by Nathan Long
‘They coming,’ said Giano.
‘Captain.’ Franka urged. ‘Reiner, please.’
‘It’s too late. I…’ With a growl of frustration, Reiner stepped to one of the dead ratmen and cut a ring of keys from his belt. ‘Their weapons,’ he said. ‘And the scalpels.’
Giano and Franka began stripping the dead ratmen of their cleavers and swords and daggers as Reiner tried a key in a lock. They gathered up all the surgeon’s scalpels, chisels and saws as well. The key didn’t fit. Reiner tried another. It wouldn’t turn.
The rat-voices were getting closer.
Reiner cursed. ‘Give them the weapons.’ He was sweating.
Franka kept a sword for herself, then helped Giano pass the rest of the blades through the bars to the prisoner’s eager hands. Reiner tried another key. Still no luck.
The rat-voices were clear now. Reiner could hear the jingle of weapons and armour.
‘Damn damn damn!’ He thrust the keys at the man who had spoken first. ‘I’m sorry. We must go. Good luck to you.’
‘What’s this?’ said the man, taking the keys by reflex. ‘You’re leaving?’
Reiner backed to the door, pulling on his mask. ‘We must.’ He turned to Giano and Franka. ‘Hurry.’
‘Reiner, you can’t…’ said Franka.
‘Don’t be a fool. Do you want to live?’
He pushed her towards the door. She looked like she was going to protest again, then turned on her heel and started into the corridor, her face twisting with emotion. Giano pulled on his mask and followed her.
‘Black death take you, you bastards!’ cried a woman.
Reiner flinched as he Franka and Giano ran down the narrow corridor to the main tunnel.
‘How we take with no face on?’ asked Giano, gesturing at Franka.
Reiner closed his eyes. ‘Curse me for a fool. Should have made three disguises. Give me a moment to think.’
They stopped just before they reached the tunnel, crouching in the shadow of the opening. They heard cries of rattish dismay behind them as the ratmen found the dead guards.
‘No moment left,’ said Giano.
‘I don’t know!’
‘Carry me!’ said Franka.
‘Carry you?’ asked Reiner.
‘The surgeon sells his mistakes for food. I saw ratmen carry bodies out this way all day.’
‘Perfect!’ said Reiner. ‘Hold tight, lad.’ He hoisted Franka over his shoulder like a sack and started into the tunnel. ‘And mind you play dead.’
‘Or we be dead,’ added Giano.
Reiner and Giano crossed quickly to the far side of the tunnel, putting the line of carts between them and the side passage, then hurried for the edge of the camp, hunching low. Before they had got twenty yards they heard their pursuers burst into the tunnel behind them, screeching orders and questions at their brethren. Reiner picked up his pace. Franka bounced slackly on his shoulder. He heard her retch.
‘They come,’ she whispered. ‘Others point the way.’
‘Shut up!’ Reiner hissed.
He looked back, pulling his mask close with his free hand to see better through his eye-holes. The ratmen were indeed coming; a squad of guards with long spears and steel helms that stretched down their long snouts like horse’s barding. They spread out across the width of the tunnel and jogged through the tents and carts, looking high and low—and sniffing.
Reiner pulled Giano around a high mound of garbage, his heart pounding. If the rat-guards had their scent, it didn’t matter how well they hid, their sensitive noses would find them.
And just as he thought it, a rat squealed in triumph in the distance. Reiner moaned. The guards had sniffed out their man scent, even under all the rat-filth they had rolled in. It wouldn’t be long now. He had to do something to throw them off the trail, to draw their attention. He looked around. The tents and the garbage would make perfect tinder except there was no fire. The rats didn’t seem to use it. They ate their meat raw and slept clustered together for warmth, which made sense for a race that lived underground. He considered firing his pistols into one of the wagons loaded with the curious hand cannon and brass tanks, but he had no idea how big a blast they would make, if any.
The ratmen were closing in, following their trail through the camp like dogs after a fox. If Reiner and Giano broke into a run they would be spotted instantly. The sweat was pouring down Reiner’s sides. Franka, who had weighed nothing when he picked her up, now felt heavier than an ox. He crossed his fingers and sent a prayer to Ranald. Alright, ye old charlatan, he thought, if ye get me out of this fix I’ll trick a thousand men before next I touch wine, and that’s a promise.
