Five Muhak took up their clubs and axes stolen from the slain Tsavag. They began to circle the stranger, like a pack of slinking wolves stalking a lion. The skull-faced helm never turned, the attention of the man within focused upon the slope. There was a sense of disdain in his manner as he marched steadily onwards, ignoring the menacing men who had surrounded him.
The Muhak sprang at the armoured warrior with a savage cry. In a blur of motion, the stranger spun to face them. The strange black sword bit through the arm of the first Muhak, snapping it like a twig and throwing him back in a spray of blood and screams. A second Muhak, leaping at him from the left, caught the point of the sword in his chest.
Still in motion, the stranger ripped his weapon free, chewing through rib and lung as the edge erupted from the man’s side. The third Muhak came at him from behind. He flopped to the ground as the black sword chopped through both legs as though they were brittle desert brambles.
The fourth, striking from the right, caught the tip of the blade slashing through his face. He fell, clutching at the broth of blood and brain drooling from his ruptured eyes.
The brutal assault was over almost before it had begun. The Muhak were accomplished ambushers, skilled as jackals at the art of coordinated attack, but their prey had been faster still, killing four of their number while the echo of their war cry still wailed across the plain.
The last scavenger faltered in his attack, staring with open-mouthed horror at the havoc the stranger had visited in the blink of an eye. Blood exploded from the man’s mouth as the black sword slammed through his gut. The stranger ignored the scarlet that splattered against his armour and the dying hands that clutched at the heavy fur cloak he wore. Callously, he ripped his trapped blade upwards, crunching through bone and flesh until the black sword tore free.
Slashed from stomach to shoulder, the Muhak slumped to the ground.
Something like terror crawled into Lok’s beady eyes behind their mask of flayed flesh. The zar shouted at his warriors, fear lending a new note of rage to his voice. The Muhak hesitated, staring uncertainly at one another, no man eager to be the first to confront this strange and terrible foe.
Lok’s mattock lashed out, pulverising the skull of the Kurgan closest to him, dropping him in a burst of blood and bone. The example was enough, the zar’s tyranny reasserted. Twenty Muhak marauders, swollen bulks of muscle and rage, charged down the slope, their murderous cudgels lifted overhead in savage display.
To Dorgo’s eyes, what followed was slaughter, not battle. Twenty warriors converged on one. When the carnage abated, when the screams had faded into death rattles, when the sound of flesh and bone being torn asunder ebbed, it was the one who stood triumphant.
The havoc of his black blade lay strewn and dying around the armoured killer. Gore dripped from the stranger, coating his crimson armour in a sanguine cloak, but none of it was his. Twenty men had faced him, but not one had landed a blow against their foe. The killer turned his head, studying the butchery. Then he turned his skull-helm once more to the slope where the ashen-faced Lok waited.
The Muhak zar watched the warrior march through the wreckage of his warband, every step causing his eyes to bulge wider with fear. Lok cast his gaze from side to side, but the strength of his followers had been spent. There were no fresh Kurgan to throw at the gore-drenched spectre. The zar spat into the dust, trying to let his fury overwhelm his fear.
“You still tempt the gods, eh pig!” Lok snarled, brandishing his mattock. “You kill those dogs so you think you can fight Lok?” He brought the hammer crashing down, exploding a rock into pebbly splinters.
The armoured killer’s approach did not falter, the man within the crimson plates unimpressed by the zar’s bravado.
The air of arrogance goaded Lok’s fury as surely as the ivory hook Dorgo had used on the mammoth. The Muhak chieftain’s jutting jaw dropped open in a howl of rage, his immense bulk hurtling down the slope at his adversary. The armoured killer paused, waiting to meet the zar’s charge. The black sword licked out like the tongue of a dragon, flashing through the chieftain’s belly, spilling it onto the ground. At the same time, the mattock crashed into the nameless warrior, smashing into him like a titan’s fist. The daemonic weapon kicked him back, throwing him through the air. The armoured warrior smashed into the stiffening hulk of the slain mammoth, falling headfirst into the stream of filth oozing from its wound.
