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“Yer not thinkin’ of climbing them mounts, are ye?” Mazkha asked, noting where he was looking.
“Were it so simple,” he replied. “It has been many long months since I’ve set foot in the Empire, and my homeland lies just beyond. Can’t help but feel strange to be going the wrong way from it.”
“Ye should banish the thought of takin’ any shortcuts,” she warned. “Our Warrrgh has marched on a hundred armies, but we’ve never managed to scale even the Base of the Grey’s. There’s dragons that live in them mounts, ye’d be a fool to get within spittin’ distance of their nests. Then there’s the beasts, big furred things that’ll strip the meat from yer bones, and that’s assumin’ the cold don’t freeze ya solid. And there’s worse things, the feral monsters that dwell deep in them caves. You walk along the surface, they’ll hear ya, and ain’t no way of tellin’ where they’ll pop out from.”
“I’d though orcs knew not of fear,” Roderick noted.
“You’d be a daft idiot not to be scared,” Mazkha replied, turning her gaze up at the towering cliffs of snow. “Ain’t nothin’ that ventures up there would come out alive. I pity the sorry sack who thinks she can go through all that inhospitable terrain and come out the other side alive.”
-xXx-
“Pack-Collect your trash, man-things, we going over the mountains!” Skyseeker announced.
Her decision must have been as enigmatic as it was intelligent, for her ragtag followers regarded her with a collective, strange glance at both her and to themselves, her voice petering into an echo. Fortune was with them ever since her chance encounter with Wilfred a few days back, though she was beginning to doubt they had found each other by chance. The wizard was a wily thing, and Otto had said as much that he would likely be in the area.
It was not a thing she would ever say aloud, but they were better off with the wizard than without. With a simple spell, he could lure deer and rabbits straight their feet, eliminating the need for hunting or scavenging. Skyseeker had near thrown up her dinner the first time he’d done it, her body used to the table scraps that Pinkface had tossed her way day in and out. Being full made her feel sick, but it was a good kind of sick, and it helped to put the meat back on her bones.
He had even replaced her cloak with a new one, and it was only a little frayed towards one edge, and it lingered with a coopery smell that could be only washed blood. “One of my guards, who came with me all the way from the garrison at Marienburg,” he’d said. “We encountered a Skaven patrol along the coast, and he did not survive his wounds. I would have you wear it as proudly as he did, Miss Seeker.”
The weave was black like her, blending against her coat The hood had to have holes cut out for her ears to poke through, and the cape had to be shortened so it didn’t catch on the ground behind her, but it was a comfortable fit besides. Its biggest feature was the animal worked into the stitching of the cloak, the golden threads shaped into a winged gryphon. At first she’d wanted it removed – she had bad experiences with gryphon, remembering all toto well being chased and nearly devoured by one such beast – but Wilfred explained it was part of the Empire’s flag, and would be disrespectful to have it cut out.
Skyseeker didn’t know how she felt about bearing the Empire flag. She liked the humans, but this felt like acquiescing to their control. No matter, she could drape herself in all the Empire garb they could give her, but deep down she was her own Skaven through and through. Besides, the colour was pretty to look at. Not that someone of her stature needed colourful symbols to draw the eye. Just as they were doing right now, her followers were all directing to her their full attention.
“The Grey Mountains?” Otto asked, lounging beside the fire. The human was a little slow, she’d come to discover, he seemed even more out of his element, without a cozy ship to protect him.
“You see any other mountains, man-thing?” She made sure he saw her roll her eyes. “Yes of course the Greys. We can’t go under them, we can’t go around them, so let’s go through them!”
“We most certainly can go round them,” Wilfred interjected, the wizard seated on a stump close by. Between the three of them, the various rats and humans she hadn’t learned the names of were milling about, some turning their heads to follow the discussion. “The path north is clean terrain, and there are few bandits roaming the Brettonian province.”
“Clean? Long more like, we scurrying forever and still this place looks the same-same!”
“We’ve only been travelling for two days, Miss Seeker.”
“Feels like two hundred,” she complained. Wilfred didn’t seem moved, so she changed her approach. “What about Ironsnout?” she asked. “Vermintide right between us and Rick-Rod’s man-things. We keep moving this way-way, we have just as much chance of dining the Snout first before the man-things, true? Moreso, Skaven thinks.”
“We are but a handful of men – and Skaven,” he said with a deferral bow to the nearby rats. “if we should encounter the tide, we have a good chance of slipping away unnoticed.”
“I could, on my new flayer, but you’d have hard time of that, man-thing. Snout has more flayers of his own, they run you all down if they see us.”
“Those wheeled contraptions tore Sehlmann apart,” Otto asked, in reference to the man who’d been run down by the group of flayers. “I’d rather not go through all that again.”
“We would go through much worse tidings, if we were to cross the mountains,” Wilfred replied.
“It’s only way to catch up to the others,” Skyseeker countered. “Pull up your map again, Fred-Wil, I could cover the distance between where we are and where Rick-Rod and Kessel-man are with my paw, and that’s like a million-billion steps!”
