The alternative, of course, would have been to trust Kratch to lead the way, but Thanquol’s distrust of his apprentice had grown by leaps and bounds following his meeting with Thratquee. It was better to limit his dependence on the adept as much as possible. The fate of Skabritt remained foremost in Thanquol’s mind as they navigated the network of brick-walled tunnels and slimy canals. He tried to watch Kratch from the corner of his eye and made certain that his white stormvermin were positioned securely behind him. Their presence would discourage any thoughts of putting a knife in his back.
Kratch, of course, wasn’t the only enemy he had to worry about. It had taken a fair degree of coercion and manipulation of Under-Altdorf’s ruling clans to gain the support he needed for his expedition. Any one of the city’s scheming councillors might be plotting treachery, to seize the prize Thanquol was looking for. If Thratquee felt safe enough to be so indiscreet about his loyalty to Skavenblight, strange ideas might have sifted down to the clan leaders themselves. Warplord Quilisk in particular was being quite heavy-pawed in his dealings with the grey seer. He had sent one of his subordinate councillors, Viskitt Burnfang, to “assist” Thanquol. The number of representatives Clan Skryre sent along was also a bit more than Thanquol had asked for. Somehow, he doubted the fact was intended to benefit him. At least it set the representatives and warriors of the other clans on their guard. They would be too busy watching the Skryre ratkin for the first sniff of betrayal to think about moving against Thanquol himself.
Down through the murk of the sewers, the pack of skaven plodded. The stink of human filth was everywhere, the sounds of their feet and wagons filtering down from the streets above. Thanquol felt his contempt for the surface dwellers swell. Furless, undisciplined vermin, arrogantly thinking themselves masters of the earth! They would be forced to remember who the real masters were! Too many times had their kind stood between the skaven race and its destiny, too many times had they defied the prophecy of the Horned Rat! Too many times had they thwarted the ambitions of Thanquol the mighty! Thratquee was wrong… destruction of the humans was the most sacred duty any skaven could aspire to. And Thanquol would be that skaven!
The beastmaster at the head of the pack cried out, a sharp squeak of warning and excitement. Thanquol snapped orders to the stormvermin behind him, inciting them to lift him above the throng. Planting his feet in their strong paws, Thanquol peered over the heads of his minions. He could see a jagged patch of raw earth where the human brickwork had been pulled away. The tell-tale marks of skaven claws and fangs pitted the damp earth, vanishing into the blackness of a tunnel. The beastmaster stood before the opening the pallid warp bat straining at its leash in its eagerness to dash into the gloom.
“Find-search, quick-quick!” Thanquol snapped, slapping the muzzles of the stormvermin to encourage them to lower him. The motley pack of skaven milled about uncertainly for a moment, but then their own leaders began to echo Thanquol’s order. Cautiously, but with speed, the skaven began to converge on the earthen tunnel. Thanquol let the mass of ratkin plunge ahead, lingering behind as was the right of any wise leader. He waited until only himself and his immediate entourage were still standing in the sewer, then turned on Kratch.
“Tell me again how Skabritt died,” Thanquol hissed. His claws slowly tapped on the sword dangling from his ratgut belt. “In case you forgot anything the first time you told it.”
Kratch ground his teeth together nervously, only managing to make eye contact with Thanquol by the most severe of efforts. “Great and terrible scourge of the man-spawn, I have told-said all. Unlucky Skabritt was crushed when the cave collapsed upon him.”
“But Kratch was luckier,” Thanquol stated, displaying his fangs. He gestured with the head of his staff, pointing at the tunnel. “You first, most loyal and eager apprentice. That way if anything happens to me, it happens to you first.”
Kratch gave a backward look at the sewer behind them, looking for a moment as though he might flee. Wiser impulses prevailed however. Still grinding his teeth nervously, Kratch slowly made his way into the tunnel, feeling Thanquol’s eyes glued to his every step.
The grey seer took no reassurance from Kratch’s reluctance. He hesitated as he watched Kratch vanish into the darkness, then gestured to his stormvermin.
