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The End Times | The Return of Nagash – Extract

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PROLOGUE

Late summer 2522

The world was dead.

It simply didn’t know it yet.

That was the bare truth of it, and it pleased the one who considered it to no little end. Oh, there were things to be done yet, debts to be paid and webs to be spun or broken, but the weight of the inevitable had settled across the way and weft of the world. Time was running out, and the beast was all but bled white.

Long fingers – scholar’s fingers – stroked the murky surface of the blood that filled the ancient bronze bowl before him. The bowl was covered in the harsh, jagged script of a long-dead empire. It had once belonged to another scholar, who had come from a still-older empire even than the one that had produced the bowl. That scholar was dust now, like both of the empires in question: all three erased from the tapestry of history by hubris and treachery in equal measure. There were lessons there, for the man who had the wit to attend them, a voice that may or may not have been his own murmured in the back of his head. He shrugged the voice off, the way a horse might shrug off a stinging fly.

The scryer considered himself susceptible to neither arrogance nor foolishness. Were it any other moment, he might have admitted that it was the height of both to think oneself beyond either. As it was, he had other concerns. He ignored the soft susurrus of what might have been laughter that slithered beneath his thoughts with a surety that was the result of long experience, and bent over the bowl, murmuring the required words with the necessary intonation. The empire of Strigos might be dead, and Mourkain with it, but its language lived on in certain rituals and sorcerous rites.

The blood in the bowl stirred at the touch of the scryer’s fingertips, its surface undulating like the back of a cat seeking affection. Its opacity faded, and an image began to form, as though it were a shadow flickering across a stretched canvas. The images were of every time and no time, of things that had been, things that would be and of things that never were. The scryer desired to know of the calamitous events that afflicted the world, events whose reverberations were felt even in his tiny corner of the world. The world was dead, but with a voyeur’s eagerness, he wanted to see the killing blows.

The first image to be drawn from the depths of the bowl was of a twin-tailed comet, which blazed across the crawling canopy of the heavens, fracturing the weak barrier between the world of man and that which waited outside as it streaked along its pre-destined course. In its wake – madness.

A storm of Chaos swept across the world, spreading outwards from the poles to roll across the lands of men and other than men one by one. Daemons were born and died in moments, or tore their way through the membrane of the world to sow terror for days or weeks on end. There was no rhyme or reason to any of what followed; it was merely the crazed whims of the Dark Gods at work. The scryer watched it all with a cool, calculating eye, like a gamesman sizing up the opening move of an oft-played opponent.

In the cold, dark reaches of Naggaroth, the sound of drums set the ice shelves to shivering and caused avalanches in the lower valleys. A horde of northmen poured across the Ironfrost Glacier, and in their vanguard swooped down the elegant, crimson shape of Khorne’s best beloved. They smashed aside the great watchtowers, and the mighty hosts sent against them only stoked the fires of their fury. As Valkia exhorted her followers towards the obsidian walls of Naggarond itself, the scryer stirred the bowl’s contents, eager to see more.

The image shifted, and then expanded into great walls of pale stone, which thrust up from the green nest of the jungles of distant Lustria; here, scaly shapes warred with nightmares made flesh in the heart of the ruins of Xahutec. Elsewhere, the jungle was afire, and once great temple cities had been cast into ruin, as a continent heaved and burned.

Lustria’s death pyre flared up so brightly that the scryer winced and looked away. When he looked back at the bowl, the scene had changed. Red lightning lit the sky and strange mists spread down the slopes of the Annulii Mountains, bringing with them the raw power of Chaos unfettered. The land and its inhabitants became warped into new and terrible forms, all save the elves. The walls of reality wore thin and tore, and daemons flooded into Ulthuan. The forests of Chrace burned as the rivers of Cothique and Ellyrion became thick with virulent noxiousness, while in the heartland of the elven realms, the great cities of Tor Dynal and Elisia fell to the assaults of Chaos, rampaging daemons overwhelming their embattled defenders. As daemons scrambled in a capering, cackling riot towards a battle line of Sapherian Sword Masters, and elven magi drew upon every iota of power at their command to throw back their enemy, the image shattered like a reflection in a droplet of water, reforming into another scene of warfare.

Across the glades and valleys of Bretonnia, disgraced knights and covetous nobles flocked to the serpent banners of Mallobaude, illegitimate son of Louen Leoncouer, and would-be king of that divided land. The scryer watched as the nation over the mountains descended into fiery civil war, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw Mallobaude throw down his father at Quenelles with the aid of a skeletal figure clad in robes of crimson and black. A skull blazing with malignant power, with teeth as black as the night sky, tipped back and uttered a cackle of victory as Leoncouer was smashed to the ground, seemingly dead at his offspring’s hand. Arkhan the Black was in Bretonnia, and that fact alone tempted the scryer to try to see more. But the image was already dissolving and he let the temptation pass. There would be time later for such investigations.

A new picture rippled into view. In the deep, ice-cut valleys and towering heights of the mountain range known as the Vaults, the dwarf hold known to the scryer as Copper Mountain tottered beneath the assault of a tempest of blood-starved daemons. The legion that assailed the stunted inhabitants of the hold was so vast that the hold’s defences were all but useless. But as the dwarfs prepared to sell their lives in the name of defiance, if not victory, the daemonic storm dissipated as suddenly as it had gathered, leaving only blue skies and a battered shieldwall of astonished dwarfs in its wake. As the dwarfs began to collect their dead, the scene dissolved and a new one took its place at the scryer’s barest gesture.

The scryer chuckled mirthlessly as the next image wavered into being. Another mountain hold, but not one that belonged to the dwarfs. Not any more, at least. In the deep halls and opulently decorated black chambers of the Silver Pinnacle, the self-proclaimed queen of the world, Neferata, mother and mistress of the Lahmian bloodline, led her warriors, both dead and undead, in defence of her citadel. A horde of daemons, backed by hell-forged artillery, attacked from above and below, laying siege to the main gates of Neferata’s chosen eyrie, as well as surging up from its lower depths. But these daemons vanished as abruptly as those who had attacked Copper Mountain. The scryer frowned in annoyance. It would have been far better for his own designs for the mistress of the Silver Pinnacle to have fallen to the daemon-storm. He gestured again, almost petulantly.

What came next returned the smile to his face. The great city on the mount, Middenheim, reeled beneath the tender ministrations of the Maggot King and the Festival of Disease. Pox-scarred victims staggered through the streets, begging for mercy from Shallya and Ulric. The open sores that afflicted them wept a noisome pus and their bodies were thrown on the pyres that marked every square, still crying out uselessly to the gods. How Jerek would have cringed to see that, the scryer thought, as he laughed softly. The image wavered and changed.

His laughter continued as beneath the shadowed branches in the depths of Athel Loren, the great edifices known as the Vaults of Winter shattered, and a horde of cackling, daemonic filth was vomited forth into the sacred glades of Summerstrand. Ancient trees, including the Oak of Ages, cracked and split, expelling floods of maggots and flies, and the forest floor became coated in the stuff of decay. Desolate glades became rallying points for monstrous herds of beastmen, who poured into the depths of the forest, braying and squealing. Amused, the scryer waved a hand, dispelling the image.

His amusement faded as the blood rippled, revealing a scarred face, topped by a massive red crest of grease-stiffened hair. An axe flashed and a beastman reeled back, goatish features twisted in fear and agony. It fell, and the axe followed it, separating its malformed head from its thick neck. The wielder of the axe, a dwarf, kicked the head aside as he trudged on through the fire-blackened streets of a northern city, fallen to madness and ruin. The dwarf, one-eyed and mad, was familiar to the scryer from a past encounter of dubious memory. Snow swirled about the dwarf as he battled through the city, his rune axe encrusted with gore drawn from the bodies of beastmen, trolls, northern marauders and renegades, all of whom lay in heaps and piles in his wake. The scryer saw no sign of the doom-seeker’s human companion, and wondered idly if the man had died. The thought pleased him to no end.

The image billowed and spread as the dwarf trudged on, and the scryer was rewarded by the sight of the River Aver becoming as blood, a scarlet host of howling daemons bursting from its tainted waters en masse to sweep across Averland, burning and butchering every living thing in their path. As with the other daemonic incursions, the bloody host evaporated moments before they reached the walls of Averheim.

Averheim grew faint and bled into the dark bowers of the Drakwald. Trees were uprooted and hurled aside as a veritable fang of stone, taller than the tallest structure ever conceived by man, tore through the corrupted soil and speared towards the sky. The crown of the newborn monolith was wreathed in eldritch lightning. Similar malformed extrusions rose above the tree line of Arden Forest and the glacial fields of far Naggaroth, as well as in the Great Forest and the embattled glades of Athel Loren. Some wept flame, others sweated foulness, but all pulsed with a darkling energy. Beastmen gathered about them to conduct raucous rites, the worst of which caused even a man as hardened to cruelty as the scryer to grimace in repulsion. With a hiss of disgust, he dashed his fingers into the blood, banishing the activities of the beasts from sight and eliciting another image.

Nuln erupted into violence as crowds of baying fanatics and self-flagellating doomsayers filled the streets. The mansions of the wealthy were ransacked and unlucky nobles were hung or torn apart by the screaming crowd. Even the Countess von Liebwitz was dragged from her boudoir, amidst a storm of accusations ranging from adultery to sorcery. The scryer stabbed the swirling blood, dissolving the Countess’s screeching visage and replacing it with the snowy hinterlands of Kislev.

