The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘More elves, from the south-west,’ Elize said.

  Mannfred’s eyes narrowed. ‘Athel Loren,’ he murmured. ‘Arkhan was nearly taken by them, as he crossed the Grey Mountains. Krell moved to lead them away, costing us his strength in this, our hour of need.’

  ‘We do not need a mere wight to defend our ancestral lands, cousin,’ Elize hissed.

  ‘Krell is no more a mere wight than I am a mere vampire,’ Mannfred said, scratching his chin. ‘He is a weapon of Nagash, as Arkhan is. One of his oldest and best. How large is their host?’

  ‘Infinitesimal,’ Elize said dismissively. ‘It is barely a raiding party.’

  ‘Nonetheless, we must take care. Elves are always dangerous, no matter how few they are,’ Mannfred said. He raised his fingers and ticked them off one by one as he spoke. ‘Men, elves, beasts, yet more elves and… Who am I forgetting?’

  ‘Dwarfs,’ Elize said. ‘A throng, I think it’s called. Coming from Karak Kadrin.’

  Mannfred closed his eyes and hissed in consternation. The dwarfs were the only invaders who truly worried him. The warriors of Athel Loren were too few, the beasts too undisciplined, but the dwarfs were neither. For a century he had stepped lightly around Ungrim Ironfist, and taken care not to antagonise either him or his folk. Now, it seemed as if all of that was for naught. ‘The Slayer King is at our gate,’ he murmured. ‘Tch, where is he stumping, then?’

  ‘Templehof,’ Elize said tersely. ‘I think that they are attempting to join forces with Leitdorf and the Ulthuani.’

  ‘That… would be unfortunate,’ Mannfred said. He stared at the tree, thinking. None of this was surprising, though the timing was problematic. Still, he had prepared for this from the beginning. Everything had led up to this point. He had known the moment that he had kidnapped the Everchild, the moment he had seceded Sylvania from the shambolic Empire, that he would eventually face an invasion from one quarter or another. Now, at last, on the eve of his certain triumph, his enemies were making their final stab at stopping him.

  He took it as a compliment, of sorts. All great men could be judged by the quality of their enemies, and after all, wasn’t it the sad duty of every new empire to eradicate those older, stagnant empires that occupied its rightful place before it could take the stage?

  He plucked another blossom from the tree. ‘When I was but a headstrong youth, with more bloodlust than sense, a warrior came to my city. He was a terror such as no longer walks this world, thankfully. We called him “the dragon”. He taught me much about war, and the waging of it, and despite our… falling out some years later, I am grateful to him.’ He smiled slightly. ‘His folk often waged wars on multiple fronts, so fractious was their land. Division and conquest, he said, were as good as the same thing. When your enemies converge, you take them apart one… by… one.’ As he spoke, he began to shuck the petals from the blossom. ‘Men are like water. They can be redirected, contained and drained away with the proper application of tactics and strategy.’ He held what was left of the blossom out to her.

  She stared at it for a moment, and then looked at him. ‘You have a strategy, cousin?’

  ‘Oh many more than are entirely necessary for the conflict to come, I assure you.’ He dropped the denuded blossom. ‘Our task is simplified by our goal – we are buying time for the inevitable.’ He pointed at Elize. ‘We must peel them away, one by one. And here is how we shall do it…’

  The Broken Spine, Stirland-Sylvania border

  Hans Leitdorf stared morosely over his shoulder at the distant and now crumbling edifice of bone and sorcery that had, until a few hours ago, barred his path into Sylvania. It had begun to collapse, even as had the walls of Heldenhame so many months ago, but it had still required sorcery to clear a path for his army. Luckily, his new allies had provided a certain amount of aid in that regard.

  He surreptitiously examined the silvery figures as they studied the territory ahead from a nearby rocky knoll. Three of them – two in the ornate and delicate-looking armour characteristic of Ulthuani nobility, and the third in flowing robes of blue. All three carried themselves with the haughty surety of their folk, an arrogant confidence that no human could hope to match.

  That it had come to this was a sign of the times, in Leitdorf’s opinion. Dark times made for strange allies, as Thyrus was wont to say. Thinking of Gormann brought back memories of those terrible, final days at Heldenhame, after the undead assault had melted away.

