The End Times | The Return of Nagash

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The End Times | The Return of Nagash Page 21

by Josh Reynolds


  ‘Shut up and see to our flanks, Markos,’ Mannfred snapped, shaking the blood from his sword. ‘I tire of this.’ He stood up in his saddle and looked around. When his scouts had brought him stories of the lands ahead literally swarming with the rat-things, he had thought they were exaggerating. But in the past weeks, he had seen that, if anything, his spies had been conservative in their estimates of the number of skaven running roughshod over the Border Princes. This was the fifth – and largest of them all by far – horde in as many weeks to bar his path, and he was growing frustrated.

  It was as if some unseen power were seeking to block him from getting to Mad Dog Pass. He’d thought it was the skaven, at first, but the hordes he faced were more intent on pillage and loot than on stopping him. They inevitably attempted to retreat when they saw the true nature of the forces at his disposal, as had the first such band they’d encountered.

  He had taken the time to question the spirits of the deceased ratmen, and had found the dead ones no less deceitful than the living vermin. In his frustration, he had torn apart more skaven souls than he had slain living ones. But in the end, his suspicions had been confirmed – the Under-Empire had risen, and the skaven were at last united. They had eradicated Tilea and Estalia, and Araby was even now under siege from above and below.

  No, it wasn’t the skaven; it was something in the air itself. Arkhan was right. Forces were moving in opposition to them, and not merely those from the expected quarters. Mannfred was playing dice with the Dark Gods themselves. The thought did not frighten him. Rather, it invigorated him. If the Chaos gods were taking a hand in affairs so directly, then he was on the right path. He had faced the servants of Chaos before, and emerged triumphant. This time would be no different.

  He looked up at the dark sky, where strange green coronas still swirled and crawled, like flies on the flesh of a corpse, and laughed. ‘Come then,’ he said. ‘Come and set yourselves against me, oh powers and principalities of madness. Let the heavens themselves crumble in, and the earth turn to mud beneath my feet, and I will still triumph. Send your daemons and proxies, if you would, and I will show you that in this fallen world there is one, at least, who does not fear you. I have beaten gods and men before, and you will be no different. The veil of perfect night shall fall on this world, and order and perfection shall reign, according to my will and no other.’

  The air seemed to thicken about him for a moment, and he thought he saw cosmic faces stretched across the sky above, glaring down at him in tenebrous fascination. He felt the weight of their gaze on his soul and mind, and he swept his sword out in a gesture of challenge.

  A screech alerted him to the skaven retreat, and he looked down. The ratkin were fleeing with all the orderly precision of their four-legged cousins. He fancied that more of the pestilential vermin died in the retreat than in the battle itself. Then, considering the sheer size of the horde in question, perhaps that wasn’t all that surprising.

  ‘They flee, my lord,’ Duke Forzini said as his horse trotted past. His armour, like Markos’s, was dripping with blood, and his sword dangled loosely in his grip. ‘If we press forward, we might catch them.’ The duke had taken to vampirism with admirable rapidity, and his mouth and beard were matted with gore. Forzini had personally inducted most of his household knights into a state of undeath, binding them to him with blood where before they had been loyal only to his gold.

  ‘No need,’ Mannfred said. He sheathed his blade. ‘They are going in the same direction we are, and the fear they carry with them will infect those who stand between us and our goal.’ He looked about him, and smiled cruelly. Then, with a gesture, he drew the corpses of the two rat ogres he’d slain to their feet. ‘Besides, we have a wealth of new recruits to add to our ranks.’ More skaven followed the rat ogres’ example, their torn and mutilated bodies sliding and shuffling upright.

  Despite his bravado, and despite the sheer number of skaven corpses that were even now being washed away down the roaring waters of the Skull River, the battle had been a close one – this swarm had been the largest his forces had yet faced. An ocean of squealing bodies and ramshackle war engines that had momentarily blanketed the horizon. Mannfred had been forced to rouse the dead of three ravaged fortress towns to throw at the horde.

  Speed and subtlety alone was no longer going to serve, he thought. The closer they drew to Mad Dog Pass, the greater the likelihood that he would find himself facing similarly sized hordes of skaven. He needed every corpse he could find to throw at them.

