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Slinktalon – Robbie MacNiven

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Skaventide’

A Black Library Publication

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SLINKTALON

Robbie MacNiven

Ichit caught the assassin’s scent before he heard him.

Like many Eshin acolytes, the killer had rubbed sour-root ash into his fur and bindings in an attempt to mask his smell, but Ichit’s senses were as keen as his blades, and he detected the faintest whiff of musk in the stale air of the old burrow.

He spun, a dagger in each paw, the blades crossing to intercept a blow from a quarterstaff that would have staved in the back of his skull.

‘Quik,’ he snarled, baring his fangs at his assailant. ‘Knew I recognised your musk-stink.’

The rival assassin shrieked with frustration and whipped his staff free from Ichit’s knives before he could scissor them together and bisect the weapon.

The pair circled one another, tails flicking and thumping the dusty floor, slipping instinctively into their respective combat stances. Ichit, an old student of Master Skabeclaw and a naturally short, slight Skaven, kept low to the ground, one arm held straight out with the knife in a reverse grip. It was both a strong guard and a lure, designed to hold the target’s attention while the second blade, held low against the body and under his cloak’s hem, was kept for the killing blow. Quik, altogether taller and broader than most Eshin assassins, fronted up, square-on, languidly spinning his quarterstaff between his paws. Ichit had completed enough contracts alongside him – and had attempted to kill him on enough occasions – to know that the staff was as much a distraction technique as his own forward knife. The sting was in the tail, literally, or specifically the small half-dagger gripped in its tip, concealed behind Quik’s back. The opponent would focus so much on Quik’s brawn and the anticipation of a physical struggle that they’d fail to notice the little blade until it was punching into their throat.

‘Come to finish what you start-started in Brightspear, brood-brother?’ Ichit said, watching his opponent’s stance intently, hoping the words might cause a misstep he could exploit.

‘Your tricks will not fool me this time, little one,’ Quik responded stoically. ‘It was you who left-abandoned me like a dead thing in the Hanging Valleys. I knew it was you who lured me here, with your pretend summons.’

Such a claim was undoubtedly Quik’s weak attempt at playing mind-tricks, but reaching that conclusion nearly proved fatal. It was Ichit who had hesitated, and now Quik sprang at him, staff a blur.

Ichit counter-attacked without thinking, springing forward to dart in under Quik’s guard and carve open his bowels.

Neither strike met its intended target. Ichit found his forward momentum arrested, his body yanked to the side and pinned up against the burrow wall. The cowl of his cloak constricted sharply around his throat, and he squirmed, pinned in place not by a hand, he realised, but by a black steel throwing star that had buried itself in the dirt and taken his cloak with it, close enough to nick his neck.

He tried to yank himself free, then went deadly still as he discovered that there was also a knife at his throat. Quik was opposite him, likewise pinned by a second throwing star and menaced with poison-tainted steel.

‘Cease-stop your struggles,’ hissed the new arrival.

They both recognised him, and obeyed. After a hesitation to ensure compliance, the third assassin removed the threat of his knives and allowed the pair to wrench themselves free, a piece of Quik’s cowl tearing as he extricated himself.

Ichit felt the urge to squirt fear musk, but it was impotent. Like all assassins of Clan Slitit, he had long ago had the glands responsible for his pheromones cut out.

He bared his throat instead, Quik mirroring the sign of obeisance. Seemingly satisfied, the third assassin slipped his knives back into his cloak.

‘Scrapping like brood runts again,’ he tutted. ‘Keep your blades keen, little brothers. It was I who summoned you here. I have a new contract for you.’

The trio of assassins sat cross-legged in a triangle in the centre of the burrow, mirroring the most sacred symbol of the Horned Rat. Their tails were coiled around their waists, and though they had put away their other weapons, Ichit noted Quik still had his little throat-slitter gripped in his prehensile coils.

Relq seemed unconcerned by that, which did not surprise Ichit. The third assassin was the oldest of the trio, and the most favoured by the clan masters, though Ichit had known him before his climb to prominence. They had grown up together, part of a Slinktalon, a method used by many Eshin clans to train and test prospective assassins. The concept of teamwork – really of any kind of loyalty or cooperation at all – was anathema to Skavenkind, yet those who followed the ways of the Deceiver understood that concerted effort had its place. An assassin who could not operate alongside his knife-kin and lesser vermin had no future among the acolytes of Eshin.

Still, it had been a long time since they had stalked and killed together. Ichit had encountered Quik during recent assignments – usually trying to thieve his kills – but he had not seen Relq since the near debacle of the aelf-thing murders in Azyr. Relq seemed too exalted to do anything but give new assignments to his underlings these days, which was what Ichit assumed he had come to do now. It felt like an age since their youth, learning the craft of the Deceiver together, one throat-slit at a time.

‘You have a new contract,’ Relq reiterated. ‘I have come to deliver. Pay close attention.’

‘The assignment is for both of us?’ Quik asked doubtfully, glancing across at Ichit. In all their time together, Ichit had never quite established if Quik’s mental slowness was genuine, or an affectation to make others think him less dangerous. He had decided it was at least partly true, but Quik embellished it as part of a double bluff.

‘Yes-yes,’ Relq said. ‘Client was most specific.’

‘Our fame goes ahead of us,’ Ichit chittered.

Relq reached into his cloak, causing the other two assassins to stiffen briefly, but when he removed his paw he held only two scraps of hide-parchment, scrawled with the Skaven’s crude runic language.

‘Read-study, then gnaw-destroy,’ Relq ordered, presenting the two pieces of hide, just far enough out of reach to force Ichit and Quik to briefly lean forward to snatch them.

