The End Times | The Lord of the End Times Read online

  ‘Achendorf is dead. Took his knights and made a try for the head of the beast, poor fool,’ Staahl rumbled. Dostov frowned, but said nothing. Greiss snorted.

  ‘Do not pity him. He gambled, and lost. Would that he had succeeded,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not him I pity,’ Staahl snapped. ‘It’s us. We could have used him and his men, Axel. Instead, he sacrificed them in a foolhardy attempt at glory. Every sword counts, and he took good men into death with him.’

  ‘Does it matter where they die?’ Greiss growled, bristling. He gestured at the men below with his hammer. ‘That is why they – why we – are here, you fat old fool. To fight and die, so that the Emperor might live one more day. We are bleeding them. Nothing more.’

  ‘No.’

  They all turned as one, Martak included. The fragment of Ulric within him twitched as he caught sight of Valten ascending the steps. Down below, more men hastily squeezed into the ranks. ‘No, we are not just a sacrifice, Master Greiss. In the end, perhaps. When the war is done, and scribes record the events of this day, that is what they might say of us. But here and now, we are so much more.’ The trio of Grand Masters stepped aside as Valten strode past them. He looked up at the temple for a moment, and then turned back to them. ‘Here and now, we are the Empire of Sigmar. Here and now, we are the City of the White Wolf. Middenheim stands. And while it does, so too does the world.’ He raised his voice, pitching it to carry. Down below, the noise of men preparing for war had dimmed. Martak realised that almost every eye in the square was upon them.

  As cheers rose up from below, Valten turned back to Martak and the others. Greiss and his fellow knights were staring at him as if, for the first time, they suddenly understood that Valten was not merely a jumped-up blacksmith in borrowed armour, but something else entirely. Valten met Martak’s gaze. The part of the wizard which was Ulric recognised the spark of… otherness in the man before him. It was only a spark, but it might grow into a roaring flame. One to cleanse the stones of the Fauschlag of the filth that crept over them. If it was given the time.

  But even as the thought crossed his mind, Valten’s smile faded, becoming sad. He shook his head slightly, a gesture so infinitesimal that Martak knew he alone had seen it. And in his soul, Ulric howled mournfully.

  Greiss cleared his throat. ‘A very pretty speech, blacksmith. But speeches alone won’t see us safely to another sunrise.’

  Valten turned to the old knight. ‘No, for that we’ll have to trust in Altdorf steel, Nuln gunpowder and Middenheim courage.’ He paused, as if taking stock of the situation. Then, he continued. ‘We hoped that the Fauschlag would protect us. That the walls of Middenheim would keep the enemy at bay for weeks, if not months.’ He looked at each of the gathered officers in turn. ‘We hoped that the Emperor might rally the rest of the Empire from Averheim, and perhaps even relieve us here. That together, we could drive the enemy back into the Wastes.’ He grinned. ‘Doesn’t seem very likely now, does it?’

  Staahl snorted, and several of the captains chuckled. Greiss and Dostov frowned. Martak couldn’t restrain a harsh cackle. He felt Ulric growl unappreciatively within him; the wolf-god wasn’t, by nature, fatalistic. Nor did he have a sense of humour.

  ‘The enemy is inside the walls. All we can do now is hope to bear the brunt of his fury, and break his back when he exhausts himself,’ Valten continued. He looked at Martak. ‘If we can bring Archaon to battle, then we have a chance. If the Three-Eyed King falls, his army will disintegrate. Middenheim might well be consumed in that conflagration, but that is a small price to pay for victory.’

  Ulric snarled in agreement within Martak’s soul, and Valten smiled slightly, as if he’d heard the god’s voice. Martak wondered just how much Valten saw. If they survived the coming conflict, he intended to ask him. He heard the winding howl of a war-horn, and turned. ‘It looks like we’ll have no trouble with the first part of that plan,’ Martak murmured.

  Along the southern edge of the square, the foe had begun to arrive. Black-armoured northlanders chanted and bellowed, clashing their weapons and shaking their shields in furious tumult. Drums boomed back, deep in their ranks. Daemons capered about them, hurling incoherent threats at the men standing before the Temple of Ulric. Beastmen paced at the fringes of the gathering horde, throwing back their heads to add their roars and wildcat screams to the dreadful clangour. But, even as their numbers swelled, they did not move to cross the square and attack.

