Blood for the Blood God

9

The immense trees of the Grey rose up from the thick, clinging mist like veiled giants, dampness dripping from their pine needles, greasy black mushrooms sprouting from their trunks. The trees were huge beyond the reckoning of those that flourished in wholly mortal lands, for the power of the gods lurked within the spongy loam of the forest.

The king had been the soul of his land, the spirit binding it together and keeping at bay the powers of hungry gods. The vitality of the land and the life of the king had been inseparable, the pulse of Teiyogtei’s heart a shield against the forces that would devour the realm he had built. When Teiyogtei died, the dread energies of the Wastes swept through his former domain. Every rock, every tree, every grain of sand and blade of grass had been twisted by the radiant winds of the north. The corrupting aethyr had struck some places heavier than others. The Desert of Mirrors had been one such place. The forest known simply as the Grey was another.

The name was misleading, for the mists that swirled beneath the thick trunks of the pines were of no single colour. Like wisps of rainbow, they shifted and changed, at once all colours and none at all. No freak of wind or weather spawned the mists, for it was from the polluted soil that the corrupting fog was born, rising from the ground in snakelike tendrils.

Nothing endured the touch of the mists without being changed by them. The pines were twisted into tortuous shapes, their limbs deformed, their wood pitted and scarred. The grass upon the ground was thick and abnormal, each blade sharp as a knife and black as pitch. The birds that still lingered within the mist-shrouded forest were wizened and scabby, with crooked backs and misshapen beaks.

Once the Grey had sported all manner of strange beasts: deer the size of bears with molten fire for blood and horns made of stone; rabbits with scales instead of fur and the ravenous diet of wolves; legless elk that slithered across the earth like giant hairy worms, and fouler things that stalked the land in search of human prey.

The monsters of the Grey, as much as its poisonous mists, had caused the tribes to shun the place. When the Warherd of Kug was driven into the Grey by the human tribes, it had been assumed by all that the beastmen would perish in the ghastly forest, devoured by the strange creatures that called it home.

Instead, the beastmen had become masters of the Grey, hunting the monsters into extinction within only a few generations. Now, they were forced to range out from their forest in search of food, stalking places such as the Prowling Lands, caring little if their prey should walk upon four legs or two. But however far they wandered, they always returned to the safety of the Grey.

Within its misty expanse, they were the lords. Men, with their feeble senses, their dependence upon their eyes to find their enemies, were no threat to the gors when they strayed into the Grey. By scent and sound the gors soon found any man so foolish as to invade their territory, and where scent and sound were not enough, the gors could rely upon their eerie, piercing wails to find their enemies, seeing more with their shrieks than men did with their eyes.

A pack of beastmen stalked through the gloom of the Grey. A motley band of hairy, corrupt figures, the brutes showed every caprice of anatomy. Some hulked larger than true men, their heads shaped like those of goat, ox and elk, their feet hardened into bony hooves, their hands displaying long claws. Some were still more twisted with extra limbs sprouting from shoulder and rib and thigh, misplaced organs staring and slobbering from chest and back.

Where one possessed an arm, another had a barbed, chitinous member, like the oversized leg of a spider or crab. Where one had great curling horns, another might have a frilly crest of quills or a comb of ruffled feathers. Only in their swollen, milky eyes did the gors display any unity of form, the blind organs inflicted upon them by lives spent within the preternatural murk of the Grey Other things roamed with the hulking gors, smaller, wretched things with leathery skin and manlike faces, their pelts thinner and scattered haphazardly around their bodies; brutish things that loped upon all fours, their backs crooked, their fur shaggy and matted, their tails ending in club-like nodules of bone and sharp, knifelike spines.

They were the least of the warherd, those beastmen born weak in body or mind, the brays and beast-hounds, the runts and atavisms of their corrupt blood.

The beastmen hunted with purpose, their nostrils flaring as they sucked the scent of their prey from the air. Hairy hands clutched stone axes and spears of sharpened bone, clubs of wood and the odd blade of rusted iron. The gors were silent as they loped through the forest, each step unerringly falling upon the soft, loamy earth, never upon a lying stick or lurking stone.

The Grey was their world and the beastmen were its masters, able to navigate it perfectly even in their blindness, animal instincts guiding a thinking brain. It was what set them apart from true beasts, however mutated in shape and habit. The gors had an awareness of their world not unlike that of men, fully capable of appreciating their existence and able to harbour feelings alien to the animal mind like hate and revenge.

