The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  The herds he led had been growing restless for lack of entertainment or battle. They chafed beneath his will, and he had been forced to meet more than one challenge in the days preceding the slaughter below. The village had been a gift from the Dark Gods; he’d been running low on chieftains, forced as he was to kill any who brayed a challenge.

  But the gods were watching over their favoured child, and he felt their hands lift him up and their breath fill him, as they lent him strength and clarity. Their whispers had only grown stronger as he led the herds away from Athel Loren and into the human lands of Carcassonne, burning and pillaging the pitiful remnants of a once proud province along way. At their whim, he had held fast to the reins of the herd, and not unleashed them against Arkhan’s forces when the bone-man and his followers had crossed the Vaults and into Carcassonne. Instead, he had followed them, keeping pace but never allowing the forces under his command to attack the dead legions marching across the landscape. He had been confused at first, but he now saw the truth of the gods’ plan, and found it good.

  His captive squirmed and Malagor tightened his grip. The man was screaming still, and pleading with him in the incoherent babble of the man-tongue. Malagor ignored it. He hadn’t brought the creature up into the sky for a conversation. He had brought it to send a message.

  Malagor growled in pleasure as his wings carried him out over the village and away. He saw the serpentine length of the River Brienne and the slumped ruin of the fortress that occupied the crags above the village. A column of smoke extended above the latter, blacker than the night sky it rose to meet. The screams of the dying carried on the wind, sped along by his sorceries. After all, what use a beacon if no one noticed?

  And the village was a beacon. A signpost for the army that even now advanced towards it, riding west from Quenelles. Malagor could hear the horns of the Bretonnian host, and knew that they were close. His wings flapped, carrying him to meet them. The gods whispered to him, telling him what he must do, and he did it, happily. He swooped upwards, wings beating, and tore open the belly of his captive. Its screams were like music, and he howled in accompaniment as he gutted the squirming, hairless thing.

  The bone-man and his creatures were close by, in the castle on the high hill overlooking the village and the river. They had been there for some time, and to Malagor’s eyes, the ruin glowed with the faint phosphorescence of necromantic sorceries. He could feel the dead stirring, and something else as well – something that drew the attentions of the gods. Whatever it was, it was powerful, and the gods approved of that power. A surge of envy washed through him as he went about his task, and he bit and tore at the now limp body with more ferocity than was necessary. Blood splattered his muzzle and chest, and gore matted his hair.

  Butchery complete, he plunged down, wings folded, cutting through the air like a missile fired from a ballista, his burden dangling behind him, its slick intestines looped about his gnarled, hairy fist. At the last possible moment, he banked, hurtling upwards again even as he released the mutilated corpse, and let it tumble gracelessly to the ground before the front ranks of the approaching army. Then Malagor was streaking upwards, across the face of the moon and back towards the village. His warriors would need to be on the move when the Bretonnians arrived, or they would become bogged down in battle.

  They would lead the humans on a merry chase, and right into the bone-man’s army. The will of the gods caressed his thoughts, soothing his envy and anger, as if to say, See? See what we do for you, oh best beloved child? See how we spare your lives? See how we deliver victory unto you? And all we ask is that you claim it, as we command.

  The bone-man’s army would be weakened by battle, like a stag after it has fought off a rival, if it was not destroyed outright. Malagor could smell the stink of strange magics on the human army. But if the bone-man triumphed, then, like wolves, Malagor and his followers would harry them as they marched on. The gods whispered of living men amongst the dead, whose will kept the legions marching. They would be Malagor’s prey. Without them, Arkhan would be forced to use more and more of his power to keep the dead moving, and less of it to protect himself.

  And then, when he was stretched to his utmost, Malagor would strike. The bone-man would die again… And this time, he would stay dead.

  Tancred spurred his horse forwards, his heart hammering in his chest. He felt weighed down by fear and excitement, by glorious purpose. He let his lance dip and it rolled in his grip as he angled it towards the massive, red-armoured shape of Krell of the Great Axe, one of a pair of curses that had haunted the ducal line of Quenelles for centuries. The lance struck like a thunderbolt and exploded in a cloud of splinters. The remnants of it were ripped from his hand and he let it go as his destrier galloped past the reeling wight. Krell roared like a wounded lion and made a flailing grasp for his horse’s tail.

