Thanquol peered from behind the column, grinning as he saw Skrim Gnawtail’s sneaks pounce upon the wizard’s allies. Men might be stronger than skaven, but they were laughably slow. With their terror of Thanquol’s power to goad them onwards, Skrim’s vermin would make short work of the humans.
Just as Thanquol was deciding the fight was over before it began, he saw one of the sneaks swatted from the scaffolding by a wave of shadow that billowed and clung to him like fog. The grey seer didn’t give any thought to the wretch’s shriek as he fell, instead concentrating upon the real problem. The wizard was the flea in the fur of his plan, his magic could tip the balance against him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure there was any way to remove his threat without risking his own hide in the process.
The sound of water lapping against the column drew Thanquol’s attention. He grinned evilly as he saw Boneripper trying to climb up from the lake and join his master on the causeway. His beady eyes turned back to the cloaked wizard. Scrivner was on one of the other causeways, supporting his underlings with his shadow magic. The grey seer hissed a command to Boneripper, then pointed at the column closest to the magister. Boneripper dropped back into the reservoir with a loud splash and began to swim towards the other causeway.
Thanquol lashed his tail, amused by his own brilliance. He would wait for Boneripper to attack the wizard. While Scrivner was busy trying to stave off the rat ogre, Thanquol would be able to bring the full fury of his sorcery against the meddling magister. The grey seer teased a nugget of warpstone from the hidden pocket of his robe. He stared at its black, shining depths. There was danger in using warpstone, even the most carefully refined warpstone, to fuel spells, but in this case Thanquol decided the risk was worth it. With the wizard gone, there could be no question of his plan’s success. Two cities would die and with their deaths the glory of Thanquol would be like an ocean of magma blazing through the caverns of the Under-Empire!
Thanquol popped the piece of warpstone into his mouth, feeling its burn against his tongue. Soon, soon the moment would come. He would unleash such havoc upon the wizard that all that would be left of him was a greasy smear! No! That was the warpstone talking! He had to be careful, only use enough power to get the job done. Dead was dead, he didn’t need to make a spectacle of the wizard’s destruction.
Then, with Scrivner gone, Thanquol could savour his triumph. There would be none to oppose him then!
Fresh sounds and scents from the tunnel caused Thanquol to spin around. The grey seer nearly choked upon his warpstone as he saw a horde of chittering, green-clad skaven pour onto the ledge. Plague monks! The vile heretics of Clan Pestilens! Thanquol was under no delusion about their purpose here and what they had come for. He lifted his amulet, the richly jewelled medallion engraved with the sacred symbol of the Horned Rat. Thanquol scowled at the image, thinking of this fresh batch of adversaries come to stand between himself and his triumph.
“Are you testing me, Horned One?” Thanquol demanded.
Johann dropped down onto the scaffolding and fired the pistol he had been given by Theodor Baer full into the face of a ratman climbing up to meet him. The monster squealed and hurtled into the abyss below the reservoir wall. Other shots sounded and Johann risked a quick turn of his neck to see Grimbold standing on the ledge wall above him. The dwarf’s leather apron was hanging open now, its surface fitted with loops through which had been secured an array of fat-muzzled pistols. Thongs secured the weapons to the loops in the apron, and as the dwarf began his fusillade, he let each gun drop from his hand, slapping against his belly as the thong prevented it from falling. The dwarf quickly filled his hands with fresh pistols and continued to persecute the cringing, slinking beasts.
“If you don’t want to catch your death from plague, manling,” Grimbold chuckled, meeting Johann’s stare, “kill the ratkin before their stink gets in your nose!”
The smuggler nodded his understanding and fumblingly tried to reload his weapon. The punishment the dwarf had delivered with his barrage had not quite been enough to drive the skaven into retreat. Valkoinen’s deadly throwing knives picked ratmen from the scaffolding as they tried to swarm the men, pitching still more of the monsters into the darkness, yet still they came, encouraged by the feral snarls of their leader, a crook-backed old ratman with a stumpy tail.
