The End Times | The Return of Nagash Read online

  Mannfred von Carstein sucked the blood from his fingers as he considered the remains of the bowl speculatively. He glanced up at the body whose blood he’d carefully drained to fill it; the corpse was clad in the robes of an acolyte of one of the great Colleges of Magic – the Light College, Mannfred knew, by their colour. He’d opened the boy’s throat with his own fingers and strung him up by his feet from one of the ancient timbers above, so that the dregs of his life would drain into the bowl. There were few ingredients more effective for such sorceries than the blood of a magic user. The ghouls looked up at him expectantly, whining with eagerness. He gestured and, as one, they gave a ribald howl and began leaping and tearing at the body, like hounds at the feet of a man on the gallows. With a sniff, Mannfred pulled his cloak tight about himself and left the chamber, and its contents, to his ghoulish courtiers.

  Well, wasn’t that informative? The world writhes, caught in a storm partially of your making, and where are you? The voice he’d heard as he watched the images in the bowl, the voice he’d heard for more centuries than he cared to contemplate, spoke with mild disdain. Mannfred shook his head, trying to ignore it. A shadow passed across his vision, and something that might have been a face, or perhaps a skull, swam to the surface of his mind and then vanished before he could focus on it. Where are you, then? You should be out there, taking advantage of the situation. But you can’t, can you?

  ‘Shut up,’ Mannfred growled.

  Konrad talked to himself as well. As his habits went, that was probably the least objectionable, but still… We know how he ended up, don’t we?

  Mannfred didn’t reply this time. The voice was right, of course. It was always right, curse it. Laughter echoed through his head and he bit back a snarl. He wasn’t going mad. He knew this, because madness was for the foolish or the weak of mind, and he was anything but either. After all, could a madman have accomplished what he had, and in so short a time?

  For centuries he had yearned to free Sylvania, which was his by both right of blood and conquest, from the yoke of the Empire. And, after the work of many lifetimes, he had accomplished just that. The air now reeked of dark enchantments and an unholy miasma had settled over everything within the province’s borders. He strode out onto the parapet and looked out towards the border with Stirland, where a massive escarpment of bone now towered over Sylvania’s boundaries. The wall encircled his domain, making it over into a sprawling fortress-state. The wall that would protect his land from the doom that waited to envelop the world was the result of generations of preparation. It had required the blood of nine very special individuals – individuals who even now enjoyed his hospitality – to create, and getting them all in one place had been an undertaking of decades. He’d done it, however, and once he’d had them, Sylvania was his and his alone.

  So speaks the tiger in his cage, the voice whispered, mockingly. Again, it was correct. His wall, mighty as it was, was not the only one ringing his fiefdom. ‘Gelt,’ he muttered. The name of the Arch-Alchemist and current Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic had become one of Mannfred’s favoured curses in the months since the caging of Sylvania. While Mannfred had battled an invasion force led by Volkmar the Grim, the Grand Theogonist, and enacted his own stratagem, Gelt had been working furiously to enact a ritual the equal of Mannfred’s own. Or so Mannfred’s spies had assured him.

  Mannfred frowned. Even from here, he could feel the spiritual weight of the holy objects that caged his land. In the months preceding his notice of secession from the broken corpse that was Karl Franz’s empire, he’d sent the teeming ghoul-packs that congregated about Castle Sternieste to strip every Sylvanian temple, shrine and burial ground of what holy symbols yet remained in the province. He’d ordered the symbols buried deep in unhallowed graves and cursed ground, so that their pestiferous sanctity would not trouble his newborn paradise.

  Or such had been his intent. Instead, Gelt had somehow managed to turn those buried symbols into a wall of pure faith. Any undead, be they vampire, ghost or lowly zombie, that tried to cross it was instantly obliterated, as several of his vampire servants had discovered to their cost. Mannfred was forced to admit that the resulting explosions had been quite impressive. He couldn’t help but admire the raw power of Gelt’s wall. It was a devious thing, too, and only worked in one direction. The undead could enter Sylvania, but they could not leave. It was the perfect trap. Mannfred fully intended to congratulate Gelt on his cunning, just before he killed him.

