The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf Page 5

  ‘For Sigmar!’ Karl Franz roared, standing in the saddle and bracing against Deathclaw’s bucking flight. He rammed his blade down two-handed, aiming to crack the vampire from his mount.

  The undead lord parried, but the strength of the strike nearly dislodged him. Karl Franz followed up, hacking furiously with a welter of vicious down-strikes. The vampire struggled to fend them all off, and his armour was cut from shoulder to breastplate. The contemptuous smile flickered on his tattooed face, and for a moment he lost his composure.

  But his steed was nearly twice the heft of Deathclaw, and even in its deathly state was a far more dangerous foe. The dragon’s claws cut deep into the griffon’s flesh, tearing muscle and ripping plumage from its copper-coloured back. Karl Franz could feel the fire ebbing in his steed, and knew the end drew near. If he could not kill the rider, the dragon would finish both of them.

  ‘Why?’ Karl Franz hissed as the swords flew. ‘Why do you fight for these gods?’

  The vampire pressed his attack more savagely, as if the question struck deep at whatever conscience he still possessed. ‘Why not, mortal?’ he laughed, though the sound was strained. ‘Why not take gifts when offered?’ His fanged mouth split wide in a grin, and Karl Franz saw the iron studs hammered into his flesh. ‘They give generously. How else could I do this?’

  The vampire’s armour suddenly blazed with a gold aura, and the flames on his sword roared in an inferno. Karl Franz recoiled, and the dragon rider pounced after him. Their blades rebounded from one another, ringing out as the steel clashed. A lesser sword than the runefang would have shattered; even so, it was all Karl Franz could do to remain in position. Fragments of his priceless armour cracked free, and he saw gold shards tumbling down to the battlefield far below.

  He pressed the attack again, resisting the overwhelming barrage of blows with blade-strikes of his own, when the dragon finally broke Deathclaw’s guard and plunged a man-sized talon of bone into the griffon’s chest.

  Deathclaw screamed, and bucked wildly in the air. Karl Franz was thrown to one side, nearly hurled free of the saddle, and for a fraction of a second his sword-arm was flung out wide, exposing his chest.

  The vampire needed no more than that – with a flicker of steel, he thrust his blade into the gap, unerringly hitting the weak point between breastplate-rim and pauldron.

  The pain was horrific. Flames coursed down the length of the fell blade, crashing against Karl Franz’s broken armour like a breaking wave. His entire world disappeared into a bloody haze of agony, and he felt his back spasm.

  He heard roaring, as if from a far distance, and felt the world tumbling around him. Too late, he realised that Deathclaw had been deeply stricken, and was plummeting fast.

  Karl Franz looked up, fighting through the pain and fire, to see the rapidly diminishing outline of the vampire gazing down at him.

  ‘You could have had such gifts!’ the dragon rider shouted after him, his voice twisted and shrill. ‘You chose the path of cowardice, not I!’

  Karl Franz barely heard the words. Deathclaw was trying to gain lift, but the griffon’s wings were a ravaged mess of blood-soaked feathers, and the creature’s great chest rattled as it strained for breath.

  He fought to remain conscious, even as a hot river of blood ran over his own armour. As the two of them whirled and spun earthwards, Karl Franz caught a blurred view of the entire battlefield. He saw the limitless tides of the North hacking their way through what remained of his forces. He saw the deathly advance of the Sylvanians from the east, covering the Revesnecht valley in a veil of darkness. The rain hammered down, shrouding it all in a bleak curtain of silver-grey, drowning the Imperial colours in a sea of plague-infested mud.

  He reached out, as if he could grasp it all in his fist and somehow reverse the tide of war.

  I have failed, he thought, and the realisation was like poison in his stomach. There will be no return from this. I have failed.

  Even as the earth raced up towards him, his pain-filled mind recoiled at the very idea. He felt the great presences of the past gazing down at him, lamenting his great negligence. He saw the stern faces of Magnus the Pious, of Mandred, of Sigmar himself, each one filled with accusation.

  I was the custodian, he thought, his mind filled with anguish. The duty passed to me.

