It was quite ridiculous, really—though Duanmu Huai and his companions had fought the Skaven many times, most people in this world didn't even believe they existed.
And the reason was very simple.
Because almost everyone who'd ever seen a Skaven was already dead.
As mentioned before, the Skaven's method of warfare was unlike any other. They never charged in head-on. Instead, they released swarms of plague-ridden rats first, spreading disease to weaken the population. Only when resistance within a city had crumbled would the Skaven pour in through their underground tunnels—and at that point, faced with endless hordes of rats, the fever-ridden soldiers had no hope of survival.
The incident at the Silver City had been an exception only because the Skaven had acted together with the followers of the Plague God. Even then, very few people escaped alive. With such a primitive civilization and such poor communication, most folks dismissed talk of "ratmen attacks" as nothing but superstition or tavern gossip.
That was the Skaven for you—cunning, vile, and detestable vermin.
According to the priest of Sigmar, when he had first arrived in this city, the plague hadn't yet spread here. People even welcomed him, thinking perhaps a Sigmarite cleric could protect their city from the disease.
As it turned out, Sigmar's divine network was "out of service."
Utterly useless.
So, the priest quickly fell out of favor, and when the plague finally broke out, he was branded the very source of it.
"The southern lords did nothing?" Duanmu Huai asked.
"I heard the rulers of several southern cities all died suddenly in one night," the priest replied. "Many high officials too."
"Typical," Duanmu Huai muttered. "That's the damned rats' trick."
Assassination was their specialty—kill the leaders, plunge the government into chaos, then let the plague finish the job.
Still, Duanmu Huai wasn't completely unprepared for this kind of situation.
He just wondered whether the thing Kukuru and the others had developed would actually work.
But it wasn't the time to use it yet.
"Now's not the time to argue about this."
He frowned as the Sigmar priest went on whining.
"You came here—are you here to preach, or to fight the plague?"
"To fight the plague, of course!" the priest said loudly, though his voice soon faltered. "But… as you can see, the people here don't believe in Sigmar…"
"In that case," Duanmu Huai said, tapping the table, "try another method."
"Another method?"
He thought for a moment, then suddenly hummed quietly:
"Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme…"
"Sir Knight?"
Everyone blinked at him—the priest, Lorena, and even Bambi looked confused. Duanmu Huai cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Oh, nothing. Just remembered something. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—you know what those are, right?"
"Yes… herbs. Why?"
"With those four herbs, you can brew something called Four Thieves Vinegar. It's used for disinfection and can help suppress plague. If you're willing, give it a try."
"Really? I… I'll do that."
The priest hesitated, then nodded firmly. He stood, bowed deeply to Duanmu Huai, and hurried off.
"Not bad," Duanmu Huai said with a small nod. "If he'd said something pompous like 'a true cleric doesn't use peasant remedies,' I might've tossed him out myself."
"Sir Knight, was that… a song you were singing just now?" Lorena asked softly.
"Yeah. A ballad."
Duanmu Huai nodded. It was an old folk song from his world—'Scarborough Fair.' He'd thought of it because, back on the player forums, when people discussed the Skaven plague event, some historian-type player once mentioned that the disease was basically a fantasy version of the Black Death.
That same poster had shared a little trivia: during the Black Death, people used a disinfectant called Four Thieves Vinegar.
According to the story, during the plague years, four thieves were caught looting the homes of the dead—but somehow, they never got infected. Curious, the guards asked them how they managed to avoid the disease. The thieves revealed that they'd made a special vinegar infusion from parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, soaking cloth in it to cover their faces and hands whenever they went out to steal.
The mixture supposedly worked, and the recipe spread, earning the name Four Thieves Vinegar.
That same forum post went on to say—half-jokingly—that 'Scarborough Fair' was actually a song about the plague.
"Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there,
She once was a true love of mine…"
And the second verse—"Tell her to find me an acre of land, between the salt water and the sea strand"—wasn't about love at all, but a dying man asking his beloved to find him a grave.
Morbid stuff.
Players back then had joked that they'd learned an utterly useless bit of trivia… though most admitted they'd never listen to the song the same way again.
Still, someone even tried brewing "Four Thieves Vinegar" in-game and selling it during the plague event—and, apparently, it worked, at least a little. Duanmu Huai wasn't sure whether that was true or not, but hey, it couldn't hurt to try.
Vinegar was a disinfectant, after all. When he was a kid, his family used to boil vinegar in flu season to "purify the air."
Couldn't be completely useless.
"Anyway, nothing special," he said, finishing his explanation. Then he looked at the others. "Now—what do you make of what that priest said?"
Before leaving, the Sigmarite priest had mentioned a clue: while preaching, he'd run into men from the Religious Tribunal of the southern provinces.
The southern lands were different from the Empire and Bretonnia. Being a federation of independent territories, they had no official "state religion." Instead, they'd created a centralized administrative body to manage and coordinate all the different faiths—essentially a Religious Tribunal.
Unlike Duanmu Huai's Inquisition, though, this tribunal's role was mostly to mediate disputes between churches, not root out heresy.
However, according to the priest, he had seen these tribunal agents leading soldiers in pursuit of a brother and sister.
"A brother and sister?" Duanmu Huai repeated.
"Yes. They say the boy carries the blood of a Chaos god—and some claim the plague and the rat infestation began because of him."
That made Duanmu Huai pause.
"Probably just coincidence," Lorena said, frowning. Odelle nodded slightly beside her.
"When times get hard," Odelle murmured, "people always look for someone to blame. It makes their own guilt easier to bear. As long as it's someone else's fault, they can tell themselves they're innocent."
Her voice carried a shadow of bitterness—perhaps remembering the day she was cast aside and humiliated. (Though, if Duanmu Huai were honest, she hadn't been entirely blameless either—but now wasn't the time to say so.)
"Can't we help these people at all?" Bambi asked, her small brows furrowed.
Duanmu Huai shrugged. "Not really. Even if Anne were here, I doubt she could fix this."
Magic from Manaria didn't include plague healing; that was alchemists' work. And the Skaven plague wasn't a simple disease—it was a curse as much as an infection. In this case, divine healing would actually be more effective. Ideally, they needed priests of Shallya, Goddess of Healing and Mercy.
Sending a Sigmarite to stop a plague was like asking a general to perform surgery—completely absurd.
So, maybe the southern provinces weren't doing nothing… they just weren't doing anything useful.
"In any case," Duanmu Huai said finally, standing, "there's nothing more we can do here. Let's move on—to the heartland. We'll see how bad it really is."
They were still only on the border of the southern lands, and if even the outskirts looked like this, the center must be catastrophic. If the plague and the rat infestation spread further, countless refugees would flood north into Bretonnia—and after just ending its civil war, the country could hardly handle that.
Only by going deeper could they learn how dire the situation truly was.
(End of Chapter)