As with Naggaroth, Kislev shuddered beneath the tread of masses of northmen, all moving south. All lands west of Bolgasgrad were awash with daemons and barbarians. Along the River Lynik, the Ice Queen led her remaining warriors in a series of running battles with the invaders. As the Tsarina led her Ungol horsemen against the howling hordes, the scryer stirred the bowl, trying to ignore the murmur of the voice that pressed insistently against his awareness, demanding to be heard.

He was in Bretonnia again, as a figure clad in green armour hurled aside his helm, revealing the features of Gilles Le Breton, lost founder and king of that realm, now found and ready to reclaim his throne. The scryer laughed and wondered what Mallobaude and Arkhan would have to say about that.

He focused on the rippling blood, banishing images of the reborn king, and saw the armies of Ostermark, Talabecland and Hochland clash with a ragged host marching under the banner of the sorcerous monstrosity known as Vilitch the Curseling in the fields and siege ditches before the battlements of Castle von Rauken. Aldebrand Ludenhof, Elector Count of Hochland, mounted the ramparts of the besieged castle and put a long rifle bullet into one of the Curseling’s skulls, forcing the creature to retreat and scattering its host.

The scryer waved a hand. The images were coming faster now, some of them appearing and vanishing before he could properly observe them. His skull ached with the frequency and intensity of the scenes playing out in the bowl.

The hordes of the Northern Wastes did not merely assault the south and west. They went east as well, hurling themselves at the Great Bastion in their thousands. Khazags, Kul and Kurgan mustered daemon engines, and dozens of warlords and chieftains led their warriors against the defences of the Bastion. The smoke of the resulting destruction could be seen as far south as the Border Princes. The image wavered and faded before the scryer could see whether the Bastion had fallen.

In the desiccated deserts of the south, the unbound dead of a long-gone empire readied themselves for invasion, and the chariots of the tomb kings rolled westward, towards the caliphates of Araby. The dwarfs sealed their holds or mobilised for war as the foundations of the world shuddered and long-dormant volcanoes rumbled, belching smoke. In the Badlands, the numberless hordes of greenskins gathered and surged towards the civilised lands as one, as if in response to some unspoken signal. The ogre tribes too were on the march, bulbous bellies rumbling. In the roots of the world, the clans of the skaven scurried upwards, attacking the unprepared nations of Estalia and Tilea in such unprecedented numbers that even the scryer was slightly dumbfounded. City after city fell, and the tattered clan banners of the Under-Empire rose over the lands that had once belonged to men.

Perturbed, he swept out a hand, stirring the blood without touching it. A familiar sight, this one, and his lips peeled back from his teeth in a triumphant snarl. An old man, clad in the robes and armour of the Grand Theogonist of the Empire, wrestled against a dark shape, cloaked in shadow. The shape twisted, becoming first a man – aquiline, noble and yet feral, with eyes like crimson pits and a mouthful of fangs – then swelling to a giant, clad in armour such as no man had ever worn, wreathed in eerie green flame. The giant’s features were fleshless, and its head was a skull bound in black iron and bronze. Skeletal jaws opened wide, bone stretching and billowing impossibly as the giant thrust the struggling shape of the old man between its jaws and swallowed him whole.

The scryer dismissed the image quickly, before the eyes of that giant could turn towards him. Something chuckled and spoke, just out of earshot. He ignored it, and concentrated on the next image as it began to form in the swirling blood. The bowl began to shake slightly, as if it were being rocked by the weight of the pictures rising up out of it.

The scryer hissed in recognition as the world’s northern pole, where the membrane between worlds was nonexistent, came into view. Daemons beyond measure were assembled there, divided into four mighty hosts of damnation such as had once sought to envelop the world in aeons past. The scryer cursed loudly and virulently, his composure momentarily shaken. What he was seeing was the merest spear-point of an invasion force, a host of such magnitude that only the raw unreality of the Chaos Wastes could contain the sheer number of daemons gathered. From amid the numberless hordes came four exalted daemons – those creatures highest in the esteem of the Dark Gods.

One by one, each of the four sank down to one knee before a figure that was tiny by comparison. The latter was clad in heavy armour, and cloaked in thick furs, its features hidden beneath a horned helm. The helm turned, and eyes that blazed with a radiance at once malignant and divine met those of the scryer, across the vast stretch of time and space that separated them. The blood in the bowl began to bubble and smoke. A will more than equal to his own beat down suddenly against the scryer like a hammer-blow. A voice like seven thunders reverberated through his skull and said, ‘Rejoice, for the hour of my glory fast approaches.’

The bowl shattered. What was left of the blood slopped across the scryer’s hands and splattered on the stone floor. Snuffling, grey-skinned, hairless shapes, wearing the filthy remnants of what had once been fine clothing, crawled across the floor, splotched tongues licking at the spilled blood with eager whimpers. The degenerate creatures were all that remained of the once proud family that had, in better times, called Castle Sternieste its home. Now, they wore the miscellany of ancestral finery, smeared with grime and foulness, as they capered and gibbered in debased mockeries of courtly dances for their master’s amusement, or raided the tombs of their ancestors for sustenance.

Mannfred von Carstein sucked the blood from his fingers as he considered the remains of the bowl speculatively. He glanced up at the body whose blood he’d carefully drained to fill it; the corpse was clad in the robes of an acolyte of one of the great Colleges of Magic – the Light College, Mannfred knew, by their colour. He’d opened the boy’s throat with his own fingers and strung him up by his feet from one of the ancient timbers above, so that the dregs of his life would drain into the bowl. There were few ingredients more effective for such sorceries than the blood of a magic user. The ghouls looked up at him expectantly, whining with eagerness. He gestured and, as one, they gave a ribald howl and began leaping and tearing at the body, like hounds at the feet of a man on the gallows. With a sniff, Mannfred pulled his cloak tight about himself and left the chamber, and its contents, to his ghoulish courtiers.

Well, wasn’t that informative? The world writhes, caught in a storm partially of your making, and where are you? The voice he’d heard as he watched the images in the bowl, the voice he’d heard for more centuries than he cared to contemplate, spoke with mild disdain. Mannfred shook his head, trying to ignore it. A shadow passed across his vision, and something that might have been a face, or perhaps a skull, swam to the surface of his mind and then vanished before he could focus on it. Where are you, then? You should be out there, taking advantage of the situation. But you can’t, can you?

‘Shut up,’ Mannfred growled.

Konrad talked to himself as well. As his habits went, that was probably the least objectionable, but still… We know how he ended up, don’t we?

Mannfred didn’t reply this time. The voice was right, of course. It was always right, curse it. Laughter echoed through his head and he bit back a snarl. He wasn’t going mad. He knew this, because madness was for the foolish or the weak of mind, and he was anything but either. After all, could a madman have accomplished what he had, and in so short a time?

For centuries he had yearned to free Sylvania, which was his by both right of blood and conquest, from the yoke of the Empire. And, after the work of many lifetimes, he had accomplished just that. The air now reeked of dark enchantments and an unholy miasma had settled over everything within the province’s borders. He strode out onto the parapet and looked out towards the border with Stirland, where a massive escarpment of bone now towered over Sylvania’s boundaries. The wall encircled his domain, making it over into a sprawling fortress-state. The wall that would protect his land from the doom that waited to envelop the world was the result of generations of preparation. It had required the blood of nine very special individuals – individuals who even now enjoyed his hospitality – to create, and getting them all in one place had been an undertaking of decades. He’d done it, however, and once he’d had them, Sylvania was his and his alone.

So speaks the tiger in his cage, the voice whispered, mockingly. Again, it was correct. His wall, mighty as it was, was not the only one ringing his fiefdom. ‘Gelt,’ he muttered. The name of the Arch-Alchemist and current Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic had become one of Mannfred’s favoured curses in the months since the caging of Sylvania. While Mannfred had battled an invasion force led by Volkmar the Grim, the Grand Theogonist, and enacted his own stratagem, Gelt had been working furiously to enact a ritual the equal of Mannfred’s own. Or so Mannfred’s spies had assured him.

Mannfred frowned. Even from here, he could feel the spiritual weight of the holy objects that caged his land. In the months preceding his notice of secession from the broken corpse that was Karl Franz’s empire, he’d sent the teeming ghoul-packs that congregated about Castle Sternieste to strip every Sylvanian temple, shrine and burial ground of what holy symbols yet remained in the province. He’d ordered the symbols buried deep in unhallowed graves and cursed ground, so that their pestiferous sanctity would not trouble his newborn paradise.

Or such had been his intent. Instead, Gelt had somehow managed to turn those buried symbols into a wall of pure faith. Any undead, be they vampire, ghost or lowly zombie, that tried to cross it was instantly obliterated, as several of his vampire servants had discovered to their cost. Mannfred was forced to admit that the resulting explosions had been quite impressive. He couldn’t help but admire the raw power of Gelt’s wall. It was a devious thing, too, and only worked in one direction. The undead could enter Sylvania, but they could not leave. It was the perfect trap. Mannfred fully intended to congratulate Gelt on his cunning, just before he killed him.

In the months since he’d destroyed Volkmar’s army, Mannfred had pored over every book, tome, grimoire and papyrus scroll in his possession, seeking some way of countering Gelt’s working. Nothing he’d tried had worked. The wall of faith was somehow more subtle and far stronger than he’d expected a human mind to conceive of, and his continued failure gnawed at him. He had wanted to isolate Sylvania, true – but on his own terms. To be penned like a wild beast was an affront that could not be borne.

