01 - Grey Seer

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

  The rat-beast was knocked back by the morbid missile, toppling head over tail until it smashed into the wall of the parlour. Plaster rained down upon it from the battered wall. It hissed savagely as it lifted itself and shook its mangy pelt free of plaster. It spun about to challenge Boneripper, but the rat ogre was already upon it.

  The townhouse shook as Boneripper launched himself at the staggered rat-beast. The huge brute charged across the parlour, slamming into the rat-beast with the impact of a battering ram, the huge spike on his shoulder guard impaling the creature through the chest as he drove his body into it. The force of the impact drove both monsters onwards, and nothing so humble as timber and brick and stone was going to stop them.

  The wall collapsed in a shower of rubble as Boneripper smashed the rat-beast through the parlour wall and back into the kitchen. A table vanished in a cloud of splinters as both of the huge brutes hurtled onto the kitchen floor. Boneripper was the first to rise, tearing his gory shoulder spike free of the rat-beast’s mangled body.

  The fresh surge of pain inflicted by the withdrawal of the spike brought a shriek of agony from the rat-beast. In a frenzy of pain, the creature flung itself from the rubble, latching onto Boneripper. Even the rat ogre’s prodigious strength was not enough to overwhelm the bulk of the rat-beast. Like its smaller kind, the rat-beast scrabbled at Boneripper with all four of its clawed paws, tearing deep furrows in the rat ogre’s leathery hide. The ratlike jaws of the beast snapped and slashed at Boneripper’s head, trying to work around or through the armour of his helmet to reach the soft skin of his throat.

  Boneripper staggered, trying to stay upright with the weight of the rat-beast pulling at him and threatening his balance. Even his brutish mind understood that if he fell, he would be finished, his foe free to tear out his throat. With two of his arms, he tried to grapple the beast. His mutant third arm, its hand fitted with steel and spike, struck again and again into the beast’s side until it was coated in blood.

  The rat-beast chittered its feral ferocity at Boneripper, each blow only serving to excite its terrible vitality even more. Rather than fading beneath the force of the punishment the rat ogre was delivering, the beast seemed to be empowered by it. Snapping jaws closed against the side of Boneripper’s face, tearing away an ear and part of his cheek armour. Boneripper responded with a savage grip, his mighty arms straining as they bent the rat-beast’s body upward and back. With a wet pop, the beast’s hind legs fell limp, flopping uselessly against the rat ogre’s waist.

  The beast vomited black blood from its jaws, spattering Boneripper’s armour, but refused to abandon its efforts to reach its foe’s throat. Boneripper felt incisors scrape against the side of his neck, drawing a thin trickle of blood.

  With another thunderous roar, Boneripper threw the rat-beast from him. It crashed in a broken heap against the old larder, crushing the last of Burnfang’s test subjects beneath it. Boneripper was not satisfied, however. The rat ogre stomped after the quivering wreckage of the beast, pounding its prone form mercilessly with his huge fists. The wet smacks of fist into dripping meat were a fitting applause to such a primitive, bestial spectacle.

  Hearing Boneripper’s triumphant bellow, Thanquol decided it was safe enough to creep into the kitchen. A few of his followers crept after him, not willing to risk upsetting the grey seer if his bodyguard had indeed vanquished the terrible rat-beast. Thanquol sneered at their cowardice. Boldly, he stepped to Boneripper, swatting the rat ogre’s flank with the butt of his staff.

  “Fool-meat!” Thanquol snarled. “Leave dead-thing. There is work to do!” The grey seer turned and glowered at his shivering underlings. “Recover the spilled Wormstone,” he snapped at Burnfang. “Hide your dead as well. My enemies must find-smell no sign that I was here.”

  “What of the monster?” Burnfang growled back. “It is too big to move or hide!”

  Thanquol glared at the warlock engineer. “Then leave it, dung-breath toad! Do not pester my brilliance with your stupidity, tinker-rat!” The grey seer lifted his gaze to the other surviving skaven, both of Clan Skryre and Clan Skaul. “We waste no more time!” he declared. “We take the Wormstone to the reservoir! Then the man-things will suffer for defying the will of the Horned Rat!”

