[Thanquol & Boneripper 03] - Thanquol's Doom Read online

  Horgar ripped another rock from the pile, smashing it between his iron hands. “We’re not giving up on him,” the hammerer swore. “He never gave up on any of us, no matter how bad things looked. We’ll not give up on him now.”

  Thane Erkii shook his head. “It’s hopeless,” he avowed. “Grungni himself couldn’t survive half the mountain coming down on his head!”

  Horgar fixed the Minemaster with a menacing look. “Leave us be,” he warned, tearing another stone from the rubble.

  Suddenly, Thorlek leaped up, turning an excited face towards Horgar and Thane Erkii. “I heard something moving!” he shouted.

  “Stones settling,” Thane Erkii said.

  “I know what stones sound like,” the ranger replied curtly. “Ever know a stone to have rhythm as they settle?”

  Thane Erkii was dubious, but he crouched down beside Thorlek and pressed his ear to the rubble. True to the ranger’s claim, he could hear a regular tapping, strong and strident, emanating from behind the rubble. To his ears, the tapping seemed to be a sort of code, a signal used by miners to let any rescuers know they were still alive. Quickly the Minemaster rose to his feet, shouting for his warriors to help clear the blockage.

  Working with a desperate haste, the dwarfs soon had a section of tunnel some twenty yards wide cleared. It was then that they hesitated. Something was stirring the rocks from the other side. The alarming thought belatedly came to them that whoever was moving about might not be Klarak but one of the skaven. The image of the skeletal rat-ogre suddenly bursting from the rubble gave even Horgar pause. They had all seen what the monstrous creature could do with its warpfire projector and none of them wanted to court such a fate.

  The rocks jostled forwards with a crash, causing a cloud of dust to rise up, blinding the dwarfs. Thane Erkii called for his warriors to draw their axes and be ready. There had been times when skaven learned the miners’ code and employed it to lure dwarfs into an ambush. The Minemaster wanted to take no chances.

  When the dust cleared, however, Thane Erkii was the first to lower his weapon. He sighed with relief as he saw Klarak Bronzehammer climbing out from the rubble. The gold-bearded engineer was bruised and bloodied by his ordeal, but at least he was alive. Images of King Logan’s Book of Grudges gradually faded from the forefront of the Minemaster’s thoughts.

  Klarak’s three aides rushed forwards, whooping with joy that their friend had escaped death in the cave-in.

  “You have the luck of a drunken halfling!” Thorlek shouted, gripping the engineer’s arm. Horgar went one better, embracing Klarak in a fierce hug and lifting him off his feet.

  “That’s a nice way to see if he’s broken any bones,” Azram grumbled, adjusting the magnification of his lenses. The reprimand had its desired effect and both the ranger and hammerer released their battered victim.

  Klarak patted his bloodied scalp, then smiled at the aged lorekeeper. “Nothing broken, Azram, but I shouldn’t like to go through that again.”

  “You shouldn’t have tried it in the first place!” Horgar swore. “What was the idea of standing there taking pot-shots at a thaggoraki with the whole mine coming down about your ears?”

  “What Horgar’s trying to say is if there’s anything stupid that needs doing, he’s the dwarf for the job,” commented Thorlek.

  Klarak shook his head. “It was worth the risk,” he said, his tone grim. “Grey Seer Thanquol poses too great a menace to Karak Angkul to be allowed to live. If it cost my life to bring him down, it would have been a fair trade.” The engineer clenched his fists, an angry light shining in his eyes. “It didn’t work though. Before the roof came down, I saw him scamper off deeper into the mine.”

  “Then we’ve nothing to worry about,” Horgar said. “The stupid ratkin has buried himself alive. A few days and the vermin will starve and save us the bother of smashing his skull in.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Klarak cautioned. “There’s too much at risk to take any chances.” He thought about the warning from Altdorf and the horror that Grey Seer Thanquol would unleash unless he was stopped. Frowning, Klarak started to strip the scorched and tattered mail vest, dropping the blackened armour to the floor. “This vest barely guarded me against Thanquol’s magic,” he said.

  “You’ll have to have Kurgaz inscribe some tougher runes on the next one,” Azram suggested.

