The End Times | The Rise of the Horned Rat

SIXTEEN Queen Kemma’s Oath

‘Tor Rudrum is gone, vala,’ said Gromvarl.

Queen Kemma set down her riveting pliers and sagged over her metalwork. She did nothing but thread mail links to one another all day every day, because there was nothing else for her to do. Belegar would not let her out, nor would he see her.

‘We are trapped, then,’ she said.

‘Aye, lass,’ said Gromvarl. He reached out awkwardly to pat her back. ‘That’s about the size of it. A flight of gyrocopters came in yesterday.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Only one got through, Kemma,’ he said gently. ‘The rest were shot down by the thaggoraki. They’ve overrun all the peaks, those that are not in the hands of the grobi, at any rate.’

Kemma gave a sad nod, staring at the shining hauberk, perfectly crafted although not yet finished, in her lap.

‘The last one, pilot by the name of Torin Steamhammer, just got in before the ledges were taken by grobi on spiders.’

‘Spider riders? I thought they lived in the forests in the lowlands.’

‘They did,’ said Gromvarl, wheezing as he sat down on a three-legged stool. He took his pipe out from his jerkin and filled it. He thought to take a half-bowl, for there was precious little tobacco left in the Eight Peaks, just like there was precious little of anything fine remaining. But with things the way they were he figured he probably had scant days left to smoke what small amounts he had, and after a second thought rammed it full with his thumb. ‘All sorts of monsters up here now. Things I’ve never seen in the mountains before. The world’s in turmoil, vala.’

‘Do you have to call me that?’ Kemma said sharply. A booming played under their conversation, deep and monotonous, never stopping – the beat of an orcish battering ram on the great gates of the citadel. The greenskins had been at it ever since they’d driven the dwarfs back from the outer defences. Belegar’s warriors did what they could to keep Skarsnik’s hordes back, but they were low on everything bar rocks to drop on the besiegers. ‘You’re my only friend, Gromvarl. My only link with home.’

Gromvarl looked at her fondly. How much she’s grown, he thought. Such a pity the way fate falls. ‘Aye.’

‘He still won’t talk to me, will he?’

Gromvarl shook his head, sending his clouds of smoke shifting about his head.

‘My son?’

‘Thorgrim’s fine, my lady. He’s fretting about you. Keeps asking his dad to come and talk things through, but Belegar’s having none of it.’ He didn’t tell her that Belegar had precious little time for his heir either. He had become withdrawn, pale. He wasn’t sleeping, he was sure of that. Dawi were tough, and Belegar tougher than most, but that wound he was trying so hard to hide from everyone was not only obvious, it was not healing. Gromvarl was worried, very worried, but he did his best to hide it from Kemma behind an air of grave concern.

‘My husband is an arrogant, prideful fool, Gromvarl,’ said Kemma.

‘He’s one of the best, if not the best, warrior in all the Karaz Ankor, va– Kemma.’

‘He’s an idiot, and we’ll all die because of him.’

Gromvarl couldn’t disagree in all honesty, so he harrumphed and looked around the chamber, searching for the right thing to say. It was austere, cold, lacking a womanly touch. He found it depressing that such a good-hearted rinn as Kemma should have been brought to this. He was glad he did not have daughters. He was glad, in these awful times, he had no children at all. Still, he had not finished imparting his run of bad news. He mulled over how much he would say, but he had promised to keep her up to date.

A promise is a promise, he reminded himself. Without honour, and trust, what did they have left? An oath lasted longer than stone and iron.

‘There’s more, Kemma,’ he said quietly. Kemma fixed him with her eyes, expressionless, waiting patiently. ‘The gyrocopter brought a message from Karaz-a-Karak. After he read it, the king sat on his own in the Hall of Pillared Iron all day, bellowing at anyone who came near. He only told us what it said this morning, when he’d calmed down. A bit. Most of the holds are under siege, it can’t be much longer before they all are.’

‘And?’ said Kemma. ‘There is more, isn’t there, Gromvarl?’

The longbeard sighed. She always was far too clever. ‘Karak Azul has fallen.’ His heart pained him to speak it aloud. ‘King Kazador and Thorek Ironbrow were both killed, an ambush in the high passes some time ago.’

Kemma drew in a sharp breath. Ironbrow in particular was a terrible loss. None had his wisdom and skill with the runes. Much sacred knowledge was lost with him.

‘The hold was overrun not long after,’ continued Gromvarl. ‘The message from the High King was the same as all the others the king has had these last weeks.’

Kemma clutched at the hauberk. The rings tinkled. Gromril, by the look of it. ‘This is for Thorgrim,’ she said. ‘He’s outgrown his last.’

‘He’s getting a good girth on him,’ said Gromvarl approvingly. ‘He’ll be a strong lad, and a good king.’

Much to Gromvarl’s dismay, Kemma burst into tears.

‘He’ll never be king! Can’t you see? It’s all over. They’re coming to kill us all. They’ll kill you, and the king, and my son!’

Gromvarl reached out his hand uncertainly. A year on, his arm still pained him. Though it had set true, it had been wasted from weeks of disuse, and half-rations were no aid to building its strength back up. ‘Come on now, lass, there’s no need for that. It’s worse than it was even in the time of King Lunn, I grant you, and yet your husband is holding out. There’s not many who could do that. The runes might no longer glow upon the gates…’

‘Why?’ demanded Kemma. ‘The magic of the ancestors deserts us.’

Gromvarl clucked his tongue and rattled his pipe on top and bottom teeth. ‘No one knows. No one knows anything any more.’ It was a poor answer and did little to satisfy her. He blundered on. ‘My point is, they’re strong still. They’re tall, made of stone, steel and gromril. Made to last forever. They have not fallen yet. Why,’ he forced a smile, ‘the urk have been at it for days and they’ve not even dented them.’

‘There are many things like that in the dwarf realm, supposedly eternal, and they are failing one by one,’ said Kemma. She wiped her eyes, angry at herself for her lapse in control. ‘I’m sorry, but this is my son! A curse on dawi heads and the blocks of stone they call their brains. We should have gone months ago. Pride will kill us all.’

‘You’ll see,’ said Gromvarl. ‘Things are bad, but we’ll prevail. We’ve less ground to cover now the surface holdings are gone. Duregar’s finally been called back from the East Gate. We’ve some strong warriors here. Good lads, and brave. Most are veterans. I’ve not seen such a lot of battle-hardened dawi in my life. With them at our backs we’ve every chance. We’ve still got our defences. Kromdal’s line is the strongest yet. There are only four ways through that: the King’s Archgate, the Blackvault Gate, Varya’s Stonearch and the Silvergate. Hundreds of dawi wait there, and they’re all spoiling for a fight. And if they get through that there’s the Khrokk line, and after that…’

‘After that they’re into the citadel,’ said Kemma harshly. ‘Belegar is waiting for our enemies to fall on each other, or to wear themselves out. But they won’t. Ogres, greenskins and thaggoraki have us under siege. There’s never any less of them, and fewer of us every day. We’ve nowhere left to run. My husband’s too set in his ways! He can’t see that they’re not going to kill themselves on our shield walls – they’re going to keep coming until they break through and destroy every last one of us.’

‘It’s worked all the other times.’

‘This isn’t like all the other times! Valaya preserve me from the thickheadedness of dawi men!’ she said. ‘You’ve already told me there’s no help coming. We’ve not changed, Gromvarl. It’s why we are going to fail. Doing the same thing over and over and over… All it has to do is not work once. It didn’t work at Karak Azul. Why should it work here? They killed the reckoner. Dawi killing dawi! Do you know why?’ She didn’t give him a chance to respond but answered for him. ‘They killed him because he knew. Because he wasn’t a tradition-bound fool.’

‘Because he was helping you leave,’ said Gromvarl. He deliberately avoided the word escape.

‘It could have been you,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t.’

Gromvarl sighed around his pipe stem, and patted her hand. She was right. Kvinn-wyr was overrun, all the surface outposts, the East Gate three weeks back. The citadel was all they had left, and only the part above the ground at that.

‘It’ll all be fine, you’ll see,’ he said.

Kemma grasped his hand. She smiled through her tears. ‘You have been a loyal servant. You are wise beyond the length of your beard, and a fine warrior, Gromvarl, but you are a terrible liar.’

He humphed and clicked his teeth on his pipe.

‘Don’t get into a huff! I’m no beardling to be coddled. If we’re to die, then I’ll do it with my hammer in my hand,’ she said. Her smile hardened with resolve. ‘This I swear.’

SEVENTEEN Ikit Claw at the Eight Peaks

‘Patience, Queek, patience. You cannot kill Kranskritt, not any more.’

Queek hissed and gripped the arms of his throne. He didn’t like this new advisor of his much. For a start, the dead-things he had so carefully collected over his bloody career would no longer speak with him while Lurklox was around. Secondly, the verminlord showed no deference or fear towards him whatsoever. Kranskritt’s daemon ruled him utterly. Queek was determined the same would not be the case with him. He had the sneaking suspicion he wasn’t succeeding.

‘Pah! What sneaker-squeaker know?’

‘I killed many thousands for the Council while I still lived, little warlord,’ said Lurklox menacingly. ‘Deathmaster Snikch’s skill is a poor imitation of my glorious ability.’

‘What you know of killing in plain view, Queek means! You hide and hide before stab-strike. Too cunning, too cautious. Mighty Queek sees an obstacle, mighty Queek destroys it! Hidey in the dark is not my way.’ Queek grumbled and settled into his throne. ‘Why all this pretence-pretending! It boring! Queek bored!’ He cast a look at his favourite trophies, arrayed upon a massive rack fanning across the back of the throne. Dwarf Gouger and his sword were in a lacquered weapon stand taken from some Far Eastern place to his right. All down the aisle leading to the throne-burrow mouth were heaped piles of dwarf banners. The right claw of Clan Mors liked to boast he had more dwarf standards than the dwarf king himself. But to have them all on display made him uneasy. These were Queek’s private things! Not to be seen or touch-sniffed by any other. Mine.

‘You will do as I say, small creature,’ said the voice, coming first from near, then from behind and then to his left, ‘or I will devour you as surely as the Horned Rat himself devoured Kritislik. Arrogance is a virtue, but too much of a good thing is still too much.’

Queek glanced about. Lurklox had disappeared completely; the twitching shadows that betrayed his presence were not visible. Queek felt the first stirrings of fear. He shifted on the throne, acutely aware of his musk glands for the first time in years.

‘You are right to be afraid, O most mighty and invincible Queek,’ mocked Lurklox’s voice, coming from nowhere in particular. ‘I know you are wary of the Deathmaster, and yet perhaps one as talented as you in kill-slaying might best him in open combat. Yes-yes,’ the voice turned to musing. ‘That would be a good-fine match to watch. But I am not the Deathmaster. I am Lurklox, the greatest assassin ever to have been pupped in Skavendom! In my mortal years my name alone could stop a ratkin’s heart. In open battle you would stand no chance against me then, and now I am the immortal chosen of the Horned Rat himself. You could never beat me.’

Queek’s ears twitched.

‘Oh I know-smell you think of it, and that a part of you wishes to try. Against the lesser verminlords of the Realm of Ruin, you might even triumph.’ The voice hissed close to his ear, startling Queek. ‘Never against me! And if we were to come to violence-conflict, it would never be face to face. You would die screaming in your sleep, mad-thing Queek, and I would place your head upon your trophy pole to rant at those you killed, for no one else would hear your words. This would be my kindness to you, for the pain would be great but the humiliation worse. Do as I say-command. You are important to my plan-scheme, but no one is indispensable. You should know that. You should understand. Do you understand, Queek?’

Queek stared straight ahead, unblinking. ‘Yes-yes,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘Good. Now listen-hear to what I say-squeak. You cannot kill Kranskritt. You know why. News of his success has already reached Skavenblight. My brother in darkness aids him. They seek to regain the seers’ position on the Council. I suspect this to be the will of the Horned Rat, to test his chosen. The seers of Clan Scruten always were his favourites. I see no reason why they are no longer. My advice is that it would be foolish to disturb this test.’

‘Kranskritt is powerful, useful-good,’ said Queek. ‘You say this Soothgnawer wanted to create good impression with Kranskritt’s victory by helping mighty Queek? This is nonsense. He wants Queek dead, to take all glory for his scheming white-furred self. When Kranskritt is no longer useful, he is no longer good. Then Queek slay-kill. If you try stop me, then we will see if mighty-dark Lurklox say-squeaks the truth about supernatural battle-prowess.’

‘You are not as mad as they say.’

Queek giggled. ‘Mad or not, Queek still mighty.’

‘That you are, Queek of Clan Mors, although you have many enemies. Too many for even you.’

‘Kranskritt, Skrikk, Gnawdwell, Soothgnawer and Lurklox,’ he said rattling the names off quickly. ‘Queek does not care.’

Lurklox did not speak, Queek knew he was reading his body language and scent for the lie in his words, probably his mind too, and he knew also that Lurklox would find none.

‘I withdraw,’ the daemon said presently. ‘Ikit Claw comes. Do not reveal my presence! It will be worse for you than would be-is for me.’

Queek chittered his acknowledgement, irritating though it was to be beholden to the verminlord.

The hall fell silent. Lurklox allowed none near Queek while they spoke. Not even the dead-things. Not even loyal Ska!

Queek could hear the clanging iron frame and steam-venting hiss of the approaching Ikit Claw long before he could see him. It was not by accident that the dignitary was forced to walk the lengthy corridor. Queek watched the warlock slowly approach. He did not move fast, being more machine than rat, but there was a solidity to him, a stolidness too, that was lacking in other ratkin. He reminded Queek of a dwarf-thing. Queek suppressed a titter at the thought.

Ikit Claw did not speak until he had finally clanked to a stop before Queek’s towering trophy throne. A voice rasped behind his iron mask. ‘Greetings, O great Queek, Warlord of the City of Pillars. I bring-carry tidings. Yes-yes, I have slain many beard-things – I have broken Iron-Peak!’

Queek had heard that the rival Clan Rictus had as much to do with bringing Azul-place low as Ikit had, but he was too canny to mention it. What Ikit Claw said was as much provocation as delivery of news; Queek’s own failure years ago to destroy Karak Azul was widely known.

Queek squeaked in annoyance as Ikit drew in a long metallic breath, presaging a long flurry of ritual greetings and mock-flattery. Queek went straight for the point.

‘Why-tell are you here?’

A menacing green glow emanated from Ikit’s iron mask. ‘I bring great Queek tribute. The Council bid I gift you Clan Skryre weapons. Very kill-kill, these devices.’

Ikit paused. If he was expecting gratitude, he was disappointed.

‘Where-tell are they? Show mighty Queek!’

A grating clunk sounded from Ikit’s metal face that might have been a noise of regret. ‘Clan Mors will not be granted direct usage of these weapon-gifts. Much work has gone into their creation by Clan Moulder and Clan Skryre, although mostly hard-work thinkings of Clan Skryre. Trained teams of Clan Rictus direct them where Queek needs.’

‘I see-smell,’ said Queek coldly. ‘Is cunning Ikit Claw also to remain, to hold Queek’s hand-paw all the way to victory?’

Ikit raised his paw to his chest and bowed slightly. ‘Unfortunately not. As mighty Queek doubtless knows in his most labyrinthine and devious mind, the chief servants of the Council must hurry-scurry on and on. I cannot stop-stay,’ he said. ‘I am bid-go to the mountain of the crested beard-things, there to make much war-killing, and end another infestation of dwarfs for betterment of all skavenkind. Fool-clans besiege Kadrin-place for many months, and cannot break it. I have much fame, much influence. I killer of dwarf-places. They call for me to come here. But mighty Queek does not need much help, does he? Not like weak-meat fighting the orange-beards.’

Without waiting for a reply, the master warlock engineer turned tail and began clanking his way back. ‘But I will be back if Queek cannot do the task,’ he said. ‘So speaks the Council of Thirteen.’

‘We shall see-see,’ said Queek softly as he watched Ikit painfully clatter his way out again. ‘While fool-toys of Clan Skryre face beard-things, Queek will deal with his other enemy, and then we see-smell who is the greater. Tomorrow, Skarsnik imp-thing dies on my sword.’

‘Wait, Queek, there is another way…’ said Lurklox. The shadows thickened once more, and a rank smell of decay filtered into Queek’s nose from behind his throne. Ikit Claw left the throne-burrow and the door slammed shut. Queek levered himself out of his chair and gathered up his things. He felt better once his trophy rack was on his back. He lifted his weapons. ‘Yes, there always another way, rat-god servant. There is Queek’s sword, and there is Queek’s Dwarf Gouger. Two ways is enough choice for Queek! Skarsnik die by one of them. Which, Queek not care.’

‘Queek!’ said Lurklox warningly. ‘We must be cunning…’

But Queek was already scampering away, calling for his guards and the loyal Ska Bloodtail.

At the Arch of Kings, dwarfs waited.

A tributary of the Undak had once run through the cavern, and the arch had been built to bridge it. In its day, the cavern was among the most glorious places in Karak Eight Peaks, a cave of natural beauty enhanced by dwarf craft. The river had gathered itself together from six mountain streams in a wide pool below a small hole some half a mile upstream. The dwarfs had channelled the flow into a square trough five dwarfs deep and sixteen wide, coming into a broad grotto of cascading flowstone. Lesser channels led off from the river to aesthetic and practical purpose, flowing in geometric patterns around stalagmites, before exiting the cavern through various gates and sluices to power the triphammers of the western foundries.

The river was long dry, the streams that fed it blocked by the actions of time or the dwarfs’ enemies, the natural columns and peaks of the stone smashed. The trough had become instead a dry ditch, the rusted remains of the machinery that had once tamed the river broken in the bed. But the walls were true, sheer dwarf masonry still flawlessly smooth, affording no purchase to the most skilful of skaven climbers, and so it still presented a formidable obstacle to invaders. For fifty years the Arch of Kings had aided Belegar in keeping the ways open between the citadel and the dwarf holdings in Kvinn-wyr. Additionally, it provided an easily defensible choke point to fall back to, should need arise. Now the dwarfs had been driven out of their halls in the White Lady, that need had arisen, and the ditch kept the enemy from coming any closer to the citadel from the mountain. The Arch of Kings was the key defence for the west.

