01 - Grey Seer

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

  The display of Thanquol’s sorcery turned the crisis. His underlings had seen a recent and dramatic display of the grey seer’s awful power. They knew the havoc and carnage he could visit upon them with his magic. Thanquol gloated as the warriors of Clan Mors and Clan Skab began to form up into ragged ranks, as the armed clanrats of Skryre began to scurry and creep into positions from which they could employ their ghastly weapons. It did not matter if they feared the rat-beast. All that mattered was they feared Thanquol more!

  The muster of the ratkin was not lost upon the rat-beast’s feral brain. The monster roared as it saw the warriors form into ranks, then it was charging across the cavern, a pounding surging mass of crushing bestial fury. The beast smashed into the warriors of Clan Mors, battering them with the violence of an earthquake. Broken bodies were flung into the air as the beast ravaged the ranks of the warriors, oblivious to the swords and spears stabbing into its polluted flesh. Squeaks of terror and cries of mortal agony rose from the brutalised rat-men, filling the abandoned warren with a fearful clamour. The stink of fear was drowned out by the reek of spilled blood and ruptured bodies.

  Thanquol swung about. The rat-beast’s charge had moved it away from the passage; the one exit from the cavern. Snapping quick orders to those around him, Thanquol led a quick retreat, careful to keep his white-furred bodyguards between himself and the rampaging beast. Other skaven were quick to join the exodus, abundantly content to leave the warriors of Clan Mors to distract the monster.

  Thanquol led his minions across the cavern, the crunching of bones and the shredding of flesh echoing behind them. It was wisdom, not cowardice, to avoid a senseless fight with a mindless monster. It was more important that he bring his discoveries back to Under-Altdorf than risk himself destroying some brainless brute lurking in a forgotten warren that had been abandoned generations ago. His subordinates would support his position. At least those who made it out would.

  Thanquol looked back to see the rat-beast feasting on the fallen warriors. It was a gruesome, hideous sight that made the grey seer’s glands clench.

  While he watched the monster feed, Thanquol saw something leap up from the floor and begin a mad dash for the tunnel. It was Kratch, abandoning his improvised refuge, scent dripping down his legs. The rat-beast noticed the adept’s sudden movement. With live prey to pursue, the monster ignored the carrion crushed beneath its paws. Growling, the brute lunged after the scurrying Kratch.

  A timely tumble spared Kratch from the beast’s lunge. Sprawled across the floor, Kratch cowered as the monster’s bulk swept through the air above him. Thanquol snickered when he saw his apprentice’s dilemma, but his amusement quickly died when the rat-beast’s pounce carried it past the prone adept. Landing past its intended prey, the beast did not bother to look around for Kratch. Instead its beady eyes focused on the skaven fleeing into the tunnel.

  It was just like Kratch to treacherously refuse to allow himself to be eaten so his betters could escape.

  Thanquol shoved Burnfang out of his way as he resumed his headlong flight down the passage. The white stormvermin kept pace with him, using their halberds to batter and smash any skaven in their way. Behind him, Thanquol could hear the shrieks of ratmen as the beast ploughed into them, crunching their bodies against the earthen walls. The grey seer risked a look back, horrified to see the rat-beast rushing down the passage only a few yards away. He fumbled at his robe, paws closing around another piece of warpstone. Despite the immense danger of drawing upon such power again so soon, Thanquol was determined it was better than being chewed by a giant monster.

  Burnfang’s shrill voice squeaked above the roar of the monster and the screams of mangled skaven. Thanquol did not catch the warlock engineer’s words, but one of his guards did. Seizing the grey seer by the waist, the stormvermin crushed their charge to the floor. Thanquol spit dirt from his mouth, about to snarl an outraged protest when a chemical smell filled the tunnel. With a whoosh, the gloom of the passage was annihilated by a surge of dripping flame; the liquid fire of a warpfire thrower. Skaven shrieked as the flame licked at their bodies, searing through flesh and fur to gnaw the bone beneath. At the front of the tunnel, a Clan Skryre weapon team stood its ground, their slick oiled smocks resisting the back-spray from their weapon. They played the flame across the tunnel, heedless of whether the fire struck skaven or beast, their sadistic laughter ringing out.

