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No Honour Among Vermin – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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No Honour Among Vermin

C L Werner

The pungent smell of incense was predominant, but there were underlying scents as well. Human scents. Odours of subjugation, anxiety and adoration. The stink of fear.

Fylch Tattertail’s whiskers twitched as his nose instinctively tried to draw more information from the air. He knew it was a futile effort. The walls of the tunnel were much too thick and the alcove much too high to discern much by scent. It was by visual inspection that the truth would be revealed.

The brown-furred skaven pawed about in the pouches woven into the inside of his thread-bare tunic. Fylch pulled out a motley assortment of oddments. The skull of a weasel, the shiny carapace of a dried beetle, a rusty bolt of dubious importance, a gold coin badly scratched where it had been bitten, five buttons, a salted grot ear that looked a bit mouldy. Fylch let the litter of junk spill onto the tunnel floor. He didn’t need any of it. What he wanted was… He stopped fumbling about his tunic when he removed the blackened bit of warpblend. Steel infused with trace amounts of warpstone, the three-inch rod was etched with Queekish symbols invoking the Horned One’s protection. Fylch wasn’t so sure he accepted the merchant’s pitch about such divine defence, but he did know that the taste of warpblend on his tongue was a powerful stimulant, giving him a clarity and focus that was otherwise elusive.

Fylch scrambled up the last few steps to the top of the alcove. Slaves had spent several painstaking weeks excavating the secret stair and the little spy-perch at its top, working in absolute silence until their task was done. Fylch regretted it had been necessary to work them so hard – by the time the slaves were finished there hadn’t been much meat left on their bones. And Skowl Scorchpaw had been counting on the slaves to supplement the meagre rations the expedition had brought along.

Fylch shook his head and bit down harder on the warpblend. He was letting himself get distracted. He had to focus on the job ahead.

At the top of the alcove, Fylch found the brass-rimmed eyepiece jutting from the wall. Just a twinge of fear coursed through him as he pressed his face to the lens. He knew what he should expect to see; his biggest concern was that he’d be too late. If things had gone too far and the skaven had to wait for the next moon… Well, there weren’t any more slaves left to eat.

Peering through the lens, Fylch was afforded a bat’s-eye view of the chamber on the other side of the wall. He didn’t pretend to understand the complex arrangement of mirrors and mechanics that allowed the spy-scope to bring everything into view with such clarity. It was enough that the device worked the way it was supposed to work, something not always a certainty with Clan Skryre’s inventions.

From high above the chamber, the scope brought the room into view, gathering up the fitful light from braziers and torches to throw a reddish cast across everything. To Fylch it was like looking at a reflection in a puddle of blood.

The chamber was vast, easily a hundred feet wide and thrice again as long. Parts of the walls and especially the ceiling looked raw and natural, but the floor had been smoothed and levelled. The wall sections that had been worked were likewise smoothed down and covered in a sort of plaster or limestone glaze. There were pictures and symbols painted on them, but some of those symbols made Fylch’s glands clench and the less thought he gave to the murals the better.

Dominating the room, at its far end, was a broad altar of volcanic obsidian, its edges shining like mirrors. There were iron shackles set into the four corners of the altar, and Fylch could pick out the smell of dried blood rising from the shallow grooves cut into the top of the platform and the hound-faced basins resting on the floor beneath each one. Behind the altar, towering dozens of feet above it, was a monstrous statue. It had a roughly humanoid build, with broad shoulders and two powerful arms, but instead of legs it had a mass of serpentine bodies, their coils interlaced in grotesque patterns that defied the eye to follow them. There was no head; instead a bestial face jutted outwards from between the shoulders, its lips pulled back in a toothy snarl. One stony arm was held against the statue’s side, a viciously crooked sword clutched in its hand. The other was outstretched, pointing one of its claws forwards.

Fylch held his breath when he saw that claw. There was a chain wrapped around it and at the end of the chain there was a hook. Normally that hook was unburdened, but now there was a huge bronze bell hanging from it. It looked as big around as an overfed duardin and was about as tall as a grot in boots. Fylch could make out the grisly runes cut into the sides of the bell. They almost seemed to glow with malice and precipitated a spurt of fear-musk from his glands as he looked upon them.

It wasn’t just fear that Fylch felt. There was a brew of relief and eagerness that rushed through him as well. The bell was what they were after! It was the reason Skowl had brought them here. And despite his anxiety, Fylch knew that it wasn’t too late. They still had time to steal the relic away from the humans.

He glanced across the robed figures that were seated on the floor facing the altar. They swayed in time to the angry cadence of a huge drum, their hooded heads sweeping across the ground. At an estimate, Fylch would have guessed there to be two hundred of them, but he found it hard to make an accurate assessment with their individual scents masked by the incense – he might be counting the same ones over and over. He was more certain about the dozen armoured guards who flanked the congregation, tall and imposing men locked inside heavy suits of bronze armour. Then of course, there was the masked priest standing underneath the statue, his visage locked behind the fanged skull of a monstrous hound. That was the man-thing to pay particular attention to, and Fylch gave him a scrutinising glower. The cultists were mindlessly obsessed with ritual and each ceremony was performed exactly like the ones before it. The priest would set the tempo, and from what Fylch could see there was still quite a bit of time before he’d be ready to start his mumbo jumbo and make an offering to the Blood God.

