The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf Read online

  ‘Fly!’ he growled again, brandishing his staff over the creature’s neck as if the splinter of gnarled wood would intimidate such a colossal mount. The griffon hissed back at him, and strutted around the yard aimlessly. More shouts came from the surrounding buildings, at ground level this time, and the red glare of firelight spread from the barred windows. Men burst out of the doors leading back to the beast-chambers, each carrying a long spear and clutching nets between them.

  A huge, burly figure, bald-headed and with an iron stud in his nose, roared up at them, his face puce with anger. ‘Get back in there, you flea-ridden fly-hog!’ he bawled, gesturing frantically at the other men to fan out and surround the griffon. ‘Sigmar damn you, you will suffer for this!’

  At the sight of that man, the griffon immediately reared again, nearly throwing Martak from its back. Its forelegs scythed, and it let rip with a piercing shriek of fury.

  The first net, weighted with iron balls, was thrown. With a coiled pounce, the griffon leapt into the air, flapping powerfully to gain loft.

  More nets were thrown, then spears, but none reached the target. The griffon powered upward rapidly, climbing higher with every powerful down-beat of its huge wings.

  Martak hung on, his heart racing, clutching to the beast’s plumage with fear-whitened knuckles.

  ‘Taal’s teeth,’ he swore, realising belatedly what he had taken on.

  Altdorf fell away below him, a patchwork of faint lamplight amid the overcast gloom of the night sky. The griffon banked, and Martak saw the baroque sprawl of the Imperial Palace stretched out, glistening faintly from the light of a thousand lanterns. Even in the midst of his blind terror, it was hard not to be awed by the spectacle.

  ‘North, damn you,’ he hissed, trying again to impose his will.

  The griffon did not listen, but headed east, instinctively heading for the mountains where it had been hatched. Martak persevered, reaching out to the beast’s mind and trying to quell its wilfulness.

  Slowly, painfully, it began to respond. Martak whispered every scrap of the Lore of Beasts into its ears, piling on the words of command.

  Eventually, with a frustrated caw of defeat, it began to listen. It toppled to one side and angled north, heading over the seas of dark-limbed trees and flying steadily.

  Ever since that moment, Martak had battled with it, forcing it to obey him through sheer bloody-mindedness. There was no beautiful meeting of souls and no mutual respect between them – every wing-beat was a struggle, a draining battle of psyches. The griffon toiled through the air as if mired in it. Just staying mounted was a challenge in itself, and Martak nearly slipped from his perch more than once.

  Somehow, though, they flew on until the sunrise, by which time they were far out over the forest and the Reik valley was a long way behind them. Both of them were exhausted, bad-tempered and stinking with sweat.

  Martak gazed out over the vast expanse of land below. Although he had often tramped far and wide into the Great Forest, it was only from the air that one could appreciate just how immeasurably immense the Empire was. During the long flight they had barely passed any settlements, and yet the forest still stretched off towards the four empty horizons in an unbroken, daunting mass. Night-mists curled and boiled atop the crowns of the trees, spiralling into eerie columns that twisted up to meet the weak light of the sun. The eastern horizon was a weak strip of pale gold, glistering faintly under heavy bands of iron-grey.

  The griffon cawed harshly. Ahead of them reared several outcrops of dark rock, thrusting clear of the canopy like leviathans breaking the ocean surface. Martak sensed the beast’s desire to set down, drawn perhaps by a landscape that reminded it of its mountainous home.

  Martak allowed it to lose height, and soon they were circling down towards the nearest column of stone, angling with surprising dexterity through the chill dawn air. The griffon crouched as it touched down.

  Martak gripped it tightly by the nape of the neck, and hissed into its ear. ‘You are mine, now. I do not release you. One way or another, we are bound to one another, so do not get any ideas.’

  The griffon hissed back at him, and scraped its talons along the rock, but did not make any further protest. They understood one another, and a bond, however tenuous and irascible, had been established.

