Chapter 17

The dark world of the underground ruins shook before Marcus’ sight. His ears adjusted to the ringing sound that reverberated off the walls of his brain and he felt his legs being pulled back into the safety of a building’s shadowed interior.

Just before he was lifted inside, he saw the face of a Ratman that was following him disappear in a cloud of red before its body slumped to the ground, and the dull ache of the bullet’s sound caught up with him.

He thrashed, kicking out and turning round to see Deekius, Skeever, and Ix surrounding him like a personal honor-guard while more Rat screams peppered the cavernous skies above.

Something bloody and swollen hung loose from Skeever’s right arm’s socket, and Marcus’ eyes bulged as he recognized it was the remains of the hulking Rat’s arm.

“Skeever,” he stuttered. “You-“

“Be not minding it!” the Talon-Commander screeched so all his men nearby could hear it. “We are having bigger problem!”

Marcus looked at the sweating faces of the others and nodded briskly, steadying himself without another hesitation even as he realized, with a tight knot of dread, that the shooter had clearly aimed for his head.

“What’s the situation?” he asked, coming to sit with the gathering as Skeever and Ix both chanced a look out the broken window of their ruin hideout.

“We are being scattered by shooter,” Deekius replied.

“Shooty dwarf!” Ix spat. “Shooty dwarf, crazy dwarf – mad like all men of the stone-stone!”

Marcus frowned, cautiously peering over the lip of the windowsill and seeing an assortment of the scattered Ratguard. Rat corpses littered the streets – each one with a single hole that had punctured its cranium. Beyond, at least five meters away, Marcus caught sight of Gatkseek’s furry, white form guiding panicky troops towards his location next to a blown-out chapel. As the Rats moved, the stragglers were being picked off one by one. Any who attempted to flee from the cover of the ruins were popped like hairy watermelons as they skittered away in fright from the flash of light that gleamed from the other side of the chasm.

A sniper, Marcus thought. One that’s got us pinned here. Putting the fear of death into these Rats so that I bet they don’t even hear Gatskeek’s commands anymore.

He crouched low as a pinpoint shot broke the panes of rusted glass on the window beside him.

“How do you know it’s a dwarf?” he asked.

The crowd looked to Ix, who shrugged grimly.

“Dwarf-dwarf only one shoot long gun-gun,” he said. “When Boss Skegga take Grindlefecht, we lose many Yip-Yips to shootie-Dwarves. Some he take prisoner. But their gun-guns too big for us.”

Marcus nodded as he turned back to the Rats. “Have you ever seen one of these Dwarves so near your Capital?”

Both shook their withered heads, Deekius kneeling to resume his healing incantation on Skeever’s busted arm. “We are not having seen Dwarf for ages,” he said. “That there is one amongst the ruins just beyond Fleapit is bad. Could be scout. Could be sent by stout men of the stone to scope out Fleapit defenses.”

“Or,” Marcus offered with grim realization. “He could be an assassin.”

The others fixed their eyes on him as he stroked his scraggly beard which, by now, had ceased to be itchy.

“He aimed the shot that maimed Skeever at me,” Marcus said. “If Skeever had not seen it, I could be dead right now.”

He looked with serious eyes upon the wounded Ratman.

“Once again, I owe one of your kind in this Underkingdom my life.”

“We can be giving thanks after battle is over,” Skeever said. “For now, we must be defeating this Dwarf.”

“Quite right,” Marcus agreed, hearing Gatskeek roar as another bullet chipped away at the skull of one of his men out in the open. “Right now, we need to focus on linking up with Gatskeek.”

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“Should we be forming Testudo, Sire?”

Marcus shook his head. “Not good enough. Whatever weapon he has it’s not only got tremendous range but tremendous firepower. If that’s a simple Dwarven weapon…to be honest I want to know how your Boss Skegga managed to defeat a fort full of them.”

Ix licked his serrated teeth. “A single Kobold life is meaning nothing, Sire. A thousand are meaning victory.”

“This Skegga sounds like a regular Ulysses S Grant,” Marcus scoffed. “But at any rate, we can’t afford to make slow progress. The narrow streets of this ruin also don’t suit such a wide formation. In fact, they don’t suit any formation at all.”

“So we run, then?” Deekius asked expectantly. “Fleapit is only being a few hours away.”

