—<THREE>—

Deadlock

Nagashizzar, in the 98th year of Tahoth the Wise
(-1300 Imperial Reckoning)

 

 

Moving as though in a dream, the barbarian witch crept towards the cavern wall. The rough stone had been scribed with angular northern runes in complex spiral patterns that radiated from the centre of the wall and covered an area broad enough for two men to stand abreast. Akatha paused before the strange sigil, her grey-tinged lips working as she murmured sibilant words of power. Arcane symbols had been painted on her cheeks and down the length of her arms in sinuous patterns; they shone a pale and ghostly blue through the fine layer of ash that had been smeared over her skin. Tiny charms of yellowed bone had been woven into her tangled, soot-stained braids, clattering softly with each measured tread. A faint, greenish glow emanated from the whites of her eyes.

Akatha raised her right hand and reached out palm-first towards the wall. Slowly, warily, as though testing the heat of a roaring furnace, she brought her hand close to the stone. Her eyes flickered shut.

She stood that way for several long moments, muttering the words of power. Suddenly, her body stiffened. Her eyes flew open, and she retreated swiftly and silently from the wall, back to where Nagash and her kinsmen waited.

The cavern was small and low-ceilinged, its floor sloping slightly downwards towards the rune-marked wall and the mountain’s distant core. Nagash hadn’t known it existed until just the week before; it had been separated from the fortress’ passageways by little more than a few feet of solid rock at one part of the chamber’s western wall. Akatha had discovered it during a casting of runes, as she’d sought to divine the invaders’ next move.

Nagash stood just inside the narrow opening his labourers had dug into the chamber. At his back stood Bragadh, Diarid and Thestus, as well as a score of Bragadh’s chosen warriors. Like Akatha, the warlord and his men were pallid and moved with an eerie, almost dreamlike grace. Their eyes shone faintly in the dimness, just as hers did, evidence of the potent elixir that Nagash had created to extend their life spans. Based on the same formula he’d used to create his immortals centuries ago, this elixir drew its power from a combination of stolen life force and the dust of the burning stone. It lent the northmen fearsome strength and vitality, though Nagash suspected that, once enough of the dust had collected in their bones, it would begin to change them in unpredictable ways. So long as they could take orders and lead their men in battle, he would continue to make use of them.

Hundreds of Bragadh’s best fighting men waited along the passageways just outside the cavern, listening intently for the call to action. They all knew that, three levels below, the ratmen were launching yet another howling assault on the bastions protecting mine shaft number six.

Akatha approached the necromancer. Daring greatly, the witch met Nagash’s coldly glowing eyes. “They are nearly through,” she whispered, her voice flat and cold. “A few minutes, perhaps. No more.”

Nagash raised a leathery hand and waved her aside. As much as her insolence irritated him, her sorcerous abilities had proven unexpectedly useful in the war against the ratmen. The barbarians, he’d discovered, had a long history of dealing with the creatures, and the arcane traditions of Akatha’s extinct sisterhood contained several rituals that were designed to combat them. The necromancer’s pride prevented him from stooping so low as to learn the barbarian rites for himself, and so the damned witch continued to survive.

The war beneath the mountain had raged for twenty-five galling years and showed no signs of ending. The ratmen were drawn like moths to the burning stone, and no matter how many thousands of the creatures he slew, there were always more to take their place. Losses on both sides had been staggering. The sheer amount of resources Nagash had expended thus far filled him with cold rage. The massive invasion force he’d carefully built for centuries was being squandered against a never-ending tide of vermin. When the war finally ended, it would take years, perhaps decades, to marshal another force capable of destroying Nehekhara. If he did not know for a fact that he’d broken the gods of his old homeland, he might have suspected some divine power bent on thwarting his dreams of revenge.

