The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf Page 24

  It would be brutal riding. The ground between them and the city walls was unknown and no doubt crawling with the enemy. By the time they arrived, they would have to move straight into battle, with no rest and no chance to prepare. It would be a desperate race.

  ‘You have followed me this far,’ Leoncoeur thundered, climbing into the tortured heavens. ‘If we stumble now, then all is for naught, so ride now, with me at your head, and we shall yet break the darkness with our valour!’

  Vlad sensed the build-up of sorcery before he saw the tempest erupt over Altdorf. For over an hour, as the river had slipped past, he had felt the gathering of an almighty conflagration. It was like the beating of some immense heart, just beneath the surface of the world, but gathering strength with every pulse.

  When the towers of smoke poured up at last from the western horizon, accompanied by the distant sound of war-drums, his fears were confirmed in full.

  They have worked some great spell, he thought to himself grimly. Well then, what did I expect? That they would walk up to the gates and beg for entry?

  Herrscher still had the presence of mind to be shocked. It was a difficult time for him – still caught between his old residual ties to the Empire and his new allegiance to Nagash. Vlad remained confident he would fall on the right side of the argument when the test came, but his transition had taken place in such a short period, and he had had much to absorb.

  ‘What is that?’ the witch hunter asked, appalled.

  Vlad sat back in his throne, drumming his fingers on the armrest. ‘Your first sight of the enemy. Mark them well – if we fail here, you will be seeing a lot more of this.’

  The smoke curled and writhed over the tops of the trees, burning its way into the sky. Vlad’s army was still many miles away, hampered by the Reik’s sluggish pace. As fast as his magic had cleared the river-path, more creepers and moss-mats had reached out to drag them back again.

  Even the Pale Ladies looked impressed by the fires ahead. They gazed up at the gently turning storm, mouths open, watching as the heavens burned.

  ‘We must go faster,’ hissed Herrscher, his voice tight with impatience.

  ‘Calm yourself, witch hunter,’ said Vlad. ‘Look at what else approaches.’

  The cavalcade of barges was still in convoy, a huge train of heavily-laden troop carriers, following like cattle in the wake of Vlad’s flagship. The entire convoy was passing around a wide bend in the river, curving from right to left as the watercourse opened up for the long straight passage towards Altdorf’s eastern wharfs.

  As they neared the curve’s outside bank, a grey strand appeared, pale under the dusk shadow of the trees beyond. It widened rapidly, exposing a marshy beach on the northern shore, dotted with mottled reeds and studded with plague-webs.

  The plain was not empty. Ranks of soldiers stood waiting, organised into disciplined infantry squares and carrying flaming torches. Black banners fluttered in the contrary winds, exposing old devices of Marienburg and silver death’s-head emblems against a sable ground.

  One lord stood apart from the others. Even for one of his lineage, he carried himself with a studied arrogance, his cloak flung back over one shoulder and his pale chin raised.

  Vlad sighed, and motioned for his ghoulish steersmen to ground the cruiser on the shoals ahead. The vessel ground to a halt, and undead menials immediately splashed into the knee-deep water and locked their hands together. Vlad rose from his throne and descended a wooden stairway hastily lowered over the side, then used the interlocking arms of his servants to avoid getting his boots wet. He alighted at the far end of the silent processional, stepping lightly onto dry sand. Behind him came Herrscher and the Pale Ladies, who were already cooing with delight.

  ‘My dear Mundvard,’ said Vlad, extending his ring-finger.

  The vampire lord before him looked at the garnet jewel with distaste, before stiffly bowing and kissing it. ‘We are in danger of missing the party,’ he said.

  Mundvard the Cruel was one of the most powerful vampires outside Sylvania. For years uncounted he had plied his grisly trade in Marienburg, only leaving once the doom of that city had become assured. He bore the marks of the degenerate aristocracy he had once been a member of – an excessively thin frame, sharp bone-structure, decayed attire harking back to a forgotten age of elegance. His lean fingers were studded with golden jewellery, and he wore a velvet frock-coat.