Belegar’s enclave had erected a gatehouse on the eastern side of the riverbed, modest by the standards of their ancestors’ works, but sturdy enough. As the road descended from the apex of the bridge’s curve, it encountered thick gates of iron and steel that barred the way to the citadel. A wide parapet with heavy battlements hung over the road, overlooking the river beyond. The wall-walk was machiolated over the foot of the bridge, to allow objects to be dropped onto the heads of attackers. Similarly, murder holes pierced the stone of the gate’s archway before the gate and behind it. A portcullis was set behind the gate, behind that, another gate, and behind that was a regiment of ironbreakers, well versed in the arts of war and irritable with the lack of decent ale.

Ikit Claw’s weapons went there first.

‘Movement!’ called Thaggun Broadbrow, the lookout that fateful day. His fellow quarrellers immediately started on the windlasses of their crossbows, drawing back the strings. They were practised; their bows were drawn quickly and the sound of bolts slipping into firing tracks clacked up the battlement.

‘See,’ said one to another, ‘I always held that crossbows are better than guns. Where are the handgunners, eh? Out of powder, that’s where. Whereas me, my lad, will always have a missile to hurl, as long as there’s a stick and a knife to sharpen it with to hand.’

‘Aye, true that, Gron, too true.’ Gron’s companion tapped out his pipe on the wall and carefully stowed it before fitting his own bolt into his bowstock. ‘Always be able to send a couple of them away, no matter what the situation.’

‘Grim. That’s what it is, Hengi. Grim.’

‘Aye. Grim comments for grim times.’

‘Rat ogre!’ called the lookout. ‘Rat ogre...?’ Thaggun’s voice trailed away into astonished query.

Gron peered out into the dark. ‘Now what by the slave pits of the unmentionable kin is that?’

‘Big, that’s what,’ said Hengi, sighting down his weapon at the beast approaching.

Big didn’t cover it. This was the largest rat ogre any of them had ever seen, and being dwarfs oathsworn to defend Karak Eight Peaks to the bitter end, they’d seen more than their fair share of the things. This one was a head higher than the biggest, covered all over in iron and bronze armour. Grafted to each arm was a pair of warpfire throwers, the tanks feeding each thick with plating.

‘I don’t like the look of that,’ said someone. ‘Why isn’t it charging?’

‘Ah, who cares? We’ll have it down in a jiffy,’ said another.

‘Not before it goes crazy and kills half its own!’ said someone else.

But the rat ogre plodded forwards, showing none of the snarling, uncontainable antipathy its kind usually evidenced.

‘Quarrellers of the Grundtal clan! Ready your weapons!’ shouted Gron.

The clansdwarfs rested their weapons’ stocks on the battlements, secure in their position behind the thick stone.

‘Take aim,’ called Gron.

They each chose a point on the rat ogre.

‘Loose!’ said Gron, who would never be caught dead saying ‘fire’.

Artfully crafted steel bows snapped forwards on their stocks, sending bolts of metal and wood winging at the rat ogre, by now halfway across the bridge. A unit of skaven bearing the banners of Clan Rictus ran cautiously behind it.

Not one of the bolts hurt the creature. They hit all right, but clattered off its armour. A couple punched through or encountered weak spots and stuck in the creature’s flesh, but it was unaffected.

‘Reload! At it again!’ cried Gron. ‘You lot down there better be ready,’ he shouted through a hole to the gate’s ironbreaker guards.

Quickly the dwarfs wound back their bows and fitted fresh missiles. Again they fired, to similar effect. Several clanrats fell screaming from the bridge, felled by wayward bolts, but the rat ogre stomped along, blinkered by an eyeless helm. There was a smaller rat riding its back, Gron noted. The rat ogre’s arms came up to point brass nozzles at the gates.

‘Everyone down!’ yelled Gron.

With a whooshing roar more terrifying than dragon-breath, green-tinged fire belched from the rat ogre’s weapons. It washed against the gates and melted them like wax. Backwash shot up through the murder holes onto the parapet. Several quarrellers were hit this way, spattered by supernatural flames that would not go out. They screamed as the fire burned its way through cloth, armour, flesh and bone.

The sharp smell of molten metal hit Gron’s nose. The Axes of Clan Angrund below were shouting, orders to form up and sally forth echoing up. It did no good.

The warpfire throwers blazed again. The rat ogre held them in position for a long time, melting its way through the portcullis and the second gate. The stones warmed under Gron’s feet. Screaming came from below as the ironbreakers were engulfed. A terrible way to die – Gron had seen it before. They would be cooked alive in their armour, if not outright melted.

‘Bring it down, lads!’ he bellowed. ‘Get it away from the bridge!’ Doing so was suicidal, but this thing had to be stopped.

His warriors stood up and crossbow bolts rained down. At this close range they had greater penetrative effect, and the rat ogre roared in pain. It took a step back and raised its arms.

‘Down!’ shouted Gron, and once more the quarrellers hit the stone flags. The battlements could not save them. Green fire washed over and around them, setting the quarrellers ablaze. Gron felt the diabolical heat of it as a patch stuck to him, charring its way into the skin of his left arm. A gobbet of it hit his right thumb. He gritted his teeth; no one suffered like a dwarf. But try as he might, the agony was unbearable and he screamed.

The fire abated. His arm and hand no longer burned, but were useless. His left arm he could not feel at all aside from an awful warmth. His right hand was clawed and blackened. His dawi were all dead or mortally wounded. The stone of the parapets glowed red-hot, the crenels melted back to rotten-toothed stumps.

Hengi rolled onto his back, groaning.

‘Hengi! Hengi!’

‘My eyes… Gron, my eyes!’

Gron looked out. The rat ogre had moved aside. Skaven waited for the ruined gates to cool. He saw then that the rider of the rat ogre was nothing of the sort, but some hideous homunculus grafted to its flesh.

‘Hengi, Hengi, take my bow.’ He thrust his weapon at his blinded kinsman as best he could with his ruined limbs. Hengi’s hands were sound, but his upper face was a red raw mess, his eyes weeping thick fluids. Lesser creatures would have been howling in agony, but they were dawi. Pain could not master them. ‘They’ve something controlling the rat ogre, some creature of theirs. If we can kill it, we might be able to stop it.’

‘Shoot then,’ said Hengi, his voice thick with bottled pain.

‘I cannot, my arms are ruined. You will have to do it. Let me aim it for you, here!’

Gron guided Hengi to a crenel whose merlons were not red-hot, pushing him with his shoulders into the gap. The pair were hidden by the smoke of stone burning beneath them, allowing Hengi to fumble the crossbow onto the wall. Gron got behind Hengi and sighted down it as best he could.

He squinted. ‘Left a touch. Up, up! No, down. Easy, Hengi. Now,’ he said.

The last discharge of a dwarf crossbow upon the King’s Archgate occurred, sending a bolt fast and true to bury itself in the wizened creature on the back of the rat ogre. The monster reacted immediately, shaking its head as if coming out of a drugged sleep.

It roared. Clanrats squeaked in fear. The warpfire throwers belched again and again, fired by the furious monster without thought. Gron looked on with satisfaction as the rat ogre spun round, setting the regiment alight. Presently its fuel ran out and the skaven brought down their wayward creature eventually, but only after one regiment of thaggoraki had been entirely destroyed, and three more fled.

Gron looked back over the dry river. The darkness was alive with movement and red eyes. As soon as the rat ogre was dead, they were on the move again.

He sank back against Hengi. Soon the skaven would be coming for them.

‘Let’s not let them take us alive, eh? Lad?’ said Gron. ‘You’ll have to go last, I can’t move my hands at all.’

Hengi nodded. His knife slid from his belt.

All along the third line of defence, similar things were happening. Rat ogres armed with ratling guns, upscaled poisoned wind mortars and other terrible weapons came against the dwarfs. One by one the gates fell, with such speed that the dwarfs of the Khrokk line had no time to prepare, and this too fell the same day.

The way was open to the citadel.

EIGHTEEN A Gathering of Might

Duffskul hiccupped and waddled along the corridor to Skarsnik’s personal chambers in the Howlpeak. He hummed to himself as he went, trailing clouds of stinking shroomsmoke behind him. He was wearing his best wizarding hat – a once very bright yellow, now so grubby it was almost green – and a collection of charms that hummed with Waaagh! magic.

The little big ’uns and moonhats by Skarsnik’s chambers scrambled over themselves to open the doors.

‘A fine welcome, oh yus. You got the right respects for your betters, grotty boys,’ he said. They simpered gratefully at his praise.

In the corridor it was freezing; the constant winds whistling through the windows gave the mountain its goblin name and its hurty-bit biting temperatures. In Skarsnik’s rooms it was a different matter, swelteringly hot from the fire blazing in the hearth. Duffskul brought in a gust of sharp-smelling winter with him, but it was swiftly defeated, carried off by the vapours steaming from his robes in the sudden heat.

‘Duffskul, me old mate,’ said Skarsnik, looking up from his work. As usual papers tottered around him, and on many other desks too, to which he flitted as he worked. He wrinkled his eyes, holding a parchment at arm’s length.

‘Too much reading’s bad for you, boss, oh yus.’ Duffskul kicked old bones, rags and bottles out of the way as he made his way over to a sturdy dwarf chair near the fire. Gobbla lay asleep on the filthy rug before the flames, whiffling gently in his sleep.

‘Someone’s got to keep these zogging idiots in line,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Can’t do it if you’s not organised…’ His words trailed away as he deciphered whatever it was that he had written there.

‘I always said you was a funny little runt. Done us proud you have wiv all that thinking there in the old brain box.’ Duffskul rubbed his hands together in front of the fire and sighed contentedly. His heated robes gave off the most noxious smell. ‘Ooh, that’s nice, ooh, that’s very nice!’ He smacked his lips and pulled out his gourd of fungus beer. He sloshed it around disappointedly. ‘If only I had a little drinky to help meself really enjoy it.’

Skarsnik had gone back to his work, the enormous griffin quill in his hand scratching over his parchment.

‘Wanna drink? Help yourself,’ he said distractedly.

Duffskul didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed up the nearest bottle and uncorked it. ‘You is running low.’

‘And you is going to have to brew up a lot more fungus beer. And preferably stuff that don’t taste of old sock!’ said Skarsnik. ‘Precious few stunty barrels to nick, and none of the grapey goodstuff coming out the west these days, so don’t you go gulping it all. I needs me drinks to thinks,’ he said, and giggled quietly.

Duffskul guzzled anyway, glugging priceless Bretonnian wine right from the bottle until it had nearly all gone. ‘Ahh! Now that is better. Ooh, that is a lot better.’

‘Right. Now you is all nice and comfy, why don’t you tell me what you is doing here,’ said Skarsnik, finally looking up and laying down his quill. ‘I am a very busy goblin.’

‘Ain’t you just, ain’t you!’ giggled Duffskul.

‘Get to the point, you mad old git,’ said Skarsnik affectionately. Duffskul had been with him right from the very start, and had stuck with him when others had wandered off, turned traitor or inconsiderately died.

‘Well, we has questioned the ratty scouts.’

‘Yeah?’

‘And we has kept careful watch on their doings and all that, oh yus.’

‘Tolly’s boys?’

‘Best sneaks in the peaks,’ said Duffskul. ‘And I has been trying to speak with da Twin Gods! Gork and Mork, what you has visited and who is the mightiest greenies of them all.’

‘Right. And? Are the ratboys going to attack, then? They’ve got them stunties well bottled up. Only a matter of time before they make their move on me. When and where, that’s what I want to know, when and where.’

‘And you shall know, king of the mountains!’ Duffskul swivelled in the armchair, and leaned on its torn, overstuffed arm. ‘The rats are going to try and drive us out for good, starting with orctown in the old stunty city and da camps outside the walls.’

‘Right,’ said Skarsnik, who had expected as much. ‘East Gate?’

‘Drilla’s boys went to kick out the stunties yesterday. Empty. Well, it was – full of black orcs now.’

‘Hmm.’ Skarsnik drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Well, let’s ambush the little furry bleeders.’

‘They’ll be expecting that,’ said Duffskul.

‘Course they will! That Queek’s not an idiot, even if he is as mad as snot on one of your better madcap brews. But what he’s not gonna be expecting is a special ambush, and so I’s going to make it a very special ambush. He’ll definitely not expect that!’

‘Oh no, oh yus,’ said Duffskul.

‘The Waaagh!’s building, Duffskul, greenies coming to me from left right and centre.’ He paused, and looked down at his lists, running ink-stained fingers down the parchment. ‘I reckon I should meet with this Snaggla Grobspit. Drilla’s lads have already come over. Time to take that cheese-stealing maniac to task, don’t you fink?’

‘Oh yes, boss! Oh yes. Oh yus,’ said Duffskul, his eyes spinning madly in his face. ‘And I’ve got a cracking idea meself.’

‘Have you now?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Right then, tell me all about it, and we’ll figure out exactly what we is going to do…’

The paired skaven warpsteam engines at the gates of the Hall of a Thousand Pillars chuffed madly, whistling as they vented pressure to equalise their efforts. Masked Clan Skryre engineers looked out from the haphazardly armoured embrasures holding their machines, then scuttled back to their charges, fiddling with knobs and tossing levers. Satisfied that their pistons were synchronised, the tinker-rats blew whistles at one another, then set about yanking more levers into the correct positions to open the doors. The tone of the engine’s voices deepened as their gearing wheels thunked into position, engaging with the massive cogs that worked the door mechanisms. Huge gear chains twanged as they came under tension. Machinery hidden high in the roof of the Hall of a Thousand Pillars rattled, and the great gates of the underhalls of Karak Eight Peaks creaked open.

The skaven massed behind the doors shrank back in terror of the sunlight. Few of them had ever been overground, and the prospect of a world without a roof sent a chitter of nervousness through their ranks.

‘Hold-hold!’ their masters ordered, cracking whips and punching the most timid.

The gates crushed rubble and other detritus to powder as they opened. Ponderous but unstoppable, they were one hundred feet tall. The tired sun picked out their decoration as they swung inwards, the runes and clan marks of the beard-things that made them still fresh as the day they had been carved.

‘Forward!’

The first claws of skaven scurry-marched up the ramp leading into the surface city.

All around Karak Eight Peaks, skaven emerged blinking and terrified into the sunlight, pale though it had been made by the choking ejecta of the world’s volcanoes and the endless, uncanny storm that wracked the skies. At the fore of the warriors emerging from the Hall of a Thousand Pillars into the surface city went Ikk Hackflay, a rising star in Queek’s entourage. He was a logical replacement for Thaxx and Skrikk, whose heads now graced the Grand Warlord’s trophy room.

From the skaven-held mountains, more warriors emerged. Four of Queek’s five clawpacks. Reduced by months of war, they still numbered in the tens of thousands. Over one hundred thousand warriors marched forth. Every column flinched as it walked out into the day, and not just for the frightening lack of a ceiling. They all expected to be ambushed as they came out, no matter how well hidden or supposedly secret their burrows were.

They were not ambushed. The immediate fighting they had planned for never came. They surfaced instead to a ghost town. The thickly packed orc-shacks and tents in the city were empty, as were the encampments in the weed-choked farmland beyond the city walls.

Queek surveyed all this impatiently from the top of part of the rubble slope created by the collapse of Karag Nar.

‘Careful, Queek,’ said Krug from his trophy rack. ‘He’s a wily one, that Skarsnik.’

‘What news?’ he said to his gathered lieutenants. ‘Grotoose?’

‘Nothing, great Queek.’

‘The fifth clawpack has found not one of the green-things, exulted Queek,’ fawned Kranskritt. Queek gave him a hard look. He still did not trust the grey seer. Only Lurklox’s insistence kept the wizard alive.

Skrak reported the same, as did Gnarlfang and Ikk Hackflay, who had been furiously stomping from place to place in search of something to kill.

‘There is no one here,’ said Gritch, his assassin’s voice pitched just over the wind soughing through the dry winter grasses. There had been precious little snow that year, though it was bitingly cold. ‘The siege camp is empty. They have abandoned their attack on the gates. There is a new idol in the main square of the beard-thing city. Stone and iron, it stares-glares with skull-eyes at dwarf-thing fort-place.’

‘So good your scouts are. Well done! So skilled to find big stone giant, but not little things,’ Queek said. ‘What about scouts sent to the mountain halls and peaks? Where is the Skarsnik-thing, where are his armies?’

‘Many scouts not scurry back, great Queek,’ said Gritch, bowing low.

‘Queek very impressed.’

Gritch began to protest, but Queek cut him off. ‘Big-meat ogre-things?’ said Queek.

‘Gone with the gold,’ said Skrak.

‘Fools,’ said Queek. ‘Why they so obsessed? Gold soft, useless.’ He held up his sword and looked up its length. ‘Not hard-sharp like steel. They like to eat, more than a skaven gripped by the black hunger.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they eat it.’

‘Skarsnik has gone then,’ said Grotoose. ‘He has fled the wrath of mighty Queek!’

Queek rounded on him, raising Dwarf Gouger. ‘Oh no, do not be mistaken. Little imp watches, little imp waits to see what we will do. Little imp thinks he will beat Queek in very-very cunning-clever trap. But little imp will not trap Queek.’

‘Will he attack in the day?’

‘Skaven love-like the night. We scurry under the big roof now that is no roof at all. Skaven not like it, pah! But Skarsnik’s little soldiers no different.’

Kranskritt glanced nervously up at the sun, shining pale yet still menacing through the thick cloud. ‘What do we do then, mighty one?’

Queek wondered if he could strike the seer dead now. He could, he thought. Lurklox was not there, and he did not see Soothgnawer – nor did he think he was near, for his trophies whispered their wisdom to him, something they did not when either verminlord was close by. He refrained from acting upon his whim.

‘We clear the city as planned, Queek decrees! Tear it all down, break it to pieces, smash the imp-thing’s little empire on the surface as we smashed his town in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars. Then we will see if he can be tempted out or not.’

Orders were given, and the army split into its various components to cover the vast area encompassed by the bowl sheltered by the eight peaks. Clan Skryre engineers set up their war machines near the mostly securely held skaven mountains in case of attack, while the armies subdivided further and began the work of demolishing the greenskins’ settlements. In ruined fields covered by scrubby forest, greenskin shelters were kicked down. Clanrats clambered over the crumbling dwarf city, levering stones out of the walls of rough-built huts. Warpfire teams torched entire villages of tents, while wind globadiers tossed their poisons into ruins and caves that might hold monsters. Teams of rat ogres tackled the bigger structures, clawing down idols of stone, wood and dung.