A faint sound echoed across the cavern—a scratching scrabbling sound that Nagash and the barbarians had come to know all too well. With neither side willing to concede defeat, the course of the war had been measured in tunnels seized and levels taken. Passageways and branch-tunnels leading to the all-important mine shafts had been fortified by both sides, with cunning barricades and redoubts designed to hinder an enemy advance. Smaller tunnels were filled with rubble or sown with vicious traps to slaughter the unwary, forcing teams of sappers to reopen them in preparation for a major attack. Control of the deeps ebbed and flowed from one week to the next. Conquests were made and then lost again, as one side or the other exhausted itself in a punishing attack and then lacked the strength to hold on to what it had taken. In-between major assaults the two armies would pause for weeks or even months at a time, staging punishing raids against their enemy’s forwards positions while they rebuilt their shattered forces.

From time to time, the two armies would try to break the deadlock with cunning stratagems. Most often they involved the digging of new tunnels to strike at the enemy from an unexpected direction—just as the ratmen were attempting now. The assault on mine shaft six was a diversion, meant to pin down the necromancer’s troops so that another contingent of warriors could emerge behind them and cut them off.

It was a strategy that had served the ratmen well since the first day of the war, and one they returned to time and again when their frontal assaults had been stymied for more than a few months at a time. The tactic was effective because the creatures could dig tunnels with a speed and skill that beggared the imagination; by the same token, it was also largely predictable.

Nagash had known this was coming for several months now; he’d planned for it, in fact, reinforcing the defences around mine shaft six with every warrior he could spare and grinding down one frenzied assault after another. When the tempo of the attacks tapered off, he set Akatha to watching for the signs that the enemy was attempting another tunnel. This time he meant to turn their favourite tactic against them.

A part of the cavern wall across the chamber seemed to shimmer in the torchlight as the furious tunnelling stirred up a fine haze of rock dust. There was a faint crackling sound. Tiny fragments of stone began to cascade from the wall. Nagash smiled mirthlessly and clenched his fists. Power coursed through his limbs as he began a soundless chant, summoning up the energies of the burning stone.

The breach opened in a single instant, with a crash and a rumble of broken rock. A cloud of pale dust billowed out into the cavern, followed by the swift-moving silhouettes of ratmen. Hissing and chittering turned to squeaks of surprise as the attackers realised that they were not alone.

Words of power boiled up from Nagash’s throat, reverberating painfully in the dank air. A surge of savage anticipation gripped him; since the war began, he had remained far from the front lines, directing the movements of his forces from on high rather than embroiling himself personally in one small part of the conflict. As a result, the ratmen had yet to suffer the full might of his power.

With a furious cry of exultation, the Undying King flung out his hands and unleashed a storm of death upon his foes.

Streams of hissing green darts leapt from the necromancer’s fingertips, scything through the ranks of the stunned ratmen. The filthy creatures screamed as they were struck; their blood boiled, erupting from their bodies in glowing, greenish-black mist. Scores fell in the first moments, slain before their bodies hit the cavern floor.

Shrieks of terror rebounded across the chamber as the ratmen who escaped the first onslaught fled in panic back through the tunnel and fetched up against their comrades advancing in the other direction. Nagash followed after them, hurling another volley of magical bolts into the press. In the packed confines of the tunnel, the darts savaged the ranks of the ratmen. They collapsed where they stood like reaped grain, their corpses blackened by heat and hissing with escaping fluids.

The sight of so much terror and death filled Nagash with ferocious joy. The necromancer waded into the windrows of heaped bodies like a starving man welcomed to a feast. He seized corpses and flung them out of his way like straw dolls, his desiccated flesh buzzing with the unleashed energies of the abn-i-khat. Screams of pure, animal terror echoed from the roughly hewn walls. Nagash threw back his misshapen skull and howled with dreadful laughter as he hounded the ratmen into the depths.

Roaring wild oaths and battle cries, the northmen followed after their master. There was no way to know how far the tunnel went, but it was certain that it led back behind the invaders’ front lines. The avenue of attack ran both ways, as the ratmen were about to learn.

Thoughts of strategy were lost on Nagash at the moment; he was caught up completely in the slaughter, hurling one burning volley after another at the retreating ratmen. His body was wreathed in a fierce nimbus of crackling green fire that grew fiercer with every spell he cast, until the corpses of the ratmen smouldered beneath his touch.

The pursuit stretched into an eternity of thunder, screams and bloodshed. Nagash waded through a sea of corpses, his body burning with unleashed power. The number of ratmen he slew passed all reckoning. He had grown so lost in the grim rhythms of the slaughter that when he finally emerged from the far end of the tunnel the transition took him momentarily aback.