  Tancred and his men had left La Maisontaal Abbey weeks earlier, in an effort both to conserve what supplies the abbey-garrison had, and to hunt down a particularly pernicious band of beastmen, which had been haunting the border country since the end of the civil war. The survivors of their attacks spoke of one with wings, which had interested Tancred. Such a beast was bound to be important in some fashion, for obvious reasons.

  He put little stock in the whispers of the peasantry, who murmured the name of Malagor, for that creature was nothing more than a fairy tale. While the beastmen did have their war-leaders and shamans, they were brute things, no more dangerous than the orcish equivalent. To think that there was one whom all such dark and loathsome creatures would bow to was laughable.

  Tancred had brought Anthelme with him on the hunt, leaving the defence of the abbey in the hands of Theoderic and the others. He had had his misgivings at first, but he knew that such a hunt might help ease the chafing boredom of garrison duty his restive knights were already complaining of. Now it was beginning to look as if he were being guided by the Lady herself. When they’d sighted the motley horde of braying beastmen, the creatures had broken and fled rather than giving honest battle, and in pursuing them, Tancred and his warriors had crashed right into the mustering forces of the very enemy he had been preparing the abbey’s defences against.

  Arkhan the Black had returned to Bretonnia, as Lady Elynesse, Dowager of Charnorte, had foretold, and he’d brought with him an army of the dead: an army that was Tancred’s duty, and honour to destroy here and now, before it reached the abbey. He had ordered his men to charge before the undead could organise their battle line, and, like a lance of purest blue and silver, the knightly host of Quenelles had done so, driving home into the sea of rotting flesh and brown bone. He had lost sight of Anthelme in that first, glorious charge, but he could spare no thought for his cousin, not when the cause of so much of his family’s anguish stood before him.

  Tancred bent and snatched up his morning star from where it dangled from his saddle. It had been his father’s, who had wielded it in battle against Krell and his cackling master decades ago. Now it was the son’s turn to do the same. ‘Father, guide my hand,’ Tancred growled as he jerked on his warhorse’s reins, causing the animal to rear and turn. He spotted Krell immediately. The wight was already charging towards him, bulling aside the living and the dead alike in his eagerness to get to grips with Tancred. The black axe flashed as Tancred rode past. He slashed at the beast with his morning star.

  Krell roared again, a wheezing wail that nearly froze Tancred’s blood in his veins. The dreadful axe came around again, braining Tancred’s mount even as the animal lashed out at the dead man with its hooves. Krell staggered. The destrier fell, and Tancred was forced to hurl himself away from it and avoid being caught under the dying beast. He landed hard, his armour digging into him. He clambered to his feet as Krell lunged over the body of his horse.

  Tancred stumbled aside, narrowly avoiding Krell’s blow. The axe hammered into the ground. Tancred whirled back and sent the head of the morning star singing out to strike Krell’s wrist. The wight let go o
f his axe and grabbed for the mace. He seized the spiked ball and jerked it from Tancred’s grip. He hurled it aside as he grabbed for Tancred with his free hand. Armoured fingers dug into Tancred’s helmet, causing the metal to buckle with an ear-splitting whine. Tancred clawed for the sword at his waist as Krell forced him back, his heels slipping in the mud. The wight was impossibly strong, and when he fastened his other hand on Tancred’s helmet, Tancred knew he had to break the creature’s grip before his skull burst like a grape. He drew his sword and slashed out at Krell’s belly in one motion. Blessed steel, bathed in holy waters by the handmaidens of the Lady herself, carved a gouge in the bloodstained armour.

  Krell shrieked and stepped back, releasing Tancred. The latter tore his ruined helm from his head as Krell turned to retrieve his axe. ‘No, monster! You’ve escaped justice once too often,’ Tancred bellowed. He cut at the wight’s hands, forcing Krell to jerk back. Tancred knew that if the undead warrior got his hands on his axe, there would be little chance of stopping him. He slashed at him again, driving the monster back a step. He felt the strength of purpose flood him, washing away his earlier doubts and spurring him on. His father had gone to his grave, cursing the names of Krell and Kemmler. They had been a weight on his soul that had never been dislodged, and it had dragged him down into sour death at the Battle of Montfort Bridge. But now, Tancred could avenge his father, and Quenelles as well.

