CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
Duffskul hiccupped and waddled along the corridor to Skarsnik’s personal chambers in the Howlpeak. He hummed to himself as he went, trailing clouds of stinking shroomsmoke behind him. He was wearing his best wizarding hat – a once very bright yellow, now so grubby it was almost green – and a collection of charms that hummed with Waaagh! magic.
The little big ’uns and moonhats by Skarsnik’s chambers scrambled over themselves to open the doors.
‘A fine welcome, oh yus. You got the right respects for your betters, grotty boys,’ he said. They simpered gratefully at his praise.
In the corridor it was freezing; the constant winds whistling through the windows gave the mountain its goblin name and its hurty-bit biting temperatures. In Skarsnik’s rooms it was a different matter, swelteringly hot from the fire blazing in the hearth. Duffskul brought in a gust of sharp-smelling winter with him, but it was swiftly defeated, carried off by the vapours steaming from his robes in the sudden heat.
‘Duffskul, me old mate,’ said Skarsnik, looking up from his work. As usual papers tottered around him, and on many other desks too, to which he flitted as he worked. He wrinkled his eyes, holding a parchment at arm’s length.
‘Too much reading’s bad for you, boss, oh yus.’ Duffskul kicked old bones, rags and bottles out of the way as he made his way over to a sturdy dwarf chair near the fire. Gobbla lay asleep on the filthy rug before the flames, whiffling gently in his sleep.
‘Someone’s got to keep these zogging idiots in line,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Can’t do it if you’s not organised…’ His words trailed away as he deciphered whatever it was that he had written there.
‘I always said you was a funny little runt. Done us proud you have wiv all that thinking there in the old brain box.’ Duffskul rubbed his hands together in front of the fire and sighed contentedly. His heated robes gave off the most noxious smell. ‘Ooh, that’s nice, ooh, that’s very nice!’ He smacked his lips and pulled out his gourd of fungus beer. He sloshed it around disappointedly. ‘If only I had a little drinky to help meself really enjoy it.’
Skarsnik had gone back to his work, the enormous griffin quill in his hand scratching over his parchment.
‘Wanna drink? Help yourself,’ he said distractedly.
Duffskul didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed up the nearest bottle and uncorked it. ‘You is running low.’
‘And you is going to have to brew up a lot more fungus beer. And preferably stuff that don’t taste of old sock!’ said Skarsnik. ‘Precious few stunty barrels to nick, and none of the grapey goodstuff coming out the west these days, so don’t you go gulping it all. I needs me drinks to thinks,’ he said, and giggled quietly.
Duffskul guzzled anyway, glugging priceless Bretonnian wine right from the bottle until it had nearly all gone. ‘Ahh! Now that is better. Ooh, that is a lot better.’
‘Right. Now you is all nice and comfy, why don’t you tell me what you is doing here,’ said Skarsnik, finally looking up and laying down his quill. ‘I am a very busy goblin.’
‘Ain’t you just, ain’t you!’ giggled Duffskul.
‘Get to the point, you mad old git,’ said Skarsnik affectionately. Duffskul had been with him right from the very start, and had stuck with him when others had wandered off, turned traitor or inconsiderately died.
‘Well, we has questioned the ratty scouts.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And we has kept careful watch on their doings and all that, oh yus.’
‘Tolly’s boys?’
‘Best sneaks in the peaks,’ said Duffskul. ‘And I has been trying to speak with da Twin Gods! Gork and Mork, what you has visited and who is the mightiest greenies of them all.’
‘Right. And? Are the ratboys going to attack, then? They’ve got them stunties well bottled up. Only a matter of time before they make their move on me. When and where, that’s what I want to know, when and where.’
‘And you shall know, king of the mountains!’ Duffskul swivelled in the armchair, and leaned on its torn, overstuffed arm. ‘The rats are going to try and drive us out for good, starting with orctown in the old stunty city and da camps outside the walls.’
‘Right,’ said Skarsnik, who had expected as much. ‘East Gate?’
‘Drilla’s boys went to kick out the stunties yesterday. Empty. Well, it was – full of black orcs now.’
