The End Times | The Rise of the Horned Rat

PROLOGUE The Realm of Ruin

In the darkest of places, in the most timeless of times, the twelve Shadow Lords of Decay convened in dire assembly.

They came swiftly on foot, scurrying through the rotting refuse that choked their domain. Their high horned heads bobbed furtively, now visible, now hidden by mounded rubbish: the wealth and wisdom of myriad ages taken, gnawed, despoiled, tasted and inevitably discarded. One could find all manner of treasure buried in the stinking filth, but it meant nothing to the creatures who possessed it. It was only to be coveted for the sake of having, ruined for the sake of ruination, and quickly forgotten.

Such was the way of this young race. Scavengers, usurpers, content to squat in the desolation of better peoples, their unnatural vitality and ingenuity nought but engines for entropy. The skaven were the true children of Chaos, and this place, this foetid reek under a glowering sky, was theirs alone – a nowhere realm nibbled out of the Realm of Chaos, given shape by the spirits of the ratmen that came to dwell there. A dismal place, the Realm of Ruin, a hell its inhabitants dearly desired to remake upon the mortal world.

A verminlord is a huge creature, tall as a giant, but in the wrack of the Realm of Ruin there is no scale a mortal mind can make sense of. Thus, although the Shadow Lords walked on two feet, although their heads were capped with mighty horns – and although all possessed some obvious, uncanny power – when seen from afar they appeared small and timorous, resembling nothing so much as the lowly creatures from whom they had descended. They moved like rats and they were cautious like rats, stopping every hundred paces to lift their noses and sniff at the air with a rat’s sly mix of boldness and fear. Rats – rats cavorting in the rubbish of worlds.

In ones and threes, but never twos – for two lends itself too readily to betrayal – they came to the place of gathering. Verminhall, the great hall of the Realm of Ruin. The immortal lords of skavenkind converged upon the building. Once close, they broke into a scurrying run, when they were sure no others could see them scamper. They entered the portals of the vast edifice with unseemly haste, keen to clear the open space around its walls and the terrible things that hunted there.

A grandiose, overstated mirror to the Temple of the Horned Rat that stood in the living world, Verminhall was dominated by a tower that soared impossibly high. Sprouting from the uncertain centre of the building, thick and ugly, it disappeared into the churning purple clouds. Its top was lost to the sky, and its filth-encrusted walls flashed to the violence of emerald lightning. As with all things the children of Chaos possessed, it had doubtlessly been stolen from forgotten creatures – some race that had regarded itself as finer and worthier, only to fall in surprise to the vermintide. After all, this chain of events was set to repeat itself forever. In a sense, it already had. Time has no meaning in the Realm of Chaos.

The greater powers sneered at the Horned Rat, seeing him as one of the infinite array of petty godlings whose insignificant domains marred the purity of Chaos. They were wrong to do so. The Horned Rat was no longer some minor creature, for he had grown mighty. His children were legion. Long-fermented plans were at last coming to fruition.

If this terrible place taught any lesson at all – to those few able to survive here long enough to receive it – it would be this: one should not dismiss the offspring of the lowly.

The hour of the Horned Rat was at hand.

The daemonkind verminlords, first among the servants of the Horned Rat, were as numerous as their mortal counterparts, countless in their multitudes and ubiquitous in the culverts and gulleys of creation. But of them, only twelve were deemed truly great. The greatest of these twelve was Lord Skreech Verminking. He who had once been many, and was now one.

Causality had no meaning in the Realm of Ruin, not in any sense that a mortal would understand. But Verminking’s intention was to arrive after his peers, in order to underscore his own importance, and he always performed as to his intent.

The interior of Verminhall was a cave, a monument, a howling void, a place of life and of death, a temple, a palace – all, none and many more of these things besides. The laws of nature were openly mocked. Braziers burned backwards, green light glinting from Verminking’s multiple horns as warpstone condensed from the very air. Fumes pulled themselves into dented brass firebowls, adding second by second to the mass of the solid magic growing within them. The lump of warpstone embedded in the daemon’s empty left eye socket flared with sympathy at its brothers’ birth pangs as the verminlord passed.

