The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  He felt eyes on him, and looked around to meet Aliathra’s gaze. ‘Were you amused, Everchild? I have heard that your folk drink deep of the cup of mortal suffering, finding it to be exquisite.’

  ‘No,’ she spoke, her voice soft. ‘I was simply surprised that it worked. I thought dead things could not be ensnared thus. Then, you are not truly dead, are you?’ Arkhan said nothing. The elf smiled sadly. ‘For that to have worked, there must be some kernel yet of the man you once were, trapped in the husk of you, Arkhan the Black. Some small touch of mercy.’

  The cat shrieked, and Arkhan turned away. ‘No. There is not,’ he said, finally. He picked up his staff and slammed it down. The chamber echoed with the sound, and he heard the howl of the vargheists who lurked in the shadows above drift down in reply. The cat leapt onto his shoulder. The vargheists dropped down heavily, snarling and snapping at one another. Arkhan pointed his staff at the unconscious form of Lupio Blaze. ‘Unchain him, and bring him. I grow weary of Sylvania. It is time to leave.’

  Sylvania, the western border

  ‘We are still agreed, then?’ Mannfred asked, hands crossed on his saddle’s pommel as he leaned over his mount’s neck. The horse-thing was all bone and eldritch fire, and it stank of charnel pits and mouldering ashes. ‘West for you and east for me.’

  ‘As we agreed,’ Arkhan said. He stood at the centre of his carefully prepared ritual circle. At his feet, pinned to the ground by crudely forged bronze spikes, was the pain-contorted shape of Lupio Blaze. Black candles, with tallow rendered from human flesh, surrounded the circle, as did a number of smoking iron braziers.

  And in the distance, the only obstacle between them and the return of the Undying King. Gelt’s wall of faith rode dips and curves of the border; the symbols of Morr, Sigmar, Ulric and a dozen other gods, some real, some not, hung suspended in the air, glowing with a terrible, painful light. The western border was one of the few places where the cursed barrier was visible to the naked eye, and thus the perfect spot to ensure that the spell had actually worked.

  Behind Mannfred, the army of Sylvania waited. Arkhan would take only a small bodyguard of Drakenhof Templars and his dissolute cadre of necromancers into Bretonnia, while Mannfred would lead the vast bulk of the waiting army into the Border Princes. Above the silent army, the Drakenhof banner fluttered like a dying snake.

  ‘Excellent,’ Mannfred said. He leaned back in his saddle and slapped his thigh. ‘Well… on with it, liche. I have a world to conquer and no time to dally.’ He jerked on his mount’s reins and galloped off to rejoin his waiting blood knights.

  Arkhan watched him go and then looked down at the knight. ‘Any last words, warrior?’ Arkhan asked softly. Blaze glared up at him defiantly, and spat something virulent in Tilean. Arkhan nodded respectfully. ‘As it should be. A brave man’s final words ought to be unrepeatable,’ he said.

  Arkhan began to chant, slowly at first, and then faster, the words bursting from him like a cascade of rocks down a cliff-face. He spoke in the tongue of Nehekhara, and it came as easily to him as the memory of his first death. He spat the words into the teeth of the growing wind, and the vast faces, bloated and loathsome that leered down at him through the tattered veils of reality. The words were as much promise as invocation, and the world squirmed about him as his voice tore great wounds in the air. Thunder rumbled overhead. Black lightning, blacker than the dark sky, split the air, creating jagged cracks in the firmament full of squamous, daemonic shapes, which writhed and fought.

  Ghostly shapes, half formed and inhuman, spiralled madly about Arkhan and his captive, and wolves, both dead and alive, began to howl. The bitter air grew thick and poisonous, as the weight of the forces Arkhan was invoking settled on the world. He drew the bone dagger from the jewelled sheath on his belt with his free hand and dropped down to crouch over the knight. The same dagger that had almost taken Morgiana’s life would now spill the blood of her fellow captive. ‘Rest assured that your sacrifice will help to save the world, warrior. Take that thought with you into the embrace of your goddess, for however long it lasts.’

