Mind-Stealer

C. L. Werner

The sharp stench of solder and melted copper made Thanquol’s whiskers twitch. The grey seer’s body shook as his nose rebelled against the smell and his body was wracked by a terrific sneeze. The little bells fixed to his horns jangled discordantly as he tried to cleanse the odour from his sinuses.

‘Fast-quick,’ the grey-robed ratman snarled, spitting each word through clenched fangs. His paw clenched tighter about the heft of his staff, the icons and talismans tied about its metal head clattering against the scarred wood. Never a particularly patient skaven, Thanquol’s temper was coming to a boil.

The object of his ire didn’t seem aware that messy sorcerous death was hovering just over his shoulder. The brown-furred skaven continued to fiddle with his spanners and hammers, sometimes reaching into the pockets of the leather apron he wore to fish out some strange tool or instrument. The stone slab which was serving as his workbench was littered with a confusion of metal gears and copper wire, ratgut tubes and little slivers of refined warpstone. The sickly glow of the warpstone was reflected in the thick goggles the skaven wore, making it seem as though his eyes had been replaced with hellish flames.

‘Soon-soon,’ the brown skaven chittered. ‘No worry-fear, Great-Mighty Thanquol! Krakul Zapskratch is good-smart warlock-engineer! Best-best in Under-Empire!’

Thanquol scowled at the magnitude of Krakul’s boasting. Only an empty-brained slack-wit would spew such an outrageous lie and expect his betters to believe him! To think that any warlock-engineer with real ability would be wasting his life as an itinerant tinker-rat wandering from burrow to burrow, selling his services to whatever three-flea warlord he could find! Just for daring to make such a bold-smelling lie, the grey seer was tempted to call down the wrath of the Horned One upon the fool-meat and burn him to a cinder!

Of course, there was a very good reason why Thanquol couldn’t do that. Krakul Zapskratch might be a loathsome, lying, sneaky ill-smelling braggart, but he was also the only warlock-engineer in Greypaw Hollow. Kill the tinker-rat, and there was no one else in the miserable, misbegotten warren capable of making the repairs Boneripper needed.

The grey seer’s eyes narrowed as he glared down at the enormous body lying stretched across the stone slab. Had it been standing, the creature would have been three times the size of its master, a towering construction of steel, bone and wire fuelled by a warpstone heart and driven by the arcane mechanics of Clan Skryre’s techno-sorcery. In shape, it retained a morbid resemblance to a living rat-ogre, and the warlock-engineers had even used the bones of Thanquol’s first Boneripper when assembling their creation. The skeletal automaton had been a gift-bribe by Kaskitt Steelgrin, meant to buy the grey seer’s services in a crooked scheme to ransack the treasury of Bonestash while the skaven were busy fighting the dwarf-things of Karak Angkul.

Thanquol lashed his tail in amusement. Kaskitt had paid for his treachery and presumption. Boneripper belonged to him now, without any obligations to a wire-chewing scrap-rat and his larcenous schemes. Even the control valve the warlock-engineers had hidden among Boneripper’s gears, designed to shut the rat-ogre down should it be ordered to attack any skaven of Clan Skryre, was gone, disabled by dwarfish pistol-fire. The grey seer had impressed upon Krakul what would happen to him if he so much as thought about repairing that particular mechanism.

Of course, that didn’t keep Thanquol from watching every move the warlock-engineer made. It didn’t matter if he had no idea what Krakul was doing with all his strange gizmos. The only important thing was for Krakul to think the grey seer knew what he was about. There was, after all, a chance that Krakul wasn’t the mouse-brain he seemed.

Krakul frittered around with a nest of corroded wires and punctured tubes situated behind Boneripper’s metal chestplate. Thanquol could hear the tinker-rat tutting under his breath as he removed the damaged mechanisms. There was a distinctive green glow about the wires, and Krakul was careful to handle them only with a set of insulated tongs.

Thanquol’s ears sank back against the sides of his skull, his head crooking back in a glowering gesture. He wasn’t about to listen to Krakul chide him about having Boneripper lug a large quantity of warpstone for days on end. The corrosion could have been caused by anything! Maybe some of the smelly fluids Clan Skryre used as coolants, or the warpfire projector built into Boneripper’s third arm. The lummox had suffered enough damage from bullets and boulders that almost anything could have leaked down inside its chest. The green glow emanating from the wires didn’t mean anything!

Agitated squeaks rose from the tunnel outside Krakul’s burrow. Thanquol pulled aside the man-hide curtain which separated the workshop from the main tunnel. Across the narrow corridor, he could see other skaven faces peering out from their holes. He followed the direction of their gaze, his nose twitching as the smells of blood and fear-musk excited his senses. Greypaw Hollow sat beneath a forest and it wasn’t unusual for Warlord Pakstab to send groups of clanrats out to scavenge the wilderness for food and materials.

What was unusual was for one of these expeditions to return in such a sorry condition. Thanquol could see the miserable little ratkin, their fur bloodied, their eyes wide with fright. Several of them bore ugly gashes and deep wounds, hobbling about on broken legs and hugging broken arms to their chests.

Thanquol clapped a paw against his ear to stifle the shrill, wheedling voices of the scavengers as they reported their misfortune to a furious Pakstab. Whatever had befallen the fool-meat, whether they had scurried right into a troll hole or been stampeded by a herd of cattle, it was Pakstab’s problem. Another petty inconsequence that was far beneath the dignity of a grey seer to notice. Thanquol had more important things to occupy himself with.

He was just turning his head to return to Krakul’s workshop when a particular whine froze him in his place. Thanquol felt a tingle of fear squeeze at his glands and a cold hand close about his heart. It was a shaking paw that drew the rat-skull snuff-box from his robe.

The grey seer felt an intoxicating rush of warmth course through his body as he sniffed the pulverised weed, burning away the fear and allowing hate free reign. Thanquol gnashed his fangs, spinning about and marching out into the tunnel. Skaven heads vanished back into their holes as the enraged sorcerer stalked past.

Had he heard right? He would find out! He would find out if these flea-spleened maggots had really seen what they had seen!

The few skaven bold enough to emerge from their burrows to investigate the curious squeaks and smells of the returned scavengers quickly scurried out of Thanquol’s way as the sorcerer marched up the corridor. Even the armoured stormvermin, their claws wrapped about the hafts of hatchet-headed halberds, cringed when they saw the intense hatred blazing from the grey seer’s eyes and sniffed the murderous aggression in his scent.

Grey Seer Thanquol brushed past Pakstab as though the warlord wasn’t even there. His paw trembled with rage as he closed his fingers around the throat of one of the scavengers. The little ratman’s eyes boggled in terror as Thanquol pulled him close.

‘What did you smell-see?’ Thanquol hissed. ‘Speak-squeak! Quick-quick!’ The only sound the crippled ratman could make was a wet rattle as the grey seer throttled him. Absently, Thanquol released his choking clutch, glaring as the dead skaven toppled to the floor. The temerity of the worm-fondler to die when the mighty Thanquol had questions to ask him! Out of spite, the grey seer kicked the corpse in the head, then turned his attention to the other scavengers.

‘You!’ the grey seer pronounced, pointing a claw at one of the ratmen, a portly creature missing an ear, half his tail and most of one paw, each of the injuries so fresh that black blood leaked from his wounds.

‘Mercy-pity!’ the ratman whined, awkwardly falling to his knees and exposing his throat in a gesture of submission. ‘No-no hurt-harm, most merciless of priests, great gnawer of–’

Thanquol ground his fangs together, in no mood to be flattered by this fool-meat. ‘What did that to you?’ he snarled, jabbing the end of his staff into the scavenger’s mangled paw. The wretch squealed in agony, quivering on the floor. Thanquol lifted his head, casting his eyes across the other scavengers.

‘We smell-track man-things in forest,’ one of the scavengers hastily spoke up. ‘Many-few man-things carrying many-many strange-meat in wheel-burrow. We try-fetch food-fodder from wheel-burrow.’

