CHAPTER NINETEEN 
‘Waaagh!’ cackled Duffskul madly. He danced a little jig and threw bolts of green lightning from his fingertips, blasting skaven to pieces with every shot. His knees popped as he danced, but he was too excited to care. Swarms of ratmen fled before the feet of the Idol of Gork, squealing in terror. Wherever the stone monster went, skaven units burst apart like ripe puffballs, disintegrating into individual warriors who ran in every direction like mice fleeing an orc. ‘That’s right, ya little ratties! That’s right! Run away!’
Duffskul’s eyes glowed with the surfeit of Waaagh! energy washing over the battlefield. From atop his idol he could see right across the Great Vale for miles and miles. The main scrap was right there, in the old dwarf surface city, but smaller skirmishes were going on right the way across the entire bowl. Outside the walls, wolf riders ran down blocks of skaven infantry. Streaks of green whizzed down from on high where jezzail teams discharged their guns. Doom divers plummeted from even higher up. Batteries of goblin artillery duelled with skaven lightning throwers, sneaky gobboes dripping in night-black squig oil fought running battles with groups of skaven assassins. Right at the back, mobs of spider riders ran amok, unopposed by anyone. The ratboys were trying to bring their lightning cannons about, but weren’t having much luck. Not long now and they would smash up the skaven artillery. There was a lot more to see than just the big ruck at the centre, oh yus.
Duffskul liked a nice fight, and this was the biggest and best he had ever seen. There were loads of greenies! Lots of lots, boys from every tribe and every kind of greenskin you could think of – except sneaky hobgobboes and stupid gnoblars, naturally – while there were so many ratties on the other side that he couldn’t even begin to count them, and Duffskul could count pretty high for a goblin. It was a proper Waaagh!
‘Waaagh!’ he screeched. ‘Waaagh!’ The powers of Gork and Mork flooded through him and out his arms and toes and nose, the great idol of mad old Zargakk filling him with power.
What had happened to Zargakk, Duffskul had no idea. No one had seen him in years. He was probably dead. Good thing too, or there’d be no way Duffskul would have got his hands on the idol.
‘Come on, Gork!’ he called. A phantom foot formed from the magic spilling from Duffskul’s skin. With a screech he sent it smashing into a unit of ratties, squashing them flat. He laughed uproariously, so hard he cried. Orc magic that one; Duffskul might be crazy, but he was deeply in favour with the Great Green Twins.
The idol lurched to one side, nearly tipping Duffskul from his perch on its shoulder. With desperately scrabbling hands, he caught himself on the rough stone. Sucking his lacerated fingers, he cast about for his attacker.
A flash of black lightning crackled against the idol, making it moan. It stumped around to face its tormentor, a white-furred skaven sorcerer who was hurling magic of his own at Duffskul’s new pet. Unlike the blasts from the skaven cannon, this was hurting it.
‘Oi!’ he shouted, responding with a crackle of his own destructive magic. He screamed in triumph as it fizzed towards the skaven, but the rattie waved a dismissive hand, and the green light of Waaagh! power dissipated. The sorcerer raised his hands and hurled twin blasts of blacklight at the idol’s knee. Duffskul countered, but the magic got through, weakened, but still effective. With a tinkle, the chains binding the menhirs of the idol’s left leg burst apart. The idol took another step, reaching out crude hands to grab the sorcerer, but its foot was left behind.
‘Watch out! Watch out!’ Duffskul said in horror as the footless leg descended once more.
The idol let out a moronic bellow as it fell. The ground rushed up at Duffskul.
‘Heeeeeelllllp!’ he wailed. The idol crashed down, breaking into a dozen pieces of bouncing rock that rolled all over the place, trailing wisps of dying magic.
The sorcerer stood triumphantly, sure of his victory.
Duffskul was having none of that. Bruised but otherwise undamaged, he stood and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Oi! Ratty! Who do you think you are?’
The rat snarled, exposing the tiny needle teeth either side of its flat incisors. Its eyes went dead-black. Smoke tinged with purple flares poured from its mouth.
