“You would kill-kill me!” Thanquol hissed, his voice booming with magical energy. Flickers of green light danced from his fangs as he spoke like fiery sparks from the mouth of a furnace. “Scat-licking frog-nibbler! Curse-curse the moment you were plop-dripped from your breeder’s belly!” The grey seer unleashed a burst of power from his staff with each snarl, a burst of pummelling force that smashed into the assassin, throwing him yards at a time through the tunnels. Now the sorcerous glow was gone, Thanquol’s wrath and pursuit having taken them back into the passageway. The warriors of Clan Mors and Skab, resolutely refusing to enter the cavern and take part in the violence they had heard, now huddled against the walls, horrified by the awful power the grey seer was unleashing.
“Grovel-beg, worm-feeder!” Thanquol growled at the battered assassin. The wretched ratman bled from every corner of his body, limbs hanging from him in tangles of twisted wreckage. It was all the creature could do to look at Thanquol, much less try to shape words to his broken mouth.
It was not enough. The invigorating, fiery power of the warpstone had magnified Thanquol’s arcane power, enhanced his senses, swollen the speed of his devious mind, but one thing had shrivelled beneath its influence: patience.
Thanquol sent another burst of power smashing into the assassin, flinging his shattered wreckage into the mass of broken earth that marked the collapsed tomb of Skabritt. The assassin’s impart brought a burst of bloody froth from his muzzle, sent ribs skewering through his pelt. Thanquol favoured the watching clanrat warriors with a menacing snarl, reminding them to pay particular attention to this example of the grey seer’s power, lest they be his next victims.
Grey Seer Thanquol stalked towards the shattered assassin, his steps filled with power and malignity. However, even as his rage swelled, his might began to ebb. The warpsight faded slowly from his eyes, the fire slowly seeped out of his veins. For the first time Thanquol felt the drag of the warlock engineer’s body, causing him to drop the dented warp-lantern he had been carrying. Strength deserted his excited muscles and he was forced to lean on his staff for support. Thanquol’s breathing became short, his heart pounding erratically against his chest. Panicked thoughts raced through his brain, urging him to consume another warpstone nugget before the power faded from him entirely. Thanquol shivered as he fought to keep his paw away from another hidden pocket, exerting all his willpower to keep the compulsion at bay. Addiction to warpstone was the curse of every grey seer if he was not prudent, an addiction that would end when the terrible powers of the warpstone became too much for any sorcerer to control and the grey seer’s body was ripped apart from within.
A bloody smile came to the assassin’s face as he saw Thanquol’s power desert him. The grey seer simply scowled down at the killer, then crushed what was left of his face with his staff. After all, one did not need magic to settle with vermin.
“Let this be an example!” Thanquol snarled as he turned away from the carcass. His gaze, even without the fire of warpstone behind it, was fierce enough to command the rapt attention of every skaven in the passage. There were many more of them than there had been. Viskitt Burnfang and the rest of his warlock engineers had come forward to join the warriors while Kratch and several survivors from the treacherous attack in the cavern had come back to see for themselves the outcome of Thanquol’s fight.
“Smell-see this,” Thanquol ordered, pointing a talon at the bleeding ruin of the assassin. “Remember-learn! This is what happens to all who betray Thanquol!” The grey seer fixed his fury on Kratch. The apprentice cringed at the attention, seeming to curl up into his own fur.
“Go!” Thanquol growled, now pointing to the cavern. “Someone has taken what I came here to find! Search-find it, before I think about all those who did not guard the safety of one who serves the Council!” For emphasis, Thanquol fingered the talisman from the Shattered Tower. The reminder was enough. Clanrats and warlock engineers, Clan Skaul scouts and Clan Moulder beast-handlers, an eager, frightened throng, scurried up the passage and into the cavern, almost tripping over themselves in their haste to appease the grey seer’s anger.
Thanquol took a moment to enjoy the terror of his minions. The first rule of command for any skaven was to ensure his followers feared nothing more than their leader. The ill-fated attempt on his life had gone far to instil that kind of respect in the ad-hoc entourage he had been provided with by the council of Under-Altdorf. He would need that kind of power base now that the hunt for the Wormstone was proving more difficult than he had anticipated. That was something he would need to discuss with Kratch, preferably while tugging fangs from the lying maggot’s mouth.