  Laughter turned to screams as the monster came racing down the tunnel, its side engulfed in flame. Agonised, maddened, the rat-beast charged the source of the fire rather than fleeing it. The brute’s mass smashed into the weapon team, dashing both of the ratmen against the walls. The burning monster did not pause to finish its foes but continued on, rushing down the winding tunnels. Moments later, Thanquol could hear a faint splash as the scorched creature dived into the stagnant muck of the human sewer system beyond the skaven tunnels.

  The grey seer pushed the clinging arms of his bodyguards from him and lifted himself to his feet. Brushing dust from his robes, Thanquol dispassionately surveyed the carnage in the tunnel, mangled and broken skaven picking themselves from the smoking wreckage of their fellows. He ground his fangs together as he saw Kratch stepping gingerly through the gory mess.

  “I think you forgot to tell me a few things,” Thanquol hissed as his apprentice came closer. Kratch started to stammer out some sort of excuse, but Thanquol was in no mind to hear his lies. A quick smash of his staff into the adept’s gut crumpled Kratch in a gasping heap on the ground.

  Feeling much better, Thanquol started to see what was still alive enough to be salvaged from the ruins.

  “You can trust me, Maus, no less an authority than Dr. Loew confirmed it’s wyrdstone.”

  Kempf stood within a cluttered curio shop, surrounded by shelves bulging with pieces of rusty armour, notched blades, mouldy garments decades out of fashion, cracked pots, dented tankards and the leering bosom of an old ship’s figurehead. The building was less store than it was rat run, narrow little aisles winding their way through heaps of old junk and almost-trash. One glance at the motley collection, the gathered hoard of a pack rat rather than the wares of a merchant, the observer might be forgiven for cultivating a belief that the proprietor would buy nearly anything brought into his shop.

  It was a calculated deception, for the owner of the shop was notorious for his shrewd business sense and miserly soul. Bitter and sharp, Hopfoot the Maus was far from the happy, hedonistic halflings of the Moot. Frugal to the point of deprivation, as judgemental as the warden of the Reiksfang, as vicious-minded as a goblin warchief, many stories and rumours circulated about the waterfront regarding Hopfoot’s past. The halfling’s twisted leg was blamed on everything from an extreme case of orcish shingles to a bad fall when he pulled himself out of a giant’s cook-pot. The reasons for his exile from Mootland were even more speculative. Some said he’d murdered his father to claim an inheritance and had been forced to flee with the field-wardens hot on his hairy heels. Others said he’d committed the unforgivable crime of stealing recipes from the Baker’s Guild and had been tarred and feathered before being run out of the Moot on a rail. Whatever the true stories, Hopfoot kept them as close to his chest as the tiered ring of money belts that hugged his plump frame.

  The halfling was fingering one of those belts as he eyed the green-black shard the smuggler had placed on the teakwood counter. There was a foxy, suspicious gleam in his eyes as he lifted his head and squinted at Kempf. “If Loew thinks this stuff is wyrdstone, why don’t you sell it to him?”

  Kempf chuckled. “He’s an alchemist, you’re a fence. You have more ready money than he does.”

  Hopfoot patted the steel barrel of an enormous blunderbuss, its mouth looking wide enough to swallow the Emperor’s Palace. It was one of many such weapons secreted about the confusing jumble of the curio shop. In the past, enterprising burglars had thought the diminutive fence would make an easy mark. It was said the halfling had sold their bodies to the medical c
atechists at the university. Their clothes would be some of those quietly decaying on the dusty shelves.

  “I have more money because I am careful with it,” Hopfoot warned. “Not all thieves use their hands. The clever ones try to use their tongues.” The fence’s voice dropped to a sinister snarl. “You aren’t clever, now, are you?”

  “Don’t threaten me, Maus!” Kempf snapped, reaching out to retrieve the stone shard. The halfling’s nimble hands quickly pulled it from the man’s reach. “I can just as easily sell it to Loew.”

  Hopfoot grinned, fingering his jewelled money belts again. “You are a terrible liar, Kempf. If you were going to sell to Loew, you wouldn’t have come here. Besides, as you so eloquently observed, I have more money at hand for such expenditures.” The halfling stared at the greenish rock again. “Tell me, why don’t you want to sell to Loew? Worried that he might have spoken with Gustav Volk?”

