The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  He considered leaving them, while he forged ahead, but knew that would only be inviting trouble. They were frightened of him, but fear only went so far. He needed to keep them where he could see them.

  Mallobaude’s rebellion had stirred a hornet’s nest of necromantic potential. In the months before his first, tentative missives had reached Arkhan in his desert exile, Mallobaude had sought to gather a colloquium of sorcerers and hedge-wizards to counter the witches of the lake and wood who bolstered the tottering throne of his homeland. Dozens of necromancers and dark sorcerers had responded, trickling over the Grey Mountains in ones and twos, seeking the Serpent’s favour. When Arkhan had arrived at last, he’d been forced to initiate a cull of the gathered magic-users. Most were merely fraudsters or crooked creatures with only a bit of lore and a cantrip or two – hardly useful in a war. These he butchered and added to the swelling ranks of dead, where they’d be more useful.

  Others he’d sent off to the fringes of the uprising, to distract and demoralise the enemy. The rest he’d gathered about him as his aides. He’d rescued the best of these in the final hours of the rebellion, gathering them to him and whisking them away from harm. Many hands made quick work, and he had much to do. The angles of the Corpse Geometries were bunching and skewing as the world shuddered beneath the weight of some newborn doom. The world had teetered on the edge of oblivion for centuries and it appeared that something had, at last, decided to simply tip it over.

  The thought was neither particularly pleasant nor especially unpleasant to Arkhan, who had long ago shed such mortal worries. Death was rest, and life a burden. He had experienced both often enough to prefer the former, but the latter could never entirely be shed, thanks to the grip Nagash held on his soul. ‘We will keep moving. Let the dead fall. This land is full of corpses, and we no longer have need of these. They merely serve to slow us down.’ He swept out a hand, and the shambling legions at their back twitched and collapsed as one with a collective sigh, all save the two enormous corpses that bore the heavy, iron-bound Books of Nagash in their arms. The two zombies had, in life, been ogre mercenaries from across the Mountains of Mourn. They and a mob of their kin had been drawn to Bretonnia by the war, and slain in the final battle at Couronne. Arkhan had seen no sense in wasting such brawny potential, and had resurrected them to serve as his pack-bearers.

  ‘This is the first time we’ve stopped in days. We are not all liches, lord,’ Ogiers said, looking about him at his fallen warriors. Arkhan had dispatched them with the rest. If Ogiers disapproved, he was wise enough to say nothing. ‘Some of us still require food, sleep… A moment of rest.’

  Arkhan said nothing. Behind Ogiers, Fidduci and Kruk made their way towards them over the field of fallen corpses. Franco Fidduci was a black-toothed Tilean scholar with a penchant for the grotesque, and Kruk was a twisted midget who rode upon the broad back of the risen husk of his cousin, clinging to the wight like a jongleur’s pet ape.

  ‘What happened? All my sweet ones fell over,’ Kruk piped.

  ‘Our master has seen fit to dispense with their services,’ Ogiers said.

  ‘But my pretty ones,’ Kruk whined.

  ‘If you’re referring to those Strigany dancing girls of yours, they were getting a bit mouldy,’ Fidduci said. ‘Best to find some new ones, eh?’ He looked at Arkhan. ‘Which we will, yes? This is not a land for four innocent travellers, oh most godly and grisly of lords,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Frightened, are you?’ Arkhan rasped.

  ‘Not all of us have escaped death’s clutches as often as you,’ Ogiers said. He looked around. ‘Maybe we should take our leave of you. We will only slow you down, lord, and you disposed of our army, thus rendering our contribution as your generals moot.’

  The cat examined the gathered necromancers with milky eyes. Its tail twitched and its yellowed and cracked fangs were visible through its mangled jowls. Arkhan stroked it idly, and said, ‘No, you will not leave my side. Without me, you would be dead. Actually dead, as opposed to the more pleasing and familiar variety. We all serve someone, Ogiers. It is your good fortune to serve me.’

  ‘And who do you serve, oh most puissant and intimidating Arkhan?’ Fidduci asked, fiddling with his spectacles.

  ‘Pray to whatever gods will have you that you never meet him, Franco,’ Arkhan rasped. ‘Now come, we are a day from… What was it called, Kruk?’

  ‘Valsborg Bridge, my lovely master,’ Kruk said. The diminutive necromancer hunched forward in his harness and pounded on his mount’s shoulders. ‘Come, come!’ The wight turned and began to lope in a northerly direction.

