01 - Grey Seer

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

  “Mighty claw of the Horned One,” Skrim whined, “this loyal-true servant has found one of the man-things that took-stole the Wormstone!”

  Thanquol spun about, giving Skrim his full attention, slaves and infections forgotten. A greedy gleam shone from Thanquol’s eyes. From habit, he drew the little ratskull box from his robe, tapping a bit of warpstone snuff into his paw. “Speak-squeak!” he repeated impatiently.

  “One of Clan Skaul’s business ventures is selling Black Dust to the foolish man-things in the over-city,” Skrim told the grey seer. “Our agent among the humans is name-scent Otto Ali. The man-thing runs a dust-den where other man-things come to breathe the poison.”

  “They pay to be sick?” Thanquol asked, incredulously. He knew that the humans were insane, from their concepts of “self-sacrifice” to their unintelligent devotion to offspring and birthkin. They even treated their breeders as something more than brutish property to be used and forgotten. But to deliberately inhale Black Dust, the poisonous residue of warpstone refinement, was such an excessive display of stupidity that he had a hard time believing it.

  “Yes-yes,” insisted Skrim, bobbing his head up and down. “They pay much-much! Do anything to breathe the dust again!” The crook-backed ratman’s voice faded into chittering laughter. “Clan Skaul use dust-addicts much-much!”

  Thanquol took a pinch of snuff and drew it into his nostrils. Such contemptible weakness was only to be expected from the man-things, further proof, if any was needed, that the skaven were the only fit rulers of the world. Clan Skaul had used the weak nature of the man-things to swell their own power, gaining a clawhold in Under-Altdorf that was almost the equal of the greater clans through their network of drug addict dupes and tools. It was such a sneaky ploy, Thanquol was tempted to admire it. At the moment, however, he only wanted to know how it helped him find the Wormstone.

  “A man-thing addicted to dust came into the warren of Otto Ali,” explained Skrim. The ratman tapped his snout. “He smell-scent of Clan Mawrl warpstone.”

  Thanquol clapped his paws together, tail twitching in excitement. “The man-thing is being held-kept?”

  “No-no, great and terrible priest-master,” Skrim said. “The man-thing was allowed to leave.” He saw the fury start to rise in Thanquol’s eyes and hurried to elaborate.

  “The man-thing might be suspicious-wary if he was kept longer. His dust-hunger is much-much. He will be back. Soon-soon.”

  “Good,” Thanquol snarled. “When the man-thing comes back, I will see-smell him for myself. If he leads me to the Wormstone, you will be rewarded. If not…”

  Thanquol didn’t describe what would happen if Skrim’s discovery didn’t pan out. Sometimes it was enough to let an underling imagine his own punishment.

  “Stop fussing over me, Johann,” Hans growled for what seemed the hundredth time. This time a fit of coughing didn’t spoil his insistence that he was alright.

  Ensconced within one of the finest rooms in the Crown and Two Chairmen, the smuggler had spent the last two days virtually bedridden, plagued by fits of coughing and the interminable scratching. He made for an amusing sight; the hardened dockland rogue who had boldly defied Gustav Volk and the Vesper Klasst organisation, now partially sunken into an overstuffed mattress of dainty pastels and frilly lace. At least Hans would have made for an amusing sight if it weren’t for his deathly pallor and the hollowness of his cheeks.

  The remaining members of his band, minus the still missing Kempf, were gathered around the bed like mourners at a wake, their expressions as grave as that of a dwarf told the beer had ran out. His brother’s expression was the dourest of them all. Johann had heard rumours about Kleiner being very ill before the watch had come for him. The big man might have caught nearly anything down in the sewers. And he might have shared his affliction with Hans before Baer came calling on him.

  Hans seemed to read his brother’s thoughts. He gave Johann what was supposed to be a cheery smile. The effect was rather spoiled by the anaemic condition of his face. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just a bit tired is all. Too many late nights,” he added with a lascivious wink.

