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

  Another volley from the dwarf jezzails and then the skaven mob was beset by the ferocity of their enemy’s most hideous weapon. Situated at the centre of the dwarf line, an immense war engine had been biding its time, waiting for the ratkin to come in range. As the chittering horde continued to advance, the dwarf engineers sprang into action, hastily working the massive pump fitted to the rear of the barrel-shaped chassis of the weapon. From its dragon-shaped mouth, a sheet of dripping fire shot out across the onrushing skaven. Skavenslaves burst into flame as the liquid fire washed over them, transformed into living torches that squealed and howled in terrified agony.

  This last attack did not go unanswered. Thanquol watched as Twitchtail popped open the mask of his helmet and stuffed something that looked suspiciously like warpstone into his mouth. An instant later, the warlock-engineer pointed his claw at the dwarf flame cannon. From his fingertips, a flickering stream of energy sizzled through the cavern. Several skaven were between Twitchtail and his target, each of them becoming a smouldering heap of fur and rags as the warp-lightning passed through them.

  Whatever effect passing through a half-dozen skaven had, there was still enough potency in Twitchtail’s spell to fulfil its purpose. The violent energies crackled about the dwarf weapon and its crew. The heavy armour of the dwarfs betrayed them, the metal acting as a conductor for the murderous magic. They fell to the ground, charred bones rolling free from their smoking armour.

  The cannon itself blew apart, its volatile fuel ignited by Twitchtail’s magic. Shards of bronze and iron, splinters of oak and wutroth were sent slicing through the massed troops of both sides. The thick armour of the dwarf warriors protected them from most of the shrapnel, but they were momentarily stunned by the blast.

  The skaven fared more poorly, a score of slaves and clanrats injured in the explosion. The worst of the wounded were trampled underfoot by the chittering mass of ratmen following behind. The scent of dwarf blood in their noses, the skaven had found their courage and were now eager to rend and slay.

  With a howl, the trollslayers obliged them. Scorning armour in their effort to court a glorious death, the slayers had suffered worse from the explosion than their fellows. Not one of them was unmarked by the shrapnel, but such was their ferocious determination that they paid their wounds little heed.

  The ferocity of the skaven collided with the berserk fury of the slayers. Steel axes hacked through verminous bodies while rusty swords and sharp fangs ripped at dwarfish flesh. The slayers cut down their foes, dropping them by fives and tens for each of their own that was brought low. The floor of the great hall became strewn with the carnage, the floor turning black from skaven blood.

  Even the most optimistic ratman could see numbers alone would not prevail against the crazed slayers. One dwarf, stabbed through the gut by a spear, a crooked sword thrust through his collar bone, continued to fight on, a maniacal laugh shuddering from his blood-flecked lips. Another, his hand pinching tight a throat torn by skaven fangs, had strength enough to batter his enemies with the haft of his axe. Dying, the slayers refused to quit the fray while a single spark of life still pulsed in their veins.

  Thanquol was far from the most optimistic ratman. As he saw the slayers hacking their way through his troops, he imagined the crazed dwarfs routing his entire army. Such had happened before. Carefully he sniffed the air, trying again to detect the hateful scent of the one-eyed lunatic from Nuln.

  Prudence was called for, and before things took a turn for the worse. Already the other dwarfs were rushing into the fight to support their beleaguered maniacs. Once a dwarf shield wall was supporting the slayers, they would be almost impossible to bring down. At least not without some help from the Horned Rat.

  And maybe a sliver of warpstone for good measure.

  Fangs crunched against the tiny shard of green stone, grinding it into dust. Thanquol swallowed the fiery residue, drawing its power into his veins. The grey seer’s eyes burned with eldritch energies, his staff crackling with sorcerous power. He felt the intoxicating rush of magic flooding his mind.

  What did he need to fear the dwarfs for? He was Thanquol the Magnificent, Great Pestilence of the Overworld! With a snap of his claws he could bring the whole dwarfhold crashing down, smash to bits every last one of the fur-faced vermin! He would sink the entire mountain into the steaming pit of Karak Angkul!

  Thanquol forced himself to calm down. Degrees, he reminded himself, everything must be done by degrees. Caution was as important as power. A safe pelt was more important than a dead enemy.