  ‘I had expected you to bring more guests,’ said Vlad, casting his eye over the forces Mundvard brought with him. Some were the dead of Marienburg, still arrayed in tattered remnants of their old uniforms. Others must have been raised on his march east, and others still were creatures of Mundvard’s old hidden retinue. At the rear of the throng, hissing under the leaves, lurked a greater beast, one that had once terrorised the Suiddock, and now slithered abroad again under new magical commandments.

  Mundvard affected a look of disinterest. ‘We do what we can. Times are not what they were.’

  Vlad shot his deputy a dark look. Mundvard was a skilled killer, one of the finest exponents of the dagger-in-the-dark school of murder, but his long sojourn in Marienburg had made him flighty and high-strung. If there had been time, Vlad might have been tempted to give him a lesson in command, a painful one, but Morrslieb was now full and the gaps between the worlds had already been punctured.

  He withdrew his claw.

  ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘Three hosts assail the city,’ said Mundvard. ‘They have already started the assault. Some hex has been enacted, and daemons are falling from the sky.’ He wrinkled his slender nose in distaste. ‘Altdorf is a rotten corpse. It will not last the night.’

  ‘And that is why we are here,’ said Vlad, patiently. ‘Is your army ready to march?’

  ‘Whenever I give the word.’

  ‘Then give it.’

  Mundvard looked at the barges, which were coming in, one by one, to ground on the beach. ‘Should we not take the river?’

  Vlad shot him a contemptuous look. ‘I will enter the city when I am invited.’ He drew closer to Mundvard, pleased to find that he was a half-head taller than his lieutenant. ‘Let me instruct you in how this thing is to be done. I will not sneak into Altdorf like some beggar, fighting up from the quays and the sewage-bilges. I will demand my electorship before I raise so much as a sword to aid them. When their desperation finally forces them to crack, I will ride through the gates atop a war-steed, my head held high, and I will take the salute of the Emperor himself. They will invite me in. Do you see this? Nothing less will suffice.’

  Mundvard looked at him doubtfully. Vlad could read the thoughts flickering across his elegant face. Is this what Nagash intended? Can it be worth the risk?

  Eventually, though, the vampire nodded in acquiescence. ‘So be it,’ Mundvard said, as if he cared not either way. ‘The North Gate is the quickest route from here. The forest is crawling with daemons, mind.’

  Vlad raised an eyebrow, and gestured to where his troops were making landfall. Shades fluttered overhead, their long faces breaking into piercing moans. Ghouls slipped between the shadows of the trees, and hulking undead champions trudged through the lapping surf, uncaring if the brackish waters slopped over the tops of their age-crusted boots. Greater beasts were waiting on the barges in iron cages – skeletal leviathans, raving vargheists, crypt horrors wearing bronze collars marked with runes of control. Thousands had already landed, and thousands more would come.

  ‘Daemons are but the dreams of mortals,’ Vlad said, witheringly. ‘Just wait until they clap eyes on us.’

  The underworld kingdom was breaking apart. Sewer arches collapsed under the strain, showering broken bricks into the steaming channels. The air burned, throbbing with released magic that bounced and swerved through the honeycomb of chambers.

  Festus went as quickly as his sagging muscles would carry him, sloshing through the turbulent slurry and making his way back to the cauldron chamber. It had been a magnificent thing
to witness – his Great Tribulation, soaring up the shaft and breaking into the city above, rupturing the skin of the heavens and ushering in the deluge of daemon-kind. He could feel unreality flex and buckle around him, warping the very fabric of the undercity.

  Such complete success did not come without risks. He had unleashed forces that now ran far beyond his capability to control. If he did not get out soon, he would be buried by the destruction he had caused. All he had been charged to do was start the process, and like fermentation in a barrel, it would now bubble away without his further involvement, taken over by an intelligence far greater and subtler than his own.

  He stumbled along the sewer-path, kicking past a gurgling gaggle of half-drowned daemon-kin. More of the masonry around him collapsed, sending dust spiralling through the echoing tunnels. Ahead of him stood the cauldron chamber, still lined with popping vials.

  This was the crowning achievement of his long art. Most of the petty daemons summoned by the Tribulation would be ripped from the tortured skies by the plague-tempest, but that would not suffice for the greatest of the breed. For such titans of contagion, a more direct route was required.