“We will never be making it,” Skeever said through a pained grimace as the priest ceased his healing. “The dwarf will be picking us off one by one, starting with the Shai-Alud.”

Marcus nodded gravely, hearing more shouts of rats in their death-throes in what had now become an abandoned death-maze out there. Winding streets held nothing but running Ratmen who were little more than sitting ducks for the shooter above.

A maze…

Marcus looked up at the commanders and their men they had managed to save. A force sizeable enough to take on armies, and yet here they were cowering before one single foe far more technologically advanced than they were.

But technology only took an enemy so far, and Marcus knew at least one weakness that could confound even a seasoned sniper.

“Ix,” he said. “Hand me one of those panes of broken glass.”

The Kobold did as he was bid.

“Skeever, I need your weapon.”

“Be taking it,” the Ratman said as he looked with fury at his busted arm. “It is being useless to me now.”

“I’ll also need an adhesive,” Marcus said then, remembering who he was talking to, added: “Something sticky.”

The Rats looked at each other with slight, bloody grins, and each one coughed up a piece of twitching puss from a section of their addled bodies.

“Uh, thanks,” Marcus said as he wrapped the sleeve of his robe round a mangy, hair-filled piece from Deekius, attaching it to the tip of Skeever’s rusted blade and then affixing the glass shard to the thing.

“Bingo,” Marcus murmured as he positioned himself next to the doorway entrance to their position. “Now, we’ve got a makeshift mirror.”

“Sire?” Deekius whispered. “What is being your purpose?”

“First step in dealing with snipers,” Marcus said. “Is figuring out where he is.”

He gingerly set the blade-mirror out on the ground, slowly turning it so that it showed him the surrounding region – the tips of the ruined towers, the high chapel spire where Gatskeek was hunkering down, and the jagged ridges of the canyon.

The city had suddenly become devoid of Ratman screams. Those who had tried running down the decayed streets were already dead.

Marcus waited. He watched.

And Marcus knew that out there, somewhere, their foe was doing the same.

“Come on,” he murmured. “Come on…”

A flash in the dark.

He blinked, and his arm shook with the reverberation of the mirror being splintered into a thousand pieces and the sword skidded away from him.

Marcus leaned his back against the wall as the rest of the pinned congregation came to see what he’d just learned.

“Our man’s up in the spire at the Northwest edge of the town,” he explained. “We should move quickly. If he’s got any brains he’ll know we’re on to him and try to reposition himself. But he’s greedy. He won’t move if we present him with targets.”

The Rat-leaders and the Kobold commander looked at the men beside them, then back at Marcus.

“I’m afraid,” their Shai-Alud said through a wry smile. “I must ask too much of you all, yet again.”

He explained what they’d have to do to reach Gatskeek – a plan which would take a combination of proper technique, timing, and, worst of all when it came to warfare, no small degree of luck.

When he’d finished, they Rats stood in darkness and silence, staring at him like he’d just told them they’d basically already lost.

Skeever was the first to eventually give a simple nod of acceptance.

“And once we are getting there?” he asked. “What is being the plan?”

“I’m afraid it’s going to have to be the same process, just with more numbers.”

The wounded ogre-rat nodded again, holding his head up high as he barked the order to his men without another question.

Skeever, Marcus thought. You might look like a filthy rat, but you’ve got the soul of a Spartan in you. Pretty much my polar opposite…

As Ix and the others readied themselves to execute their breakout towards Gatskeek’s chapel position, Deekius knelt down beside Marcus and began his creepy, chittering whispering.

“Sire,” he said. “I am not meaning to be changing your plan, but there is a way I am seeing to defeat the shooter Dwarf that will be sparing the lives of the Clansmen we have left.”

Marcus’ eyebrows twitched at the Rat’s candor. It seemed almost like he was proud of his little idea and, when he told Marcus exactly what he had up his sleeve, even the Shai-Alud was forced to admit that it was a variable he hadn’t even considered.

“You…you can do that?” he asked.

Deekius nodded with no small degree of pride. “He-Who-Festers has bestowed me with many gifts, Sire. And this is not all I can do. I am being more than just simple priest, as you know. After all, it is these hands that summoned you.”

Marcus, for probably the first time since he had met the bag of filth and hair standing before him, actually smiled with the Rat.

“You know something, Deekius?” he said. “You might just see us through this yet.”

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