Sight of the defiant ratkin enraged Amando. The Tilean hurled an epithet that would have shocked the ears of the Lord of Murder and threw his empty pistol after it. Shrieking furiously in his native tongue, Amando rushed across the scaffold to break the skaven attack in the surest way he knew: by killing their leader.
“Someone stop that fool!” Theodor barked.
Before he knew what was happening, Johann found himself running after Amando. The smuggler leapt over the blade of a ratman crawling up from the underside of the scaffold, punctuating the manoeuvre by kicking the monster’s teeth down its throat. He didn’t linger to see if the blow caused the ratkin to lose his grip, but pressed on in his rush to save Amando from the suicidal frenzy that had seized him.
The crook-backed ratman was snarling and spitting at the others now, calling them back to protect it from the Tilean. The ratman drew its own pistol from the filthy rags that served it as clothes and raised it to fire at Amando. Johann heard a shot sound from behind him. The crook-backed rat jumped in pain as a bullet smashed into it, its own pistol falling from its paw as pain from its wound seized it.
Amando gave a cry of triumph, leaping down to the last platform between himself and his prey. A ratman reared up before him, slashing at him with its notched blade. The Tilean screamed as the sword clove into his leg, then brought his own sword smashing down into the ratkin’s head, scraping against its skull and ripping an ear and most of its scalp free from the bone beneath.
Johann dropped down to drag Amando away, but the Tilean shook him off, pointing at the cowering rat-leader.
“I kill that pig, then you take me back!” Amando growled.
Johann had no chance to argue. At that instant the seemingly dead ratman at Amando’s feet found some measure of strength in its dying body. With a hiss, the skaven buried its fangs in the Tilean’s foot. Amando shrieked in shock and pain, then brought the edge of his blade slashing across the monster’s throat, banishing its filthy life for good.
Foul black blood sprayed as Amando opened the ratman’s neck, splashing across Johann’s body. The smuggler felt disgust at contact with the loathsome ichor, but quickly this was forgotten as tearing, crawling pain wracked his body. It felt like his body was ripping itself apart from within, like his veins were trying to slither free from his flesh. Johann clawed at his skin, trying to combat the itching sensation. He slumped to the shaking floor of the platform, horrified by what he was doing.
Amando, stunned by the strange agony that had seized Johann, was torn from his blind rage and turned to help his comrade in arms. A shot sounded and most of the Tilean’s face vanished in a spray of blood and bone. On the higher platform, Johann could see the crook-backed ratman fling aside a second pistol. The monster glared at him for a moment, then threw itself at the causeway edge above it. No man could have made such a leap, nor found purchase for his grasping fingers, but the wiry ratman managed the impossible. An instant its stumpy tail swung from the lip of the causeway, then Johann heard a splash as the rat-leader threw himself into the reservoir.
The reason for the ratman’s flight was revealed as Johann heard men rushing across the platforms.
“More ratmen have swarmed into the cavern,” Theodor shouted at Johann. “We need to find a defensible position on the other side to fend them off!”
Johann only dimly heard the exchange. He was too busy staring at his arm, at the disgusting suggestion of movement beneath his skin where the black blood of the skaven had stained it. He reached a hand towards Amando’s body, to see if the Tilean’s flesh was also affected, trying desperately to deny the hideous truth fighting to dominate his brain. He recoiled, biting down on
his lip to keep from screaming. Not only was Amando’s skin unmarked, but as his hand reached towards his head, where the sickly glowing warpstone bullet the ratman had fired was lodged in his skull, Johann saw a filthy green wormlike growth push itself free from his wrist.
Poisoned! Poisoned by that damnable stone from the sewer! Poisoned like his brother Dietrich! He saw in his mind the ghastly scene of his brother’s deathbed, the filth and horror of that lingering sickness.
The wizard had known! Johann realised the fact with a sickening horror. Scrivner’s terrible familiar had smelled it on him. Perhaps the wizard had known even before that. He had known, and he had said nothing! Johann rose to his feet, glaring at the causeway where the wizard stood before the oncoming horde.
“It’s suicide to go back,” Valkoinen snarled at him.
Johann nodded stiffly to Valkoinen.
“Sounds like exactly what the doctor ordered,” Johann said, then turned and hurried to fit words to deeds.
