The End Times | The Return of Nagash

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The End Times | The Return of Nagash Page 39

by Josh Reynolds


  Mannfred, bloody-faced, sprang to his feet and loped towards the fallen beast. As he reached the creature, Eltharion rose, battered but unbowed. He spared a single, inscrutable glance for his fallen mount, and then he extended his blade towards Mannfred. ‘You’re in my way,’ he said.

  Mannfred grinned. ‘So I am, elf.’

  Eltharion strode forward. ‘I haven’t got the time for you today, beast. It would be best if you walked away, and lived to fight another day.’

  ‘Make time,’ Mannfred spat. Here was a creature whose arrogance rivalled his own, and he found himself stung by the sheer gall of the elf. How dare they invade his lands and presume to treat him as anything less than what he was! He interposed himself as the elf charged towards the Nine Daemons.

  Two blades, one forged by the greatest artisans of an empire long since fallen, the other by the mightiest civilisation to ever walk the world’s white rim, came together with a sound like the roar of tigers. Mannfred stamped forward and shrieked, a war-cry not heard in the world for ages undreamt of slipping instinctively from his lips. Eltharion made no sound, and his face betrayed no effort as he met the vampire’s blow and blocked it.

  Mannfred moved quicker than he ever had before in the entirety of his accumulated centuries. He moved faster than the human eye could follow, so fast that his flesh was rubbed raw by his speed. Nonetheless, Eltharion parried every blow with a grace that stung Mannfred’s eyes. Every blow save one. Mannfred gave a hiss of satisfaction as the tip of his blade slid across the elf’s arm, slicing easily through armour and cloth to bite the flesh beneath. Eltharion staggered, and a second blow sawed at his side, tearing at his cuirass. Mannfred laughed as the sweet smell of elf blood filled his nostrils. ‘Death, warrior – death is all that you’ll find here. Death and an eternity of servitude after.’ He circled Eltharion and continued to spew taunts. ‘You’ll be my bodyguard, I think. I’m running short on those, thanks to you. Would you like that, elf? I’ll let your mutilated husk lead my legions when I burn the pretty white towers of your people and make them my chattel.’

  He’d hoped to provoke the elf. To spur him into attacking wildly, and without concern for his own wellbeing. Instead, the elf came at him with a chilly meticulousness. He parried Mannfred’s next blow and the edge of his blade came close to opening the vampire’s throat. Eltharion fought with machine-like precision, every blow calculated for maximum effect and minimum effort. If he hadn’t suddenly found himself on the defensive, Mannfred would have been impressed.

  He realised, as they traded blows, that for the first time in a long time he was the less-masterful combatant in a duel. For too many years, he had relied upon old skills and sheer brute strength, but here, at last, was an opponent whom he could not simply overmatch.

  A blow from Eltharion’s sword tore open his cuirass and sliced through the flesh beneath. A second blow smashed into Mannfred’s forearm with hammer-like precision, shattering bone and shearing muscle to leave the limb hanging from a single agonised strand of muscle. Mannfred howled and staggered back, clutching at his wounded limb, his sword lying forgotten in the dust. The world spun around him, and he could see all of his hopes and dreams turning to ash before him.

  ‘No,’ he hissed. ‘No! I’ve fought too long, too hard to be beaten now, by you!’ he roared as he flung out his good hand. Deathly magics coalesced in the air before the grimly advancing elf, forming into a sextet of black swords. Eltharion weaved through the blades, parrying their every blow.

  Mannfred, crouched on the slope, watched the elf fight his way through the blades. The sable swords had only been a distraction. They would fade in moments, leaving Eltharion free to attack again. He had only moments in which to act. Ignoring the pain of his mangled arm, he summoned the energy to unleash a bolt of raw, writhing magic. He rose on unsteady legs, the scope of his world narrowed to Eltharion’s graceful form. If he could kill the elf, it would be done. He extended his hand, black lightning crackling along his forearm and between his curled fingers.

  But before he could unleash the spell, he heard a guttural snarl. A heavy body lunged across the slope, trailing blood and feathers. The griffon’s beak snapped shut on his extended arm, its talons smashing into his chest and thigh. Mannfred screamed as he was borne to the ground by the monster’s weight. It was no consolation that his spell had killed the creature as it struck it.

  ‘No! Damn you, no!’ Mannfred screamed, pleading with fate as he tried to extricate himself from the dead animal’s claws and beak. ‘No! Not now! Eltharion – face me, damn you!’ he shrieked as Eltharion started up the slope with only a single backwards glance. ‘Eltharion,’ Mannfred wailed, squirming beneath the corpse of the griffon.

