Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology (39 page)

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!