  Martak dismounted stiffly and hobbled to the edge of the stone island. He stood fifty feet above the tallest of the trees, and could see nothing but a landscape of leaves in every direction – no rivers, no castles, no cultivated land. The forest reeked of slowly mouldering fruit. The more he looked, the more he felt the marks of slow corruption. The Great Forest had always been a perilous and dank place, but now it was truly festering.

  Martak slumped to his haunches. He would have to make a fire soon. Somehow, he would have to find something to eat – if anything that still lived in the forest was worth eating.

  He gazed out to the north, and at the sight of the endless ranks of trees, his heart faltered.

  Is this a mistake? he ruminated. Should I have stayed? My absence will make Helborg spit blood.

  He smiled grimly. That, on its own, probably made it worth the labour.

  Behind him, the griffon began to preen itself, pulling at its tangled feathers with its hooked beak. Martak shuffled away from the precipice, and started to look for dry tinder. The fire would do more than keep them warm – it was the precursor to a spell, one that would allow his sight to roam far beyond the confines of his mortal vision.

  It would not be easy to summon up the requisite power – scrying was not his strength, and the dreary tang of mutation hung in the air, thicker and more durable than the rolling mist.

  ‘But I will find you,’ Martak said aloud, startling the griffon. ‘By the Eight Winds, this journey will not be wasted.’

  He hobbled across the bare stone, limping from muscle-ache and the cold, muttering to himself. Out in the wilds, the clouds hung heavily, and the plague-wind moaned.

  It would be a long, cold day.

  ‘Consider it, o my brother,’ said Otto, softly.

  ‘I do so, o my brother,’ replied Ethrac, his voice hushed in awe.

  Neither of them spoke for a little while after that. The two of them sat on Ghurk’s shoulders, lost in thought. Below them, their army waited for orders. They waited for a long time.

  Ghurk stood at the summit of a bald, windswept hill on the north bank of the Reik. The close press of thorn and briar had given way a little there, exposing the vista to the east in all its untrammelled glory. Ahead of them, at last, lay their goal.

  Just below Ghurk’s hooves, the terrain fell away sharply in terraces of foliage-clogged undulation. The Reik valley had widened since Carroburg, and was now a broad, shallow bowl. The land had once been cultivated across the flat floodplain, but now the crops rotted in their drills, reeking with a subtle aroma that Otto found immensely pleasing. Everywhere he looked, the forest had crept past its ancient bounds, smothering everything. The new growths had taken on a wild variety of hues – pus-yellow, olive-green, the pulsing crimson of blood-blisters. Above it all, the clouds still churned, making the air as thick and humid as half-warmed tallow.

  A mile away, Altdorf lay, rising from the tormented plain like a colossus, straddling the wide river and thrusting its towers up towards the uncaring heavens. Far bigger than Marienburg, far bigger than Talabheim, it was the greatest of prizes, the jewel of the southern Empire.

  It had never been a beautiful place, even before the Rot. It had none of the soaring grandeur of Lothern, nor the stark geometry of the Lustrian megalopolises. What it had was solidity – the huge, heavy weight of history, piled atop layer after layer of construction until the final ramshackle, glorious heap of disparate architectural and strategic visions reached up to scrape at the lowering rainclouds themselves. Mighty buttresses reinforced vast retaining walls, straining amid the lattice of bridges and causeways and spiral stairs and gatehouses and watchtowers, all surmounted by slender tiled roofs
that poked upward like fire-blackened fingers. A thousand hearths sent sooty trails snaking over the tiles, casting a pall of smog that hung like pox over the entire gaudy display. Copper domes glistened dully amid the tangle of dark stone and grimy daub, and the noise of forges and manufactories could be made out even from so far away, grinding away somewhere deep in the bowels of the vast, vast city.

  Its walls were intact. Otto permitted himself some surprise at that – he had been told to expect the masonry to have crumbled away. Perhaps the defenders were more capable than he had expected. They had certainly worked hard.

  It mattered not. Walls of stone were of little impediment to the hosts he commanded. Altdorf was just a microcosm of the Empire itself – the true rot came from within. There was no point in reinforcing borders and bastions and parapets if the flesh contained beyond them was withering away with every passing hour. They were weak, now. Terribly weak. How many of them could still lift their weapons? How many even had the desire to?

