"Dinnae try tae run, ye'll only die tired!"

- Mantra of House Darragut Sniper's Guild

“GO!”

Marcus’ command was barely needed. At his word, Deekius raised his staff to the broken roof of their position and channeled a Glow-Glob directly at the sniper’s position. The globe flew towards his tower and exploded in a dazzling display of blinding light, and then the running began.

The rats poured from their position and started zig-zagging across the streets, stepping over the corpses of their brethren. They ran in groups of five, as instructed, with Marcus having smeared his face with dirt and shavings of hair from some troops that had willingly donated their matted fur. If he didn’t already have at least one virulent disease from this place, then he reckoned he’d probably get one now…

Nonetheless, the strategy worked…for a time. As the rats moved, they obeyed his orders – keep running, stop abruptly and turn, criss-cross each other and move to the next piece of ruined building or rock that afforded some cover. Snipers shoot where you’re going to be, not where you are. If this one was worth his salt, as Marcus suspected, then he’d be predicting. He’d be watching and waiting for the right shot.

As the improvised flashbang died away above them, his squad began to fall. Their movements were effective for a time, allowing them to traverse the squalid streets and avoid most of the sniper’s strikes. Still, whenever they saw the puff of smoke and felt the vibration of his bullets against the ground so close to their feet, they shook with panic, and Marcus had to bark at them to keep on moving.

He would have continued to do so if the ratman next to him hadn’t then fallen, crumpled and twitching, as the sniper’s next shot found its mark.

And that meant he had found him…

Marcus dove for cover behind a ruined wall just as the next shot rang out and brought the statue of a bearded Dwarf crumbling to pieces behind him.

He covered his ears – at this close range the ringing of the shot was so intense that it felt like an artillery barrage. Whatever bullets the Dwarf was employing, they were potent. Potent enough to slice through steel and stone.

“Sire Marcus!” Skeever shouted as he himself dove for the nearest ruined building in the next intersection. “Are you seeing the chapel?”

Marcus looked up and tentatively and scanned the corpse-laden street before him. There it was. Probably only ten meters away. Salvation.

At the church doors stood Gatskeek and his men, waiting, calling out for their comrades.

No! Marcus roared in his brain. Don’t let him know where we –

As one Ratling broke free from their position and sprinted at the church, his head was promptly clipped from his shoulders.

Damn it!

The world once again fell into silence.

Deekius came up the rear, his old bones aching after all the exertion.

“I don’t suppose you have another Glob in you, Deekius?”

The Rat-Priest shook his sweating head. “My power is waning, Sire. I have enough energy for one final spell, as we discussed.”

Marcus nodded. It was now or never, then.

He took one look at Skeever. His eyes communicated all that he needed to.

Ix’s shrill barks could be heard behind them. The little guy was still scurrying along. Probably, his puny size gave him the edge over a sniper. His small head was probably that Dwarf’s worst nightmare.

Marcus stood and, bracing himself, gave his command.

“RUN!”

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The Rats broke free from their positions with a collective cry of fear mixed with rage, each one still living sprinting for the chapel where old Gatskeek waited, cheering them on with a “Be coming! Be coming!”

Marcus heard the distinctive sounds of skulls being perforated. He felt his own legs begin to quake with the stress of the exertion, and yet the sight of the chapel door, coupled with the adrenaline coursing through his veins, was enough to keep him running even when he could no longer feel his legs as they hit the dark, bloody ground beneath him.

His zigzagging became more cumbersome as he neared his final destination. Deekius, Skeever, and the other rats had by this point tossed their weapons away and ran on all fours, totally abiding by their squalid animal instincts. Seeing the speed with which they passed him by, for once, Marcus wished he could be more like them.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, a flash rang out in the dark.

You’ve found me, haven’t you…

“MARCUS!”

Deekius pushed him just out of the bullet’s trajectory. It slammed into the glass windows of the building behind them and sent its shards flying across the ground, leaving both Shai-Alud and Rat-Priest to look up from their prone positions into the flashing eye that was looking down at them from the tower above. An angel of death, about to deliver divine judgement.