As Thanquol followed after his underlings, the grey seer gave no notice to the body of the assassin he had killed. So it was that his eyes failed to see a slight trickle of earth drip from the collapsed heap of dirt and rubble and his ears failed to hear a faint, but persistent, scratching sound rising from beyond the cave-in.
Jakob Helmer stamped his feet against the splintered floorboards and clapped his hands together, trying to keep warm. The night chill that rose with the fog from the River Reik seeped through the shabby walls of the boarding house as though they weren’t even there, soaking into the watchman’s bones with a wintry clutch. Not for the first time, Jakob cursed his sergeant, his job and the thin cloth of his tunic. What was so important about some room in a flytrap flophouse that Baer wanted a man posted on guard all night? He suspected it was the sergeant’s idea of a punishment duty after catching Jakob playing dice in the backroom of the Drunken Bastard the previous week. The suspicion, combined with the dampness of the fog and the chill of the night, might have been enough to convince him to abandon his thankless post for a few hours if Baer’s despicable penchant for checking up on his men wasn’t still so fresh in the soldier’s mind. If he was discharged from the watch, the best Jakob could expect from his wife was a cracked skull when she bounced a skillet off his head.
The watchman blinked his eyes, staring into the creeping blackness that filled the stairway and the lower landing. He could only dimly make out the outline of the building’s main door below, illuminated by the dim light of a streetlamp outside. For an instant, it had seemed to him that the outline had flickered, vanished for the briefest of moments. Jakob scowled and blew another hot breath against his hands. As cold as it had grown, even his eyes were starting to go numb. He nibbed his fingers together, watching as a little of the blue tinge faded from them. Perhaps he should pay a quick visit to the Street of 100 Taverns and secure something more substantial to fortify himself against the cold of night.
Jakob blinked as he looked up from his hands. The darkness of the stairway seemed to have grown even more pronounced, thicker and blacker than it had been. He was just about to dismiss the impression as some trick of light when a sound arrested his attention. The watchman spun about, his frozen hand dropping to his sword. He could not say what exactly the noise had been, but he was certain of where it had come from; only a few feet away from him on the upper landing.
The watchman felt his blood chill even more as his staring eyes picked out a figure among the shadows that filled the landing. Someone was standing there in the darkness, watching him. He could distinctly make out the silhouette of a tall man, shoulders and head just barely perceptible against the dark background.
“Who is there?” Jakob challenged, his voice low and filled with threat. He allowed only a single breath to pass for an answer to come, then drew his sword. The rasp of metal against leather sounded loud as lightning in the silence of the hallway. The watchman took a step towards the dark figure in the shadows and repeated his challenge. Still there was no reply.
Licking his lips, Jakob raised his sword and took another step. If the stranger in the shadows thought to make sport of the watchman, he would soon discover that Jakob was in no mind to play games. The soldier took another step, his arm tense, ready to thrust two feet of sharpened steel into the body of the intruder.
The last step brought a nervous laugh to Jakob’s lips. As he drew closer, the sinister figure he thought he saw vanished. Another trick of his tired eyes, the shadow against which he had imagined he saw some lurking presence proved to be the outer wall of the house. There was nowhere any intruder could have escaped to even if there had been one there. Jakob sheathed his sword and returned to his post, still chuckling over his fanciful fright. He looked back down the stairwell, smiling as he saw the outer door illuminated by the streetlamp. Even the splotch of blackness he had been convinced lay upon the stairs was gone, another phantom of his fatigue and tedium.
It never occurred to the watchman that he had seen something upon the stairway, something that wrapped itself in the blackness of the darkened building, something that had silently and swiftly raced up to the landing when Jakob turned to investigate the noise he had heard. He would not have believed that both the sound and the sinister silhouette were illusory suggestions that had been planted in his brain by an outside will. He did not know that as he had been threatening shadows, something had come up behind him, stealthily opened the smashed door and slipped inside the room he had been set to guard.
