conference. It was just the way Johann preferred it. Crowded, the sudden arrival of the smugglers would pass largely unnoticed. More tactically minded than his brother, Johann was a good deal more cautious than Hans about the secrecy of their lair. Hans, in his opinion, trusted to luck and the favour of Ranald the Trickster too much and too often. The eyes of the Dockwatch weren’t just on the streets. And now there were Gustav Volk’s spies to worry about as well.
Johann’s steely gaze swept across the taproom, studying the motley gutter-sweepings sitting about the tavern’s dilapidated tables and gathered about its knife-scarred bar. Grimy, sour-faced visages sometimes looked up from their tankards of beer and flagons of ale to return his challenging inspection. Waterfront stevedores, back-alley swindlers, leather-faced fishermen, squinty thieves, swaggering sailors, brutish muggers, and foppish panderers all clustered about the cheap booze and scarcely edible fare of Ulgrin Shatterhand’s establishment. Johann could see the gaudy fabrics of Marienburg, heavy fur cloaks from Kislev, the stripped homespun of Nuln and Wissenland, the threadbare greens of Wurtbad, even the balloon-like cut of Tilean tunics and trousers. The smuggler laughed grimly. It wasn’t in the lofty spires of government and aristocracy where men from foreign places and foreign minds came together as equals with common purpose. It was in the lowest rungs of society that men set aside their differences. It was in the gutter they came together.
Any one of those faces that looked back at him might be one of Volk’s spies. Johann shook his head. The organisation Vesper Klasst had put together had its fingers in every district in Altdorf; even if none of Volk’s people were in the crowd, some of Klasst’s were certain to be. Hans was really testing the limits of Ranald’s divine indulgence. It was Johann’s experience that the gods seldom favoured fools overlong.
Hans and the others had already sidled over to the bar, pushing a knot of grumbling stevedores to make room for them. The labourers looked ready to make trouble, but proved too sober to pick a fight with any mob that included someone like Kleiner among its number. Hans was barking out orders for Reikland hock when Johann joined them.
“This is stupid, Hans,” Johann hissed from the corner of his mouth. “Somebody is sure to be looking for us.”
“They won’t start anything here,” Hans protested. He smiled as he took the clay tankards from the dumpy woman behind the counter. He pushed drinks down the bar to his men. He rolled his eyes when Johann refused the last tankard.
“You worry too much,” Hans grumbled, pointedly taking a swig from the tankard he had offered to his brother. “Comes from all that thinking you’re doing all the time. A man can’t think his way out of whatever the gods have in store for him.”
“It damn sure can’t hurt,” Johann retorted. “You ever stop to think Volk is sure to hear about us being here?”
Hans sighed, looking back down the bar. His annoyance grew when he saw that the rest of his men were watching the two brothers with rapt attention. Wilhelm wasn’t even drinking, instead soaking his mangled hand in his tankard. Kempf had a slithery look in his expression and his frequent glances in the direction of the pantry and the cellar beneath it told quite clearly where his thoughts were. Kleiner was scratching at his arm in between trying to stifle a suddenly persistent cough. Old Mueller just looked resigned, like a beetle waiting for the other boot to fall.
Hans leaned into his brother, keeping his voice low, but not so low that the other smugglers couldn’t hear him. “I want Volk to know about this place. If his people are watching it, then there’s small chance one of us is going to come sneaking back here on his own and try to make off with the wyrdstone. It’ll take all of us to even have a chance of getting something that big out of here.”
Kempf hissed something unrepeatable. Wilhelm slammed his hurt hand against the counter and took a drink from his tankard. Kleiner coughed. Mueller just gave voice to a pained groan. Hans grinned like the face of Khaine, enjoying his brother’s look of disbelieving horror.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’d rather put us all on the spot than have somebody getting rich off my sweat.”
Johann decided not to point out that it had been mostly Kleiner’s sweat, any more than he was minded to observe that their chances of making off with the wyrdstone even together weren’t going to be good. Volk’s gang was sure to get some of them. He felt disgusted as he saw the answer reflected in his brother’s twinkling eyes. That was part of the plan: fewer shares to go around. Not stupid, just callously reckless and ruthless.
Disgusted, Johann looked away from Hans, staring instead at the massive axe fastened to the wall above the bar. It was a huge weapon, the runes and craftsmanship proclaiming its dwarfish origin. It was a testament to how much the tavern’s proprietor was feared and respected on the waterfront that no one had seen fit to try and steal it. Ulgrin Shatterhand was known for his black tempers and a sadistic streak seldom found in a dwarf. Some said the loss of his hand had made him mean enough to choke a giant with the one he still had. Others said it was some secret shame that made him an exile from his own people and which had made him as bitter as the waters of the Sour Sea. Johann had heard a slightly different version from the few dwarfs he’d met in the Orc and Axe. They said Ulgrin Shatterhand was such a miserable grumbaki because of that splendid axe above the bar: a cheap human-crafted forgery if they’d ever seen one.
