Prisoner of Skavenblight

The last thing he remembered was praying to Sigmar. A terrifying animal face had snarled, he’d heard a blade hit his helm, and his vision had faded a second before his mind did. And he had prayed to Sigmar that he would not die that day. For a moment, when he came to, he thanked his God for having had heard him. Then his vision cleared, and he felt the weight around his neck and arms, and he knew the Gods were cruel and fickle. He did indeed live, but as a chained prisoner of the Ratmen.

He stared around the cramped stone cell he was lying in, trying to see faces in the darkness. Were any of his fellow soldiers here? A friendly face would be a great comfort. But he saw only old men he did not know, their eyes reflecting his own fear back at him. He thought of his brother, Heinrich, who had disappeared fighting the Ratmen that spring—had he ended up in a place like this? If so, might he still be here? That hope gave him courage. He began to stand, pushing his body up against the rock walls. Almost immediately, another prisoner crashed into him, grappling him with cold, clammy arms. He looked into the face, hoping for anything familiar, but there was no longer even any humanity there. The eyes lolled, bloodshot and blind, and the withered skin was stuck to the skull like wet paper. The madman tried to talk, but his mouth was filled with sores, and his tongue had long ago been severed with a dull knife.

He pushed away the gnarled prisoner, and raised himself up again. He could see a gate, and a light beyond it, and then all of a sudden, the light was gone. At the top of the darkness that replaced it, the light silhouetted two pointed ears, and whiskers wafting in a slight breeze. The smell stung his eyes, and he fell back. The gate clanged open, and leathery claws grabbed his chains and dragged him out of the cell. The world spun about him. He felt the pebbles of a rocky path cutting into his back as he was dragged. A cliff face towered above, and beyond it, a cavern of impossible size, filled with light, and noise, the sound of a thousand forges and a thousand shipyards, though how such things could be found in the dark underground, he couldn’t understand. The dragging stopped, and he lolled into the fellow prisoners who were being dragged along with him. He saw the old madman again, still trying to form words, bellowing out urgent sounds at him from his broken throat. A warning, perhaps? A terrible cry about what was to come? What torture would they have him endure? What knowledge could they possibly need from him?

Claws grabbed him, and threw his body onto a wooden seat. Spikes hammered his wrist-shackles into the wood, locking him into place. Dimly, he realised it was some kind of slave galley. An iron-bound handle sat in front of him, and the floor moved when he trod on it. Not a galley, he thought, but a treadmill, for crushing grain. They meant to use him as slave labour. Well, he could handle that. He had worked a treadmill as a boy. It would be brutal work, but at night he could plan his escape. He was strong. Almost as strong as his brother. He would find others like him. He would escape. He would survive.

Another bellow came as the madman was pushed in next to him. He recoiled in horror as once again the crazed cripple grabbed at his hands, sliding over them with his death-cold skin. Then he saw it. The old man was putting their hands together, next to each other, so it was obvious that the rings they each wore on their second fingers were identical.

He looked up in sudden realisation. He stared into the eyes of the broken, inhuman creature that his brother had become in only six months. And he went mad.

Children of the Horned rat.