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Thanquol Triumphant - C L Werner

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Thanquol Triumphant

C. L. Werner

Four tons of solid stone came hurtling down from the sky, blotting out the stars and moons. Its great shadow stretched across the earth like the hand of some malignant god. The musky stink of fear rose from a hundred terrified skaven as death came smashing down upon them.

Grey Seer Thanquol stood in terrified fascination as the massive boulder crushed a dozen skaven beneath it and then began to roll down the slope towards him. Clanrat warriors threw down their weapons and squealed in horror, scattering in every direction, clawing and climbing over each other in a frantic effort to save their lives. The sickening crunch of pulverised bone formed a gruesome accompaniment to their squeaking.

Paralysed by his own fear, Thanquol watched helplessly as the boulder rolled directly towards him. Musk emptied from his glands as he saw skaven after skaven ground into pulp beneath the rolling stone. With each revolution the boulder’s surface became ever more caked in the smashed residue of its victims, a sticky morass of fur and blood that clung to the ground in greasy ribbons.

Black blood spurted across Thanquol’s face as the body of a shrieking clanrat burst beneath the boulder. The tangy smell of skaven gore snapped Thanquol from his paralysis, but with his mind overwhelmed by the onrushing juggernaut, all he could think to do was raise his staff and cover his eyes while squeaking the Horned Rat’s name.

It took Thanquol a few seconds to realise he hadn’t been crushed. Opening one eye in a suspicious squint, he saw the boulder resting only a few feet from his whiskers. The pulp of crushed bodies dragging at it had finally arrested the stone’s momentum. The grey seer whispered a hasty thanks to the Horned One, then quickly wiped the blood from his robes.

The narrowness of his escape sent cold fury racing through his glands. Thanquol glared at the frightened clanrats scampering off in all directions. Chittering, mouse-licking, flea-brained whelp-eaters! How dare they abandon a prophet of the Horned One? Thanquol would see them stretched out and skinned alive. He’d see their whiskers plucked out one by one, their tails docked with a chipped chisel. The treacherous, faithless, dung-sniffing vermin!

He shouldn’t have been surprised. The warriors of Clan Krawl were infamous for their shameless cowardice. It had taken such a web of intrigue to bring Krawl to the battlefield that it made Thanquol’s head hurt just thinking about it. Seerlord Kritislik was right to want the mouse-spleened clan annihilated. Allied to Clan Mors, Krawl could be an obstacle to the power-base of the grey seers. Dead, the cowards wouldn’t be a problem to anyone.

Thanquol raised his muzzle and sniffed at the wind. He picked up the scent of Krawl’s elite stormvermin, locked in combat with the most brutal assemblage of orcs the grey seer had seen in quite some time. Each of the greenskin monsters towered over the armoured skaven, and in their fists they bore crude blades that weighed more than a ratman in full armour. The orcs were wreaking a hideous slaughter upon the core of Warlord Fissk’s warriors. It would not be long before their drug-boosted ferocity collapsed into stark terror and the stormvermin broke. Once they started to run, the rest of Fissk’s army would disintegrate into a panicked mob. The orcs would have a grand time running them down and slaughtering them.

Those who actually made it back to their tunnels would have another surprise waiting for them: slavers from Clan Skully. Thanquol expected to make a nice percentage for facilitating the acquisition of so many slaves. Kritislik had said he wanted the threat of Clan Krawl eliminated, but he hadn’t said Thanquol couldn’t make a profit at the same time.

The grey seer bruxed his fangs and wrung his paws together. That fool-meat Fissk had fallen into Thanquol’s scheme perfectly, believing the claims of a prophetic vision that he must do battle with the orcs in their own warcamp. Fissk had even accompanied the stormvermin personally, trusting that the Horned One was on his side. The presumptuous maggot. As though the Horned Rat would notice such a miserable bag of offal.

Suddenly, Thanquol’s sharp eyes noticed that the stars were going dark again. His eyes went wider as he watched another boulder come hurtling earthward – once again in his direction! The grey seer squealed in terror, leaping onto the top of the first boulder and hugging himself close to its surface. He’d never heard of an orc that was precise enough to hit the same spot twice. It was a comforting idea until he remembered that the boulder hadn’t actually landed where it was.

The ground shook as the second stone came smashing down. Thanquol lashed his tail in amusement when he saw the rock go careening down the slope, far from his own position, crushing hapless clanrats and slaves in its path. Then he noticed the rock beneath him starting to move. The impact had broken his refuge free from its mire of pulp and gore. For a horrifying instant, he felt himself slipping down the face of the boulder – straight into its path.

Clenching his glands, clamping his staff between his jaws, Thanquol scrabbled up the bloody surface of the rock, every second expecting to lose his hold. By an almost miraculous effort, he gained the top of the rolling stone. The grey seer didn’t hesitate, but leaped from his precarious perch, throwing himself to the earth behind the boulder.

Thanquol rose from the ground, his robes caked in the crushed bone and pulped flesh of dead clanrats, his body shivering with fury. Twice now the filthy greenskins had tried to kill him with their stupid stone thrower. That was two times too many!

Holding his staff aloft, Thanquol drew upon the winds of magic. His beady eyes glared through the darkness, sighting the crude catapult. Snarling a Word of Malignance, the grey seer sent a bolt of crackling green lightning rocketing towards the catapult. Instantly, the war engine was in flames, burning orcs staggering away from it like fleas from a drowning rat.

Thanquol grinned in triumph, chittering maniacally. But the laughter caught in his throat when the burning catapult slumped to one side and loosed one last boulder. He watched in horror as the stone went careening into the orcs fighting the stormvermin. Scores of orcs were pulverised by the runaway rock, and the stone didn’t stop until it had ground the hulking figure of their warboss beneath it.

A great moan of confusion and fear arose from the ranks of the formerly formidable orcs. In dismal disarray, the monsters began to quit the field, hotly pursued by Krawl’s warriors. Where certain doom had been apparent only a moment before, now the skaven were utterly victorious.

If there was anything left in his glands, Thanquol would have emptied them. How would he explain this fiasco to Kritislik? Who would he blame?

But as he heard his name shouted by a thousand jubilant ratmen, a sly gleam came into Thanquol’s eye. Why, his brilliant plan had worked perfectly. He’d won the battle for Warlord Fissk and brought the clever-brave Clan Krawl into a closer devotion to the Horned Rat and his chosen prophets, the grey seers.

This was a triumph beyond what Kritislik had planned, and it was one that belonged to Thanquol alone.

Unless the Seerlord said otherwise, of course…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C. L. Werner’s Black Library credits include Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy and the Thanquol and Boneripper series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He claims that he was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story was ever published.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

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ISBN 978-0-85787-896-0

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