‘Ye’re right, ye’re right.’ He nodded at Gobbla. ‘Someone take that away!’ he said, trying to sound like he didn’t care. The goblins that came forward were wise enough to handle the dead squig very carefully indeed. Kruggler helped the goblin warlord up while one of Skarsnik’s little big ’uns smashed the chain with his long axe.
The weight gone from his foot felt weird. He wiggled it around speculatively. Definitely weird.
‘Boss!’ said Kruggler in exasperation.
‘What? Yeah, sorry, the battle, the battle.’ Skarsnik raised his hand to his eyes. He couldn’t see very well because they kept filling up with water and he didn’t know why. He blinked it away and took stock of the battle.
Towards Silver Mountain, a fresh horde of clanrats running down the remainder of the squig teams there.
To the east, the now very distant form of Big Red trumpeting his way towards the evening. To the south, a mighty arachnarok spider being dismembered by the mysterious shadow.
To the centre, the broken Idol of Gork – or was it Mork? He really couldn’t be sure – and an additional item: one slaughtered wyvern, topped with a headless orc. The Headtaker’s troops were forming up, gathering stragglers back into solid formations. The formation that Skarsnik’s little big ’uns had broken was being bullied back into shape by its leader.
‘I’ve seen enough,’ said Skarsnik.
‘What?’ said Kruggler.
‘It’s a bust. We’ve lost. A good scrap, but we couldn’t pull it off, because there really is a lot of them, ain’t there?’ said Skarsnik to himself. ‘Farsands, and farsands.’ He did a quick mental calculation, the kind that would make a normal goblin die of a brain infarction. ‘That’s actually a lot more of them than there is of us…’ He looked to the citadel. ‘Old Belegar’s next. We need to scarper.’
‘What?!’ repeated Kruggler.
‘Kruggs, mate, we have lost! Can I make it any simpler for you? If we don’t shift, Queek’ll have our heads on that poncy bedstead he wears on his back quicker than he’ll have Belegar’s. I don’t think I want to stick around for that. Sound the retreat!’ he shouted.
‘What about the rest of the boys?’
‘What? Out-of-towners, weird scrawny runts wot smell of old leaves and ride about on spiders, and deadbeats? Nah, they played their part. Leave ’em. Besides, if we all go at once, then the rats might attack us before we can get away, mightn’t they?’ Skarsnik tapped his grubby forehead with a bloody finger. ‘Always thinking me. That’s why I is king and you is not.’ He addressed his signallers again, before they commenced their flag-waving and horn-blowing. ‘And by retreat, I mean walking back inside carefully with your weapons ready, not running for the hills so we’s can all get out of breath, run down, chopped up and et by ratsies! Got that?’ he bawled.
His horn-blowers and flag-wavers nodded. At least some of them understood. They relayed his orders as best they could. Some of the greenskins even obeyed them. All in all, thought Skarsnik, as he watched his tired tribe and its allies about face and march up to the gates of the Howlpeak, things could have been a whole lot worse.
Once he’d regained the gates himself, he went up to the broken battlements atop it. Through his telescope he watched the skaven break into a desperate run as the last of the Crooked Moon tribe withdrew to the safety of the Howlpeak. For a long time, he kept his spyglass trained on Queek’s furious, furry face and watched it get madder and madder. He kept watching, in fact, until the gates clanged shut.
Now that was funny.
‘Gobbla,’ he said, meaning to share the moment with his pet. ‘Gobbla, look at that, eh? Boy? Boy?’ Skarsnik looked down at his side.
But, of course, there was nobody there.
TWENTY
Lurklox’s Deal
Skarsnik went into his private rooms as quickly as he was able. That was not very quickly. He had to patrol the borders of his much-reduced kingdom to make sure the lads were watching out properly, and that there were units ready to see off an attack, and that the outsiders who had come into the Howlpeak didn’t cause any bother. That went double for any who were orcs. He had a few challenges now Gobbla was gone, but that was not such a bad thing. He needed to put a couple of orcs down to keep the rest in line. Without Gobbla, they found him still extremely dangerous, and the fact that he could still break an orc with his bare hands without his giant pet had quietened them down real quick. But Gobbla’s loss was telling on him in other ways. Without the squig, he’d lost his skaven assassin early warning system. He might as well leave the door unlocked, dismiss all his guard and go to sleep with a knife conveniently laid out next to his bed.
Once inside, he locked the door and commenced pacing, the butt of his prodder clashing on the floor. He banged it harder and harder as he got more and more worried. Skarsnik was no stranger to dilemmas, but this one was a real pickle and no mistake.
‘Got to get organised, got to get organised!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Where is I if I don’t gets organised?’ He glanced to his papers, but this time they didn’t hold the answer. ‘Gotta fink!’ he said, and worried at his fingers with sharp goblin teeth. ‘Item one,’ he said to himself. ‘Old Queek’s going for conquest. Item two, there’s loads more of them than there is of us. Item three, them stunties aren’t going to be there much longer, and when they is not, old squeaky Queeky’s gonna come knockin’ on me door with all his monsters and such. So what to do? Need Duffskul, yeah.’ He made to call the shaman, but remembered he was dead too. Who else could he call on? No one had seen Mad Zargakk in years, Kruggler was the brightest of the gobboes to hand but still very thick, and there was no point at all in asking an orc…
He caught something from the corner of his eye, a flicker in the room where one shouldn’t be.
‘Oh, come on. Not again!’ he groaned. He levelled his prodder at the globe of black lightning crackling into being. ‘I’m not in the mood today, ratboy! Buzz off or get a face full of Morky magic!’
But as the visitor manifested, Skarsnik’s expression of defiance turned to a gape. His intention to zap the rat dissipated. This wasn’t your usual rat with horns, magicking himself in to have a pop – although it did, he supposed, have horns. And it did look like a rat, only not that much. Bigger, it was. Everywhere.
‘Rats,’ he said, ‘aren’t usually that big.’
Skarsnik took a step back as an immense shape stepped out of the shadows. Although, that wasn’t right, because the shadows came with it. They writhed over the thing, whatever it was, stopping Skarsnik from getting a good look at it. He got an impression, nothing more – long, hairy arms lined with thick tendons, black claws, and a head crowned with an impressive rack of horns above a masked face where terrible eyes burned.
For the first time in a long time, Skarsnik gulped fearfully. The thing! The weird thing from the battle that had taken out Grobspit’s spider monsters, right there in his bedroom! The creature was huge, bigger than a troll, all wiry muscle and patches of fur. It had claws bigger than Gobbla’s teeth. Then Skarsnik recognised it for what it was, and recovered his wits. Better the daemon you know, and he knew this kind well enough.
‘Oh. Right. It’s one of those.’ The stink of rodent and glowy green rock was unmistakeable. ‘Ratfing daemon, one wiv lots of extra shadow, but a ratfing daemon you is. Well, ain’t I honoured,’ he said archly. ‘Oi, back off,’ he shouted, holding his ground. His prodder crackled with power. ‘I ain’t no snotty to be pushed about.’
‘I am a lord of the Thirteen in Shadow!’ scoffed the rat-daemon. ‘I am master-assassin! That cannot hurt me. You cannot hurt me!’