  Klarak looked back at the blockage filling the tunnel. “I don’t think it would do any good. You weren’t close enough to see how Thanquol powered that last spell of his. I saw him actually eat a piece of wyrdstone. He was fairly burning with energy, at any instant I expected him to burst into flames. The rats he summoned to gnaw through the beams did burn from the magic goading them to do Thanquol’s bidding.” The engineer made a desultory wave of his hand. “No,” he grumbled, “I don’t think I know enough to make a vest that could protect me from that kind of power. And I don’t think any sorcerer capable of that kind of magic is going to let a few tons of rock keep him bottled up.”

  “You sound almost like you’re giving up,” Thorlek said, an incredulous note in his tone.

  “Maybe it would be easier if I did,” Klarak told him. He gave his friend a grim smile. “But when have you ever known me to do anything the easy way?”

  Grey Seer Skraekual scurried through the old mine, the ratskin map clutched in his trembling paws, his whiskers maintaining contact with the earthen wall. His mind was a confusion of terrified instinct and avaricious ambition. A skaven needed the scent of his own kind in his nose in order to feel even slightly at ease. Alone, the ratman’s natural fears rose to almost overwhelming levels. It was only by exertion of his hideous will that Skraekual was able to keep himself from fleeing in terror back to Bonestash.

  He was playing for keeps now. Destroying that arrogant idiot Thanquol and the morons with him had been a step from which there was no going back. Skraekual had to succeed in the mission Seerlord Kritislik had entrusted to him. He would need the Seerlord’s protection if either Clan Mors or Clan Skryre decided to take issue with the way he had handled his supposed superior. If the fools didn’t manage to succeed in overcoming the dwarfs in their petty war, then Skraekual would make a convenient target upon which to fix the blame. For his part, it would be difficult to shift the responsibility back on the late and unlamented Grey Seer Thanquol.

  Skraekual lashed his tail in anger as he thought about his scheming rival. The pompous maggot! He’d deserved to die! Thinking himself favoured by the Horned Rat! Acting as though he was the chosen child of the Horned One and lording it over anyone and everyone! Well, now Thanquol knew better. The Horned One did not favour fools!

  How easily the dung-sniffer had been taken in by Skraekual’s deceptions. It had been pup-play to make Thanquol think his rival was nothing but a burned-out, warp-witted addict. A few bottled scents applied at the right time, a few well-staged fits, and the idiot had been completely taken in. He would almost have liked to see Thanquol’s face if the dullard knew Skraekual’s nose hadn’t rotted off from an excess of warp-weed. It had been bitten off by an over-enthusiastic breeder!

  Chittering his amusement, the grey seer examined his map once more. It represented the labour of three months and a small fortune in warpstone incense to create that map, staring for days on end into his black mirror. But the mirror had shown him all. It had revealed to Skraekual the location of the old skaven warren of Festerhole, the first settlement to exist beneath Karak Angkul, predating Bonestash by nearly two thousand birth-cycles.

  Disaster had come upon Festerhole when the mines of the dwarfs had broken into the skaven tunnels. The ratmen had fought tenaciously against the dwarfs, but at last they had been overwhelmed. The short-sighted dwarfs, however, hadn’t moved to occupy the old warren. Instead they had collapsed every approach into the tunnels and entombed the last of the ratkin in their homes. Without the numbers to dig their way out again, the skaven had perished after a few weeks of infighting and cannibalism.

&nb
sp; But Festerhole hadn’t vanished completely. In the old records of the Order of Grey Seers, Skraekual had found reference to Festerhole’s spiritual leader: Grey Seer Thratsnik. Thratsnik, it seemed, had departed Skavenblight with a potent talisman in his possession, a talisman of such power that Seerlord Kritislik was desperate to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong paws. He’d offered Skraekual wealth and position just to recover the thing and bring it back to him. It would be interesting to see if Seerlord Tisqueek could make an even better offer.

  The Hand of Grey Lord Vecteek the Murderous, Warmonger of Clan Rictus during the Black Death. It sent a thrill of fear down Skraekual’s spine just to think of Vecteek’s genocidal reign. Under his generalship the skaven had spilled out onto the surface and very nearly enslaved the wretched race of man-things. Only the betrayal of his subordinates had prevented him from achieving his ambitions and bringing about the Great Ascendancy foretold by the Horned Rat.