Nagash found himself in a broad, low-ceilinged cavern packed with squalling, screeching ratmen. The terrified survivors had fled into the mass of warriors waiting their turn to advance up the tunnel, and their panic had spread like wildfire through the ranks. Pandemonium reigned as pack leaders fought to rally their warriors with snarled threats and the flats of their blades. Bone whistles shrieked and the urgent clash of brass gongs added to the cacophony.

The necromancer paused, taking his bearings. The closest of his undead warriors was six levels above him, below even mine shaft number seven. He was deep in enemy territory—possibly even behind the bulk of the ratmen army. In one swift move he’d turned his enemy’s knife back upon their own throat. For the first time in decades, he dared to think that perhaps victory finally lay within his grasp.

With a triumphant shout, Nagash drew upon the burning stone and brought down a rain of fire on the milling ratmen. Burning bodies collapsed in heaps, adding fuel to the howling panic. He advanced on the stricken horde, his warriors filling the space behind him and forming up into companies of sword and axemen. Dimly, Nagash could hear Bragadh and Thestus shouting orders over the din; their people’s hatred of the ratmen ran so deep that their rivalry had all but disappeared in the face of the invasion.

A dull clatter arose at Nagash’s back—the flat bark of sword and axe against the surface of bronze-edged wooden shields, rising in volume and intensity as one northman after another added their weapon to the din. Blue-tattooed barbarians threw back their heads and bellowed their bloodlust in a swelling roar that could be felt in the bones of man and rat-creature alike. In the confines of the cavern it was an awesome, world-shaking sound.

The noise rose to a fever pitch—and then, cutting through the tumult like a knife, came an unearthly, piping wail. Akatha’s voice, charged with primitive magics and shaped by the ancient secrets of her sisterhood, calling for the spilling of blood and the harvesting of souls. As they had for thousands of years, the northmen charged at their foes not to the baying of horns, but to the cry of the witch’s war-song.

A wave of shouting barbarians swept past Nagash in a thundering wave and smashed into the corpse-strewn ranks of the ratmen. The broad-shouldered warriors towered over their foes; their blows splintered shields and shattered swords. They carved their way through the enemy with as much joyous savagery as Nagash himself. Bragadh and his chosen warriors were in the thick of the fighting, spilling the blood of their foes with every stroke of their blades. The necromancer followed close behind them, hurling bolts of fire over their heads to fall upon the densely packed mob.

The ratmen, already well past the limits of their resolve, collapsed completely under the weight of the barbarian onslaught. A rout began: terrified warriors threw down their weapons and climbed over their fellows in an attempt to escape the oncoming northmen. The horde began to dissolve before Nagash’s eyes as the ratmen died or fled into the dubious safety of the passageways on the far end of the cavern. The murderous northmen hounded them mercilessly and the melee seemed to swiftly recede away from the necromancer. Behind him, still more of the barbarians were charging into the cavern; Nagash paused, his own thirst for slaughter ebbing away as he tried to focus on the unfolding battle. From where he stood, he had two options: order his warriors to turn aside and cut off the ratmen on the levels above, or to press still deeper into the mountain in hopes of sowing further chaos and perhaps coming to grips with the leader of the enemy army.

He hesitated for scarcely a moment before reaching a decision, but the pause was enough to save him.

Across the cavern came a chorus of metallic-sounding shrieks, like steam bursting from a dozen copper pots. A furious, greenish glow filled the air at the far end of the chamber, and the battle cries of the northmen were transformed into screams of horror and pain.

In an instant, the barbarian charge came to a crashing halt. Warriors piled into one another around Nagash, shouting and cursing. The strange, hissing shrieks sounded again, followed by more screams and a gust of hot wind that carried the sickly-sweet reek of charred flesh. The flickering glow was getting closer, spreading over and through the ranks of Nagash’s men.

The crowd of northmen surrounding Nagash began to surge backwards, towards the captured tunnel. Men were shouting in terror up ahead, exhorting their fellows in their own crude northern tongue. Furious, the necromancer forced himself through the press, searching for the source of the panic.