Despite the pitch dark of the squalid room, the intruder picked his way with practised ease, only the faint swish of a cloak betraying his presence. Eyes, fiery and piercing like ruddy garnets, penetrated the darkness, dissecting at a glance the place where Kleiner had spent his terrible ordeal. Carefully the invader stalked towards the reeking pallet, like a panther on the prowl. A dark heap, indistinct and almost formless in the gloom, sprawled across the rag-strewn mess of soiled hay and greasy brown stains.
The vile reek was familiar to the strange visitor, just as it had been to Theodor Baer when he had made out his report. It was the same smell of death and corruption that had pervaded the carcass of the dog. But it was not the wreckage of a dog that dripped from the rags and hay. The few bones, the few scraps of flesh and organ that had not ruptured and corroded told the observer that what he gazed upon had lately been a man.
Gloved hands whispered in the darkness, reaching beneath heavy folds of grey cloth to produce two objects. The first was a small glass vial with a topper of cold-wrought iron. The second was a thin copper device, like a knitting pin but hinged at its tip to form something resembling the bill of a gull. Holding the vial firmly in one hand, the intruder leaned above the pallet and prodded among the grisly ruin of what had once been the smuggler Kleiner. After a few seconds of picking about the slimy mush, the hooked bill closed about something fat and elongated, almost resembling one of the dead man’s fingers but for its ghastly green-black colour and bloated, wormy shape.
The grisly maggot hung lifelessly from the pincers as the intruder lifted it to the neck of the vial and quickly nudged it inside. The thing had never truly been alive, but there was a chance that its motive power had not yet been entirely spent, a chance that the man in the darkened room did not want to risk. He knew what manner of death had struck here, what terrible corruption had been passed on into the dog Theodor had killed.
It was not that mystery that caused the visitor to linger in the squalid hovel, his penetrating gaze inspecting every nook and crack in walls and floor. He knew what kind of death stalked the streets of Altdorf. What he did not know was why and how it had been brought into the city.
Those questions remained a puzzle to the intruder when, just before the morning sun began to rise, he made his silent departure. There was no need to again ensorcel the senses of Jakob Helmer when he made his exit; the watchman had been asleep at his post for some hours when the intruder left.
In that respect, Jakob was much like the city at large; asleep and unaware of the horror that threatened them all.
It was as well that the city was unaware. Knowledge would bring panic, panic would bring confusion and confusion would bring disorder. Altdorf could not afford such unrest, not when her enemies were so many and so near.
Now that his master had examined what he had found, Theodor Baer would be free to destroy the evidence of how Kleiner had died. The secret would be kept and the ignorance of Altdorf’s teeming masses would be maintained.
For how long it could be maintained was a question for which the cloaked figure that vanished in the predawn streets had no answer.
CHAPTER SIX
The Wizard and the Monster
Grey Seer Thanquol stood within the cavernous warren, perched atop a lump of stone, overseeing the frantic efforts of his underlings as they scoured the floor of the abandoned cave. Their objective was to gather small slivers of blackish green stone, the tiniest of fragments of the missing Wormstone. These toxic flakes were scattered throughout the warren, forcing the skaven to scour every nook, dig under every bone, in their search. The effort was made all the more complicated by the warp bat’s refusal to have anything to do with the unnatural debris, anxiously cringing beneath the legs of its beastmaster every time an effort was made to include it in the hunt. After a time, even Thanquol gave up trying to induce the animal to cooperate. If it wasn’t so valuable and if he didn’t need the goodwill of Clan Moulder, he would have ordered his stormvermin to gut the rebellious vermin.
None of the scouts sent by Clan Eshin had survived the skirmish and assassination attempt, though they had taken most of the Clan Pestilens contingent with them. Chantor Pusskab was among the casualties, a skaven dagger nestled in his chest, whatever strange revelation he had wanted to impart to the grey seer locked on dead lips. The knife in Pusskab’s chest looked terribly familiar to Thanquol and he felt uncomfortable when he recalled the throwing knife that had missed him and the death squeak that had followed when the weapon struck a very different target.
