He had sensed their murderous rage in the air and done everything in his power to avoid being the focus of it. He had heard all about the gory details of Clan Skryre’s Excruciation Engines, and many times he had shuddered at the tale of how Grottle liked to consume his enemies’ entrails before their very eyes while they still lived.
In order to avoid this fate, he had wracked his mind for every little detail he could remember, to convince them that he was co-operating thoroughly. The prospect of immediate painful death overcame any reluctance caused by the thought of what Grey Seer Thanquol might do to him in the future. And, in one small, cunning and deeply hidden part of Lurk’s mind, it occurred to him that if these three could be made angry enough to take vengeance on Grey Seer Thanquol, then Thanquol would be too dead to take any revenge on him in turn.
He was pretty sure now that he had succeeded. Heskit One Eye had gnawed his own tail in rage as Lurk explained how the grey seer had sent explicit details to their enemies concerning Clan Skryre’s plan to invade the College of Engineering. He had even fabricated a few convincing details of how the grey seer had laughed and gloated about how his stupid enemies would soon fall into his trap. Well, thought Lurk, Thanquol most likely had.
Izak Grottle had become so outraged he even spluttered out a mouthful of food when Lurk explained how Thanquol had told him that the fat fool would never suspect his idiotic plan to smuggle a secret weapon into the city on a converted barge would be betrayed by Thanquol’s cunning.
Vilebroth Null called down the curse of the Horned Rat on his rival when Lurk told him how Thanquol, jealous of the favour their god had shown the abbot, decided to remove a dangerous rival by revealing the whereabouts of his secret lair in the human cemetery to his two most trusty agents on the surface, Gurnisson and Jaeger.
“Are you certain the grey seer is in league with those two?” Grottle demanded. “Absolutely, definitely certain?”
“Of course, mightiest of Moulders. He forced me, on pain of hideous death, to deliver notes to them and they always responded to his instructions, did they not? I can only conclude that either they are in Grey Seer Thanquol’s pay or—”
“Or what?” Vilebroth Null burbled.
“No. The thought is too hideous. No true skaven would stoop to—”
“Stoop to what? To what?”
“Or he is in their pay!” Lurk said, amazed by his own powers of invention. This set off another burst of outraged chittering.
“No! No! Impossible,” Heskit One Eye said. “Thanquol is a grey seer. He would never submit to taking orders from any but another skaven. The thought is ludicrous.”
“And yet…” Vilebroth Null said.
“And yet? And yet?” Izak Grottle said.
“And yet it is indisputable that Grey Seer Thanquol had been in touch with the surface dwellers, and had betrayed our plans to them!” Null said. “How else could they have got wind of our schemes? How else could such magnificently cunning plans have failed?”
“Are you seriously suggesting that Grey Seer Thanquol is a traitor to the skaven cause? Seriously?” Izak Grottle asked, showing his terrifyingly huge fangs in a great snarl.
“It’s possible,” Lurk dared to add.
“All too possible, I fear,” Heskit One Eye said. “It is the only explanation for why the grey seer would interfere with our mighty machinations, when all we were attempting to do was further the skaven cause.”
“And yet the human and the dwarf are his enemies too. By all accounts they almost killed him in the lair of the human, von Halstadt.”
“And he sent the gutter runners against them,” Vilebroth Null added. “That was a true contract. Chang Squik still spits when he thinks of his failure.”
“What if Grey Seer Thanquol is cunning enough to use his enemies against us?” Heskit One Eye said excitedly. “He pits them against us. He cannot lose! He thwarts a rival or we kill his sworn enemies for him.”
There was a moment of silence in the chamber, and Lurk knew that whatever else his enemies thought of the grey seer, they had suddenly gained enormous respect for his cunning. On consideration, he had to admit that he had too. Whatever flaws he might possess, it was hard to dispute that Grey Seer Thanquol was possessed of all the qualities of a truly great skaven.
