His minion man-things hunched low, almost as low as a Skaven could, clinging to the shadows of the machinery all about them. Makeshift pipes and sluices fought against floodwaters to maintain equilibrium; the pervasive sound of grinding cogs and gushing water had masked the war party’s approach for many nights in this waterlogged ruin, and the embattled settlement made for easy pickings for Ratcyst Gall and the White Hand war party of Airk Thrall-Maker, the foolish cretin who fancied himself in charge. So far, there had been no reason to disabuse him of that delusion: the flesh harvest had been sweet, and the material plucked from drowned corpses, lost soldiers, and the Ghurish beasts come to eat both was already stitched together to form the two hulking, grotesque spawn-thing creatures that lay hidden close by in the deep water, in case of trouble.
They were not creations worthy of the Writhing BloodSire, the Master Moulder knew, nothing he made these days were, but they kept his pet humans content to scavenge rather than embark upon some idiot’s quest for the inconceivable concept they called “glory.”
No, no. That would not do. Glory, even for the Horned Rat to whom all glory belonged forever and ever, was worthless to Ratcyst at this moment. The discarded bodies of man-thing and Ghur-thing was the prize he had come to extract from this war zone; he needed plenty, enough to let him reach quota for the Masterclan and perhaps even start a growth vat to alleviate the strain of needing to hunt month-to-month just to meet the demands of his wholly unreasonable jailers back in Blight City.
His mind had just turned to his favourite imaginings of revenge and comeuppance against the grey seers and that damnable verminlord when the man-thing Beastspeaker whistled like a carnivorous sparrow – a bird-thing signal for danger.
The war party, consisting of Ratcyst, Airk, the Beastspeaker, and the tribe’s rank-and-file, held still. Ratcyst sniffed the air, noted the Beastspeaker did too, and briefly applauded the man-thing for her rare show of basic intellect. With the clanging of the pumps draining the floodwater, only smell would serve them unless —
“Ey boyz I tink we’ve found us some o’ dose civil folkz scuttering ‘bout! Up dere – by the metal rivers!”
— unless you were up against dimwitted Orruk, evidently.
“Aiz got eyes on dem, boss!” Another yelled exuberantly, giving away their positions.
“Dey’re mine!” One more, a more gravel tone, established claim, beginning a chorus of bickering.
Ratcyst hated Orruk. Not for any trait they exhibited, although all of their traits were definitely loathe-worthy; no, he hated them for being a living organism useless to his divine purpose of bringing the Horned Rat bodily into the realms. Orruk flesh could not be harvested – in the same way they were untameable, their essence refused to be spliced, combined, and tamed.
And now they were here to not only waste his precious cover of night, but also potentially call attention to their position for the allies of the settlement’s man-things to exploit! No, they had to retreat. Scurry away. Let these embodiments of null-data and applicability be someone else’s problem.
Nearby, Airk Thrall-Maker stood to his full towering height. The Heart-eater lifted his vicious toothed axe high overhead, and the other White Hand man-things revealed themselves as well, each swelling with terrible, unproductive pride.
No! Ratcyst wanted to scream at them for their stupidity, but couldn’t. They were only useful to him so long as they thought of him as subordinate, as a bestially blessed advisor to their tribe – which, to be true, he was simply by virtue of his superior Skaven intellect. He could not simply bark a command at Airk and expect their service to him to continue, and establishing a new relationship with another tribe would make him miss quota.
The Master Moulder stewed, and cursed when the chieftain of the White Hand bellowed – bellowed!? – his response to the quarreling Orruks:
“You!” (No-no!) “It is all of you” (Stop-cease! Enough!) “who are mine to prey upon this night!” (AUGH!)
That certainly ended the Orruk argument. Immediately, they raised an exultant war cry. The White Hand roared bestially in response. Together, they created such a clamor that it was now impossible to hope that they could escape undetected.
Ratcyst rubbed the bridge of his snout with his disgusting claw-less human fingers and scratched his fur in agitation using his original Skaven limbs hidden beneath his robes.
“Creations, to me!” He called to his lurking monstrosities, summoning them as a fleshwall to defend him with their writhing tentacles as an Orruk astride a greater gnashtoof barreled towards him. Quota or no, what mattered most was that he survive this night and live for revenge tomorrow.
As Airk Thrall-Maker reveled in battle and in displaying his augmented strength against the hardy Orruk who fell before him, Ratcyst Gall knew part of that tomorrow would need to be spent devising a more direct and reliable means of manipulating that recalcitrant, untamed beast.
