The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf Read online

  ‘I never tell false,’ she said. ‘I told you that you would lead your people into glory. That remains your destiny, should you be strong enough to seize it. Are you strong enough, lion-heart? Or has this bitterness quenched your fire?’

  ‘Never. Command me.’

  A chill breeze made the river ripple, stirring the trees around them. The Lady shivered, and her impeccable features creased. ‘Great powers are moving. They converge on Sigmar’s city. The Fallen covet it, as do the Dead. Those who remain will not stand unaided. That is where the hammer will fall, and that is where the world will change.’

  ‘But my realm–’

  ‘It is no longer your realm.’

  ‘My people are hard-pressed.’

  ‘The Green Knight is their guardian now,’ the Lady said, almost sorrowfully, as if that alone presaged the end of her hopes for something better. ‘I tell you the truth. Is that not what you have been praying for?’

  Leoncoeur looked at her intently. The beauty was still there, as was the ethereal power, but both were diminished. She was fighting against something. This apparition was costing her, and the price would be steep. ‘All lands are dying,’ he said, realising what made her sick. ‘They have poisoned the rivers.’

  ‘You asked for a way to serve,’ she said. ‘I have given it to you.’ She gave him a fond, faint smile. ‘If you spurn the offer, you might yet live. There might be some kind of service for you in safer places, of a meagre sort.’

  Then it was Leoncoeur’s turn to smile. When their faces cast off the most oppressive lines of care, they looked so alike. ‘I never craved meagre service. I was a king.’

  ‘You still can be.’ The Lady began to sink, sliding down into the brackish waters. ‘The City of Sigmar, my champion. Already its foundations tremble. That is the anvil upon which the fate of man will be tempered.’

  ‘Then will you live, Lady?’ asked Leoncoeur, watching with concern as she slipped towards the Gironne’s tainted waters. ‘Can you be saved?’

  ‘Ask only of mortal fates,’ she whispered, her tresses sliding under the surface. ‘Look for me in pure waters, but the games of gods do not concern you.’

  But they did. They always had. As Leoncoeur watched her subside into nothingness again, as the golden edges faded from the leaves and the air sunk once more into mud-stinking foulness, he felt as if his heart had been ripped out. He remained immobile for a long time, his knees sinking steadily into the mire, his hands limp by his sides.

  ‘The City of Sigmar,’ he murmured.

  No force of the Empire had stirred itself when Bretonnia had been riven by war. Very rarely had the great and the good of Karl Franz’s realm given much thought to their chivalrous cousins over the Grey Mountains. Then again, it was foolish to assume that they had not been hard-pressed themselves. Leoncoeur had heard the rumours running through court – that disaster had overtaken Marienburg, that the north was aflame, that even the greenskins were terrified of something and remained hidden in their forest lairs.

  He felt icy water creep under the skin of his armour plate, rousing him from his lethargy. He stood cumbersomely, hauling on looped creepers. No remnant of the Lady’s presence remained, and the Gironne looked as turgid and weed-choked as before.

  Leoncoeur trudged back to his mount, slipping on the mud-slick riverbank as he went.

  ‘Altdorf,’ he said, musingly, already gauging the distances. ‘If that is where the fates are to be written, we must not be missing.’

  He thought of the hot blood of his countrymen, and their desire to exchange the grim hunts after petty quarry for the blood-and-thunder of a real war. Many still looked to him; if he ordered them, they would ride with him still.

  He reached his horse, and untied it.

  ‘So be it,’ he said to himself, smiling dryly as he prepared to mount again. ‘I asked for a path. I have been given one.’

  He vaulted into the saddle. He turned one last time, gazing back to where ripples still radiated, and saluted.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Then he kicked his mount up the slope, and was soon gone.

  In his absence, the riverbank sunk into silence once more, broken only by the faint slap of the river-current against the shore, and the mournful wind in the twisted branches.

  The deathmoon rode in the eastern sky, glowing with a sick greenish sheen. Its wholesome companion was nowhere to be seen.

  Such as was foretold, Vlad thought, looking up into heavens.

