The End Times: The Return of Nagash
- Автор: Рейнольдс Джош
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd.
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
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Mannfred frowned. He considered the Claw of Nagash, where it lay across his saddle. He could feel the power it held, power enough to carve out a nation, if he wished. Once, that would have been enough for him. He had vied for thrones before. But something had changed in him. A throne, a city, a province – these were no longer good enough. Even an empire was but a drop in the ocean of his ambition.
Those ambitions were the root of every plan he had concocted since he had dragged himself from the mire of Hel Fenn, revivified by the blood of a dying necromancer. They drove him on, into the reeking tunnels, and he, in his turn, drove on the dead with the lash of his will. Vlad was right. He had discarded subtlety; there was no use for it here. The only tools of worth were the press of bodies and the savage tactics of attrition.
In the hours that followed, Mannfred willed wave after wave of zombies into the labyrinthine network of tunnels. Through the eyes of his flesh-puppets, he mapped out the safest route for him and his Drakenhof Templars to take towards the heart of the festering pit. He lost hundreds of zombies, but gained twice their number in new recruits from among the skaven dead. Entire squealing tribes of the vermin were stifled and silenced beneath the tide of rotting meat, and then dragged upright to serve beside their slayers. It was necromancy as applied brutality, sorcery wielded like a blunt object, as Mannfred battered himself a path through the enormous burrow.
He led his knights deeper into the tunnels, which grew grand in scale. The burrow was a tumour of stone and darkness. Foul poisons dripped from filth-encrusted stalactites, and the rough walls of rock were marked by generation upon generation of crude skaven-scrawl; the caverns were choked with ramshackle structures of warped wood and rust-riddled metal. And everywhere, the skaven. Some fled his approach, others tried to resist. Sometimes they even fell upon one another in vicious displays of compulsive betrayal that startled even Mannfred, who took advantage of such incidents with bemusement.
Deeper and deeper he pushed his forces. He could feel the Fellblade now, like a wound in the world, pulsing, calling to the claw it had hacked from Nagash’s wrist. It called to him, and Mannfred went gladly, driven by the devils of his ambition.
The Fellblade would be his, and with it, the power of Nagash.
‘It’s a fairly innocuous sort of place,’ Erikan Crowfiend murmured. He leaned over his horse’s neck and ran his fingers through the matted mane of the ghoul crouched beside him. The rest of the pack swirled about him, yapping and snarling like dogs on the scent. There were hundreds of them, drawn from all over Bretonnia to the meadows of Quenelles by the scent of death. The other vampires seemed perturbed by the presence of so many flesh-eaters, especially Anark von Carstein, who glared at the Crowfiend with barely repressed fury.
‘It is nothing more than a slightly fancy tomb,’ Kemmler said. The ghouls gambolling about the legs of Erikan’s steed avoided the Lichemaster and Krell, who stood just behind him, his Great Axe in his hands.
‘A tomb whose inhabitants are barred to us, thanks to Bretonnian witchery,’ Arkhan said. He stood on the back of his chariot and looked at his commanders, examining each one in turn. Then, he turned his attentions back to the object of their discussion.
La Maisontaal Abbey sat on the slopes of the Grey Mountains, its walls the same hue as the tumble-down stones of the cliffs around it. Its walls were half finished, but it was an imposing structure nonetheless, built to protect its inhabitants from any who might wish them harm. It had been built in the early years of Gilles Le Breton’s first reign, its construction funded by a mysterious nobleman from the east, who had claimed that the abbey was the repayment of a debt owed. Arkhan, who had once lost his head to the sword of the nobleman in question, suspected that there was more truth to that tale than not.
In the fading, grey miasma of the day, the abbey was a flickering nest of fireflies as torches, lanterns and bonfires were lit. He wondered if the inhabitants thought that firelight would be enough to keep back the host he had arrayed on the plains before La Maisontaal. ‘What do your spies tell you, Crowfiend?’ he asked, after a moment.
The vampire glanced down at one of the ghouls, who gave a warble and licked broken fangs in the parody of smile. The Crowfiend looked at Arkhan. ‘Much meat,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘Asking them to count is useless. Past one, it goes “many”, “much” and “most”. That’s as accurate as they get.’ He straightened in his saddle. ‘They’re keeping close to the walls and the torches, however. That much they could say. Plenty of weak points, jammed with frail, trembling meat, ready to be torn and squeezed dry of life.’ The Crowfiend smiled crookedly. ‘A better sort of battlefield than Couronne, I will say.’
‘If you must,’ Arkhan said. He looked at Anark. ‘You, vampire. Mannfred spoke of your military experience. Analyse and explain,’ he said.
The vampire grunted and shook himself. ‘Traditional Bretonnian tactics. A shieldwall of peasantry in front of artillery, knights on the flanks to crush the attack once it becomes hung up on the fodder.’ Anark lifted himself slightly in his saddle, and his brutal features slackened into something approaching consideration. ‘Trebuchets and archers. The bonfires mean fire-arrows,’ he added, his lip curling away from a fang.
‘What is fire to the dead?’ Kemmler asked, running his fingers through his tangled beard. ‘Let our army carry an inferno into the heart of their army, if that is the fate they choose.’
Arkhan ignored the necromancer. He let his gaze drift across the ragged ranks of his army. The vast majority of it was composed of the graveborn victims of war and plague. He disliked relying on such chattel – zombies were little more than ambulatory shields for better, more reliable troops. Unfortunately, he had precious few of the latter.
The Silent Legion stood ready for battle, clad in ancient armour and bearing weapons not seen since the height of the Nehekhara. He had seen to their resurrection from their essential salts upon his arrival on the fields before La Maisontaal Abbey, and Nagash’s nekric guard stood ready to wage war on the living once more.
Arrayed about the Silent Legion were the warbands Arkhan and Kemmler had dragged from their slumber in the Vaults. Composed of wights and skeletons, the warbands were possessed of a savage bloodlust second only to Krell’s, and without the sorcerous chains that compelled them to obey Arkhan, they would have already begun the attack.
Beyond them, and scattered before and around the host were the ghoul packs that had followed them from the borderlands and into the hills. A harsh winter and a bloody spring had added to their numbers, as villages throughout southern Bretonnia became little more than haunts for newly christened cannibal clans. Such pathetic beasts were drawn to the stench of necromancy like iron filings to a lodestone. Like the zombies, they were of little practical use, but Arkhan was confident that they could readily take blows meant for more valuable troops as easily as any staggering corpse.
And last – the Drakenhof Templars. The armoured vampires were eager for war, none more so than the brute Mannfred had named Grand Master. Anark met his gaze and looked away quickly. Was he nervous, Arkhan wondered, or bored? Neither would surprise him. That Anark intended treachery was almost certain. The creature was barely competent, save in military matters, and openly defied Arkhan at every opportunity, eliciting chortles from his fellow leeches. All save the Crowfiend, whom he seemed to despise even more than Arkhan.