Neither assassin attempted to study the scraps yet, both too experienced to allow themselves to become distracted while in such lethal company.

‘Clan masters giving out new contracts then?’ Quik asked.

‘Objective is not from clan masters,’ Relq said. ‘Outside contractor. Identity hidden, but could not trick old Relq.’

‘And what is target?’ Ichit demanded.

‘Brain-vermin from the Skryre clans,’ Relq said. ‘Name is Queem – Warlock Engineer and inventor-tinkerer. Think-thinks himself very clever. We shall soon see how clever.’

‘If contract is from outsider, what is the reward?’ Quik asked slowly. ‘Much-much warpstone? Fresh blade-venoms?’

Relq let out a chitter of amusement.

‘Oh no, it is something much more valuable, little brothers.’

Queem reached back, and fumbled for the engagement lever.

His underscurry, Kringe, made to assist him, but he batted the bandage-clad Skaven away irritably.

‘No touch-touch, worm! Go and see to ratling gun!’

‘Yes, oh majestical tinkerer-master,’ Kringe whined before hurrying off.

Success was just a tail’s width away, Queem could feel it.

He made a second backwards-lunge for the lever, snout contorting with effort, before finally managing to trip it. The pack he was wearing – a cumbersome mass of rusting metal pipes, copper coils and brass gears, constructed with exacting effort and precision around a solid warpstone core – stuttered, choked, and activated.

Queem’s heart raced as he shifted his grip to the adjustment node and began to turn its dial, forcing himself to go slowly despite the instinctive desire to immediately ramp the charge to maximum. The thrumming sensation vibrating through his body built until, with a crack, a faint halo of green energy burst into being, surrounding the Warlock Engineer.

‘Yesss,’ Queem hissed, before looking for Kringe. The assistant had retreated behind a scarred and blackened sheet of scrap metal, from which the multiple barrels of a ratling gun were protruding, pointed directly at Queem and an empty wall of his workshop burrow.

‘Show yourself, underscurry,’ Queem barked, annoyed at the feckless rat’s cowardice. Kringe’s head popped up, the cracked goggles he affected now lowered. The assistant had once been just another captive piece of fodder for Queem’s unending experiments, but he had proved shockingly durable, surviving all manner of surgeries, grafts, electrocutions and detonations. Queem had eventually decided to elevate him to underscurry-assistant, after the previous Skaven to hold the role – Queem had forgotten his name – had been turned inside out by the automatic skitterleap device that he was still developing.

Kringe was also loyal, or more accurately, just too stupid to ever consider betraying him. That made him valuable, though Queem would never admit it.

‘Shoot-fire,’ the Warlock Engineer shouted at him over the din of the activated backpack.

‘But master–’ Kringe began to wail.

‘Do it, worm, or I send-banish you back to the fodder pits!’ Queem screamed at him, snatching up and launching a nearby wrench in his direction for emphasis.

Kringe flinched and ducked back behind the metal plate.

With a buzz, the ratling gun’s barrels began to spin up.

Sudden doubts assailed Queem. He screwed his eyes tightly shut, gritted his fangs, and prayed to the Horned Rat and to every verminous and cunning deity he could conceive of that his invention would work as planned.

Kringe opened fire on his master.

The chattering report of the ratling gun filled the workshop, followed by an ear-aching crack. Queem felt energy surge through his body, his fur standing on end, his tail going rigid. He opened his eyes, half expecting to find himself confronting his maker in the great burrow of the afterlife. Instead, he was surrounded by a sphere of power, the green energies projected by his pack flaring like lightning as the bullets impacted against them. Each one of the lethal projectiles was destroyed, turned to dust before any could strike him.

‘More,’ the Warlock Engineer demanded, ramping up the pack’s power while Kringe cranked the ratling gun’s lever with a whine of terror, muzzle turned away from the weapon.

A deluge of warplead hammered at Queem, a storm of lightning wreathing him, crackling across his back and limbs, lighting up his wide, manic eyes.

‘It works,’ he screeched. ‘It works!’

Kringe took the exclamations as permission to stop testing both the energy shield’s limits, and those of the ratling gun. He ceased his cranking, the hail of bullets ending as the barrels began to slow to a stop, smoke coiling from them. The green sphere of power around Queem likewise ceased crackling, though its shimmer remained vaguely visible.

Queem stood at its centre, panting, every hair standing on end, smoke wisping up from a small fire that had started on the top of his head. He cackled with delight, hopping from paw to paw.

‘I am a genius-thing,’ the Skaven inventor exclaimed. ‘Kringe! Where are you, underscurry? Bear witness to my maleficent greatness!’

Kringe popped back up, the filthy bandages forever swaddling his ruined body blackened and crusted with warp dust expelled from the ratling gun.

‘D-does this mean we are done with experiment-tests, master?’ he stammered.

Queem bared his rancid fangs in glee.

‘Oh no-no, my underscurry. The greatest test is still to come.’

Quik broke the skulls of the two guards at the entrance to Queem’s lair in quick succession.

He had considered posing as a client intending to view the inventor’s wares, but the ruse had hardly been necessary. The creatures set to guard the burrow’s entrance were drooling, imbecilic creations, part flesh, part machine, practically lobotomised by their master’s deranged experimentation.

Quik had no doubt a greater challenge lay within. He slipped through the entrance passage, lesser Skaven fleeing ahead of him, shrieking. It was not a subtle way of operating, but then few things were subtle about Quik.

He snapped the neck of the next slavering, snarling rat-beast to come at him with an open-palmed twist of his wrists, then resorted back to his quarterstaff, splitting skulls and cracking ribs as he advanced.

Let Ichit squirm and claw his way through the dirt as he tried to reach the target first. Quik would beat him to it, and would do so without grubbing and cowering like a worm.

