They were not ambushed. The immediate fighting they had planned for never came. They surfaced instead to a ghost town. The thickly packed orc-shacks and tents in the city were empty, as were the encampments in the weed-choked farmland beyond the city walls.
Queek surveyed all this impatiently from the top of part of the rubble slope created by the collapse of Karag Nar.
‘Careful, Queek,’ said Krug from his trophy rack. ‘He’s a wily one, that Skarsnik.’
‘What news?’ he said to his gathered lieutenants. ‘Grotoose?’
‘Nothing, great Queek.’
‘The fifth clawpack has found not one of the green-things, exulted Queek,’ fawned Kranskritt. Queek gave him a hard look. He still did not trust the grey seer. Only Lurklox’s insistence kept the wizard alive.
Skrak reported the same, as did Gnarlfang and Ikk Hackflay, who had been furiously stomping from place to place in search of something to kill.
‘There is no one here,’ said Gritch, his assassin’s voice pitched just over the wind soughing through the dry winter grasses. There had been precious little snow that year, though it was bitingly cold. ‘The siege camp is empty. They have abandoned their attack on the gates. There is a new idol in the main square of the beard-thing city. Stone and iron, it stares-glares with skull-eyes at dwarf-thing fort-place.’
‘So good your scouts are. Well done! So skilled to find big stone giant, but not little things,’ Queek said. ‘What about scouts sent to the mountain halls and peaks? Where is the Skarsnik-thing, where are his armies?’
‘Many scouts not scurry back, great Queek,’ said Gritch, bowing low.
‘Queek very impressed.’
Gritch began to protest, but Queek cut him off. ‘Big-meat ogre-things?’ said Queek.
‘Gone with the gold,’ said Skrak.
‘Fools,’ said Queek. ‘Why they so obsessed? Gold soft, useless.’ He held up his sword and looked up its length. ‘Not hard-sharp like steel. They like to eat, more than a skaven gripped by the black hunger.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they eat it.’
‘Skarsnik has gone then,’ said Grotoose. ‘He has fled the wrath of mighty Queek!’
Queek rounded on him, raising Dwarf Gouger. ‘Oh no, do not be mistaken. Little imp watches, little imp waits to see what we will do. Little imp thinks he will beat Queek in very-very cunning-clever trap. But little imp will not trap Queek.’
‘Will he attack in the day?’
‘Skaven love-like the night. We scurry under the big roof now that is no roof at all. Skaven not like it, pah! But Skarsnik’s little soldiers no different.’
Kranskritt glanced nervously up at the sun, shining pale yet still menacing through the thick cloud. ‘What do we do then, mighty one?’
Queek wondered if he could strike the seer dead now. He could, he thought. Lurklox was not there, and he did not see Soothgnawer – nor did he think he was near, for his trophies whispered their wisdom to him, something they did not when either verminlord was close by. He refrained from acting upon his whim.
‘We clear the city as planned, Queek decrees! Tear it all down, break it to pieces, smash the imp-thing’s little empire on the surface as we smashed his town in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars. Then we will see if he can be tempted out or not.’
Orders were given, and the army split into its various components to cover the vast area encompassed by the bowl sheltered by the eight peaks. Clan Skryre engineers set up their war machines near the mostly securely held skaven mountains in case of attack, while the armies subdivided further and began the work of demolishing the greenskins’ settlements. In ruined fields covered by scrubby forest, greenskin shelters were kicked down. Clanrats clambered over the crumbling dwarf city, levering stones out of the walls of rough-built huts. Warpfire teams torched entire villages of tents, while wind globadiers tossed their poisons into ruins and caves that might hold monsters. Teams of rat ogres tackled the bigger structures, clawing down idols of stone, wood and dung.
None, however, could bring low the great idol of Gork staring fixedly at the citadel in the centre of the city. Queek followed the line of its gaze. Glints on the battlements of the citadel showed dwarfs powerlessly watching as the skaven rose up to take control of yet more of their ancestral home.
‘Soon, Belegar long-fur, it will be your turn,’ hissed Queek.
The idol was as tall as a giant, but much more massive, its crude arms and legs made of monoliths stacked on top of each other and chained in place in crude approximation of orcish anatomy. A huge boulder with crude eyeholes hacked into the face topped it off, a separate jaw of wood hanging by more rusty chains from its face. It looked as if it should be pushed over easily, but would not fall. Warpfire splashed off the rock and iron. Warp-lightning crackled across it without effect. More powerful explosives were sent for. All the while the idol hunched there, apish and insolently strong as the day wore on.
Still Skarsnik did not come.
From his position atop the parapets of Howlpeak, Skarsnik watched the skaven go about the business of wrecking orctown. Fires burned everywhere.
‘They is behaving like they own the place, burning our houses down,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Old Belegar is probably loving every bit of this.’
‘Should we go and get them now, boss?’ said Kruggler. Crowds of orc and goblin bosses hung around him, the lot of them sheltering under nets and swags of cloth covered with dust and dyed grey to hide them from the skaven’s eyes.
Skarsnik snapped his telescope shut; the skaven weren’t the only ones to steal from dwarfs. ‘In a minute, Kruggs.’ He swept his hand out towards the eastern peaks. ‘We’ll wait until they’re nice and spread out, then we’ll attack, smash the centre, rout the rest and have a nice big ratty barbecue.’
‘I is not for waiting!’ grumbled Drilla Gitsmash, king of the Dark Lands black orcs. What with his thick accent, he was almost unintelligible behind his heavy, tusked visor. ‘We should get out there and smash ’em good now. I is not for waiting!’ he repeated.
‘Oh yes you is, if you want to win,’ said Skarsnik, looking up at the black orc as if he weren’t twice his size and four times his weight, before re-extending his telescope and turning back to the view. ‘But if you wants to go out there on your own and get chopped up to little itsy bitsy pieces, then go ahead. I is sure my boys could do with a laugh. No?’ Drilla said nothing. ‘Good idea that. Best to wait until we’re all going out. Is everyone in position?’
‘Yes, boss,’ said Kruggler.
‘Tolly Grin Cheek?’ This was not the original supporter of Skarsnik from way back, but the fourth murderous goblin to bear the name, and the facial scars that went with it.
‘He’s up behind them, boss.’
‘And that Snaggla fella? Not sure about him. Tell you, spiders is fer eating, not riding – and what’s this nonsense about some spider god? How many gods are there, boys?’
‘Gork and Mork,’ said one. ‘That’s four.’
‘Five?’
‘Definitely more than one!’
‘One,’ grumbled Drilla. ‘Mork don’t count.’
‘There’s two!’ said Skarsnik, his voice becoming shrill. ‘Two. Gork and Mork. Not three, or lots, or twenty-two thousand.’
Goblin faces creased in pained confusion at the mention of this incomprehensible number.
‘I told you, boss, I fought wiv some of them forest boys up north in the Border Princes,’ said Kruggler. ‘They is real sneaky. Morky as you like. You’ll love it.’