  The grey seer looked past the throng to see Skrim skulking in the shadows. He pointed a clawed talon at the slinking spy. “Gnawtail will lead you through the tunnels,” he said. His eyes became as cold as those of a snake and Skrim felt his insides shrivel as Thanquol snarled words he knew were meant for him alone.

  “Gnawtail knows the way.”

  As the skaven began to scurry from the gory ruin of the old kitchen, none of them gave a second glance to the dripping mass of meat and fur splashed against the larder, nor to the hate-filled eye that sullenly watched them go.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Triumph of Thanquol

  The abandoned townhouse on the Reikhoch Prachstrasse was as still as a crypt when twenty armed men and dwarfs burst through its doors. From front and back, the men rushed through the dusty rooms, swords and pistols at the ready. Each man’s brow dripped with a sweat of fear, knowing too well the hideous enemy they expected to find. As they surged into each empty room, their fear only increased. If the ratkin had not confronted them already it could only be because they were waiting for the intruders to stumble into some devious trap.

  Theodor Baer led the group that had smashed its way through the entranceway at the front of the townhouse. Baer could feel the hairs standing on the back of his neck as he crept through the silent rooms. He had heard the stories about the townhouse and its last tenant, tales of vampirism and worse horrors. The watch sergeant allowed himself a grim chuckle. Beside his fear of the restless dead, confronting a mob of verminous underfolk would almost seem tame by comparison. Almost.

  Theodor kept his pistol aimed, turning it with the lantern in his free hand. The instant his light showed something monstrous, it would get a bullet through its skull. He only hoped the men with him were as ready for action. Most of them he knew only casually, some of them not at all. Being a vassal of Jeremias Scrivner was not the sort of thing that drew men together for socialising in their off hours. Of course, the very fact that they did serve the wizard spoke of their capability. Scrivner was not one to make time for charity cases. Those who bore his token were men with something to offer him, some skill useful to the wizard’s interests.

  Entering the parlour, Theodor’s lantern revealed a shambles of piled furniture and torn tapestries. The sickly stink of spilled perfume assailed the watchman’s senses. He heard Amando, the Tilean duellist, cough violently behind him, clenching a rag to his face against the smell. Theodor controlled his own repugnance, sweeping the lantern across the room. A grey shape appeared in front of him. Before he could tug the trigger of his pistol, a steely grip knocked his hand aside.

  “They have gone,” the chill voice of Jeremias Scrivner told him. The wizard reached to Theodor’s lantern, throwing open the metal shutters on its sides. The sudden light threw the parlour into sharp relief. Theodor’s initial impression of cluster and ruin was justified. Someone had ransacked the entire townhouse to create a gaudy impression of a throne-room, like a child playing king.

  Sounds from the hallway beyond the parlour brought Theodor and the men with him turning from their cursory inspection of the room. Certain that the ratkin had sprung their trap, each man tensed, weapons at the ready. Sighs of relief spread across the parlour. The sounds had come from the men who had come from the back of the house. Theodor gave a grudging nod of respect to Simo Valkoinen.

  “Report,” the hissed whisper of Scrivner commanded the professional killer.

  “Nothing,” Valkoinen answered. “Nothing alive, at least. There are rooms that look like an orc warband slept in them. Most of those smell like a whore’s boudoir. But no trace of what did the damage. No trash, no fur, no scat.”

  “They cleaned up after themselves,” observed one of the fight
ers with Theodor. The speaker was a squat, broad-shouldered dwarf, his frosty beard tied into elaborate braids that fell almost to his knees. His dark eyes twinkled like chips of ore from his wrinkled face, almost matching the mailshirt and steel helm he wore. Grimbold Silverbeard did not speak only of Valkoinen’s report. He pointed a stubby finger at the floor. Amid the debris of tattered finery, patches of the dusty floor had been scrubbed so fiercely that the tiles were little more than layers of scratches. “Skaven blood isn’t easy to get up. Back in Zhufbar, if it got on anything that wasn’t metal, we usually burned it. Damn bad choice to make between carrying that stink around and cutting your beard!”

  “Trying to hide the fact they were here?” Theodor wondered. “But why drench the place in perfume? You can smell it from the next street.”

  “Because it isn’t men they are afraid will find their trail,” Scrivner said. “The ratmen are their own worst enemies. This was done to hide their scent from their own kind. The skaven who possess the stone are afraid they will be discovered by enemies from their own ranks. Perhaps that fear has gripped them enough, that they will not be expecting other enemies to come after them.”