  He felt a tremor, and glanced up at the Claw of Nagash, where it sat atop the staff strapped to his back. The fingers twitched and stretched, as though gesturing towards the mountains rising in the distance. It seemed that its movements were becoming more agitated the closer they came to Mad Dog Pass, almost as if it were impatient to be reunited with the blade that had severed it from Nagash’s wrist, once upon a time. Mannfred could almost feel the dark magics radiating from the Fellblade. His palms itched to hold it, and he could sense the hum of its deadly energies. His hand clenched.

  You don’t have it yet, boy. You still have a million ratmen between you and that dark blade, and you’d best not forget it, Vlad said. Mannfred opened his hands and looked resolutely away from the shifting shadow-shape that scratched at the edges of his attention. Vlad’s voice had only become stronger as they came closer to the Fellblade. When he fought, there was Vlad, watching him as though he were still a boy on the proving ground, fumbling with his blade. Vlad had always watched him that way.

  ‘Nothing I did was ever up to your standards, was it, old man? I never measured up to you or your blasted queen, or the bloody champion. And you wonder why I stole that cursed bauble…’ he muttered, running his hands over his scalp. ‘Yet here I sit, on the cusp of victory. And where are you? Ash on the wind.’

  Better ash than a body rotting in a bog, Vlad said. Did you enjoy it? Sunk in the mire, a hole in your heart, unable to move or scream. I wonder, did something of that tainted place creep into your veins? Is that why you changed? You were always so vain, and now, you are as foul and as bestial as any of those treacherous animals I locked away in the vaults below Castle Drakenhof. Why, you’ll take to wing any day now, I’d wager. You’ll shed all pretence, just like Konrad, and succumb to the madness in your blood…

  Mannfred snarled. His hand flew to the hilt of his blade and he drew the sword, twisting around in his saddle to face the shade of his mentor. The tip of his blade narrowly missed Markos’s nose as he rode up. The other vampire jerked back and nearly fell from his saddle. ‘Are you mad?’ he snarled.

  ‘Mind your tone, cousin,’ Mannfred growled. He fought to control his expression. ‘You shouldn’t sneak up on me while I am concentrating.’ He looked about, and saw that every dead thing around was standing at attention, empty eyes fixed on him. He could feel the power of the Claw mingling with his own as it spread outwards and roused the inhabitant of every grave for miles around, be it skaven, human, orc or animal. More, he could feel them stumbling forwards at his call, answering his summons. Thousands of rotting corpses and tormented spirits were coming in response to his command.

  ‘How many more cadavers do we require?’ Markos muttered, looking around at the swaying dead who surrounded them.

  Mannfred smiled nastily. ‘Enough to drown the skaven in their burrows, cousin. I will bury them in the bodies of their kin. Come – time slips away, and I would not have my prize do the same!’

  Quenelles, Bretonnia

  When it came time to make camp, the village had seemed the best spot. It was still mostly intact, if all but abandoned. They had seen smoke rising up into the overcast and cloud-darkened sky, and Anark, the Crowfiend and the other vampires had ridden pell-mell to claim whatever living blood remained in the village. Unfortunately for them, all of the villagers who had not fled were piled up on a pyre in the centre of the market square, burned to a crisp.

  Luckily, the vampires had glutted themselves during the b
attle several days before. But Arkhan had been hoping to add the inhabitants to his host. Too many of the dead had been irretrievably lost in that battle. If they were to take La Maisontaal Abbey, and then escape Bretonnia in the aftermath, they would need a host of considerably larger size than they currently had.

  ‘No blood, no corpses of any worth – it’s almost as if someone got here ahead of us,’ Erikan Crowfiend said as he rode up to Arkhan to deliver his report. A gaggle of ghouls gambolled after his horse. The Crowfiend had an affinity for the flesh-eaters and he had begun to assert some control over the numberless cannibals that haunted the meadows of Quenelles. ‘I’ve sent out scouts, but none of them have come back yet.’

  Arkhan pondered his comment silently. Every graveyard and town they had come to since crossing the border into Quenelles had been razed to the cellar stones, and the bodies of the dead mangled or burned beyond use. Some of that, he knew, was down to the ghouls, who spilled across Bretonnia like locusts, feeding on the dead left behind by the civil war. But he could not escape the feeling that potential lines of supply were being cut one by one by unseen enemies.

