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“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.
“Could have been travellers,” Otto suggested from the back of the lobby.
“Are you stupid?” Skyseeker asked. “Who in Horned Rat’s name would travel this forsaken spot-place?”
“Breeder did,” Kretch reminded, shying away when she twisted her head to look at him.
“It was group decision!”
“We should take some time to make camp and rest,” Wilfred said, trying to keep them all on track. “Though the thought of lingering here troubles me. No more than an hour at most.”
Whoever had left the charcoal, they made good use of it, toasting the tower with warm air and soft light. It was to cramped to fit all of them inside, so turns were taken for who should stay outside and keep watch. For what, she could not be certain.
Being around so many men and rats at once made her fur crawl, so she offered to vacate a spot for someone else. She hugged her cloak tighter around herself as she gale whipped at her flank, Skyseeker peering up at the icey overhangs and steep faces above and around her. She could hear strange, cracking noises carrying from a distance, a quake that echoed off the ice, resonating almost like some cold creature was voicing a hunting call. Minutes of silence would pass before another one would be heard, only enhancing the uneasy silence between.
“That’s ice breaking apart,” Otto explained, who had yielded his place inside not long after she. “I’ve heard it before. I lived near a lake when I was a boy, and in winter the top of it would freeze over. When it cracked during the day, it made very queer sounds.”
Skyseeker looked up the slope adjacent to the tower, tracking a sheet of snow that rippled down its face. She gazed higher, up to the dark rocks that lipped the top. The lumps of granite looked like looming figures. Everything was so still, and she was almost compelled to keep from breaking the quiet, lest she draw unwanted attention to herself.
It made her uneasy to be still for so long, and it was a relief when Wilfred rallied up the rest of them, urging them to push on. The path wended higher and narrower beyond the tower. The mountains squeezed in from either side, forming a choke which only two or three men could walk through side by side. Snow and ice were on all sides, and now when it cracked the noise seemed to echo for minutes on end.
She felt as though they were walking into the maw of some creature of ice, the beams of sunlight struggling to filter through the narrow breaks above, their group bathing in a gloom. “Skaven not like this place,” she muttered, wanting everyone to know her discomfort.
“At least we aren’t being snowed upon,” Otto suggested from the rear. “The chill was killing me.”
“You man-things so weak-weak,” Kretch asked from over her shoulder. “how you live up on surface for this long, Kretch has no idea.”
“If I recall, it was me and my men’s presence that tipped the scales of our capture. You’d still be in that Skaven burrow if not for us.”
“Breeder did the big thinking,” Kretch replied. “You not take credit for Breeder’s plan-plan, she smarter than you and man-things combined.”
“Wipe the drool from your mouth, simpering rodent.”
“Quiet!” Skyseeker hissed. “I hear things.”
The group was so tense that they all collectively stopped, and Skyseeker took a moment to appreciate how much command she wielded, but the confidence soon plummeted. She heard it again, a scraping of something dragging across rock, a disturbed pebble rattling against the slopes as it plummeted from above. From behind her goggles she could look more discreetly, and she moved only her eyes up the heights of the sheer face ahead of them.
Movement between two crystal protrusions caught her eye. Maybe ten meters above the ground was a rippling of dark fabric, sheathed across something laying in the rocks. It was barely bigger than a Skaven, but it was hard to gauge its true size, its dark linen blended well with the ice.
She switched her view to night-mode, masking the movement as her scratching at an itch on her face. The world took on bright shades of green, but also a point of glitter. The sun was filtering down beams at just the right angle to sparkle off the glass, and Skyseeker’s heart froze as she realised it was the glint of a scope.
“What do you see?” Wilfred muttered, keeping his voice low. The rest of the Skaven and men scanned their surroundings warily, and it seemed only the wizard had sensed her alarm.
“Not know, it’s up there. Don’t look, you fools,” she snapped when Kretch turned to glance up at the ledges, but too late. The figure knew it had been discovered, and there was a spark of orange as the report of a shot echoed through the mountains.
A Skavenslave to her immediate left had his head severed from his furry shoulders, pink droplets spraying across those stood behind him. Skyseeker bolted for cover before his body had even hit the ground, and not a heartbeat later did several more shots follow the first. There were multiple shooters up on the ledges, each concealed beneath dark shawls and nestled into nooks of ice. They filled the narrow pass with lead, her companions scattering and bumping into each other in their haste for cover.
Their group fell into separated halves on each side of the path, the dead skaven between. Chips of ice sprayed as the shooters reloaded and fired, but despite the thunderous reports of their guns the ice was too thick to penetrate, and the angle was unfavourable. Skyseeker watched as the men began to draw weapons, some had crossbows, some pistols, those with the former taking aim first and sending up arrows in return fire.
“Stay your hands!” Wilfred shouted over to them, trying to be heard over the battle. “Stop!” he yelled, waving his staff to get their attention. The men were reluctant, but obeyed. Their attackers were another matter. “Master dwarves,” Wilfred continued. “hold your fire! You are shooting on men of the Empire. In the name of the High King, I bid you parlay with us.”
To her shock, the enemy ceased fire, and for a long pause all was silent but the whistle of the creeping wind. Her ears pricked as she heard scuffling from above, a new voice calling down to them, one deep and unsympathetic.
