The End Times | The Lord of the End Times

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Yes, I am a thief. And your moment has passed, old wolf. You are dead, and I will not let you sacrifice a life merely to take mine.’ He lifted his staff, and the words to an incantation rose in his mind. But before he could speak, Karl Franz stepped between them. Though the Wind of the Heavens had been stripped from him, there was still something yet in him that made Teclis wary. A lurking strength, as unlike his own as Tyrion’s was. He lowered his hands. ‘I did what I had to do,’ he said, without quite knowing why, as he met the Emperor’s gaze. ‘I did what was necessary.’

  ‘And would you do it again?’ Karl Franz said, his voice a quiet rumble.

  Teclis hesitated. He glanced towards Tyrion. ‘In a heartbeat,’ he said.

  The Emperor nodded slowly, as if he had expected no other answer. He turned and looked down at his bodyguard. The man thrashed and howled, fighting to be free of his captors. Veins bulged on his neck, and froth coated his lips. Karl Franz looked back at Teclis. ‘Can you help him?’ he asked.

  Instead of replying, Teclis knelt. Volker’s body twitched and his face seemed to elongate, becoming monstrous and unformed. Teclis stretched out his hand and plunged his fingers into the wet chill that obscured the man’s face. He tried to grasp the shard of Ulric’s essence that had made its home in the man, even as he had grasped the Flame in Middenheim. But this was different. It was no mindless flux of power, but rather a desperate consciousness, savage and determined. It struggled against him, and he heard Volker wail in agony.

  Images flooded his mind. He saw Middenheim burn, felt the heat of the flames, and the blistering cold as the sliver of Ulric’s might was pressed into Volker’s soul. Fear, weakness, fatigue, all were buried beneath the cold, so that Volker might survive the sack of the city and escape to bring warning to Averheim. Even in death, the wolf-god had been determined to watch over his chosen people. Sigmar might have been their greatest god, but Ulric had been their first.

  But now, with warnings delivered, there was one last task. Ulric had known that somehow, someway, Teclis would cross paths with the men of the Empire once more, before the end of all things. And he was determined to have his revenge. Teclis felt a sudden, stabbing pain, as if teeth were tearing into his flesh, and he jerked his hand back with a hiss. Steam rose from his blue-tinged flesh as he cradled the wounded limb to his chest. Alarielle and Malekith’s guards started forward, but the Eternity King slammed a fist down on his throne. ‘Be still,’ he grated. ‘No more of our people’s blood shall be spent in payment of his schemes. Let him survive or fall on his own.’

  Volker flung off his captors. ‘You killed them, thief,’ Volker snarled, lunging for him again. His voice echoed strangely amongst the trees, with a sound like ice-clad branches snapping. As he fell back, Teclis saw Tyrion start forwards, one hand on his blade. He waved a hand, stopping his brother before he could interfere. This is my fight, brother, my burden, Teclis thought. ‘You killed my city – my people – you killed the world. For what?’ Volker growled, in a dead god’s voice.

  ‘For him,’ Teclis said, indicating his brother. ‘For them. I sacrificed your people for my own, and I would do it again, a thousand times over, if I had to.’ He extended his staff to hold Volker at bay. ‘Malekith was right. I gambled the world. But I did not lose, for here you all stand… Incarnates, gods in all but name, ready to throw back the end of all things.’ He made a fist. ‘I tore apart the Great Vortex, and sought to ground the winds of magic in living champions, who would become mighty enough, as a group, to defy the Chaos Gods themselves.’

  He saw Balthasar Gelt nod, as if a question had suddenly been answered. The wizard said, ‘But not all of the winds are accounted for – what of the Winds of Beasts, and of Death?’

  Volker threw back his head and howled, before Teclis could even attempt to reply. The air quivered with the sound. He ripped his sword from its sheath and swung a wild blow at Teclis. The sound of steel on steel followed the echoes of the howl, as the Emperor interposed himself, and his runefang, between the maddened knight and his prey. ‘No,’ Karl Franz said. ‘No, the time for vengeance is done.’

  ‘Who are you to gainsay me?’ Volker roared. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and froth dotted his patchy beard. He strained against Karl Franz, trying to untangle their blades.