  “Magister!” It was Grimbold who called out, his voice betraying an excitement his people seldom allowed themselves to display. Scrivner swung around at the dwarf’s call, staring over his shoulder as the dwarf displayed what he had found. It was a scrap of torn parchment, hoary with age.

  “I found it poking out from under that chest,” Grimbold explained. “It’s a chart, one of the blueprints of the Grey Dwarfs who helped construct the city’s infrastructure. This one,” his thick thumb tapped a set of Khazalid runes drawn at the top of the parchment, “is for something called the ‘Dunkelwa…’. That’s all that’s left.”

  “The Dunkelwasserkleinmere,” Scrivner finished for the dwarf. “An old name. Now it is known as the Kaiserschwalbe.”

  Grimbold’s eyes went wide with horror. “The reservoir! The filthy ratkin mean to poison the reservoir!”

  “We can’t let them!” Johann swore, pushing his way through the other men in Valkoinen’s group. “They’ll poison hundreds, thousands if they put that filth into the water!” The smuggler clenched his fists in fury, imagining the magnitude of suffering, entire households stricken with the same slow corruption that had beset his brother. Men, women and children, it would be wholesale slaughter such as even a Kurgan warlord would balk at.

  Scrivner gave Johann a grim nod, then looked to Grimbold once more. “You will lead us to the reservoir.”

  “I maintained the Imperial sewers long enough to know every way into the place,” Grimbold said. “But the ratkin are fair diggers. They might have made their own way. We’ll reach the reservoir, but without knowing what route they are using I can’t say if we’ll beat them or simply meet them.”

  “Then the surest course is to follow their trail,” the wizard stated. He removed a vial from the folds of his cloak. Johann had never seen such a vibrant purple elixir as that which sloshed against the clouded glass of the vial, but he recognised the dove of the Shallyan temple on the wax seal that closed its top. “Stay here,” Scrivner commanded, “and do not move, whatever you see.” His cloak swept around him as he stalked from the parlour and through the broken wall that led into the kitchen.

  Tense moments passed, then the men in the parlour heard a grisly sound of laboured breathing and grinding bone. Despite the wizard’s warning the watchers drew back from the grotesque shape that crawled through the wreckage. It was an immense, rat-like thing not an inch of its body unmarked by violence. Broken bones ground together as the beast pulled itself across the floor, dragging its useless hind limbs after it. The thing gave them no notice as it crossed the parlour leaving a bloody trail after it. The drooling, slobbering horror vanished into the gloom of the study. The men in the parlour could hear wood splintering as the monster attacked the wall with its fangs, gnawing at the concealed entrance to the basement.

  “The map was not the only thing the skaven left behind.” The wizard’s whispered words startled men who had been fixated upon the rat-beast. Once more, their cloaked master stood among them. Johann noticed that the vial in Scrivner’s hand was now empty. “The tears of Shallya allow the abomination a few more hours. We must trust that they are enough. The skaven learned well from our smuggler friends,” Scrivner added, gesturing to the black paste none of Thanquol’s minions had dared clean from the parlour. “They have mixed their vile poison with wine to hide its smell. Well enough to hide from their own kind and my familiars.”

  There was a loud snapping noise as the rat-beast gnawed its way past the secret panel. Scrivner’s eyes burned in the darkness as the sound carried into the parlour.

  “But there’s one nose they can’t trick anymore,” he said, stalking after the rat-beast as it disappeared through the hole it had made. Scrivner’s servants fought down their own fears and followed after their mysterious master.

  “Right now I bet you wish Volk had settled your mob down in the sewers,” Theodor told Johann as they waited their turn to descend into the basement.

  Johann shook his head. “I may die in a sewer yet,” he told the watchman. “But this time at least I’ll do it for more than a few barrels of contraband.”

  Skrattch Skarpaw scrambled up the slime-slick sewer wall, clinging to the dripping surface of an archway. As one of the skilled assassins of Clan Eshin, Lord Skrolk had sent him ahead to scout the way for the plague lord’s retinue. Despite Kratch’s assurances and oaths of loyalty and service, Skrolk was being wary of treachery from Thanquol’s former apprentice. Among the skaven there was no such concept as being over-cautious. Skarpaw, being near the end of his usefulness to Skrolk, was not only the most capable of spotting any traps the grey seer might have set, but also the most expendable if he fell afoul of one.