Ichit paused, sniffing the air, whiskers twitching.

He was close. The right-hand tunnel was the one he needed.

The assassin clawed onwards, on his belly, working through a dirt passage only the slightest of Skaven would be able to fit through. Let Quik risk his fur-hide and beat his head against the Skryre-inventor’s defences, Ichit thought. It was he who would do Relq and their old masters proud by finding the path of least resistance.

A dozen or more sleeps had passed since Relq had delivered the duo’s contract. Relq had disappeared immediately after, leaving Ichit and Quik to work out their own plans between them. There had been little in the way of agreement, beyond a broad scheme that inevitably played to their individual strengths. That meant poor, slow, stupid Quik was smashing his way in through the front burrow, while Ichit took a route more befitting a true Eshin assassin.

Like all Skaven lairs, Queem’s headquarters was a maze of tunnels and passages great and small. Ichit had dug his way into an offshoot of an offshoot, something only the most paranoid of ratmen would have thought to guard. Queem seemingly did not adhere to such heightened preservation instincts, and Ichit had met no sign of any threat as he penetrated towards the central workshop through the smallest tunnels of the uppermost warren.

That was until he slipped into one of the larger passages. Nothing stirred, but to his surprise he discovered a network of strings criss-crossing the tunnel from one wall to the other, seemingly pinned at random angles and intervals. The strange obstruction lay between him and a hole in the ground that, from the sounds of industry, the flickering green lights and the shrieked commands rising up from below, led directly down into the main burrow.

Ichit crouched, scenting the air, hunting for evidence of the traps he was sure waited ahead. He caught the faint whiff of singed flesh and fur, but other than that, nothing.

This would be a worthy test indeed, the assassin decided. He paused a while longer, closing his eyes, repeating the mantras of speed and precision Master Zekquol had taught all three of them when they had barely been large enough to wield a knife. In fairness, Ichit’s size had not increased a great deal since those days.

Thoughts calmed, he began to traverse the cords. They were dense and taut, and he had no doubt that even breathing too heavily on one would trip whatever wicked and deadly devices the Warlock Engineer had seeded throughout his lair. Ichit did not allow himself to consider such dangers, pressing though they were – he darted over and under, his movements lithe, almost instinctive, a delicate tiptoe leap turning into a roll and springing up into another jump.

Not a single string was so much as brushed. It had been a flawless display. Only when Ichit vaulted the last length, just above waist height, and felt the floor he landed on depress with a click, did he realise his mistake.

Pressure board, buried beneath a thin layer of dirt just beyond the threads.

Ichit stood very still, praying to the Deceiver that his slender frame was light enough not to have fully triggered it.

He heard a sucking intake of air, like some great beast suddenly inhaling, right next to his ear.

He knew that sound, knew what it meant.

Death.

Without thinking, the assassin leapt, lunging with the metal claws strapped to the back of his paws as he did so. The weapon-tools ploughed into the dirt and knotted roots of the tunnel’s roof, lodging there and allowing Ichit to swing his legs up and dig his lower claws in too, anchoring his whole body.

In the same instant, the warpfire thrower concealed in the wall next to him activated.

‘Will not be long now, fool-rodent,’ Queem exclaimed, batting Kringe’s snout and shoving him towards the entrance to the workshop, as shrieks of terror rang down from the outer burrow. ‘Go and make sure it is them, and not some nervous musk-squirter spreading panic!’

Kringe obeyed, scurrying off. Queem reached back and, after a moment’s annoyed fumbling, tripped the pack’s engagement lever.

Quik almost regretted his strategy during the first volley of warplead bullets.

He had reached the hole to the central burrow with little resistance, but that was now changing. His opponents were not just experimental fodder but warriors of the Skryre clans. A pack of Warplock Jezzails had scurried out of an upper tunnel and occupied a rickety platform of rotting timber and discarded junk overlooking the entrance to the workshop burrow, and now they had started to shoot down at Quik.

The big assassin snarled and sidestepped with a speed that belied his size, glowing green bullets slicing the air around him and kicking up dirt. He swung his quarterstaff over the head and shoulders of the nearest Skryre-rat trying to stab him and twisted, putting the unfortunate Skaven abruptly between him and the Jezzails. The captive twitched and convulsed as he was riddled with bullets meant for Quik.

More assailants came at him, and he spun the meat shield again to take their blades, then let go of the body and kicked it away while lashing out simultaneously with his staff, snouts and fangs snapping and spitting blood beneath the hard old length of wyrmwood. He shoved his way through the screeching press, adding jabs of his fist and short, hard cracks with his elbow to the repertoire of blows, using raw size and strength to his advantage.

The Jezzails had made a mistake – they had discharged their volley as one, each doubtless eager to be the first to claim the kill shot. That meant they were all reloading simultaneously, and Quik knew how long it took to prime and load a warplock. He had been keeping a mental count of the passage of time since the first salvo.

He swung his staff again to clear space around him, then fished into his cloak.

Strength was always a good answer, but not always the correct one. It had taken Quik some time to embrace that particular axiom of old Master Sharpgnaw, but he had got there eventually.

He flung down a pawful of shroud-bombs. They shattered, and immediately clogged the foetid air with a dense pall of grey smoke.

He pushed through it, reaching the end of his count as he went – it elapsed before anything happened. As he had suspected, the Jezzails were poor, their reloading slow.

The second volley twitched the smoke. The shrieking around Quik intensified as the indiscriminate salvo cut down more of Queem’s confused and blinded minions. He darted through the carnage, eager now, sensing victory. The workshop was just ahead, and he would reach it, and the target, before that cowardly grub Ichit.

