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Wilfred understood instantly, losing his composure for a moment as he came to the realisation. “Ah, that,” he said, clearing his throat. “Well, to be young, and in love, that is nothing to apologise for. Although, you could have found yourselves a quiet place further away from the pantry…”
“You not have to worry about that, I never let him waste a drop,” she replied. Wilfred cringed, and it seemed she’d said too much. “Whoops, pretend Skaven did not say that.”
“I appreciate your candour, Miss Seeker, and I thank you. Must admit, having an apology from a Skaven is one of the most… unusual things I did not expect to happen in my lifetime.”
“Make no mistake, Fred-Wil, I only say things because you were in wrong place at wrong time – and that Rick-Rod told me to. Skaven’s not sorry that it happened, only that it didn’t finish.”
“It’s the thought that matters,” Wilfred said, giving her a courteous nod.
She sipped at her meal, the watery taste of the broth clinging to her gums. “You know, Fred,” she continued. “Skaven was expecting you to throw tantrum, but you not seem bothered by Rick-Rod and I’s breeding. Some of the man-things who know, or think they know, have very nasty reactionings.”
“How nasty?” Wilfred inquired.
Tossing me into the sea, for starters, she thought, but held her tongue before it turned to words. “Uh, typical man-thing hate, naturally. Smart comments hither, a bad look thither. I thought Skaven were ill-tempered, but you man-things can get very angry at anything that’s not a man-thing.”
“We can be very prejudicial, that I won’t deny,” Wilfred replied. “But both our kinds have been at odd long before even our grandfathers were born, and it is only natural to cast suspicion. Consider the circumstances of our meeting. We were only expecting to find Roderick at the port city, but instead he turns up with you in his company. We were all suspicious. Would that be any different, if our roles were reversed, and you returned to one of your cities with a human behind you?”
“Not likely,” she admitted.
“There is value to be had through our alliance,” he continued. “Some of the men can’t see the world beyond the hilt of their sword, or the barrel of their guns, but knowledge is the ultimate weapon. With your help, the Empire can strengthen itself against the other Skaven Clans, should they come across our borders. There has been much suspect that the Skaven area already dwelling deep beneath our cities. Your help would be invaluable in finding them.”
“You’d use Skaven like a… Skaven?” she asked, turning her snout up at him. “That’s why you’ve helped Skaven along? I thought we were buds, Fred-Wil?”
“Of course I would call you friend, miss Seeker,” Wilfred added hurriedly. “You were invaluable in securing the relic, you have saved Otto and his men from capture, and your company to Roderick has brought some much needed light. I am simply stating your future prospects within the Empire – that is what you want, isn’t it? To live in our great land, alongside one another?”
Skyseeker gave him a sideways glance, mulling over his words. While it was humbling to be called useful, being a tool for the humans, even for Wilfred, made her insides twist. Still, it was better than the alternative, a life as a breeder within Clan Mors’ pits. There was always the option of ging with neither, but going down the lone-rat path would be disastrous, she only had ot look at her attempted assassination of Ironsnout for the proof.
“You said I gave Rick-Rod some much needed light,” Skyseeker asked, changing the subject. “What you mean by that-that?”
“Roderick’s exile was a… difficult time. He had always dreamt of a face-to-face meeting with the Emperor, but instead of in ceremony he had come to the Emperor in shame and regret. I had been at the far end of the hall in which the Emperor and his advisors had stripped him of rank and titles. The things that were said… even I could not understand how unfair they could be to a Son of Sigmar.”
Skyseeker recalled her meeting with the splendiferous Lord Gnawdwell, how scared she been when she’d climbed the steps of his tower, the agony that preluded the meeting with one who was so powerful, so cruel. Had Roderick felt such things in his own summoning, she wondered.
“Emperor sent him to Tilea on his own, banished him, correct?” Skyseeker asked.
He gave her a quizzical look. “Is that what he told you? The Emperor was unfair, but not cruel, and he gave Roderick a chance of redemption, once I had informed him that the Conclave had detected the relic, and Roderick was able enough to recover it. Some Lords who had fought with him on campaigns promised him horses, weapons, men to help, but he denied them all. ‘I would walk this path alone’, I recall him saying. I almost suspected he did not want to return alive, but maybe something along the way changed his mind.”
“Me-me?” Skyseeker asked, pointing at her chest. This was all news to her, Roderick had confided his doubts to her back in Tilea, she remembered, but she didn’t expect it to have run this deep.
“Yes. He was devastated when you had disappeared during the attack on the ship. His prior doubts resurged, and he cursed the gods themselves. Would that the raven they sent me had not been killed by the Skaven who accosted us and captured Otto’s men, even a single word from you would do him much good.”
“You care about Rick-Rod a lot,” she noted. “I aske dim if you were his daddy once, and he said no-no, but I’m not convinced.”
“Roderick is the future of the Empire,” he said. “And I am its past. I’m an old man, Miss Seeker, far older than you may think. I have borrowed many years from the warp and the world, and the earth will call for it back one day. I cannot stop that, but I can prepare the youth for a brighter, safer life than mine ever was. If that means bringing you, and all these men and Skaven, into the fold, then I will do all in my power to see you to safety.”
“So! You only my friend for my brilliant intelligence? Got it,” Skyseeker said. It should have been insulting to be called a tool in so many words, but in a way it was a little flattering. The wizard’s intentions had been somewhat obscured to her, but she felt a little more comfortable, now that he had spoken plainly. The Wiards Conclave was a powerful clan within the human Empire, so she’d heard, it would do well to have them as allies.
