The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  The loud, raucous communal croak of a number of carrion birds let him know he’d reached his destination, and he quickly assumed a mask of genteel calm. It wouldn’t do to show any weakness, emotional or otherwise, to a creature like the Crowfiend. He’d asked Elize’s creature to meet him in the castle’s high garden. There were things Mannfred needed to ask him, to lend weight to or dismiss those theories now burgeoning in his mind.

  A brace of skeletons, clad in bronze cuirasses and holding bronze-headed, long-hafted axes, guarded the entrance to the open-air, walled garden. He stepped past them, and as he entered the garden, a flock of black-feathered birds leapt skywards, screaming in indignation. He watched them swoop and wheel for a moment. Vlad had always felt a ghastly affection for the beasts. Mannfred had never understood how a creature as powerful as Vlad could waste his attentions feeding sweetmeats to such vermin, when there were more important matters to be attended to.

  The Crowfiend sat on one of the cracked, discoloured marble benches that encircled the garden’s single, crooked tree. The fat-trunked monstrosity was long dead, but somehow it still grew, drawing gods alone knew what sort of nourishment from the castle into whose mortar it had sunk its roots. Erikan stood as Mannfred approached. Mannfred gestured for him to sit. He gazed at the other vampire for a moment.

  The Crowfiend had a face that radiated feral placidity. There was no obvious guile in him. Cunning, yes, and cleverness, but no guile. He was not a subtle creature, but neither was he stupid. There was something familiar there as well – a raw need that Mannfred recognised in himself. A hunger that was greater than any bloodthirst or flesh-greed. Mannfred drew close to the other vampire and caught his chin in an iron grip. He pulled Erikan’s face up. ‘I can see the ghoul-taint in your face, boy. Elize tells me that your kin were corpse-eaters, though not so debased as those that prowl these halls.’

  ‘They were, my lord,’ Erikan said.

  ‘They were burned, I am given to understand.’

  ‘Yes,’ Erikan said, and he displayed no more emotion than if he’d been speaking of a rat he’d killed. Mannfred wondered if such lack of feeling was a mask. Vampires, contrary to folk belief and superstition, did not lose the ability to feel emotion. Indeed, undeath often enhanced such things. Sometimes every emotion was redoubled and magnified, stretched almost into caricature. Love became lust, passion became obsession, and hatred… Ah, hatred became something so venomous as to make even daemons flinch. And sometimes, they became as dust, only a fading memory of emotion, a brief, dull flicker of fires burned low.

  ‘If I were to say to you that the world is soon to die, what would you say?’

  ‘I’d say that I’d like to see that, my lord,’ Erikan said.

  Mannfred blinked. He meant it, too. He let him go. ‘Is existence so burdensome to you?’

  Erikan shrugged. ‘No. I merely meant that if the world is to burn, I might as well help stoke the fires,’ he said.

  ‘You believe it is time for a change, then?’

  Erikan looked away. ‘Change doesn’t frighten me, my lord.’

  ‘No, perhaps it doesn’t, at that. Perhaps that is why Elize chose you – she has always had a streak of perversity in her, my lovely cousin. She was a sister of Shallya once, you know. She was at Isabella’s side, when she passed over from the wasting illness, and Vlad wrenched her back from Morr’s clutches. Poor, gentle Elize was Isabella’s first meal upon awakening. And she served as the countess’s handmaiden until her untimely end.’

  Erikan said nothing. Mannfred smiled thinly. ‘Very loyal is Elize. Loyal, trustworthy, her ambition kept on the tightest of leashes. Why did she toss you aside, I wonder?’ The other vampire cocked his head, but did not reply. For a moment, Mannfred was reminded of a carrion bird. He gestured airily. ‘I don’t suppose it matters. She brought you over, and that is more a gift than most get in this fallen world.’ He turned away and strode to the tree. ‘You came from Couronne, I’m given to understand,’ Mannfred said. He gazed up at the tree. Idly he jabbed a talon into the spongy surface of the trunk. Black ichors oozed out of the cut. He glanced back at Erikan and sucked the sour sap off his finger.

  Erikan nodded slowly. ‘I did.’

  ‘The Serpent fell, then,’ Mannfred said.