  Grinding his teeth against the power-crazed impulses still trying to tempt him, the grey seer forced his mind into focus. He could see the dwarf battle line, now hopelessly mixed with that of his own troops. Twitchtail’s skirmishers were starting to fire into the melee, lobbing globes of poison gas and discharging warpfire throwers into the swirling confusion of dwarfs and skaven, heedless of which side was slaughtered by their weapons. It was the sort of ruthlessness that never failed to take the enemy by surprise and several dwarfs had already been felled by the ploy.

  Thanquol intended to do better. Focusing the power burning through his body, the grey seer slapped his paws against the floor. He pictured the position of the slayers, evoking the might of the Horned Rat to burn them where they stood.

  The great hall shook, trembling to its very foundations as Thanquol’s magic coursed through its stones. A great conflagration erupted from beneath the battle line, a massive fire that immolated dwarf and skaven alike in a holocaust of annihilation. The sorcerous blaze expanded, consuming troops from both sides, throwing the dwarfs into confusion and spurring the skaven into retreat.

  Angrily, Thanquol broke the spell, allowing the flame to dissipate. Where his spell had burned the granite had turned black, peppered with scores of charred corpses. He chittered with amusement as he heard the dwarf leaders trying to restore order to their panicked warriors. Then the grey seer’s eyes narrowed with fury as he saw the horde of ratmen scampering towards his own position.

  “Ring-ding the holy bell!” Thanquol snarled at Nikkrit, finding his standard bearer gripped by the same awed fascination as Frothrend’s imbecile stormvermin. “Rally-stop my army!” He added a few choice threats and was pleased when the discordant clatter of the bell began to sound. Spinning about, he snapped more orders at Frothrend. “Form-make line-wall! No skaven leave-flee!”

  Twitchtail and his skirmishers came scurrying ahead of the mob of clanrats, moving with surprising speed for all the bulk of their weaponry. The warlock-engineer uttered an angry snarl when he saw the line of stormvermin blocking his way.

  “Move-move!” Twitchtail howled. “Hurry-scurry before dwarf-things come!”

  Frothrend cast an imploring gaze at Thanquol. The fangleader wasn’t happy about the number of guns and bombs the skirmishers were carrying. Thanquol considered letting the more dangerous Clan Skryre ratmen past. Then he noticed the fresh loyalty-scars branded into Twitchtail’s fur. As one of Kaskitt’s former retinue, it was natural that Twitchtail had been compelled to receive Ikit Claw’s brand. What Thanquol found less natural was that every Clan Skryre ratman clamouring to escape back into the mines also bore new brands.

  They had all been Kaskitt’s followers! That scheming offal Ikit Claw had tricked Thanquol! The maggot had never intended Thanquol to secure the dwarf-metal for him, he was using the grey seer as a distraction to keep the dwarfs’ attention!

  Thanquol lashed his tail, his blood boiling. He was getting very tired of being used as a decoy by every scheming crook-back he came across!

  “Back-back!” Thanquol snarled. He would show the Claw! He’d break through the dwarfs, find the metal and then force the Chief Warlock to come begging…

  “Fool-meat!” Twitchtail spat. At a gesture from the warlock-engineer, one of the skirmishers aimed his jezzail at the grey seer.

  Reflexively, Thanquol ducked, clapping his paws across his face and shouting at his bodyguard. “Boneripper!
Burn-kill!”

  The order brought caustic laughter from Twitchtail and the skirmishers. They knew the mechanical rat-ogre wasn’t able to hurt any skaven from Clan Skryre. Their laughter vanished in squeaks of terror as Boneripper limped forwards and sent a gout of warpflame sizzling through the jezzail, turning him into a burning heap in the wink of an eye.

  Thanquol grinned at the unexpected turn his thoughtless panic had taken. Gloatingly, he glared at the crestfallen Twitchtail. “Get-take tinker-rats back to fight-fray!” he ordered. “Make-take all clanrats too!” he added, seeing the mass of panicked warriors surging towards them.

  Twitchtail glanced at the swarm of routed skaven and began to shiver. “They won’t stop-stop!” he said. The image of being trampled did wonders for the warlock-engineer’s imagination. Shrieking orders to his own ratmen, Twitchtail set his two ratling guns into position and opened fire on the fleeing clanrats. The revolving guns churned out a fusillade that tore through the ratkin, butchering them by the bushel.