He dodged around a large tent and tripped over a small, fiercely hot forge, where a ratkin smith was pouring lead into bullet moulds. Reiner swallowed a curse and swerved drastically to avoid crashing into another rat who was busy folding measures of black powder into square gauze packets. Damn fool rats, not enough sense to keep blackpowder away from a…
Reiner stopped dead in his tracks. Giano crashed into him. Franka yelped. Idiot, thought Reiner, cursing himself. His prayer instantaneously answered and he’d nearly dismissed it as an obstacle. He dumped Franka unceremoniously to the ground, whispering, ‘Stay dead,’ then stepped up to the powder rat. The creature was scooping the powder out of a small wooden cask with what looked like a soup spoon from a nobleman’s banquet table. Reiner kicked him off his haunches, caught up the powder keg in both hands, stepped back, and before the rat smith had begun to comprehend what was happening, hurled it at the forge with all his strength.
The cask smashed to pieces on the bricks and the powder caught with a great whump. A huge ball of fire erupted, almost enveloping Reiner in its billows. His mask and robes were smoking as he hurried back to Giano and Franka. The rats around them shrieked. The tent was ablaze. The smith was wreathed in fire and screaming as he scampered in careening circles, setting on fire everything he touched.
‘Hurry!’ cried Reiner. He scooped Franka up again, then ran on with Giano at his side. The ratmen they passed paid them no mind. They were too busy staring at the spreading fire with blank expressions or pushing forward with blankets and skins of water. The whole tunnel’s attention was taken by the fire. Ratmen craned their necks over Reiner and Giano as they ran by. Reiner crossed his fingers again. A thousand men, ye mountebank, he thought. A thousand men.
They reached the edge of the camp and dodged through the jumbled ranks of siege towers and war machines, then stopped with the broad tunnel before them. Reiner set Franka down with a grunt of relief and tore off his mask and robes.
‘You take robes off?’ asked Giano, worried.
‘I don’t care,’ said Reiner. ‘I can’t stand another moment.’
‘Good.’ Giano pulled his off too.
‘We’ll be sitting ducks,’ said Franka looking at the wide open space before them.
‘We’ll have to risk it,’ said Reiner. ‘The side tunnels could go nowhere, or double back.’
‘So we run, hey?’ said Giano.
‘Aye,’ said Reiner. ‘We run.’
RANALD’S GIFT OF luck must have been holding, for they jogged the length of the tunnel without seeing or hearing any signs of pursuit. Reiner hoped their hunters were caught in the fire—or even better, that the whole ratman encampment had gone up in flames. Though even that would not have been enough to ease his mind. The faces of the men and women he had left in the iron cages bobbed in front of him as he ran. Their pleas rang in his ears.
As they neared the end of the tunnel, where the digging machines faced the wall, Franka put a hand on his arm and nodded ahead.
‘Torchlight,’ she said quietly.
Reiner stopped and peered forward. Beyond the monstrous contraptions, the tunnel’s omnipresent purple light was pushed back by a warm yellow glow. Reiner frowned, trying to remember if they had left a torch burning there. No. They had not. They had ground it out.
A shadow app
eared on the tunnel wall, grossly distorted, but recognizably the shadow of a ratman.
Reiner froze, his heart pounding. Was it their pursuers? Had they circled around somehow and beaten them there? Were they waiting to kill them?
But then another shadow pushed into the light next to the ratman’s. It was human.
‘What this?’ whispered Giano. ‘Rat and man?’
Reiner didn’t care to find out. He looked around at the few side passages piercing the tunnel’s walls. Was there a way around? He doubted it, and even if there was, which one should he take? They could wander lost down here forever. Had they the luxury of waiting, whoever it was that was blocking their way might go away, but they couldn’t wait. Their pursuers might come up behind them at any moment. They had to move.
Reiner put a finger to his lips and motioned Giano and Franka ahead. They crept forward, drawing weapons and keeping the bulk of the massive diggers between them and the torchlight. Reiner began hearing voices, an alternating hissing and rumbling. He paused. He could swear he recognized that rumble. Another few steps and the rumble turned into words.