  Erikan nodded again. ‘We were defeated.’

  ‘And what of Arkhan the Black?’

  Erikan jolted, as if struck. ‘What about him, my lord?’

  ‘What happened to him in the aftermath?’

  ‘I don’t know, my lord,’ Erikan said. ‘I and– I was with Mallobaude’s bodyguard.’ His face twisted slightly. He shook himself. ‘Some say Arkhan was never there at Couronne to begin with. That he had used Mallobaude as a diversion for some other scheme. Others say that the Green Knight struck off his head as he had Mallobaude’s.’

  Mannfred grunted. ‘No such luck,’ he muttered. He looked back at Erikan. ‘But he was there – in Bretonnia – of this you’re certain?’

  ‘I saw him, though only at a distance, my lord. It was him. He rode in a chariot of bone, which bore banners of crackling witch-fire and was pulled by skeletal steeds surmounted by the skulls of men, which screamed out in agony as they galloped.’

  Mannfred nodded. ‘That sounds just ostentatious enough to be truthful,’ he murmured. The liche had long since lost any subtlety he had possessed in life. Arkhan had none of a vampire’s inbuilt sense of discretion. He was almost… theatrical.

  What had the liche been after, he wondered? He was about to inquire further as to Arkhan’s activities when movement drew his eye, and he glanced up. A pale face stared down at him from among the crooked, arthritic branches of the tree, its features twisted in a mocking smile as flickering shadows gathered at the corner of his vision. Was it Vlad’s face? Or someone else’s… The features were at once Vlad’s and those of a youth from some other land, handsome and terrible and noble and bestial all at once. The thin-lipped mouth moved, but no sound came out. Nonetheless, Mannfred heard it as clear as if it had whispered in his ear. ‘La Maisontaal Abbey,’ he muttered. He blinked and shook himself. The face was gone, as were the shadows, leaving behind only a dark echo of a man’s sonorous chuckle. He felt like a child being guided towards a treat. Irritated, he gouged the trunk of the tree again, leaving five suppurating wounds in its soft bark.

  Of course it was La Maisontaal. Of course! Why else would the liche have bothered with a backwater like Bretonnia? Mannfred stared at the sap seeping from the tree. But why come here, now? Unless… He grunted. Arkhan’s goals were as unsubtle as the liche himself. He had ever been Nagash’s tool. He had no more free will than the dead who served him.

  He was coming for those items that Mannfred now possessed, and had spent no little effort in acquiring. His lips peeled back from his fangs as he contemplated the audacity of the creature – to come here, to Sylvania, to take what was Mannfred’s by right of blood and conquest? No, no, that would not do.

  ‘Once a thief, always a thief,’ he snarled. He turned, his cloak flaring about him like the stretched wing of a gigantic bat. Erikan started, and tried to stand as Mannfred swooped upon him. He grabbed the other vampire gently by the throat with both hands, forcing him to remain still. ‘Thank you, boy, for your candour. It is much appreciated,’ Mannfred purred. ‘Tell your mistress and her oaf of a progeny Anark to ready the defences of this citadel. I expect the Drakenhof Templars to defend what is mine with their lives, if it comes to it.’

  He released Erikan and strode towards the doorway, cloak swirling. Erikan rose to his feet and asked, ‘And what of you, Lord Mannfred? What should I say you are doing?’

  ‘I, dear boy, am going to confront the invader in person. I would take measure of my enemy before crushing his skull to powder beneath my boot-heel.’

  Vargravia, Sylvania

  If he had been capable of it, Arkhan the Black would have been in a foul mood. As it was, he merely felt a low throb of dissatisfaction as he led his rotting, stumbling forc
es through the blighted foothills of Vargravia. It had been a matter of mere moments to use his magics to rip a hole in the immense bone wall that carved off Sylvania from the rest of the world, but the blackened and shattered bone had repaired itself with an impressive speed. More than half of his army had been left on the other side of the gap, but there was nothing for it. He could always raise more to replace them. If there was one thing that Sylvania didn’t lack, it was corpses.