“The distance is… far,” Wilfred conceded. “But it is too dangerous. Only the snow thrives in those tall passes, and the elements are harsh to the living. Avalanches, breaking cliffs, not to mention the dwarven strongholds that dwell inside the rock.”
“There are dwarfs up there?” Otto asked, once more too slow on the uptake.
“Yes, but do not consider compare them to the mountain folk you may be familiar with. The Empire has only made formal contact with a handful of the hundreds of Clans that live beneath the surface, and the ones beneath the Grey’s have never formally announced themselves to us. We will find no friends or allies up there.”
“We not going under mountains,” Skyseeker reiterated. “Stupid dwarfs won’t know we there, they too busy drinking from rocks like they were teats or something. Scurrying across them won’t take long anyway… uh… how long would it take to get to other side?”
“Four, perhaps five days and nights,” Wilfred admitted. “Assuming we cross at the thinnest span, which is not too far from where we are now. And assuming we run into no obstacles, be they living, or not.”
“We should consider this choice carefully,” Otto added in. “It’ll take over a week to get back to the Captain, assuming we’re faster than them, and there’s a vermintide between us and them. We won’t arrive to find anybody left, if we don’t make it back in time to warn them.”
It sounded like the sailor was on board with the idea, but Wilfred still shook his head in disagreement.
“Have you ever felt the chill of freezing temperatures, Otto? It will be no stiff breeze, but a fierce cold that would seem to burn your skin.”
“If it gets us back to our companions sooner, it’s a price I’ll pay,” Otto replied. “Perhaps we should call a vote?”
“Yes-Yes!” Skyseeker agreed. “All those in favour of crossing the mountains, getting to the Imperial-place and the other man-things quickly, plus no chance of running into the Snout, raise your paws!”
Kretch and all the Skaven followed her example. Otto soon joined, and a few of his men did the same. More than half of their number were in agreement, but it was only fair that Wilfred got his say.
“All against?” she asked. Wilfred was not alone in his protest, a few of the more careful humans raising their paws with him, but they were far outnumbered even at a glance. “Splendation,” she announced. “I love democracy, especially when it goes my way.”
“Very well,” Wilfred muttered. “It is decided, we will cross the Grey’s to the Empire. At least we will return to the homeland sooner, if we make it across. If we want to stand even half a chance at surviving, there are preparations to be made, work to do.”
Kretch threw up his paws in frustration, speaking up for the first time that day. “Kretch never agreed to work, can he take vote back?”
“No backsies, Kretch,” Skyseeker said. “And don’t be lazy,” she added, definitely not remembering any point of time whatsoever, where she had reacted the exact same way, with a certain sailor who was presently sitting nearby.
Preparations, it seemed, where to gather an abundance of firewood, and any tool they had on paw was to be used to fell every possible tree, and it seemed they’d deforested a few clearing’s worth of wood before Wilfred was satisfied. It would be one of the few ways they would have of driving back the cold, according to the wizard, and since no trees grew so high in altitude, finding something to burn up there would be difficult, if not impossible.
The men passed out their cloaks and garbs until each one was equally equipped with as many layers of clothing, and Skyseeker was glad for her fur. The coldest she’d ever been was when she’d fallen into the sea after the wolfship had been attacked, but Wilfred made it seem it would be worse than that, though she wouldn’t know precisely how much until they were well up into the peaks.
Next came an extended period of hunting and foraging, Wilfred explaining that it was better to have more food than less, as the cold would cause them to burn energy quicker. Skyseeker wasn’t about to ignore his advice, so she took her slaves aside and make them swear not to stuff themselves full in the days ahead. Naturally the promised, though she had Kretch make sure to keep an eye on them all the same.
It was near the end of the day when the group was ready to proceed, though Wilfred still had his doubts. They rested that night in the woods they’d cleaned out, and pressed on in a different direction come morning. Wilfred was their key navigator, and he had them follow him in a gently northward arc, keeping the mountains on their immediate right.
She could not tell why, but at a certain point, the wizard bid them to turn towards the slopes. After every league the woods became sparser, and the forests that were once teaming with game became quiet and lonely, until even the ground beneath them turned to barren dirt.
What had once been far-off summits and cliffs became tangible inclines, and the group made their first steps into the ascent. At first they were simple bumps of terrain, but they quickly became sheer faces that had to be scaled by careful positioning of feet and paws. A few hardy shrubs clung to life, but now the world was flat and featureless, except for colourless rocks and a few strips of saplings. The transition from the fertile lowlands to the hardy mountains was far from subtle.
The humans quickly began to slow their pace, their unbalanced figures making the climbs slow and cautious out of safety. Skyseeker had no such worries. Her tail held out her counterbalance, and she had an intuitive sense of where she could find handholds for her fingers. Twice she had to save Otto from taking hold of a loose rock, and she had to order Kretch to make sure none of the others got in harms way. Skaven were good at digging and climbing, and even if these were skavenslaves, they put the men to shame. Hopefully they would remember this if or when they reached the Empire. The last thing she wanted was to come all this way to the Empire, only to be treated as an enemy of the realm.