  The foul wind whistled past him. Deathclaw was struggling to fly on, to evade the heart of the Chaos horde, but his pinions were broken, and with his last, blurred sight Karl Franz saw that they would not make it.

  Karl Franz did not feel himself slip from the saddle, dragged clear by his heavy armour. He never saw Deathclaw try to retrieve him, before the griffon finally collapsed to the earth in a tangle of snapped bones and crushed plumage. He never even felt the hard thud of impact, his face rammed deep into the thick mud even as his helm toppled from his bloodied head.

  His last thought, echoing in his mind like an endless mockery, was the one that had tortured him from the first, as soon as the vampire’s corrupted blade had pierced his armour and rendered the outcome of the duel inevitable.

  I have failed.

  From the beleaguered western flank to the shattered east, every Empire soldier saw the Emperor fall. A vast ripple of dismay shuddered through the ranks. They all saw the skeletal dragon tear Deathclaw from the skies, casting the war-griffon down amid a cloud of gore-stained feathers. They all saw the creature valiantly try to drag itself clear of the battlefield, fighting against its horrific wounds. For a moment, they dared to believe that it might reach the precarious safety of the stockade again, and that even if the Emperor was sorely wounded that he might still live. For a moment, all eyes turned skywards, hoping, praying fervently, demanding the salvation of their liege-lord.

  When the griffon’s flight at last dipped to earth, still half a mile short of safety and surrounded by the raging hordes of the North, those hopes died. They all saw Karl Franz fall from the saddle, dragged down into the mire, far from any possible rescue. They saw the war-griffon follow him down, the proud beast dragged to earth as if weighed with chains.

  A wild howl erupted from the Chaos armies. Even the undead, now fighting their way west through turbulent formations of Skaelings, paused in their assault. The remaining Empire formations buckled, folding in on themselves as if consumed from within. The weakest soldiers began to run, tripping over bodies half-buried in the mud. The stoutest detachments fought on, though their positions were now exposed by the cowardice of lesser men.

  The undead dragon ran rampant, sweeping low over the Empire lines, scooping defenders up in its emaciated claws and hurling their broken bodies far across the plain. The other fallen vampires crashed into contact, borne by monstrous creations whose eyes smouldered with forge-fires and whose hooves were lined with beaten iron. Ranged against them were the last of Huss’s zealots, a horrifically diminished band, and what remained of Talb’s hollowed-out forces. The Reiksguard still fought on, guarding their fallen captain, but were separated from the rest of the Empire army by a swirling tempest of daemons and fanatical fighters. Even Mecke’s western flank now crumbled, its defenders panicking and turning on their tyrannical commander. The army of Heffengen finally subsided, sinking into the morass.

  Schwarzhelm fought like a man possessed by the spirit of Sigmar, single-handedly accounting for scores of Kurgan scalps. Huss was scarcely less brutal, shouting out war-hymns as he laid into the enemy with his warhammer. For a time, those two warriors defied the encroaching tides, bolstered by the vital energy of Valten and Ghal Maraz. Amid a sea of seething corruption, the lights of faith endured for a little while.

  But even that could not last. Schwarzhelm fought to within a hundred yards of where Helborg had been felled, but as the Empire formations around him melted away, he was forced to turn back at last. Gathering what remnants he could, he hacked his way south, veering east as he reached the curve of the Revesnecht. He, Huss and Valten were harried all the way, though the pursuit faded once the prize of Hef
fengen itself loomed on the southern horizon.

  A few other scraps escaped the carnage – a kernel of the Reiksguard cut their way free, bearing the sacred Imperial standard and taking control of the army’s baggage trains before they could be looted. Many of the wagons were set aflame to prevent the enemy taking on fresh supplies, but a few were driven hastily south. The remnants were joined by the shattered Reiklander companies, plus any outriders from the Ostermarkers and Talabheimers who managed to escape the slaughter.

  For those that could not escape, the end was swift and brutal. Champions of Chaos stalked across the war-scorched battlefield, breaking the necks of any who still lived. Spines were ripped out of the corpses and draped over the shoulders of the victorious. Daemonic grotesques capered and belched amid the charnel-debris, sucking the marrow from the bones and spewing it at one another. Though the greater daemon had been slain, its lesser spawn survived in droves, sustained by the crackling magicks animating the air.