  Arkhan gestured with his staff. ‘You heard him. Come, come,’ he intoned. Fidduci and Ogiers shared a look and then began to trudge after Kruk. Arkhan followed them sedately. As he walked, he considered his reasons for coming to Sylvania.

  Bretonnia had been, if examined honestly, an unmitigated disaster. He had intended to use the civil war as a distraction in order to crack open the abbey at La Maisontaal and secure the ancient artefact ensconced within its stone walls, but Mallobaude had failed him. He’d been forced to retreat, gathering what resources he could. He intended to return, but he required more power to tip the balance in his favour. And time was growing short. The Long Night fast approached, and the world was crumbling at the edges.

  There was no easy way to tell how long it took them to reach the bridge, even if Arkhan had cared about marking the passage of time. More than once, he and the others were required to fend off roving bands of ghouls or slobbering undead monstrosities. Bats swooped from the sky and wolves lunged from the hardscrabble trees, and Arkhan was forced to usurp their master’s control to protect his followers. Ghosts haunted every crossroads and barrow-hill, and banshees wailed amidst the bent trees and extinct villages that they passed on the road to Valsborg Bridge. It was Mannfred’s hand and will behind these obstacles, Arkhan knew. The vampire was trying to slow him down, to occupy his attentions while he mustered his meagre defences.

  The bridge was nothing special. A simple span of stone across a narrow cleft, constructed in the days of Otto von Drak, before the Vampire Wars. A thin sludge of water gurgled below it. Arkhan suspected that it had been a raging river in its day, but the arteries of running water that crossed Sylvania were fast drying up thanks to Mannfred’s sorcery. Storm clouds choked the skies above, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

  His companions had collapsed by the roadside, exhausted by the gruelling pace. Even Kruk hung limp in his harness, stunted limbs dangling. Arkhan looked up at the churning sky, and then back at the bridge. Then he turned to his pack-bearers and motioned for them to drop to their haunches. They sank down, jaws sagging, blind, opaque eyes rolling in their sockets. They would not move, unless he commanded it, and they would not let anyone take the books they carried without a fight. He hefted his staff and stroked the cat, which made a sound that might have been a growl.

  Someone – something – was coming. He could feel it, like a black wave rolling towards the shoreline, gathering strength as it came. Arkhan glanced down at his followers. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Do not interfere.’

  ‘Interfere with what?’ Ogiers demanded as he clambered to his feet. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To parley with the master of this sad realm,’ Arkhan said as he strode towards the bridge. ‘If you value your insignificant lives, I’d draw as little attention to yourself as possible.’ He walked across the bridge, ignoring Ogiers’s shouts, and stopped at the halfway point. Then he set his staff, and waited. He did not have to wait long. The sound of hooves gouging the ground reached him several minutes later, and then a steed of bone and black magic, bearing a rider clad in flamboyant armour, burst into view, trailing smoke and cold flame. At the sight of it, the cat curled about his shoulders went stiff, and it hissed.

  The rider hauled on his reins, causing the skeleton horse to rear. Its hooves slammed down on the stone of the bridge, and it went as still as death. Its rider rose
high in his saddle and said, ‘It has been some time since I last saw you, liche.’

  ‘I have counted the years, vampire.’ Arkhan scratched his cat’s chin. ‘Have you come to surrender?’

  Mannfred von Carstein threw his head back and unleashed a snarl of laughter. Overhead, the sky trembled in sympathy. ‘Surrender? To a fleshless vagabond? It is you who should prostrate yourself before me.’

  ‘I have not come to bend knee, but to reclaim that which is mine by right.’

  Mannfred’s sneer faded into a scowl. ‘And what might that be?’

  Arkhan held up his hand, fingers extended. As he spoke, he bent his fingers one by one. ‘A crown, a severed hand, and seven books of blood-inked flesh.’ He cocked his head. ‘You know of what I speak.’

  Mannfred grimaced. ‘And why should I yield these artefacts to you?’

  ‘Nagash must rise,’ Arkhan said, simply.

  ‘And so he shall. The matter is in good hands, I assure you,’ Mannfred said. ‘Go back to the desert, liche. I will call for you, if I should require your help.’

  ‘I am here now,’ Arkhan intoned, spreading his arms. ‘And you seem to be in need of help. Or have you discovered a way of freeing your land from the chains that bind it and trap you?’

  ‘That is no business of yours,’ Mannfred snarled.