His momentary lack of focus was almost fatal. Just in time, he noticed that the smoke he had summoned was taking on a rancid, yellow-green tint.

His muzzle twitched, and he caught the pungent reek of poisoned wind.

He paused his advance, kicking aside one choking Skaven who stumbled into him, then yanked free the mask he had brought for just such a danger. It was a battered old trophy taken from a slain Skryre Poisoned Wind Globadier, and though it lacked the heavy breathing tank that allowed its wearer to continue inhaling amidst corrupted air, the rags he had stuffed into it – freshly soaked with sap from an Ulgu shade-tree – provided sufficient protection against this particular trap.

He inhaled, smelling the foul-stink of the counter-toxin in the sap, but tasting nothing of the poisonous shroud unleashed upon him.

Then, he resumed his advance, through the pack of choking, suffocating, vomiting Skaven that had been trying to stop him, and into the heart of Queem’s lair.

With a roar, emerald fire blazed through the end of the upper tunnel, momentarily igniting the very earth itself. Ichit pressed himself desperately against the passage roof, convinced he was in the process of being immolated, unable to even screech as the unnatural Skryre flames seared away even the oxygen in his lungs.

He clung on for as long as he could, but the strength in his skinny body rapidly deserted him, as did the roof itself. He fell amidst a cascade of dirt, finally finding enough air to scream, only for the impact with the floor to drive it from his lungs again after a short, strangled yelp.

To his amazement, he found that not only was he alive but that his fur – though smoking – was unignited. Even his tail had only been lightly singed.

He lay for a brief moment on the scorched ground, dragging in charred, fume-stinking air, and giggled at the revelation of his own survival – not that such a thing had ever been in doubt, of course.

Then he heard the automatic warpfire thrower inhale again. He scampered up, noticed the hem of his cloak was actually licking with green flames, hastily sliced it off, and flung himself through the upper burrow hole, just as the infernal contraption ignited again.

‘They’re here!’ shrieked Kringe, bursting back into the workshop, almost tripping on discarded experimental debris, his goggles on and several bandages newly bloodied. ‘Eshin-things come, master!’

‘Be silent and get back-back, you fool,’ Queem snarled, shoving Kringe away as he tried to help with the energy pack. ‘No time for mistakes!’

He finished activating the pack himself and couldn’t resist a shiver of excitement as he felt the energies unleashed around him once more, making him tingle from whisker to toe-claw.

‘Now you will see my true genius, underscurry,’ he exclaimed.

The declaration had barely been made when a figure came crashing through the detritus heaped around the workshop’s entrance.

He was one of the biggest Skaven Queem had ever seen – at least, outside of the pens of the Moulder clans – worthy of a Stormvermin Fangleader. His bare arms were thickly muscled, though his muzzle was hidden behind the ghoulish, bug-eyed visage of a poisoned wind mask – stolen Skryre property, no doubt.

The assassin spun the staff he was wielding with a flourish, and pointed it at Queem. At the same moment, a shape dropped down through one of the burrow’s upper holes, bat-like as it landed in a crouch, a blade in each hand. A second assassin, Queem realised, this one altogether more slender and swift-looking than its oversized cousin.

The Warlock Engineer bared his fangs in triumph. Everything was going just as he had planned.

Kringe attempted to attend him again, but Queem thrust him irritably away once more and, before the assassins could strike, withdrew hastily towards the rear of the lair, snatching up and triggering an electro-prong along the way.

‘Wake, Doomcrusher, wake-wake,’ he yelled, plunging the tool into the mass of rusting metal heaped at the burrow’s back.

The Eshin killers had made it this far. Now, the true tests could begin.

Ichit assessed his surroundings as he rose from his crouch, blades poised. The heart of Queem’s realm was as disordered and refuse-filled as any Skryre workshop he had been in, the tinkerer’s experiments indistinguishable from the rusting, festering junk surrounding them.

The important thing was that Queem himself was now before Ichit. Quik had made it as well, but Ichit was certain he had reached the lair seconds ahead of the blundering brute.

The pair started towards Queem, who had retreated to the rear of the chaotic burrow. Ichit thought the Warlock Engineer was attempting to flee, but saw his mistake when Queem took up a lance crackling with energy and plunged it into what at first appeared to be just another pile of scrap in the corner.

It began to move.

The junk rose up, lesser detritus cascading from a shape that was massive, hunched over, but unmistakably verminoid.

Ichit thought at first he was looking at a rat ogor, then realised the thing was not flesh and muscle and bone, but rusting sheets of metal bolted and fused over clacking pistons and grinding, ill-matched cogs. It stood on back-jointed mechanical limbs, shook the remaining scrap off its broad shoulders, and let out a scraping growl.

‘Kill-destroy!’ Queem bellowed up at his creation, pointing a claw at the pair of assassins. The mechanical monstrosity swung towards them and raised its trunk-like forearms, both of which ended in a mass of razor saws. The energy from the prong Queem had rammed into it still flaring and sparking, the blades began to spin.

‘You fight metal thing,’ Ichit ordered Quik hastily. ‘I will slice-kill tinkerer.’

‘No-no, you kill metal thing,’ Quik exclaimed, cracking his staff off the floor. ‘Inventor is mine!’

Any further debate was interrupted as the metal thing in question swung a saw-fist at the pair. Ichit threw himself left while Quik went right, each barely avoiding having their tail severed.

As he recovered his balance, Ichit saw there was some flesh to the machine after all – a brain throbbed in a glassy tube towards the rear of the armoured head-muzzle, suspended in bubbling green liquid, a nest of cables connecting it to the artificial frame beneath.