“Even so, even allowing that Grey Seer Thanquol possesses devilish cunning, he has still betrayed us to the enemy! That is beyond dispute. He has revealed our hidden plans, and the hidden plans of our great clans to the enemy,” Izak Grottle said. “Grey Seer Thanquol is a traitor and an enemy of all our peoples.”
“I agree,” Heskit said. “A traitor he most certainly is. And more—he is our personal enemy. He has acted against us all once and almost caused our deaths. Perhaps he will be more successful with his next attempt.”
All three of them shivered when they thought of the daemonically clever intelligence which worked against them. Lurk could see the fear written on their faces, and in the nervous twitching of their whiskers.
“I humbly suggest,” Null said, “that it might be the will of the Horned Rat that we remove Grey Seer Thanquol from his command of the army, and send him to make his explanations to the Council of Thirteen.”
“I heartily agree with your sentiments. Heartily!” Izak Grottle said. “But how are we to accomplish this? The traitor remains in command of almost five thousand Clan Skab warriors while our own forces are but a shadow of what they once were.”
“Doubtless as the traitor planned,” Heskit said.
“Doubtless,” the other two agreed simultaneously.
“There is always assassination,” Heskit suggested.
“Possibly! Possibly!” Grottle said. “But who would take the chance that the Eshin might be deluded enough to report the request for such a thing to the traitor himself?”
“We could do it ourselves,” Vilebroth Null said.
“Grey Seer Thanquol, despite his known treachery, is a lamentably powerful sorcerer,” Heskit One Eye said. “We might fail and we might die!”
All three shuddered and then, as one, all three pairs of eyes turned on Lurk. He quivered to the soles of his paws, for he knew what they were thinking.
“No! No!” he said.
“No?” Heskit One Eye said menacingly, reaching for the butt of his pistol.
“No?” Izak Grottle rumbled hungrily, and licked his lips.
“No?” Vilebroth Null said, hawking a huge lump of green phlegm onto the floor beside Lurk’s feet where it bubbled corruptly.
“No! No! Most merciful of masters, I am but a lowly skaven. I possess not your mighty intellects and awesome powers. Any of you might expect to best Grey Seer Thanquol in combat or cunning, but not I.”
“Then why should we preserve your life?” Izak Grottle said silkily. “Why? Speak! Quick! Quick! I am hungry.”
“Because… because…” Lurk floundered around frantically seeking a path out of this hideous maze. He cursed the day he had ever encountered Grey Seer Thanquol or bore his messages to the human and the dwarf. Wait! That might be the answer. Perhaps in the grey seer’s own great example was the solution to his problem. “Because… because there is a better way!”
“Is there?”
“Yes. Yes. One that holds fewer risks and is more certain!”
“You interest me, Lurk Snitchtongue,” Izak Grottle said. “What is there that you can see that we cannot?”
“Yes! Yes! Go on! Explain!” Vilebroth Null said in his hideous bubbling voice.
“You could use the grey seer’s own methods against him!”
“What?”
“He has used Jaeger and Gurnisson against you. Why not use them against him?”
There was another pause while the three great skaven exchanged glances.
“They are certainly formidable,” Vilebroth Null said. “For non-skaven.”
“Perhaps! Perhaps they could do it!” chittered Heskit One Eye.
“Do you think so? They are not skaven and Thanq
uol is a grey seer. A grey seer!” Izak Grottle said and banged his fist on the table for emphasis.
“With every humble respect,” Vilebroth Null said, “you have not encountered this pair. Heskit of Skryre and I have. A more wicked and dangerous set of opponents it is hard to imagine. Even I, with all my magical powers, barely eluded them.”
“They slaughtered well over half of my company,” Heskit said, leaving out his own part in the massacre.
“I defer to your greater experience,” Grottle said. “But the question remains: how will we get them to go after Grey Seer Thanquol?”
“A letter!” Lurk suggested, carried away by the sheer pleasure of plotting.