  He hammered at Krell, and witch-fire crawled up his blade with every blow. He heard the singing of the handmaidens of the Lady, and felt their hands upon his shoulders, guiding him. Every blow he struck was with her blessing, and Krell staggered and reeled as strange fires crawled across his grisly armour and ichors dripped from the sharp, jagged plates like blood. His fleshless jaws gaped in a bellicose snarl and he swatted at Tancred, like a bear clawing at leaping hounds. Men joined Tancred. He still saw no sign of Anthelme, but he had no time to worry. All that mattered was Krell. Spears stabbed at the beast from every side, digging at the wounds Tancred had already made.

  The wight flailed about like a blind man, splintering spears and driving back his attackers, but more pressed forward. Tancred growled in satisfaction and looked around. Kemmler would be close by. If he could find the madman, and put an end to him, then Krell would be easier to dispatch once and for all.

  ‘Tancred!’ a voice shrieked. Tancred spun, and only just interposed his sword as a stream of crackling, sour-hued fire swept towards him. The flames parted around the blade. A wizened, crooked figure strode through the press of battle as if it were no more important than the squabbling of vermin. ‘Duke of Quenelles, I thought you gone to the worms at Montfort Bridge,’ Heinrich Kemmler snarled. He swept out his staff and his blade. The skull atop the former chattered like a berserk ape as Kemmler drew close.

  ‘My father, necromancer,’ Tancred said. He felt strangely calm. It was as if every moment of his life had led to this point. As if this single moment of confrontation were his reason for being. He felt a weight upon him that he had never felt before, save the first day he had taken up the burden of his ducal duties and privileges. ‘I am the son, and it falls to me to see that you at last pay your debt to the world.’

  Kemmler cackled and weird shadows wreathed him, obscuring him from sight as Tancred attacked. Tancred struck out at him, but his blade bit nothing but air again and again. ‘What’s the matter, Tancred? Too long off the tourney field?’ Kemmler hissed, as though he were right beside him. A blow caught Tancred in the back and he lurched forward. He turned, but the flickering shadow-shape was gone before he could so much as thrust. More blows came at him. One of his pauldrons was torn from his shoulder, and rags of chainmail were ripped from his torso. His surcoat was in tatters and his pulse hammered in his head painfully. He couldn’t breathe, could barely see for the sweat, and his muscles trembled with fatigue.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this for centuries,’ the necromancer said, circling him, his form rippling like a rag caught in a wind. ‘Your father and grandfather – your whole stinking line – has harried me from the day I first had the misfortune to set foot in this pig’s wallow of a country. Again and again I have been forced to flee from you, but no more. Today your line ends screaming…’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tancred saw the old man’s shape waver into solidity. The necromancer raised his sword for a killing blow, his face twisted in a leer of satisfaction. Tancred spun and his blade pierced the old man’s side, tearing through his flickering cloak. Kemmler screeched like a dying cat and he flailed at his enemy with his blade. Tancred avoided the wild blows and moved in for the kill. He could hear Krell roaring behind him, but he concentrated on the hateful, wrinkled, fear-taut features of the necromancer before him. He drove his shoulder into the old man’s chest and knocked him sprawling. ‘No, old devil, this is the end of you,’ Tancred said. He stood over Kemmler, and raised his blade in both hands. ‘For my father, and in the name of all those whom you have slain and defiled, you will die.’

  Before he could strike, however, he felt a sudden ripping pain, and then everything was numb. The world spun crazily. He struck the muddy ground, but felt nothing. He couldn’t feel his legs or his arms. He saw a headless body – whose body was that? – totter, drop its sword, and fall nearby. Everything felt cold now, and he couldn’t breathe. He saw Krell, axe dripping with gore, kick the headless body aside, and drag Kemmler to his feet. Whose body? he thought again, as darkness closed in at the edges of his vision. Whose body is that?