  Festus hurried over to the cauldron, wincing as more glassware exploded above him. The liquids within still bubbled as violently as ever, even though the fire at the cauldron’s base had long gone out. Truly gorgeous aromas spilled from the lip, exuding freely as globular slush dribbled down the obese flanks.

  A vast hand thrust up from the boiling broth. That hand alone should have been far too large to fit inside the vessel – it was a scaly, clawed and mottled hand, steaming gouts from its immersion and still wrinkled from the moisture.

  Festus clapped his palms together in joy, watching as another claw shot out from the far side of the cauldron. Two enormous fists clamped onto the edges of the vessel, and flexed.

  The broth spilled over, cascading to an already swimming floor, and a pair of antlers burst into view. Two enormous yellow eyes, slit-pupilled like a cat’s, blinked at Festus.

  ‘Plaguefather!’ cried Festus, taking a hesitant step towards the emerging monster.

  Like all its kind, the daemon had many names in many realms, all of which were but a distant mockery of its true title, which was unpronounceable by all but the most studious of mortal tongues. In Naggaroth it was cursed as Jharihn, in Lustria feared as Xochitataliav, in destroyed Tilea hated as Kisveraldo the Foul-breathed, in distant Cathay reviled as Cha-Zin-Fa the Ever-pustulent. In the Empire it had earned the moniker Ku’gath the Plaguefather, and its ministrations had ever been most virulent in those lands.

  Festus cared little for true names, for he was no scholar of the dark arts, just a meddler in potions and the delicious fluids of sickness. He did recognise the enormous power erupting before him, though – an unstoppable mountain of gently mouldering hides, crowned with a grin-sliced face of such exquisite ugliness that it made him want to reach up and chew it.

  Ku’gath looked around, seemingly a little bewildered. It hauled itself up higher, and a truly colossal bulk began to emerge, flopping over the side of the now absurdly tiny cauldron. The daemon’s bulk was far greater than the mortal vessel could possibly have contained, a conceit that Festus found particularly amusing.

  ‘Where... is this?’ growled the daemon, its slurred, inhuman voice resonating throughout the gradually disintegrating kingdom.

  ‘Altdorf, my prince,’ said Festus, wobbling for cover as a whole rack of vials crashed to the floor, scattering the glass in twinkling fragments. ‘The Tribulation. You remember?’

  That seemed to clarify Ku’gath’s mind. The giant mouth curled as it snorted up remnants of the broth, before it vomited a pale stream of lumpy effluent straight at Festus. The Leechlord revelled in the slops hitting him, sucking up as many as his purple tongue would reach.

  Then Ku’gath dragged its quivering flanks clear of the cauldron. A vast foot extended, terminating in a cloven hoof and trailing long streamers of pickled gore. Laboriously, puffing and drooling, the enormous creature extracted itself from its tiny birth-chamber, standing tall before its summoner.

  Unfurled to its full extent, the greater daemon was immense. Its antlers scraped the high arched vault, and its withers slobbered over broken potion-racks. When it turned around, whole shelves of priceless liquors were crushed against its sloping flanks, streaking down the steaming flesh like thrown dyes.

  ‘We have to leave,’ said Festus, shuffling out of the daemon’s path and knocking over an empty prey-cage as he did so. ‘This place is no longer... commodious.’

  Ku’gath grunted, and started to shuffle through the chambers, smashing and crushing as it went. ‘I can smell the fear,’ it slurred, spitting through the flecks of vomit still clinging to its lower lip. ‘They are... above.’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ agreed Festus, doing what he could to usher the beast towards the only exit large enough to accommodate it. ‘Follow the stink! They are lucky to have lived to witness you.’

  Ku’gath spat a gobbet of mucus the size of a man’s fist, and it splattered stickily against the wall. ‘I hunger,’ it gurgled.

  Festus smiled lasciviously. ‘As do I, bringer of ruin, but it is just a little way now.’ He thought ahead, wondering how he would direct such a leviathan to its true target. ‘Plenty of souls to suck up, plenty of guts to slip down your gullet. They are lining up, one by one.’

