The dwarfs maintained their vigil over the wall, a tense silence gripping the men who watched them. No one knew what to expect, and all were looking to the dwarfs for the first warning.
Hearkening to every scrape and scratch their sharp ears detected behind the wall, Kurgaz and his dwarfs kept the Middenheimers aware of what was happening. When the dwarfs suddenly scrambled away from the wall, scattering a few yards down the tunnel, Mandred knew the attack was imminent.
The wall came crumbling down, big blocks of stone tumbling into the corridor. Gritty dust billowed through the tunnel, stifling the torches and lamps the men carried, making the subterranean darkness still blacker. Through the cover of that blackness, inhuman creatures spilled into the passageway. Mandred could hear their scuttling claws, their bloodthirsty squeaks. He could smell their mangy fur and rotten breath. The skaven were upon them.
In that first flurry of viciousness, the ratmen dragged down a score of soldiers and even a few of the dwarfs. The skaven exploited the confusion of their assault to the full, attacking with such savagery that many of their own kind perished in fratricidal thrusts of spear and blade.
If the vermin had broken their discipline in that moment of horror, Mandred doubted any of his troops would have survived. They would never outrun the skaven and any sign of weakness would only embolden the monsters. Their only hope was to maintain the line, defy the panic that clawed at their hearts.
‘Khazuk!’ Kurgaz’s roar boomed through the tunnel, echoing from every wall and pillar. ‘Khazukan Kazakit-Ha!’ The war-cry was taken up by the other dwarfs, rolling like the boom of cannon.
‘For Ulric!’ Mandred added his own shout to the bedlam. ‘For graf and wolf!’ He lunged through the blackness, slashing at a figure he could only dimly see. There was no mistaking the skaven for anything human or dwarf, even with nothing but a shadowy outline to attack. His sword sang true, hewing through the beast’s forearm and eliciting a feral bleat of misery. A second slash of the blade had the thing flopping on the floor.
Soldiers rallied around the prince, taking up his war-cry. Soon the shout of ‘wolf and graf’ drowned out the bestial snarls and squeaks of the enemy. With spear and axe, sword and mace, the men pressed the vermin back towards the wall. Fresh torches were lit, more lanterns were brought forwards and light streamed down the tunnel.
There were well over a hundred of the skaven, with more of them spilling into the tunnel from a jagged tear in the wall. The ratmen were a motley sight, ranging from armoured brutes with black fur to scrawny, starved wretches with protruding ribs and only the simplest bone knives and wooden spears in their paws. However ragged and foul, the vermin fought with savagery, hurling themselves at the men with desperate ferocity.
In those brief flashes when he wasn’t cutting down an enemy or shielding himself from slashing blades and snapping jaws, Mandred thought his force must be overwhelmed. The floor under his feet was slippery with black skaven blood, the bodies of dead vermin littered the floor. Scores, perhaps hundreds of the beasts had been butchered and yet still they came rushing from the hole. It was a vision from the hells of Khaine, the Murder God’s infernal legions boiling up from the netherworld.
On, on they fought, until their arms grew weary from the killing, until their lungs sickened at the stink of blood and their ears were deafened by the wailing song of slaughter. Tears of despair rolled down Mandred’s cheeks. Pride in the valour of the soldiers beside him turned to bitterness in the knowledge that bravery could never stem such a horde. The skaven would drown them all beneath their swarming hosts.
In the midst of his despair, Mandred’s blade flashed out and for once didn’t sink itself in furry flesh. Dimly he reconciled the shock with the vision in his eyes, hordes of ratmen scurrying back to the hole. Squeaks of fright replaced screams of battle as the skaven retreated, abandoning their wounded and dead.
Mandred drew upon reserves of strength he didn’t know he had. Shaking the weariness from him, he rose and whirled his bloody sword overhead. ‘After them!’ he shouted, swinging the sword downwards, thrusting its point at the ratmen scrambling into the wall. ‘Let none escape!’ The soldiers, every bit as weary as their prince, marched forwards, a vengeance on every face.
Before they could reach the hole, their path was blocked by Kurgaz and the other dwarfs. The bearded warriors were caked in gore, their armour foul with the blood of skaven. There was more than mere vengeance in their faces; it was the genocidal hate of millennia, a fury that would be sated by nothing less than total extermination.
Even so, the dwarfs barred the Middenheimers from pursuing the fleeing ratmen. When one incredulous knight tried to shove Kurgaz aside, the dwarf dropped him by driving the haft of his hammer into the man’s gut.
‘They’re escaping!’ Mandred roared at the dwarf. Had their allies gone mad?
A dull roar shook the tunnel, not quite drowning out the shrill scream of hundreds of inhuman voices. A column of dust to rival what came before rushed out from the hole as tons of earth and rock slammed down to seal the fissure.
Mandred and his soldiers were thrown to the floor by the tremor, blinded and nearly smothered by the thick cloud of dust. When he regained both vision and feet, Mandred saw Kurgaz still standing between the men and the dirt-choked crack in the wall. The dwarf looked like some horrible wraith, coated from crown to toe in grey dust.
‘Never chase a skaven into his burrow,’ Kurgaz said, spitting dirt from his mouth. ‘Other ratkin always make sure you can’t follow.’
Mandred felt a chill run through him as he understood what Kurgaz was saying. The collapse had been engineered, designed to prevent pursuit. He thought of those terrible squeals. How many hundreds of their own had the skaven murdered with that cave-in?
‘You’ll learn, princeling,’ Kurgaz assured Mandred. ‘Before we’ve driven the skaven from Grungni’s Tower, you’ll be wise to all their tricks.’ The dwarf looked across the dirty, tired countenances of the other Middenheimers. ‘First thing you’ll need to do is work up some stamina. Can’t have you burned out after a small fracas.’
Beck stepped forwards, tugging links of mail from the slashed edge of his coif. ‘That wasn’t their main force?’ he asked in a tone of piteous despondency.
Kurgaz threw his head back in a booming laugh. ‘Just a skirmish!’ He jabbed a thumb at the floor. ‘The real fight is down there, in the workings and the deeps. This was just some larcenous ratlord with a sneaky idea to slip upstairs and nab some plunder before anybody got wise to him. If his own lot didn’t drop the roof on his head, he’ll know better than to try it again.’ Kurgaz turned around, swinging his warhammer up onto his shoulder. ‘Come along manlings, we’ve a long way to go. You can rest up on the way.’
Mandred felt the sting of the dwarf’s gruff words. No gratitude, no praise. No appreciation. Just a casual dismissal of the entire fight as inconsequential. It grated on his pride as a human, was an offence to his honour as a noble and a slight upon his ability as a leader. He was tempted to turn around and lead his men back into the city, leave the dwarfs to hold the Crack on their own.
Instead, he threw back his shoulders and turned to shout commands to his followers. ‘Dispatch the wounded topside! Officers, reform your companies.’ He thought about the ferocity of the attack and the suddenness of the skaven ambush. ‘Spears to the fore and flanks. Archers behind.’ He watched for a moment as the soldiers adjusted to the new formation, then called out in a voice loud enough to carry back to the surface. ‘Let’s show these beardies how men can really fight!’