Ix wished these ratman mounts wouldn’t sway around so much.

He missed the cool, flat backs of the Skogs that he rode into battle on the dangerous raids against the fat dwarves in their stone houses before this war started. But even the tiniest Yip knows that things change. One day you think you have leaped your highest leap. The next day you find that there is another mountain to overcome.

Such thoughts buzzed in his mind as he kicked the Spineripper gently and brought it to a halt before the narrow pass that led from the edge of Ratman territory to Boss Skegga’s dominion.

“Head Yip Ix?” one of his men asked him. “What be problem?”

Ix scanned the slowly moving objects he saw in the distance, his eyes picking out rolling stones clustered together between the two great canyons dubbed Razor-Tooth pass.

“Be holding,” he said to his men. “There be big-big trouble ahead.”

He led his meagre unit of six over to a rocky crater and ordered them to fall prone. Looking over the lip of their position, they could pick out the size of the force that was surely coming for them.

But the sound – that was what hit their ears first.

Ix would be lying if the joyous cries of his once-brothers did not inspire some small sense of longing in him. He looked upon the force of Skogriders and slingers as they emerged from between the pass like a red haze of bloody death, the faces of every kobold smeared with the purple blood of dwarves or ratmen prisoners, some of whom they carried with them on wooden poles. They had spread their limbs and strung them up like grisly artistic projects. For what purpose, Ix could only guess at.

As the little Kobold tried counting each head that emerged from the pass – counting at least 300 troops before he realized this was no mere raiding party. For, at the center of the horde, a lumbering steel giant trundled forward on two spoked wheels – its shiny skin glistening in the darkness of the cavern, every inch it moved causing the ground to quake beneath it.

“By Kalyip!” one of Ix’s men cried. “It is dwarven gun-gun!”

“Big dwarven gun-gun,” Ix corrected.

He sat back down and looked into the eyes of his men as they shook with terror. Even the ratman Spinerippers seemed to shake to behold the great, beastly cannon – they knew that its roar brought one thing alone: death.

“What we do-do?” Ix’s men asked. “Sire Marcus cannot win-win against dwarf gun!”

“We should run-run, quick-quick!” another Kobold spat, practically twitching in terror. “We should be joining the troops! Skegga will not know-know we are traitors. He will let us come back-back, yes?”

The sound of Ix’s hoofed-foot stamping on the hard stone ground brought the men suddenly and abruptly back to their senses.

“If I am knowing anything,” he said. “It is to never be under-estimating Sire Marcus. We run-run to him. We tell him what come-comes. And we will win.”

…

Deekius couldn’t have asked for a more undisciplined bunch of soldiers.

Fort Spearclaw was a mess. No – a pile of filth would have at least had some use as a font of worship for He-Who-Festers. This fort was nothing but a glorified hovel. A place for rats to die in.

He and his entourage of Marrow rat soldiers were met at the gates by an unimpressed guard wielding a shortsword that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. Not a single bloodstain coated the blade.

“We are not needing a priest,” the gatehouse captain had said, before ordering the gate to be shut.

Deekius stood firm. He slammed his staff into the ground and amplified his voice with the gift of the Gloomraav. “You will not be turning away the Gloomraava that summoned Shai-Alud into this world!” he bellowed. “We are coming to liberate this village. And we are calling upon you to aid us.”

The soldiers lining the fort walls chuckled – though the action was a paltry imitation of laughter at best.

“Be going home, soap-munching priest!” one of the crossbow-wielding archers on the dingy fort battlements spat back down at him. “We are independent fort now! We no more take orders from He-Who-Festers, or King Shrykul! If he is being offended, he can be coming here to take the fort back himself!”

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The rats of the battlements then proceeded to lift up their leathers and display their furry buttocks for Deekius and his men to see, before they subsequently defecated down the side of their own walls.

“Be letting us at them, Gloomraava,” one of the tough Marrow-rats said beside Deekius. “We of Clan Marrow are knowing how to deal with disrespect.”

But Deekius was cool. He simply turned his attention back to the rat who was still standing at the gate before them, staring at the priest and his armored entourage.

“What is being your name?” Deekius asked.

The lazy rat spat out a clod of Glitterpak meat and said, “Regurg.”

Deekius straightened up, ignoring the laughter of the men who still wiggled their butts at him from above.

“Who is being your commander, here?”

Regurg shrugged and flashed a sly smile at the priest. “You are talking to him.”