  ‘That is up for discussion, I think,’ Arkhan said. He held out a hand. ‘Nagash must rise, leech. Nagash will rise, even if I must destroy this blighted land to accomplish it. That is my curse and my pleasure. But he has always held some affection for your kind. If you serve him, perhaps he will let you keep your little castle.’ Arkhan cocked his head. ‘It is a very pretty castle, I am given to understand.’

  Mannfred was silent, but Arkhan could feel the winds of death stirring as the vampire gathered his will. The air seemed to congeal and then fracture as Mannfred flung out his hand. A bolt of writhing shadow erupted from his palm and speared towards Arkhan. The liche made no attempt to move aside. Instead, he waited. A freezing, tearing darkness erupted around him in a squirming cloud as the bolt struck home. If he had still possessed flesh, it would have been flayed from his bones. As it was, it merely tore his cloak and cowl. The cat on his shoulder yowled, and Arkhan gestured negligently, dispersing the cold tendrils of shadow.

  Arkhan laughed hollowly. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Not even remotely,’ Mannfred snarled.

  More spells followed the first, and Arkhan deflected them all and returned them with interest. Incantations he had not uttered in centuries passed through his fleshless jaws as he pitted his sorceries against those of the lord of Sylvania… and found them wanting. Arkhan felt a flicker of surprise. Mannfred was more powerful than he’d thought. In his skull, his master’s chuckle echoed. Was this a test then, to separate the wheat from the chaff?

  Dark sorceries and eldritch flames met above the bridge between them for long hours, crashing together like the duelling waves of a storm-tossed sea. Cold fire bit at writhing shadows, and black lightning struck bastions of hardened air, as the muddy turf of the riverbanks began to heave and rupture, releasing the tormented dead. Bodies long buried staggered and slumped into the guttering river, splashing towards one another. More skeletons, clad in roots and mud, crawled onto the bridge and groped for Arkhan as he batted aside Mannfred’s spells. The cat warbled and leapt from his shoulder to crash into a skeleton, knocking it backwards.

  He ignored the others as they clawed at him. There were few forces that could move him once he had set himself. The biting, clawing dead were no more a threat to him than leaves cast in his face by a strong breeze. Nonetheless, they were a distraction; likely that was Mannfred’s intent. It was certainly Arkhan’s, as he directed his corpse-puppets to attack Mannfred.

  The vampire smashed the dead aside with careless blows and hurled spells faster than Arkhan could follow, hammering him with sorcerous blows that would have obliterated a lesser opponent. The stone beneath his feet bubbled and cracked. It had survived a weathering of centuries, and now it was crumbling beneath the onslaught. Arkhan was beginning to wonder if he was going to suffer the same fate. He could feel his defences beginning to buckle beneath the unyielding onslaught. Mannfred’s power seemed inexhaustible; vampires were reservoirs of dark magic, but even they had their limits – limits that Mannfred seemed to have shed. Where was he drawing his power from? Some artefact or… Arkhan laughed, suddenly. Of course.

  Mannfred had sealed off Sylvania, blocking the sun and the rivers and the borders. Such a working would require some source of mystical power. Mannfred was drawing on those same magics now, and it gave him a distinct advantage. But, such a resource, while advantageous, was not infinite.

  Certain now that he had his foeman’s measure, Arkhan redoubled his efforts. If he could force Mannfred’s hand, he might be able to simply outlast him. Sorcerous talons and bone-stripping winds lashed at him, but he held firm, his hands clasped around his staff. Overhead, the clouds swirled and contracted. Fire washed over him, and a thousand, thudding fists, which struck at him from every side. Wailing ghosts and serpentine shadows sought to drag him down, but Arkhan refused to fall. He sent no more spells hurtling towards his foe, instead bolstering the dead who fought at his behest.

  Mannfred was howling with laughter, and Arkhan could feel the weight of the mighty magics that thrummed around the vampire, waiting to be unleashed. As Mannfred gathered them to him, the words to a powerful incantation dropping from his writhing lips, Arkhan readied himself.

  Nevertheless, the first shaft of sunlight was as much a surprise to him as it was to Mannfred. It burst from the clouds high above and struck the bridge between them. The latter’s skeleton mount reared and hurled him from his saddle. Arkhan staggered as the pressure of his enemy’s magic faded. The expression on Mannfred’s face as he clambered to his feet was almost comical. The vampire looked up, eyes wide and hastily released the murderous energies he had been preparing to hurl at Arkhan back into the aether. The clouds roiled and the sunlight was once more choked off by the darkness.

