The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  Do you care? Vlad asked.

  Mannfred had no answer.

  Beechervast, the Grey Mountains

  The town had been called Beechervast. Now, it was nothing. Flames crackled and buildings collapsed with rumbling groans as the dead marched through the dying settlement, adding to their number. Erikan watched as a screaming woman was dragged from the ruins of a hostel by two of his order. Her screams faded to moans as the two vampires fed greedily.

  Erikan let his gaze drift to where Arkhan the Black stood near his chariot, watching what his magics had wrought. After the wood elf ambush at Parravon, they’d lost most of what was left of their army, including Krell, who’d held off their attackers while Arkhan and the others made for the dubious safety of the mountains. Whether Arkhan had attacked Beechervast simply in order to replenish his forces, or to wait and see if Krell caught up with them, Erikan couldn’t say, and hadn’t asked.

  They’d lost much to acquire the shroud-wrapped shape strapped to Arkhan’s back. His eyes were drawn to it. It was a staff, he thought, much like the one Arkhan carried. To Erikan, it seemed to pulse with a sour light. It was like a wound in the world, and something in it pulled at the thing he was. There was power there, but he knew that if he tried to take it, it would consume him the way a moth is consumed by flame. Arkhan was welcome to it, whatever it was. He looked away from it, and saw Anark ambling towards Arkhan. Subtle as a brick to the head, he thought. He’d been wondering when Anark was going to give it a go.

  Anark sprang into motion. He leapt towards the liche and shrieked a war-cry as he swung a wild, overhand blow. The liche whirled and swatted aside the tip of the sword with his staff and drove a bony fist into Anark’s face, sending him flying backwards.

  Erikan winced, as the Grand Master of the Drakenhof Templars hit the ground with a clatter. To his credit, Anark was on his feet a moment later. He charged towards Arkhan, who had stepped down from his chariot. Arkhan side-stepped the vampire’s lunge and caught him in the back of the head with his staff, sending him stumbling to his hands and knees.

  Arkhan looked at Erikan, who still sat atop his horse. ‘Well, vampire?’ the liche croaked.

  ‘Not me,’ Erikan said, holding up his hands. ‘Not my fight, Black One.’

  ‘Traitor,’ Anark snarled as he regained his feet.

  ‘From here, it looks like you’re the one attacking our ally for no reason,’ Erikan said, settling back in his saddle, thumbs hooked in his sword belt. ‘What would Lord Mannfred say, I wonder? Or Elize, for that matter?’

  ‘I could hazard a guess as to what Lord Mannfred would say,’ Arkhan said, planting his staff. ‘Tell me, vampire… What did he offer you? What could possess you to act so foolishly?’

  ‘This is positively cunning for Anark, sad to say,’ Erikan interjected. ‘What happened, Anark? Did Elize bat her pretty lashes and ask you for one little favour? I remember those days, when I was her favourite.’

  ‘Shut your filthy mouth,’ Anark howled. He leapt for Arkhan again. There was no subtlety to him, only raw power. He was nothing but one big muscle, all killer instinct without the cunning to mediate it. His armour creaked as he swelled with murderous power. Arkhan caught the blow on his staff, and for a moment, liche and vampire strained against one another.

  Then, the moment passed. Black lightning crackled along the length of Arkhan’s staff and caught hold of Anark’s sword. A moment later, the blade shivered into fragments, and its wielder was tossed back into the dust, bloody from the metal fragments that had spattered his face. Before Anark could get to his feet, Arkhan drove the end of his staff into his skull with all the precision of a trained spearman. There was a wet, unpleasant sound, and Anark went limp.

  ‘Effective,’ Erikan murmured.

  ‘I have dealt with treacherous vampires before,’ Arkhan said. He turned and looked at Erikan. ‘I assume that you were not part of this less-than-devious stratagem, then?’

  ‘I had no idea that it was even in the offing,’ Erikan lied. ‘Thick-headed as he is, that blow won’t keep him down long. Anark isn’t much, but he’s a fighter. I fancy he could keep going, even missing the whole of his head. And he won’t give up.’

  ‘What would you suggest?’

  Erikan couldn’t say why he was helping the liche. He thought, perhaps, it was simply that Anark had been a constant source of annoyance. Or maybe he’d grown tired of the way Elize seemed to shower the brute with affection. Let her get a new, hopefully smarter, pet. ‘Chain him to the postern of the Sigmarite temple I noticed when we rode through the gates. Let the flames or the sun have him, and that’ll be the end of it.’

