01 - Grey Seer

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

  “See-look!” the assassin crowed, pointing a claw at Kratch. “The traitor-priest’s apprentice! All-all is as I have true-told!”

  The creature Skarpaw addressed was such a ghastly-looking specimen that he made even the wretched ratmen carrying Kratch seem the picture of health. Bloated with corruption, his face lost beneath a mass of boils, his fur limited to green-tinged patches, the plague lord peered evilly from beneath the grimy folds of his hood.

  “Yessss,” the plague lord’s voice bubbled through a mouth almost barren of fangs. “You have true-told. This time.” One of the creature’s wasted hands pulled a little vial from a ratskin bag hanging from the rope that circled his waist. Almost absently, the plague lord dropped it at his feet. Skarpaw pounced after the vial, chasing after it as it bounced down the bricks towards the filthy water. Bloated plague rats, of the four-legged kind, scattered before his frantic pursuit. The plague monks laughed at the assassin’s terror, their voices sounding like a chorus of maggots. Skarpaw caught the vial just as it struck the water, his hand coated in green scum as he pressed the vessel to his lips and guzzled its contents with abandon.

  Lord Skrolk chortled at the pathetic spectacle. “Have no fear-fright, Skarpaw-slave. Lord Skrolk keep-honours his promise-squeak. You may wait ten bells before you must earn-beg more medicine.” The plague lord made the last word sound as though it held all the evil in the world within it. The other plague monks wrinkled their muzzles at the sound, muttering a wheezing chant that sounded like nothing so much as the buzzing of flies.

  Lord Skrolk pushed his way through his green-robed disciples, his rheumy eyes focused on Kratch. A flick of the plague lord’s scabby claw and the wretched creatures holding the adept set him down. They glared sullenly at Lord Skrolk, like so many abused curs fearing their master’s cruel whims. Another flick of the plague lord’s claw and the sickly ratmen retreated back through the scummy water, keeping just near enough to pounce on Kratch should the apprentice seer try to escape.

  “Thanquol’s lick-spit,” Skrolk said, fixing Kratch with his putrid gaze. The plague lord’s breath was like an over-ripe midden, making the adept gag. “You are fool-meat to spy-sneak for your master.” Skrolk’s lips pulled back, exposing the few blackened fangs still clinging to his gums. “Tell-speak, where is your master and what he has stolen?”

  Kratch found enough desperate courage to force words up his throat. “I-I serve not-not Thanquol thief-traitor! I-I am brother-under-the-fur to your most obscene eminence, father of decay and despair! Death to the traitor-meat! Death-suffer for Thanquol!” For emphasis, Kratch spat after pronouncing the name of his old mentor.

  Lord Skrolk simply stared at the snivelling apprentice, the snarl never leaving his diseased face. “I… Clan Pestilens desires the Wormstone,” Skrolk growled. “Arrogant Thanquol is no-no interest. Your revenge is no-no interest.”

  Skrolk waved his paw. One of the plague monks drew a rusty dagger from beneath his robes and started to descend the slope of the island. Kratch dropped to his knees, quivering in the cold filth of the flooded vault.

  “Mercy-pity, great doom-breeder, sire of a thousand poxes!” Kratch’s whines became even more rapid when he saw that flattery had done nothing to arrest the descent of his executioner. “Kratch can take mighty Lord Skrolk to what his former traitor-teacher has stolen!”

  Lord Skrolk’s face narrowed with suspicion, but he raised a paw, stopping the executioner’s descent. Kratch hurried to explain his meaning to the plague lord. “When I tried to save-protect the Wormstone from thieving Thanquol, I placed upon it my seer-sign.” Kratch gestured with his claws, giving some hint of the sorcerous symbol he had scratched into the rock. “I can see-scent my seer-sign wherever Thanquol-thief takes it.” The adept tapped the side of his head, indicating that his sense of the magical mark was something he sensed in his mind rather than a thing some skaven with better eyes or nose could hope to find.

