A few of the vermin rushed at the palace itself, launching themselves from the yard in an effort to reach the veranda. Most of the creatures fell short, crashing back to earth with snarls and squeaks. One of the monsters, however, caught the balustrade with its paws. Briefly its legs scrabbled at the edge of the veranda, then it was pulling itself upwards, fangs bared in a vicious snarl.
Mirella found herself unable to move, unable to do anything but gaze in horror at that verminous face. The skaven chittered at her. She could see the muscles under its piebald fur tense as it prepared to spring at her.
Death caught the ratman before it could attack. A ball of spiked steel slammed into its face, splitting its skull and sending a spray of fangs and blood across the veranda. Brother Richter swung the footman’s mace he held a second time and sent the corpse tumbling down into the yard. In the next instant, the priest grabbed Mirella and pulled her inside the palace.
Dazed, confused by her astounding escape, Mirella was slow to appreciate the bloodstains on the cleric’s robe or the sounds of conflict echoing through the interior of the Middenpalaz. Then it struck her. What she had seen in the yard must be happening everywhere, anywhere there was a grate or drain leading into the sewers. The skaven were bypassing every fortification in the city by attacking from below!
‘Graf Gunthar is rallying his warriors,’ Richter was telling her as he helped a cluster of servants barricade the door opening onto the veranda. ‘They’ve fought their way down to the cellars and are closing up the entrances!’
Mirella listened to the priest, but his words made little impact on her. Her thoughts were somewhere else. If the skaven were able to reach the city, if they had already prevailed below…
‘What about Mandred?’ she gasped.
Brother Richter shook his head. ‘The graf believes it was a trap to draw the army below. The skaven must have been waiting.
‘Prince Mandred must be dead.’
‘Khazuk!’ Kurgaz bellowed, staving in the face of a ratman with the head of his hammer. The dwarf laughed boisterously as the carcass went flying backwards, toppling several of the skaven behind it.
Mandred slashed the throat of the monster he fought, nearly decapitating it. ‘A fine cast, friend Smallhammer.’
Kurgaz cracked the skull of one of the skaven that had tripped over the corpse of his previous victim. A fierce shout sent several others scurrying away in fright. ‘That’s naught,’ he grumbled. ‘You should see me with the real thing!’
It didn’t take any explanation for Mandred to know what the dwarf was talking about. It was impossible not to note the fearsome power of Drakdrazh. The temptation to sit back and watch Kurgaz’s brother ply the enchanted hammer back and forth among the vermin was almost overwhelming. It was like seeing one of the dwarf ancestor gods in action. Mandred couldn’t help but think of Ghal Maraz, the Hammer of Sigmar, and its legendary might. He wondered where the outlaw knight had taken it after it was stolen from Emperor Boris. He wondered if he would ever see it wielded in battle as he now saw Drakdrazh being wielded.
The dwarfs were already locked in pitched battle when the Middenheimers reached the caverns and mines of what the denizens of Karak Grazhyakh called the Fourth Deep. Skaven had swarmed up from the smaller shafts and tunnels radiating out from the Fourth Deep. Fighter for fighter, the ratmen were vastly inferior to the rugged dwarfs, their crude armour and scavenged weapons woefully primitive beside the steel plate and keen axes of their foes. The dwarfs, however, were unable to match the speed of the ratkin, an advantage that enabled the skaven to bring their prodigious numbers to bear upon the foe. The dwarfs presented a solid rock, steady and impenetrable, but the skaven were like a raging sea, sweeping in from every quarter to pound at their defences.
How easy it would have been to lose heart when they reached the battle, when they saw the seemingly endless horde flooding through the great hall, scurrying across overturned mine carts and scampering down skeletal gantries. It was one thing to hear how numerous their foe was, but to see it before one’s eyes was a thing terrible to contemplate. Mandred felt his own heart buckle when he saw that verminous sea crashing around the small knots of embattled dwarfs scattered through the cavern. Yet seeing those doughty warriors, unperturbed despite being outnumbered and surrounded, combating their enemy with a stubborn defiance, made an even greater impression. Watching a grizzled old dwarf smoking calmly on his pipe as he mashed ratmen with his axe, or listening to a young beardling singing a Khazalid tune as he plied his hammer sent a fire coursing through their veins. Such courage in such conditions was a magnificence of valour that belonged in legend. No man could abandon such courage to be overwhelmed and destroyed. Whatever time he bought by such abject cowardice wouldn’t be life, but merely a hollow existence of shame.
To a man, the Middenheimers had charged into the Fourth Deep, the fatigue of their long march forgotten as the roar of battle thundered through them. Shouting ‘wolf and graf!’ they had fallen upon the flank of the skaven horde. The ratmen, already locked in combat, were taken by surprise, forced to give ground before the humans.
If they prevailed, they would be hailed as heroes when they returned to the surface, paraded through Middenheim as champions of order and light. If they could turn the skaven back here, they would break the siege of their homes before it could even start.
The tide of battle was turning against the skaven. Steadily the humans were driving them back, fighting their way across the cavern to relieve the embattled dwarfs one group at a time. Ratmen still swarmed from the shafts and passageways, but now they did so fighting a trickle of skaven seeking to flee the conflict. The sight reassured Mandred. If his army could maintain the momentum, they would make that trickle into a raging torrent that would sweep the verminous horde away.
‘We’ll soon join your brother!’ Mandred called out to Kurgaz, nodding to him.
The dwarf turned away from the mushed remains of an armoured ratman, frowning as he tried to peer over the shoulders of the knights and soldiers around him. ‘I’ll take your word for it, princeling,’ he growled, then hurled himself at another foe.
Beside the prince, Beck was fending off the frenzied assault of a snaggletoothed ratkin draped in a tattered cloak and wielding knives in both its paws. The filthy creature reminded Mandred of the gutter runners that had rampaged through Neist’s hospice. He felt no qualms as he drove his sword into the thing’s back. Many more would die before Sofia was avenged.
‘Thank you, your grace,’ Beck huffed, winded by the hard fight. He had barely drawn a breath before he was lunging forwards again, striking down an opportunistic ratkin that was leaping at Mandred’s back. The rodent fell in a pool of spilled entrails.
The ebb of battle flowed away from the prince’s position. For a moment, he was able to gaze across the cavern, to appreciate the havoc that had been wrought against the skaven. Even as Mandred was feeling the glow of their accomplishment, he saw something that turned him sick inside.
Kurgaz’s brother, that great champion with his fabulous warhammer, was beset by a mob of armoured ratmen. Black-furred brutes, they bore great halberds in their paws. While Drakdrazh struck one down, another slashed at Mirko, catching him in the back of the knee. The dwarf’s mail blunted the impact, but he staggered just the same. The blazing runes on the haft of his hammer flickered for a moment.
In that moment, a huge white skaven wearing black armour lunged at Mirko, a sword clutched in either paw. The massive ratman brought both blades stabbing down, driving them with such force that they penetrated the mail between neck and shoulder. The monster put his full weight behind the stabbing blades, pushing them down until only the pommels projected from Mirko’s shoulders.