And this way, if anything went wrong, Thanquol’s hands were clean. No one would ever trace the Slayer’s intervention back to him, he could ensure that. The idea of using the pair to thwart his other enemies’ schemes was too good to resist.
He turned the scheme over from all sides, examining the possible outcomes and finding it foolproof. Either the dwarf and the manling would foil the plot in their usual, brutally inept manner or they would be killed trying to do so. Either outcome suited Thanquol. If they foiled Heskit’s plan, the warp engineer would be discredited. If they died, Thanquol would have lost two potent enemies and could still organise some nasty surprises for the Clan Skryre warlocks on their return. In the best of all possible worlds, the two sides would eliminate each other. Thanquol helped himself to some warpstone snuff and consumed it with glee. What a scheme! So intricate! So cunning! So truly skaven! Here once more was proof of his own incredible genius.
Now all he had to do was think of a way of letting the dwarf and his henchman know about Heskit’s plan. It would have to be complex, subtle and ingenuous. Those half-witted fools would never suspect that they were aiding their mightiest enemy.
“Message for you, sir,” said the small, grubby faced boy, holding out his hand for payment. In his other hand, he clutched a piece of coarse parchment.
Felix looked down at him and wondered if this was some sort of trick. The beggar lads of Nuln were particularly known for their ingenuity in parting fools from their money. Still, he might as well pay attention. The lanterns had just been lit. It was early yet and the Blind Pig had not even started to look like it would fill up this evening.
“What’s this? You do not look like a courier.”
“I dunno, sir. This funny-looking gentleman handed me this scrap of paper and a copper penny and told I would get the same again if I delivered it to the tall blond-furred bouncer at the Blind Pig.”
“Blond-furred?”
“He spoke kind of funny, sir. Looked kind of funny, too. To tell the truth, he smelled kind of funny an’ all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, his voice wasn’t exactly normal. It was kind of high pitched and squeaky. And he was wearing a monk’s robe with a cowl that covered his face. I thought his robes hadn’t been washed for a long time. They smelled like a dog or some furry animal had been sleeping in them. I know, ’cause my dog, Uffie, used to—”
“Never mind Uffie right now. Was there anything else you noticed about him?”
“Well, sir, he walked funny, all hunched forward…”
“Like an old man?”
“No, sir, he moved too quick for an old man. More like one of the crippled beggars you see down on Cheap Street ’cept he moved too quick to be crippled and… well, there’s one more thing but I was scared to tell you in case you thought I had been at the weird-root.”
“And what was that?”
“Well, as he was moving away, I thought he had a snake under his robes. I could see something long and snaky moving around.”
“Could it have been a tail? Like the tail of a rat?”
“It could have been, sir. It could have been. Do you think it could have been a mutant, sir? One of the changed?” A note of wonder and horror had entered the child’s voice. He was obviously thinking that he might just have had a close call.
“Perhaps. Now, where did you see this beggar?”
“Down Blind Alley. Not five minutes ago. I rushed over here thinking I’d get myself a nice bit of pie with the copper piece you was going to give me.”
Felix tossed the kid a copper and snatched the piece of paper from his hand. He glanced across the bar to see if Gotrek was about. The Slayer sat at a side table, his massive shoulders hunched, clutching an ale in one brawny fist and his monstrous axe in the other. Felix beckoned him over.
“What is it, manling?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
“No sign of anything here now, manling,” Gotrek said, peering down the alley. He shook his head and ran a brawny hand through his huge dyed crest of hair. “No scent either.”
Felix could not tell how the Slayer could smell anything over the stench of the trash that filled Blind Alley, but he did not doubt that Gotrek was telling the truth. He had seen too much evidence of the keenness of the dwarf’s senses in the past to doubt him now. Felix kept his hand on the hilt of his sword and was ready to shout for the watch at a moment’s notice. Since the child had brought the note, he had suspected an ambush. But there was no sign of one. The skaven, if skaven it had been, had timed things well. It had given itself plenty of time to get away.
Felix took another glance down the alley. There was not much to see. Some light filtered in from the shop lanterns and tavern windows of Cheap Street but not enough for him to make out more than the outlines of rubbish, and the cracked and weather-eroded walls of the buildings on either side of the alley.
“This leads down into the Maze,” Gotrek said. “There’s a dozen entries to the sewers down there. Our scuttling little friend has got clean away by now.”
Felix considered the winding labyrinth of alleys which comprised the Maze. It was a haunt of the city’s poorest and most desperate wretches. He did not relish the prospect of visiting during broad daylight, let alone trying to find a skaven there in the darkness of this overcast and moonless evening. Gotrek was probably right anyway: if it was a skaven, it was in the sewers by now.
Felix backed out into the street and moved under the lantern that illuminated an all-night pawnbroker’s sign. He unfolded the coarse paper and inspected the note.
