He knew he was trusting in the curiosity, and perhaps even the misguided honour, of the living. And that trust was not misplaced. No arrow, bullet or spell assailed him as his abyssal steed dropped to the top of a towering boulder just before the line of raised shields. He sat for a moment, relishing the attention. He had moved in the shadows for so long, waging little wars, that he had almost forgotten what it was like to be the focus of so much fear. Once, long ago, he had faced men and dwarfs arrayed similarly. His enjoyment lessened as he recalled how the battle of Hel Fenn had gone. For all his power, he had been struck down in what should have been his moment of ultimate triumph.
And now, he was merely one nightmare amongst many. Mannfred shook his head, and smiled. ‘Ah well,’ he murmured. ‘Best to be about it.’ He straightened and said, ‘So – who will it be, then?’ His voice carried easily. The living were almost as silent as the dead. Mannfred grinned. ‘Come now, don’t be shy. We are all men of the world, and is not my presence a guarantee of good conduct? Who will it be? The Emperor without an empire? Or one of the exiles of fair Ulthuan, who now infest these shores like field mice? Come, come, step forward, and sign thy name into history as the one who stretched out a hand in fellowship to the Undying King,’ he said. ‘You have called, and we have come. Do not turn us away now, at light’s last gleaming.’
It was a pretty speech, equal parts mocking and inviting. And it had the desired effect: a tall figure, clad in darkly gleaming armour, stepped forwards. ‘Say what you have come to say, abomination, and then begone,’ said Malekith. His armour’s death-mask rendered his words strangely metallic, and Mannfred felt a chill. Here was one like Nagash, bound to some greater power. He could smell the raw essence of magic rising from the Witch-King, and for a moment, he felt his confidence waver.
Mannfred leaned in. ‘And if I choose to tarry?’ he spat.
‘Then we will destroy you, and forget you,’ said a second masked individual. Robes rustling, Balthasar Gelt stepped up to join Malekith. ‘Your master has a surplus of puppets, vampire. One more or less will hardly change things.’
Mannfred smiled lazily. Though he could sense the power that now held Gelt in its glittering clutches, he was on firmer ground with Vlad’s former pet. ‘Ah, Gelt. Twice-traitor, first to your Empire and then to Vlad.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor Vlad… He could have used your help, you know. There at the end, I mean.’
Gelt stiffened, and Mannfred laughed. ‘And now, here you stand.’ He leered at Alarielle, who stood behind Malekith. ‘I wouldn’t trust him, my lady. Yon poltroon is the very best of serpents. Why, his heart is rotted clean through with guile and malice.’
‘Something you would know intimately,’ Karl Franz said. He didn’t look at Mannfred as he spoke, and the latter knew, without turning to look, that the Emperor was staring at Nagash. And that, even more worryingly, Nagash was staring back at him.
Incensed, Mannfred glared at the man. ‘I know only that you are a relic of a newly dead world. What use have you now, eh? A statesman without a state, a tyrant stripped of his power. A dead man would be more use than you, Karl Franz, last of the rotten house and failed potentate that you are. I dub thee Fumbler of the Faith and Lord Lackwit,’ Mannfred said, making the sign of the hammer in mocking fashion. The Emperor looked at him, and Mannfred lowered his hand. Smoke rose from his fingers, and he shook his hand to disperse it. Even now, the symbols of Sigmar held some power over him.
‘You have no power in that regard, thankfully,’ Karl Franz said. ‘Only one vampire was named elector, and he does not stand before me.’
Mannfred blinked. For a second, he was tempted to cross the distance between them and tear out the man’s throat. But he restrained himself. Now was not the time to be drawn into foolishness. He licked his lips and looked at Malekith, pointedly ignoring the human. ‘You commanded that I speak my piece, so I shall, mighty elf-king.’ He swept out his arm to indicate the maggoty host stretched across the horizon. ‘Great Nagash, Lord of the Underworld, Undying King and Supreme Lord of All Dead Things, wishes to parley.’
Arkhan the Black watched Mannfred confront the last rulers of the living world, and thought how, under different circumstances, the army spread out around him would be here for different reasons. Instead of a triumphal siege, however, they had come seeking allies in a last-ditch gamble.