  ‘A more merciful death than I intended,’ Arkhan said. He gestured, and a trio of wights came forward and hefted Anark’s limp form. They carried him off.

  ‘But still a death,’ Erikan said.

  ‘Yes,’ Arkhan said. The liche examined him silently for a moment, and then turned away. They left Beechervast not long after, riding out at the head of an army newly swollen by the addition of the population of the town, slaughtered and resurrected.

  No one seemed too put out by Anark’s death. Then, he hadn’t exactly gone to great lengths to make friends amongst the order. Neither had Erikan, but he supposed he was more tolerable than a swaggering bully any day. As a member of the inner circle, leadership of the remaining blood knights had fallen to him, and he rode at their head for lack of any better ideas. He wondered how Elize would receive the news of Anark’s death. Would she be angry, sad, or… nothing. The latter, he thought, would be the most unpleasant. Vampires could love, but it did not come easily. And sometimes it was not recognised as such until it was far too late.

  The Lahmians had songs, spread by the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle, about lost loves and immortal tragedies. They turned troubadours and poets just to keep those songs and verses alive and circulating amongst the living. It made things easier, sometimes, if the cattle thought love, rather than thirst, was the norm for vampires.

  As they rode towards the Sylvanian border, Arkhan communed with the spirits of the dead from atop his chariot, seeking any word on Krell. Wailing ghosts and shrieking spectres circled him like pigeons in an Altdorf plaza. Erikan rode beside him.

  The spirits scattered abruptly. ‘Any word?’ Erikan asked.

  ‘Krell yet persists. He will rejoin us when he can. He is leading the Wild Hunt away from our trail.’ Arkhan shook his head, a curiously human gesture. ‘Beastmen, wood elves, Kemmler… Enemies at every turn.’

  ‘Rats in a sinking barrel,’ Erikan muttered.

  Arkhan looked at him. Erikan shifted uncomfortably. ‘Why do you serve the von Carstein, vampire?’ Arkhan asked suddenly. ‘Love, fear… boredom?’

  Erikan didn’t look at the liche. He didn’t like the twin witch-fires that flickered in the dead thing’s eye sockets. He’d only ever seen Arkhan at a distance; up close, the sheer wrongness of him, of something once human bent and twisted into something new, something abominable, something that should not walk upon the earth, was all too easy to see and to feel. Arkhan’s presence, the undiluted necromantic energies that emanated from his skeletal form, made Erikan’s head ache, as if he had a sore tooth.

  But it wasn’t simply the liche’s noxious presence that made him hesitate. The question wasn’t an easy one. Why had he answered the call? Why had he left Sylvania in the first place? The questions were like the strands of the same cloth; as he tugged each one, another came loose. Arkhan looked at him. ‘Well? We have nothing but time, Crowfiend. Why not pass it in conversation, rather than silence?’ Arkhan cocked his head. ‘Are you upset about the other? What was his name – Anark?’ The liche made a rattling sound that Erikan had come to associate with his attempts at humour. ‘That one was not fated to find himself on the right side of history, I’m afraid. But you… You are a survivor, I think. A scrambler on the edge of destiny. When all is said and done, why do you serve von Carstein?’

  Erikan hesitated. And then,
he said, ‘Power. Not over the world, but over myself – my own fate. As long as others were stronger, I would never be master of my own fate. That is why I studied necromancy.’

  ‘I smell no stink of grave sorcery about you,’ Arkhan said.

  ‘I was a terrible student,’ Erikan said, smiling slightly. ‘Plenty of inclination, but no aptitude. So I sought out the next best thing…’ He bowed his head. Arkhan gave a raspy chuckle.

  ‘A woman, was it? And then?’

  ‘It wasn’t enough. I climbed one tower, to find myself at the bottom of another. So… I left.’ His smile faded. ‘From the moment I was born it was a loveless life. I lived out of spite, and it wasn’t enough. So I turned into something worse than death, and tried to take from the world until there was nothing left to take. But the world was bigger than I thought.’ He looked up at the forest canopy overhead. ‘I am tired of surviving. I am tired of the world. I want an end, and I want to watch it all fall into the grave with me. I do not want fire. I want ash, and silence. I want night, silent and eternal, stretching from pole to pole, heaven to earth.’

