The end times, p.75
The End Times, page 75
‘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.’
Archaon swept his blade up, and fire crawled along its length. ‘This sword. Your blood. Your age has passed. The pallid mask of human existence has begun to peel back, revealing the canker within. Why not rip it off at once, and glory in these final hours – shout, revel, kill, and taste the blood of the world as it dies.’
Men murmured. Fever-bright eyes blinked. Tongues caressed lips. Volker shuddered, trying to push his way through the numbing fog that had engulfed his thoughts. Archaon seemed to glow with a sour light, like a beacon calling all of the world’s children home. Part of Volker wanted to follow it wherever it led, to give in to despair and rage and wash away the memories of Heldenhame and Altdorf in blood. He looked down, and caught sight of the crowned skull emblazoned on his cuirass, with the ‘KF’ sigil of Karl Franz.
The sound of hooves shook him from his reverie. Men stood straighter, and looked about, as Valten eased his horse through the press. He looked tired, the way they all did, but not weak. Not exhausted. When he spoke, his voice carried easily through the rain, and across the square, from one wing of the army to the other.
‘He is right, brothers,’ Valten said. ‘All of history has come down to this place. Every story, song and saga, they have all led up to this day, this hour, this moment. We stand in the shadow of heroes and gods, and their hands are on our shoulders, urging us in one direction… or another.’ As the words left his mouth, he turned towards Archaon.
‘But it is up to us to choose who we listen to. We have been given this day to make our stand. To bar the door of the world against the beast that would devour everything we hold dear. We have been given this moment to show our teeth. To show our anger, and let it light the flames of the world’s wrath.’ Valten looked out over the massed ranks of soldiery. ‘Let its heat warm you, and its light drive back the dark. Let that fire light the way to the ending of the world, if that is what the gods will. Let it scour the rock, and consume the stars themselves. Let the heat of our pyre scorch the Dark Gods cowering in the shadows, if that is the will of Sigmar.’
He paused. And smiled. It was a gentle smile. The smile of a blacksmith at his forge. ‘But either way… let the fire burn, brothers.’ The words were delivered quietly, but they carried nonetheless. Volker was not alone as a cheer ripped its way from his throat. Hundreds of voices rose, mingling into a single roar of defiance. The sky ripped wide, as if the cacodaemoniacal gods above had been driven into paroxysms of fury by the sound.
Archaon raised his sword. Lightning shrieked down, striking the blade and casting a sickly light across the square. The cheers ceased as the Lord of the End Times reminded them of his presence. Volker hunkered down behind his shield as stray sparks of lightning spat and crawled across the ground at his feet.
‘This is the way the world ends,’ Archaon rumbled. ‘This is the way the world begins. Let my name ring out, and let the very mountains tremble. I have come for the rotten heart of your Empire, and I will not leave until I feel it grow still in my hand. Run and die, or stand and die, hammer-bearer, but die all the same.’ He spread his arms, as if inviting attack.
‘Death is a small price to pay for victory,’ Valten said. He spoke steadily, with certainty, and his voice carried easily across the square. ‘And our victory is writ in the heavens themselves. You are not the one to unravel the weave of the world. Ride home, ride back into the darkness.’ He gestured with his hammer.
‘I am home,’ Archaon snarled. ‘And I will not be denied.’ He hauled back on the reins of his monstrous steed, causing the beast to rear. He raised his blade up and then swept it down, as if it were a headsman’s axe and it were Middenheim’s neck on the block.
With a roar to shake the Fauschlag itself, Archaon’s army charged.
The moment the Slayer of Kings swept down, Archaon was in motion. Bent low in the saddle, the Lord of the End Times led the attack. Canto, surrounded on all sides by the grim, armoured figures of the Swords of Chaos, had no choice but to follow in his wake.
Canto ducked his head, and bent almost parallel to the neck of his newfound mount. The animal gibbered ceaselessly in what sounded like Tilean, spewing what were either curses or recipes as it pounded along, its hooves eating ground at a relentless pace. He’d tried hitting it, but that only made it talk more loudly, and it had tried to bite him to boot. He’d decided to settle for holding on and letting the beast do as it willed.
Holding tight to the reins, he risked a glance back. The rest of the Chaos horde was in motion behind the Swords. Chaos warriors from a hundred different warbands pounded after their warlord, shaking the square with the fury of their charge. Wild, yelling tribesmen ran alongside them. Packs of twisted, mutated hounds bayed madly as they loped across the cobbles, and daemons capered and gambolled in their wake. To the east, Canto caught sight of a massive slaughterbrute ploughing forwards, flinging aside unlucky tribesmen in its haste to get to the enemy. Gibbering Chaos spawn flailed about madly around its mighty form, screeching and screaming. Behind this vanguard came wave after wave of northmen, enough to bury all of Middenheim in corpses if that was what it took to win the victory.