  Eltharion strode towards the standing stones, seemingly gaining strength with every step. As he reached them, light crackled between them. Mannfred cackled weakly. Of course Arkhan had cast some defensive enchantment, of course!

  His cackles died away as Eltharion raised his sword in a two-handed grip and thrust the sword into the mystical barrier. The magic crackled and spat, writhing around the blade like a thing in pain. The runes upon the elvish blade glowed as red as coals, and then Eltharion pushed his way into the ring of the Nine Daemons.

  With an agonised snarl, Mannfred freed himself from the dead griffon, leaving behind more flesh and blood than he liked to think about. Bleeding heavily, he staggered up after the elf and, with a last surge of strength, he pounced at the gap the elf had made.

  He was too slow. He struck the mystic barrier and staggered back. Wailing spirits whirled about him as he pounded his now-healed fists against the barrier. He saw Eltharion toss away his smoking and melted blade.

  Arkhan had his back to the elf, standing before the cauldron, one hand wrapped in the golden tresses of the Everchild, forcing her head and torso over the cauldron’s rim. In his other hand, he held his knife in preparation for slashing her throat, as he had with all of the other sacrifices. In the centre of the cauldron, Volkmar hung limp in a mystical web of chains.

  Eltharion lunged with a roar worthy of his slain mount. Arkhan released his captive and spun. Eltharion slammed into him, his hands closing about the liche’s bony neck. Arkhan glared at the elf. ‘Release me, warrior.’ Eltharion slammed him back against the cauldron as if to snap the liche in two. ‘Very well. I have no more time for mercy.’

  Arkhan’s hands snapped up and caught the elf’s wrists. Instantly, a cloud of rust billowed up from Eltharion’s vambraces. As Mannfred watched, the entropic curse consumed him. It rippled across metal and flesh with equal aplomb, warping and cracking armour as it withered flesh. The elf’s hair turned white and brittle, and his flesh took on the consistency of parchment, but he did not release his hold on Arkhan. To the last, his gaze held the liche’s.

  Then, with barely a sigh, Eltharion the Grim, Warden of Tor Yvresse, burst apart in a cloud of dust.

  Arkhan staggered back, the witch-lights of his eyes flashing with something that might have been regret. Mannfred began to pound on the barrier anew as Arkhan turned back and jerked Aliathra to her feet. He reclaimed his dagger. ‘My father will destroy you, liche,’ she said. Mannfred was impressed. There was no fear in her voice, only resignation.

  ‘Your father is already dead, child. My allies have seen to that.’

  ‘Allies? What allies?’ Mannfred shouted. ‘Arkhan – let me in!’

  Arkhan ignored him. He looked at Aliathra as she said, ‘For all of your power, you know nothing.’

  ‘We shall see,’ Arkhan said. He glanced at Mannfred. ‘Stop striking my barrier, vampire. It’s becoming annoying.’

  ‘Let me in, you fool,’ Mannfred snarled. His mind probed at the sorcery that protected the stones, trying to find a weak point. He had to get in there.

  ‘Why? So that you can try and subvert this moment for your own ends? No – no, I think not. You have played your part, and admirably so, vampire. Do not ruin it now with petty antics.’ Arkhan stepped forward and drag
ged Aliathra towards the cauldron. She struggled for a moment, then pressed her hands against the liche’s chest. Arkhan threw up a hand as a white, painful light flared suddenly. He recoiled as if burned, and then swung the elf maiden towards the cauldron. ‘What have you done, witch?’ he rasped.

  ‘You’ll find out,’ she said.

  Arkhan hesitated, staring at her. Then, with a dry rasp of anger, he cut her throat.

  As her blood spilled into the already bubbling cauldron, Arkhan began to speak. The words had a black resonance that caused the air to shudder and squirm, as if in fear. Mannfred began to pound on the shield again, howling curses at the heedless liche as he continued to chant.

  As Mannfred watched in mounting frustration, Arkhan placed his knife against one of Volkmar’s wrists and, with a single, efficient motion, severed the hand. Volkmar screamed and writhed in his chains. Arkhan, still chanting, lifted the Claw of Nagash and pressed it forcefully against the Grand Theogonist’s pulsing stump.