  ‘I am your Emperor, Wendel Volker. And that should be all that needs to be said.’ The Emperor spoke quietly as he leaned into the locked swords. ‘Now sheathe your blade.’ The two men locked eyes, and for a moment, Teclis wondered which would win out. Then Volker staggered back and slumped, his sword falling to the grass. He sank down, and the frost that coated his armour began to melt. The Emperor dropped to one knee and placed a hand on Volker’s shoulder. Teclis could still feel the wrath of the wolf-god, or whatever was left of him, retreating, slinking back into hiding. It was not gone, but its fury was abated, for now.

  Before anyone could speak to break the silence that followed, the trees gave out a sudden rattle, and a wind rose up, causing the leaves to make a sound like murmuring voices. Teclis stiffened. While he was no native of the forest, he knew well what that sound meant. It was a warning.

  A moment later, a member of the Eternal Guard moved out of the trees to Alarielle’s side and whispered something into her ear. Her eyes widened and she stood quickly. She looked around. ‘It seems that you are not the only refugees seeking sanctuary within the forest,’ she said. Her voice was strained, and her skin pale. ‘An army approaches the edge of the Wyrdrioth.’

  Teclis’s grip on his staff tightened. He could feel the presence of another Incarnate – and one far more powerful than any of those now standing in the Eternal Glade. Together, they might equal him, but separately, they stood no chance. Even here, in the living heart of Athel Loren, he could feel the malignant, suffocating pulse of Shyish – the Wind of Death – and the one who had become its host.

  ‘An army?’ Malekith snarled. ‘Who would dare?’

  ‘The Wind of Death,’ Teclis said, before Alarielle could speak. He bowed his head. ‘It is the Incarnate of Death.’ He looked up, meeting the gaze of each Incarnate in turn.

  ‘The Undying King has come to Athel Loren.’

  SEVEN

  The Wyrdrioth, Northern Edge of Athel Loren

  ‘Well, they appear to have prepared quite the welcome for us, I must admit,’ Mannfred von Carstein said as he lounged insouciantly in Ashigaroth’s saddle. The abyssal steed growled in reply. Mannfred patted the creature’s armour-plated neck, and glanced around at his bodyguard of Drakenhof Templars. The armoured vampires sat astride their cannibal steeds, awaiting his orders. Or so they wish me to believe, he thought. His good humour evaporated. He turned back towards the forest and ran his palm over his hairless scalp.

  If he’d been human, what he saw before him might have taken his breath away. Banners of all colours and designs were raised together as, for the first time in generations, elves, dwarfs and men prepared to fight as one. The battle-lines had been arranged before the tree line, barring the army of the dead from the Wyrdrioth.

  If he’d had any intention of taking his forces into the forest, such a display might have annoyed him. He turned in his saddle, taking in the bleak host which was spread out behind him. The banners of the dead were thick among the pine-crags. An army of worm-picked bone and tattered wings, lit by baleful witch-fires, the dead had spilled down from the mountains in their thousands, their every step precise, guided by a single, crushing will. The will of Nagash.

  Mannfred snapped his teeth in frustration. In the years since he had aided Arkhan the Black in resurrecting the Undying King, he had seen everything for which he had worked since his resurrection from the stinking mire of Hel Fenn turn to ashes. Every scheme, every triumph, gone like dust on the wind. All of it ground beneath the remorseless heel of Nagash, as the Undying King prepared for the final war.

  Even Sylv
ania was no longer his – Nagash had given the blighted province over to Neferata to defend, while he marched to war with his remaining lieutenants. Speaking of which… where is the bag of bones? He twisted about, hunting for any sign of his rival. Arkhan was never very far from Nagash these days. Too, he seemed somehow… diminished by the association. As if Nagash’s will had completely obliterated his own. In and of itself, the neutering of his old rival didn’t bother Mannfred all that much. But the implications of it were unpleasant, to say the least.

  I’d rather not become a mindless automaton, thank you very much, he thought. Such a fate was beneath him. Then, so was the current state of affairs. Still, reduced circumstances often meant increased opportunities. And there were plenty of the latter, in the wake of the destruction of the Black Pyramid.