Deekius dragged him to his feet, but he knew that, now, it was hopeless.

The eye flashed with dazzling white…

Mari, he thought. Wherever you are, I’m coming.

…and the rusted blade of a scimitar caught the bullet mere inches from his face before embedding itself in the far wall of another decrepit building.

Marcus double blinked, unsure if he was really still standing there, in the dark city of the underworld.

Then Deekius’ pulling yanked him right back to reality.

“Be going!” the rat-priest yelped. “Quick!”

Marcus let the little creature lead him the rest of the way, with Gatskeek grabbing his arm and yanking him inside the abandoned chapel with as much force as an ogre grabbing its prey.

Only then did Marcus notice that his scimitar was missing from its scabbard at his side.

He looked from the scabbard to the rat that stared at him with heavy-set eyes, seeing the impish grin that spread across his furry lips.

“Gatskeek,” he said as Skeever and what remained of his forces made it through the chapel entrance. “You…”

“Be not mentioning it,” the old rat huffed. “Now, we are being even. You are giving my troops their lives. I am giving you yours.”

Marcus staggered, barely able to comprehend what just happened. The sheer luck of it…

“But,” he stammered. “How did you..?”

“I am watching,” Gatskeek said, indicating the top of the spire from where the sniper was still taking shots at the stragglers who couldn’t make it to their safe haven. “Just like he is. The dwarf is taking six seconds to reload between every shot. I am aiming my scimitar in time.”

Marcus could barely believe what the Ratman was telling him.

“You are putting the Shai-Alud’s life in danger!” Deekius railed, stepping forward and flashing his staff threateningly in the unfazed veteran’s face.

“And yet he didn’t,” Marcus said as he stepped between them. “Instead, he performed a miracle that He-Who-Festers would be proud of.”

Deekius retched, looked down at the ground, and bowed with silent admission.

“It seems your God might smile upon you more than you think, Gatskeek,” Marcus said.

“Peh,” the old Rat squeaked. “It is just being luck, that is all.”

The irony was not lost on Marcus. Here they were in previously held enemy territory, holed up and shivering in the ruins of what was clearly a central place of worship for the Dwarves. It was odd, however: although Marcus was assuming that the strange symbols of precious gems and metals surrounded by fire, water, lightning, or other elemental forces that dotted the walls meant this was clearly a place of religious significance, there were no examples of personalized religious iconography typical to most churches. No depictions of Gods, no images of saintly Dwarves wielding golden weapons in their hands. He had been wondering what one looked like all this time. It seemed his first encounter with one would be the sniper, and yet he also knew there was only one way that encounter would go – with one of them ending up dead.

I wonder…Marcus thought as he edged towards the nearest shattered windowpane, looking up from its sill at the tip of the sniper’s post upon the ancient Dwarven spire.

“You are being even uglier than usual, kinsman,” he heard Gatskeek say to Skeever as the latter dropped, panting, to his knees.

“Who would be thinking a Dwarf would lay me low,” Skeever replied, in a tone that was barely audible even as the unnatural quiet of the empty streets descended on them all again.

Marcus couldn’t quite place it, but there was something behind the bulky Ratman’s words. Almost as though he was close to death itself…

“We will be making the fat-beard pay dearly for the insult,” Gatskeek said.

Then, as he had become accustomed to, Marcus felt all the remaining rats eyes glue themselves to his back.

He turned to see what was left of them – a force of 45 men, including Ix’s Kobolds, that were squashed together like a heap of living, breathing pestilence between the four walls of this drab place of worship.

Filthy creatures, yes. Savage, beyond question. But at least four of them had saved his life on numerous occasions in the past few days. For that, at least, he owed them something. He owed them the chance to strike fear in the enemy that had wounded them. He owed them vengeance.

“I assume you are having a plan?” Gatskeek asked him.

Marcus wiped dried blood from his forehead and stretched a smile across his face that would’ve made the most devious Ratman proud.

“Don’t I always?”

###

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