There was no sense to the geometry of the great hall. Stairs went on infinitely to nowhere. Black rivers flowed along walls. Within round cages of iron, cats roasted eternally in green fire without being consumed. Windows opened in midair, looking upon places neither near nor far, but most definitely not within the bounds of the Realm of Ruin. The squeaking of a billion times a billion anguished skaven souls made a painful chittering that obliterated all other sound. Verminking moved through it as one long accustomed to visiting, taking unexpected turns and secret ways precipitately and without warning, the ultimate rat in the ultimate maze.

The other eleven great verminlords awaited their lord in the Chamber of the Shadow Council, a room that was at once endless in size and claustrophobically small. A hollow, thirteen-sided table, as wide as forever, dominated the floor. A pool of noisome liquid was at its centre, in whose oceans strange images stirred.

As they awaited their chief, the Shadow Lords of Decay bickered and schemed with one another, or sat grooming their remaining patches of fur with long tongues, content to listen to their peers, hate them, and secretly plot their undoing. All the others were present, and thus only two places were empty: Verminking’s own, the first position; and that next to his, the thirteenth. The head of the table, in a sense, this was the seat of the Horned Rat himself – a massive throne carved of warpstone, big enough for a god. The likeness of its owner glared in baleful majesty from its canopy’s apex.

It was said that the Great One could watch them from the unblinking, glowing eyes of his facsimile. Verminking suspected he watched them all the time; he was a god after all, the verminlord reasoned. Such was the burden of being the most favoured of the Horned Rat’s many children.

Lord Verminking was not alone in his nervousness, although he hid it better than most. As was usual at such gatherings, each member of the assembled Shadow Council broke regularly from his bluster, blagging and threats to glance at the place of the Horned Rat. The god was known to attend the meetings himself – infrequently perhaps, but thus always unexpectedly. When he did attend, the musk of fear hung heavy on the air, and often as not a new opening became available upon the Council. In their own fear of the verminlords, no mortal skaven would have ever suspected that the rat-daemons felt terror for any reason, but they did. Their hearts were as craven as those of lesser ratkin.

‘Lord, I have come!’ announced Verminking. As he made for his chair, he kicked aside dozens of the blind white rats carpeting the floor. From the mouths of these pathetic vermin came the mewling excuses of fallen skaven lords, their souls condemned to recount their failures forever.

Verminking’s musk glands clenched as he squeezed past the Horned Rat’s throne to gain his own seat. When he reached his place, a lesser verminlord – one of the elite guard of the Shadow Council – appeared from the gloom and pulled Verminking’s chair out for him. The daemon gave it a cursory examination before sitting. One could never be too careful in the domain of the Great Horned One. The verminlord guards in service to the Council had their tongues ripped out so that they could not relay what they heard, but that was no barrier to ambition – nor, in that place of sorcery, to speech.

‘You are late, Lord Skreech,’ hissed Lurklox, the shadow-shrouded Master of All Deceptions. He was Verminking’s opposite number and, therefore, his second greatest rival. At least that was the case bar every third meeting, when Lurklox was replaced by Lord Verstirix of the fourth position in ceremonial opposition to Verminking. All this was enshrined on the Great Black Pillar growing in the tower. The rules governing the mortal Lords of Decay were maddeningly complex, but as nothing to those that dictated the politics of their hidden demigods. The Black Pillar in Skavenblight had been inscribed by the Horned Rat himself. The Great Black Pillar – the real sum of the Horned One’s knowledge, the verminlords liked to think – was eternally updated. It grew constantly from the root like gnawing-teeth as more edicts were added to its hellishly contradictory catalogue. Rarely a day went by without some new ruling. The pillar was already over one hundred miles high, and the text upon it was very small. Only Verminking confidently claimed to know the full scope of the Horned Rat’s teachings. He was lying.

‘We are entitled to be late, yes-yes, Lurklox. It is our right!’ insisted the lord of all verminlords. ‘Many places we must go, many things we must see, so that you might see them too.’

‘You dishonour us,’ said Lurklox. One could never quite catch sight of the assassin, he was so swathed in shadow.

Vermalanx the Poxlord waved a diseased hand at Verminking. ‘Yes-yes,’ he said thickly. ‘Mighty-exalted the great Skreech is, he of the many minds and many horns.’

