When he turned back around to lead his army into the subterranean gloom, Mandred saw Kurgaz looking at him. He wasn’t sure if it were his imagination, but he thought he saw Kurgaz smiling before the dwarf turned away.
Dwarfs! He doubted if any human could ever really understand them. Too proud to ask for help, too stubborn to praise it when it was given. Yet help them Middenheim would.
Because in helping the dwarfs, they would be keeping the skaven away from their city.
Warmonger Vecteek preened his whiskers and squeaked contentedly as the dust-covered messenger made his report. The little force had broken into the dwarf tunnel when the sniffer-moles became agitated. The moles had become accustomed to the smell of dwarfs, so their handlers knew it was something different that upset their keen senses. Breaking into the tunnel, they’d discovered a few dwarfs leading a great company of humans down into the stronghold!
Vecteek didn’t care about the details of the ensuing fight. With an angry snarl and a flick of his tail, he set a pair of Verminguard pouncing on the messenger. There was an amusing look of entreaty on the hapless ratkin’s face when his head was chopped from his shoulders.
The humans were reacting just as he’d planned. They were rushing down into the tunnels to help the dwarfs. And while they were busy slaughtering Vrrmik’s treacherous scum, they’d be leaving their city wide open. Helpless prey for Clan Rictus and the genius of Vecteek!
The Grey Lord’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he leaned over the side of his palanquin. He bared his fangs as he saw Plaguelord Puskab watching him from the shadows. The diseased priest had been arguing for delays, trying to play for more time. He claimed the Black Plague needed a few more weeks to truly spread. Vecteek wasn’t fooled by such puerile attempts at deception. Vrrmik and the weaklings of Clan Mors would never hold out that long. The dwarfs would overwhelm them and the humans would return to their city. Vecteek’s careful plan to divide and conquer would be undermined!
Or, perhaps Puskab was being truthful. Vecteek licked his fangs as he mulled over that possibility. In that case, the plague would ravage Middenheim, destroy the city without the loss of a single skaven life.
Vecteek’s tail lashed out in a fit of fury, slapping one of his Verminguard. The second possibility was even more abhorrent. No great battle! No chance to display the genius of the Warmonger against a formidable enemy! It was insufferable. If it cost a thousand, ten thousand of his clanrats, he’d have his battle. There was no glory in a bloodless victory. The plague was there to weaken and debilitate, but it couldn’t be allowed to claim credit for the final triumph!
‘Diggers! Sap-rats!’ Vecteek snarled, his voice cracking down the length of the earthen tunnel. Criers scattered through the maze of passages and burrows winding behind the walls of Karak Grazhyakh took up his shout, ensuring it reached the ears of every skaven bearing the brand of Rictus on his pelt. ‘Man-things go below to help the dwarf-meat. Now Rictus-rats will strike! Now Rictus will conquer! Now Rictus will reign!’
He leaned around, glaring once more at Puskab, fairly daring the plaguelord to protest his orders. Vecteek considered that the degenerates of Clan Pestilens must have at least a pawful of brains when Puskab wisely kept silent.
‘Dig-smash! Break-crush!’ Vecteek howled. ‘Up! Up into man-thing nest! Up to their streets and their cellars! Up to their granaries and their stockyards! Up to their homes and their temples! All-all belongs to Rictus! All-all belongs to Vecteek!’
Vecteek savoured the clamour of claws on bare rock as his underlings hurried to obey his diktat. The approaches were already prepared; before the next feeding cycle his sappers would be through. The tunnels would break up into the sewers beneath Middenheim. From the sewers, the skaven would filter into every cellar, dungeon and crypt.
The walls of Middenheim were tall and strong, built to keep out any foe. Any foe except the one who chose to ignore them. Now those same walls would imprison the people of Middenheim.
Would ensure that none of Vecteek’s prey escaped.
Chapter XVI
Altdorf
Kaldezeit, 1114
‘Open in the name of the Emperor!’ The command was shouted in a thick voice, punctuated by the hammer-like blows of a mailed fist against old timber. The speaker was a stocky, heavy-set being, shorter than a man but with a stoutness of build that lent him a decidedly powerful appearance. Heavy plates of steel were strapped above the mail he wore, and over his bearded head he wore a close-fitting helm adorned with swirling runes of silver and gold. Rings of gold were threaded through the plaits of his thick beard.
Beset by plague and disease, the collection of revenue had become a logistical nightmare for the Ministry of Finance. Taxmen died by the droves as they succumbed to the illness of their victims, their ranks decimated even more savagely than those of physician and priest. An attempt had been made during the spring of 1112 to employ men already struck by the Black Plague as excise collectors, but the effort had failed miserably. The plague-stricken collectors had spread the disease to every quarter of the city. Worse, with the spectre of Morr already hovering over them, they had proven less than stalwart about turning over the revenue they collected to Imperial coffers, skimming most of the money to squander on such pleasures as they might enjoy before the plague took them.
It was Emperor Boris himself who came up with a solution. Aware that the plague had ignored the halfling population, he had seized upon the theory that the Death was only affecting humankind. Soft-hearted and inoffensive, halflings didn’t have the stuff to act as tax collectors. Fortunately, there was another non-human community dwelling in Altdorf that did.
Their own business failing as the plague devastated their customers, many of Altdorf’s dwarfish community had responded to the Emperor’s summons. Soon an entire cadre of dwarf taxmen were stalking the streets of Altdorf, exacting the Imperial tribute from great and small with the stubborn, harsh tenacity of their dour breed. True, the services of the dwarfs were more expensive than those of human taxmen — for one thing the dwarfs refused to accept Imperial coin after the gold content was reduced, forcing their wage to be drawn in raw nuggets and dust — but their role was essential to maintaining the financial stability of Imperial government.
The dwarfs adopted the grandiose title of ‘The Imperial Guild of Excise, Custom, Honour and Fidelity’, but to the people of Altdorf they were simply ‘Goldgather’s Goldgrubbers’. Though they were hated and despised universally, it was still a rare thing for anyone to raise their hand against one of the dwarfs. More than merely the act of defying Imperial law, it was the vindictive nature of the dwarfs themselves that held the abused populace silent. Injure a dwarf and the whole race would persecute the offender’s family unto the tenth generation. Dwarfs recorded their grudges in great tomes so that even the slightest insult would never be forgotten.
The few peasants abroad in the streets didn’t even turn their heads at the commotion on the doorstep of a once prosperous moneylender. They had become accustomed to shunning the house ever since the warning cross had been chalked across the door. Few even knew if the man or any of his household still lived, nor were any willing to risk the plague to find out. Once a week a corpse-cart would pass down the street and knock at each door. They would find out if anyone were still in there — it was what they were paid to do. The corpse-collectors earned a copper from the Temple of Morr for each nose they brought to the cremation pits outside the city wall.