‘Right,’ said Skarsnik. He gave the vista one last pass with his telescope. He squinted at the sun. Noon, as near as he could reckon it. Not good for his night boys, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘Now or never,’ he said. ‘Positions, lads. And get the signal to Duffskul sent!’
Skaven passed under Duffskul’s nose. From the shoulder of the idol he was looking right down at the top of their pointy little heads, and some of them looked right back at him. He pulled faces at them and laughed at how close they were. They couldn’t see him, couldn’t smell him, didn’t know he was there at all. They milled about, trying one thing after another to destroy his idol, arguing over how it had got there. Duffskul knew the answer to that, of course.
It had walked.
It had taken him ages to ride it back down from old Zargakk the Mad’s wizlevard cave, way up over the Black Crag. A risky journey, but funnily enough, he hadn’t been bothered by anyone at all on the way back.
A single puff of smoke, black as a night goblin’s robes, rolled up into the sky over the tumbled parapets of the Howlpeak’s Grimgate. Duffskul laughed. He did a little dance. He whispered horrible things in the general direction of the skaven.
And then he did his magic.
‘What-what is that noise?’ said the skaven warlock nearest to the idol’s foot.
‘What noise?’
‘Deaf-deaf, you are! A scream-shriek, getting louder.’ The pair of them looked left, looked right and all around them, turning in circles to find the source of the rapidly loudening cry.
‘I hear now!’ said the second, exactly half a second before a goblin smashed itself to paste yards from their position. All that was left was one twitching foot, a shattered pair of canvas wings, and the echoes of its scream.
Only then did the skaven, born and bred in a world with comfortably low skies, think to look upwards.
Goblins were arcing through the heavens in long lazy curves, swishing their wings back and forth like birds. The illusion was impressive. One could almost think a goblin could fly, so at home the doom divers seemed in the clouds.
They were, unfortunately for the goblins, as aerodynamically gifted as boulders, and their flights lasted only marginally longer. Unfortunately for the skaven whose regiments they steered themselves onto, they did about as much damage as boulders too. A goblin’s head was uncommonly dense, especially when crammed into a pointed helmet.
‘Look-look!’ The second skaven tugged upon the sleeve of the first.
‘Yes-yes, I see! Flying green-things, very peculiar.’
‘Not there,’ he said, grabbing hold of his colleague’s head and pointing his gas-masked face at the head of the idol, their field of vision being somewhat restricted. ‘There!’
The skaven looked up at the idol. The idol, eye-caves glowing a menacing green, stared back.
‘Waaaaaghhhhhh!’ the idol shouted.
The skaven shrieked as a heavy rock foot ground them out of existence.
Atop its shoulders, Duffskul whooped. By way of reply, the mountains and ruins of Karak Eight Peaks resounded to the blaring of horns and the clanging of cymbals, the roll of dwarf-skin drums and the tuneless squeal of the squigpipes.
With a rapid clacking, the Grimgate swung open, splitting the grimacing orc-head glyph painted over the ancestor runes in two.
Out marched legions of greenskins. They headed right for the centre of the city.
‘All right, Mini-Gork, I believe we’ll be needing to go thataway!’ said Duffskul.
With rumbling strides accompanied by the grinding of rock, the Idol of Gork swung about and set off towards the enemy.
‘He is coming! Green-imp shows his hand-paw! Foolish green-thing. Loyal Ska, sound the advance!’
Skaven cymbals clashed, and the entirety of Queek’s first clawpack rose up from its hiding places. Forming rapidly into claws, the elite of Queek’s army made a wall of strong, armoured ratmen across the widest of the Great Vale’s shattered boulevards.
‘Forward!’ shouted Ska. ‘Forward for the glory of Queek! Forward for the glory of Clan Mors! Forward or I’ll kill-slay you myself!’
Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins were off first, the fangleader eager to prove himself. Queek had had his eye on the skaven ever since he had raided Belegar’s lower armouries months ago, taking enough dwarf armour to equip his entire claw, changing their names from the Rustblades to the Ironskins afterwards. From the speed he set off at, he evidently felt Queek’s scrutiny upon him.
Lightning blasted skywards from the ground, bursting goblins apart in the air. Some got through, some of those shattered the scaffolds the lightning cannons were mounted upon, and so the goblin doom divers and the best of Clan Skryre occupied one another.
‘That’s good, that is,’ said the dead dwarf king Krug. ‘Stops them from smashing your lads up.’
Queek hissed irritably. ‘Of course, Queek knows this. It is all part of Queek’s plan!’
Down the slopes of the mountain, innumerable hordes of goblins poured. Queek glanced nervously around the mountain bowl, across the city and out beyond where the lower reaches of the further peaks were hazy. His eyesight was as good as any skaven’s, which is to say at distance, not very good at all. But he saw no sign of movement elsewhere, and heard no sound of battle.
‘Ska!’
‘Yes, masterful Queek.’
‘Send messengers. Be sure to warn our lieutenants. This is not the fullness of the green-things’ force.’
Ska nodded, detailing his own minions to fulfil the orders.
Meanwhile, Skarsnik’s vanguard were jogging forwards to form a broad front. Queek ordered the slaves ahead, and with a terrified chittering, caused as much by the snarling packmasters at their rear as fear of the enemy, they surged across the mounded ruins of the dwarf city towards their greenskin foe. As the slaves neared, the goblins laughed loudly and shoved out whirling fanatics towards them. Queek had seen this so often by now that the tactic no longer held any surprises for him, but he remained wary of them. They spun round and round, laughing madly, hefting giant metal balls at the ends of long chains that should have been impossible for a goblin to lift.
He could not see their connection with his slave legions directly. The bodies of weak-meat tossed high in the air by the goblins’ swinging balls informed him of when it happened anyway.
‘Pick up speed! Hurry-scurry!’ shouted Queek. The Red Guard broke into a jog, their wargear clattering. ‘Mad-thing green-things will come through, kill-slay slaves – we must be through before they can turn and chase Queek!’
Queek’s elite burst through their screen of slaves, hacking down those who did not get out of the way. The goblins had advanced some three hundred yards from the Grimgate, filling the wide road and spilling into the ruins either side. The city here had been much reduced, piles of rubble with twisted trees poking out from them or greened mounds showed where once workshops and homes had stood. It made for difficult ground to fight over.
The town sloped downwards from Queek’s position, following the contours of the Howlpeak. Above was the still-open Grimgate. Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins pushed their way out of the slaves there, slightly ahead of Queek’s formation. From his vantage, Queek saw the broad, bloody lanes through the skaven created by the fanatics. These wobbled in uncertain lines, some looping right the way back round towards the goblin lines. The casualty numbers were horrendous, but all were slaves and of little worth. Queek snickered; they had performed their role excellently. The fanatics were falling one by one, smashing into low walls, dropping from exhaustion, or becoming hopelessly tangled with the slaves, their miserable deaths aiding the skaven cause far more than the ratkin ever could in life.