  What a skilled grey seer could do with such an artefact! The mummified paw of one of skavendom’s fiercest warlords! Surely Vecteek had been favoured by the Horned One, and by possessing even a bit of his remains, a grey seer would be able to augment his own connection to his god. What need for warpstone when the grey seer had such power at his fingertips!

  Skraekual bruxed his fangs, imagining the might that would soon be his. Why should he kowtow to either Kritislik or Tisqueek? He could make himself Supreme Seerlord once he had the Hand of Vecteek!

  Excitedly, the grey seer turned towards the wall of the mine. The dwarfs had been most thorough in disguising this section of tunnel, but Skraekual’s map showed him where the old skaven passageways had once been. He stared at the mass of rocks before him, visualising the long-lost warren behind the wall. He could see the trapped skaven dying in the darkness, beseeching Grey Seer Thratsnik for the intervention of the Horned One. If only Thratsnik had been more knowledgeable he might have saved them and himself with the relic he had stolen from Skavenblight. Now his stupidity had become Skraekual’s gain.

  Drawing a sliver of warpstone from his robe, Skraekual thrust the toxic rock between his fangs and ground it into powder. Swallowing the crushed warpstone, he felt the intoxicating rush of raw magic flooding through his veins. For an instant, he lost his focus, indulging in the maddening flow of aethyric energy. Then Skraekual remembered his purpose and asserted his will, quickly turning the rush of energy into fuel for a mighty spell.

  Setting his paw against the rock face, Skraekual shaped the magical power filling his body into a tremendous spell. The entire tunnel began to shake as the rocks split before the grey seer’s magic, vaporising beneath the black malignity of his will. Dust billowed out from the long-sealed passageway as the grey seer’s spell ripped through the earth.

  Soon he had an opening wide enough for twenty skaven, reaching as far back as that part of Festerhole the dwarfs had been unable to collapse. The air held a musty, dead quality that set Skraekual’s fur on edge. With the warpstone energy still blazing through his body, he directed a second tremor deeper within the old warren, smashing apart another tunnel the dwarfs had demolished, one that would reconnect Festerhole to the Underway. After coming so far and risking so much, Skraekual wasn’t about to be trapped in the tomblike maze of Festerhole and share the ignominious fate of Thratsnik.

  Feeling a bit more confident with the back door opened, Skraekual scurried down the dusty tunnels of the warren. The gnawed bones of skaven littered the ground, evidence of the cannibalism that had consumed the settlement once the dwarfs had cut it off. Occasionally, the mummified husk of an intact body leered at him from the desolate passages, the sorry remains of the last ratmen to perish in the cataclysm.

  Skraekual ignored the morbid husks, intent only upon reaching his objective. Through his mirror, he had seen the burrow of Grey Seer Thratsnik and knew which way he must go to find the dead sorcerer’s lair. He uttered a shrill squeak of triumph when he scuttled into the cave-like burrow. Most of Thratsnik’s possessions had crumbled into dust, only a few stone cabinets cobbled together from old dwarf masonry and a handful of copper jars and trinkets remaining intact. However, behind a table crafted from the broken leg of a dwarf statue, Skraekual saw the shrivelled mummy of Thratsnik himself.

  And resting before the dead grey seer, as full and fresh-looking as though it had been newly severed from its owner’s arm, was a hairless skaven paw!

  Skraekual rushed across the room. He hesitated before the table, freezing as he felt Thratsnik’s dead eyes on him. He snickered nervously. The old fool had been dead for centuries. There was nothing he could do to cheat Skraekual of his victory now!

  Making a quick grab at the table, half expecting the horned husk of Thratsnik to get up and try to stop him, Skraekual seized the severed hand. Springing away from the table, the grey seer made certain to keep his eyes on the old mummy while he inspected his prize.

  The freshness of the paw was evidence that it had been endowed with potent enchantments, even the lowest skavenslave could have seen that. Sniffing the paw, Skraekual detected the odour of the warpstone which had been used to preserve the hand. It must have taken several pounds of the precious rock to so thoroughly saturate the paw. Further evidence that he now possessed a most potent artefact, a holy relic of the Horned One.

  There was another smell too, one that was strangely familiar to Skraekual’s nose. Suddenly, the grey seer spun about. The scent he detected wasn’t coming from the paw. It was coming from behind him.

  Grey Seer Thanquol stood in the doorway of Thratsnik’s lair, his fangs displayed in a threatening grin. Beside him stood the hulking figure of Boneripper.

