‘Was I ever as arrogant as Nagash?’ Vlad asked. ‘Was I ever as blind as Mannfred?’
Arkhan looked at the vampire. ‘You tell me,’ he said, after a time.
‘Neferata certainly thought so,’ Vlad said, and chuckled. He rubbed the heavy ring that decorated his finger. ‘Never could abide arrogance, that one.’
‘No… she cannot.’ Arkhan turned away from him. Vlad smiled.
‘She and Isabella have – had – much in common. I thought, once upon a time, that I could mould her into the image of the queen. When she resisted, when she turned my arrogance back on me, hissing and spitting, I knew that there was no need. The first time she raised her voice to me in anger, I felt my heart ignite.’ Vlad cocked his head. ‘Was it that way with you, gambler? Prisoner, slave, lover… so many masks between you two. And now, shorn of all pretence…’
Arkhan said nothing. Vlad waited. When no reply seemed forthcoming, he sighed and shrugged. ‘And that is the shame of it all. Love, that rarest of alchemies, is lost so easily when the wind shifts and the fire is sighted on the horizon. Luckily, for some, adversity only adds strength to that bond.’
Arkhan turned to see what Vlad was looking at. Behind them were arrayed the Drakenhof Templars. Loyal once to Mannfred, they had, by and large, honoured their oaths to serve the master of the von Carstein line, and had bent knee to Vlad upon his resurrection. Of the inner circle, only a few remained. Count Nyktolos had met his fate on the sands of the Great Desert; and the burly monster Alberacht Nictus, the Reaper of Drakenhof, had died defending that infamous pile, and the scores of huddled Sylvanian peasantry sheltering within it, against daemons more monstrous even than himself.
Of those he had known, and who had aided him in restoring Nagash, only two remained – Erikan Crowfiend, and Elize von Carstein. The morose Bretonnian, in his dark patchwork armour, sat close beside the crimson-haired von Carstein woman, both of them mounted on cannibal horses from the Sternieste stables. He saw that their hands were not-quite touching, fingers barely intertwined. Love was not forbidden among the dead, for Nagash had little understanding of it, save as a goad. But it was rare. Vlad watched them surreptitiously, his eyes unreadable.
If he had been capable of it, Arkhan might have smiled. Instead, he let his gaze play over the other templars. Von Carsteins, most of them, though there were a few who bore on their faces the stamp of other primogenitors. Hard-eyed Blood Dragons, cunning Lahmians, even one or two brutal Strigoi, wearing tattered armour and cradling crude weapons. And one other, her face composed and so still as to resemble marble.
Eldyra of Tiranoc was an elf, or had been. She was the only survivor of Eltharion the Grim’s doomed rescue attempt on behalf of the Everchild, she whose life essence had been used to quicken Nagash’s spirit from its dark bower in those final moments at the Nine Daemons. She had fallen in that last, fateful battle, but Mannfred had been seized by one of his distressing whims, and had shown her mercy. Of sorts, at any rate.
Now, she sat astride her horse, as undead as the rest of the Drakenhof Templars, and as bloodthirsty as any of Mannfred’s get. The elf noticed his attentions, and met his gaze. Her eyes held no hint as to her thoughts. As he watched, Elize von Carstein leaned over and murmured something to Eldyra, and the elf looked away.
‘Not the first mistake Mannfred has ever made, but it might be his last,’ Vlad said. Arkhan looked at him. Vlad gestured to Eldyra. ‘Still, I am impressed that it was done at all. A rare thing, to see one of our sort crafted from alien flesh.’
‘Your sort. Not mine,’ Arkhan said.
‘But even you have to admire the artistry of it. Men are born to die. They are well on their way to being corpses with the first, squalling breath that they draw. But to take a thing of life, a thing which will not know death, and to twist it so… Ah, well.’ Vlad shook his head. ‘Mannfred was always creative. For a limited value of the term.’
‘Yes. And foolish. He is taunting them,’ Arkhan said. Vlad followed his gaze, and frowned.
‘Well, that’s hardly a surprise, is it?’ He chuckled. ‘It has ever been his nature to be imprudent. That arrogance you mentioned earlier, I think. He cannot conceive of a defeat or a treachery of which he is not the author.’
‘Then he is in for a rude surprise,’ Arkhan said. He looked at Vlad, and then past him, at Nagash. The Undying King paid no attention to the living or the dead, instead communing with the roiling tempest of souls which had made him its aleph in the moments following his consumption of the gods of Nehekhara so many months ago. Arkhan cut his eyes back to Vlad. ‘You are certain, then?’
‘If I weren’t, I would have said nothing. I would not be hiding myself from him,’ Vlad said softly. He frowned. ‘Mannfred is a poison, and he always has been. He is treacherous and uncontrollable. He knows no master save ambition, and he listens to no counsel save that which is born in the black froth which passes for his mind. And he is the author of too much of the tragedy, too much of the grief which afflicts them. Though I am loath to admit it, Mannfred shook the pillars of heaven and earth. And the only way to patch the resulting cracks is… well.’ He smiled sadly. The emotion, Arkhan noted, did not reach his eyes.
‘He will be missed,’ Arkhan said.
Canto Unsworn rode through the ruined streets of Middenheim on his gibbering horse and tried to ignore the shrieks and screams that even now, a year after the fact, still rang out at odd intervals from the shadowed recesses of the fallen city. He also ignored the moans of the beaten, battered shape which he had dragged behind his horse across half of the city. Ignoring the former was easier than ignoring the latter.
A crackling bolt of sorcerous lightning hammered into a nearby building, causing a section of it to collapse and a cloud of dust to wash across the street. Canto looked up. The skies overhead still boiled with madness. The fury of the maelstrom above was matched by the destruction below. In the wake of the slaughter wrought by the victorious Chaos forces, the city had been scoured of what life it had once possessed. Archaon’s forces ran riot through the ruins. Corpses had been piled into heaps in every square and plaza, unstable mountains of carrion that grew until they rivalled the city walls in sheer height. Many of these had been set on fire, and now a pall of stinking charnel smoke hung over sections of the city. Northmen, skaven and beastmen alike looted freely and with abandon.
Canto knew that it was only the will of Archaon which kept the disparate parts of the horde from turning on each other. For the servants of the Dark Gods, victory was as perilous as defeat, and the only safety was in battle unending. Already, the knives had come out; more than one ambitious chieftain or champion had made a try for Archaon’s throat. Their bodies now hung above the city’s gatehouses, beside the bodies of the Fellwolf Brotherhood, the Gryphon Legion and any others who had elicited the Three-Eyed King’s displeasure.
The latter had been the last of the organised resistance within the city to fall. The hardy Kislevite knights, led by their Grand Master, Dostov, had holed up in the House of Coin, alongside the survivors of the various mercenary companies who had fought for Middenheim. Surrounded and besieged in an ill-provisioned prison of their own making, Dostov and his followers had nonetheless held out for several weeks. When the break-out attempt came, the Gryphon Legion – or what was left of it – had led the way, thundering towards the northern causeway and the viaduct beyond. Those who made it had found themselves fighting upriver against the warbands which were even then still streaming into the city.