Ghurk hauled back hard with his tentacle, digging his hooves in and tugging. The terrorgheist’s bony neck broke, and the creature gasped out a glut of corpse-gas from its gaping jaws. Its sinewy wings flapped pathetically, and it thudded to the ground. With the creature’s momentum broken, the mob of zombies collapsed around Ghurk, scattering in twisted piles of confusion at his feet.
‘There is no time for this!’ hissed Otto, using his scythe to clear the last of the clinging zombies from Ghurk’s hide. ‘Clear them out!’
Ghurk obeyed, bounding after the remaining enemy, swinging both arms like jackhammers.
The three women in lace leapt down from their vantage then, spitting curses. Ethrac was too busy breaking the remainder of the zombies to respond, so Otto hauled his scythe back, swung it around three times, then let go. The blade flew towards the leader of the trio, rotating in a blur of speed. Before she could evade the missile, it sliced clean across her neck, decapitating her in a single strike and spraying blood in broad spatters against the walls of the yard.
‘Return!’ cried Otto, reaching out with his right claw.
The scythe immediately swung around again, still spinning, and dropped back into his waiting palm.
That broke the spirit of the remaining undead horde. Bereft of the guiding will of their vampiric masters, the zombies lost all cohesion, and were soon mopped up by the oncoming tribesmen. The two remaining ladies fled back into the Palace depths, wailing like infants. Ghurk rampaged through the remaining throng, treading the last survivors into the stone underfoot. He crashed over the carcass of the terrorgheist and repeatedly stamped on it, powdering the bones and trampling the meagre scraps of sinew that still clung to them.
‘Is this really the best they can do?’ muttered Otto, still busy with his scythe.
‘We killed the master,’ said Ethrac, hurling more plague-slime about him with great heaves. ‘Why do any still stand? The dead return to death when the master is killed.’
Otto shrugged. The Palace now lay before them, its doors gaping open and its riches clustered within, and lust was already overtaking his fury. ‘Who knows? Perhaps there is another to be found.’
Ethrac kept up the barrage of raw sorcery, exploding zombies at a terrific rate. The broken dome of the Palace loomed up massively, a cyclopean structure even in its ruin. Flames still guttered around it, fuelled by the unleashed lethal energies, and the storm-pattern of clouds formed an immense cupola over the whole scene.
The devastation was now total. Every building in the city had been demolished or dragged into ruins. The death-toll was incalculable, and would never be recovered from. In a sense, it mattered not what happened now – they had done what no warlord of the north had ever done. They had broken Sigmar’s city, wreathing it in fell sorcery and drenching it in the blood of the slain.
But there was still the final blow to be struck. The human Emperor still lived, and had come back to his den in time for the denouement. Such had always been predicted, and the Plaguefather had never guided them awry.
‘He is in there,’ said Ethrac, barely noticing as his troops slaughtered and smashed the last remnants of the defence. ‘I can smell him.’
Otto grinned back at him, his face sticky with blood.
‘Then we go inside,’ he said triumphantly. ‘And bring this dance to its end.’
Margrit looked up at the vampire, not knowing whether to thank him or curse him. His fell warriors had cleared the courtyard of daemons and were now pursuing the remaining Chaos forces out of the square beyond. The surviving humans emerged from whatever places they had managed to barricade themselves behind, mistrust etched on their faces.
Vlad von Carstein was still gazing at the body of Leoncoeur. There was a sadness on the vampire’s face.
For all that, the creature’s aura still made Margrit shudder. For her whole life, she had been taught to fear and hate the grave-stealers. If any force of the world was truly anathema to hers, it was the bringers of everlasting death.
‘And what of us, lord?’ she asked, staring up at him defiantly. ‘Now you have your victory, what is your purpose?’
Vlad turned to her, as if seeing her for the first time. Margrit could not help noticing that his gaze flickered instinctively down to her throat.
‘If there were time, lady, I might show you all manner of wonders,’ he said. ‘You can see for yourself, though, that none remains.’
He looked up, past the temple dome and towards the Palace hilltop. His eyes narrowed, as if he were focusing on things far away.
