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

  Thanquol’s eyes lit up as he saw the mass of wealth. His tail twitched in excitement as he scurried forwards to accept the money.

  “Three thousand?” Nabkrik pleaded, hugging one of the bags to his chest. “I-I can’t use-take barge-scow.”

  “Sell-trade it to Clan Sleekit,” Thanquol said, jerking the bag away from Nabkrik’s fat fingers. “Or sell it back to Clan Skurvy, if you have the spleen.” A sharp smell crept into Thanquol’s nose. Glancing down he noted another bag of warp-tokens still hidden in the drawer beneath the chair. “And another thousand warp-tokens for saving you from that vicious murder-rat!”

  Nabkrik sputtered in protest, but had sense enough to refrain from mentioning that the dead pirate had been intent on killing Thanquol, not himself.

  Even so, the grey seer didn’t take kindly to the argument. Sniffing another pinch of snuff, he leaned forwards and glared into Nabkrik’s eyes, his lips pulled back to expose every fang in the grey seer’s mouth. “Or perhaps you don’t feel-think your skin-fur is worth a thousand warp-tokens?”

  Grey Seer Thanquol prowled through Skavenblight’s skrawl market, his newly-hired guard-rats battering a path for him through the teeming masses of skaven crowding the streets. Unlike the rest of skavendom, part of Skavenblight existed above ground, situated in the ruins of an ancient human city. Tradition held that the skaven had inherited the city as a gift from the Horned Rat himself, and since that tradition was taught as religious truth by the grey seers, nobody was of a mind to question its basis in fact. While the teeming masses of the Under-Empire eked out an existence in the muddy burrows beneath the city, the rich and powerful carved out nests for themselves among the grandest of the old human buildings. Each of the great Lords of Decay had his own fortified palace within the sprawl of Skavenblight and the most imposing structure in all the city, the colossal bell tower that jutted up into the sky like the bared fang of a god, held the Council of Thirteen’s meeting chambers.

  With all the most powerful ratmen in the world gathered in Skavenblight, the city’s markets were second to none. Merchants and traders from every corner of the Under-Empire brought their wares to the capital, knowing that here alone could they command top price for their exotic goods. Prowling through the skrawl, Thanquol smelled the odours of a hundred lands, heard the chittering squeals of a thousand clans mixed in a cacophony of haggling. He watched a greasy Clan Verms bug-breeder selling trained fleas with shells that glistened like tiny stars. He saw a white-nosed skaven with one ear displaying narcotic salt-licks from the jungles of Ind. He listened to a balding ratman extolling the uses of mole-skin whisker brushes.

  Standing amid the jumbled confusion of the market, Thanquol couldn’t remember now why he had been so dead-set on seeing Nightlord Sneek as soon as he arrived in the city. He laughed at his foolish paranoia, the puppyish fear that had dogged him all the way down the river. Clan Eshin had no authority over him! He was the mighty Grey Seer Thanquol, hero of skavendom! It was he who had slain Xiuhcoatl, the terrible Prophet of Sotek, not any of Eshin’s vaunted murder-rats! If Nightlord Sneek wanted to see him, then the cowardly old shadow-stalker could come to him!

  Thanquol snapped shut the rat-skull box and sneezed as the fiery warpstone snuff seared his nasal passages. He cast a shrewd eye on the goods his train of stevedores was carting behind him. New robes fashioned from the finest weasel-fur. A sword of Cathayan steel. A marvellous dwarf-bone puzzle box, inlaid with tiny tiles of powdered warpstone.

  His favourite purchase, however, had to be the horn-rings etched with the thirteen secret names of the Horned One. Thanquol lifted a claw and played idly with them as he walked along, enjoying the way the tiny bells dangling from the gold loops tinkled when he swatted them.

  Yes, he would cut quite an imposing figure when Nightlord Sneek came to thank him for saving Clan Eshin from humiliation and disgrace. But, of course, there was one thing that was still missing. Guard-rats were nice, but they had a worrying tendency to take the short-sighted view that their lives were more valuable than that of their employer. Thanquol always felt a more brainless kind of loyalty was advisable to feel truly safe.

  Patting his belly, the grey seer lifted his nose and sniffed around for the distinct scent of Clan Moulder’s flesh-shapers. He still had a small fortune to spend, more than enough to buy a first-class rat-ogre from one of the beast-masters.