A figure loomed ahead of him. It was Bragadh, his face streaked with gore. The warlord’s eyes were wide with shock. He shouted something in his native tongue, then remembered himself and switched to Nehekharan. “Back, master!” he cried. “You must go back—”

Before Nagash could snarl a reply, the shrieks rose again, louder and closer than before, and the necromancer saw a dozen northmen in front of Bragadh disappear in a roaring blast of green flame. The sorcerous power in the fire was as palpable as the heat he felt against his leathery skin. It ate through armour, clothing and flesh with appalling swiftness, gnawing the warriors down to blackened bones right before his eyes.

Like the lash of a whip or the flickering tongue of a dragon the flame receded with a thin hiss, vanishing even as the charred corpses of the northmen collapsed to the ground. With a shock, the necromancer realised that the hungry flames had carved a broad swathe through his troops, who were now in full retreat from the four contraptions of wood and bronze that squatted at the far side of the cavern.

The devices were each the size of a large war-chariot, and mounted on a wooden bed supported by a pair of bronze-rimmed wheels. A sturdy wooden yoke extended from the front of the bed, but where a set of horses would have been lashed to the post, there were four broad-shouldered ratmen with push-handles gripped in their clawed paws. Upon the wooden bed sat a sealed cauldron of cast bronze, whose curved sides shimmered with radiant heat.

Situated on the rear of the wooden bed, just behind the cauldron, was a large box of bronze and wood. Four long, almost oar-like levers extended from the box, alternating to the left and right. Two ratmen gripped each lever. In that strange, slow-motion clarity brought on by combat, Nagash saw the rats lift the great levers so high that they rose onto the tips of their toe-claws. There was a muffled whoooosh of indrawn air, like the sound of a great furnace bellows.

Four thick, bronze pipes ran from the box into the sides of the great cauldron and a long, oddly flexible pipe of some kind ran from the front of the cauldron and was threaded through arched bronze staples hammered into the wood. It extended for another six feet from the end of the yoke, terminating in a heavy-looking bronze nozzle held by a pair of curiously garbed ratmen. The creatures were swathed in heavy robes of leather and sturdy cloth, and wore leather gauntlets that reached all the way back to their knobby elbows. The skin of their snouts was bald and blistered from heat. Strange discs of some dark, glossy material were held over their beady eyes by a dark leather band, lending them an unblinking, soulless stare.

Nagash watched the mouth of one nozzle turn his way. Green fire flickered hungrily in its depths, mirroring the hungry leer of the ratmen who wielded it.

There was nowhere to run. Instinctively, Nagash shoved Diarid aside and called upon the power of the abn-i-khat. The wild energies burned at his fingertips, but at the last moment he hesitated to unleash his sorceries on the fire-throwers. If the cauldrons burst, even in such a relatively large space as the cavern, the escaping heat might consume everything in the chamber. Instead, he turned his attentions on the carpet of mangled bodies that lay between him and the ratmen.

The necromancer clenched one fist. “Rise,” he commanded, just as the bellows-rats hauled down their levers and another chorus of draconic shrieks filled the cavern.

Necromantic energies flowed from Nagash in a torrent, enveloping the corpses in an instant. The bodies of human and ratman alike reared up from the cavern floor, like mummer’s dolls pulled by invisible strings. They caught the blast of sorcerous flames full-on; Nagash heard the buzzing sizzle of flesh and the sharp crackle of splintering bone as the heat consumed them. The ranks of the undead were cut down by the flames, but in so doing they absorbed or deflected enough of the blast to spare their master.

Once more the flames receded with a menacing hiss. Barely a handful of Nagash’s newly-animated corpses remained.

Diarid clambered to his feet and stared at the enemy war engines in evident horror. “We must retreat,” he said to Nagash. “Quickly, before those things can draw another breath.”

Nagash clenched his corroded teeth. The barbarian was right. He hadn’t imagined the damned ratmen could be so clever. Wordlessly, he ordered the remaining corpses forwards in a token charge against the war engines, then hastened swiftly back to the far tunnels.

