Lawson switched to Number Four's point of view.
In the darkest corner along the workshop's far-right wall, something was trembling.
One end of a thick iron chain had been welded into the wall.
The other end was looped around a skinny green neck.
A gretchin.
But not quite like any of the gretchin Lawson had seen before.
This one was smaller, only about three-quarters the size of a normal gretchin. Its skin was a paler yellow-green rather than the standard dark green of most greenskins.
What stood out most were its hands.
They were longer and more dexterous than those of any ordinary gretchin.
Thin fingers. Clear joints. Every one of them marked by calluses and old burn scars.
Around its neck, besides the iron chain, was a collar twisted together from wire. Hanging from it were several small metal tags, each etched with rough greenskin lettering.
A Mek's slave-grot.
The kind of rare gretchin that occasionally appeared among their kind with a faint mechanical instinct.
Nowhere near as smart as a true Mekboy, but at least clever enough to know the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver.
Meks chained them in workshop corners and used them as living tools.
When this slave-grot saw Lawson and the Deathsworn approaching, its whole body trembled.
It had seen the Mekboy's death from beginning to end.
If it had been a normal gretchin living within a greenskin tribe, it would never have bowed to a human.
Under the influence of the Waaagh! field, greenskins only worshipped kin who were bigger, greener, and better at fighting.
But this grot was not a normal grot.
It had been chained in the workshop corner for who knew how many standard days.
It belonged to no tribe.
Took part in no Waaagh.
Had no protection from its own kind.
Even the other gretchin would not speak to it.
Long isolation from the tribe had thinned the Waaagh! field around it to almost nothing.
It was just a broken, domesticated slave.
Whoever held the chain was its master.
The Mekboy was dead, but the chain remained.
Now the one standing at the other end of it had changed.
And besides, a gretchin's instinct to survive was carved into its bones.
Faced with a group of armed humans who had butchered eight Ork boyz in thirty seconds, the smartest possible choice for any gretchin, even the most fanatical Waaagh! believer, was obvious.
So the slave-grot did the only thing that made sense in its position.
It knelt.
Its two green knees struck the metal floor.
That yellow-green head dropped as low as it could go, both large ears nearly pressed flat against the deck.
"Don't kill! Useful! Can work! Can hand things over! Can turn screws! Can clean guns! Can do anything!"
"Don't kill! Big humie, please don't kill!"
Lawson looked down at the little thing shaking on its knees.
Number Four already had his Fang of Catachan raised.
"Wait."
Lawson crouched down and studied the slave-grot at close range for several seconds.
Those hands really had spent a long time doing fine mechanical work.
There was a fundamental gulf between human engineering logic and greenskin engineering logic. A human engineer looked at greenskin equipment and asked, How could this possibly work? A greenskin slave-grot instinctively knew which part to kick to make it start, and which bolt to tighten to stop it from exploding.
That kind of built-in knowledge was useful to him.
"Keep it."
Number Four lowered the blade.
Lawson unhooked a two-meter length of monofilament line from his webbing and tied one end tightly around the slave-grot's neck, replacing the old iron chain.
Then he handed the other end of the line to Number One.
"Tie it to your belt. If it runs or causes trouble, that's on you."
Number One fastened the line to his combat harness with an expressionless face.
Lawson looked at the slave-grot still kneeling on the floor and asked a question.
"What's your name?"
The slave-grot froze for a moment.
At the bottom of greenskin society, gretchin usually did not need names.
They were called things like "idiot," or "you," or "that useless little git."
But Mek slave-grots were occasionally given functional nicknames.
"Boss... calls me... Little Wrench."
"Little Wrench." Lawson repeated the name once.
After the workshop was cleaned out, Lawson led everyone back to the stronghold.
Over the next two days, he began large-scale expansion.
Adamant steel reserves were abundant, and Life Points accumulated steadily through constant hunting.
The number of Deathsworn rose rapidly. One batch. Then another. Then another.
Until the stronghold was full of hulking men.
Including Number Six, still guarding the armory alone, Lawson now commanded sixty-one Deathsworn.
Six ten-man squads, each led by one of the more experienced Deathsworn as squad leader.
The eight-hundred-square-meter maintenance bay had become crowded, but Lawson had no intention of relocating yet.
The defensive advantage of this position and the trap network surrounding it were worth far more than a larger space.
During the first rest cycle after the expansion was complete, a small incident unfolded in one corner of the stronghold.
Little Wrench was crouched beside a pile of scrap metal, shaking as it stared at the Deathsworn eating nearby.
Ten Deathsworn from the resting shift were squatting on the floor, using the Fangs of Catachan to carve up roasted Ork meat.
The smell of roasted Ork thigh filled the maintenance bay.
The Deathsworn chewed expressionlessly, and the grinding crunch crunch of tough meat being bitten apart sounded especially clear in the quiet stronghold.
Little Wrench's huge eyes were wide and round.
Its body was trembling, but it did not dare make a sound.
The monofilament line tied around its neck reminded it that any noise displeasing to the boss could mean its head leaving its shoulders.
Lawson noticed the little grot's reaction.
He took a fist-sized chunk of roasted Ork meat from one of the Deathsworn and casually tossed it onto the floor in front of Little Wrench.
"Eat."
Little Wrench looked at the meat.
Then at Lawson.
Then back at the meat.
It shook even harder.
Watching the thing on the verge of tears, Lawson suddenly thought of something.
He opened the system panel and switched his attention to the Scrap Yard.
The residue of Waaagh! energy stripped from Ork souls.
He extracted a tiny amount from it, no bigger than a fingernail, a small clump of green energy residue.
That residue condensed in his hand into a tiny green pellet.
He wrapped it onto the roasted Ork meat.
For a greenskin, Waaagh! energy was almost the source of life itself.
For a starving slave-grot that had spent who knew how long chained up, hungry and miserable, contact with pure Waaagh! residue was like water to someone lost three days in the desert.
Little Wrench's oversized nose twitched twice.
"Ahh!"
It let out a cry completely different from the pitiful squeaks it had made before.
Then it pounced.
Both green claws grabbed the chunk of roasted Ork meat coated with Waaagh! residue.
Its tiny teeth sank into the tough flesh with a force that seemed impossible for so scrawny a body, and the Waaagh! residue clinging to the surface turned the meat of its own kind into something beyond food.
A sacrament.
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