‘Yes-yes,’ agreed General Bonestab, the steel-encased warlord of Clan Grikk. ‘My spies tell me Boris-man hated much-much by man-things. With no leader, man-things not fight!’
‘Dwarf-things more problem than man-things!’ snapped Warlord Manglrr Baneburrow, commander of the teeming hordes of Clan Fester. ‘Dwarf-things kill Graug-dragon, now try to steal Fester-warren in Karak Azgal! We must crush-slay all dwarf-things!’
‘We will kill-slay all dwarf-meat.’ The words came in a venomous hiss. The eyes of the council turned towards the Twelfth Throne and the malignant creature seated there. Lord Vecteek the Murderous, Warmonger of Clan Rictus, preened his silky black fur as he leaned back in his stone chair, plundered from the dwarf-halls of Karak Ungor. Clad in a suit of steel plates that sported an array of spikes that would have shamed a rose bush, Vecteek let his piercing grey eyes linger upon each of his rivals. Even those who habitually sided with Clan Rictus squirmed under the Warmonger’s scrutiny.
‘The dwarf-meat will be slaughtered,’ Vecteek pronounced, ‘but first we will enslave the humans. We will use their fields and their herds to make us strong, to feed new armies. Then we will annihilate the dwarf-things.’
‘The man-things are still too many,’ insisted Kreep. ‘We will lose too many fighting them. We will be too weak to conquer dwarf-things.’
‘Who said we will fight them?’ Vecteek chortled, his wicked laugh echoing through the Grey Chapel. ‘Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch has brought us a new weapon.’ Vecteek extended his claw, gesturing for the Poxtifex to speak.
Nurglitch reared up in his seat, his corpulent mass undulating in a loathsomely boneless fashion. The Arch-Plaguelord was cloaked in a decayed habit of leprous green cloth, split in many places where the diseased ratman’s buboes had swollen past the raiment’s ability to restrain. Great thorns sprouted from Nurglitch’s spine and shoulders, dripping a foul green sludge from their tips. Clouds of black flies swarmed over his rotten mass, crawling about the tattered hood which cast his face into shadow. When he spoke, the plaguelord’s pestilent breath sent squadrons of flies dropping to the floor.
‘Glory to the magnificence of the Horned One,’ Nurglitch coughed, ‘in His true aspect,’ he added, shifting his hooded face towards Seerlord Skrittar. ‘By his divine grace, we, His true servants, have discovered the most blessed of His contagions!’ Nurglitch unclasped the heavy tome he wore chained about his neck, pulling away mouldering pages until he exposed a hollow within the book. His warty paw emerged clasping a glass vial. The other Lords of Decay cringed away from the plaguelord, each waiting for one of the others to leap from his seat and start a rush for the many exits hidden within the Grey Chapel’s walls.
‘The Horned Rat brings to us a new holy plague!’ Nurglitch chortled, brandishing the vial aloft. His boast did nothing to ease the fears of the other lords. The slicing voice of Vecteek, however, reminded them that there were other things to fear.
‘Coward-trash!’ Vecteek snarled. ‘Sit-stay! Hear-listen! The plague is harmless to our kind. It will only kill man-things.’
First among equals, Vecteek’s word was law among his fellow Lords of Decay. It wasn’t belief, but obedience, that kept the council in their seats. Only the connivance of the Verminguard could have allowed Nurglitch to bring his poison into the Shattered Tower, and no ratman in Clan Rictus was insane enough to dare such a thing without Vecteek’s permission. As they stared at the vial, the council members saw not only the power of Pestilens, but the dominance of Rictus. The reminder wasn’t a pleasant one.
‘How do we know it will kill man-things?’ Rattnak Vile asked. His lips curled away from his fangs. ‘How do we know it will not kill skaven?’
Vecteek rose from his seat, clapping his paws together. At the sound, a gang of Verminguard came slinking into the Grey Chapel, wheeling a great glass cage ahead of them. Inside the cage, a motley confusion of scrawny ratmen and dirty human slaves moaned and whined, clutching weakly at the transparent walls of their cell. The assembled Lords of Decay shifted uneasily as they noted the markings on the pelts of the skaven locked inside the cage, finding a representative from each of their clans among the captives. One piebald ratman even displayed tiny horns, making him resemble the grotesque grey seers.
Another signal from Vecteek and Nurglitch oozed out from his chair and approached the cage. The plague priest dragged open a tiny portal, then dropped the little vial into the cage. The vessel shattered as it struck the floor, expelling a black fog into the cage. For a moment, the captives were lost within a veil of darkness. Then the veil fell away as the fog dissipated, condensing into a black soot. The skavenslaves continued to paw madly at the glass walls, squealing in terror. The human captives, however, lay strewn about the floor, their flesh marked with weeping sores and suppurating buboes.
‘No sickness,’ Nurglitch coughed. ‘Plague is for man-things. Won’t kill ratkin. My apprentice, Poxmaster Puskab Foulfur, test new plague on many man-things. Nine of ten die!’
The statement brought greedy glitters to the eyes of the assembled ratmen. Nine of ten? The humans would be so decimated that even if they were united they would pose no threat at all to the hordes of the Under-Empire! The ratmen would be able to sweep the humans aside and claim the surface for their own! Fat from the plunder of the man-things’ empire, they would be stronger than ever in the history of skavendom!
Sythar’s tail twitched as he studied Nurglitch. The plaguelord was a zealot, a religious fanatic whose clan had once tried to enslave the entire Under-Empire. If the plague priests truly had a weapon of such potential then the power of Clan Pestilens would grow beyond measure. He cast an envious glance at the Twelfth Throne. Wresting the seat away from Warmonger Vecteek would be hard enough, but to usurp control of it from Clan Pestilens might be impossible. He turned his gaze across the table to Seerlord Skrittar. As much as it galled him, Sythar would have to side with the grey seer when things came down to a vote.
‘I have seen the effectiveness of Puskab’s disease,’ Seerlord Skrittar declared, leaving unsaid whether such intelligence had come from sorcerous visions or flesh-and-blood spies. Nurglitch growled as he heard the grey seer bestow credit for brewing the disease upon his apprentice, an insult made all the more vexing for the truth behind it.
‘This new plague has the potential to leave our enemies helpless, to decimate them in their thousands,’ Skrittar continued. Sythar waited for the grey seer to twist these seeming strengths into reasons why the council must oppose Nurglitch’s new weapon. Instead, the grey seer shocked the other Lords of Decay by endorsing the contagion.
‘The Horned Rat displays His beneficence in strange ways,’ Skrittar said, tilting his head towards the empty Black Throne, almost as though he were listening to some unseen speaker. ‘He has overlooked the… eccentricities of Clan Pestilens and through them bestowed upon us the weapon which shall bring about the long-prophesied ascendancy!’ The prophet-sorcerer turned towards Vecteek, bowing his head. ‘We should ask the council to vote. I say we endorse this new weapon and use it immediately against the man-things!’ Again, Skrittar cocked his head towards the empty seat. If needed, there was no mistaking which way the Horned Rat would cast his vote.
Vecteek stared suspiciously at the Seerlord. At the moment, Vecteek seemed to be considering using his Verminguard and stopping whatever scheme Skrittar was hatching before it could start. However murdering the Seerlord was one of the few things beyond Vecteek’s power. It would give the many enemies of Clan Rictus the justification they needed to band together and overthrow the Warmonger. Nothing was more guaranteed to incite the rabble of skavendom like a holy war.