The leader of the pack was a huge brute with a goatlike face and the gnarled horns of an ox. Its powerful, human torso was married to a massive, horselike body, almost as though it had been moulded in the womb as a parody of a mounted rider. The brute’s chest was covered in strips of lacquered armour stolen from previous invaders of the Grey, and the weapon it held in its clawed hands was a broad-bladed axe of bronze. Savage talismans of feather and bone were strung through the piebald mane that ran down its back from neck to tail. The centaur creature craned its head around to yip a warning to its followers. The other beastmen scattered at their leader’s command, vanishing into the murk of the forest. Only a handful of the largest gors remained behind. They studied the gloom with flared nostrils and canted ears, waiting for the approach of the prey that the centigor had scented.

The intruder came boldly, making no effort to hide his mount’s advance. To the keen ears of the beastmen, the steed’s progress through the forest was like the crack of thunder. They did not need their useless, milky eyes to watch the stranger pass through the trees; sound was enough.

Chirps and clicks echoed through the gloom of the forest. Where another might dismiss the noises as the squeal of a rodent or the call of a bird, they carried a different story to the ears of the gors. They told of lurking hunters slithering into position. They told of a noose being drawn tight.

The centigor yipped again, the sound rumbling from its misshapen bulk. There was a surly, challenging quality to the brute’s growl. Some of the calls that had sounded from the forest had betrayed a note of fear, the pack leader reminding its followers to do their part. Those who betrayed the hunt were nothing more than prey themselves.

There was reason for the fear, and even the centigor felt an uneasiness in its bestial heart. That reason was the peculiar scent that was carried to them, the stink of battle and blood, death and carnage.

The smell was intimidating, menacing. It spoke of strength and power, brutality and slaughter. The beastmen learned early to distinguish the smell of another predator, to discern its formidable nature by scent alone. Their instincts railed against this scent, sounding a warning in their savage minds. Primitive hate fought against primal instinct to quell their fear.

The Grey was the warherd’s territory and none had ever trespassed upon its lands with impunity.

A bleating scream rang out in the murk of the forest, calling the centigor’s creatures to the attack. From behind thorny bushes, from beneath scraggly shrubs and clumps of overgrown knife-grass, the pack sprang into action. Feral grunts and bellows ripped through the air as the beastmen charged the lone rider who had entered their land. Crude weapons, gleaming fangs and wicked claws flashed through the darkness, driven by the blind bloodlust of the half-men.

The Skulltaker met their attack with the cold detachment of a machine. A gor was hacked in half by the warrior’s smoking sword as it rushed at him with a stone axe. A snarling bray collapsed as a blow from the Skulltaker’s armoured hand crushed its face. The canine steed slashed and tore with its deadly paws, spilling its foes to the ground with each sweep of its claws and slap of its barbed tail.

The hooting, growling cacophony of roars rising from the beastmen was gradually replaced with groans and shrieks.

As the Skulltaker ripped his blade free from the horned skull of an attacker, one of the baser creatures among the throng launched itself at him. The beast-hound crashed into the man, pitching him from the saddle, twisting around so that it might conspire to land atop him as he crashed to the earth.

The Skulltaker’s hands locked around its hairy throat, digging into its leathery flesh, preventing the brute’s powerful jaws from tearing into his neck. The beasthound’s plated tail whipped around, stabbing at the man pinned beneath it. Leprous yellow, tipped with a jagged stinger and bloated venom sack, the extremity was more like that of an enormous scorpion than a shaggy, dog-like brute.

Driven by the superhuman strength of the hound’s muscles, the stinger punched its way through the crimson armour of the Skulltaker, the venom sack pulsating as it expended its poison into the man’s body.

The beasthound was surprised when, instead of slackening, the fingers locked around its throat tightened, ripping through the flesh. Corrupt black blood gushed from the creature’s mangled neck. It tried desperately to pull free from the killing grip.

The hound’s strength was beyond that of any normal creature, brute or man. So was that of its foe. With a sickening tearing sound, like soggy leather slapping against stone, the hound lurched upwards, exposing the dripping mess of muscle and bone left by the Skulltaker’s fingers. It struggled for an instant, and then flopped gamely against the Skulltaker’s side, its life draining out through the gaping wound in its neck.

The Skulltaker tried to rise, but was dragged back down by the weight of the hound’s tail. Still stabbed into his side, the tail continued to pulse with venomous life even as the hound expired. The Skulltaker snarled, closing his hands around the plated, pallid extremity. The warrior pulled, exerting his prodigious strength. Flesh ripped, bone snapped and the tail was torn free from the beasthound’s carcass.