‘But I tell you, you can wait no longer. You must attack as soon as you can. Tomorrow if possible!’
A cold snake of dread began to stir in Reiner’s guts. It was Commander Volk Shaeder speaking.
A voice like a knife on slate answered. ‘Tomorrow no. Many days cutting from skaven-tunnel to man-tunnel. War machiness not get out unless cutting.’
Reiner almost choked. Giano was growling in his throat. Franka put a hand on his arm to calm him.
‘But you don’t have days,’ continued Shaeder. ‘Look. This was left in the brothel. If Gutzmann saw this all would be lost. You must act before your carelessness exposes you!’
The harsh voice hissed, distressed. ‘My armies all not here. I half strong only.’
‘You needn’t worry about that. The fort will be lightly defended. I’ll make sure of it.’
There was pause, then the rat-voice spoke again. ‘This trick?’
‘Why would I trick you when we want the same thing? You want Aulschweig for a grain farm. I want the gold we’ve shipped to Caspar. All that stands in our way is Gutzmann and the fort. Then I will be away to Tilea with more gold than the richest man in Altdorf, and you will have food for your people for all time.’
The ratman practically crooned his answer. ‘Yes. Yes. Grain farm, man-slaves to work, and make strong us with they flesh. No more we eat you garbage. Now we grow strong.’
Reiner could almost hear Shaeder biting his tongue. ‘A grand dream, to be sure.’
‘This you do,’ said the ratman. ‘Close mine. Say no safe. We dig all day and night and day again. Ready tomorrow moon-rise.’
‘Excellent,’ said Shaeder. ‘I will…
Giano spat, drowning out the rest. ‘Traitor! Traitor to man! He die! I must—’
Reiner clapped a hand over the Tilean’s mouth, but it was too late. There was silence from beyond the digger. And then a harsh slither of syllables from the ratman.
Clawed feet skittered toward them and Reiner could hear swords scraping from sheaths. He backed away, pulling Franka with him.
‘Sorry, captain,’ said Giano. ‘I carry away myself…’
‘Shut up and move, you fool,’ Reiner growled. ‘Out from under these things.’
They ran out of the shadow of the diggers, and not a moment too soon. Black shapes swarmed around the big machines, slipping under them, over them and through their skeletal structures like eels.
‘Against the wall,’ said Reiner. ‘Don’t let ‘em encircle us.’
They ran to the left wall and turned, swords at the ready. Reiner drew his pistol. From the diggers came ten of the biggest ratmen Reiner had yet seen: tall, lean warriors with glossy black fur and gleaming bronze armour. Their swords were rapiers, long and thin. They flickered like heat lightning in the purple gloom.
TWELVE
The Honour of Knights
AS THE RATMEN closed in, Reiner saw, behind them, Shaeder running into a side passage, and a tall black-furred ratman in burnished armour watching from a safe distance. Then there was no time to pay attention to anything but the blades slashing toward him. Reiner fired his pistol into the eyes of the closest ratman, and it flew back, its face a red crater. Another lunged at him savagely, though its shiny black eyes betrayed no emotion. Reiner threw his pistol at it and blocked with his sword while drawing his dagger.
Beside him, Franka and Giano were parrying and dodging like mad. Nine blades poked and chopped at them, and the ratkin were no mean swordsmen. Though not a match for Reiner or Giano in strength, they more than made up for this deficit with their terrifying speed. The three humans had no chance to counter-attack. They were too busy keeping the ratmen’s blades at bay—or at least trying to. They were failing miserably.
Reiner barked as a ratman cut him across the forearm. He heard Franka and Giano gasp as they too were pinked. Another ratman sliced Reiner’s forehead, and blood trickled into his left eye, half blinding him. A third blade slid across his ribs.
A ball of rage and despair welled up in him. The scriptures of Sigmar told one that dying in battle against the enemies of mankind was the noblest destiny a man of the Empire might attain. Well, it was a lot of bunk. Reiner wanted to die of his excesses at a ripe old age, surrounded by fabulous riches. Instead he was going to die here in a filthy tunnel, pointlessly, shoved through the gate of Morr with his whole life ahead of him.
