Khazrak hesitated. The beastman’s good eye narrowed. For the first time, Todbringer noticed how much white there was in the other’s hair, and how carefully the beast moved. Like an old warrior, conserving strength. Like Todbringer himself. He felt a pang of sadness. For all that the monstrosity before him deserved death, it had been the closest thing he’d had to a friend these past few years. Knowing that Khazrak was out there had given him a sense of purpose. It had given him a reason to live, after his wife’s death, even if that reason was for hate’s sake. And in a way, he was grateful to his enemy for that, for all that he intended to take Khazrak’s head. Some things are just meant to be, he thought grimly. Then, he laughed. At least now I can stop chasing fate.
Khazrak’s thick wrist flexed, and the barbed whip uncoiled. Todbringer took a breath. ‘How long, old beast? A decade? Two? It seems a shame to miss the end of the world, but we’ve never been showy, have we?’ he asked. ‘No, best to let them get on with it, eh? We know where the real war is, don’t we?’
The caterwaul of the gathered beastmen dimmed as he raised his sword. They were no longer important. They never had been. Only Khazrak mattered. The others were animals, and no more or less dangerous than any beast of the forest. But Khazrak was almost a man, and he deserved a man’s death. Preferably, a long, lingering one.
Slowly, the two old warriors began to circle one another. ‘Oh yes, we know,’ Todbringer murmured. ‘You took my sons, and I took your whelps. I took your eye, you took mine.’ He reached up to trace the scar that cut across the empty socket. Khazrak mirrored the gesture, seemingly unthinkingly. ‘The world is on fire, but our war must take precedence. We have earned this, haven’t we, old beast?’
Khazrak met his gaze, as the question lingered on the air between them. ‘Yes, this is our moment. Let us make the most of it.’ Todbringer took a two-handed grip on his runefang. Khazrak raised his blade. It might have been a salute, but Todbringer doubted it. No, Khazrak knew nothing of honour or respect. But he recognised the totality of this moment, as Todbringer did. Strands of destiny bound them together, and as the world ended, so too would their war. It was only appropriate. Todbringer brought his sword back and closed his eye. Guard my city, Herald of Sigmar. May the Flame of Ulric burn bright forevermore, and may its light guide you to victory, where I have failed, he thought.
Khazrak bellowed, and Todbringer’s eye snapped open as the beast lunged for him. Their blades slammed together with a sound that echoed through the trees. The two old enemies hacked and slashed at one another ferociously. They had fought many times before, and Todbringer knew the creature, even as the beast knew him. Blows were parried and countered as they fell into an old, familiar rhythm. Two old men, sparring in the mud, surrounded by a circle of monstrous faces and hairy bodies.
He flashed his teeth in a snarl, and Khazrak did the same as they strained against one another. The faces of his sons, his wives, his soldiers flashed through his mind – all of those he’d lost in the course of his war against the creature before him. He wondered if Khazrak was seeing something similar – how many whelps had the banebeast lost over the course of their conflict? How many of his brutish mates and comrades had Todbringer’s sword claimed? Did he even feel love, the way a man did, or did he know only hate?
The mud squirmed beneath his feet, and his heart hurt. His head swam, and his lungs burned. He was old, too old for this. He could smell Khazrak’s rank perspiration, and the creature’s limbs trembled no less than his own. How many challenges to his authority had Khazrak faced, in his long life? Todbringer recognised some of the beast’s scars as his handiwork, but the rest… ‘Did they toss you out, old beast? Is that why you’re here, and not with the rest, laying siege to Middenheim? Or did you refuse to go, did you refuse to bow before the Three-Eyed King until our score was settled? Were you waiting for me?’ he gasped as he leaned against his sword, pitting all of his weight against that of his opponent.
Khazrak gave a bleat of frustration as they broke apart for a moment, and the whip hissed and snapped as the beastman sought to ensnare Todbringer’s legs. An old trick, and one that had caught Todbringer unawares many years before. But he was ready for it now. He avoided the lash and stamped down on it, catching it. Even as he did so, he lunged forwards awkwardly, slashing towards Khazrak’s neck, hoping to behead the beast. Khazrak staggered back and parried the blow.