  Then, with two swift movements, he slit the knight’s wrist and thigh, releasing twin sprays of red blood to splash onto the thirsty ground. Blaze’s struggles grew weaker, and his curses quieter, as his life emptied itself into the soil of Sylvania. Arkhan stood, and raised his hand. His fingers snapped closed and the candles tumbled over, setting the pooling blood alight. The fire raced about the circle, spiralling upwards with a loud roar, consuming everything within, save for Arkhan, who stood untouched by the greedy flames. His robes whipped about him as he raised his hand, and the flames tore at the heavens in reply. The fire whirled about him in a flickering typhoon of destruction, and in the coruscating surface of the flames he could see the faces of his enemies, gnashing their teeth and cursing him silently. Arkhan let the flames spill upwards into the sky.

  And then he snuffed them with a snap of his bony fingers. The fire went out, leaving him in a circle of char and ash. He stood for a time, as the magics he had raised coursed through him. He had taken the power that had hidden in the knight’s blood into himself, and he could feel it roil in his nonexistent veins. Its fury had momentarily silenced the voice of his master within him, and he felt as if an indescribable weight had been lifted from his old bones. He looked at his hand, considering the power he now held. It would be so easy to use it for himself, to do as he wished, for once. He could dispatch his rivals here, take Mannfred’s acquisitions for himself and remake this blighted land into something that would ride out the coming storm better than the eternal abattoir the vampire imagined. A land of order and perfect, beautiful silence, where no daemon or dark power, save himself, held sway.

  He looked up and met Mannfred’s cool, calculating glare. A giant shadow hung over the vampire, looming above him, its black gaze on Arkhan. He knew that he was the only one who could see it, who could feel the impatient malevolence that boiled off it like steam. Who was it looking out of the vampire’s eyes right now? What black brain drove Mannfred in his efforts?

  Arkhan knew the answer well enough. He had seen it before, on the Valsborg Bridge, and in Castle Sternieste. The world buckled beneath the weight of a dark fate, and one that he knew better than to try and avoid. ‘Nagash must rise,’ Arkhan murmured. He motioned slowly, and the ashes at his feet stirred, rising as if caught in a hot wind. They played about his fingers as he gestured with his knife and called out, ‘Bring your standard forward, vampire.’

  Mannfred gestured. A blood knight rode towards Arkhan, carrying the Drakenhof banner. Arkhan anointed the ancestral banner of the Sylvanian aristocracy with a handful of ashes. ‘Carry the banner to the wall.’

  The standard-bearer glanced at Mannfred, who motioned towards the partition. The blood knight grimaced visibly, and then kicked his coal-black steed into motion towards the wall of faith. As the armoured vampire extended the standard towards the hovering holy symbols, there was a flash, and one by one, the sigils and symbols tumbled from the air to land heavily on the ground. Mannfred stood up in his saddle and waved his hand. ‘Forward!’ he shouted. ‘For Sylvania, and for the world to come!’

  NINE

  Hvargir Forest, the Border Princes

  Mannfred lifted the pale arm from his lap and sent it and the bloodless body it was attached to thudding to the ground with a negligent gesture. The body had belonged to a young woman: a peasant from one of the villages they had taken the night before, he thought. Now it belonged to the worms, until he decided to add her pitiful carcass to his legions. He brushed his thumb across his lips and said, ‘Bring Duke Forzini forward, if you please. I would speak with our host.’

  Count Nyktolos nodded shallowly and stepped out of the tent that Mannfred had claimed for his own. The Vargravian’s features were a distorted parody of a man’s – too wide and flat by far, his flesh the colour of a bruise. A shark-like mouth stretched from pointed ear to pointed ear, and his eyes bulged unpleasantly. He resembled
a puppet, with his monocle and his hair greased flat against his stoat-like skull. Looks aside, he was deadly with a blade and had a keen mind, two things Mannfred appreciated. Even better, his ambitions were just petty enough to be amusing, rather than annoying.

  ‘Since when do you palaver with food, cousin?’ Markos asked, from where he stood, examining the hide map stretched across a wooden frame in the corner of the tent.

  ‘Speak of the annoyingly ambitious,’ Mannfred murmured. He looked around the tent, taking in the rough decor. It had all the pomp and panoply he expected of the frontier nobleman he had borrowed it from two nights before. Tapestries and animal furs hung from the support poles of the tent, and a quadrupedal, low-slung iron brazier, filled with coals which had long-since gone cold, occupied the centre beneath the smoke hole cut into the top of the tent. A rack of spears – boar, wolf and other more esoteric varieties – stood behind the crudely carved wooden stool he now occupied. He looked down at the staff laid across his lap, and the withered, iron-wrapped thing that had been lashed to the top in ages past: the Claw of Nagash. The thing was a hand – or, more accurately, a claw. It was larger than a man’s, and it seemed to ooze a sorcerous miasma. As he looked at it, the long, skeletal fingers seemed to twitch, as if they yearned to grasp his throat. And perhaps they did. Something of Nagash’s spiteful spirit was trapped in this claw, just as it was in his crown and his books.