But Gelt’s sorcerous cage wasn’t the only problem. Dark portals had opened in certain, long-hidden places within Sylvania, vomiting forth daemons by the score, and the distraction of putting paid to these incursions had eaten into his studies. After the last such invasion, Mannfred had resolved to find out what was going on in the rest of the world. The young acolyte of the Light College whom he’d used to fill his scrying bowl had been taken prisoner, along with a dozen others, including militiamen, knights and a few wayward priests, during Volkmar’s attempt to purge Sylvania.

Finding out that Sylvania wasn’t the only place afflicted by sudden daemonic sorties hadn’t quelled his growing misgivings. In fact, it had only heightened the pressure he felt to shatter Gelt’s wall and free Sylvania. The world was tottering on the lip of the grave and, amusing as it was to watch, Mannfred didn’t intend to go over with it. There were still things that needed doing. There were tools that he still required, and he had to be able to cross his own borders to get them.

Tools for what, boy? the voice asked. No, not ‘the voice’. It was pointless to deny it. It was Vlad’s voice. Mannfred leaned over the parapet, bracing himself on the stone, his eyes closed. Even now, even centuries after the fact, the shadow of the great and terrible Vlad von Carstein hung over Mannfred and all of his works. Vlad’s name was still whispered in the dark places and burying grounds, by the living and the dead alike. He had etched his name into the flesh of the world, and the scar remained livid even after all this time. It galled Mannfred to no end, and even the joy he’d once taken from his part in his primogenitor’s downfall had faded, lost to the gnawing anger he felt still.

He’d hated Vlad, and loved him; respected him and been contemptuous of him. And he’d tried to save him, though he’d engineered his obliteration. Now, for his sins, he was haunted by Vlad’s voice. It had started the moment he had begun his great work, as if Vlad were watching over his shoulder, and only grown stronger in the months that followed. He’d been able to ignore it at first, to dismiss the shadows that crept at the corner of his eye and the constant murmur of a voice just out of earshot. But now, when he least needed the distraction, there it was. There he was.

Do you still think that the design of the web you weave is yours, my son? Vlad hissed. Mannfred could see his sire’s face on the periphery of his vision, so much like his own. Can you feel it, boy? The weight of destiny sits on you – but not yours. As if to lend weight to the thought, Mannfred caught sight of his shadow; only it wasn’t his – it was something larger, and a thousand times more terrible than any vampire, lord of Sylvania or otherwise. Something that flickered with witch-fire and seemed to stretch out a long arm towards him, seeking to devour him. You speak of tools, but what are you, eh? Vlad purred. Who is that who rides you through the gates of the world?

‘Quiet,’ Mannfred snarled. The stone of the parapet crumbled in his grip. ‘Go back to whatever privy hole your remains were thrown in, old man.’ Without waiting for the inevitable reply, Mannfred drew his cloak about him and turned to go, not quite fleeing the voices and shadows that taunted him, but moving swiftly all the same.

He made his way through the half-ruined corridors to the great open chamber that crouched at the top of the southernmost tower of the castle. Once, it had been a meeting room for the Order of Drakenhof, a brotherhood of Templars devoted to eradicating the evil that they believed had corrupted Sylvania. Vlad had taken great pleasure in hunting them over the course of long centuries, Mannfred recalled. Every few hundred years, the knights of the order stirred in their graves, reforming and returning to their old haunts. The definition of insanity, Mannfred had heard, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If that was the case, then the Drakenhof Templars had been quite mad.

While Vlad had been content to play with them, as a cat plays with mice, Mannfred had little patience for such drawn-out displays of cruelty. They served no purpose, and to have such a thorn work its way into his side every few decades was an annoyance he felt no need to suffer through. When he had returned to Sylvania in the wake of Konrad’s disastrous reign, he had immediately sought out every hold, fortress and komturei of the order and wiped them out root and branch. He had wiped out entire families, butchering the oldest members to the youngest, and leaving their bodies dangling from gibbets about the border of Sylvania as a warning to others. He had made a point – unlike Vlad or Konrad, Mannfred would not tolerate dissent. He would not tolerate enemies on his soil, worthy or otherwise. After the last knight had gasped out his final breath in a muddy ditch south of Kleiberstorf, he had reformed the order and turned it over to those of his creatures that found pleasure in parodying the traditions of knighthood.

Where once men had met to discuss the cleansing of Sylvania, Mannfred now stored the tools of his eventual, inevitable triumph, both living and otherwise. A ghoul clad in the remains of a militiaman’s armour and livery crouched near the entrance to the chamber, leaning against a gisarme that had seen better years. The ghoul jerked in fright as Mannfred approached and yowled as he gestured sharply. It scrambled towards the heavy wooden door to open it for him. As it heaved upon it and turned, something hurtled out of the chamber beyond and caught the ghoul in the back of the head with a sickening crunch.

The ghoul flopped down, its rusty armour rattling as it hit the floor. The chunk of stone had been thrown hard enough to shatter the cannibal’s skull and Mannfred flipped a bit of brain matter off the toe of his boot, his mouth twisting in a moue of annoyance. ‘Are you finished?’ he asked loudly. ‘I can come back later, if you’d prefer.’

There was only silence from within the chamber. Mannfred sighed and stepped through the aperture. The room beyond was circular and large. It stank of rain, fire, blood and ghouls, as most of the castle did these days. But unlike the rest of the castle, the stones of this chamber thrummed with a heady power that was just this side of intoxicating for Mannfred. It was the one place that he was free from Vlad’s voice and the lurking shadows that dogged his steps.

The room was lit by a profusion of candles, made from human fat and thrust into the nooks and crannies of the walls and floor. The latter was intercut by gilded grooves, which formed a rough outline of Sylvania, and a semicircle of heavy stone lecterns, each carved in the shape of a daemon’s claw, lined the northernmost border of the province. Giant grimoires, bound in chains, sat on several of the lecterns, their pages rustling with a sound like the whispers of ghosts.

At the heart of the chamber sat a plinth, upon which was a cushion of human skin and hair. And resting on the cushion was the iron shape of the Crown of Sorcery. To Mannfred’s eyes, it pulsed like a dark beacon, and he felt the old, familiar urge to place it on his head stir within the swamps of his soul like some great saurian. The crown radiated a malevolent pressure upon him, even now, and even as quiescent as it was. There was an air of contentment about it at the moment, and for that he was grateful. He knew well what monstrous intelligence waited within the crown’s oddly angled shape, and he had no desire to pit his will against that hideous sentience. Not now, not until he’d taken the proper precautions. He’d worn it, briefly, on his return from Vargravia, and that had been enough to assure him that it was more dangerous than it looked.

He was so caught up in his study of the crown that he didn’t turn as another rock surged towards his head. He caught the missile without looking and crushed it. He held up his hand and let the crumbled remains dribble through his fingers. ‘Stop it,’ he said. He looked at the walls behind the barrier of lecterns, where his nine prisoners hung shackled. Except that there were only seven of them. Two were missing.

Mannfred heard a scrape of metal on stone and whirled. A man clad in once-golden but now grime-caked and dented armour, decorated with proud reliefs of the war goddess Myrmidia, lunged for him, whirling a chain. Snarling Tilean oaths, the Templar of the Order of the Blazing Sun swung his makeshift weapon at Mannfred’s face. The vampire jerked back instinctively, and was almost smashed from his feet by the descending weight of a heavy stone lectern in the shape of a daemon’s claw, wielded by a brute clad in furs and a battered breastplate bearing a rampant wolf – the sigil of Ulric.

Mannfred backhanded the Ulrican off his feet with one hand and snagged the loop of the Myrmidian’s chain with the other. He jerked the knight towards him and wrapped the links of the chain about his neck. He kicked the knight’s legs out from under him and then planted his foot between the man’s shoulder blades. Wrapping the chains about his wrist, he hauled upwards, strangling the man.

The Ulrican gave a bellicose roar and staggered towards him. Burly arms snapped tight around Mannfred’s chest. He threw his head back and was rewarded by a crunch of bone, and a howl of pain. Mannfred drove his foot into the back of the knight’s head, driving him face-first into the stone floor and rendering him unconscious. Then he turned to deal with the Ulrican.

The big man staggered forwards, blood streaming from his shattered nose. His eyes blazed with a berserk rage and he roared as he hurled himself at Mannfred. Mannfred caught him by the throat and hoisted him into the air. The man pounded uselessly on the vampire’s arm, as Mannfred slowly choked him comatose. He let the limp body fall to the floor and turned to face the other seven inhabitants of the chamber. ‘Well, that was fun. Anyone else?’

Seven pairs of eyes glared at him. If looks could kill, Mannfred knew that he would have been only so much ash on the wind. He met their gazes, until all but one had looked away. Satisfied, he smirked and looked up at the shattered dome of the tower above, where fire-blackened support timbers crossed over one another like the threads of a spider’s web. He could see the dark sky and stars above, through the gaps in the roof. He whistled piercingly, and massive, hunched forms began to clamber into view from among the nest of wood and stone.

There were two of the beasts, and both were hideous amalgamations of ape, wolf and bat. Mannfred had heard it said that the vargheist was the true face of the vampire, shorn of all pretence of humanity. These two were collectively known as the Swartzhafen Devils, which was as good a name as such beasts deserved. One of the creatures clutched something red and wet in its talons and gnawed on it idly as it watched him. He had given the beasts orders not to interfere with any escape attempts on the part of the captives.