‘Hmm.’ Skarsnik drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Well, let’s ambush the little furry bleeders.’
‘They’ll be expecting that,’ said Duffskul.
‘Course they will! That Queek’s not an idiot, even if he is as mad as snot on one of your better madcap brews. But what he’s not gonna be expecting is a special ambush, and so I’s going to make it a very special ambush. He’ll definitely not expect that!’
‘Oh no, oh yus,’ said Duffskul.
‘The Waaagh!’s building, Duffskul, greenies coming to me from left right and centre.’ He paused, and looked down at his lists, running ink-stained fingers down the parchment. ‘I reckon I should meet with this Snaggla Grobspit. Drilla’s lads have already come over. Time to take that cheese-stealing maniac to task, don’t you fink?’
‘Oh yes, boss! Oh yes. Oh yus,’ said Duffskul, his eyes spinning madly in his face. ‘And I’ve got a cracking idea meself.’
‘Have you now?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Right then, tell me all about it, and we’ll figure out exactly what we is going to do…’
The paired skaven warpsteam engines at the gates of the Hall of a Thousand Pillars chuffed madly, whistling as they vented pressure to equalise their efforts. Masked Clan Skryre engineers looked out from the haphazardly armoured embrasures holding their machines, then scuttled back to their charges, fiddling with knobs and tossing levers. Satisfied that their pistons were synchronised, the tinker-rats blew whistles at one another, then set about yanking more levers into the correct positions to open the doors. The tone of the engine’s voices deepened as their gearing wheels thunked into position, engaging with the massive cogs that worked the door mechanisms. Huge gear chains twanged as they came under tension. Machinery hidden high in the roof of the Hall of a Thousand Pillars rattled, and the great gates of the underhalls of Karak Eight Peaks creaked open.
The skaven massed behind the doors shrank back in terror of the sunlight. Few of them had ever been overground, and the prospect of a world without a roof sent a chitter of nervousness through their ranks.
‘Hold-hold!’ their masters ordered, cracking whips and punching the most timid.
The gates crushed rubble and other detritus to powder as they opened. Ponderous but unstoppable, they were one hundred feet tall. The tired sun picked out their decoration as they swung inwards, the runes and clan marks of the beard-things that made them still fresh as the day they had been carved.
‘Forward!’
The first claws of skaven scurry-marched up the ramp leading into the surface city.
All around Karak Eight Peaks, skaven emerged blinking and terrified into the sunlight, pale though it had been made by the choking ejecta of the world’s volcanoes and the endless, uncanny storm that wracked the skies. At the fore of the warriors emerging from the Hall of a Thousand Pillars into the surface city went Ikk Hackflay, a rising star in Queek’s entourage. He was a logical replacement for Thaxx and Skrikk, whose heads now graced the Grand Warlord’s trophy room.
From the skaven-held mountains, more warriors emerged. Four of Queek’s five clawpacks. Reduced by months of war, they still numbered in the tens of thousands. Over one hundred thousand warriors marched forth. Every column flinched as it walked out into the day, and not just for the frightening lack of a ceiling. They all expected to be ambushed as they came out, no matter how well hidden or supposedly secret their burrows were.
They were not ambushed. The immediate fighting they had planned for never came. They surfaced instead to a ghost town. The thickly packed orc-shacks and tents in the city were empty, as were the encampments in the weed-choked farmland beyond the city walls.
Queek surveyed all this impatiently from the top of part of the rubble slope created by the collapse of Karag Nar.
‘Careful, Queek,’ said Krug from his trophy rack. ‘He’s a wily one, that Skarsnik.’
‘What news?’ he said to his gathered lieutenants. ‘Grotoose?’
‘Nothing, great Queek.’
‘The fifth clawpack has found not one of the green-things, exulted Queek,’ fawned Kranskritt. Queek gave him a hard look. He still did not trust the grey seer. Only Lurklox’s insistence kept the wizard alive.
Skrak reported the same, as did Gnarlfang and Ikk Hackflay, who had been furiously stomping from place to place in search of something to kill.