“Yes! Yes! A letter,” Vilebroth Null said.
“It is fitting that Grey Seer Thanquol should be undone by the device by which he sought to undo us.”
“But where and how will our two assassins get their chance at him?”
“We must wait for the opportunity to arise,” Null said.
“And how will we write this letter?” Grottle asked. “I for one have no knowledge of these primitive human runes.”
“I have some knowledge of the human script,” Heskit One Eye said almost apologetically. “I need it for reading human schematics.”
“We must use the exact paper and pen that the grey seer uses,” Grottle said.
“Our friend Lurk can acquire those,” Vilebroth Null said, smiling horribly to reveal rotting teeth.
“And he can deliver the message too, in his usual way,” Heskit said smugly.
“It appears that I won’t be eating you today then, Lurk Snitchtongue,” Izak Grottle said “We need you alive. Of course, should you attempt to betray us…”
“That will change,” Heskit finished.
Lurk did not know whether to be glad or sorry. He appeared to have prolonged his life but only at the risk of incurring Grey Seer Thanquol’s wrath. How did he get himself into these things?
“We’re leaving the city,” Elissa said challengingly. She glared up at Felix as if expecting him to contradict her. “Hans and I. We have decided to go.”
“I don’t blame you,” Felix said. “It’s a bad place to be and it’s going to get worse.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
Felix looked around at the room they had shared during their brief time together. It seemed small and empty, and soon it would seem emptier still, once she had gone. Was there anything more to say? He really could not blame her for wanting to leave and, to be honest, he could see no real future for them together. So why did it still hurt? Why did he have this feeling of hollowness within his chest? Why did he feel this urge to ask her to stay?
“You’re going with Hans?” he asked, just to hear some words. She looked at him coldly and crossed her arms together under her breasts defensively.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re not going to try and stop us, are you?”
She seemed almost to want him to say yes, he thought. “It’s not very safe outside the city right now,” he said.
“We’re only going back to our village. It’s less than a morning’s walk.”
“Will they take you? I hear that people from the city are being stoned and shot with arrows if they go near villages and farms. In case they have the plague.”
“We’ll survive,” she said, but she sounded less sure of herself. “Anyway, it can’t be worse than it is here, with the plague and the gangs and the rats and all. At least back in the village they know us.”
“They certainly know Hans. I thought you said the elders hated him.”
“You would cast that up, wouldn’t you? They’ll take us back. I’ll tell them we’re going to be married. They’ll understand.”
“Are you? Going to be married, I mean.”
“I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“Oh Felix, what else am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life being pawed by strangers in bars? Going about with footloose mercenaries? It’s not what I want. I want to go home.”
“You need any money?” he asked.
Suddenly she looked a little shifty. “No,” she said. “I’d best be going. Hans is waiting.”
“Be careful,” he said, and meant it. “It’s not a safe city out there.”
“You should know,” she said. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him passionately on the mouth. Just as he was about to take her in his arms, she broke free and made for the door.
“You look after yourself now,” she said, and he thought he detected a glimmer of tears in the corner of her eyes. Then she was gone.
It was only afterwards, when he checked the loose floorboard, that he discovered the purse of money Otto had given him was gone. He lay on the bed, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. Well, he thought, let her have the money. The chances were he would not live long enough to spend it himself.
Grey Seer Thanquol glanced around the chamber at the assembled skaven captains. His burning gaze seemed to defy anyone to speak out. No one did.
Lurk counted the commanders present. All of the Clan Skab leaders were here, plus Izak Grottle, Vilebroth Null and Heskit One Eye. Chang Squik, the Clan Eshin assassin, skulked in one corner, glaring occasionally at Lurk with hate-filled eyes. He had not forgotten what Lurk had said about him on that long-ago day when the grey seer had humiliated them both in front of the whole army.
