133: Mission Accomplished

Following rumours that have reached Karaz Ankor of suspicious engineering feats among the raki, I, like many other karak rangers, have journeyed throughout the mountains in order to substantiate or refute these stories.

I followed a rather inauspicious trail into the Middle Mountains, where I was able to confirm that the worst fears of our master engineers might be true. Unfortunately, I was forced to pretend to be taken prisoner and enslaved by the heinous raki, a state of affairs which I swore to avenge, and one I now report I was able to.

Coming to Karak Skygg following rumours of a great weapon that might rival the arsenal of the dwarfs, it was a surprise to discover how advanced they were with their engineering, and though I am not an engineer, it seemed that the weapon was a surprisingly impressive creation. Though not close to dwarf engineering genius, it was plainly greater than anything umgi ingenuity could achieve.

By Grungni, if I were to reveal the many trials and humiliations I was subjected to in Karak Skygg, it would make your beard curl. But it is such hardship I endure for my Bittercrag ancestors and for Karaz Ankor.

I pride myself that in my infiltration of Karak Skygg I became barely distinguishable from one of the sorry slaves imprisoned there. But I persevered knowing that my chance to thwart the raki plot would inevitably come.

And it did, as Grungni sent me help in the unlikely form of a strange band of umgi and their halfling. Greta, a witch hunter, Erina, a zharr wizard, Fred, a guard from Middenheim, and Blume, an engineer. As unlikely as these characters were, so helpful were they to me, that they may have been Grombrindal himself.

At my first glimpse of them, as they moved through the hold, unmolested by the scurrying raki, I cursed them in the name of Gazul. But they must have seen something in me, that told them I had not been broken by the rat men, and they let me know that they were not the servants of the raki, but here to destroy their great weapon. This was the sign that I had been looking for, and so I told them that I knew the hold well enough to lead them to it.

And after speaking with the slave master, they managed to get me released. And I was able to lead them to the great cannon. On the way I discovered rhuns leading to a cache of explosives, left here by the ancient runelord Thognar Torbrow for the very purpose of destroying the hold should it be taken. It seemed as if Grungni himself had planned this. Precisely why he had led these humans here as his unwitting servants has yet to be revealed to me, but Grungni moves in mysterious ways.

It was decided that I would lead the rebellion that might give them time to set the bombs. First I needed to free a captured raki clan leader to take advantage of some raki inter-clan squabbling. And the witch hunter would help me. The fire wizard had to rescue her sister, who had been captured by the raki and who they thought was being used to direct the cannon against Morrslieb. The engineer and the guard were to get the gunpowder to a place where it would do the most damage to the cannon.

They instructed the halfling to deal with a rat ogre who was near the cannon, and who was responsible for a series of great gongs that seemed to be timing the operation of the weapon.

Any tactical plan needs to be done with careful timing, and I was under the impression that these attacks were to be coordinated so as to cause the greatest surprise. But as soon as the halfling was told his mission, he ran off excitedly in the direction of the rat ogre. And once he realised what was happening the guard ran after him. To protect him or to try to stop him, I did not know.

Meanwhile, I had found the captive clan leader and asked him what he would do if I released him. The witch hunter said something about a plague his clan had endured in Middenheim. And the raki, in his broken Reikspiel, said that he would seek out Maliss, the leader of Karak Skygg, and rip his head off. And so, in one shot from the witch hunter’s pistol, the raki’s manacles were broken. Two pack masters had seen us, however, and the witch hunter drew another pistol and shot one, who scurried away.

The second one stabbed the witch hunter, but I, and the clan leader Kratz, fell upon him and killed him between us, like, dare I say it, Grimnir and Skavor. Kratz spat on the body and skittered off to lead his enslaved clan. I followed him towards the slave pens to rouse the non-raki prisoners and lead them in revolt. Sometimes in life we have to choose between the lesser of two evils, and at this time, though it felt unnatural and disconcerting, it was clear that fighting alongside the weaker of the raki factions in order to undermine the stronger is entirely justified.

It was not long before we had pulled some sort of fighting force together, and despite having few weapons at the beginning, and a cowed and broken army, we had the weight of numbers and were able to trouble the raki.