Duffskul threw up his own hands. Giant green fists formed around them. He held out his hand, a hand that had become the magic-wreathed, crackling fist of Gork himself. He swung at the sorcerer, who warded off Duffskul’s magic with his dark mist. Duffskul swung again. The skaven responded too late, and Duffskul grabbed him hard.
‘How you like that, eh, ratty? Orc magic that. I know it because I is the chosen of Gork and Mork, their teller of fings to Skarsnik, who was raised up high because of me!’ He squeezed hard. The skaven squealed.
‘We make deal-deal?’ it said in mangled greenskin.
‘I don’t fink so.’
Duffskul sucked in deep, inhaling the winds of magic rushing over the excited orcs and goblins. Power filled him. So much power! He could drink it all in and then he’d be the bestest wizlevard who ever lived, mighty as the gods themselves!
Duffskul’s head hurt with the strength of it, a good pain, deep and satisfying, like the kind of itch it is a pleasure to scratch. The magic-light flaring in his eyes bleached out his vision.
Duffskul giggled. The skaven white-fur shrank in his magic fist. ‘I’m gonna do this proper, you squeaking cheese-thief,’ said Duffskul. Determined to make a show of it, Duffskul fished inside his robes and pulled out a piece of shamanshroom. He taunted the skaven with it.
‘You know what this is, ratty? This is a shamanshroom. From da deep caves, where only those in da know can go. An old shaman, taken root, you might say, gone into da great green! But they leaves some of their magic behind, leaves it for the likes of me to eat up and squish ratties like you. Oh yus.’
Duffskul popped the leathery fragment in his mouth and chewed hard with black teeth. Something of the dead shaman’s residual power flooded into him, augmenting the magic coursing through Duffskul to catastrophic levels. Everything went far away. He could hear the laughter of the Twin Gods in the distance. Sometimes that was a good sign. But not always, far from it.
‘Now I is… Now I is…’
He hiccupped. Something went pop deep inside his brain. Duffskul frowned.
‘Whoopsie,’ he said.
With a wet splotch, his head exploded, fountaining a great deal of blood and a lot less brain all over the remains of the idol and the skaven sorcerer both.
The green fists evaporated into mist, and Kranskritt fell, taking in a deep and welcome breath to his bruised lungs.
‘Heh heh, green-thing. Very good. Very interesting. But you dead now.’ He frowned and leaned in to check. The green-thing’s head had gone, what was left soaking messily into his dirty yellow robes. ‘Yes-yes, definitely dead.’
Trying to salvage his dignity, Kranskritt brushed as much brain off his clothes as he could and walked away, checking all the time that no one was looking.
Skarsnik held up his prodder and waved it. Horns sang out all through the fleeing tribes. The regiments immediately stopped and turned around. A few of the more enthusiastic lads carried on going right through the city and up the mountain slopes; others were too far gone in panic to heed the rallying horns, but the majority – and all of these were Skarsnik’s own boys, he noted proudly – reformed their ranks. A fresh flood of night goblins poured out from the gates to reinforce his back line.
Skarsnik peered under the black cloth covering Gobbla. ‘You all right under there, mate?’ he said. Gobbla snuffled back. ‘Good.’ Skarsnik looked up and down his lines. All in order. ‘Let’s see what we can see,’ he said and unsnapped his telescope.
The skaven army was in total disarray. Split up by Skarsnik’s ambushes, large parts of it were isolated into groupings of a few hundred strong. He watched with satisfaction as the foreigner Snaggla Grobspit and his giant spiders tore apart the skaven war machines. But it wasn’t over yet. The Headtaker had a strong force about him, and was heading for that cocky big head Krolg Krushelm on top of that big lizard he was always riding about. Well, Skarsnik would wait to see what happened there. Either way, Krolg’s loss would be no great one. The orc hadn’t been in the Peaks long, and hadn’t yet learned to show the proper respect. That was the usual way with the orc bosses, but this one was more uppity than most, and making the other orcs behave badly.