  He’d brought the Claw so that it might lead him to the object of his search – the skaven-forged Fellblade – the very weapon that had severed Nagash’s hand from his wrist and ended his Great Work the first time. There was a sympathetic vibration between the two, and with a bit of coaxing, the one pointed the way to the other. The Claw whispered to him, and he listened and set his legion marching towards Mad Dog Pass.

  It had taken him centuries to discover Kadon of Mourkain’s staff and the Claw, hidden as it had been, in the vaults of that lost city. Ushoran, fearing its power, had sealed it away in the deepest, blackest pit he could find, though he’d taken the Crown for himself. Then, perhaps the ancient vampire had thought that he could master one artefact of Nagash’s but not two, more fool him. Ushoran’s will had not proved equal to the task, though he’d come closer than any save Mannfred himself. Mannfred stroked the staff, and the Claw curled and twitched like an appreciative cat. ‘Poor Ushoran. If only you had listened to me,’ he murmured. ‘I told you that she couldn’t be trusted.’

  ‘What?’ Markos asked. He sounded annoyed.

  Mannfred glanced at him lazily. ‘Nothing, brave cousin. Merely talking to myself.’

  ‘An old family trait,’ Markos muttered.

  ‘What was that?’ Mannfred asked, even though he’d heard Markos quite clearly. ‘You have something to say, Markos?’

  ‘I said that this map is out of date,’ Markos replied smoothly.

  ‘It’s Tilean. What did you expect? Cartography is one of the few arts that they do not claim to have invented,’ Mannfred said. ‘And in answer to your impertinent query, cousin… This is no mere hunting party, whatever our host claims. Why else bring a troop of armoured horsemen and spearmen?’

  ‘Spears are used in hunting,’ Markos said. Mannfred could tell from the glint in his eye that he was being deliberately obtuse. Markos’s mood had been positively acidic since they entered the Black Mountains, and hadn’t abated with battle. They’d encountered the small force as they descended the mountains and entered the Hvargir Forest. Mannfred had obscured the movements of his forces through sorcerous means as they travelled through the mountains, but Markos and the others had been growing restive when the unfortunate Duke Forzini had crossed their path with his simple ‘hunting party’. Forzini was one of a multitude of minor, self-proclaimed counts and dukes who ruled the petty fiefdoms of the Border Princes.

  ‘True,’ Mannfred said. ‘But what hunting expedition requires a hundred such, as well as cuirassiers, fully armoured knights, and what I believe is called a – ah – “galloper gun”, hmm? What were they hunting for, cousin?’

  Markos opened his mouth to retort, but Nyktolos returned, and shoved a bedraggled figure through the tent flap. The man, bound in chains, and stinking of blood and fear, fell onto the ground at Mannfred’s feet. Mannfred clapped his hands. ‘Ah, and here he is now! The man of the hour, Duke Farnio Forzini, of the demesne of Alfori. They make a fine millet in Alfori, I’m told. Of course, the prime export, as with so many of these tiny mountain realms is violence.’ Mannfred smiled. ‘Something I myself am well acquainted with.’ He stood and hauled his prisoner to his feet. ‘Up, sirrah, up – on your feet. I am a count, and you a duke, and neither of us should kneel.’

  Forzini flinched away from Mannfred’s grin. The Tilean was a big man, with the muscle of a trained knight. He had fought hard, even after he realised what it was he faced. It had taken two days to beat a sense of fear into him. Forzini saw the dead body of the maid and his face went pale. Mannfred followed his gaze and asked, ‘Oh, was she one of your peons? My apologies. I was peckish, you understand. I so rarely allow myself to indulge, but, well, you put up quite a fight and I built up a hellish appetite.’

  He looked at the beaten man. He had to reach Mad Dog Pass before the first snows of the season, and that meant moving quickly through the Border Princes. He had no time to indulge in unnecessary battle. If the petty aristocracy of these lands had learned of his approach, and were mobilising to meet him in battle, he needed to know, and sooner rather than later. ‘Where were you marching to?’ Mannfred hissed. ‘Tell me, and I won’t gut you and feed you to my horses.’

  ‘S-skaven,’ Forzini mumbled, his eyes tightly closed.

