by C. L. Werner
The stink of disaster infested the scents of Puskab and his companions – the few plague monks who had escaped the Howling Hills. It wasn’t a paranoid imagining, but a vile odour secreted by the glands, a vile broth that conveyed both fear and submission. How despicable that such a smell should affix itself to a Grey Lord, to the mighty Poxmaster of Pestilens! It was an indignity that he found almost impossible to endure, an imposition that had caused him many times to turn on his small entourage. Decimating their numbers, however, had done nothing to assuage the tremors in his glands. If anything, it had made the noxious fug even worse. For a time, it had been possible to blot out the smell with pestiferous incense sticks, but the supply had run out long before they reached Skavenblight.
Puskab hesitated as he heard a particularly loud snarl rise from the shadow of a partially toppled archway. His baleful glare sent the utterer scampering off with his tail tucked between his legs, but the mere occurrence of such an incident bespoke an unbelievable boldness of impudence. He was a Grey Lord! The Grand-High Poxmaster of All Skavendom! Architect of the Black Plague and Favoured Spawn of the Horned One! For a common gutter-haunter to possess the spleen to dare snap at him – whatever impropriety might exude from his glands – was outrageous beyond belief!
His claws tightening about the gnarled staff he carried, Puskab vowed to avenge these indignities. The scum of Skavenblight would learn what it meant to trifle with the plaguelords of Clan Pestilens!
Snapping commands to his retinue, Puskab hurried them through the decrepit back streets. Now, more and more, the plague monks found eyes watching them from the shadows, furtive figures scampering along the rooftops.
Rounding a corner that connected to one of the city’s main runs, Puskab was startled by the sight of hundreds of bodies lying rotting in the street. The evidence of violence was everywhere, a gory litter of carnage that stained the ground and spattered the walls. A diseased stink rose from the carrion, a stink Puskab knew only too well. It was the corruption left behind by the Black Plague.
A tremor of alarm raced through the Poxmaster’s glands. The plague, his plague, running rampant through Skavenblight? It couldn’t be! Only the plaguelords had the necessary knowledge to inflict such catastrophe upon their fellow ratkin. Yet why would they? There was no sense in slaughtering the very creatures they had invested such effort towards enslaving!
‘The Bilious Basilica, scurry-hurry!’ Puskab growled at his entourage. The plague monks turned away from the piles of dead, the hacked remains of skaven driven mad with disease and despair. They rushed down the narrow lanes, scurrying along ancient boulevards reared by the hands of men and dwarfs long before the first skaven stirred from its hole. Decayed pillars and broken masonry choked many of the pathways, compelling the ratmen to scurry over and around the obstructions. Here and there, heaps of dead skaven lay clustered about the rubble, their pelts blistered with the sores of plague.
Sinister whispers now pursued Puskab through the confusion of avenues. He didn’t need to threaten his minions to greater speed. It was all he could do to keep from falling behind. There was no denying the presence of lurking skaven on the rooftops, no questioning the skulking shapes that watched them from behind boarded windows and locked doors. Every rodent instinct in Puskab’s body was alert to the threat that hovered nearby, the brooding menace that seemed to swell and grow with each passing breath.
The Bilious Basilica, the fortress-monastery of Clan Pestilens, their most prominent holding on the surface of Skavenblight, reared up before Puskab’s gaze as he scurried out from the cramped morass of tottering tenements and collapsed storehouses. Once it had served as a factory of some kind, but the imposing stone structure with its tiered levels and soaring parapets had long been the domain of Clan Pestilens. The plague monks had erected a massive wall around their monastery, a fortification thrice as tall as any skaven and nearly a dozen feet thick. The Poxmaster breathed slightly easier when he saw the ragged banners of Pestilens displaying the triple pimple symbol of the Horned One flying from the battlements. He could smell the sentries prowling the walls and hear the sharp cacophony of their scratchy chant.
Instead of reassuring him, the sentries brought a renewed sense of disquiet to Puskab. There were too many guards on the walls, far more than he could ever recall seeing. There were other smells too, the pungent tang of plague fumes rising from incense burners, the necrotic decay of neglected corpses. Drawing nearer, Puskab could see the heaps of dead ratmen piled outside the walls. The evidence was as obvious as it was incredible: the feckless hordes of Skavenblight had tried to storm the basilica!
