The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf Read online

  ‘They need me,’ said Karl Franz, unable to watch the killing unfold.

  Schwarzhelm, this time, said nothing. He gazed out across the battlefield, his head lifted, listening. He sniffed, drawing the air in deep. Then a shudder seemed to pass through his great frame. ‘They are here again, my liege,’ he rumbled, looking utterly disgusted.

  For a moment, Karl Franz had no idea what he was talking about. He followed his Champion’s stare, screwing his eyes up against the drift of smoke and plague-spoor.

  Over in the east, where Talb’s troops struggled heroically amid a slew of shifting mud, a chill wind was blowing. The ragged clouds summoned by the daemon-kin blasted back across the wide field, exposing a clear sky. All along the horizon, black figures crested a low rise. Tattered banners hung limp in the drizzle, dozens of them, standing proud above whole companies of infantry. The figures were moving – slowly, to be sure – but with a steady, inexorable progress.

  Karl Franz turned to one of the engineers and snatched a telescope from his trembling hands. He clamped the bronze spyglass to one eye and adjusted the dials.

  For a moment, all he saw was a blurred mass of winter-sparse foliage. Slowly, his vision clarified, resting on an outcrop beyond the curve of the Revesnecht. As he examined it, he understood why Schwarzhelm had been so appalled.

  Again, he thought, bleakly. But why, and how? And for whom do they fight?

  He moved the telescope’s view down the long line of unkempt figures, resting on none of them for long. He swept north, aiming for their leader. Eventually, he found him, and the spyglass halted.

  Karl Franz clutched the bronze column tightly. The rumours had swirled since Alderfen, and he had not wanted to believe any of them. It had been so long ago. The chroniclers and scholars could have been wrong – it might be an impersonator, a shadow, a lesser demagogue assuming the mantle of an older and more sinister soul.

  As he nudged the dials to bring the focus into line, Karl Franz felt a hollow sensation in his guts. There could be no mistake. He saw a long, arrow-straight mane of pure white hair, hanging from a still-noble head. Eyes of purest obsidian were set in a flesh-spare visage, drawn tight across sharp bones. He saw armour the colour of a flaming sunset, blackened with old fires and old blood; a long, ebony cloak lined with finest ermine; fangs jutting from a proud, cruel mouth; a longsword, sheathed in an ancient scabbard.

  And, most of all, the ring. Even at such a distance, its garnet-stone glowed like an ember, leaking smoke from its setting.

  Karl Franz put the telescope down. ‘Then it is true,’ he murmured, leaning against the balcony railing heavily. ‘Vlad von Carstein.’

  Schwarzhelm’s face was black with fury. He looked torn between rival hatreds – of the Chaos hordes that hammered at them from the north, and the undead blasphemers that had crept into view in the east. ‘There were rumours at Alderfen,’ he rasped. ‘They say the dead fought with us.’

  Karl Franz felt like laughing at that, though not from mirth. ‘What surety can we place on that?’ He gazed up at the heavens, as if some inspiration might come from there. In days long past, it was said that the comet would appear to men at the times of greatest darkness, such as it had done for Sigmar and for Magnus. Now, all he could see was the scudding of pestilential clouds.

  He reached again for his war-helm, and this time Schwarzhelm made no move to stop him. The undead continued to gather along the ridge. With every passing moment, their numbers grew. Soon there would be thousands. Between them, the armies of Chaos and undeath outnumbered the mustered Imperial forces.

  ‘What do you command, my liege?’ asked Schwarzhelm.

  ‘Talb’s flank is close to collapse,’ said Karl Franz, placing the helm on his head and fastening the leather straps around his neck. ‘Take any reserves you can find, join Huss and pull him out of there. Salvage what you can, stage a fighting retreat.’

  Schwarzhelm nodded. ‘And you?’

  Karl Franz smiled dryly, and his hand rested on the hilt of his runefang. As if in recognition of what was about to happen, Deathclaw let fly with a harsh caw from its enclosure.

  ‘We are between abominations,’ he said, his voice firm. ‘This is my realm. Once again, we must teach them to fear it.’