  The last to quit the field was the spectral Vlad von Carstein, whose presence at the conclusion of the battle remained as enigmatic as his arrival. His undead host had reaped a terrible toll on the Chaos army’s eastern extremity, but after the Empire contingents had scattered, they were exposed to the full force of the victors’ wrath. Whole regiments of skeletons and zombies were smashed apart by charging warbands of Kurgan, adding to the tangled heaps of bones already protruding from the blood-rich mud.

  It did not take long for their dark commander to give the silent order to withdraw. The winds of death were driven east by the stinking fug of decay, and the black-clad host melted back beyond the riverbank just as mysteriously as they had arrived, their purpose still unclear.

  Only one duel of significance remained. Few witnessed its outcome, for a strange vortex of shadow swept suddenly across the skies, its edges as ragged and writhing as a witch’s cloak-hem. The undead dragon tore into the heart of the vortex, its empty eye sockets burning with an eerie green light. Flashes of sudden colour flared from within, as if a whole clutch of battle wizards had been trapped in its dark heart.

  At the end of whatever had taken place in that sphere of magicks, the dragon took flight again, lurching as awkwardly as ever over the bleak plain and following the undead army east. Its rider still wore crimson armour, though not the same as earlier, and he carried a severed, fanged head in one gauntlet.

  With that, the legions of the dead quit the field, leaving the plaguebearers to scavenge and plunder what remained. A peal of corpulent thunder cracked across the vista, echoing with faint echoes of laughter. The tallymen trudged through the dead and dying, taking note of the contagions they came across on long rolls of mouldering parchment. Insects of every chitinous variety buzzed and skittered across the rows of corpses, seeking out juicy eyeballs and tongues to feast on.

  Across the whole, drab vista, the rain continued to fall, as if the flood could bear away the filth that had infected Heffengen. No natural rain could wash such plagues clean, though, and the sodden earth reeked from it, steaming in the cold as a thousand new virulences incubated in every bloody puddle.

  The Bastion was broken. The Empire had been routed across its northern borders, exposing the long flank of the Great Forest to attack. Not since the days of the Great War had the wounds been so deep, so complete. Even in those dark times, there had been an Emperor to rally the free races and contest the Dark Gods.

  Now there was nothing, and the winds of magic were already racing. Not for nothing did men say, in what little time of sunlight and happiness remained to them, that the end of all things had truly begun. Not in Praag, nor in Marienburg, but in Heffengen – the dank and rain-swept battlefield where Karl Franz, greatest statesman of the Old World, had fallen at last.

  FIVE

  Helborg woke into a world of agony.

  He reached up with a shaking hand, pressing cautiously against the seared flesh of his raked cheek, and even his old warrior’s face winced as the spikes of pain shot through him. He tried to rise, and a thousand other wounds flared up. After two failed attempts, he finally pushed himself up onto his elbows, and looked around him.

  He was in a canvas tent, the walls streaked with mud and heavy with rainwater. He had been placed on a low bunk of rotten wooden spars, little better than wallowing on the sodden ground itself. From outside the tent he could hear the low, gruff voices of soldiers.

  He reached for his sword, but it was gone. With a jaw-clenched grunt, he sat up fully on the bunk and swung his legs over the edge. His armour was gone, too – he was wearing his gambeson, covered in a mud-stained cloak.

  He could not make out what the voices outside the tent were saying – it might have been Reikspiel, it might not. He searched around him for something to use as a weapon.

  As he did so, memories of the final combat with the daemon flashed back into his mind. He remembered the stench of it, spilling from the wide, grinning mouth that had hung over him at the end.

  I should be dead, he mused to himself. Why am I even breathing?

  Then he remembered the clarion calls of the dead, and a shudder ran through his ravaged body. If they had taken him, then the outlook was even bleaker. The servants of the Fallen Gods might torture their prey before death, but at least death would come at last. If he were in the hands of the grave-cheaters then the agony would last forever.

  The entrance flaps of the tent stirred, and Helborg searched for something to grasp. The tent was empty, and so he grabbed one of the rotten ends of a bunk-spar and wrenched it free. Brandishing it as a makeshift club, he prepared himself to fight again.