Off balance, Todbringer jerked back as Khazrak snapped the whip at his good eye. The tip of the lash tore open his cheek. Khazrak pressed the attack. The beast’s sword hammered down once, twice, three times against Todbringer’s guard. One blow tore the shield from Todbringer’s grasp and sent it rattling across the ground, the second and the third were caught on the runefang’s length, but such was the force behind the blows that Todbringer was driven to one knee. Thick mud squelched beneath his armour, and he felt his shoulder go numb as he blocked another blow. Khazrak was old, but strong; stronger than Todbringer. And fresh as well. He had saved himself, gauging the best time to strike. Even as he reeled beneath his enemy’s assault, Todbringer felt a flicker of admiration. What a man you would have made, had you been born human, he thought. A fifth blow slid beneath his guard, and he felt a pain in his gut. He shoved himself back, and saw that Khazrak’s blade was red to the hilt.
The gathered beastmen scented blood and began to bray and stamp in anticipation. Todbringer was nearly knocked off his feet by Khazrak’s next swing. He sank back, rolling with the blow. Khazrak charged after him, snorting in eagerness. Todbringer lashed out, and felt a savage thrill of joy as his blade caught Khazrak in the shin. Bone cracked and Khazrak gave a cry. The banebeast fell heavily, and Todbringer hurled himself onto his enemy, knocking the weapons from Khazrak’s fists. He raised his runefang over Khazrak’s pain-contorted features. ‘For my sons,’ Todbringer hissed.
Khazrak’s good eye met his own. The beastman blinked, just once, and stilled his thrashing, as if in acceptance of what was about to transpire. Then Khazrak snarled, and the runefang descended, piercing the creature’s good eye and sinking into his brain. Khazrak’s hooves drummed on the ground for a moment, and then were still. Todbringer leaned against the hilt of the runefang until he felt the tip sink into the mud beneath Khazrak’s skull. ‘This time, stay dead,’ he wheezed.
The gathered beastmen were silent. The Drakwald was quiet. But Boris Todbringer was not. He rose wearily, his strength gone, only stubbornness remaining. He was wounded, weakened, and surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of beastmen. He would die here.
But he had won.
Todbringer tilted his head back and laughed the laugh of a man who has shed the last of life’s shackles. For the first time in a long time, he felt no weight on his heart. He had won. Let the world burn, if it would, for he had made his mark, and done what he must.
He looked down at Khazrak, spat a gobbet of blood onto the death-slackened features of his old enemy, and ripped his sword free, even as the closest of the beastmen began to edge forwards, growling vengefully. He was going to die, but by Ulric, they’d remember him, when all was said and done.
‘You want the world?’ Boris Todbringer growled. Clasping his runefang in both hands, the Elector Count of Middenheim, supreme ruler of Middenland and the Drakwald, raised the blade. He smiled as the enemy closed in.
‘You’ll have to earn it.’
ONE
Middenheim, City of the White Wolf
Gregor Martak, Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic, took a pull from the bottle of wine and handed it off to the man standing beside him atop the battlements of the Temple of Ulric. The temple, fashioned as a fortress within a fortress, dominated the Ulricsmund and the city of Middenheim itself, and was the highest point of the Fauschlag. Martak’s companion – clad in the dark armour of a member of the Knights of the White Wolf, albeit much battered and in need of a good polishing – took the bottle grudgingly, after the wizard sho
ok it invitingly. Martak scratched at his tangled beard and looked out over the city. From the temple battlements one could see further than anywhere else in Middenheim, almost to the ends of the horizon. And what Martak saw now chilled him to the bone.
Rolling banks of black cloud had swept in from the north, and hung over the city, blotting out the sun. Every torch and brazier in the city was lit in a futile effort to hold back the dark. Sorcerous lightning rent the clouds. The crackling sheets of lurid energy lit the streets below with kaleidoscopic colours, and mad shadows danced and capered on every surface. But the darkness was no barrier to what now approached the city.
The pounding of drums had been audible to Martak and the rest of the city for some hours before the arrival of the horde which now seethed around the base of the Fauschlag in an endless black tide. The wind had carried the noise of the drums, as well as the guttural roars and screams of the damned who made up the approaching army. Flocks of crows had darkened the rust-coloured sky, and the roots of the mountain upon which Middenheim stood had trembled.