‘There is no one here,’ said Gritch, his assassin’s voice pitched just over the wind soughing through the dry winter grasses. There had been precious little snow that year, though it was bitingly cold. ‘The siege camp is empty. They have abandoned their attack on the gates. There is a new idol in the main square of the beard-thing city. Stone and iron, it stares-glares with skull-eyes at dwarf-thing fort-place.’
‘So good your scouts are. Well done! So skilled to find big stone giant, but not little things,’ Queek said. ‘What about scouts sent to the mountain halls and peaks? Where is the Skarsnik-thing, where are his armies?’
‘Many scouts not scurry back, great Queek,’ said Gritch, bowing low.
‘Queek very impressed.’
Gritch began to protest, but Queek cut him off. ‘Big-meat ogre-things?’ said Queek.
‘Gone with the gold,’ said Skrak.
‘Fools,’ said Queek. ‘Why they so obsessed? Gold soft, useless.’ He held up his sword and looked up its length. ‘Not hard-sharp like steel. They like to eat, more than a skaven gripped by the black hunger.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they eat it.’
‘Skarsnik has gone then,’ said Grotoose. ‘He has fled the wrath of mighty Queek!’
Queek rounded on him, raising Dwarf Gouger. ‘Oh no, do not be mistaken. Little imp watches, little imp waits to see what we will do. Little imp thinks he will beat Queek in very-very cunning-clever trap. But little imp will not trap Queek.’
‘Will he attack in the day?’
‘Skaven love-like the night. We scurry under the big roof now that is no roof at all. Skaven not like it, pah! But Skarsnik’s little soldiers no different.’
Kranskritt glanced nervously up at the sun, shining pale yet still menacing through the thick cloud. ‘What do we do then, mighty one?’
Queek wondered if he could strike the seer dead now. He could, he thought. Lurklox was not there, and he did not see Soothgnawer – nor did he think he was near, for his trophies whispered their wisdom to him, something they did not when either verminlord was close by. He refrained from acting upon his whim.
‘We clear the city as planned, Queek decrees! Tear it all down, break it to pieces, smash the imp-thing’s little empire on the surface as we smashed his town in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars. Then we will see if he can be tempted out or not.’
Orders were given, and the army split into its various components to cover the vast area encompassed by the bowl sheltered by the eight peaks. Clan Skryre engineers set up their war machines near the mostly securely held skaven mountains in case of attack, while the armies subdivided further and began the work of demolishing the greenskins’ settlements. In ruined fields covered by scrubby forest, greenskin shelters were kicked down. Clanrats clambered over the crumbling dwarf city, levering stones out of the walls of rough-built huts. Warpfire teams torched entire villages of tents, while wind globadiers tossed their poisons into ruins and caves that might hold monsters. Teams of rat ogres tackled the bigger structures, clawing down idols of stone, wood and dung.
None, however, could bring low the great idol of Gork staring fixedly at the citadel in the centre of the city. Queek followed the line of its gaze. Glints on the battlements of the citadel showed dwarfs powerlessly watching as the skaven rose up to take control of yet more of their ancestral home.
‘Soon, Belegar long-fur, it will be your turn,’ hissed Queek.
The idol was as tall as a giant, but much more massive, its crude arms and legs made of monoliths stacked on top of each other and chained in place in crude approximation of orcish anatomy. A huge boulder with crude eyeholes hacked into the face topped it off, a separate jaw of wood hanging by more rusty chains from its face. It looked as if it should be pushed over easily, but would not fall. Warpfire splashed off the rock and iron. Warp-lightning crackled across it without effect. More powerful explosives were sent for. All the while the idol hunched there, apish and insolently strong as the day wore on.
Still Skarsnik did not come.
From his position atop the parapets of Howlpeak, Skarsnik watched the skaven go about the business of wrecking orctown. Fires burned everywhere.
‘They is behaving like they own the place, burning our houses down,’ said Skarsnik. ‘Old Belegar is probably loving every bit of this.’
‘Should we go and get them now, boss?’ said Kruggler. Crowds of orc and goblin bosses hung around him, the lot of them sheltering under nets and swags of cloth covered with dust and dyed grey to hide them from the skaven’s eyes.
