2k words
***
“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.
The very peak of the ice was still far above her head when she came upon ground flat enough to stand on, her two slaves hauling their mangy bodies after her. A tony path wended away to the left and right, no mere ledge but a path proper, the perfect vantage for anyone wishing to overlook the pass below. She wondered if this had also been left by the Imperials, or was this a feature created by the dwarfs?
She hurried along in the direction of the enemy, the thunderous reports of bullets now below and to her right. She clung to the wall, compressing herself into as small a target as possible, the dwarves coming into view. The path she was on rounded the ice wall, so thin in places there was only scant inches of rock that saved one from a harsh drop. The dwarves were either laying prone or crouching on the more stable parts of its length, their long rifles trained on her friends and allies. She was within striking distance now, and could see how overengineered their guns were. While the imperial flintlocks were wooden, simple things, these dwarfs carried barrels of pure steel and brass casings, and rather that reload through paper charges, their guns could snap along the middle and a shell could be loaded without no extra effort. Not unlike jezzail guns, they seemed breech-loaded.
A tremulous voice rose up above the sounds of shooting, Skyseeker’s fur rippling as the ever-present wind began to strengthen. It was blowing directly into her snout, yet after a pause, she felt its caress slip along her arm, then her back, until the flecks of snow it carried had done a complete one-eighty turn. It carried into the cloaked faces of the dwarfs, she only noticed because some of them had raised gloved hands to shield them. It must have been Wilfred, tempering the winds in their favour, giving her cover.
“Now’s our chance!” she hissed to her slaves. “Skitter-attack!”
“Rikka-rak!” they answered, and they took the charge like a trio and ferocious, slavering beasts, one of her slaves tripping over his paws. Skyseeker ignored him, the fastest of any rat, and came upon the closest dwarf the quickest. She drew her gilded rapier, and leapt in the same movement, gripping the pommel in both paws and pointing it forward.
The dwarf noticed her too late, his reaction too slow, and she plunged the blade through shoulders wider than her whole body. The rapier came out the chest glossy with blood, the dwarf groaning as he convulsed. The dwarf teetered, and she wrenched her weapon free before he took her down the drop with him, his rifle clattering against the ice as it followed him down.
The sound drew the attention of the next dwarf along, the sniper turning to draw a bead on her head. He pulled the trigger, the muzzle flash so bright it left an afterimage when she blinked her eyes. Skyseeker compressed against the ground, the round passing over her head with a sharp whip of air. She stood and draw a knife from one of her pouches, tossing it in retaliation. It caught in the dwarf’s shoulder, which seemed to be unarmoured from the way it buried to its hilt. The tough little man was still trying to reload his gun, favouring his other arm in the reload. She prepared another throwing knife, but the effort was in vain. Her two skavenslaves had finally caught up and outpaced her, and they rushed the wounded shooter down with their knives out, a flurry of stabs ending him where he stood.
Skyseeker hopped deftly over the protruding rocks, making her way up the narrow ledge. On the opposite side, the rest of the shooters were exchanging fire with her companions, but it seemed her presence had been noticed. Flakes of ice rained down on her as someone narrowly missed putting a bullet in her skull, Skyseeker trying to calm her racing heart and focus on her speed. She zig-zagged, switched between all fours and her feetpaws, anything to throw of their aim as she rushed the path.
Just a short distance ahead of her, the two halves of the high ledges almost touched across a narrow gap, if she could leap across it, she could deal with the rest of the dwarfs. It wasn’t her doing all the work, she noted. A crossbow bolt hit one of the snipers on the leg, forcing another of the dwarves to abandon his post and drag him out of the line of fire. Their initial surprise had caught the humans off-kilter, but thanks to her ingenious stratagem there was hope yet of turning this around.
She rushed for the jump and with a quick pray to the Horned Rat for strength, her paws left solid ground as she she leaped across. He had granted her with his filthy blessing, for she made the jump with a clear foot to spare.
The ledge up here was similar to the first, narrow and winding and slippery. Her sudden advance went unnoticed to all but the dwarf who’d been taken pot shots at her, but this one knew she would get to him first before he loaded another shot. He turned to face her, his thickset arms reaching for the weapon on his belt. She expected a sword or axe, but was stunned to see he draw a bronze pickaxe from its leather holster, the shaft near as tall as her torso, yet the dwarf wielded it in one hand.
He stood before her in defiance, the rest of his brethren still firing on her companions behind him. His chest was barrelled with muscle, at least it seemed that way beneath his furs and cloak, and his gloved hands were thickset, so huge they looked like they could bend steel, and she grew weary of getting to close to this one.
“Ha! Come to taste dwarven steel, raki?” the dwarf snarled, and she recognised his gruff voice as the prior speaker. She could see a fiery red beard poking down from the darkness of his hood, braided and ringed with little silver jewels. The longest strand almost reached his clavicle. “My pick has spilt the blood of a thousand vermin before you.”
“Then it’ll be Skyseeker, master assassin, who ends your short little power trip,” she replied, flourishing her rapier in a way she hoped would be intimidating.
“How dare you utter such a vile word to me?” the dwarf demanded, taking a slow pace towards her. “Daurik, son of Sorurd, dose not take slights from anyone or anything.”
“What word? Short?”
Daurik could have killed her on the spot if looks were lethal. “You doom you and you manlings to slow deaths with your insolence, chaos-filth.”
“Shoooo-ooort!”
Daurik had laughed in her face upon their first meeting, but there was no mirth in his face now. “Die now, in ice and pain!”