None, however, could bring low the great idol of Gork staring fixedly at the citadel in the centre of the city. Queek followed the line of its gaze. Glints on the battlements of the citadel showed dwarfs powerlessly watching as the skaven rose up to take control of yet more of their ancestral home.

‘Soon, Belegar long-fur, it will be your turn,’ hissed Queek.

The idol was as tall as a giant, but much more massive, its crude arms and legs made of monoliths stacked on top of each other and chained in place in crude approximation of orcish anatomy. A huge boulder with crude eyeholes hacked into the face topped it off, a separate jaw of wood hanging by more rusty chains from its face. It looked as if it should be pushed over easily, but would not fall. Warpfire splashed off the rock and iron. Warp-lightning crackled across it without effect. More powerful explosives were sent for. All the while the idol hunched there, apish and insolently strong as the day wore on.

Still Skarsnik did not come.

From his position atop the parapets of Howlpeak, Skarsnik watched the skaven go about the business of wrecking orctown. Fires burned everywhere.

‘They is behaving like they own the place, burning our houses down,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Old Belegar is probably loving every bit of this.’

‘Should we go and get them now, boss?’ said Kruggler. Crowds of orc and goblin bosses hung around him, the lot of them sheltering under nets and swags of cloth covered with dust and dyed grey to hide them from the skaven’s eyes.

Skarsnik snapped his telescope shut; the skaven weren’t the only ones to steal from dwarfs. ‘In a minute, Kruggs.’ He swept his hand out towards the eastern peaks. ‘We’ll wait until they’re nice and spread out, then we’ll attack, smash the centre, rout the rest and have a nice big ratty barbecue.’

‘I is not for waiting!’ grumbled Drilla Gitsmash, king of the Dark Lands black orcs. What with his thick accent, he was almost unintelligible behind his heavy, tusked visor. ‘We should get out there and smash ’em good now. I is not for waiting!’ he repeated.

‘Oh yes you is, if you want to win,’ said Skarsnik, looking up at the black orc as if he weren’t twice his size and four times his weight, before re-extending his telescope and turning back to the view. ‘But if you wants to go out there on your own and get chopped up to little itsy bitsy pieces, then go ahead. I is sure my boys could do with a laugh. No?’ Drilla said nothing. ‘Good idea that. Best to wait until we’re all going out. Is everyone in position?’

‘Yes, boss,’ said Kruggler.

‘Tolly Grin Cheek?’ This was not the original supporter of Skarsnik from way back, but the fourth murderous goblin to bear the name, and the facial scars that went with it.

‘He’s up behind them, boss.’

‘And that Snaggla fella? Not sure about him. Tell you, spiders is fer eating, not riding – and what’s this nonsense about some spider god? How many gods are there, boys?’

‘Gork and Mork,’ said one. ‘That’s four.’

‘Five?’

‘Definitely more than one!’

‘One,’ grumbled Drilla. ‘Mork don’t count.’

‘There’s two!’ said Skarsnik, his voice becoming shrill. ‘Two. Gork and Mork. Not three, or lots, or twenty-two thousand.’

Goblin faces creased in pained confusion at the mention of this incomprehensible number.

‘I told you, boss, I fought wiv some of them forest boys up north in the Border Princes,’ said Kruggler. ‘They is real sneaky. Morky as you like. You’ll love it.’

‘Right,’ said Skarsnik. He gave the vista one last pass with his telescope. He squinted at the sun. Noon, as near as he could reckon it. Not good for his night boys, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘Now or never,’ he said. ‘Positions, lads. And get the signal to Duffskul sent!’

Skaven passed under Duffskul’s nose. From the shoulder of the idol he was looking right down at the top of their pointy little heads, and some of them looked right back at him. He pulled faces at them and laughed at how close they were. They couldn’t see him, couldn’t smell him, didn’t know he was there at all. They milled about, trying one thing after another to destroy his idol, arguing over how it had got there. Duffskul knew the answer to that, of course.

It had walked.

It had taken him ages to ride it back down from old Zargakk the Mad’s wizlevard cave, way up over the Black Crag. A risky journey, but funnily enough, he hadn’t been bothered by anyone at all on the way back.

A single puff of smoke, black as a night goblin’s robes, rolled up into the sky over the tumbled parapets of the Howlpeak’s Grimgate. Duffskul laughed. He did a little dance. He whispered horrible things in the general direction of the skaven.

And then he did his magic.

‘What-what is that noise?’ said the skaven warlock nearest to the idol’s foot.

‘What noise?’

‘Deaf-deaf, you are! A scream-shriek, getting louder.’ The pair of them looked left, looked right and all around them, turning in circles to find the source of the rapidly loudening cry.

‘I hear now!’ said the second, exactly half a second before a goblin smashed itself to paste yards from their position. All that was left was one twitching foot, a shattered pair of canvas wings, and the echoes of its scream.

Only then did the skaven, born and bred in a world with comfortably low skies, think to look upwards.

Goblins were arcing through the heavens in long lazy curves, swishing their wings back and forth like birds. The illusion was impressive. One could almost think a goblin could fly, so at home the doom divers seemed in the clouds.

They were, unfortunately for the goblins, as aerodynamically gifted as boulders, and their flights lasted only marginally longer. Unfortunately for the skaven whose regiments they steered themselves onto, they did about as much damage as boulders too. A goblin’s head was uncommonly dense, especially when crammed into a pointed helmet.

‘Look-look!’ The second skaven tugged upon the sleeve of the first.

‘Yes-yes, I see! Flying green-things, very peculiar.’

‘Not there,’ he said, grabbing hold of his colleague’s head and pointing his gas-masked face at the head of the idol, their field of vision being somewhat restricted. ‘There!’

The skaven looked up at the idol. The idol, eye-caves glowing a menacing green, stared back.

‘Waaaaaghhhhhh!’ the idol shouted.

The skaven shrieked as a heavy rock foot ground them out of existence.

Atop its shoulders, Duffskul whooped. By way of reply, the mountains and ruins of Karak Eight Peaks resounded to the blaring of horns and the clanging of cymbals, the roll of dwarf-skin drums and the tuneless squeal of the squigpipes.

With a rapid clacking, the Grimgate swung open, splitting the grimacing orc-head glyph painted over the ancestor runes in two.

Out marched legions of greenskins. They headed right for the centre of the city.

‘All right, Mini-Gork, I believe we’ll be needing to go thataway!’ said Duffskul.

With rumbling strides accompanied by the grinding of rock, the Idol of Gork swung about and set off towards the enemy.

‘He is coming! Green-imp shows his hand-paw! Foolish green-thing. Loyal Ska, sound the advance!’

Skaven cymbals clashed, and the entirety of Queek’s first clawpack rose up from its hiding places. Forming rapidly into claws, the elite of Queek’s army made a wall of strong, armoured ratmen across the widest of the Great Vale’s shattered boulevards.

‘Forward!’ shouted Ska. ‘Forward for the glory of Queek! Forward for the glory of Clan Mors! Forward or I’ll kill-slay you myself!’

Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins were off first, the fangleader eager to prove himself. Queek had had his eye on the skaven ever since he had raided Belegar’s lower armouries months ago, taking enough dwarf armour to equip his entire claw, changing their names from the Rustblades to the Ironskins afterwards. From the speed he set off at, he evidently felt Queek’s scrutiny upon him.

Lightning blasted skywards from the ground, bursting goblins apart in the air. Some got through, some of those shattered the scaffolds the lightning cannons were mounted upon, and so the goblin doom divers and the best of Clan Skryre occupied one another.

‘That’s good, that is,’ said the dead dwarf king Krug. ‘Stops them from smashing your lads up.’

Queek hissed irritably. ‘Of course, Queek knows this. It is all part of Queek’s plan!’

Down the slopes of the mountain, innumerable hordes of goblins poured. Queek glanced nervously around the mountain bowl, across the city and out beyond where the lower reaches of the further peaks were hazy. His eyesight was as good as any skaven’s, which is to say at distance, not very good at all. But he saw no sign of movement elsewhere, and heard no sound of battle.

‘Ska!’

‘Yes, masterful Queek.’

‘Send messengers. Be sure to warn our lieutenants. This is not the fullness of the green-things’ force.’

Ska nodded, detailing his own minions to fulfil the orders.

Meanwhile, Skarsnik’s vanguard were jogging forwards to form a broad front. Queek ordered the slaves ahead, and with a terrified chittering, caused as much by the snarling packmasters at their rear as fear of the enemy, they surged across the mounded ruins of the dwarf city towards their greenskin foe. As the slaves neared, the goblins laughed loudly and shoved out whirling fanatics towards them. Queek had seen this so often by now that the tactic no longer held any surprises for him, but he remained wary of them. They spun round and round, laughing madly, hefting giant metal balls at the ends of long chains that should have been impossible for a goblin to lift.

He could not see their connection with his slave legions directly. The bodies of weak-meat tossed high in the air by the goblins’ swinging balls informed him of when it happened anyway.

‘Pick up speed! Hurry-scurry!’ shouted Queek. The Red Guard broke into a jog, their wargear clattering. ‘Mad-thing green-things will come through, kill-slay slaves – we must be through before they can turn and chase Queek!’

Queek’s elite burst through their screen of slaves, hacking down those who did not get out of the way. The goblins had advanced some three hundred yards from the Grimgate, filling the wide road and spilling into the ruins either side. The city here had been much reduced, piles of rubble with twisted trees poking out from them or greened mounds showed where once workshops and homes had stood. It made for difficult ground to fight over.

The town sloped downwards from Queek’s position, following the contours of the Howlpeak. Above was the still-open Grimgate. Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins pushed their way out of the slaves there, slightly ahead of Queek’s formation. From his vantage, Queek saw the broad, bloody lanes through the skaven created by the fanatics. These wobbled in uncertain lines, some looping right the way back round towards the goblin lines. The casualty numbers were horrendous, but all were slaves and of little worth. Queek snickered; they had performed their role excellently. The fanatics were falling one by one, smashing into low walls, dropping from exhaustion, or becoming hopelessly tangled with the slaves, their miserable deaths aiding the skaven cause far more than the ratkin ever could in life.

The slaves were thinned by panic, fanatics, bow-fire and doom divers. Clanrats came through them to support their general. Poisoned wind globadiers ran before them, approaching perilously close to the goblin lines before heaving their spheres of gas into their foes’ tight-packed ranks.

Queek sniffed the air. The wind was rank with greenskin. Neither his nose nor his eyes could pick out Skarsnik. ‘That way!’ he shouted, pointing directly at the centre of the greenskin force. ‘Come-come, quick!’

With a fierce cry, the Red Guard ran forwards. They burst through their screen of slaves and into the goblin vanguard, where they hacked their way through two mobs of goblins in short order. Queek’s view of the battle became restricted. He heard rather than saw the charge of Hackflay’s Ironskins, and the following clanrats. The first line of goblins bowed under pressure, nervous of the stormvermin carving their way through and the masses of clanrats coming next.

Deeper into the greenskin army Queek pushed, spinning and leaping, effortlessly felling the feeble warriors. Another goblin regiment parted before him, throwing down their shields and crooked spears rather than face him. His Red Guard skidded to a halt, momentarily cowed by the massive mob of black orcs they saw on the other side.

‘Oi! Squeaker!’ shouted their leader, a massive brute of an orc. ‘I’m gonna have you!’

The black orcs executed a flawless turn to the left, and charged.

‘Kill-slay them all!’ squealed Queek. ‘Breeding rights to the three who kill most big-meat!’

Spurred on by his generous offer, Queek’s Red Guard broke into a run. The two elite units met with a clash of metal that drowned out all else.

These were no goblins, but the ultimate orcs, bred by magic in the slave pits of Zharr-Naggrund. They smashed down the Red Guard with their huge axes. The Red Guard duelled with them, seeking to keep the black orcs at arm’s length with their halberds. The skaven felled a good number, but there were many, and they were fearless. The Red Guard’s advance ground to a halt. Their leader pushed his way forwards, levelling his massive two-handed axe at Queek.

‘Come on then, Headtaker! I’ve heard a lot about you. Nonsense, I reckon.’

The greenskin’s accent was outlandish, but Queek understood. He replied in the beast’s own language.

‘Come die then – always space for more trophies for Queek!’

The orc roared and charged, bowling over a Red Guard who got in the way and trampling him down into the dirt. Queek spun round, allowing the orc to pass him, then smashed the spike of Dwarf Gouger through its chest. The orc made a noise of surprise. Queek finished it with a thrust through its visor slit with his sword, skewering the orc’s small brain. It fell over heavily.

Queek wasted no time, prising off its tusked helmet and sawing its head off. He handed it to one of his guard, who jammed it upon a free spike on Queek’s rack. He’d left many empty for today.

Seeing their leader cut down disturbed the black orcs, and the Red Guard pressed their advantage, surrounding them and hewing through their thick mail with their halberds. Clanrat regiments had cut through the shattered goblin vanguard, joining Queek. They pressed back at greenskins moving to fill this potential gap in the line.

‘Ska! Break them!’ called Queek, cutting down two more of the black orcs.

Ska nodded, slammed a black orc out of the way, and leapt at their standard bearer.

The black orcs’ metal icon wobbled in the air as Ska attacked, then fell.

The orcs, reduced to a knot surrounded by ferocious skaven, broke. Queek and his warriors cut many of them down. Predictably, the greenskin centre collapsed around them. Seeing their toughest regiment destroyed, and well aware that their destroyers lingered still in their midst, a huge tranche of weaker greenskins broke.

‘The way to the gates are open!’ squealed Queek, forgetting in his exultation exactly who he was dealing with. The clanrats surged forwards after the fleeing goblins.

Horns sounded from all across the city. The left and right flanks of the goblin army angled inwards, coming at the mass of skaven from both sides. A fresh wave of doom divers began to rain down from the sky, unsettling the skaven with their shrieks. They plummeted into the horde of ratmen with final wet splats, their broken bones and flying harnesses shattering into spinning shrapnel that cut down many ratkin. Under the ferocity of this suicidal bombardment, the clanrats’ advance slowed and began to break up.

‘No! No!’ shrieked Queek. ‘We have them!’

He bounded up onto a ruined wall, the last corner of a building torn down who knew when. The age-worn stones were cold under his bare foot-paws.

Queek hissed at what he saw. Goblins were pouring out of the mountains to the west, encircling his rear. The huge idol they had discovered that morning had come to life, smashing its way through the skaven centre, some sorcerer atop it flinging bolts of green lightning from its shoulder. Queek wished for a screaming bell, or an abomination or two, but the dwarf-things had slain both of his. From caves thought cleared came a stream of squigs, including one big as a giant. It squashed as many skaven as it ate. Lesser round shapes bounded around its feet. A collective squeak of terror drew Queek’s attention to the foot of Karag Zilfin, where mangler squigs carved red ruin through his army.

Queek returned his attention to the fleeing goblins. Skarsnik had lured him into a trap, that much was certain, but it was not going to plan. The green-imp’s bait force had not rallied and fled still.

Even so, the skaven army was at a disadvantage.

Squeaks from the foot of the wall called to him. His minions had caught up with him. A gaggle of messengers stood there, waiting expectantly to carry fresh orders away.

A final messenger, its fur matted with drying blood, came to a panting stop. ‘Great Queek! Much terror-slaughter on the east. Giant spiders attack.’

‘How big? Fist-paw big?’

The messenger shook his head and swallowed. ‘Wolf-rat big and… Much-much bigger.’

Queek bared his teeth in anger. Away out beyond the outer edges of the city, into the derelict farmland to the east, many death-squeaks were being voiced. He narrowed his eyes. In his blurred distance vision, large shapes lurched against the pale horizon.

Just as he thought he was getting a paw on the situation, a terrifying screech rent the air and there was a snap of leathery wings. A dark shape swooped overhead, bringing with it a carrion stink and a sharp, reptilian smell.

A wyvern bearing an orc warboss landed heavily right in the middle of the clanrat regiments behind Queek.

A fresh wave of panic rippled through the clanrats around his position. This proved too much for them. Predictably, they ran. A huge section of the skaven centre collapsed. There was now a large part of the central battlefield devoid of combatants, each side running from the other. Queek was left alone with his Red Guard, who held fast about the Great Banner of Clan Mors.

‘Stand! Stand! Cowards!’ squealed Queek. He turned to his messengers with a snarl.

He pointed to one.

‘Kranskritt!’ he commanded. ‘Go to him! It is most important he kill-slay the idol!’

He spared a look for the rampaging rock construct. Warp-lightning crackled around it with no effect.

To another he said, ‘To the Burnt Cliffs with you – call out the reserves.’ He spoke then directly to Ikk Hackflay and Grotoose. ‘Ironskins and rat ogres, pursue green-thing rout.’

‘And you, mighty leader?’ rasped Ikk.

Queek scanned the sea of black-robed goblins, seeking out the tell-tale splash of red that would reveal the location of Gobbla, and therefore his master. Queek could not find him! The imp-thing would have to wait. He turned his face to the wyvern flapping about the battle and slaughtering clanrats.

‘Queek has other matters to attend to.’

NINETEEN War in the Great Vale

‘Waaagh!’ cackled Duffskul madly. He danced a little jig and threw bolts of green lightning from his fingertips, blasting skaven to pieces with every shot. His knees popped as he danced, but he was too excited to care. Swarms of ratmen fled before the feet of the Idol of Gork, squealing in terror. Wherever the stone monster went, skaven units burst apart like ripe puffballs, disintegrating into individual warriors who ran in every direction like mice fleeing an orc. ‘That’s right, ya little ratties! That’s right! Run away!’

Duffskul’s eyes glowed with the surfeit of Waaagh! energy washing over the battlefield. From atop his idol he could see right across the Great Vale for miles and miles. The main scrap was right there, in the old dwarf surface city, but smaller skirmishes were going on right the way across the entire bowl. Outside the walls, wolf riders ran down blocks of skaven infantry. Streaks of green whizzed down from on high where jezzail teams discharged their guns. Doom divers plummeted from even higher up. Batteries of goblin artillery duelled with skaven lightning throwers, sneaky gobboes dripping in night-black squig oil fought running battles with groups of skaven assassins. Right at the back, mobs of spider riders ran amok, unopposed by anyone. The ratboys were trying to bring their lightning cannons about, but weren’t having much luck. Not long now and they would smash up the skaven artillery. There was a lot more to see than just the big ruck at the centre, oh yus.