He turned his spyglass elsewhere. In other parts the battle was in balance, not going quite as well as he had hoped. The manglers had run out of steam over by the Burnt Cliffs and been killed, allowing skaven reinforcements to pour out of the rat holes there and strengthen the flank about the base of Silver Mountain. Big Red the giant squig was stomping far from the main fight, chasing down a dwindling pack of ratmen, but was effectively out of the battle. A flare of magical energy drew his attention to the Idol of Gork rampaging around the skaven rear. A sympathetic ‘Oooh!’ went up from the army as the magically animated statue lost a foot and pitched forwards flat on its face. Skarsnik saw Duffskul fall with it, then lost him amid the ruins. ‘He’ll be all right,’ said Skarsnik to himself, although he was worried – not for Duffskul, but mainly because he had expended his store of secret weapons and the skaven still weren’t broken.
Still, neither was his army.
He turned his telescope to the front, where, through the magnified points of goblin hats, he saw Ikk Hackflay’s Ironskins and a bunch of massive ratboys closing with his position. Furry ogre-things came with them, driven on by a fat, mean-looking skaven. Two of Queek’s best, he thought. Be good to get rid of them. ‘Ready, lads! We’ve got big furry lads coming in, one mean looking fella leading them, and some ogre-fings with a fatty ratty. We’s gonna kill them both. Everybody ready?’
‘Waaagh!’ they responded.
‘I’m glad you said that,’ he said, with a crooked smile.
Queek ran at full scurry towards the wyvern and its stupid-meat rider. The wyvern charged about on the ground, smashing prey down with its heavily armoured skull and gulping them down whole. Gore hung from its mouth. The bloody remains of skaven were scattered everywhere, along with piles of the wyvern’s dung. As it moved, it toileted, clearing room in its bulging stomach for more meat. Given enough time, it would eat itself into a torpor, but wyverns had big appetites and that time would be too long in coming.
The orc speared a clanrat, dangling the still-squealing creature in front to the mouth of his mount. The wyvern’s beady eyes fixed on the morsel, and snapped at it as the orc snatched the skaven out of the way. He laughed uproariously as he teased the beast.
Queek signalled to his guard to halt, and strode out. He banged his weapon hilts on his breastplate to get the orc’s attention.
‘Big-meat! Queek the Mighty, ruler of City of Pillars, will fight you.’
Hearing this, the orc heaved on the wyvern’s reins, pulling it around to face Queek.
‘Headtaker,’ he spat. Krolg eyed the stormvermin twenty paces behind Queek carefully. They made no move to come forwards, or he might well have flown off. That’s why Queek had ordered them to stay where they were. The wyvern spread its wings and bellowed. Its tail arched high over its back, in the manner of a scorpion. Black venom dripped from the point of it sting. The vinegary stench of it made Queek’s eyes run.
Krolg dug long spurs into the tender skin under the wyvern’s wings. It leapt into the air, gliding the short distance at Queek. The impact of the beast’s landing shook the ground. The orc thrust at him overhand with his spear, a clumsy blow that Queek parried easily, riposting with a powerful backhand against the wyvern’s head. Queek had never fought one of these creatures before, and its iron-hard scales took him by surprise. The blow jarred his arm so hard his teeth clacked together. The wyvern barely registered it, snapping at him from one side while the orc drove his spear at him from the other. Queek sprang back, only to expose himself to a punishing strike from the wyvern’s poisoned tail. Queek barely threw himself aside. He skidded as he landed, vulnerable for a moment, but the orc and his mount were too slow. The stinger plunged into the ground, whipping back almost as quickly.
Queek wiped spatters of burning venom from his muzzle. The orc atop the wyvern chuckled at him and urged his mount on.
The rock here was harder to gnaw than it appeared, so the old saying went.
The goblins stumbled backwards, pushed by the fury of the stormvermin. A massive rat-leader slew a brace of goblins with each sword stroke. Skarsnik levelled his prodder at him and let fly with a blast of raw magic. Some sixth sense caused the rat-leader to leap aside, and Skarsnik burned up half a dozen of his fellows instead.
‘I’m going to have to sort this out myself, aren’t I?’ said Skarsnik. ‘Come on, Gobbla.’ He pulled on his squig’s chain, and the pair of them shoved their way down to the front.
