‘Have a care!’ Prince Sigdan exclaimed, anxious at the turn the conversation had taken.
‘Why else would he refuse to bestow the title upon Duke Konrad?’ Baron von Klauswitz asked. ‘Why else would he tell Boeckenfoerde to disband the army before its job was done? The Reiksmarshal had orders to make certain the beastkin weren’t annihilated!’
‘That’s not true!’ The objection came from a young man in the white tabard of a knight, a member of the Reiksknecht. Baron von Schomberg had brought Captain Erich von Kranzbeuhler with him to the Imperial Palace as his adjutant. Always impressed with the captain’s forthright manner and honourable character, he hadn’t thought twice about bringing him to Prince Sigdan’s castle.
‘The Reiksmarshal is a loyal man and a fearless soldier,’ Erich continued, unperturbed to have the attention of so many of the Empire’s leaders focused upon him. ‘If the Emperor was using him, then it was from deceit.’ The young knight bristled at the incredulity he still saw on the faces of those around him. ‘Can anyone here say they haven’t been forced to do the same?’
Count van Sauckelhof smiled. ‘One of Boeckenfoerde’s officers has been carrying on with a shepster employed by my wife. It seems he was complaining about the Emperor giving them orders to finish the campaign before Mittherbst, then going and drawing off most of their cavalry to guard the Bretonnian frontier.’ The Westerlander shook his head. ‘I’d think such deceptions would be unnecessary if the Reiksmarshal was another of the Emperor’s sycophants like Ratimir and that peasant Kreyssig.’
‘What does it matter one way or another?’ Kretzulescu declared. ‘The problem right now isn’t the army. It’s this damn head tax or war tax or whatever the Emperor wants to call it! In Sylvania we’ve had three poor harvests in a row and enough ill omens to put a curse on Taal himself! I can name a dozen villages that have fallen prey to illness and half a dozen more that have been abandoned by both lords and serfs!’
‘Things stand much the same in the rest of Stirland,’ Baron von Klauswitz commented, a haunted look creeping into his eyes.
‘Plague?’ Prince Sigdan asked, giving voice to the dreaded word. It seemed to echo through the hall, sending shivers down the spine of every man at the table.
‘Shallya have mercy,’ von Schomberg whispered, invoking the goddess’s protection against the fearsome spectre of pestilence and disease.
Skavenblight
Nachgeheim, 1111
A cold, clammy smell wafted through the darkened halls. Furtive shapes scuttled and scurried against the ancient stone passageways, squeaking and chittering as they crept through the shadows. The rats clawed their way through piles of rags, swam through scummy puddles of swamp slime, prowled across jumbles of old bones and tumbledown masonry. They leapt across the many holes pitting the crumbling floor or swarmed across the stout cables spanning the worst of the gaps.
The entrancing scent of food drew the ravenous vermin deeper into the primordial gloom. They ignored the rank odours of the creatures which called the maze-like confusion of halls and galleries home. A starving scavenger learned to become bold around even the most rapacious predator.
It was the boldest of the rats who scurried along the wall towards the alluring smell. The rat hesitated a moment when its beady eyes spotted two flickers of green flame rising from the darkness ahead. But hunger soon overrode caution and the big grey rat hurried on towards the source of the smell.
The lump of blackened cheese was lying just within the glow cast by the nearest of the lights. Again the rat hesitated, but again its hunger drove it onwards. It hurried towards the beckoning cheese, leaping the last three feet to sink its fangs and claws in the enticing feast.
As soon as the rat lighted upon the cheese, a great furry hand snapped out from the darkness, closing about the animal and its prize. The rat squealed in terror, writhing in its effort to sink its fangs into the flesh of its captor. Its captor, however, gave the rodent no chance to retaliate. With practised ease, a clawed thumb pressed down upon the rat’s head, snapping its neck.
Krisnik Sharpfang stared down at the quivering carcass in his paw. Beady red eyes, hideously similar to the rat’s own, gleamed with hunger. Long fangs, monstrously enlarged versions of those in the dead rodent’s mouth, gnashed together in an expression of savage triumph. Whiskers twitched, ears shivered, a long naked tail lashed against the slimy wall. Uttering a famished whine, the skaven began to nibble at his catch.
‘Save-save some cheese,’ snapped a voice from the darkness.
Krisnik froze in mid-chew, turning a hostile glare at the speaker. Illuminated by the green glow of the farther worm-oil lamp was a black-furred ratman, his brutish frame encased in a hodgepodge of steel plates and strips of iron mail. A thick-bladed broad-axe was clenched in one of the creature’s paws.
‘Catch-take more rat-meat with cheese,’ the second skaven hissed.
Krisnik wolfed down the bite he had taken, then hurriedly closed his paw around the haft of his own broad-axe. ‘My-mine cheese,’ he snarled. ‘My-mine rat-meat!’
The other skaven bared his fangs in a murderous leer, his claws clenching tighter about the grip of his weapon. His greedy antagonist glared back at him. The two ratmen, armed and armoured for battle, took each other’s measure. The second skaven reluctantly backed down, casting a worried glance at the massive steel-banded door behind him. Krisnik noticed the gesture, his former bravado evaporating in a shudder of fright. Almost sheepishly, he tossed the hindquarters of his catch to his comrade.
It wasn’t that he was worried about fighting the other guard. He was bigger and stronger than his comrade, and better with the axe. Besides, if he wasn’t, there was that trick he’d learned about swatting an enemy’s groin with the flat of his tail. No, it wasn’t fear that made him relent; it was simply a matter of recognising the dignity and decorum which was proper for a ratman of his position. A warrior entrusted with the protection of the Shattered Tower didn’t lower himself to squabbling over morsels of cold, gamey rat-meat.
Especially when the Lords of Decay would expect to find two guards exactly where they had been posted. It didn’t appeal to Krisnik to consider what they would do should they find one of their guards missing. Clan Rictus had enough ways of dealing with traitors and shirkers, all of them hideous and unspeakable. He didn’t need to think about how much nastier the imaginations of the council members might be.
Taking the tiniest nibble from his sliver of cheese, Krisnik darted a furtive look at the massive door. He was thankful the door was as thick as it was. Whatever the Council of Thirteen had been discussing for so long was nothing for his ears! The Lords of Decay took great pleasure displaying the bodies of spies when they were through mutilating them. Several score decorated the spires of the Shattered Tower at present, but the rulers of skavendom were always able to find room for more.
Krisnik shivered in his armour. Maybe joining the elite Verminguard hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Which one of his jealous rivals had arranged to put him into such a predicament, he wondered?
Eerie green light cast strange shadows across the enormous hall, rendering its immensity a patchwork of darkness and illumination. The light streamed from a pair of gigantic crystal spheres bound in cages of iron and supported upon great pillars of bronze. A confusion of wires and hoses drooped from the pillars, writhing along the stone floor until they vanished into a huge copper casket. A wiry skaven, his fur dyed a deep crimson where it was not scarred with burns, scrambled about the casket with frantic, jittery motions. His gloved paws flew across levers and hastily adjusted valves, causing the green light to flicker and small bursts of glowing gas to billow from vents in the bronze pillars.