Lok wilted onto his knees, the mattock sliding from hands that were desperately fumbling at his ghastly wound. The zar struggled to press the wound closed, to staunch the seepage of blood and bile. In the fashion of a dying wolf, he refused to accept the gravity of his wound, refused to concede the approach of death, but even in his agony, a smile split the Muhak’s brutal face. At least his enemy would follow him into the Hunting Halls.
Even this small joy fled from Lok, draining away with his lifeblood. The figure sprawled amid the muck and gore of the mammoth was rising, picking itself from its own ruin. Despite the ferocity of the blow Lok had struck, fuelled by the zar’s immense strength and the mattock’s obscene power, the warrior yet lived. The armoured killer stood for a moment, wiping filth from his skull-like mask. Then, slowly, remorselessly, he began to retrace his path up the slope.
The Muhak zar took one hand away from his wound, trying to reach his hammer on the ground beside him. The effort brought a fresh stream of pain shuddering through him, but the sight of the approaching destroyer was more terrible to him than any mere physical suffering. Lok felt the warrior’s malignancy grow with each step, coiling around him in a stifling shroud of hate. There was more than death in the killer’s black blade, more than shame. Lok could feel the jaws of hell closing around him, and hear the snarling laughter of daemons in his ears.
The warrior loomed above the zar, kicking the mattock away from his clutching hand. An armoured gauntlet reached down, pulling Lok’s head by its mass of oily black hair. The zar struggled feebly in the iron grip, but could not prevent his head from being pulled back, exposing his throat to the sky. Then the black sword came chopping down, hewing through the thick, stumpy neck.
The chieftain’s body slapped against the earth, his head staring down at the corpse as it dangled from the warrior’s fist. The killer lifted his trophy high, presenting it to the darkening sky.
“A skull for the Skull Throne!” the iron voice of the warrior rasped. Lightning cracked across the cloudless heavens, as though in answer to his cry.
Dorgo freed himself from his prison, leaving a spike of ivory thrust through the meat of his arm. It would need the healing arts of a shaman before the shard could be removed, otherwise the wound would bleed and he would not have the strength to make the long march back to his people. It was not mere survival that moved him to caution, nor bearing witness to the fate that had befallen his fellow hunters.
There was a still graver purpose that urged him on, something greater than his fear.
Zar Lok, chief of the Muhak, was dead, butchered by a nameless, tribeless warrior. In all the years since the fall of Teiyogtei, such a fate had never claimed a chieftain of one of the eight tribes. Word of this had to be brought to his father, brought to him before the other tribes discovered that Lok was dead. A delicate balance existed between the eight tribes, and someone had destroyed that balance, setting into motion events that would resound throughout the domain. The sooner Hutga learned of this, the better he would be able to prepare the Tsavag for what was coming.
Dorgo shuddered again, the image of the outlander burned into his mind. He could not shake the impression that Lok had somehow recognised his slayer. Even before he struck the first blow, the Kurgan seemed to know that his doom was at hand. More than the brutality of the Muhak’s death, it was this terrible air of resignation and hopelessness that chilled his marrow.
Dorgo crept cautiously away from the wreckage of the ivory cage. He did not waste time looking for his lost sword, nor linger to claim a weapon from the butchered Muhak. Inste
ad, he mounted the rocky slope, climbing the crumbling mound as the first step on his long journey back to the lands of the Tsavag.
Dorgo left the crimson warrior behind him, crouched beside Lok’s mangled carcass, the zar’s head resting on the ground before him. With slow, careful strokes, the warrior drew his black blade against the chieftain’s head, carving away the flesh, layer by layer, exposing the gleaming skull beneath, cleaning the trophy he had offered to mighty Khorne.
CHAPTER TWO
It took Dorgo three days to hike out of the vastness of the Crumbling Hills. He survived off the small vermin that lived beneath the rocks, slaking his thirst with the juice of the thorny bushes that had replaced the ancient gardens. He fashioned a crude spear from a shard of flint and the leg bone from a partially eaten elk carcass, the abandoned kill of a hill tiger. At night he wedged himself between the decaying walls of the old forts, trying to hide from the predators that prowled the desolation. He awoke many times to hear the scuttling of stalk spiders crawling across the rocks, but the immense arachnids passed him by without investigating the lone Tsavag who intruded upon their domain.