  Calling out to his entourage, Thanquol sent his guard-rats ahead to bully a way through the swarming crowd. Other guard-rats kept a close watch on his stevedores, ensuring that none of them got “lost” in the shuffle.

  For many minutes, Thanquol’s henchmen tried to force a way through the press of ratmen, but the tide of traffic coming down the street was too great for them to overcome. Growing impatient, and having a momentary flash of fear as he recalled how Chang Fang had tried to use just such a crowd to kill him not long ago, Thanquol directed his minions down a back alleyway. The few denizens of the blighted backpath scampered away when they saw the fearsome grey seer approach.

  The smell of rat-ogre leading him on, Thanquol gave directions to his guard-rats, urging them to make speed along the narrow, winding run of alleys. A twinge of disquiet kept nagging at the grey seer, stubbornly resisting his repeated efforts to silence it with a pinch of reassurance from his snuff-box.

  The alleyway was about as black as the inside of a snake’s belly when Thanquol discovered the reason for his nagging concern. A piece of shadow suddenly detached itself from one of the walls, falling silently upon his leading guard-rats. Before any of them could so much as squeak in surprise, the shadow was cutting them to ribbons, wielding blades not only in each paw, but one gripped by its tail as well!

  The tangy stink of skaven blood and voided bowels flooded the alleyway. Thanquol watched the shadow leaping from one guard to the next, striking them down as though they were mewling pups instead of ten warp-tokens a day Clan Rictus sword-rats! The lack of any distinct scent emanating from the murdering shadow abolished any idea that it was anything but one of Clan Eshin’s merciless assassins!

  Worse, Thanquol was pretty certain he’d seen this particular assassin in action once before. Deathmaster Snikch, Nightlord Sneek’s prize killer, a skaven who had never failed to carry out any murder asked of him.

  All the reassurance the warpstone snuff had been filling his head with seemed to evaporate. The grey seer’s body began to shiver from horn to tail. He tried to focus his mind on a spell that might reduce the Deathmaster to a bloody paste, or at least something that would allow Thanquol to escape from this deathtrap of an alley. But no matter how hard he tried to concentrate, the magical words just swirled around, refusing to coalesce into anything resembling a complete incantation.

  Deathmaster Snikch rose from the mangled heap of his last victim, wiping his three swords clean on the dead guard-rat’s cloak before stalking straight towards Thanquol. The assassin’s body was clad in black silk, his paws and tail dyed to blend with the darkness, but Thanquol could see the malignant gleam in the killer’s red eyes. Snikch seemed to be daring the grey seer to try casting a spell against him.

  Thanquol did something more practical. He reached into his robes, removed the heavy bags of money Nabkrik had given him and dropped them onto the ground. Snikch cocked his head to one side as he heard the warp-tokens clatter against the hard earth.

  “Take-use,” Thanquol urged the Deathmaster. “I want-want you to have-keep.”

  Snikch didn’t even look at the bags of money, instead fixing Thanquol with his malignant stare. “Thanquol returns from lizard-land,” the assassin hissed.

  “Yes-yes!” Thanquol hurriedly agreed. “I kill-slay Xiuhcoatl! Other skaven ran-flee, but I stay-fight! Keep-keep promise-word to Nightlord Sneek!” Snikch cocked his head to one side as the grey seer spoke the last part so Thanquol hastily added: “I want-need look good-nice before see-speak to Nightlord.” He hoped it sounded like a reasonable excuse for his delay in seeking out the sinister master of Cl
an Eshin.

  Deathmaster Snikch took another step towards Thanquol, his tail lashing from side to side, a dripping blade still clenched in its prehensile coils.

  “Stay away from the dojo, Grey Seer,” Snikch snarled through the folds of his mask. “Stay far-far away. You were never there.”

  Thanquol blinked in confusion. “But… Xiuhcoatl… kill-slay?”

  The sword clenched in the Deathmaster’s tail arced upwards. “Nightlord Sneek never say-send you to lizard-land. Say-squeak anything, and never say-squeak anything again.”

  Thanquol continued to mutter confusedly. What madness was Snikch talking about? Of course Sneek had sent Thanquol to Lustria! The mission had been a success! Xiuhcoatl was dead! Clan Eshin had exactly what they wanted. What did it matter if Thanquol was the only one to return to tell the tale? The Prophet of Sotek was dead!