He moved quicker than she gave him credit for, his braided beard whipping as the dwarfed charged. His pick came up at her in an upward arc. She dodged aside, her swiping counter resisted as the dwarf parried the blow. The narrow ledge made it difficult to manoeuvre, and where she would usually flank and outstep a foe she had to face the dwarf directly, a style of battle that clearly favoured the halfling.
Gunfire rippled from beyond and below as their weapons sliced back and forth, the sound of clashing steel making her momentarily reminisce of the bite of her warp-daggers. The dwarf gave her no reprieve, coming close enough that she could feel the warmth of her breath, giving her little opportune to reach for a throwing knife. He must have seen the fate that befell his former kin.
His choice of weapon may have been a tool more fitting in a slave’s hand, but that didn’t mean it was harmless. The crescent shape of its twin heads was unusual, giving his attacks a deceptive and strange angle of approach. It was difficult to block a curved blade, and he swung it not like a sword or axe or club, but some mixture of all three. Tucking her daggers into the pickaxe had to be precise, accurate, and it required her to think when she would rather act, and it kept her on the defensive.
A quarrel from below pierced into the ice between her and the dwarf, but the halfling merely stepped around it as he continued to pressure her. She managed to get a slice in against his bicep, her blade cutting into his heavy winter clothing, but it was hard to gauge whether she had cut deep enough into his linens. From the way he never faltered, she assumed it had not.
She fell stupidly for a feint, the dwarf reaching out with his pick in two hands, treating her as though she were a stubborn geode ready to be cracked, but he pulled directions at the last second, slamming the haft against her chest. His arms were like two logs, and the weight of the attack threw her to her knees. He followed with a half swing, like he was reading to decapitated her, even if his weapon was not fit to such a task. She ducked beneath it, sweeping a paw over the ground, and when she rose to a crouch she flung out her arm, casting the pawful of snow straight into his eyes.
The dwarf pulled away by instinct, and it was enough that this time she cut more than his garb. She plunged her rapier into the side of his ribs, feeling the soft resistance of yielding flesh. Before she could twist, the dwarf brought down his fist, the thing almost the size of her snout, cracking her across the cheek. She wrenched Von Kessel’s old blade free, stepping out nimbly from another follow-up punch. Blood spurted from the hoel she’d left in him, the dwarf staggering as their duel came to a brief pause.
Her blade had to have nicked something important, the dwarf clutching his side and loosing an uneasy groan. He did not fall, giving her a hateful look as he tilted his pick in challenge. She had to hand it to these dwarves, they weren’t pushovers.
She didn’t wait for him to recover, this time she made the charge, the rapier held out in a reverse grip. She flipped it when she was in range, keeping him guessing as to where the point would come from. At the same moment, the dwarf countered, nto with his weapon but his stumpy leg, throwing it out in a kick. He faster only by a moment, but it was enough. His boot swept out the legs from beneath her, and she tumbled, the slope of the narrow ledge carrying her into open air.
She scrambled to grab something, catching the ledge, but the dwarf stomped on her fingers and she let go with a cry. For a terrible heartbeat she thought herself doomed, but the ice walls of the pass were not straight but curved, and she was in open air only a moment before she found herself sliding down its surface. The force of the fall was still enough to send pangs of pain rippling up her back, and she did not roll but skid, and her limbs caught on several protruding rocks that drew blood when they bit into her fur and skin.
The fall could not be more than fifteen or twenty meters, and it was over in a few seconds, Skyseeker sliding to a halt on the floor of the pass. When the dizziness cleared, she cradled an elbow beneath her, bracing against it so she could look above her. She fully expected to be greeted with the sight of a dwarven rifle, but she could not see Daurik, or any of his other snipers. Inf act, there was no more thunderous reports of shots, only their dying echoes. Had she hit her head too much, and her senses had dulled? No, she could still hear the scream of the wind, and the flap of her cloak as it ruffled against her scalp. The quiet seemed so disconcerting after so much activity.
She felt a hand reach into her paw, and she turned to see Wilfred kneeling beside her, his wrinkled face full of alarm. “Miss Seeker! Are you well?”
“I can’t feel my spleen, or my paws,” she clarified, forcing tears of pain back. She would not cry before a man-thing, or Kretch or her slaves either. “Where’d the midgets go?”
“Routed,” Wilfred said. “They vanished back into the snow not a moment before I saw you fall. It seemed we slew enough of them to force a withdraw.”
She craned her neck up at the ledge, and saw it was true. She could see a hand hanging over the lip, and it seemed they had not even bothered to retrieve their dead. She noted movement to the side, and was about to call out an alarm, but it was just her two skavenslaves, probably searching for her by the way they thrust their snouts out and around them. They looked so stupid and witless, it was almost endearing.
“Hold still, I will see to your wounds,” the wizard mused, placing the tip of his staff between her shoulders.
“W-Will it hurt?” she stammered, feeling an odd tingling sensation, in the spot his staff touched her. It reminded her of the seconds before Ironsnout had shocked her with warp-lightning, how he’d subjected her to hours and hours of torture and humiliation.
“I will not lie, the pain will be great. This magic shall condense all the hours of pain into a handful of seconds, but you shall be recovered completely afterward. I can see you shaking, do not be afraid. I won’t force this magic upon you, but trust me it is better than being injured for days in these treacherous mountains.”
She willed her shakes to cease, but hating and admiring the human for his perception and comfort. It would not do to seem weak to a man-thing, let alone her slaves or even Kretch, who could be watching for all she knew. Kretch needed a strong leader to follow, it would not do to let him see her in pain.