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Scrape to Victory – Gav Thorpe

A Black Library Publication

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Scrape to Victory

by Gav Thorpe

‘Kikkit!’

The sound of Oversneer Skreet bellowing his name made him flinch, expecting an accompanying blow or lash. Early life in the slave pits had given him certain instincts that no amount of time in the higher tunnels could overcome. It had also taught him swift reflexes, honed a sharp mind and developed an incorrigible sense of self-preservation, character traits that had served him well as he had clawed his way – often literally – to his current place within the hierarchy of Crookback Mountain.

As one of the clanrats working in the verminhive, his life was tedious, painful and fraught with the politicking of his ambitious companions. All of which was preferable to constant whippings and beatings, the peril of being fed to the rat ogres when supplies fell low, or suffering random and potentially lethal mutation while mining the warpstone deposits.

Yes, all in all, his lot had improved much.

Shoulders hunched, ears flat to his head, Kikkit looked around from the bench where he had been working – filing cog teeth along with thirty other workers for shipments to the factory-workshops of Clan Skryre in Skavenblight.

‘Yes-yes, oversneer?’

The burly skaven responsible for second shift bared yellowing teeth in a broad grin. It looked awfully similar to the oversneer’s grimace of anger, so Kikkit kept his posture and expression neutral. The clanrats to either side of him surreptitiously moved a little further away, leaving him in a void of his own uncertainty.

‘It’s official, Kikkit,’ said Skreet, waving a rag of parchment covered in the ink scratchings of the skaven. ‘The commission of the Southern Cabal of Associated Blood Bowl have released the latest figures. You, Kikkit, my mangy little rat, have forty-two confirmed injuries to a downed opponent.’

A ragged cheer went up at this announcement and Kikkit allowed himself a pant of happiness.

‘I knew-knew that goblin would count,’ he crowed, jabbing a finger toward Snarlitt. ‘Forty-two! One more and I’ll have the league record!’

‘That’s right, you scrawny backstabber. Nobody in the history of SCABB has kicked more people when they’re down.’

‘And the Crookback Cretins is through to the final,’ squeaked Chuchuk, waving his rusty spanner. ‘Win that and it’s a place in the Blood Bowl tournament itself!’

This roused another desultory cheer, and a few sour glances. The Grey Seers had, to a certain degree, lavished praise and attention on Kikkit and the others that had made the grade to be linesmen in the Cretins. Kikkit had more warpstone and gold than he had ever known, which wasn’t saying much seeing as he had known so little in the past. But it had bred resentment too, in those that had to cover his shift while he was playing, particularly on the long journeys across the mountains or the Dark Lands.

Kikkit didn’t care though. The elbows in his ribs at the trenchers, the tacks left by his bedding, the urine in his daily ration of teatwater. Even the risk of death and injury at the hands of some orc or ogre player were worth the risk because he had, rolled up and hidden in his most secret place behind the bilge pumps, an invitation for a try-out at the Skavenblight Scramblers.

It was conditional on getting the ‘Most Injuries of a Downed Opponent’ record at the end of the season.

Never mind the Cretins reaching the Blood Bowl, they would get annihilated in their first match, most likely literally. But the Scramblers… They were his tunnel out of Crookback to the life of a full-time professional Blood Bowl player.

‘Kikkit!’

The growl of the oversneer snapped him from his reverie.

‘Back to work, you maggot-ridden furbag, the final’s not until tomorrow. Shift doesn’t end ’til sundown.’

‘Yes-yes, oversneer,’ replied Kikkit, bending back to his task. As he rasped his file between the points of a large gear, his thoughts drifted away again, picturing piles of gold coins, warpstone tokens, and platters upon platters of food with hardly any mould on it.

The Big League beckoned.

The howl of the ratwolves signalled dusk and the end of second shift. Kikkit left in the scrum with the others, casually biting and scratching his neighbours as they pressed through the narrow workshop entrance, battling against the flow of the other shift trying to get in.

He loitered for a moment outside the feeding hall, content to let the others push in front. It was a big match tomorrow and his gut felt shrivelled, his appetite absent.

Watching his fellow clanrats punching and wrestling each other to get at the sagging trenchers reminded him of the day he had caught the eye of the Grey Seers. It had been just such a dinnertime, he had been ravenous after a long day of toil, and in the eating melee he had spied one of his companions on his back, dazed by a blow. Kikkit had leapt, ducked and climbed through the sprawl to snatch a rancid chicken from the downed skaven.