  Faced with a fresh source of gruesome death, the routed skaven turned about, flying back towards the dwarf lines straight into the ranks of their vengeful pursuers. Trapped between their cruel masters and their remorseless foes, the skaven became frenzied killers, fighting with the viciousness of cornered rats. The abrupt shift from vanquished enemy to amok fighter caught the dwarfs unprepared. Without the time to form into a shield wall, several of the bearded warriors were dragged down and torn to ribbons by verminous claws and fangs.

  “Keep them there,” Thanquol warned Twitchtail. A blast of lightning suddenly arced out from the dwarf lines, smashing into the warlock-engineer and hurling him across the great hall. Thanquol cringed as he heard Twitchtail’s bones snap when his body smashed against the far wall. The tang of magic was in the air and belatedly the grey seer recalled the bone-mage he had spotted among the dwarfs at the onset of the battle.

  Well, the fool had chosen the wrong enemy to strike down with his craven attack! Now Thanquol would obliterate the dwarf before he even had time to know what was happening. The grey seer climbed onto Boneripper’s leg, peering above the swirling combat to sight the altar and the old dwarf with the hammer. While he watched, the dwarf brought the rune-hammer crashing down on the anvil, sending little bolts of lightning flaring across the great hall.

  A horrible purpose motivated the lightning, and each spark swept towards one another as it escaped the anvil, becoming a single lance of magic. Thanquol slipped around behind Boneripper as he saw the lightning speed in his direction. The bolt electrocuted one of Frothrend’s warriors, melting the stormvermin’s feet to the floor.

  “Kill-slay dwarf-mage!” Thanquol howled at the late Twitchtail’s comrades. They didn’t seem too happy about the idea, but came around when Boneripper’s warpfire projector took aim at them. Thanquol chortled as a barrage of fire, gas and warpstone bullets sailed into the melee. He was less pleased when he saw the chaotic barrage kill more skaven than dwarfs. He was still less amused when another bolt of lightning came sparking out from the anvil to shock a stormvermin uncomfortably near where he was standing.

  It was all Ikit Claw’s doing! That flea-spleen traitor-meat had planned this! He thought he would use the dwarfs to eliminate the one skaven cunning enough to save the Under-Empire from his megalomaniacal plan to threaten it with his hellish weapon! Well, now the claw would be on the other paw! Thanquol didn’t want his Doomsphere now. He could reap just as much benefit by bringing evidence of the Claw’s treachery back to Skavenblight. The Lords of Decay would hail him as the saviour of skavendom and the mightiest grey seer since Gnawdoom!

  “Frothrend,” Thanquol snarled. “I must report-tell this setback to Ikit Claw. I put-make you warlord in my absence. Kill-slay all dwarf-meat!”

  The fangleader didn’t seem too happy about his promotion, but knew better than to argue with Thanquol. Bowing his head in submission, Frothrend started snapping orders to his minions.

  The grey seer didn’t stick around long enough to listen in on Frothrend’s plans. He had more important things to worry about, such as what Ikit Claw was up to and what sort of evidence he would need to steal to expose his sordid little scheme before the whole Council. Taking a firm grip on his staff, he ordered Boneripper to lead the way back into the mines.

  Nikkrit watched the grey seer scurry into the darkness, then took one glance back at the battlefield. Still ringing his bell, the standard bearer scampered off in pursuit of his departed master.

  Chapter XIII

  The smelthall of Karak Angkul was nestled at the core of the stronghold, its immensity stretching through the stronghold’s Third and Fourth Deeps. Immense columns of stone, their surfaces plated in bronze, reared up from the granite floor to support the ceiling two hundred feet above. The floor, pock-marked by slag pits and cisterns, was covered in mosaics of red stone, depicting the life of the ancestor god Smednir the Shaper of Ore, showing him teaching the ancient dwarfs how to smelt iron and copper. Giant blast furnaces fed by enormous sets of bellows were arranged along the walls of the smelthall, each furnace connected by a clockwork conveying belt to the ore-heaps situated throughout the chamber. Towards the middle of the smelthall were the refining furnaces, monstrous coke-fed ovens in which ground ore would be further purified. A massive slaghearth stretched along one corner, a low stone table upon which waste slag would be re-smelted, a bed of charcoal blazing beneath it. Reducing furnaces and orehearths were lined across another wall, situated close to where the sand moulds of the metal-casters would shape the molten lead or silver into ingots.