‘This is your temple again, for a time,’ he said, coldly. ‘Bury your dead and look to your walls. If all goes well, I will be back.’
Then his whole body seemed to shimmer like a shadow in sunlight. The ring on his finger briefly flared with crimson light, and his gaunt frame dissolved into a flock of squealing bats. They fluttered skywards, spiralling into the rain-lashed skies.
Margrit watched the bats go, slumped against the stone of the courtyard with the dead knight leaning against her. The noises of combat were falling away as the undead drove the daemons back from the temple’s environs and into the maze of the burning poor quarter.
She looked up. The plague-rain was beginning to lessen, as was the tearing wind. Though the slimy droplets still cascaded, their force was already beginning to fade.
‘But what is left?’ she murmured to herself, looking around her destroyed temple, at the pools of blood on the stone, at the corroded and gaping rooftops beyond her little kingdom. ‘What is there to be salvaged now?’
No answers came. She smoothed the bloodied hair from the knight’s brow, and closed his eyes. It would have been nice to have known his name.
TWENTY-THREE
Deathclaw landed on the marble floor, its claws skittering on the polished surface. Karl Franz dismounted just as Martak’s beast landed on the far side of the chamber.
The place had once been a chapel to Sigmar the Uniter. In its prime, a hundred priests a day would perform rites of absolution and petition, processing up the long aisles with burning torches in hand. The high altar was draped in gold and surrounded by the spoils of war – trophies from a hundred realms of the earth, the bleached and polished skulls of greenskins, the wargear of the northmen’s many tribes.
Now all was in disarray. The chapel’s arched roof had collapsed under the weight of pulsating mosses, and loops of pus-glistening tendrils hung from the ragged edges. The chequerboard floor had been driven up, exposing masses of writhing maggots beneath. The altar itself was broken, cracked in two by a creaking thorn-stump, and blowflies swarmed and buzzed over every exposed surface.
Karl Franz pulled the reins from around Deathclaw’s neck and cast them aside. The very action of laying eyes on the devastation was enough to make him feel nauseous, but there was no time to linger over the desecration. From beyond the listing doorway at the rear of the long central aisle, he could already hear the echoes of fighting. The Palace was rife with it, from the high towers to the deepest dungeons. Even from the air he had seen how complete the defeat was – a huge army of Chaos tribesmen and mutated beasts had cut its way deep into the heart of the complex, resisted only by a motley mix of Palace guards and warriors of Sylvania’s cursed moors.
It was just as it had been in Heffengen – the dead fighting with the living. How such allies came to be within the sanctity of the Palace grounds, though, was a question for another time.
‘Now what?’ asked Martak, dismounting clumsily and skidding on the polished floor.
‘The Chamber of the Hammer,’ replied Karl Franz, striding out towards the doors with Deathclaw in tow.
Martak took a little more time to persuade his steed to follow suit, and had to haul on its halter to bring it along. ‘What of the Menagerie, lord?’ he asked. ‘The dragon! Can you not rouse the dragon?’
Karl Franz kept walking. He could have done that. He could have opened all the cages and let the beasts loose, but it would not acc
omplish anything now. There was only one course open to him, one he barely understood, one that could only bring him pain.
‘Time is short, wizard,’ he said, reaching the doors and peering out through their wreckage. A long corridor stretched away, empty of enemies for the moment and ankle-thick with fungus spores. ‘You will have to trust me.’
Martak hurried to catch up. ‘Trust you? You have told me nothing! You saw the armies, you know how close they are.’ He fixed the Emperor with a look of pure exasperation. ‘What will this serve?’
Karl Franz looked back at him with some sympathy. There were no easy answers, and it was not as if his own intentions filled him with any certainty. All he had now were feelings, stirred by the sight of the comet and prompted by vague premonitions and old whisperings.
It could all be futile – everything, every step he had taken since the disaster at the Auric Bastion. But, he reflected, was that not the essence of faith? To trust in the promptings of the soul in the face of all evidence to the contrary?
