The End Times:
The Lord of the End Times
(Josh Reynolds)
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
Autumn 2527
The runefang slid from its sheath with a dreadful hiss. The blade shimmered crimson as it bit into the squealing ungor’s neck and removed the beastman’s verminous, almost-human head from its scrawny shoulders. The unlucky creature’s comrades scrambled to avoid a similar fate, but the sword rose and fell in a display of red butchery, spattering the trunks of nearby trees with gore. The blade’s wielder gave a harsh cry and his horse reared, one iron-shod hoof snapping out to catch a fleeing beastman in the back, snapping the wailing creature’s spine.
Boris Todbringer, Elector Count of Middenheim, Marchlord of the Drakwald, twisted in his saddle, laying about him with the runefang. The sword, called ‘Legbiter’, seemed to hum with joy in his hand as it went about its work. It, like its master, took pleasure in the simple things in life and the shedding of blood was the simplest thing of all for such a weapon. Ungors screamed and died to blade and trampling hoof, and Todbringer roared with pleasure as each new carcass struck the soft loam of the forest floor.
‘Come on then, come and die, filth,’ he bellowed. ‘Let Khazrak hear you scream.’ An ungor leapt at him, a spear clutched in its hairy hands. The blade drew sparks as it scraped across his cuirass and he brought his shield edge down on the creature’s skull, splitting it.
Todbringer smiled fiercely, despite the close call. He felt more alive now than he had for many years. He’d at last shifted the weight of responsibility to stronger shoulders, and was free to do as he wished. And what he wished was to hunt down the foe whose shadow had blighted his life for too long. The creature which had claimed the lives of his sons and taken his eye. The beast which had massacred his people and challenged his authority.
Khazrak would die. Even if the world was coming to an end, even if the Emperor himself fell, Khazrak would die. The beast must die. That certainty drove Todbringer on, and lent strength to his aching limbs as he hewed and slashed at the enemy like a man half his age – or one possessed. The world had narrowed to that singular point, and nothing else mattered. In some part of his mind, Todbringer wondered if killing the beast might not reverse the course the world had taken in the fraught months since the second fall of Altdorf.
The Empire was in flames. Even the most sceptical of men could see that the great kingdom which Sigmar had built was now turning to ash on its death-pyre. The plague-ravaged remains of Marienburg crawled with maggots and rot. Nuln was a rat-gnawed ruin, reduced to a blasted crater by the vermin which even now laid siege to Middenheim. Talabheim was a stinking shell, so poisonous and foul that it was avoided even by the armies of the Three-Eyed King. Even Altdorf, which had weathered the plague-storm that had consumed Marienburg, had fallen at last to the chittering hordes of the ratmen. The Emperor had fled south to Averheim, while others had come north, to the City of the White Wolf. His city.
A crude axe bounced from his shield and he urged his horse forwards into the press, trampling the beasts as they tried to form a ragged phalanx. His runefang, the sign of his authority, of his right of rule, sang a woeful song as he swept it out in a precise arc, lopping off spear heads and malformed limbs alike. ‘Fight me, beasts,’ he roared. ‘Come and die, you spawn of a six-legged goat!’
Even nature itself was in rebellion. The skies roiled with crackling, magic-laden clouds and the birds and beasts had fled. The Drakwald was empty of all life save the mutated aberrations who now died beneath his sword. It was the End Times. That was what Gregor Martak had claimed, when he’d arrived alongside the so-called Herald of Sigmar, Valten – a former blacksmith, of all things! Martak might have been the Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic, but deep down he was still a country lad from Middenland, with soil in his ears and gloom in his heart, and Todbringer wouldn’t have put much stock in his mutterings save for the evidence of his own eyes.
Martak and Valten had come, bringing men and news, and their army of stragglers, refugees and flagellants had breached the zigzag trench lines and burrowed encampments of the ratmen which had ringed Middenheim. Todbringer had welcomed them, though not the news they’d brought. Not at first, at least. They spoke of the fall of the great cities and more besides, of the collapse of the dwarf empire and the slow dissolution of Bretonnia. Tilea, Estalia, all of the great southern states were ashes as well, burned to cinders by the conflagration which even now pressed in on the remnants of the Empire.
The End Times. The thought was enough to send a shiver of uncertainty through him, even as he chopped down on a shield of wood and animal hide. The ungor brayed in fear as the runefang sought its heart. Todbringer grunted and sent the body slewing into its fellows with a flick of one thick wrist. The End Times. That was why he had heaved his responsibilities onto Valten’s broad shoulders, and named him Castellan of Middenheim. Let the Herald of Sigmar fight the war to end all wars. Todbringer had his own war: a smaller war, but of the utmost importance. If the world was coming to an end, then he had one last matter to attend to. One last debt to settle.
It was a pure, just thing in a time when the foundations of the earth seemed to be eaten away and the sky gaped wide and hungry. That was what he told himself. One valorous act to stem the tide of brute corruption which sought to envelop everything. Kill the banebeast, and break the warherds. With the beast-tribes broken, the war in the north could be won easily. Without their fodder, the armies of the Three-Eyed King would find themselves bereft of their numerical advantage. That would be enough to turn the tide. It would be enough. It had to be.
A pulse of guilt shot through him. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, he knew. A small but insistent part of his mind constantly whispered that he had left his city, his people, in the hands of strangers. Only a Todbringer could weather the storm that had come to engulf Middenheim, it said, and he felt determination fade to doubt, and that doubt became a certainty that he had made a mistake.