“Our scuttling little friends have picked a good night for it,” Gotrek muttered, taking a swig from the flask of schnapps.
Felix studied the sky. He could see what the Slayer meant. The sky was cloudy and the greater moon was a sliver. The lesser moon was not visible at all.
“Smugglers’ moon,” Felix said.
“What?”
“My father used to call moons like this ‘smugglers’ moons’. I can see why. Dark. The excisemen would find it hard to see you on a night like this.”
“River patrols too,” Gotrek said. “Not that humans can see worth a snotling’s fart at night anyway.”
“I suppose,” Felix said, wanting to contradict the Slayer, but knowing that he was right in this case.
“Aye, well just be glad a dwarf was here, manling. Even though he has only one good eye.”
“Why?”
“Because there is your Black Ship! Look!”
Felix followed the dwarfs pointing finger and saw nothing. “You’ve had too much schnapps,” he said.
“Your people have yet to brew a draft that could get a dwarf drunk,” Gotrek said.
“Only legless…” Felix muttered.
“At least I’m not blind.”
“Just blind drunk.”
“I’m telling you there’s a ship there.” Felix squinted into the gloom and began to think the dwarf might be right. There was something large out there, a shadowy presence moving erratically in the deep water.
“I do believe you’re right,” Felix said. “I apologise most sincerely.”
“Save your breath,” the Slayer said. “There’s killing to be done.”
“Faster!” Felix said, standing on the prow of the skiff and keeping his eyes fixed on the shadowy shape ahead.
“I’m going as fast as I can, master,” the boatman said, poling with all the energy of an arthritic hedgehog. He was a hefty man, slow-moving and ponderous.
“A one-armed man could pole faster,” Gotrek said. “In fact, I’ll bet if I chopped off one of your arms, you could move quicker.”
Suddenly the boatman found a surge of new strength from somewhere and they picked up speed. Felix wasn’t sure whether to be glad or not. He was nervous about approaching the skaven ship in this small craft. He wished they had summoned the watch but the Slayer had become overcome with battle frenzy and insisted there was no time to waste. He assured Felix that the commotion they would soon be generating would attract the river patrols. Felix did not doubt that he was right.
As they came closer, he could see that it was a black ship all right, a huge grain barge painted all black and moving swiftly downriver. He wondered why the skaven had done this. Certainly black made the ship inconspicuous at night, but during the day the barge would be as noticeable as a hearse in a wedding parade. Maybe it had travelled downriver unpainted and they had disguised it this very evening. Maybe they had a concealed base somewhere within a night’s sailing upriver. Such a base could be quite some distance away, for a barge could cover a lot of water in one night, moving with the current as this one was.
Felix dismissed all such speculation as pointless. He knew he was only doing it to keep his mind occupied and distracted from fear of the coming encounter.
What were they up to on the barge, he wondered? If they weren’t skaven then they were the worst sailors he had ever seen. The barge now appeared to be drifting in a great half circle. He could hear a faint muffled drumbeat and the creaking and clashing of oars. It sounded like there was some difficulty in guiding the craft.
“It’s them, all right,” Gotrek said. “Skaven are even worse sailors than I’d heard.”
Felix could hear the distant squeaking calls of the skaven now, and knew the Slayer was correct. Unfortunately, the boatman had heard him too.
“Did you say ‘skaven’?” he asked, superstition and fear engraved across his fat, sweat-sheened face.
“No,” Felix said.
“Yes,” Gotrek said.
“I’m not going anywhere near a barge if there are Chaos-worshipping monsters on board!” the boatman declared.
“My friend was only joking,” Felix said.
“No I wasn’t,” Gotrek said.
The boatman stopped poling. Gotrek glared at him.
“I hate boats almost as much as I hate trees,” he said. “And I hate trees almost as much as I hate elves. And what I particularly hate are people who keep me on boats longer than I have to be on them, when there are monsters to slay and fighting to be done.”
The boatman had become very pale and very still, and Felix was almost sure that he could hear his teeth chatter.
Gotrek continued to rant: “You will pole this boat till we reach that rat-man barge or I will rip off your leg and beat you to death with it. Do I make myself clear?”
Felix had to concede that the sheer amount of menace the Slayer managed to get into his voice was impressive. The boatman certainly thought so.
“Perfectly,” he said, and began poling with redoubled speed.
As they approached the black barge, Felix saw a new problem. Their skiff was low in the water but the barge had high sides. On level ground, it would have been a simple climb, but on two moving vessels bobbing on water it was an entirely different proposition. He mentioned this to Gotrek. “Don’t worry,” the Slayer said. “I have a plan.”
“Now I am worried,” Felix muttered.
“What was that, manling?” The Slayer looked close to berserk rage.
“Nothing,” Felix said.
“Just grab that lantern and be ready to move when I tell you.”
The skiff drifted into contact with the ship. As it did so, Gotrek smashed his axe into the barge’s side. It bit deep and held there and the Slayer used it to pull himself up until he reached a porthole.
“Very stealthy,” Felix said sourly. “Why not give a hearty shout of welcome while you’re at it.”