The festering ranks of the plague monks came scuttling out of the tunnel like so many rotting corpses, their fur hanging from their emaciated limbs in mangy strips, their frayed robes crusty with filth from their decaying bodies, and in each rheumy eye the ecstatic madness of the true fanatic. The plague monks did not see horror in their abominable condition; they saw power.
Instinctively, Thanquol looked past the mouldering mob of common plague monks, over the cowls and hoods of the frenzied wretches swinging obscene incense censers over their heads, past the diseased dregs carrying profane fly-strewn icons of crumbling bone and rusting iron, beyond the shrieking zealots with prayer scrolls clenched in their scrawny fists. He looked beyond the tide of madness, seeking the master of this deranged throng. He found him, perched upon the backs of four bulky ratmen who had somehow managed to retain some semblance of strength despite the ravages of their many ills.
Thanquol hissed an oath through his fangs. He knew that filthy rat, the insane, gibbering heretic who stood at the position of command behind his miserable congregation. Lord Skrolk, perhaps second only to Nurglitch himself in the loathsome ranks of Clan Pestilens and the foul plague priests!
Skrolk caught Thanquol’s eye. The plague lord’s lips peeled back, displaying his rotten smile. There was a look of unspeakable triumph in Skrolk’s expression, as though all the hate and malice in his entire clan had been boiled down into a single display of emotion. Thanquol knew Nurglitch wanted the Wormstone for himself and Clan Pestilens alone. Accepting the will of the Council had been a ruse. His true plan had been to send Lord Skrolk to steal the Wormstone once Thanquol found it. And if, in the process, the grey seer was eliminated, so much the better for Skrolk and Nurglitch. Thanquol’s killing of Plague Lord Skratsquik would be avenged. With the Wormstone in their possession, Clan Pestilens would need fear no retaliation for striking down one of the Horned Rat’s sacred priests!
Thanquol bit down on the warpstone in his mouth, feeling its fiery power blaze through him. His vision became a brilliance of golden light, his arms felt as though they swelled with power. He could see the swirling threads of magic all around him; the grey darkness surrounding the human wizard, the green putrescence that billowed about Skrolk. They were as nothing to Thanquol’s enhanced sight, petty tricks drawing upon but a few of the sorcerous strands that writhed all around them! The grey seer would show them real power! He would show them true magic!
Chittering wildly, Thanquol opened himself to the aetheric forces surrounding him, drawing all the many strands of magic into his body and into his mind. He formed the power into a thought, forced the thought to become purpose, forced the purpose to become action. Forced action to become words, gestures, binding the power with the secret knowledge handed down to the grey seers by the Horned Rat himself. Skrolk, the pathetic heathen, would suffer for his impiety! The Horned Rat would gnaw the heretic’s bones!
As he started to point the blazing head of his staff towards the corrupt plague lord, Thanquol’s sorcery-soaked vision noticed another figure drawing arcane energies into itself. The efforts of this one were even more laughable than those of Scrivner and Skrolk, like a whelp trying to raise a rat ogre’s maul. Yet there was something naggingly familiar, insufferably annoying about the pathetic aura of the wretch. Thanquol’s fangs snapped together, grinding against each other as he realised who the little scum-mage was!
Adept Kratch! The treacherous little bastard-flea was still alive! He was there, at the fore of the plague monks, his grey robes cast aside for the green decay of his new friends. The riddle of how Skrolk had found him was solved. The plague monks were here courtesy of some trick of his deceitful former apprentice!
Kratch vanished in a blaze of green-gold fire, the fur stripped from his bones as he was engulfed by the full fury of Thanquol’s magic. Plague monks near him pitched and fell, their hearts burst by the magnitude of the sorcery that had smashed into the adept. Other plague monks whimpered and howled as the refuse of Kratch’s sorry carcass splashed across them, greasy black drops that sizzled and burned whatever they touched.
Thanquol felt every eye in the cavern drawn to him as shocked silence drowned out the roar of battle. Man, dwarf and skaven, every face was pinched with horror at the unfathomable power the grey seer had unleashed. Fur and hair stood on end, patches of ice bobbed upon the surface of the reservoir. The air itself seemed charged, flickering with a weird afterglow along the course the grey seer’s annihilating blast had taken. Even Lord Skrolk’s blemished face was filled with astonished terror. If the decayed villain still had functioning glands, Thanquol knew they must be spurting the musk of fear like a runt in a snake pit.