Controlling the panic rising within him, Puskab marched towards the great double-gates of the monastery. He waited a moment, the stump of his tail twitching with imapatience as he waited for the guards to admit him. When, after a moment of inaction he lifted his gaze, he found the sentries still at their posts, not so much as twitching a whisker to open the doors.
‘Poxmaster Puskab Foulfur command-demands entrance to basilica-nest!’ he growled with a flash of yellowed fang.
‘Poxmaster Puskab can rot with the dead,’ an oozing voice growled back. Puskab knew that oily inflection, the tones of his hated rival Vrask Bilebroth. Sniffing the air, it was an easy thing for him to pick out the other plaguelord’s scent. Craning his antlered head back, he could see his enemy perched upon one of the upper parapets.
‘I return from battle-fight,’ Puskab declared, trying to keep his voice firm and superiority in his posture. ‘Vrrmik-meat is dead.’
Vrask’s attitude remained challenging even in the face of the important news Puskab brought with him. ‘Much skaven-meat dead-dead,’ Vrask announced, his words slashing like claws. He pointed a scabby paw at the carrion heaped about the walls. ‘Black Plague,’ he hissed. ‘Kill-slay much-much.’ He curled back his lips, exposing his sharp fangs. ‘Too much-much!’
Puskab didn’t like the accusation in Vrask’s voice. He could imagine the delusional maggot taking it into his head that Puskab was behind the contagion. Certainly Vrask had been envious of the trust and honour accorded to the Poxmaster by Vrrmik, but certainly he must understand how Vrrmik’s death changed all that? Puskab was concerned only with increasing the strength of Clan Pestilens, not petty personal ambitions and jealousies.
‘I want-need speak-squeak with Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch,’ Puskab said. Nurglitch would support him and punish Vrask for showing such temerity.
Vrask chuckled, a sound like the slopping of swamp water in a rusty bucket. ‘Nurglitch gone-gone. Left Skavenblight. Take-want pilgrimage to Blisterdeep.’
Puskab blinked in disbelief. Nurglitch had abandoned Skavenblight, had made the arduous journey back to Blisterdeep? Blisterdeep was the most distant of Clan Pestilens’s strongholds, a jungle pit far to the south, beyond the great deserts and the vast savannah. What could compel Nurglitch to stage such an unseemly retreat?
‘Black Plague kill-take many skaven!’ Vrask howled down at Puskab. ‘Kill-take Skurvy and Skab, Fester and Ferrik, Gnaw and Scruten, Rictus and Mors! Kill-slay Moulderkin and Skullykin, leave none to watch-guard slave-meat! Slave-meat fight-flee in lowest tunnels, kill-steal much-much!’
What Puskab had mistaken for arrogance and supremacy in Vrask’s voice was quickly becoming exposed as fright. The plaguelord slurred his words together in the terrified squeak of a lowly clanrat. It wasn’t the Poxmaster’s return that evoked such fear. No, Vrask was afraid of something else, something so formidable that Nurglitch had fled Skavenblight, leaving Vrask behind holding the bag.
Puskab stared again at the heaps of dead. He cocked back his ears, listening to the chorus of squeaks and whispers in the streets he had so recently abandoned. The hordes of Skavenblight, the teeming thousands who dwelt within and beneath the mighty city! Surely they couldn’t be so foolish as to think Pestilens had deliberately loosed the plague on them!
A glance at the pil
ed dead convinced Puskab that the hordes of Skavenblight were indeed that foolish. More, he noted for the first time the crude patches and emblems adorning many of the dead, the brands marking their fur. They wore the cross-bone symbol of the Horned Rat, the same symbol employed by the grey seers to denote their archaic order.
‘Queekual…’ Puskab snarled as the realisation struck him. No plaguelord, not even Vrask would have been so unwise as to loose the disease among the teeming hordes of Skavenblight. Their knowledge of plague was too extensive, their appreciation of the difficulties of containing and controlling an outbreak in such conditions too acute. The Black Plague was too lethal in its effects to leave enough survivors for the plague monks to convert to the true path of the Horned One. But an outside force, an interloper who didn’t understand the workings of sacred plagues, he might be so insane. Certainly it was obvious the Seerlord had been exploiting the disaster to restore the prestige of his antiquated religion.