Another smashing stroke saw Gotrek over the ship’s side. He stood there for a moment and then lowered the axe, blade first.
“Grab hold,” he roared. Felix leapt up and grabbed hold of the axe shaft with his right hand, while holding the lantern in the other. Gotrek raised the axe one-handed, lifting it up, apparently effortlessly, despite Felix’s weight and the uncomfortable angle. He swung the axe inwards over the ship’s side and brought Felix with it. Felix dropped to the deck, amazed by the awesome strength the dwarf had just displayed.
“Looks like we’re expected,” he said, nodding at the mass of skaven swarming up onto the deck.
“Good,” Gotrek said. “I need a bit of exercise.”
What was that, Skitch wondered? He had heard an almighty crash and the sound of wood splintering. Had those buffoons managed to crash the barge onto a sandbar again? He would not have put it past them. They had claimed to be experienced sailors and that crewing a human ship would be no problem. So far that had not proved the case.
If they jeopardised this mission, Izak Grottle would tear them all limb from limb and devour their entrails before their dying eyes, but such thoughts brought Skitch no consolation. He knew he would be the first course at the packmaster’s punishment feast.
When he heard the crew’s squeaks of alarm, Skitch knew it was even worse than running aground. They had been discovered by a human patrol. He cursed the bad luck which had enabled the humans to discover them. It must have been a million-to-one chance. Now he wished he had brought some rat-ogres after all. He had not done so, for fear that their roars and bellows would give away the ship’s position, but that did not seem to matter now.
Part of him wanted to squirt the musk of fear, but then again it was his responsibility to see to his charges. He raced from the cabin into the hold. All around him, massive rats thrashed in their cages, desperate to get free and to eat. Seeing the look of feral hunger in their eyes, Skitch was glad that he had doused himself in oil of swamptoad, a substance that he knew his creations found repellent.
Hearing the
sounds of terrible carnage from above, Skitch swiftly began to throw open the cages. The rats swarmed hungrily up the gangplanks, moving towards their living, breathing food.
Felix lashed out with the lantern. Its flame flared bright as it rushed through the air. The dazzled skaven before him leapt back, momentarily blinded. Felix took advantage of its confusion to stab it through the throat with his sword.
The deck was already slippery underfoot with blood and brains. The Slayer had left an awful trail of destruction behind him. His axe had reduced a dozen skaven to limbless corpses. The others were fleeing backwards or jumping over the side of the barge to avoid him. Felix moved along behind, killing those who sought to outflank the dwarf and putting the dying out of their misery.
His heart beat loudly within his chest. His sword’s hilt felt sweaty in his grip but he was not as afraid as he usually was in mortal combat. Compared to some of the fights he had been in, this one was relatively easy. Suspiciously so, in fact, considering there was supposed to be some terrible skaven weapon on board this vessel.
Not that the relative ease of the fight would make much difference, he told himself, springing aside to duck a knife cast by one of the skaven sailors, and lunging forward to take another rat-man through the heart. All it would take would be one lucky blow, and he would be just as dead as if a rat-ogre had torn him into little pieces.
Concentrate, he ordered himself—and then stopped in horror as the tide of furry forms started swarming up from the hold.
Skitch snuck up the stairway and peered out at a scene of terrible violence. A monstrous squat dwarf wielding a flailing great axe had killed half the crew and seemed intent on massacring the other half. In this he was assisted by a tall, blond-furred human who held a lantern in one hand and a wicked-looking blade in the other. All around, the killer rats gnawed at the bodies of dead and dying skaven.
Skitch froze on the spot and squirted the musk of fear. His paws locked on the last cage, in which frantic rats struggled to get away from the stink of the oil on his fur. Skitch recognised the pair who had invaded the ship. They had become something of a dark legend amongst the skaven besieging Nuln. This was the fearsome pair whom even the gutter runners had failed to slay, who had routed the warlocks of Skryre, whom it was said even Grey Seer Thanquol feared to meet again. They were formidable killers of skaven—and they were here, on this very barge!
Skitch was no warrior and he knew he could be of no aid to the skaven in the battle above. It was possible that even the killer rats would fail to overcome this seemingly invincible twosome. It was plainly his duty, then, to escape, carrying the last of the surviving rats, to preserve them for the future when they might be used again.
So thinking, he held the cage high above his head and leapt into the night-black waters.
Felix watched as more and more of the huge rats poured from the hold. There was a hunger and madness in their eyes which frightened him, and he wondered if these could be the skaven secret weapon. One large fierce brute threw itself at him. He felt the horrid scurry of its paws on his leg. He lashed out, sending the beast flying and stamped down, feeling the spine of another crack beneath the heel of his boot.
He looked around at Gotrek. The Slayer beheaded another of the skaven crew, sending a great fountain of black blood belching into the air. Before the skaven corpse hit the ground, more and more rats had swarmed over it.
Something dropped onto Felix from above. He felt paws scrabbling in his hair, and small sharp teeth nipping his ear. A foul animal stench filled his nostrils. He dropped the lantern and reached up, feeling muscles squirm beneath fur as he plucked the rat free. Fangs nipped at his fingers as he threw the thing over the side and into the river.