  “Burn-burn!” Thanquol growled, pointing a claw at Skraekual. “Burn-burn with fire!”

  “Wait-wait!” Skraekual shrieked. “We can-will share-share!”

  Thanquol motioned for Boneripper to stand down, then fixed Skraekual with an enraged stare, his foot tapping impatiently against the dusty floor of the burrow. Skraekual dipped his head in submission, making himself as unthreatening as possible. But there was a little grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  “This is the Hand of Vecteek!” Skraekual announced, displaying the dismembered paw. He noted the way Thanquol’s eyes boggled at the mention of the lost artefact. “With this we can make-take what we want-like from Seer-fool Kritislik.”

  Thanquol ran a claw through his whiskers, avarice creeping into his eyes. “How can I trust you?” he hissed.

  Skraekual seemed to sympathise with his rival’s suspicions. Hurriedly, he tugged the dragon-head ring from his finger. “A gesture-token of oath-bond,” Skraekual said, tossing the ring to Thanquol.

  The motion surprised Thanquol, and awkwardly he bent about to catch the ring. It crumpled in his grasping fingers. A trick! Some cheap tin trinket! All this time it had been another of Skraekual’s deceptions! From the start he’d never had Master Sleekit’s ring!

  “Die-burn, fool-meat!” Skraekual growled. A burst of black energy leapt from the grey seer’s paw, sizzling across the cave.

  Thanquol squealed in horror, narrowly diving from the path of the deadly spell. Scrambling across the ground, putting Boneripper between himself and his enemy, he watched in horror as the wall behind him began to corrode, the rock turning to dripping mush beneath Skraekual’s magic.

  “Boneripper!” Thanquol shrieked. He pointed a claw at Skraekual. “Kill-smash! Kill-smash!”

  The rat-ogre vented warpsteam as its damaged mechanics ground into action. The huge monster charged straight towards Skraekual. The sorcerer’s eyes glowed a brilliant green as the brute rushed him. At the last instant before Boneripper could reach him, he vanished in a puff of foul-smelling smoke. Unable to stop, the rat-ogre kept barrelling across the cave. It smashed headfirst into the stone table, collapsing it and hurling the mummy of Thratsnik from the seat it had occupied for centuries. A great cloud of warpsteam erupted from Boneripper and the brute collapsed amid the rubble.

  Thanq
uol did not have long to take in the spectacle of his bodyguard’s failure. A brutal impact against the back of his head sent him sprawling across the cave floor. Looking up, he saw Skraekual glaring down at him, his staff poised to smash the grey seer’s head. Skraekual had used his magic to escape Boneripper’s charge, but the vengeful sorcerer had not gone far.

  The staff came smashing down, glancing off Thanquol’s horn as the grey seer scrambled from its path. Skraekual bared his fangs in a vicious snarl. Extending the Hand of Vecteek, he sent a blast of pure aethyric force ploughing into his enemy. Thanquol was flung like a rag doll across the cave by the magical blow. Skraekual tittered in amusement at his foe’s helplessness and sent another blast of raw magic smashing into him.

  “Slow-slow,” Skraekual hissed. “You are first-first victim of Supreme Seerlord Skraekual and I want-will like-like watch-smell you die-die!” In his bloodthirsty mania, flecks of foam dripped from Skraekual’s mouth and madness burned in his eyes.

  Thanquol took advantage of his rival’s insane gloating to conjure his own spell. Lightning crackled about the head of his staff, surging across the cave to strike the other grey seer. Before the warp-lightning could connect, however, Skraekual made a slashing gesture with the Hand of Vecteek. As though it had been torn to shreds by a thousand invisible fangs, the tatters of Thanquol’s spell were scattered across the burrow.

  “Pain-suffer!” Skraekual snarled, gesturing once more with the talisman. Thanquol attempted to fend off the sorcerous attack with his own counterspell, but the malignancy of Skraekual’s magic was too powerful to be resisted. All he could do was shriek in terror and spurt the musk of fear as an invisible force closed about him in a crushing embrace.

  The crazed gleam shining in his eyes, Skraekual made sweeping gestures with the Hand. At each gesture, Thanquol was battered against the walls or dashed to the floor. A long gash opened along his snout as his fur was torn, a piece of his left horn went bouncing across the floor as it broke against one of the stone shelves.