The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Understood. His deputy is Gerhard Mulleringen. I will speak to him again.’

  Helborg felt light-headed as he walked. Chambers passed him by, one by one, their edges blurred and their doors gaping. He was vaguely aware of functionaries and knights bowing, and the muffled sound of orders echoing from other corridors, and the clatter of running feet. It might as well have been a dream – all that mattered was the army, the walls, the supplies and the defence plans. He had to remain focused.

  Suddenly, he realised that one of the vague shadows flitting about him was not moving. He blinked, to see one of the Palace servants standing directly in his path. The man looked terrified, but remained where he was.

  ‘Your pardon, lord!’ he stammered, bowing low. ‘I was charged to deliver these as soon as I could, but you have been... hard to find.’

  Helborg glared at him. The servant held two rolls of parchment, one in each hand. ‘What are they?’ he demanded, wondering whether he could face more ledgers and dockets to sign.

  ‘Letters, lord. One is marked with the seal of the Supreme Patriarch. The other was delivered from the Grey College.’

  Helborg shot Zintler a dry look. ‘The shadow-mages. What have they laid hands on now?’ He grabbed both rolls, and broke Martak’s seal first. As he read, his reaction moved from curiosity, to disbelief, to fury.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Helborg said flatly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Zintler.

  ‘He’s left the city. The damned traitor. I’ll have his eyes. I’ll rip his throat out and hang it from the Imperial standard. I’ll punch his–’

  ‘I can send a search party. We’ll bring him back.’

  Helborg rolled his eyes. ‘He’s an Amber battle wizard, Zintler. Your men would limp back as green-eyed hares, if they came back at all. It’s too late – he broke into the Menagerie and worked some trickery on a war-griffon. They’re both long gone.’ He leaned heavily against the nearest wall, putting out a hand to support himself. Martak had been a pestilential fool, a peasant of the worst and most scabrous order, but he had been gifted, and his staff was needed. His loss was just one more blow amid a thousand other lesser cuts.

  Zintler looked shocked, and for a moment did not say anything. When he did, his voice was weak. ‘Why?’

  Helborg laughed harshly. ‘He thinks the Emperor lives. He’s gone to find him.’ His voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘The pressure’s got to him. I knew he was weak. Damn it all, what were they thinking, appointing a man like that?’

  Zintler shook his head sympathetically. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He advises me to perform a purge of the sewers – still on that old saw.’ Helborg snorted another bitter laugh. ‘Even now, he still presumes to advise me.’ He screwed the parchment up and hurled it away. ‘We do not need him. We still have magisters, and we still have priests, and I will not waste men on a fruitless trawl of the undercity.’

  Even as he said the words, he realised how he sounded.

  Desperate. I am clutching at any morsel of hope now.

  He unravelled the second roll of parchment, finding himself yearning for some better news.

  ‘From the Grey College, you say?’ he asked, breaking the seal.

  The servant nodded. ‘They told me it was found on the roof, surrounded by blood. They do not know how long it was there.’

  Helborg raised a weary eyebrow – just one more portent of doom. The tidings had been so relentlessly horrific over the past few days – Carroburg lost, Talabheim silent, Nuln cut off. In the deep of the night, when he struggled for just an hour of sleep, he feared that even his iron-hard defiance was beginning to crack at the edges.

  Let it be news of reinforcements – from somewhere. Anywhere!

  He started to read.

  To the most sublime and majestic Karl Franz, Prince of Altdorf, Count of the Reikland, Emperor of the Eleven Provinces and Heir of Sigmar (Or his deputy, given the uncertain times that have overtaken us.)

  I have no doubt you will not wish to read a letter such as this, and from one such as me. You will be tempted to throw it into the fire as soon as you see the signature. I urge you to resist – I do not make this communication lightly, nor do I wage this war without urgent cause.

  Your scryers will by now be telling you what all men of reason can see for themselves – the order of the world is changing. The Law of Death has been broken, and the remaining Seven Laws are straining at the edges. Powers that have stood firm for millennia are fading, while others are growing with unseemly haste.

