The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  As he rose, his hand was already healing. ‘Is this wise, cousin?’ Markos asked, looking down at the not-quite-dead man. ‘Also, I hope you aren’t expecting us to turn his servants. Such a thing is below even my slight dignity.’

  Mannfred smiled. Screams echoed from outside. ‘The Vargravian is already handling it. By the time we reach our destination, I shall have a bodyguard worthy of an emperor of the dead, cousin.’

  Markos was about to reply, when the air was suddenly split by the howl of a wolf. The sound ratcheted through the tent, drowning out even the scream’s of Forzini’s men. Markos drew his blade and rushed to the tent opening. ‘The alarm,’ he barked.

  Mannfred followed more sedately, wiping his lips with his fingers. It seemed he wasn’t going to have to go looking for the skaven – they had come to him.

  Brionne, Bretonnia

  The castle on the crag had once been one of the great bulwarks upon which the might of Brionne had been built, guarding the province’s border against all enemies. Now, it was a fire-blackened ruin, long since picked over by scavengers of all varieties, human or otherwise.

  Heinrich Kemmler, the Lichemaster, lifted his staff and thumped the end of it on the ground, calling the dead of the ruined keep to attention. The crackle of bones pushing through the ash and the wreckage of their own flesh filled the air, and Kemmler closed his eyes and moved his hand and staff like the orchestral conductor at the Imperial opera. The dead rose at his cajoling, reaching towards him like penitents in a temple, and a harsh, croaking laugh slipped from Kemmler’s lips.

  Arkhan watched the Lichemaster draw the dead from their too-brief slumber, and felt no little surprise at the obvious power the elderly necromancer now seemed to wield. When he had last seen Kemmler, in the waning months of the Bretonnian civil war, the Lichemaster had been a mumbling, muttering wretch, barely cognisant of the world around him. Now, Kemmler resembled the Lichemaster of old, full of cold, dark reservoirs of power.

  Those reservoirs had barely been tapped in the Vaults, Arkhan knew, when he and Kemmler had cracked open the web-strewn, elf-sealed tombs that lined the high reaches of those mountains months earlier. Kemmler had swept aside the antediluvian magics that chained the wild, selfish spirits that clustered in those mausoleums as if they had been nothing more than cobwebs. Arkhan had done the same, but he knew the origins of his own strength. He knew what lay at the bottom of the inner wells from which he drew his power. Kemmler’s newfound strength, on the other hand, was a puzzle and a concern. His wrinkled frame swelled with the winds of death and dark magic, and the dead responded to his smallest gesture. Kemmler’s glittering gaze met Arkhan’s, and the old man smiled widely, exposing a crooked cemetery of brown and black tombstone teeth.

  Arkhan gave no sign that he had noticed the smile. Instead, he let his gaze slide past the puppet to the puppetmaster. Krell the Undying. Krell of the Great Axe, who Arkhan knew of old, and who had served as Nagash’s right hand, as Arkhan was his left. The ancient wight, clad in his ornate armour, which was stained a rusty hue by the oceans of gore that he had waded through over the centuries, loomed over Kemmler, his terrible axe hanging from his hand. Krell met Arkhan’s gaze, and his great horned helm twitched slightly. Had that been a nod of greeting, a gesture of respect, or simply an idle shudder of the wretched berserker spirit that fuelled the wight, Arkhan wondered. There was no way to tell. Krell’s mind was a roiling storm of battle-lust and blood-greed at the best of times.

  If Kemmler was a worry, then Krell was a fixed point: the unassailable rampart upon which the future could be erected. Nagash had wrested Krell’s mighty soul from the clutches of the Dark Gods, and bound it to him as inextricably as he had Arkhan’s. They were his hands, his sword and shield, and his will made flesh.

  But was that all they were? He thought again of the Everchild’s taunt – had it been a taunt? – that he was, in some way, still the man he had been. He leaned against his staff, gnawing over her words. The effects of Morgiana’s glamour had long since faded, but he could still feel the wounds it had wrought in his psyche. It had stirred the embers of a fire he’d thought long since extinguished. And if those embers still existed within him, what of Krell?

  He gazed at the armoured bulk of the enormous wight. If there was some part of Krell as he had been left in that powerful husk, what might it do if it awakened? Would even Nagash be able to control such an entity, if its ire was aroused?