  Then he started moving, ignoring the supplications from his field-staff around him. As he went, his mind fixed on the trial ahead. The whole army would see him take to the air. All eyes would be on him, from the moment Deathclaw cast loose his chains and ascended into the heavens.

  ‘Hold the line for as long as you can,’ he ordered, descending from the viewing platform with long, purposeful strides. ‘Above all, the daemon is mine.’

  THREE

  Helborg charged straight at the daemon, spurring his steed hard. The vast creature towered over him, a swollen slag-pile of heaving, suppurating muscle. It was now fully instantiated, and its olive-green hide glistened with dribbling excreta.

  The stench was incredible – an overwhelming fug of foul, over-sweet putrescence that caught in the throat and made the eyes stream. Every movement the thing made was accompanied by a swirl of flies, sweeping around it like a cloak of smog. Under its hunched withers the earth itself boiled and shifted, poisoned by the sulphurous reek and ground down into a plague-infused soup. The daemon wallowed in its own filth, revelling in the slough it had created around it.

  Helborg’s horse nearly stumbled as it galloped into range, betrayed by the shifting terrain, but its head held true. The daemon saw him approach and drew its cleaver back for a back-breaking swipe. Helborg drove his mount hard towards the target. The cleaver whistled across, spraying bile as it came. Helborg ducked as he veered out of its path, and felt the heavy blade sweep over his arched back; then he was up again, raised up in the saddle and with his sword poised.

  Others of the Reiksguard had followed him on the charge, some still bearing their long lances. Two of them plunged the weapons deep into the daemon’s flanks, producing fountains of steaming mucus. The daemon let slip a gurgling roar, and swung its bulk around, tearing the knights from their saddles and flinging their bodies headlong across the battlefield.

  Helborg’s warhorse shied as it tore past the wall of trembling hide, and Helborg plunged his sword into the daemon’s flesh while still on the gallop. It was like carving rotten pork – the skin and muscle parted easily, exposing milk-white fat and capillaries of black, boiling blood beneath.

  The daemon’s cleaver lashed back towards him, propelled by obese and sagging arms, but Helborg was moving too fast. He guided his steed hard-by under the shadow of the other daemonic arm, slashing out with the runefang as he went. More gobbets of flesh slopped free, slapping to the earth in smoking gouts.

  The Reiksguard were everywhere by then, riding their steeds under the very shadow of the daemon’s claws and hacking with their longswords. The creature throttled out another echoing roar of pain, and flailed around more violently. Its cleaver caught two Reiksguard in a single swipe, dragging them from the saddle. Its balled fist punched out, crushing the helm of another as he angled his lance for the cut.

  The clouds of flies buzzed angrily, swarming around the beleaguered daemon and rearing up like snakes’ heads. They flew into visors and gorgets, clotting and clogging, forcing knights to pull away from the attack. Maggots as long as a man’s forearm wriggled out of the liquidised earth, and clamped needle-teeth to the horses’ fetlocks. Swarms of tiny daemon-kin with jaws as big as their pulpy bodies spun out from the greater creature’s armpits as it thrashed around, clamping their incisors onto anything they landed on and gnawing deep.

  The Reiksguard fought on through the hail of horrors, casting aside the lesser creatures in order to strike at the greater abomination beyond, but the creature before them was no mere tallyman or plaguebearer – it was the greatest of its dread breed, and the swords of mortal men held little terror for it. Its vast cleaver whirled around metronomically, slicing through plate armour like age-rotten parchment. Helborg sa
w three more of his men carved apart in a single swipe, their priceless battle-plate smashed apart in seconds.

  He kicked his steed back into contact, riding hard for the daemon’s whirling cleaver-arm. As he went, he pulled his runefang back for the strike, and the sacred blade shimmered in the preternatural gloaming.

  The daemon saw him closing in, but too late. It tried to backhand him from his mount with the cleaver’s hilt, and Helborg swerved hard, leaning over in the saddle. As the eldritch blade whistled past again, Helborg thrust out with his own sword, ramming the point up and across. The runefang plunged in up to the grip, sliding into the putrid blubber as if into water.