  Volkmar’s screams grew in pitch and volume, spiralling up into the tormented air to mingle with the unpleasant echoes of Arkhan’s chanting. Arkhan stepped back and snatched up Alakanash. He lifted the staff high and tendrils of dark magic burst from the stump of the Claw. The tendrils writhed about Volkmar’s arm and burrowed into the old man’s abused flesh. Volkmar screamed and shook in his chains, convulsing with a suffering that even Mannfred had trouble imagining.

  He took no pleasure in the old man’s pain, though he might have, under different circumstances. He slid down, suddenly weary, as the tendrils began to expand. As they grew, they lashed and flailed and spread across Volkmar’s frame, winnowing into him and leaving only a cancerous mass of dark magic in their wake. Soon, the only thing of Volkmar that Mannfred could see were his eyes, bulging in agony.

  Then, there was nothing save the mass, which swelled like an abominable leech as it feasted greedily on the blood in the cauldron. Chains snapped as the mass thrashed about, drawing sparks from the stones around it. It continued to swell as Arkhan held the Fellblade extended, point-first towards the cauldron.

  Arkhan spat words like arrows, piercing the air with the hateful sound of them. The Fellblade rose from his hand as if plucked by invisible fingers. It hung in midair for a moment and then, with a loud crack, it shivered into a thousand steaming fragments, which swirled about the mass like tiny comets before striking it and burrowing into its surface.

  Outside the circle, Mannfred hunched closer to the stones as the wind picked up, and the howling of the spirits grew deafening. The stones trembled and glowed with daemonic fire. Thunder rolled across the sky above, and he screamed in pain as the enchantment he had laid across the land – his land – was torn asunder. Something vast and terrible descended into the stone circle with a volcanic sigh.

  His head was filled with fiery wasps, and his bones felt as if they would tear from his flesh to join the maelstrom swirling about inside the circle. His heart swelled and wrenched in his chest, and he crawled forward as the spell that had barred him entry shattered like glass. Something spoke in a voice that echoed through his mind.

  ‘YOU HAVE DONE WELL, MY SERVANT.’

  Nagash.

  It was the voice of Nagash and it tore through him like a blade, cutting through his arrogance, his ambitions, his hopes and his vanities. Mannfred shuddered in his skin as he crept towards the cauldron. He felt sick, as though a great pressure had settled on him. He knew then that his dreams had only ever been that – dreams. Arkhan had been right, in the end. There was no controlling what had come back into the world. What now spoke in a voice like sour thunder. ‘THE GREAT WORK CAN BEGIN.’

  He saw that Arkhan had prostrated himself and he could not stop himself from doing the same. He bent low, hoping that the thing that now gazed at him with eyes as deep and as empty as a hole in the world could not sense the bitterness in his heart.

  ‘DO YOU SERVE ME?’ Nagash asked, looking down at him.

  Mannfred von Carstein closed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he croaked, ‘I serve you… master.’

  EPILOGUE

  Geheimnisnacht

  Mannfred von Carstein screamed.

  For the first time in a long time, he truly screamed. Not a howl of frustration, or the cry of a wounded warrior, but the shriek of a frightened beast, caught in a trap. Nagash’s servants had stripped his cuirass and cloak from him, leaving him bare-chested. They held his wrists pinned, and skeletal hands sprouted from the ground like hellish mushrooms to grasp his feet and ankles.

  ‘No, I refuse – I will not let you do this – I forbid it!’ Mannfred screamed, struggling vainly against the withered grip of the ancient, long-dead warriors who held him.

  ‘YOU… FORBID?’ The sickly green witch-lights of Nagash’s eyes flickered. The fleshless jaw sagged in what might have been laughter. Nagash loomed over the vampire. ‘YOU FORBID NOTHING, LITTLE FLEA. YOU SIMPLY SERVE.’

  ‘Then you don’t need him! You have me,’ Mannfred howled, jerking in his captors’ grip. ‘I have always been loyal to you! I brought you back – me, not him!’

  Nagash took Mannfred’s chin in one black claw. ‘LOYAL. YOUR KIND DOES NOT KNOW LOYALTY. DO THEY, ARKHAN?’ The witch-lights flickered towards Arkhan, where the liche stood watching.

  ‘Loyal or not, he has served you,’ Arkhan said, one hand still pressed to his chest where the Everchild had struck him. He could feel something there, as if she had passed something to him, but he could not say what. ‘As have I.’