The thought elicited some amusement. In life, he had been a notorious gambler, and a champion of debt; that was how Nagash had first caught him up in his schemes of empire. And here he was at the last, wagering what little he still had in one last great throw of the dice. He reached up and touched a charred spot on his robe. The black mark was in the shape of a hand – the hand of the Everchild, Aliathra of Ulthuan. In her final moments, before Arkhan had slit her throat, the elven princess had struck him. Something had passed between them, though he could not say what it had been. Whatever it was – curse, blessing or something in between – it was still within him. And it was growing stronger.
Arkhan looked up, examining the wheel of stars and the tortured heavens. They held no answers. The music of the spheres had become discordant and painful. Auguries showed only falsehood, and the oracular spirits spat gibberish, even when Nagash himself questioned them. The underworld was in disarray, and the gods of men were dead or diminished.
The Great Work was undone. An eternity of careful preparation, of strife and conflict, all for nothing. The thought did not weigh as heavily as he’d feared it might. In truth, it was worth it, if only to see the Undying King at a loss. Though his mind and soul had long been bartered away to Nagash, some flicker of the man he had been yet remained. Some sliver of that cynical, acid-tongued wretch, with his black teeth and gaudy robes, still lingered in the husk of him, and was, perhaps, growing stronger as Nagash’s attentions were diverted to more important matters. And that fragment, that ghost of a ghost, was amused to no end by the predicament that Nagash had found himself in.
‘Irony is a beautiful thing, if you are not its victim,’ someone said, close beside him. Arkhan looked around. He was surrounded by a flock of robed and hooded adherents – liches, vampires, necromancers – all students of the Great Work. Mortuary priests, disciples of poor, dead W’soran, and those few surviving living practitioners of the Corpse Geometries, all gathered together now at his discretion. But the one who had spoken was none of those things – he was as unique as Arkhan himself. He wore a hooded cloak, concealing his identity, but there was no hiding the warrior’s build, or the aristocratic posture.
‘I was never one to indulge in the misfortunes of others,’ Arkhan said.
The hooded figure gave a bark of laughter. ‘You forget – I have played dice with you, Arkhan. I know exactly what sort of man you were – and still are.’
‘And what sort of man are you?’
‘One who honours his debts.’
Arkhan turned away. ‘It is a shame that you could not reach Averheim in time. You might have turned the tide.’
The hooded figure looked at him. ‘It is a shame that our lord and master failed to heed me when I suggested that we muster in defence of the Empire. And now look where we are. The last place any of us, especially him, wanted to be.’
‘Which him are you referring to? Nagash… or your hapless progeny?’
‘Both, I think,’ Vlad von Carstein said. ‘But Nagash especially. Mannfred knows that failure breeds opportunity as well as, or better than, success in the right circumstances. Nagash, I think, does not.’ The vampire looked towards the towering shape of Nagash, his expression speculative.
‘Nagash cannot conceive of failure. To fail would imply that he made a mistake. To admit that would unravel all that he is, was and will be,’ Arkhan said.
‘And would that be so bad?’
Arkhan leaned against his staff, skull pressed to its length. ‘For better or worse, Nagash is as close to a god as remains to this dying world.
To remove his certainty would be to cripple him, and by extension, condemn us all.’
‘Arrogance set him on his path, and arrogance will see him through,’ Vlad said. He shook his head and sighed. ‘More and more, I wonder if Mannfred is not his truest servant after all, given the similarities between them.’
‘Mannfred is a fool. Nagash is not.’ Arkhan looked at Vlad. ‘Why have you not informed him of your survival? He believes that you met your end in Sylvania, at your paramour’s hands.’
‘To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that he still thinks I’m dead,’ Vlad murmured. He frowned, and for a moment Arkhan considered asking him about Isabella. That the Chaos Gods had brought her back was of little surprise to him. Nothing was beyond them, and such a resurrection was merely a parlour trick for such powers. But he decided against it. What Vlad thought of it was unimportant. All that mattered was that he served.
‘He has never been very observant, where his desires are concerned. He wishes for you to be dead, and so you are,’ Arkhan said. ‘That is his greatest weakness, and greatest strength. His lies propel him on, fuelling the arrogance that lends him strength.’
