The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  He didn’t bear Gelt a grudge – not too much of one, at any rate – but he’d come to learn that the new Grand Patriarch wasn’t adverse to cutting corners. He was cunning but sloppy, with a compulsion to tinker when he wasn’t cheating his creditors. That sort of man needed someone trailing after him, making sure he wasn’t causing too much of a mess. Gormann chuckled to himself. That he’d been elected to that position by his fellow patriarchs would be amusing, if it weren’t so sad. Then, if Gelt grew suspicious, they could simply claim that Gormann was driven by vindictiveness.

  He’d come to Talabecland to study the wall of faith. The magics that Gelt had employed to create his wall were old, and far outside of Gelt’s area of study. Someone, it was assumed, had helped him. Gelt was keeping mum, but the other patriarchs, especially Gregor Martak, master of the Amber Order, were concerned, and Gormann didn’t blame them. It wouldn’t be the first time one of their own had used forbidden magics. Traitors like van Horstmann were few and far between, but their actions were indelibly engraved on the collective memory of the Colleges of Magic. Gormann didn’t like to think of them, though. As much as he disliked Gelt, he didn’t think the alchemist would willingly turn to the dark. He cleared his throat and asked, ‘What news from the rest of the Empire?’

  ‘The same as it’s been for a year. Kislev is gone, and her people with her, save those who fled south to warn us of the invasion,’ Leitdorf said. ‘Only Erengrad remains yet standing, and that only because of von Raukov and the Ostlanders. Men from Averland, Stirland, Middenland and Talabheim march north to bolster our defences on the border.’

  He looked tired, Gormann thought. Then, he always had. Being brother to a man like the deceased and infamously insane former Elector of Averland had a way of ageing a man prematurely. Leitdorf had stayed out of the succession debacle, claiming that his duty was to the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood. In truth, Gormann was one of the few who knew that it was actually because Leitdorf was convinced that the Empire of his father and grandfather was being bled white by callow nobles and politicking aristocrats. He included Karl Franz among the latter, though he’d been wise enough never to say so where anyone important could hear him.

  Gormann often feared for his friend. Leitdorf was a man of blood and steel, for whom patience and politesse were vices. Gormann had never been very good at the glad-handing his former position had required, but even his limited skills in that regard far outstripped Leitdorf’s. If the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood hadn’t been so influential, it was very likely that someone would have put something unpleasant and surely fatal in Leitdorf’s wine.

  Leitdorf went on. ‘Beastmen still rampage across ten states, including this one. Plague ravages the western provinces, and our sometimes allies across the mountains are beset by their own foes.’ He drained his cup and stared at it. ‘The dwarfs have shut their gates. Tilea and Estalia are overrun.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I fear that we are living in the final days, old friend.’

  ‘Plenty before you have said as much, and as far back as Sigmar’s time, I’d wager,’ Gormann said. He drained his own cup. ‘We’re no more at the End Times than they were then.’

  Before Leitdorf could reply, the clangour of alarm bells sounded over the town. The bells echoed through the room, and Leitdorf leapt to his feet with a curse. ‘I knew it!’ he snarled. He hurled aside his empty cup. ‘I knew it! Gelt’s wall has failed.’

  ‘You can’t know that,’ Gormann said, but it was a half-hearted assertion. He could feel what Leitdorf couldn’t – the rising surge of dark magic that caused a sour feeling in the pit of his gut. He knew, without even having to see, why the bells were ringing. He tossed aside his cup and snagged the decanter as he followed Leitdorf out of his office.

  Outside, men ran through the courtyard of the keep, heading for their posts. Leitdorf stormed to the parapet, shoving men aside as he bellowed orders. Gormann followed more slowly. The sky was overcast, and a cold wind curled over the rooftops of Heldenhame. Flocks of carrion birds were perched on every roof and rampart, cawing raucously.

  ‘You told me I didn’t know that Gelt’s wall had failed, Thyrus? There’s your proof. Look!’ Leitdorf roared as he flung out a hand towards the approach to the western wall. It was thick with worm-picked skeletons, clutching broken swords and splintered spears, and steadily advancing towards the wall. Further back, on the edge of the tree line, Gormann could make out the shape of catapults. Their silhouettes were too rough to be wood or metal, and Gormann knew instinctively that they were bone.