He heard the roar of guns, and turned to see flashes of fire from the top of the temple steps. As soon as the horde had broken into a charge, the Empire guns had opened fire. Mortars thumped, cannons boomed and helblasters let out a staccato roar. To his right, a barrage of rockets slammed down amongst the remnants of the Headsmen, tearing his former comrades to pieces. Tribesmen fell as cannonballs pounded into the close-packed mass of bodies. Crossbow bolts hummed through the air like wasps, plucking riders from the saddles and catching leaping hounds in mid-air. Despite there being more room, it reminded Canto unpleasantly of his earlier march up the viaduct.
He jerked his mount to the side, narrowly avoiding a bounding pink horror as it was shredded into a pair of moaning blue ones in a spray of twinkling multi-coloured motes. Somewhere behind him, a Chaos-tainted giant gave a long, drawn-out death-howl as it toppled forwards like a felled tree. The ground shuddered beneath his steed’s hooves as the great body crashed down, crushing a score of inobservant tribesmen.
But none of it mattered. There were simply too many bodies to be so easily thrown on the fire and forgotten. All around Canto, bellowing Kurgan, Aeslings and Tahmaks pressed forwards over the fire-torn bodies of the dead, climbing heaps and drifts of corpses in their eagerness to reach their foes. Snarling Dolgans, mounted on shaggy horses, galloped alongside Khazags and the horse-lords of the Kul. Kvelligs, Aghols and Bjornlings forced their way up, into the teeth of the enemy fire, their broad, brightly painted kite shields bristling with bullet holes and broken crossbow bolts. Too, masked cultists from the softer southern lands charged as wildly as their hardier northern allies, robes the colour of dried blood flapping as they smashed round shields with bronze-headed maces in terrible hymns to the Lord of Skulls.
The end was as inevitable as a storm in summer, or snow in winter. Canto drew his sword as his horse vaulted the broken body of a mutated ogre, and felt a cold weight in his gut. Either way, what happened here would determine the fate of all involved. Death or glory, he thought bitterly, as the Swords of Chaos galloped on.
Even as he drew close to the Empire lines, Canto felt an old, horribly familiar tingle at the nape of his neck. Somewhere behind the enemy, a whirling white vortex took form and rose above the heads of the soldiers. A figure clad in furs rose with it, long arms gesturing frantically. A harsh voice spat out jagged words of power, and a blizzard of shimmering ice-forms erupted from the swirling vortex. Canto heard a chill shriek and saw an immense flock of white crows, with beaks and talons of glittering ice, hurtle towards Archaon, and by extension, himself.
Riders to either side of him were torn from their saddles by the birds. He ducked his head, and felt talons scrape against his helm and cuirass. A skull was plucked from his pauldron. He’d lost his shield not long after entering the city, and he cursed himself for not claiming another. With a roar, he whipped his blade about his head in an attempt to drive the flapping ice-constructs back as he urged his horse on. He caught a glimpse of Archaon moments before the Lord of the End Times struck the enemy like a thunderbolt.
The shield wall exploded, as if it had been hit by a volley of cannon fire. Archaon could not be stopped or slowed, and wherever his head turned, men died. Canto and the others joined him a moment later, thundering home with a resounding crash. Screaming soldiers were smashed off their feet by the impact, while the blades of the Chaos knights cut through breastplates and shields or hacked off heads. Canto laid about him without enthusiasm, fighting on instinct. Every blow felt like the turn of a page, bringing them closer to the end. But that’s what you want, Unsworn, he thought. An end to this madness.
It sounded like something Count Mordrek might have said. Under other circumstances, that alone might have made him dismiss it out of hand, but the act of killing brought with it a strange sort of clarity. Was it truly escape from this battle, from the eyes of the gods, which he desired, or was it an ending?
When he’d first chosen sides and taken up arms against his fellow man, it had seemed that he would never tire of battle, or of the rewards bought with blood. But a few centuries’ worth of slaughter was enough to glut any man, especially the son of a spice importer from Nuln. He’d slipped off the wheel of fate, and hadn’t looked back.
It had all seemed so clear, once upon a time. The triumph of the Dark Gods seemed a certainty. But he’d never stopped to ask himself what form that triumph might take. The gods weren’t warlords or tribal chieftains, for whom land and slaves were the spoils of victory. The gods only desired souls and destruction. Neither of which appealed to Canto, particularly.