  Mannfred grunted. ‘How many?’

  ‘Thousands – more maybe,’ Forzini said. He looked at Mannfred. ‘We were riding to aid my neighbour, Count Tulvik, at Southern Reach. His fortress had come under siege.’

  ‘Then you were going in the wrong direction,’ Nyktolos said mildly, cleaning his monocle on his sleeve. ‘I was once a… guest of old Tulvik.’ He blinked. ‘Well, his grandfather, actually.’

  Mannfred growled. He caught Forzini by the throat. ‘I don’t care for lies, Forzini.’

  ‘W-we were! I swear!’ Forzini choked out. ‘But then, a runner brought word that my own hold was under siege. So I turned back – my wife and children, my people!’ The last exploded out and Forzini broke free of Mannfred with a convulsive surge of strength. Mannfred let him go. Forzini lunged for the hilt of Mannfred’s sword. ‘I have to save them!’

  Mannfred casually dropped his fist onto the back of Forzini’s skull and knocked him sprawling to the ground. He pinned the cursing duke in place with his foot and looked at Markos. The other vampire nodded grudgingly. ‘That would explain what we’ve seen, wouldn’t it? This isn’t an isolated raid we’re talking about, cousin. It’s an invasion.’

  When they’d descended into the foothills of the Black Mountains, the plains and fenland and forest should have been dotted with proud, if small, cities and fortified outposts as it always had been. What they had seen instead was a land in ruins. Castles were scorched piles, and towns were reduced to smouldering embers. And everywhere, the signs of plague – bodies choked the ditches and mass graves lay full, yet uncovered.

  At first, Mannfred thought it was simply the aftermath of one of the interminable border wars, which occasionally flared up and then died away. But the devastation was too extensive. Memories of the portents of doom that he had witnessed in his scrying so many months ago had come rushing back, of the fates of Tilea and Estalia, and he knew that the end that he had witnessed was drawing closer. The weft and weave of the world was realigning and time was running out. That was the only thing that could draw the skaven from their twilight burrows in such numbers as Forzini and his own scrying had described.

  He had faith enough in Elize’s ability to maintain control of Sylvania in his absence, but he knew that no other could defend his realm better than he could. If the skaven were truly massing
in such numbers in the Border Princes, he couldn’t count on his sorceries seeing him unmolested to his goal. Better then not to even try, now that he had passed beyond the borders of the Empire.

  ‘How many prisoners did we take?’ he asked, after a moment.

  ‘Ah, one, two, three… Fifty or sixty,’ Nyktolos said, ticking off his fingers. ‘Mostly the duke’s household guard. They fought hard for a band of jumped-up bandit-knights.’

  ‘Due to my friend Forzini here, I have no doubt,’ Mannfred said. He caught hold of the chains binding Forzini and pulled him close. ‘I am not ordinarily in the habit of giving choices, Forzini. It sets a bad precedent, you see, for royalty to allow the dregs to think that they get a say in their own fates. But, if there are thousands of skaven slumping and sneaking through these lands, I’ll need every sword I can get, dead or… otherwise.’ Mannfred licked his lips. Though the girl’s blood had quenched his thirst, he could still detect the erratic thump of Forzini’s pulse. Mannfred tightened his grip on the chains. ‘Swear fealty to me, Duke Forzini, and I shall save your lands for you. Indeed, you can be the hero who saves the entirety of the Border Princes, if that is your wish. Or die here, and ride at my side regardless as a nameless and mindless thing. Serve me in life, or in death. But you shall serve me. Name your preference.’

  He heard Vlad’s sibilant chuckle as he gazed down into the flushed, sweating features of the duke. Those are familiar words. You honour me, my son, Vlad murmured. Mannfred could almost see him out of the corner of his eye. He blinked, and Vlad vanished. ‘Well?’ he snarled, hauling Forzini close. ‘Make your choice.’

  ‘Y-you will save my people?’ Forzini asked.

  ‘I will save everyone,’ Mannfred said.

  Forzini closed his eyes and nodded jerkily. Mannfred gave a satisfied growl and sank his fangs into the Duke’s throat. As he drank, his eyes met Nyktolos’s and the ugly vampire nodded sharply and left the tent. When he had finished, he let the duke’s body slump to the ground. Crouching over him, Mannfred used a thumbnail to slit his palm, and then squeezed several drops of blood into the ragged wounds he had made in Forzini’s throat.