Skarsnik’s prodder emerged first, punching through the gap between two goblins and spearing a stormvermin on its triple prongs. Skarsnik grunted as he pushed, shoving the dead rat back off its feet and tripping those in the ranks behind it. The rat was big, but Skarsnik was strong. Under his robes he was a mass of knotted muscle, his success such that he had grown huge for a night goblin – for a goblin of any kind, for that matter. Only Fat Grom had been bigger, but as Skarsnik liked to say, that was all fat and it didn’t count.
‘Come on, you ratties!’ shrilled Skarsnik. Recognising their master’s arch nemesis, the stormvermin scrambled over each other to get at him, eager to be the one to take his head. He stabbed and blasted with his prodder. Gobbla fought at his side, snapping the heads off halberds that might have speared his master, snapping the hands off that held the halberds, and snapping off the heads of the vermin that guided the hands. Skarsnik was old and thoughtful, but when roused he was mean as an orc warlord after a heavy night on the fungus brew. With Gobbla by his side, he was well nigh unstoppable. By his own efforts, he opened a wide circle in the front ranks of the stormvermin. ‘Go on! Get on at ya!’ he shouted, whirling the prodder round his head and whooping with delight. The goblins pushed forwards after him, chanting his name.
Skarsnik brought his prodder in a wide arc, aiming to decapitate three stormvermin with one blow, only to find it intercepted by a black sword. A terrible strength was behind it. He pushed, and a fat, heavily muscled skaven pushed back. Skarsnik did not know his name, but it was Grotoose. A pack of rat ogres moved in and boxed in Gobbla, leaving the King under the Mountains to face Grotoose alone.
The Clan Moulder war-leader leaned in close to Skarsnik, both of them grimacing with hatred and effort. With a flourish, Skarsnik disengaged, flinging Grotoose’s sword arm wide. Skarsnik reversed the prodder, sending the weighty ferrule on its base driving into Grotoose’s flabby stomach. Air exploded from the skaven’s mouth, and he doubled over. Skarsnik stepped in, but Grotoose was shamming. As Skarsnik approached, Grotoose slammed his sword hilt into Skarsnik’s head, and again. Driven back, Skarsnik stumbled, his feet fouled in the chain attaching Gobbla to him.
Grotoose loomed over him, blotting out the pale sky.
He raised his sword. ‘Now you die-die!’
Grotoose never landed his blow. Gobbla came from the side, a bolt of crimson death, teeth snapping. He swallowed the claw leader of Clan Moulder whole.
Skarsnik got to his feet and patted his pet. ‘That was close! That was too close,’ he muttered. ‘Good boy, Gobbla.’
Gobbla burped.
Skarsnik took a moment. The stormvermin and rat ogres had been driven back, the flow of battle moving away from him. Annoyingly, the stormvermin’s boss was still alive and kicking, but he was on the defensive. ‘They don’t need us no more, come on. We got some strategising to do,’ he said. His speech was peppered with bastardised Reikspiel and Khazalid words he used for concepts Orcish lacked the capacity to express. He led his pet back to his vantage point to begin said strategising.
He extended his telescope again. The battle was much as it was before. Then he saw something he had never seen, a blurring shadow that leapt all over the battlefield. One instant it was in one place, in another elsewhere. A disk of metal whirred out from this darkness, curving through air and flesh alike without interrupting its course. It banked around and flew back to its starting point, being snatched out of the air by a huge clawed hand.
‘That’s weird,’ said Skarsnik. ‘That looks a bit like one of them…’
Gobbla whined. Skarsnik looked down.
‘What’s wrong, boy?’
Gobbla’s nose snuffled. He looked up into Skarsnik’s eyes with his one good one.
‘Gobbla?’
A dribble of blood collected at the corner of the squig’s mouth. Skarsnik knelt down, concerned. A squelching sound came from Gobbla’s innards. Skarsnik put his ear to the squig’s side.
Gobbla whined again.
A knife burst through the top of the squig’s skull. Gobbla’s eye rolled back into his head, and the squig collapsed, deflating. His bulk wobbled and shook, and the knife cut downwards.
‘Gobbla!’ screamed Skarsnik.