Thanquol’s eyes narrowed with impatience. He didn’t care a lick for any of this. ‘What kept you from stealing the food?’ he demanded, smacking the quivering skaven on the floor with his staff. The fresh squeal of pain had the desired effect. The other scavenger couldn’t finish his story fast enough.

‘Breeder-thing see us!’ the scavenger cried. ‘Call-bring much-much man-thing! Fight-kill much-much! Many-many die-die from one-eye and dwarf-thing!’

Thanquol swatted the quivering skaven again as he slowly strode towards the talkative scavenger. ‘A man-thing and a dwarf-thing did this to you?’ he growled. He raised a claw to emphasise his next point. ‘With one eye?’

The scavenger’s fright had risen to such a state that he couldn’t speak, simply bobbing his head up and down in a desperate effort to appease the fearsome sorcerer.

Gotrek Gurnisson and his mangy man-thing, Felix Jaeger! By the malicious malevolence of the Horned One!

Vengeance boiled up inside Thanquol’s black heart. The grey seer rounded upon Pakstab, pointing a claw at the startled warlord’s nose. ‘Get-fetch your battle-rats!’ the enraged sorcerer snarled, foam dripping from his mouth. ‘Great enemies of skavendom have hurt-harm your valiant scouts! I will avenge their injuries upon these heretic-things with your army!’

Pakstab blinked in confusion. His whiskers trembled, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Thanquol could read the warlord’s thoughts. He wanted no part in fighting whoever had savaged his scavengers. He certainly wanted nothing to do with Thanquol’s vengeance.

Hissing a curse, invoking one of the thirteen forbidden names of the Horned Rat, Thanquol gestured with his staff at one of the injured scavengers. An emerald glow suffused the metal icon fitted to the top of the staff. The same green glow surrounded the doomed scavenger. The ratman had time to shriek once before his body collapsed into a pool of steaming green mush.

‘We march-kill enemy-meat now!’ Thanquol screamed, turning his blazing eyes back upon Pakstab. The warlord nodded his head with an eagerness that was obscene. That was the beauty of a gratuitous display of destruction magic: there was never a need to repeat it.

Thanquol turned away to leave Pakstab to gather his warriors. He could be confident that Pakstab would marshal his forces quickly. After all, the warlord would be right there beside Thanquol when they made the attack. Anything that happened to the grey seer would happen to Pakstab too.

Worse, Thanquol promised, if Gotrek and Felix slipped through his paws! What he would do to Pakstab would be such a horror that his screams would be heard in Skavenblight!

As the grey seer stalked back down the tunnel towards Krakul’s workshop, he barked orders at the tinker-rat, using a bit of his magic to magnify his words so that they carried into the farthest corners of the burrow.

‘Fix-finish Boneripper, wire-nibbler! I want my rat-ogre on its feet and ready to kill-slay!’ Thanquol brushed aside the curtain, fixing his imperious stare on the warlock-engineer. Krakul’s eyes might have been hidden behind his goggles, but there was no mistaking the frightened posture and smell of the tinker-rat.

Thanquol reached into his robe and removed a little sliver of black cheese from his pocket. He stared at it for a moment, then glared at Krakul. ‘You have until my third nibble to fix Boneripper,’ the grey seer pronounced. ‘After that, I will burn off one of your fingers every time I take another bite.’

Krakul was an eccentric, scheming scrap-fondler, but he had the good sense to know when a sorcerer was making an idle threat. With almost unseemly haste, the warlock-engineer leapt back to the stone slab, tools clattering against Boneripper’s metal chassis, as he hurried to finish the repairs.

The confusion of smells emanating from the caravan threw each of the skaven into a state of anxiety and excitement. The good, familiar odours of oats and wheat, the appetising scents of horses and oxen, the reek of human sweat and the stink of iron and bronze; these all mixed in a single aroma that tantalised the skaven, made their bellies growl and their paws itch. The promise of full bellies and a bit of plunder was one that every ratman dreamed about.

Still, there were other smells teasing the keen skaven noses. There was a heavy, greasy stench one old crook-eared ratman said was troll. There was a musky, reptilian fug none of the skaven could identify. There was a sinister coppery smell that reminded Thanquol of the abominations Clan Moulder kept in Hell Pit, though he wasn’t about to offer that insight to any of his yellow-spleened underlings.

The other smells didn’t matter, because Thanquol had detected the scent he was looking for. It was that vile mix of tattoo ink and cold steel, animal starch and cheap beer, all wrapped around the dirt-stench of a dwarf.

Gotrek Gurnisson! He was travelling with the caravan, and if he was there, then that damnable Felix Jaeger was with him! Thanquol didn’t know what trick of fate had thrust his two most hated enemies into his clutches, nor did he care. It was enough that the Horned Rat had smiled upon him and bestowed this delectable gift upon him. Before he was through with them, he’d offer the human’s two eyes and the dwarf’s single, blood-crazed orb as a burned offering to the Horned One by token of gratitude. Maybe he’d even teach them how to pray to the Horned One for mercy.

Not that it would do them any good.

When the humans made camp. That would be the time to do it. Their horses would be grazing, their wagons unhitched; at least some of their number would be sleeping. The skaven could set upon them and slaughter half the company before they had a chance to blink!

Yes, it was a good plan. The audacity of Pakstab’s weasel-tongued track-sniffer Naktit to try and take credit for developing such a plan! Because the scout-rat had mentioned something of the sort first, he had the temerity to believe the same idea hadn’t already occurred to Thanquol! Why should a grey seer share his innermost thoughts with the sort of verminous rabble Greypaw Hollow dared call warriors? It had been sorely tempting to let Boneripper smash the creeping little nuisance into paste for his arrogance.

But that would have been the petty, spiteful reaction of a lesser skaven. Thanquol was grand enough to be gracious and forget the failings of his underlings. With Gotrek and Felix nearly in his grasp, he felt magnanimous enough to ignore the stupidity of lesser ratmen. The Horned One had granted him a mighty boon; surely Thanquol could allow similar beneficence. Yes, he’d let Naktit keep his worthless little life.

Unless something went wrong! If that happened, he’d have Boneripper squeeze the creepy little tick-tracker until his eyes popped out of his skull.

It was early morning when the skaven started trailing the caravan, slinking through the dense thickets and close-set trees, always keeping out of sight while maintaining a clear view of the trail. The wagons were unusual, the sort of thing that even Thanquol with his vast experience and study of humans had never seen before. Their sides were painted in bright, garish colours, flags and pennants waving above them, bold words emblazoned on their sides. The horses and oxen which pulled the wagons were similarly arrayed, bright plumes fastened to their bridles and garlands of flowers tied about their necks. The men driving the wagons were also dressed in bright, gaudy clothing, sporting billowy breeches and vibrant vests and headscarves.

Most perplexing of all were the half-dozen cage-carts. These followed behind the other wagons, their contents hidden beneath tarps. The smells rising from them and the brief view of bars afforded by the trailing edge of the tarps, left no doubt that each cage held some living beast. Low growls, sullen snarls or angry howls rose from some of the carts. Most of the sounds were new to the skaven, though a few of the cries were familiar enough to send shivers down their spines. The old crop-eared ratman started whining about trolls again – at least until Boneripper stepped on his head. Fear was a useful thing, but only when the ratkin knew what they should be most afraid of.

Thanquol peered through the bushes, trying vainly to spot his hated foes, but there was no sign of either Gotrek or Felix. The grey seer concluded the two were inside one of the wagons. It would be in keeping with their perfidious natures to hide themselves away.

Taking a pinch of warpstone snuff, Thanquol resisted the burning desire to launch the attack immediately. He didn’t care that more of Pakstab’s clanrats would die in such an impulsive raid than in a carefully planned assault. It was the possibility that Gotrek and Felix might escape that stayed his paw. However much it vexed him, he would have to wait. Naktit insisted the time to attack would be when the caravan settled down to camp and it was Thanquol’s experience that humans, with their pathetic vision, wouldn’t travel at night. He could wait.