Skarsnik snapped his telescope shut; the skaven weren’t the only ones to steal from dwarfs. ‘In a minute, Kruggs.’ He swept his hand out towards the eastern peaks. ‘We’ll wait until they’re nice and spread out, then we’ll attack, smash the centre, rout the rest and have a nice big ratty barbecue.’
‘I is not for waiting!’ grumbled Drilla Gitsmash, king of the Dark Lands black orcs. What with his thick accent, he was almost unintelligible behind his heavy, tusked visor. ‘We should get out there and smash ’em good now. I is not for waiting!’ he repeated.
‘Oh yes you is, if you want to win,’ said Skarsnik, looking up at the black orc as if he weren’t twice his size and four times his weight, before re-extending his telescope and turning back to the view. ‘But if you wants to go out there on your own and get chopped up to little itsy bitsy pieces, then go ahead. I is sure my boys could do with a laugh. No?’ Drilla said nothing. ‘Good idea that. Best to wait until we’re all going out. Is everyone in position?’
‘Yes, boss,’ said Kruggler.
‘Tolly Grin Cheek?’ This was not the original supporter of Skarsnik from way back, but the fourth murderous goblin to bear the name, and the facial scars that went with it.
‘He’s up behind them, boss.’
‘And that Snaggla fella? Not sure about him. Tell you, spiders is fer eating, not riding – and what’s this nonsense about some spider god? How many gods are there, boys?’
‘Gork and Mork,’ said one. ‘That’s four.’
‘Five?’
‘Definitely more than one!’
‘One,’ grumbled Drilla. ‘Mork don’t count.’
‘There’s two!’ said Skarsnik, his voice becoming shrill. ‘Two. Gork and Mork. Not three, or lots, or twenty-two thousand.’
Goblin faces creased in pained confusion at the mention of this incomprehensible number.
‘I told you, boss, I fought wiv some of them forest boys up north in the Border Princes,’ said Kruggler. ‘They is real sneaky. Morky as you like. You’ll love it.’
‘Right,’ said Skarsnik. He gave the vista one last pass with his telescope. He squinted at the sun. Noon, as near as he could reckon it. Not good for his night boys, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘Now or never,’ he said. ‘Positions, lads. And get the signal to Duffskul sent!’
Skaven passed under Duffskul’s nose. From the shoulder of the idol he was looking right down at the top of their pointy little heads, and some of them looked right back at him. He pulled faces at them and laughed at how close they were. They couldn’t see him, couldn’t smell him, didn’t know he was there at all. They milled about, trying one thing after another to destroy his idol, arguing over how it had got there. Duffskul knew the answer to that, of course.
It had walked.
It had taken him ages to ride it back down from old Zargakk the Mad’s wizlevard cave, way up over the Black Crag. A risky journey, but funnily enough, he hadn’t been bothered by anyone at all on the way back.
A single puff of smoke, black as a night goblin’s robes, rolled up into the sky over the tumbled parapets of the Howlpeak’s Grimgate. Duffskul laughed. He did a little dance. He whispered horrible things in the general direction of the skaven.
And then he did his magic.
‘What-what is that noise?’ said the skaven warlock nearest to the idol’s foot.
‘What noise?’
‘Deaf-deaf, you are! A scream-shriek, getting louder.’ The pair of them looked left, looked right and all around them, turning in circles to find the source of the rapidly loudening cry.
‘I hear now!’ said the second, exactly half a second before a goblin smashed itself to paste yards from their position. All that was left was one twitching foot, a shattered pair of canvas wings, and the echoes of its scream.
Only then did the skaven, born and bred in a world with comfortably low skies, think to look upwards.
Goblins were arcing through the heavens in long lazy curves, swishing their wings back and forth like birds. The illusion was impressive. One could almost think a goblin could fly, so at home the doom divers seemed in the clouds.
They were, unfortunately for the goblins, as aerodynamically gifted as boulders, and their flights lasted only marginally longer. Unfortunately for the skaven whose regiments they steered themselves onto, they did about as much damage as boulders too. A goblin’s head was uncommonly dense, especially when crammed into a pointed helmet.