  “Volk doesn’t concern you, Maus,” Kempf stated, reaching for the shard again. The halfling leaned away from his clutching hand.

  “He’s looking for you, you know,” Hopfoot said. “You and all your friends. Offering a tidy sum too.” The fence made a placating gesture with his hand. “I buy and sell goods, not information. Ask around, anyone will tell you that Hopfoot’s memory is absolutely awful.” The halfling’s smile broadened. “But maybe it isn’t Volk who you are hoping to avoid. Does Hans know you’re making a side deal?”

  “For a fellow with a bad memory, you’ve got an ugly tongue,” Kempf growled. Before he could move, Hopfoot had his arms around the blunderbuss, raising it menacingly above the counter.

  “Let’s keep things professional, shall we? Any transaction we agree to stays between the two of us. Discretion is, after all, the heart of good business.” The halfling set down the wide-mouthed gun and picked up a stick of lead from the counter. Writing on a strip of water-stained parchment, he began to make calculations. After a few moments, he set down the lead and pushed what he had written towards Kempf. “I trust you can read numbers if not letters.”

  Kempf’s face grew flush, his fingers crumpling the parchment. “What are you playing at, Maus? This isn’t even half what Dr. Loew would pay for a good piece of wyrdstone like that!”

  “Then see Dr. Loew. Or maybe talk to the Dietrichs about your little side-deals. How much of the stuff have you skimmed already, I wonder? Enough to make Volk the least of your problems?”

  “Stop baiting me, you poisonous little toad!”

  Hopfoot’s smile dropped into a thin, friendless sneer. “I’m just making certain we understand one another. Discretion, after all, doesn’t come cheap. Think of it as an added custom or duty. A bit less profit for you, and Hopfoot’s memory remains as bad as the roads in Stirland. Nobody needs to know you ever came here… or why.”

  Glowering at the fence, Kempf gave a reluctant nod. Hopfoot opened one of the pouches on a money belt and began counting out silver coins. The smuggler watched the little stack of silver rise, all but drooling over the piled money. Absently, he began to scratch at his arms, twitching as he did so. The fence noticed the motion and he gave Kempf a knowing look.

  “How long has it been since you visited Otto Ali?” Hopfoot’s smile grew back into its former broadness when he saw the alarm seize Kempf’s features. “Don’t worry. If I can’t remember where you were, I can’t very well know where you are going if anyone asks.”

  The halfling laughed as Kempf quickly grabbed the fistful of coins and darted down the cramped aisles of his shop. “Come again,” Hopfoot called after the smuggler. He heard the little bell fastened to the door jingle as the man retreated into the street. He stared back at the green stone in his hand, laughing to himself as he considered how much he could sell it for.

  “Always a pleasure to help those in need of discretion.”

  Grey Seer Thanquol stalked through the cramped streets of Under-Altdorf, his albino stormvermin clearing a path for him through the press of mangy, furry bodies. The streets of Under-Altdorf, like those of any skaven warren, were narrow and winding, designed so that those who scurried along them could feel the reassuring presence of solid earth against their whiskers. Stenches and smells inundated the priest-sorcerer, an almost overwhelming stink of musks and scents. Here in the market skrawl of Under-Altdorf, every few feet of tunnel bore the musk of a different individual as merchants and tradesrats marked their shops and stalls. Dingy signs, often no more than a rag drenched in the odour of the proprietor’s wares, stabbed out from the tunnel walls, denoting some little wooden stall or the sunken entrance to a more permanent establishment. Large banners hung over the entrances to side-tunnels and connecting passageways proclaiming the clan affiliations of those merchants to be found in that stretch of the market. Sometimes, though rarely, Thanquol even saw signs bearing the scratch-marks of written Queekish, though literacy was considered something of an unattainable extravagance by much of the teeming masses that scurried through the marketplace.