The front-runners of the horde had emerged first, from the edges of the forest to the city’s north. Trees were uprooted or shattered where they stood, the groans and cracks of their demise joining the cacophony of the army’s arrival as they were battered aside by hulking monsters the likes of which Martak had hoped never to see. Behind the savage behemoths came numberless tribesmen from the far north clad in filthy furs, armoured warriors and monstrous mutants. They poured out of the forest like an unceasing tide of foulness, and the thunder of the drums was joined by the blaring of war-horns and howled war-songs, all of it rising and mingling into a solid roar of noise that set Martak’s teeth on edge and made his ears ache.
Now, the horde stood arrayed before Middenheim, awaiting gods alone knew what signal to launch their assault. Thousands of barbaric banners flapped and clattered in the hot breeze, and monstrous shapes swooped through the boiling sky. Beastmen capered and howled before the silent ranks of armoured warriors. The horde’s numbers had swelled throughout the day, and even the most sceptical of Middenheim’s defenders had realised that this was no mere raiding band, come to burn and pillage before fading away like a summer storm. No, this was the full might of the north unbound, and it had come to crack the spine of the world.
‘I hate to say I told you so, Axel, but… well,’ Martak grunted. He swept back his grimy fur cloak and gestured with one long, tattooed arm towards the walls beyond which the foe gathered in such numbers as to shake the world. Or so it seemed, at least, to Martak. His companion, despite the evidence of his senses, didn’t agree.
Axel Greiss, Grand Master of the Knights of the White Wolf and commander of the Fellwolf Brotherhood, used the edge of his white fur cloak to wipe the mouth of the bottle clean, and took a tentative swig. ‘What is this swill?’ he asked.
‘A bottle of Sartosan Red. Some fool had hidden it in the privy,’ Martak grunted.
Greiss smacked his lips, made a face, and handed the bottle back. ‘It’s a rabble out there, wizard. Nothing more. You’ve spent too much time amongst the milksops of the south if that’s your idea of a horde. I’ve seen hordes. That is no horde.’ He sniffed. ‘Middenheim has withstood worse. It will withstand this.’ He gestured dismissively. ‘Ulric’s teeth, they’ve even chased off the ratmen for us.’
Martak took another pull from the bottle. ‘Have they?’ The skaven who had been besieging the city prior to the arrival of the horde had abandoned their siege-lines, like scavengers fleeing before a larger predator. Some of the ratmen had gone south, Martak knew, while others had surely scampered into the tunnels below the Fauschlag. Not that he could get anyone to listen to him on that last score. It was Altdorf all over again. What good was being the Supreme Patriarch if no one listened to him? Then, it wasn’t as if the Colleges of Magic still existed, he thought bitterly.
Greiss, as if echoing Martak’s thoughts, eyed the Amber wizard disdainfully. ‘They’re gone, wizard. Fled, like the cowardly vermin they were. Do you see them out there?’
‘Doesn’t mean they aren’t there,’ Martak grunted. It was an old argument. He had ordered scouts sent into the depths of the Fauschlag, despite the vigorous protestations of Greiss and his fellow commanders. What they had reported had only confirmed his fears of an attack from below. The skaven hadn’t fled. They’d merely given over the honour of the assault to Archaon. No, the ratmen were massing in the depths, preparing to assault Middenheim from below. He could feel it in his bones.
‘Doesn’t mean they are, either,’ Greiss said. He shook his head. ‘And if they are, what of it? Middenheim stands, wizard. Let the hordes break themselves on our walls, if they wish. They will fail, as they have done every time before. As long as the Flame of Ulric burns, Middenheim stands.’ Martak made to hand him the bottle, but Greiss waved it aside. ‘Stay up here and drink the day away if you will, wizard. Some of us have duties to attend to.’
Martak didn’t reply. Greiss’s words stung, as they had been meant to. He watched the Grand Master descend from the battlements, his armour clanking. Greiss didn’t like him very much, and if he were being honest, Martak felt the same about the other man. He didn’t like any of his fellow commanders, in fact.
Men of rank and noble birth from Averland, Talabheim and Stirland, as well as Middenheim, were all somewhere below in the city, jockeying for position and influence. The world was collapsing around them, shrinking day by day, and men like Greiss thought it was just another day. Or worse, they saw it as an opportunity. The world was ending, but men were still men. Martak upended the bottle, letting the last dregs of wine splash across his tongue. Men are still men, but not for much longer, he thought.