  He remembered finding Weskar’s head, mounted on the butt of a spear that had been stabbed point first into the centre of the castle courtyard. He remembered the blood that slopped thickly down from the battlements, and the gory remains of the castle’s defenders, heaped carelessly where they had fallen. He and Gormann had personally cleansed the bestial filth from the upper barracks and towers, burning and killing those shrieking vargheists that had not fled with Mannfred.

  During the cleansing of the castle, they’d discovered that the vaults of Heldenhame had been torn asunder and scoured by sorcery. Ancient treasures, gathered from Araby in the time of the Crusades, had been melted to glittering slag as a sign of Mannfred von Carstein’s disdain. There was no way to tell if anything had been taken, though Gormann had had his suspicions. Leitdorf had found them hard to credit at the time, but as the year wore on, and he had seen the current state of the Empire for himself, he had begun to believe.

  Worse even than the desecration of his order’s citadel had been what happened afterwards – as he had readied his surviving forces to pursue von Carstein back into his stinking lair to accomplish what the Grand Theogonist, Sigmar bless and keep his soul, could not, a massive herd of foul beastmen had blundered through the line of trees only just recently vacated by the undead. The children of Chaos had thrown themselves at the newly breached western wall with no thought for the consequences.

  The battle that followed had done little to assuage the fury Leitdorf had felt at the time, or indeed still felt. It had, however, gone much better than the first. A single charge by Leitdorf and his vengeful knights had sufficed to set the howling rabble to rout. When the beastmen had been thrown back, he had seen that the defences were repaired. Then, leaving Captain Volker in command of the forces of Heldenhame, Leitdorf, Gormann and a handful of knights had ridden for Altdorf, looking to procure reinforcements.

  The journey had been nightmarish. Beastmen ran wild across Talabecland and Reikland, despite the efforts of the knightly orders who hunted them relentlessly. Every noble, innkeeper and merchant with whom Leitdorf spoke whispered of darker monstrosities than just beasts lurking beneath the trees, and of villages and towns obliterated by fire from the sky. Doomsayers and flagellants were abroad in ever-swelling numbers, agitating the grimy, plague-ridden crowds that clustered about every temple however large or small, begging for respite from gods who seemed deaf to even the loudest entreaty.

  Things had been little better in Altdorf. Karl Franz had played his usual games, stalling and refusing to commit himself openly, and Leitdorf had waited for an audience for three days before being informed that the tide had turned for the worse in the north. It seemed as if Balthasar Gelt’s magics had proven as useless there as they had in Sylvania, and the Emperor had ridden north to inspect the war effort personally, along with the Reikmarshal. Gormann had ridden out after them, to see what aid he might provide, leaving Leitdorf to scrape up what additional troops he could for the long march back to Heldenhame.

  That was when he had met the elves.

  Leitdorf felt a begrudging respect for Karl Franz’s politesse even now – he had arranged events so that two annoyances satisfied one another, at no cost to himself or the war effort in the north. It even placed both him and the elves in the Emperor’s debt, for having done so. Each had what they sought, more or less. Awkward compromise was the soul of diplomacy, or so Leitdorf had been assured by men who knew more of such things.

  Leitdorf and his new allies had ridden out that night. As they reached the easte
rn border of Sylvania, the silvery host of Ulthuan had been joined by the full might of the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood. A mightier host Leitdorf could not conceive of. Nonetheless, such a joint effort came with its own particular difficulties.

  The elves were cautious to the point of hesitation, or so it seemed to him. For a race that moved so swiftly and gracefully, they seemed inclined to tarry overmuch for Leitdorf’s liking. Irritated, he spurred his horse forward to join the elves on the knoll. His horse whinnied at the smell of the griffon, which crouched nearby, tail lashing. The great brute hissed at him as he drew close, and his hand fell to his blade instinctively. All three elves turned to face him as his fingers scraped the hilt.

  ‘Stormwing will not harm you,’ the woman, Eldyra, said, her voice high and musical. She spoke in an archly precise and archaic form of Reikspiel, and the harsh, jagged words sounded odd coming from her mouth. She was a princess of Tiranoc, he recalled, though he knew little of the distant island home of the elves, and so could not say what the human equivalent might be. A countess, perhaps, he thought.

  ‘If he tried, it would be the last thing he did, I assure you,’ Leitdorf growled, eyeing the beast warily. The elf woman smiled, as if amused.