Pusskab and several of the other plague monks had been gathering strange wormy growths from the floor of the cavern. The things had a weird, pungent smell that reminded Thanquol equally of warpstone and sewage. Even so, the plague monks had thought the things important enough to collect, so Thanquol bit down on his squeamishness and ordered Kratch to gather them together. Kratch wasn’t overly pleased by the task, quickly bullying some Clan Skaul clanrats into doing the work. The studious way Kratch avoided touching any of the dried, crumbly worms was not lost on Thanquol. Anything his apprentice avoided coming into contact with was worth keeping in mind. Later, when there were not so many listening ears, he’d have some questions to put to Kratch about the Wormstone and Skabritt’s ill-fated expedition.
The fate of the Wormstone itself was soon explained. Some of the Clan Skaul contingent found faint prints in the dust of the floor; the marks of boots. Humans had been here and, judging by the depth of some of the tracks when they had departed, they had taken something very heavy away with them. Of all the clans, Skaul and Eshin had the greatest contact with the human nest above Under-Altdorf. Knowing the disfavour and distrust with which Thanquol now regarded Clan Eshin, Clan Skaul was quick to offer its services tracking down the errant humans. Their spokesman, an old crook-backed spy named Skrim Gnawtail, promised that Skaul’s network of informants, partners and pets among the humans of Altdorf would quickly locate the men the grey seer needed to find. With Thanquol’s blessing, Skrim Gnawtail sent one of his younger, spryer subordinates to make contact with Skaul’s agents on the surface. Thanquol watched the wiry skaven scurry from the warren, rushing down the black passageway beyond.
“These shards,” Viskitt Burnfang was saying, one of the flakes of stone gripped in his iron-sheathed hand. “They are strange. I should like to examine them further.”
Thanquol looked at the warlock engineer, studying his posture and scent for any mark of deceit. He was perfectly willing to allow the warlock engineer to suffer the hazards and labour of experimenting with the Wormstone residue. He was less than willing to let such discoveries slip into the paws of Clan Skryre. He gave Burnfang a threatening smile of fangs. “Perhaps we could study it together,” he told the warlock engineer, lifting his head to remind Burnfang of his superior authority. There was no reaso
n not to allow Burnfang to do all the work. He could always suffer an accident before any report could find its way back to Warplord Quilisk.
Before Thanquol could make more detailed ideas about how to exploit Burnfang’s skills without risk, a sharp squeal of terror rose from the passageway behind him. The grey seer spun about, his eyes going wide as he saw an enormous creature waddling out of the darkness. Its scent was sickly, a foul mixture of decay and disease laced with, yes, a suggestion of warpstone. The reek of fresh blood—skaven blood—was heavy about the monster, stemming from the ugly smear splashed across its massive jaws.
Gigantic, rat-like, its foul eyes gleaming with hunger and madness, the rat-beast crept slowly forwards, a rope of bloody drool spilling from its fanged mouth.
“Rat-beast still live-live!” Kratch’s panicked shriek echoed through the cavern. The adept dived behind a pile of bones, spurting the musk of fear. Thanquol watched the display of terror. The private discussion about what exactly had happened to Skabritt was going to be very interesting.
The rat-beast growled in response to Kratch’s scream. It shook dirt from its mangy pelt and loudly sniffed at the air. Its claws crunched against the floor as it continued to creep forward.
Thanquol hopped down from his perch and started to back away. He smelled the horror in the scent of his underlings, disturbed to see them retreating even more rapidly. The grey seer forced himself to stand his ground, straightening his posture and raising his head. He glared at his minions, showing his fangs. Angrily he pointed at the slowly advancing monster. “Kill-kill!” he snarled.
The command didn’t seem to impress his underlings. When the rat-beast suddenly swung its huge head around and bit through a Clan Skaul ratman trying to sneak past it, many of them began to squirt their own fear-smell. Thanquol ground his fangs together. The craven filth! Their cowardice was threatening his own welfare! He closed his eyes, drawing upon some of the divine power of the Horned Rat. A leprous glow began to gather around the metal head of his staff.
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