The End Times | The Return of Nagash Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer

  Illustrations

  Prologue

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Part Two

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Part Three

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Legal

  eBook license

  The world is dying, but it has been so since the coming of the Chaos Gods.

  For years beyond reckoning, the Ruinous Powers have coveted the mortal realm. They have made many attempts to seize it, their anointed champions leading vast hordes into the lands of men, elves and dwarfs. Each time, they have been defeated.

  Until now.

  In the frozen north, Archaon, a former templar of the warrior-god Sigmar, has been crowned the Everchosen of Chaos. He stands poised to march south and bring ruin to the lands he once fought to protect. Behind him amass all the forces of the Dark Gods, mortal and daemonic. When they come, they will bring with them a storm such as has never been seen. Already, the lands of men are falling into ruin. Archaon’s vanguard run riot across Kislev, the once-proud country of Bretonnia has fallen into anarchy and the southern lands have been consumed by a tide of verminous ratmen.

  The men of the Empire, the elves of Ulthuan and the dwarfs of the Worlds Edge Mountains fortify their cities and prepare for the inevitable onslaught. They will fight bravely and to the last. But in their hearts, all know that their efforts will be futile. The victory of Chaos is inevitable.

  These are the End Times.

  PROLOGUE

  Late summer 2522

  The world was dead.

  It simply didn’t know it yet.

  That was the bare truth of it, and it pleased the one who considered it to no little end. Oh, there were things to be done yet, debts to be paid and webs to be spun or broken, but the weight of the inevitable had settled across the way and weft of the world. Time was running out, and the beast was all but bled white.

  Long fingers – scholar’s fingers – stroked the murky surface of the blood that filled the ancient bronze bowl before him. The bowl was covered in the harsh, jagged script of a long-dead empire. It had once belonged to another scholar, who had come from a still-older empire even than the one that had produced the bowl. That scholar was dust now, like both of the empires in question: all three erased from the tapestry of history by hubris and treachery in equal measure. There were lessons there, for the man who had the wit to attend them, a voice that may or may not have been his own murmured in the back of his head. He shrugged the voice off, the way a horse might shrug off a stinging fly.

  The scryer considered himself susceptible to neither arrogance nor foolishness. Were it any other moment, he might have admitted that it was the height of both to think oneself beyond either. As it was, he had other concerns. He ignored the soft susurrus of what might have been laughter that slithered beneath his thoughts with a surety that was the result of long experience, and bent over the bowl, murmuring the required words with the necessary intonation. The empire of Strigos might be dead, and Mourkain with it, but its language lived on in certain rituals and sorcerous rites.

  The blood in the bowl stirred at the touch of the scryer’s fingertips, its surface undulating like the back of a cat seeking affection. Its opacity faded, and an image began to form, as though it were a shadow flickering across a stretched canvas. The images were of every time and no time, of things that had been, things that would be and of things that never were. The scryer desired to know of the calamitous events that afflicted the world, events whose reverberations were felt even in his tiny corner of the world. The world was dead, but with a voyeur’s eagerness, he wanted to see the killing blows.

  The first image to be drawn from the depths of the bowl was of a twin-tailed comet, which blazed across the crawling canopy of the heavens, fracturing the weak barrier between the world of man and that which waited outside as it streaked along its pre-destined course. In its wake – madness.

  A storm of Chaos swept across the world, spreading outwards from the poles to roll across the lands of men and other than men one by one. Daemons were born and died in moments, or tore their way through the membrane of the world to sow terror for days or weeks on end. There was no rhyme or reason to any of what followed; it was merely the crazed whims of the Dark Gods at work. The scryer watched it all with a cool, calculating eye, like a gamesman sizing up the opening move of an oft-played opponent.

  In the cold, dark reaches of Naggaroth, the sound of drums set the ice shelves to shivering and caused avalanches in the lower valleys. A horde of northmen poured across the Ironfrost Glacier, and in their vanguard swooped down the elegant, crimson shape of Khorne’s best beloved. They smashed aside the great watchtowers, and the mighty hosts sent against them only stoked the fires of their fury. As Valkia exhorted her followers towards the obsidian walls of Naggarond itself, the scryer stirred the bowl’s contents, eager to see more.