  ‘Well, that was an amusing diversion,’ Arkhan rasped. He started across the bridge. ‘Are you prepared to listen to reason now?’

  Mannfred shrieked like a beast of prey, and drew his blade. Without pause, the vampire leapt at him. Arkhan drew his tomb-blade and blocked Mannfred’s diving blow in a single movement. The two blades, each infused with the darkest of magics, gave out a communal cry of steel on steel as they connected, and cold fire blazed at the juncture of their meeting. Mannfred dropped to the bridge in a crouch before springing instantly to his feet. He sprinted towards Arkhan, his sword looping out. This too Arkhan parried, and they weaved back and forth over the bridge, the screams of their swords echoing for miles in either direction. Overhead, the sky growled in agitation, and the noisome wind swept down with a howl.

  Below them, in the mud and stagnant water, the dead fought on, straining against one another in a parody of the duel their masters fought above them. Arkhan could feel Mannfred’s will pressing against his own. He’d foregone magic, save that little bit required to control the dead. Their battle was as much for mastery of the warring corpses below as it was against each other. The vampire came at him again, teeth bared in a silent, feral snarl. His form flickered and wavered as he moved, like a scrap of gossamer caught in a wind storm. A living man would have found it impossible to follow the vampire’s movements, but Arkhan had long since traded in his mortal eyes for something greater.

  He matched Mannfred blow for blow. It felt… good, to engage in swordplay once more. It had been centuries since his blade had been drawn for anything other than emphasis or as an implement of ritual. The ancient tomb-blade shivered in his hand as it connected again with Mannfred’s. The embers of old skills flared to life in the depths of Arkhan’s mind, and he recalled those first few desperate battles, where a gambler’s skill in back-alley brawls was put to the test by warriors whose names still lingered in legend. It was good t
o be reminded of that time, of when he had still been a man, rather than a tool forged by the will of another.

  Arkhan wondered if Mannfred knew what that was like. He thought so. The vampire’s magics had that taste, and his voice was like the echo of another’s, though he knew it not. Arkhan could almost see a familiar shape superimposed over his opponent, a vast, black, brooding shadow that seemed to roil with amusement as they fought.

  I see you, Arkhan thought. This was a test and a pleasure for the thing that held the chains of their souls. Arkhan’s master had ever been a sadist and prone to cruel whimsy. This battle had been a farce, a shadow-play from the beginning. There was a power in that knowledge. A power in knowing exactly how little of it you yourself possessed. It allowed you to focus, to look past the ephemeral, and to marshal within yourself what little will your master allowed.

  Arkhan the Black was a slave, but a slave who knew every link of the chain that bound him by heart. Mannfred had yet to realise that he had even been beaten. Their blades clashed again and again until, at last, Arkhan beat the vampire’s sword aside and swiftly stepped back, his now-sodden and torn robes slapping wetly against his bare bones.

  ‘We are finished here, vampire.’

  Mannfred’s eyes burned with rage, and for a moment, Arkhan thought he might continue the fight. Then, with a hiss, Mannfred inclined his head and sheathed his sword with a grandiose flourish. ‘We are, liche. A truce?’

  Arkhan would have smiled, had he still had lips. ‘Of course. A truce.’

  FOUR

  Heldenhame Keep, Talabecland

  ‘The problem isn’t getting in. It’s just a wall, and walls can be breached, scaled and blown down,’ Hans Leitdorf, Grand Master of the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood said, glaring at the distant edifice, which towered along the border of Sylvania. That it was visible from such a distance was as much due to its sheer enormity as to the height of the parapet he and his guests stood atop. ‘It’s what’s waiting on the other side. They’ve had months to erect defences, set traps and build an army out of every scrap of bone and sinew in Sylvania. And that’s not even taking into account the things slipping over the border every night to bolster the cursed von Carstein’s ranks. Strigany nomads, strange horsemen, beasts and renegades of every dark stripe.’ He knocked back a slug from the goblet he held in one hand. Leitdorf was old but, like some old men, had only grown harder and tougher with age. He was broad and sturdily built, with a barrel chest and a face that had seen the wrong end of a club more than once. He wore a heavy fur coat of the sort Ungol horsemen were fond of, and had his sword belt cinched around his narrow waist. ‘We’ve tried to stop them, but we’re too few. I don’t have enough men to do more than put up a token effort. And when I ask for more men from the elector and Karl Franz, I get, well, you.’ He looked at his guest.