His token force managed scarcely a dozen steps before they were incinerated. Nagash felt the heat of the flames wash over his shoulders, then abruptly recede. He glanced over his shoulder to see a semicircle of green flame playing across ruined corpses three-quarters of the way across the cavern. Realising that their quarry had retreated beyond their reach, the nozzle-rats were screeching at the wretches manning the yokes of their war engines, urging them forwards.

Diarid vanished into the tunnel. Moments later, Nagash reached the mouth of the sloping passage. Behind him, axles groaned as the war engines began to move.

The necromancer turned back to the ratmen, his rage building. Would the damned stalemate never end?

Nagash raised his arm and pointed at the oncoming ratmen. The fires of the burning stone had ebbed to little more than sullen embers. He’d expended too much, too quickly. Next time, he would be certain to have greater reserves to call upon.

His ragged lips curling with contempt, he spat a stream of arcane syllables. A handful of darts, larger and brighter than those he’d cast before, streaked across the cavern. They flashed past the nozzle-rats of one of the middle fire-throwers, missing them by a hair’s breadth—and struck the bronze cauldron in a shower of hot green sparks. The cauldron resounded like a struck bell and then blew apart in a thunderous detonation. The crew of the war engine vanished in a ball of sorcerous fire. Jagged metal fragments slashed through the air, striking the engines to either side; less than a second later, they detonated too, showering the cavern with curtains of sizzling flame.

Hot air buffeted Nagash, tugging at his hood and the sleeves of his robe. For a long moment he stared into the depths of the holocaust he’d unleashed, then, muttering venomous curses, he withdrew into the darkness of the tunnel.

 

The long knife flashed in the firelight, silencing the pack leader’s protestations. The warrior stiffened, beady eyes widening as he clawed at the gaping wound that stretched across his throat. He collapsed in a welter of bitter blood, legs and tail twitching horribly.

Lord Eekrit stood over the dying clanrat, his tail lashing in fury. The hem of his rich robe was soaked in gore.

“Anyone else?” he hissed, turning to glare at the trio of quivering pack leaders left on the dais. Four of their number already sprawled lifelessly on the steps behind them. The warlord gave the fifth pack leader a savage kick, rolling him off the dais to join the rest. “Does anyone else expect me to believe that a burning man with eyes of god-stone killed four hundred of our best warriors by himself?”

The surviving pack leaders—all that remained of those who’d presided over the debacle earlier that night—stretched their rangy bodies across the stones and bared their necks to Eekrit. Ears flat, tails twitching feverishly, they filled the air with fear-musk and made no reply.

Eekrit had enough. No one was telling him anything useful, and his shoulder was getting sore from all the throat-cutting. “Out of my sight!” he shrieked. “Out-out!

“Tomorrow you fight in the front ranks, with the rest of the slaves!”

The three pack leaders scrambled off the dais, all but tripping over themselves in their haste to escape their master’s rage. Once they were gone, packs of slaves hastened from the shadows to drag away the objects of Lord Eekrit’s ire. The warlord watched them for a moment then turned away in disgust, flinging the bloodstained knife across the dais. It skittered over the stones, missing Lord Eshreegar’s foot by a hair’s-breadth. The Master of Treacheries never so much as twitched.

Like everything else in the great cavern, the dais had changed greatly in the past quarter-century. Slaves had built three-quarter-height walls from rubble and mortar, creating a proper audience chamber without completely isolating it from the cacophonous noise of the rest of the space. Rich rugs had been laid across the top, flanked by two gilded braziers that filled the partially enclosed space with a pleasing mosaic of light and shadow. Heavy tapestries hung from the walls, each one commissioned at great expense by artisans in the Great City. Tall, broad-shouldered warriors from Eekrit’s own clan stood guard at every corner and to either side of the chamber’s door, clad in armour of thick leather faced with bronze discs and clutching fearsome-looking polearms.

At the rear of the dais another, smaller platform had been built, upon which sat a fine and imposing throne made of teak and inlaid with traceries of gold. Growling under his breath, Eekrit stalked back to the throne and collapsed angrily onto its cushioned seat. “Idiots,” he muttered darkly. “I’m-I’m surrounded by idiots.”

