by C. L. Werner
Even as Mandred’s cavalry galloped away from the wall, the catapults and cannon began their barrage. He smiled at the craftiness of the dwarfs. To deceive the skaven about their intentions, the artillery would be directed against several places along the wall. Only a quarter of the total barrage would be focused on the real target until the advance of the infantry and their siege towers made such deception pointless. Then the full might of the barrage would pour down upon the gatehouse and the wall around it. If everything worked to plan, the skaven defenders in that position would be pounded into complete disarray and the monsters would be too late to rush reinforcements to secure the area before Mandred’s forces came pouring in.
The graf watched as the first boulders and cannonballs came slamming into Averheim. He reached to his arm, fingering the strip of bloodied cloth tied about his armour, a piece cut from Mirella’s bloodied dress. There would be a reckoning this day, he swore it by all Ulric and Sigmar and any other god who would listen. The ratmen had much to atone for, but this day, this day he consecrated to the woman he had loved and who had been taken from him by the cringing monsters.
Whatever god the skaven owned, that foul being would be meeting a great many of his pestiferous children soon.
Vrrmik kept to his subterranean burrow, listening with keen anticipation as each messenger brought more details to him about the battle being fought overhead. The great warlord stroked his whiskers and chittered in delight. Everything was proceeding exactly as his brilliant plan had anticipated.
The midnight assault by Clan Pestilens against the human encampment had achieved its purpose magnificently even if Puskab Foulfur had failed to poison the army’s food stores. Vrrmik had anticipated that it would take the threat of starvation to goad the humans into swift and desperate action. He was surprised that it had needed nothing more than the attack itself to provoke Man-dread into immediate attack. It was an important lesson to bear in mind, this recklessness of the humans to react to any attack by staging one of their own. Vrrmik could liken their reaction only to the mindless belligerence of ants when their nest had been disturbed.
Whatever the cause and whatever the reason, Man-dread was playing right into Vrrmik’s paws. As each scout came scampering back to him, the Grey Lord chortled a little more loudly. The slaves holding the outer walls had been overrun; the humans had brought up their foot troops and were invading the city.
He almost wished he could be there to smell the terror in the scents of Warlord Hakrr and Warlord Ransik when they found humans pouring into the rear of their armies. The hordes of Clan Rictus and Clan Skab were ringed around the Averburg, so keen to steal the victory from Clan Mors that they’d completely ignored the thinning of Vrrmik’s own forces laying siege to the stubborn human fortress. Most of those Vrrmik had left behind were slaves and warriors from thrall clans, losses that Mors would easily replace.
But it wasn’t the decimation of his skaven rivals alone that excited Vrrmik. Soon he would cut the pelt from Man-dread, this annoying human who had caused so much distress to the Under-Empire. In some ways, Vrrmik felt obliged to Man-dread. Indeed, if the human hadn’t already existed he thought he would have had to invent him. Man-dread’s attacks had sapped the strength and injured the pride of many clans, among them even the mighty Pestilens itself. He had proven useful in curtailing the reckless ambitions of lesser skaven, of reminding them of their place within the hierarchy of Skavenblight.
Now, however, Man-dread had made the mistake of crossing claws with Clan Mors. His usefulness was almost at an end. Having been built up as the great threat to skavendom, it was time for the human to be sacrificed to the greater glory of Vrrmik.
Vrrmik closed his paws tighter about the heft of Skavenbite as he listened to the frantic report from the exhausted messenger who had scurried all the way from the cellars near the Averburg to the great warlord’s hidden lair. He bruxed his fangs together in delight as he heard the news. Man-dread’s troops had reached the rear of Warlord Ransik’s clanrats. Even better, the humans within the fortress were sallying forth to engage Warlord Hakrr’s stormvermin.
Vrrmik reared up to his full imposing height. A steady diet of specially prepared meats and cheeses infused with warpstone dust had swollen his musculature to a degree where his fur had abandoned the effort to clothe the bulging biceps and triceps, leaving great patches of his body naked to the skin. His armour, festooned with spikes and warpstone charms, exuded the scent of slaves slaughtered only that morning so that none of his warriors could fail to detect the smell of their warlord. A bladed tail-ring encircled the scaly appendage as it lashed to and fro behind the monster’s back.