Meanwhile, and here I report hearsay gleaned somewhat later, the engineer, Blume, who is a wealthy heiress to a spice magnate from across the Great Ocean, managed to find one of the rubber suits the raki were using to protect themselves from the poisonous fuel they were filling the weapon with. Despite it being too small for her, and smelling of foul raki, she put it on, creating a makeshift snout with some schematics she had found in the raki laboratory.

She was joined by the witch hunter, Greta, who grabbed a couple of barrels and gunpowder. And she pretended to be a slave of the rubber suited rat woman as they brought the gunpowder up to the other barrels they had already stored near the cannon. They now had five barrels, but despite the growing disturbance deeper into the hold, they still could not position them close to the cannon, without being discovered.

Meanwhile, the halfling was fighting the rat ogre, who, I am told, had three eyes, an abomination to Valaya and all that is natural. He charged in and hit it hard, but the hulking creature was barely phased, and they joined in a ferocious melee.

The guard, Fred, and the fire wizard, Erina, had followed the halfling. Fred was looking out for him, but Erina was looking out for her sister. Four more raki emerged, powerful fighters wearing heavy armour and wielding great halberds. Fred immediately charged in, hitting one of the raki, but it struck back, wounding him and rending his armour.

The ogre struck back at the halfling and two of the raki joined in, both of them hitting him. And two of them fought Fred. But Erina cast a fire spell and two of them were set alight. And the halfling got a good hit to the ogre’s guts leaving him bleeding profusely but too stupid to give up the fight. And the ogre struck back in anger what would have been a devastating blow, but as fate would have it, the halfling deflected its hammer at the last moment. One of the flaming Rakis died from the fire and Erina set the other two alight.

Then, Blume and Greta arrived. But as they did, so did another raki. This one was extremely grim, dressed in a strange armoured suit with a gas mask, and was wielding a large halberd that was glowing with the sickly green light of the raki’s power. And he carried a hose that was pumping out noxious gases. The creature handed the hose to his prehensile tail to carry, and drew a pistol. And this, they decided was Maliss, the supposedly genius engineer, and the leader of the clan. He fired his pistol at Fred and the shot went straight through his shield and hit him. And who knows what infernal tainted stuff they make their shot from.

The armoured raki attacked as well, and the halfling said a prayer to his uncle Isaac, or something, and avoided the blow. And later the witch hunter asked about this, and the rest of the umgi were not forthcoming. I think that in the circumstances, that is best left undiscussed.

And then Blume shot the rat ogre and killed it dead. It is hard to know how much more powerful the gun is than the sword (and Imperial firearms are descended from dwarf technology, after all) but I should credit the halfling with having softened up the brute at least a little bit before Blume’s fatal shot. And the halfling ran away from the fight, towards the stairs, hearing Greta call him a coward as he went.

And that was the last any of us saw of the halfling. Later I was told that he hunked some of the barrels of gunpowder into the chamber below the gun and set them off, knowing he could never survive the blast. Was it brave or foolhardy, audacious or insane? It was foolhardy and insane.

From what they said later, the halfling had suffered greatly from the influence of the dark gods, and suffered at the hands of rat men and dark wizards so that he was unable to sleep. And that had driven him to fevered imaginings of a dark underworld filled with terrible creatures and unspeakable horrors. But I think he was just a wazzok.

The rest of the umgi faced Maliss and three of the armoured rats. Erina cast her fire at the rats again, and two of them fumbled their halberds. And Blume shot at Maliss, but this time she missed. And the man rat engineer shot back, hitting her. And the rat men attacked, Blume managed to shoot one of them, killing it. Fred hit one, and the fire that was still burning around them did for another.

And Erina cast her magic at Maliss, and he was surrounded by zharr, but he continued to advance, undaunted, spraying his noxious smoke around. He reloaded his pistol and he said in his shrill rat voice, ‘Yes-yes. Man-things here cause problem. Not big-big problem, small-small like flea. Still annoying. No more now. Maliss clever smart. Think-think very sharp.’

And they heard a loud explosion coming from the level below. I heard it too, even where I was, far below in the lower levels. The last raki went for Erina and hit her but she stayed standing, and Fred rushed to defend her, and managed to kill him. And Maliss shot at Blume again, sending her to the ground unconscious.

Erina told Maliss he was an idiot for thinking he could shoot the moon. And he replied that he had, ‘Search-find Warpstone. Build big big plan. The Moonbreaker. The end of the man-things, time for Clan Skryre, time for Maliss!’