  Can any now doubt that the Gods of Ruin have put aside their ancient quarrels, and are now acting in concert? And, if that is so, can there be any further doubt that they must be victorious? The great heroes of the past are with us no more, for we dwell in a time of lesser souls.

  And yet, not all is foregone. There is another way. Only one soul stands a chance of enduring the storm of Chaos: my Master, who even now strives to return from the banishment of ages. Already he has struck down enemies older than the stones you stand on, and soon he will turn his gaze northwards.

  Your great ancestor once ended him in a duel that still echoes through the ages. And yet, if you wish to see the forces of Order prevail in this time, you will need to welcome him now. I am but an emissary, a forerunner of this greater soul, and I offer my services to you. My armies have already marched at the side of yours, though you may not have known it then. They will march alongside you again, should you consent to my offer, freely given and motivated by nothing more than mutual need.

  The living and the dead have ever been at odds, but we are more alike to one another than to the corruptions of the Outer Dark. Where they would turn the world into a howling maelstrom of perpetual flux, we understand the principles of order, of command, of endurance. There is a future taking shape, one in which the foundations of reality are made firm again, where the weak are protected and the strong given dominion. It is not the future your priests were wont to pray for, but it is one in which humanity is preserved, and that, let me assure you, is the very best that can be hoped for now.

  Make no mistake, my lord, this is the choice: alliance, or oblivion. Just as your ancestor Magnus swallowed his pride to make common cause with the elves of Ulthuan when they were denounced as witches by the ignorant, so must hard choices be made in our own time.

  I demand nothing but that which has always been my birthright: Electorship of Sylvania, a province which has unfairly been denied its existence for too long. The rights and privileges of this station shall be the same as the others of that rank: a runefang, a place at the Imperial Council, the old exemptions from the common law and the freedom to raise and keep men-at-arms. I only ask one more boon of you: the chance to search the Reikland for the resting place of one who was dear to me. If the world is to be remade, then I must discover her before all is cast anew.

  I am aware that the mutual enmity between our peoples will make this proposal a hard one to entertain fairly. I have no doubt, though, given the circumstances, you will see past ancient prejudices and buried grievances. You will have seen the same auguries as we have, and you will know what is at stake. And, after all, do I not have some prior claim to this title? Or does right of conquest count for nothing in these debased times?

  I trust that this missive will reach you, despite all the turmoil that even now seeks to overwhelm us. By the time you read it, I will be on the march, heading along the path of the Stir towards Altdorf. By the time I arrive, I will command a host larger than the last time I camped outside your walls. I earnestly hope that I do not arrive too late, and that you will at least have the opportunity to make your judgement under clear skies and with a free heart.

  Until then, I remain, as I ever have been, your loyal and ever-obedient servant,

  Vlad von Carstein

  Helborg took a long time over the words. When he had reached the end, he read it again, hardly able to believe what was before his eyes.

  If he had not been
at Heffengen, he might have assumed the letter was some malicious forgery, despite the authentic-looking seal and appropriately archaic hand. But he had been at Heffengen, and so could believe only too well that the provenance was genuine.

  He remembered von Kleistervoll’s words after the battle.

  They say the dead fought the northmen.

  Helborg had not believed that then. He had seen von Carstein emerge, just as the battle remained in the balance. He had seen the skeletal dragon, and the onrush of the fanged knights in blood-red armour. Until he had arrived, the day had not been altogether lost.

  Zintler hovered at his side, clearly itching to know what had been written. Helborg let him wait. His mind was racing.

  Could he be trusted? Could I have been wrong?

  As soon as the treacherous words entered his mind, he cursed himself for even thinking them.

  He lives for nothing more than destruction! All of his kind do! They sense weakness, and circle for the kill.

  Zintler could not restrain himself, and coughed delicately. ‘My lord?’

  Helborg did just as he had done with Martak’s letter, and crumpled the parchment into a tight ball. He stuffed it into a pocket sewn on the inside of his half-cloak, and shoved it down deep. It would not do to have any but him aware of its contents. Just as with so many other things, he would have to bear the burden alone. Even the electors could not be told.