Duffskul liked a nice fight, and this was the biggest and best he had ever seen. There were loads of greenies! Lots of lots, boys from every tribe and every kind of greenskin you could think of – except sneaky hobgobboes and stupid gnoblars, naturally – while there were so many ratties on the other side that he couldn’t even begin to count them, and Duffskul could count pretty high for a goblin. It was a proper Waaagh!

‘Waaagh!’ he screeched. ‘Waaagh!’ The powers of Gork and Mork flooded through him and out his arms and toes and nose, the great idol of mad old Zargakk filling him with power.

What had happened to Zargakk, Duffskul had no idea. No one had seen him in years. He was probably dead. Good thing too, or there’d be no way Duffskul would have got his hands on the idol.

‘Come on, Gork!’ he called. A phantom foot formed from the magic spilling from Duffskul’s skin. With a screech he sent it smashing into a unit of ratties, squashing them flat. He laughed uproariously, so hard he cried. Orc magic that one; Duffskul might be crazy, but he was deeply in favour with the Great Green Twins.

The idol lurched to one side, nearly tipping Duffskul from his perch on its shoulder. With desperately scrabbling hands, he caught himself on the rough stone. Sucking his lacerated fingers, he cast about for his attacker.

A flash of black lightning crackled against the idol, making it moan. It stumped around to face its tormentor, a white-furred skaven sorcerer who was hurling magic of his own at Duffskul’s new pet. Unlike the blasts from the skaven cannon, this was hurting it.

‘Oi!’ he shouted, responding with a crackle of his own destructive magic. He screamed in triumph as it fizzed towards the skaven, but the rattie waved a dismissive hand, and the green light of Waaagh! power dissipated. The sorcerer raised his hands and hurled twin blasts of blacklight at the idol’s knee. Duffskul countered, but the magic got through, weakened, but still effective. With a tinkle, the chains binding the menhirs of the idol’s left leg burst apart. The idol took another step, reaching out crude hands to grab the sorcerer, but its foot was left behind.

‘Watch out! Watch out!’ Duffskul said in horror as the footless leg descended once more.

The idol let out a moronic bellow as it fell. The ground rushed up at Duffskul.

‘Heeeeeelllllp!’ he wailed. The idol crashed down, breaking into a dozen pieces of bouncing rock that rolled all over the place, trailing wisps of dying magic.

The sorcerer stood triumphantly, sure of his victory.

Duffskul was having none of that. Bruised but otherwise undamaged, he stood and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Oi! Ratty! Who do you think you are?’

The rat snarled, exposing the tiny needle teeth either side of its flat incisors. Its eyes went dead-black. Smoke tinged with purple flares poured from its mouth.

Duffskul threw up his own hands. Giant green fists formed around them. He held out his hand, a hand that had become the magic-wreathed, crackling fist of Gork himself. He swung at the sorcerer, who warded off Duffskul’s magic with his dark mist. Duffskul swung again. The skaven responded too late, and Duffskul grabbed him hard.

‘How you like that, eh, ratty? Orc magic that. I know it because I is the chosen of Gork and Mork, their teller of fings to Skarsnik, who was raised up high because of me!’ He squeezed hard. The skaven squealed.

‘We make deal-deal?’ it said in mangled greenskin.

‘I don’t fink so.’

Duffskul sucked in deep, inhaling the winds of magic rushing over the excited orcs and goblins. Power filled him. So much power! He could drink it all in and then he’d be the bestest wizlevard who ever lived, mighty as the gods themselves!

Duffskul’s head hurt with the strength of it, a good pain, deep and satisfying, like the kind of itch it is a pleasure to scratch. The magic-light flaring in his eyes bleached out his vision.

Duffskul giggled. The skaven white-fur shrank in his magic fist. ‘I’m gonna do this proper, you squeaking cheese-thief,’ said Duffskul. Determined to make a show of it, Duffskul fished inside his robes and pulled out a piece of shamanshroom. He taunted the skaven with it.

‘You know what this is, ratty? This is a shamanshroom. From da deep caves, where only those in da know can go. An old shaman, taken root, you might say, gone into da great green! But they leaves some of their magic behind, leaves it for the likes of me to eat up and squish ratties like you. Oh yus.’

Duffskul popped the leathery fragment in his mouth and chewed hard with black teeth. Something of the dead shaman’s residual power flooded into him, augmenting the magic coursing through Duffskul to catastrophic levels. Everything went far away. He could hear the laughter of the Twin Gods in the distance. Sometimes that was a good sign. But not always, far from it.

‘Now I is… Now I is…’

He hiccupped. Something went pop deep inside his brain. Duffskul frowned.

‘Whoopsie,’ he said.

With a wet splotch, his head exploded, fountaining a great deal of blood and a lot less brain all over the remains of the idol and the skaven sorcerer both.

The green fists evaporated into mist, and Kranskritt fell, taking in a deep and welcome breath to his bruised lungs.

‘Heh heh, green-thing. Very good. Very interesting. But you dead now.’ He frowned and leaned in to check. The green-thing’s head had gone, what was left soaking messily into his dirty yellow robes. ‘Yes-yes, definitely dead.’

Trying to salvage his dignity, Kranskritt brushed as much brain off his clothes as he could and walked away, checking all the time that no one was looking.

Skarsnik held up his prodder and waved it. Horns sang out all through the fleeing tribes. The regiments immediately stopped and turned around. A few of the more enthusiastic lads carried on going right through the city and up the mountain slopes; others were too far gone in panic to heed the rallying horns, but the majority – and all of these were Skarsnik’s own boys, he noted proudly – reformed their ranks. A fresh flood of night goblins poured out from the gates to reinforce his back line.

Skarsnik peered under the black cloth covering Gobbla. ‘You all right under there, mate?’ he said. Gobbla snuffled back. ‘Good.’ Skarsnik looked up and down his lines. All in order. ‘Let’s see what we can see,’ he said and unsnapped his telescope.

The skaven army was in total disarray. Split up by Skarsnik’s ambushes, large parts of it were isolated into groupings of a few hundred strong. He watched with satisfaction as the foreigner Snaggla Grobspit and his giant spiders tore apart the skaven war machines. But it wasn’t over yet. The Headtaker had a strong force about him, and was heading for that cocky big head Krolg Krushelm on top of that big lizard he was always riding about. Well, Skarsnik would wait to see what happened there. Either way, Krolg’s loss would be no great one. The orc hadn’t been in the Peaks long, and hadn’t yet learned to show the proper respect. That was the usual way with the orc bosses, but this one was more uppity than most, and making the other orcs behave badly.

He turned his spyglass elsewhere. In other parts the battle was in balance, not going quite as well as he had hoped. The manglers had run out of steam over by the Burnt Cliffs and been killed, allowing skaven reinforcements to pour out of the rat holes there and strengthen the flank about the base of Silver Mountain. Big Red the giant squig was stomping far from the main fight, chasing down a dwindling pack of ratmen, but was effectively out of the battle. A flare of magical energy drew his attention to the Idol of Gork rampaging around the skaven rear. A sympathetic ‘Oooh!’ went up from the army as the magically animated statue lost a foot and pitched forwards flat on its face. Skarsnik saw Duffskul fall with it, then lost him amid the ruins. ‘He’ll be all right,’ said Skarsnik to himself, although he was worried – not for Duffskul, but mainly because he had expended his store of secret weapons and the skaven still weren’t broken.

Still, neither was his army.

He turned his telescope to the front, where, through the magnified points of goblin hats, he saw Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins and a bunch of massive ratboys closing with his position. Furry ogre-things came with them, driven on by a fat, mean-looking skaven. Two of Queek’s best, he thought. Be good to get rid of them. ‘Ready, lads! We’ve got big furry lads coming in, one mean looking fella leading them, and some ogre-fings with a fatty ratty. We’s gonna kill them both. Everybody ready?’

‘Waaagh!’ they responded.

‘I’m glad you said that,’ he said, with a crooked smile.

Queek ran at full scurry towards the wyvern and its stupid-meat rider. The wyvern charged about on the ground, smashing prey down with its heavily armoured skull and gulping them down whole. Gore hung from its mouth. The bloody remains of skaven were scattered everywhere, along with piles of the wyvern’s dung. As it moved, it toileted, clearing room in its bulging stomach for more meat. Given enough time, it would eat itself into a torpor, but wyverns had big appetites and that time would be too long in coming.

The orc speared a clanrat, dangling the still-squealing creature in front to the mouth of his mount. The wyvern’s beady eyes fixed on the morsel, and snapped at it as the orc snatched the skaven out of the way. He laughed uproariously as he teased the beast.

Queek signalled to his guard to halt, and strode out. He banged his weapon hilts on his breastplate to get the orc’s attention.

‘Big-meat! Queek the Mighty, ruler of City of Pillars, will fight you.’

Hearing this, the orc heaved on the wyvern’s reins, pulling it around to face Queek.

‘Headtaker,’ he spat. Krolg eyed the stormvermin twenty paces behind Queek carefully. They made no move to come forwards, or he might well have flown off. That’s why Queek had ordered them to stay where they were. The wyvern spread its wings and bellowed. Its tail arched high over its back, in the manner of a scorpion. Black venom dripped from the point of it sting. The vinegary stench of it made Queek’s eyes run.

Krolg dug long spurs into the tender skin under the wyvern’s wings. It leapt into the air, gliding the short distance at Queek. The impact of the beast’s landing shook the ground. The orc thrust at him overhand with his spear, a clumsy blow that Queek parried easily, riposting with a powerful backhand against the wyvern’s head. Queek had never fought one of these creatures before, and its iron-hard scales took him by surprise. The blow jarred his arm so hard his teeth clacked together. The wyvern barely registered it, snapping at him from one side while the orc drove his spear at him from the other. Queek sprang back, only to expose himself to a punishing strike from the wyvern’s poisoned tail. Queek barely threw himself aside. He skidded as he landed, vulnerable for a moment, but the orc and his mount were too slow. The stinger plunged into the ground, whipping back almost as quickly.

Queek wiped spatters of burning venom from his muzzle. The orc atop the wyvern chuckled at him and urged his mount on.

The rock here was harder to gnaw than it appeared, so the old saying went.

The goblins stumbled backwards, pushed by the fury of the stormvermin. A massive rat-leader slew a brace of goblins with each sword stroke. Skarsnik levelled his prodder at him and let fly with a blast of raw magic. Some sixth sense caused the rat-leader to leap aside, and Skarsnik burned up half a dozen of his fellows instead.

‘I’m going to have to sort this out myself, aren’t I?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Come on, Gobbla.’ He pulled on his squig’s chain, and the pair of them shoved their way down to the front.

Skarsnik’s prodder emerged first, punching through the gap between two goblins and spearing a stormvermin on its triple prongs. Skarsnik grunted as he pushed, shoving the dead rat back off its feet and tripping those in the ranks behind it. The rat was big, but Skarsnik was strong. Under his robes he was a mass of knotted muscle, his success such that he had grown huge for a night goblin – for a goblin of any kind, for that matter. Only Fat Grom had been bigger, but as Skarsnik liked to say, that was all fat and it didn’t count.

‘Come on, you ratties!’ shrilled Skarsnik. Recognising their master’s arch nemesis, the stormvermin scrambled over each other to get at him, eager to be the one to take his head. He stabbed and blasted with his prodder. Gobbla fought at his side, snapping the heads off halberds that might have speared his master, snapping the hands off that held the halberds, and snapping off the heads of the vermin that guided the hands. Skarsnik was old and thoughtful, but when roused he was mean as an orc warlord after a heavy night on the fungus brew. With Gobbla by his side, he was well nigh unstoppable. By his own efforts, he opened a wide circle in the front ranks of the stormvermin. ‘Go on! Get on at ya!’ he shouted, whirling the prodder round his head and whooping with delight. The goblins pushed forwards after him, chanting his name.

Skarsnik brought his prodder in a wide arc, aiming to decapitate three stormvermin with one blow, only to find it intercepted by a black sword. A terrible strength was behind it. He pushed, and a fat, heavily muscled skaven pushed back. Skarsnik did not know his name, but it was Grotoose. A pack of rat ogres moved in and boxed in Gobbla, leaving the King under the Mountains to face Grotoose alone.

The Clan Moulder war-leader leaned in close to Skarsnik, both of them grimacing with hatred and effort. With a flourish, Skarsnik disengaged, flinging Grotoose’s sword arm wide. Skarsnik reversed the prodder, sending the weighty ferrule on its base driving into Grotoose’s flabby stomach. Air exploded from the skaven’s mouth, and he doubled over. Skarsnik stepped in, but Grotoose was shamming. As Skarsnik approached, Grotoose slammed his sword hilt into Skarsnik’s head, and again. Driven back, Skarsnik stumbled, his feet fouled in the chain attaching Gobbla to him.

Grotoose loomed over him, blotting out the pale sky.

He raised his sword. ‘Now you die-die!’

Grotoose never landed his blow. Gobbla came from the side, a bolt of crimson death, teeth snapping. He swallowed the claw leader of Clan Moulder whole.

Skarsnik got to his feet and patted his pet. ‘That was close! That was too close,’ he muttered. ‘Good boy, Gobbla.’

Gobbla burped.

Skarsnik took a moment. The stormvermin and rat ogres had been driven back, the flow of battle moving away from him. Annoyingly, the stormvermin’s boss was still alive and kicking, but he was on the defensive. ‘They don’t need us no more, come on. We got some strategising to do,’ he said. His speech was peppered with bastardised Reikspiel and Khazalid words he used for concepts Orcish lacked the capacity to express. He led his pet back to his vantage point to begin said strategising.

He extended his telescope again. The battle was much as it was before. Then he saw something he had never seen, a blurring shadow that leapt all over the battlefield. One instant it was in one place, in another elsewhere. A disk of metal whirred out from this darkness, curving through air and flesh alike without interrupting its course. It banked around and flew back to its starting point, being snatched out of the air by a huge clawed hand.

‘That’s weird,’ said Skarsnik. ‘That looks a bit like one of them…’

Gobbla whined. Skarsnik looked down.

‘What’s wrong, boy?’

Gobbla’s nose snuffled. He looked up into Skarsnik’s eyes with his one good one.

‘Gobbla?’

A dribble of blood collected at the corner of the squig’s mouth. Skarsnik knelt down, concerned. A squelching sound came from Gobbla’s innards. Skarsnik put his ear to the squig’s side.

Gobbla whined again.

A knife burst through the top of the squig’s skull. Gobbla’s eye rolled back into his head, and the squig collapsed, deflating. His bulk wobbled and shook, and the knife cut downwards.

‘Gobbla!’ screamed Skarsnik.

Grotoose hauled himself from a long slit in the squig’s side. His skin was blistered from Gobbla’s potent stomach acids, fur falling out in clumps. Half his face had been melted off. Groaning in pain, he dragged himself away with fingers whose flesh came away from the bone as he scrabbled at the rock.

Skarsnik looked on in speechless horror. Grotoose raised a head with eyes that had been burned to whiteness.

‘I first Clan Moulder beastmaster in Eight Peaks,’ he said thickly. ‘It take lot more than stupid red-ball, fungus-thing to kill me.’

His face contorting with rage, Skarsnik raised the prodder high and drove it down through Grotoose’s back so hard it shattered the stone beneath. Grotoose shuddered, as if he’d still planned on getting up, before he finally realised he was dead.

‘Gobbla,’ said Skarsnik, in a small voice. The battle forgotten, he dropped his prodder and fell to the squig’s side. The squig sagged in on itself, its capacious body pooling like a half-empty wineskin. Skarsnik knelt and hesitated, eyes surveying this most cruel ruin as if he could bring it back to wholeness by wishing it otherwise.

It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. Gobbla was dead, his small, faithful brain leaking out through the hole in the top of his head.

Skarsnik laid both hands on the leathery hide of his closest companion.

‘Gobbla,’ said the Warlord of Karak Eight Peaks, with a catch in his throat. ‘Gobbla!’

Queek dodged another thunderous blow from the wyvern, tripping on a half-buried lump of masonry as he did. He was panting heavily, bleeding down one arm from a lucky spear-thrust.

‘Getting tired, incha, little rattie?’ rumbled the orc. ‘You’re a tasty fighter, that’s what they all say. Down in the Badlands they say that. That far away. Yeah, that’s right. Ain’t you proud?’ The orc laughed. ‘Broken Toofs, my tribe. We heard that all right, we heard all about da Headtaker.’ He widened his eyes in mock fright. ‘But I reckoned it was all bluster, all talk. Load of nonsense. No rat going to outfight an orc every day of the week like what they say you can, though I see you got a couple of blackies up there on your spikes. Idiots, they are. No fun in them. I ain’t one of them snaggle-toothed stunty slaves. I’m a free orc – you’ll never beat me.’

Queek kept his distance from the circling wyvern. He spat on the ground. Let the orc talk himself into an early grave. The ones with the big mouths always spoke too much, leaving themselves open to Queek’s mightiness.

This fight had gone on too long. If he didn’t finish it soon, the green imp might win!

How to end it? How to end it? Queek burned inside.

‘My name,’ said the orc, ‘is Krolg Krushelm! You hear that, now. I wants you to be thinking it when I guts ya! I’m a real greenskin, not like this sneaky little git here. No wonder you ain’t been beat yet. As soon as I’m done with you, I’m taking that cave runt down. It’s about time the Eight Peaks had a real boss.’ Krolg spurred his mount.

The wyvern roared, spraying Queek with foul-smelling spittle. The tail swiped down, jaws coming at him from another angle, Krolg’s spear from a third.

Queek had the measure of his opponents. A good fight, a fine challenge. A pity to finish it.

He ducked the sting, batted the spear tip aside with his sword, rolled under the wyvern’s head, sprang to his feet and, with a powerful swing, buried Dwarf Gouger in the wyvern’s eye. The spike on the pick punched through the soft eyeball and the thin bone at the back of the socket with ease.

The wyvern bellowed in agony and spread its wings. It wrenched its head back from the source of its pain. Queek kept tight hold of Dwarf Gouger’s haft, letting go only when the time was right. As he arced through the air, Krolg’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of surprise below his twisting body.

Krolg was still wearing the expression when his head toppled from his shoulders and rolled into the dirt.

Queek landed on his feet in a crouch, a gleeful smile on his lips.

He waited until the wyvern’s death throes had ceased before retrieving his favourite weapon.

‘Boss! Boss!’