Grotoose hauled himself from a long slit in the squig’s side. His skin was blistered from Gobbla’s potent stomach acids, fur falling out in clumps. Half his face had been melted off. Groaning in pain, he dragged himself away with fingers whose flesh came away from the bone as he scrabbled at the rock.
Skarsnik looked on in speechless horror. Grotoose raised a head with eyes that had been burned to whiteness.
‘I first Clan Moulder beastmaster in Eight Peaks,’ he said thickly. ‘It take lot more than stupid red-ball, fungus-thing to kill me.’
His face contorting with rage, Skarsnik raised the prodder high and drove it down through Grotoose’s back so hard it shattered the stone beneath. Grotoose shuddered, as if he’d still planned on getting up, before he finally realised he was dead.
‘Gobbla,’ said Skarsnik, in a small voice. The battle forgotten, he dropped his prodder and fell to the squig’s side. The squig sagged in on itself, its capacious body pooling like a half-empty wineskin. Skarsnik knelt and hesitated, eyes surveying this most cruel ruin as if he could bring it back to wholeness by wishing it otherwise.
It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. Gobbla was dead, his small, faithful brain leaking out through the hole in the top of his head.
Skarsnik laid both hands on the leathery hide of his closest companion.
‘Gobbla,’ said the Warlord of Karak Eight Peaks, with a catch in his throat. ‘Gobbla!’
Queek dodged another thunderous blow from the wyvern, tripping on a half-buried lump of masonry as he did. He was panting heavily, bleeding down one arm from a lucky spear-thrust.
‘Getting tired, incha, little rattie?’ rumbled the orc. ‘You’re a tasty fighter, that’s what they all say. Down in the Badlands they say that. That far away. Yeah, that’s right. Ain’t you proud?’ The orc laughed. ‘Broken Toofs, my tribe. We heard that all right, we heard all about da Headtaker.’ He widened his eyes in mock fright. ‘But I reckoned it was all bluster, all talk. Load of nonsense. No rat going to outfight an orc every day of the week like what they say you can, though I see you got a couple of blackies up there on your spikes. Idiots, they are. No fun in them. I ain’t one of them snaggle-toothed stunty slaves. I’m a free orc – you’ll never beat me.’
Queek kept his distance from the circling wyvern. He spat on the ground. Let the orc talk himself into an early grave. The ones with the big mouths always spoke too much, leaving themselves open to Queek’s mightiness.
This fight had gone on too long. If he didn’t finish it soon, the green imp might win!
How to end it? How to end it? Queek burned inside.
‘My name,’ said the orc, ‘is Krolg Krushelm! You hear that, now. I wants you to be thinking it when I guts ya! I’m a real greenskin, not like this sneaky little git here. No wonder you ain’t been beat yet. As soon as I’m done with you, I’m taking that cave runt down. It’s about time the Eight Peaks had a real boss.’ Krolg spurred his mount.
The wyvern roared, spraying Queek with foul-smelling spittle. The tail swiped down, jaws coming at him from another angle, Krolg’s spear from a third.
Queek had the measure of his opponents. A good fight, a fine challenge. A pity to finish it.
He ducked the sting, batted the spear tip aside with his sword, rolled under the wyvern’s head, sprang to his feet and, with a powerful swing, buried Dwarf Gouger in the wyvern’s eye. The spike on the pick punched through the soft eyeball and the thin bone at the back of the socket with ease.
The wyvern bellowed in agony and spread its wings. It wrenched its head back from the source of its pain. Queek kept tight hold of Dwarf Gouger’s haft, letting go only when the time was right. As he arced through the air, Krolg’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of surprise below his twisting body.
Krolg was still wearing the expression when his head toppled from his shoulders and rolled into the dirt.
Queek landed on his feet in a crouch, a gleeful smile on his lips.
He waited until the wyvern’s death throes had ceased before retrieving his favourite weapon.
‘Boss! Boss!’
Skarsnik heard the words only dimly. His entire attention was fixed on the dead Gobbla, his hands still pressed into his gradually sinking flesh.
A hand grabbed him. ‘Boss!’
Skarsnik whirled round and snarled into the face of Kruggler.