Vermalanx dipped his head in a bow that could have been mocking, but so much of the Poxlord’s face had rotted down to brown bone that it was impossible to tell. The more sycophantic members of the Council clapped politely. From lumps of warp rock, empty eye sockets and multiple eyes randomly arranged around malformed heads, they gave sidelong looks to their fellows, determined not to be out-fawned.

The shard of warpstone embedded in Verminking’s face flared dangerously. ‘Do not mock-mock, do not tease!’ He slammed his hand-claw down on the table. ‘We are the greatest of all of you. The Great Horned One himself whispers into our ear.’ Among Verminking’s many untruths, this statement had the distinction of being mostly true, even if it was disconcerting for him when the Horned Rat did actually whisper in his ear.

‘Oh, most assuredly you are the greatest, O greatest great one, most pusillanimous sage, O most malfeasant malefactor,’ said Verminlord Skweevritch. The metal prosthetics covering the upper part of his body hissed green steam as he twitched submissively.

‘Lickspittle,’ chittered the Verminlord Basqueak.

‘I say vote Skweevritch off-away! We have no time for such sycophancy,’ said Lord Skrolvex, the fattest and most repugnant, to Verminking’s eyes, of their number.

‘Silence!’ he shouted, his multiple voices covering all frequencies audible to skaven ears, to deeply unpleasant effect. ‘Silence,’ he said again for good measure. Long tails lashed. Ears quivered in discomfort. ‘There is business afoot, yes. Business we must watch, oh so carefully, my lords. In the mortal lands, great Lords of Decay meet, great Lords of Decay plot-scheme. They meet, so we the Shadow Council, great Verminlords of Decay, the true Council, must meet too-also.’

Chattering and insults were traded. Verminking silenced them with a hand-claw, and pointed his other at the pool. ‘Listen! See-smell! Look-learn!’ he said. Greasy bubbles popped on the surface as the pool became agitated. In slow circuit the liquid turned, swirling around and around, faster and faster, to form a whirlpool, whose funnel plunged deeper and deeper until it surely must have surpassed the limits of the water. A black circle appeared at its bottom, and the whirlpool went down forever. The other verminlords looked at it in askance, lest it drag them in, but Verminking had no such fear. He stared eagerly into the depths of eternity. Fumes rose from the liquid, sparking with warp-lightning, before settling down as a glowing mist. Within the mist, the following image formed.

A room not unlike the Shadow Council’s, though not so grand. A table like the Shadow Council’s, though not so ornate. Thrones around the table, like the Shadow Council’s, though not so large. In the twelve thrones sat twelve skaven lords of great power, though not so powerful as the twelve who watched them unseen.

Verminking’s skin twitched. The Verminlords of Decay watched the mortal Lords of Decay. Who watched them? Where did it stop? Were there conclaves of rats, squeaking in the sewers observed by gimlet-eyed beastmasters? Were there layer upon layer of ever greater rat-things plotting and interfering with those below? He chased the thought away, but it lingered at the back of his fractured mind, insistent as a flea in his ear.

The mortal skaven were in full debate. Things were not going well. Shouting and squeaking raised a clamour that shook the room. Many were standing to wave accusing forepaws at one another. Some squeaked privately to one another, or shot knowing looks across the table as deals were silently struck and as quickly broken.

Just as Verminking had silenced the Shadow Council, so Kritislik the Seerlord silenced the Council of Thirteen, although nowhere near as majestically. He was white-furred and horned, and that should have ensured him supremacy. He was chief of the grey seers, the wizard lords of the skaven, blessed by the Horned Rat himself, and nominal chief of the Council in his absence. But the others were in rebellious mood. Kritislik was agitated, squeaking rapidly and without authority. He had yet to squirt musk, but the look of fear was on him, in his twitching nose, widened eyes and bristling fur.

‘Quiet-quiet! You blame, shout-squeak! All fault here. Great victories we have were in manlands of Estalia and Tilea.’

‘Many slaves, much plunder-spoils,’ said Kratch Doomclaw, warlord of Clan Rictus. ‘All is going to plan. Soon the man-things will fall. Listen to the white-fur.’