As it transpired, however, he didn’t have to wait that long. Thanquol blinked in bewilderment when, just a little past noon, the caravan came to a halt. He watched in wonder as the wagons moved into a wide clearing and the men driving them began to unhitch their teams. There were still a good six hours of daylight left, a fact each of the light-sensitive skaven appreciated quite keenly. Surely the humans weren’t stupid enough to squander…

Thanquol grinned, turning his eyes to the ground at his feet, envisioning the deep, dark burrow of the Horned Rat. Truly his god was favouring him! First to deliver Gotrek and Felix to him, then to make the stupid humans stop well before nightfall. The skaven could rest and recuperate from their forced march through the forest.

The only thing Thanquol didn’t like was the size of the clearing. Every skaven was agoraphobic and the clearing elicited a feeling of unspeakable dread. The forest had been dense enough to be almost comforting, but all the open sky above the clearing was another thing entirely. It would be a bit better at night, but even so, the thought of all those stars glaring down at them like so many hungry eyes was something to make the glands clench.

A few of the humans were sent away on horseback, galloping off down the trail. Thanquol dismissed them from his thoughts after snarling an order to Pakstab that no opportunistic sword-rat should bother them. He didn’t want the humans breaking camp when their outriders failed to return and they became uneasy. He wanted the stupid creatures to think themselves perfectly safe and alone until the very moment of the attack.

For the second time, Thanquol blinked in disbelief. The humans that remained in camp were removing poles and an immense roll of canvas from one of the wagons. While he watched, they spread the canvas out across the clearing, then began to prop it up from beneath with the poles. It was unbelievable, but the humans were constructing some kind of massive tent, effectively placing a roof over the clearing! Truly the Horned One had decided to recognise and reward his selfless and valiant servant!

Gratitude to his god died on his tongue when Thanquol spotted two figures climbing down from one of the wagons. One was a tall human with long blond hair, the other was a stocky dwarf, his head shaved except for a single strip of ginger fur running down the centre of his scalp. Flecks of foam dribbled from Thanquol’s mouth as he glared at his hated enemies. His fingers closed around a nugget of warpstone hidden in the seam of his robe.

It would be so easy! Bite down on the warpstone, draw its sorcerous energies into his body and unleash a spell of such devastation that the two blood-ticks would burst into a thousand gory fragments! All the humiliation and disgrace that these two had brought upon him would be avenged in one moment of sadistic violence!

Thanquol let his paw fall empty at his side. It was too easy. Too easy for Gotrek and Felix. All the times they had meddled in his affairs… No, they wouldn’t get off so easy! For them, there would be no quick death.

‘Pakstab!’ Thanquol snarled. The warlord scurried forwards, his posture displaying a submissiveness rooted in fear, but his fur bristling with a far less docile resentment. The grey seer bared his fangs at Pakstab until the warlord was well and truly subdued.

‘Keep your tree-rats quiet,’ the grey seer hissed. ‘We wait until nightfall and the man-things sleep.’ He jabbed a paw towards the wagon where his enemies stood. ‘I want those ones alive!’

Dismissing the warlord from his mind, Thanquol returned his attention to the clearing. Soon it would be dark and then the humans would go to sleep. That was when he would lead Pakstab’s brave warriors into combat.

He only wished there was a way to make Gotrek and Felix understand they had only a few hours left to live!

Thanquol reached over and snatched the far-eye from Krakul’s hand, an effort made easier since the warlock-engineer was short a few fingers. The grey seer ground his fangs together in a fit of anger.

Crickets chirruped, owls hooted, bats flittered about the trees. It was night, as black and welcoming as the tunnels of Skavenblight.

Why, then, were the humans still awake! Even worse, there were more of them! The outriders had returned after only a short time, but it wasn’t long after that more humans began to trickle into the camp. These weren’t so brightly dressed as the ones from the caravan, and they stank of dirt and manure: typical odours of the slavelings humans used to grow their crops and tend their flesh-beasts.

Thanquol didn’t care who they were or where they came from. What he wanted to know was what they were doing! By the horns of the Horned One, none of it made sense to him! The field-humans, obviously a lesser clan than the brightly dressed ones, had wandered about the camp as though they each of them were a fangleader inspecting a new burrow. The caravan humans hurried about, performing every sort of bizarre labour at the slightest command of the field-humans.

The grey seer was still scratching his ears at some of the things he had seen. There was a gangly human who could spit fire and another one that was able to stick a sword clear down his throat without skewering himself! He saw a grungy little man-thing in voluminous robes engaged in the rather despicable antic of biting the heads from live chickens. As he would soon spit out the chickenhead, Thanquol could make absolutely no sense of this particular activity. There was a pair of breeders who capered about on a thin rope stretched between two poles, displaying an agility that would have impressed even a murder-adept of Clan Eshin. He watched another human gallop around the camp on a horse, flipping and jumping all around the animal, making the grey seer wonder if some saboteur had slathered grease across the horse’s back.

None of it made any kind of sense! The field-humans would slap their hands together in moronic fashion, howling loudly and baring their teeth at the caravan-humans. Yet the threatening display only excited the caravan-humans to new efforts.

Thanquol removed the spyglass from his face long enough to scowl at Naktit. So, the humans would go to sleep once it was dark, would they!

The grey seer’s nose twitched as a new smell reached him. It was the odour of magic, crude but powerful. Forgetting Naktit for the moment, Thanquol swung back around and directed the spyglass upon the source of the aethyric energy.

What he saw made his glands tighten. Some of the brightly-clad humans were opening the door to one of the cages. Locked inside was an enormous troll! As soon as the door was open, the brute lurched out into the clearing, roaring and thumping its chest! Thanquol could only scratch his ear in disbelief. The humans were insane to let such a monster loose!

The field-humans screamed and started to scatter, but before they could get far a caravan-human wearing a broad-brimmed hat called out to them, ordering them to stop. He turned and faced the troll, drawing from the crimson sash he wore not a sword or axe or blunderbuss but a slender flute. Before the amazed grey seer’s eyes, the troll stopped, its dull eyes staring down at the little man.

Expecting any sort of horrific violence to follow, Thanquol’s wonder increased when the man began to play his flute. The troll lifted up its huge feet and began to dance!

Thanquol scowled as he heard the field-humans screeching and slapping their hands together. He focused his attention not on what he could see, but upon what he could feel. Sniffing the patterns of magic in the air, he could follow the slender strands of energy emanating from the troll. One strand led back to one of the wagons where a bound human lay hidden, his mouth tightly gagged. As he struggled, his movement struck Thanquol as peculiar, more like an idiot’s fit than the resistance of a grown man-thing.

The other strand of magic led to a dark little pavilion set aside from the main tent. Just visible at the entrance of the pavilion was an old breeder, her flesh withered, all the meat shrivelled by age. Thanquol could tell at a glance that the breeder-thing was a mage by the grey hue of her hair. It was easy to forget that human breeders sometimes developed such abilities, a sure sign of their inferiority to the skaven whose breeders’ only purpose was to make and nurse more skaven.

The breeder-witch was doing something, weaving her magic between the idiot-flesh and the troll. Whatever she was doing, it gave her control over the troll, control more perfect and precise than any cave-lurking goblin chief had ever dreamed of.

The presence of a sorceress made Thanquol reconsider the wisdom of the planned attack. It was always dangerous to risk the powers of an unknown wizard, even if it was just a breeder-thing. If he had an apprentice to send out to cast spells and draw the witch’s attention, he would have felt better.

A cruel smile flashed upon Thanquol’s verminous face. Lowering the spyglass, he turned towards Krakul. Few among the warlock-engineers had true magic, and he rather doubted that Krakul was one of those who did. However, many of the contraptions crafted by Clan Skryre mimicked magic in their effects. Surely enough to trick a stupid breeder-witch!

‘Brave-wise Krakul,’ Thanquol said. ‘I give you the honour-glory to lead the attack.’