  The land around him was limned with a ghostly light, tainted as stomach-bile. Morrslieb had ever cast a corrupted illumination, but now its noxious effluence seemed worse than ever. Its scarred face was bloated, presaging the onset of Geheimnisnacht.

  That should have made him glad. In the old days, when the deathmoon rode high on bitter, cloudless nights he had gloried in the visions it had brought him. He had raised scores of unliving to march under his black banners, and their bones had shone under the glow of the tainted heaven-spoor.

  He stood before Castle Drakenhof’s ruined gates, his long cloak snapping in the night wind, and gazed out over the host he had summoned. As yet it did not compare to the vast armies he had once marched west with, but it was grand enough for now. Crowds of Sylvanian troopers, shivering in the cold, stood in decent approximations of Imperial infantry squares. They were dwarfed by the clattering ranks of skeletons and zombies, some pulled from the dark soil just hours ago by Vlad’s necromancers. Skinless horses walked silently along avenues between ghostly regiments, their skull-faced riders showing no emotion as they surveyed the lines of the undead host. Black banners flew, their tattered edges pulled by roving winds.

  ‘Will it be enough?’ Vlad asked.

  No one answered. He stood alone. On his first such crusade, Isabella had been by his side, counselling him, encouraging him. Her absence made his heart ache – to the extent he had a heart, at any rate. The grief was real enough.

  In the far distance, thunder cracked along the eastern horizon. The sawtooth edge of the mountains briefly became visible, black against the outer dark. Carrion crows cawed as they flocked above in huge swarms, ready to fly west ahead of the main host.

  Vlad watched them mob and swirl. There were many hours left before the dawn, and they could make good time under cover of night. Though he planned to drive the army onwards even during the daylight hours, he knew they would struggle under the sun’s harsh glare. The mortals would need to be fed and rested, and even the dead would require constant supervision from his covens of spell-winders.

  They would make for the Stir, taking any towns and villages on the way and turning their impoverished inhabitants to the cause. Since the Law of Death had been loosened, the many graveyards of his cursed province would readily yield up more fell troops for the host, and so the numbers of both mortal and unliving would swell with every league they marched. Once at the river, they would take barges downstream, riding the flood as the dark waters foamed and rushed west.

  He did not expect any serious resistance before reaching the borders of Reikland. The Empire was like a rotten fruit – still intact on the outside, but eaten hollow within. The fortified city of Wurtbad might prove a temporary delay, but he had already taken steps to ease that potential barrier.

  Behind him, he heard the howls of vargheists as they loped and swooped amid the ruins. He sensed the shuddering movements of ghouls, and saw the shimmer-pattern of unquiet spirits. Those spectral presences would soon send the entire realm into paroxysms of fear, just as they had done so long ago. And yet, this time he was not marching to bring the Empire to its knees. Far from it.

  He looked down at the roll of parchment in his left hand, sealed with a great wax glob and marked with the signet-device of the von Carsteins. He remembered how difficult it had been to find the words to use.

  I am aware that the mutual enmity between our peoples will make this proposal a hard one to entertain fairly. I have no doubt, though, given the circumstances, you will
see past ancient prejudices and buried grievances. You will have seen the same auguries as we have, and you will know what is at stake. And, after all, do I not have some prior claim to this title? Or does right of conquest count for nothing in these debased times?

  Vlad was not sure about those lines, but he had left them in. The detail of the law could be hammered out in person – the important thing was to make the approach now, before the city was cut off by the hosts of the North.

  He looked up, just in time to see an enormous bat flutter down from the castle rafters. Its body was as big as a wolf’s, and its leathery wings had a downdraft like a hunting eagle’s. More bats followed their leader down, hovering in pack formation, until nine pairs of red eyes glowed before him in the night.

  Vlad wrapped the parchment tightly in oilskin and tied the bundle with twine. He held it up, and the hovering bat took it in its powerful jaws.

  ‘Go swift, go safe,’ whispered Vlad, reaching up to caress the animal.

  Then the whole flock of fell creatures shot upward into the night, spiralling high over the assembled army and heading west.