  The canvas was pushed aside, and Preceptor Hienrich von Kleistervoll limped inside.

  ‘Awake then, my lord,’ he observed, bowing.

  Helborg relaxed. As he did so, he felt a trickle of blood down his ribs. His wounds had opened. ‘Preceptor,’ he said, discarding the spar. ‘Where are we?’

  Von Kleistervoll looked terrible. His beard was a matted tangle, and his face was purple from bruising. He was still in his armour, but the plate was dented and scored. The Reiksguard emblem still hung from his shoulders on what remained of his tunic, soiled by the wine-dark stains of old blood.

  ‘Ten miles south of Heffengen,’ von Kleistervoll said grimly. ‘Can you walk? If you can, I will show you.’

  Helborg was not sure if he could reliably stand, but he brushed his preceptor’s proffered arm away brusquely and limped past him into the open.

  The sky was as dark as river mud. A bone-chilling wind skirled out of the north, smelling of ploughed earth and rust. Helborg shivered involuntarily, and pushed up the collar of his gambeson tunic.

  Ahead of him, over a bleak field of bare earth, men were moving. They limped and shuffled, many on crutches or carrying the weight of their companions. Some still had their weapons, many did not. All of them had the grey faces of the defeated, staggering away from the carnage with what little breath remained in their cold-torn bodies.

  Helborg watched the long column trudge along. So different from the bright-coloured infantry squares that had marched up to Heffengen, their halberds raised in regimented lines. There could not have been more than a thousand in the column, perhaps fewer.

  Von Kleistervoll drew alongside him. The preceptor’s breathing rattled as he drew it in.

  ‘This is all we retrieved from the Reiklander front,’ he said. ‘Some of Talb’s men, too. Mecke was driven west. No idea where he ended up.

  ‘Schwarzhelm?’

  ‘He was still fighting at the end. Huss too, and the boy-warrior. They dragged together what they could and headed east.’

  Helborg hesitated. ‘And the Emperor?’

  Von Kleistervoll’s stony visage, scabbed with black, did not flicker. ‘You did not see it?’

  Helborg could not remember. His last hours of awareness were like a fever-dream, jumbled in his mind. He thought he recalled fighting alongside Ludwig, dragging their heavy blades through waves of enemy daemon-kin, but per
haps that was just his damaged imagination.

  He dimly remembered a skeletal dragon breaking the clouds, a nightmare of splayed bone and tattered wings. He recalled a rider in crimson armour, surrounded by spears of aethyr-lightning. He saw the grin of the daemon again, bubbling with the froth of madness. All of the images overlapped one another, fusing into a tableau of fractured confusion.

  ‘Could he have survived?’ Helborg pressed.

  ‘The day was lost,’ said von Kleistervoll. ‘If we had stayed a moment longer... I do not know. We could not remain.’ The preceptor’s voice was strained. ‘You were wounded, Huss had been driven east...’

  ‘I understand,’ said Helborg. Von Kleistervoll was a seasoned fighter and knew his warcraft – if he had judged that retreat was the only option, no doubt he had been correct. ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘You gave the order, lord: Altdorf, with all haste. The enemy tightens its grip on the north, fighting with what remains of the living dead over the ruins. Heffengen is no place for mortal men now – we must save what remains.’

  Helborg remembered his final words with Karl Franz.

  Altdorf is the key. It always has been.

  He pulled the ragged cloak around him. He would have to don armour again, to find a steed strong enough to bear him. The men needed a leader, someone who looked like a leader.

  ‘My sword?’ he asked.

  Von Kleistervoll smiled, and gestured towards a line of heavy wagons struggling through the mud. ‘We have it, and your battle-plate. Now that you are restored to health, the runefang will lead the army once more.’

  Now that you are restored to health. Helborg felt hollowed-out, his body shriven and his mind tortured. He was sweating even in the cold, and the hot itch of blood under his clothes grew worse. ‘I saw him, preceptor,’ he murmured, watching as the grim procession of wounded and bereft wound its way past. ‘A legend from the past, standing under the world’s sun. What times are these, when the princes of the dead walk among us?’