‘Like Nagash,’ Vlad said, with the smile of one who believes he’s scored a point.
Arkhan shifted uncomfortably. He did not reply. Let the vampire think what he liked. In all the years he’d spent duelling with Mannfred, he’d forgotten how much more deadly the first von Carstein was. Mannfred, for all his faults, was not a philosopher. He was pragmatic, and focused on the material world. A craftsman of death, rather than an artist. For all his pretensions of nobility and all of his insistence that the world’s throne was his by right of blood, Mannfred was still a callow, petty creature.
Vlad, on the other hand, was anything but. He had wrung knowledge from the writings of Nagash without the benefit of a tutor, learning through trial and error. He had fought for everything he claimed, and claimed nothing he had not shed blood in pursuit of. Mannfred schemed towards a single, final goal, like an arrow travelling towards its target. Vlad, however, was more like a sword, capable of more than simply carving out an enemy’s heart.
‘Was I ever as arrogant as Nagash?’ Vlad asked. ‘Was I ever as blind as Mannfred?’
Arkhan looked at the vampire. ‘You tell me,’ he said, after a time.
‘Neferata certainly thought so,’ Vlad said, and chuckled. He rubbed the heavy ring that decorated his finger. ‘Never could abide arrogance, that one.’
‘No… she cannot.’ Arkhan turned away from him. Vlad smiled.
‘She and Isabella have – had – much in common. I thought, once upon a time, that I could mould her into the image of the queen. When she resisted, when she turned my arrogance back on me, hissing and spitting, I knew that there was no need. The first time she raised her voice to me in anger, I felt my heart ignite.’ Vlad cocked his head. ‘Was it that way with you, gambler? Prisoner, slave, lover… so many masks between you two. And now, shorn of all pretence…’
Arkhan said nothing. Vlad waited. When no reply seemed forthcoming, he sighed and shrugged. ‘And that is the shame of it all. Love, that rarest of alchemies, is lost so easily when the wind shifts and the fire is sighted on the horizon. Luckily, for some, adversity only adds strength to that bond.’
Arkhan turned to see what Vlad was looking at. Behind them were arrayed the Drakenhof Templars. Loyal once to Mannfred, they had, by and large, honoured their oaths to serve the master of the von Carstein line, and had bent knee to Vlad upon his resurrection. Of the inner circle, only a few remained. Count Nyktolos had met his fate on the sands of the Great Desert; and the burly monster Alberacht Nictus, the Reaper of Drakenhof, had died defending that infamous pile, and the scores of huddled Sylvanian peasantry sheltering within it, against daemons more monstrous even than himself.
Of those he had known, and who had aided him in restoring Nagash, only two remained – Erikan Crowfiend, and Elize von Carstein. The morose Bretonnian, in his dark patchwork armour, sat close beside the crimson-haired von Carstein woman, both of them mounted on cannibal horses from the Sternieste stables. He saw that their hands were not-quite touching, fingers barely intertwined. Love was not forbidden among the dead, for Nagash had little understanding of it, save as a goad. But it was rare. Vlad watched them surreptitiously, his eyes unreadable.
If he had been capable of it, Arkhan might have smiled. Instead, he let his gaze play over the other templars. Von Carsteins, most of them, though there were a few who bore on their faces the stamp of other primogenitors. Hard-eyed Blood Dragons, cunning Lahmians, even one or two brutal Strigoi, wearing tattered armour and cradling crude weapons. And one other, her face composed and so still as to resemble marble.
Eldyra of Tiranoc was an elf, or had been. She was the only survivor of Eltharion the Grim’s doomed rescue attempt on behalf of the Everchild, she whose life essence had been used to quicken Nagash’s spirit from its dark bower in those final moments at the Nine Daemons. She had fallen in that last, fateful battle, but Mannfred had been seized by one of his distressing whims, and had shown her mercy. Of sorts, at any rate.
Now, she sat astride her horse, as undead as the rest of the Drakenhof Templars, and as bloodthirsty as any of Mannfred’s get. The elf noticed his attentions, and met his gaze. Her eyes held no hint as to her thoughts. As he watched, Elize von Carstein leaned over and murmured something to Eldyra, and the elf looked away.