‘No!’ said one, huge and deep voiced. He was black as night and unconquerable as the mountains. Lord Gnawdwell of Clan Mors. ‘You take-steal too much, far beyond your scavenge rights. You test my patience, thief-thief, sneaker. I will not listen to your prattling one heartbeat longer.’

‘My clanrats, my victory,’ said Kratch, making an effort to keep his voice low and slow. ‘Where is Lord Gnawdwell’s trophy-prize? I shall squeak you where – still in the hands of the dwarf-things, who you have not yet defeated.’

Squeaking laughter came from several of the others, including, most irksomely for Gnawdwell, Lord Paskrit, the obese warlord-general of all Skavendom.

The lords of the four greater clans scowled at this display of indiscipline among the warlord clans. Lord Morskittar of Clan Skryre, emperor of warlocks and tinkerer in chief, was not impressed.

‘Many devices, many weapons, many warptokens’ worth of new machines you of the warlord clans were given-granted in aid of the Great Uprising. What have we to show-see for it? Yes-yes, very good. Tilea-place and Estalia-place gone-destroyed.’

General noises of approval interrupted him. Morskittar held his paws up, palms flat, and bared his teeth in disapproval. ‘Fools to cheer like stupid slave-meat! The weakest human-lands destroyed only. Frog-things still in their stone temple-homes. Dwarf-things still in the mountains. And Empire-place not yet destroyed!’ He shook his head, his tail lashing back and forth behind him. ‘Disappointing.’

‘What you squeak-say? Where are your armies?’ said Lord Griznekt Mancarver of Clan Skab. ‘Guns no good without paw-fingers to pull triggers.’

More uproar and shouted accusations. All around the room, the elite Albino Guard of the Council stiffened, ready to intervene on the winning side should open conflict erupt.

‘No! No!’ said Morskittar. ‘I will speak! I will speak!’ He slammed a skull carved of pure warpstone down onto the table. It banged like a cannon, the report buying him silence. ‘Why point-indicate me with paw of blame?’ said Morskittar slyly. ‘I say the grey seers are the ones who shoulder responsibility. Clan Scruten are those who bring everything to ruin.’ He pointed at Kritislik.

‘Yes-yes!’ chittered the others immediately, all of whom had their own reasons for loathing the priest-magicians. ‘The seers, Clan Scruten!’

‘Outrage! Outrage!’ squealed Kritislik. ‘I have led this council long ages-time! I led great summoning many breedings ago! I speak for the Horned Rat!’

‘You speak for yourself,’ said Paskrit the Vast, gruffly. Sensing weakness, he heaved his bulk up to face Kritislik on his footpaws. ‘You speak for Clan Scruten. Always scheming, always plotting. Always say do this, do that! Why is it Clan Mors find itself fighting Clan Rictus? Why Clan Skurvy lose half of thrall clans the day before sea-battle of Sartosa-place?’

‘Grey seer is why, Clan Scruten! Clan Scruten are to blame,’ croaked Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch.

They all shouted then, except for the inscrutable Nightlord Sneek, master of Clan Eshin, who watched it all with hooded eyes half hidden by his mask and no scent to betray his thoughts.

‘It is not our fault! Your incompetence and greed-grasping stops the obeying of our rightful orders! We are the horned rats. We are the chosen-best of the Great Horned One! You fight-fight, scrapping like common rat-things on human middens. Listen to us, or suffer,’ shouted Kritislik.

‘No! Lies-deceit. You pit us against one another when all we wish to do is work in harmony for the betterment of all skavenkind!’ said Lord Gnawdwell.

The others nodded solemnly. ‘Truth-word!’ they said. ‘We would conquer, but for you. Grey seers make us fight-fight!’ They would all happily have knifed each other in the back at the least provocation, whether a grey seer was pulling the strings or not. That the grey seers usually were pulling the strings complicated matters enormously.

The Council of Thirteen erupted into a cacophony of squeaked accusations. The scent of aggression grew strong.

The Shadow Lords looked on with growing disapproval.

‘See-see,’ said Verminking. ‘Great victories they have, and now they fall to fighting.’

‘They are what they are, and no more,’ said Vermalanx disinterestedly. ‘Children yet, but mastery shall come to them. Then true greatness we shall see-smell in due course. I care not for this – my Nurglitch’s plans are well advanced.’