‘Attack-maim! Destroy-die!’ Vrrmik growled at his clanrats. The murderous hammer he bore came smashing down, reducing the head of the messenger into a bloody mist with a single blow. The violent display urged his warriors into a frenzy of activity.
Light streamed down into the tunnels as the skaven pulled aside the camouflaged covers. Hidden by the stalks of black corn growing in the loose layer of dirt strewn over them, the mats were dumped into the burrow and the skaven swarmed up into the dry moat outside the walls of Averheim. Warning trumpets blasted from the human encampment far across the plain as the teeming hordes of Clan Mors surged up onto the surface.
The warning was sounded too late. Even as the human soldiers who had stayed behind to protect the breach turned to see why the alarm had sounded, the skaven were among them. Not the weak, half-starved slaves who had defended the walls, but armoured clanrats and stormvermin. The horde swept across the horrified men in a tidal wave of slashing blades and snapping jaws.
Vrrmik advanced with his warriors, exulting in the raw power of Skavenbite. A sweep of his hammer and a human was flung twenty feet into the air, his body crashing to earth in a puddle of splintered bone and ruptured flesh. An overhand blow of the warhammer and an armoured knight was driven into the ground like an iron nail, his feet so firmly embedded in the flagstones that a second strike from the weapon ripped his legs off at the knees.
More than the havoc inflicted by his hammer, it was the terror the carnage evoked that set Vrrmik’s blood racing. The savoury smell of fear in the scent of his minions, the stink of terror in the sweat of the humans. Vrrmik was a demigod of death and destruction, a living engine of slaughter and ruin.
Furiously, Vrrmik drove his horde on into the human ranks. His trap was sprung; Man-dread’s army was caught inside Averheim, pinned between the stone walls and the hordes of Rictus and Skab. Mors would press the humans further into the toils of the other clans, equally happy with whichever side suffered losses. There was only one death Vrrmik refused to concede to the other skaven, one death that he would deny even his own warriors.
The keenest noses among the scavenging troglodytes of Clan Skrittlespike followed close beside Great Warlord Vrrmik, their senses trained to pick out one scent from among the countless smells and odours in the air. Their purpose was to sniff out Man-dread himself and guide Vrrmik to him.
When Man-dread perished, it would be beneath the mangling sweep of Skavenbite. When the hope of humanity was slaughtered, all would recognise Vrrmik as the butcher of that hope.
Man and skaven alike would bow in terror before the might of Vrrmik.
Skavenblight, 1122
‘Scurry-hurry! Quick-quiet!’ the squeaking hisses of Queekish came uneasily to Moschner’s tongue. He felt unclean even trying to shape such sounds. Squeamishness, however, was a quality he didn’t have the luxury of indulging. Not anymore. Not if he was going to reduce Skavenblight to a charnel house of disease and destruction.
He watched as the three skaven slaves, scrawny specimens that had been supplied to him as test subjects, attacked their labour with frantic urgency. Moschner watched them carefully, wary lest their haste should blot out their sense of caution. Previous experience had taught him that a single reprimand from him would send the slaves into fra
tricidal frenzy. If any of them thought another was going to spoil its chance to escape, the results would be swift and brutal.
The skaven were secured in a large cage at the back of the cave. The walls were much too tough for a human or dwarf to excavate barehanded, but a skaven could gnaw through iron with its fangs if given enough time and incentive. To the best of his ability, Moschner had endeavoured to provide the creatures with both.
Every hour, Moschner expected his plans to collapse around him. The audacity of his scheme frightened even himself. Every time he was visited by Seerlord Queekual he was certain the ferocious sorcerer had seen through his ploy. However, the abject terror he felt during such visitations served to encourage the ratman’s megalomaniacal pride. In his arrogance, Queekual was oblivious even to the possibility that this terrified little slave might have the courage to plot against him, that so frightened a wretch would be bold enough to lie to his face.