Krakul looked like he’d swallowed one of his own spanners. The warlock-engineer looked about him, as though hoping there was some other skaven named Krakul standing nearby.

‘Great and holy Thanquol the Terrifying!’ Krakul squealed. ‘I am not worthy of such distinction. I am only poor-small tinker-rat–’

‘Stop whining,’ Thanquol snapped. ‘You’re going.’ He drew upon the smallest measure of his sorcery, causing his eyes to take on a ghoulish green glow. ‘Or would you rather stay?’ he hissed. Krakul didn’t have any real magic, but Thanquol certainly did. It was perhaps wise to remind him of that fact.

‘Take the clanrats and attack from the right,’ Thanquol ordered. ‘Naktit’s scouts will come from the left. Once you have the man-things’ attention, Pakstab will lead the stormvermin and strike the centre.’

‘Where will you be, invincible one?’ Pakstab asked, his tone not quite as servile as it could have been.

Thanquol smoothed his whiskers. ‘I will stay here and ensure nothing goes wrong with your plan.’ Now that so many unforeseen complications had become part of the situation, Thanquol felt it was time to distance himself from responsibility for organising the attack. After all, these were Pakstab’s warriors. Why shouldn’t the warlord shoulder the responsibility if they couldn’t adapt to changes on the battlefield?

Pakstab glared murderously at the grey seer, his fingers twitching about the hilt of his sword. The warlord glanced past Thanquol at the imposing hulk of Boneripper. Grinding his fangs together, Pakstab relented. Turning away, he began squealing orders at his underlings. If he was expected to lead the attack, he was going to make sure there were plenty of skaven around him to do the brunt of the fighting. It was exactly the sort of cowardly, selfish scheming Thanquol had come to expect from a greedy, grasping thug like Pakstab. It was unfortunate for Greypaw Hollow that there was no leader of Thanquol’s calibre ruling the warren, a leader with the cold resolve and iron self-control to set aside his own desires for the betterment of all skavendom.

The grey seer drew a sharp intake of breath as his eyes fell upon one corner of the clearing. Most of the field-humans had gathered to watch the dancing troll, giving Thanquol a better view of the rest of the space. Now he could see a burly dwarf standing beside a pile of boulders, an immense hammer in his thick hands. Judging by the broken stones around him, the braggart had been showing off his brainless physique, smashing rocks for the entertainment of the field-humans, glutting his drunken ego on the empty-headed praise of buffoons and churls!

Gotrek Gurnisson! Well, this was the last time he would interfere in Thanquol’s affairs!

Spinning around, the enraged grey seer snapped commands at Boneripper. ‘Kill-burn-slay!’ Thanquol shrieked at the skeletal rat-ogre, the warp-tooth fitted to the sorcerer’s ear pulsing with power as it transmitted his fury to the hulking automaton. Without hesitation, Boneripper reared up and charged out from the forest, hurtling towards the clearing like a warp-fuelled avalanche.

Squeaks of shock and dismay rose from the bushes and underbrush. The creeping skaven warriors of Greypaw Hollow weren’t in position yet. They wailed against losing the element of surprise when Boneripper charged past them, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for massacring the humans without a fight. Many of them turned tail, ready to scurry back to their dark burrows.

Thanquol dissuaded the warriors from their cowardly retreat with a show of force. Summoning the might of the Horned One into his body, harnessing the aethyric currents around him, the grey seer pointed his staff at the closest of the fleeing ratmen. A crackle of green lightning leapt from the head of the staff, coiling about the retreating stormvermin, cooking him inside his armour. As the smouldering ratman crashed to the ground, Thanquol’s magically magnified voice thundered over the clearing.

‘All-all fight-kill!’ Thanquol roared. ‘Kill much-much or suffer-die!’

The threat turned the frightened skaven around. By now Boneripper had reached the clearing. The carnage it was causing among the hapless humans helped to further bolster the fragile courage of the ratmen. Squeaking their war-cries, the verminous horde descended upon the caravan.

Thanquol lashed his tail in frustration. That idiot Boneripper! Stupid, brainless oaf of a scrap-heap! Couldn’t it tell when he wanted it to do what he said and when he didn’t? The brute had spoiled the ambush by its moronic interpretation of its master’s outburst!

But was it Boneripper’s fault? Might that treacherous tinker-rat Krakul have done something to the rat-ogre, changing it from Thanquol’s clever, loyal, unquestioning bodyguard into a lumbering dolt with only the vaguest semblance of intelligence? Yes-yes, that certainly sounded probable! It wasn’t so long ago that Ikit Claw had unreasonably developed some paranoid ideas about Thanquol and tried to kill him. It was more than coincidence that Krakul was of the same clan as the Claw!

Thanquol yipped in alarm as another idea came to him. Hiking his grey robe up above his knees, he dashed towards the clearing. The timing of Krakul’s treachery had spoiled the perfect ambush, opening the possibility that Gotrek and Felix might escape! And now it occurred to him that this might be Krakul’s real purpose. Thanquol had long known that there had to be someone using the two insufferable interlopers against him. Neither one of them was clever enough to continually be interfering in the grey seer’s schemes. There had to be a traitor, a villain from the lowest dregs of skavendom whose pride and arrogance couldn’t abide the greatness of Thanquol’s genius. It was another skaven who kept thrusting the pair in his way!

It was up to Thanquol to see that his enemies were taken alive, that they might confess who it was that had…

Again the grey seer yipped in alarm. The mangled body of a stormvermin went flying past him, almost bowling him over as it went tumbling into the bushes. A second body crashed to earth almost at his feet.

Thoughts of traitors and vengeance abated as Thanquol began to appreciate his surroundings. In his haste, he’d scurried well ahead of the main body of Pakstab’s warriors. He was in the clearing, under the tent, with a frightened mob of humans rushing about, screaming and wailing in abject terror.

Unfortunately, the troll wasn’t frightened of the skaven. It had stopped dancing, too. Instead it had lumbered out and intercepted the boldest and most eager of the stormvermin. With decidedly un-troll-like deliberation, the monster brought its scaly fists pounding into one ratman after another, each powerful blow smashing a furry body into ruin.

Thanquol froze as the ugly brute turned towards him. The musk of fear spurted from his glands as the troll opened its jaws wide, roaring at the grey seer. The monster’s hand tightened about the squealing clanrat it held, breaking every bone in the skaven’s body. The fearful display forced Thanquol into action. Drawing upon his sorcery, he pointed his staff at the troll, sending a blast of malignant magic full into the monster’s face.

Wisps of black smoke rose from the troll’s head as the spell crackled across its flesh. But the brute didn’t fall. As the smoke cleared, it glared at Thanquol. The scaly, blackened skin of the monster’s face may have been scorched by his magic, but already the incredible regenerative powers of the troll were undoing the damage. Before Thanquol’s eyes, the burned skin began to heal. Snorting and huffing, the troll lumbered towards the skaven sorcerer.

‘Boneripper!’ the grey seer squeaked as the troll swung at him. The monster’s tremendous fist smashed into the ground Thanquol had been standing on before making a frantic leap for one of the posts supporting the tent. He wrapped his limbs about the post, clinging to it as though it were the mast of a sinking ship. A sideways glance showed him the troll using its other hand to pull its fist from a crater that had punched clear down to bedrock. His glands spurted fear-musk as he considered what such a blow would have done to him had it landed.

‘Boneripper!’ the sorcerer shrieked again. He wasn’t certain if his bodyguard heard him; the range of the warp-tooth which controlled the rat-ogre had never been explained to him. Worse, there was the possibility that Krakul had done something to limit Thanquol’s control. He should never have trusted that snivelling scrap-rat!

Something else heard him, however. Turning its head upwards, the troll glared at Thanquol. There was a chilling intelligence in the monster’s eyes, a keenness of hate that he’d never seen any troll exhibit before. Frantically, Thanquol pawed at his robe, seeking a piece of warpstone to fuel another spell – a spell strong enough to overcome the troll’s regeneration.