  The image shifted, and then expanded into great walls of pale stone, which thrust up from the green nest of the jungles of distant Lustria; here, scaly shapes warred with nightmares made flesh in the heart of the ruins of Xahutec. Elsewhere, the jungle was afire, and once great temple cities had been cast into ruin, as a continent heaved and burned.

  Lustria’s death pyre flared up so brightly that the scryer winced and looked away. When he looked back at the bowl, the scene had changed. Red lightning lit the sky and strange mists spread down the slopes of the Annulii Mountains, bringing with them the raw power of Chaos unfettered. The land and its inhabitants became warped into new and terrible forms, all save the elves. The walls of reality wore thin and tore, and daemons flooded into Ulthuan. The forests of Chrace burned as the rivers of Cothique and Ellyrion became thick with virulent noxiousness, while in the heartland of the elven realms, the great cities of Tor Dynal and Elisia fell to the assaults of Chaos, rampaging daemons overwhelming their embattled defenders. As daemons scrambled in a capering, cackling riot towards a battle line of Sapherian Sword Masters, and elven magi drew upon every iota of power at their command to throw back their enemy, the image shattered like a reflection in a droplet of water, reforming into another scene of warfare.

  Across the glades and valleys of Bretonnia, disgraced knights and covetous nobles flocked to the serpent banners of Mallobaude, illegitimate son of Louen Leoncouer, and would-be king of that divided land. The scryer watched as the nation over the mountains descended into fiery civil war, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw Mallobaude throw down his father at Quenelles with the aid of a skeletal figure clad in robes of crimson and black. A skull blazing with malignant power, with teeth as black as the night sky, tipped back and uttered a cackle of victory as Leoncouer was smashed to the ground, seemingly dead at his offspring’s hand. Arkhan the Black was in Bretonnia, and that fact alone tempted the scryer to try to see more. But the image was already dissolving and he let the temptation pass. There would be time later for such investigations.

  A new picture rippled into view. In the deep, ice-cut valleys and towering heights of the mountain range known as the
Vaults, the dwarf hold known to the scryer as Copper Mountain tottered beneath the assault of a tempest of blood-starved daemons. The legion that assailed the stunted inhabitants of the hold was so vast that the hold’s defences were all but useless. But as the dwarfs prepared to sell their lives in the name of defiance, if not victory, the daemonic storm dissipated as suddenly as it had gathered, leaving only blue skies and a battered shieldwall of astonished dwarfs in its wake. As the dwarfs began to collect their dead, the scene dissolved and a new one took its place at the scryer’s barest gesture.

  The scryer chuckled mirthlessly as the next image wavered into being. Another mountain hold, but not one that belonged to the dwarfs. Not any more, at least. In the deep halls and opulently decorated black chambers of the Silver Pinnacle, the self-proclaimed queen of the world, Neferata, mother and mistress of the Lahmian bloodline, led her warriors, both dead and undead, in defence of her citadel. A horde of daemons, backed by hell-forged artillery, attacked from above and below, laying siege to the main gates of Neferata’s chosen eyrie, as well as surging up from its lower depths. But these daemons vanished as abruptly as those who had attacked Copper Mountain. The scryer frowned in annoyance. It would have been far better for his own designs for the mistress of the Silver Pinnacle to have fallen to the daemon-storm. He gestured again, almost petulantly.

  What came next returned the smile to his face. The great city on the mount, Middenheim, reeled beneath the tender ministrations of the Maggot King and the Festival of Disease. Pox-scarred victims staggered through the streets, begging for mercy from Shallya and Ulric. The open sores that afflicted them wept a noisome pus and their bodies were thrown on the pyres that marked every square, still crying out uselessly to the gods. How Jerek would have cringed to see that, the scryer thought, as he laughed softly. The image wavered and changed.