Skarsnik heard the words only dimly. His entire attention was fixed on the dead Gobbla, his hands still pressed into his gradually sinking flesh.

A hand grabbed him. ‘Boss!’

Skarsnik whirled round and snarled into the face of Kruggler.

Kruggler took a step backwards, both hands raised. ‘Boss! Now ain’t the time. Don’t let them see you like this, boss. The lads need bossing, boss! What are we going to do?’

Skarsnik shivered. The skin around his eyes felt tight. A strange emotion he’d not felt before… Nah, nah, that wasn’t right. Once before, long ago, when Snotruk had killed Snottie, his loyal companion in his lonely days as a runt. Hollow like, all empty inside, like nothing really mattered any more.

He shook it off, but it clung on, clamping around the quivery bit of meat inside his chest like it would crush it with cold, cold ice.

‘Ye’re right, ye’re right.’ He nodded at Gobbla. ‘Someone take that away!’ he said, trying to sound like he didn’t care. The goblins that came forward were wise enough to handle the dead squig very carefully indeed. Kruggler helped the goblin warlord up while one of Skarsnik’s little big ’uns smashed the chain with his long axe.

The weight gone from his foot felt weird. He wiggled it around speculatively. Definitely weird.

‘Boss!’ said Kruggler in exasperation.

‘What? Yeah, sorry, the battle, the battle.’ Skarsnik raised his hand to his eyes. He couldn’t see very well because they kept filling up with water and he didn’t know why. He blinked it away and took stock of the battle.

Towards Silver Mountain, a fresh horde of clanrats running down the remainder of the squig teams there.

To the east, the now very distant form of Big Red trumpeting his way towards the evening. To the south, a mighty arachnarok spider being dismembered by the mysterious shadow.

To the centre, the broken Idol of Gork – or was it Mork? He really couldn’t be sure – and an additional item: one slaughtered wyvern, topped with a headless orc. The Headtaker’s troops were forming up, gathering stragglers back into solid formations. The formation that Skarsnik’s little big ’uns had broken was being bullied back into shape by its leader.

‘I’ve seen enough,’ said Skarsnik.

‘What?’ said Kruggler.

‘It’s a bust. We’ve lost. A good scrap, but we couldn’t pull it off, because there really is a lot of them, ain’t there?’ said Skarsnik to himself. ‘Farsands, and farsands.’ He did a quick mental calculation, the kind that would make a normal goblin die of a brain infarction. ‘That’s actually a lot more of them than there is of us…’ He looked to the citadel. ‘Old Belegar’s next. We need to scarper.’

‘What?!’ repeated Kruggler.

‘Kruggs, mate, we have lost! Can I make it any simpler for you? If we don’t shift, Queek’ll have our heads on that poncy bedstead he wears on his back quicker than he’ll have Belegar’s. I don’t think I want to stick around for that. Sound the retreat!’ he shouted.

‘What about the rest of the boys?’

‘What? Out-of-towners, weird scrawny runts wot smell of old leaves and ride about on spiders, and deadbeats? Nah, they played their part. Leave ’em. Besides, if we all go at once, then the rats might attack us before we can get away, mightn’t they?’ Skarsnik tapped his grubby forehead with a bloody finger. ‘Always thinking me. That’s why I is king and you is not.’ He addressed his signallers again, before they commenced their flag-waving and horn-blowing. ‘And by retreat, I mean walking back inside carefully with your weapons ready, not running for the hills so we’s can all get out of breath, run down, chopped up and et by ratsies! Got that?’ he bawled.

His horn-blowers and flag-wavers nodded. At least some of them understood. They relayed his orders as best they could. Some of the greenskins even obeyed them. All in all, thought Skarsnik, as he watched his tired tribe and its allies about face and march up to the gates of the Howlpeak, things could have been a whole lot worse.

Once he’d regained the gates himself, he went up to the broken battlements atop it. Through his telescope he watched the skaven break into a desperate run as the last of the Crooked Moon tribe withdrew to the safety of the Howlpeak. For a long time, he kept his spyglass trained on Queek’s furious, furry face and watched it get madder and madder. He kept watching, in fact, until the gates clanged shut.

Now that was funny.

‘Gobbla,’ he said, meaning to share the moment with his pet. ‘Gobbla, look at that, eh? Boy? Boy?’ Skarsnik looked down at his side.

But, of course, there was nobody there.

TWENTY Lurklox’s Deal

Skarsnik went into his private rooms as quickly as he was able. That was not very quickly. He had to patrol the borders of his much-reduced kingdom to make sure the lads were watching out properly, and that there were units ready to see off an attack, and that the outsiders who had come into the Howlpeak didn’t cause any bother. That went double for any who were orcs. He had a few challenges now Gobbla was gone, but that was not such a bad thing. He needed to put a couple of orcs down to keep the rest in line. Without Gobbla, they found him still extremely dangerous, and the fact that he could still break an orc with his bare hands without his giant pet had quietened them down real quick. But Gobbla’s loss was telling on him in other ways. Without the squig, he’d lost his skaven assassin early warning system. He might as well leave the door unlocked, dismiss all his guard and go to sleep with a knife conveniently laid out next to his bed.

Once inside, he locked the door and commenced pacing, the butt of his prodder clashing on the floor. He banged it harder and harder as he got more and more worried. Skarsnik was no stranger to dilemmas, but this one was a real pickle and no mistake.

‘Got to get organised, got to get organised!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Where is I if I don’t gets organised?’ He glanced to his papers, but this time they didn’t hold the answer. ‘Gotta fink!’ he said, and worried at his fingers with sharp goblin teeth. ‘Item one,’ he said to himself. ‘Old Queek’s going for conquest. Item two, there’s loads more of them than there is of us. Item three, them stunties aren’t going to be there much longer, and when they is not, old squeaky Queeky’s gonna come knockin’ on me door with all his monsters and such. So what to do? Need Duffskul, yeah.’ He made to call the shaman, but remembered he was dead too. Who else could he call on? No one had seen Mad Zargakk in years, Kruggler was the brightest of the gobboes to hand but still very thick, and there was no point at all in asking an orc…

He caught something from the corner of his eye, a flicker in the room where one shouldn’t be.

‘Oh, come on. Not again!’ he groaned. He levelled his prodder at the globe of black lightning crackling into being. ‘I’m not in the mood today, ratboy! Buzz off or get a face full of Morky magic!’

But as the visitor manifested, Skarsnik’s expression of defiance turned to a gape. His intention to zap the rat dissipated. This wasn’t your usual rat with horns, magicking himself in to have a pop – although it did, he supposed, have horns. And it did look like a rat, only not that much. Bigger, it was. Everywhere.

‘Rats,’ he said, ‘aren’t usually that big.’

Skarsnik took a step back as an immense shape stepped out of the shadows. Although, that wasn’t right, because the shadows came with it. They writhed over the thing, whatever it was, stopping Skarsnik from getting a good look at it. He got an impression, nothing more – long, hairy arms lined with thick tendons, black claws, and a head crowned with an impressive rack of horns above a masked face where terrible eyes burned.

For the first time in a long time, Skarsnik gulped fearfully. The thing! The weird thing from the battle that had taken out Grobspit’s spider monsters, right there in his bedroom! The creature was huge, bigger than a troll, all wiry muscle and patches of fur. It had claws bigger than Gobbla’s teeth. Then Skarsnik recognised it for what it was, and recovered his wits. Better the daemon you know, and he knew this kind well enough.

‘Oh. Right. It’s one of those.’ The stink of rodent and glowy green rock was unmistakeable. ‘Ratfing daemon, one wiv lots of extra shadow, but a ratfing daemon you is. Well, ain’t I honoured,’ he said archly. ‘Oi, back off,’ he shouted, holding his ground. His prodder crackled with power. ‘I ain’t no snotty to be pushed about.’

‘I am a lord of the Thirteen in Shadow!’ scoffed the rat-daemon. ‘I am master-assassin! That cannot hurt me. You cannot hurt me!’

‘Yeah, right. Shall we give it a little try? I reckon a blast of Mork magic’d put a very big hole in you, you… you… ratfing. Don’t you?’

‘This is no stand-off, green-thing. I mighty-powerful. I show you mercy. If I wanted you dead, tiny and most vexing imp, dead you would be.’

‘Who’s showing who mercy? You want to test?’ He jiggled the prodder. ‘Fzapp!’ it went, very quietly but menacingly. Skarsnik sniffed at the sharp smell of discharged magic. ‘What is it you want, anyhow? Not seen one of your like for a while.’

‘I am verminlord! Master of skaven. You have glimpsed-seen my kind?’ said Lurklox, catching his surprise just a moment too late.

Skarnsik nodded the tip of his pointy hat to a large skull mounted over the fireplace. ‘Yeah. You could say that. Bagged that one about fifteen winters back.’

Lurklox looked at the yellowing skull then back at the prodder. Skarsnik grinned evilly.

‘So now we got that out of the way, what do you want, then? Get on with it, I haven’t got all day. Just lost a battle, and I need to do something about it.’

Skarsnik’s bravado rather put Lurklox off his stride, and spoiled his grand entrance. He stood taller, but the goblin would not be intimidated.

‘Green-thing!’ said Lurklox portentously. ‘You are beaten-defeated. The indefatigable Queek has smashed your army for the last time.’

Skarsnik looked off at his heaped stuff, disinterested. ‘Has he now? There’s a lot more where those boys came from.’

‘Lie-lie! Green-things like strength. You beaten, you not strong. They leave soon, and you die-die.’

‘Right,’ said Skarsnik. ‘I’m no quitter though, and I’ve won a lot more battles than I have lost.’

‘Already your large and bouncing beast-thing is no more.’ Lurklox pointed at the broken chain still manacled to Skarsnik’s ankle. ‘We kill-slay it, we kill-slay you.’

‘You wait a minute,’ said Skarsnik with sudden and dangerous anger. ‘The fight ain’t gone out of me yet, you big horned rat… rat… What was it you said you was?’

‘I great verminlord!’ shrieked Lurklox.

‘I don’t care what you are, you’re in my bedroom and I’m not happy about it!’

Lurklox sniffed the air and made a disgusted noise. ‘Neither of us are. To business, then! I come offer-give with mighty gift-offer for green-thing Skarsnik! In possession of Ikit Claw, arch-tinker rat, is a very powerful bomb.’

‘A bomb?’ said Skarsnik.

‘A bomb! The greatest bomb ever made by rat-paw and skaven ingenuity.’

Lurklox waved a paw, and a scene wreathed in warpstone-green smoke shimmered in the air before Skarsnik. It showed a vast and busy workshop. Skaven in strange armour worked at cluttered benches. Atop one of these was an intricate brass device the size of a troll’s head.

‘Yeah?’ said Skarsnik, careful to hide his surprise at the workshop, the likes of which he’d never seen before. He rapidly factored its existence into his calculations, allowing for it being an illusion, but he reckoned it probably wasn’t. ‘So what? Why are you telling me this? Gloating, are we? Going to blow me up? Didn’t work last time, did it?’ He decided the towering rat god wasn’t going to kill him just yet, and he sat down on his filthy bed with a groan. It had been a testing day.

‘No-no! I give-bring to goblin warlord! A fitting gift-prize for worthy foe.’

‘And what the zog exactly am I supposed to do with this giant metal egg, eh?’

‘There are many dwarf-places left. See!’ Lurklox brandished his shadowed claws again. An image of a strong dwarf citadel surrounded by a siege camp. ‘Zhufbar-place! Impregnable, undefeated. Many skaven die here. Perhaps you could win great glory for yourself by bringing it low?’

‘Looks like you’ve got plenty of furboys there right now. What do you need me for? And come to think of it, why not just get one of your sneaky pink-nosed little pals to do it? You don’t need me at all.’ Skarsnik’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why not just off me now? I’m not buying this at all.’ Skarsnik emphasised his words with the prodder.

‘You are as much boon-thing as problem-trouble, green-thing. Many pieces on the board-game. I prefer to keep you alive. The skaven at Zhufbar-place are weak. You are strong. Dependable.’

‘That’s nice to know,’ said Skarsnik.

‘You do as I squeak-say, green-thing?’

Some of the defiance went out of Skarsnik. He felt older than ever. He was tired. Outside a sea of rats awaited him, Queek wanted his head and might just get it this time, he’d lost his only useful advisor, and then there was Gobbla. The next time this big rat paid him a visit, he might not survive. Skarsnik slumped a little, it was time to face facts. ‘I don’t see I got much choice,’ he said quietly. ‘But it’s going to cost you more than the big boom boom,’ he added sharply.

‘Yes-yes?’

‘If I can’t kill Queek,’ he spat the name, ‘I’ll not be happy leaving both them gits alive. Bring me Belegar’s head for me collection, and I’ll do as you say. Skarsnik will leave the Eight Peaks,’ he smiled. ‘Although it’s more like six and a half peaks now, ain’t it?’

‘You swear-swear, and you go to Zhufbar? Lead your mighty armies there?’

‘And then I’ll never come back. I swear it. Although you know that means nothing, right?’

Lurklox’s masked face appeared for a moment in the swirling green-black fog surrounding his form. Something like a smile wrinkled the skin visible around his eyes.

‘I see why we have not beaten you yet. You are almost like a skaven.’

‘Oi!’ said Skarsnik. ‘There’s no need to be rude.’

There was much to be done upon the surface. Queek’s desire to see the green-things’ shanty totally demolished and their burrows stopped up bested his patience, and it was growing dark before Queek, still besmirched and begrimed with the filth of battle, marched back towards the comforting darkness of the underworld. His troops lined every street on his route, squeaking out his name. He went slowly, letting them see him, his head held high and chest puffed out, his trophy rack bloody with new heads. Ska went behind him, his Red Guard marching in perfect step after Ska.

‘Another victory!’ Queek said. ‘Another victory for mighty Queek! Queek brings Clan Mors only victory!’

‘All hail mighty Queek!’ shouted Ska.

His guard clashed their halberds on their shields and shouted. The army cheered, bowing and fawning over their leader as he walked past them.

Once inside, Queek made straight for the burrows he had requisitioned as his base for this war on the surface. His servants awaited his coming. Blind, weak and castrated, they were feeble examples of the skaven breed, and that suited Queek perfectly.

He went to be cleaned, allowing the quaking slaves to unstrap his armour. They licked blood from his fur, bit out tangles and scabs, and gingerly cleaned his few scratches. His armour was given the same attention. Once upon a time, Queek had been lax in his hygiene, allowing the muck of battle to cake his armour for weeks at a time until he stank. Not any longer. He had resolved not to go abroad filthy as a plague monk. He told himself it was all about appearances, but deeper down, and as Sleek Sharpwit’s head kept telling him, it was because the smell of death reminded him that he was getting old.

As his servants worked on him, he relaxed. Some of the murderous tension went from his muscles. To his followers he had delivered a great victory, but all he could think about was the green-thing retreating back through his gates to the safety of the Howlpeak. Queek’s lip curled, his fists clenched. Belegar was easy-meat now, dead-meat weak-meat, but his extermination of the dwarfs would give the imp time to retrench, and Queek had not slain as many of his goblins as he had hoped.

If he were truthful, he was lucky to have won at all.

The torches in Queek’s chamber flickered. In the corner he had a pile of looted glimstones, their cold light forever constant, but these too stuttered. The presence of his dead-thing trophies, always tentative of late, receded entirely. A shadow gathered. It would be behind Queek. It always was. He did not give Lurklox the pleasure of turning to greet him.

‘Little warlord preening, good-good. Sleekness is stealthiness,’ said the verminlord’s voice, as Queek had predicted, from behind him.

Even blinded, the thralls felt the powerful presence and scurried to get out. The shadow grew around Queek, making everything black. Queek alone remained illuminated, alone in the dark.

Lurklox stepped through into the bounds of this world, gracefully uncoiling himself from nothing into something. Although he had seen it many times now, Queek was unnerved by the way the towering verminlord stepped out from the shadow.

Queek did not care for the way Lurklox spoke to him, nor did he like the way his fur stood on end in the rat-daemon’s presence.

‘What have you found out?’ demanded Queek.

‘Impudence, haste-haste. Always the same. Either too much greeting, or none at all. The warlord clans never change.’

Sensing that Queek had steeled himself against such provocations, the verminlord got to the point.

‘The grey seer needs you as an ally. Your Lord of Decay Gnawdwell moves to ally with Clan Skryre. It is he that makes the attempts upon your life. It was he that bid-told Thaxx to delay. It was he that called upon Ikit Claw to shame you. You are being used, Headtaker. Gnawdwell grooms many replacements for you.’

Queek burst into laughter. Lurklox’s anger grew thick, a palpable, dangerous thing, but Queek did not care. ‘Great and stealthy Lurklox talk as if this not known to Queek!’ He dissolved again into giggles. ‘None of this news to Queek. Every lord tests his lieutenants. So what? Most die, some live to be tested tomorrow. And Queek has lived to see many tomorrows! Gnawdwell will not be disappointed by Queek disappointing him.’

Lurklox loomed, growing bigger. Queek stared defiantly up at the shadowy patch he judged the verminlord’s face to occupy.

‘Then what of Gnawdwell’s prize, long life and forever battle?’ said Lurklox, and Queek’s blood ran cold. ‘Does it still stand, or was Gnawdwell only lying to Queek? Queek is a fool-thing, mad-thing. Queek does not know everything, but I do.’

Lurklox let his words hang, making sure he had asserted dominance over the warlord before continuing. Queek wanted to know if the offer was real; Lurklox could taste his incipient fear at his growing age. Good. Let him be afraid.

‘Time runs on,’ said Lurklox, hammering the sentiment home. ‘Time Queek no longer has. I have come from council with Skarsnik. I have struck a deal with the goblin-thing for you. The war here will soon be over. Queek is needed elsewhere.’

The shock on Queek’s face was a further reward for the verminlord.

‘Yes-yes!’ said Lurklox, encouraged. ‘Deliver the dwarf-king’s head by sunset tomorrow and Skarsnik will leave the City of Pillars.’

Queek snorted and licked at a patch of fur his slaves had missed. ‘What else did you give-promise Skarsnik? Queek’s lieutenants make uncountable bargains with the goblin king, and he breaks every single one. What make Lurklox think this time will be any different?’

‘Queek guesses well. Clever warlord. There was something else. The promise of that head… and something Ikit Claw does not yet know is missing. A threat-gift. If the imp-thing not take, then we use it against him.’