  In all the centuries of his existence, Arkhan had learned much of the arts of war. The back-alley gambler had become a hardened battlefield general, who knew the way of the refused flank, the feint and the coordinated onslaught. He knew when he was facing a planned attack, even if it looked like coincidence or random chance.

  There was a mind working against his, and he suspected he knew where it hid. More than once, he had caught the creeping moth-wing touch of dark magics at the edges of his senses. Not necromancy, but something older and fouler by far. The magics of ruination and entropy. The magics of the Dark Gods. He could taste them on the air, as he had when he’d breached the wall of faith in Sylvania. They were gathering their strength, as the winds of magic writhed in torment. Even now, the air stank of the breath of the Dark Gods. It hung thick and foul and close, obscuring his sorcerous senses.

  He glanced up, and saw a shape, circling far above. For a moment, he mistook it for an unusually large carrion bird. Then, he realised that he had seen that dim, flapping form before. It had harried his host for leagues. It never drew too close, but it had pursued them relentlessly. It was this thing that radiated the magics he sensed, he was certain. It followed him, and a horde of beastmen followed it, the very beastmen who had led the Bretonnians upon him, and now loped in his wake like wolves haunting the trail of a dying stag. They had been shadowing the undead since the battle with Tancred’s forces.

  Arkhan had dismissed the creatures at first, thinking them little better than the ghoul packs that now loped in the wake of his host. But his scouts had brought him reports that the creatures had followed them from the battlefield, shadowing his forces, never engaging in conflict, and always fleeing if challenged. The herd was also growing in size. Worse, it was doing so more quickly than his own forces. He felt as if he were being driven forwards, like the beast before the hunters, and there was nothing for it but to run as quickly as possible.

  ‘Bah, we will find blood and corpses aplenty if we but follow Tancred’s army and destroy it. They’ll make for Castle Brenache. With the forces at our disposal we can tear it down stone by stone,’ Kemmler said. Arkhan ignored him. ‘Are you listening to me, liche?’ Kemmler snapped. He grabbed Arkhan’s arm.

  Arkhan knocked Heinrich Kemmler sprawling. ‘You are a fool, old man. Your obsession has almost cost us everything. We are done with your fantasies of vengeance.’ The liche pinned Kemmler in place with his staff. Krell moved towards them, axe not quite raised. Arkhan fixed the wight with a glare, and the cat perched on his shoulder hissed at the wight. Krell hesitated, seemingly uncertain who to strike. Arkhan decided not to press the issue.

  He lifted his staff and stepped back. ‘You have cost me an asset, and burdened us all, in the name of bruised pride and ego.’ Kruk had died in the battle with the Bretonnians. Kemmler had abandoned his position to attack his old enemy, leaving Kruk exposed to the lances of the knights, and the little necromancer had been dislodged from his harness somehow. He’d subsequently been trodden into a red pulp by the galloping hooves of the knights’ horses. Ogiers and Fidduci had been able to keep those dead under the little man’s control upright, but only just. With Kemmler distracted by Tancred, Arkhan’s army had nearly disintegrated.

  If the Bretonnians had not routed when they had, Arkhan knew, it was very likely that his mission would have been over before it had even truly begun, so devastating had their initial charge been. Luckily, the core of his army was still intact – the wights and skeletons he’d drawn from the molehills and tombs of the Vaults, and the blood knights who Mannfred had foisted on him. And he too had recovered the ancient canopic jars that he had cached on the border of Quenelles, which housed the dust and ashes of the Silent Legion.

  Over the course of centuries, Arkhan had carefully seeded many desolate and isolated places with unliving servants, so that should he ever find himself in need, he would have warriors to call on. The Silent Legion were one such group. In ages past, they had served Nagash, and it was only the increasing strength of the winds of magic that would enable Arkhan to restore them to fighting vigour and control them. But he needed time to prepare the proper rites to do so. Time that Kemmler had cost them.

  ‘You promised me Tancred’s head,’ Kemmler snarled as Krell helped him to his feet. The old man stank of blood and indignation, and he pressed a hand to his side, which was stained dark. Tancred hadn’t died without leaving his enemy a painful reminder of their dalliance. That wound had weakened Kemmler, and slowed down their advance considerably. ‘I was merely taking my due, and I won you the battle in the process.’