  ‘I have no doubt,’ she said. ‘Are your men rested?’

  ‘Rested?’ he repeated, feeling as if he had missed some vital part of the conversation.

  ‘We stopped to allow them to rest. Humans are fragile, and lacking in endurance,’ the older elf, Belannaer, said, as though he were lecturing a particularly dense child.

  ‘Are we?’ Leitdorf asked, through gritted teeth. ‘My thanks. I was not aware of our limitations, or your consideration for such.’

  ‘I could make a list, for you, if you like. For future reference,’ Belannaer went on, seemingly oblivious to Leitdorf’s growing anger. Then, maybe he was. Sigmar knew that Leitdorf was having trouble reading anything on the marble-like faces of the Ulthuani… Maybe they had a similar difficulty with human expressions. The thought didn’t allay his anger, but it calmed him slightly.

  ‘That won’t be necessary. We are ready to continue on, when you are,’ Leitdorf said, addressing the third of them, the grim-faced elf prince called Eltharion. The Prince of Yvresse was plainly the leader of the expedition, yet he had not spoken one word to Leitdorf in their travels to date. Nevertheless, Leitdorf suspected that the prince could speak and understand Reikspiel well enough. He was beginning to get the impression that Eltharion resented the indignity of having to ally with men. It was all the same to Leitdorf, in the end. As long as Sylvania was a smoking ruin by Geheimnisnacht, he could indulge the elf’s pettiness.

  ‘Excellent,’ Eldyra said. Her eyes sparked with humour. ‘We were just discussing whether we should slow our pace so that the dawi have time to reach– What was it called again?’

  ‘Templehof,’ Leitdorf said. He tugged off his glove with his teeth and reached into his cuirass to retrieve a map. He tossed it to Eldyra, who caught it gingerly, as if it were something unpleasant. ‘A foul little town, located on a tributary of the Stir. It’s not far from Castle Sternieste, which is where the vampire is currently skulking, if the survivors of the Grand Theogonist’s ill-fated crusade can be believed.’ He cocked his head, considering. ‘It might be wise. Ungrim is going to be fighting his way west, through the heart of this midden heap of a province. Von Carstein will be throwing every corpse between Vanhaldenschlosse and Wolf Crag at the dwarfs, if he’s smart.’

  ‘And is he?’ Eldyra asked.

  Leitdorf laughed bitterly. ‘Oh he’s a cunning beast, that one. But he’s still a beast. And we have him trapped in his lair.’ Which was true enough. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Gelt’s wall of faith seemed to still be intact. Objects of veneration still hung in the air like a chain of holiness about the borders, shining a clean light into the murk of Sylvania. Still, he hoped Gormann was giving the weedy little alchemist an earful of it, wherever they were.

  ‘Yes, very inspired that,’ Belannaer said idly, looking at the horizon. ‘I would not have expected a human mind to grasp the complexities of such an enchantment. It was crude, of course, but that cannot be helped.’

  ‘No, it cannot,’ Leitdorf said, biting off the rest of his reply. The worst of it was that he didn’t think that the elves meant to be insulting. They simply assumed he was too thick to tell when they were being so. Well, all save Eldyra. The elf woman shook her head slightly and rolled her eyes. Leitdorf grunted. Unnatural as her beauty was, she nonetheless made him wish he were a few decades younger, and less cautious. ‘And no, we should not. Templehof lies in the shadow of Castle Templehof, which has long been claimed by Mannfred. It is a centre of power for him, which is why I chose it for our meeting place.’

  ‘You wish to make our intent clear to him,’ Eldyra said, after a moment. She nodded and her odd eyes flashed with understanding. ‘We will take it, and show him what awaits him.’

  ‘It is a waste of time,’ Eltharion said.

  Leitdorf was surprised. The elf’s voice was no less musical than Eldyra’s, but it was filled with contempt. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘We care nothing for centres of power, or clarity of intent. All that matters is rescuing the one we came for. Let the stunted ones catch up with us, if they can.’ He looked at Leitdorf. ‘We are not here to subjugate your lands for you, human.’

  ‘No, of that I am quite aware, thank you,’ Leitdorf snapped. The griffon hissed again, but he ignored it. ‘What are you here for then? You still haven’t even mentioned the name of the one you are supposedly here to rescue.’