‘Why not use this thing-thing against him in first place, mysterious Lurklox? Simple way best. Skaven too stupid to see.’

Lurklox did not answer.

‘Very well,’ said Queek. ‘I will slay the beard-thing and hand over his head to the imp. Queek has-owns many dwarf-thing trophies already. What does Queek want one more for?’

On rickety shelves, nearly two dozen trophy heads looked at him with empty eyes.

Queek refrained from explaining to Lurklox just how tricksy the goblin was. It would give him a great deal of amusement to see the verminlord upstaged by the imp. There was no way that the so-called king would give up the kingdom he had been fighting over for his entire life. And when he broke his deal, Queek would kill him and take back Belegar’s head and Skarsnik’s into the bargain. Queek tittered.

‘A great-good deal, clever high one, most impressive.’

TWENTY-ONE The Final Saga of Clan Angrund

In an out-of-the-way cellar of the citadel, Gromvarl stood in a pit in the floor and tugged at an iron ring set into a flagstone. Unprepossessing, lacking the adornment of most dwarf creations, a slab of rock hiding a secret. There was a finality to it.

‘Someone give me a hand here!’ grumbled the longbeard. ‘It’s stuck.’

‘It’s the differentiation in air pressure – sometimes does that, sucks it closed. It’s murder to get open,’ said Garvik, one of Duregar’s personal retainers. ‘Come here. Ho ho, Frediar! Hand me a lever.’

Garvik’s nonchalant manner turned to swearing. Soon there were four of them in there, arguing over the best way to prise the door open. Finally, after much effort, it budged. Air whistled around the broken seal. They tugged hard, and a fierce draught set up, building to a shrieking wind that settled into an eerie moan once the stone had been set aside.

Gromvarl looked down the narrow shaft the trapdoor covered: big enough for a dwarf, no more. He held his lamp over it. Red iron rungs stretched down into the blackness. The shaft descended thousands of feet. That it had not been uncovered by the thaggoraki or the grobi was a wonder. Only weeks ago, a handful of rangers had set out from this place to guard the refugees fleeing the sack of Karak Azul. There had been hopeful talk of their numbers swelling those of the dwarfs of Karak Eight Peaks, but Karak Eight Peaks had become a place of wild hopes. None of the dwarfs of Ironpeak had ever arrived, and the warriors sent out to help them were lost.

A double-or-nothing gamble for the king, and the dice had come up poorly once more. The dice these days were always loaded. Douric could have told him that. The king rolled now in desperation, a dawi down to his last coin.

‘Gromvarl! Get yourself out of there. The king’s coming.’

Gromvarl disdainfully allowed himself to be helped up out of the pit, like he was doing those who helped him a favour, and not the reverse. Truth was, he was not so spry any more, but he hid it under a barrage of complaints.

Once out, he stood among a group of fifty dawi gathered in the cellar, three dozen of them dressed for hard travelling, all armed. The room was crowded, the damp air fogged by their breath and the heat of their bodies. Longer than it was broad, with a tapering roof of close-fit stone, the cellar was flawless work, but all unembellished as the escape door. No such place of shame should be decorated. No carven ancestor face should look upon the backs of dwarfs as they fled. That was the reasoning. A shame that ordinarily ale barrels and cabbage boxes hid.

Several of those present were proper warriors, rangers and ironbreakers. They stared at the floor, humiliated beyond tolerance by the king ordering them to leave. They understood that what they had to do was important, all right, but Gromvarl would bet his last pouch of tobacco – and he was down to the very last – that every one of them wished some other dawi had been selected and told to go in his place. They chewed their lips and moustache ends and fulminated. Gromvarl could see at least three potential Slayers among their number.

A dwarf matron rocked a babe in arms. The child, its downy chin buried in its mother’s bosom, snuffled in its sleep. Gromvarl smiled sorrowfully at the sight. There were too few unkhazali in these dark days, and there was no guarantee this one would survive. His expression clouded. Dwarf babies were as stoic as their elders, but they still cried from time to time. One misplaced call for milk and ale from the bairn could spell the end for the lot of them.

Better out there than in here. His thoughts turned to others, whose parents could not be swayed to leave. He thought too of Queen Kemma, shut up in her tower. As merciful as Belegar had been in permitting, and in some cases ordering, others out, he could not be swayed to release his queen and his prince. Oaths, said the king. Sadness gripped Gromvarl. Some oaths were made to be broken.

With that in mind, he clutched the key in his pocket.

Torchlight glinted from artful wargear. The king and his two bodyguards entered the small cellar where the dwarfs waited to flee.

The king was wan, his eyes heavily pouched and bloodshot. He tried to hide the stiffness in his side, but Gromvarl was too old to be fooled. The rumours of the king’s injury told of a sad truth. That was far from the worst of it, however. Gromvarl could tell from the look on Belegar’s face; he had finally given up on the slender hope of aid from elsewhere. He was prepared to die.

‘I’ll not make a meal of this,’ said Belegar softly. ‘I know none of you made this decision lightly, and some of you didn’t want to go at all. Let it be known that I release you all from your oaths to me. Find some other king, a better king. Under his protection and in his service, may you live out more peaceful lives.

‘Warriors,’ he said to those handful of such. ‘I have not chosen you to go because I can spare you. I cannot. I have chosen you because you are among the finest dawi left alive in Karak Eight Peaks. These are your charges. They need you more than I do. I release you also from all your oaths to me, and consider them fulfilled two and a half times over. Had I gold to give, you would have it by the cartload and in great gratitude. Instead, I place upon you one final burden – guard these last few of the clans of Karak Eight Peaks with your lives and your honour. Do not let the bloodlines of our city die forever.’

At these words dwarf resolve stiffened. Gazes were no longer downcast. Lips trembled with new emotions, and spines straightened.

‘Aye, my king,’ said Garvik, then the others repeated this one after another, some of the shame at their departure leaving through their mouths with the words. Belegar held the eye of each one and nodded to them.

‘Now go, go and never return. This was a glorious dream, but it is over. We wake to the darkest of mornings. May you all see the light of a better morrow.’

Gromvarl stood back. Garvik wordlessly indicated that they should begin. A ranger went first, the group’s guide, spitting on his hands before he reversed into the dark hole and took grip of the first of the iron rungs. The moan of the wind changed tone as he blocked the shaft.

‘Four thousand feet,’ he said, his words bearing the soft accent of the hill dwarfs who had once ranged above the ground of the Eight Peaks. ‘Your arms will hurt, dawi or not. Keep on. After me, leave ten rungs, then ten rungs between each that follows after. Anyone thinks they’re going to fall, call a halt. Pride will kill everyone beneath you should you slip. Remember that. Don’t talk otherwise. This way is as yet undiscovered by our enemies, let us keep it that way.’

His head disappeared into the shaft. They counted ten ringing steps.

‘Next!’ whispered the ranger from the ladderway.

The first went, then the next. As they disappeared into the dark, wives bid farewell to husbands, children to fathers, warriors to their master. Then they were all gone, swallowed up by the ground as if they had never been.

Gromvarl watched them all go into the hole, one after the other, his heart heavy and a lump in his throat. So went the last sorry inhabitants of Karak Eight Peaks, to a doom none within would ever know.

When the last had gone, the king nodded. Gromvarl beckoned to two others. With their help, the trapdoor was replaced. Runes of concealment flared upon it. As the marks faded back into plain stone, the trapdoor went with them. The inset iron ring disappeared, as did any sign of a join with the pit floor. Then the dwarfs levered the flagstone that concealed the pit wherein the trapdoor nestled back into place. Masons hurried forwards, swiftly mortaring it back into place. Within a couple of hours, it would look like any other slab in the floor of the cellar.

Barrels were rolled back in, filling up the room.

The escape route disguised, the dwarfs filed out in silence.

‘And here we come to the end of it all,’ said Belegar. ‘Fifty years of dashed hopes and broken honour. Was it all worth it?’

Never numerous, there remained only two hundred fighting dwarfs left in all of Karak Eight Peaks, a sum that included those untried warriors previously restricted to garrison duty, and those elders honourably retired from the front lines. A shattered people remained, drawn in to this last toehold from every part of the kingdom that had been so painfully retaken. Too few to adequately defend the doors into the Hall of Pillared Iron, Belegar had ordered them into a square at the centre of the room.

‘Do not lament cracked stone, cousin,’ said Duregar. ‘If you swing the hammer so clumsily, the chisel slips. Best learn to swing it better.’

Belegar laughed blackly. ‘There has to be a next time for the learning to take, Duregar.’

Duregar shrugged, working his mail into a slightly more comfortable position. ‘Then others will learn from our errors, if errors they were. There’s no harm to be found in trying to do something right and failing. Better to chance your arm than never risk failure at all.’

‘Your words are a comfort to me.’

‘They are intended to be, my king.’

‘To the end, then, Duregar?’

‘As I swore, to the end. For the Angrund clan, and for the chance at a more glorious future.’

Duregar gripped his cousin’s hand tightly. The king squeezed back.

‘Whatever it is I have achieved here,’ said Belegar, ‘I could not have done it without you, Duregar.’

A black masked face appeared around the main doors at the far end, and quickly withdrew.

‘A scout, lord!’ shouted one of the lookouts.

‘Leave it be. Get back into formation. At least we know they’ll be here soon. A small surprise seeing us stood here rather than behind more barred doors, eh?’ Belegar paused. ‘I’d make a speech, say words of encouragement to you all, but you need none of that. You know what is coming, and will fight boldly all the same. I could not be prouder of you all. I…’ He stopped. ‘This is something better said with ale rather than speech.’

The hogshead of ale at the centre of their formation was cracked open. To the last the dwarfs were fastidious in all they did, carefully tapping the barrel with a spigot, lest any go to waste. Foaming tankards were passed around, each dwarf given as much as he desired. The days of rationing were ending along with all else.

They drank quickly, wiping suds from their beards with satisfied gasps. This was the king’s ale, the best and last. In quiet ones and twos they clasped arms and said their farewells, toasted kinsmen fallen in battle or treacherously murdered by the thaggoraki and grobi. Fond reminiscences were aired, and particular grudges recounted.

Belegar counted his men again. Of the Iron Brotherhood, fourteen remained. Duregar’s bodyguard swelled their ranks to twenty-nine. They had only three cannons pointed at the two main gates, precious few guns or other machines, and just a smattering of crossbows.

‘Like the last days of King Lunn,’ said Belegar. ‘Traditional weapons, tried and tested – none of your new fangled gear. Iron and gromril and dwarfish muscle.’

‘Personally, I’d be glad of a flamecannon,’ said Duregar.

‘Aye,’ admitted Belegar. ‘So would I.’

Noise echoed up the corridors leading from the lower levels of the citadel.

‘Here they come! Dawi, to arms!’ shouted Belegar. His wound twinged as he climbed atop his oath stone and took his shield and hammer from his retainers. He tried not to wince.

Explosions rippled out, their distant rumbles carrying billows of dust into the hall. Worthless slave troops, sent to their deaths in the dwarfish traps. That was always the skaven way. Belegar wished that Queek would get on with it.

The battle was short by recent standards. Four waves of skaven came in and were thrown back, broken upon the unyielding steel of the shield walls. Poisoned wind globadiers scurried in the wake of the clanrats to be shot down by dwarf quarrellers with tense trigger fingers. This last time the skaven’s poisons choked their own. Ratling guns and warpfire thrower teams met the same fate, every one felled by pinpoint shots. The dwarf cannons fired until their barrels glowed.

But the dwarfs were few, and the skaven many. In ones and twos the final brave defenders of Karak Eight Peaks fell. The defensive ring around Belegar grew smaller and smaller. The skaven pressed their attack. The cannons fell silent. The number of dwarfs shrank steadily from two hundred, to a hundred, to fifty. The fewer they were, the harder they fought, no matter how tired they were, no matter how thirsty for ale. Each kinsman dragged down fired the dwarfs with righteous anger, driving every one on to acts of martial skill that would have been retold in the sagas and noted in books of remembrance, if only there were survivors to carry their stories away.

It was clear there would be none.

The latest skaven attack flowed back from the dwarfs, but there was no rest. A flood of red-armoured skaven bearing heavy halberds came streaming into the room.

‘Queek Headtaker’s personal guard,’ said Belegar. ‘He is coming.’

‘This is it, then,’ said Duregar, who stood side by side with his cousin still. ‘You and he will meet for the final time. Strike him down, Belegar. Send him back to whatever hell sired him.’

Belegar set his face and hefted his hammer. The crust on his wound opened again. Blood dampened his side under his armour.

The stormvermin of Queek’s Red Guard crashed into the remaining two-score dwarfs. The stormvermin were fresh and fired with vengeance. Long had the Iron Brotherhood been a ratbane. They hacked down the dwarfs, although the folk of the mountain gave good account of themselves. The last dozen dawi crowded round their lords, sending the Red Guard back time and again. Belegar and Duregar fought back to back, hammers crushing limbs and heads.

One by one the last of the dawi were dragged down, until only Belegar and Duregar remained. All round the kinsmen, skaven fell upon the fallen, tearing at dwarf flesh in their feeding frenzy, or wrenching trophies from the corpses. Duregar was attacked by six of the creatures at once and pulled down, his last words in that life a defiant war-shout to Grimnir.

‘Come on! Come on!’ bellowed Belegar. ‘Take me too, then, you miserable vermin!’ He brandished his hammer, sweeping it about him, but the skaven withdrew to a safe distance, imprisoning him in a circle of spearpoints. ‘Where is the Headtaker? I would show him my hammer!’ Belegar wept freely, tears of sorrow mingled with tears of anger.

The ring opened, and in stepped Queek.

‘Here I am, dwarf-thing. Eager-keen to die?’ he said in high-pitched Khazalid. This was too much for Belegar. To be confronted with this theft of the innermost mysteries of the Karaz Ankor at the very end was one insult too many.

‘Still your tongue! The language of our ancestors is not for you to profane! Bring your head here so that I may crack the secret of our speech from your skull. Attack me, Headtaker, and let us see how well you fare against a king!’ roared Belegar.

Queek hefted Dwarf Gouger and his sword. ‘Queek kill many kings, beard-thing. Your head joins theirs today, yes-yes.’ He tittered, then sprang into a spinning leap, the infamous Dwarf Gouger and sword whirling with deadly speed.

Belegar parried them with stolid economy. Queek curled over a hammer strike that would have flattened a troll and landed behind the king. Belegar faced him.

‘And I thought the Headtaker a master of combat,’ said Belegar quietly. All emotion save hatred and defiance had bled from his face. He stood on legs weakened by his wound and battle fatigue, but he stood nonetheless. ‘If you are the finest warrior your kind has to offer, no wonder you must resort to cheap tricks to bring your enemies low.’

Queek snarled and ran at Belegar. He punched forwards with the head of Dwarf Gouger, intending to make Belegar sidestep onto the point of his sword. But Belegar moved aside a fraction of an inch, evading the maul. He stamped down on Queek’s sword, though it moved almost too quickly to be seen, wrenching it from Queek’s grasp. A hammer blow of his own caught Queek by surprise. The skaven warlord moved aside awkwardly, holding only Dwarf Gouger. The hammer grazed him nonetheless, bruising his sword arm and driving his own armour into his flesh. Queek jumped back, swordless, blood matting his fur.

‘Pathetic,’ said Belegar. ‘Flea-ridden vermin, swift and twitchy. There’s not a dwarf alive who isn’t worth twenty of you.’

‘Queek has killed many hundred beard-things,’ said Queek. He shook his arm. Agonising pins and needles ran from his shoulder to his hand, jangling the nerves of his fingers. His shoulder was numb. ‘Queek kill one more very soon.’

‘Probably. I am tired, and I am beaten, and the memory of our last encounter festers still in my flesh. But even as you hack the head from my neck, Queek, you will know that you could never best me in more honourable circumstances.’

Few skaven gave a dropping for honour, but Queek was one of this unusual breed. His honour was not as a dwarf would see it, but it was there, built of arrogance though it was. Queek became enraged at this slur upon it.

The duel that followed was swift, its outcome inevitable, but Belegar was not done yet. Queek spun and ducked, casting a deadly net of steel about the dwarf with his terrible maul. Belegar smashed it aside several times with his shield, but with each swipe he became weaker. Queek hooked the king’s shield with the spike of his weapon, yanking it free from Belegar’s arm with a squeak of triumph. A following blow smashed into Belegar’s side, causing the king to cry out as his wound burst wider, but Queek overreached himself and the dwarf’s hammer hit his left side, rending apart his warpstone armour and cracking his ribs. Agonised, Queek staggered, only at the last turning his stumble into a spin that had him facing the long-fur again.

He and Belegar panted hard. Belegar bled freely from the wound Queek had given him in their last encounter. Blood pooled about his feet. He had other wounds, some small, others graver. He could not see it himself, but his face was ghostly white.

Queek smiled in spite of his pain. The end approached.

‘Greet-hail your ancestors when you meet them, beard-thing. Queek will come for them next. Death is no refuge from the mighty Queek!’

Again Queek charged, putting all his cunning into a complicated swipe reversed at the last moment to send Belegar’s hammer spinning away from him. Another blow took the dwarf king in the knee, shattering it, and sending the dwarf down. But to Queek’s amazement, the king arrested his fall. Holding himself in a kneel, his weight on his undamaged leg, he glared at the skaven, his eyes poison.

Queek swung Dwarf Gouger a final time. The spike connected with the side of the king’s helmet, punching through the gromril. Queek squealed at his victory, but his cries turned to pain. He looked down. The dwarf had somehow got Queek’s own sword up, and now it pierced him at the weak shoulder joint of his armour. He stepped back, and Belegar fell over with a crash, his eyes never leaving Queek’s face.

Queek screamed as he pulled out his sword from his armpit, the weapon’s square teeth dragging lumps of his own flesh with it. Ska rushed out from the ranks of the Red Guard, but Queek shoved at his massive chest with his unwounded hand.

On shaking legs, Queek walked over to the dwarf king. He plucked Dwarf Gouger free, casting it onto the carpet of dwarf bodies. With a yell, he swung his sword over his head, severing the king’s head with one blow.

He dropped his sword and bent over, then held aloft Belegar’s head with his good arm. He stepped up onto the dwarf king’s oath stone.

‘The City of Pillars is ours, from deepest deep to loftiest peak! Queek brings you this greatest of victories, only Queek!’