Bellowing its rage, the troll charged towards Thanquol’s post. The grey seer squeaked in terror, the sliver of warpstone slipping from his paws. He watched as the glowing green stone hurtled downwards, seeing his last hope of survival falling with it.

Suddenly, Boneripper’s skeletal bulk was between Thanquol and the oncoming troll. The rat-ogre’s piston-driven arms closed about the troll’s enormity, crushing it in an embrace of steel and sinew. The troll flailed about in Boneripper’s grip, trying to tear its way free.

The two monsters might have stood there all night, immovable object against irresistible force. But Thanquol had other ideas. Baring his fangs, glaring at the troll’s ugly visage, he snarled an order at Boneripper: ‘Burn-slay!’

Obediently, Boneripper lifted its third arm, pressing the nozzle of the warpfire projector against the troll’s skull. There was a tremendous flash of light, a resounding boom and a thunderous crash that knocked Thanquol from his perch. The grey seer smashed to earth, moaning as the impact rattled his bones.

When his head stopped ringing, Thanquol darted a look over at the troll. It was dead now, only a smoking stump of neck rising from its shoulders. Boneripper’s warpfire had burned the monster’s head off! The threat to himself vanquished, Thanquol looked for his bodyguard. The explosion had thrown Boneripper to the ground, its third arm nothing but a jumble of twisted metal and shattered bone. The rat-ogre didn’t move, even when Thanquol snarled an order at it to do so.

Wonderful! The slack-witted dolt had destroyed itself! Surely it should have understood not to use its warpfire at such close quarters! By the Horned One, what could have possessed the lummox… But, of course, it was Krakul and his treacherous meddling with Boneripper’s mechanisms! When Thanquol got his paws on the filthy maggot-chewer…

The grey seer forgot about Krakul when he spotted two figures rushing at him from across the clearing. Thanquol’s empty glands clenched as he recognised the hated Gotrek and Felix! His paw drew another shard of warpstone from his robe, popping the sorcerous rock into his mouth, sending magical energy coursing through his veins. He could cast a quick spell that would get him a hundred miles away, far from Gotrek’s murderous axe and Felix’s flashing sword!

Only… the dwarf wasn’t carrying his deadly axe. He was still lugging around that huge hammer. It was the human who was brandishing an axe, but a far smaller one than the weapon of Gotrek Gurnisson.

It was a trick! That was why they weren’t using their usual armaments! That was why Felix had grown so tall and muscular, why the dwarf had changed his tattoos and added a ring of metal studs across his brow! They knew the mightiest sorcerer in the world, the most favoured disciple of the Horned Rat, a genius so insidious that even the Lords of Decay trembled in his presence – they knew that there was no hope of resisting their unconquerable foe! They had taken these stupid measures to try and disguise themselves, as though anyone could hide from Thanquol’s wrath!

Thanquol stretched forth his paw, the malignity of his magic erupting in a blast of terrific force. The pulsation of raw aethyric energy sizzled across the clearing, causing grass to wither and cloth to burst into flame. The head of the human’s axe dripped to the ground in a molten mess, the wooden heft of the dwarf’s hammer became a mass of fire. Thanquol chittered in triumph as his hated enemies stopped their crazed charge and stared stupidly at their ruined weapons!

‘Die-die now-now!’ Thanquol hissed, unleashing a withering blast of green fire against his foes. Their screams fell silent as their bodies boiled beneath the fury of his sorcery. The grey seer cackled wildly as he watched his enemies writhe and twist in the malignant flames.

He had dreamed of this moment for so long! There was no restraint now, no thought of interrogation and torture, just utter destruction – the extermination due to these low creatures who had dared trifle with his greatness! He grinned savagely as he watched the agony blazing in the eyes of his dying enemies.

And then cold, hateful realisation forced itself upon Thanquol in his moment of triumph. Looking into the eyes of his enemies, he couldn’t escape the observation that the dwarf had two and the human only one! His mind went back to the wounded scavenger-rat’s report. What Thanquol had heard was ‘one-eyed dwarf’, but what the scout had said was ‘one-eye and dwarf’. The grey seer was prepared to believe many things, he might even accept that Felix would put out one of his eyes in an effort to hide from Thanquol’s wrath, but the one thing he couldn’t believe was that Gotrek had similarly been able to grow a new eye. As loathe as he was to admit it, these two weren’t his hated arch-foes!

Outraged fury caused Thanquol to send another blast of magic into the twitching bodies. His enemies in Greypaw Hollow were behind this, goading him into this foolish attack! He’d see that they paid for playing upon his selfless drive to exterminate the enemies of skavendom!

Before the grey seer could visit further destruction upon the corpses, a roar sounded from behind him. Thanquol spun about, staring in horror at a gigantic beast. The thing was bigger than either Boneripper or the troll, so large that there was something absurd about it as it crawled out from its cage, about the idea that something so enormous had been able to fit inside so small a space.

Where the troll had been a scaly brute, this creature was a shaggy monstrosity, its body covered in greasy, black fur. Four arms projected from its muscular torso, two of them terminating in great bony blades like the pincers of a tunnel-mantis. The beast’s head was like that of a goat, three spear-like horns thrusting outwards from its forehead. For all its monstrousness, there was a terrible gleam of intelligence in the beast’s eyes, the same expression of hate and determination he had seen in the troll’s eyes.

Once again, Thanquol could smell magic in the air, tendrils of energy that drifted between the beast and a human who was flailing against three others who were trying to bind him with chains. Again, the grey seer followed the coils of energy back to the aged breeder-witch. She stood, glaring back at him, her wrinkled face drawn back into an expression of loathing.

‘Keep Abela’s body safe!’ the witch shouted at the men trying to chain the lunatic thrashing about on the ground. ‘We must give him time to use the ghorgon to destroy the underfolk!’

The ghorgon, for such Thanquol decided the four-armed beast must be, lost no time trying to follow the witch’s orders. The creature came charging forwards, swatting aside those skaven unlucky enough to get in its way, slashing them with its bony blades or clawing them with its powerful hands. One stormvermin, driven mad with fear, tried to gut the monster with a pole-axe. For his efforts, the ratman was knocked to the ground and pulverised beneath the ghorgon’s hoofed feet.

The air was heavy with the musk of fear now, Pakstab’s craven warriors fleeing before the ghorgon’s assault. Thanquol could hear the warlord’s weasely voice calling off the attack, enjoining his weak-spleened vermin to retreat. The traitor-meat had no compunction about abandoning his confederate and spiritual advisor on the battlefield, even after all the generosity and beneficence Thanquol had showered upon Greypaw Hollow!

The ground trembled under his feet while Thanquol stared after his vanished allies. Spinning back around, the grey seer squeaked in fright. Barrelling down upon him, each of its four arms raised to visit murderous death upon him, was the ghorgon! Without any of Pakstab’s cringing ratkin to slaughter, the beast had made incredible time crossing the clearing.

Thanquol’s own terror saved him. Where a second of thought or deliberation would have doomed him, instinct rose to his rescue. Pointing his claw at the charging ghorgon, the grey seer unleashed the full force of the spell he had conjured.

A sheet of crackling green lightning crashed into the ghorgon. The beast howled in agony as its fur burst into flame, fingers of warp-lightning searing through its flesh and blackening its bones. The smouldering carcass of the monster crashed to earth, its momentum propelling it onwards. Staggered by the reckless release of such a mighty spell, Thanquol couldn’t even muster the energy to dash aside as the huge bulk came sliding towards him. Even dead, the ghorgon was massive enough to smash the grey seer into paste.

Thanquol sighed with relief when the sliding body came to rest almost at his very feet. That relief ended with a shrill screech that made him jump.

‘You’ve killed Abela!’ the breeder-witch wailed, pointing her withered hand at Thanquol. ‘You’ve killed my son!’