‘Yes-yes,’ said Throxstraggle, Vermalanx’s ally and fellow plaguelord. ‘What care we for these pup squeakings?’

‘Your grave error to set aside Clan Pestilens from the doing-aims of the others. You are not apart from this, poxlords,’ said Verminking. ‘You and yours distance yourselves, but Clan Pestilens is nothing alone. You think-remember that.’

Vermalanx chirred angrily.

‘No mastery will come. They fail! They fail!’ spat Basqueak. ‘Fool-things! Squabbling while the world slips from their paws. Always the same, civil war comes again. Skavenblight will ring to the sound of blade on blade. Man-things and dwarf-things will recover, and skaven stay in the shadows. Always the same.’

‘Yes-yes,’ said Verminking. ‘They fail. But watch…’

In the mortal realm, Kritislik stood, waving a fist at the other Lords of Decay, admonishing them for their stupidity. From the look on his face, he thought it was working, for the others suddenly fell silent and shrank back in their seats, eyes wide. A few bared their throats in submission before they could catch themselves. Someone shamefully let spray the musk of fear. It hung heavy over the crowd, an accusation of cowardice.

Kritislik began to crow. The mightiest lords of Skavendom, and he had them in the palm of his paw. Now was his chance to stamp his authority all over this rabble again!

Or maybe not. Kritislik was so taken by his own oratory that he had completely failed to notice the shape growing behind him.

Black smoke jetted from the seat of the Horned Rat. The wisps of shadow built into a cloud that writhed and began to take the form of something huge and malevolent.

‘Ah! Now! Order, is good, yes! You listen-hear good, you…’ Kritislik stopped mid-sentence. His nose twitched. ‘You are not listening to me, are you? You do not hear-smell me good?’ he said. He was answered by eleven shaking heads, the owners of which were all trying to look inconspicuous.

He turned around to see a horned head forming from darkness more complete than that found in the deepest places of the world.

Kritislik threw himself to the floor in outright obeisance as the manifested Horned Rat opened eyes that flooded the room with sickly green light. Words of power rumbled from some other place, the voice underpinned by hideous chittering – the deathsqueaks of every rat and skaven ever to have drawn breath.

‘Children of the Horned Rat,’ he said, his voice as final as a tunnel collapse, ‘how you disappoint your father.’

‘O Great One! O Horned One! Once more I welcome you to the–’

‘No one summon-bids I, Kritislik. I come, I go, wherever I please. I have no master.’

‘I… I…’

‘You squabble pathetically. This will cease now. Your plans are sound, your alliances are not. I will not countenance another failure. Long have Clan Scruten had my blessing. I have given you my mark, great power, and long life.’ The head bore down on Kritislik, lips parting to show teeth made of crackling light. ‘You have wasted my favour.’

Without warning, a hand formed from the smoke, scrabbling as if seeking purchase on an unseen barrier. Fingers and claws pointed forwards. The air warped as the hand pushed against an unseen skin, then burst its way into common reality and reached down.

Kritislik squealed in terror as he was plucked from the floor by his tail. His fine robes dropped down to cover his head. The musk of fear sprayed without restraint, followed by a rich stream of droppings.

‘The others are right-correct, little Kritislik.’ A second hand reached out from the darkness, where now a muscular torso had also formed. A gentle claw-finger lifted the hem of Kritislik’s upended robes to reveal his petrified face, and stroked along his horns. ‘So much I have given you, and yet you scheme for more. Greedy, when there is enough for all to feast upon. Your avarice stops now.’

The mouth of the Horned Rat gaped wide. Kritislik was hoisted high by the tail over a maw swirling with terrible possibilities. Kritislik stared down and gibbered at what he saw there.

‘M-mercy! M-mercy, O Great One! We will double our efforts! Triple them! Quadrupl–’ His pleas ended in a scream as his tail was released. The grey seer fell into the eternally hungry mouth of his god. The Horned Rat’s jaws snapped shut. His eyes closed with pleasure, and when he opened them again they burned with a cold and terrible light.