Thinking about the axe made Johann look down the other end of the counter where an enormous glass jar rested. If the axe was a forgery, there was nothing fake about the tavern’s other mascot. Pickled and preserved, the jar was filled with the swollen, snarling head of the largest, nastiest orc anyone in Altdorf had ever seen; many fights in the tavern started as arguments about whether the thing had really belonged to a large orc or had instead come from a small troll. Whatever the case, it was generally agreed that Ulgrin had lost his hand to orcs before he settled down to establish his tavern. The standing offer of free drinks to anyone who brought a larger orc head to the dwarf only helped to support such rumours.
As Johann looked at the leathery, green-skinned scowl of the head, his eyes were drawn to movement beyond the trophy. The bat-wing doors at the front of the taver
n swung open, admitting a knot of armed men. Instantly the murmur of conversation in the taproom faded away to a whisper of muttered curses and hastily concealed contraband.
The foremost of the men was nearly as tall as Johann, with much broader shoulders. His features were regular, almost aristocratic if they hadn’t been spoiled by a jagged knife scar along the left cheek, pulling the corner of the man’s mouth into a slight pucker. Dark eyes, like the black pits of Mundsen Keep, fixed Johann with their gaze, then quickly looked past him and focused on his brother. The scarred mouth did its best to spread into a smile. The man dropped his hand casually to the longsword he wore at his side, the leather of his glove creaking as his fingers assumed a deceptively easy grip on the pommel.
“I’ve paid!” The outburst came from behind the counter. A hinged section of the bar swept upward and the stocky figure of Ulgrin Shatterhand stormed out. The dwarf’s long white beard was tucked into the belt of his beer-stained apron, his grubby hand wiping foam across his leather leggings. The steel hook that gleamed from the stump of his other arm was held menacingly at his side. “You can’t go abusing my custom, griffon! I’ve paid!”
The man with the scar turned a withering scowl against the dwarf. “Funny, the captain must have failed to mention it.” He made a gesture with his hand, tapping the bronze pectoral that hung above his hauberk of reinforced leather. A griffon rampant, a halberd clenched in its talons, stood out upon the flat metal plate. It was the same figure that was represented upon the white armbands each of the armed men wore. It was the symbol of the Altdorf city watch. The bronze pectoral denoted the speaker as a sergeant in that stalwart organisation.
“He’ll damn sure mention it after I get through talking to him!” Ulgrin snarled. “And then he’ll take that fancy jewellery away from you and kick your arse back down with the sewerjacks!”
The sergeant fixed Ulgrin with his most authoritarian stare. “He’ll be happy to hear you are so vocal about the bribes he accepts, drok,” the soldier said. “It might make him reconsider the arrangement.”
The words had their intended effect. Sputtering and cursing, Ulgrin Shatterhand retreated back behind the counter, leaving his patrons to the attentions of Theodor Baer and his watchmen.
It wasn’t a general raid for outlaws and contraband that interested the sergeant tonight, however. There was a very specific purpose behind his visit and as he turned his attention away from the angry dwarf and back to the men clustered about the bar, he found himself looking at that reason. Nodding to his men, Theodor Baer strolled over to where Hans Dietrich was trying his best to look inconspicuous.
“Heard you had some trouble tonight,” Theodor said by way of greeting.
“Get stuffed, griffon,” Hans spat.
“No thanks,” Theodor replied, pushing the tankard away from Hans’ fingers, forcing the man to turn around and face him. “Though I think Gustav Volk has some idea about doing something of the sort to you.”
“Volk is always talking tough,” Johann interrupted. “But we’re still here.”
Theodor looked down the bar, letting his eyes rest a while on each man. His gaze lingered on Kleiner, watching as the man almost doubled over from a fit of coughing. “Seems to me there’s a lot less of you here than a few nights ago.”
“I think some of the boys might have caught a ship for someplace,” Hans said.
“If they caught a ship, its port of call was the Gardens of Morr,” Theodor retorted. He raised the tankard, sniffed at it and wrinkled his nose at the reek of the cheap beer. “Though I can’t blame them for keeping away if this is the best stuff you can get here.”
“Whatever you are fishing for, griffon, you won’t find it here,” Johann said, glowering at the sergeant.
Theodor shook his head. “I’m not interested in you lot,” he said, though once again his attention was distracted by Kleiner’s coughing and scratching. “You’re small fish. I want the big shark. I want Volk.”
“I’d like to give him to you,” Hans smiled. “But unfortunately that is a commodity that isn’t mine to sell.” The elder Dietrich threw down several silver coins onto the bar and shuffled away from the counter. The rest of the smugglers followed him, Kleiner last of all. Theodor watched them leave, but made no move to stop them.
In the doorway, as the small band left the Orc and Axe, Johann looked back at the sergeant. Theodor wasn’t watching the smugglers anymore. Johann saw him further down the bar, near where Kleiner had been standing.
Across the distance, Johann couldn’t see what Theodor found so interesting. He didn’t see the strange, fat green worm writhing on the counter as it burrowed its way into the woodwork.