Thanquol could smell the currents of magic gathering about the old witch as she summoned the aethyric powers to her with vengeful abandon. Before he could raise his own defences, he felt the unleashed fury of the witch wrap itself about him in an invisible coil. He could smell the thread of energy writhing back to the witch. Worse, he could sense the thread working its way across the clearing, closing upon a little cage suspended near the troll-wagon. A small, wiry green creature moped about in the cage, its long arms dangling between the bars.

Fear thundered in Thanquol’s heart. He understood the magic of the breeder-witch. She had placed the mind of her whelp into the ghorgon, and she had done the same with the troll and another human. Now she intended to force Thanquol’s mind into the loathsome body of a snotling!

Panic seized the grey seer. He struggled frantically against the hag’s curse, pawing at the air, trying belatedly to raise a magical barrier against her spell. Bit by bit, he could feel the magic taking hold of him, could sense his inner being ripped from his flesh, sent drifting towards the cage.

‘Boneripper!’ Thanquol yelled, crying out to his bodyguard to save him, forgetting for the moment the brute’s collapse after destroying the troll.

The rat-ogre seemed to have forgotten as well. Awkwardly, Boneripper rose up from the ground, its shattered arm still smoking. The automaton swung about, facing towards Thanquol, obediently waiting for further orders, oblivious to the stream of magic winding past its towering bulk.

Before Thanquol could call out to the rat-ogre to order it to kill the witch, he felt the last vestiges of his essence drawn out from his body. His spirit, his mind, was sent hurtling across the clearing. A flash of unspeakable cold, a confusion of whirring light and sound, and then there was only darkness.

It took a tremendous effort of willpower to vanquish that darkness, an effort that Thanquol found almost beyond him to make. Only the thought of all the enemies and traitors who would outlive him sustained him in his moment of despair. Feeling as though a thousand daggers pierced every corner of his being, as though a great fire had been sent raging through his chest, the grey seer fought his way back to consciousness.

The first thing that struck Thanquol was the almost complete absence of smell. What little he could discern were the aroma of old bone and the stink of metal, both underlaid with a tantalising hint of warpstone. The next thing which impressed him was his vision. It was much sharper than before, but everything had a strange, unworldly green hue to it. There was no sensation of touch: he couldn’t feel the bars of the cage or even the floor under his feet. He couldn’t even feel his heart beating in his chest!

Terror flooded through Thanquol’s mind as he considered the only possibility. The spell had been too much for the snotling’s fragile body to endure. His spirit had been hurled into a corpse! Any moment now his essence would be sent on its long journey to the burrows of the Horned One, there to answer for his failures and mistakes!

Thanquol shivered in horror at that fate. The Horned Rat knew he existed only to serve the vicious god of the skaven, that there was no more loyal or steadfast priest to enter the Order of Grey Seers! Yet, even in the afterworld there might be spies and traitors, filling the Horned One’s ears with lies about Thanquol’s devotion.

For a second chance! Thanquol would give himself utterly to the Horned One, devote himself purely to service to his god if only the Horned Rat would give his humble priest another opportunity to serve him!

In his terrified grief, Thanquol raised his hand to cover his eyes. It wasn’t the fact that the arm of what should have been a corpse moved when he willed it to move that shocked Thanquol. It was the shape of that arm. Not the leathery green limb of a snotling, but the massive, bony arm of a skeletal colossus!

Something had gone wrong with the breeder-witch’s spell!

Thanquol swung his body around, feeling the immense power of his new form. He glared down at the witch, savouring the terror gripping her features. The hag had not brought about his destruction, but her own. The transfer of Thanquol’s spirit into the body of the snotling had been intercepted, blocked when Boneripper lurched up from the ground. Instead of being cast into the fragile body of a greenskin runt, Thanquol had been invested into the mighty frame of a rat-ogre!

The grey seer opened his skeletal jaws and chittered malignantly, the sound crackling like lightning across the clearing.

The witch turned aside, glaring towards Thanquol’s real body. Her voice cracked as she shouted orders to the other caravan-humans.

Thanquol watched the humans go racing towards his old body. Let them have it, the weak, puny husk of rat-flesh! What need had he of a body of fragile flesh when his genius was enshrined in a hulk of bone and steel, merged with the pinnacle of Clan Skryre engineering!

He raised his skeletal paw, intending to send a spell searing down into the witch’s body. Thanquol cringed when nothing happened. He couldn’t feel any magic coursing through his new body. Worse, he couldn’t sense the aethyric emanations around him! He tried sniffing at the witch, but couldn’t discern even the faintest whiff of magic!

Suspicion flared through Thanquol’s mind. If he couldn’t smell magic, he could see confidence, and the witch was much too confident now. Somehow, in some way, Thanquol sensed he was still bound to his old body. He remembered the care the humans had taken with the bodies of their kinsmen when the witch cast their minds into the monsters.

Howling in panic, Thanquol charged across the clearing, the skeletal claws of the rat-ogre swatting aside the converging humans as though they were flies. He didn’t waste the time to savour the havoc, but sprang for the horned ratman standing alone and vulnerable. Invested with Boneripper’s mind, Thanquol’s old body stood unmoving, gripped by the idiocy that required commands from its master to give it motivation.

Thanquol tried snarling at his old body, to get Boneripper to flee, but without the warp-tooth, he had no way of commanding the stupid brute. Instead, he resorted to scooping up his body and tucking it under the rat-ogre’s arm. Without further hesitation, Thanquol dashed into the forest, leaving the clearing and the caravan behind.

He needed time to understand what had happened to him, time to study the effects of the witch’s curse. Then, once he was master of this condition, he would come back and settle with the witch and his hated enemies Gotrek and Felix!

Thanquol spent almost an hour lurching through the gloom of the forest before he found the other skaven. He cursed the dim-senses of his new body. With a proper nose, he would have been able to find the fools quickly. Instead, he had been forced to grope about in the brush looking for tracks.

After deserting him, his duplicitous allies had retreated to a shadowy patch of scrubland a league or so from where the caravan had made camp. Thanquol could hear them arguing amongst themselves, trying to concoct some lie that would make their abandonment of skavendom’s greatest hero believable when Skavenblight sent its representatives to Greypaw Hollow.

Thanquol listened to the vainglorious squeaking of Warlord Pakstab for a full minute. It was just as well Boneripper’s body didn’t have a stomach, because it surely would have turned hearing the weak-spleened maggot-nibbler touting his brave effort to reach the embattled grey seer. Only the arrival of three gigantic beast-things had driven him away. He knew that the noble Thanquol wouldn’t have wanted Greypaw Hollow’s valiant warlord to throw away his life needlessly.

Snorting with contempt, Thanquol lumbered out from the trees. The sudden appearance of the skeletal rat-ogre brought squeals of fright from the skaven. Thanquol lashed his bony tail in amusement. Unable to smell, he’d been forced to judge the wind by sight alone, but he’d managed to prevent Boneripper’s scent from betraying his presence to the treacherous ratmen. Surprise was his, and he intended to use it to the fullest.

‘Pakstab-meat,’ Thanquol snarled. The skaven were doubly horrified to hear the grey seer’s voice thundering at them from Boneripper’s jaws. ‘Stop-speak, before I ring your neck!’

The warlord fell to his knees in shock. ‘Terrible Thanquol… is-is that you?’

The rat-ogre loomed over Pakstab, swatting him across the muzzle with a bony claw. The blow sent the ratman tumbling through the scrub. ‘Next stupid question?’ Thanquol growled, turning his skull-like visage so he could stare down at each of the skaven in turn.

‘What-what happened?’ Krakul asked, the warlock-engineer’s eyes boggling excitedly behind his goggles.

Thanquol took a shaking step towards the tinker-rat. ‘You should have stayed quiet,’ he warned. He lifted Boneripper’s massive claw, intending to swat the treasonous little scrap-licker. As he did so, however, he felt a cold pain in his side. His entire body shivered to a stop.

Krakul clapped his paws together, chittering maliciously. The reason was obvious to Thanquol: the faithless weasel had repaired the safety valve, making it impossible for Boneripper to hurt a skaven of Clan Skryre.