  Throughout the smelthall, clockwork conveying belts of leather and tin deposited ore onto the oreheaps or carried coke to the furnaces. Hooks and chains fitted to mechanised pulleys swung from iron gantries and stone causeways far overhead, creating weird draperies of steel and bronze. Giant copper pipes brought water down to the kilns while a fast-flowing culvert snaked its way across the floor to remove waste. The shudder of great steam-driven fans formed a perpetual susurrus as the atmosphere within the smelthall was rotated and fresh air was sucked down from the surface by fluted vents.

  Within the smelthall, the heat was tremendous, each furnace and kiln burning with the fires of industry. The quartz glowstones hanging from the pillars were hardly a match for the hellish red light belching from the chimneys of the furnaces and the mouths of the ovens. Strange shadows flickered throughout the hall as dwarfs from a dozen clans worked the raw ore of the mines and recovered the precious metals locked within the stone.

  Around one of the small forges arrayed throughout the smelthall, Klarak Bronzehammer and his assistants worked feverishly to rework the beams of barazhunk that had been recovered from the mines. The pounding hammers of the dwarfs rang out as each of the beams was slowly reshaped into a thin sheet of metal.

  Only Kurgaz Brightfinger, the runesmith, did not partake in the frenzied labour. His face pale, sweat beading upon his brow, the dwarf had his own task to perform. Seated on the floor, he employed a long rune-etched burin of gromril to engrave the still hot plates of barazhunk. Kurgaz worked in silence, his face drawn and pale, his breath barely stirring his body as he focused on his work. Fixated upon the rune he had studied in Runelord Morag’s chambers, Kurgaz had no attention to spare for anything else. Time and again he attempted to recreate the magical symbol, time and again he failed, each time feeling a little more of his vitality drain away. It was no small thing to fail in the crafting of a Master Rune. Even to make the attempt was normally a matter of weeks of the most careful preparation. Kurgaz had been given only a few hours. Only the knowledge that Klarak desperately needed the rune-magic kept him at his work. With true dwarfish stubbornness, the only way he would accept defeat was when he collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

  Klarak sympathised with his friend. He knew how great was the effort he was demanding of Kurgaz. When he’d originally set the runesmith to learning that particular Master Rune, he’d thought he’d have more time before ever needi
ng it. Now, however, the presence of Ikit Claw and the threat of the Doomsphere was too great to brook any delay. It might mean the salvation of the entire Worlds Edge Mountains.

  “You shouldn’t push him like that,” Kimril observed, a touch of disapproval in the physician’s voice. “The strain on him is too great to maintain. Something must give way.”

  Klarak nodded. “I know,” he said, “but Kurgaz is the only chance. None of the other runesmiths would dare even try and Runelord Morag would insist on a month of rituals and preparation before going ahead. By then it would be too late. I wanted this magic for my own inventions. Now I need it for Ikit Claw’s fiendish machine.”

  “How can you be so certain the ratkin will come?” Azram objected as he brought his hammer cracking down against the heated surface of the barazhunk beam stretched across his anvil. “If the beast is as smart as he seems, now that he’s stolen some barazhunk, he could study it and make his own.”

  “You forget skaven nature,” Klarak said. “They are all thaggoraki, thieves who will never make something for themselves if they can steal it from someone else. The Claw will come for the rest of the barazhunk. It’s our job to be ready for him when he does.”

  Klarak shifted his gaze to study the complicated instrument set close by his anvil. It was a curious arrangement of tubes and rods, a variant upon the water clocks still employed by the most tradition-minded dwarfs. This clepsydra, however, was not designed to measure time. Klarak had made several changes to its workings, the most important of which were the copper stakes which bolted the machine to the floor. Sunk to a depth of several feet, the stakes acted as divining rods, feeling the vibrations in the earth below. The glass tubes would act as a gauge for these vibrations, giving a visual impression of their magnitude and intensity.