  Arkhan looked at him for a long time. Then, as if uncertain of his own intent, he reached out and clasped Erikan’s shoulder. ‘You will have it. Nagash rises, and the world descends. We will all know the peace of oblivion.’

  ‘Will we?’ Erikan asked softly. ‘Or will we be puppets, for an eternity?’

  Arkhan’s grip tightened. ‘No. Nagash despises anything that is not him, or of him. He hates and fears that which he did not create. We will be dust on a nightmare wind, vampire, when we have fulfilled our purpose. We will be nothing.’ He released Erikan’s shoulder. ‘Or so I hope.’ He turned away. ‘I am tired, vampire. I am so tired, but I cannot lay aside my burden, until the end of all things. I was a gambler once. I gambled and lost. And this is my debt.’

  Erikan said nothing. Arkhan fell silent. They rode in silence, two weary souls, bound in chains of night and servitude.

  NINETEEN

  Castle Sternieste, Sylvania

  ‘Treachery,’ Mannfred intoned grandiloquently. ‘Treachery most vile.’

  ‘Which treachery are we speaking of – yours, or mine?’ Arkhan asked, not bothering to look at the vampire. Mannfred glared at the liche’s back. The two stood at the top of Castle Sternieste’s tallest tower. Arkhan had arrived a few days before Mannfred, and had awaited his return at the tower’s pinnacle, as if in anticipation of a confrontation. Mannfred saw no reason to deny him such, if that was his wish.

  Despite the fact that they had both been victorious in their respective endeavours, and that both Alakanash and the Fellblade were now in their possession, Mannfred saw little reason for celebration. Neither, apparently, did Arkhan. Mannfred wondered whether the liche was even capable of such an emotion.

  On the ride back through the Border Princes, Mannfred had managed to half convince himself that Arkhan had somehow encouraged Markos’s failed coup. He hadn’t thought the liche would actually admit it, but he’d hoped to see some sign of concern. Instead Arkhan had seemed almost… relieved? He wondered what had happened on Arkhan’s campaign in Bretonnia. The vampires who had ridden with the liche spoke of a rain-lashed battle on the Lieske Road with a herd of beastmen, and an attack by the fierce elves of Athel Loren, which had seen the loss of Krell. Whether the ancient wight had truly been destroyed, or merely separated from his master for the moment, Arkhan had not seen fit to share. Mannfred shoved the thought aside. ‘Yours is the only treachery I see, liche,’ he snarled.

  ‘Then you are as wilfully blind as you are ignorant, vampire.’ Arkhan glanced over his shoulder. ‘Your assassin failed.’ Mannfred let no sign of his annoyance show on his face. Elize had sworn to him that her pets could accomplish the task he’d set for them, but they’d failed. Anark was dead, and the Crowfiend had either thrown in with Arkhan or chosen discretion over valour. If it was the latter, Mannfred found it hard to blame him. If it was the former, he fully expected Elize to deal with it before he next saw her.

  ‘As did yours,’ Mannfred hissed. Arkhan didn’t react. Mannfred glared at the fleshless face, and wondered what he had expected. Denial, perhaps, or denunciation. That was how a vampire would have reacted. Instead, the liche simply turned away. Mannfred shook his head, frustrated. ‘And I am not speaking of overly ambitious underlings, in any event, as you well know.’

  ‘Illuminate me then, I beseech you.’

  Arkhan stared out at the horizon, his fleshless hands clasped behind his back. He stood at the edge of the crumbling battlement, at his ease and seemingly unconcerned. Mannfred’s hands twitched, and he considered unleashing a spell to send the liche tumbling from the tower like a skeletal comet. But he restrained himself. If Arkhan wanted to play the fool, fine. He would treat him as such.

  ‘The protective spells I wove about my land are failing,’ he ground out. ‘You told me that losing one of the nine would have no effect.’ Elize had reported as much to him as soon as his mount clattered into the courtyard of Sternieste. She had practically flown to his side to warn him that the omnipresent clouds that swirled overhead, blanketing his kingdom, had grown thin in places. The cursed light of day was returning to Sylvania. Slowly, but it was returning. And when it had, so too would come the zealous priests and fanatical witch hunters, to harry his subjects and tear asunder all that he had worked so hard to build. Worse, Gelt’s wall of faith still stood as strong as it ever had, and showed no sign of failing.