  ‘They’re waiting for their master to arrive,’ Valten said. He stared at the gathering ranks of the enemy, as if in search of Archaon.

  ‘Biggest dog gets first bite,’ Martak grunted. He could feel the essence of the wolf-god gathering itself in him, ready for the fury to come. His breath came in pale puffs, and those men closest to him stepped back nervously.

  Suddenly, the air was split by the sound of beating wings. It was as if a hundred thousand crows had chosen that moment to fill the air above the square. The men on the steps cried out in alarm, and clapped their hands to their ears as the thunderous wingbeats threatened their eardrums. Even Valten staggered slightly as the air rippled with the shadows of diving, swooping birds. Martak alone stood tall.

  His eyes narrowed, and his hand shot out to catch hold of the end of a spear moments before it lanced through Valten’s chest. The whirring, shifting shadows parted, and the spear’s wielder was revealed – a snarling beastman, with wide, black-feathered wings rising from his broad back. Malagor, the Dark Omen, Best-Loved of the Dark Gods, Ulric’s voice growled in his mind. Martak’s lips skinned back from his teeth, and he returned Malagor’s snarl in kind. The tableau held for a moment, as man and beast stared at one another. Martak’s arm trembled as he slowly forced the spear back. Malagor’s wings beat heavily, as it tried to drive the weapon forwards. Then, in a clap of darkling thunder, the creature was gone.

  On the other side of the square, the gathered beastmen suddenly broke ranks and pelted forwards, as if Malagor’s attack had been a signal. They brayed wildly and brandished crude weapons as they charged in a scattered, undisciplined mass towards the gleaming ranks of spears and halberds.

  Valten shook himself, as if emerging from a dream. He raised his hammer. ‘To your places, brothers, captains, masters… May Sigmar and Ulric both watch over you,’ he said, looking at the others. They snapped into motion, hurrying to their positions, as down below orders rang out along the Empire battle-line, drums rattled and horns blared. Valten looked at Martak. ‘They want me dead,’ he murmured. ‘They do not want their chosen weapon to meet me in combat.’

  ‘Well, let’s disappoint them, then,’ Martak growled. He looked out over the square, eyes narrowed. Whatever madness had seized the beastherds had not consumed the rest of Archaon’s army. Unsupported as they were, and out in the open, the beastmen were being cut to ribbons by volleys of crossbow bolts and gunfire. Behind Martak, the great cannons began to bellow, and soon cannonballs bounced across the square, ploughing into the frenzied ranks of charging beastmen. Mortar shells and rockets hammered the disorganised herds, hurling broken corpses through the smoke-stained air. A looming ghorgon, massive jaws snapping hungrily, toppled backwards as a cannonball smashed through its skull, and crushed a dozen of its lesser kin.

  A shriek from above tore Martak’s attentions from the carnage being wrought in the square. He and Valten looked up, to see a swirling murder of crows descend on the artillery at the top of the steps. Gunners cried out in fear and pain as Malagor swept through them, plucking eyes and raking flesh. The Dark Omen was monstrous and unstoppable, and his body dissolved into a shower of feathers only to reform elsewhere to wreak more havoc. Even as the bodies of those he’d slain tumbled down the steps, Malagor vanished, the thunder of wings echoing in his wake.

  Valten started up the steps, hammer in hand. Martak grabbed his arm. ‘No. I’ll handle the beast. You see to the battle.’ Valten opened his mouth, as if to rep
ly, then nodded and turned to race down the steps. Martak cracked his knuckles, and then closed his eyes. His nostrils flared as he inhaled the stench of Malagor’s magics. The creature was ripe with the stink of the swirling energies which permeated the clouds far above. Martak, eyes still closed, turned one way, and then another, following Malagor’s twisting, turning pilgrimage across the battle-lines of the Empire. Men died wherever the beast settled, and it seemed to be unconcerned with the savage slaughter being inflicted on its kin, for its attacks were random, rather than calculated to ease the advance of the beastmen.