‘Not the first mistake Mannfred has ever made, but it might be his last,’ Vlad said. Arkhan looked at him. Vlad gestured to Eldyra. ‘Still, I am impressed that it was done at all. A rare thing, to see one of our sort crafted from alien flesh.’
‘Your sort. Not mine,’ Arkhan said.
‘But even you have to admire the artistry of it. Men are born to die. They are well on their way to being corpses with the first, squalling breath that they draw. But to take a thing of life, a thing which will not know death, and to twist it so… Ah, well.’ Vlad shook his head. ‘Mannfred was always creative. For a limited value of the term.’
‘Yes. And foolish. He is taunting them,’ Arkhan said. Vlad followed his gaze, and frowned.
‘Well, that’s hardly a surprise, is it?’ He chuckled. ‘It has ever been his nature to be imprudent. That arrogance you mentioned earlier, I think. He cannot conceive of a defeat or a treachery of which he is not the author.’
‘Then he is in for a rude surprise,’ Arkhan said. He looked at Vlad, and then past him, at Nagash. The Undying King paid no attention to the living or the dead, instead communing with the roiling tempest of souls which had made him its aleph in the moments following his consumption of the gods of Nehekhara so many months ago. Arkhan cut his eyes back to Vlad. ‘You are certain, then?’
‘If I weren’t, I would have said nothing. I would not be hiding myself from him,’ Vlad said softly. He frowned. ‘Mannfred is a poison, and he always has been. He is treacherous and uncontrollable. He knows no master save ambition, and he listens to no counsel save that which is born in the black froth which passes for his mind. And he is the author of too much of the tragedy, too much of the grief which afflicts them. Though I am loath to admit it, Mannfred shook the pillars of heaven and earth. And the only way to patch the resulting cracks is… well.’ He smiled sadly. The emotion, Arkhan noted, did not reach his eyes.
‘He will be missed,’ Arkhan said.
Middenheim, City of the White Wolf
Canto Unsworn rode through the ruined streets of Middenheim on his gibbering horse and tried to ignore the shrieks and screams that even now, a year after the fact, still rang out at odd intervals from the shadowed recesses of the fallen city. He also ignored the moans of the beaten, battered shape which he had dragged behind his horse across half of the city. Ignoring the former was easier than ignoring the latter.
A crackling bolt of sorcerous lightning hammered into a nearby building, causing a section of it to colla
pse and a cloud of dust to wash across the street. Canto looked up. The skies overhead still boiled with madness. The fury of the maelstrom above was matched by the destruction below. In the wake of the slaughter wrought by the victorious Chaos forces, the city had been scoured of what life it had once possessed. Archaon’s forces ran riot through the ruins. Corpses had been piled into heaps in every square and plaza, unstable mountains of carrion that grew until they rivalled the city walls in sheer height. Many of these had been set on fire, and now a pall of stinking charnel smoke hung over sections of the city. Northmen, skaven and beastmen alike looted freely and with abandon.
Canto knew that it was only the will of Archaon which kept the disparate parts of the horde from turning on each other. For the servants of the Dark Gods, victory was as perilous as defeat, and the only safety was in battle unending. Already, the knives had come out; more than one ambitious chieftain or champion had made a try for Archaon’s throat. Their bodies now hung above the city’s gatehouses, beside the bodies of the Fellwolf Brotherhood, the Gryphon Legion and any others who had elicited the Three-Eyed King’s displeasure.
The latter had been the last of the organised resistance within the city to fall. The hardy Kislevite knights, led by their Grand Master, Dostov, had holed up in the House of Coin, alongside the survivors of the various mercenary companies who had fought for Middenheim. Surrounded and besieged in an ill-provisioned prison of their own making, Dostov and his followers had nonetheless held out for several weeks. When the break-out attempt came, the Gryphon Legion – or what was left of it – had led the way, thundering towards the northern causeway and the viaduct beyond. Those who made it had found themselves fighting upriver against the warbands which were even then still streaming into the city.
The End Times | The Lord of the End Times Page 16
