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Whispering through the trees came the croak of something distinctly mechanical, but it was hard to make out its direction. Her band scanned the surrounding woods, some of the more craven slaves shrinking in on themselves, some even daring to turn back into the cave. She would have happily called them out on their cowardice, until the sound grew closer, closer, until it seemed the entire forest was rumbling, and the growl took on the quality of a revving engine.
“Get down!” she screeched, throwing herself behind the nearest tree. A moment later, something large and spherical crested the hill to their east, gaining a few feet of air before slamming back to the ground with a creak of metal. Curved blades scythed through the grass before it as the giant wheel ploughed into the clearing, woodchips and rocks spraying.
The Skaven sitting on the elevated seat threw his head back and laughed, using his controls to steer his doomflayer into the group of skavenslaves. They scattered, some helped along by a couple of the man-thing who reacted quicker, darting in to pick up the rats as though they weighed no more than toddlers, running them into the safety behind trees or rocks. From behind the first doomflayer came a second, a third, then a fourth, the vehicles throwing up clouds of dust in their wake as they mowed the earth.
Skyseeker peaked out from behind the trunk, watching her new followers flee beneath the machines. Some were faster than others, Skyseeker turning her head away as she watched a slave get caught in the path of a wheel, his body pulverised beneath the flayer’s weight after being chopped apart by the kinetic-powered blades. The pilots were just as loud as the engines of their vehicles, always laughing and cackling as they drove through in and out of the clearing, swooping down on the band in quick strafes and picking off the stragglers before driving off for another pass.
Skyseeker looked round for options, and eventually she settled on the tree. She hooked her claws into the wood, hoisting herself up one leap at a time, the air displacing as a doomflayer zipped by beneath her, its laughing pilot coming and going. She hoisted up to one of the low-hanging branches, perching above the chaos.
Green grass was turning to crimson as another slave was caught in the path of another flayer, the pilots whooping and taunting without ever pausing to breathe. Some of the other Skaven were taking after her example, getting off the ground and out of the doomflayer’s reach.
Here the humans were disadvantaged, too big and slow to climb up like the slaves could, though that didn’t stop them from trying. She spotted Otto bracing his hands together, using his linked fingers to create a step for another human to climb into the branches. To their right, a doomflayer pilot was taking his aim, lining him up for a deadly rush.
The pilot twisted the handles, pulling into a sharp turn with a revv of its giant engine, beginning his strafe. Skyseeker poised on her branch, leaning out her weight as far as she dared before taking off with a gentle push.
A moment passed in which she dreaded she mistimed her jump, but she willed her heart to steady, the hump of the flayer’s wheel passing by, and the pilot’s seat lining up with her paws. The driver gawked up at her in disbelief as she came hurtling down, landing her feet on either of his armoured shoulders. She stumbled through the transition of momentum, but she reached one paw out to grip the armoured wheel for purchase.
“The audacity!” the doomflayer pilot snarled, Skyseeker vaguely recognising him from her trips into the hangar. “You scratching all my chrome, slave!”
“Mine now,” she replied, planting a foot in his face. The pilot lost his grip, tumbling from his seat and crashing to the rushing ground below, Skyseeker taking up his place without a second glance. The ‘seat’ wasn’t really a place she could sit, but just a spot for the controller of the doomflayer to perch, and the controls consisted of a single handle that could pivot and twist to control the speed and direction. Skyseeker was no pilot, but she didn’t’ have to be to wield a flayer.
She wrenched the stick, and the flayer curved away, Skyseeker waving at Otto as she passed him by. She set her course to intersect with the closet flayer, the pilot turning on the spot as he prepared to harry her servants with another pass, the swords on his vehicle red with blood.
He only noticed something was amiss until she was right on top of him, and he tried to steer his flayer away, but he was too late. Skyseeker pushed the flayer into its top speed, the engine purring as it reached its top speed, her fur roiling in the wind. Her wheel mounted the pilot and his own vehicle as though it wasn’t even there, Skyseeker barely feeling the suspension compensate for the impact.
The Skaven was thrown clear as his vehicle was severed down the middle, his scream silenced as her blades on her wheel diced him apart. The ruined flayer spewed forth a cloud of smoke and exhaust, Skyseeker coughing her lungs clear as she drove through it. On the other side, she jerked the stick again as she dodged a group of slaves trying to make a break for the forest, her wheel coming close enough to snip the fur off one of them.
“Out the way!” she barked, shaking her fist above her head. “Out the way! Skaven’s swinging this big mother round-round!”