‘Thirteen times thirteen passes of the Chaos moon I will give you. Thirteen times thirteen moons I will wait. Go to your legions and your workshops! Bring me victory. Bring me dominance over this mortal realm! You must be as one, work as one, as single-minded as a swarm pouring from a cracked sewer-pipe – all rats scurry-flood in same direction. Only then will you inherit the ruins of this world, only then will you rule. Thirteen times thirteen moons! Fail, and all will suffer the fate of the seer.’

With a crackle of green lightning and the tolling of a bell so loud the room quaked, the Horned Rat vanished. Kritislik’s bones lay black and smoking upon the floor.

The tolling bell faded and stopped. The Lords of Decay uncovered their ears, picked themselves up off the floor and sniffed the air.

The ensuing silence lasted for all of fifteen swift skaven heartbeats.

‘I move,’ said Morskittar, swallowing to moisten his dry throat, ‘to vote the grey seers from the Council. Clan Scruten will sit-rule no more!’

For only the fourth time in skaven history, a vote was passed unanimously. As soon as it was done, the clanlords immediately fell to arguing again: over what to do, and more importantly, over who should occupy the empty seat.

In the Realm of Ruin, the twelve Shadow Lords of Decay managed a shocked silence for a little longer.

Skweevritch broke it. ‘But the Great Horned One has not gone abroad in the mortal realm for many-many years. Centuries!’ he wailed.

‘What-what? What?’ squealed Soothgnawer, white-furred as the unfortunate Kritislik. He was the champion of Clan Scruten and was dismayed, but he did not voice his objections too loudly in case the Horned Rat became aware of them. ‘No seer on the Council? No seer? Unthinkable.’

‘And what of us, what do we do?’ said Skrolvex. They all glanced nervously at the throne, in case their god should pay them a visit also. The Horned Rat’s appetite was notoriously insatiable.

Verminking spoke, cunningly and persuasively. ‘Pups need guidance. Who becomes slave, who becomes lord. The strongest decides. The Horned Rat! The Great Horned One has shown us the way. Is it not clear? We must follow his example. We must go to them, into the mortal realm. We will guide them.’ He pointed at the bickering mortal skaven.

Lord Basqueak twitched. ‘Mortal realm? We are vulnerable there! Danger! Much peril.’ His tail twitched.

They were all immortal, chosen of the Horned Rat. And yet certain rules applied to them, as they did to all inhabitants of the higher realms. To suffer death and banishment for a hundred years and a day back into the Realm of Chaos was not a terminal experience, but their places on the Shadow Council would be forfeit, and no verminlord could countenance such a loss of power.

‘Coward!’ squealed Kreeskuttle. He stood tall with a rattle of armour. Kreeskuttle was the mightiest of arm upon the Council, if not of intellect.

Basqueak hissed, jutting his head forwards. ‘Then you, Lord Kreeskuttle, shall go to the mortal lands and take the risk! Show-tell how brave you are.’

Kreeskuttle growled, and sank back into his chair.

‘I will go,’ said Vermalanx arrogantly. ‘I have no fear. I will go to the land of the frog-things, there to guide the great plagues.’

‘Yes! Go-go!’ burbled Throxstraggle enthusiastically, notably making no promise of his own to follow.

‘I too,’ said Soothgnawer. ‘It wrong-bad no seer sits on the Council. I will help them win their place again. We must atone for our sins against the Horned Rat.’

They eyed each other with quick, suspicious eyes. Plots were forming, plans being drawn up. No doubt others would go without declaring their intentions. Outrageous risk for ephemeral gain wobbled yet again on the balance of the skaven soul.

‘Soothgnawer is right,’ said Verminking. ‘The grey seers hold the key.’

The mist over the pool shivered, clearing away the bickering lords of the mortal skaven. The image wavered, and a narrow alleyway materialised, one of thousands within the crammed confines of Skavenblight. Noses twitched, teeth bared. The verminlords recognised it instinctively, although it changed daily. The home of all skaven.

‘Here-here, valued lords. Here-here is our weapon!’ said Verminking.

A white-furred figure scuttled along, constantly looking over his shoulder. A massive rat ogre paced along beside him, taking one step for every fifteen of the grey seer’s.

‘Is that…’ asked Vermalanx.

‘It isn’t…’ said Kreeskuttle.

‘It is!’ gasped Basqueak.

‘Thanquol!’ squeaked Poxparl.