  Nonetheless, the beastmen were possessed by an unmatched ferocity, and down in the square they hurled themselves through the teeth of the artillery and crashed home at last, smashing into the ranks of the state troops. The creatures were outnumbered, and almost ridiculously so, but Martak knew that such concerns no longer held sway over them. The Children of Chaos had been driven into a killing frenzy, and they were determined to taste the blood of their enemies.

  There!

  The thought sliced through his consciousness, and Martak’s eyes snapped open. His head ached with the pounding of wings as he turned and saw a mass of whirling feathers dropping towards Greiss and his knights. Martak raced down the steps, one arm flung back. He stopped, and his arm snapped forwards. A jagged spear of amber, coated in ice, cut through the air with a whistling shriek.

  The mass of shadow-crows gave a communal scream and something hairy dropped from their midst to crash down on the steps. Martak pounced, his hands seizing the length of his conjured spear, and he shoved his prey back down as it tried to rise. Malagor howled in agony as it pawed uselessly at the ice. Its blood had splattered out across the steps like the wings of some great, malignant bird. Martak leaned against the spear with his full weight. Malagor’s flesh blackened with frostbite, and its froth became frozen slush. It glared at Martak, and he matched that gaze, even as he had before.

  Then, with a frustrated whimper, Malagor flopped back and lay still. Martak shoved himself back, and stood. Down below, the fury of the beastmen was mostly spent. Martak watched with grim pleasure as Valten struck a minotaur, the force of his blow driving the monster to its knees. His second blow took its head completely off, sending it rolling across the cobbles. The surviving beastmen were beginning to flee.

  Valten wheeled his horse about and rode back through the lines, speaking calmly to the soldiers. A joke here, a word of comfort there… The god in Martak watched in wonder as men who had only moments before been filled with fury and fear straightened their spines and locked shields once more. The ragged holes carved in their ranks by the beastmen vanished as fresh men moved to fill the gaps. Fallen standards were lifted high as Valten passed along the shield-wall, meeting the gaze of each man in turn. He began to speak, and his words were almost immediately drowned out by cheers.

  What is he? Ulric murmured. Martak smiled. ‘A blacksmith,’ he said, softly. War was Valten’s anvil, and, were the world a kinder place, perhaps he could have made something stronger from the raw materials the End Times had provided him. For a moment, Martak could almost see it… a world of shining towers, and prosperous peoples. Where no woman would have to abandon her deformed child to the forests; where no man would so fear the touch of tainted water that he chose a slow death by alcohol, rather than risk the waters of the Reik. Where the cities of men were not threatened by howling hordes of northmen or orcs.

  Ulric growled within him, and Martak felt his smile slip. Such a world was not a pleasant thought for a god of war, winter and woe. ‘Well, it’s not as if we have to worry about it, eh?’ he asked himself. ‘The wheel of the world is slowing, and soon enough it will stop.’

  Valten rode up to the bottom of the temple steps, and Martak went down to meet him. ‘Do you hear the drums, Gregor? I think we’ve caught their attention,’ Valten said. His eyes strayed to the remains of Malagor, and then he turned in his saddle, peering out across the square. ‘Which is all to the good, I think. The men have had a victory. They’ll be hungry for another.’

  Martak followed his gaze. The horde gathered along the southern edge of the temple square had grown to massive proportions. It was a seething tide of black armour, cruel weapons and ragged banners. The latter stretched back into the gloom which dominated the narrow streets and crooked avenues of the Ulricsmund beyond. A wave of noise rose and spread from the ranks of the Chaos worshippers, tortured syllables crashing down and flowing over the men of the Empire. The raw surge of noise rose to mingle with the thunder that rocked the strange clouds overhead, to create an apocalyptic cacophony which drowned out all thought and sense.

  Then lightning flared across the sky, and the horde fell silent. The sudden quiet was almost as bad as the noise had been. Martak felt Ulric bristle within him, and he looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of the monstrous, ghostly shapes which moved behind the clouds. They are here, Ulric growled. They come to watch.