The stars were coming out in force now, so Skyseeker volunteered to take the first nap, scurrying into a ball and wrapping her cloak around her. She stared at the embers, her thoughts turning from Roderick, to Skavenblight, to Ironsnout, then finally to rest.
-xXx-
The day of hiking that followed was not unlike the first. Up and up, the party of rats and men would their way up the vague trail that veined its way over the mountainside. The depth of the snows continued to deepen, until even the ankles of the men were obscured beneath the powder. Every breath Skyseeker took was like drawing in ice, and the flakes were falling so heavily it seemed her fur had turned white, like that of the Seers, the most prestigious Skaven within the Under-Empire.
They had progressed deep within the pointed teeth of the Little Grey’s, as she coined them – the smaller slopes that formed around the giant ones that reached the clouds. Deep enough that when she turned around, she could not longer see the colours of Brettonia, or the sea, both were lost behind the hills of tundra they’d crossed. Even the azure sky had taken on a moody grey disfigurement, an avalanche of airborne snow waiting to bury them in ice.
Wilfred had been right to bring extra firewood, there was nothing out here that could be burned, apart from a few sturdy strips of grass that could be used as kindling. For some reason she was reminded of the Cracked Lands, the deserts that had been the resting place of the relic. Both were barren of life, both were inhospitable, the only difference being one was hot and the other cold.
Their path brough them into a small curve around the mountain’s eastern face, the white dust interrupted by black rocks and blue crystals every which way, some taller and girthier than even the man-things. There had been little conversation to be had over the gale, but Skyseeker raised a fist, a signal she’d seen Roderick use when he wanted the men to stop.
“Halt-Wait!” she called out. “Skaven sees thing ahead of us.”
Wilfred was the only one ahead of her, but he heard her command and stopped to look back. The men and Skaven likewise turned to peer at her. “What is it?” the wizard asked.
Skyseeker brought her fist to her face, adjusting the dials of her goggles. Not only did they help to keep the flakes from her eyes, but the filter settings allowed her to see a cleaner picture. The gears clicked nosily as she adjusted the zoom function, narrowing her vision onto an object ahead. At a glance it seemed to be yet another protrusion, but the longer she looked, she could make out the details of cobbled stone, and a narrow window halfway up the tall, thin build.
“A tower,” she said. “Up there, beside the path-trail.”
Wilfred followed her pointed finger. “Good eye, Miss Seeker, how did you see that? IT must be near three hundred feet away, and shrouded in the snow.”
“You wish your scientists could make a gadget this brilliant, Fred-Wil,” she said, tapping her goggles with a nail. “Shall we go?”
“The path goes right across it, I don’t see we have another choice. From now on, we must be quiet.”
“You heard him, hush-tails!” Skyseeker called out to her Skaven counterparts, then realised she had shouted and gave Wilfred a sheepish look. He motioned them on, and the group crept forward, near silent as their snow muffled their paws and boots. She saw Otto place a paw on his sword, the rest of his men doing likewise. She found it unlikely for the tower to be inhabited, she could see no fire smoke, but she drew her dagger just the same.
By a hundred feet, she could see there was another window on the east side of the tower, and likely two others on the faces she could not see. Inside the slots was darkness, which would make perfect spots for snipers, and the open approach up the hill would have made any jezail foam at the mouth – more than they usually did of course. But their approach was uncontested, and Wilfred took position on one side of the entrance, Skyseeker the other. If there had been a door it was long gone now, just a cobbled archway that led within.
Wilfred held out his staff, as though intending to cast a spell at any would-be dwellers, Skyseeker at his flank. Half the group stood watch outside, while the rest followed. It was quickly apparent that nobody was inside, the lobby a small, squat space, with ruined furniture to one side and a burned-out heart on the other. Stairs wound up the inside in a spiral onto a second and third level, the planks shredded places by rocks fallen form the ceiling that capped the tower, were spots of clouds could be seen when she looked straight up.
“We are alone,” Wilfred declared. “Inside, everyone, let us take to rest here.”
The chill crept in through the gaps in the decaying cobble, and she could see wisps of snow follow the party in through the entrance, but it was still a lot better than being outside and exposed. “Who’d be dumb enough to build things out here?” she wondered aloud.
Wilfred pointed towards the hearth, or rather, just above it. The banner was frayed to the point all colour had gone, but the could see the resemblance to her cloak when she looked closely.
“Outposts were built all along the Grey Mountains, many and many years ago,” Wilfred explained. “They were the Empire’s eyes to the west, before Brettonia had declared its friendship to the world of men.”
“Oh, uh, no offense intended,” she quickly added, though she still thought you’d have to be stupid to build something like this in the tundra. What could watchmen hope to see, with so much snowfall? “But there should be man-things here, correctness?”
“These posts were abandoned long before my time,” Wilfred said. “No force would be foolish enough to cross the Grey’s – pardoning ours of course. We may see other structures like these over the next few days, and I welcome the shelter.”
“Abandoned? Kretch does not think so,” the Skaven muttered. He was hunkered beside the heart, poking his sword into the firepit within. “Look at this, Skyseeker.”
There were logs in the pit. Burnt to a black beyond black, and shrunken into strips of bark. She reached out her paw, but they were cold as snow.
“That could have been left there by the prior tower keepers,” Wilfred said. “But it would have been long decayed by now How unusual.”
“We not first ones to pick over this ruin,” Kretch said. “But who, or what? Kretch cannot say for certain. Maybe the Snout sent rats this way-way too.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Skyseeker snapped. “The Snout goes north to relic, we going other way.” She left out the part that their paths would intersect again – everyone was after Roderick, it was only a matter of time before they’d meet Ironsnout again.