  He took a long drink from the decanter. As he watched, the torsion arms of the distant war engines snapped forward with an audible screech. The air ruptured, suddenly filled with an insane and tormented cackle that cracked the decanter and made Gormann’s teeth itch. Most of the missiles struck the wall. One crashed into the ramparts, and smashed down onto a regiment of handgunners who’d been scrambling to their positions. A dozen men died, consumed in eldritch fire or simply splattered across the rampart by the force of the impact.

  ‘They’re aiming for the blasted scaffold,’ Leitdorf growled. ‘The Rostmeyer bastion is still under reconstruction. There’s no facing stone to protect the wall’s core. It’s nothing but rubble.’ He whirled to glare at Gormann. ‘If they destroy that scaffold, the whole wall will come down.’

  ‘That’s why you put the guns there, isn’t it?’ Gormann asked, taking another slug from the cracked and leaking decanter. ‘See? There they are – happily blazing away.’ And they were. The sharp crack of the Nuln-forged war machines filled the air, as in reply to the enemy’s barrage. Round shot screamed into the packed ranks of skeletons, shattering many.

  But even Gormann could see that it was like punching sand. Every hole torn in the battle-line of corpses was quickly and smoothly filled, as new bodies filled the breaches, stepping over the shattered remains of their fellows.

  ‘Kross is a fool,’ Leitdorf said, referring to the commander of the Rostmeyer bastion. ‘They need to concentrate on those catapults. Infantry, dead or otherwise, will break itself on the walls. But if those catapults bring it down…’ He turned and began shouting orders to his men. Gormann peered out at the battlefield. Gun smoke billowed across the walls and field beyond, obscuring everything save a vague suggestion of movement.

  ‘I think they figured it out,’ Gormann said. The smoke cleared for a moment, and the wizard saw one of the catapults explode into whirling fragments and flailing ropes as a cannonball struck it dead on. Men on the ramparts cheered. Leitdorf turned back, a fierce grin on his face.

  ‘Ha-ha! That’s the way!’ he shouted. ‘I knew Kross was the right man to command that bastion. Damn his pickled heart, I knew he wouldn’t fail me!’

  Gormann said nothing. He finished the bottle. His skin itched and his eyes felt full of grit as he sensed a tendril of dark magic undulate across the field. He heard the cheers began to falter and didn’t have to look at the tree line to know that the shattered engine was repairing itself.

  ‘By Sigmar’s spurs,’ Leitdorf hissed.

  ‘All these years sitting on their doorstep and you didn’t expect that, Hans?’ Gormann asked dully. He examined the decanter for a moment, and then flung it heedlessly over his shoulder. He heard it smash on the cobblestones somewhere far below. ‘This battle won’t be as quick as all that.’

  The cheering atop the battlements faded as the wind slackened and the fog of war descended on Heldenhame once more.

  Wendel Volker staggered through the smoke, eyes stinging and his lungs burning. Flames crackled all around him. A shrieking fireball had crashed down onto the tavern, and it was ready to collapse at any moment. He resisted the urge to sprint for safety and continued to clamber through the wreckage, stumbling over bodies and searching for any signs of survivors. So far he’d found plenty of the former, but none of the latter.

  The roof groaned like a dying man, and he heard the crack of wood surrendering to intense heat. Fear spurted through him, seizing his he
art and freezing his limbs, but only for a moment. Then his training kicked in, and he whispered a silent prayer of thanks to the man who’d taught him swordplay. He knew the fear was good, and it had sobered him up. He had a feeling he was going to need to be sober. He could hear the bells of the keep, and the roar of the cannons on the western wall, punctuated by the harsh rhythm of handguns firing at an unknown enemy.

  Kross would be up there, he knew, unless he was still sleeping off his drink from the night before. A brief, blissful image of Kross, asleep in his bunk as a fireball landed atop his quarters, passed across the surface of Volker’s mind. His joy was short lived. A burning mass of thatch tumbled down, nearly striking him. Ash and sparks danced across his face and clothes, and he swatted at himself wildly. He heard someone scream, and a flurry of curses. He wasn’t the only one in the tavern. He’d led as many as would volunteer into the burning building.