  Skrolk’s snarl lessened by a fraction. He waved his scabby claw and the sickly ratmen came swarming forwards, seizing Kratch. Savagely they tore at him, ripping away his grey robes and leaving him naked and shivering before the island of plague monks. Skrolk waved his paw again and three plague monks climbed down the mass of bricks and mud, carrying with them the body of a fourth. Callously, they stripped the diseased carcass of its tattered green robe and threw it to Kratch. Instinctively, the adept caught the flung garment. He stifled the impulse to cast it aside, trying not to look too closely at it, or pay attention to the way the flea-ridden cloth seemed to crawl beneath his fingers.

  “Brother-under-the-fur,” Skrolk laughed. “Now you are brother-true. Reject false-words of seers and embrace true face of the Horned One! Bring Skrolk to the Wormstone, and you will be plague priest. Betray,” the word was nothing but a bestial snarl at the back of Skrolk’s throat, “and you become pus-bag.”

  Kratch followed Skrolk’s extended finger, cringing when he saw that the plague lord was pointing at the rotting, pseudo-dead things that had captured him. Hurriedly, Kratch started to don the filthy green robe, trying to give an impression of enthusiasm.

  Skarpaw crept forwards as the adept was dressing himself. “Thanquol will not give up the Wormstone without a fight. His magic is powerful-strong and his rat ogre is worth any fifty of your plague monks!”

  Lord Skrolk glared at the assassin. “I will deal with the seer’s corrupt sorcery,” his bubbling voice declared. Again, the plague lord made a gesture with his scabby paw. This time it was not the ratmen on the island who reacted to his command, but another group of plague monks gathered at a brick-lined archway across from the little tunnel Kratch had crawled through. At his gesture, the ratmen began pulling on heavy bronze chains, fighting to pull something into the dim light of the vault. Kratch froze and turned his head as he heard something huge sloshing through the water of a flooded sewer and into the vault. Skarpaw drew his wicked swords and dropped into a crouch of tense muscles and pounding heart. Skrolk simply grinned his black-toothed smile.

  “Pox and Nox will deal with Boneripper.”

  Grey Seer Thanquol inhaled a pinch of warpstone snuff and snickered as he studied the diagrams Skrim’s agents had stolen from one of Altdorf’s civic buildings. The skaven had stolen dozens of plans for everything from sewers to the Imperial Menagerie, and hundreds of worthless documents even the most addle-witted ratman should have been able to recognise as being useless, but it was this set of mouldy old parchment maps that best suited Thanquol’s grand vision.

  They were old, hundreds of generations old by the standards of the short-lived skaven. They had been drawn up by dwarf artisans in the distant times when the squabbling humans had warred amongst themselves and laid siege to one another each spring. The men of Altdorf had feared for their security, seeking to establish lines of supply that would withstand any attacker, no matter how large his army. The dwarf diagrams represented a solution to the city’s most pressing concern: a reliable supply of water independent of the River Reik. The burrowing beard-things had found an underground lake beneath the oldest part of the human city. Through a clever network of subterranean channels and pipes, the dwarfs had made the lake into a reservoir that could supply the entire city for an indefinite period. Fed by still deeper streams and rivers, the lake was an almost bottomless well to sate the thirst of the humans.

  It was also, Skrim reluctantly confirmed, the main source of fresh water for the skaven city of Under-Altdorf as well.

  Thanquol lashed his tail in amusement and rolled up the diagrams, stuffing them into his belt. The reservoir would be the perfect place to strike! In one fell swoop, he would poison the largest human settlement in the Empire and destroy the treacherous heretics of Under-Altdorf! Even the Lords of Decay would be forced to bow before the genius of such a masterful stroke. Thanquol rubbed his paws together, imagining the honours and rewards they would heap upon him.

  The grey seer rose from the claw-footed chair, some of its decaying velvet clinging to
his robes as he stood. Thanquol padded across the dusty wreckage of what had once been the townhouse’s study, Boneripper’s immense bulk plodding a respectful three paces behind him. He wrinkled his nose, sniffing the air, catching the faint odour of Wormstone. Following the sounds of activity, he descended to the ground floor of the town-house, creeping into what had been the front parlour.