“Follow him,” Thanquol told the albinos. “Watch him. Watch everything.” He dug the little box of warpstone snuff from his robes and inhaled a pinch of the gritty dust, feeling its sorcerous energy sear through his body, firing his senses and steeling his courage.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, pushing his bodyguards forwards. Thanquol gave a last anxious look at the dripping sewers. Briefly he considered the thought that had occurred to Kratch, but decided against such ignoble retreat. His decision was helped somewhat by the way the shadows seemed to coil about the brickwork support pillars in menacing patches of darkness. They might hide almost anything. At least whatever the dark tunnel might be hiding would have plenty of other skaven to distract it from himself.
Thanquol turned and scurried after his stormvermin with just enough haste to not undermine his carefully woven air of authority.
After the grey seer vanished down the tunnel, one patch of shadow detached itself from a nearby pillar. Sheathing his sword, Skarpaw gave a disappointed cough. He should have realised that killing Thanquol would not be so easy.
“I’m still worried about him,” Johann told his brother. The two smugglers were prowling the narrow streets of the waterfront, trying to keep to the back alleys and seldom-travelled lanes that twisted their way between a festering array of hostels and tenements.
“You worry too much,” Hans chided him. The older Dietrich kicked a broken jar lying in the muddy lane. He grimaced as something that smelled of old cabbages splattered across his boot. He motioned for Johann to wait while he tried to wipe the muck off by rubbing his shoe against the plaster wall beside him.
“Gustav Volk is still looking for us,” Johann said. “What if he found Kleiner?”
Hans abandoned his effort to clean himself. He wrinkled his nose at the revolting brown smear he had made on the wall, then shrugged and jogged up to catch his brother. “If Volk’s mob found Kleiner, then they’re the ones you should be worrying about.”
Johann shook his head as they started down another nameless alley. This time Hans was careful to step around a splintered tankard that was in his path.
“You saw Kleiner when we were in Loew’s,” Johann objected. “The man could barely stand. I’ve seen beggars who looked healthier.”
“Most beggars are healthy,” Hans scolded. “Best racket in the city, as long as you pay your tithe to the priests of Ranald.” He saw the irritation on Johann’s face and changed his attitude. “Kleiner probably just drank too much,” he assured. “You know him, probably celebrating selling the wyrdstone before we’ve even got a single copper from it.”
“We didn’t know it was wyrdstone before we went to Loew’s.”
Hans let out a disgusted sigh. “Mother hen, that’s you, dear brother! I didn’t see Kempf around this morning, but I don’t see you worrying about him.”
“Kempf is so slippery a rat couldn’t keep up with him,” said Johann. “He can take care of himself.”
“And Kleiner can’t!” Hans protested, his voice incredulous. “I’ve seen the man outdrink a kossar and outfight a Norscan!”
“He wasn’t sick then,” Johann said. He hurried to the other side of the alley as a window opened in the wall above and someone emptied a slop bucket into the street. Hans didn’t match his brother’s agility and soon had a cloak to match his boot.
“So what if Volk gets him?” Hans growled, wringing filth from his clothes. “One more share for the rest of us.”
Johann gave his brother a withering smile. “Not if Volk makes him talk first.”
Hans’ face went pale, his eyes going wide with alarm. He grabbed his brother’s arm, fairly pulling the big man down the alley. “What ar
e we standing around talking for? Let’s go check on my friend Kleiner!”
“I want him out!” The old woman’s shrill voice was as piercing as a lance this close to his ear. Theodor Baer glared at the crone, but if her vision was still clear enough to note the expression, she took no notice of it.
“Into the street!” she shrieked. “I’ll not have some pox-ridden vagabond giving my house a poor reputation!”
The old hag stomped one of her feet against the wormy floorboards of the landing, the thick leather clogs she wore threatening to punch through the dilapidated wood. “I’ll not have people driven away because they hear I’m harbouring disease in my house!”
“Then maybe you should keep your voice down, grey mother,” Theodor hissed. “The way you’re shrieking, they can probably hear you at the Emperor’s Palace.”