More inquisitive was the beady-eyed rock wolf that watched him for the better part of a day before deciding that the man was still too hale to make easy prey.
Most of the injuries he had suffered when he had been thrown from the mammoth had started to heal, even the pain in his leg had ceased to vex him as it had on the first day of his escape. The wound in his arm, however, continued to pulse with pain. Dorgo had gathered maggots from the elk carcass, setting them on his arm to clean away the dead flesh and stave off infection. The Tsavag had long since come to ignore the crawling sensation against his skin, the oily feel of the worms against his flesh. He had seen too many warriors with swollen, noxious wounds, green with disease and corruption. Most of them became cripples if they survived at all. It was a sorry fate for any warrior. Better to feed the tiny children of Onogal than entice one of the Grandfather’s more grisly gifts.
Beyond the Crumbling Hills, Dorgo would need to cross the Prowling Lands, a great expanse of flatland where, in winter, the hardy snowgrass would defy the elements and the feeble sun to carpet the plain in pallid stalks and leafy blades. The Tsavag would descend upon the Prowling Lands when the first snows came, letting their mammoths glut themselves upon the winter grass, but the gods had not yet unleashed that season upon the domain. For now, the Prowling Lands were deserted, populated only by sickly clumps of thin-trunked trees and yellowed stands of fungus.
The Prowling Lands took their name from the treacherous landscape, where the land shuddered frequently, splitting apart to form deep gullies and jagged ravines. The threat of sink holes was constant. Too small to threaten a mammoth, the holes could easily swallow a man, closing over him and leaving no hint of his doom. Predators too lurked in the Prowling Lands. In the summer, the gullies were home to zhagas, giant lizards covered in a carapace of thorns and capable of swallowing a child in a single bite. In the winter, ice lions called the Prowling Lands home, enormous beasts capable of taking down a small mammoth and possessed of a cruel intelligence that was more than natural for a simple beast.
It was neither sink hole nor lizard nor lion that made Dorgo cautious as he crossed the Prowling Lands. He was wary of a different kind of threat. The Prowling Lands bordered upon the Grey, the twisted, fog-shrouded forest where the Warherd of Kug made their lair. Driven into the Grey by the human tribes of the domain, the beastmen waged perpetual war against Hung, Kurgan and Tong alike. Years of dwelling within the perpetual darkness of the Grey had made the beastmen almost blind, but the monsters had developed other powers to compensate for their lost sight. In the dark of night, they would raid the encampments of men, taking only one kind of plunder back with them into the darkness of the Grey: man-flesh for their cooking pots.
There was little risk of encountering them by day, but Dorgo knew the beastkin sometimes foraged in the darkness of the gullies. They would not chance an encounter with a strong group of men, but a lone warrior, a wounded one at that, would excite their bloodlust if they caught his scent.
Dorgo stared forlornly at his feeble spear of bone and flint. It would be poor protection against any but the smallest beastkin, much less some of the hulking brutes the warherd sometimes produced. He would need to brave the gullies, only in the deep shadows of the fissures was any water to be found in the Prowling Lands. It was a five day march to cross the flatlands, to reach the valleys where the Tsavag made their summer encampment. He might be able to endure without food, but not water. Despite the danger of reptiles and half-men, he couldn’t keep entirely to the high ground. Thirst must eventually drive him down into the darkness.
For the best part of two days, Dorgo managed to press on, chewing on the pulp from a thorn bush to deceive the clawing thirst that tormented him. Several times, the ground had shuddered around him. Twice he had nearly fallen into sink holes that yawned open at his approach. The deep fissures and gullies were almost invisible until the warrior was right on top of them, forcing Dorgo to adopt a slow, cautious pace.
When his thirst at last refused to be put off by the badly gnawed pulp, Dorgo selected a winding gully that sported a thick clump of ugly green toadstools along its edge. It seemed a likely enough prospect to conceal a small spring.
