He drew his sword. ‘You will win in the end, because that is the way of it. But I shall poison your victory with my last breath. Do you hear me?’ he roared, casting his words into the howling winds. ‘I shall not go lightly into destruction. I shall burn like a black sun, and you shall know fear before my standard is cast down. I will break this world before I let you claim it. This I swear.’ He swept his blade out as magical lightning slammed down around him, shattering buildings and casting the bodies of the dead high in the air. The sky twisted in on itself, and the red light grew darker.
Malekith paid it no mind. He bent over, urging Seraphon to greater speed. Let all the gods stand in his way, if they dared. He was the Eternity King, and this world was his. And he would not lose it now, not without a fight.
Arkhan the Black watched in satisfaction as Krell and the Doomed Legion brought the gift of death to the enemies of Nagash. It had been but the work of moments to lend his sorcerous might to the great spell Teclis had woven in Athel Loren. Another power, too, had been there, lending aid, and between them, they had bolstered the reach of the spell so that more than just those in Athel Loren were caught up in its folds.
Almost the entirety of Nagash’s army had been plucked from the pine-crags and transported to the streets of Middenheim to join their master for the final battle. And it was the final battle. Arkhan could feel it in his bones. It was like an ache, edging towards true pain, and he welcomed it. He reached up to touch the Everchild’s mark on his chest. Would her curse reveal itself soon, he wondered? Would it even get the chance? The very bedrock of the world was shifting beneath his feet, and he felt that soon it might swallow them all. Even Nagash himself might not survive. He pushed the thought aside, even as it occurred to him.
Oblivion, he thought. To sleep at last, no more to be awoken, no more to be set on the war-road. He watched as the northmen, heavy with sleep and ale, died swiftly beneath the axe of Krell. Do you welcome the end, as I do? he wondered, watching the wight wade through the enemy with obvious glee. Krell was an enigma to the living, but to Arkhan he was a brute, barely chained by Nagash’s sorcery, a creature not wholly one thing or another. Now he fought those he once might have led, and without hesitation. No, he decided. No, Krell would not welcome an end to his days of slaughter.
Nor would others, Arkhan suspected. Vlad was in this city somewhere – he could feel the vampire’s black soul, pulsing like a ghost-light – and he had no intention of succumbing to oblivion. Vlad was as treacherous as Mannfred, and, worse yet, far wiser than his protégé. When the end came, when the Great Work at last came to its resolution, Vlad would pit himself against Nagash; else why would he seek to curry favour with humans and elves alike?
And he was not the only one. Neferata too would rally her followers, and set her standards in opposition to the Undying King. Arkhan felt some slight satisfaction at the thought… He had counselled Nagash to leave her as castellan of Sylvania for that very reason. Let Neferata cull the more treacherous elements of the dead for her own armies. Best to know who the enemy was, when the time came.
‘COME,’ Nagash said. Arkhan looked up at his master. Nagash surveyed the carnage as if it were of no more import than a squabble for table scraps between dogs. The Great Necromancer started forwards, almost floating as the spirits of the dead rose to join the throng which surrounded him. Arkhan followed in his wake, lending his spells to those of his master as they drew those slain by Krell and his wights back to their feet and added them to the already substantial horde. Nagash, it seemed, intended to drown the city in an ocean of corpses.
It was an effective tactic, if lacking in finesse. Arkhan glanced at his master. Then, the Undying King had never been one for finesse. But once, at least, he had understood subtlety. Now, even that seemed to have been discarded. In his own way, Nagash was just as much a brute as Krell – he was not human, not any more. Nor was he the liche who had resurrected Arkhan to serve him in Nagashizzar. He had become something else, something far closer to the gods of old Nehekhara. A vast, irresistible force aimed at a distant target.
Cries filled the air. Arkhan looked up. Few buildings still stood in this part of Middenheim, and those that were in evidence had been repurposed into slave pens. Arkhan saw that many, if not all, of the captives were clad in the ragged and faded uniforms of a number of provinces. As the northlanders flooded past the ramshackle gates of the pens, the slaves had begun to cheer, but those cheers became screams as they saw the dead shambling in their captors’ wake.
‘Should we free them? Such chattel might be useful, in the coming fray,’ Arkhan said, looking up at Nagash. The other Incarnates, he knew, would look kindly on such an action. Such small mercies were the way to bind their unwilling allies to them all the more tightly.
‘YES. WE SHALL FREE THEM,’ Nagash intoned. He reached out a hand, and Arkhan felt the Winds of Death rise. Amethyst light played about Nagash’s outstretched claw, and then a darkling fire washed across the stinking pens which covered Neumarkt, choking the life from all it touched. The screams rose to a fever pitch, and then, all at once, fell silent.
But they did not stay silent for long. Soon, every corpse in Neumarkt was rising to its feet, and making to join the still-shambling throng. They smashed from their pens, and rose from the streets, and fell in with the horde, which continued on through the city and into what had once been the Great Park. Arkhan said nothing as the dead swarmed. Nagash was his master, and Arkhan’s will had never been his own. Better to argue with the storm, than with the Undying King.
There, amongst the burned-out trees and bald earth, the enemy had chosen to make their stand. The horde lurched to a stop at a simple gesture from Nagash. Arkhan took in the thick ranks of steel shields which lined the park’s eastern overlook, and the warriors who crouched behind them. Behind this bulwark, sorcerers chanted loudly, tracing strange sigils in the air, and the air grew hot and foul as fell sorceries were worked.
Nagash laughed. The distant chants faltered and fell silent, as the sound of it crawled across the park and into the ears and hearts of the enemy. It was a terrible sound, like the crackle of ice-covered bones as they were trod underfoot.
Nagash looked down at Arkhan, his eyes glowing balefully. He swept out his staff to indicate the followers of Chaos. ‘LOOK, MY SERVANT. MORE SLAVES TO BE FREED.’ Nagash set his staff and set the dead to moving again with but a thought.
‘LET US SHATTER THEIR CHAINS.’
Vlad von Carstein caught the northman’s chin and wrenched his head to the side. There was a sharp pop as the man’s neck snapped, and the vampire sank his fangs into the dying man’s throat. When he had finished, he shoved the body aside to join the others, and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. The blood tasted foul, but it was nourishing enough.
The group of northmen, clad in reeking furs and black iron, had been as surprised as he when he’d appeared suddenly in their midst. He’d felt the magics that Teclis had invoked, but had not grasped their intent until he had been surrounded by startled warriors. He’d recovered his wits first, and then butchered the lot. He looked around. He recognised the Palast District easily enough, though it had been substantially redecorated since he’d last visited Middenheim.