  His threat made, Deathmaster Snikch faded back into the darkness, vanishing in the wink of an eye. If not for the dead guard-rats strewn about the alley and the fear musk dripping down his leg, Thanquol might have questioned whether the assassin had ever been there.

  With the source of his fear gone, Thanquol turned to berate his stevedores for not lending a hand when their employer was in peril. He ground his fangs together when he saw that not one of the luggage-rats was anywhere to be seen. Every last one of them had fled, probably the very moment Snikch started carving up the worthless vermin he had hired from Clan Rictus. The stevedores hadn’t been so terrified, however, as to abandon the valuables they had been carrying. By now all of his carefully selected gear was being sold in a dozen back-burrow dives.

  Irritably, Thanquol stooped to recover the money he had dropped. Again he felt his jaws tighten. The bag of warp-tokens was gone. Spirited away by the sinister Deathmaster.

  Thanquol drew the rat-skull snuff-box from his sleeve and glared at it. If not for the idiotic bravado the snuff had subjected him to, he would never have behaved so irrationally. Certainly he would have made provision to keep a spell ready to blast that annoying little flea Snikch back to his slinking master! He wished he hadn’t drowned Lynsh, because at the moment, there were a lot of things he wanted to do to that miserable pirate.

  Upending the snuff-box, Thanquol spilled the contents onto the ground. He was through with the phoney strength of such vices. He did not need them! He was Grey Seer Thanquol, mightiest sorcerer in all skavendom, favoured servant of the Horned Rat! He was above such petty weaknesses!

  Looking around him, Thanquol took stock of his situation. His guard-rats were piles of meat (which Clan Rictus would expect him to pay for), his luggage-rats were gone (with his luggage), and his hard-earned warp-tokens had vanished into the night (along with a master-assassin who might just decide to come back). All in all, things were looking decidedly bad.

  Thanquol stooped down on all fours and began collecting the snuff he had dumped out. The stuff might be dangerous, but there was no sense allowing it to go to waste.

  It was a less confident but far more irritable Grey Seer Thanquol who began retracing his way through Skavenblight’s swarming streets. He was heading towards the stone tenements where some of the lesser warlords maintained their warrens. As a grey seer, there was always a bit of money to be made offering to bless a clanleader or packmaster. Alternately, there was always a bit of money to be had by threatening to put a curse on a clanleader or packmaster. Making up what he would need to placate Clan Rictus for their dead warriors would take a bit of time.

  Ordinarily, Thanquol wouldn’t have bothered, but with things as they were, there was always a chance Clan Rictus might approach Clan Eshin about the misunderstanding and engage their services to make an example of him. Thanquol considered that the only reason Deathmaster Snikch had let him live was because Nightlord Sneek needed an excuse to eliminate him that wouldn’t draw attention to the plot to assassinate Xiuhcoatl. Until he could put himself under the protection of one of the other Great Clans or the Council itself, the last thing Thanquol wanted was Clan Eshin taking any more interest in him.

  Ahead, the grey seer noticed a dilapidated building lying half across the street, its bulk kept standing only by its more stout neighbour across the way. The effect was to make that part of the street almost a tunnel, with the collapsed building pressing down upon the pedestrians below. Far from shunning the spot, the pace of each skaven slackened as he bent low and scurried under the crumbling brickwork, finding the press of tons of stone overhead far more comforting than the open emptiness of the night sky.

  Thanquol crouched down and joined the throng scurrying beneath the ruin. Initial thoughts of imminent squashing should the building suddenly decide to finish its descent were banished by the comfortable sensation of something solid above him. Ever since seeing the hideous snake-birds of Lustria, Thanquol’s agoraphobia had been especially pronounced. He’d even made a little hutch for himself from Boneripper’s fur during his long sea voyage to evoke some sense of security.

  Skaven snapped and snarled at one another as they passed beneath the structure, angrily urging others forwards while stubbornly trying to prolong their own time under the ruin. The bickering voices and sharp squeaks echoed from the walls, the air was filled with the hot stink of so many skaven pressed close together. It was no wonder then that Thanquol failed to notice the lurking ratmen above him.