‘Why him-him?’ said Grunsqueel, moved finally to speak. ‘He is useless! Great power has been gifted-given to this horned one, and what has he done? He has squandered-wasted it. Of all of them, he is by far the worst.’

‘Used it no good.’

‘True-true. How many times has Thanquol, great grey seer, failed us?’ said Lurklox. ‘The Horned Rat should eat him too!’

‘Many-many times!’ chittered the others. ‘Failure! Liability!’

‘See-watch, how weak he is! He goes always tail down, the musk of fear never far from squirting. He is weak. Excuses, excuses and never success,’ said Basqueak.

‘He is a coward!’ said Skweevritch, which was a little rich, as he was no hero himself.

‘Fool-fool. The dwarf-thing and man-thing have thwarted him alone many-many times!’ said Kreeskuttle.

‘The disaster at Nuln.’

‘The shame of his failed summoning!’ said Basqueak. The others nodded in emphatic agreement. More than one of them had been ready to step into the mortal world that day, only for Thanquol to botch it.

Verminking held up a hand-claw and hissed. ‘He is all these things and more. Failure! Dreg! It is in part because of him no grey seer sits upon the Council in the world below.’

‘Failure!’ the others squeaked.

‘Fool-fool! He should be destroyed-killed, not aided,’ said Throxstraggle.

‘Yes, failure. Yes, fool-fool. But in him is our greatest tool.’

‘What-what?’

‘Lord Skreech squeaks madness,’ said Verstirix. The warrior verminlord puffed up his chest. ‘Enough! Veto right is mine.’

‘Do you challenge us, the greatest of our number?’ said Verminking.

Verstirix looked to his colleagues for support; they pointedly looked away.

‘Grey Seer Thanquol has much service to render. Yes-yes,’ said Soothgnawer.

‘Too much faith you have in him,’ said Basqueak. ‘Fool-thing, Throxstraggle is correct. We should slay-kill very slowly. Then find another.’

Verminking stroked the surface of the foetid pool, his long black claw sending ripples across its surface and the image shimmering above it. ‘No-no. It is he, it is he.’

‘Who make you decide-determine? Vote! Vote!’ screeched Verstirix.

‘Yes, vote-vote. Ten against two. You lose, Soothgnawer, Skreech,’ bubbled Vermalanx.

‘Not two against ten, not that at all. You count bad.’

‘Two! Two! I see only two, fool-things!’

‘Three against ten,’ said Verminking quietly. He looked meaningfully at the Horned Rat’s throne. It could have been a trick of the light, but it appeared that the warpstone eyes of the effigy atop it glowed more brightly.

A silence fell over the Council. Tails twitched. Beady eyes darted beneath horns that shook, just a little, with fear.

‘I say,’ said Poxparl calculatingly, ‘that we give Thanquol another chance. Mighty Lord Skreech has moved-touched my heart.’

‘Yes-yes,’ squeaked Basqueak very loudly, talking directly towards the vacant throne. ‘I vote yes-yes.’

‘I too,’ said Throxstraggle.

‘If it is so, it is so,’ muttered Vermalanx.

One by one, the verminlords voted. The motion was passed by a narrow margin – there had never yet been a unanimous vote on the Shadow Council. Verminking looked to Verstirix, challenging him to use his veto. The ex-warlord looked at the empty throne, then found something on the surface of the table that needed his urgent attention.

‘It is done, then,’ said Lord Skreech Verminking triumphantly. ‘Let us rip the veil between worlds. Let us stalk mortal lands again! Skitter-disperse, go to your favourites.’ He peered hungrily into the pool. ‘Go where you will, as quickly as you can. We shall go to Thanquol.’

Thanquol’s nose twitched, his famous sixth sense giving him the itchy feeling that he was being watched. He looked around the stinking alley, into crooked windows, along the skyline, black against the foggy night, into alleyways where sagging duckboards crossed open sewers. He saw no threat, but shivered nonetheless. His musk gland clenched.

‘Sssss! Jumping-fear at own shadow! At own shadow!’ he scolded himself. He jerked an angry paw at his bodyguard. ‘Boneripper, on-on!’

And so, unknowing of the attention focused upon him at that moment, Thanquol continued with his furtive passage through Skavenblight.