  In the months since he’d destroyed Volkmar’s army, Mannfred had pored over every book, tome, grimoire and papyrus scroll in his possession, seeking some way of countering Gelt’s working. Nothing he’d tried had worked. The wall of faith was somehow more subtle and far stronger than he’d expected a human mind to conceive of, and his continued failure gnawed at him. He had wanted to isolate Sylvania, true – but on his own terms. To be penned like a wild beast was an affront that could not be borne.

  But Gelt’s sorcerous cage wasn’t the only problem. Dark portals had opened in certain, long-hidden places within Sylvania, vomiting forth daemons by the score, and the distraction of putting paid to these incursions had eaten into his studies. After the last such invasion, Mannfred had resolved to find out what was going on in the rest of the world. The young acolyte of the Light College whom he’d used to fill his scrying bowl had been taken prisoner, along with a dozen others, including militiamen, knights and a few wayward priests, during Volkmar’s attempt to purge Sylvania.

  Finding out that Sylvania wasn’t the only place afflicted by sudden daemonic sorties hadn’t quelled his growing misgivings. In fact, it had only heightened the pressure he felt to shatter Gelt’s wall and free Sylvania. The world was tottering on the lip of the grave and, amusing as it was to watch, Mannfred didn’t intend to go over with it. There were still things that needed doing. There were tools that he still required, and he had to be able to cross his own borders to get them.

  Tools for what, boy? the voice asked. No, not ‘the voice’. It was pointless to deny it. It was Vlad’s voice. Mannfred leaned over the parapet, bracing himself on the stone, his eyes closed. Even now, even centuries after the fact, the shadow of the great and terrible Vlad von Carstein hung over Mannfred and all of his works. Vlad’s name was still whispered in the dark places and burying grounds, by the living and the dead alike. He had etched his name into the flesh of the world, and the scar remained livid even after all this time. It galled Mannfred to no end, and even the joy he’d once taken from his part in his primogenitor’s downfall had faded, lost to the gnawing anger he felt still.

  He’d hated Vlad, and loved him; respected him and been contemptuous of him. And he’d tried to save him, though he’d engineered his obliteration. Now, for his sins, he was haunted by Vlad’s voice. It had started the moment he had begun his great work, as if Vlad were watching over his shoulder, and only grown stronger in the months that followed. He’d been able to ignore it at first, to dismiss the shadows that crept at the corner of his eye and the constant murmur of a voice just out of earshot. But now, when he least needed the distraction, there it was. There he was.

  Do you still think that the design of the web you weave is yours, my son? Vlad hissed. Mannfred could see his sire’s face on the periphery of his vision, so much like his own. Can you feel it, boy? The weight of destiny sits on you – but not yours. As if to lend weight to the thought, Mannfred caught sight of his shadow; only it wasn’t his – it was something larger, and a thousand times more terrible than any vampire, lord of Sylvania or otherwise. Something that flickered with witch-fire and seemed to stretch out a long arm towards him, seeking to devour him. You speak of tools, but what are you, eh? Vlad purred. Who is that who rides you through the gates of the world?

  ‘Quiet,’ Mannfred snarled. The stone of the parapet crumbled in his grip. ‘Go back to whatever privy hole your remains were thrown in, old man.’ Without waiting for the inevitable reply, Mannfred drew his cloak about him and turne
d to go, not quite fleeing the voices and shadows that taunted him, but moving swiftly all the same.

  He made his way through the half-ruined corridors to the great open chamber that crouched at the top of the southernmost tower of the castle. Once, it had been a meeting room for the Order of Drakenhof, a brotherhood of Templars devoted to eradicating the evil that they believed had corrupted Sylvania. Vlad had taken great pleasure in hunting them over the course of long centuries, Mannfred recalled. Every few hundred years, the knights of the order stirred in their graves, reforming and returning to their old haunts. The definition of insanity, Mannfred had heard, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If that was the case, then the Drakenhof Templars had been quite mad.