  He smiled thinly, relishing the memory. At the time, it had not been so enjoyable. But in the aftermath, with several weeks between then and now, he had come to see it for the opportunity it was. A sizeable Chaos army, composed of the rotting dead, giggling plague-daemons and howling barbarians, had smashed through Nagash’s defences with a single-minded determination that put the Undying King’s own forces to shame. Even worse, the enemy had been commanded by old friends and absent companions – the spectral abomination known as the Nameless, and Isabella von Carstein, newly resurrected and as unhinged as ever. One of them would have been bad enough, but the presence of both had made a bad situation all the worse.

  The Nameless had ever been treacherous; the dark spirit was a thing fuelled by spite and treachery, more so than any vampire, and its questions and petulant demands had been a constant annoyance. Why Nagash had brought it back, when there were any number of appropriate champions to choose from, Mannfred couldn’t say. The Great Necromancer could stir the waters of death and bring any spirit bobbing to the surface – why not bring back Konrad or one of the other von Carsteins? Anyone other than Vlad, he thought. But no, Nagash had seen fit to bend the Nameless to his will, and then forgotten about it until the creature had returned in the service of a new master.

  And Isabella had come with it. Hadn’t that been a surprise, he thought. Of all the von Carsteins he had certainly never expected to see her. Indeed, he’d half expected that Nagash had hidden her soul away in some phylactery somewhere, so as to better control Vlad. It was what Mannfred would have done, had he ever conceived of such a ploy. Unlike Nagash, however, he had no illusions as to just how uncontrollable Vlad truly was. Or had been, Mannfred thought, not without some amusement.

  Sylvania had resisted the End Times until that point, inviolate and unchanged. Now, it was a reeking ruin, and what little life it had once had was gone, snuffed by the contest between Nagash and Nurgle. And more than one of Nagash’s lieutenants had been claimed in that conflagration – Luthor Harkon, gone at last to join his treacherous kinsman Walach, and the mighty Vlad von Carstein himself, brought low by the woman he loved.

  Mannfred couldn’t restrain a laugh. Goodbye, goodbye, parting is such sweet sorrow, he thought gleefully. So soon returned to the dust where you belong, old man. How the Chaos Gods had got their talons in Isabella’s twisted soul he didn’t know, but she had been the most effective weapon they’d employed to date. She had distracted them all, even Nagash, while the skaven had burrowed beneath Nagash’s nightmare pyramid and claimed a debt that the Undying King had owed them since the razing of Nagashizzar.

  It had been a plan worthy of… well, him. He scratched his chin and chuckled, studying the ranks of the living. Of course, if he had been in charge, he would have made sure Nagash had been returned to his well-deserved oblivion, one way or another. Instead, all the Dark Gods had managed to do was stir the tiger from his lair. And now the predator had come to make common cause with his prey, against the fire that threatened to claim the forest around them. Not that the prey knew that just yet. The smell of fear on the wind was delightful.

  ‘Ah Vlad, if only you could be here – at last, he follows your sage counsel. Too little, too late,’ Mannfred murmured.

  ‘You sound cheerful for one who has just had his territories stripped from him,’ a familiar voice said. Mannfred twisted about in his saddle and looked down at Arkhan the Black as the latter pushed through the front rank of corpses. ‘I thought you might make your move at last, when he made Neferata castellan of Sylvania.’

  Mannfred’s smile faded. ‘My loyalty is as solid as the bedrock beneath our feet, liche.’

  Arkhan’s skull tipped back, and a weird scuttling sound rose from his fleshless jaws. Mannfred’s lips peeled back from his fangs. The liche was laughing at him. ‘Oh, be silent, you withered husk,’ he snapped.

  ‘You are like a spoiled child, angry at having a favoured toy snatched from his grasp,’ Arkhan rasped, staring towards the army of the living. ‘And it is only fitting that Neferata rule… She was born for it, and it would take all four gods of Chaos to shift her. Besides which, there are now more Nehekharan nobles in your precious province than the backward Sylvanian aristocracy you and Vlad dote on. Nagash took the Great Land from them, and now they will have Sylvania in recompense.’

  ‘Yes, because gods forfend that they should be discomfited in any way. A fragile breed, your desert princes,’ Mannfred spat. Arkhan was right, which only made it worse. The customs of the kings and queens of Nehekhara were alien to him, and without Nagash there to quell them, they would revolt against him the moment he tried to impose his will. For now, at least. He pushed the thought aside and hunkered forwards in his saddle.