  The woman perched at the end of the bed made a loud harrumph at the comment and rolled her eyes. Argula Cranach was blonde, buxom and built like an Amazon. Her looks were on the harsh side, not quite manly but neither the appearance of a Detlef Sierck heroine. She reminded Johann of statues he had seen of the warrior goddess Myrmidia. Her cheeks were brightly painted, her face thickly powdered as she tried to hide too many years of hard living and ill repute. Even so, as Johann considered it, she was a damn sight too decent to be entangled with his manipulative sibling. As part owner of the Crown and Two Chairmen, and sole proprietor of the tavern’s upstairs brothel, she was a damn sight closer to being legitimate than Hans. And for all her shrewdness in business, she was as naive and helpless as a Shallyan nun when it came to matters of the heart.

  Argula and Hans enjoyed an on-again, off-again relationship. That is, Hans enjoyed it while Argula simply suffered through the storm. When Hans was flush, when his luck was high and his pockets full, Argula and her tavern were the last places he wanted to see. When things were bad, when the watch was hounding him or the loan sharks looking to break his legs, Hans always turned to Argula for help. Like an idiot, she always took him in, hiding him until things cooled down. Then Hans would be off again, leaving a mouthful of empty promises and false hopes behind. Johann always felt the woman would be better off taking in some back-alley cur.

  Of course, under the current circumstances, Johann had to admit the masochistic relationship was like a gift from Ranald. In need of a new hideout, the Crown and Two Chairmen was about the best the smugglers could ask for, even if the girls were remaining staunch in their policy of not extending further credit to the men. Argula tended Hans with the doting affection of a mother hen, worrying about his health even more than Johann. It had been by her suggestion that Johann and the others had come into the madam’s boudoir to see for themselves their leader’s condition.

  It was anything but reassuring.

  “Late nights!” she scoffed, adjusting her bodice. The garment clung to her ample frame so tightly, Johann wondered if she knew some trick to keep from breathing. “For which of us, Hans? You coughing your lungs into my hair or me trying to sleep through the racket?”

  “Now don’t be coy, my love,” Hans scolded her. His lewd smirk vanished in a fit of coughing. Argula rushed to coddle the smuggler, crushing him to her breast and trying to massage his back at the same time.

  “I understand you have a surgeon on the premises?” Johann said, intruding upon the scene. “Perhaps it is time we sent for him?”

  Argula turned her head, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Gustaf? That swine? The only thing Gustaf Schlecht is able to handle is sewing up holes in the bouncers after a rowdy night and helping the girls with… indelicate problems! I won’t have that butcher touching my sweet Hansel!”

  Hans grimaced as Argula used the diminutive name, but soon he was more concerned with an even worse fit of coughing. The liquid that spilled from his mouth was green and bilious, smelling like raw sewage that had sat out in the sun for a week. Mueller grabbed at his nose and hurried to open the room’s window.

  “Argula, we can’t help him,” insisted Johann. “Much as we’d like to, we just don’t know how.”

  Argula closed her eyes, rocking Hans slowly back and forth in her arms. A hard woman, she was trying her best to fight back a show of feminine weakness. Johann saw the tears anyway. He turned away from the woman, joining the other smugglers beside the open window. Next to the stench of whatever Hans had coughed up, even the smell of the streets was refreshing. Johann tapped his fingers against the window sill, his mind lost in thought. From below the racket of drunken university students, the clatter of carts, and the shrill voice of a street-corner activist declaiming the evils of Bretonnian brandy rose to invade the room. Trust the crack-pot agitator to choose the corn
er outside the tavern for his soapbox!

  “He needs a physician,” Johann told his comrades.

  “You heard Argula,” Wilhelm said. “She won’t let this man Schlecht anywhere near Hans.”

  Johann clenched his fist. “Then we’ll need to get someone else is all,” he growled.

  “Someone else?” Mueller scoffed. “You expect doctors to just come dropping out of every harlot’s bed in the place?”

  “I’ll have to go out and fetch one,” Johann said.

  Mueller shook his head, his one good eye narrowing into a squint. “Look, I know he’s your brother and all, but use your head man! Where do you think Kempf is? The watch might have done for Kleiner, but I’d wager my bottom teeth Kempf is spilling his guts to Volk as we speak. Anybody sees you on the street, it’s all of our necks!”

