Queek could restrain himself no longer. He leaped into the tunnel, drew his weapons, and vanished into the gloom.
‘But they my slaves…’ said Thaxx.
‘If you like,’ said Ska, lounging on a rock and picking his claws, ‘you go stop him. I sure-certain that work out just fine for clever Warlord Thaxx.’ Queek’s Red Guards tittered.
The squeal of panicked ratmen blasted from the tube. They blundered out into the dimly lit corridor, but could not go far, caught by their chains.
One tripped and fell at Skrikk’s feet. He looked up at the clanlords pleadingly.
‘You go quick-quick now,’ said Skrikk. ‘Back in there so mighty Queek may kill-slay.’
‘He very bored,’ said Ska. ‘You be good and make him happy.’
The skavenslave stared at them piteously as he was dragged back into the cave, knocking a pile of bones out of the way. He grabbed a skull, but it did not arrest his progress and he disappeared into the dark still clutching it.
A short and noisy time later, during which the cave’s stale air ripened with the reek of blood, bowels and musk, Queek emerged from the tunnel, dripping with gore. He panted lightly.
‘That no fun,’ he said. He licked his lips free of blood and smiled with cruel joy nevertheless. ‘No challenge for Queek to slaughter slaves.’ He looked speculatively at Thaxx. Skrikk nodded enthusiastically behind his back, jiggling his eyebrows at Thaxx and making a pantomime of how formidable a warrior Skrikk was.
‘Skrikk greater warrior!’ said Thaxx in a tumble.
‘Not so great as mighty Queek!’ said Skrikk, his tail twitched nervously.
‘Who is?’ said Queek with a shrug. ‘Now, where final clawpack? If it far, Queek not happy. Maybe we see how good Skrikk and Thaxx are…’
‘Not far! Not far, mighty Queek!’ said Thaxx, bowing low. ‘A half day, then all inspections done.’
Skrikk shot Thaxx a warning look. Thaxx caught it.
‘Er, but Warlord Queek must be tired, so much travelling. He should go rest-sleep to increase his strength so that he might kill-slay beard-things and green-things better.’
‘You say Queek is sleepy-tired, less-brilliant-than-Queek Warlord Thaxx?’ said Queek.
‘Oh no, your deadliness, of course not. All know that Queek could kill all things half asleep and with a small feeding spoon. It is just that you are right…’ Thaxx took a step backwards as Queek reared up over him.
‘You say sometimes Queek not-right?’
‘No! No! Queek is always right! Every time! Everyone knows!’ squealed Thaxx.
‘Yes-yes, Queek the mightiest. Queek also the most correct and cleverest,’ said Skrikk. Queek was mollified.
Thaxx relaxed a little. ‘You say boring. It boring looking at so many rat-things.’ He flapped his paw dismissively. ‘They look all the same. Perhaps we go back now? Meet fifth clawpack later?’
Queek’s eyes narrowed. ‘What Thaxx hide? What Thaxx think Queek not like about fifth clawpack?’
‘Hide?’ said Thaxx, his eyes wide with wounded innocence.
‘Never,’ said Skrikk.
‘You quite insistent, both of you, that Queek see boring rats. And now, all of a sudden, you not want Queek to see boring rats. Queek not stupid. You think Queek stupid?’
‘No,’ wailed Thaxx.
‘You better tell Queek now,’ said Ska.
Thaxx abased himself upon the floor. ‘It is not Thaxx’s fault. Stupid-meat minions make mistake. He told by great lords to do it.’
‘Do what?’ said Queek. He hefted Dwarf Gouger and gave it a pleased lick.
‘It better,’ said Skrikk with a resigned expression, ‘if Queek see-smells with his own eyes and nose.’
They went downwards from the bone caves into old skaven ways, gnawed by teeth long before the invention of tunnelling machines. These cut a slope across the outermost edges of the dwarf deeps under the Great Vale. Innumerable shafts and stairways joined the halls carved into the mountains to the undercity proper. The skaven tunnels cut across them all. They came to a winding stair, and went down this for many thousands of paces – round and round, until Queek felt dizzy. He had lived most of his life in Karak Eight Peaks, but this stair was new to him. The Eight Peaks was so vast that it was impossible to know it all, although the hated green-imp claimed to.
Down and down, passing into areas of the city that had collapsed. Some skaven, like Sleek Sharpwit, heretically said that beard-things were not stupid and built well. Queek laughed. Here was proof it was not so! There were many cave-ins and collapses that had sealed off whole sections of the beard-things’ burrows before quicker minds had rejoined them.
‘Earthquakes, poor skaven engineering undermining good dwarf work,’ said Sleek’s dead voice sulkily.
‘Stupid beard-things,’ said Queek.
His underlings, as always, pretended not to notice Queek’s one-sided conversations with his trophies.
They skirted the edges of the City of Pillars, the main part of the skaven domain in the Eight Peaks, where the last of the dwarfish deeps gave way to broken mines and endlessly convoluted warrens of skaven burrows. The journey took three feedings before they emerged at the very bottom of the world.
Deep in the deepest reaches of the City of Pillars, hundreds of fathoms below the lowest of the old dwarf deeps, was the Trench.
Who knew what cataclysm had torn this gap into the bowels of the earth? Nearly a mile deep and half a mile across, it went further into the living rock than even the skaven wished to go, and they were the children of the underworld. Along its base were dozens of cave mouths. These were not natural formations. They were carved by living creatures, but only a portion of them by the skaven. Down there were strange things, blindwyrms, deep trolls, scumbloids, mad-things and worse. Skaven who went into those tunnels often did not come out again.
Not today. The tunnels had been pressed into use as barrack burrows and every one crawled with armed skaven. Nothing that did not squeak or bear fur would dare come into the Trench. From end to end and wall to wall, the floor of the canyon was a seething mass of ratkin bodies.
‘The fifth clawpack, your most mightiness,’ said Skrikk, bowing.
Queek’s mouth opened. He shut it with a click. He was reluctantly impressed. There were dozens of warrior clans – none of the greater ones, admittedly, but some of the more respected names among the rabble clans were present. More arresting were the large numbers of Moulder-beasts, far more than in the other formations. He spotted a great number of rat ogres, thousands of giant rats and, most impressively, a pair of caged abominations. Far more monsters than Queek had seen in the rest of the city.
‘Who lead-bring such an endless rat sea to the City of Pillars?’ asked Queek quietly. Both his lieutenants ducked their heads submissively.
‘It hard to say, most subtle and dangerous–’ began Thaxx.
‘That is, it not easy to put into words, great and–’ interrupted Skrikk.
‘I do,’ said a voice from the shadows. A shape was there, lurking where the dark was too thick even for skaven eyes to see through. Queek smelt the identity of the squeaker before he threw back his hood to reveal the silhouette of horns.
‘White-fur!’ said Queek, his sword hissing free from its scabbard.
‘O mighty, terrible and great warrior Queek! I am Kranskritt, servant of the Horned Rat and emissary of Clan Scruten.’ Kranskritt stepped out of the dark and bowed to the jingle of small bells. A bunch of flunkeys came skulking out behind their master. They had precisely none of his poise and threw themselves down to the stone hurriedly for fear of Queek.
Thaxx and Skrikk scuttled backwards, banging into Ska.