2k words
***
She travelled across the slave pit without interruption, arriving at the doors to Ironsout’s chambers. She kicked them open, scampering inside, taking in her surroundings, her gaze lingering on the spot the warlord had pushed her against the wall, a shiver crawling down her spine.
The cabinet and bench were the only noteworthy bits of furniture, and she tossed open the drawers of the latter, rummaging through scrolls and books and paperweights. She was surprised that the Snout could read through his freaky mask. She dug round for a few moments, taking to toss entire drawers to the floor to deepen her search.
“Where is it?” she growled to herself. When the desk was trashed she moved to the cabinet, which stood near twice her height against the wall. She used her sword to breach the lock, tossing open the doors with a crunch.
She delved snout first into the layers of shelves, tossing aside all of the Snout’s possessions. There were Skaven relics probably older than she was, trinkets from the other races, a feathery headdress with a serpentine mask on the front, but she ignored it all. There were little safe hatches and small compartments full of coins and antiquities, but these two she dropped to the floor.
“What did you do with it, Ironface?” she demanded.
“Do with what-what?”
She squeaked, spinning and tossing her sword in a panicked flail. It flipped once in its arc, and Kretch had to duck to avoid decapitation, the rat glancing over his shoulder as the sword was flung down into the pit.
“Kretch you moron!” she sighed. “Never sneak up Skyseeker whilst I sneak!”
“Kretch apologises, was only looking for breeder. You are missing escapade. Man-things taking out slavers, but they not last forever, you need to come with Kretch and get out of here! What you doing in Snout’s place?”
“Looking,” she replied, turning back and tossing open another drawer. “The Snout took my dagger from me, and Skaven must get it back-back. Help look for it, and hurry!”
“You got sword, breeder, what you need lousy dagger for?”
“Lousy! This not you average dagger, Kretch, this was weeping blade, and it was gift, came right from oleaginous Lord Gnawdwell himself.”
“An Eshin blade? Kretch knows of their weapons. And if Kretch knows a thing or two about a thing or two, the Snout knows a thing or three as well. He would have hid it well, or took it for himself. You waste time sneaking, Skybreeder.”
She had near dismantled the entire cabinet before she became aware of every second lost. Fleeing slaves would soon spread word of the man-things escaping their captors, and it wouldn’t be long before stormvermin and clanrats would come.
“You have point,” she conceded, though she kicked the Snout’s possession around into a further mess, purely out of spite. No more weeping blades, no more corrosive stabs.
She took one final peak through the cabinet’s contents, and her spirits lifted a notch. Sitting on the top shelf was a blade of gold, with jewels encrusted into the handguard, the leather grip protected from a needle without edges but a deadly point. She snatched it up, giving Von Kessel’s rapier a few practice jabs, imagining she was plunging it down Ironsnout’s face. It would never compare to stabbing with her weeping blade, but it was very balanced with a decent reach. It would do.
“What about the breeders?” she asked, gesturing to the door at the back of the room. “We have to help them.”
“What, you going to carry them out of burrow?” Kretch scoffed. “They are fatter than a broodmother teat, or going to be soon-soon.”
“Skaven cannot just leave them here,” she protested. As with everything in the pit, the door was not locked, and the Skaven inside were too hopeless to try and escape. She looked down on the sprawled rat women, and it wasn’t hard to imagine they had not moved since last she saw.
“Come-Come, fellow breeders,” she said, trying to rouse them with a roaring speech. “This Skaven has just made a prison riot, and you are all invited! What say you? I’ll take that mumbling as a yes!”
She tried to pull the nearest one to her feet, but she was so heavy, her body fattened by purposeful overindulgence. Skyseeker could imagine what they must be thinking, eating anything they could get, gleaming any sense of pleasure when subjected to the whims of a warlord like Ironsnout.
“We run out of time, breeder,” Kretch said from behind. “You want to stay and join them, or you want to leave?”
“Curse you and your logic,” she snarled, gesturing for him to start moving. She took one last look at the breeders, reaching down to give one a stroke behind a pink ear. “I’ll kill him,” she promised. “I’ll stab him, right in the gut, he’ll never touch a breeder again, this you have Skaven’s word on.”
They heard more fighting down the tunnel, but by the time she and Kretch returned to the workshop, it was all over. The slavers were lying dead or dying between the generators, and the humans were helping the latter on their way. It seemed that a few clanrats had been nearby at the time and had come to investigate, but there were no casualties on the human’s side.
“Skyseeker!” Otto called out, wiping his bloodied sword on the tunic of a dead slaver. “Where have you been? We were just about to leave without you.”
“I was on important business,” she said, waving her golden needle about. “Where’s Pinkface?”
“The rat you gave a whooping? I’m not sure, he must have crawled off when I wasn’t looking. Wait a moment,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Is that that Cap’s sword? How did-?”