  The room no longer bore even the echo of its former function. Under Burnfang’s frantic direction, it had been transformed into a workshop, every table in the abandoned townhouse pressed into service to support stone pestles and mortars. The warlock engineer’s minions worked at a frenzied pace, their snouts lost behind masks of rat-gut and leather, their hands covered in what looked like oversized mittens. The workers laboured at their pestles, grinding slivers of Wormstone down into a fine grit of poison. The grit, in turn, was poured into wine bottles looted from the cellar of the townhouse. Fabulously rare and priceless vintages had been callously spilled across the floor as the ratmen emptied the bottles in preparation for receiving far more sinister contents.

  Thanquol grinned as he watched his underlings work. Soon they would pulverise the last of the Wormstone. Soon they would be ready to strike! Then none would dare defy the might and power of Grey Seer Thanquol! From the spires of Skavenblight to the lowest rat-burrow, all the Under-Empire would grovel before the fury of Thanquol!

  Watching his minions work but taking small notice of their actual labours, Thanquol didn’t notice Viskitt Burnfang quietly pour a small measure of crushed Wormstone into a little glass sphere, nor observe the warlock engineer carefully set the sphere inside one of his many belt pouches.

  Burnfang glanced up at the grey seer and struggled to hide his snarl of contempt. The time would soon come to disabuse Thanquol of his arrogance.

  Deep beneath the streets of Altdorf, something stirred in the darkness. Powerful nostrils flared, sniffing at the air. Thousands of scents and smells raced through the tiny brain of the beast, each quickly dismissed and discarded. From all the myriad odours of the city, from the countless stenches of its sewers to the innumerable smells of its markets and thoroughfares, the sensitive nose picked out the one scent that had aroused its interest, the scent that had twice drawn it up from the black underworld and into the city above.

  The rat-beast rose from its haunches, filthy sewer water dripping from its scalded hide. The clammy chill of the noxious canal soothed its oozing wounds, the muck of the brick-lined channel cooling its burnt flesh. The monster was loath to abandon its refuge, but the intoxicating scent of the Wormstone pulled at its primitive senses, drawing it like a moth to a flame. It chattered angrily to itself, despising this impulse it could neither understand nor control.

  Slowly, the rat-beast began to lope through the dank tunnels of Altdorf’s sewers, its keen nose trained on the guiding scent of its poisonous quarry, following the scent with the unerring precision of a lodestone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Gone to Ground

  “What happens now?”

  The question lingered in the little back room of the Black Bat, almost as though by being spoken, it had assumed life and substance of its own. The echoes seemed to seep into the soot-stained plaster walls, to crawl into the scarred timber benches and heavy oak table. The uncertain tone recoiled from the stone-lined fireplace, repulsed by the cold breeze whistling down the chimney.

  Johann Dietrich’s companions shared a grim, forbidding look. It had taken three of them to keep him from rushing to the Crown and Two Chairmen to save his brother from Gustav Volk’s doubtful mercy. He was uncertain which of the three had struck him with a leather sap, though there was a sinister aspect about the sharp, leathery features of the swarthy Tilean leaning against the room’s only door that made him Johann’s first choice. The Tilean gave him a sour look in turn, making it clear he didn’t care a groat for what Johann thought of him.

  The other two were seated at the table with Johann. One was a burly, wild-haired man wearing a heavy leather slicker and an almost shapeless felt hat. If pressed, Johann would have guessed his vocation as coachman or perhaps barge captain. He had a cunning glint to his eye that reminded him of merchants and other swindlers, but was weathered enough to look like he was no stranger to real work.

  The second man at the table was less formidable in build, but a good deal more sinister in aspect. He was dressed better than the Tilean and the coachman, his clothes sporting a finery only racketeers and ship captains dared display on the waterfront; the little designs on his eelskin boots were picked out in gold leaf, the buckle of his belt was a monstrous assemblage of amethyst and jade, the pearl hilts of his matched daggers were shaped like snarling sharks and each eye was picked out with a tiny ruby. Seeing the daggers, Johann came to the cold realisation that he knew this man, even if he had never set eyes upon him before. No one on the waterfront had failed to hear of Simo Valkoinen. Next to the “Murder Prince” Dieter Neff, he was the most infamous assassin-for-hire in Altdorf. How many of the bloated bodies found floating in the Reik could be credited to Valkoinen and his “Fangs of Stromfels”, no one could say for certain. It was certain that Valkoinen, the “Cold Death” as the criminals of the waterfront had named him, was not offering any official tally of his work.