She churned a giant arc in the dirt, zeroing in on the next flayer. This one met her head on, and the two vehicles approached one another at rapid speeds. Skyseeker steeled herself, but she broke first, swerving aside a moment before a collision.
The enemy pilot streaked by with his sword raised, but Skyseeker blocked the blade, and after a swift counterstrike, she struck him down, his body crumpling and his flayer spinning out of control and falling to its side.
She pushed the flayer up to its top speed, her head swivelling to track the last doomflayer. She spotted it behind her, but as she pulled into a slow, heavy turn, it didn’t meet her challenge. It was pulling away, retracing the path the group of pilots had taken to get here, rushing up and over an incline.
“Yes-Yes! Flee and run you mangy rodent!” she called, though she could barely hear herself over the chugging engine, so her taunt probably went unheard. She chased the doomflayer right up to the crest, applying the brakes as she reached its peak.
She watched the flayer vanish into the layers of trees, holding for a few moments more to make sure he wouldn’t come back. Flipping an obscene gesture in its general direction, she pulled her flayer about, cruising back down towards the clearing.
It looked as though there had been a war. Barely a few ribbons of grass remained, the ground consisting of ripped up roots and giant tranches that marked the passing of a flayer, the bodies of a few unfortunate slaves sprawled about. There was even a human, or at least, the limbs of one, Skyseeker turning her nose up at the stench of death.
“Skyseeker!” someone called, Skyseeker finding the button that controlled the engine, and shutting it down so she could hear better. “Skyseeker,” it said again. Otto appeared from around the bulk of the flayer, giving the bloodied knives a wide berth. “Astounding work back there. I almost feared the worst.”
“I never doubted me for a second,” she admitted proudly. “How are the man-things?”
“Bastards took out Hubert, but the rest of us are fine,” Otto replied. The other humans were gathering nearby, nursing a few scratches, but otherwise they looked fine.
“And Kretch?” she asked. “Where’s Skaven’s little helper gone?”
“Kretch is here!” a voice called out, Skyseeker turning to see the rat man hauled himself over. The rest of the slaves trailed behind, just as battered but able as the humans. “How you know how to drive doomflayer, breeder?”
“I don’t,” she admitted. “I’m just that intelligently… intelligent.”
Kretch awed over her, while Otto watched them both with a sceptical brow raised.
“What happened to all the slaves?” Skyseeker asked, gesturing the group of rats. There was far less than she remembered, and the flayers couldn’t’ have run them all down.
“Some took to wilds,” Kretch said. “Some went back into burrow. Not like Kretch or others, we most loyal to you, breeder.”
“We shouldn’t tarry for long, either,” Otto added. “If more of those… ‘doomflayers’ come back in force, we won’t stand a chance. Someone grab Hubert’s body.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Kretch said, snarling up at the human. “There not enough left of that man-thing for you to carry. Where we even going anyway? Kretch not been in this part of surface before.”
Kretch waited for her answer, he and the other slaves looking to her as though she were the Horned Rat himself. With a start, she realised Otto was also waiting for her answer, and she felt al little insecure with all the pairs of eyes on her, though she did her best not to show it.
“W-Well, I obviously have a plan-scheme,” she said, hoping that would settle them for the moment. “I, uh… I… hmm.”
“Perhaps we should find Wilfred,” Otto suggested. “With a little hope, he might even be nearby.”
“Outstandation!” Skyseeker exclaimed. “We shall find the wizard, in the name of Sigmar and the Horned Rat. Any idea where to start, Otter? Where last place you saw him?”
“We had made camp the night before we were taken,” Otto said. “I don’t remember where exactly, but…” He looked up at the evening sun, seeming to judge a distance as he watched the sky. “We were marched east for the most part, so we should go west, look for landmarks.”
“East, west, south, whatever it is, we go now and quick-quick,” Skyseeker insisted. “The further we get from burrow, the better. Skaven is not getting captured again. Come on, slaves!” she shouted. “March feet! Grab loot off those pilots and move tails!”
The slaves picked the three dead pilots free of their possessions, whichever of the strongest slaves allowed to keep their swords and armour. Otto seemed to find the sight abhorrent, but if there was anything insulting about taking useful gear, she could not see it.
With her band prepared, she climbed back onto the doomwheel, igniting the engine with a click and a whir. She was exhausted, all the rush from the fight with Pinkface and his slavers, the rush through the tunnels, and the fight with the flayers, she would have collapsed if she hadn’t had the flayer to transport her.
But through all the tiredness, she was so unbelievably relieved to have escaped. She was one step closer to reuniting with Roderick, and one step closer to getting her revenge on the Snout.