“No time for minor details,” she said, cutting him off. “We need to scurry. Get your man-things rounded up.”
“What about these ones?” another human asked, gesturing to a group of skavenslaves. Some had taken up arms in the chaos, and from the way their spears were bloodied, they must have helped the humans kill their former masters.
“They answer to Kretch,” Kretch replied, then gave a deferring bow. “And I answer to Skyseeker. They are the breeder’s.”
“Mine?” she asked. “Oh, excellence, Skaven is now master of slaves. I’m just like you now, Otter!”
“We’re escaping with these rodents?” Otto asked, casting a disgruntled glance back at the slaves.
“Positively! I’ve always wanted a slave army.” There were only twenty or thirty skavenslaves, but in her head that was a lot more. “Come, slaves, follow your master breeder! To freedom!”
“Freedom!” some of them chanted back, and they fell in behind her as she took the lead. Skyseeker brandished Von Kessel’s needle and moved for the tunnel mouth, Kretch and Otto’s men at her flanks. As soon as the path split she faltered.
“Psst! Kretch!” she whispered. “Which way is closest way out?”
“Left, then left again,” he whispered back. “Came into burrow from that way a few times. Not guarded much.”
“How much?” she asked warily.
“We have man-things under our…. your control. They cut down slavers quick-fast, they kill any clanrats we find, yes-yes?”
This was proven true far sooner than she intended. Twice they came across a wondering patrol, but they were so surprised to see roaming man-things and slaves working together that they didn’t stand a chance, Skyseeker joining Otto as they cut down any of them that got in her path, the underground tunnels filling with the stench of death and sweat.
To Skyseeker it seemed they were going deeper, not higher, but Kretch’s instructions were the only lead she had. The industrial heart of the burrow faded with each turn, until it became a hazy background noise, and then finally disappearing. The passages began to narrow and malform, and there were less supports here to brace against the earth, and far fewer slaves, as if this network of the burrow had been abandoned.
“I hear things!” one of the slaves squeaked from the back. Skyseeker paused the troupe and told them all to shut up. Her ears ringed in the following silence, but they pricked when she detected something.
“I don’t hear a thing,” Otto complained, but Skyseeker hushed him.
“It sound like… clanking,” Kretch muttered, his ears pricking.
“They are coming,” Skyseeker added. “Let’s move-tails, men and rat men! Pick that pace up and go!”
“We are going in circles,” Otto said as he dashed to keep up. “Do you even know where you are taking us, rat?”
His question was directed to Kretch. “Kretch is trying to take you out, man-thing, but he can’t think if you keep filling ears with your slurry-words.”
The tunnels continued to twist, but the sounds of marching boots was growing ever louder and closer. Twice Skyseeker looked back to see green torchlight flickering against the walls behind them, laughing and chittering carrying on the air. Pinkface must have taken to warning the burrow guard, or maybe they were following the musk of fear the slaves stank the tunnels with.
“Kretch,” she snarled. “Get us out of this burrow, right now.”
“We close-close,” he insisted. “One more tunnel!”
They followed his directions down another winding passage, this one curving up and left, the first incline since their journey deeper down since the workshop. Just as she was about to suspect Kretch had been leading her along, her eyes snapped open. Her fur was touched with wind, the taste of fresh air sweet on her tongue.
She urged her followers on, and soon there was a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. The rough and grey walls of the tunnel were giving way to stiff roots and clay-coloured deposits, a euphoric warmth blasting in from the end of the cave.
They emerged from a cleft in the middle of a dense woodland, Skyseeker turning to peer at the sunlight as it dazzled through the fingers of shimmering leaves. She turned to look at the hump of earth that concealed the entrance, and if not for her followers emerging from the turn of the rocks, she would never have known it to be an entrance. The stones curved and hooked so that even if one stood directly before it, they would only mistake the entry for a crack.
It took the humans more effort to leave, their bodies a little too thick to squeeze through, but after some pushes from the slaves behind, the humans were soon freed, with the skavenslaves pouring out after. Skyseeker stared between her toes, watching the stalks of soft grass bulge from beside her prints. She had done it. All the punishment from Ironsnout and Pinkface combined, and she’d escaped. She would never admit it aloud, but she had had her doubts, but her genius had paid off.
She was free.
Kretch seemed to be of the same mind, taking a reprieve to fall down on the ground and hug the earth in gratitude. Even Otto and his companions were sharing a few companionable pats on the shoulders – the slaves too were relishing the freedom, though they scanned their surroundings with a certain caution. They must not get out from the burrow much, if at all. Skyseeker could sympathise, she had never experienced the surface world until a few months ago. It would be up to her to teach them the ways of the surface, how to not only survive, but exploit it.
“Don’t get too comfortable, my new minions,” she called out, getting their attention. “There is work to do, and only we can do it. First we must… what’s that noise?”