Fylch drew back from the eyepiece. If not for the warpblend bit in his mouth, he might have uttered a titter of triumph; instead he simply lashed his forked tail from side to side in amusement. There was still time! Everything was ready and there was still time!

Fylch took the bit from his mouth and scurried back down the steps. He paused over the pile of junk he had dumped earlier. He picked through the rubbish, stuffing objects back into his pockets. It was a very pretty beetle husk, after all, and one never knew when even a mouldy salted grot ear might become appetising.

Fylch hurried down the narrow tunnel. He was reassured by its comforting confines, his whiskers brushing against solid walls to either side. All skaven preferred it when they knew nothing could go creeping around them and come at them from behind. When the tunnel opened into a wider corridor, Fylch’s paw closed about the hilt of the sword tucked under his belt. It was an unthinking, instinctive motion, a reaction to the abrupt loss of the security offered by the tunnel.

It was also a mistake. Before Fylch could react, he was struck a powerful blow from the side. He crashed against the hard stone floor, the sword flying from his fingers as he slid across the ground. The tang of his own blood was on the air, and he could feel a sticky dampness under his tunic where he had been scratched by claws. His eyes darted to the creature who had struck him. No need to guess which of the five skaven in the corridor was to blame. Only the hulking Krick was licking blood from his claws.

Fylch bared his fangs and lashed his forked tail in fury. Krick glared back at him, showing his sharp teeth in a wicked grin. The big skaven was powerfully built, almost twice as massive as Fylch. His body was covered in woolly black fur, and the fur in turn was covered by metal armour and a hide cuirass. Krick absently wiped the rest of the blood on the hanging skirt of his cuirass and glanced at the sword Fylch was reaching for.

‘Go. Take. Krick kill-bash Fylch fool-meat,’ the big skaven snarled, fingers tightening about the spiked mace the brute carried.

A guttural snarl from one of the other skaven in the corridor caused Krick to drop down in a submissive posture, head turned and throat exposed in a gesture of contrition. ‘Tattertail bring-carry sword-blade…’ he stammered, trying to explain himself.

The skaven who had snarled at Krick gave the brute a menacing glower. He was a tall piebald ratman, lean and rangy in contrast to Krick’s muscled bulk. He wore a voluminous leather robe-smock, its outer surface slick and shiny. A bewildering array of tool belts criss-crossed his waist and chest. Lashed across his side was a metal cylinder with a deranged assortment of hoses and wires streaming away from it. Many of these connected to the bulky metal glove that was strapped to his right hand. A sinister green glow pulsated from the cylindrical device… and from a reservoir on the back of the glove. Taken in whole, the device was a ghastly weapon and one that had given its inventor his name: Skowl Scorchpaw.

‘Fylch too clever-smart to plot against me,’ Skowl snapped, eyes straying from Krick to Fylch. They were ugly, bulging eyes, burned red by the chemical fumes of Clan Skryre’s workshops, and it was a hard thing for any skaven to hold the warlock engineer’s gaze for long.

‘Yes-yes, mighty-great Skowl,’ Fylch whined, his forked tail flicking across the ground. ‘Fylch is loyal-true!’

Skowl held his crimson eyes on Fylch. ‘And what has loyal Fylch spy-seen?’

‘Man-things start rite,’ Fylch said. ‘Bell hang-swing from statue-beast.’ Fylch looked across the other skaven in the corridor. ‘Soon bring sacrifice-meat to altar-plate,’ he declared.

One of the other skaven, a hunchbacked ratman with a scrapyard of weird tools and devices hooked to the basilisk-hide coat he wore, quickly fished a spherical instrument from one of his bags. He squinted at the crystal sphere and manipulated a dial on its underside. He bobbed his head in delight as the device blinked and whirred. ‘Not-need fear-worry,’ he squeaked. ‘Cultists never start-slay without moon-time. Still time-chance for plan.’ He jabbed a clawed finger at the sphere as though to prove his point.

Fylch ducked his head to hide his bared fangs. The tinker-rat was Teekritt Badscratch, as adept at creating new inventions as he was at stealing them from other skaven. Fylch wondered which category the strange lunar tracker belonged under. He almost hoped the thing wasn’t working right just so he could watch Scorchpaw vent his displeasure on the arrogant Teekritt.

Skowl bruxed his fangs as he digested Teekritt’s assurance. He turned to the other three skaven in the corridor. ‘Know-remember what to do,’ he said. ‘Hide-find places. Wait-lurk.’ His gaze roved across the three. The red eyes locked with that of a small, one-eyed ratman. ‘Ragbrat send-show signal.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Inferno! Volume 2 in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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