Kruggler took a step backwards, both hands raised. ‘Boss! Now ain’t the time. Don’t let them see you like this, boss. The lads need bossing, boss! What are we going to do?’
Skarsnik shivered. The skin around his eyes felt tight. A strange emotion he’d not felt before… Nah, nah, that wasn’t right. Once before, long ago, when Snotruk had killed Snottie, his loyal companion in his lonely days as a runt. Hollow like, all empty inside, like nothing really mattered any more.
He shook it off, but it clung on, clamping around the quivery bit of meat inside his chest like it would crush it with cold, cold ice.
‘Ye’re right, ye’re right.’ He nodded at Gobbla. ‘Someone take that away!’ he said, trying to sound like he didn’t care. The goblins that came forward were wise enough to handle the dead squig very carefully indeed. Kruggler helped the goblin warlord up while one of Skarsnik’s little big ’uns smashed the chain with his long axe.
The weight gone from his foot felt weird. He wiggled it around speculatively. Definitely weird.
‘Boss!’ said Kruggler in exasperation.
‘What? Yeah, sorry, the battle, the battle.’ Skarsnik raised his hand to his eyes. He couldn’t see very well because they kept filling up with water and he didn’t know why. He blinked it away and took stock of the battle.
Towards Silver Mountain, a fresh horde of clanrats running down the remainder of the squig teams there.
To the east, the now very distant form of Big Red trumpeting his way towards the evening. To the south, a mighty arachnarok spider being dismembered by the mysterious shadow.
To the centre, the broken Idol of Gork – or was it Mork? He really couldn’t be sure – and an additional item: one slaughtered wyvern, topped with a headless orc. The Headtaker’s troops were forming up, gathering stragglers back into solid formations. The formation that Skarsnik’s little big ’uns had broken was being bullied back into shape by its leader.
‘I’ve seen enough,’ said Skarsnik.
‘What?’ said Kruggler.
‘It’s a bust. We’ve lost. A good scrap, but we couldn’t pull it off, because there really is a lot of them, ain’t there?’ said Skarsnik to himself. ‘Farsands, and farsands.’ He did a quick mental calculation, the kind that would make a normal goblin die of a brain infarction. ‘That’s actually a lot more of them than there is of us…’ He looked to the citadel. ‘Old Belegar’s next. We need to scarper.’
‘What?!’ repeated Kruggler.
‘Kruggs, mate, we have lost! Can I make it any simpler for you? If we don’t shift, Queek’ll have our heads on that poncy bedstead he wears on his back quicker than he’ll have Belegar’s. I don’t think I want to stick around for that. Sound the retreat!’ he shouted.
‘What about the rest of the boys?’
‘What? Out-of-towners, weird scrawny runts wot smell of old leaves and ride about on spiders, and deadbeats? Nah, they played their part. Leave ’em. Besides, if we all go at once, then the rats might attack us before we can get away, mightn’t they?’ Skarsnik tapped his grubby forehead with a bloody finger. ‘Always thinking me. That’s why I is king and you is not.’ He addressed his signallers again, before they commenced their flag-waving and horn-blowing. ‘And by retreat, I mean walking back inside carefully with your weapons ready, not running for the hills so we’s can all get out of breath, run down, chopped up and et by ratsies! Got that?’ he bawled.
His horn-blowers and flag-wavers nodded. At least some of them understood. They relayed his orders as best they could. Some of the greenskins even obeyed them. All in all, thought Skarsnik, as he watched his tired tribe and its allies about face and march up to the gates of the Howlpeak, things could have been a whole lot worse.
Once he’d regained the gates himself, he went up to the broken battlements atop it. Through his telescope he watched the skaven break into a desperate run as the last of the Crooked Moon tribe withdrew to the safety of the Howlpeak. For a long time, he kept his spyglass trained on Queek’s furious, furry face and watched it get madder and madder. He kept watching, in fact, until the gates clanged shut.
Now that was funny.
‘Gobbla,’ he said, meaning to share the moment with his pet. ‘Gobbla, look at that, eh? Boy? Boy?’ Skarsnik looked down at his side.
But, of course, there was nobody there.