“By what reason would the dawi parlay with those who intrude upon our home?”
“We are dawongi,” Wilfred called back. “We seek only to pass through these mountains, we were not aware this was your territory, intrusion was not our intent.”
“Ha! Dawongi, is it? A manling in the company of raki thinks himself a friend?”
“These Skaven mean you no harm,” Wilfred insisted. “They are friends of the Empire, and mine.”
Skyseeker chanced a peek beyond the ice. She exposed herself only a moment, finding the speaker had risen to a crouch from his nest up in the rocks. It was a dwarf, as tall as her but thick about the arms and chest, his silver rifle still drawn over her location.
“Good-Good,” she whispered up at the wizard. “You keep him talking, man-thing, while I think of plan to cut his fat little throat. He killed my unnamed skavenslave!”
“Quiet,” Wilfred hissed back. “There will be no killing this day if we can avoid it. The dwarven people are stubborn, but honourable people.”
“Now I know where Rick-Rod gets his merciful tendencies from,” she grumbled. “Fine, we do it you way-way. What should I say?”
“Nothing, it is best if you leave the talk to me,” Wilfred replied. He turned and raised his voice towards the speaker. “We seek only to cross back into the Empire, we were stranded in the lands west of here, and seek only to return home. In the High King’s name, we have no quarrel with you.”
“The High King has no say in this place,” the dwarf shouted back. “We are not the umgdawi, the cravens who would suckle on the teats off the umgi. We are true dwarfs, and you are not welcome here.”
“Then let us leave in peace,” Wilfred said. “Our journey has been long and arduous, let us end it without battle.”
“Aye, you’ll leave – the way you came, if you’re lucky. Manlings bring war and death wherever they go, but you would bring rats into our mountain. You’re a greater fool than I thought if you think their company will do you any favours, the raki would kill us all if we let them propagate.”
Wilfred hesitated, and she knew he was losing the dwarves with his plea. Skyseeker took up the mantle of coming to his aid, stepping forward and raising one arm around their cover in greeting.
“Miss Seeker!” Wilfred hissed. “Don’t…”
“Salutationings, Downies! Downise? Dawi’s,” she corrected, and Wilfred closed his eyes in dismay. “Take out the gunk from your tiny heads and listen, we trying to get out of your hair, why you making this so difficult?”
“Ha! The manling has a pet rat to speak for him,” the dwarf scoffed. “Has that forsaken Empire of yours truly fallen so, that you’d take rodents into your charge?”
“I am under no one charge, I am Skyseeker,” she announced. “Master assassin, and humble bargainer in my spare time. We make deal-pact, you and I. You like gold, yes-yes? Shiny, pretty, coins, you get them and we get out of your beards.”
“You don’t have any gold,” Otto whispered from behind her.
She snapped round and glared at him. “Shut your hole, imbecile.”
“Whatever creature crapped you out from between its legs should have called you Deathseeker,” the dwarf scoffed. “A bullet in the head will be your only way out of this place.”
Skyseeker clutched her paws into fists, fuming beneath her hood. She had learned to expect mild racism during her time on the surface, but to go for her own mother? It was all she could do to keep from seeing red.
“You think your fat fingers are faster than my Skaven reflexes?” she snapped. “I might be a rat, but at least I’m not a twisted, freakish, lumpy, lumbering beast, who looks like a man-thing but was squashed into a tiny hairy mountain! Skaven bets you’re perched up there to compensate for your woefully short stature, I bet your tiny cranium couldn’t even reach my chest, you angry little midget!”
It was hard to see the dwarf’s face from this range, but Skyseeker could tell his features had clouded over. The gun he wielded trembled in his large gloves, and for an instant she almost considered backing away in fear.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Wilfred muttered.
“On my ancestors,” the dwarf snarled, his voice full of barely restrained fury. “I’ll rip the skin from your bones and bury you in the ice. Kill them all! The manlings as well!”
A bullet zipped over her head as Skyseeker ducked back behind the wall, snickering as she was proven right – the dwarfs reactions yielded to hers. She saw Wilfred scowling down at her and shrugged. “What? Beard-thing started it, not Skaven.”
“He wanted you to provoke him, Miss Seeker,” Wilfred replied. “Now he feels honour-bound to stop us.” He flinched as a shot glanced at their feet, Skyseeker jumping back and bumping the Skaven stood behind her. “No matter,” he said. “Now we must fight. Fire at will, Sons of Sigmar.”
Otto and the other picked up where they’d left off, and soon the two sides were embroiled in an exchange of firearms. Skyseeker was no fan of guns, and it didn’t seem like there would be spares for her anyway, but she wouldn’t idle this fight.
“Cover Skaven!” she shouted. She pointed to two Skaven. “You and you, follow, we go up this ice and flank these beard-things.”
Wilfred nodded, clearly he didn’t fancy sitting in this narrow pass waiting to be shot either. “If you’re certain you can climb that high, do it. Shall I cast you a protective ward, as I did on the ship?”
“The rock armour thing?” she asked, Wilfred nodding. “Negative, rocks too heavy for climbing in. You just stay her and keep slaves safe.”
“Be careful,” Wilfred warned. She turned for the wall, bending her knees in a spry crouch. She leapt like a feline, pouncing on the wall and burying her claws into its slippery surface, chittering in effort as she began to climb.