He would have to dig deeper, to drag some surety from somewhere. In the meantime, there was little he could do to assuage the wizard’s doubts.
‘If you wish to rouse the beasts, then I will not prevent you,’ said Karl Franz. ‘You have delivered me to this place, and for that alone I remain in your debt. But I will not join you – the time is drawing closer, and I must be under the sign of Ghal Maraz when the test comes.’
He forced a smile. The wizard would have to follow his own path now.
‘You may join me or leave me – such is your fate – but do not try to prevent me.’ He started walking again, and Deathclaw followed close behind, ducking under the lintel of the chapel doors. ‘This is the end of all things, and when all is gone – all magic, all strength, all hope – then only faith remains.’
The spell guttered out, and Vlad reconstituted deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace.
For a moment, it was all he could do not to stare. He had dreamed of being in this place for so long – more than the lifetime of any mortal. The yearning had stretched through the aeons, as bitter and unfulfilled as the love he had once borne for her. For Isabella. He had often imagined how it would be, to tread the halls as a victor, drinking in the splendour of aeons. Long ago, so long that even he struggled to retain the memory, he had imagined himself on the throne itself, presiding over a whispering court of black-clad servants, the candles burning low in their holders and the music of Old Sylvania echoing in the shadowed vaults.
To have accomplished those long hopes should have made him glad. In the event, all he felt was a kind of confusion. Nagash had given him what he needed to get here at last, but it turned out that all that remained was a ruin of foliage-smothered stonework and gaping, eyeless halls. It would never be rebuilt, not now. He had accomplished his goal, only to find that he was a master of ashes.
‘My lord,’ came a familiar voice.
Vlad turned to see Herrscher and a band of wight-warriors in the armour of the Palace. They must have been raised recently, for their greaves and breastplates were still mottled with soil. Further back stood silent ranks of the undead, interspersed with ragged-looking groups of zombies.
‘Where are the rest?’ asked Vlad.
‘Mundvard and the ladies rode out to halt the plague-host before it reached the Palace,’ said Herrscher. ‘They did not come back.’
Vlad nodded. Perhaps he should have expected it – the Ruinous Powers had always been too strong for his servants to take on.
‘Then their commanders will be within the walls now,’ said Vlad.
‘They have taken the southern entrance,’ said Herrscher. ‘They are heading for the centre, and we are in their path. If we leave now–’
‘Leave?’
Herrscher looked confused. ‘We cannot stay here, lord,’ he protested. ‘Your army is spread throughout the city, but they have broken into the Palace in force. They cannot be stopped, not by us, not without summoning reinforcements.’
Vlad smiled tolerantly. Herrscher looked genuinely perturbed at the prospect of harm coming to him, which was as good a sign as any that his transformation was complete.
‘You are right, witch hunter,’ said Vlad. ‘The longer this goes on, the worse things will go for us. To bring this beast low, we must sever it at the head.’ He smiled thinly. ‘The savages of the north lead their armies from the front. If we wish to find the authors of this plague, look to the vanguard.’
Herrscher looked doubtful. ‘We are so few,’ he muttered.
‘Ah, but you have me with you now.’ Vlad glanced up and down the corridor, trying to get his bearings. ‘I wonder, do any of your old kind still live, or do we have this place to ourselves?’
As if in answer, there was a huge, resounding bang from the corridor running away to the south, like a massive door had been flung back on its hinges. Following that came the sound of a low, slurring panting. The floor shook, trembling with the impact of heavy footfalls.
Herrscher drew his blade, as did the wights, and they fell into a defensive ring around their master.
Vlad unsheathed his own sword with a flourish, finding himself looking forward to what was to come. The footfalls grew louder as the beast smashed its way towards them.
‘So the hunt is unnecessary – they have come to us.’ Vlad raised his sword to his face, noting the lack of reflection in the steel. ‘Now look and learn, witch hunter – this is how a mortarch skins his prey.’
With some regret, both Otto and Ethrac had to dismount from Ghurk as he barrelled on into the Palace interior. Their huge steed now scraped the roof of the corridors, bringing down chandeliers and ceiling-panels as he lumbered ever closer to the goal.
