Frankos had been far from me and the main thrust of the skaven attack when I’d fallen, along with the bulk of the Freeguild. The Knight-Heraldor had always been blessed with a cooler head than I would have known what to do with, and I was confident, as only I could be, that he would have been smart enough to get off Kurzog’s Hill before being overrun. Barbarus too. I hadn’t seen the King in the Sky after the aetar had abandoned us, and I could only hope that he had gone with them. And Xeros… Sigmar, I never thought I’d wish the Stormcloud well, but if the Lord-Relictor lived then there was no place in creation that the skaven could harbour me and hope to remain hidden from his stormsight.
I turned my gaze inwards.
Introspection had never suited me and I was about a century out of practice, but a Stormcast Eternal could always tell where he was. Every realm has a magical resonance that responds in its own peculiar way to the spark of Azyr we all bear within us. And the light of Sigendil shines upon us always, calling us to war just as it had in my mortal days. I was almost certain I was still in Ghur. I could sense the same savage gyres in the aether that my soul had felt as kindred when they had first met in the Free City of Cartha, but there was a scratching, chittering white noise running through it that gnawed at my confidence in that judgment.
‘Be alive, Stormcloud.’ I sat in silence for an interminable spell longer. ‘But pray Sigmar, don’t bring Akturus with you.’
The sound of the dungeon door being reopened startled me from my reverie.
How long had it been? Long enough to have become a moot consideration.
I was up and at the bars before Milk Scar had made the short swagger to my cell.
He looked pleased with himself. Never a promising sign in such a transparent sadist. In addition to his two thugs, who looked shifty and had their weapons out, he had brought two more clanrat guards with lowered spears to back them up. A heavy set of solid bar manacles fell from his paws and onto the floor beside him with a clunk. One of the spear-rats scurried closer to pole them through the bars and into my cell.
‘On-on,’ said Milk Scar. ‘Fast-quick.’
‘Why?’
‘We walk-scurry.’ The ratman bared his teeth at me, and clipped the ear of his spear-rat who obligingly prodded at the manacles until they butted against the outside of my foot. ‘To learn name of your captor.’
Chapter six
I put on the manacles. I stepped forward on command and let the nervous-looking spear-rat insert a locking bar through each wrist while the other attached another set around my ankles. These, at least, were linked by a short length of rusty chain rather than being a solid lump of iron, allowing me to move a little, even if it did force me to shuffle about like a monk of the Listening Order. The thought of beating the two ratmen to death with their locking bars did occur, but I am not nearly the unthinking animal that I like to be portrayed as. That they feared me enough to be so cautious was flattering, but I knew that killing a couple of clanrat guards was not going to get me out of that cell. And I did want to get out of that cell. I was curious to know who was mad enough to think that they could cage the Bear-Eater, and why.
After that, I allowed (though I was definitely stretching the definition of ‘allowed’ by this point) them to feed a metal rod through steel eyes in both sets of fetters and lock them together. By the time Milk Scar was satisfied enough to unlock the door I was trussed like a Sigmarzeit hog for roasting.
I still fancied my chances in a fight if it came to it, but fleeing a skaven warren in that state was hardly going to be the most glorious escapade of my life.
I was content to wait for my moment. For now.
The spear-rats both shuffled behind me as I stepped out of the cell and into the passage. One of Milk Scar’s henchrats approached with a hood, a look in his eyes that suggested he was wondering how to overcome the clear foot of disparity between his uppermost reach and the top of my head with dignity.
‘No-no,’ said Milk Scar, to his henchrat’s poorly disguised relief. ‘Our… friends want-wish to see him.’ His struggles over the word ‘friend’ suggested to me that Queekish had no proper translation for it.
Then one of the spear-rats prodded me in the back and we were moving.
Exploring the interior of a skaven lair was one of those rare experiences that I’d often found time to imagine but had yet to indulge. Like hunting vulcharc through the Crystal Labyrinth of Tzeentch, scratching my name onto the black stones of the Shrine of Elixia in the famous Hanging Vale of Anvrok, or conquering the Tattered Peaks of Ulgu where, I’ve heard, you can see older stars than any in Azyr. Naturally, then, I went in with certain expectations, all of which were grossly surpassed by the reality.
As soon as the door was opened, I gagged on the stench of rat. If my gaoler had soaked a cloth in piss and ordure, allowed it to marinate with wet fur and fouled meat, and then stuffed the finished article in my mouth the pungence could not have been more overpowering. It was almost enough for me to turn around and beg for the hood. The effect of the odour was worsened by the fact that my sense of smell, along with an equally disturbed one of touch, was almost all I had to go on. The same awful green half-light that had permeated the dungeons coated everything here as well, enough to see by, but only just; no colour there but green and the many shades of it towards black. The clanrat right in front of me was less defined than a shadow.
Even the main tunnels were narrow.
The skaven scurried on all fours and it was tight even for them. No consideration was spared for the eight-foot-tall Stormcast Eternal with fetters binding ankles and wrists, and the skaven behind me took every moment of struggle as fair excuse to prod me in the back with their spears.
‘Try that again and I will break your arms,’ I snarled.
They simply tittered and prodded harder. As if the passages were not cramped enough with just the six of us, we had to contend with a constant flood of skaven coming in the opposite direction, as well as plenty more trying to overtake us from behind. A thoroughfare through skaven eyes, or to be more accurate, skaven whiskers, seemed to be a survival contest of biting and clawing and bullying of the fittest. I’d taken more than a few claw marks, and a few more sly spear jabs I might add, before we’d even lost sight of the dungeons.
Very occasionally the passage widened, but if I was expecting any respite from the deranged horrors of skavendom then I was to be disappointed.
The tunnel seemed to have been dug with just enough deliberation to wind around a succession of larger natural caverns, widening as it did so – in this instance, into a vertiginous shelf of flat-ish rock overlooking the chaotic sprawl of verminous industry below. Scaffolding clambered up the walls, wreathed in the impenetrable toxic smog of the hell-foundries and machinery in its depths. The rickety platforms that had been built onto the very top of the scaffolds put me in mind of dead fish floating on a poisoned lake, and I’d seen more than a few of those in my time battling the Rotbringers of Ghur.
There are many horrors that I’ve borne witness to in my life, but the sound and vibrations of those skaven machines, ravening and consuming with neither animus nor soul, made me shudder.
Milk Scar moved unerringly through it all in spite of his blindness. He would scurry along, inches from a thousand-foot drop, whiskers atwitch at some change in pressure or humidity that I couldn’t detect. Then he would count out his steps before halting at a bustling intersection, sniffing both ways, then dashing headlong into a seething torrent of vermin – as if it were somehow preferable to the seething torrent of vermin that had been there two seconds beforehand. When he counted, I counted, doing my best to recall our route, memorising the rhythm of the landmarks, such as they were. A side-passage from which the unappetising stench of roasted flesh emerged. Another that went up, skaven scrambling over each other for claw-holds, the chittering and screaming of skaven barter echoing down. We went through a sprawling warren of hide yurts that I took to be the skaven equivalent of an embassy quarter. Beastmen brayed and jeered as I was led through, shaking their horns in a riotous display. I bared my teeth gamely and tried to clench my fists and flex my muscles. My fetters wouldn’t let me raise my hands above my waist, but I was pleased to see that the effort offended them enormously.