He shuddered, suddenly cold, and pulled his furs tighter about himself. He’d thought, just for a little while, that victory was possible. Just for a moment, he’d seen a ray of light pierce the gathering dark, and a spark of hope had been kindled in the ashes of his soul.
He’d seen that light – the light of the heavens – ground itself in the broken body of Karl Franz, and restore him to life in the ruins of Altdorf. He’d seen the foul gardens of plague and pestilence scoured from the stones of the city, and the monstrous things that had grown within them struck down. He’d seen more besides… The broken body of Kurt Helborg, his proud face stained with blood; the regal figure of Louen Leoncoeur, King of Bretonnia, as he stood against daemons in doomed defence of a realm not his own; the shattered statue of Sigmar, weeping blood. The light had washed it all away, in the end.
But only for a moment. Then, the dark had closed in once more. With the Auric Bastion no more, and Kislev turned to ashes, the armies of Chaos had swept south, burning and pillaging. Names out of black legend had returned to bedevil an Empire that had thought itself free of them. And not just the Empire. Bretonnia was shattered into warring fragments; Tilea had been erased by the chittering hordes of ratmen; Sylvania had swollen from boil to tumour, and the unbound dead roamed the land, attacking the living.
Martak stuck a finger into the mouth of the bottle, feeling around for any remaining droplets. Altdorf had survived one assault only to fall to another. Now it was a haunt for scuttling vermin. Karl Franz had fled to Averheim, the only city other than Middenheim yet remaining to the Empire. And soon it’ll be down to one, unless Averheim has already fallen, Martak thought sourly. Greiss’s overconfidence aside, Martak knew a losing battle when he saw one. He’d lived most of his life in the wilderness, and Middenheim reminded him of nothing so much as a wounded stag, surrounded by hungry wolves. Oh, the stag would gore a few. It’d put up a good fight, but in the end… the outcome wasn’t in doubt.
Regardless, he had his own part to play. He would see to the tunnels beneath the city, since no one else thought they were worth defending. He could do some good there, he hoped. He had ordered barricades to be pulled into place at the top of the winding stairs that led down into the guts of the
Fauschlag, and had demanded, and received, a levy of men from the walls to guard key tunnel junctions. Soon enough, he would go down to join them, in the dark, to wait for the attack.
There were thousands of skaven massing in the depths, whatever Greiss thought. That was where they had all gone when Archaon arrived, but they wouldn’t stay below for long. And when they decided to come up, there would be little Martak could do to stop them.
He stuck a finger in his mouth and sucked the liquid from it. He’d never been much of a drinker before all of this, but now seemed as good a time as any to develop a few bad habits. Martak hefted the bottle in preparation to hurl it out over the city, when something made him stop. A voice, strong and sonorous, rose from somewhere below him. He could not make out the words, but he recognised the timbre easily enough.
Valten.
The Word made flesh. The Herald of Sigmar, come to light their darkest hour. He had been a blacksmith once, they said. Martak’s father had been a swineherd, and he saw no shame in humble beginnings. Especially when the end result was so… impressive. He lowered the bottle and set it on the battlement. Then, picking up his staff from where it lay, he made to descend. As he headed for the steps, he heard a soft growl behind him.
Martak stopped. He turned, heart thudding in his chest. Something that might have been a wolf, or the shadow of a wolf, sat where he’d stood only a few moments before. It regarded him steadily for the span of a single heartbeat, and then, like a twist of smoke, it was gone. Martak stared at the spot, mouth dry, hands trembling. He was suddenly very, very thirsty. He turned away and left the battlements as quickly as his legs could carry him.
When he at last reached the main rotunda of the temple, Valten’s speech was coming to a close. His voice swelled, momentarily blotting out the noise from outside the walls. Martak moved through the large crowd of refugees that had occupied the main chamber of the temple, towards the main doors and, beyond them, the steps that led down into the close-set streets of the Ulricsmund. The huddled masses gave way before him, and whispers of worry preceded him, as well as murmurs of disgust for his unkempt presence. Even the basest peasant had standards, Martak supposed; standards which he obligingly failed to meet as often as possible.
The End Times | The Lord of the End Times Page 2