‘Look-look!’ The second skaven tugged upon the sleeve of the first.
‘Yes-yes, I see! Flying green-things, very peculiar.’
‘Not there,’ he said, grabbing hold of his colleague’s head and pointing his gas-masked face at the head of the idol, their field of vision being somewhat restricted. ‘There!’
The skaven looked up at the idol. The idol, eye-caves glowing a menacing green, stared back.
‘Waaaaaghhhhhh!’ the idol shouted.
The skaven shrieked as a heavy rock foot ground them out of existence.
Atop its shoulders, Duffskul whooped. By way of reply, the mountains and ruins of Karak Eight Peaks resounded to the blaring of horns and the clanging of cymbals, the roll of dwarf-skin drums and the tuneless squeal of the squigpipes.
With a rapid clacking, the Grimgate swung open, splitting the grimacing orc-head glyph painted over the ancestor runes in two.
Out marched legions of greenskins. They headed right for the centre of the city.
‘All right, Mini-Gork, I believe we’ll be needing to go thataway!’ said Duffskul.
With rumbling strides accompanied by the grinding of rock, the Idol of Gork swung about and set off towards the enemy.
‘He is coming! Green-imp shows his hand-paw! Foolish green-thing. Loyal Ska, sound the advance!’
Skaven cymbals clashed, and the entirety of Queek’s first clawpack rose up from its hiding places. Forming rapidly into claws, the elite of Queek’s army made a wall of strong, armoured ratmen across the widest of the Great Vale’s shattered boulevards.
‘Forward!’ shouted Ska. ‘Forward for the glory of Queek! Forward for the glory of Clan Mors! Forward or I’ll kill-slay you myself!’
Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins were off first, the fangleader eager to prove himself. Queek had had his eye on the skaven ever since he had raided Belegar’s lower armouries months ago, taking enough dwarf armour to equip his entire claw, changing their names from the Rustblades to the Ironskins afterwards. From the speed he set off at, he evidently felt Queek’s scrutiny upon him.
Lightning blasted skywards from the ground, bursting goblins apart in the air. Some got through, some of those shattered the scaffolds the lightning cannons were mounted upon, and so the goblin doom divers and the best of Clan Skryre occupied one another.
‘That’s good, that is,’ said the dead dwarf king Krug. ‘Stops them from smashing your lads up.’
Queek hissed irritably. ‘Of course, Queek knows this. It is all part of Queek’s plan!’
Down the slopes of the mountain, innumerable hordes of goblins poured. Queek glanced nervously around the mountain bowl, across the city and out beyond where the lower reaches of the further peaks were hazy. His eyesight was as good as any skaven’s, which is to say at distance, not very good at all. But he saw no sign of movement elsewhere, and heard no sound of battle.
‘Ska!’
‘Yes, masterful Queek.’
‘Send messengers. Be sure to warn our lieutenants. This is not the fullness of the green-things’ force.’
Ska nodded, detailing his own minions to fulfil the orders.
Meanwhile, Skarsnik’s vanguard were jogging forwards to form a broad front. Queek ordered the slaves ahead, and with a terrified chittering, caused as much by the snarling packmasters at their rear as fear of the enemy, they surged across the mounded ruins of the dwarf city towards their greenskin foe. As the slaves neared, the goblins laughed loudly and shoved out whirling fanatics towards them. Queek had seen this so often by now that the tactic no longer held any surprises for him, but he remained wary of them. They spun round and round, laughing madly, hefting giant metal balls at the ends of long chains that should have been impossible for a goblin to lift.
He could not see their connection with his slave legions directly. The bodies of weak-meat tossed high in the air by the goblins’ swinging balls informed him of when it happened anyway.
‘Pick up speed! Hurry-scurry!’ shouted Queek. The Red Guard broke into a jog, their wargear clattering. ‘Mad-thing green-things will come through, kill-slay slaves – we must be through before they can turn and chase Queek!’