Otto and Ethrac ran alongside him now, both panting hard from the exertion. Ghurk himself seemed as infinitely strong as ever, his bulging muscles still rippling under his mottled hide. The vanguard of their suppurating horde came on behind, wheezing through closed-face helms and carrying their axes two-handed before their bodies.
As they came, they destroyed. Paintings were torn from their frames and ripped to pieces, statues were cast down and shattered. Ghurk’s hooves tore up the marble flooring, and his flailing fists dragged whole sections of wall panels along with him. They were like a hurricane streaking into the heart of the enemy’s abode, breaking it down, brick by brick, into a heap of mouldering refuse.
As they rounded a narrow corner, Otto was the first to catch sight of fresh enemies. A thrill ran through him, and he picked up the pace. ‘Shatter them!’ he cried, his voice cracking with enthusiasm. ‘Smash them!’
Just as at the Palace gates, the warriors lined up against them were no mortals, but more of the undead that had dogged their passage ever since the breaking of the walls. Otto began to feel genuine anger – they just could not be eradicated. They were like a... plague.
Ghurk bounded ahead, and Ethrac matched pace, his staff already shimmering with gathering witch-light. The undead wights rushed down the wide passageway to meet them, racing into battle with their unearthly silence. Soon the corridor was filled with the echoing clang of blades clashing. Zombies and skeletons went up against marauders and tribesmen in a mirror of the desperate combat still scored across the entire cityscape.
There was only one opponent worthy of Otto’s attention, though – a crimson-armoured vampire lord bearing a longsword and wearing a long sable cloak. That one towered over even the mightiest of his servants, and swept arrogantly into battle with the poise of a true warrior-artisan.
Otto swung his scythe, clattering it into the vampire’s oncoming blade even as Ghurk and Ethrac blundered onwards, reaping a swathe through the undead ranks beyond.
‘You are the master, then,’ Otto remarked, parrying a counter-blow before trying to skewer the vampire with his blade’s point. ‘Do you have a name?’
‘My name is known from Kislev to Tilea,’ replied the vampire distastefully. ‘Vlad von Carstein, Elector Count of Sylvania. You, t
hough, are unknown to me.’
Otto laughed, whirling the scythe faster. ‘We are the Glottkin. We come to bury the Empire in its own filth. Why not let us?’
Vlad sneered, trying to find a way through Otto’s whirling defence. The vampire carried himself with an almost unconscious arrogance – the bearing of a creature born to rule, and one who knew how to use a sword. ‘You would cover the whole world in your stink. That will not be allowed to happen.’
‘It cannot be stopped now. You surely know that.’
Vlad hammered his blade into the attack. ‘Nothing is certain. Not even death – I should know.’
Otto laughed out loud, enjoying the artistry of the combat. Ghurk would never have understood it, nor Ethrac, but their gifts had always been different. ‘You are rather good, vampire,’ he observed.
‘And you... fight with a scythe,’ replied Vlad, contemptuously.
As if to demonstrate the weapon’s uselessness, the vampire suddenly changed the angle of his sword-swipe, catching the hook of the blade and pulling it out of Otto’s hands. Otto lunged to reclaim it, but it fell, clanking, to the floor. The vampire trod on the blade, advancing on his prey with a dark satisfaction in his unblinking eyes.
Otto let fly with a punch, hoping to rock the vampire, but Vlad was far too quick – he caught Otto’s clenched fist in his own gauntlet, and twisted the wrist back on itself. Caught prone, Otto was forced round, his spine twisted.
Before he could do anything else, the vampire’s blade punched up through his ribcage, sliding through his encrusted skin with a slick hiss. Vlad lifted him bodily from the floor, held rigid by the length of steel protruding from his torso. The pain was excruciating.
‘And so it ends, creature of the Outer Dark,’ said Vlad, bringing his sword-tip up to his lips. As was his wont with the defeated, he licked along the sword’s edge, drinking deep of the blood that ran freely along the cutting edge.
The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf Page 31