Ichit threw himself at the construct, a wild leap carrying him up onto its shoulder. He made to shatter its brain container with his metal talons, but lost his footing as it twisted under him, trying to reach back with one of its buzzing limbs, as though seeking an itch it could not quite get at.

Ichit was forced to leap down behind it before he was bisected. He suddenly found himself almost muzzle to muzzle with Queem.

The Warlock Engineer’s eyes widened, and he flinched as Ichit lunged at him, blades carving towards his heart and throat.

Neither blow landed. The sphere of energy surrounding Queem engaged, and there was a crack of green lightning. Ichit squealed in pain and found himself slammed back through the air, impacting against one of the rat ogor construct’s rear limbs. Queem cackled, unharmed, the air round him dancing and shimmering with emerald sparks and ghost lights.

The construct lunged for Quik. The assassin ducked as best he could, a saw blade almost scalping the fur between his ragged ears. He charged in under the forelimb and struck his staff against the rusted plates comprising its torso, then immediately regretted the effort – the wyrmwood rebounded, doing nothing but making his paws smart.

The construct was slow, but practically impervious. The cogs and gears within it scraped and growled as it shifted to try and get at Quik again. The assassin ran between its legs and almost tripped over the fallen Ichit, having to vault him.

He turned the evasive jump into an attack on Queem, swinging his staff in an overhead blow with all of his fearsome strength.

The strike had as little effect on the Skryre tinkerer as it had on his metal monstrosity, launching Quik back the way he’d come in a blaze of crackling light, fur singed.

‘We go-strike together, like we did at Greyfort,’ Ichit snapped at his accomplice, the reality that neither of them were going to manage a solo kill now unavoidable. Quik didn’t answer, but recovered his stance, panting, fur on end.

They darted in together, Ichit from the left and Quik from the right, raining blows against the energy shield. None even came close to connecting with their target.

Queem laughed. ‘Stupid Eshin worms. Can you not see I am impervious!’

The assassins were forced to break off their attacks again as the construct lumbered back round to swipe at them. Its clumsy blow actually connected with Queem, but even the saw blades were rebounded by the flaring energy, though the ferocity of the collision caused the inventor to yelp with alarm.

‘Kringe, release the little ones,’ Queem yapped at his assistant, who was hanging back from the melee, seemingly torn between natural cowardice and the desire to help his master. He scrambled to obey.

Ichit hissed with frustration. Finding a way to reach Queem was next to impossible, especially while they were being forced to evade the Warlock Engineer’s hulking invention at the same time.

‘Quik, make distraction,’ he snapped at his erstwhile partner.

Quik seemed to have come to similar conclusions to Ichit – for once, he didn’t argue. He stood before the brute thing and squared up, flourishing his quarterstaff and pointing it at the artificial beast.

It responded to the challenge with a machine roar, metal screeching on metal. Quik backpedalled as it lunged at him, drawing it away from Queem, while Ichit darted round its back and again leapt for its shoulder plates.

‘Hurry-hurry,’ Quik screeched, narrowly avoiding another screaming saw blade and batting his staff against the jumbled cables and pistons of its forearm in an ineffective riposte.

Ichit was tempted to let the thing deliver the killing blow to Quik before making his own strike, but there were more pressing matters. A chittering noise swelled like a rising tide, as a cascade of rats came pouring from a series of cages Kringe had just unlatched. They swarmed across the floor of the workshop like a living carpet, beginning to bite and claw at Quik and swarming up the construct’s flanks to get at Ichit.

The little assassin started to strike at the tank shielding the construct’s brain, snarling, almost losing his footing as the machine lunged again for Quik. A hairline crack began to appear in the glassy surface, bubbles broiling within as the brain bounced against the tank’s side.

The thought of Quik mocking him for his lack of strength made Ichit strike all the harder. The other assassin would doubtless claim he could have shattered the container with a single blow.

He felt pain in his lower limbs, and the tugging, writhing sensation of rats scurrying up him, the construct beneath now infested by the swarm. He paid them little heed – all Skaven were used to being surrounded and bitten by such lesser vermin. That was until he found his next blow weaker than the one before, and his sight beginning to blur.

The assassin almost slipped, having to snatch on to a knot of cabling in the construct’s shoulder to steady himself. It was suddenly difficult to think, let alone keep his balance.

He looked down blearily at Quik, seeing him stumble, barely managing to avoid the construct’s next floor-gouging strike.

Fresh pain spiked in Ichit’s forearm, and he raised the limb before his dimming eyes – only then did he discover the reason for the sudden, deadly lethargy that had dulled their senses.

Not all the rats in the swarm were natural-born. Amidst the sea of mangy brown bodies rising up to choke the assassins, metallic carapaces glittered – tiny verminous simulacra of true rodents, comprised of welded-together shards of metal and miniature gears, each one powered by a fragment of glittering warpstone lodged in its core.

For a second, Ichit wondered if Queem really might be a genius.

Then the paralysing venom in the tiny jaws and claws of the mechanical rats took full effect, and he felt himself falling.

After that, there was only darkness.

‘Wake-wake, Eshin worm,’ Queem crooned, slapping the larger of the assassins about the snout. The brute stirred, found focus, and immediately strained against his bonds.

Queem scampered back a few paces, then regretted the instinctive display of panic. He had commanded Kringe to bind their two new guests, but even so, he felt instinctive fear towards the Eshin clans and their infamous, shadowy killers. Yet he had triumphed over not one, but two! They were completely at his mercy.

‘Do not struggle-strain, big one,’ Queem leered, prodding the brute from a safe distance with his deactivated electro-prong. ‘My underscurry has tied you tight!’

The duo simply glared up at him. He turned away and finally allowed Kringe to attend him. He wished all to witness his triumph.