Mannfred claimed the body of the ghoul and dragged it into the room by an ankle. The vargheists were suddenly alert, their eyes glittering with hunger. He rolled the body into the centre of the outline of Sylvania and stepped back. The vargheists fell upon the dead cannibal with ravenous cries. The captives looked away in disgust or fear. Mannfred smiled and set about rebinding the two men. That they’d escaped at all was impressive, but it wasn’t the first time they’d tried it, and it wouldn’t be the last. He wanted them to try and fail, and try again, until their courage and will had been worn down to a despairing nub.

Then, and only then, would they be fit for his purpose.

His eyes flickered to the lone nonhuman among his captives. The elven princess did not meet his gaze, though he did not think it was out of fear, but rather disdain. A flicker of annoyance swept through him, but he restrained the urge to discipline her. Instead, he moved towards the prize of the lot, at least in his eyes.

‘Bad dreams, old man?’ Mannfred said, looking down at Volkmar, Grand Theogonist of the Empire. He sank down to his haunches beside the old man. ‘You should thank me, you know. All of you,’ he said, looking about the cell. ‘The world as you knew it is giving way to something new. And something wholly unpleasant. Outside of Sylvania’s borders, madness and entropy reign. Only here does order prevail. But don’t worry, soon enough, with your help, I shall sweep the world clean, and all will be as it was. I shall make it a paradise.’

‘A paradise,’ Volkmar rasped. The old man met Mannfred’s red gaze without hesitation. Battered and beaten as he was, he was not yet broken, Mannfred knew. ‘Is that what you call it?’ Volkmar shifted his weight, causing his manacles to rattle. The old man looked as if he wanted nothing more than to lunge barehanded at his captor. A wound on his head, a gift from one of the vargheists, was leaking blood and pus, and the old man’s face was stained with both. Mannfred could smell the sickness creeping into the Grand Theogonist, weakening him even further, despite the holy power that was keeping him on his feet.

‘I didn’t say for whom it would be such, now, did I?’ Mannfred said. He rose smoothly and pulled his cloak about him. He looked down at Volkmar with a cruel smile. ‘Don’t worry, old man… When I consummate my new world, neither you nor your friends will be here to see it.’

ONE

Stirland-Sylvania border

The world was dying.

It had been dying for a very long time, according to some. But Erikan Crowfiend, in his long trek from the battlefield of Couronne, had come to the conclusion that it was finally on its last legs. There was smoke from a million funeral pyres on the wind, not just in Bretonnia but in the Empire as well, and the stink of poison and rot was laid over everything. In the villages and wayplaces, men and women whispered stories of two-headed calves that mewled like infants, of birds that sang strange dirges as they circled in the air, and of things creeping through the dark streets that had once kept to the forests and hills.

Beasts and greenskins ran riot, carving red trails through the outskirts of civilisation as nightmare shapes swam down from the idiot stars to raven and roar through the heart of man’s world. Great cities reeled from these sudden, unpredictable assaults, and the great gates of Altdorf, Middenheim and Nuln were barred and bolstered, almost as if it were intended that they never be opened again.

Erikan had seen it all, albeit at a remove. He had been forced to fight more than once since crossing the Grey Mountains, and not just with beasts or orcs. Men as well, and worse than men. Then, Erikan wasn’t exactly a man himself. He hadn’t been for some time.

Erikan Crowfiend’s heart had stopped beating almost a century ago to the day, and he had not once missed its rhythm. He moved only by night, for the sun blistered him worse than any fire. His breath reeked of the butcher’s block and he could hear a woman’s pulse from leagues away. He could shatter stone and bone as easily as a child might tear apart a dried leaf. He never grew tired, suffered from illness or felt fear. And under different circumstances, he would have been happy to indulge his baser instincts as the land drowned in madness. He was a monster after all, and it was a season for monsters, from what little he’d seen.

But he was no longer the captain of his own destiny, and hadn’t been since the night a pale woman had taken him in her arms and made him something both greater and lesser than the necromancer’s apprentice he had been. So he moved ever eastwards, following a darkling pull that urged him on, across beast-held mountains and over burning fields, and through forests where the trees whimpered like beaten dogs and clawed at him with twisted branches.

Above him, a swarm of bats crossed the surface of the moon, heading the gods alone knew where. Erikan suspected that they were going the same place he was. The thought provided no comfort. The call had come, and he, like the bats, had no choice but to obey.

‘Erikan?’ a wheezing, slurred voice asked, interrupting his reverie.

‘Yes, Obald,’ Erikan said, with a sigh.

‘It could just be the alcohol talking, or it could be the constant seepage from these inexpertly, if affectionately, placed poultices of yours making me light-headed, but I do believe that I’m dying,’ said Obald Bone, the Bone-Father of Brionne. He took another swig from the mostly empty bottle of wine he held in one bandaged claw. The necromancer was a wizened thing, all leather and bone, wrapped in mouldering furs and travel leathers that, to Erikan’s knowledge, had never been washed. Obald lay in a travois made from the stretched hide and bones of dead men, constructed by equal parts sorcery and brute strength. He blinked and forced himself up onto one elbow. ‘Where are we?’

‘Just about to cross the border into Sylvania, Obald,’ Erikan said. He was hauling the travois behind him on foot, its straps of dried flesh and stiffened gut lashed about his battered and grime-encrusted cuirass. Their horse had come down with a bad case of being digested by something large and hungry that even Erikan had been hard-pressed to see off. He didn’t know what it was, but he hadn’t felt like sticking around to find out. Monsters once confined to the edges of the map were now wandering freely, and setting upon any who came within reach, edible or not. ‘And you’re not dying.’

‘I hate to be contrary, but I am a master of the necromantic arts, and I think I know a little something about death, imminent, personal or otherwise,’ Obald slurred. His travois was cushioned with empty bottles, and he reeked of gangrene and alcohol. He’d been getting steadily worse since Erikan had extracted the arrow that had taken him in the belly in the last moments of the battle for Couronne, just before the Green Knight had struck off Mallobaude’s head.

For the first few weeks, Obald had seemed fine, if in pain, but the wound wasn’t healing, and they weren’t the sort whom the priestesses of Shallya normally welcomed. Obald had survived worse in his time, but it was as if he, like the world, were winding down.

Obald sank back down onto the travois, dislodging several bottles. ‘Did I ever tell you that I’m from Brionne, Erikan? Good pig country that.’

‘Yes,’ Erikan said.

‘I was a pig farmer, like my father and his father before him. Pigs, Erikan – you can’t go wrong with a pig farm.’ Obald reached out and swatted weakly at the sword sheathed on Erikan’s hip. ‘Blasted Templar blade. Why do you still carry that thing?’

‘I’m a Templar. Templars carry Templar blades, Obald,’ Erikan said.

‘You’re not a Templar, you’re my apprentice. It’s not even a proper sword. Hasn’t even got a curse on it,’ Obald grumbled.

‘But it’s sharp and long, and good at cutting things,’ Erikan replied. He hadn’t been Obald’s apprentice since he’d been given the blood-kiss and inducted into the aristocracy of the night. He smiled at the thought. In truth, there was very little aristocratic about hiding in unmarked graves and devouring unlucky peasants.

‘Where’s my barrow-blade? I want you to have my barrow-blade,’ Obald said muzzily.

‘Your barrow-blade is still in the body of that fellow whose horse we stole,’ Erikan said. The flight from Couronne had been as bloody as the battle itself. When the Serpent had fallen, his forces, both the living and the dead, had collapsed in an utter rout. Obald had had an arrow in the belly by then, and Erikan had been forced to hack them a path to freedom as the dead crumbled around them.

‘Ha! Yes,’ Obald cackled wetly. ‘The look on his poxy, inbred face was priceless – thought that armour would save him, didn’t he? Oh no, my lad. A dead man’s sword will cut anything, even fancy armour.’ He rocked back and forth in the travois, until his laughter became strangled coughing.

‘So you taught me,’ Erikan said.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ Obald hiccupped. ‘You were my best student, Erikan. It’s a shame that you had to go and get mauled by that von Carstein witch.’

‘She’s not a witch, Obald.’

‘Trollop then,’ Obald snapped. ‘She’s a tart, Erikan.’ He belched. ‘I could do with a tart about now. One of those fancy ones from Nuln.’

‘Are we still talking about women?’ Erikan asked.

‘They put jam – real jam – right in the pastry. Not sawdust and beef dripping, like the ones in Altdorf,’ Obald said, gesticulating for emphasis.

‘Right, yes,’ Erikan said. He shook his head. ‘I’m sure we can find you a tart in Sylvania, Obald.’

‘No no, just leave me here to die, Erikan. I’ll be fine,’ Obald said. ‘For a man who wears as many bones as I do, I am oddly comfortable with notions of mortality.’ He upended the bottle he held, splashing much of its contents on his face and ratty beard. ‘Bones, bone, Bone-Father. I can’t believe you let me call myself that. Bone-Father… What does that even mean? The other necromancers were probably laughing at me.’

He was silent for a moment, and Erikan half hoped he’d fallen asleep. Then, Obald grunted and said, ‘We showed them what for though, didn’t we, Erikan? Those blasted nobles and their treacherous Lady.’ Obald and a handful of other necromancers had flocked to Mallobaude’s serpent banner after the dukes of Carcassonne, Lyonesse and Artois had declared for King Louen’s bastard offspring, and they’d raised legions of the dead to march beside the Serpent’s army of disgraced knights. But Obald and his fellows had been a sideshow compared to the real power behind Mallobaude’s illegitimate throne – the ancient liche known as Arkhan the Black.