Boneripper, however, was a being without mind or will of its own. Thanquol possessed the finest mind in the Under-Empire and a willpower that could resist the wiles of gods and daemons alike. Snarling against the cold pain, Thanquol reached down to his side, clawing at his back until he ripped Krakul’s gizmo from its fastenings. Holding the device between his skeletal talons, he glared down at the warlock.

‘This belongs to you,’ Thanquol hissed, hurling the gizmo down at Krakul. The warlock-engineer shrieked once as the heavy bronze safety valve struck him, shattering his skull into a pulpy mess.

The other skaven wailed in horror, falling to their knees, exposing their throats in submission. It was sorely tempting to annihilate every one of the vermin, but Thanquol knew he needed them. He’d had time to do a lot of thinking while hunting for his disloyal underlings. He didn’t like the conclusions he’d reached.

Strong and powerful, mightier than any vessel of flesh and bone, the rat-ogre’s unliving body was nevertheless cut off from the aethyr, denying Thanquol access to the divine power of the Horned Rat and the black sorcery which emanated from such power. For a grey seer, being denied this was even more terrifying than the diminished sensory stimulation offered by Boneripper’s mechanical senses.

There was another aspect which chilled Thanquol to his very marrow and made him feel very small and timid despite his new brawn and bulk. How many Bonerippers had there been? Each of them dying in some spectacular and gruesome fashion? There was something hideously unlucky about rat-ogres, something that was positively fatal to them. Thanquol didn’t like the idea that he had inherited the current Boneripper’s ill fortune when he’d switched bodies with the brute. He felt as though he were scurrying about a drain, fighting against time and current before he was sucked down to a horrible doom!

No! He had to get back into his own body – and he had to do it quickly. The only way to do that was to force the breeder-witch to undo her curse. She had to know the secret of such magic, she must have used it many times with the beasts of her carnival!

‘Hear-listen!’ Thanquol growled at the grovelling skaven. ‘All of you obey! Find-seek breeder-witch! Don’t hurt, only find!’ Thanquol could see the scheming wheels turning in the brains of his underlings, so he decided to add a threat to his command.

‘Hurt-harm breeder-witch and I will go to Greypaw Hollow!’ Thanquol snarled, rearing up to the rat-ogre’s full height. He thumped both bony claws against his chest, recalling how formidable the troll’s performance had been. The effect was only somewhat lessened when he dropped his real body to the ground.

‘I will kill your breeders, crush your whelps and take your warpstone!’ Thanquol threatened. ‘I will make Greypaw Hollow the lowest of thrall-clans! You will all be fodder-meat for the snake-maggots of Clan Verms!’

The dire threat brought renewed promises of fealty and obedience from the skaven, their whines and squeaks echoing through the forest. They could be counted upon to do what Thanquol demanded of them. His threat would keep them in line.

Of course, after all he had suffered, Thanquol intended to carry out every part of his threat, whether the simpering ratkin obeyed him or not.

Thanquol stared down at the little village, cursing for the umpteenth time Boneripper’s lack of smell. With a proper nose, he’d be able to pick out the breeder-witch’s scent from the air. He could tell in an instant if Naktit was lying to him and punish the track-rat accordingly. The only thing that made him dubious of such treachery was the fact that the other skaven had no way of knowing about this particular infirmity. As far as they knew, Thanquol could smell as keenly as any of them.

Unless, of course, that filthy tinker-rat Krakul had said something before he died.

Flexing the massive arms of the rat-ogre, Thanquol glowered at his underlings. The scouts had been gone only a short time before reporting that the caravan had been abandoned. There were signs of a fight that must have happened after Thanquol’s… withdrawal. From the evidence, the fighting had been between two groups of humans. The scouts couldn’t say which of the humans had won, but they had been able to follow the witch’s scent back to this village.

Thanquol ground his fangs in annoyance. Naktit said that the witch had been taken to the biggest building in the village. The grey seer knew that sort of structure; it was one of the god-burrows the humans built to worship the confusing pantheon they followed. This particular one had a big hammer on its spire. Thanquol knew that particular cult quite well – the followers of Sigmar had a positive mania for burning any wizard or witch they could get their hands on. If he didn’t act fast, the breeder-witch would be dead and the secret of her curse lost with her!

He couldn’t let that happen! More and more, Thanquol felt the gnawing dread that something dire would happen, that the same fate which had overtaken six other Bonerippers would soon befall this one! To save himself, he had to save the witch from the witch hunters!

‘You are sure-certain there is a tunnel?’ Thanquol snapped at Naktit.

The scout bobbed his head in frantic eagerness. ‘Yes-yes, Horrible One! Man-thing temple-place always have tunnel! Use to hide-flee when man-thing gods make war!’

Thanquol reached a huge claw to his face to brush his whiskers, only belatedly remembering that Boneripper didn’t have any. It was true enough that the different priests of the humans sometimes made war against each other. The first thing they would do in such a war would be to burn down the houses of other gods. But would humans have enough brains to build an escape tunnel?

The rat-ogre’s skull twisted about, craning downwards to regard the horned ratman standing at Thanquol’s feet. There was such a look of dull idiocy on the grey seer’s face that Thanquol felt a gnawing horror crawl through him. Whatever happened, he had to return to his own body. He couldn’t abandon it to the mindless Boneripper. He had to be back inside his own fur, feeling blood coursing through his veins, a heart pounding in his chest! He had to restore his connection to the Horned One’s power! More, he had to get a sniff of snuff. His nerves, or whatever he had in the rat-ogre’s body, were on edge for lack of a pinch of warpsnuff. It didn’t do any good to dump the stuff into the rat-ogre’s nasal cavities; it would only burn up in the automaton’s furnace.

Yes, they would attack the human village. Pakstab would lead the majority of the skaven in an assault against the village walls, drawing the humans away from the temple. While the humans were occupied with Pakstab’s diversion, Thanquol and Naktit’s scouts would use the tunnel to sneak into the crypt beneath the temple. Humans had a tendency to lock their captives underground, so he was hopeful the breeder-witch would be there.

If not – well, every last ratkin in the expedition knew what Thanquol would do to them if anything went wrong!

Thanquol snarled as his metal shoulders brushed against the ceiling of the tunnel, sending a cascade of debris raining down upon him. Belatedly, he remembered to shield the horned body strapped to his back, twisting about awkwardly so the rat-ogre’s metal chest took the brunt of the rubble. After all he had gone through, it would be a cruelty beyond imagination to have his real body mangled before he could return to it.

Or was that the point? He glared suspiciously at the narrow tunnel and at Naktit. Had that been the scout’s scheme, to lure Thanquol down here where the rat-ogre’s ridiculous size would prove disadvantageous? Where Boneripper’s very bulk threatened to bring the entire hole crashing about his ears?

Thanquol bit down on his suspicions. As much as it galled him, he had to trust Naktit. He had to trust that the breeder-witch was where the scout said she was. He was a bit reassured by Naktit’s presence – surely the tracker would know he’d be the first casualty if Thanquol found out he was lying.

Eventually, the tunnel wormed its way beneath the stone foundations of a building. So far, it appeared Naktit’s report was accurate. The only building in the human warren large enough to warrant such ponderous foundations was the temple. Thanquol began to feel a bit more optimistic. When this was all over, he might even allow Naktit to live.

Human voices, low and distorted, began to filter into the tunnel. Ahead, Thanquol could see a heavy stone wall with a ring set into it. This, as Naktit hurried to explain, was the entrance to the temple. On the other side was the crypt.

‘…confess, woman, while you still have a tongue to do so!’ The voice was harsh and cruel, almost skaven-like in its vicious inflection.

‘You will torture me anyway, templar, so what use are my words?’

The second voice set Thanquol’s jaws clacking together. It was the breeder-witch! From her tone, she sounded weak, possibly wounded. Maybe dying? Thanquol fought down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He had to wait, let Pakstab draw away the other humans. Then he could safely step in and snatch the breeder-witch.