  ‘Their pride will be the greatest obstacle,’ he mused aloud. ‘Can the Empire humble itself enough to see sense? That is yet to be decided.’ Then he smiled coldly to himself, feeling his long fangs snick on his lower lip. ‘All men can change, and every mortal has a turning-point. We just have to find where that is. Would you not agree, Herrscher?’

  The witch hunter stepped from the shadow of the gates, flanked by ashen-faced guards. His own skin was as white as bone, shrivelled dry onto his prominent skeleton. The clothes he had worn when fully alive now hung from him loosely, and his pistol-belt had slipped almost comically about his thighs.

  Herrscher stared out at the host before them. Then he looked down at his hands. He was trembling.

  ‘The shock will pass,’ said Vlad, not unkindly. ‘You forget the worst of the pain, in time.’

  Herrscher looked at him, a mix of horror and hatred on his face. For all that, he did not reach for his weapon. ‘How is it... possible?’ he rasped, and his once-powerful voice was as thin as corpse-linen.

  Vlad sighed. He would have to get used to many such initiations into the half-life of undead servitude. ‘You do not need to know that. All you need to know now is that my will gives you breath. You will accept that. You will come to cherish it. The power of resistance you once commanded has gone, and you are my lieutenant now.’

  Vlad regarded Herrscher with something approaching fondness. The witch hunter would never truly know it, but his position was one of the highest honour – other captains would be appointed, but he was the very first.

  Herrscher looked like he wanted to scream, to dash his own brains out, to launch himself at Vlad and wring his neck, but of course none of those things were possible now. The witch hunter might be screaming on the inside, but he would do the bidding of the one who had raised him, just as Vlad did the bidding of Nagash who had raised him.

  ‘Now come,’ said Vlad, placing a gauntlet on Herrscher’s shoulder and leading him out from the gate’s shadow. ‘We march within the hour. Let me show you your new servants.’

  Helborg woke with a jolt. He was still on his feet, propped up against a wall. He did not remember falling asleep. He had hardly been able to close his eyes for the three days since he had been back in Altdorf, and when he did his mind swiftly filled with nightmares. He saw, over and over, the Emperor felled above Heffengen, plummeting to the earth in a deathly spiral before disappearing from view.

  The grief was still raw. Karl Franz had been the undisputed master of the sprawling Empire, the only man with the patience, the guile and the sheer presence to hold the fractious provinces together. Only Karl Franz could have faced down Volkmar in one of his tirades, or kept Gelt from flying off into another half-considered magical endeavour, or resisted the grim implacability of Schwarzhelm in his worst moods. Karl Franz had kept them all in line.

  If Helborg was honest, only in the past few days had he truly understood what a titanic achievement that had been. The demands of electors, courtiers, wizards, engineers and generals were endless. Every hour brought new demands to his door, burdening him with both the vital and the trivial. For the moment, he had cowed the three electors into submission and ensured his mastery over the city defences, but it would only be a matter of time before they started scheming again. Both Gausser and von Liebwitz saw the present crisis as an opportunity for advancement, and even Haupt-Anderssen sniffed the chance to profit from the flux. Only the wizard Martak seemed to understand the Empire’s desperate straits, and he was little better than a pedlar, looked down on by his more elevated kin in the colleges and disregarded by the Palace staff who served him.

  Helborg pushed himself from the wall he had been leaning against, cursing himself for losing consciousness. He was still in full ceremonial armour. He wore his Reiksguard symbols at all times to remind the populace – and, in truth, himself – that he was the last remaining link to the past. Out of all the great heroes of the Empire – Gelt, Volkmar, Schwarzhelm, Huss – only he remained, isolated and cut off from what remained of the northern armies. There was no knowing if any of them still lived, and to even contemplate mounting a significant defence without them felt alien and uncomfortable.

  Helborg blinked heavily, hoping none had seen his lapse. The corridor around him was empty, a stone shell lined with torches. Through narrow slit-windows he could see that it was nearly dark outside, and the night’s chill was creeping through the granite. For a moment he could not remember why he had come this way, then it all came back – inspection of the northern gate with Zintler. He had made it as far as the fortified citadel above the gatehouse. He must have just paused for a moment.