Why Arkhan had chosen to aid Mallobaude, Erikan couldn’t say. He had his reasons, just as Obald and Erikan did, the latter supposed. And with the liche on their side, Bretonnia was brought to its knees. At the Battle of Quenelles, Erikan had had the pleasure of seeing the Serpent cast his father’s broken body into the mud. The southern provinces had fallen one by one after King Louen’s death, until the Serpent had cast his gaze north, to Couronne.

It had all gone wrong then. Mallobaude had lost his head, Arkhan had vanished, and…

‘We lost,’ Erikan said.

Obald gave a raspy chuckle. ‘We always lose, Erikan. That’s the way of it. There are no winners, save for death and the Dark Gods. I taught you that too.’

Erikan hissed in annoyance. ‘You taught me a lot, old man. And you’ll live to teach me more, if you stop straining yourself.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Obald coughed. ‘You can smell it on me. I know you can, boy. I’m done for. A longbow is a great equaliser on the battlefield. I’ve only survived this long out of nastiness. But I’m tired now, and I’m all out of spite.’ He coughed again, and Erikan caught the whiff of fresh blood. Obald doubled over in the travois, hacking and choking. Erikan stopped and tore himself loose from the travois. He sank down beside his old mentor and laid a hand on his quivering back.

Obald had always looked old, but now he looked weak and decrepit. Erikan knew that the old man was right. The arrow that had felled him had done too much damage to his insides. That he had survived the journey over the Grey Mountains and into the provinces of the Empire was due more to stubbornness than anything else. By the time they’d reached Stirland, he’d been unable to ride, and barely able to sit upright. He was dying, and there was nothing Erikan could do.

No, that wasn’t true. There was one thing. He lifted his wrist to his lips. He opened his mouth, exposing long, curved fangs and readied himself to plunge them into his wrist.

He paused when he saw that Obald was watching him. Blood and spittle clung like pearlescent webs to the old man’s beard. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of rotting teeth. Obald patted him on the cheek. ‘No need to bloody yourself, Erikan. My old carcass wouldn’t survive it, anyway.’

Erikan lowered his arm. Obald lay back on the travois. ‘You were a good friend, Erikan. For a ravenous, untrustworthy nocturnal fiend, I mean,’ the necromancer wheezed. ‘But as the rain enters the soil, and the river enters the sea, so do all things come to their final end.’

‘Strigany proverbs,’ Erikan muttered. ‘Now I know that you’re dying.’ He sat back on his heels and watched the last link to his mortal life struggle for breath. ‘You don’t have to, you know. You’re just being stubborn and spiteful.’

‘I’ve been stubborn and spiteful my whole sorry life, boy,’ Obald croaked. ‘I’ve fought and raged and run for more years than you. I saw Kemmler’s rise and fall, I saw Mousillon in all of its pox-ridden glory and I visited the secret ruins of Morgheim, where the Strigoi dance and howl.’ The old man’s eyes went vacant. ‘I fought and fought and fought, and now I think maybe I am done fighting.’ His trembling, wrinkled fingers found Erikan’s wrist. ‘That’s the smart choice, I think, given what’s coming.’ His glazed eyes sought out Erikan’s face. ‘Always get out before the rush, that’s my advice.’ His voice was barely a whisper. Erikan leaned close.

‘I miss my pigs,’ Obald said. Then, with a soft grunt, his face went slack, and whatever dark force had inhabited him fled into the crawling sky above. Erikan stared down at him. He’d been hoping that the old man would make it to Sylvania. After leaving Couronne, they’d learned that the other survivors were going there, drawn by some bleak impetus to travel across the mountains. There were stories of walls of bone and an independent state of the dead, ruled by the aristocracy of the night. They’d even heard a rumour that Arkhan’s forces were heading that way.

It was the beginning of something, Erikan thought. Obald had mocked the idea, in between coughing fits, but Erikan could feel it in the black, sour hollow of his bones. There was smoke on the air and blood in the water, and the wind carried the promise of death. It was everything he’d dreamed of, since his parents had gone screaming to the flames, the taste of corpses still on their tongues. He’d seen a spark of it when Obald had rescued him then, flaying his captors with dark magics. In those black flames, which had stripped meat from bone as easily as a butcher’s knife, Erikan had seen the ruination of all things. The end of all pain and hunger and strife.

And now, that dream was coming true: the world was dying, and Erikan Crowfiend intended to be in at the end. But, he’d been hoping that Obald would be by his side. Didn’t the old man deserve that much, at least? Instead, he was just another corpse.

At least he was free, while Erikan was still a captive of the world.

Erikan carelessly pried the old man’s fingers off his wrist and stood. He dropped his hand to the pommel of his blade and said, casually, ‘He’s dead.’

‘I know,’ a woman’s voice replied. ‘He should have died years ago. He would have, if you hadn’t been wasting your time keeping his wrinkled old cadaver from getting the chop.’

‘He raised me. He took me in, when anyone else would have burned me with the rest of my kin, for the crime of survival,’ Erikan said. His hand tightened on the hilt of his blade and he drew it smoothly as he whirled to face the newcomer. ‘He helped me become the man I am today.’

In the sickly light of the moon, her pale flesh seemed to glow with an eerie radiance. She wore baroque black armour edged in gold over red silk. The hue of the silk matched her fiery tresses, which had been piled atop her head in a style three centuries out of fashion. Eyes like agates met his own as she reached out and gently pushed aside his sword. ‘I rather thought that I had some part in that as well, Erikan.’

He lowered his sword. ‘Why are you here, Elize?’

‘For the same reason as you, I imagine.’

Erikan stabbed his blade down into the loamy earth and set his palms on the crosspiece. ‘Sylvania,’ he said, simply.

Elize von Carstein inclined her head. A crimson tress slipped free of the mass atop her head and dangled in her face, until she blew it aside. He felt a rush of desire but forced it down. Those days were done and buried. ‘I felt the summons.’ She looked up at the moon. ‘The black bell of Sternieste is tolling and the Templars of the Order of Drakenhof are called to war.’

Erikan looked down at the pommel of his blade, and the red bat, rampant, that was carved there. It was the symbol of the von Carsteins, and of the Drakenhof Templars. He covered it with his hand. ‘And who are we going to war with?’

Elize smiled sadly and said, ‘Everyone. Come, I have an extra horse.’

‘Did you bring it for me?’

Elize didn’t answer. Erikan followed her. He left Obald’s body where it lay, to whatever fate awaited it. The old man’s cankerous spirit was gone. His body was just so much cooling meat now, and Erikan had long since lost his taste for such rancid leavings.

‘Are we all gathering, then?’ Erikan asked, as he followed her through the trees, towards a quiet copse where two black horses waited, red-eyed and impatiently pawing at the earth. Deathless, breathless and remorseless, the horses from the stables of Castle Drakenhof were unmatched by any steed in the known world, save possibly for the stallions of far Ulthuan. He took the bridle of the one she indicated and stroked it, murmuring wordlessly. He’d always had a way with beasts, even after he’d been reborn. He’d kept company with the great shaggy wolves that Obald had pulled from their forest graves, leading them on moonlit hunts. The day Obald had taught him how to call up the beasts himself was the closest he had ever come to true happiness, he thought.

‘All who still persist, and keep to their oath,’ Elize said. ‘I arrived with several of the others. We decided to journey together.’

‘Why?’ Erikan asked.

‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Elize asked, after a moment, as she climbed into her saddle. ‘Is it not meet that the inner circle do so? I saw your trail, and decided to see if you were interested in joining us. You are one of us, after all.’

‘I don’t recall you asking me whether I wished to be,’ he said, softly. Elize kicked her horse into motion and galloped away. Erikan hesitated, and then climbed up into his own saddle and set off after her. As he rode, he couldn’t help but muse that it had always been thus. Elize called and he came. He watched her ride, her slim form bent low over her mount’s neck, her armour glinting dully in the moonlight. She was beautiful and terrible and inexorable, like death given a woman’s shape. There were worse ways to spend eternity, he supposed.

She led him into the high barrows and scrub trees that populated the hills and valleys west of the border with Stirland. Ruins of all sorts dotted the area, the legacy of centuries of warfare. Shattered windmills and slumping manses towered over the gutted remains of border forts and isolated farmsteads. Some were more recent than others, but all had suffered the same fate. This was the no-man’s-land between the provinces of the living and the dead, and nothing of the former survived here for long.

As they left the trees and the fog that had clung to them, he hauled back on the reins of his horse, startled by the sight of the distant edifice of bone, which rose high up into the sky, towering over the area. It was far larger than the rumours he’d heard had intimated. It was less fortress rampart than newborn mountain range. Only the largest of giants would have had a chance of clambering over it. ‘Nagash’s teeth,’ he hissed. ‘I’d heard he’d done it, but I never expected it to be true.’ The sense of finality he’d had before, of endings and final days, came back stronger than ever. Sylvania had always seemed unchanging. A gangrenous wound that never healed, but never grew any worse. But now, now it was finally ready to kill. He wanted to laugh and howl at the same time, but he restrained himself.

‘Yes,’ Elize said, over her shoulder. ‘Mannfred has seceded from the Empire. Our time for hiding in the shadows is done.’ The way she said it made him wonder if she were entirely happy about it. Most of their kind were conservative by nature. Immortality brought with it a fear of change, and a need to force the world to remain in place. Erikan had never felt that way. When you were born in squalor and raised amid corpses, a bit of change was not unwelcome.