Queek’s elite burst through their screen of slaves, hacking down those who did not get out of the way. The goblins had advanced some three hundred yards from the Grimgate, filling the wide road and spilling into the ruins either side. The city here had been much reduced, piles of rubble with twisted trees poking out from them or greened mounds showed where once workshops and homes had stood. It made for difficult ground to fight over.
The town sloped downwards from Queek’s position, following the contours of the Howlpeak. Above was the still-open Grimgate. Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins pushed their way out of the slaves there, slightly ahead of Queek’s formation. From his vantage, Queek saw the broad, bloody lanes through the skaven created by the fanatics. These wobbled in uncertain lines, some looping right the way back round towards the goblin lines. The casualty numbers were horrendous, but all were slaves and of little worth. Queek snickered; they had performed their role excellently. The fanatics were falling one by one, smashing into low walls, dropping from exhaustion, or becoming hopelessly tangled with the slaves, their miserable deaths aiding the skaven cause far more than the ratkin ever could in life.
The slaves were thinned by panic, fanatics, bow-fire and doom divers. Clanrats came through them to support their general. Poisoned wind globadiers ran before them, approaching perilously close to the goblin lines before heaving their spheres of gas into their foes’ tight-packed ranks.
Queek sniffed the air. The wind was rank with greenskin. Neither his nose nor his eyes could pick out Skarsnik. ‘That way!’ he shouted, pointing directly at the centre of the greenskin force. ‘Come-come, quick!’
With a fierce cry, the Red Guard ran forwards. They burst through their screen of slaves and into the goblin vanguard, where they hacked their way through two mobs of goblins in short order. Queek’s view of the battle became restricted. He heard rather than saw the charge of Hackflay’s Ironskins, and the following clanrats. The first line of goblins bowed under pressure, nervous of the stormvermin carving their way through and the masses of clanrats coming next.
Deeper into the greenskin army Queek pushed, spinning and leaping, effortlessly felling the feeble warriors. Another goblin regiment parted before him, throwing down their shields and crooked spears rather than face him. His Red Guard skidded to a halt, momentarily cowed by the massive mob of black orcs they saw on the other side.
‘Oi! Squeaker!’ shouted their leader, a massive brute of an orc. ‘I’m gonna have you!’
The black orcs executed a flawless turn to the left, and charged.
‘Kill-slay them all!’ squealed Queek. ‘Breeding rights to the three who kill most big-meat!’
Spurred on by his generous offer, Queek’s Red Guard broke into a run. The two elite units met with a clash of metal that drowned out all else.
These were no goblins, but the ultimate orcs, bred by magic in the slave pits of Zharr-Naggrund. They smashed down the Red Guard with their huge axes. The Red Guard duelled with them, seeking to keep the black orcs at arm’s length with their halberds. The skaven felled a good number, but there were many, and they were fearless. The Red Guard’s advance ground to a halt. Their leader pushed his way forwards, levelling his massive two-handed axe at Queek.
‘Come on then, Headtaker! I’ve heard a lot about you. Nonsense, I reckon.’
The greenskin’s accent was outlandish, but Queek understood. He replied in the beast’s own language.
‘Come die then – always space for more trophies for Queek!’
The orc roared and charged, bowling over a Red Guard who got in the way and trampling him down into the dirt. Queek spun round, allowing the orc to pass him, then smashed the spike of Dwarf Gouger through its chest. The orc made a noise of surprise. Queek finished it with a thrust through its visor slit with his sword, skewering the orc’s small brain. It fell over heavily.
Queek wasted no time, prising off its tusked helmet and sawing its head off. He handed it to one of his guard, who jammed it upon a free spike on Queek’s rack. He’d left many empty for today.
Seeing their leader cut down disturbed the black orcs, and the Red Guard pressed their advantage, surrounding them and hewing through their thick mail with their halberds. Clanrat regiments had cut through the shattered goblin vanguard, joining Queek. They pressed back at greenskins moving to fill this potential gap in the line.
‘Ska! Break them!’ called Queek, cutting down two more of the black orcs.
Ska nodded, slammed a black orc out of the way, and leapt at their standard bearer.