  ‘I told you that it would have negligible effect. And such is the case. Your enchantments still hold – the sun is kept at bay and your empire of eternal night yet stands. Rejoice,’ Arkhan said. Mannfred snapped at the air unconsciously, like a dog provoked beyond endurance.

  ‘With every day that passes, the spell grows weaker, and I can do nothing to stop it. We have weeks, or perhaps only days, before the enchantment fails entirely. And then what, bag-of-bones?’ Mannfred demanded, pounding a fist into the battlement. Stone cracked beneath the blow and fell, tumbling down, down, to smash onto the courtyard so far below. Arkhan watched the stone fall, and then looked at Mannfred.

  ‘By then, Nagash will have risen. By then, it will be too late.’

  ‘You knew,’ Mannfred hissed. He leaned towards the liche. ‘You knew. You tricked me.’

  ‘I am but a bag-of-bones. I am dust and memory. How could I trick you, the great Mannfred von Carstein?’ Arkhan gave a rattling laugh. He looked at Mannfred. ‘How it must have galled you to take that name, eh? How it must have pricked that monstrous pride, that abominable vanity that you wear like a cloak. Tell me, did you weep bloody tears when you surrendered your silks and steel for wolf-skin and crude iron?’

  Mannfred heard Vlad’s chuckle. He had hoped that he’d heard the last of the memory, or the ghost, or whatever it was, in the Border Princes. You did. I remember it quite clearly. You whined for weeks – weeks! – and over a bit of frayed silk.

  ‘Quiet!’ Mannfred snapped. He saw Vlad’s face, hovering just behind Arkhan. His mentor’s smile cut him to the quick, and he longed to unleash the most destructive spells he could bring to mind, just to wipe that mocking grin away.

  ‘Were you talking to me, or to him?’ Arkhan asked. The liche cocked his head. ‘Who do you hear, vampire? I can hazard a guess, but I would not wish to offend you.’

  Mannfred spun away with a snarl, fighting to regain his composure. His hands balled into fists, and his claws cut into the flesh of his palm. ‘You have already offended me,’ he said, not looking at the liche. ‘And I hear nothing but your hollow, prattling lies.’

  ‘Then I shall continue… Time is our enemy. It has turned on us. The enchantments I laid upon the Drakenhof banner yet hold. But they too will eventually fade. And our work is not yet done.’

  ‘The Black Armour of Morikhane,’ Mannfred said. He closed his eyes. Somewhere behind him, he heard Vlad applaud mockingly. Oh well done, boy. I see you were paying attention. Then, you always were a quick study, Vlad said.
Mannfred opened his eyes and turned. ‘Heldenhame,’ he said. He looked out over the battlements, towards the northern horizon, where Heldenhame Keep stood silent sentinel over Sylvania.

  He felt a pang as he took in the realm he had claimed by right of blood and conquest. In the beginning, he had never truly thought of Sylvania as anything other than a stepping stone. It was a backwater, full of ignorant peasants, barbaric nobility and monsters. He had never seen its potential the way Vlad had. But as he waged war after war, shedding blood for every sour metre of soil, he had come to see what the other vampire had seen, all those centuries ago. He had come to understand why they had taken up new names, and sought to burrow into the vibrant, if savage, flesh of the young Empire.

  There was a rough beauty to this land, with its dark forests and high crags. It was a cold land, full of shadows, as far and away from the land of his youth as it was possible to get. But where that land had cast him out, this one had taken him to its bosom, and he felt his pulse quicken as he gazed out over it.

  This was his land now. He had died to defend his right to it, and its waters ran in his blood. Nothing would take it from him. Not Nagash, and certainly not Karl Franz. But they weren’t his only enemies. He’d seen the portents, but hadn’t truly believed, not until his march across the Border Princes. The world was in upheaval. Everything was changing. His spies had learned much while he prosecuted his campaign against the skaven. There was a war-wind blowing down from the north, and drums beat in the Troll Country, rousing the lost and the damned to war. Kislev was gone, and the northern provinces of the Empire were in flames.

  As he stared out at his land, Mannfred thought of the being he had seen in his scrying, the one to whom even daemons bowed, and he felt a cold determination settle over him. If this was the end, better Nagash than nothing. ‘Heldenhame,’ he said aloud, again.

  Heldenhame was the Empire’s first line of defence against any army coming from his lands, and he had wasted more than one legion on its walls. But then, so had many others – including the barbarous orcs. ‘Its walls are strong, but they have their weaknesses.’