  The daemon roared out a gurgled cry of outrage, affronted by the audacity of the attack. Helborg grabbed the hilt of his sword two-handed, fighting to control the movements of his mount, and heaved. The rune-engraved steel sliced through sinews, severing the daemon’s arm at the elbow. A thick jet of inky blood slobbered across his helm visor, burning like acid, and he pulled harder.

  With a sickening plop, the daemon’s entire forearm came loose, trailing long strings of muscle and skin behind it. Weighed down by the cleaver, the chopped limb thudded to the earth, sinking into the slurry of saliva and pus underfoot. The daemon bellowed, this time in real agony, stretching its wide mouth in a gargantuan howl that made the clouds shake.

  The surviving Reiksguard pressed their attack. Noxious fluids slapped and flayed out from the stricken daemon, each lashing tendril studded with clots of biting flies. Helborg pulled his steed around for another pass, his heart kindling with raw battle-joy.

  It could be hurt. It could be killed.

  But then, just as he was about to kick his spurs back into his mount’s flanks, he heard it. War horns rang out across the battlefield, cutting through the surge and sway of massed combat.

  Helborg had heard those horns before – their desiccated timbre came from the age-bleached trumpets of another era. No Empire herald used such instruments – they were borne by armies that had no right to still be marching in this age.

  Helborg twisted in the saddle, trying to scry where the sounds came from. For a moment, all he saw were the grappling profiles of knights and plague-horrors, locked in close combat around the raging mass of the greater daemon. Swirling rain lashed across them all, masking the shape of the hordes beyond.

  Then, as if cut through by the harsh notes of the war horns themselves, clouds of milk-white mist split apart, exposing for a moment the whole eastern swathe of the battlefield. Helborg caught a glimpse of huge crowds of mortals and aethyr-spawn, grappling and gouging at one another across the vast sweep on the eastern flank. And then, beyond that, on the far bank of the Revesnecht, he saw the cursed banners of Sylvania hoisted against the squalls, each one marked with the pale death’s head of that cursed land. At the head of the revenant host stood a lone lord clad in blood-red armour, his long white hair standing out as starkly as bone in a wound.

  A shudder of disbelief ran through him. He knew who had worn that armour. He also knew how long ago that had been. It was impossible.

  Vlad von Carstein.

  The shock of it broke his concentration. As he gazed, spellbound, on the host of undead advancing into the fray, he forgot his mortal peril.

  The daemon lumbered towards him, dragging its vast weight forward in a rippling wall of wobbling flesh. Its lone claw scythed down, trailing streamers of smoking poisons. Helborg’s horse reared up, panicked by the looming monster bearing down on it.

  Helborg fought with the reins, trying to pull his steed away from danger, but the creature had been maddened and no longer heeded him. The daemon’s talons slammed into Helborg’s helm, ripping the steel from his head and sending it tumbling. Long claws bit deep into his flesh, burning like tongues of flame.

  The impact was crushing. The horse buckled under him, screaming in terror, and he was thrown clear. Helborg hit the earth with a bone-jarring crash, and blood splashed across his face. He tried to rise, to drag himself back to his feet, but a wave of sickness and dizziness surged up within him.

  He gripped his sword, trying to focus on the pure steel, but the dull ache of his wounds flared up along his flank. He saw the blurred shapes of his brother-knights riding fearlessly at the daemon, and knew that none of them could hope to end it.

  He cried out in agony, trying to force his limbs to obey him. A wave of numbness overwhelmed him, racing like frost-spears through his bones. He heard the deathly echo of the war horns as if from underwater. The wound in his split cheek flared, and he smelled the poison in it.

  Then his head thudded against the mud, and he knew no more.

  Deathclaw soared high above the battlefield. The griffon’s huge wings beat powerfully, shredding the black-edged tatters of cloud around it. Its bunched-muscle shoulders worked hard, pulling the heavily built beast into the air.

  Karl Franz leaned forward in the saddle, his blade already drawn. The griffon, once released from its shackles by fearful keepers, was a furnace of bestial power. Both of them had saved the life of the other more than once, and the bond that connected them was as strong as steel.

  ‘You have been kept collared for too long,’ Karl Franz murmured, running the fingers of his free gauntlet roughly through Deathclaw’s feathered nape. ‘Let your anger flow.’