‘See, never doubt-question my greatness,’ he told Kringe, wagging a claw at him. ‘Experiments were complete success!’

Kringe began to gibber some meaningless plaudits, but Queem turned his attention back to his prisoners, almost manic with delight.

‘Suppose you wonder how great Queem came to snatch you so easily, yes-yes?’ he demanded. ‘Eshin underestimated Queem’s cunning. Even master-killers not so clever as me, hmm?’

To Queem’s mild annoyance, neither assassin responded. He carried on, hopping from paw to paw excitedly.

‘Pair were betrayed by their master. Yesss, I see you understand now. I went to Relq, asked for good subjects for my tests. Paid well in warpstone and Skryre favours so he would lie-trick to underlings. He sent you two. It was I who provided contract. He said you were good stabbers, but stupid-stupid. Sniff out some traps, you did. I will make notes. Revise work. Make perfect. When word spreads, endless clients I will have, bid-fighting for my creations! All will acknowledge my genius! I will become Arch-Warlock!’

The pronouncement was almost Queem’s last. Caught in a frenzy of gloating, his attention had slipped, and he nearly missed the fact that the smaller assassin had somehow worked his way free of his bonds.

The Eshin acolyte lunged suddenly forwards, and Queem let out a squeal of alarm and threw himself back, the weight of the pack he was wearing almost sending him sprawling. At the same time, the bigger of the two assassins grunted, and snapped his own restraints with little more than a flex of his arms.

‘Stop them!’ Queem screamed at the underlings he had permitted to enter his workshop to ogle his prized prisoners. Most were already scattering in terror, but a few brave-stupid ones flung themselves against the assassins, who set about breaking ribs, limbs and necks with their bare paws.

Queem scrambled further back, looking in panic towards Doomcrusher, but the great construct had been deactivated, brainstem partially uncoupled and its mechanisms allowed to rest and cool. It would take too long to reawaken.

But he still had the pack! He strained wildly for the lever and managed to trip it, feeling the device thrum with reassuring energies. He fumbled for the adjustment node, but in his haste had knocked it back, just out of claw’s reach.

‘Kringe, quick-help,’ he panted, looking around wildly for his assistant. Where was his underscurry when he needed him most?

‘Here, master,’ Kringe exclaimed, scampering through the surge of flailing bodies. He reached round to the pack, and Queem forced himself to keep still and accept the assistant’s aid.

The green energies snapped fully into being, and Queem felt a surge of relief.

It lasted only a moment. The throbbing of the pack continued to rise in pitch, until it was whining loud enough to hurt the Warlock Engineer’s ears. The orb of green power surrounding him crackled and, with a thud, decreased fractionally in size. Then, it did it again. And again.

‘No, no, not that way,’ Queem yelled, shoving at Kringe and trying once more to reach the adjustment node. ‘Fool-thing, you turn it wrong!’

‘Too late, master,’ Kringe said, stepping back. Queem’s eyes widened in horror as the assistant held up the adjustment node, broken off from the pack, its cables sparking.

With a thud, the size of the sphere around Queem decreased once more.

‘Assistant, how could you?’ the Warlock Engineer stammered.

‘Not assistant,’ Kringe hissed in a voice that was not his own. ‘Assassin.’

Dread gripped Queem, and it only intensified as the thing he had thought of as Kringe began to remove his goggles and bandages. The Skaven beneath was not the hairless, famished, scarred and burned rat he had known, but a lean, muscular, black-furred thing.

Queem recognised him. The third assassin. Relq.

‘Not so clever-smart now, are you, tinkerer?’ Relq growled.

‘Why?’ Queem whined, scrabbling at his pack, trying to drag it off, but the straps were fastened tight. Another thud, and the energy crackled closer. His whiskers had started to smoke, the lightning making him flinch, lashing and cracking like a whip inches from his snout.

‘You think to use Eshin to test your little toys,’ Relq said, casting off the last of his disguise. ‘Only fair I use you as good test of my assassins.’

‘Where is my underscurry?’ Queem demanded, hoping to distract the killer as he desperately tried to unstrap the pack. The energy contracted again, searing his arms, making him scream.

‘Kringe suffered little accident when you sent him out to check intruders,’ Relq admitted. ‘I have been with your fodder for some time now, watch-observing you both. Learning your underscurry’s movements. Posture. Voice. Even cut-sliced out his scent-makers.’

Relq showed where the bandages had held pieces of Kringe’s most pungent flesh, the scent assuaging any subconscious doubts Queem might have had about his underscurry’s identity.

Queem realised, too late, that he had underestimated these Eshin vermin.

‘This… this is treachery,’ he squeaked, writhing furiously now in his efforts to rip off the malfunctioning pack. ‘I… I have contracted you! You are mine to command!’

‘Contracted we are, yes-yes,’ Relq agreed, voice as low and deadly as one of his many blades. ‘Hired by unknown client, to murder-kill Warlock Engineer Queem.’

‘It was not unknown, it was me,’ Queem screamed. ‘I hired you! I-I absolve you of contract! Make this cease!’

‘Unlikely story, tinkerer.’ Relq leered, his tone becoming theatrical as the sphere of energy continued to steadily constrict. ‘Think we were born-bred yestersleep? What rat would be mad enough to hire Eshin acolytes to carry out his own assassination? No-no. Eshin clans always fulfil their contracts.’

Queem’s screams became howls of pain as, little by little, his invention burned and crushed him. Ichit and Quik watched in awe, the green lightning flashing over their cowled features and reflecting back from their black eyes.

It was Relq who broke the spell. The orb of energy had almost completely contracted, Queem an unrecognisable mess of burning, fizzing meat, crushed together within a small orb of green light. The pack itself was beginning to buckle and rupture, the warpstone inside blazing. Its thrumming was now a scream, filling the workshop and making the surrounding detritus clatter and vibrate.

