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A Last Sniff of Glory – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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A Last Sniff of Glory

David Guymer

He stared, unblinking, at the silhouette on the other side of the candle flame. The air curdled with tension, marrow spilt too long ago from the bone. The candle flickered. He wondered what it was for: it stung his eyes, tickled his nose, and they could all see perfectly well in the dark without. Fur and rags rustled edgily on the bench beside him. Someone in the gloomy undercroft coughed.

‘Would you like me to repeat the question?’

Shadows licked at his clawed muzzle as Rurrk glared into the untidy flame.

His trainer, Kato, squeaked in alarm.

The rat was padded throat to ankles in a cracked leather suit, arms and legs stiffened to either side, a piebald scruff of head and a twitch of tail sticking out from either end. He scrunched his eyes tight as Rurrk’s broad shoulder took him through his belly padding. Air fled clenched fangs in a foetid mewl, and his footpaws squirmed at the end of their pipe-like leg padding as they were snatched from the ground. By the time Rurrk had grunted off him and stuck a cleated kneepad into his throat Kato was squealing with fright.

‘Done-done!’ Kato squeaked, trying to clap a paw on the dirt and managing instead a maggot wriggle of his tackle suit. ‘Good-good. Very good. Time out. Enough practice for now, I think.’

Groggily, Rurrk released his grip on his knuckles. The cloying scents of dirt and droppings and fur moult panted in and out of his mouth. His lungs were still paying out on the debts they owed, and for a moment he’d been confused about who it was beneath him. Kato’s supine muzzle swam in and out of focus and he lowered his fist, his knee issuing a protesting ‘pop’ as he released the pressure on Kato’s throat and stood.

Kato struggled to get up too, but could not.

The temptation to kick a rat when it was down was difficult to resist, but Clan Moulder trainers didn’t exactly grow out of the ground. By some miracle of better judgement he withheld even a correctional shot across the kidneys, and bent to haul Kato up by the collar.

While the clanrat squirmed out of his armour, Rurrk leant against the claw-cut wall of the practice field cavern system to wheeze, pretending to watch the other vermin train.

They were whelps mostly, practising scrimmage line-ups and tossing around under-inflated balls that had been filched (judging by the faded logos) from the training fields of Karak Izor and Miragliano. A black-furred Clan Rictus bully with a lumpen cudgel and a vest of rusty chainmail stood guard at the tunnel mouth. A plank of mouldering wood had been hammered into the wall behind him and scratched with the words:

Skavenblight Scramblers training field – no ball games.
Trespassers will be eaten.

Some rats thought just anyone could be a Blood Bowl player.

Rubbing the old lump at the back of his skull, Rurrk recalled how it was that he had first come to the attention of the Scramblers’ then head coach. The plague priest had given him a nasty crack, but he remembered taking three of his novices down first. He’d learned sometime afterwards that the team’s apothecary had needed to cut the fourth in half to get him out from under Rurrk’s arm before they could fix his head. The lump of bone sticking through the fur of his head was just another memento. Nothing that a pasting of skalm hadn’t fixed at the time, but it ached like bathwater whenever he had to play above ground.

An intrusion by the present made him grimace, and he twisted some of the stiffness from his wrist, elbow and shoulder.

He could have sworn it had hurt less back then.

‘You in good-good shape,’ Kato chittered, despite the evidence, hyperactive claws making a meal of unfastening the strapping of his vambrace. ‘You improve, yes-yes. Muscles good for their age-years. My regimen good, I think, yes. Yes, I think it is.’

Rurrk grunted.

‘You keep to my exercises?’ Kato asked, then brushed the vambrace off his arm and skipped around the strewn pads as though he had won and they had lost.

‘Every day.’

‘And the diet?’

He reached for his gut with a wince.

‘Good-good. Need every edge can get-steal, I think. Yes? Not so young as used to be. No. Stop playing with arm. Joint pains are side-effect, give-give.’

Kato’s expert claws kneaded the ache from Rurrk’s bicep before moving on to the joints. Rurrk’s eyelids flickered in pleasure. ‘Litter-brother of mine has slave who once had master who mucks out spawn cages for Hell Pit Harridans. He squeak-slips to slave that Princedom of Pain razed three Kislevite villages during off-season. Then had fun-way with dead-things after.’

Rurrk snarled. ‘Kislev village-places get razed all time. They not even trying any more.’

Kato frowned at him, claws working. ‘Ear to the ground, master. Squeak-talk of Underway is that the Inviolate Prince stronger than ever. Not too late to back out-down.’

‘Seven years too late.’

‘You squeak-talk yet to Razzel?’

Rurrk sniffed. ‘Course I have,’ he lied.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Wayne England.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-603-3

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