The chamber of the Council of Thirteen was deep within the Shattered Tower. An ancient structure, older than even the skaven race, the Shattered Tower loomed above the decaying sprawl of Skavenblight like the warning finger of a malevolent god. Even with its foundations sucked down into the mire of the Blighted Marshes, there was no corner of Skavenblight upon which its shadow did not fall. It was a potent reminder of the authority and reach of the Lords of Decay, a physical tribute to the awful power of the Horned Rat and his domination of his chosen people: the skaven.
Enormous doors, carved from black Southland wood and engraved with the sinister sign of the Horned Rat, guarded the entrance to the council chamber. Before the black doors, the biggest rat ogre Thanquol had ever seen crouched beside the wall. The chain fixing its collar to thick iron staples set into the floor looking to have been stolen from a warship’s anchor. The ugly brute rose up as it caught the scent of Thanquol and his escorts. Nearly furless, every inch of the rat ogre’s exposed hide had been branded with the mark of the Horned Rat. It snuffled grotesquely at the air, like some great hound, then slowly lurched away from its post beside the doorway.
Thanquol controlled a quiver of fear as he felt the flagstones beneath his paws tremble from the huge monster’s plodding steps. The albino stormvermin who flanked him, the guards who had led him through the streets of Skavenblight to ensure he kept his meeting with the Council, gave the faintest hint of musk as the brute’s muscular bulk thundered past. Thanquol did not find the subdued fear of his grim escorts comforting. He wondered how many of those summoned to the chambers of the Council ended up in the monster’s craw.
The rat ogre’s immense paw closed around an enormous club with a head of grotesquely carved warpstone. To Thanquol’s awed gaze, it looked as if the brute held an entire tree in its claws. He could imagine the weapon smashing down, pulverising whatever it struck into a gooey smear on the floor. The grey seer took a few nervous steps back, ensuring at least a few of the stormvermin were closer to the beast than he was.
The rat ogre, however, seemed to take no further notice of Thanquol and his entourage. Turning, the brute ambled over to a gigantic brass gong. With one swift motion, the monster brought its club smashing into the suspended metal disc, the violence of the impact sending a puff of green dust rising from the warpstone head.
A sound, low and sinister and evil, droned through the black corridors of the Shattered Tower, vibrating through the stones with malefic purpose. Thanquol could feel the sound pulse through his bones and ground his fangs against the terrifying sensation.
The single, throbbing note faded away, seeming to devour its own echoes. As it passed into nothingness, a new sound scratched at Thanquol’s senses. Slowly, with eerie precision, the great doors of the Chamber of Thirteen were swinging open, moved by some force even Thanquol’s sorcerous gaze could not discern. Smells, ancient and evil, billowed out from the room beyond the doors. Thanquol fought to keep his heart from racing. There would be time enough for terror after he crossed the threshold.
White paws closed about the grey seer’s shoulders, giving him an encouraging shove towards the doorway when he hesitated. Thanquol scowled at the mute armoured ratmen. Obviously the cowardly wretches had no intention of accompanying him further. He wished the shrivelling of their rathoods and
a thousand other curses upon them as he carefully crept across the threshold, watching every step with a caution that made his experience in the Maze of Merciless Penance seem overbold.
No sooner had Thanquol stepped inside the chamber than the great black doors slammed shut behind him with a resounding boom. The grey seer sprang forward ten feet, his pulse racing. Anxious paws flew to his long, hairless tail, stroking it like a brood-mother with a favourite whelp. Thanquol let out a long gasp of relief. It was all there. Somehow his tail had managed to avoid being caught in the slamming doors.
A low, bubbling chuckle took Thanquol’s thoughts from his near-escape to the greater peril that still menaced him. It was a deep, throaty laugh, sickening and rotten, Thanquol was reminded of gas escaping from beneath a bog. It was a cruel, savage sort of humour that brooked no good will towards whatever it was directed against. He knew such a voice could belong to only one creature: Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch, the foul master of the disgusting plague monks of Clan Pestilens.
The grey seer peered across the chamber. It was a great, round hall, its ceiling lost in the darkness far above. Braziers of glowing warpstone cast flickering shadows across the room, somehow managing to further obscure the far end of the hall even as they illuminated the centre. Even Thanquol’s keen gaze could scarcely make out the other side of the chamber. He had the impression of a rounded dais and a circular podium draped in red cloth. Behind the podium were chairs, but whatever sat upon them was nothing more than an indistinct shape, a blotch of blackness that might hide anything or nothing.
Thanquol did not need to count the chairs to know that there were thirteen. Their occupants, if any, would be the Lords of Decay, the warlords and masters of the most powerful clans in the Under-Empire. He could barely make out the banners that stood behind each chair, casting a darker shadow upon its occupant. Each banner depicted the sign of the great clan or warlord clan the Lord of Decay ruled over and represented. The assassins of Clan Eshin, the fanatics of Clan Pestilens, the brutal warriors of Clan Mors and Clan Skab, all had their representative upon the Council of Thirteen.
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