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Skarr held his sword with the point facing down and removed a small dagger from a pouch at his bet. He leaned against the mountain face and started to scrape the dagger along the blade to sharpen it. This was his first sword, as long as his arm and a half, and with serrated with almost hook-like notches. His other sword, his new sword, was still bound in its troll-skin sheath on his back. He finished sharpening the weapon and sheathed it at his belt, glancing up at the line of Goblins and Orcs picking their way up the lower slopes of the mountain.
'How long-long till they get here, you think-think?' Skarr murmured to Skrak, the renegade assassin who'd joined his clan. Skrak was wrapped in his customary garb, long sheets of cloth as black as Skarr's fur. Skarr couldn't see any weapons on the enigmatic killer, but he was sure they were there.
'Maybe another tenth of a day-day, the going is tough-tough.' Skrak hissed back in that Cathayan accent of his.
'Good,' Skarr replied. 'Take-take a few of your scouts and put a few rockslides into them. We wouldn't want-want them eager to fight when they get-get here, would we?'
Skarr reached up to his shoulder and patted the hilt of his magical blade, just for reassurance. The hilt felt warm, almost throbbing under his touch. He had seen it wrought of elf-metal, from the armour of a traveller they had ambushed. The blade had a hollow channel running through the middle of it, and Skoot, his warlock, had packed it with warp-dust and magical compounds. The whole thing had been heated carefully again, to solidify the warp-dust and cause the metal to expand. He himself had cut his own arm and cooled the hot sword with his own blood. And today it would be warmed with the blood of others. He turned back to the tunnel entrance at the back of the ledge, and saw Skoot and his apprentices shuffling out and easing themselves onto a ledge just above the one he himself stood on. He called to the magician,
'You and the rest-rest of your chanting little new-borns had better-better do something impressive with your hocus-pocus this time-time, or I'll rip your throats out and drink your blood, weak-weak and thin as it is!' The other reason that he had got the sword, of course, was the fact that he'd nearly been hit by a spectacularly miss-firing fireball in the last battle the Clan had fought.
The Orc horde was large, for sure. A unit of Orcs waving a variety of crude clubs and axes were in the centre, being urged on by a huge brute half again as big as them, covered in scraps of armour and waving a massive blade. This was flanked by mobs of Goblins waving stabbing spears and short bows. On the left flank of the approaching army was a scurrying group of Goblins with brightly coloured feathers all over them, riding on spiders larger even than the mutants in the Clan Moulder breeding holes at the bottom of the Clan's burrows. On the other side came a group of creatures which Skarr really did not like the look of: green-scaled trolls waving tree limbs and boulders, stumbling as a large Goblin with a staff screamed at them in a shrill voice. The wing blowing up the mountain just carried the shrieks to Skarr, unfortunately accompanied by the stink of the trolls. A rancid mixture of rotten fish, decaying meat and excretion attacked Skarr's pointed nose, forcing him to sneeze. He called into the mouth of the tunnel,
'It is time-time! Let these green skins see the might-might of THE SKAVEN!'
His Clan Guard were the first to emerge, their long spears held high, a bare hand or so below the tunnel roof, their musician beating out a solid thudding beat on the hollow log strapped around his back with a long cudgel. Skarr took up his position at the head of them, long, torn black cloak fluttering raggedly behind him. His prize fighters were almost as good as those Storm Vermin the bigger Clans hired, but cheaper to use, were loyal personally to him. At least as loyal as the Skaven mind is capable. They stopped at the edge of the ledge, drum still booming its challenge to the climbing Orcs. Skarr glanced over his shoulder to see two groups of swarming Clanrats scurried out of the tunnels and stopped on either side of the Clan Guard. A ragged pack of slaves were being pushed to the edge of the ledge to his right, several falling off. A roar off to his left indicated that his new unit of Rat Ogres was in position, the roars being accompanied by the rattle of chains and the crack of whips. The hulking giants had better be as mean as they looked, or the alliance with Clan Moulder was off faster than he could gut a snotling. And that was pretty fast, he'd been practising on slaves.

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