  Then, he thought nothing at all.

  Heinrich Kemmler watched as Tancred’s head rolled through the mud. He tried to smile, but all he could muster was a grimace of pain. He levered himself awkwardly to his feet with his staff, its skulls, hung from it with copper chains long ago gone green with verdigris, dangling grotesquely. It was a potent artefact, his staff, and he drew strength from it as he gazed down at the wound Tancred had left him as a parting farewell. Blood seeped through his coat and dripped down into the dirt. The wound hurt, but he’d suffered worse in his lifetime. He scrubbed a boot through the dirt. ‘That’s the last taste you’ll have of me,’ he hissed. He looked up as a shadow fell over him.

  Krell, coming to check on him, like a faithful hound. Or perhaps a hound-master, checking on his pet. As he gazed up at the scarred and pitted skull of the wight, Kemmler wondered, and not for the first time, if he was fully in control of his own fate. He thought of the shape he sometimes saw, that seemed to lurk in Krell’s shadow – a phantom presence of malevolent weight and titanic malice. He thought that it was the same shape that padded through his fitful dreams on those rare occasions when sleep came. It whispered to him, indeed had been whispering to him all of his life, even as a young man, after he’d first stumbled upon those badly translated copies of the Books of Nagash in his father’s haphazard ancestral library.

  Those books had started him on his journey, the first steps that had seen him defy death in all of its forms, benign or sinister. He had fought rivals and enemies alike, striving to stand alone. The Council of Nine and the Charnel Congress – rival consortiums of necromancers – had faded before his might, their petty grave-magics swept aside by his fierce and singular will. He had pillaged the library of Lady Khemalla of Lahmia in Miragliano and driven the vampiress from her den and the city, and in the crypts beneath Castle Vermisace he had bound the liches of the Black Circle to his service, earning him the sobriquet ‘Lichemaster’.

  He had counselled counts, princes and petty kings. He had gathered a library of necromantic lore second only to the fabled libraries of forsaken Nagashizzar. He had waged a cruel, secret war on men, dwarfs and elves, prying their secret knowledge from them, and with every death rattle and dying sigh the voice in his head, the pressing thing that had encouraged him and driven him, had purred with delight. Until one day, it had gone silent.

  It had abandoned him to a life of scurrying through the hills, a broken, half-mad beggar, his only companion a silent, brooding engine of
destruction, whose loyalties were unfathomable. He had thought, once, that Krell was his. Now he knew better. Now he knew that they had been at best, partners, and at worst, slaves of some other mind.

  Kemmler’s eyes found the tall, thin shape of Arkhan the Black, as the liche oversaw the rout of the remaining Bretonnian forces. With Tancred’s death, they’d lost heart. In some ways, the living and the dead were remarkably similar. He glared at the liche and then stooped to retrieve his sword. He grunted with pain, but hefted the blade thoughtfully.

  Arkhan heard the same voice he had, Kemmler knew. Krell as well; both liche and wight were slaves to it. And that was the fate it intended for Kemmler. Just another puppet. He could hear it again, though only faintly. But it was growing louder, becoming a demanding drumbeat in his fevered brain. It was inevitable that he would surrender.

  Kemmler looked at Krell. He spat at the wight’s feet and sheathed his sword. ‘Inevitability is for lesser men.’

  ELEVEN

  Skull River, the Border Princes

  Mannfred brought his blade down on the rat ogre’s broad skull, cleaving it from ears to molars. The beast slid away, releasing its grip on Mannfred’s mount, as he jerked his blade free in a welter of blood and brains. Two more of the oversized vermin lumbered towards him, growling and giving high-pitched bellows. He spurred his mount towards them, his teeth bared in a snarl. As his skeleton steed slipped between the two creatures, he swept his sword out in a single scythe-like motion, sending the heads of both monsters flying.

  ‘A heady blow, cousin,’ Markos crowed, from nearby. The other vampire’s armour was drenched in skaven blood, and his blade was black with it from tip to the elbow of his sword arm. Markos, like the other Drakenhof Templars, had been at the centre of every recent battle.