  The assassin’s claws found tiny gaps between the bricks to maintain his hold. His scaly tail coiled about one of his cruelly serrated swords. Skarpaw’s eyes glittered in the darkness, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air. Beneath the fug of human waste, he smelled a familiar scent. The odour of fresh blood was strong as he heard something large sloshing through the muck. Skarpaw tensed as a new scent reached him, the reek of the rat-beast that had routed Thanquol’s minions during their expedition into the forgotten burrows of Clan Mawrl.

  He held his breath as the huge monster dragged itself through the scum of the canal, its mangled body little more than an open wound. Any moment might see the beast’s finish. Scavenging instincts reared up from the depths of Skarpaw’s psyche, urging him to leap upon the dying monster, but reason subdued the impulse. There were other sounds now, sounds of many feet trudging through the sludge and scum. Skarpaw pressed himself even closer to the wall, vanishing into the shadow of the vaulted ceiling. He stifled his breathing, willed his heartbeat to an infrequent murmur. Like a verminous gargoyle, he became as lifeless as the stone around him, only his glittering eyes betraying his presence.

  Men emerged from the darkness. Skarpaw knew enough of the ways of men to recognise that these presented a motley gang, finery mixed with the rags of the slums, the soft scents of refinement mixed with the hard smells of the lower classes. At their fore, Skarpaw saw a grey-bearded dwarf leading the way, a light glowing from the peak of his helm as he followed the dying rat-beast. Just behind the dwarf, however, was a figure that sent a thrill of fear racing through Skarpaw’s pulse.

  A hooded man cloaked in grey and with the chill of sorcery about his smell. It could only be the wizard-thing that had fought Thanquol for possession of the Wormstone. He had survived his battle with the grey seer and was once more on the trail of his adversary and his prize. Somehow, in some way, the wizard-thing was letting the rat-beast lead him to Thanquol!

  Skarpaw lingered in the shadow of the archway for many minutes, allowing the steps and scent of the men to fade into the distance. After what Kratch had told Skrolk about the wizard-thing, the assassin wanted to ta
ke no chance of the human discovering his presence. Even his killer’s heart preferred not to pit itself against magic and sorcery. The memory of Thanquol’s spell of madness was still too fresh.

  Certain he was undiscovered, Skarpaw dropped down from his sanctuary, sliding along the slimy brickwork to the putrid surface of the canal. At first with caution, then with speed, the assassin raced down the black maze of sewers, darting down side-passages and around cross-tunnels. The ratman’s winding route seemed a confusion of turns, but he was not relying upon memory to bring him back to his gruesome master. Skarpaw used the rotten smell of the plague monks to lead him through the sewer, a smell even the dull senses of a human would find hard to mistake.

  Soon, the assassin stood in the tunnel where Lord Skrolk’s festering followers were gathered, impatiently awaiting their scout’s report. The plague lord himself shuffled forward as Skarpaw came upon the clustered vermin. Skrolk’s boil-strewn face scowled at the assassin, the fumes rising from his censer-staff matching the smouldering temper in his blemished eyes.

  “There will be no more medicine until you clear the path,” Skrolk warned the assassin, his voice bubbling with menace. “If the Wormstone escapes me, you will wish I had let the pox do its work!”

  Skarpaw prostrated himself before the ghastly plague lord, taking the decayed hem of his filthy robe and rubbing it across his nose in a show of abasement. “Horrific one!” he whimpered. “Others seek the traitor!” He pointed to where Kratch stood among the plague monks, the adept now garbed in the same rotten green robes. “The wizard-thing still seeks Thanquol! I have seen it and its underlings walking through the scat-stream. They were following the great rat-beast from Clan Mawrl! They were hunting the Wormstone!”

  Kratch scrambled from the mass of plague monks, grovelling at the feet of Lord Skrolk. He kissed the plague lord’s decaying tail, rubbed his forehead against the monk’s leprous foot, anything to make his show of abasement and devotion more convincing than that of the assassin. “Terrible bringer of suffering!” Kratch wheezed. “Your humble servant did not know the wizard-thing still lived! I did not know…”