THE SQUINT

Skragrott screwed up his eyes and rubbed the heels of his scrawny palms into the sockets, trying his best to massage away some of the throbbing pain that pulsed through his head. Thump, thump, thump, it went, as insistent as if there were something trapped inside his fungus-addled brainpan. Something big was coming, something that was just dying to shatter his skull and break out in an explosion of gribbly bits like the spoor-burst of a hedkrakka fungus. It put him in an excessively bad mood.

The bawling, raucous din of the marching horde wasn’t helping his headache. Fingering the pebble-like glimmerings in the hidden pocket of his robes – purchased at great cost in quicksilver and worn smooth by his constant rubbing – he stopped and took in the vast army crossing the vista of the Ghurish hinterlands. Tens of thousands of orruks of every conceivable breed, shape and shade of green spread from east to west, each dead set on unleashing their own brand of violence on the humie city at the march’s end. Amongst them were not only Skragrott’s fellow Moonclan, shuffling black triangles teeming in the ochre dust, but also Grimscuttle lads on their giant black arachnids, stupefied troggoths caught up in the romp, growl-bellied ogors and even hundred-foot-tall Mega-Gargants that blotted out the sun as they passed. He had plans for the latter contingent, but for now, he had to bide his time. In truth, he was not enjoying it one bit.

For a time, the mood of violent joy had been contagious, and Skragrott had found himself caught up in it, grinning like the Bad Moon itself until the muscles on the back of his head hurt from leering. But it had been weeks since they had set off, and they were still thousands of miles away from their destination. The constant din of the greenskin march, a fizz of Waaagh! energy always on the brink of exploding into a frenzy of violence, was playing on his nerves something chronic. If it weren’t for the fact that Gordrakk was at the head of the sprawling column, the whole thing would have collapsed in on itself long ago. But no one wanted to risk the wrath of the Fist of Gork – least of all Skragrott, after all he’d gone through to get the giant lummox on side.

‘Boss!’ shouted one of his runners, a Snarlfang-riding grot by the name of Spitey who came pounding up on his growling steed in a blurring puff of dust. ‘Boss, your nutters are off again. Doing this.’ The rider made a face, sticking his tongue out and waggling his ears. ‘Dead funny to watch, but one of ’em’s spewin’ out black smoke from his eyes, and it stinks funny.’

Skragrott gave a shuddering sigh, turning back and making for the cage full of captives he kept at the back of the column, all the while enduring the jeers and accusations of the orruks stomping past him. Some glorious leader he made, here in Ghur, without his pointy throne. At least back in Skrappa Spill, the bigger greenies knew to treat him with something approaching respect.

The cage of scrap was ugly as sin, all sharp edges and rust, juddering along on six mismatched wheels with a persistent metallic squeak that did Skragrott’s head in but was absolutely necessary to keep the seers within from gathering their wits. A great wooden effigy of the Bad Moon had been chained atop the cage to keep its inhabitants cowed into submission, and most of the time, it worked.

Skragrott had ordered the portable prison to be dragged around with him ever since he set off to join forces with Gordrakk, goading his most trusted troggoths to push it through the Chamonic realmgate under Bigga Hill and having them haul it all the way out here to the middle of Ghurish nowhere. He told the lads it was to keep his hand in when it came to torture, but the truth was that the seers and prophets inside were invaluable for glimpsing future events. He was unable to visit the fungal asylum under Skrappa Spill on the march, so instead he’d brought the best bits with him – those that hadn’t been already claimed by the fungus-riddled walls of the place, that is. Spitey had been right: the inhabitants were moaning, gibbering and gurning as their bony hands gripped the bars. One of them was shuddering on the floor, thin trails of black smoke trailing from his eyes. Clearly they’d had a bit too much of Gordrakk’s Waaagh! as well.

‘Shut it!’ screamed the Loonking. ‘Shut yer bleedin’ mouths or I’ll slit yer guts wide open! You only speak when I tells ya!’ He marched up to the cage and jumped up onto the running board, giving the captive prophets as much evil eye as he could muster. They all shrank back – the dark tidesman from Shyish, always gibbering about the secrets of Lunaghast; the Azyrite in his tattered robes, constellations of silver thread glinting amongst the dirt; even the gaunt aelf, blind and hideous since Skragrott poked out his eyes.

All bar one.

