The end times, p.60
The End Times, page 60
‘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.
CHAPTER 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.