  His laughter continued as beneath the shadowed branches in the depths of Athel Loren, the great edifices known as the Vaults of Winter shattered, and a horde of cackling, daemonic filth was vomited forth into the sacred glades of Summerstrand. Ancient trees, including the Oak of Ages, cracked and split, expelling floods of maggots and flies, and the forest floor became coated in the stuff of decay. Desolate glades became rallying points for monstrous herds of beastmen, who poured into the depths of the forest, braying and squealing. Amused, the scryer waved a hand, dispelling the image.

  His amusement faded as the blood rippled, revealing a scarred face, topped by a massive red crest of grease-stiffened hair. An axe flashed and a beastman reeled back, goatish features twisted in fear and agony. It fell, and the axe followed it, separating its malformed head from its thick neck. The wielder of the axe, a dwarf, kicked the head aside as he trudged on through the fire-blackened streets of a northern city, fallen to madness and ruin. The dwarf, one-eyed and mad, was familiar to the scryer from a past encounter of dubious memory. Snow swirled about the dwarf as he battled through the city, his rune axe encrusted with gore drawn from the bodies of beastmen, trolls, northern marauders and renegades, all of whom lay in heaps and piles in his wake. The scryer saw no sign of the doom-seeker’s human companion, and wondered idly if the man had died. The thought pleased him to no end.

  The image billowed and spread as the dwarf trudged on, and the scryer was rewarded by the sight of the River Aver becoming as blood, a scarlet host of howling daemons bursting from its tainted waters en masse to sweep across Averland, burning and butchering every living thing in their path. As with the other daemonic incursions, the bloody host evaporated moments before they reached the walls of Averheim.

  Averheim grew faint and bled into the dark bowers of the Drakwald. Trees were uprooted and hurled aside as a veritable fang of stone, taller than the tallest structure ever conceived by man, tore through the corrupted soil and speared towards the sky. The crown of the newborn monolith was wreathed in eldritch lightning. Similar malformed extrusions rose above the tree line of Arden Forest and the glacial fields of far Naggaroth, as well as in the Great Forest and the embattled glades of Athel Loren. Some wept flame, others sweated foulness, but all pulsed with a darkling energy. Beastmen gathered about them to conduct raucous rites, the worst of which caused even a man as hardened to cruelty as the scryer to grimace in repulsion. With a hiss of disgust, he dashed his fingers into the blood, banishing the activities of the beasts from sight and eliciting another image.

  Nuln erupted into violence as crowds of baying fanatics and self-flagellating doomsayers filled the streets. The mansions of the wealthy were ransacked and unlucky nobles were hung or torn apart by the screaming crowd. Even the Countess von Liebwitz was dragged from her boudoir, amidst a storm of accusations ranging from adultery to sorcery. The scryer stabbed the swirling blood, dissolving the Countess’s screeching visage and replacing it with the snowy hinterlands of Kislev.

  As with Naggaroth, Kislev shuddered beneath the tread of masses of northmen, all moving south. All lands west of Bolgasgrad were awash with daemons and barbarians. Along the River Lynik, the Ice Queen led her remaining warriors in a series of running battles with the invaders. As the Tsarina led her Ungol horsemen against the howling hordes, the scryer stirred the bowl, trying to ignore the murmur of the voice that pressed insistently against his awareness, demanding to be heard.

  He was in Bretonnia again, as a figure clad in green armour hurled aside his helm, revealing the features of Gilles Le Breton, lost founder and king of that realm, now found and ready to reclaim his throne. The scryer laughed and wondered what Mallobaude and Arkhan would have to say about that.

  He focused on the rippling blood, banishing images of the reborn king, and saw the armies of Ostermark, Talabecland and Hochland clash with a ragged host marching under the banner of the sorcerous monstrosity known as Vilitch the Curseling in the fields and siege ditches before the battlements of Castle von Rauken. Aldebrand Ludenhof, Elector Count of Hochland, mounted the ramparts of the besieged castle and put a long rifle bullet into one of the Curseling’s skulls, forcing the creature to retreat and scattering its host.

