The prince started to draw his sword to confront the first ratman when a second leapt into the cell, its daggers slashing at him. The filthy blades raked across the front of his coat, ripping it open and narrowly missing the man beneath it. Hissing and snapping, the monster pressed its attack, driving Mandred towards the corner of the cell with a flurry of attacks. The prince’s forearm was gashed and cut as he tried to protect his face from the monster.
The ratman’s speed was hideous, something Mandred remembered from his previous encounter. Recalling that fight, he also remembered that its strength was less formidable. Gritting his teeth, he prayed the same held true for this example of the breed.
The brute had him nearly to the wall now. Mandred could see a third monster slinking into the room, a heavy bludgeon in its paws. The thing uttered a happy squeak when it spotted the helpless dwarf lashed to the bench. The sight decided the prince. When his own foe slashed at him again, he pressed his body forwards, leaning into its attack. He felt the dagger cut deep into his arm, but at the same time he was able to catch the thing’s wrist. With a brutal twist, he felt he ratman’s bones snap. The vermin howled, springing away.
Mandred ignored the beast and whipped out his sword with his free hand. In one flash of steel, he raked the blade across the length of the bench, slashing through the leather straps. He heard the dwarf roar, the ratman with the club squeak in fright. Then he was too busy to worry about Kurgaz. His first adversary was back on the attack.
Holding its injured arm against its breast, the ratman sprang at Mandred, hoping to disembowel him with a rake of its blade. Years of fencing had driven home the proper response to such an assault, yet even as he darted backwards the monster’s great speed allowed its dagger to stab his thigh.
Despite the agony of the wound, Mandred was grateful. For an instant, the weapon caught in his flesh. For a moment, the ratman was defenceless and within reach of his sword. It was all the time he needed. With a backhanded riposte, he opened the ratman’s throat and sent it thrashing to the floor, coughing on its own blood.
Mandred spun about to confront the ratman attacking Kurgaz, but the dwarf already had the creature sprawled across the bench, its brains dashed in with its own club. Turning, he found the first ratkin, the one that had charged Neist. The brute was leaning over Neist’s body, its paws frisking the alchemist’s clothes. When it saw Mandred limping towards it, it bared its teeth and sprinted for the corridor.
The fiend never reached the hall. Before it could clear the doorway, a blade was thrust into its side. The ratman writhed on the impaling sword for an instant, then crumpled to the floor. Mandred noted that one of its paws was clenched, but as death claimed it the paw fell open and the strange bullet rolled from its fingers.
‘Ulric’s Axe!’ Beck cursed, stepping into the cell. The knight’s clothes were covered in blood. With an effort he tore his eyes away from the creature and looked to his prince. ‘Your grace, you are hurt!’
Mandred waved away his guard’s concern, tried to limp towards the corridor. Beck moved to help him despite the admonition. ‘Forgive me, but I couldn’t obey you. My first duty is to protect Prince Mandred von Zelt, even when it conflicts with your own orders.’
‘We have to help Sofia… Make sure…’
Beck frowned at the desperation in his prince’s voice. ‘You can’t help her now. These… things… were already there.’
All the vigour seemed to evaporate from Mandred’s body. If not for Beck’s support, he would have fallen to the floor. His mind whirled at the news, his heart cracked at the thought that Sofia had perished under the blades of such filth.
Why? Why had they killed her? His despairing gaze fell upon the weird bullet. Had the beasts been following that? Tracking it through the hospice, killing wherever it had been?
A gruff laugh thundered above the prince’s sorrow. Shuffling out from behind the bench, his hands still clenched tight about the club that had nearly killed him, Kurgaz Smallhammer regarded the mourning Mandred. ‘Aye,’ the dwarf said, spitting on the verminous corpse. ‘Now you know what skaven look like.’
Puskab Foulfur looked up from the mouldy tome he had been consulting. A flick of his claw sent the scabby slave holding his reading lamp slinking off into a darkened nook. The plague priest folded his paws across the ratbone lectern and regarded his visitors with pestiferous scrutiny. It was seldom that any but the plague monks dared the noxious caves Puskab had made his lair, and they only with the gravest business.
The skaven who stood before him was a black-furred killer, draped in a cloak that might have been skinned off a shadow, an array of exotic weaponry fixed to his belt. Puskab knew the weaponry to be mere adornment. The assassins of Clan Eshin never displayed the real tools of their trade.
‘Speak-squeak,’ Puskab ordered, a malicious gleam in his eye. One of the apprentices of Deathmaster Silke, Nartik Blackblade had fallen out of favour with his terrifying master and been given the hazardous duty of spying on the plague monks. Fortunately for him, Nartik had enough sense to turn the potential death sentence into a boon. Instead of spying on Puskab, Nartik was spying for Puskab.
‘Gutter runners failed to get the jezzail bullet,’ the assassin reported. ‘Warmonger Vecteek mad-hate! Ordered Silke to kill-slay all gutter runners that escape!’ Nartik chittered with amusement. ‘I listened to one of them before…’ He made a ripping motion with his claw across his throat. ‘Say-tell that man-thing king-pup knows about us now.’
Puskab’s tattered ears twitched in pleasure at the report. Things were going even better than he had planned. With Clan Mors on its way, he’d decided there was no good reason to delay infecting the humans with the Black Plague. Exploiting Nartik and the gutter runners, they’d been able to spread the disease without waiting for the direct route Vecteek thought necessary. The extra weeks would make the humans much weaker when the attack finally came.
Now, however, there was a new wrinkle to consider. The dwarfs were embattled below, but they’d be too stubborn to ask for help from the humans above. But if the humans were to offer that help without the dwarfs asking, would they refuse it?
Too proud to ask for help, but not too proud to take it.
Puskab chittered as he pictured the scene. Hundreds of humans marching off to help the dwarfs, leaving their own city as a helpless morsel to be devoured by Grey Lord Vecteek.
Yes, everything was certainly going much better than he’d imagined.
Carroburg
Jahrdrung, 1115
‘Don’t permit this.’ The plea was voiced by Princess Erna, spoken with a frantic vehemence. ‘You can’t do this. Even if the warlock’s magic works, how can you accept your life at such a price?’
Emperor Boris glared at the woman. He started to raise his hand to strike her, but desisted. It was for low creatures like Kreyssig to hit a lady. He had more dignity than that. Still, he wished she would stop nagging at him. He wasn’t without his misgivings. The girl wasn’t some peasant, she was of good breeding and background. He mourned the waste of a young woman of such attractiveness. It was tragic, but how much more tragic would it be if the Empire were to be deprived of its Emperor because of the plague?
He paced across the thick bearskin rug sprawled before the hearth in his bed chamber. Sometimes Boris would glance over at Erna seated at the edge of the bed. It wasn’t lost on him that for once she’d come to his room without an armed escort. It was clear what she was offering if he would indulge her entreaty.
Part of him wanted to. Part of him was sickened by what Fleischauer’s magic demanded. But that part of him wasn’t strong enough to overcome his fear. Not simply fear of the plague, but fear of losing control. The great and noble guests he’d assembled here formed the core of his power. Without their confidence he knew he wouldn’t be able to wield his authority in their domains. Enough provinces were already rife with open defiance; he couldn’t afford to lose any more.