More and more rats dropped from above or pounced from the deck. He felt like he was in the centre of a swirling storm of fur. Gotrek stamped and hacked and kicked but he was in the same position. The rats were too numerous and too fierce to overcome. If they stayed they would die a horrible death by a thousand bites.
“Not a death for a Slayer, I would say!” Felix shouted.
“Torch this blasted floating rats’ nest!”
“What?”
“Torch it and let’s begone!”
Felix looked around and saw the lantern. He picked it up and threw it with all his force onto the deck. Burning oil spilled everywhere. Felix had often heard his father say what a danger fire was on a ship. They were, after all, built of wood and sealed with inflammable pitch. Felix had never thought he would be grateful for that fact, but he certainly was now. Flames started to flicker and dance all around him.
The smell of burning fur and flesh reached his nostrils. Squeaking rats scurried everywhere, their fur smouldering and blazing as they tried to escape the hot flames. Some leapt overboard and plummeted into the water like small living meteors. Others continued their attack with redoubled fury, as if determined to drag something else down in death with him.
Felix decided that this was their cue to depart.
“Time to go!” he shouted. A backwash of heat blazed towards him, singeing his hair and eyebrows.
“Aye, manling, I think you are right.”
Felix sheathed his sword, turned and vaulted over the side. He tumbled into the water, rats falling all around him. After the heat of the burning ship it was almost a relief to feel the shock of cold dark water closing over his head. He kicked out and up and his head broke the surface.
He could see that there were boats all around, come to look at the fire. Fighting the weight of his scabbard, he struck out for the nearest vessel.
Sopping wet, Felix sat glumly on the wharf and kept his eyes peeled. So far there was no sign of the Slayer. He had not seen Gotrek since he plunged into the water. He wondered if the dwarf could swim. Even if he could, was it not possible that he had drowned trying to hold on to his precious axe? It would not exactly have been the glorious death he craved.
His clothes were wet and his teeth were starting to chatter but still he sat, wishing that he had some of the schnapps Gotrek had been swigging earlier. Felix wondered about the skaven weapon that was meant to have been on board the Black Ship. He knew now that he would never find out what it was. The barge was a burned-out hulk resting on the bottom of the river. The boatmen who had picked him up had held their position in mid-river and watched it burn, before accepting a handful of silver in payment for carrying Felix to the shore.
There was a wet, slapping sound nearby Felix looked warily to his right. One of the huge, hungry rats had made it off the ship then. It clambered up the side of the ladder from the landing stage, shook its fur dry like it was a dog and trotted off up the wharf. Felix watched it go.
Briefly Felix considered finding the boatmen again and going out to search the river for the Slayer. He knew it would be a futile effort; the Reik was too wide and the current too strong. If the Slayer had drowned, doubtless his corpse would eventually be recovered and put on display at the Old Bridge, waiting with all the others the river had taken for someone to come and claim it. Felix could check there tomorrow.
He stood up wearily from the mooring post on which he sat and prepared for the long trudge home. As he did so, he caught sight of a familiar figure, berating an equally familiar boatman who was poling towards the landing stage. Felix waved a welcome.
“Current carried me down river,” Gotrek called, hauling himself up onto the wharf. “Ran into our old friend here. Took most of the night to get back.”
“Going against the current,” the weary boatman said. He looked as tired as any man Felix had ever seen, and deeply scared too. Felix could guess the nature of the threats which Gotrek had used to motivate him.
“Well,” he said, “let’s get back to the Pig and have some beer. I think we’ve earned it.”
“Forgive me if I don’t join you,” the boatman said. “And… and there’s the small matter of my fee.”
Cold, wet and bedraggled, Skitch finally scuttled into the Underways. It ha
d been a truly dreadful night. He had swum through the chilly waters carrying the last cage of rats. After that, he had scuttled along the riverbanks until he found a sewer outflow, and then he had spent the rest of the night wandering through the tunnels until he had found the familiar scent of skaven. Dodging human patrols in the dark, the trail had finally led him here.
He was proud of himself. He had managed a long and difficult trek. He had lost his bifocals and could barely see but he had made it, and he had managed to preserve a cage full of his precious specimens. Better yet, in the cage were several pregnant females so he would easily be able to start all over again. The rats were healthy too. Even now they were showing signs of agitation. Skitch realised it was because they could smell food. He was close to the storage chambers where the supplies for the great invasion force were kept.
Now, he thought, all he needed was a cover story to tell the sentries to explain his business. Easy enough; he would just say that he was bringing food for Izak Grottle. Anybody who knew the packmaster would believe that.
The thought made him titter. He was still tittering when his near-blind eyes failed to pick out the stone in front of his feet and he tripped, sprawling clumsily into the dirt. The cage rolled free from his grip. The battered lock clicked and it sprang open. The killer rats bounded forth and raced off in the direction of the skaven stores.
Skitch groaned. He knew what the consequences of that were going to be. Soon it would not be just Izak Grottle who was hungry.