The grey seer straightened, holding himself high as he felt the terrified appreciation of his enemies. Then his pride wilted, along with the tremendous strength he had imagined flowing through his limbs only moments before. Thanquol struggled to keep standing, succeeding only in sliding down the length of his staff, wilting into a weary pile upon the stones of the causeway. Bile rose through his throat, burning as he vomited a mix of warpstone and blood. Quivering like a leaf, Thanquol tried to focus his vision. It was a horrible effort, his brain swimming with pulses of pain and throbbing against the inside of his skull as though trying to batter its way out of his head.
Across the stone ledge, Skrolk’s eyes were not having the same problem holding the image of his enemy. Gone was the terror, and in its place a snickering scorn.
Thanquol had drawn such incredible power, unleashed such unspeakable havoc, and to what purpose? Skrolk lived, as did more than enough of his vile disciples to slaughter both Thanquol’s miserable servitors and the meddling human wizard’s agents.
Skrolk’s bubbling laughter oozed through the cavern, echoing from the walls. It would be some time before Thanquol could muster the concentration for even the most minor cantrip. Before that happened, he intended to be wearing the grey seer’s entrails for a belt.
Thanquol groaned as his vision finally steadied. He saw Skrolk clap his paws together, saw two mammoth shapes emerge from the tunnel. Horror clawed at the grey seer’s heart. The things that lurched out onto the ledge were rat ogres, brutes nearly the equal of Boneripper in size. Where his bodyguard had prodigious strength and savagery, however, these had the same diseased viciousness of the plague monks. Their emaciated bodies were nests of boils and sores, their flesh betraying a leprous tint, rabid foam dripping from their black-toothed maws. He didn’t need Skrolk’s pointing finger to tell him what victim the plague lord had chosen for his monsters.
Thanquol tried to lift himself, but his wobbly legs just crumpled beneath his weight. He ripped the escape scroll from his belt, but his pounding head and bleary vision would not cooperate enough to read the complex spell.
The grey seer groaned again, smacking his horned head against the cold stone beneath him. It had been a fit of temperamental stupidity, an outburst of temporary madness! Satisfying as obliterating Kratch might have been, it was a woeful blunder tactically.
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* * *
Jeremias Scrivner struggled to maintain the bonds of shadow wrapped about the gigantic hulk of Boneripper. The rat ogre refused to submit, forcing his huge body onwards, regardless of how much power the wizard put into his spell. Inch by inch, the monster was breaking free, his tiny brain too dull to submit to Scrivner’s magic. More formidable even than the grotesque rat-beast had been in Dr. Loew’s workshop, Boneripper had enough of a mind to focus upon the commands of his master. The rat ogre had been told to attack the wizard, and whatever Scrivner did, he was determined to obey that command.
Scrivner glanced at the gloating grey seer. He knew the fiend’s intention. Callous as all his breed, the rat-mage would wait until the wizard was completely and hopelessly occupied by Boneripper, then Thanquol would leap to the attack. Scrivner knew there was no hope that the grey seer would stay his magical assault out of concern for his bodyguard. For any skaven, there was only one life that was not expendable: his own.
The wizard began to slowly fall back along the causeway. If he could put enough distance between himself and Boneripper, he might be able to strike Thanquol before his bodyguard could reach him. He struggled to tighten the wispy fetters wrapped about Boneripper’s legs, but the monster stubbornly pressed on, slogging through the arcane chains like a behemoth trudging through a quagmire. Scrivner could not gain enough ground on the brute. If he ended his spell, Boneripper would be upon him before he could even wag a finger at the gloating Thanquol.
“Master!” The harsh bellow sounded from behind Scrivner. The wizard recognised the voice as that of Grimbold Silverbeard. The dwarf had extricated himself from the fight on the scaffold. His pistols spent, his hands instead were filled with black metal objects, round at the base then tapering to a point from which a hemp fuse protruded.
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