  He shook himself down, still feeling groggy from lack of rest, and went quickly up towards the parapet level. He climbed two spiral staircases, strode down a long archer’s gallery, then finally emerged into the open air again.

  Zintler was waiting for him on the open summit of the gatehouse, a wide courtyard ringed with shoulder-height battlements. A huge flagpole stood in the centre of the space, hung with an Imperial standard. As he passed it, Helborg could smell the mould-spores on the fabric.

  Even here, he thought grimly.

  Zintler saluted as Helborg approached, not giving any indication that he had been kept waiting.

  ‘How stands it?’ asked Helborg, joining him on the northern edge of the courtyard.

  ‘Plague has reached the city,’ said Zintler. ‘Barely two-thirds of the men capable of carrying a sword can still lift one. It will only get worse.’

  Helborg nodded grimly. Similar reports were coming in from all across Altdorf. Despite guarding the water supplies tightly, something was infecting the poorer quarters and spreading out to the garrisons. The air itself was foul, and carried an edge of bitterness when the wind blew.

  ‘The walls?’ Helborg asked, peering over the edge to look at them for himself.

  The northern gate had been built up and augmented over hundreds of years, and was now a vast pile of age-darkened stone, crested with gunnery emplacements and the snarling golden gargoyles of griffons and lions. Bulwarks and kill-points jostled with one another in a cunning series of funnelling formations. By the time an enemy got anywhere close to the gates themselves, they would have been pummelled by artillery and ranged magic, doused in boiling oil and pelted with building rubble, then finally overwhelmed by sorties streaming out from hidden posterns all along the ingress way.

  At least, that was how it had been in the past, when the Empire’s armies were more numerous than the sands on the grey Nordland shore. Now Helborg doubted whether he had enough able bodies to occupy more than half the defensive positions available to him.

  ‘The walls are crumbling,’ said Zintler flatly. He reached over to the top of the battlements and prised a section of mortar from the joints. It disintegrated between his finger and thumb. Once again, Helborg smelled the ste
nch of rot.

  ‘It can’t be crumbling,’ Helborg muttered. ‘This is granite from the Worlds Edge peaks.’

  ‘The Rot,’ said Zintler, as if that explained everything.

  They were already referring to the Rot in the streets – the malaise that seemed to spread through everything, spoiling milk, fouling foodstuffs, infecting living flesh.

  ‘Enough of that,’ snapped Helborg. ‘Summon the master engineer and get him to shore up the foundations. The gates must hold.’

  ‘Master Ironblood is already engaged–’

  ‘Summon him!’ Helborg snapped. ‘I don’t care what he’s tinkering with – the gates must hold.’

  Zintler bowed, admonished. The Reikscaptain had the grey lines of fatigue around his eyes, just as they all did. Helborg wondered if he had had any sleep either.

  ‘What reports from the west?’ Helborg asked, running a weary hand over his cropped scalp.

  ‘The enemy draws close to Carroburg.’

  ‘Have the Greatswords been pulled back?’

  ‘The messages were sent.’

  ‘That is not what I asked.’

  Zintler looked rattled. ‘I do not know, lord. We send messengers out along the river, and never hear from them again. We send fortified contingents in barges, and they disappear. I do not have enough men to chase them all down. We do what we can, but–’

  ‘So be it,’ growled Helborg, not wanting to hear any more excuses. Zintler was doing his best, but the inexorable tide of work was getting to them all. Carroburg housed some of the finest regiments in the Reikland – if they could be salvaged, then the city’s defences would look a lot more secure. If they decided to make a doomed stand at the western city, then things looked even bleaker. ‘There is nothing more to be done.’

  Helborg’s cheek flared with pain. The daemon’s claws had bitten deep, and though the wound had closed over, it had never truly healed. He was aware how it made him look. He could feel poisons at work under the scabby skin, and knew that no apothecary would be able to salve them.