His guard squeaked out their praises, and Queek showed them all the lifeless head of Belegar. Such a fine trophy. Such a shame he had to give it up.

TWENTY-TWO The Last King of Karak Eight Peaks

Gromvarl staggered up the stairs. Black spots swam in front of his eyes, crowding out what little light there was left in the citadel. The poisoned wound in his back throbbed a strange sort of pain, at once unbearable yet simultaneously numb. He fought against it with all his dwarfish will, forcing himself on in the fulfilment of his first, last and most important oath.

The protection of Vala Kemma.

The sound of fighting still sounded from below, but it was that of desperate, lonely struggles fought in dark corners against impossible odds, and not the regimented clash of two battle lines. Screams came with it, and the stink of burning. There were only the old, the sick, and the young in the upper levels. The skaven were coming for Karak Eight Peaks’s small population of children.

Gromvarl stumbled on the steps, his feet failing to find them. He broke a tooth on the stone. Five thousand years old, and still a sharp corner on the step edge. Now that, he thought, was proper craftsmanship.

Kemma was up above, locked in her room and forbidden to fight. Gromvarl had one of the only keys, but had been forced by the king to swear he would not use it.

The king was dead. As far as he was concerned, the oath died with him.

He staggered his way upwards, his progress growing slower and slower as he went. The fiery numbness had taken hold of his limbs. He had to rest often, his unfeeling hand pressing against the stone. He knew that if he sat down he would never reach his destination.

Finally, he arrived, one hundred and thirty-two steps that had taken a lifetime to climb behind him.

The door wavered ahead of him, its black wutroth shimmering as if seen through a heat haze. He fell to his knees and crawled towards it, the poison in his blood overcoming his sturdy dwarf constitution at the last.

With a titanic effort of will, Gromvarl slid the key home in the lock. Only his falling against the door enabled him to twist it at all.

The door banged open and he fell within. He moaned as he hit the floor. He slid into blackness. To his surprise, it went away again, and he managed to heave himself up to his knees. His head spun with the effort.

‘Kemma!’ he said. ‘Kemma!’ His throat was dry. A fire raged in it, consuming his words so they came out as insubstantial as smoke.

The queen was not there. The room was too small for her to hide. There were sounds coming from her garderobe, smashing, a frantic scrabbling.

A black-clad skaven came out, a scarf wrapped around its muzzle. It was a wonder it hadn’t heard the door; then Gromvarl realised that the sounds of battle were very close behind.

Upon seeing him, the skaven assassin leapt over him, and pulled back his head sharply by the hair. A blackened dagger slid against his throat, the venom that coated it burning his skin.

‘Where dwarf-thing breeder-queen?’ asked the skaven. Like all of its kind, its voice was surprisingly soft and breathy. Not a hint of a squeak to it when they spoke the languages of others. Gromvarl found this rather funny and laughed.

The skaven twitched behind him, agitated.

‘What so amusing, dwarf-thing? You want to die?’

‘Not particularly, you thieving thaggoraki.’ He burst out laughing again.

‘Very good. You die-die just the same.’

A loud bang filled the room. The skaven slid backwards, its poisoned knife clattering to the floor. Gromvarl tossed the smoking pistol away.

‘Never did like guns,’ he grumbled, ‘but I suppose they have their uses.’ He fell onto his hands and knees. ‘Not long now, eh, Grungni, eh, Grimnir? Soon I’ll be able to look you in the eye and ask how I did. Appallingly, I’ll bet.’ He coughed, and bloody froth spattered from his mouth. Before he fell face down onto the floor, he smiled broadly.

Vala Kemma had always been as particular as any dwarf. Even in this prison in all but name, she’d kept her mail well oiled and her armour shining.

The mannequin that it had sat upon was empty.

Kemma had got away.

‘That’s my lass,’ he said into the stones of the floor. They were cool, welcoming. His breath dampened them with condensation. ‘That’s my lass,’ he whispered, and the stones were damp no more.

Kemma ran through the upper storeys of the citadel, her secret key clutched in her hand, not that she needed it now. Poor Belegar, he always underestimated her. Leaving her shut up behind a simple lock? She felt a moment of anger; it was almost like he didn’t think her a proper dwarf, probably because she was a woman.

But she was a dwarf, with all that entailed. Dawi rinn, and a vala too. More the fool him for not realising. He had always been so blinkered! Look where that had got him. Look where that had got them all.

People were running, those few warriors stationed in the top floors of the tower towards the sounds of fighting coming from the stairs, the remainder away to the final refuge with as much dignity as they could muster.

Only now, at the very end, were some of the dwarfs succumbing to panic, and not very many of them at that. Most were shouted down and shamed by their more level-headed elders, and there were plenty of them up there to do the shouting.

She caught sight of a familiar figure, bent almost double by the weighty book she had chained about her neck. Magda Freyasdottir, the hold’s ancient priestess of Valaya. Even at the end she was dressed up in the lavender finery of her office, her ankle-length, silk-fine hair bound in heavy clasps of jet.

‘Magda! Magda!’

The priestess turned, her face surprised. Kemma ran right into her arms.

‘Steady, my queen,’ she said ironically, and rightly so, for Kemma’s kingdom was by now much circumscribed. ‘I am not so steady on my feet as I was. I have someone here who might better appreciate your hugs. My king!’ she called. ‘Here he comes,’ she said to Kemma. ‘The last king of Karak Eight Peaks.’

Thorgrim came through the door, fully armed and armoured, his wispy beard hidden behind a chin-skirt of gromril plates. The sight of it made Kemma’s heart swell. Next month he would have been eleven years old, nineteen years until the majority he would never attain. In his boy’s armour he looked ridiculously young. In the visor of his helmet, his soft brown eyes, so like his father’s in particular, were wide with fear but hard with duty. My son, thought Kemma. He would have been a fine king.

‘Mother!’ he shouted with undwarf-like emotion. The others looked away at the boy-king’s unseemly display. They embraced. Someone tutted.

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘I too,’ said Kemma. She looked him deep in the eyes. His return look said he knew it too, that soon they would be.

‘Where are your Valkyrinn?’ said Kemma to Magda, looking about for the priestess’s bodyguards.

‘Gone. Gone to fight, and now doubtless dead.’

‘The king is dead?’ she asked, although she knew the answer.

‘Fallen. We are the last few dawi of Karak Eight Peaks. Thorgrim is our lord now.’

‘Whatever you say, mistress Magda,’ said Thorgim.

Magda chuckled. ‘You’re the king! You don’t have to defer to me.’

‘I think I will,’ said Thorgrim gracefully. ‘If it’s all the same to you.’

The last few dwarfs were running down the hall towards the room, heavy boots banging sparks from once fine mosaics. Worryingly, this included the last few warriors. Bloodcurdling screams and a horrible squeaking pursued them.

‘We better get in, and quickly,’ said Magda. She produced from under her robes a heavy object wrapped in oilcloth and offered it to the queen. ‘You’ll be wanting this.’

‘My hammer?’ guessed Kemma.

‘Of course. No queen should stand her last without her weapon. Are we dawi, or are we umgi females to go screaming into the night?’

Kemma nodded and took the oilcloth from the priestess; there indeed was the hammer.

‘Thank you.’

‘I took it from the armoury. I had no doubt you would need it at the end. Valaya provides for her champions.’ She gave a weary sigh, and steadied herself on Kemma’s shoulder. ‘I fear she has one final task for you before the end.’

Freya beckoned her through the door. The few dwarf warriors outside nodded their heads grimly and slammed it shut. A key turned in the lock from outside, and those inside barred the door as best they could, nailing planks across the door and frame that had been left there for that purpose.

What a last stand. Here were the young and infirm, the very, very old. Those beardlings old enough to fight or who flat out refused to leave, those young unkhazali who were too young to chance the journey. Their parents’ choice, not theirs. Kemma wished Belegar had ordered them all to go.

A room mostly full of those who never would or could no longer swing an axe. But all of those strong enough to lift them held one. Cooks, merchants, beardlings and rinn. All dwarfs had warrior in them, but some were more warlike than others, and the dwarfs in that room were among the least. They were down to the very last. She and Thorgrim were the champions of the room, the last heroes of this failing land.

She looked out of the room’s small window. Snow swirled around the tower, but it could not obscure the hordes of greenskins camped outside, insolently within gunshot of the walls. It made her sick to see them. Within hours, she reckoned, they would be fighting with the skaven over her bones.

The door shook. The beardlings tried their best to be brave, the younger children were openly terrified, the unkhazali cried in their mothers’ arms. There were not many children there; Karak Eight Peaks had never been a kind environment to raise beardlings. And here they all were, Karak Eight Peaks’s hopes for the future, trapped like rats and waiting to die.

The warriors in the corridor called out their battle-cries. From beyond the door a clashing of blades and the squealing of dying skaven set up. Thorgrim looked to his mother.

‘Don’t hold your axe so tightly,’ she scolded gently. ‘It will jar from your hand, and then where will you be?’

‘Sorry, mother,’ said Thorgrim.

Kemma smiled at him sadly. ‘Don’t be sorry. You have never done a wrong to dawi or umgi or anyone or anything else.’ She reached up to pat his face as she always had, a mother’s gesture for her child. But, she realised, he was not a child any more, despite his years. He was a king. She grasped his arm instead, a safe warrior’s gesture. ‘You would have been a very great king, my boy.’

The sound of arms abruptly ceased. There was a thump on the wood and a dying gurgle. Blood pooled under the door. Queekish squeaked outside. Silence. Then the door began to shake.

The door bounced in its frame. The wood splintered. The nails in the planks worked loose, and the first of them clattered to the floor.

‘They’re coming!’ screamed Kemma. ‘They’re coming!’

The fight was short and bloody. Kemma barred the way, keeping her son behind her, but he was singled out, and he was among the first to die. Kemma held back her grief and fought them as long as she could, a succession of untried warriors taking the position at her side. The skaven were stormvermin, strong and cunning warriors, but she was a queen, her hammer driven by a mother’s grief. They stood no chance. Ten she slew, then twenty. Time blurred along with her tear-streaked vision.

Kemma felt relief when the poisoned wind globe sailed into the room over the stormvermins’ heads, and shattered on the stone walls behind her. The choking gas poured with supernatural alacrity to fill every corner. The skaven in front of her died, white sputum bubbled at its lips, eyes bulging. Kemma held her breath, though her head spun and eyes stung and blurred. She ran forwards, hoping to buy time enough for the dwarfish young to die. Better a quick death by gas than the lingering torment of enslavement that would await them should they be taken alive.

‘Dreng! Dreng thaggoraki! Dreng! Dreng! Dreng!’ she shouted, swinging her hammer wildly. Her lungs burned, she could feel them filling with fluid. She was drowning in her own blood. Still she fought, sending the skaven breaching party reeling. Behind her, the cries and coughs subsided. Good, she thought. Good.

‘Za Vala-Azrilungol!’ she cried, holding her runic hammer aloft. The runes on it were losing their gleam, the magic leaching away, becoming nought but cut marks in steel. ‘Khazuk-ha! Vala-Azrilungol-ha! Valaya! Valaya! Valaya!’ She swung her hammer for one final swing, bloodying a stormvermin’s muzzle, but she was dying, her strength fleeing her body, and they brought her down. They pinned her to the floor, and she spat bloody mouthfuls at them. She panted shallowly, but could draw no sustenance from the air. The world and all its cruelties and disappointments receded. A golden light shone behind her as the halls of her ancestors opened their doors. Before she passed through, she flung one last, panting curse at her murderers.

‘Enjoy your victory. I hope you live to regret it.’

The column of greenskins toiled up the slopes of the mountains, into the bitter chill of the unnatural winter. They were led by a toothless, wrinkled old orc clad in nothing but a pair of filthy trousers and a stunty-skin cloak with the face still attached. The head of the stunty sat on the orc’s scalp, moustaches hanging either side of the orc’s face, beard tied under his chin. Consequently the dangling arm and leg skin of the dead dwarf only came halfway down the orc’s back. He had on no shoes, no shirt, no nothing, and it was freezing cold.

‘This way, this way!’ said Zargakk the Mad, for that was who the orc was. ‘No it ain’t!’ he scolded himself. ‘Oh yes it is!’ he replied.

‘Just where have you been these last years, Zargakk?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Funny you just turning up this morning like that. We could’ve used you in da fight.’

‘Yep, yep,’ yipped Zargakk. ‘Could have, could have. But I’s been busy. Yep, very busy. Part of it I was, er, dead. Yeah. I forget, um, the rest. But you got me Idol of Gork, dincha? That was a help! And I’m here now. Whoop!’ His eyes blazed green. Smoke puffed from his ears. Duffskul had been nutty, but Zargakk was totally crazy.

‘Funny, ain’t it,’ said Skarsnik, half to himself, ‘in an ironical kind of way, that we is using the same little hidden ways to gets out that them stunties used to get in.’

‘Suppose,’ said Zargakk. The goblin and orc chiefs marching with them shared perplexed looks.

‘But there’s no stunties there now, boss, none at all. They’s all gone!’ said one, who was either braver or even thicker than the rest.

Skarsnik shut his eyes tight and shuddered.

They had marched out in the morning, after a nervous-looking skaven had delivered the king’s head. Zargakk had been sitting on a toppled stunty statue in front of the Howlpeak, the citadel burning behind him. All across the skies were clouds of blackest black, so black the night goblins didn’t really notice it was day at all. In the east, south and north they were lit red by the fires of the earth. Only to the west was there a hint of blue, and that was pale and scalloped by roils of ash.

Up, up onto the slopes they went, chancing the high passes. The main road out of the Eight Peaks to the west was buried in rubble from the skaven’s detonation of the mountains. Although large numbers of skaven had departed to the north, some remained, and the East Gate was most likely in the hands of the ratmen by now. Skarsnik wasn’t banking on them keeping their word, so up into the cold they went.

From high above the Great Vale, Skarsnik turned to take one last look at his former domain. His entire army stopped with him. Most of it did, anyway, those elements that did not tripping over the ones that had, and no small number of them slipping to their deaths as a result.

‘Garn! Get on! Get on!’ yelled Skarsnik, planting his boot in the breeches of a mountain goblin. ‘Blow the zogging horns, you halfwits. Do it! Get ’em moving! Just cos I is stopping don’t mean everyone should!’

Horns blared, the mountains answering sorrowfully. Drums rolled like distant thunder in the forgotten summers of the world. Skarsnik thought there might never be a summer again.

‘Look at that. Would you look at that,’ said Kruggler, peering out from under his dirty bandages. He’d been wounded across the forehead during the battle, but his skull was particularly dense and he seemed unharmed. ‘Seems such a waste, leaving it all behind.’

‘Yeah,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Don’t it just? All them zogging rats just upped and left an’ all. Ridiculous. It’s empty. Empty after all this time.’

‘The greatest stunty-house in all the world!’

‘Second greatest,’ corrected Skarsnik, holding up a grubby finger. ‘Second greatest. And it was all mine.’

‘Why they going?’ said Kruggler.

‘Search me,’ shrugged Skarsnik. ‘Don’t make no sense.’

‘Why don’t we just go back then?’ said someone.

‘Nah,’ said Skarsnik. ‘We do that, they’ll come back. Besides, new vistas, new worlds to conquer. All that.’

‘Stupid rats,’ grumbled Dork the orc, current boss of Skarsnik’s bigger greenies. Skarsnik had lost so many of his chieftains he wasn’t sure who was who any more, and he couldn’t exactly stop to check his lists.

‘Mark my words, it’ll be full of trolls soon enough,’ said Tolly Grin Cheek the Fourth.

‘Maybe,’ said Skarsnik, raising his eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time, except, it won’t happen.’

‘How you know that, boss?’ said Dork.

Skarsnik plucked a human-made watch from his pocket and screwed up his eyes to peer at it. ‘I just do. Should be about now.’

‘What, boss?’ said Tolly Grin Cheek.

‘You don’t think I’d let those ratboys have the place, did you? You don’t think I’m beat do you? Eh? Eh?’

The goblins and orcs looked at each other searchingly. No one wanted to hazard a guess at the right answer to that one.

‘Course not!’ said Skarsnik. ‘Y’see, those ratboys are too zogging clever by half.’

‘Not like us, eh, boss!’ said Dork. The others laughed at their own cleverness.

‘No. No. Definitely not,’ replied Skarsnik flatly. ‘Anyways, that big ratfing promised me two things. Old Belegar here.’ Skarsnik patted his dwarf-hide pouch, wherein languished the severed head of the king. ‘And one of them fancy machines the ratties are always meddling with. I had a mob put it down there, set it off to go, then run away.’

‘What was it, boss? What was it?’ they shouted excitedly.

Skarsnik pulled a pained expression and shuddered. ‘Can’t one of you zogging morons have a guess, just one guess?’

‘A super trap!’ said one.

‘A big axe?’ said Dork hopefully.

‘A troll!’

‘A dragon!’

‘Two dragons!’

‘Lots of dragons!’ someone else shouted, getting carried away with the whole dragon idea.

‘It’s a bomb, you snotlings-for-brains. Our boss here got a big bomb off them, didn’t he?’ Zargakk the Mad said. ‘He did, he did!’ he added, nodding in enthusiastic agreement with himself.

‘That’s the truth, right there,’ said Skarsnik. ‘A bomb. Apparently, they was going to blow up the big dwarf mountain up north where the king of all stunties live. Well, not now they ain’t!’

They all shared a good laugh at that.

‘This big rat god fing showed up, and offered it to me. Tried to talk me into blowing up Zhufbar with it! So I said yes.’

‘But we ain’t at Zhufbar, boss!’

‘Yeah, Zhufbar’s, like, miles away.’

‘It’s at least three.’

‘More like loads.’

‘Will you just let me finish?’ shouted Skarsnik. ‘Zhufbar’s one thousand and eighty-four miles away, if you must know. So I thoughts to meself,’ he continued at normal volume again, ‘I ain’t walking all that way on the say-so of a ratboy! Then I finks, well, if I ain’t going to have the Eight Peaks, and the stunties aren’t going to have the Eight Peaks, then the zogging ratboys certainly aren’t going to have it. I’m going to be the last king of the Eight Peaks. Me,’ he said, low and growly. ‘Not some mange-furred rat git with cheesy breath! I tells you, it’s the biggest bomb what ever there was. Huge! All brass and iron and wyrdstone.’ He had to exaggerate its size. The goblins would never have believed something small as a troll’s head could do so much damage.

