‘Yes-yes, go-go!’ the others chittered.
‘You will listen to me,’ said Thanquol. ‘Listen to my speakings. I have a way!’
‘No!’ shouted Kreekwik. ‘Squeak-talk of Thanquol grandiose lies.’
‘Cast him out!’ said Felltwitch. ‘Cast him out! Banish him!’
Light fled and shadows deepened as each and every grey seer began to cast a spell, bringing a taste of rot and brimstone.
‘No-no!’ said Thanquol. He backed up to the door, only to find it inexplicably locked. He cursed the guards he’d bribed to let him in. Cornered, he summoned his own magic.
Boneripper. Boneripper was there. Sensing his master’s peril, the rat ogre snarled out a thunderous roar and ran at the other seers, chisel-incisors bared.
A dozen beams of warp-lightning intersected on his powerfully muscled body. They flayed the skin from his chest, but Boneripper kept on coming. The muscle underneath smoked. Still he kept on coming. He reached the first grey seer and reached forwards with a mighty claw. Green fire blazed from the seer’s eyes, reducing the rat ogre’s hand to ash. He roared in anger, not in pain, for Boneripper was incapable of feeling pain. He punched forwards with one of his remaining fists, but this was snared in a rope of shadow and teeth that fastened themselves into his flesh.
‘No-no!’ Thanquol shrieked. He countered as many spells as he could, draining magic away from his peers, but there were too many. His glands clenched.
With a mighty howl, Boneripper was dragged to his knees. Magic writhed all over him, burning and tearing pieces from him. Jilkin the Twisted, a particularly spiteful seer, reached the end of his convoluted incantation. He hurled an orb of purple fire at the injured construct, engulfing its wounded arm. The fire burned bright, then collapsed inwards into warp-black with a sucking noise.
Boneripper roared, his arm turning into a slurry of oily goo, which fountained over the other seers. A deafening thunderclap of magical feedback had them squeaking in agony. Many were blasted to the floor by the sudden interruption of their own sorcery.
When they got up, horned heads shaking out the ringing in their sensitive ears, they were grinning evilly.
‘No-no! Wait-wait!’ chittered Thanquol as they advanced on him. ‘Listen-hear my idea!’ He looked to them imploringly. ‘I am your friend. I was master to many of you. Please! Listen!’
Thaumkrittle drew himself up. ‘Grey Seer Thanquol, you are expelled-exiled from Clan Scruten. You will scurry from this place and never return.’
The other rats fell on him, sharp claws tearing, teeth working at his clothes, ripping his robes and charms from his body. Thanquol panicked. Drowning in a sea of hateful fur, he felt his glands betray him, drenching him in the shame of his own fear.
‘No-no, listen! We must… Argh! We must summon a verminlord, ask them what to do! We are the prophets of the Horned Rat! Let us ask-query his daemons how to pass this trial-test he has set us.’
The seers hoisted Thanquol onto their shoulders and bore him from the room. The door’s sorcerous locks clanked and whirred at their approach, the great bars rattling back into their housings.
The night of Skavenblight greeted Thanquol indifferently as he was hurled bodily into it, followed shortly after by the embrace of the mud of the street.
Thanquol groaned and rolled over. Unspeakable filth caked him.
‘Please!’ he shouted, raising a hand to the closing doors.
They stopped. Thanquol’s tail swished hopefully.
Thaumkrittle’s head poked out of the crack, the head of his staff protruding below his chin. At least, thought Thanquol, they were still wary of him.
‘If you return, once-seer Thanquol, we will take-saw your horns,’ Thaumkrittle said.
The large, messy figure of Boneripper was flung out magically after him. Thanquol barely dodged aside as the unconscious rat ogre slapped into the mud.
The door clanged shut. Thanquol snivelled, but his self-pity lasted only seconds before self-preservation kicked in. Interested red eyes already watched from the shadows. To show any sign of weakness in Skavenblight was to invite death.
‘What you look-see?’ he snapped, getting to his feet unsteadily. ‘I Thanquol! I great seer. You better watch it, or I cook you from inside.’
He set off a shower of sparks from his paws, then stopped. The light showed his beaten, dishevelled state all too clearly. The shadows drew nearer.
Clutching the remains of his robes to preserve his modesty, Thanquol checked over his bodyguard. Boneripper had lost two of his arms and much flesh, but his heart still beat. He could be repaired. Thanquol spent some time rousing the construct, his head twitching with intense paranoia this way and that. But though his glands were slack, his heart hardened. Eventually, the rat ogre hauled itself to its feet. To Thanquol’s relief, there suddenly appeared to be a lot fewer shadows in the street.
‘If Clan Scruten does not want me, then maybe Clan Skryre will,’ he said to himself. With all the haste he could manage, he headed off to their clan hall.
Inside the Temple of the Grey Seers, dull-eyed skaven and human slaves mopped at the mess that had been part of Boneripper. The grey seers resumed their places and recommenced their debate.
‘I have an idea,’ said Jilkin. ‘Let us summon a verminlord.’
‘That great idea,’ said Kreekwik. ‘Ask-beg the great ones from beyond the veil.’
‘Yes-yes,’ said Thaumkrittle up on his platform. ‘A great idea of mine. I am very clever. That why I your new leader-lord, yes? So, who want to follow my great idea and speak-pray to the Horned Rat for one of his servants?’
The grey seers looked at one another. Such blatant claiming of Jilkin’s suggestion was majestic. They could respect that.
‘Of course, O most mighty and powerful caller of magics,’ Kranskritt said. He bowed.
The others followed.
THREE
Karak Eight Peaks
Skarsnik, the King under the Mountains, looked out over the greenskin shanty town filling the dwarf surface city. In ruined streets, between ramshackle huts of wood and hide, raucous orcs drank and fought one another. Goblins squealed and tittered. On the slopes of scree studded with broken statuary, snotlings gambolled, throwing stones at passing greenskins, oblivious to the cold that turned their noses pink.
Autumn was halfway through, and the first flakes of the year’s snow already drifted on the wind.
Skarsnik shivered and pulled his wolf pelt closer about him. He was old now – how old he wasn’t quite sure, for goblins took less care in reckoning the years than men or dwarfs did. But he felt age as surely as he felt the grip of Gork and Mork on his destiny. He felt it in his bandy legs, in his creaking knees and hips. His skin was gnarled and scabbed, thick as tree bark, and he leaned more often on his famous prodder for support than he would have liked. His giant cave squig, Gobbla, snuffled about around his feet, equally aged. Patches of his skin had turned a pinkish-grey, for he was almost as old as his master.
Skarsnik wondered how long he had left. It was ironic, he thought, that after years of wondering whether it would be a skaven blade or dwarf axe that finished him, it would be neither. Time was the enemy no one could fight.
In truth, no one knew how old a goblin could get because they did not usually last that long. Most of them would not even consider dying of old age. Skarsnik considered lots of unusual things because Skarsnik was no ordinary goblin, and what went on in his head would have been entirely alien to other greenskins. Lately, old age had occupied Skarsnik’s thoughts a lot.