Any notion that dying beside his beloved was in some way romantic was bunk as well. It was the cruellest of jokes. There was so much they hadn’t done. They hadn’t danced together or lived together. They hadn’t made love together. And worst of all, they hadn’t been free together. For the entire time Reiner had known her, he and Franka had been prisoners, under the thumb of the Empire or Manfred or his brother. Reiner had never been able to take her where he liked, show her his old haunts, explore new places with her, or even stay in and forget the world with her.
He could feel his arms growing heavier as he fanned them this way and that to catch all the steel stabbing his way. A blade pierced his leg. Another nicked his ear.
‘Franka. I—’
The girl flicked a look his way between ducking and blocking. Her eyes shared his sadness. She grinned crookedly. ‘Should have broken my vow, hey?’
Reiner laughed. ‘Well yes, damn ye, y’should have. But—’ A blade nicked his shoulder. ‘Curse it! What I wanted to say—’
‘Hoy!’ came a cry, and one of the ratmen Reiner was facing suddenly had a crossbow bolt sprouting from his neck. It fell, choking and screeching.
Both the ratmen and the humans looked around. Running through the giant diggers and drawing their weapons were Karel and Hals and Pavel, as well as Dag, Jergen and Gert. Only Abel was missing.
Despite what the rat-surgeon had said about his kind having no spleen, the ratmen did not break, but met the new threat in good order. Three locked up with Pavel and Hals, one forced Gert back, besting the reach of his short-hafted axe with its long blade. Their leader, who had previously hung back, lunged at Karel, pressing him strongly. Dag windmilled wildly at another with a short sword and dagger, screaming his head off but doing little. Reiner, Franka and Giano, freed to fight one ratman apiece, continued on the defensive while they recovered their strength.
Jergen, as silent as ever, once again made all the other Blackhearts look like children waving sticks. He cut down the first ratman he faced with a single stroke, and before it had collapsed, had stepped past another and beheaded it with a backstroke. A third, seeing him with his sword arm stretched behind him, lunged at his exposed chest. Jergen swayed slightly to the left, allowing its sword to pass by his ribs, then trapped the blade under his arm and chopped down through the ratman’s clavicle to the heart.
‘Would you look at him work,’ breathed Franka.
This sudden butchery at last unnerved the other ratmen. Their attacks faltered as their c
omrades screamed and spouted blood. Their leader sprang back from Karel and cried the retreat.
The ratmen scampered away towards their encampment, so quick that not even Jergen got in a last lick as they disengaged. Their wounded cried after them piteously, but they never looked back.
Franka stepped forwards to dispatch these with her dagger as the others started after the retreating rats.
‘No!’ said Reiner. ‘There’s a whole army down there.’
And just as he said it, he noticed shadows moving on the tunnel walls beyond the retreating rats. Their pursuers had finally resumed the chase.
‘We must fly,’ he said. ‘There’s more coming.’
The men reluctantly turned back, wiping down their weapons and sheathing them.
‘Walking vermin,’ said Gert wonderingly. ‘Just as y’said.’
As the men started to crowd into the hole, Dag made a face. ‘That you what stinks, captain? Thought it was the rats.’
‘We had to disguise our scent.’
‘Ye did that well enough,’ said Pavel covering his nose.
Reiner looked around for Franka. ‘Franz?’
She was sitting on the chest of one of the fallen ratmen, mechanically plunging her dagger into its chest over and over again, her eyes streaming tears.
‘Franz.’
She didn’t respond.
He crossed to her. ‘Franz!’
He caught her wrist.
She looked up, snarling. Then blinked. Her face relaxed. ‘I… I’m sorry. You didn’t see…’
Reiner swallowed. ‘No need to explain. But they’re coming.’
She nodded and stood, and they followed the others into the hole.
As they emerged into the mine tunnel, Reiner caught Hals’s eye. ‘Changed your mind, did you?’
Hals scowled and looked away. ‘We… we couldn’t let y’die. But yer safe now, so, uh, we’ll be on our way.’
‘Fair enough,’ Reiner said.
Pavel and Hals and the others turned and started hurrying up the slope. Reiner snorted as he pressed his kerchief against the cut above his eye. It was ridiculous. They were all travelling the same way, but Reiner allowed them to pull ahead for appearance’s sake.