Erikan urged his horse on. ‘No wonder the bells have been sounded. If he’s done all of this, he’s going to need as many of us as he can get.’ The thought wasn’t a comforting one. Vampires could, by and large, get along, if there was a reason. But the inevitable infighting and challenges for status that would result were going to be tedious, if not downright lethal.

Elize didn’t reply. They rode on through the night, galloping hard, the endurance of their steeds never faltering. More than once, Erikan saw distant campfires and smelt the blood of men. The armies of the Empire were on the move, but he could not tell in which direction they were going. Were they laying siege to Sylvania? Or were the rumours of another invasion from the north true? Was that why Mannfred had chosen now of all times to make such a bold statement of intent?

All of these thoughts rattled in his head as Elize led him towards one of the ruins close to the bone bastion. It was far from any of the campfires that dotted the darkness and had been a watch tower once, he thought. Now it was just crumbled stone, blackened by fire and covered in weeds and moss. He saw that three men waited inside, as he climbed down from his horse and led it to join the others where they were tied to a gibbet. Elize led Erikan into the ruin, and he nodded politely to the others as he ducked through the shattered archway. There was no light, save that of the moon, for they needed none.

‘What is he doing here?’ one of the men growled, one hand on the hilt of the heavy sword belted to his waist. Erikan kept his own hands well away from his blade.

‘The same as you, Anark,’ Erikan said, as Elize went to the other vampire’s side, and put her hand over his, as if to keep him from drawing his blade. Anark von Carstein was a big man, bigger than Erikan, built for war and clad in dark armour composed of serrated plates and swooping, sharp curves. The armour had seen its share of battle, to judge by the dents and scratches that marked it. Anark had been fighting in the Border Princes, the last Erikan had heard, leading an army of the dead on behalf of one petty warlord or another.

Elize leaned into Anark and whispered into his ear. He calmed visibly. She had always had a way with the other vampire, Erikan recalled. Then, much like Erikan himself, Anark was a protégé of the Doyenne of the Red Abbey, and had even been allowed to take the name of von Carstein, something Erikan would likely never achieve. Nor, in truth, did he wish to. He had his own name, and he was content with it. That, he thought, was why she had cooled to him, in the end. She had offered him her name, and he had refused. And so she had found another blood-son, lover and champion. And Erikan had left.

He looked away from them, and met the red gaze of the other von Carstein present. ‘Markos,’ Erikan said, nodding. Markos was hawk-faced and his hair had been greased back, making him resemble nothing so much as a stoat. Where Anark was a simple enough brute, Markos was more cunning. He had a gift for sorcery that few could match, and a tongue like an adder’s bite.

‘Crowfiend, I never thought to see you again,’ Markos said. ‘You know Count Nyktolos, I trust?’ He gestured to the other vampire, who, like Anark and Markos, was clad in a heavy suit of armour. Nyktolos wore a monocle, after the fashion of the Altdorf aristocracy, and his grin stretched from ear to ear, in an unpleasant fashion. Unlike Anark and Markos, his flesh was the colour of a bruised plum, flush with a recent feeding, or perhaps simply mottled by grave-rot. It happened to some of them, if the blood-kiss wasn’t delivered properly.

‘Count,’ Erikan said, bowing shallowly. He’d heard of the other vampire. He’d been a count of Vargravia once, before Konrad had stormed through, in the bad old days. Nyktolos smiled, revealing a mouthful of needle fangs, more than any self-respecting vampire needed, in Erikan’s opinion. If he was Konrad’s get, that and his odd hue were probably the least of his problems.

‘He’s polite. I like him already,’ Nyktolos croaked.

‘Don’t get too attached,’ Anark said. ‘He won’t be staying long. Erikan doesn’t have the stomach for war. A real war, I mean. Not one of those little skirmishes they have west of the Grey Mountains.’

Erikan met Anark’s flat, red gaze calmly. The other vampire was trying to bait him, as he always did. Just why Anark hated him so much, Erikan couldn’t really fathom. He was no threat to Anark. He tried to meet Elize’s eyes, but her attentions remained on her paramour. No, he thought, no matter how much he might wish otherwise, he posed no danger to Anark, in any regard. ‘I hope you weren’t waiting for me,’ he said to Markos, ignoring Anark.

‘No, we were waiting for– Ah! Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,’ Markos said, looking up. The air was filled with the rush of great wings, and a noisome odour flooded the ruin as something heavy struck its top. Rocks tumbled down, dislodged by the new arrival as he crawled down to join them, clinging to the ancient stones like a lizard. ‘You’re late, Alberacht,’ Markos called out.

The hairy body of the newcomer remained splayed across the stones above them for a moment, and then dropped down. Erikan stepped back as Alberacht Nictus rose to his full height. The creature, known in some quarters as the Reaper of Drakenhof, extended a hooked claw and caught Erikan gently by the back of his head. He didn’t resist as the monstrous vampire pulled him close. ‘Hello, boy,’ Alberacht rumbled. His face was human enough, if horribly stretched over a bumpy, malformed skull, but his bloated body was a hideous amalgamation of bat, ape and wolf. He wore little armour, and carried no weapon. Having seen him at work, Erikan knew he needed none. His long claws and powerful muscles made him as dangerous as any charging knight.

‘Master Nictus,’ Erikan said, not meeting the vampire’s bestial gaze. Alberacht was unpredictable, even for a vampire. He looked less human every time Erikan saw him. Sometimes he wondered if that was the fate that awaited him, down the long corridor of centuries. Some vampires remained as they were, frozen forever in their last moment. But others became drunk on slaughter and lost their hold on what little humanity remained to them.

‘Master, he says,’ Alberacht growled. His face twisted into a parody of a smile. ‘Such respect for this old warrior. You see how he respects me?’ The smile faded. ‘Why do the rest of you fail to follow suit?’ He turned his baleful gaze on the others. Bloody spittle oozed from his jowls as he champed his long fangs. ‘Am I not Grand Master of our order? Must I break you on discipline’s altar?’ The others backed off as Alberacht released Erikan and turned towards them. He half spread his leathery wings and his eyes glowed with a manic light. He stank of violence and madness, and Erikan drew well away. Alberacht was fully capable of killing any of them in his rage.

‘Not for centuries, old one,’ Elize said smoothly. ‘You remember, don’t you? You gave up your post and your burdens to Tomas.’ She reached out and stroked Alberacht’s hairy hide, the way one might seek to calm an agitated stallion. Erikan tensed. If Alberacht made to harm her, he would have to be quick. He saw Anark gripping his own blade, and the other vampire nodded tersely when he caught Erikan’s eye. Neither of them wanted to see Elize come to harm, however much they disliked one another.

‘Tomas?’ Alberacht grunted. He folded his wings. ‘Yes, Tomas. A good boy, for a von Carstein.’ He shook himself, like a sleeper awakening from a nightmare, and stroked Elize’s head, as a weary grandfather might stroke his grandchild. ‘I heard the bells.’

‘We all did, old beast,’ Markos said. ‘We are being called to Sternieste.’

‘Then why do we stand here?’ Alberacht asked. ‘The border is just there, mere steps from where we stand.’

‘Well, the giant bloody wall of bone for one,’ Count Nyktolos said, shifting his weight. ‘We’ll have to leave the horses.’

‘No, we won’t,’ Elize said. She looked at Markos and asked, ‘Cousin?’

‘Oh, it’s up to me, is it? Since when did you take charge?’ Markos asked. The flat gazes of Anark and Alberacht met his and he threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Right, yes, fine. I’ll get us in the old-fashioned way. Subtlety, thy name is Elize. Form an orderly queue, gentles all, and Erikan as well, of course. Let’s go home.’

TWO

Stirland-Sylvania border

Dawn was cresting the tops of the hills by the time they reached the foot of the bastion. As the red, watery light washed across the ridges of pale bone, Erikan sought some sign of an entrance, but he saw none as they galloped along its base. ‘How are we getting in there? There’s no gate,’ he shouted to Markos. The other vampire glanced at him over his shoulder and grinned.

‘Who needs a gate?’ Markos laughed. He jerked his reins, causing his horse to rear, and flung out a hand. Dark fire coruscated about his spread fingers for a moment as he roared out a few harsh syllables. A bolt of energy erupted from his palm and slammed into the bone bastion, cracking and splintering it. ‘Master Nictus, if you please!’

There was a shriek from above as Alberacht hurtled down, swooping towards the point of impact. The gigantic vampire slammed into the wall and tore through it with a thunderous crash. Markos kicked his horse into motion before the dust had cleared, and Erikan and the others rode hard after him. The wall began to repair itself with a horrible rustling sound as they rode through the gap. And there was something else – a weirdling light that spread about them as they rode, and Erikan felt as if something had opened a burning hole in his belly. He heard Elize gasp and Count Nyktolos curse out loud, and saw that they were all lit by witch-fire, but only for a moment. Then they were clear of the wall, and the feeling faded.

The first thing he noticed was that the sky was dark. The second thing he noticed was the dull, rhythmic pealing of distant bells. ‘The bells of Sternieste,’ Alberacht crooned, swiping shards of bone from his shoulders. ‘I thought never to hear their lovely song again.’

‘Nor I,’ Markos muttered. Erikan saw that he was looking at the wall.

‘What is it?’ he asked. Thunder rumbled somewhere amongst the thick charcoal-coloured clouds that choked the dark sky. There was lightning over the distant hills. Erikan felt invigorated and captivated, all at the same time.