‘Weeds toe what?’

‘He means the glowy green rock what the ratties likes so much,’ said Dork, glowing almost as much as said rock himself with self-satisfaction.

‘Yeah, that’s right. The green glowy. About a ton of it, I’d say, all packed about with black powder.’

‘What’s an “aton”?’

‘Lots! A ton is lots! Very heavy! It’s lots, all right?’ said Skarsnik, his hood vibrating with irritation. ‘So lots it’ll make them little bangs what the ratties brought down Red Sun Mountain with look like squigs popping on a fire. And I made ’em give it to me! Me!’

A tinny chime sounded from out of the watch, strange music to play out the destruction of their home, accompanied by the slap-tramp of goblin feet as the tribes wound their way upwards.

‘And that’s the timer,’ said Skarsnik. He chuckled evilly.

They all stared expectantly at the city. Big ’uns and bosses had to lash the lads to stop them from gawping at what their betters were looking at.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

‘Was that it? Has it gone?’ asked a particularly thick underling, who was staring right at Karak Eight Peaks’s desolate ruins.

‘No. No. No! That wasn’t it, you zogging git!’ Skarsnik roared. He spun round and blasted the gobbo with a bright green zap of Waaagh! energy. The goblin exploded all over everybody else.

An uncomfortable silence fell, punctuated by the drip of goblin blood. Karak Eight Peaks remained resolutely, undemolishedly there.

‘Er,’ said Kruggler, tentatively tapping Skarsnik’s shoulder. ‘You know them skaven gizmos, they don’t always work, do they, boss?’

‘Mork’s ’urty bits,’ said Skarsnik. He sniffed. He spat. He shuffled about a bit. The chain that Gobbla used to be attached to clanked sadly. He couldn’t bring himself to take it off. ‘Not with a bang, but with a whimper,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Sorry, boss?’

‘Nothing, Krugs,’ said Skarsnik with forced bonhomie. ‘Nothing. Just something I read in a humie book once.’ Skarsnik shook his head and waved his sorry band onwards. ‘Come on, boys. Nothing left to see here. Nothing left at all.’

‘’Ere, boss,’ called someone. ‘I got a question.’

‘Yes?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Dazzle me with your piercing insight, Krugdok.’

‘Just where exactly are we going?’

‘And I remain undazzled,’ said Skarsnik with such sharp sarcasm you could have trimmed a troll’s nose hair with it. Besides Zargakk, not one of the goblins or orcs, excepting perhaps Kruggler – and then only perhaps – noticed. ‘To tell you the truth, and I really mean it this time…’ The goblins dutifully tittered. The orcs scowled. ‘…I haven’t got a bleedin’ clue.’

And with those eternal words, the last king of Karak Eight Peaks turned from his kingdom for the final time, and trudged over the mountain shoulder. Ahead of him the lowering volcanic skies hid an uncertain future.

TWENTY-THREE Twelve in One

Thanquol splashed through shallow puddles on the walkway by the sewer channel. He had given up trying to keep his robes clean. They were roughly made anyway, not like the finery he was used to.

‘This not good-good,’ he grumbled. ‘Grey seers fall low, Thanquol lowest of all.’

He scurried along, head constantly twitching to look behind him. He missed the comfort of Boneripper’s presence. He got more done when he wasn’t constantly watching his own back.

Not very far over him were the warrens of the man-things, the city-place they called Nuln. He was here to take it for Clan Skryre, and things were not going very well at all.

If he’d known how much the clan would expect of him, then he probably wouldn’t have thrown himself on their mercy.

Probably.

Not so long ago, Thanquol and his fellow seer Gribikk – how annoying to find him here too! No doubt he had already reported Thanquol’s presence back to Thaumkrittle – would have been in charge of the expedition, and it would all have been over some time ago. But it was Skribolt of Clan Skryre who was in charge, his large contingent of warlocks supposedly fighting alongside Clans Vrrtkin, Carrion, Kryxx and Gristlecrack. Naturally, the entire expedition was unravelling.

It was all Skribolt’s fault, not his. The Great Warlock was a fine inventor, Thanquol could see that, but he lacked vision, and his strategies lacked scope. How was it Thanquol’s fault that Clan Vrrtkin and Clan Carrion had turned on each other? How was it his doing that they could not even take a warehouse full of gunpowder without fighting among themselves?

Of course, he was being blamed. Poor Thanquol, once the darling of the Council, now a scapegoat for a tinker-rat of limited vision. He gnashed his teeth at the terrible injustice of it all. He was desperate. The plans to raid the man-thing’s city for gunpowder and a working steam engine had come to nought. The Council of Thirteen had made it very clear the mission would succeed, or heads would be forfeit. As things stood, that meant his head, and that would not do at all. The emissary from the Council had been quite specific, in a roundabout way. Thanquol still could not believe that the grey seers had fallen so far. The shame of having to explain himself for something that patently was not his fault made his ears burn. Worst of all, it had been a lowly warlock who had come all puffed up and guarded by the Council’s elite Albino Guard to deliver the ultimatum. That was a grey seer’s task.

Skribolt was close to ridding himself of Thanquol. He was in league with Gribikk – it was the only explanation. They’d taken Boneripper from him not long afterwards, ostensibly for repairs, but Thanquol knew the truth of it. Another attack on the surface failed shortly afterwards, again due to the treachery of Clan Vrrtkin. Ordered to report his own ‘failure’ by farsqueaker, he had sabotaged the machine and fled to the sewers. The uprising was going wrong all over the Empire, and they couldn’t blame him for all of it. But they didn’t have to. He was at last resorts. He didn’t know whether to be more angry than afraid, or more afraid than angry. If this didn’t work…

Thanquol reached the door he sought and glanced about himself, nose twitching with nerves. The bundle he carried mewled, and he shushed and patted at it. A splash sounded up the river of filth flowing sluggishly past him. He stayed deathly still, ears pricked for any sound, but nothing came to him but the steady drip of water, and a far-off rushing sound from where the sewer discharged into the river.

He unfroze, tail moving first and then his whole body melting into nervy activity. With his free hand he drew forth the key for the door, stolen from the city sewerjacks many years ago.

They hadn’t missed the key. The lock was so clogged with rust it was patently obvious no one had been here since his last visit. He had to place the squirming bundle on the floor to turn it. The squealing it made set his heart pumping and glands clenching. The door groaned louder still when he pushed it open. He paused again, holding his breath until he was satisfied.

He scooped up the bundle and scurried in, pushing the door slowly to behind him.

As he suspected, the chamber was undisturbed. The man-things definitely hadn’t been there, and he breathed a little easier. Cobwebs thick with dust festooned the domed ceiling. A lesser drain ran diagonally through the circular room, cutting off a third of it from the rest before disappearing through a culvert in the walls. Thanquol absently patted the bundle again, and set it down in the corner as far away from the stream of human waste as he could. To summon the verminlord, it was important his offering was as pure as possible.

He flexed his right hand-paw. The grafting scar around his wrist itched. He held both of them, regarding their mismatched nature. ‘Gotrek!’ he hissed, recalling the moment his hated nemesis had severed the paw. He clapped his left hand over his muzzle. Who knew if the dwarf-thing were here, lurking in the shadows and ready to foil him yet again?

Thanquol took a generous pinch of warpstone snuff to calm his nerves. His head pounded at the effect, his brain strained against his skull. His chest rose and fell expansively. His vision cleared, and he saw revealed the straining tendrils of magic crossing the room. So much of it in the world!

Enough perhaps for success. His eyes narrowed, and he allowed himself his most diabolical chuckle.

Thanquol set to work.

First, he brushed as much dust away from the centre of the room with his foot-paws as he could, revealing the stone beneath. Though segments of the walls dripped with moisture, and filth ran through it, the room was otherwise wholesome, and surprisingly dry. With a shard of sharpened warpstone, he scratched out a double circle and filled the band between inner and outer layers with intricate symbols. He fought the urge to nibble on the warpstone shard, at least until he was done. When he had, he munched on the blunt end as he scrutinised his work. He nodded, and turned to the bundle.

He unwrapped it quickly.

‘So ugly!’ he hissed. ‘Not like skaven pups. Come-come! You sing for Thanquol now.’

Thanquol drew his knife and placed the squealing bundle in the centre of the circle.

When he was done, Thanquol carefully dripped the blood into the gouges in the floor. His usual frenetic movement became measured as he carefully filled in each. This had to be done precisely. Messing it up didn’t bear thinking of. He whispered words of summoning under his breath, hoping it wouldn’t be like the last time, hoping that…

Skarbrand…

Do not think-recall the name! he told himself. It was probably still listening. He calmed himself, waited until the memories of the bloodthirster he’d accidentally called up the last time faded, then continued.

He placed the pup’s remains and its bloodied rags outside the circle, and held up his hand-paws.

Although his past efforts had ended in disaster, once more the white-furred sorcerer attempted to slice the veil between realms. Once more he attempted to bring forth a verminlord. He spoke-squeaked the words of power, calling upon the Horned Rat and the mightiest daemons of his court. Green fire crackled from his eyes and between his upraised paws.

‘Come-skitter! Join me in the realm of the mortal! I command you! I, Grey Seer Thanquol so squeak-say!’ he said. There was a blast of power and the fabric of reality rippled.

He stood there exulted, hands still upraised. It was working!

Nothing happened.

He let his arms drop, and looked around. The room was unchanged. He was alone.

Once more Thanquol had failed. This time, at least, he had not done so with the same disastrous consequences as his previous attempt. He groaned. His paws clenched.

‘Why-why?’ he said. The temptation was to storm out, destroy the circle, and find someone else to blame. But he could not. He was the one being blamed – entirely unjustly – by others. He had to succeed.

Tail swishing, the grey seer paced out of the circle, careful not to scuff the marks. He went around and inspected them all.

‘Perfect! Perfect! They are all perfect! The Horned Rat himself could not have drawn them better. Why-why does it not work?!’ he squealed angrily. The bloody rags caught his eyes. Maybe two…?

It was then that Thanquol perceived a shadowy hand reaching out of the blackness gathered in the chamber’s vaulted ceiling. The claws ripped through reality with a screech that sent pain running down his spine. The enormous hand headed unerringly for him. He found that he could not move, not even when the hand grabbed him by the ankles and lifted him upright, dangling him upside down as its owner stepped out of a black abyss of shadows. Remembering the fate of Kritislik, Thanquol liberally vented the musk of fear.

But he was not consumed. The entity stepped through into the realm of the mortal, casually bestriding Thanquol’s protective circle. It examined him with curiosity, peering at him this way and that.

Thanquol could do nothing but squeak in wide-eyed wonder. He had seen verminlords before, of course, but never anything like this. No horns had ever sprouted so majestically as the ones upon its head. Multiple sets curved and entwined the daemon’s face. They seemed to sinuously curve and move as Thanquol watched them. Beneath the horns one eye was missing. In its place was not an empty socket, but a warpshard, or if the angle was correct, a black hole of endless nothing. Thanquol’s head throbbed as he looked into it.

‘Ahhh, Thanquol, you took your time. Perhaps you are not so gifted as I thought?’ it purred. ‘I have waited for you to call me. Yes-yes, we have much to do.’

‘Who-what are you, O great master?’ shrilled Thanquol.

The creature placed him gently alongside the channel. Only then did the grey seer notice that one of the verminlord’s foot-paws was in the drain. It did not sink into the river of filth but hovered above it.

The ancient being stooped to Thanquol’s level.

‘Our name is Lord Skreech Verminking,’ said the verminlord. ‘There are many of us, and one.’ As he spoke, Thanquol saw before him – or perhaps he imagined it – the verminlord’s visage flicker, revealing many ghostly aspects that together somehow made the face the creature wore: the contagion-ridden body of a plague priest, the shadowy assassin, the hungry hordes, the tinkering weaponsmith, the future-gazing seer. ‘The ruins, the decay, they give me power. I was called here by blight and destruction. There is much in the world in this time, and it is good,’ it said, sniffing the air and craning its neck. ‘And by you, Thanquol.’

Thanquol swallowed in awe. Could it be? The grey seers had long spoken in whispers of ‘the One’, a Rat King – a conglomerate evil. As mortal skaven had their hierarchies of clan, caste, and rank, so too did the verminlords above them. There was one, an entire Council of Thirteen elevated by the Horned Rat in the past to daemonhood as one creature. He was their ruler, the lord of the supposed Shadow Council of Thirteen. Had Thanquol really just summoned forth the most powerful of all verminlords? He had always known he was special, but this was pleasing confirmation. Pleasing indeed. He smiled.

The grey seer looked up into that strange face staring back at, and possibly through, him. It seemed to have read his thoughts, for it looked down upon him indulgently, its enormous claw reaching out to ever so gently stroke his horns. ‘I am who you think I am, yes-yes, little seer. You have a purpose. I have need of your singular talents. Together we shall conquer.’

Thanquol’s heart soared. With this creature at his side, none could stand before him! He couldn’t wait to see Skribolt’s face, or to smell him squirt the musk of fear.

‘Nuln-place first?’

The verminlord nodded its head, pleased with the seer, or so it seemed to the conceited Thanquol. ‘And much more besides. We have many tasks ahead of us. But first, gifts!’

Impossibly, a huge shape was in the corner of the room, half shadowed, like it had been there all the time and was patiently waiting for its cue. Thanquol’s eyes widened. The largest rat ogre he had ever seen stepped out of the shadows.

Thanquol’s whiskers twitched with glee.

‘Many thanks-gratitudes for such beneficent generosities, O great and unplumbably wise Lord Verminking!’ Thanquol’s eyes narrowed, his imagination alive with much smashing and kill-slaying. ‘I shall call him Boneripper,’ he said.

In the war council of the Nuln-place clawpack, all was not well. For hours the skaven assailing the city had hurled accusations at each other by the dimly flickering light of warp-braziers. The room the council occupied was a small one, built and forgotten by humans long ago, and pitifully insufficient in size to contain so many over-weaning egos.

‘I say-squeak you are a worthless weak-meat, and all Clan Vrrtkin are puny-small and shifty!’ squeaked Warlord Throttlespine of Clan Kryxx. He had drawn his sword and pointed it at Warlord Trikstab Gribnode of Clan Vrrtkin. ‘You are at fault for our lack of success, tricking and lying and attacking when we should fight together.’

‘Lies, lies! Not good lies either,’ squealed Gribnode. He pulled his own sword. The other members of the war council stood hurriedly from the table, upsetting their chairs. ‘All knows Thanquol-seer is weak link in rusty chain here, and you are next weakest, Throttlespine. Banish Thanquol, great and cunning Warlock Skribolt! Banish him, so we not have to suffer the stink of his slack musk-hole! It is this that foils our efforts! Then let us banish Throttlespine. He is in league with Thanquol! His cowardice too is legendary.’

Throttlespine growled and jumped onto the table. ‘Coward, am I? I lead from the back of my ratkin as every true warrior should-must, whereas you, where are you? Skulking and hiding off the battlefield! You are to blame, and seek to smear my good-true name with ordure of failure. I am a loyal servant of the council!’

‘No, I am the loyallest servant of the council!’ retorted Gribnode.

‘Stop-cease, halt!’ squeaked Skribolt. ‘This is too much!’ Unable to get anyone to listen to him, he began to crank the handle of his warp-lightning generator.

Throttlespine was tensed for a leap when the sound of fighting came from outside.

‘Stop-stop!’ squeaked a stormvermin beyond the door. ‘Many-much council leaders exercise deep and important thinkings. Go aw–’ The guard’s order was cut short. The sound of armoured bodies clattering off the walls took its place. A terrifying roar had them all looking at each other, and struggling to control their fear glands.

A single blow felled the plank door so hard it hit the flagged floor with a bang like a cannon shot. On the other side was the largest rat ogre any of the council members had ever seen, even Grand Packmaster Paxrot of Clan Moulder, and he knew his rat ogres very well. The four-armed behemoth doubled over to squeeze its bulk through the doorway. Following the monster came Grey Seer Thanquol.

‘Thanquol?’ said Skribolt, his hand slowing on the warp-lightning crank, then speeding up again. ‘You are banished!’

‘Good-good, all still here? I bring news from the Council,’ said Thanquol, who was puffed up and obviously very pleased with himself.

This proclamation was most stunning to Great Warlock Skribolt, whose claw still churned the handcrank on his warp-energy generator. His muzzle twitched as he grasped for what to say.

‘Yes-yes, after so much incompetence,’ and here the grey seer paused to look at Skribolt, ‘I am to be in charge. Any disputes can be directed to my bodyguard, Boneripper.’ At this, Thanquol nodded at the hulking beast stood snarling behind him, surveying the gathering with hate-filled eyes.

‘But that is not…’ Skribolt started to say, but the grey seer cut him off.

‘My new bodyguard, Boneripper,’ said Thanquol. ‘The old one was mostly dead,’ he added dismissively. ‘This one better. Now that the element of surprise is gone-lost,’ Thanquol continued, ‘I feel it is time to switch tactics. My plan is to–’

At last Skribolt found his tongue. ‘Enough! No more! Halt-stop!’ said the Great Warlock, the last words coming out perhaps more shrilly than he had wished. ‘On whose orders were you gift-granted authority? Why-tell was I not informed?’

Skribolt was standing, lightning wreathing him as his whirring contraption sucked in the winds of magic. All the other skaven – warlords, a top assassin, and a master moulder – took a step backwards away from the two.

When a voice spoke from the shadows all turned, finding a terrible sight. The blackness strained with life, and an awful shape moved there. Such was the power inherent in it that several of the lesser warlords let their musk glands loose.

‘On our authority, Great Warlock!’ said the shadow. The room went black, lit only by dancing chains of lightning. A long, elegant claw reached out, snuffing out the sparks between Skribolt’s backpack conductors. In the blackness a single terrifyingly evil eye radiated green over them, holding them each in its turn, leaving none in any doubt that his most treasured schemes had been exposed, digested and dismissed as the work of fools.

As suddenly as it appeared, the blackness was gone. The war council was alone again.

‘What do you bid-command, O great and exalted leader Thanquol?’ intoned Warlord Throttlespine, bowing low. The rest of the skaven followed suit, although they did subconsciously shuffle away from those who had befouled themselves.

Thanquol had already surmised that Throttlespine was the smart one, yet it was gratifying to be proven correct. Nodding his head slightly in acceptance, Thanquol began again. ‘As I was squeal-saying, my plan…’