The Tsavag crept to the edge of the depression, peering down into its gloom. Before he could react, the lip of the gully broke away beneath him. Dorgo flailed his arms to catch himself, but the searing jolt of pain that shot through him as his wounded arm caught at the crumbling ground caused his entire body to grow numb. With the grace of a boulder, he crashed to the bottom of the gully, the clatter of his violent descent echoing all around him.
Dorgo was still, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, not wishing to betray his presence by making more noise. The beastkin were almost blind, relying upon sound to stalk their prey. Dorgo was determined to see them before they heard him. At least the clammy chill that filled the gloom of the gully boded well. There had to be water nearby to imbue the air with such dankness. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Dorgo saw something sparkling in the fitful light. He had found not merely a spring, but a pool.
The hunter took a scrambling lunge towards the water, and then froze. A gruesome shape was reflected in the surface of the water. Slowly, Dorgo lifted his eyes to stare at the creature that cast its image over the water. Sprawled across a big rock, knifelike scales running across its back and sides, was a huge zhaga. The lizard regarded him coldly with an amber-hued eye, its forked tongue licking at the air. Dorgo locked his fist around the crude spear he had fashioned, bracing himself for the reptile’s attack.
The zhaga seemed wary rather than aggressive, more interested in savouring the patch of sunlight it had found than lunging for the warrior. Dorgo could see its long, thick tail, bloated with stored fat. A quick glance showed him that bones were strewn all around the pool. Clearly, the lizard had fed well off those who thought to visit its pool, perhaps well enough that it was no longer hungry?
Keeping his eyes locked on the sunning lizard, Dorgo scooped water from the pool into his mouth. It was bitter, foul with minerals, but to the hunter it was like a gift from the gods. Soon, he forgot the menace of the zhaga, his body revelling in the long-denied succour of water. It was with an effort that he finally pulled himself away from the pool, leaving it to the indolent zhaga. He had few delusions about his good fortune as he struggled out of the shadows of the gully and back onto the plain. When thirst next drove him down into the gullies, he could hardly expect to be so lucky again.
On his third day in the Prowling Lands, Dorgo found himself again driven to brave the fissures. He took greater care lowering himself into the depression this time. Once his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he found he was in a shallow ravine, scraggly clumps of weed poking out of its earthern walls. No pool of free-standing water greeted him this time. He only hoped he would be spared the presence of another zhaga, o
ne without a fattened tail. The hunter walked to the nearest clutch of weeds. He knew that the vegetation was his best guide to the presence of water.
Working his spear, he began to dig at the weeds, cutting through the earth to expose the pasty roots. He smiled when he felt the moisture clinging to the weeds. Abandoning the spear, he pawed at the wall with his hands. Soon his efforts were rewarded with a thin trickle of water, the boon of some underground spring. Dorgo scooped out a patch of wall, using his hands to strain the liquid as he drank, trying to force more water than mud into his mouth.
So lost was he in his labours, that the Tsavag almost failed to hear the distant crash of some large creature moving across the plain above. The ponderous boom was repeated, the walls of the gully shaking as the thing stalked closer. Dorgo gathered his spear, ready to scurry down the gully before whatever was tramping across the plain should find him. There were tales of giants living in the Grey, stories that they did not keep to the forest like the beastkin, but roved abroad to meet their ferocious appetites. The thought chilled the warrior. Fear of the giants had kept the tribes from exterminating the beastkin long ago, for no man dared match himself against creatures that were said to be almost godlike.
Still, the hunter’s curiosity had been awakened. Moreover, he knew he should learn in which direction the hulk was travelling so that he might avoid it. Dorgo lifted his head above the rim of the gully, peering across the flatlands even as the ground shook once more. Distant, but distinct, he saw the immense creature that made the earth tremble so. The hunter laughed, springing from the trench with a strength he had not felt in days. His spear raised above his head, he yelled and shouted at the distant colossus. Slowly, the beast turned, moving towards him in long, plodding steps.
By the merest chance, Dorgo had found another of the Tsavags’ war mammoths returning from its hunt. There was no need to brave another night exposed upon the Prowling Lands. Tonight he would sleep in the mammoth-hide yurts of his tribe.
[Warhammer] - Blood for the Blood God Page 3