The handwriting was odd. The letters were formed with jagged edges, more like dwarf runes than the Imperial alphabet, but the language was definitely Reikspiel, although poorly composed and spelled. It read:
Frends—be warned! Evil rat-men of the trecherus skaven klan Skryre—may they be poxed forever, espeshully that wicked feend Heskit Wan Eye—plan to attak the Colledge of Ingineering this nite during the dark of the moon. They wish to steel your secrets for their own nefare-i-us porpoises. You must stop them or they will be wan step closer to conquering the surface world,
Yoor frend.
Felix handed the letter to Gotrek. The Trollslayer read it and crumpled it up in one brawny fist. He snorted derisively. “A trap, manling!”
“Maybe—but if so, why not simply lure us here and attack us?”
“Who can tell how the rats’ minds work?”
“Maybe not all skaven are hostile. Maybe some of them want to help us.”
“Maybe my grandmother was an elf.”
“All right. Maybe one faction has a grudge against another faction and want us to settle it for them?”
“Why not settle it themselves?”
“I don’t know. I’m just thinking aloud. Tonight is the Feast of Verena. There will only be a few people in the college. All the others will be at the Countess Emmanuelle’s Feast for the Guild. Perhaps we should warn the watch.”
“And tell them what, manling? That a skaven sent us a note warning us his brother was going to burgle the Elector Countess’s special arsenal. Perhaps you’ve forgotten what happened the last time we tried to warn anybody about the skaven.”
“So you’re saying we should do nothing?”
“I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m saying that we should look into this ourselves and not count on getting any help from anyone else.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
“If it is, it is. A lot of skaven will die.”
“So might we.”
“Then it will be a heroic death.”
“We’d best get back to the Blind Pig first. Heinz will be wondering where we’ve got to.”
“You delivered the note as instructed?” Grey Seer Thanquol asked.
“Yes! Yes, most ingenuous of masters,” Lurk said.
“Good. You are dismissed. Hold yourself ready for further instructions. If anyone asks you what you were doing on the surface, tel
l them you were spying on the dwarf in preparation for killing him. In a way, it will be the truth.”
“Yes, yes, cleverest of councillors.”
Thanquol rubbed his paws together with glee. He did not doubt that the stupid dwarf and the hairless ape would fall into his cunningly woven trap. His beautifully composed and lovingly crafted message would see to that. Now all he had to do was wait and make sure that, whatever happened, Heskit’s warriors failed in their task. And he knew just the way to do that.
Heskit surveyed his corps of warp engineers with pride. He watched a team of warpfire throwers check their bulky and dangerous weapon, showing all the care of well-trained skaven engineers. The smaller of the two lovingly banged the firebarrel with a spanner to make sure it was full, while the other kept the dangerous nozzle pointed at the ceiling most of the time, in case of accidents.
Bands of sweating slaves rested for a moment, their breath coming in gasps, their tongues lolling out after long exertion. They had laboured long and lovingly to prepare the way for this night’s work. They had spent many hours luring the sewer watch away from this place, and days working with muffled picks to finish these structures. Now the ramps were all in place, and they were ready to breach the surface and swarm out through the manburrow.
Heskit inspected their work with a well-trained professional eye. During his apprenticeships, he had overseen the construction of scaffolding around the great skaven warships. Scaffolding that almost never collapsed killing those upon it, Heskit thought with pride. It had been the wonder of his burrow. Well, after tonight, his fellow engineers would have even more to wonder about. He would surpass Mekrit’s invention of the farsqueaker, and do more to advance the skaven cause than Ik had done with his invention of the portable tormenting machine. After tonight he would possess all the proudest secrets of the race of man. And then he would improve them in a thousand ways.
Heskit knew that he had picked his time well. Today was the Feast of Verena. The human guards were but a skeleton watch compared to their usual numbers, and doubtless were all drunk. Even now Clan Eshin assassins were moving above, picking off the few sentries which remained on duty. Soon it would be time to go forward with the plan.
A Poison Wind globadier hurried past, his face obscured by his metallic gas-mask. Only the globadier’s nervous darting eyes were visible through the quartz lenses. He clasped his glass sphere of chemical death to his chest, protecting it against accidents the way a mother bird might protect a precious egg.
Heskit’s chronometer chimed thirteen times. He tugged its chain and pulled the ornate brass device out of his fob pocket. He held it to his ear, and was rewarded by the sound of loud ticking from the lovingly crafted mechanism within. He flicked the chronometer open and glanced at the face. It showed a little running skaven. Its feet moved back and forth every heartbeat. Its long tail pointed to the thirteenth hour, and so did the short stabbing sword it clutched. It was exactly thirteen o’ clock, to the hour, to the minute. Heskit turned and gave the sign for the operation to begin.
Felix looked at the outside of the new College of Engineering. It was a most impressive building, more like a fortress than any University College he had ever been in. The tall, broad towers at each corner would have been more at home on a castle than on a place of study. All the windows at ground level were barred. There was only one way in, through a massive archway, large enough for a horse-drawn carriage.
A soft thud behind him told him that Gotrek had arrived and most likely fallen into one of the flower beds. He heard the dwarf curse in his harsh, guttural tongue.
“Best be quiet!” Felix whispered. “We really should not be here.”