The tunnel had been a masterstroke. It had taken weeks to gnaw through the hard granite closer to the mountain’s heart, but it had positioned his army for a devastating thrust into the enemy’s side. While a massive frontal assault pinned down the bulk of the mountain’s defenders around mine shaft six, Vittrik’s precious war engines would have been positioned to pour fire into the rear ranks of the enemy. Meanwhile, the rest of Eekrit’s troops would have raced into the upper levels of the fortress, seizing key tunnel junctions and disrupting the flow of reinforcements from the surface. He’d fully expected to seize at least three of the enemy’s upper shafts by the end of the day, possibly even more. With a little luck and the Horned God’s favour, it could even have been the death-stroke that put an end to the whole war.

But of course it hadn’t worked out that way. All he had to show for his efforts were another three thousand dead skaven and a raging fire in his painstakingly crafted tunnel that was still burning, hours after Vittrik’s engines had been blown to scrap. If he cocked his ears just right, Eekrit could hear the sounds of crashing metal and panicked squeals in the distance as the drunken warlock-engineer took out his rage on his hapless slaves.

Lord Eekrit drummed his claws on the hard wood of the throne’s armrest. What could he have possibly done to earn the Horned God’s ire? Had he not made all the proper obeisances, given all the proper bribes? What had he done to deserve such a perplexing, miserable, expensive war?

True, he had personally profited greatly from the War beneath the Mountain, as it was being called back at the Great City. God-stone was being carved from the mine shafts under his control and shipped home in staggering amounts. His personal fortunes and those of his clan swelled with each passing season; they had grown so great that Rikek was now considered among the most powerful of the warlord clans. He could afford the best of everything, even sorcerous potions and charms of god-stone to preserve his handsome looks and youthful vigour. Eekrit had even begun to seriously consider buying his way onto the Great Council once the war ended, if it ever ended.

There was just no end to the damned skeletons. For every one his warriors killed, there seemed to be a dozen more ready to take its place. The northmen who’d apparently allied themselves with the walking corpses were at least something his people knew how to deal with. Long ago they’d had a running war with the humans over their meagre store of god-stone, and while the barbarians were fearsome warriors in their own right, the fact was that they had lost their war with the skaven all those centuries ago. They could be beaten. The corpse army, though, that was something else again.

The long war of attrition was consuming skaven lives at a horrifying rate. New companies of reinforcements were arriving from the Great City every month. When the first loads of god-stone had begun to arrive at home, there had been a massive swell of volunteers from the clans, each seeking to make their own fortunes in the war. Now most of those treasure-seekers were dead, spitted on enemy spears or eaten by the enemy’s pallid corpse-takers, and their gnawed skeletons stood in ranks behind their foe’s tunnel redoubts. All that Eekrit got from the clans now were mobs of terrified slaves and sullen criminals; he suspected that the Great City hadn’t been so free of bandits in centuries.

So far, the Council of Thirteen had tolerated the bloody stalemate thanks to the wealth of god-stone Eekrit provided, but he knew that such tolerance had its limits. The Children of the Horned God had never fought so long and so bitter a war in the entire history of their people and their resources, however vast, were not without their limits. He had to find a way to break the deadlock, and soon, before the Grey Lords decided to take matters into their own paws.

Eekrit glanced sullenly at Eshreegar. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

The Master of Treacheries shrugged. For once, Eshreegar couldn’t be blamed for having no news to give the warlord; his scout-assassins had been covering the diversionary assault, many levels away from the disaster. “We know that the northmen are accompanied by a witch,” he observed. “It’s said they have powers of divination. She might have predicted the attack.”

“Not that,” Eekrit growled. “The burning man.”

Eshreegar’s ears rose in surprise. “You believe the pack leaders’ tales?”

“The fools didn’t have the wit to change their story, no matter how many throats I-I cut,” Eekrit grumbled. “So I must assume they were telling the truth, strange as-as it seems.”

The black-robed skaven considered the warlord’s question. “A sorcerer-corpse, perhaps?”

Eekrit’s whiskers twitched. “Is such a thing possible?”

The Master of Treacheries shrugged again. “Perhaps Qweeqwol knows.”

The warlord bared his teeth in disgust. “Most days I’m not certain which side that-that lunatic is on.”