  While Vlad had been content to play with them, as a cat plays with mice, Mannfred had little patience for such drawn-out displays of cruelty. They served no purpose, and to have such a thorn work its way into his side every few decades was an annoyance he felt no need to suffer through. When he had returned to Sylvania in the wake of Konrad’s disastrous reign, he had immediately sought out every hold, fortress and komturei of the order and wiped them out root and branch. He had wiped out entire families, butchering the oldest members to the youngest, and leaving their bodies dangling from gibbets about the border of Sylvania as a warning to others. He had made a point – unlike Vlad or Konrad, Mannfred would not tolerate dissent. He would not tolerate enemies on his soil, worthy or otherwise. After the last knight had gasped out his final breath in a muddy ditch south of Kleiberstorf, he had reformed the order and turned it over to those of his creatures that found pleasure in parodying the traditions of knighthood.

  Where once men had met to discuss the cleansing of Sylvania, Mannfred now stored the tools of his eventual, inevitable triumph, both living and otherwise. A ghoul clad in the remains of a militiaman’s armour and livery crouched near the entrance to the chamber, leaning against a gisarme that had seen better years. The ghoul jerked in fright as Mannfred approached and yowled as he gestured sharply. It scrambled towards the heavy wooden door to open it for him. As it heaved upon it and turned, something hurtled out of the chamber beyond and caught the ghoul in the back of the head with a sickening crunch.

  The ghoul flopped down, its rusty armour rattling as it hit the floor. The chunk of stone had been thrown hard enough to shatter the cannibal’s skull and Mannfred flipped a bit of brain matter off the toe of his boot, his mouth twisting in a moue of annoyance. ‘Are you finished?’ he asked loudly. ‘I can come back later, if you’d prefer.’

  There was only silence from within the chamber. Mannfred sighed and stepped through the aperture. The room beyond was circular and large. It stank of rain, fire, blood and ghouls, as most of the castle did these days. But unlike the rest of the castle, the stones of this chamber thrummed with a heady power that was just this side of intoxicating for Mannfred. It was the one place that he was free from Vlad’s voice and the lurking shadows that dogged his steps.

  The room was lit by a profusion of candles, made from human fat and thrust into the nooks and crannies of the walls and floor. The latter was intercut by gilded grooves, which formed a rough outline of Sylvania, and a semicircle of heavy stone lecterns, each carved in the shape of a daemon’s claw, lined the northernmost border of the province. Giant grimoires, bound in chains, sat on several of the lecterns, their pages rustling with a sound like the whispers of ghosts.

  At the heart of the chamber sat a plinth, upon which was a cushion of human skin and hair. And resting on the cushion was the iron shape of the Crown of Sorcery. To Mannfred’s eyes, it pulsed like a dark beacon, and he felt the old, familiar urge to place it on his head stir within the swamps of his soul like some great saurian. The crown radiated a malevolent pressure upon him, even now, and even as quiescent as it was. There was an air of contentment about it at the moment, and for that he was grateful. He knew well what monstrous intelligence waited within the crown’s oddly angled shape, and he had no desire to pit his will against that hideous sentience. Not now, not until he’d taken the proper precautions. He’d worn it, briefly, on his return from Vargravia, and that had been enough to assure him that it was more dangerous than it looked.

  He was so caught up in his study of the crown that he didn’t turn as another rock surged towards his head. He caught the missile without looking and crushed it. He held up his hand and let the crumbled remains dribble through his fingers. ‘Stop it,’ he said. He looked at the walls behind the barrier of lecterns, where his nine prisoners hung shackled. Except that there were only seven of them. Two were missing.

  Mannfred heard a scrape of metal on stone and whirled. A man clad in once-golden but now grime-caked and dented armour, decorated with proud reliefs of the war goddess Myrmidia, lunged for him, whirling a chain. Snarling Tilean oaths, the Templar of the Order of the Blazing Sun swung his makeshift weapon at Mannfred’s face. The vampire jerked back instinctively, and was almost smashed from his feet by the descending weight of a heavy stone lectern in the shape of a daemon’s claw, wielded by a brute clad in furs and a battered breastplate bearing a rampant wolf – the sigil of Ulric.