  And what if it already had been? Krell met his gaze, and the two dead things stared at one another across the courtyard. Whose puppet are you? Arkhan thought. Kemmler laughed, and Arkhan turned towards him. The Lichemaster was directing two of the newly risen dead to fit a scavenged bridle and saddle onto the resurrected body of the lord of the keep. Then, if Krell broke his leash, he suspected he knew where the Great Axe would fall first. The thought was almost amusing. If anyone deserved to be savaged in that way, it was Kemmler.

  ‘What is he doing?’ Ogiers asked. ‘Is he mad?’ Arkhan looked back at his coterie of servants. The necromancers stood nearby in a nervous cluster, watching as Kemmler worked his sorceries. Even amongst the desecrators of the dead, the Lichemaster was in a league of his own. None of them had wanted to come, and Arkhan could tell that even the normally phlegmatic Fidduci was bothered by the company he now found himself in.

  ‘You have eyes. What do you think?’ the latter asked. The Tilean was furiously cleaning his spectacles, something he did when he was nervous. ‘Of course he’s mad. He’s always been mad.’

  ‘But useful, yes?’ Kruk tittered, stroking his wispy beard. He hunched forward over his cousin’s rotting shoulder and stroked the dead man’s mouldering features affectionately. ‘And it is no strange thing. A horse is a horse, of course – two legs or four, yes?’ The crippled midget bounced in his harness and laughed at his own words.

  Across the courtyard, Kemmler forced the dead lord to fall onto all fours. Kemmler laughed again, and raised his staff. Dark energy crackled along its length and bodies shuffled towards the kneeling lord. They knelt, linking arms and legs, and his intended mount climbed atop them. The whole twitching mass resembled nothing so much as an awkward pyramid for a moment. Then Kemmler swept his staff out and barked a guttural phrase, and the dead men began to sink and slide into one another with a variety of unpleasant sounds. Bones burst through sloughing meat and crashed into one another, splintering and reforming as flesh melted into flesh, and organs were discarded in splashes of blood and fluid.

  A moment later, a conglomerate horror that reminded Arkhan of a spider, if a spider were made of writhing human bodies, pushed itself up on its multitude of hands and feet. Kemmler climbed into the saddle and hauled on the reins, forcing the thing to rear. He laughed again as it dropped down, and leered at Arkhan. ‘Well, liche? What do you think of my new pet?’

  ‘Very pretty, Kemmler. You’re welcome, by the way. A less genial master might not have allowed you to indulge your appetites for flesh-craft,’ Arkhan said. He was rewarded by a scowl from the necromancer. While Krell’s loyalty was certain, Kemmler had a distaste for servitude that bordered on mania.

  ‘Allow? We are partners, Nehekharan,’ Kemmler said. ‘You need me.’ He grinned at Ogiers and the others. ‘My power far outstrips that of your cat paws. Between them, they might just manage to summon a small horde, but you’ll never take La Maisontaal Abbey without me.’ He spat the name of their destination like a curse. Then, for Kemmler, perhaps it was. He had tried to assault the abbey more than once in his sordid career, and failed every time. Arkhan wondered if Kemmler could feel the call of the artefact hidden in the abbey’s vaults even as he himself could. He suspected that Nagash whispered in the Lichemaster’s ear, whether Kemmler knew it or not. Else how could he have controlled Krell – if he truly did.

  ‘Whatever you need to tell yourself, so long as you do as I say,’ Arkhan rasped. Kemmler made a face. He was different. Arkhan could not say why, or how, but it was as if something had been awaken
ed in the necromancer. And Arkhan did not like it. He did not like Kemmler’s newfound lucidity, or the threads of power that ran through him. ‘We are both servants of a higher power. All of us here serve that power, lest anyone has forgotten.’

  He turned, taking in the other necromancers, and the lazing vampires, who met his gaze with glittering red glares. ‘Do not think that you can stray. Time runs slow for the dead, but it runs all the same,’ he said, his voice carrying to every corner and ear capable of hearing and comprehending. He raised his staff and gestured to the sky, which boiled like a storm-tossed sea of green and black overhead. Sickly coronas rippled across the shroud of the night, and green scars carved through the black, streaking down towards distant mountains. It reminded Arkhan of the pearlescent flesh of a corpse succumbing to decay.