‘Did you feel something? As we passed over the border?’ Markos asked.

‘I did. You?’

‘Aye,’ Markos grunted. His eyes narrowed to slits for a moment. Then, with a growl, he shook himself. ‘We should go. If the bells are sounding, then Mannfred will be at Sternieste. And so will Tomas and the others.’

They rode on, more slowly now. Sylvania was much as Erikan remembered it, from his last, brief visit. He had been at Elize’s side then, learning the ways of their kind, and she had brought him to Sternieste for a gathering of the Drakenhof Order. Elize had spoken for him, and Alberacht had welcomed him into the order with terrifying heartiness. The old monster had been a good Grand Master, as far as it went. Erikan glanced up at Nictus as he swooped overhead, and felt a pang of what might have been sadness.

They made their way to the castle by the old paths, known to their kind. They passed isolated villages and outposts that sought to throw back the omnipresent darkness with torches mounted on posts and lanterns chained to the walls. There was still life of sorts in Sylvania, though how long that would be the case Erikan didn’t care to guess. Most vampires needed little in the way of nourishment, but then, most had the self-control of a fox in a chicken coop. Many of those little villages would not last out the week, he knew.

They rode through the camps of Strigany nomads and sent ghoul-packs scrambling from their path as their deathless steeds sped along the dark track. Loping wolves and shrieking bats kept pace with them from time to time, as did other, worse things. Erikan had heard that when Mannfred had returned to the damned province and first set about the taming of Sylvania, he had thrown open the vaults of Castle Drakenhof and let loose every foul thing that Vlad had ever interred. All were heading east, towards Castle Sternieste. It was as if every dark soul were being drawn to that distant manse, like metal splinters to a lodestone.

It looked like a grasping talon, its trio of crooked towers jutting ferociously towards the moon above. Even from a distance, the crumbling citadel was magnificent. It was a feat of engineering that had, in its day, claimed a third of the lives employed in its construction, and their tattered souls still clung to the rain-slick stones. It crouched in the open, seemingly in defiance of those who might march against it, and Erikan could guess why Mannfred had chosen it – Sternieste was impressive, as citadels went, but it was also situated perfectly along the main artery of Sylvania. Any invaders who took the traditional routes would have to take Sternieste, before they could do anything else. Sternieste, more so than Fort Oberstyre or Castle Drakenhof, was the keystone of the province.

There was also the fact that Castle Sternieste rose high over a field of rolling hillocks. Each of the latter was a cairn of stupendous size and depth, from a bygone age. It might contain a hundred corpses or merely one, but whatever the number of its inhabitants, each dome of soil and withered, yellow grass pulsed with dark energy. And each and every one of them had been broken into. As they rode through the sea of graves, Erikan could feel the ancient dead stirring, disturbed by the passing presence of the vampires.

They passed the burgeoning earthworks being erected by an army of the recently dead. Zombie knights in shattered armour laboured beside equally dead handgunners and militiamen in the mud and dirt, raising bulwarks and setting heavy stakes. Sternieste’s master was readying his lands for siege.

Anark had taken the lead, and he led them towards the gaping main gate of the castle. The portcullis had been raised and the gates unbarred and flung open. There were no visible guards, but then, did a citadel of the dead really need them?

As they clattered into the wide, open courtyard, a flock of crows hurtled skywards, disturbed from feasting on the bodies inside the gibbet cages that decorated the inner walls. Heaps of rotting bodies lay everywhere in the courtyard, strewn about like discarded weapons and covered in shrouds of more squabbling carrion birds.

‘Lovely,’ Markos said, as he slipped out of his saddle. ‘It’s like paradise, except not.’

‘Quiet,’ Elize murmured. She tapped the side of her head. ‘Can’t you feel it, cousin? Can’t you feel him? He’s watching us.’

‘Who?’ Erikan asked, though he knew the answer as well as any of them. He could feel the presence of another mind scrabbling in the shadow of his own, prying at his thoughts and probing his feelings.

‘Who else? Welcome to Sylvania, my brethren,’ a voice called out as the doors of the outer keep opened with a squeal of long-rusted hinges. The heavy, bloated bodies of two gigantic ghouls, each the size of three of its lesser brethren, burdened with chains and rusty cow bells, moved into view as they shoved the doors open. Each of the creatures was shackled to a door, and they squalled and bellowed as a group of armoured figures stepped between them and moved to meet the newcomers.

‘Well, look what the dire wolf dragged in, finally. Elize, Markos and… some others. Wonderful, and you’re all late, by the way. I expected you days ago,’ Tomas von Carstein said as he drew close. The current Grand Master of the Drakenhof Templars looked much the same as he had when Erikan had last seen him. He’d been handsome enough as a living man, but centuries of undeath had crafted him over into a thing of cold, perfect beauty. The warriors who accompanied him were cut from much the same stripe – blood knights, Templars of the Drakenhof Order, who’d fought on thousands of battlefields. Each of them was a capable warrior, more than a match for any living man or beast. Erikan knew one or two of them, and these he nodded to politely. They returned the gesture warily – as Elize’s get, he’d been inducted into the inner circle of the order almost immediately, and Tomas was among those who’d been somewhat incensed by what he saw as her profligate ways.

‘Welcome to Castle Sternieste, where the seeds of our damnation have been sown,’ Tomas continued, extending his arms in a mocking gesture of welcome.

‘Very poetic, cousin. But I, for one, have been damned for a very long time,’ Markos said. Tomas laughed harshly.

‘This is a different sort of damnation, I’m afraid.’ He frowned. ‘We’re trapped.’

‘What do you mean? Explain yourself,’ Anark demanded. Tomas made a face.

‘Must I? You felt it, didn’t you? That grotesque frisson as you crossed the border?’ He looked at Anark. ‘We are trapped here, in Sylvania. We cannot cross the borders, thanks to the sorceries of our enemies – rather, say, Mannfred’s enemies.’

‘Lord Mannfred, you mean,’ Elize corrected.

‘Yes, yes,’ Tomas said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Lord Mannfred, in his infinite wisdom, decided to openly secede our fair homeland from the Empire. They responded in kind.’ He laughed. ‘They locked the door behind us after we left, it seems.’ His laughter grew, becoming a harsh cackle. He shook his head and looked at them. ‘Still, I am glad to see you. At least I’ll be in good company for the next millennia.’

‘Are we the only ones to arrive?’ Alberacht rumbled. ‘Where are the others? Where is the rest of the inner circle? Where is my old friend Vyktros von Krieger? Where are the Brothers Howl and the Warden of Corpse Run?’

‘Maybe some of us were smart enough to run the other way,’ Markos muttered.

Tomas laughed harshly. ‘Vyktros is dead, killed trying to breach the damnable sorceries that have us trapped. As for the others, I don’t know. What I do know is that Mannfred wished to see us – you – as soon as you arrived. And he’s been getting impatient.’ He smiled. ‘It is to be as it was in the old days, it seems, with us at his right hand. Exactly what it is that we’ll be doing, seeing as we are confined to this charming garden of earthly pleasures, is entirely up for debate. Come,’ Tomas said. He turned and stalked across the bridge. Erikan and the others shared a look, and then followed their Grand Master through the dark gates of Castle Sternieste.

The castle was a hornet’s nest of activity. Skeletons clad in the armour and colours of the Drakenhof Guard marched to and fro, in a mockery of the drills they’d performed in life. Bats of various sizes clung to the ceilings and walls, filling the air with their soft chittering. Ghouls loped across the desiccated grounds, the leaders of the various packs fighting to assert dominance. The dead of ten centuries had been wakened and readied for war, and they stood, waiting silently for the order to march.

There were vampires in evidence as well, more of them than Erikan had ever seen in one place. Von Carsteins as well as others – Lahmians, in courtly finery, and red-armoured Blood Dragons, as well as gargoyle-like Strigoi. For the first time in centuries, Castle Sternieste rang with the sound of voices and skulduggery. They clustered in the knaves and open chambers, sipping blood from delicate goblets, or fed on the unlucky men and women rounded up at Mannfred’s orders from what few nearby villages had not been abandoned and dragged to Sternieste to serve as a larder for the growing mob of predators. They spoke quietly in small groups or pointedly ignored one another. They duelled in the gardens and plotted in the antechambers.

None of them attempted to hinder Tomas and his companions. Everyone knew who the Drakenhof Templars were, and gave them room – even the scions of Blood Keep, who eyed them the way a wolf might eye a rival from another pack. No one was tempted to try their luck at gainsaying him just yet. It wouldn’t be long, though. Erikan could smell resentment on the air. Vampires, by their very nature, seethed with the urge to dominate and they chafed at being under another’s dominion.

Tomas led them through the castle, up curling stone stairwells and through damp corridors where cold air, and things worse than air, slipped in through broken walls. Ghostly knights galloped silently through the corridors, and wailing hags swept upwards, all drawn in the same direction as the vampiric Templars. It was there, in the bell tower of Sternieste, that the great black bells tolled, calling the dead to their master’s side. The sound of the bells was as the creak of a coffin lid and the thud of a mausoleum door; it was the crunch of bone and the wet slap of torn flesh; it was the sound all dead things knew, deep in the marrow of their bones.

