Erich felt his blood run cold as he heard the Middenlander’s boast. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded.
The baron glared back at the knight, a smug smile on his face. ‘Erna is doing her part,’ he said. ‘And when that peasant scum is gone, no one will worry about how he died!’
Princess Erna gasped in pain as her husband’s fist smashed against her cheek. Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. Staggering back, she made a dive for the dagger that had fallen to the floor. Kreyssig lunged at her before she could grasp it, seizing her by the hair and wrenching her away with a savage twist. Again his fist lashed out, connecting with her belly and driving the breath from her lungs. Far from satisfied, he brought his fist smacking across her chin. Only the hand buried in her hair kept her upright.
‘My lord!’ shouted Fuerst, rushing towards his master. ‘Commander! You’ll kill her!’
Kreyssig turned and glared at his manservant. Blood was dripping from a long slash along the side of his face. ‘That’s the idea,’ he hissed.
Fuerst felt his gorge rise. A timid, even cowardly man, he had no stomach for bloodshed. That was why he had cried out when he entered his master’s bedchamber to announce a messenger below. Princess Erna had been standing over his sleeping master, the dagger in her hand. The distraction of Fuerst’s shout had caused her to falter for a moment, and in that moment, Kreyssig was able to roll away, his face suffering from a blade that was meant for his heart.
‘You can’t do that!’ Fuerst protested, rushing forwards as Kreyssig punched his reeling wife once more. The manservant reached out to stop him, but trembled at the thought of daring to touch his master. Instead, he pleaded for the woman’s life in the only way Kreyssig would understand. ‘If you kill her, you will never inherit the title of baron. They will never let you keep the dowry Baron Thornig bestowed on you. You’ll lose all the lands you would have inherited.’
Kreyssig’s face contorted into an almost inhuman snarl. Contemptuously he let Erna crumple to the floor. ‘Baron Thornig?’ he hissed. ‘That blue-blooded rogue was here today. He put her up to this!’ His eyes took on a reptilian quality as he wondered why the nobleman had desired his death so soon after the wedding.
‘Maybe it has something to do with the riot?’ Fuerst suggested.
The glowering commander rounded on his functionary. ‘What riot?’ he snapped. ‘Where? When?’
Fuerst backed away, flustered by his master’s barrage of questions. ‘An uprising outside the Courthouse,’ he said. ‘Not more than half past the last bell. There’s a messenger downst-’
Kreyssig snarled in rage, springing towards his wardrobe. ‘That is what this is about! They wanted me out of the way and used this witch to do it!’
Fuerst stared at his master, unwilling to believe his words. ‘Nobody… no one would dare…’
Shaking a boot at his servant, Kreyssig explained the one thing that would give an enemy the courage to strike at him in such a way. ‘They dare because they intend to remove the Emperor!’ he declared. ‘This riot is just a diversion!’ He pointed his finger at Fuerst. ‘Go tell that messenger to send word to all the Kaiserjaeger and any Schueters we can trust. The revolt isn’t at the Courthouse! It’s at the Imperial Palace!’
Eyes bugging from his face at the magnitude of what he was hearing, Fuerst scrambled downstairs to pass instructions to the messenger. Kreyssig continued to dress himself, already dreading he might be too late. He cast a hateful look at the unconscious woman strewn across the floor.
‘Before this is over, my dear,’ he said, ‘you will wish Fuerst had let me kill you.’
Skavenblight
Vorhexen, 1111
Thick coils of pungent incense veiled the vast hall in a smoky haze. Worm-oil lamps cast sickly green light from a great chandelier suspended from the soot-stained ceiling, conspiring with the smoke to cast weird shadows flickering about the walls. From the floor, an enormous glyph blazed with sinister brilliance, its sharp angles shining with a hellish luminance that rippled with echoes of flame and ruination.
Puskab Foulfur abased himself as he stepped towards the glowing symbol, the sigil of the Horned Rat. Though it was a false mask, the plague priest knew it was expected that he should prostrate himself before the symbol of the skaven god. Here, at the very heart of the Shattered Tower, the grey seers held sway and were zealous in punishing anything that smelled of heresy.
Piety, devotion to the Horned Rat. It was the final of the Twelve Tests and, in a perverse twist, also the easiest of them. Perhaps the grey seers really did depend upon their god to smite down any unbeliever. Or perhaps Seerlord Skrittar didn’t dare evoke some conjuration against Puskab and then claim it was a divine judgement. Whatever the case, the plague priest lifted his horned head and scurried across the floor, careful to carry himself with just the right mix of timidity and boldness the Lords of Decay would expect from a supplicant.
The plague priest scowled at the sigil as he stepped across it. One day Clan Pestilens would blot out the false superstitions of the grey seers. The plaguelords would reveal to the whole of skavendom the true aspect of the Horned One and cast aside once and forever the foolishness of deluded mystics. On that day, the ratmen would either bind themselves to the Pestilent Brotherhood, or they would be destroyed!
Taking a firm step across the angular horns of the sigil, Puskab lifted his eyes from the floor. The time of Clan Pestilens was coming. The Black Plague was already burrowing towards that day.
A raised dais dominated the far side of the hall. A pedestal draped in grey cloth loomed at the centre of the dais. Surrounding it, just dimly visible in the hazy mix of smoke and shadow, were thirteen stone seats, great thrones each adorned with the symbol of the Horned Rat. The personal banners of the council members hung suspended above each seat, displaying a chaotic confusion of glyphs, pictures and trophies.
Few skaven were ever allowed to enter the Shattered Tower, the megalithic structure which dominated Skavenblight and the whole of the Under-Empire. Fewer still were granted a glimpse of this place, the Chamber of the Thirteen, the great hall of the Lords of Decay!
Puskab struggled to focus his vision upon the figures seated upon the dais, but the effect of the incense and the flickering shadows made the effort impossible. The council members were always wary of assassination and so took pains to obscure their presence even within their most inviolate sanctums. For all the plague priest’s senses could tell, the creatures seated upon the dais might be no more than members of the Verminguard while the real Lords of Decay observed him from another room.
The plague priest scratched his muzzle while he waited for the masters of skavendom to acknowledge his right to stand before them. Anger briefly flickered through the ratman’s savage heart, resentment that despite the great service he had done, despite his discovery of the Black Plague, he had still been treated like a common clanrat by these lurking schemers!
The Twelve Tests were designed to slay any skaven desiring to challenge the Council of Thirteen. One test devised by each of the Lords of Decay. Some were cunning traps, others took the form of mind-wracking riddles while still others were composed of the most unfair and one-sided contests the vicious brain of a skaven could devise. All were alike in one respect — unless the challenger knew what to expect each of the tests was impossible.
There was only one way a challenger could prevail and that was how Puskab had done it. Through the sponsorship of a seated lord, and the use of his network of spies and informants, the challenger might learn the secret of each test before he ever set a paw within the black depths of the Shattered Tower. Blight Tenscratch had revealed to Puskab the trick to each trap, the answer to each riddle, the solution to each contest. Through the Wormlord’s connivance, Puskab had survived to make his challenge and demand a place among the council.