Captain Donal's Report 

It was a little after midnight when the alert was first raised.  Assistant Engineer Maurice Flaubert was on duty in the pump-house and noted that water wheel three had stopped for no apparent reason and then restarted.  Master Gunri was summoned, and was present in the pump-house when wheel two similarly stopped and restarted.  His conclusion was that something was working its way up the stream – a conclusion that turned out to be correct.

Master Gunri came immediately to the third floor and woke me, and together we went and woke his lordship.  He immediately suited up in his armour, while her ladyship was taken up to the upper floors.  A runner then arrived to tell us that the third wheel had also stopped and restarted.  I sent orders to rouse a squad of men and station them in the Barbican against the possibility that whoever was coming might attempt to enter there or one of the other outer buildings, however we were fairly certain that a single intruder – for so the length of the pauses in the wheels indicated – was likely to be an assassin, which meant they were probably after Sir Robert as there were no other nobles of note in residence at the time.

Sir Robert himself took up a position with me to watch the Round Hall from one of the passageways in the roof area.  Here we saw the skaven crossing the hall.  Fortunately he went around to the right past the stairs down to the kitchens, which allowed Gunri to slip out and instruct the guards in the Barbican to advance and seal the entrance to the tower.  We were slightly worried about this, but we didn’t want a nervous guard suddenly sounding the alarm and Gunri had been told to act as if he suspected nothing, so the skaven succeeded in ‘avoiding’ him.

As soon as the assassin entered the staircase, the guards came inside and closed the doors of the tower.  Sir Robert and I made our way back up to the privy guard chambers and waited.   Sir Robert insisted on facing the intruder one-on-one, so rather than surrounding him and simply taking him, we waited behind the door to the privy guard until we saw him entering the second floor chambers, then followed him to the bedroom.

Sir Robert, as I said, had insisted on facing the intruder alone – and he almost succeeded.  Her ladyship, however, insisted even more strongly that he bring the dogs with him.  I entered the bedchamber behind him, with a squad of guards just behind me, and I saw him knock the skaven down.  That was our signal to advance – he could have just as easily killed him there and then, but he chose to use the flat of his blade to prevent any blood getting on the carpet!  I could scarcely believe it, and I thought it was all up when the rat flung that knife at him with his tail and it struck his helm.  But he got away with it.

We executed the rat-man around the back, near the pump-house.  Gurni insisted on getting out his axe and doing it himself.  “This’ll larn ye to mess with ma turbine wheels!” he said, and that was the last thing the skaven heard before he brought his axe down.  We chucked the body onto the midden, no sense wasting time burying the vermin after all.

All in all, it was an interesting night.  It showed that our defences worked, but the skaven seem to have got hold of a lot of information on the layout of the Keep, which is somewhat worrying.  They’ll know he failed – it’s fairly obvious that his lordship is still alive after all, even if they don’t find the body of their assassin.  Hopefully they won’t know why, however, and will make the same mistakes if they try again – which I fear they will.