The grey seer threw his arms wide. Trails of fire followed his paws as he gathered magical power. That got everyone in the room’s attention, Lurk thought. Suddenly all eyes were riveted on Thanquol as if, with a single gesture, he might choose to annihilate anyone who did not look at him. That was certainly a possibility, Lurk thought. If he recognised the signs correctly, the grey seer had consumed an awful lot of warpstone powder.
Lurk shivered and continued to chew on the foul herbs that Vilebroth Null had given him to abate the plague. He fought down the urge to check within his breastplate and make sure the parchment and quill he had stolen from Thanquol’s private stock were not sliding into view. He knew that nothing would draw attention to him quicker. He reassured himself that they were there. He could feel the nib of the pen poking into the tender fur beneath his armpit.
“Tonight is the night you have all been waiting for!” Thanquol said. “Tonight we will smash-crush the humans once and for all. Tonight we will invade the city and enslave all the occupants. Tonight we will strike a blow for the Under Empire and the skaven nation that will long be remembered!”
Thanquol paused impressively and glanced around the room once more, as if waiting for an interruption. No one dared to speak, but Lurk saw Null, One Eye and Grottle exchange glances, before looking at him. He hoped for all their sakes that the grey seer had not noticed. He glanced nervously at Thanquol, but fortunately the grey seer seemed to be caught up in the flow of his own mad eloquence.
“We will grind the humans beneath the iron paw of our massed skaven army. We will carry them off into inevitable slavery. Their wealth will be ours. Their city will be ours. Their souls will be offered screaming to the Horned Rat.”
Thanquol paused once more and Izak Grottle found the courage to ask the question that Lurk could tell had been on everyone’s mind.
“And how is this to be accomplished, great leader?”
“How? How indeed! By a plan at once simple and yet staggeringly cunning. By a use of force and sorcery which will be talked about down the ages. By overwhelming ferocity and superior skaven technology. By—”
“By what precise means, Grey Seer Thanquol?” Vilebroth Null interrupted. “I humbly suggest that, like every skaven out of runt-hood, we are all familiar with the general methods of attack.”
For a moment Lurk could tell that Thanquol was weighing up the pros and cons of blasting the plague monk into his component atoms for his insolence. He was glad when prudent skaven caution won out and the grey seer continued to speak.
“I was just coming to that, as you would have
discovered had you not interrupted me. We will attack through the sewers. Each of you will lead your assigned force to a point marked on the map.” With this, the grey seer indicated the complex mass of symbols inscribed on the large sheet of parchment hanging behind him. Many of the assembled leaders leaned forward to see where they would be sent.
“I do not see your rune on this plan,” Heskit One Eye said. “What will you be doing, grey seer?”
Thanquol glared at him with burning red eyes. “I will be where you would expect your leader to be, performing the most difficult and dangerous of tasks.”
Silence fell over the assembled skaven leaders. This was not in point of fact where they would have expected their leader to be at all. They would expect him to be safely in the rear directing operations. The warpstone Thanquol had consumed appeared to make him talkative. He spoke on, into the silence.
“I will be leading the crowning attack. I will lead the assault by our stormvermin which will seize the palace of the breeder, Emmanuelle, and capture all of the city’s rulers. Tonight they are having a ball, one of their purposeless social events. I will fall on them by surprise and have them all in my paw. Leaderless, the humans will surely fall to our attack.”
There were more murmurings from the assembled skaven. It was a good plan, and a bold one. Lurk wondered if any of the others saw what he saw. The grey seer had chosen his place in the assault carefully. By managing this bold stroke, by capturing the human leaders, he would assure himself of the lion’s share of the glory. Further, it would undoubtedly be a lot safer attacking a bunch of humans and their breeders dressed for a ball than fighting massed troops in the city.
“Such a position is too dangerous for a leader of your great cunning,” Heskit One Eye said. “It would be a tragedy if the genius of Thanquol was to be lost to skavendom. To prevent such a tragedy, I will lead this assault. I will shoulder the terrible risks.”