Deekius flashed his ignorant smile right back at him, making sure the rats on the battlefield were watching. “I am invoking Right of Greyfang.”

Regurg stiffened and twitched his whiskers in consternation and Deekius’s smirk widened. It looked like the rat still knew what the ancient decree of the old Warlard Greyfang meant when a ratman invoked it: a duel to the death.

“The words of the Warlord are meaning nothing here,” he said. “Not anymore.”

“You are refusing, then?” Deekius asked.

He had him – the priest knew how prideful these Talon-Commanders could be. Even one such as this – who had long since given up his loyalty to his King – could not survive a single month without the unbridled trust of his men, and rejecting the Right of Greyfang would mark him as a coward in their eyes. Even now, Deekius could see that they had ceased their childish pranks, and were now absorbed in the discussion that was taking place, looking to their once-Lord for his answer.

Our kind are born to serve, Deekius thought as he looked at the gradually building tension behind the commander of Spearclaw’s eyes. To give up position of power is being worse than death.

“You think I am being afraid of Gloomraava such as you?” he asked, gesticulating wildly more, Deekius knew, as a show for his men than anything else. “Fine. We shall be meeting in the center of this fort, and you shall be falling under my blade!”

Without any further fanfare the furious rat stormed into his fort and drew his virgin shortsword, taking a few drunken practice swings through the air as his crossbowmen came down from the battlements to get the best seats in the house for what was about to transpire.

Deekius calmly walked through the puddles of mud and shit and bloated corpses that littered the ground of this place. Already he could see why these rats had become indolent – their mounds of dead numbered in the dozens. They had both a wealth of food, and a reminder that their opponents were far stronger than they.

“They are holing up in here like water-bathing wretches!” one of Deekius’ Marrow guards spat. “Is this truly how pathetic the warriors of Clan Red-Eye are being? Be letting me fight as your champion, Gloomraava. I shall be slaying this heretic in seconds.”

“Be still,” Deekius warned the soldier as he craned his neck, staring down the hopping form of Regurg currently engaged in psyching himself up. “And do not be intervening. No matter what.”

Both ratmen squared off in the middle of the cragged peak Spearclaw was built upon, their toes grinding grey pebble between them. The rats of the fort slung their weapons and respected the tradition with dignity, telling Deekius that there might still be some hope for these lazy wretches.

At least, he thought with a sly grin. We will be punishing them after the war is won.

A single bead of sweat dropped from Regurg’s frayed brows as he circled the priest’s tiny, hunchbacked form, and as soon as it hit the dry earth, he charged.

“Har-YAH!”

His swipe came down upon Deekius’ staff and knocked the Gloomraava back against a haybale beside the fortress’ North wall. Deekius rose, winded, and only narrowly managed to avoid the high slash of Regurg’s next attack that shore through the hair on his forehead.

As the Gloomraava rolled to the side of the now cocky warrior, he saw the beast hold up his blade and display the specks of green blood that oozed across its edge.

“Be bearing witness!” he roared to the crowd. “Tonight, we are dining on Gloomraava blood!”

As his horde cheered him on from the battlements, Deekius’ entourage began to surge forward.

But the ratman held up his gnarled claw, tasting the blood that dripped from his skull.

“I am telling you,” he said. “Do not be intervening.”

The rats of Clan Marrow then beheld the Gloomraava stand, lapping at the small rivers of blood that cascaded down his own face and snarling a devious, bone-chilling smile.

“The noble servant of weakling Shrykul is going mad!” Regurg shouted to his cheering men. “Well, should I be putting him out of his misery?”

“Be taking the head from his bastard shoulders!” his men yelled back at him.

Deekius, meanwhile, breathed deep the air of the Underkingdom. He stared forwards, eyes probing the body of his ratman opponent.

He placed his hands, palm up, on the ground.

He whispered words that the rats of Clan Marrow had never heard another rat utter.

“You are seeing your death, Gloomraava?” Regurg spat in the face of his apparent prostration. “Then, be allowing me to finish you!”

Regurg surged towards his opponent with a mad bellow of animal rage spilling from his lips. His bulging arm came swinging down in a mercy-strike that would have taken any rat’s head clean from his shoulders.

Any rat, that is, except his opponent.

For when Deekius opened his eyes and looked upon the blade of the unworthy commander, he saw nothing more than a child paralyzed with fear.

###

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