  ‘It is nothing, Zintler,’ he said, pushing himself clear of the wall. He dismissed the servant with a curt wave and started walking. ‘Nothing worth a damn.’

  Zintler trotted to keep up. ‘And Martak? Can we do nothing?’

  Helborg whirled on the Reikscaptain, fixing him with his hawk-dark eyes. As he did so, the wounds on his cheek spiked with fresh pain.

  ‘We do what we have to do,’ he snarled. ‘We prepare. We train. We fight the darkness. We never give in. And we do so alone. There is no salvation from outside these walls, Zintler – you understand that? We have everything we are going to be given, and it must suffice.’

  He felt the thrill of mania begin to run away from him then, and he tripped over his words. When these dark moods came on him, he felt almost like laughing.

  Zintler shrank back, anxiety written on his dutiful features. ‘Just so, my lord. But – forgive me – we are all mortals. There is also need for rest. When did you last take any?’

  Helborg’s eyes flared at the impudence. ‘Rest?’ he blurted. ‘Rest? Did Mandred take rest? Did Magnus? Would Schwarzhelm, or Karl Franz?’

  He started walking again. He could feel his joints ache, his ribs creak, his wounds leak blood in a thin trickle down his neck.

  ‘To the walls,’ he croaked, keeping his shoulders back, his neck stiffly upright. ‘Our labours are not yet done, and neither are the stonemasons’. I will see the works for myself, and if they have slackened from the task I will gut them with their own trowels.’

  The cauldron overflowed, sending frothy, fatty matter splatting on the stone floor.

  Festus stirred more vigorously, knowing the delicate juncture he had reached. He had been working for so long now, so patiently and so carefully that even a minute error now would be more than he could bear. As his flabby body sweated from the fires, the alembics and glassware funnels bubbled violently.

  From one of the cages he could hear a woman weeping. Those cages were almost empty now – he would have to find a way to step up procurement before the final stage, which would not be easy. The City Watch was getting vigilant, and he had seen evidence of those damned Shallyans poking their noses around the margins of his domain.

  The Shallyans were the only thing Festus truly had anything like fear for. A normal mortal could be so easily corrupted, since their appetites were so typically gross and their fear of sickness so habitually complete. The inhabitants of Altdorf were just like the inhabitants of any other Imperial city – petty, spiteful, grasping and timorous. Being turned into vessels of a greater sickness was the best thing they could possibly have aspired to, not that they ever evinced much gratitude for it.

  But the sisters – they were tricky. They did not fear illness. How could they, since they spent their whole lives immersed in it? They did not suffer from gluttony, and they had no crippling fears. They accepted the world for what it was, and felt no need to change it, other than to ease the suffering of those stricken by its more painful aspects.

  That, frankly, was perverse, and was just what made the Leechlord shudder. When his work was done here and the Tribulation was complete, Festus knew exactly where he was going and exactly what he was going to do. He could already hear the screams of the sisters as they writhed on the tip of his scythe. He would take his time killing them, one by one, letting them experience the full strength of what they had always denied.

  It did not matter how strong or stoical they were – when confronted with the utter inevitability of defeat, they would all crack. They would be lapping up his potions sooner or later, and they would be thankful for it.

  He sniffed a slug of mucus up and swallowed. Tiny daemon-kin scurried around at his hooves, licking the drops of yellowish sweat that coursed from his bulging muscles. They were excitable now. They could sense what was in the cauldron, and they knew what it meant.

  All along the walls of the subterranean chamber, vials and jars rattled and shivered. The drones of tumour-sized blowflies hummed through every vaulted cavity and undercroft. His realm had spread quickly, and now occupied hundreds of forgotten shafts and pits beneath Altdorf’s foetid ground-level streets.

  This was his kingdom, a foretaste of the greater kingdom of contagion to come, but it was still fragile. If he were discovered, if the mortals chose to look beneath their blocked noses and seriously try to track down the source of what ailed them, he might yet be vulnerable.