  Johann glowered at Mueller, then favoured Wilhelm with the same challenging look. “Try to stop me, and you won’t have to worry about Volk.” The two men backed away. They knew only too well Johann’s skill with the blade. Together they might be able to take him at such close quarters, but one of them wouldn’t walk away to brag about it. Neither of the smugglers wanted to chance being the unlucky one.

  Johann marched to the door. He paused on the threshold. “Keep an eye on things, Argula,” he said, giving a meaningful look to his skulking companions by the window. “I’ll be back soon with a real physician for Hans.”

  There was nothing else to be said and Johann wasn’t of a mind to waste more time questioning the wisdom of what he was doing. Rapidly, before common sense could really start to nag at his conscience, Johann descended the carpeted stairway that connected brothel and bar, navigating his way through perfumed whores and eager university students. He was through the tavern almost as soon as his feet left the bottom step, pushing his way out the bat-wing doors and into the foggy streets of Altdorf.

  He paused for only an instant outside the tavern, trying to get his bearings. A soft voice beside him brought Johann spinning around, his sword in his hand. A small, shivering man backed away, pamphlets falling from his hands as he tried to display his lack of weaponry and malice.

  “Peace, good sir,” the little man said. Johann recognised the voice as that of the agitator who had been making speeches outside the tavern. “I mean no offence. I am quite harmless, I assure you.”

  “Then what do you want?” Johann demanded, his sword remaining poised to ran the agitator through.

  “I am Ludwig Rothfels,” the agitator introduced himself, “a prophet of the streets, wise in the ways of…”

  “Cut to the chase before something else gets cut.”

  Rothfels smiled nervously. “Quite so, quite so. I understand your brother is sick and you are in need of a physician.”

  Johann took a step towards Rothfels, ready to run the man through right then and there. Then he remembered the open window. It was possible the little sneak had heard the smugglers’ discussion by mere chance. It was, of course, equally possible he was one of Volk’s informants.

  Sweating, Rothfels seized Johann’s moment of delay. “For a small gratuity, good sir, say three pieces of silver, I could bring a healer back to this… establishment. I could do this far more quickly than you could, for, you see, I happen to know of a healer who will come here like that,” Rothfels paused and snapped his fingers, “should I ask her to.”

  “Her?” Johann asked, suspicion in his voice.

  “Er… yes, good sir,” Rothfels stammered. “You see, I don’t know any physicians, but there is a priestess of Shallya who shares a… mutual acquaintance. The ties that bind us are quite strong, I assure you. If I ask a favour of her, she will feel honour bound to come.”

  “A Shallyan priestess?” Johann scoffed.

  “Do not mock the powers of the gods!” Rothfels replied, deliberately mistaking the reason for Johann’s doubt. “Shallya has been ministering to the sick and wounded long before these book-smart quacks started meddling with things!”

  Something about the agitator’s tone made Johann decide the man was on the level, or at least running an honest hustle. “All right, little man,” he said, fishing a pair of silver coins from his pocket. “I’ll play your game. Bring your priestess. If you can have her here before I find a physician, I might even give you the other coin you asked for.”

  Ludwig snatched the coins from Johann’s open hand. Sketching a hasty bow, he hurried off through the fog. He had to make a report to the master and pass word to Sister Kliefoth. Ludwig was quite pleased with himself. He had not only verified that the Dietrich brothers had returned to their old haunt, but had also arranged matters so that another of the master’s servants would be able to keep tabs on the smugglers from within their own hideout!

  Kempf was sprawled in one of Otto Ali’s rickety bunks, a clay pipe dangling from his numbed lips. The smuggler had lasted only a few days before he started to feel the urge to return to the drug parlour. He’d been forced to return to the cellar of the Orc and Axe, using care and caution to elude any watchers Gustav Volk might have posted around the tavern. Another shard of wyrdstone broken off from the rock hidden in the barrel of vinegar, another visit to Hopfoot the Maus, and Kempf was ready to “chase the dragon” once more.

  Otto Ali had been more friendly than the last time Kempf had come to him, even going so far as to admit him into one of the small private alcoves normally reserved for guild masters and aristocrats, the prestigious patrons of the den who could not afford to be seen in such places.