The Poxmaster’s fur bristled as his senses were thrown into a paroxysm of alarm. A sniff of the air told him that hundreds of skaven were advancing upon the basilica. A glance over his shoulder brought the image of scraggly figures creeping out from the streets, clubs and blades clenched in their emaciated paws. Puskab looked back to the parapet, desperately hoping Vrask would relent and open the gates before it was too late. His rival simply glowered down at him, displaying his fangs once more in a murderous grin.
‘The Shattered Tower!’ Puskab snapped at his cringing retinue. There was no sanctuary for him here, but however bold the mob might have grown they wouldn’t dare to violate the sanctity of the Shattered Tower, the very heart of skavendom.
Angry whispers rose to vengeful howls as Puskab and the plague monks fled from the walls of the basilica. Back into the winding streets they ran. From every cellar, from every rooftop, mobs of enraged skaven appeared. Doors were smashed open, shuttered windows battered to splinters as diseased ratmen rushed to intercept the fugitives. Skaven from scores of clans, chittering in a maddened discord of dialects and accents, flooded the avenues. Their cries were for blood and vengeance, shrieks that bespoke the outrage of the doomed and abandoned.
‘Puskab die-die! Die-die Puskab!’ the mob roared in a thousand-fold voice of thunder.
The plague monks with Puskab were forced to cut their way through knots of ratmen, slashing them down with murderous sweeps of their swords. The dying ratkin pawed at them, trying to drag their killers down with them into the gutter. Several times a plague monk would linger too long freeing himself from the grip of a skaven he had slain. Their shrill wails as the enraged mob caught them lent new speed to the feet of the survivors.
After what seemed an eternity of twists and turns, Puskab could smell the brackish water in the basin of the shapeless fountain that bordered the broad plaza at the base of the Shattered Tower. Only a few plague monks remained with him now, the others dragged down by the mob which was close behind. With sight of the fountain and the near-formless lump of bronze poised above it, Puskab knew precisely how far it would be to the steps of the Shattered Tower. Too far to outdistance the mob.
Without a second thought, Puskab brought his staff cracking against the knee of a plague monk. The stricken creature yelped and crashed to the ground, his momentum causing him to slide along the cobblestones and slam against the base of the fountain. Puskab didn’t spare the betrayed wretch another glance. Slaughtering the plague monk would delay the mob for a few breaths. Long enough for the Poxmaster to reach safety.
Racing into the plaza, Puskab’s heart leapt into his throat. Every street was choked with enraged ratmen. Word had spread through every quarter of the city, drawing the terrified masses together into a vengeful tempest of fangs and claws. The Poxmaster gnashed his fangs at the sight. The last of his retinue made a break for a darkened alleyway only to be brought low by a skulking gang of red-cloaked Skully murder-rats.
Drawing upon his sorcerous power, Puskab set a pestilential torrent spilling from his fangs, spattering the nearest mob with sizzling acid. The agonised victims staggered back, their pained seizures impeding the advance of those behind. The Poxmaster seized upon the space he had gained. Springing forwards, he leapt towards the great stone steps at the base of the tower.
A lone figure stood there, sombre and sinister in his charcoal robes. Seerlord Queekual’s eyes glittered with arcane power as he glared down at Puskab. The prophet pointed a claw at the plaguelord. ‘The Horned Rat has judged! You are guilty of heresy! You and your spawn shall be cleansed in blood!’
Puskab threw forth his paw. From each splayed claw a ribbon of noxious green light sped towards the Seerlord. ‘Eat-gnaw heresy!’ he spat.
Queekual flinched as the green light crackled about him. His paw clenched tight about the mummified talisman hanging about his neck. For an instant, the green light started to collapse towards him. The next moment, Puskab’s spell was shattered in a spray of bile and worms.
The Seerlord’s staff blazed with fire as he brought it swinging around. From the horned head, a bolt of malignant energy leapt. There was a flash of leprous yellow miasma as the bolt shredded through the protective barrier Puskab tried to invoke. Then Queekual’s magic slammed into the Poxmaster, tearing the staff from his claws and hurling him through the air.