  A low crack and growl of thunder played across the eastern horizon. Great pillars of cloud were gathering, driven west by gales from the Worlds Edge Mountains. Stray flickers of lightning briefly flashed out across the grey, drab air, glinting on the Reik’s dreary surface.

  The river had almost entirely turned into a glutinous slurry, and it barely lapped its own banks any more. Huge vines had slithered out of the encroaching tree-cover and extended into the water, making what remained even more viscous.

  Otto smirked as he saw the transformation. The god he served was a mighty god indeed. The very earth had been poisoned, the waters thickened, the growing things perverted and sent thrusting into feral parodies of themselves. There was no resisting this – it was the wearing weight of entropy, the corruption of all purity, the glorious potential of the sick, the foul, the decaying.

  ‘We march now,’ Otto breathed, knowing how little time it would take. The army would sweep east, filling the valley before them from side to side, surrounding the city as the ocean surrounded its islands.

  ‘Not yet,’ warned Ethrac. ‘We wait for the others.’

  Otto felt like snapping at him. Ethrac could be tediously particular. He loved his brother – he loved both his brothers – but Ghurk’s pleasing enthusiasms never ceased to be endearing, whereas Ethrac could, on occasion, be harder to like.

  ‘We may crush it now, o my brother,’ said Otto, forcing a smile. ‘Crush it like Carroburg.’

  ‘No, no.’ Ethrac waved his staff to and fro, and the bells clanged. ‘Not long to wait. The others grow closer. We will need all three – the Lord of Tentacles, the Tallyman, the beasts of the dark wood, the hosts of the far north.’

  Otto rolled his eyes. ‘They are starved, o my brother! They are timorous.’

  Ethrac shot him a crooked smile. ‘Not as starved as they will be, o my sibling. Not as timorous as they will be. While they still have a little of their native strength left, we must creep with caution. How many battles have been lost to impetuosity? Hmm? You can count them all?’

  Otto was about to retort, knowing the argument was futile, when the clouds parted overhead. The fine drizzle that had accompanied them since making landfall at Marienburg guttered and trembled. A new light flooded across the valley, weaker than the shrouded sun, like a pale flame.

  The hosts of ruin looked up. Otto did likewise.

  He saw the flames of the comet flicker, masked by the shifting airs and made weak by the filth in the skies, but there nevertheless. Tongues of fire glimmered in the heavens, just as they had done in the half-forgotten days only recorded in forbidden books.

  Otto made the sign of ruination. ‘The twin-tailed star,’ he muttered.

  Ethrac chuckled. ‘It surprises you, o my brother? You have not listened to me. The comet was there to witness the birth of Sigmar’s realm, and it will be there to see it out. Such signs and portents were written into fate’s tapestry since before you or I were woven into it.’

  Otto continued to stare at the comet uneasily. He could barely catch sight of it, and its light was washed out by the gloom of midday, but the brief snatches he did perceive made his stomach turn.

  ‘It presages nothing,’ he muttered, to convince himself as much as anything else.

  ‘That is right,’ said Ethrac, satisfied.

  ‘The full deathmoon is due.’

  ‘That it is.’

  Otto drew in a phlegmy breath. He could sense the tension from the thousands of warriors waiting behind him. All they needed was an order.

  ‘Then we wait for it,’ said Otto. ‘We wait for the Night of Souls.’

  ‘We do.’

  Otto grinned. His mood was oddly changeable. Why was that? Nerves? Surely not – he had been shown the future, and it was gloriously, infinitely putrid.

  ‘Not long now, then,’ he said, drumming his fingers on Ghurk’s leather-hard flesh.

  Ethrac smiled contentedly, and looked up at the heavens.

  ‘Not long at all, o my brother.’

  The wait was over. The scouts had returned from the forward stations, and the reports had been sent down from the Celestial College’s scrying towers.

  In a way, it was a relief. The sham-war was over, the real one could begin. Whatever Helborg might have done better, it mattered not now. All that remained was the fight itself, the clash of steel against iron, and in that at least the Reiksmarshal had never been found wanting.