A towering, tattered-robed git stood fast, the swirling pink and blue tattoos on his face seeming to writhe and glow from within as he clutched the least wonky of the cage’s bars and met Skragrott’s gaze without faltering. The Seer of the Crystal Isle, he called himself. He snarled and opened his mouth to speak.

Skragrott punched his teeth in. His whole fist fit in there, just about, and he let go of the glimmerings he had been clutching in his clammy palm. He yanked his hand back amongst strings of blood and saliva, leaving three of the strange pebble-things in the gittish seer’s gob as the rest clattered to the cage’s uneven tin floor.

‘Choke on that,’ said Skragrott, watching with a great deal of satisfaction as the fancy seer started to shudder, rattling the cage’s bars and frothing at the lips. ‘Get that down yer neck, ya mouthy git, and puke yer secrets back out nice and fast.’

The seer gave vent to a rising moan, starting so low it sounded like a troggoth’s rumble and reaching a piercing shriek like the boiling of a Brewgit’s kettle. He slammed into the cage bars as if pushed by an giant, invisible hand, his face a hand’s breadth from Skragrott’s pointy nose, and stared furiously at him, one wide eye spiralling pink, the other blue. Those eyes seemed to grow larger and larger until Skragrott felt he was sinking into them, drowning in them.

The Seer of the Crystal Isle was no longer a bare-footed, tattered mendicant but a towering Magister bedecked in scintillating silk and fluted armour plates, somehow outside the cage and simmering with anger. He had not two eyes but three, one dead centre in his forehead. That new eye burned with such intensity that Skragrott had to narrow his eyes as if looking straight into the Hyshian sun, but he could not tear his gaze away. He felt his soul wither like a bare hand held in the mouth of a furnace. Larger and larger grew the sorcerer, his mouth opening impossibly wide to spill avalanches of pebble-like glimmerings.

‘You seek prophecy, wretch? You go to your death!’ he boomed. ‘The gate will shatter! The earth will tear! The sky shall eat the storm, and the serpent’s tide will rise! The Changer’s riddle is born anew by the splitting mirror of the Dark Prince!’

Skragrott cowered, mind aflame. Back at the Spill, he had been in two minds about caging this one, but the magnitude of his error was only now becoming clear. He was a prey creature trapped without hope of escape by its natural predator. His limbs shivered uncontrollably, and he sank down, staring up at the still-growing terror of feathers, robes and back-jointed limbs that was unfurling above him to eat him whole.

And there, over its shoulder, was the moon.

It was whispering something. Skragrott strained to hear it, leaning in. Leaning up. Getting taller, somehow, getting closer, swelling with power as he focused on the moon even as it shrugged off its chains. ‘You wot?’ said the Loonking, his voice that of a million troglodytes all shouting at once. ‘You bleedin wot?’ He was a giant, now, far taller than the gargants that had receded into grey murk of the column, nothing more than a backdrop against that which really mattered: the Chaos-worshipper who had dared to attack him.

Skragrott gathered the moon’s chains in a gnarled fist the size of a boulder and heaved. With a great effort, he swung it around and around, his heels tracing erratic spirals in the dust as he gathered momentum. The moon-effigy cackled and laughed as it whooshed through the glittering air, a tail of sickly yellow-green fire trailing from its craters.

The feathered titan before him reached out, nine taloned limbs reaching to rip his soul apart, but this time Skragrott was ready. Letting go of his lunar wrecking ball, it struck the apparition right in its guts, blasting the horrible thing apart in a million shards of shattering crystal. The Bad Moon gave a triumphant whoop, and suddenly it hung in the firmament once more, cold, distant and silent as the grave.

Skragrott shook himself as if waking from a nightmare and steeled himself to peer inside the cage once more. The Seer of the Crystal Isle had become nothing more than a shapeless mass, a pillar of glowing, pulsating fungus with limb-like appendages growing around the bars of the cage. A mist of grey-green spores slowly dissipated around him. Skragrott looked up; the great effigy of the Bad Moon atop the cage stared down at him, same as before, but its grin seemed a little wider, and its chains had entirely disappeared.

‘Um,’ said the Loonking. ‘Er… right! Let that be a lesson to the rest of ya! Mess with the boss and ya get… ya get shroom-ified!’

Skragrott tried to shake his staff threateningly, stumbled a little instead and righted himself with as much dignity as he could muster. Robes damp with sweat, he made his way back towards the front of the column. Some semblance of order had been restored, thank Mork.

He just wasn’t quite sure how.

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

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