  The black dust tasted as sweet as before, filling every pore of Kempf’s body as he drew it into his lungs. The dingy surroundings, the tattered curtain that separated the alcove from the main room of the parlour, all these faded into a soft blur as the smuggler’s senses were drowned beneath a tide of intoxicating warmth and kaleidoscopic swirls. Kempf’s squalid reality vanished as his mind was sent soaring. When the curtain was pulled aside and Otto Ali crept into the alcove, it was more unreal to Kempf than a dream.

  “He has taken the dust,” Otto Ali said, his voice shaking with nervousness, sweat beading his swarthy brow.

  Another figure stalked into the room, something so wild and weird that even in the midst of his dust-dream, Kempf managed a laugh of disbelief. It was a big rat dressed in a ragged grey robe, a bogey from nursery rhymes, one of the underfolk. To add to the unreality, the ratman sported immense curling horns and a long staff tipped with a strange metal icon. Kempf began to giggle, wondering if the thing had come for him because he had sucked his fingers as a boy. Then he lost interest in the weird figure, abandoning himself to the colours of dream.

  Thanquol leered at the sprawled figure of the addict, sniffing at the man’s hands and hair. A cruel smile spread on the grey seer’s face. Skrim was right, this wretch did smell of Wormstone. The question was, where had the filthy man-thing hidden it! Thanquol was tempted to claw the information out of the maggot, but he knew that in his present condition the man wouldn’t feel even the most vicious torture.

  “How long?” Thanquol snarled at the anxious operator of the drug den.

  “S… several hours,” Otto Ali answered, being careful not to smile or make eye contact with the horned ratman. In all his long years of dealing with the skaven, he had never encountered one that filled him with such terror as the imposing grey seer. Otto Ali knew the dangerous temper of the underfolk and wasn’t about to take any chances with a creature even Skrim Gnawtail feared.

  Thanquol bared his fangs, staring down at the smuggler. “Good-good,” he decided. “When the man-thing awakes, we will begin.”

  Otto Ali raised a hand to his throat, horrified by the menacing suggestiveness of Thanquol’s words.

  Suddenly, one of the addicts in the main parlour cried out. The scream was not unusual; many times the dreams of the pipe smokers were not pleasant. What was unusual were the shouts of Otto Ali’s guards that followed the outburst. Man and skaven tore aside the curtain and stormed into the drug den. At the same time,
the crash of steel against steel reached their ears.

  Thanquol’s eyes narrowed with suspicion even as his glands clenched in alarm. A dark figure was in the far corner of the room, fending off a half-dozen burly humans with a pair of notched black blades. The grey seer could smell the odour of skaven fur, but could not detect an individual scent. His alarm grew. Only one clan of skaven descented themselves: the assassins of Clan Eshin.

  Outnumbered, the assassin was still a blur of steel and black fur. His dark swords struck sparks from the blades of the guards when they didn’t slash into the flesh behind them. In the first instants of conflict, two of the humans were down, the others backing away in fear. As they withdrew, Thanquol was afforded a clear look at their attacker. The grey seer felt another spasm of fright. No simple assassin, but Skrattch Skarpaw himself! His very position as clan leader of Under-Altdorf’s branch of Clan Eshin made him the deadliest killer in the entire city!

  Thanquol grabbed a fistful of white fur, pulling the albino stormvermin he had left to watch the entrance of the alcove closer to himself. He would have liked to have brought Boneripper into the lair, but the rat ogre was simply too massive to fit. Certainly the absence of Boneripper had factored into Skarpaw’s decision to attack now.

  “Get the others! Quick-quick!” Thanquol snarled at Kratch. The apprentice nodded, but made no move to leave the cover he had found behind a wooden bunk. Thanquol ground his teeth at his minion’s cowardice, but soon had bigger problems to concern him. Skarpaw had heard the grey seer’s voice. The assassin spun, plunging one sword into a human’s gut, leaving the weapon sheathed in the dying man’s flesh. With his now empty paw, he drew three sharp metal disks from his ratskin tunic.

  Instinctively, Thanquol dragged the white stormvermin into the path of the assassin’s throwing stars. The skaven warrior’s body shivered and shook as the weapons slammed into him, their envenomed tips sending poison rushing through his veins. Thanquol tightened his hold on the living shield as he felt the body shiver and go limp. He snarled again for his minions to stop cowering behind cover and help him.