  That they’d been close to hand was less luck and more circumstance – Volker and the men he’d led into the inferno had only just left the tavern, after all. He’d wasted an entire night swilling cheap beer rather than dealing with the stacks of make-work that the seneschal of Heldenhame, Rudolph Weskar, insisted his underlings produce. Those who could read and write, at any rate. Since Kross could do neither, his records and logs were handed over to Volker, who suspected that Weskar was still attempting to stir the pot. The seneschal had made his disdain for both men clear in the months since their last confrontation, and Volker had done all that he could to avoid Weskar and Kross, as well as Kross’s lackeys, like Deinroth.

  Volker saw a bloody hand suddenly extend from beneath a fallen roof beam and flail weakly. He shouted, ‘Here!’ He coughed into a damp rag and shouted again. Uniformed men swarmed forwards through the smoke and Volker helped them shift the roof beam. He recognised the barmaid from his previous night’s carousing and scooped her up. Ash and sparks washed down over him as he grabbed her, and he heard the groan of wood giving way. ‘Everyone out,’ he screamed. The barmaid cradled to his chest, he loped for the street. Men bumped into him as they fled, and for a moment, he was afraid that he would be buried and immolated as the tavern roof finally gave way and the building collapsed in on itself.

  Volker hit the open air in a plume of smoke. His skin was burning and he couldn’t see. Someone took the girl from him and he sank down, coughing. A bucket of water was upended over him and he gasped. ‘Get his cloak off, it’s caught fire,’ a rough voice barked. ‘Someone get me another bucket. Wendel – can you hear me?’

  ‘M-Maria,’ Volker wheezed. ‘Is she…?’ More water splashed down on him. He scraped his fingers across his eyes and looked up into the grim features of Father Odkrier.

  ‘Alive, lad, thanks to you.’ Odkrier hauled him to his feet. ‘Can you stand? Good,’ he said roughly, without waiting for a reply.

  ‘We’re under attack, aren’t we?’ Volker asked. The streets were packed with people. Some were trying to put out the spreading fires, but others were fleeing in the direction of the eastern gate. Volker didn’t blame them.

  ‘Sylvania has disgorged its wormy black guts and the restless dead have come to call,’ Odkrier said. Volker saw that he held his long-hafted warhammer in one hand.

  Volker shuddered and looked west. The boom of the cannons continued, and he saw men in Talabecland uniforms hurrying towards the Rostmeyer bastion. He swallowed thickly, and wished that he’d managed to save a bottle of something before the tavern had gone up in flames. ‘Kross isn’t going to be happy.’

  ‘No one will be happy if our visitors get in, captain,’ a harsh voice said. Rudolph Weskar glared about him, as if he could cow the burgeoning inferno by sheer will. Then, Volker wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if it had worked. ‘Especially you, captain. Why aren’t you at your post?’ He raised his cane like a sword and tapped Volker on the shoulder. Excuses flooded Volker’s mind, but each one died before reaching his lips. Weskar frowned. ‘Never mind. Go to the eastern walls and bring as many men as you can. We’ll need them if the western wall comes down.’ Weskar’s hard eyes found Odkrier. ‘The men at Rostmeyer bastion are in need of guidance, father.’

  ‘I’ll wager they could use my hammer as well,’ Odkrier growled. He slapped Volker on the shoulder. ‘Take care, lad. And don’t dawdle.’ Then the warrior priest turned and hurried off.

  Volker watched him go, and wondered if he would ever see the other man again. He looked at Weskar and asked, ‘How bad is it, sir?’

  Weskar looked at him, his eyes like agates. ‘Get me those men, Volker. Or you’ll find out.’

  Hans Leitdorf cursed for the fourth time in as many minutes as a merchant’s cart was crushed beneath the thundering hooves of his warhorse. The man screamed curses from the safety of a doorway as the column of heavily armoured knights thundered past. Leitdorf longed to give him a thump for his impertinence, but there was no time. Instead, he roared out imprecations at the running forms that blocked the path ahead. ‘Blow the trumpets!’ he snarled over his shoulder to the knight riding just behind him.

  The knight did as he bade. Whether the blast of noise helped or hindered their efforts, Leitdorf couldn’t actually say. He felt better for it, though. No one could say that the knights hadn’t given fair warning. Anyone who got trampled had only themselves to blame.

  Still, it was taking too long to reach the southern gate. When the messengers from the Rostmeyer bastion had reached him, Leitdorf had already been climbing into the saddle. A sally from the southern gate was the most sensible plan – it would enable the knights to smash into the flanks of the undead unimpeded. If they ever got there. A night soil cart was the next casualty of the horses, and Leitdorf cursed as bits of dung spattered across his polished breastplate.