  Mannfred backhanded the Ulrican off his feet with one hand and snagged the loop of the Myrmidian’s chain with the other. He jerked the knight towards him and wrapped the links of the chain about his neck. He kicked the knight’s legs out from under him and then planted his foot between the man’s shoulder blades. Wrapping the chains about his wrist, he hauled upwards, strangling the man.

  The Ulrican gave a bellicose roar and staggered towards him. Burly arms snapped tight around Mannfred’s chest. He threw his head back and was rewarded by a crunch of bone, and a howl of pain. Mannfred drove his foot into the back of the knight’s head, driving him face-first into the stone floor and rendering him unconscious. Then he turned to deal with the Ulrican.

  The big man staggered forwards, blood streaming from his shattered nose. His eyes blazed with a berserk rage and he roared as he hurled himself at Mannfred. Mannfred caught him by the throat and hoisted him into the air. The man pounded uselessly on the vampire’s arm, as Mannfred slowly choked him comatose. He let the limp body fall to the floor and turned to face the other seven inhabitants of the chamber. ‘Well, that was fun. Anyone else?’

  Seven pairs of eyes glared at him. If looks could kill, Mannfred knew that he would have been only so much ash on the wind. He met their gazes, until all but one had looked away. Satisfied, he smirked and looked up at the shattered dome of the tower above, where fire-blackened support timbers crossed over one another like the threads of a spider’s web. He could see the dark sky and stars above, through the gaps in the roof. He whistled piercingly, and massive, hunched forms began to clamber into view from among the nest of wood and stone.

  There were two of the beasts, and both were hideous amalgamations of ape, wolf and bat. Mannfred had heard it said that the vargheist was the true face of the vampire, shorn of all pretence of humanity. These two were collectively known as the Swartzhafen Devils, which was as good a name as such beasts deserved. One of the creatures clutched something red and wet in its talons and gnawed on it idly as it watched him. He had given the beasts orders not to interfere with any escape attempts on the part of the captives.

  Mannfred claimed the body of the ghoul and dragged it into the room by an ankle. The vargheists were suddenly alert, their eyes glittering with hunger. He rolled the body into the centre of the outline of Sylvania and stepped back. The vargheists fell upon the dead cannibal with ravenous cries. The captives looked away in disgust or fear. Mannfred smiled and set about rebinding the two men. That they’d escaped at all was impressive, but it wasn’t the first time they’d tried it, and it wouldn’t be the last. He wanted them to try and fail, and try again, until their courage and will had been worn down to a despairing nub.

  Then, and only then, would they be fit for his purpose.

  His eyes flickered to the lone nonhuman among his
captives. The elven princess did not meet his gaze, though he did not think it was out of fear, but rather disdain. A flicker of annoyance swept through him, but he restrained the urge to discipline her. Instead, he moved towards the prize of the lot, at least in his eyes.

  ‘Bad dreams, old man?’ Mannfred said, looking down at Volkmar, Grand Theogonist of the Empire. He sank down to his haunches beside the old man. ‘You should thank me, you know. All of you,’ he said, looking about the cell. ‘The world as you knew it is giving way to something new. And something wholly unpleasant. Outside of Sylvania’s borders, madness and entropy reign. Only here does order prevail. But don’t worry, soon enough, with your help, I shall sweep the world clean, and all will be as it was. I shall make it a paradise.’

  ‘A paradise,’ Volkmar rasped. The old man met Mannfred’s red gaze without hesitation. Battered and beaten as he was, he was not yet broken, Mannfred knew. ‘Is that what you call it?’ Volkmar shifted his weight, causing his manacles to rattle. The old man looked as if he wanted nothing more than to lunge barehanded at his captor. A wound on his head, a gift from one of the vargheists, was leaking blood and pus, and the old man’s face was stained with both. Mannfred could smell the sickness creeping into the Grand Theogonist, weakening him even further, despite the holy power that was keeping him on his feet.

  ‘I didn’t say for whom it would be such, now, did I?’ Mannfred said. He rose smoothly and pulled his cloak about him. He looked down at Volkmar with a cruel smile. ‘Don’t worry, old man… When I consummate my new world, neither you nor your friends will be here to see it.’