‘Fool-fool.’ The skaven shoved him unceremoniously over the edge and then we all went at it again.
‘Behind us,’ Barrach yelled.
I turned to see more skaven massing on the other side of the cavern. Not the bronze-armoured elites that had mustered to bar our passage, but clanrats, stepping unenthusiastically onto the swaying bridge, goaded on by the snarls and threats of their clawleaders. One spear-armed warrior appeared to panic as soon as he set paws on the bridge and tried to fight his way back onto the stone berm. A black-furred skaven with a scar criss-crossing his jaw shoved him off. The clanrat wailed until he struck a chimney stack with a hollow clang. The clawleader waved another dozen clanrats onto the bridge in his place.
I knew that I could fight those sorts of numbers all day, but I realised that I had already ridden my luck about as far as I could expect it to carry me. Even coming on one or two at a time, that many clanrats would eventually overwhelm Barrach, and I wouldn’t be having nearly so easy a time once I was being attacked from both sides.
And I wasn’t forgetting that this was a Clans Skyre lair. Surely I could only run amok for so long before someone thought to bring out a jezzail.
I took a fistful of the bridge’s load-bearing cables in each hand and flexed my biceps, drawing the cables in towards me until we both started to colour. The shock-vermin squealed in alarm as the cables whined.
‘No-no!’
I grinned. ‘Yes, yes.’
The shock-vermin were already starting to scamper back the way they’d come when Barrach made a noise as though he were passing a stone. Curiosity got the better of me. I glanced over my shoulder to see the human warrior’s skin coming out in scales that thickened as I watched into hard plates of bark, fingernails lengthening into claws. By the time he emitted a woody growl and straightened up again, he looked more like something crossed between a sylvaneth and a bonesplitter orruk than a man.
I let go of the ropes.
‘How long have you been sitting on that?’
His mouth creaked as the rigid parts forced a grin. ‘I told you I was Champion of the Wild Harvest, a warrior of the Gorwood Gorkai. Didn’t I?’
‘Impressive.’
‘Now can I take the front?’
‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’
Grabbing Barrach by the barky protrusions of his chest I physically lifted him up and swung him around me, switching our positions. He burst towards the still-wavering shock-vermin like water from a crumbling dam, and would have taken me right along with him if I hadn’t had the wherewithal to let go. Wooden fists clubbed bronze armour to bent gears and bits of spring. Iron hard plates of bark turned aside storm-glaives and claws. Six ranks had been bulldozed before the rest simply squealed surrender and fled. The clanrats on what was now my side looked far less confident about facing me than they had been ten seconds ago about facing Barrach. Having just watched him work, they were giving me far too much credit.
Not that I’ve ever let that stop me before.
‘Hamilcaaaar!’
Clenching my fists, I shook them above my head, bellowing like a gargant with a hangover, until the clanrats shrieked and broke, scarpering for the safety of the tunnels in short order.
‘Remember the name!’
I turned around to find Barrach’s wooden armour already sinking back into his green skin. His muscular form seemed much diminished now that the fury of his goddess, dead or otherwise, had ebbed.
‘The Maiden is flood and rainstorm, forest fire and predator’s teeth,’ Barrach breathed, sinking to one knee and wheezing. ‘Destructive, but passing.’
‘Can you call on her again? I have a feeling we’ll need her.’
‘For a shorter time, maybe. I…’ He shook his head. His green skin was paler than it had been, his expression drawn, as though the Maiden’s gifts had come from within rather than some divinity without. ‘I just need to catch my breath.’
‘I’ll take the lead for now then, if it’s all the same with you.’
I counted my steps as my twice-daily commutes with Milk Scar had conditioned me to count them, albeit more quickly as I was running this time and no longer in chains. We hadn’t gone far when the squeak and chitter of pursuing clanrats gave way to bovine grunts and ursine barks. The odour changed too, becoming less musty and acidic and more of a pungent, physical presence alongside us in the tunnel.
‘What in spring, summer and winter is that?’ Barrach hissed, covering his nose.
‘Gorwood beastmen.’ Kurzog must have set up home in this part of the lair only after my capture, thus coinciding with the end of Barrach’s own daily visits to Ikrit’s burrows. ‘Think of it as guest quarters.’
‘Is this part of your plan?’
I nodded. ‘Think about it. The skaven would never let an ally too deep into their lair, and for practical reasons alone they would have to be kept near the surface. Have you ever tried getting a beastman herd underground?’ I adopted a passable impersonation of someone who had once done just that. Barrach shook his head. ‘We have to be somewhere close to an exit,’ I concluded.
‘You think.’
I tapped my heart. ‘In here, remember.’
Barrach snorted. ‘I remember. So all we need to do now is fight our way through a beast herd.’
‘Do not fear,’ I grinned, already striding out of the tunnel and into the main chamber. ‘Hamilcar Bear-Eater will go first.’
Various ideas spilled through my mind as I went. From creeping through the beast camp yurt to yurt, to crafting a distraction of some kind and then skirting around the walls for an exit, but the key to looking like a leader is to think quickly and act decisively. The trick to accomplishing the former is almost always to make the latter as straightforward as possible. So without actually thinking all that hard about it at all I stepped into the wavering light of the Blind Herd’s dung fires, cupped my hands around my mouth, and took a deep breath.
‘Brayseer Kurzog! Did you really think that a few thousand skaven could keep the Bear-Eater from you?’
Barrach hissed, and shrank back into the deeper shadows of the tunnel mouth. ‘That’s your plan?’
‘Kurzog is a cunning animal,’ I laughed. ‘But he fears me like mortal men fear death itself. He will want me and me alone. Stay back. And while his eye is on me you can make your escape.’
‘What about you?’
‘Fear not. The chain has not been forged that can leash Hamilcar Bear-Eater.’
Further conversation was immediately curtailed as the yurt beside me was ripped down and a bull-headed bestigor stamped through, swinging a flail. I ducked back, the ridiculously heavy weapon tearing open the rock at my feet. I countered with a sharp blow to the ribs and heard bones crack. The bestigor slobbered over me, bleating with pain, and struck out with a forearm. I blocked it on the muscle of mine, then grabbed the beastman literally by the horn. It snorted and huffed and wrenched its neck muscles, but was otherwise helpless as I led it, struggling, like a show pony around a circle and then let it go. I jumped well clear as it swept its horns across my belly with a roar, inadvertently hooking the spear with which a surprised (and now upside down) ungor had been about to stab me, and then disappeared under the flailing hooves of the rest of the beast herd. One enraged gor, his antlers partially entangled with the leather strapping of another, strained for a long-handled battle-axe. I kicked his ungulate fingers away from the haft and picked up the weapon for myself.