  The scryer waved a hand. The images were coming faster now, some of them appearing and vanishing before he could properly observe them. His skull ached with the frequency and intensity of the scenes playing out in the bowl.

  The hordes of the Northern Wastes did not merely assault the south and west. They went east as well, hurling themselves at the Great Bastion in their thousands. Khazags, Kul and Kurgan mustered daemon engines, and dozens of warlords and chieftains led their warriors against the defences of the Bastion. The smoke of the resulting destruction could be seen as far south as the Border Princes. The image wavered and faded before the scryer could see whether the Bastion had fallen.

  In the desiccated deserts of the south, the unbound dead of a long-gone empire readied themselves for invasion, and the chariots of the tomb kings rolled westward, towards the caliphates of Araby. The dwarfs sealed their holds or mobilised for war as the foundations of the world shuddered and long-dormant volcanoes rumbled, belching smoke. In the Badlands, the numberless hordes of greenskins gathered and surged towards the civilised lands as one, as if in response to some unspoken signal. The ogre tribes too were on the march, bulbous bellies rumbling. In the roots of the world, the clans of the skaven scurried upwards, attacking the unprepared nations of Estalia and Tilea in such unprecedented numbers that even the scryer was slightly dumbfounded. City after city fell, and the tattered clan banners of the Under-Empire rose over the lands that had once belonged to men.

  Perturbed, he swept out a hand, stirring the blood without touching it. A familiar sight, this one, and his lips peeled back from his teeth in a triumphant snarl. An old man, clad in the robes and armour of the Grand Theogonist of the Empire, wrestled against a dark shape, cloaked in shadow. The shape twisted, becoming first a man – aquiline, noble and yet feral, with eyes like crimson pits and a mouthful of fangs – then swelling to a giant, clad in armour such as no man had ever worn, wreathed in eerie green flame. The gia
nt’s features were fleshless, and its head was a skull bound in black iron and bronze. Skeletal jaws opened wide, bone stretching and billowing impossibly as the giant thrust the struggling shape of the old man between its jaws and swallowed him whole.

  The scryer dismissed the image quickly, before the eyes of that giant could turn towards him. Something chuckled and spoke, just out of earshot. He ignored it, and concentrated on the next image as it began to form in the swirling blood. The bowl began to shake slightly, as if it were being rocked by the weight of the pictures rising up out of it.

  The scryer hissed in recognition as the world’s northern pole, where the membrane between worlds was nonexistent, came into view. Daemons beyond measure were assembled there, divided into four mighty hosts of damnation such as had once sought to envelop the world in aeons past. The scryer cursed loudly and virulently, his composure momentarily shaken. What he was seeing was the merest spear-point of an invasion force, a host of such magnitude that only the raw unreality of the Chaos Wastes could contain the sheer number of daemons gathered. From amid the numberless hordes came four exalted daemons – those creatures highest in the esteem of the Dark Gods.

  One by one, each of the four sank down to one knee before a figure that was tiny by comparison. The latter was clad in heavy armour, and cloaked in thick furs, its features hidden beneath a horned helm. The helm turned, and eyes that blazed with a radiance at once malignant and divine met those of the scryer, across the vast stretch of time and space that separated them. The blood in the bowl began to bubble and smoke. A will more than equal to his own beat down suddenly against the scryer like a hammer-blow. A voice like seven thunders reverberated through his skull and said, ‘Rejoice, for the hour of my glory fast approaches.’

  The bowl shattered. What was left of the blood slopped across the scryer’s hands and splattered on the stone floor. Snuffling, grey-skinned, hairless shapes, wearing the filthy remnants of what had once been fine clothing, crawled across the floor, splotched tongues licking at the spilled blood with eager whimpers. The degenerate creatures were all that remained of the once proud family that had, in better times, called Castle Sternieste its home. Now, they wore the miscellany of ancestral finery, smeared with grime and foulness, as they capered and gibbered in debased mockeries of courtly dances for their master’s amusement, or raided the tombs of their ancestors for sustenance.