  ‘It should not have been a battle,’ Arkhan said. ‘It should have been a slaughter. We should have drowned them in a sea of rotting flesh and mouldering bone, and swept them aside in minutes. Instead, we were drawn out into a pointless struggle that lasted more than a day. We have no time for this.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t,’ Kemmler spat. ‘But Bretonnia owes me a pound of flesh and I intend to collect!’ He gripped his staff so tightly that the ancient wood creaked.

  ‘What you think you are owed is of no concern to me,’ Arkhan said. ‘La Maisontaal Abbey is only a few days’ march from here, and I would give our enemies no more time to prepare. I care nothing for Brenache, or your grudge. We have wasted enough time.’

  ‘Time, time, time,’ Kemmler mocked. ‘You act as if you still live, and that one day is different from another. What matters when we do it, so long as it is done. Let Nagash wait.’

  The zombie cat twitched and fixed Kemmler with a glare that the old necromancer didn’t seem to notice. Arkhan reached up to stroke its head. ‘Nagash isn’t what I’m worried about. How long do you think we have before the new king of this ravaged land notices that we’ve invaded? Or the rulers of Athel Loren? They are occupied, for now, but that will not last forever. And there are more enemies abroad than just men and elves.’

  ‘Who would dare challenge the most mighty and puissant Arkhan, eh?’ Fidduci broke in, before Kemmler could spit what was certain to be an acidic reply. The Tilean took off his spectacles and began to clean them on the hem of his filthy robe.

  The spear caught him just between his narrow shoulder blades and punched through his chest in an explosion of gore. Ogiers, who’d been standing beside him, fell back with a yelp. Arkhan looked up as a howl echoed through the air. The flying shape had drifted lower, and he saw then that it was no bird, but instead a winged beastman. It swooped upwards with a triumphant roar and he knew then that it had thrown the spear. Kemmler had distracted him, and he had not seen the beast’s approach.

  Fidduci coughed blood and reached out, weakly, towards Arkhan. The liche ignored him, and began to ready a sorcerous bolt. He intended to pluck the flying beast from the sky for its temerity. A shout drew his attention before he could do so, however. He saw Anark and the other vampires riding back towards him
, smashing aside zombies in the process. ‘Beware!’ Anark bellowed. ‘It’s a trap!’

  Horns wailed and Arkhan cursed as beastmen came charging out of hiding in a rush, exploding from the meadows around the village, and out of the seemingly empty shacks, howling and snarling. They tore through the ranks of the unprepared dead like starving wolves, with crude axes and chopping blades. Arkhan whirled around, and black lightning streaked from his eyes, incinerating a dozen of the malformed creatures. It wasn’t enough. A gor, foam dripping from its muzzle, leapt over the burning, smoking remains of its fellows and brought a blade down on Ogiers’s skull, splitting the Bretonnian’s head from crown to jaw.

  As the necromancer fell, Arkhan obliterated his killer. Power roiled within him, and spewed out in murderous waves, laying beastmen low by the score. But still they came on, their eyes bulging and froth clinging to their lips. They had been driven beyond the bounds of madness, and there was no fear in them. Magic had hidden their presence from him, magic wielded by the flying creature that even now circled above him, its jeering laughter drifting down like raindrops. It was all Kemmler’s fault. The Lichemaster had tarried too long, playing his games of spite with Tancred, and been wounded for it. They’d lost half of their army at a stroke, as Fidduci fell, bleeding and hurting. And now, the children of Chaos were attempting to take advantage of their weakened state. He could almost hear the laughter of the Dark Gods, echoing down from the storm-stirred heavens.

  Arkhan was forced to fall back. The cat yowled and hissed as it clung to his shoulder, and he drew his tomb-blade, only just in time to block a blow aimed at his skull. He spun, crushing his attacker’s head with the end of his staff. For a moment, he won clear. But it didn’t last.

  The minotaur was the largest of its brutish kind that Arkhan had ever had the misfortune to see. It rampaged towards him, bellowing furiously, bashing aside its smaller cousins heedlessly as it came closer to him, the great axe in its hand licking out towards him. Arkhan thrust his staff and his blade up, crossing them to catch the blow as it fell. The axe was the same size as his torso, and it was all that he could do to catch the blade. The force of the blow drove him down to one knee. He strained against the weight of the axe as the minotaur hunched forward, trying to break his guard through sheer brute strength.

 

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