2k words
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She willed herself to stop trembling, both 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.
“Do it,” she grumbled, closing her eyes in trepidation. The collecting energy continued to spike, until it felt like Wilfred was driving a molten brand into her back, and it took all her effort not to scream. It only lasted a handful of seconds, just as Wilfred had said, and soon the burning was replaced by a soothing numbness that bloomed through to her wounds. Her cuts and gashes closed, and the pain in her arms from where she’d landed hard on them faded, until she didn’t need assistance to stand up.
“Thanking you, Fred-Wil,” she muttered, slotting her rapier back into her belt. “Skaven promises to share my warpstone with you.” Little did he know she didn’t have any warpstone, and any mathematician such as herself knew dividing zero by half still meant zero.
They made their way back to the group, Skyseeker taking a mental head count. Aside from the rat who’d been sniped at the start of the conflict, there were no other casualties. Kretch had managed to keep the other skavenslaves’ heads down, who would have likely lost their lives if they’d tried to flee under the gunfire.
“Miss Seeker, have your companions retrieve the dwarf weaponry,” Wilfred said, pausing by one of the men who was plugging a wound in his shoulder. It seemed a bullet had grazed him, but just as he did for her, the wizard leant him his healing magic.
“Good idea-scheme,” she chimed. “will get right on it. Kretch! Fetch me the gun-guns, take some slaves to help you, but not the stupid ones! Not want them shooting their paws off accidently.”
“But they all stupid!” Kretch complained.
“Then take the less stupid rats. Must I do all the thinking round here?”
Kretch nodded, the insult going straight over his thick head. He scampered off with a few of the Skaven, navigating up the ledges to collect the fallen arms, along with slings of ammo. Wilfred had the dwarven rifles distributed among the men with the best aim, and was deliberate to makes sure each had an equal amount of shells.
“You expecting the short-things to come back, Fred-Wil?” Skyseeker asked, once the group was ready to press on. Nearly every one of their number was now casting their gaze upward, as though hoping to spot more concealed beards in the snow.
“Most certainly,” Wilfred replied. “There may very well be a Clan Hal nestled beneath our feet, and the sound of battle can carry deep.”
“Hope so! Every beard-thing in a ten league radius should know the Skaven run this surface-world now,” she said. “We beat Dork or whatever his name was and his friend right back to their holes. And by we I mean me. Stabbed their beards right off their stubby faces, I did.”
She neglected to detail the part where Daurik had cast her off the ledge, but she technically told the truth, and embellishment didn’t equate to dishonesty in her book. Wilfred seemed to be convinced, giving her a weary look as he ducked beneath a low overhang.
“You would do well to quench your pride, Miss Seeker. The great pride of the dawi is matched only by their stubbornness, they are not to be taken lightly.”
“Yawwwwwn.”
“The dwarf is no meagre foe to scorn and dismiss,” Wilfred chided. “They are a begrudging people, and every wrongdoing against them is penned into ancient parchment, so that even after generations have passed a slight is never forgotten. To insult even one is to make a lifelong enemy.”
“Not if he’s dead-dead,” Skyseeker replied, holding her rapier proudly, its tip pointed skyward. “Let’s hunt us some dwarf.”
“Were it so simple. The dwarfs know these mountains better than any of us, we are in their turf now, just as they told us. I fear it will be us who will be the hunted Even beyond the Grey Mountain’s, I fear they will pursue us still.”
“Sounds like these beard-things should know when to take a loss,” she muttered.
“Would you?” Wilfred replied. “You do not strike me as one who easily admits defeat.”
“That’s cause Skyseeker never loses,” she insisted. She hesitated, considering her time enslaved as one of Ironsnout’s temporary pets. “At least,” she added. “not without my trusted slaves and man-things to back me up.”
“Then let us pray this tempest does not separate us. There is a blizzard approaching, I can feel it.”
All Skyseeker could feel was her body numbing with the growing chill, but maybe that was the point.
An hour’s walk east saw the tower vanish into the snowy mists behind them, while the trails twisting into the mounts and crevices appeared before them. At places they began to fork into separate routes, but with no wayposts or signage to signify their destinations. Wilfred seemed confident in his navigation, and so nobody questioned his lead.
There were yet more handmade structures, cobbled buildings jutting from the endless snow. These were yet more towers, and also squat, boxy structures that could have been cabins or hovels in their heydays. There was even the odd outhouse for the humans to empty their bowels in mild privacy. It was all evidence that perhaps in the distant past these mountains had not always been conquered in frost, many hundreds of years ago. It made Skyseeker more on edge than ever, to be walking through a place even the numerous humans were welcome no longer.