‘Scamper-run,’ Relq snapped at Ichit and Quik.

The pair started, and turned tail, racing to catch up with their master as he bolted out of the workshop.

When the detonation came, it obliterated Queem’s lair, collapsed his burrows, burned his underlings, and crushed and destroyed every single one of his inventions.

By then, however, the Slinktalon were gone, vanishing without a trace into the shadows of the tunnels beyond.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robbie MacNiven is a Highlands-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He is well known for his Carcharodons novels Red Tithe, Outer Dark and Void Exile, as well as the Warhammer 40,000 novels Oaths of Damnation, Blood of Iax, The Last Hunt and Legacy of Russ. His work for Warhammer Age of Sigmar includes the novel Scourge of Fate and the Gotrek Gurnisson novella The Bone Desert. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.

An extract from Skaventide.

Sometime past midnight, the Heart of the Halt pulsed once, and the heat of it woke Brevin Fortis from dreams of shadows and smoke.

He sat up and stared across his workshop. He’d moved his pallet in here years ago, when he’d first come to this place on the edge of everything, to be closer to his work. The night was quiet and cool, but his skin was slick with sweat and he could feel a heat gathering in his chest where the Halt had marked him ten years before. He stood, thin sheets sliding off, pressed one hand against the raw basalt of the room’s wall, and murmured.

‘Where?’

Beneath his hand the cold stone warmed and then began to glow red like approaching dawn, like blood flowing. The glow bloomed around his hand in a perfect circle, then moved upwards, like a brush stroked through ink, away from the Heart, towards the top of the Halt. As he watched, it dimmed to nothing but a lingering heat.

Brevin frowned and took his hand away. Then, he stepped to the rack next to his bed where his armour hung, the silver sigmarite gleaming in the gloom, and began to dress.

It was three hundred steps to the top of the Halt from Brevin’s workshop, but he took them three at a time, well acquainted with the shallowness of each stone tread. This fortress had been built long ago by mortals, and its rooms were scaled for them, despite the enormity of the place.

The Halt was a wall, four hundred feet tall and almost three times as long, a bastion of basalt that stretched between the sheer cliffs of Warrun Vale. The vale itself cut through the Adamantine Chain, the gigantic mountain range that separated the dry, hot plains of Aqshy’s Great Parch from its lonelier lands bordering the Ocean of Tears. In some distant age, a forgotten empire had built a line of fortresses into these mountains, an attempt to block every route in and out, denying passage to an enemy now unknown. Warrun Vale, located almost in the centre of the Chain, was the widest of those routes, and so the Halt was the greatest of the ancient fortresses.

And deep within that giant pile of basalt, those mortals had set the Heart, the relic that had been Brevin’s blessing and curse for ten long years.

Brevin reached the top of the steps, breathing easy despite the climb and the altitude. The Warrun Vale might lie far below the snow-capped peaks of the Adamantine Chain, but it was still high above the Great Parch. The air here was cold and thin, but Brevin’s body had been crafted by the gods. The guard at the top of the stairs was mortal though, and when the woman stepped out to challenge him, Brevin could hear the chatter of her teeth, the panting draw of her breath.

‘Who–’ she started, but her voice fell to a stammer as she saw him in the lantern light. ‘Lord-Ordinator!’

‘Golden Lion,’ he answered, keeping his voice low. It was deep in the night, and most of the Halt’s defenders were asleep. Or should have been. He’d heard mutters as he mounted the steps, the sounds of restless sleep broken by dreams. Or nightmares. ‘How goes it?’

‘Quiet, Lord-Ordinator.’ The woman finally remembered herself and moved back, giving him space to pass. Beneath her cloak she was wrapped in a breastplate, its steel enamelled crimson and emblazoned with the golden head of a lion snarling over two crossed swords. Brevin didn’t recognise her, but Brevin didn’t recognise most of the mortals guarding the Halt. The 27th Regiment of the Golden Lions had marched here four years ago, the latest regiment sent by the distant free city of Hammerhal Aqsha to guard this lonely bastion. Eight hundred men and women with polished armour and determined faces, the first line of defence for the vast open lands that surrounded Hammerhal Aqsha and the other free cities of Sigmar.

Another set of children wrapped in costume armour, waving toy swords.

That was unfair, Brevin thought. The Adamantine Chain was far from any place that could be called safe. In the years they’d been here, these mortals had faced feral orruks, screaming grots riding malformed troggoths, bands of blood-mad Khorne worshippers from gods-cursed Hel Crown, and even a pair of towering gargants. They were soldiers, brave and true, even if they were half his size.

Besides, he’d been mortal once himself. How he would have bristled then to be thought of as a child when he’d fought for his people. But it was hard to remember that the Astral Grandhammer he carried now was over twice as tall as he once was. Before Sigmar had taken his soul and poured it into a body remade for war.

‘My lord Stormcast Eternal,’ the guard said as he passed. ‘Are you looking for General Kant?’

‘I was not,’ he answered honestly. ‘But I am now, if she is here.’

‘Yes.’ The soldier pointed towards the centre of the wall. A figure stood there, a shadow against the dim glow rising from the face of the wall below. ‘She said she couldn’t sleep.’

‘I know the problem,’ he said. Nodding his thanks, he walked towards the Golden Lions’ leader.