When the war had first begun, Eekrit had made a point of soliciting the old seer’s advice, showing him the respect that Qweeqwol’s station deserved; to do any less would have tempted the wrath of the Seer Council. All he’d gotten for his trouble were riddles, or rambling discourses on treachery and death—as though he needed an education on those subjects. Qweeqwol came and went as he pleased, roaming the caverns and the lower tunnels at will, even occasionally making token appearances along the battle-lines. It was as though the seer was searching for something, though what was anyone’s guess. And yet, he wasn’t entirely useless. Eekrit could think of at least three separate occasions over the years where Qweeqwol had taken an interest in the course of the campaign and supported Eekrit’s strategies in the army’s war councils. On two of those occasions, Lord Hiirc had very nearly turned the army’s chieftains against him, but the seer had stomped into the middle of the proceedings and had the would-be rebels baring their throats with little more than a hard stare and a few well-chosen words. Come to that, Qweeqwol had also been instrumental in persuading Lord Vittrik to part with those precious war engines of his. It was as though the seer was pursuing an agenda all his own, but Eekrit hadn’t the first clue what it might be.

A thought occurred to the warlord. He tapped a claw meditatively against the armrest. “If this magical terror is half as deadly as those fools claimed it to be, perhaps I could appeal to the Seer Council for someone…”

“Younger?”

“Less insane.”

Eshreegar let out a high-pitched snort. “Best of luck with that,” the Master of Treacheries said, his pink tail twitching.

The warlord’s ears flattened in irritation. He raised a paw to summon a scribe, and was surprised to see one of his slaves already racing to the foot of the dais. Eekrit straightened.

“What is it?” he demanded.

The slave stretched himself out at the base of the steps—no mean feat, with the puddles of cooling blood scattered across the stones. “New-new arrivals, master,” the slave gasped. “From the Great City.”

Eekrit’s whiskers twitched. Travellers to the mountain were rare, especially these days, and the next contingent of reinforcements weren’t due for another few weeks.

“What manner of arrivals?” he asked.

“Warriors,” the slave squeaked. “Many-many of them.”

Eekrit gave the Master of Treacheries a penetrating stare. Eshreegar tucked tail and head both.

“I-I don’t know,” he said weakly. “I’ve heard nothing.”

Eekrit growled deep in his throat. “One day you’ll have to tell me the story of how you came to be a master of scouts,” he said darkly. “I imagine it’s a very amusing tale.”

Without waiting for a reply, the warlord stalked down off the dais and across the audience chamber. His bodyguards fell into step behind him in ordered ranks, polearms held across their chests and tails lashing aggressively. The slave let out a startled squeak and dashed ahead of Eekrit to pull open the chamber’s double doors.

Beyond lay a complex of walled spaces and narrow passageways, framed by three-quarter-height walls of mortar and stone, which included lavish living quarters for Eekrit and loyal members of his clan who served in his retinue. More bodyguards stood watch at strategic locations throughout the complex, ever vigilant for signs of treachery. They pounded the ends of their polearms on the stone floor as Eekrit approached, sending passing slaves scrambling out of the warlord’s way.

The warlord’s mind raced as he hurried through the maze of dimly lit corridors. He wasn’t fool enough to assume that the sudden arrival of troops was a good sign, nor was he going to sit idle and wait for their leader to come and pay his respects. It was entirely possible that one clan or another—possibly Morbus, or even Skryre—had decided to alter the balance of power in their favour and claim the mountain’s riches entirely for their own. The longer he waited to assert himself, the more time the new arrivals had to begin pursuing their own agendas.

The clangour and stench of the cavern steadily grew as the warlord left his clan’s lair behind. The great space, once so vast it easily held as much as a quarter of the entire skaven expeditionary force, was now sub-divided into dense warrens of living quarters, foundries, storage sites and slave pens. The labyrinth of chambers and passageways spread outwards from the cavern for as much as a mile in every direction—an under-fortress to match the sprawl of towers and structures crowding the mountain slopes high above. There were even marketplaces stretching back along the wide tunnels that led to the Great City, where traders from the lesser clans gathered to provide goods and luxuries for the wealthier members of the expeditionary force. Eekrit couldn’t even guess how large the population under the mountain had grown over the last two decades; in another ten years the under-fortress might become a subterranean city every bit as tangled, scheming and treacherous as anywhere else in the growing skaven empire.