  The world was rotting inside and out. It was dying. But it would linger on its deathbed for millennia, if the thrones and dominations that stood arrayed in his path had their way. The gods of men and daemons fought to own a world that had one foot in its grave. Only in death would it be redeemed. Only by the will of the Undying King.

  The cat, in its usual place on his shoulder, stretched, bones and ligaments popping audibly as it dug its claws into his robes. He felt a surge of purpose in him as he continued to speak, though he wondered, deep in the secret places of his mind, whether those words were his, or those of Nagash. ‘We all serve the will and whim of the Undying King, and it is his hand that guides us on this road. It is by his will that we all exist. Vampires were born from his black blood as surely as you walkers of the deathly way follow his wisdom and hearken to his teachings, as certainly as it was by his will that I persist in my task. We owe him our service, our loyalty, for without him, we would be dust and forgotten. Instead, we stand at the threshold of the world’s heart and knock. We were the meek, and now we are the mighty. We serve the King of the World.’ He looked at Kemmler. ‘All of us. Remember that.’

  Kemmler snarled and opened his mouth to reply, when a black horse galloped into the courtyard, hurtling through the shattered portcullis with preternatural grace. Its rider slid from the saddle as the horse came to a stop near Arkhan. The vampire gestured over his shoulder and barked, ‘Company!’ The vampire was one of a number Mannfred had insisted he take as an honour-guard. This one was called Crowfiend, he thought, though he resembled neither a crow nor a fiend as far as Arkhan could tell. Nonetheless, Arkhan preferred his company to that of Anark, the brutish commander of the armoured blood knights. That one stank of ambition and impatience, two things that Arkhan no longer understood or tolerated.

  Arkhan cocked his head. ‘Beastmen?’ His scouts had reported that a sizeable herd of the Chaos creatures were nearby, laying waste to a village in the valley below. Whether they desired battle, or merely wanted to scavenge in Arkhan’s wake, he couldn’t say.

  ‘Bretonnians,’ Erikan Crowfiend said. ‘They’re flying the flag of Quenelles.’

  Arkhan felt a twinge of surprise. His forces had skirted Quenelles’s southern border despite the fact that their goal lay in the strand of the Grey Mountains that marked the eastern edge of that province. Instead, Arkhan had led his followers further south, coming down out of the mountains into Carcassonne, rather than risking the wrath of Athel Loren.

  The southernmost provinces had been the most heavily devastated in the civil war, stripped of foodstuffs and able-bodied men. He’d done so intentionally, hoping to leave himself a clear path to reach the abbey when he wished. But evidently, the province had not been as devastated as he thought.

  ‘Tancred,’ Kemmler snarled. There was an eagerness in that sound that disquieted Arkhan. He recalled suddenly that it had been a previous Duke of Quenelles who had defeated the Lichemaster during one of his periodic attempts to take La Maisontaal Abbey. It was the same duke, or perhaps his son, who had harried the Lichemaster out of Bretonnia and into the Grey Mountains.

  ‘Possibly, or it could be any one of a hundred other displaced aristocrats from that province,’ Arkhan said, gesturing sharply. ‘It matters little. They are in our way. We will smash them, and continue on. Nagash must rise, and none will stand in our way.’

  TEN

  Hvargir Forest, the Border Princes

  When Snikrat saw the tents, arrayed so temptingly on the blighted plains that hugged the edge of the forest, he immediately began to salivate. It looked like yet another of the petty man-thing princelings was attempting to flee. It was the perfect target – big enough to give a fight, small enough that the fight wouldn’t last very long, thus presenting him, Snikrat the Magnificent, with the perfect opportunity to cement his heroism in the minds of his followers, without actually risking himself too much.

  ‘Forward, brave warriors,’ he chittered, flourishing his blade. ‘Forward for the swift-glory of Clan Mordkin! Forward, at the command of me, Snikrat the Magnificent.’ Clanrats stampeded past him, most of them already intent on looting the collection of tents and supply wagons, the latter seemingly unprotected. His stormvermin bodyguard, the aptly named Bonehides, knew better than to leave his side. Partially it was because it was their job to see that he survived, and partially because the wiser among the black-furred skaven knew Snikrat’s reputation for sniffing out the best loot. Snikrat grinned and gestured towards the supply wagons. ‘There! We must flank them, in their side, there, so that none escape, by which I mean flee and thus possibly evade us,’ he hissed out loud, just in case any of Feskit’s spies were listening. ‘Come, my Bonehides – double-fast-move-move!’