  Thanquol patted the heavy bag he bore and his tail twitched in satisfaction. He had turned the fiasco in the old warren of Clan Mawrl into a victory, one that only a skaven of his keen and discerning intellect could have achieved. Playing one clan against the other, he had been quick to accuse each of being behind the plot to assassinate him. Thanquol was not sure he believed Skrattch Skarpaw’s insistence that if Clan Eshin had wanted the grey seer dead they would never have been foolish enough to use their own ratmen to accomplish the deed, but it made for a most effective argument to keep the other clans nervous and jumping at shadows. Each had been most eager to show their loyalty to Thanquol and, more importantly, the Lords of Decay in Skavenblight, by lavishing the grey seer in gifts and promises.

  They could keep the promises. Thanquol might not be convinced of Skarpaw’s innocence, but he was far from satisfied that none of the others were guilty. He included Grey Seer Thratquee in that suspect group. The old villain was probably just impatient enough to try and kill Thanquol even before the Wormstone was in their paws! Thanquol wasn’t about to accept further reinforcements from the clan leaders. The remains of his first retinue, those who had survived the attacks of the assassins and the rat-beast, were enough for his purposes, and more importantly could be reasonably assumed not to have been involved in the plot to kill him. They didn’t smell of treachery, or at least Thanquol could try to convince himself they didn’t. If they thought he trusted them, they’d let their guard down and be easier to watch.

  Gifts, however, had been much more welcome. Each of the clans had tried to outdo the others in financing Thanquol’s changed mission. A small fortune in warpstone tokens now rattled in the dwarfskin bag slung over his shoulder, enough to rebuild the fortune he had lost trying to pursue his foolish vendetta against that damnable slayer and his manling pet. There was even enough that he could spend part of it on what it was intended for without feeling the bite too keenly. It would certainly help him keep up appearances as far as the council was concerned.

  “Most merciful and wise master,” Kratch’s whining voice sounded from beside Thanquol. The grey seer turned to see his apprentice’s head bobbing submissively at his elbow. “Allow this wretched underling to relieve-carry your onerous burden.”

  Thanquol gave the adept an incredulous stare and clutched the bag tight against his chest.

  “When orcs fly,” the grey seer answered. Ever since they had left the council chambers, Kratch had been grovelling and snivelling, trying to get his paws on the swag Thanquol’s craft had won. The adept’s manipulations might be as transparent as a broken window, but his tenacity was becoming tedious. Of all the skaven the rat-beast had gulped down, how was it possible the nasty thing had missed Kratch? Surely it was some trial sent by the Horned Rat to test Thanquol. The only thing that gave him pause was the nagging doubt that he might still need his apprentice to identify the Wormstone when it was found.

  That and concocting an elaborate enough lie about Kratch’s future accident that the Council
of Thirteen would accept.

  Thanquol was pulled from the happy thought of several inventive and torturous ends for his apprentice by one of his albino guards. The hulking armoured skaven bowed before the grey seer, his posture bespeaking the new respect and fear both stormvermin had been displaying ever since his brutal destruction of the assassins. If Thanquol had even considered intimidation would work on the elite warriors, he’d have tried it long ago instead of bribery and deception.

  The white-furred stormvermin waited until Thanquol acknowledged him, then lifted a paw and pointed at the bright yellow and blue banner stretched across a nearby tunnel entrance. The rune scratched across its surface in what smelled like a particularly septic sort of blood proclaimed it as the demarcation for Clan Moulder’s section of Under-Altdorf’s skrawl market.

  Thanquol’s tail twitched and a feral gleam came to his eye. When he had told the council he did not need more ratmen to serve him, he had, of course, meant minions provided by the clans. If he was to master the Wormstone, he would need to experiment with the pitiful remnants recovered from Clan Mawrl’s abandoned warren. For that, he would need test subjects… many test subjects. The slavemasters of Clan Moulder and Clan Skaul had ample stocks of shackled wretches to be had for a few warpstone tokens. Clan Skaul specialised in human slaves, starveling drug-fiends abducted from the nest of humans above Under-Altdorf, the dregs and detritus of the largest concentration of humans in the Old World, the nameless and faceless who were barely missed by their fellows. Thanquol had already negotiated the purchase of a few score of these manlings to test the effects of the Wormstone upon. Before he returned to Skavenblight and presented a weapon before the Lords of Decay, it would be advisable to make sure it worked first.