‘Funny, ain’t it,’ said Skarsnik, half to himself, ‘in an ironical kind of way, that we is using the same little hidden ways to gets out that them stunties used to get in.’
‘Suppose,’ said Zargakk. The goblin and orc chiefs marching with them shared perplexed looks.
‘But there’s no stunties there now, boss, none at all. They’s all gone!’ said one, who was either braver or even thicker than the rest.
Skarsnik shut his eyes tight and shuddered.
They had marched out in the morning, after a nervous-looking skaven had delivered the king’s head. Zargakk had been sitting on a toppled stunty statue in front of the Howlpeak, the citadel burning behind him. All across the skies were clouds of blackest black, so black the night goblins didn’t really notice it was day at all. In the east, south and north they were lit red by the fires of the earth. Only to the west was there a hint of blue, and that was pale and scalloped by roils of ash.
Up, up onto the slopes they went, chancing the high passes. The main road out of the Eight Peaks to the west was buried in rubble from the skaven’s detonation of the mountains. Although large numbers of skaven had departed to the north, some remained, and the East Gate was most likely in the hands of the ratmen by now. Skarsnik wasn’t banking on them keeping their word, so up into the cold they went.
From high above the Great Vale, Skarsnik turned to take one last look at his former domain. His entire army stopped with him. Most of it did, anyway, those elements that did not tripping over the ones that had, and no small number of them slipping to their deaths as a result.
‘Garn! Get on! Get on!’ yelled Skarsnik, planting his boot in the breeches of a mountain goblin. ‘Blow the zogging horns, you halfwits. Do it! Get ’em moving! Just cos I is stopping don’t mean everyone should!’
Horns blared, the mountains answering sorrowfully. Drums rolled like distant thunder in the forgotten summers of the world. Skarsnik thought there might never be a summer again.
‘Look at that. Would you look at that,’ said Kruggler, peering out from under his dirty bandages. He’d been wounded across the forehead during the battle, but his skull was particularly dense and he seemed unharmed. ‘Seems such a waste, leaving it all behind.’
‘Yeah,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Don’t it just? All them zogging rats just upped and left an’ all. Ridiculous. It’s empty. Empty after all this time.’
‘The greatest stunty-house in all the world!’
‘Second greatest,’ corrected Skarsnik, holding up a grubby finger. ‘Second greatest. And it was all mine.’
‘Why they going?’ said Kruggler.
‘Search me,’ shrugged Skarsnik. ‘Don’t make no sense.’
‘Why don’t we just go back then?’ said someone.
‘Nah,’ said Skarsnik. ‘We do that, they’ll come back. Besides, new vistas, new worlds to conquer. All that.’
‘Stupid rats,’ grumbled Dork the orc, current boss of Skarsnik’s bigger greenies. Skarsnik had lost so many of his chieftains he wasn’t sure who was who any more, and he couldn’t exactly stop to check his lists.
‘Mark my words, it’ll be full of trolls soon enough,’ said Tolly Grin Cheek the Fourth.
‘Maybe,’ said Skarsnik, raising his eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time, except, it won’t happen.’
‘How you know that, boss?’ said Dork.
Skarsnik plucked a human-made watch from his pocket and screwed up his eyes to peer at it. ‘I just do. Should be about now.’
‘What, boss?’ said Tolly Grin Cheek.
‘You don’t think I’d let those ratboys have the place, did you? You don’t think I’m beat do you? Eh? Eh?’
The goblins and orcs looked at each other searchingly. No one wanted to hazard a guess at the right answer to that one.
‘Course not!’ said Skarsnik. ‘Y’see, those ratboys are too zogging clever by half.’
‘Not like us, eh, boss!’ said Dork. The others laughed at their own cleverness.
‘No. No. Definitely not,’ replied Skarsnik flatly. ‘Anyways, that big ratfing promised me two things. Old Belegar here.’ Skarsnik patted his dwarf-hide pouch, wherein languished the severed head of the king. ‘And one of them fancy machines the ratties are always meddling with. I had a mob put it down there, set it off to go, then run away.’
‘What was it, boss? What was it?’ they shouted excitedly.
Skarsnik pulled a pained expression and shuddered. ‘Can’t one of you zogging morons have a guess, just one guess?’
‘A super trap!’ said one.
‘A big axe?’ said Dork hopefully.
‘A troll!’
‘A dragon!’
‘Two dragons!’
‘Lots of dragons!’ someone else shouted, getting carried away with the whole dragon idea.
‘It’s a bomb, you snotlings-for-brains. Our boss here got a big bomb off them, didn’t he?’ Zargakk the Mad said. ‘He did, he did!’ he added, nodding in enthusiastic agreement with himself.
‘That’s the truth, right there,’ said Skarsnik. ‘A bomb. Apparently, they was going to blow up the big dwarf mountain up north where the king of all stunties live. Well, not now they ain’t!’
They all shared a good laugh at that.
‘This big rat god fing showed up, and offered it to me. Tried to talk me into blowing up Zhufbar with it! So I said yes.’
‘But we ain’t at Zhufbar, boss!’
‘Yeah, Zhufbar’s, like, miles away.’
‘It’s at least three.’
‘More like loads.’
‘Will you just let me finish?’ shouted Skarsnik. ‘Zhufbar’s one thousand and eighty-four miles away, if you must know. So I thoughts to meself,’ he continued at normal volume again, ‘I ain’t walking all that way on the say-so of a ratboy! Then I finks, well, if I ain’t going to have the Eight Peaks, and the stunties aren’t going to have the Eight Peaks, then the zogging ratboys certainly aren’t going to have it. I’m going to be the last king of the Eight Peaks. Me,’ he said, low and growly. ‘Not some mange-furred rat git with cheesy breath! I tells you, it’s the biggest bomb what ever there was. Huge! All brass and iron and wyrdstone.’ He had to exaggerate its size. The goblins would never have believed something small as a troll’s head could do so much damage.
‘Weeds toe what?’
‘He means the glowy green rock what the ratties likes so much,’ said Dork, glowing almost as much as said rock himself with self-satisfaction.
‘Yeah, that’s right. The green glowy. About a ton of it, I’d say, all packed about with black powder.’
‘What’s an “aton”?’
‘Lots! A ton is lots! Very heavy! It’s lots, all right?’ said Skarsnik, his hood vibrating with irritation. ‘So lots it’ll make them little bangs what the ratties brought down Red Sun Mountain with look like squigs popping on a fire. And I made ’em give it to me! Me!’
A tinny chime sounded from out of the watch, strange music to play out the destruction of their home, accompanied by the slap-tramp of goblin feet as the tribes wound their way upwards.
‘And that’s the timer,’ said Skarsnik. He chuckled evilly.
They all stared expectantly at the city. Big ’uns and bosses had to lash the lads to stop them from gawping at what their betters were looking at.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
‘Was that it? Has it gone?’ asked a particularly thick underling, who was staring right at Karak Eight Peaks’s desolate ruins.
‘No. No. No! That wasn’t it, you zogging git!’ Skarsnik roared. He spun round and blasted the gobbo with a bright green zap of Waaagh! energy. The goblin exploded all over everybody else.