Puskab landed in a heap, his head ringing from its impact against the unyielding stone. He found himself staring up at the top of the Shattered Tower, the steeple where he had won his duel with Wormlord Blight and claimed his position on the Council. For an instant only did the memory flicker, then it was blotted out by the dozens of savage skaven faces that crept into view and glared down at him.
‘Fear your tormentor no more!’ Seerlord Queekual shouted from the steps. ‘The beneficence of the Horned Rat has delivered the Poxmaster unto your paws! Cleanse your warrens of his plague with his blood!’
Queekual lingered over the scene, savouring the shrieks rising from Puskab Foulfur’s tortured carcass as the panicked mob tore the fallen Poxmaster limb from limb.
Chapter XXII
Altdorf, 1124
For the better part of an hour, Kreyssig could hear the jubilant crowds cheering Graf Mandred as the Middenheimer made his entry into Altdorf. The details of the Battle of the Howling Hills might not be known to the peasants; even the accomplishments of his army during its march through Averland and Stirland were probably unknown to these people. Yet something, some force made them respond to this man, cheering his procession as it rode past the Königplatz and headed towards the rebuilt bridges.
Kreyssig fumed at the sound of those cheering mobs. He’d sent agitators to poison the commoners against Mandred, engaged them to spread the most obscene rumours about the Middenheimer. Given their newfound adoration of the Sigmarite faith, Kreyssig’s spies had told the peasants that Mandred intended to abolish the Temple and establish an Ulrican priesthood in its stead. He’d told the peasants that Mandred intended to conscript every fifth man to be sent to Middenheim and rebuild the City of the White Wolf. He’d even gone so far as to spread Beck’s stories that Mandred cavorted with witches and took counsel from followers of the Ruinous Powers.
All of that, and still the people cheered. Sitting astride his horse outside the gates of the Imperial palace, it was an ordeal for Kreyssig to keep calm and wait. It would be beneath the dignity of his position as Protector of the Empire to ride out to meet Mandred. No, since Kreyssig was the Emperor’s surrogate, it was Mandred who must ride to meet him.
‘The people seem to be pleased with their new Emperor,’ Duke Vidor observed. As one of the most important nobles in Altdorf, not to mention Reikmarshal, Kreyssig had felt obligated to include Vidor among his own retinue. There was still no love lost between the two men, as Vidor lost no opportunity to remind him. ‘Peasants can sense noble blood. They know who is a legitimate lord and who is simply a poseur.’
‘He isn’t Emperor yet,’ Kr
eyssig hissed through clenched teeth.
Duke Vidor feigned a look of profound surprise. ‘Really? I thought he had the hammer! I thought he had the blessing of the gods! I thought he just purged half the Empire of ratmen!’
Kreyssig leaned around in his saddle and glowered at Vidor. ‘Apparently he is simply returning Ghal Maraz to where it belongs,’ he told the duke. ‘As for the rest, gods are even more fickle than people about who they give their favours to.’
Vidor shook his head. ‘The peasants don’t seem to think so,’ he said, waving his hand as the sound of cheers drew nearer.
Kreyssig did his best to look regal and composed as Mandred’s procession came into view, rounding the street and marching past the Courts of Justice. The attempt faltered when he saw the hero riding a great white stallion adorned in a crimson caparison. Mandred wore a suit of glistening plate armour that seemed to fairly blaze in the sun. His helm was the open-faced visage of a snarling wolf, the nobleman’s own face framed by the steel jaws. At his side, he wore Legbiter, the runefang of Middenland, but resting across his left shoulder was the magnificence of Ghal Maraz itself. The warhammer of Sigmar really did seem to exude its own brilliance, a shine that had nothing to do with the sun overhead.
All of this, Kreyssig took in at a glance, trying to get the measure of his enemy. But it wasn’t Mandred’s appearance that told him what sort of man the Empire had made into a hero. It was the long line of foot soldiers who flanked either side of the procession. They seemed to have been carefully selected in their arrangement, a Middenlander marching beside an Averlander with a Stirlander and a Nordlander following behind. Every land, every province Mandred’s army had fought in was represented, a visible manifestation of the unity and solidarity that had allowed him to rout the ratkin from the territories they had conquered.
