It’s the first thing a tunnel fighter learns to guard against.”

“You’ve done this sort of thing before then,” Felix said, half sarcastically.

“Yes, manling. I was fighting in the depths before ever your father was born. The ways around the Everpeak are never free of foes and all the citizens of the King’s Council do their share of military service in the depths. More young dwarfs die that way than any other.”

Gotrek was being unusually forthright, as he sometimes was before moments of great peril. Danger made him garrulous, as if he wanted to communicate with others only when he realised he might never get another chance. Or perhaps he was simply still drunk from the night before. Felix realised he would never know. Fathoming the dwarf’s alien mind was nearly as far beyond him as was understanding a skaven.

“I can remember my first time in the tunnels. Everything seemed cramped. Every sound was the tread of some secret enemy. If you listen with fearful ears you are soon surrounded by foes. When the true foe comes you have no idea from which quarter. Stay calm, manling. You’ll live longer.”

“Easy for you to say,” Felix muttered as the hefty Slayer shoved past. All the same, he was reassured by Gotrek’s presence.


With some trepidation they approached the place where Gant had been killed. Mist rose from the surface of the stew and in places a slow current was evident in the sludge. The area of the fight looked very much the same as Felix remembered it, except that the body was gone. The area where the corpse had lain was disturbed.

There was a trail in the slime that suddenly ended at the ledgeside, as if the body had been dragged a short way, then dumped. He knew they should have shifted it yesterday, when they had the chance, but they had been too shaken, disturbed and excited by what had happened to do so. No one had wanted to carry the mangy, rat-man body. Now it wasn’t there.

“Someone took it,” Hef said.

“Wonder who?” Spider said.

Gotrek scanned the ledge where the body had been. He bent down and peered closely at the tracks, then rubbed his eye-patch with his right fist. The hatchet which had killed the skaven came dangerously close to his tattooed scalp.

“Wasn’t a man, anyway. That’s for sure.”

“All sorts of scavengers in the sewers,” Rudi said. He voiced the common belief of all sewerjacks. “There are things you wouldn’t believe living in the stew.”

“I don’t think it was any scavenging animal,” Gotrek said.

“Skaven,” Felix said, voicing their unspoken thoughts.

“Too big. One of them was anyway. The other tracks might be skaven.” Felix peered out into the gloom; it suddenly appeared even more menacing.

“How big?” He cursed himself for taking on the same monosyllabic way of speaking as the others. “How large exactly was this creature you referred to, Gotrek?”

“Perhaps taller than you, manling. Perhaps heavier than Rudi.”

“Could it be one of the mutants you say the skaven breed? A hybrid of some sort?”

“Yes.”

“But how can all those prints simply vanish?” Felix asked.