  He stirred harder. Beneath the cauldron’s surface, the dark shape grew ever more solid. A misshapen antler-prong briefly broke the brackish water, before sinking again. A gurgling sigh echoed from underwater, potent enough to make Festus shiver with anticipation.

  They were all looking to him. The Glotts, the Tallyman, the Lord of Tentacles, the beasts, the damned and the god-marked – they were all looking to him to unlock the Great Tribulation.

  He sweated harder. He was no longer chortling as he worked, and he no longer took any pleasure in his allotted task.

  Time was running out. The deathmoon was riding low, and would be full soon. The massed hosts of the Urfather were crashing through a tangled, twisted forest of nightmares, and would be hammering at the gates uncomfortably quickly.

  If he failed... if any of them failed...

  Festus wiped his forehead. A diminutive toad-creature nipped his foot, and he kicked it irritably away. From the cauldron, a bubbling fountain briefly erupted, but did not sustain.

  ‘Come on,’ Festus muttered, putting more energy into the endless stirring. ‘Come on...’

  FOURTEEN

  Martak hung onto the griffon’s neck and gritted his teeth. A range of terrors coursed through him.

  This is the realm of birds, he thought grimly. I have no place in it.

  It had been easy enough to break into the Menagerie. With the attention of the city locked on the walls and the impending arrival of the enemy, the internal watch had grown slack and undermanned. Martak had slipped into the vast array of pens and cages during the night, using every ounce of his art to placate the creatures that slavered at him from behind iron bars.

  Initially he had hoped a Bretonnian pegasus might have been held there – he knew how to ride a horse, and guessed it would be much the same to control one of their winged brethren – but the only creatures capable of flight were the colossal Imperial dragon and the select herd of Karl Franz’s war-griffons. He had not even got close to the dragon before gouts of sulphurous smoke had forced him back, and even he was not boastful enough to think he could master that living furnace of scale and talon – the world would have to be ending around his
ears for him to contemplate rousing that.

  The griffons were scarce less fearsome, though, rising to over twice the height of a man at the shoulder and with flesh-ripping beaks that curved like scimitars. They all growled and hissed at him as he passed their pens, pawing at the straw beneath them and watching him with beady, unblinking yellow eyes.

  In the end, he had selected a russet beast, marginally leaner than the others and with bands of crimson and gold on hawk-like wings. He had held its gaze and whispered words of control and reassurance. It had taken a long time before the griffon was calm enough for him to break the locks and dare enter, and then it still reared up, cawing furiously, and Martak was forced to delve deep into the Lore of Beasts to prevent it clawing his eyes out.

  Eventually the creature suffered him to lead it by the halter, and the two of them walked out of the Menagerie’s main cage-chambers and into the dung-strewn exercise yards beyond. It took him three attempts to mount, during which the noble beast glared at him coldly with a mix of irritation and contempt. Eventually the commotion, punctuated with earthy swear-words of dubious origin, roused the less soporific members of the watch, and the thud of footfalls echoed down from the watch towers around the yard.

  Cursing, Martak hauled on the reins. ‘Fly, then, damn you,’ he hissed, having no idea how such a creature was ridden. Griffon riders were vanishingly rare in the Empire’s armies, and they trained for years before mastering the tempestuous natures of their wild mounts. Very quickly Martak felt the spirit of the beast defying him – it was perfectly aware what he wanted, and perfectly aware that he had no power to compel it.

  Faint lights blinked into life from the summit of the watch towers as torches were lit. A bell began to clang somewhere in the depths of the Menagerie’s guardhouse, and doors slammed.

  Still the griffon remained on the ground, its wings unfurled, but resolutely unmoving. Martak cried out every word of command in his lexicon, racking his mind for the correct cantrip or word-form. Perhaps there was not one – griffons were not like the dumb beasts of the deep wood that could be charmed with a gesture, they were ancient and proud scions of the mountains, with souls as fiery and untamed as the peaks they circled.