The landlady’s face grew flush with indignation. A little, withered specimen of waterfront wretchedness, the crone retreated down the rickety stairs with all the grace of a one-legged cat. Somehow she remained upright throughout her stumbling withdrawal. She turned at the foot of the stairs, pointing a crooked finger at Theodor Baer and the two watchmen with him.
“Not another night under this roof!” she said, her tone as imperious as anything spoken by the Emperor. “You put him out, or I’ll speak to your captain!” Her threat made, the old woman scrambled back behind the door of her own rooms and slammed it behind her.
“What a charming lady,” one of the watchmen commented. “Is it wrong to hope the goblins come for her?”
“You were the one who heard her screaming for the watch,” the other soldier said. “If it was left to me, I would have ignored her and kept right on walking.”
Theodor was still staring down the stairs at the old woman’s refuge, only absently listening to the conversation of his subordinates. They had spent a long night prowling this district, searching for anything out of the ordinary, and the tempers of all three men were growing short. The tempers of his subordinates would be even shorter if they learned their orders had not come from the captain, but from a strange slip of parchment only Theodor himself had seen. That was something Theodor did not intend to ever share with his men. There were some things it was better for them not to know about.
Still, there was no denying that their long night vigil had failed to produce any results. Whatever had caused the grisly affliction of the dog the night before, they had seen no further evidence of it. Theodor would have dismissed the incident as some one-off monstrosity, some vile mutant that had somehow eluded the attentions of the witch hunters, if it had not been for the orders he had received from his hidden master. As long as he had served that unseen hand, Theodor had never known the master to be wrong. If the message said the dog was not a lone aberration, then Theodor knew enough not to question.
Something one of his men said began to nag at Theodor. He looked back at the soldiers, then at the door behind them on the landing. “We might not have ignored the old hag, but somebody is ignoring us,” he said, walking quickly to the door. The sergeant brought his hand smacking against the panels in his most demanding and official knock. Still there was no sign of acknowledgement. He waited a moment, pressing his ear to the door, listening for any sound in the room beyond.
An uneasy feeling crawled up Theodor’s spine. Stepping away from the door, he motioned to his men. “Kick it in,” he told them. The two watchmen were quick to comply, hobnailed boots making short work of the worm-eaten panels. Theodor squirmed his hand through the splintered wood and threw back the bolt.
The smell was the first thing that struck the soldiers as they opened the ruined door, a greasy stench of sickness mixed with a vilely sweet scent. The squalor of the room was made still more foul by the brown, greasy rags strewn about the floor and lying thick upon the straw-covered pallet that had served the occupant as a bed. Pots and buckets of filth were piled all around the bed, abandoned when the inmate had become too weak to tip them out the room’s little window. Despite the reek, Theodor was struck by the absence of flies. At this time of year, they should be thick as lice in such surroundings. The sergeant felt the hairs on his arm prickle with uneasiness. There was something wrong, unholy about this place, something more terrible than disease and plague, something that offended even the most base of insects.
Theodor Baer was a brave man, he had patrolled these same dark streets alone during the height of the Beast murders without a thought to his own safety. Yet it took every effort of will for him to approach the pallet. His men lingered behind, steadfastly holding position in the doorway. After taking only a few steps towards the pallet, Theodor quickly rejoined them, pushing both soldiers back onto the landing and slamming the door behind them.
“Fritz,” Theodor pointed to one of his men. “You will stay here. No one enters this room. Not the old lady, not other watchmen, not even the Grand Theogonist!” Theodor stared into the soldier’s eyes until he was certain he had impressed upon the man the seriousness of his orders. It was the pale, frightened glaze over the sergeant’s features more than his tone of voice that drove home the gravity of the situation.
Theodor started down the stairs, taking the other watchman with him. “I am going to make my report to the captain. I will send a relief for you as quickly as possible,” he called up to the man on the landing as he made a swift exit from the crumbling boarding house. Already Theodor was pushing the ghastly thing he had seen in the hovel from his mind, concentrating instead upon his next move. He thought about what he would write in his report, considering each word with the utmost care, words intended for someone much more important and powerful than his captain.