  He’d brought nearly the entire order with him. Those who remained he’d left to watch over Heldenhame Keep, or were abroad on the order’s business elsewhere. He felt no reluctance in bringing every man who could ride with him. He’d left the defences of the city and the keep itself in Weskar’s capable hands. Even if the enemy got into the city, the keep would hold. The walls were thick, and the artillery towers manned. No barbaric horde or tomb-legion had ever cracked those defences, and this time would be no different.

  Fireballs shrieked overhead, striking buildings. Bits of burning wood, thatch and brick rained down on the column as they galloped through streets packed with panicked people. Men and women were scrambling for safety like rats, and the roads were becoming progressively more impassable. The rattle of handguns echoed through the air. The dead had drawn within range then, which meant they were close enough to scale the wall.

  The enemy had no siege towers and no ladders for escalade, but Leitdorf had fought the undead often enough to know that they had little need of such. If there was a way in, they would find it. ‘Damn Gelt and his gilded tongue,’ he spat out loud.

  ‘You’re not the first to say that,’ Gormann said. Leitdorf looked at the Patriarch of the Bright College. The wizard rode hard at his side, clad in thick robes covered in stylised flames. He wore no hood, so his white-streaked red hair and beard surrounded his seamed face like the corona of the sun. He carried his staff of office, and he had a wide-bladed sword sheathed on his hip.

  ‘Nor will I be the last, I think, before our travails are over,’ Leitdorf said. ‘I knew his blasted cage would fail. I knew it.’ He looked away. ‘I argued long and hard that his sorcery was only a temporary measure at best – that it afforded us an opportunity, rather than a solution. We should have seized the moment and swept Sylvania clean with fire and sword. And now it’s too late. The muster of Drakenhof is at our gate, and the Empire is in no fit state to throw them back if we fail.’ He pounded on his saddle horn with a fist.

  ‘Doom and gloom and grim darkness,’ Gormann said. A fruit vendor’s stall toppled into the street as people made way for the knights, and cabbages and potatoes burst beneath his horse’s hooves. He looked up as another fireball struck home. ‘If thi
s is an invasion, it’s a fairly tentative one. A few mouldering bones and artillery pieces do not a conquering force make. Where are the rest of them? The rotting dead, the cannibal packs, the spectres and von Carstein’s detestable kin?’

  ‘Sometimes I forget that you’ve been living in Altdorf, getting fat all of these years,’ Leitdorf said. He ignored Gormann’s outraged spluttering. ‘You are fat, Thyrus. I’m surprised you fit into your robes. Those dead things out there are to soften up our walls for the rest of them, when night falls. Then we’ll be on the back foot, unless we smash them here and now, and send von Carstein back over the border with our boot on his rump.’

  ‘You never told me you were a poet, Hans,’ Gormann said.

  Leitdorf growled and hunched his shoulders. ‘Will you for once in your sybaritic life take things seriously?’

  ‘I take everything seriously, Hans,’ Gormann said. ‘I’m more concerned about how von Carstein circumvented Gelt’s cage. That enchantment was like nothing I’ve ever encountered, and if von Carstein managed to break it, then old Volkmar’s wild claims about that leech getting his claws on the thrice-cursed Crown of Sorcery might be more than some dark fantasy.’

  ‘Or Gelt’s spell wasn’t as permanent as he claimed. I ought to wring that alchemist’s scrawny neck,’ Leitdorf barked. He looked at Gormann. ‘Of course, you’ve considered the obvious…’

  Gormann made a face. ‘I have.’

  Leitdorf frowned. ‘What do we really know about Gelt, Thyrus? I’d always heard that he cheated you of the staff of office, but you’ve never said what really happened.’ He snapped his reins, causing his mount to rear as a pedlar scurried out of his path. ‘Out of the way, fool!’ he roared. He glanced at Gormann. ‘There are rumours about Gelt. Dark ones… What if this is part of some scheme? He caged Sylvania, right after Volkmar – one of his most influential critics – vanishes into its depths, and then claims that nothing can escape. As soon as we’ve turned our eyes and swords north, that inescapable cage is suddenly no more effective than a morning mist.’