  The war-griffon responded, emitting a metallic caw that cut through the raging airs. Its pinions swept down, propelling it like a loosed bolt over the epicentre of the battlefield.

  Karl Franz gazed out at the scenes of slaughter, trying to make sense of the battle’s balance amid the confused movements of regiments and warbands. The bulk of his forces were now locked close with the Chaos warriors, gripped by brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The western flank was still largely intact and Mecke had ordered his veteran Greatswords into the fray, where they grappled with ranks of plate-armoured warriors bearing twin-headed axes and skull-chained mauls. The centre remained contested. The bulk of the Reiklanders had no answer to the seething tides of daemonic horrors, though the Reiksguard knights still fought hard amid the raging centre of the field. Over to the east, the Ostermarkers were fighting a desperate rearguard action against utter destruction. Beyond them, the army of the undead was drawing closer to the battlefield, advancing in terrifyingly silent ranks.

  Karl Franz’s task was clear. Mecke still held position. Schwarzhelm, Huss and Valten would have to salvage something from the wreckage of the eastern flank, whether or not von Carstein came as an ally or an enemy. The malign presence at the core of the Chaos army, though, was beyond any of them, and its baleful aura was spreading like a shroud across the whole army. From his vantage, Karl Franz could see its bloated bulk squatting amid the shattered Reiksguard vanguard, laying about with a gore-streaked fist. Such a monster was capable of ripping through whole contingents of mortal troops, and nothing else on the field was capable of standing against it.

  There was no sign of Helborg. No doubt the Reiksmarshal had charged the creature, hoping to bring it down before its full strength was manifest. It was a typically reckless move, but the daemon still lived, despite the gouges in its nacreous flesh and an arm-stump spurting with ink-black blood.

  ‘That is the prey, great one,’ urged Karl Franz, pointing the tip of his runefang towards the daemon’s blubbery shoulders.

  The griffon plunged instantly, locking its huge wings back and hurtling towards the horror below. Karl Franz gripped the reins tightly, feeling the ice-wet air scream past him. The landscape melted into a blur of movement, all save the bloated monstrosity below them, which reared into range like a vast weeping boil on the face of the earth.

  Deathclaw screamed out its battle-rage, bringing huge foreclaws up. At the last moment, the daemon’s vast head lolled upward, catching sight of the two of them just as their fearsome momentum propelled them into it.

  The griffon dragged its talons across the daemon’s face, slicing into its eyes. Its rear legs raked across the daemon’s slobbering chest,
churning the foetid flesh into putrid ribbons. Karl Franz hacked out with his runefang, feeling heat radiate out from the ancient blade – the runes knew the stench of daemon-kind, and they blazed like stars.

  Just as the daemon reached for them with its lone arm, Deathclaw pounced clear again, circling as expertly as a hawk. The daemon’s talons slashed at it, but the griffon ducked past the attack and surged in close again. Deathclaw’s beak tore at the daemon’s shoulder, ripping more skin from its savaged hide.

  The daemon twisted, pulling its obese haunches clear of the slough below and reaching to pluck the griffon from the sky. Its claw shot out, and clutching fingers nearly closed on Deathclaw’s tail.

  The griffon shot clear with a sudden burst of speed, and circled in for a renewed strike. As it did so, Karl Franz seized the hilt of his sword two-handed and held it point-down. He knew just what his steed was about to do, and shifted his weight in the saddle in preparation.

  The daemon reached out for them again, and Deathclaw plummeted, evading the creature’s claws by a finger’s width before clamping its own talons into the daemon’s back. The griffon scored down the length of the daemon’s hunched spine, ripping through sinews and exposing bony growths.

  Karl Franz, poised for the manoeuvre, waited until the nape of the daemon’s neck loomed before him. It was a foul, stinking hump, studded with glossy spikes and ringed with burst pustules. He aimed carefully.

  The daemon twisted, trying to throw Deathclaw loose, but Karl Franz plunged the sword down. The tip bit clean between vertebrae, driving into the bone and muscle beneath. The magic blade exploded with wild light, spiralling out from the impact site and tearing through the drifting filth around it.