  At the first sound of a warning clarion, he had donned his full battle-garb. Three menials were required to help him into it, and when they were finished he was encased from neck to knee in plate armour. They had polished it furiously hard over the past week, and the steel gleamed like silver. The scabbard of his runefang had been lovingly restored, and the icons of the griffon and the insignia of Karl Franz looked as pristine as they ever had done. The menials draped a new cloak over his shoulders, and it brushed against the stone floor with a sigh of fine fabric.

  He banished them once all was done, and remained for a moment in his private rooms, donned for war.

  From outside, he could hear the growing clamour of the city readying itself. Bells rang out from every temple tower, sounding the alarm and rousing the sick and the exhausted from their beds. Great arcs of lightning crackled across the rooftops as the magisters of the colleges readied their arcane war machines. Trumpets sounded in every garrison, calling the thousands of troops still in the employ of the Palace to their stations. Scaffolds cracked and groaned as huge cannons were winched into position and rolled forward on their parapet mounts.

  Helborg smiled. They were the sounds he lived to hear. The troops were responding as he had drilled them to. They might have learned to curse him since he returned from the north, they might have spat his name with hatred when he had forced them into another exercise or commandeered another water-supply or made the engineers work through the night to keep the battlements intact and the foundations strong, but they were ready. The standards still flew from the turrets, and the cancer of fear had not undone them just yet.

  He walked over to the door. As he did so, he caught sight of his reflection in a grimy window-pane, and paused.

  He looked much the same as he had done in the past – the lean, aquiline face with its hook nose and flamboyant moustache. When he turned to one side, though, he saw the long rakes along his cheek, still flecked with scab-tissue. As if aware of the attention, the wounds flared again, hot as forge-irons.

  ‘Keep it up,’ Helborg snarled. ‘Keep the pain coming. It’ll only make me angrier.’

  He swept out of the chamber and into the corridor outside. He walked swiftly, banishing the fatigue that had dogged him for so long. He still had not managed to sleep, but the adrenaline of the coming combat sustained him, flooding his muscles and making him itch to draw his blade.

  As he went, commotion built around him. Palace officials ran to and fro, carrying orders and last-minute requisitions. Knights in full armour stomped from the armouries up to their stations, s
aluting smartly as they caught sight of the Reiksmarshal. Helborg saw the sigils of the Sable Chalice, the Hospitallers, the Knights Panther, the Order of the Golden Wolf, and there were no doubt more already stationed across the city.

  And, of course, there were the surviving Reiksguard, restored to combat readiness following von Kleistervoll’s punishing regimen. Nine hundred were ready to deploy, counting those that had remained in Altdorf prior to Heffengen – a formidable force, and one that he would personally command when the time came.

  He neared the high doors of his destination. When they saw him coming, the door-guards hurriedly pushed them open, bowing as he strode through.

  On the far side, the circular Chamber of Ghal Maraz opened up in all its many-arched splendour. In times of peace, the priceless warhammer itself was hung on chains of gold from the domed roof, guarded by four warrior priests and ringed with wards from the Light College. Only the mightiest or the most faithful were ever permitted access to the chamber while the weapon hung suspended over its iron war-altar. That altar had been forged from the guns used in the defence of the city against the vampire lords of legend, and was as black and sullen as pitch.

  Now the chains swung emptily, for Ghal Maraz, like so much else, was lost, borne by the boy-warrior Valten somewhere out in the wilds of the north. The city’s defenders still mustered before the altar nevertheless, as if some lingering aura of power still hung over the empty hooks.

  They were all there: von Kleistervoll in his full preceptor’s regalia, Zintler looking very different in his ceremonial Reikscaptain’s war-plate, the grand masters of the Knightly Orders, the masters of the Colleges of Magic, the arch-lectors and the master engineers and the Imperial generals with their captains and lieutenants in tow. Von Liebwitz, Haupt-Anderssen and Gausser were present, all in their own ancestral battle-gear. They might have been quarrelsome, power-hungry schemers, but they each carried a runefang and had been tutored since infancy on how to use it.