Hot, dank air swirled around the warlord, reeking of scorched metal, offal and old, pungent musk. Skaven screeched imprecations at their slaves; somewhere a whip cracked and a young voice cried out in pain. Copper furnaces huffed and roared, sending up thin ribbons of acrid smoke and casting waves of pulsing green light across the soot-stained roof of the cavern. It was the sound and smell of civilisation, Eekrit mused. Whether the skeletons wanted it or not, the skaven were here to stay.

The warlord and his bodyguards cut like a knife through the crowds of labourers, slaves and clan warriors milling along the main arteries that led across the floor of the cavern. He headed for the broad square that lay just inside the cavern opposite the Skaven Gate, which opened onto the wide tunnel that led from the mountain back to the Great City. As they approached the square he could hear the deep buzz of voices up ahead.

Eekrit emerged at the side of the square opposite the Skaven Gate and, even knowing what to expect, the sight of the warriors assembled there stunned him. The entire assembly area was packed from one end to the other, and judging by the commotion over by the gate, there were still more arriving. Facing him were packs of towering, broad-shouldered skaven warriors, armoured in layered plates of bronze and wielding polearms with broad, curved blades. They were the heechigar, the elite storm-walkers of the warlord clans, rarely seen in the field unless—

The warlord felt his hackles rise at the sight of the two skaven standing in the shadow of the storm-walkers. One was mad old Qweeqwol. The aged seer was standing with his back to Eekrit, his knobby paws gripping the ancient wood of his glowing staff as he spoke in low tones to a tall, lean skaven lord.

Eekrit’s tail twitched. The warlord clamped down hard on his musk glands. The skaven lord was older than he, and wore a fine harness of bronze plates chased with gold. Glowing tokens of god-stone hung about his neck, and another god-stone the size of a swamp-lizard egg shone balefully from the pommel of a curved sword resting at his hip. His lean, dark-furred head bore the marks of the battlefield: a triangular notch had been neatly sliced from the skaven’s right ear, and a fearsome old scar spread down his cheek and across his throat like a jagged fork of pale lightning. But it wasn’t the terrible scars, or the vicious sword and armour that struck terror into Eekrit’s ruthless heart, it was the unassuming grey wool robe that hung about the lord’s broad shoulders.

Eekrit’s bodyguards snapped to attention at once, the butts of their polearms striking the stone in a single, well-practised motion. The sound caught the attention of the skaven lord, whose dark eyes narrowed coldly as they regarded the warlord. Noticing the sudden change, Qweeqwol turned about slowly and focussed on Eekrit as well, his glowing green eyes unblinking and inscrutable.

Lord Eekrit clasped his paws over his stomach and approached the newcomer. Despite his best efforts, his whiskers gave a single, nervous twitch.

“An honour,” Eekrit managed to say. The back of his neck itched as he sank to his knees before the Grey Lord. His eyes were on a level with the baleful light at the pommel of the skaven’s sword. “A great-great honour, yes.” The warlord’s fawning expression faltered. “Ah, my lord—”

“Velsquee,” Lord Qweeqwol announced. “Grey Lord Velsquee, of Clan Abbis.”

Eekrit stole a glance at the seer. Was the old fool smirking at him?

“My lord Velsquee,” he continued, pronouncing the name with care. “Welcome you to the under-fortress.” The warlord bowed his head. “How may I serve the Council?”

The Grey Lord stared coldly down at Eekrit. “Under-fortress, eh?” he said. “I suppose you’ve scratched out a lair for yourself somewhere in this nest.”

Eekrit gritted his teeth. The stonecutters had only just finished the last touches on his chambers. “I would be pleased to make them available to you, my lord,” he managed to say. “Will you be visiting for long?”

Velsquee rested a clawed paw on the hilt of his sword. “As long as it takes to win this war,” he said with a wicked smile. “This stalemate’s gone on long enough. It’s time for a change of strategy.”