The lie still held, but Moschner knew he was on borrowed time. There was only so long he could rotate the skaven test subjects from cage to cage before Queekual noticed. There was only so long he could pass off specimens not yet exposed to the plague as early-stage victims of the disease.
The secret hidden by the lie was one that would have thrilled Schroeder. Moschner could take no such pleasure. He felt like a Shallyan acolyte shaking hands with a diseased disciple of the Fly Lord. What he was doing represented the sundering of every oath he’d sworn as a physician and healer. That he had succeeded in his ghastly labour only made it worse.
The improved strain of Black Plague Queekual demanded had become reality several weeks ago. That was the secret Moschner couldn’t afford to let his terrible patron discover.
He still had only the vaguest idea of what the Seerlord intended. That the monster wanted this disease to unleash against his own kind was obvious, but what Queekual hoped to achieve was a mystery to Moschner. Whatever it was, he was certain that it brooked no good for mankind.
That was why Moschner had been playing for time. That was why he had removed the healthiest of his skaven specimens to the rear cages, had given them crude digging tools fashioned from the fangs of their dead kin. That was why he had encouraged the ratmen to dig, had helped them hide the loose earth in the bellies of dead slaves. The earth below Skavenblight was a labyrinth of tunnels and passages. It couldn’t be long before the ratmen broke through to another chamber. When they did, they would be free, free to scatter and hide among the teeming hordes of their monstrous society.
Free to escape and bring the new strain of plague to the rest of the ratkin. For what none of the slaves knew was that they’d already been exposed to the disease, that they were in fact simply the latest in a long chain of skaven that had been pressed into the doktor’s plot. If they broke through before the worst symptoms crippled them, they would go free. If not, Moschner would move their sick carcasses to different cages and wait for a fresh batch of specimens to take up the work.
‘Scurry-hurry,’ Moschner repeated as he marched away from the diggers.
He would give Queekual his plague, all right. But not in the way the sorcerer expected.
Seerlord Queekual clutched the mummified cat’s-paw tighter. A relic from the ancient tombs of Khemri, it was a powerful talisman against sickness and decay. Warlord Nekrot had worn it once and Queekual’s agents had secured it for him when the unlamented Bonelord met his end before the malefic magics of Vanhal. He was certain of the talisman’s efficacy, having tested it on a dozen apprentices and adepts. They’d resisted exposure to the very worst diseases, so Queekual was prepared to accept that the talisman performed in the manner expected of it.
Even with the talisman’s protection, the horned ratman cringed when he leaned down and scrutinised the miserable captives sprawled at the bottom of their cages. He held a brick of pungent cheese to his nose to blot out the offensive odour of rot and disease. The stench of plague was as unmistakable as the physical symptoms. While he watched, one of the captives twitched violently and was still.
‘That one has just died,’ Moschner-man reported. The slave consulted his clay tablet, nodding his head in deference to the Seerlord’s exalted position. ‘The specimen was exposed to the new stock only eighteen food cycles ago.’
The report had Queekual leaning close to the bars despite the smell and his own fear of the plague. Eighteen food cycles? Twenty-four hours as humans reckoned time! The sorcerer wiped a string of drool from his fangs. It was astounding, to think the disease could kill so quickly! It went beyond his greatest expectations.
‘I was smart-wise to keep you alive when all the others disappointed me,’ Queekual declared, preening his whiskers with two claws while the rest continued to grip the block of cheese. He gestured with the paw gripping the mummified talisman. ‘All the others, witches and priests, herbalists and barbers. All of them failed. All of them died.’
Moschner bowed in the expected gesture of submissive gratitude. He lifted the clay writing tablet. ‘I have written down the formula for you,’ he said. ‘You understand how to read Reikspiel as well as speak it?’
The skaven swung away from the cage, his fur bristling at the condescension in Moschner’s tone. ‘Give-bring!’ Queekual snarled, flinging the block of smelly cheese to the floor. The doktor was the very model of a humble slave as he crept forward and deposited the tablet in Queekual’s waiting paw.