  Feskit had returned to the clan’s lair with the bulk of their army, and the bulk of the loot a few days before, leaving Snikrat to pilfer the scraps and escort the slowest of the hundreds of filthy human slaves Clan Mordkin had taken in their ravaging of the Border Princes. Feskit likely thought he was being generous. Snikrat would show him true generosity soon enough – Feskit would have all the sharp steel he could stomach. The thought of vengeance, ill-defined and unlikely as it was, filled Snikrat with a surge of confidence. First he would kill any humans who tried to flee, as they inevitably did, being inveterate cowards, then he would loot the wagons – and then, yes, then, at some point, inevitably, after a suitable period of time, he would kill Feskit and wrest control of Clan Mordkin from his unworthy paws.

  Granted, there were probably some steps in there he was missing, but he’d work those out when he came to them.

  He led his stormvermin towards the wagons, looking forward to the screams of the man-things. But instead of screams, all he found was… Quiet. He stopped, and his warriors clattered to a halt around him. Snikrat’s hackles itched, and he sniffed the air. It stank of blood and rot, which weren’t the usual odours one associated with humans.

  Snikrat heard the sounds of his warriors attacking the camp. To his finely attuned ears, it did not sound like a slaughter. At least, not the good kind. His musk-gland tightened and he fought down a sudden surge of irrational fear. What was there to be afraid of? Was he not Snikrat the Magnificent, heir to Feskit, whether the latter admitted it or not?

  ‘Come-come, let us take the wagons, by which I mean these wheeled conveyances here, for the greater glory of skavenkind,’ he said. His next words died in his furry throat as the air quivered with a low, harsh growl. That growl was joined by several more. Black, lean shapes moved across the top of the wagons or behind them, and Snikrat looked about, suddenly aware that the wagons weren’t as undefended as he’d assumed.

  Wolves crouched on the wagons or slunk from beneath them. Each bore numerous wounds, any one of which should have laid such beasts low, Snikrat saw as he extended his blade warily, his stormvermin clustering about him. Yet they didn’t seem bothered by the broken shafts of arrows and spears that poked from their sagging hides. ‘Dead-dead things,’ a stormvermin squealed.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Snikrat blustered. ‘Spears!’

  His warriors levelled their cruelly barbed spears and locked shields, forming a rough hedgehog. He’d learned the tactic fro
m a Tilean slave when he was but a pup. Sometimes he regretted eating the old man as quickly as he had. Nothing alive could break a Bonehides square, especially not a pack of quarrelsome curs.

  Something laughed.

  There was a promise implicit in that sound. Snikrat recognised it, for he himself had often laughed such a laugh while advancing on wounded or unwary prey. It was the laugh of a wolf-rat on the hunt, and his fur bristled with barely restrained terror as his eyes rotated. There, on the top of the wagons, something purple-faced and dead crouched, eyeing him through the lens of a monocle. The thing grinned, displaying row upon row of serrated, sharp teeth. Snikrat swallowed.

  ‘Oh happy day. A-one, a-two, a-three… So many little rats for me,’ the vampire snarled. Then, faster even than Snikrat the Magnificent could follow, it sprang upon them, its sword whistling down like the stroke of doom.

  Brionne, Bretonnia

  The spear thrust out at Malagor from the depths of the hay loft. He swatted the rusty head aside with his staff and thrust one long arm into the hay, seizing the spear-wielder and dragging him screaming into the firelight.

  The village had already been burned once, but that hadn’t stopped the beastmen from trying to burn it again. Malagor drew the wailing man towards him and calmly silenced him by slamming his head into a nearby post. Then, with a flap of his wings, he flew up and out of the barn, carrying his prize.

  He caught an updraught, and rode the hot wind above the burning village. It had been prosperous, as such places went, before the war that had recently rocked this land. Malagor’s lips peeled back from his fangs in a parody of a smile as he looked down and saw his warriors pursuing frightened peasants. There was little enough sport in this land, and he was glad enough to provide his followers with some small bit, before they went into battle.