  And it would be easier now, as well. There was something in the air, here; or, rather, there was something missing. He looked up, scanning the dark sky overhead. It had been daylight when he’d crossed the border, only moments before. But the skies of Sylvania were as black as pitch, and charnel winds caused the trees to rustle in a way that, had he still possessed hackles, would have caused them to bristle. He could taste death on the wind the way another might smell the smoke of not-so-distant fire.

  But despite all of that, they were going too slowly. It had taken him longer than he’d hoped to reach Sylvania. The power of Chaos was growing, and Arkhan could feel the world quiver, like a man afflicted with ague. The winds of magic blew erratically, and things from outside the walls of reality were clambering over the threshold in ever-increasing numbers. More than once, he’d been forced to defend himself from cackling nightmares from the outer void, drawn to the scent of sorcery that permeated him. Beasts gathered in the hills and forests, making them traps for the unwary, and the land heaved with conflict in a way it never had before. It was as if the world were tearing itself apart in a frenzy.

  Perhaps that was why his master had begun to speak to him once more. Ever since he had been resurrected from his first death by Nagash’s magics, an echo of the latter’s voice had occupied his head. A comforting murmur that had never truly faded or weakened, even when Nagash himself had ceased to be. For years he had refused to acknowledge it for what it was, and had lied to himself, boasting of autonomy to the soulless husks that did his bidding. An easy thing to do when the voice grew dim, retreating to a barely heard buzz of mental static. But, over the course of recent decades, it had begun to grow in volume again. It had whispered to him in his black tower, compelling him to rise and strive once more, though there seemed to be no reason to do so.

  His first inkling that it was not merely a stirring in the dregs of his imagination was when the armies of Mannfred von Carstein had marched on the ruins of Lahmia. Such arrogance was well within the remit of every vampire he’d ever met, but the sheer scale of the undertaking was a thing unmatched in his experience. Von Carstein had wanted something from the ruins of Lahmia. Whether he’d found it or not, Arkhan did not know. Von Carstein had fled before the might of Lybaras and its High Queen. But something had compelled the vampire to strike at Lahmia, and then later, Nagashizzar.

  When Queen Khalida had made to return the favour a few centuries later, Arkhan had travelled with her to Sylvania, in pursuit of one of Mannfred’s get. Mannfred himself was long dead by that point, sunk into the mire of Hel Fenn, but the dark spirit that had compelled him to attack the Lands of the Dead was obviously present in those creatures of his creation. They came again and again, looking for something. In this case, it had been one of Nagash’s lesser staves of power – not Alakanash, the Great Staff, but a weaker version of it.

  And like all tools forged by the Great Necromancer, it had had a whisper of his consciousness in it. Nagash had ever imparted something of himself, something of his vast and terrible soul, in everything of his making. Arkhan had taken the staff for his own, and though he’d held it aloft, the voice he’d long thought banished from his mind returned. It had howled in his mind, the chains of an ancient subjugation had rattled and he had begun his quest.

  Upon Nagash’s destruction by the brute hillman now venerated by the people of the Empire, those artefacts of his design had been scattered to the four winds by plot and chance. The will that pressed upon Arkhan’s own had whispered to him his new task – to find these missing treasures. He was to seek out and gather the nine Books of Nagash, the mighty Crown of Sorcery, the Black Armour of Morikhane and the Great Staff, Alakanash, all of which had vanished into the weft and way of history. And there was the Fellblade of foul memory, and certain other things that must be brought together. Lastly, he required the withered Claw of Nagash, struck from the Great Necromancer’s arm by the edge of the Fellblade, and lost for millennia.

  Once all of these had been gathered, Arkhan could begin the last great working. Then, and only then, could the Great Necromancer return to the world, which was his by right of birth and fate. And it was Arkhan’s task to help Nagash do so, even if it meant his obliteration in the doing of it. Such thoughts had rebounded against the walls of his skull for centuries, growing stronger and stronger, until it had reached a crescendo of such power that Arkhan was hard pressed to tell his thoughts from those of his master.

  Two of the Books of Nagash were in his possession even now, strapped to the backs of his servants. And he knew where Alakanash and the Black Armour were. But someone had beaten him to the other items, or so the voice in his skull whispered again and again. And that someone, he had been assured, was Mannfred von Carstein, resurrected from the grave even as Arkhan himself had been.