  Eyes as wide and as hot as the sun washed over him, through a tear in the clouds, and Martak shuddered and looked away. There had been nothing recognisable in that gaze – nothing save an eternity’s worth of hunger and madness. The Chaos Gods were not as the gods of men. They had known the world as dust in the aeons before creation, and they would know it as dust again before they were finished.

  Out across the square, the host of the lost and damned parted like split wood. Chaos warriors, scarred tribesmen and squabbling daemons all pushed and thrust against their fellows to create a wide corridor. And down that corridor, riding at an unhurried pace, came the architect of all the world’s pain himself.

  Archaon, Lord of the End Times, had arrived.

  Wendel Volker wished he had time for a drink. He wished he had time for anything. He stood amid the lines of the state troops, his armour stained with gore and his shield hacked almost to flinders. Brunner stood nearby, his falchion resting on his shoulder. The former bounty-hunter looked almost at ease, as if the carnage of only a few moments before had been nothing at all. The rest of Valten’s men had spread out among the ranks, filling in gaps or simply seeking out friends and comrades to stand with. Volker had neither. Not any more.

  He closed his eyes, and tried to relax. The worst was yet to come, and a Volker couldn’t be found wanting. Behind him, he heard the murmurs of healers and warrior priests as they worked to stiffen spines and bind wounds. Servants of Sigmar, Ulric and even Ranald, all were present. Whether their gods were was another matter.

  ‘He’s a big one,’ Brunner grunted.

  Volker opened his eyes. The Chaos horde had fallen silent. Their master, the Three-Eyed King himself, had arrived. Volker lifted his visor to get a better look at the king of all monsters. Brunner wasn’t wrong – Archaon was big, bigger than any of his followers, save for those who loomed over buildings. His armour shone with a terrible light, and the air about him shimmered as if the weight of his presence caused reality itself to stretch and fray. Archaon was wrong, Volker thought. He was the very essence of wrongness, of the foulness that crept in through the cracks in the world, and Volker felt his stomach twist in agonised knots as he watched the Lord of the End Times ride through his followers and into the square.

  ‘How much do you think they’d pay me for his scalp?’ Brunner said.

  ‘They’d make you bloody emperor,’ Volker said, not looking at him. Archaon was in no hurry. His daemonic steed pawed the ground as it moved forwards. The ground cracked and steamed where the animal’s hooves touched. The Three-Eyed King was surrounded by a bodyguard of Chaos knights, each of them a monster in his own right. Archaon, his great sword balanced across his saddle horn, stared at the forces arrayed before the temple.

  Volker fought the urge to shrink back into the ranks. He felt soul-sick and weary as Archaon’s inhuman gaze swept over him. Overhead, the roiling clouds had thickened and darkened as the storm redoubled its fury. A hot rain had begun to fall, softly, slowly at first,
and then with hissing fury. The sword in Volker’s hand felt heavy, and his breathing was a harsh rasp in his ears. Archaon straightened in his saddle. His armour creaked like the wheels of a plague cart, and when he spoke, Volker felt each word in the marrow of his bones.

  ‘I am the Final Moment made flesh. I stand here on this mountain, and I will sit on its throne. I will be the axis upon which the wheel of change turns, and the world will drown in the light of unborn stars.’ Archaon looked up. ‘Can you feel it, men of the Empire – can you feel the air tremble like a thing alive? Can you feel the heat of the fire that rages outside the gates of the world?’ He lowered his head, gazing at them, his expression unfathomable, hidden as it was within the depths of his helm. ‘The End Times are here, and there is no turning back. There is no past, no future, only now. Time is a circle and it is contracting about the throat of the world,’ Archaon said, making a fist for emphasis. ‘Why do you cling so to the broken shards of Sigmar’s lie? There is no afterlife. There is no reward, no punishment. Only death, or life.’

  Volker blinked sweat from his eyes. Men to either side of him shifted in obvious discomfort. Archaon’s words ate at his resolve like acid, stripping him of courage and will. Archaon gazed at them for a moment, as if to let his words sink in, and then he began to speak again. ‘Look to the sky. Look to the street. Cracks are forming in what is, and what was. That which shall be presses against the threshold of time itself. This world is, and always has been, but a moment delayed. A single drop of blood, hanging from the tip of a sword. And now, it splashes down.’