Johann and Hans watched from the blackened mouth of an alleyway as Theodor Baer and one of his soldiers exited the house. There was no mistaking the intense look on the sergeant’s face, nor the haste in his step.
“Looks like Baer found something to nab Kleiner with,” Johann commented, smacking fist into palm in a gesture of impotent frustration.
Hans sidled nonchalantly against the peeling plaster of the timber-framed wall behind them. “Better Baer than Volk,” the smuggler observed with a shrug.
“Kleiner can’t spend any time in Mundsen Keep,” Johann growled back. “Not sick as he was. It would finish him.” The filthy conditions and abysmal deprivations of the prison were infamous among the denizens of Altdorf. For all but the strongest condemned to the dungeons of the keep, a sentence of more than a few weeks was as good as a trip to the hangman.
“We’ll get him out,” Hans promised. He noted the doubt in his brother’s expression. “No, seriously, we’ll set aside some of the profit from the wyrdstone to bribe the jailors. The way Loew was preening over the little slice we gave him, there should be more than enough to buy Kleiner’s way out.”
“That almost sounds like charity, Hans,” Johann said. “I guess that’s why I don’t exactly trust it.”
Hans spread his hands in a gesture of hurt offence. “You wound me, Johann. Of course I’m not going to leave Kleiner in Mundsen. What kind of man do you take me for?” Hans hastily continued before his brother could answer that question. “Look, it’s like this. If Volk had grabbed Kleiner, he might have spilled what he knew to try and swing some sort of deal. But we all know there’s no deal you can offer Baer. Damn griffon thinks he’s in the Reiksguard. Pure as the winter snow, that one! He’d break Kleiner’s jaw just for suggesting a pay-out, and Kleiner knows it. That means he’ll keep mum and wait for us to sell the wyrdstone and spring him.”
“You cover all the angles, don’t you?” Johann scowled.
“One of us has to,” Hans replied with a smile. “We can’t both of us wear our heart on our sleeve.”
Johann shook his head and started back down the alleyway. Hans watched his brother for a moment, then cast a lingering stare at the decaying boarding house. Kleiner, in Baer’s hands, would play for time and wait for the other smugglers to spring him. Of course, by that stage of the game they would
already have sold the wyrdstone. Hans knew his brother wouldn’t approve, but Kleiner’s capture was something of a windfall. One less share to dole out when the time came to make the split.
The smuggler turned and laughed softly as he followed after his brother. He wondered how many weeks it would take Kleiner to realise that nobody was going to bribe the guards at Mundsen Keep. Hans felt little pity for his unfortunate associate. A man who let himself get caught had to look after his own luck.
Hans looked back at the house one last time. The smuggler scratched at his neck as he turned away. His skin had been itching all day, growing more persistent and vexing. He’d have to speak with Argula at the Crown and Two Chairmen. He suspected that some of the girls’ rooms had bedbugs.
The rough, earthen tunnels had a fug about them, a thick stink of rotting meat and decaying flesh that set Thanquol’s stomach growling and his nerves on edge. The keen nose of a skaven could easily decipher the smell of their own kind, even in death. There was no horror in the demise of a fellow ratman, of course. Rare indeed was the skaven who had not turned to “burrow pork” as a way of staving off starvation at some stage in his life. Death was death and meat was meat. What troubled the grey seer was not the presence of corpses, but anxious doubts about how they had died and a nagging suspicion that Kratch was being less than forthcoming about the details of his previous excursion to this forgotten sub-warren of Under-Altdorf.
Ahead of him, Thanquol could see the shapes of his entourage scurrying down the tunnel, rapidly pursuing Clan Moulder’s warp bat. The Clan Skryre element, probably at Viskitt Burnfang’s command, had produced warpstone lanterns, casting an eerie electrical glow about the throng of ratmen. It was on Thanquol’s tongue to reprimand Burnfang for overstepping his authority and not begging permission of the grey seer before illuminating the tunnel, but a sly twitch of his whiskers indicated that Thanquol dismissed the thought as soon as it came to him. Let Burnfang light himself up like a Karak Azgal lava pit, it would make him the most visible and most logical target for anything lurking in the abandoned burrow.
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