  ‘Think of it, Arkhan. Few men, living or dead, can say that they have seen the green-vaulted reaches of Athel Loren. What secrets must linger in that wild wood? What secrets might you or I rip from it? All we have to do is…’

  ‘Parley,’ Arkhan said.

  Mannfred snorted. ‘Of course. Forgive me. For a moment, I forgot we had an army of but thousands at our back. So of course we must parley, lest their few hundred wreak unmentionable havoc.’ He looked slyly at Arkhan. ‘Why the sudden change of heart, you think? Why now, after all this time, does our lord and master stoop to address the cattle?’ He smiled and tapped his nose. ‘Vampires are very good at smelling weakness, liche. We can taste death on the air.’ He leaned down, and met Arkhan’s flickering gaze unflinchingly. ‘Just how badly did losing the Black Pyramid hurt him, eh?’

  ‘Why not ask him yourself?’ Arkhan said.

  ‘I thought I was,’ Mannfred said. He turned away. ‘In any event, who’s it to be, then? Who’ll act as herald, to bring word of our peaceful intentions to yon foemen?’ He sat back. ‘You, perhaps? Or one of your Nehekharan addle-pates? Perhaps that loudmouthed fool, Antar of Mahrak? He’s a favourite of yours, is he not?’

  ‘You will do it,’ Arkhan said, not looking at him.

  ‘Will I?’

  Arkhan said nothing. Mannfred sniffed, stood up in his saddle, and craned his neck, searching for the Undying King. Nagash was hard to miss – he stood at the centre of the army, a skeletal giant surrounded by a flickering corona that changed colour by turns, becoming green, then black, then purple. He was the corrupt heart and dark will of an army that was little more than a single, charnel entity. The hooded and cloaked forms of a dozen necromancers surrounded him as ever, each one lending his will to ease Nagash’s burdens.

  Nine heavy tomes, each filled with Nagash’s darkest wisdoms, floated around him, pages flapping with a sound like the snapping of jaws. The grimoires were connected to Nagash by heavy chains, and they strained at them like beasts at the leash. Moaning spirits swirled about him, blending together and breaking apart in a woeful dance of agony. There were men there, and elves and dwarfs, as well as other races. To die at Nagash’s hands was to not die at all, but instead be condemned to eternal servitude.

  The wide skull, lit by its own internal flame, turned, and the blazing orbs that danced in its cavernous sockets brightened briefly. Nagash did not speak. He did n
ot need to. Mannfred knew that Arkhan would not have spoken without Nagash’s permission. He turned and snapped Ashigaroth’s reins. The abyssal steed leapt into the air with a shriek, and hurtled towards the lines of the living.

  He did not bother to attempt to conceal himself. As pre-eminent as he was in the sorcerous arts, those below were his match. The most powerful surviving sorcerers, wizards and necromancers in all the world, those not aligned with the Archenemy, were here in this place. The rest were dead, or hiding. Creatures like Zacharias the Everliving had perished, defying Nagash to the last, while monsters like Egrimm van Horstmann had been consumed by the ever-shifting tides of war and madness. Those who remained had chosen their hills to die on, and were gathering their strength for the storm to come.

  Zacharias, at least, had made his end an entertaining one. He smiled as he thought of it – the sky had been wracked with spasms, and the Vanhaldenschlosse chewed to steaming wreckage by the confrontation between vampire and liche. Zacharias had held off Nagash’s army alone with only his magics for days, before Nagash had bestirred himself to end the conflict. There had been something personal in it, there at the end, Mannfred thought. As if the two knew one another, and there was some grudge between them. In the end Zacharias had perished at Nagash’s hands, strangled in the ruins of the Vanhaldenschlosse and his remains cast upon the pyre.

  He leaned forwards, and Ashigaroth wailed like a lost soul as it hurtled over the heads of elves, dwarfs and men. Mannfred laughed as he let his steed indulge itself. Like him, the creature fed as much on fear as flesh, and there was precious little of the former left in a world so close to ultimate ruin. But while it lasted, he saw no harm in enjoying it.