It was, on reflection, pretty much the same as trying to get the ball from under a pile of players, and it was his natural timing and ruthlessness that had earned his place among the Crookback Cretins and now saw him so close to achieving his dreams.

It was with a bit of a swagger that he turned away from the food hall and headed through the twisting gnaw-tunnels to the chambers of Nyak Longtooth. As he turned into the corridor where the cave of his representative lived – his ‘agent’, Nyak insisted, though he was nothing more than a loan-ratshark – Kikkit slowed, suddenly aware that something was amiss. Usually, the curtained door to the warlock’s laboratory was guarded by Nulk, Nyak’s huge rat ogre. There was no sign of Nulk but the flicker of warpstone light betrayed movement inside the chamber.

‘Nyak?’ He tugged aside the ragged curtain and poked his twitching nose into the room.

His eye was first drawn to the broken crucibles and scattered pieces of magical equipment on the floor. Next he noticed the shattered glass vials and alembics on the warlock’s experimenting bench. His gaze flicked back to the stone floor. Was that fresh blood?

He took all of this in at the same time that he registered the three figures standing just inside the doorway. Two were skaven a little larger than Kikkit, dressed in the thick hide aprons, gloves and kilts of Clan Moulder packmasters. They had coiled whips at their belts. One had a long ragged scar down the side of his face, his front teeth prominent even for a ratman. The other wore thick goggles of scratched green glass, his right hand replaced with a crude angled hook of iron.

The third figure was Nulk, looming over Kikkit with ropes of drool hanging from his bared fangs.

‘Sorry! Wrong-wrong turn,’ shrieked Kikkit, spinning around to leave.

‘Not so quick-quick. Grab him, Nulk!’

Kikkit knew better than to run and instead went limp, becoming an unresisting furry sack of bones as a massive clawed fist snatched up the loose skin at the scruff of his neck. The rat ogre lifted, presenting him to the two packmasters.

‘Got ’im,’ rumbled Nulk.

‘What has we got here, Packmaster Kratch?’ said goggles.

‘One of Nyak’s “assets”, I think, Packmaster Snurk,’ said Kratch.

‘No-no, no-no, not-not asset, not-not me. Just worker, mangy rat, yes-yes, mangy furry maggot. No-nobody.’

‘Star player, I hear,’ said Kratch.

‘Most injuries of a downed opponent, that’s the talk,’ said Snurk.

Kikkit said nothing, dangling sullenly from Nulk’s fist. Snurk stepped closer, the smell of warpstone on his breath as he whispered in Kikkit’s ear.

‘Nyak got a little greedy, he did.’

‘Greedy,’ echoed Kratch.

‘Nulk here wasn’t cheap, was he?’

‘No, Snurk, he was not.’

‘And the wolfrats. And the warstoats. And the diremice. It all adds up, it does.’

‘More than a few gold crowns and warpstone tokens, let me tell you,’ chuckled Kratch.

‘That little contract of yours? The one you had with Nyak? It’s ours now.’

‘Right-right.’ Kikkit nodded ferociously and started to swing in Nulk’s grip. ‘Fair to me.’

‘And you owed Nyak thirty thousand gold crowns.’

‘Thirty…’ Kikkit swallowed hard.

‘The loans for your kit, the warpstone poultices to heal you afterwards, representation with the Grey Seers, and forty per cent of your winnings. We’ll take fifty thousand and call it even, yes-yes?’

‘Fifty thousand… Where-where am I supposed to get-get that much?’

Kratch grinned and it was not a pleasant sight. He poked a broken claw into Kikkit’s malnourished pot belly and then squeezed the clanrat’s scrawny arm muscles.

‘I think we could do a thing or two with a body like this. More than just fodder for the beasts.’

Kikkit shuddered, knowing well what happened to skaven that ended up on the operating tables of the Moulder packmasters.

‘Right-right, fifty thousand. No problems. Big match tomorrow. Final. Win-win, big prize.’

‘Yes, win-win, big prize indeed,’ said Snurk with a curled lip. He pulled a bonesaw from the pocket of his apron. Rust flaked from the old blade. ‘Or else it’s the chop for you, star player.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-612-5

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