  Valkoinen! Johann’s mind reeled under the implication, the certainty that this formidable hired killer was actually one of the helpers, the servants of the mysterious wizard who had saved his life. What sort of man could command the loyalty of a killer like Valkoinen? What sort of man would want to?

  “What happens next largely depends on you.”

  Johann’s answer came from a fifth occupant of the little room. When he had regained consciousness, Johann hadn’t noticed the little political agitator Ludwig Rothfels. He took a seat on the bench beside Valkoinen and the coachman. The pleasant-faced agitator looked almost ridiculous sitting between the brawny coachman and the sinister assassin, like a cook’s ladle set between a pair of swords.

  “You will be given a choice,” Ludwig continued, staring intently into Johann’s face. “The same choice all of us were called upon to make. You will be given the opportunity to serve the master and help him in his work.”

  Johann shook his head, snorting with ill humour. “The master and his work,” he repeated. “You make it sound very mysterious.”

  “Because it is,” growled the Tilean from his place against the wall.

  The smuggler growled back at the scowling foreigner. “Just the same, I’d like to know what noose you want me to put my neck in.” He returned his attention to Ludwig. “Just who is this ‘master’ of yours and what is this work he asks you to help him with?”

  Ludwig seemed to consider the question for a long time, and when he finally answered, there was a note of uncertainty in his voice. “We know him by the name of Jeremias Scrivner and he is a wizard of terrible power. There are many who serve him, far more than you saw at the Orc and Axe. The master has eyes and ears throughout the city, perhaps even beyond. How many may number themselves among his servants, only he could say.” Ludwig paused and sighed deeply as though remembering some past guilt. “As for his ‘work’, Scrivner is devoted to the defence of Altdorf against all those who would bring evil upon the city.”

  Johann stood, shaking his head. “It seems to me he has a strange way of fighting evil.” He swung his pointing finger around the room. “A rabble-rouser, a hired killer, a smuggler, a Tilean alley rat…”

  The Tilean pushed himself from the wall, one hand dropping to the slender rapier he wore. “You watch who you call ‘rat’ or I make nice red grin in your neck!”

  “Amando, please,” Ludwig called out. “He did not understand what he said.”

  The Tilean sneered at Johann. “He doesn’t understand? They never understand! They bring their dirty rock into the city. Then ratkin, they come to take the rock, and whatever else they wanta take!” Amando’s face became livid as he saw the incredulous expression on Johann’s face. �
�You think maybe I no know what I talk about, hey little thief?” He tapped himself on the chest. “I’m from Miragliano. I see with my own eyes what ratkin do when they take it into their heads to stop slinking in their tunnels!”

  “If the problem is so serious, then why are you sitting around here?” demanded Johann. He trembled as he remembered the ghastly creatures he had fought in the cellar and the hate-filled gaze of their horned leader. “Why doesn’t your master notify the authorities, bring the Reiksguard and the witch hunters and the whole of the Imperial army down upon them?”

  “Because the underfolk are a myth.” The hissing words came from the darkened corner of the little room, a space so small that Johann was certain no one could have hidden there. Even the other men in the room betrayed uneasy wonder as a grey-cloaked figure stepped from the shadows, the darkness swirling about his lean form like little fingers of black fog. The stormy grey eyes of Jeremias Scrivner met each of his minions in turn, subduing even Amando’s anger with the imperious power of his gaze. The wizard’s attention lingered on Johann and the smuggler stumbled back, dropping down onto the timber bench.

  “They must remain a myth,” Scrivner continued. “Ignorance is the best shield the Empire has, the ratkin themselves our best allies against the threat of the skaven. While man remains ignorant of their world, the skaven feel safe to war amongst themselves, pursuing their petty intrigues and vendettas. Given a common foe, given a common purpose, their entire race would unite into a single horde and smother the world of men beneath their numbers. For the survival of the Empire, the underfolk must remain a fable told to children.”