  ‘YES. AS YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO, UNTIL THE GREAT WORK IS COMPLETED. AS THIS ONE WILL DO. AS ALL HIS KIND WILL DO.’ Nagash leaned towards Mannfred. ‘YOU WERE CREATED TO SERVE ME. YOU ARE AN EXTENSION OF MY WILL, NOTHING MORE. AND I WILL DASH YOU DOWN OR CALL YOU UP AS IT PLEASES ME.’

  With that, Nagash sank his fingers into Mannfred’s chest and wrenched a gobbet of flesh free. Mannfred screamed and thrashed as Nagash turned and squeezed the bloody hank of meat onto the pile of dust and soil his servants had created earlier. When the last drop of blood had been wrung from it, he tossed it aside without a second glance.

  ‘RISE,’ Nagash said. It was not a request. The air, murky and foul, twitched like an inattentive cat. ‘RISE,’ he said again.

  The air twitched again. Dust billowed, mixing with Sylvanian grave soil and Nehekharan sand. Something vague was beginning to take shape. Mannfred’s howls of denial grew louder as the pool of his blood began to bubble and froth.

  Arkhan watched, curious. The blood of all vampires was, at its base, the blood of Nagash, albeit diluted by poison and sorcery. The black brew devoured and replaced all that was human in them, making them over into something else. It made a dreadful sort of sense that Nagash would know how to manipulate it.

  For as long as he could recall, the vampires had thought themselves separate and superior to beings such as himself. They had thought themselves the inheritors of Nagash’s legacy, rather than merely another sort of servant.

  Today, Nagash proved them wrong.

  The blood began to spread, increasing in volume, and rising upwards like a geyser to encompass the dust. The vague shape became less so. To Arkhan, it was as if someone were swimming towards him across a great distance. A sound drew his attention.

  Mannfred was weeping. Great red tears rolled down his cheeks, and his mouth was open in a soundless howl of fury and fear. He’d been forced to his knees by Nagash’s servants, and he’d ceased his struggles. He stared at the pulsing column of blood as if it were the end of the world.

  Then, maybe it was.

  Arkhan turned back as Nagash stepped close to the blood and, without hesitation, plunged his arm in. There was a sound like the ocean’s roar and the crash of thunder, and then Nagash jerked something out of the blood and tossed it aside. As it struck the ground, Arkhan saw that it was a human figure, flesh stained red.

  The blood splashed down and lost all cohesion. The figure lay on the ground, curled into a ball. Nagash reached for it, as if to shake it
to wakefulness. A bloodstained hand snapped out, seizing his wrist. Nagash paused.

  A voice, hoarse with disuse, said, ‘I… live.’ The figure uncoiled and rose awkwardly, as Nagash jerked his wrist free and stepped back. Beneath a mask of dried blood, feral, handsome features twisted in confusion as dark eyes gazed down at clawed hands in incomprehension. ‘I live? I-I… Isabella?’

  The eyes flickered up as Mannfred at last tore himself free of his captors and lunged towards Arkhan. Unprepared, Arkhan could only stumble back as Mannfred tore his tomb-blade from its sheath and shoved him back.

  ‘No,’ Mannfred wailed, ‘No, not again, never again!’ He hurtled towards the newcomer, his stolen sword licking out to remove the latter’s head.

  The newcomer sprang aside, stumbled and dived for one of Nagash’s warriors. He ripped the archaic blade from the wight’s belt and whirled about, bringing his newly procured weapon up just in time to block Mannfred’s next blow.

  ‘You,’ he said, eyes narrowing as they fixed on Mannfred’s contorted features. Thin lips peeled back, revealing an impressive mouthful of fangs.

  ‘I killed you once, old man. I can do it again,’ Mannfred shrieked.

  Arkhan moved to break up the duel, but stopped at an imperious gesture from Nagash. The Undying King wanted to see what happened next. The two vampires lunged towards each other, their blades connecting in a screech of metal. They spun in a tight circle, their swords locked together. For a moment, Arkhan thought Mannfred had the advantage. The other vampire seemed weak, uncertain… But then, slowly, steadily, he began to gain the upper hand. Arkhan realised that he’d been feigning weakness, in order to draw Mannfred in.

  Mannfred was too blinded by rage to see what his opponent was up to. He lunged, and the other vampire performed a complicated manoeuvre that Arkhan had last seen on the proving grounds of Rasetra more than a thousand years before, blocking the blow and disarming Mannfred all in one smooth motion. Mannfred, unable to halt his lunge, stumbled forward. His opponent’s blade was suddenly there to meet him, and it slid into his belly with a wet sound. Mannfred coughed and his eyes bulged in shock as he clawed at his opponent’s blade.

 

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