And then we heard a second explosion, louder than all the hammers of Zhufbar, and we heard a great creaking as the mechanism that was holding the great cannon up, buckled beyond repair, and the cannon shifted. And it was clear that it would not fire again. And on hearing this, many of the rat men that were fighting the slaves lost heart and fled for the lower levels and the gate.

But at the top of the hold they were still fighting, and the poison from Maliss’ gas filled the chamber, and Erina and Blume both breathed enough of it in to feel poisoned.

Maliss wielded his green glowing halberd and struck Greta, and then said, ‘Quiet mouth man-thing! Quiet or we hold it and stop you breathing! Morr-libb Warpstone - you know, yes? Yes. All-same Warpstone. Good-good Skaven, bad-bad you-things. Kill-you, twist-you, yes. Soon-soon Morr-libb break. You-things all-die. Great Horned One smile! Smile on Maliss.’ And then he hit her again, the force of his blow pushing her out of the chamber and down the side of the karaz.

Fred grabbed Blume’s unconscious body and shouted at Erina to run. But Erina would not leave her sister and so she ran to the cell where she was being held, and melted through her chains and took her gag off. And Janna shouted at Erina for burning her, and Erina shouted at Janna for getting captured a second time. But then she noticed that three of Janna’s toes had been gnawed off by her raki captors. And Janna explained that that was because she had refused to help them chart the course of Morrslieb.

Meanwhile, as he descended, Fred saw that the aiming mechanism for the Moonbreaker was a mess, and grabbed one of the barrels of gunpowder they had not used yet, and set it up on the stairs and lit a longer fuse, hoping to give Erina and Janna time to escape. But Maliss followed and shot at him, hitting Blume’s unconscious body, but as fate would have it, she still survived.

And sure enough, Erina and Janna emerged from the cell and ran down the stairs ahead of Maliss. And after they had passed the barrel, it exploded, and they kept running, not bothering to look back to see what had become of Maliss. Perhaps we will never know.

And as they fled through the hold no one stood in their way. The clan Mange rebellion had done its job. Few rats remained with both sides fleeing the complex. And most of the non-raki slaves had either perished or fled.

I had led the non-raki in their fight against their erstwhile enslavers, and we had acquitted ourselves well enough in the circumstances. I had found a sturdy dwarf-made az, an appropriate item to aid me in my vengeance. In truth, many of us, once in a position to flee the hold, did just that. But we had done enough to buy the others time.

And so I spotted the three of them making for the lower levels and I decided to follow them. I could have left the karak and been in the mountains, in my element, and free of the raki. But something told me that Grungni had brought the strange umgi band to Karak Skygg and to me, and perhaps he wished me to stay with them.

In any case, I had fulfilled my task and gathered enough intelligence on the raki weapon. Now perhaps that information was no longer needed as the weapon will never be fired. Zhufbar may be safe from that scheme, but it may be wise to consider what other schemes these umgi might be party to.

They headed to the outflow at the bottom of the hold where they knew they could escape. And it was there, as fate would have it, they found Greta’s body lying in the reed bed at the base of the outflow. She was barely alive but they gave her medical attention and soon she was able to walk. And they saw to Blume’s wounds, too, so that she regained consciousness.

I wasn’t sure whether to reintroduce myself to them there and then, but I decided that I might discover more about them if I followed quietly for a time. I am well used to moving silently and unseen in the mountains, but had I been a clumsy beardling they would never have spotted me, so much noise did they make.

But it was not long before we saw a dirigible flying above us, closing in on us. I wondered who might be piloting the thing. Certainly we have a good number of them to travel between the dwarf holds, and for a moment I thought it might have been sent for me. That my reports had got back to Zhufbar and they had decided I needed rescuing. But the dirigible flew the colours of the Todbringers of Middenheim.

The dirigible lowered and the occupants shouted down to the umgi asking who they were and what they were doing there. Fred replied that they were KITUM. And he recognised Heinrich Todbringer, the illegitimate son of the graf, who he said had been away in Wolfenburg in peace talks. And he warned Blume not to call him a bastard.

Heinrich was very tall and had another tall man with him, who was an officer in the Knights Panther. He asked about the explosions, and Fred said that they had just put paid to the rat-headed beastman schemes. He may have been impressed, but he gave Blume a strange look as she was still dressed in her rubber raki suit. But then he recognised Janna, and immediately became less suspicious, and ordered the dirigible to be landed.