‘Khaine take the Kaiserjaeger!’ exclaimed Duke Konrad, his arm covered in gore from where a rat had leaped upon him. ‘Anything’s better than being eaten alive!’
Erich spun around, noticing for the first time that the way was clear to their left. For some reason there were no rats in this direction. Perhaps they had been scared off by the approaching Kaiserjaeger, but whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to squander the chance to escape those verminous fangs! Yelling to his comrades, hugging Princess Erna tight against him, Erich led the frantic retreat.
The rats swarmed after them, chittering and squealing, raising such a deafening, monstrous commotion that the echoing voices of the Kaiserjaeger were smothered by the noise. Erich couldn’t tell if they were moving closer to or away from their enemies. Nor did he care. All that mattered was to escape the horde of ravenous vermin.
For what seemed an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a dozen minutes, the fugitives fled through the sewers. It was a shameful, terrified retreat. Warriors who had faced ogres and orc warlords across the field of battle fleeing for their lives before such tiny, miserable animals! Yet there was no fighting such a swarm. For every rat Erich might crush underfoot, ten would rush in to take its place. There were only two choices to make: run or be devoured.
Finally, when he felt his heart must burst from the exertion, when his breath was a burning agony in his lungs, when sweat streamed from his brow and blinded his eyes, the sewers suddenly fell silent. Erich paused in his headlong flight, daring to look back. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and blinked, unable to believe what he saw.
The rats were gone! One instant the sewers had been filled with a swarming horde of vermin hungry for blood, the next there was only the ancient masonry and brickwork. Against all belief, the entire horde had suddenly decided to abandon the chase!
‘Where did they go?’ Erna gasped in wonder, almost unwilling to believe the evidence of her eyes.
‘Let’s not stick around to find out,’ Erich decided. His hand lingered against the silky smoothness of the princess’s fingers, then, with deliberate gentleness, he led her to her father. The knight nodded grimly as he saw the gratitude in Baron Thornig’s face. He didn’t feel he’d done the princess any favours. What waited for her was every bit as repulsive as an army of hungry vermin.
‘At least we seem to have avoided the Kaiserjaeger,’ observed Count van Sauckelhof, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the bites marking his legs. ‘But where are we?’
Meisel sheathed his sword slowly and looked about him. Gradually the dienstmann began to nod. ‘I think we must be somewhere near the waterfront.’ He jabbed a thumb at the mucky channel, indicating the fish bones sticking from the effluent, then he pointed down the tunnel. ‘This should let out to the Reik soon. The flow is getting quicker and the air is just a little colder.’
‘Who cares where it leads, so long as it gets us out of these damn sewers!’ Duke Konrad grumbled.
‘That, your grace,’ Erich said, ‘is the best damn idea I’ve heard all day!’
With unseemly haste, the small group of nobles and idealists hurried down the tunnel, eager for the clean air and the open sky. None of them looked back. None of them saw the gleaming pair of red eyes watching them from the darkness or heard the shrill, inhuman titter of laughter that rose from the lanky shape behind the eyes.
‘Find them,’ Kreyssig snarled, glaring at the Kaiserjaeger sergeant. The soldier executed a stiff salute and hastened back through the tunnel leading up into Lady Mirella’s cellar. Kreyssig scowled as he heard the shouts of the other men searching the sewer tunnels. Except for one dead man, they had found no trace of the conspirators. Even the corpse was useless, gnawed beyond all recognition.
‘Commander,’ a sharp voice hissed from the darkness. Kreyssig swung around, a dagger in his fist. He could just make out the shape crouched beside the rubble of a broken pillar. There was no mistaking that twisted, subhuman slouch. It was one of his mutant friends, the secret eyes and ears of the Kaiserjaeger.
Kreyssig kept his dagger ready, anger blazing in his eyes. ‘They’ve escaped,’ he snarled. ‘For all your talk about knowing the sewers, the traitors escaped! If you’d led us here quicker, if you’d found a more direct route, I could have had them all!’
The mutant cringed before Kreyssig’s wrath, pressing its ratty nose to the filthy ledge in a token of abasement. ‘Forgive-mercy, great-terrible commander!’ the mutant squeaked. ‘Try-help, yes-yes, try-help much-much!’
Kreyssig resisted the urge to kick the cowering abomination’s fangs down its throat. ‘They’ve escaped,’ he repeated.
The mutant reared up slightly, its eyes gleaming red in the light of Kreyssig’s oil-lamp. ‘Not all-all,’ the creature hissed, its body straightening with pride. ‘Catch-take one,’ it reported. ‘Kill-wound,’ it added, its tone becoming apologetic. ‘Crawl off to die-die. But find-take this before traitor-meat get away!’ The mutant reached into its filthy cloak, removing a scrap of parchment from some hidden pocket. It reached out with its furry paw to give it to Kreyssig. The commander’s face contorted in disgust. Angrily he pointed to the rubble, indicating the mutant should leave its prize there.
Kreyssig was annoyed by the failure of his subhuman confederates. He was just beginning to think the mutants had outlived their usefulness when he reached down and retrieved the scrap of letter. As his eyes read the fragmented sentences, he chuckled cruelly.
‘This is good,’ he said. ‘Your people have done well.’ The mutant bobbed its head as Kreyssig complimented it. He, however, had already dismissed the creature from his thoughts. He was too busy thinking about the letter and how he was going to tell Emperor Boris that his most favoured general was colluding with a conspiracy to depose him.
First his marriage to Princess Erna, then his destruction of Reiksmarshal Boeckenfoerde’s career. Great things were ahead for Adolf Kreyssig.
There was no limit to where a man with his kind of ambition could go.
Skavenblight
Vorhexen, 1111
Panic rippled through the streets and rat-runs of Skavenblight. Every eye glistened with fear, musk dripped from every gland. The stormvermin of Clan Rictus and their thrall clans poured through the sprawling confusion of dilapidated buildings and subterranean tunnels, viciously trying to maintain order. No less than a dozen slave uprisings had broken out in different warrens. Several lesser clans had exploited the anarchy to pursue vendettas against rivals, ransacking each other’s burrows and slaughtering enemy breeders and their pups.
The source of the unrest lay within the infested tunnels of Clan Verms. More ratmen had become victims of the plague, and this time Wormlord Blight hadn’t been able to keep news of the disease from leaving the Hive. The exuberance with which the Black Plague had been regarded as it decimated the man-things by the thousands now turned to absolute terror as the skaven came to understand the same plague might be loosed among themselves.
Blight Tenscratch had been present at the hasty meeting of the council. A vote had been taken to decide what measures must be instituted to control the plague. It came closer to any vote in the history of the council to being unanimous. Blight was the only one who was against the immediate seclusion of the Hive and the extermination of every living thing inside it. Only extensive bribes had allowed Blight to escape the fate of his warren. Except for himself and a cadre of cronies, the skaven dwelling in the Hive were to be sacrificed for the common good of skavendom.
By design, Puskab Foulfur was one of the few Blight selected to be spared. Each ratman allowed to escape the Hive had cost the coffers of Clan Verms dearly, but of them all it was the plague priest who Blight felt offered the most potential for reclaiming his lost fortune.