It was true. Only authorised members of the Guild of Engineers and Mechanics, their apprentices and members of the Imperial military were allowed into this highly secret place, on pain of death or at least a long stay in the dungeons of the Countess Emmanuelle’s infamous prison.
“The sentries are all too drunk to notice anything, manling. It’s a disgrace but it’s what you expect from humans.”
Felix reached up and tugged his new cloak off the low wall. It was ripped where the broken glass and nails set on top of the wall had pierced it. Still, Felix thought sourly, better a ripped cloak than a ripped hand. He glanced over at the sentry boxes beside the locked iron gates and was forced to agree with Gotrek. It was a disgrace.
One of the sentries was so drunk that he was simply lying asleep beside his post. Then Felix saw that there was something odd in the man’s posture and he stepped over cautiously to have a look. As he did so, he saw more recumbent figures. Was it possible that all of the sentries were drunk and asleep? He crept up for a closer look, then ripped his sword from its scabbard.
The sentries were not drunk. They were dead. Each lay in a pool of blood. One of them still had a knife sticking from his back. Felix bent and examined it and immediately recognised the workmanship from his own encounter with the skaven assassins at the Blind Pig.
“It looks like our friend was telling the truth,” he said to Gotrek, who had joined him.
“Then let us go take a look inside.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Heskit stalked the corridors of the college, surrounded by his bodyguards. In a way this was a comforting place for him. He was surrounded by familiar things: forges and benches and lathes and braces, and all the tools familiar to engineers the world over, whatever their race. The smell of charcoal and metal wafted through the place on the night breeze. Skaven seethed through the corridors like an invading army, ransacking the place as they went. He hoped that his lackey, Squiksquik, had managed to get into position in the central armouries, otherwise all the choicest of loot would have vanished.
To his right, he could see a rack of long muskets of a novel design. He immediately rushed over and pulled one down. It had the half-complete look of a new prototype. Its barrel was bound with copper wire, and a small telescope had been mounted above it. Nothing to get excited about, Heskit thought, simply an inferior attempt at the jezzails his own bodyguard already carried. Without access to warpstone for their powder mixes, the humans would never be able to get the same range and hitting power. He hoped that the other stuff here was more worthy of his consideration, or it was going to be a wasted night.
“Most perspicuous of lords, this way,” he heard Squiksquik call. Heskit strode down the long hall and found himself in another machine shop. This was more like it, he thought, when he saw the round stubby mass of the organ gun. This was worth having. He strode over and ran his paws over the cold metal of one of the barrels. Yes, indeed, this was worth having.
He looked down and saw the mechanism that would cause the barrels to rotate and the striker which ignited the fuses at the same time. Very clever! He wondered whether the tolerances of the metal could withstand the use of warpstone powder. Most likely not but then again, some of those new lead-warpstone alloys he had been experimenting with might just do the trick. He had not had any accidents with them since the last automated cannon had exploded and killed ten of his assistants.
“Quick! Quick! Take it!” he instructed Squiksquik. His lackey chittered a few commands and a party of Skryre slaves rushed forward. There was a slight squeaking as they wheeled the gun away. This did not bother Heskit. In fact, he found it quite relaxing.
He pushed on deeper into the halls, wondering what new toys he would find in this strange and exciting place.
Felix fumbled with the door handle. He had been half hoping to find it locked but it was already open, and he suspected he knew why. There was a very familiar smell in the air, a combined scent of musk and wet fur and sewer reek. No doubt about it, the skaven were here.
“Perhaps we should go and inform the watch,” he whispered to Gotrek.
“And tell them what? We just broke into your armoury and discovered some skaven there. We weren’t trying to steal anything, honestly. We just wanted to look. Being hung as a thief is not
my idea of a mighty doom, manling.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t have come here,” Felix muttered. He was already regretting that he had agreed to this hare-brained scheme. In the heat of the moment, carried along by the momentum of events, it had seemed to possess a certain logic, but now he could see that it was nothing but pure madness. They were in a place where they had no business being, and most likely surrounded by fierce skaven warriors. By the time any help could get to them, they would in all probability be dead, and even in the unlikely event they survived until help came, their rescuers would, as Gotrek had suggested, most likely hang them as spies. How did he get himself into these situations, Felix wondered?
“Are you going to stand there all night—or are you going to open that door?”
Half expecting to feel a blade being thrust into his face, Felix slowly and cautiously pushed the door open. Ahead of him a long corridor loomed. It was dark save for the light that filtered in from outside. Felix wished that he had a lantern with him. There must be lights here, he thought—then realised that all they would do was draw unwelcome attention.
Gotrek pushed past and stomped off down the corridor, massive axe held ready to deal death. There was nothing for it but to follow him. Felix did not relish the prospect of being left in this vast and echoing building on his own.
“There is a problem, most decisive and responsible of leaders,” Squiksquik said quietly. Heskit turned and glared at his lieutenant petulantly.
“Problem? What problem could there be, Squiksquik? Explain! Quick! Quick!”