Tomas’s warriors peeled off as they approached the narrow stairwell that led up to the bell tower. The meeting was obviously only for the inner circle. Erikan felt a twinge of doubt as they ascended, and the others seemed to share his concern, save for Anark and Elize, who chatted gaily to Tomas as they went. Markos caught Erikan’s eye and made a face. Something was going on. Erikan wondered if Mannfred had truly summoned them, or this was some ploy on Tomas’s part. Or Elize’s, a small, treacherous voice murmured in the depths of his mind. Those who took the von Carstein name tended towards ambition. To assume the name was a symbol of your devotion to the ideals of Vlad von Carstein, of a vampire-state, of an empire of the dead, ruled by the masters of the night. Only the ambitious or the insane announced their intentions so openly.

When they climbed out into the bell tower, the air throbbed with the graveyard churn of the bells, and the soft cacophony of the gathered spectral hosts that surrounded the top of the tower. Hundreds, if not thousands of spirits floated above the tower, pulled to and chained by the dull clangour. The bell-ringers were ghouls, and they gave vent to bone-rattling howls and shrieks as they hauled on the ropes.

And beyond them, his back to the newcomers, his eyes fixed on the innumerable spirits dancing on the night wind, stood Mannfred von Carstein. He had one foot set on the parapet, and he leaned on his raised knee as he gazed upwards. He did not turn as they arrived, and only glanced at them when Tomas drew his sword partially from its sheath and slammed it down.

‘Count Mannfred, you have called and we, your most loyal servants, have come. The inner circle of the Drakenhof Order is ready to ride forth at your command and at your discretion,’ Tomas said.

‘I’m sure you are,’ Mannfred said. His eyes flickered over each of them in turn, and Erikan couldn’t help but feel nervous. He’d only ever served the creature before him at a remove. To see him in the flesh was something else again. Mannfred was tall, taller even than Anark, taller than any normal man, if not gigantic. He seemed swollen with power, and his gilt-edged, black armour was of the finest quality, despite its archaic appearance. A heavy cloak made from the hairy pelt of a gigantic wolf hung down from his shoulders, and a long-bladed sword with an ornate basket hilt was sheathed on his hip. His scalp had been shorn clean of hair, and his face was aquiline and aristocratic, with a fine-boned grace to his features. ‘While I am glad that you have come, I expected more of you, cousins and gentles all.’

‘These are the greatest warriors of the order, my lord,’ Tomas said. ‘The blood of the von Carsteins runs thick in the veins of the inner circle. Will you do us the honour of explaining your purpose in summoning us?’

‘I should think it would be obvious, cousin,’ Mannfred said. He reached out a hand as the ghost of a wailing child drifted close, as if to comfort the spectre. Instead, he crooked his fingers and swept them through its features, causing the ghost to momentarily stretch and distort. ‘I am readying myself for the war to come. To wage war, I require warriors. Hence, your presence. Or must I explain further?’

‘No, no, most wise and fierce lord,’ Tomas said, looking at the others meaningfully. ‘But one must wonder why we have been summoned into a land that we cannot then leave.’

Mannfred gave no sign that Tomas’s words had struck a nerve, but somehow Erikan knew that they had. The lord of Sylvania examined Tomas for a moment. Erikan saw his eyes slide towards those of Elize, who inclined her head slightly. His hand found the hilt of his blade. Something was definitely going on. He was sure of it now. There was an undercurrent here he didn’t like. ‘What are you implying, cousin?’ Mannfred asked.

Tomas cocked his head. ‘Surely you can feel it, my lord. It is the talk of your court, and of the guests who shelter beneath the bowers of your generosity. The borders are protected against our kind. We can enter, but not leave. And as mighty as your walls are, and as great as your army might be, we find ourselves wondering why you gave us no warning?’ He looked around him, at Erikan and the others, seeking support. Anark began to nod dully, but Elize’s hand on his arm stopped him. Erikan traded glances with Markos. The latter smiled thinly and gave a slight shake of his head.

‘If I had, dear cousin, would you have come?’ Mannfred asked, turning away.

Tomas tapped the pommel of his blade with a finger, and gave Mannfred a speculative look. ‘So what you’re saying is that you’ve knowingly trapped us here, in this reeking sty you call a fiefdom. Wonderful, truly. Vlad’s cunning was as nothing compared to your own ineffable wisdom.’ He turned to look at the others again. ‘Yes, your brilliance is as bright as the light of the Witch Moon in full glow, my Lord Mannfred. I, and the rest of the inner circle of the Drakenhof Templars, stand in awe of your puissance and forethought in calling us all back and trapping us here, in this overlarge tomb of yours.’ Tomas clapped politely. ‘Well done, sirrah. What will be your next trick, pray tell? Perhaps you’d like to juggle a few blessed relics, or maybe go for a stroll in the noonday sun?’

‘Are you finished?’ Mannfred asked.

‘No,’ Tomas said, all trace of jocularity gone from his voice. ‘Not even a little bit. I – we – came in good faith, and at your request, Lord Mannfred. And you have betrayed even that shred of consideration and for what – so that we might share your captivity?’

‘So that you might help me break the chains that bind Sylvania, dear cousin,’ Mannfred purred. ‘And you did not do me a favour, Tomas. You owe me your allegiance. I am the true and lawful lord of Sylvania, and your order is pledged to my service, wherever and whenever I so require.’

‘Not quite.’ Tomas smiled thinly. ‘We do serve the Count of Sylvania, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you, cousin.’

Erikan blinked. Even for a vampire, Tomas was fast. The gap between thought and deed for him was but the barest of moments. His blade was in his hand and arcing towards Mannfred’s shaved pate as he finished speaking, and the other had started to turn.

Mannfred was not so quick. But then, he didn’t have to be. Tomas’s blade smashed down into Mannfred’s waiting palm, halted mere inches from the crown of his head. Mannfred examined the blade for a moment, and then tore it from Tomas’s grip with a casual twitch of his wrist. Still holding the sword by the blade, he looked at Tomas. ‘In a way, Tomas, you are correct. However, in another, altogether more important way, you are decidedly incorrect.’ Without a flicker of warning, Mannfred caught Tomas a ringing blow across the side of his head with the hilt of his sword.

Tomas was sent flying by the force of the blow. Mannfred tossed the now-broken sword over the parapet and strode towards the fallen Grand Master. Erikan and the others drew back. Tomas had made his play without consulting them, and the consequences would be on his head alone. He’d likely hoped they’d join him, when they learned of the trap. Then, he had never been very smart, Erikan reflected as Mannfred reached down and grabbed a handful of Tomas’s hair. Mannfred hauled the other vampire to his feet effortlessly. ‘This, Tomas, is why I called you back. This weakness, this bravado, this mistaken impression that you, that any of you, are my equal.’ He pulled Tomas close. ‘I have no equal, cousin. I am Mannfred von Carstein, first, last and only. And I cannot abide weakness.’ He flung Tomas against the wall hard enough to rattle the latter’s armour. ‘I have begun something. And I would have my servants at my disposal, rather than traipsing off, pursuing their own petty goals when they should be pursuing mine.’

Tomas clawed at the wall and dragged himself upright. He glared at Mannfred. ‘The only weak one here is you. I remember you, Mannfred, cousin, scrabbling at Vlad’s heels, hiding from Konrad – you were a rat then, and you’re a rat now, cowering in your nest.’

Mannfred was silent for a moment. His face betrayed no expression. Then, he made a single, sharp gesture. The air and shadows around Tomas seemed to congeal, becoming sharp and solid. For a moment, Erikan was reminded of the jaws of a wolf closing about a field mouse. The darkness obscured Tomas, and there came a strange squeal as though metal were scraping against metal, and then a horrid grinding sound that made Erikan’s fangs ache in his gums.

Tomas began to scream. Blood spattered the stones, and torn and bent bits of armour clattered to the ground. To Erikan, it sounded as if the Grand Master were being flayed alive. Whatever was happening, Mannfred watched it with glittering eyes and with a slight, savage smile creasing his aquiline features.

When it was done, there was little left of Tomas – just something red and raw that lay in the detritus of its former glory, mewling shrilly. Mannfred looked down at the squirming ruin and said, ‘Anark, see to your predecessor. I have other, more important matters to attend.’

Anark started. His nostrils flared, but he gave no other sign that his sudden rise to prominence had surprised him. His lips peeled back from his fangs as he drew his sword and advanced on the remains of his former comrade.

Mannfred stepped back and turned to Elize. He stroked her cheek in such a way that Erikan thought it lucky for one of them that Anark was occupied with his butchery. Mannfred leaned towards her and murmured, ‘And so I have kept my promise, cousin.’ Erikan glanced at the others surreptitiously, but he seemed to have been the only one to hear the exchange. Mannfred drew his cloak about him and left them on the parapet. Erikan waited for the sound of his boots to fade and then said, ‘Well, that was unexpected.’

‘But not unwelcome,’ Elize said. She drifted towards Anark, and rubbed a spot of blood from his cheek. ‘Tomas was a fool, and we all know it. His end has been a century in coming, and I, for one, am glad that we do not have to put up with him longer than was absolutely necessary. If we are trapped here, then Mannfred is our best chance of escape. And besides, Tomas had no concept of honour or loyalty. Anark will make a better Grand Master, I think.’

Anark grinned and ran his hand along his blade, stripping Tomas’s blood from it. ‘Unless someone objects?’ He looked at Erikan as he spoke. ‘Well, Crowfiend?’

Erikan didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I wasn’t under the assumption that we had been given a vote.’ He inclined his head. ‘Long live the new Grand Master.’ The others followed suit, murmuring their congratulations.

Alberacht even looked as if he meant it.

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To Lindsey and Graeme for making this, among other things, readable.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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