  ‘I hunger,’ the daemon drawled, as if it were incapable of saying anything else.

  ‘I know you do,’ said Festus, rubbing its lower spine affectionately. ‘Your ache shall be sated.’ His smile broadened as his plans crystallised. ‘To the temple, great one. To the Temple of Shallya.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The army of the Urfather tore across the final stretch of open land, charging en masse towards the reeling walls. Altdorf was directly ahead, just a few hundred yards away, looming up into the madness of the Tribulation. The Glottkin’s hordes spread out into an immense swarm of churning bodies, bearing torches as they ran and screaming the death-curses of the uttermost north.

  Ghurk was at the forefront, leaping and blundering towards the vast West Gate. His breathing was already frantic and wheezing, his lust for flesh overtaking everything. His distorted right arm flailed around, and in his other hand he clutched an enormous maul that was still viscous with blood from older battles.

  The city reared up before them, a soaring black silhouette amid the sheeting plague-rain. The towers starkly framed a cracked sky beyond, shrieking with daemon cries and the swirling power of the aethyr unlocked. Banked ramparts flashed and smoked with blackpowder weapons, and the hard snap of cannon-fire, followed by the boom of the report, briefly punctured the background roar of the winds and the flames and the screaming. Petty mortal magic flared in the night, shimmering with every colour of the spectrum, something that made Ethrac snort with derision.

  The first ranks were already at the walls. Teams of plate-armoured Norscans strode up to the foundations bearing siege ladders. Wooden poles were hoisted up, swaying in the gales, before being shoved back by desperate hands on the high battlements. Boiling pitch was hurled down at the first rank of attackers, sending huge columns of steam spiralling up as the liquid burst over its targets.

  The fighting quickly spread all along the western walls, before joining up with Autus Brine’s assault from the north. Soon the outer perimeter, extending for miles in both directions, was completely besieged. The Chaos host surged up to it, bearing yet more siege ladders, crashing against the thick stone base like the tide.

  War horns rang out, one after the other, overlapping in a maddening, glorious assault on the senses. The horns were soon matched by the bellows of the fell beasts that had been driven out of the forest – scaled and tusked monsters with flame-red eyes that ground their hooves into the mud and blundered in their madness towards the looming behemoth ahead of them.

  In all directions, across the churning fields of war, battle-standards swung and swayed, crowned with s
kulls and lined red by the fires that had already kindled in defiance of the hammering squalls. Massive war engines were dragged out of cover and into range – trebuchets with thirty-foot throwing arms, lashed by chains to the ground and daubed with runes of destruction; bronze-wheeled cannons shaped with snarling wolf’s-head barrels; siege towers pulled by teams of massive, six-horned oxen that lowed and thundered from shaggy throats even as they inched their immense burdens towards the distant target.

  Otto gazed out across the measureless horde, and raised his scythe in salute. His heart was full to bursting, his whole body animated by a raw war-lust that made him want to scream aloud to the lightning-scored heavens. His forces compassed the earth in every direction, mile upon mile of battle-maddened warriors, each with only one purpose – to maim, to slay, to choke, to break bones.

  Aethyric thunder snarled across the skies, making the tormented earth shake further.

  ‘Death to them!’ Otto bawled, waving his scythe around him wildly as Ghurk galloped towards the beleaguered gates. ‘Death! Death!’

  The cry began to spread through the army, and the myriad different tribal chants and curses moulded into one, repeated, terrible word.

  Death! Death! Death!

  The drums matched the beat, thudding like hammers on anvils, driving the hordes on and making their eyes roll and their mouths froth with drool.

  Death! Death!

  Further north, where the Reik’s broad flow poured westward under the shadow of the great watchtowers, the Chaos forces leapt into the sludge and started wading towards the gap between the walls. The defenders had blocked the way with slung chains, each the width of a man’s waist, and had lined up ships, hull-to-hull, to deny passage across the unnaturally viscous Reik. Otto saw the first warriors reach their target, braving showers of arrows and blackpowder shot to clamber across the chains. They died in waves, but the tide of corpses crept closer with every surge, clogging the river further and turning it into a semi-land of trodden cadavers.