  That the information had come from the sore-encrusted lips of one as untrustworthy as Heinrich Kemmler, the self-proclaimed Lichemaster, did not make Arkhan doubt its veracity overmuch. Kemmler had returned to the Grey Mountains after some time in the Empire, retreating to lick his wounds after nearly losing his head to the bite of a dwarf axe at Castle Reikguard. Mallobaude had sought him out, despite Arkhan’s objections. The Lichemaster could not be trusted in such matters. His mind was disordered and he chafed at subordination.

  Nonetheless, he had been intrigued to learn of Kemmler’s brief alliance with von Carstein, as well as the vampire’s acquisition of an elven princess of some standing. Kemmler had seen several of the items in question during this affair, and he, being no fool whatever his other proclivities, knew that there was some black plan brewing in the vampire’s crooked brain.

  What that plan was, Kemmler hadn’t been able to say, and Arkhan felt disinclined to guess. The Books of Nagash were tomes of great power, and the Crown was a relic beyond all others. Any one of them would have served Mannfred adequately in whatever petty dreams fed his ambition. But to gather them all? That was a mystery indeed.

  From somewhere far behind him, there was a great crackle of blossoming bone. He turned to watch as the yellowing shell of the wall repaired itself at last. A number of his slower followers were caught and pulverised, their rotting carcasses disintegrating as spears and branches of bone tore through them. Arkhan leaned on his staff, one fleshless palm resting on the pommel of the great tomb-blade that sat in its once-ornate and now much-reduced sheath on his hip.

  ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ Arkhan rasped. It had required great magic to create that wall, and maintain it. Mannfred had been busy. He reached up and scratched the maggoty chin of the zombie cat laying across his shoulders. He’d found the animal in Quenelles and, on some dark, unexplainable whim, resurrected it. In life, it had been a scar-faced tomcat, big and lanky and foul-tempered. Now, it was still as big and even worse-tempered, albeit sloughing off its hair and skin at an alarming rate, even for a zombie. Arkhan suspected that the animal was doing it to be contrary. The cat gurgled in a parody of pleasure and Arkhan clicked his teeth at it. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’

  Mannfred had sealed off Sylvania efficiently enough, but Arkhan did not think he was responsible for the sour ring of faith that now enclosed the province as effectively as a dungeon door locked and barred by a gaoler. No, that particular working stank of Chamon, the yellow wind of magic – dense and metallic. That meant the involvement of men, for only they employed such basic sorceries for such complex tasks. Arkhan had little familiarity with the barbaric lands of the Empire, though he’d warred on them more than once. That they had sorcerers capable of such a wreaking
was moderately surprising. That Mannfred had aggravated them into doing so, was not.

  ‘I still can’t believe that you brought that cat with you.’ Arkhan turned at the harsh croak, and examined the angular, patchwork face of the man who stomped towards him. Ogiers was – or had been – a nobleman of Bretonnia. Now he was a horseless vagabond, whose once-minor interest in necromancy had suddenly become his only means of protection, in the wake of Mallobaude’s failed rebellion. He was also a giant of a man, who towered over the bodies of his former men-at-arms.

  ‘And I can’t believe that something so inconsequential weighs so heavily on your mind,’ Arkhan said. ‘And you do have a mind, Ogiers. That’s why I pulled you from under the hooves of your kinsmen’s horses. What of the others? Did we leave anyone on the other side?’

  ‘Some. No one consequential. That jackanapes Malfleur and that giggling maniac from Ostland. Fidduci made it through, as did Kruk,’ Ogiers said with a shrug. Arkhan stroked his cat and considered the man before him. Ogiers’s beard, once so finely groomed, had become a rat’s nest, and his face was splotched with barely healed cuts and bruises. Big as he was, he slumped with exhaustion. He’d discarded most of his armour during the retreat over the Grey Mountains, but he’d kept what he could – more, Arkhan suspected, for sentimental reasons than anything else. The other necromancers likely looked just as tired. He’d pressed them hard since they’d reached the borderlands, keeping them moving without stopping. He forgot sometimes, how heavy flesh could be. It was like an anchor around you, bone and spirit.