‘By Sigmar’s hammer, you will confess all your evils!’ the witch hunter snarled. ‘You will confess that you are in league with the creatures of Chaos, that you lured the people of this community to your encampment in order to feed their flesh to your hideous masters!’

‘The Strigany are no servants of the Old Night,’ the witch spoke, her voice weary. ‘The monsters you speak of attacked my people as well as yours.’

‘Evil will always turn upon itself,’ the witch hunter snapped. He might have said more, but the sound of frantic voices and hurried steps interrupted him.

‘Brother Echter! The monsters are attacking the village!’

‘They have come to save their infernal mistress,’ the witch hunter swore. ‘Rally the militia! These abominations must not be allowed to reach the temple!’

The sound of rushing feet faded as the humans raced upstairs. Thanquol gave them enough time to be well and truly gone before telling Naktit to open the secret door. Pakstab’s warriors would keep the humans occupied while they slipped in and stole the breeder-witch.

Naktit and his scouts tugged at the iron ring, slowly pulling back the block that sealed off the tunnel. Thanquol bristled at the delay. Lumbering forwards he seized the top of the stone with his claws and dragged the ponderous obstruction aside. Glaring at the skaven, he motioned for them to hurry onwards into the crypt.

The room on the other side of the wall was long and narrow, its sides lined with deep niches. Within each niche reposed the mouldering bones of some long dead human, the remains sealed away by an iron gate. A set of stone steps rose up into the ceiling, blocked by a trapdoor.

Except for the skaven, there was only one other living occupant in the crypt. The breeder-witch was locked inside one of the niches, her arms bound to her sides with heavy leather straps, her face disfigured by a heavy wax seal marked with the sign of the twin-tailed comet.

Thanquol brushed aside the scouts, rushing to the witch’s niche. The hag groaned in terror when she saw the ghastly rat-ogre peering at her through the bars. Then a cackle of amusement wracked her aged body.

‘Not liking your new home, rat-fiend?’ she laughed.

Thanquol’s claw lashed out, pounding against the gate and denting its iron bars. ‘Fix-change!’ he snarled at her. ‘Away-take curse-hex or I smash-kill slow-slow!’

The witch peered at him with hateful eyes. ‘Kill me and you’ll never get back,’ she threatened, pointing her chin towards the horned ratman lashed behind the rat-ogre’s shoulders.

Thanquol recoiled at the witch’s words. He crouched lower, trying to assume a meek posture. It was difficult to manage with a body as massive as Boneripper’s.

‘Fix-change,’ he repeated, trying to keep his voice low and pleasing. ‘Save-help me and I save-help you. Other man-things not hurt-harm.’

Again the witch laughed. ‘Help me? Can you give me back my sons who you and your vermin slaughtered?’

Thanquol smashed his fist against the ceiling, bringing a trickle of dust down upon his head. Of all the times for a human to start acting stupid! Here he was offering this one a chance to escape torture and slow death, and all she could talk about were her dead whelps!

A sound behind him caused Thanquol to turn. Running feet in the temple above, people rushing towards the trapdoor. The humans were coming back!

Another sound drew Thanquol’s attention to the far wall. Naktit and his scouts were back in the tunnel, pushing the block back into place. At once the enormity of Pakstab’s treachery was apparent. The warlord had led the attack only long enough to make Thanquol think everything was going according to plan. As soon as the grey seer had time to get into the crypt, the coward had called off the attack. Now Naktit was closing off the only route of escape! Once again, the traitors of Greypaw Hollow were leaving him to face the humans alone!

Thanquol lurched towards the closing tunnel, then turned back around. What use to escape if he left the witch behind? He needed her to break the curse! If he left her behind, the priest-humans would kill her and then he’d be trapped inside Boneripper for the rest of his life. Which, given the durability of rat-ogres, wasn’t likely to be long.

The trapdoor was being pulled open even as Thanquol turned back towards the witch’s cell. The harsh voice of the witch hunter shouted from the top of the stairs.

‘Behold! The heretic’s creatures have come to save her!’

Brother Echter’s statement was punctuated with a pistol shot. Thanquol could dimly feel the bullet crack against the rat-ogre’s back. From past experience, he knew it would take more than that to slow down Boneripper. However, there was just a chance that the human would reach the same conclusion and start shooting at Thanquol’s body.

Turning around, protecting the body lashed to the rat-ogre’s back, Thanquol roared at the frightened men clattering down the stairs, pounding his claws against his chest. The display appeared to impress the humans just as much as it had Pakstab’s skaven. The men following the witch hunter cried out in despair, then turned and fled back up the stairs.

‘You’ll not frighten me, mutant!’ Brother Echter swore, undaunted by the defection of his followers. Boldly, he drew a second pistol from his belt.

Thanquol was in no mood for such nonsense. Lunging forwards, he brought Boneripper’s massive claw slashing down, tearing deep furrows through the witch hunter’s flesh. The mutilated man screamed through the tatters of his face and crashed to the floor.

The skeletal rat-ogre turned back towards the witch’s cell, shaking his bloody claw at the obstinate hag. ‘You will suffer much-much unless you fix-change!’ Thanquol growled.

‘You killed everything I cared for,’ the witch told him. ‘And if you kill me, you’ll never get back!’

Thanquol clenched his bony hands, shaking with frustration. How could he threaten something that didn’t care if she lived or died? Worse, how could he threaten something that in dying would doom him as well?

Before he could work out the dilemma, the crypt echoed with the explosive report of a pistol shot. The hag’s gloating countenance became twisted with pain, a bright bloom of blood springing from her breast. Wailing in horror, Thanquol brought Boneripper’s giant foot smashing down upon the mangled witch hunter. Vengefully he stomped out the lingering spark of life that had enabled Brother Echter to shoot the witch.

Filled with despair, Thanquol went back to the cell. The breeder-witch was lying upon the floor, bleeding out from her wound. If he had had his magic, he could have helped her, much as it offended his senses. But the hag’s own curse made this impossible. He could only watch helplessly as the witch died, and in dying sealed his own fate.

Thanquol railed against the injustice of it all! To be doomed to such a cruel end because of the crude magic of a filthy breeder-thing, and all because a bunch of slack-witted fool-meat had led him to believe his mortal enemies were near! If he had the chance again, he would kill every last rat in Greypaw Hollow for goading him into this useless flea-hunt! By the Horned One, they should suffer for doing this to him!

As Thanquol bemoaned his fate, as he watched the witch die, a strange sensation came upon him. A flash of unspeakable cold, a whirring blur of light and darkness…

The grey seer fought against the darkness, though this time the struggle was far less than it had been before. When he could see again, it was with the clear vision of skaven eyes. A thousand smells rushed into his nose, a hundred sounds trickled into his ears. He could feel the blood flowing through his veins, the heart pounding in his chest. For good measure, he twitched his whiskers.

He was back in his own body! Again he could feel the aethyric forces flowing about him, the glory of the Horned Rat waiting to shape itself at his command. Thanquol couldn’t understand how the curse had been broken. Some final, desperate effort to gain the grey seer’s aid on the part of the witch?

Thanquol struggled to peer over Boneripper’s shoulder to see into the cell. Irritably, he snarled an order at his bodyguard, telling it to turn around. With its usual slavish obedience, the rat-ogre shifted its position.

The witch was dead, there was no mistaking that smell! Thanquol ground his fangs together as the solution to his deliverance came to him. The hag had been toying with him! She had told him if she died he would never break the curse when it was her very death that had ended the enchantment! How he wished she was alive so he could wring her neck!

For the moment, however, he had more pressing problems. The humans would recover from their fright soon, and when they did, they would come back to the crypt in force. It would be best for him to be far away when they did.

Then there was the small matter of Greypaw Hollow and the treachery of its denizens. Thanquol would teach those rats the price for betraying him!

But first he’d have one of them cut him loose. The idea of travelling all the way to Skavenblight tied to Boneripper’s back wasn’t exactly appealing.

He’d spent more than enough time around the rat-ogre.