To the west the Empire lines suddenly exploded into a lurid disharmony of light and sound, and Canto was nearly jolted from his saddle by the reverberations. The air stank of magics, and with a great roar, a firestorm exploded above the Empire army’s western flank. Men screamed as their clothing caught light and their skin ran like tallow. Weapons warped and curled, transmuted into horrible shapes or inert elements. The ripple of sorcerous destruction spread outwards, claiming the lives of any in its path.
But in the centre, the shield-wall still held, much to Canto’s frustration. He found himself surrounded by grim Middenlanders and howling, sackcloth-clad flagellants. Flails and halberd blades struck his armour from all sides, and it seemed that no matter how many men he killed, there were always more. Suddenly, the knot of death about him began to unravel as the Three-Eyed King forced his way through. He met Canto’s bewildered gaze with a terse nod. ‘You’ll have to fight harder than that, Unsworn. We have a ways to go, yet.’
Archaon’s eyes bored into him, as if the Lord of the End Times could see his earlier thoughts and had found them wanting. Canto’s sword arm twitched, and he saw an image of his blade sliding into the gap between the Everchosen’s helmet and gorget. Shadow-shapes hunched and slithered at the edges of his vision, and he felt taloned hands on his shoulders and on his forearm, ready to guide his blade – where?
He felt a kernel of panic begin to grow in him, and he recalled how the air had tasted in that far-off, but never far away, moment when he’d had a man named Magnus at his mercy, and chosen obscurity over glory. He’d had a chance, once, to earn the rewards of the gods. He had chosen their ire and indifference instead.
He had another chance now. It was as if that same moment had hunted him down through all of the ages, and now it had found him. He could hear its howl of triumph as it stalked him over the points of spears and shaking standards. Run and hide or stand and fight, Unsworn – your appointed hour has come round at last, something whispered in his head. Was that his voice, or Archaon’s? Was it a human voice at all, or something else?
And, more importantly, what was the choice it wanted him to make?
Archaon turned away, and began to fight his way forwards once more. His dreadful sword rose and fell with a sinner’s wail, cutting short destinies and devouring hope. Canto looked down at the blade in his hand. Then, with a sharp cry, he drove his knees into his mount’s flanks and charged in the Everchosen’s wake.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Temple of Ulric
Gregor Martak spun, and his ice-wreathed hands punched through the cackling daemon’s soft belly. The pink horror shrilled as it began to split into two smaller blue ones, but Martak’s fingers caught the creatures before they could fully form and filled their gaping maws with ice and amber. The daemons evaporated with tinny moans, as Martak turned his attentions elsewhere. Inside him, he could feel the godspark of Ulric raging and smashing against the confines of his soul.
To the west, the west, the god howled.
‘Are there not enemies enough for you here?’ Martak snarled. Ice and snow rose from his hands, sweeping forward to flash-freeze a slobbering Chaos troll. The brute toppled over and shattered into a dozen chunks. Northmen filled the gap left by the troll, and hurled themselves towards him with suicidal courage. Martak, mind reeling with the fury of the god nesting within him, hastily created a shield of amber and frost, blocking the first blow. At a gesture, the shield twisted and transformed, splitting into a multitude of stabbing lances. Several of his attackers were punched off their feet, and the rest were driven back. Martak stepped forwards, gathering his strength, and gestured again. The lances bulged, cracked and split, becoming shrieking hawks, raucous crows and even a few stinging hummingbirds.
The barbarians were forced back by the swarm of mystical constructs, even as he’d hoped. Breathing heavily, he staggered back too. The state troops closed ranks to his fore, buying him a few precious moments to catch his breath. He was tired – more tired than he’d ever been. Every muscle ached, and his body felt like a wrung-out wineskin. It was no easy thing to carry the weight of a god, and he knew, with animal certainty, that even if they won the day, he would be burned to nothing by the cold fire of Ulric’s presence. Whatever happened here today, Gregor Martak was a dead man.
He smiled thinly. Then, his life expectancy had dropped to almost nothing the moment he’d been made Supreme Patriarch. And in a time of war, no less. He’d almost died ten times over in the first battle for Altdorf, and its fall almost two years later. He shook himself all over, like a dog scattering water, and sniffed the air. He caught the rank odour – like sour milk and spoiled fruit – of fell sorcery, and peered west, as Ulric had urged.
His eyes widened as he caught sight of the eldritch inferno sweeping across the western flank of the Empire’s battle-line. He could hear the screams of men and the cackling of daemons, and knew that, unless whatever magics had been unleashed there were countered, the whole flank might collapse. He cursed and looked around for Valten.