General Delia Kant was in her mid fifties, a lean woman with grey hair and weathered brown skin marked with scars. Despite the hour, she wore the Golden Lions dress uniform with its crimson cap and jerkin. The only time Brevin had seen her out of that uniform was when she wore her armour. Armour which was just as well kept as her uniform, but ruthlessly utilitarian. Kant was a practical woman, organised and meticulous, patient but demanding with her soldiers. Brevin had got along with her well since she arrived, though they seldom spoke. The general was private, disciplined. Contained. But when he stepped up to the low rampart that ran atop the Halt’s face, she looked grateful for his company.

‘Brevin Fortis, honoured Lord-Ordinator of the Hallowed Knights. Good evening. Or should I say good morning?’

‘Morning would be more accurate,’ he said. It didn’t feel accurate though. The sky was black, the stars bright. Dawn did not touch any part of the horizon, and the only light came from the stars, the three moons that spun over the realm of Aqshy, and the steady glow of the face of the Halt. The wall was made of basalt, dense volcanic rock without seam or joint. But the face of it was covered with a sheet of quartz a foot thick, gleaming crystal covering the dark stone. Threads of crimson ran beneath the quartz, a web of glowing red veins. Emberstone. Aqshy was the Realm of Fire, and emberstone was its magic in crystalline form, fire made solid. Volatile and valuable, small pieces of emberstone could fuel vast conflagrations of magic. The amount of it contained in the face of the Halt was anything but small, and Brevin had only heard of one place that used more emberstone in its construction. That was the Whitefire Court, the home of the Collegiate Arcane in the city of Hallowheart, and the mages that lived there were constantly fighting to keep that power contained.

In the Halt, the emberstone’s power was chained to its Heart, and Brevin could feel the heat of that ancient artefact in his chest as he stared at the glowing veins of power in the wall below.

‘The Heart woke me from dark dreams,’ he said. ‘It told me to come here.’

‘Dark dreams,’ Kant said, frowning out at the darkness.

Warrun Vale was kept clear for the distance of a bowshot, but beyond that the pass was overrun with pines, massive old trees filling it from cliff to cliff except for the thin track that disappeared into the forest. The Golden Lions ran patrols out into the wilds on the other side of the Adamantine Chain, and occasionally traders would try their luck in those distant lands, though they seldom found anything there but death. The Warrun Vale was a lonely place, and beyond the mountains, foothills gave way to flat plains that ran down to the Ocean of Tears. During the day, you could see what felt like forever from here, across a haze of green to the distant sea, but there was nothing civilised out there. And now there was nothing but night.

‘I dreamt of darkness too,’ Kant said. ‘Darkness that flowed and choked. Dreams are strange lately. My sergeants tell me my soldiers don’t sleep, and when my dreams woke me tonight their cries kept me awake.’ She looked up at him. ‘Did the Heart speak to you of dreams when it woke you?’

‘The Heart spoke to me of nothing,’ Brevin said. ‘It just wanted me awake.’

Over a decade ago, Brevin Fortis had come to the Halt to study it. Lord-Ordinators were the engineers of the Stormcast Eternals, those mortals to whom the great god Sigmar in his wisdom had granted immortality so that they could battle anyone or anything that fought to despoil the Mortal Realms. Brevin had been a builder in his first life, before he was reborn a Hallowed Knight, and his ability to shape stone was valued just as much by his god as his ability to hew flesh. After his soul was Reforged, he was taught to raise edifices that would protect and inspire Sigmar’s faithful. But there was always more to learn, and when Brevin heard of a massive wall in the mountains which stood uncorrupted and unchanging through countless years and attacks, he set out to understand it. With ten other Hallowed Knights he’d come to the Halt, and found the Heart buried deep within it. He had touched that artefact, and was touched by it, and now this was his home.

He was part of the Halt now. Tied to it with chains of fire that wrapped around his heart. But did he understand it, after all those years of study? Not really.

Kant shook her head. ‘I’ve campaigned over thirty years. Came here to put in my last years before I retired somewhere to count my scars in peace. I liked it here, because it was predictable. Running patrols and breaking up fights between bored soldiers, with the occasional chance to throw rocks down on orruk heads from safe atop this wall. It seemed like a good plan. But these last few nights…’

The general frowned at the sky, as if looking for portents. ‘Something’s coming. I don’t know what, but I can feel it. So can my soldiers. They have trouble sleeping when they should, then fall asleep when they shouldn’t, and they talk of dreams they cannot remember.’ She breathed deep. ‘It’s affecting me too. Like tonight. Like every night for the last week. Dreams of choking dark, dreams of… I don’t know. Something’s wrong, something’s coming, but I don’t know what it is.’

‘Nothing is happening, but nothing feels right,’ Brevin said, and she nodded.

‘Maybe this doesn’t happen to you any more, Stormcast,’ she said, ‘but maybe you remember it. That feeling when you’re struck and you know it’s going to hurt. But the pain hasn’t hit yet, and you’re just waiting for the hurt to come. That’s what it feels like.’

‘I remember,’ Brevin said. ‘You have caught the feeling well.’

‘Lord-Ordinators…’ Kant hesitated for a moment, then pushed on. ‘I’ve heard that you’re trained to read the stars. To see the paths of the future in their dance. Could that be why you were brought up here?’

‘By the Heart?’ Brevin laughed, a rueful chuckle. ‘My ability to read the heavens was always limited. But when I touched the Heart, what little skill I had was wiped away. My perceptions are tied to the Halt now, and this wall is more concerned about stone than sky. But it woke me tonight for some reason, and I can feel something here.’ He tapped the armour over his heart, gauntlets ringing faintly against the polished metal. ‘Something is wrong, something is coming, as you said. But I cannot say what, or when. I wish I could read it in the heavens. Or anywhere.’

He raised his eyes, and then, across the vast gulf of darkness he did see something.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Alex Boyd.

Slinktalon © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. Slinktalon, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-83609-246-9

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