  ‘Such is of no concern to you,’ Eltharion said bluntly. He looked away.

  ‘You are right. It is of little concern to me. But we are allies, and such things should be shared between allies,’ Leitdorf said. He longed to swing down out of his saddle and drive his fist into the elf’s scowling face. ‘I have fought these devils for longer than any other. We must take their places from them. We must burn their boltholes and dens. Otherwise they will vanish again and again, and the object of your mission with them.’ He looked hard at Eltharion. ‘I appreciate your desire for haste – I share it myself – but we need the dwarfs. Sylvania must be put down, once and for all, for the good of all of our peoples.’

  Eltharion didn’t respond. Leitdorf felt himself flush, but before he could speak, Eldyra handed the map to Belannaer and spoke to Eltharion in their own tongue. It sounded strange and off-putting to Leitdorf’s ear. He hoped she was speaking on his behalf. Eltharion ignored her, but she persisted, fairly spitting words at him. Belannaer held up the map and unrolled it. He looked at the land ahead and then back at the map. He looked up at Leitdorf. ‘This is Templehof here?’ he asked, tapping a place on the map.

  Leitdorf nodded. ‘Yes. As I said, it’s close to our destination. It will make an adequate staging area for the assault to come,’ he said. ‘We’re only a few days away.’

  Belannaer nodded and handed him the map. The mage said something to the others. He spoke sharply and hurriedly. Eltharion made a face and shook his head. Leitdorf looked around in frustration. ‘What is it?’ he barked.

  Eldyra looked at him. ‘Belannaer says that the route you’ve chosen is dangerous. There are many…’ She trailed off and made a helpless gesture, as if trying to pluck a word from the air.

  ‘Sepulchres,’ Belannaer supplied.

  ‘There are many sepulchres and places where the dead rest uneasy on this route,’ Eldyra said. Leitdorf laughed.

  ‘This is Sylvania,’ he said. ‘The whole province is an affront to Morr. Dig anywhere and you’ll find a layer of skulls beneath the soil. The trees are nourished by mass graves, and every town is built on a burying ground.’ He leaned over and spat, trying to clean the foul taste of the air out of his mouth. ‘If we get to Templehof, we can more readily defend ourselves for when Mannfred inevitably rouses the dead to stop us.’

  ‘It is better to delay or stem the tide, than merely we
ather it,’ Belannaer said. ‘I can seal or cleanse these places as we march.’ He looked at Eltharion. ‘We are but a small force, Warden of Tor Yvresse, and in enemy lands. Think of the fate you inflicted on Grom, Eltharion. Haste did not save the greenskin from the death of a thousand cuts.’

  ‘Grom?’ Leitdorf muttered. The only creature he knew of by that name was a historical footnote. He peered at the elves, suddenly all-too aware of the vast gulf of time that sat between them. How old were they? He pushed the thought aside. He didn’t want to know. ‘Most of what you’re talking about is near Templehof, if not actually within its boundaries. As I said, it is a centre of power for our enemy. Taking it from him will weaken him considerably.’

  Eltharion looked at him for long moments. Then, with a terse nod, he said, ‘Templehof. But we will not wait long. If we have finished cleansing the place before the stunted ones arrive, they shall have to catch up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ Leitdorf said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Hunger Wood, northern Sylvania

  Count Alphonse Epidimus Octavius Scaramanga Nyktolos of Vargravia, Portmaster of Ghulport and its waters, hunched low in his saddle as he urged his terrorgheist to greater speed. Around him, several more of the great, bat-like corpse-beasts flew, the sound of their wings echoing like thunder. Fellbats and rotting swarms of their normal-sized cousins kept pace. Every so often, Nyktolos would catch sight of a screeching vargheist amidst the swarms and even a single bellowing varghulf, as the latter lurched awkwardly through the air. It had taken him nearly a day to rouse the denizens of the deep caves, but he thought he had managed to drag forth every flapping thing and night-flyer that made its home there.

  It was an odd sort of army, this, but he had commanded worse in his peculiar career. There had been the time he had led a force of brine-soaked zombie sea turtles against the harbour guard of Tor Elasor. Or that incident with the mimes. Nyktolos shuddered and looked down. The vast expanse of Hunger Wood spread out below him like a shroud of green, and he could hear the crude drums and horns of the army marching through those woods.