The black orcs’ metal icon wobbled in the air as Ska attacked, then fell.
The orcs, reduced to a knot surrounded by ferocious skaven, broke. Queek and his warriors cut many of them down. Predictably, the greenskin centre collapsed around them. Seeing their toughest regiment destroyed, and well aware that their destroyers lingered still in their midst, a huge tranche of weaker greenskins broke.
‘The way to the gates are open!’ squealed Queek, forgetting in his exultation exactly who he was dealing with. The clanrats surged forwards after the fleeing goblins.
Horns sounded from all across the city. The left and right flanks of the goblin army angled inwards, coming at the mass of skaven from both sides. A fresh wave of doom divers began to rain down from the sky, unsettling the skaven with their shrieks. They plummeted into the horde of ratmen with final wet splats, their broken bones and flying harnesses shattering into spinning shrapnel that cut down many ratkin. Under the ferocity of this suicidal bombardment, the clanrats’ advance slowed and began to break up.
‘No! No!’ shrieked Queek. ‘We have them!’
He bounded up onto a ruined wall, the last corner of a building torn down who knew when. The age-worn stones were cold under his bare foot-paws.
Queek hissed at what he saw. Goblins were pouring out of the mountains to the west, encircling his rear. The huge idol they had discovered that morning had come to life, smashing its way through the skaven centre, some sorcerer atop it flinging bolts of green lightning from its shoulder. Queek wished for a screaming bell, or an abomination or two, but the dwarf-things had slain both of his. From caves thought cleared came a stream of squigs, including one big as a giant. It squashed as many skaven as it ate. Lesser round shapes bounded around its feet. A collective squeak of terror drew Queek’s attention to the foot of Karag Zilfin, where mangler squigs carved red ruin through his army.
Queek returned his attention to the fleeing goblins. Skarsnik had lured him into a trap, that much was certain, but it was not going to plan. The green-imp’s bait force had not rallied and fled still.
Even so, the skaven army was at a disadvantage.
Squeaks from the foot of the wall called to him. His minions had caught up with him. A gaggle of messengers stood there, waiting expectantly to carry fresh orders away.
A final messenger, its fur matted with drying blood, came to a panting stop. ‘Great Queek! Much terror-slaughter on the east. Giant spiders attack.’
‘How big? Fist-paw big?’
The messenger shook his head and swallowed. ‘Wolf-rat big and… Much-much bigger.’
Queek bared his teeth in anger. Away out beyond the outer edges of the city, into the derelict farmland to the east, many death-squeaks were being voiced. He narrowed his eyes. In his blurred distance vision, large shapes lurched against the pale horizon.
Just as he thought he was getting a paw on the situation, a terrifying screech rent the air and there was a snap of leathery wings. A dark shape swooped overhead, bringing with it a carrion stink and a sharp, reptilian smell.
A wyvern bearing an orc warboss landed heavily right in the middle of the clanrat regiments behind Queek.
A fresh wave of panic rippled through the clanrats around his position. This proved too much for them. Predictably, they ran. A huge section of the skaven centre collapsed. There was now a large part of the central battlefield devoid of combatants, each side running from the other. Queek was left alone with his Red Guard, who held fast about the Great Banner of Clan Mors.
‘Stand! Stand! Cowards!’ squealed Queek. He turned to his messengers with a snarl.
He pointed to one.
‘Kranskritt!’ he commanded. ‘Go to him! It is most important he kill-slay the idol!’
He spared a look for the rampaging rock construct. Warp-lightning crackled around it with no effect.
To another he said, ‘To the Burnt Cliffs with you – call out the reserves.’ He spoke then directly to Ikk Hackflay and Grotoose. ‘Ironskins and rat ogres, pursue green-thing rout.’
‘And you, mighty leader?’ rasped Ikk.
Queek scanned the sea of black-robed goblins, seeking out the tell-tale splash of red that would reveal the location of Gobbla, and therefore his master. Queek could not find him! The imp-thing would have to wait. He turned his face to the wyvern flapping about the battle and slaughtering clanrats.
‘Queek has other matters to attend to.’