Most of these structures were seen from far-off, upon a mount to their flank or well off the beaten trail they were following, and it made her long for the shelter of the tower. Beyond the narrow pass, the terrain had evened, and the space between the mounts was broad enough that when they made camp the gale would blow out any attempts of making fire, and the lack of heat and movement was making her lethargic, and not a little miserable. It had scarce been a few days and she already had trouble picturing any other colour than white. Even when she closed her eyes, the glare of the fluffy powder was burned into her mind’s eye.
Later in that evening, the party had pressed on until they found refuge beneath an overhang, its breadth angled just enough to provide a windbreak. The sun sank and the cold rose, harsher than all the prior days combined, and she was soon shivering by their meagre campfire. She was not alone in her plight, around her the humans and Skaven alike were freezing.
“Together, all of you,” Wilfred had told them. “Share the heat of your body, do not spread apart so, I will have none of you going cold in the night.”
It was a little respite, the group clustering into tight groups, though the species’ didn’t intermingle. Only the skavenslave with the broken ankle was the exception, the human carrying him had taken to be his ward since the incident, and the two were huddled shoulder to shoulder. She could see Kretch rubbing fur with the skavenslaves to one side, but the ratman averted his eyes when she noticed him looking her way.
Skyseeker was as sharp as her warp dagger, and knew the look of an eager male when she saw it. Her first impression of Kretch was of a vile, desperate rat, but he made a good minion , and she didn’t mind the colour of his fur, how it almost resembled spun gold when in broad daylight. If she weren’t from such high stock as Queek Headtaker’s (probably) daughter, she might have considered relieving herself with his help. It would be fun having someone so servile giving himself up to her in that way.
Yet she could only discard such thoughts. Roderick had turned her off from Skaven, and now she didn’t even have the privacy to relieve herself with all these companions of hers.
She remembered the long days when it was only she and Roderick travelling the long roads. She recalled the human telling her of these very mountains once, when she had quizzed him about the greater world between Tilea and the Empire. “The Grey Mountains range across the Empire’s entire south and west facings,” he’d told her. “Hard terrain for an army, but not for a lone rider.” If he had ever been given trouble by dwarfs on his mountain trek, then he had not told her about them, nor had he ever mentioned such bitter cold this high off the surface.
How safe and warm she had felt wrapped in his arms, with his slightly hairy, but smooth body pressed up against hers. Just thinking about it made the wind seem even more chilly by comparison, but she did not banish the thought. Once she was off these mountains and reunited, she’d force her lover to make up all this cold and damp she was suffering. Only then would she enlist his help in her revenge against the Snout.
-xXx-
The dwarfs came back in the night.
She was roused by a shout, but the voice was reduced to a wet gurgle as the sentry’s gut was torn open by a projectile loosed from the darkness. The campfire was healthy with wood, and created a flickering pond of light in the midst of blowing snow. With only the dim stars above, its harsh light was basically a beacon that only blinded those close to it.
Even her goggles’ night vision filter was washed out by its flame, and she was forced to turn her eyes away. She could still hear the man-thing speaking through his own blood nearby as he chocked to death, and fear gripped her in its icy fingers as the familiar report of a rifle echoed off the mountains. The snow beside her exploded in a white puff, btu when she rose to flee someone bumped into her and sent her sprawling down again.
She turned her head to see a skavenlaves, deciding to curl into a ball rather than risk standing up again, and he wasn’t a fool for doing so. All around her the rest of her companions were stirring into action, confused faces switching to ones of fear as they realised they were under attack. Some of them tried to stand, but were sent back down with holes in their chests or limbs, another fearful skavenslave and a human shot down by unseen marksmen.
Others were crawling for the cover of the overhang, its concave inner surface making for serviceable cover. Judging from the tractor of the shooter’s bullets, they seemed to be coming from the south and east sides of the camp, but turning to look that way one was only greeted by a white slope and endless shadow.
People were shouting, and she could discern Wilfred’s voice among them but it was difficult to discern his words. Skyseeker’s limbs were frozen with both cold and fear, but she willed her body to move, reaching up and pulled the cowering skavenslave close, so she could hiss into his ear.
“Listen close-close, slave, go find and bring me Kretch, one of the things with a scope. And bring me a gun, too, but not in that order! Go-Go before I beat you for insubordinationing!”
The threat was only a half-truth, but she took a note out of Pinkface’s example, knowing that slaves responded well to violence. The slave bowed in deference, then skittered away, but either to do her bidding or to flee, it was all in the paws of the Horned Rat now.