‘Follow those instructions and you will be able to create more of the plague any time you like. All you need is some fleas and polluted blood. And a little patience.’
Queekual stared down at the tablet, his mind awhirl with the possibilities, the potential he gripped in his paws. He held a force mightier than anything Clan Pestilens possessed, a force powerful enough to bring all skavendom to its knees! Yes, the hordes of the Under-Empire would learn what it meant to defy the word of their god! Queekual would loose this new disease on all those who stood in his way. He would reshape the Under-Empire as a theocracy led by the grey seers with himself as Ultimate Hierophant!
The Seerlord’s eyes narrowed. His tail twitched in the dirt behind him. Of course, if he were to deliver skavendom from calamity, there couldn’t be any evidence linking him to that calamity.
Queekual shifted the tablet under his arm. Retrieving his staff from where it leaned against the wall, he regarded Moschner with a fanged smile. ‘You have done good-good,’ he hissed. ‘Now I gift-give your reward!’
The head of Seerlord Queekual’s staff blazed with coruscating bands of arcane energy. The blinding dazzle of light leapt from between the metal horns, striking out and immolating Moschner in a burst of sizzling annihilation. When the light faded, all that was left of Queekual’s hapless slave was a pile of smoking ash and a few charred bones.
‘Destroy-burn!’ Queekual snarled at the guard-rats outside as he marched from the cave. ‘Burn everything! Leave nothing!’
Soon, all traces of Moschner and his work would be obliterated. Then Queekual could begin his great work, the task entrusted to him by the Horned Rat Himself. There could be no question of his triumph, of the ruination of his enemies.
If he had noticed an empty cage at the back of Moschner’s cave, if he had seen the tiny, crude tunnel leading away from it, Queekual might not have felt so confident.
Chapter XVI
Averland, 1123
Terror swept through the human forces as a second mighty host of skaven appeared at their rear. The breach in the walls of Averheim was now sealed up by a solid mass of verminous flesh. The ratmen attacked in a great chittering horde, driven to the point of frenzy by the threats of their leaders and the smell of fear on their foes. While the vanguard of Mandred’s army, the knights and mounted warriors, slammed into the skaven besieging the walls of the Averburg, striving to link up with the defenders within the old fortress, the infantry supporting his assault threatened to collapse. Peasant militia, mendicant flagellants,
mercenaries and bandits, the troops had the will to fight, the heart to follow Mandred on his quest to free the Empire from the shadow of the ratmen, but they lacked the training and discipline which alone could stand before the bestial onslaught of Clan Mors.
There was one exception, one rock that stood steadfast before the sea of despair and panic that raged around it, a stolid wedge of defiance that spread across the streets. Fleeing men broke before the immovable walls of flesh and steel, funnelled down side streets and alleyways, channelled off in directions where their route wouldn’t reach the soldiers battling around the Averburg and make a shambles of their efforts to smash the skaven lines.
The ratmen pursuing the fleeing humans crashed against the shield-walls like a loathsome tide. Like a tide, too, they broke against the unyielding rock they crashed against, flowing backwards and rolling forwards in an unending wave of feral savagery.
‘Khazukan Kazakit-Ha!’ the fierce cry boomed through the streets as each wave of skaven crashed against the shield-wall. The dwarfs of Grungni’s Tower, the hardest and most steadfast warriors in Mandred’s army, had been unable to maintain the pace of the long-legged humans in their rapid advance through the city. By degrees, the dwarfs had been left behind by the spear of Mandred’s assault forces. Now they assumed a new role: that of the army’s shield.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with his kinsmen, Kurgaz Smallhammer glared at the oncoming skaven with eyes that were ablaze with hate. These beasts had killed his brother, had profaned the halls of Karak Grazhyakh, had stolen the great hammer Drakdrazh. Many were the grudges for which these vermin would atone and not the blood of a thousand of their pestiferous kind would be enough to wash away that debt.