  The broken windows of the toppled ruin formed holes in the roof of the tunnel, in one of which a pair of burly skaven crouched, their glistening eyes fixed upon the approaching figure of Grey Seer Thanquol. When the horned ratman passed beneath the window, the two lurkers sprang into motion. The two skaven leaned down from their perch, grabbing Thanquol by the shoulders. Before he was aware of what was happening, the sorcerer found himself being lifted through the window and deposited onto a cold stone floor.

  Thanquol pawed at the wall as he began to slide down the weirdly angled floor. He was inside the collapsed building, and the floor down which he had begun to slide was in fact the outer wall of the original structure. Behind him, forming a partition across the chamber, was the rotten remains of the old wooden floor. Everywhere, filthy hammocks and strings of dried weeds hung from the ceiling, the reek of mangy fur making it clear that the collapsed building was far from uninhabited.

  The only skaven he saw at present, however, were the two bruisers who had snatched him from the road. Thanquol gripped the heft of his staff, wishing he hadn’t lost the Cathayan sword he’d bought. Each of the brutes looked like he’d been sired by a rat-ogre, nasty bundles of corded muscle showing beneath their leather vests and brown fur.

  “Back-back!” Thanquol growled as the bruisers turned away from the window-hole. “I’m a grey seer and I’ll hex-curse you!”

  The two bruisers looked at each other and backed away, which Thanquol took as a good sign. Then they laughed, which he decided wasn’t so good.

  “Thank you for joining us, Grey Seer Thanquol,” a raspy voice spoke from somewhere behind him. Thanquol turned slowly around to find a gang of armed skaven emerging from behind the wooden partition-floor. The speaker was dressed in a long leather coat, his arms covered in thick gloves up past the elbows and a bizarre contrivance of rods and wires winding around his head. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was one of Clan Skryre’s warlock-engineers. The ratmen who flanked him were encased in insect-eyed iron helmets and bore an extra brace of pistols on their hips. A few cringing creatures with burnt fur and blistered skin formed the rest of the engineer’s retinue.

  Mustering his offended dignity with a scowl and a quick brushing of his rumpled robes, Thanquol glared into the warlock-engineer’s glass-covered eyes. “Give me a good reason for not turning you into a stain on the wall,” he hissed, instantly wondering why he’d let the words leave his tongue. Lynsh’s damnable snuff again!

  The skirmishers reached for their pistols, but their master merely chuckled. “Peace-peace, Thanquol,” the engineer rasped. “We need-use each other.”

  Thanquol l
ashed his tail in annoyance at the engineer’s audacity. “You assume much-much,” he snarled.

  The warplock-engineer grinned back at him, exposing his steel-capped fangs and rubbery gums. “Yes-yes,” he agreed. “I know-learn that Thanquol has many enemies. He should find-seek friends. Powerful friends. Friends like Warlock Kaskitt Steelgrin.”

  Thanquol rolled his eyes at Kaskitt’s overly dramatic way of introducing himself, but kept a tight rein on his quarrelsome tongue. What the warlock-engineer said was true. At the moment, Thanquol needed some strong friends.

  Kaskitt rubbed his paws together, taking Thanquol’s silence as a good sign. “I do not know how much you have heard-listened, but Clan Pestilens and Clan Eshin have had trouble. Assassins tried to kill-stab Lord Skrolk, now the two clans are at each other’s throats.”

  For the second time today, Thanquol could only blink in confusion. He wasn’t sure which news was more strange, the idea that Lord Skrolk was still alive or that the carefully hatched scheme Nightlord Sneek had concocted to ally with Clan Pestilens had fallen apart. Given that the last time he had seen Lord Skrolk the plague lord had been trying to kill him and that there was no reason to think Skrolk had changed his mind about that, Thanquol decided to be more upset to hear the plague lord was back in Skavenblight.

  The grey seer pulled at his whiskers as a thought came to him. It was just possible everything was all a part of Lord Skrolk’s plotting. The diseased plague lord could have placed the idea of an alliance in Nightlord Sneek’s head to begin with, sending Thanquol on the suicidal quest to kill Xiuhcoatl. Then, to ensure that even if Thanquol succeeded things would be ill for the grey seer, Skrolk goes and gets a few assassins to try and kill him! As the favourite of Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch, all he would have to do is go whining to his master and then any chance of an alliance would be off! In that situation, Nightlord Sneek would hardly receive anybody who’d killed Xiuhcoatl favourably!