Feral growls greeted the Skulltaker as he regained his feet. A pair of goat-faced gors glared at him with inhuman hate, fingering their spears. Behind them, bleating encouragement, goading them on, was the massive centigor, its bronze axe gripped tightly in its claws. The Skulltaker glared back at the monsters, and then shifted his head, looking for his fallen sword.

The gors seized the moment of distraction, lunging at the warrior. Too late, they learned that they had been deceived. Whipping around, the Skulltaker grabbed the foremost by the waist and shoulder, giving no notice to the crude spear that shattered against his breastplate. In the same spinning motion, he twisted the brute’s head down and around. The Skulltaker’s momentum forced both man and beast into the path of the second charging gor.

Like the first, the primitive spear buckled against the warrior’s armour, snapping like a dried twig, but it was not the destruction of its weapon that broke the impetus of the beastman’s attack. It was the sharp, two-foot spike of its comrade’s horn crunching through its sternum that ended its assault. The weight of the flailing, dying brute snapped the neck of its killer, dragging both bodies to the ground.

Even as the two brutes fell, the Skulltaker was beset by their leader. Raging not over the deaths of its fellows, but over the loss in status and prestige that those deaths signified, the centigor reared above the man, kicking at him with its forelegs. A single kick from the monster’s hooves would be enough to shatter bone like eggshell, and the centigor added to the menace of its attack by slashing at the warrior with the cruel edge of its axe.

Grunting, snorting laughter rumbled from the centigor as it watched its enemy reel before its assault. With the heavy length of the beasthound’s tail still impaled in his side, the Skulltaker was scarcely able to avoid the ferocious efforts of his foe, even less to prevent its cunning stratagem of placing itself between the man and his sword.

The centigor’s brutal features spread in a toothy grin. It had seen the savagery of this warrior, and knew that here was a foe to be feared, even without a weapon. However, it also saw the venomous tail hanging from his body, and could see the dismembered extremity continuing to pump poison into him. How he had survived so long, the beastman did not know, but it was certain that nothing could stave off the effects of the poison indefinitely. When the man faltered, the centigor would rush him, smash the invader’s head with its hooves and carry the corpse back for the fires of the warherd, testament to its strength and power.

The moment was not long in coming. Retreating before a brutal sweep of the centigor’s axe, the warrior stumbled, hands clutching painfully at the disembodied tail thrust into his side. The centigor roared in triumph, springing at the Skulltaker. The next instant, its roar became a howl of pain. The man’s weakness had been a feint, luring the monster into recklessness. Tearing savagely at the venomous tail, the Skulltaker ripped it free, cracking it against the centigor’s head like a bludgeoning whip. The monster clutched at its face, the jaw nearly broken by the impact of the tail.

The Skulltaker seized on his foe’s distraction. Reversing his grip on the tail, he leapt at the centigor.

The warrior ignored the brute’s armoured torso, instead sinking the barbed, dagger-like stinger into the equine shoulder beneath. The venom sack continued to pulse with obscene and deadly life. The centigor’s howl of pain became one of terror. The bronze axe dropped from its claws as it tried to seize the gruesome weapon. The Skulltaker had chosen his spot well, however, and the centigor’s hands struggled in vain to reach the poison-pumping tail.

Only when the brute bent its legs and trapped the torn end beneath one of its hooves was it able to rip the plated extremity free. By then, it was much too late. Venom already pulsed through the beastman’s body, racing through its veins like burning fire.

Unlike the Skulltaker, the centigor was not immune to the beasthound’s poison. Foam bubbled from its mouth, pink with blood. Its eyes rolled back in its head and its limbs stiffened in a spasm of agony. Then the brutish creature toppled, crashing to the ground like timber. Its hooves drummed wretchedly against the loamy earth.

The Skulltaker did not watch the death throes of his foe, but the remnants of the centigor’s pack did. They lost all taste for battle when they saw their leader fall, scrambling back into the murk of the forest, desperate to escape this new, grim terror that had invaded the Grey The Skulltaker did not try to stop them, nor did his wolf-like mount pursue. As he recovered his screaming sword from where it had fallen, only one thought was on the warrior’s mind: to find the creature he had come to kill, not the mere leader of a small hunting band, but the chieftain of the entire warherd, the beastlord Nhaa.

Lifting himself back into the bronze saddle of his steed, the Skulltaker knew the survivors of the ambush would carry word back to their chieftain. The beastlord would be ready when he came to collect its skull. It was of small consequence. The will of Khorne would not be denied.

Sul sorcerers stood within the hide walls of Hutga’s yurt for a second time, and this time the Tsavags were compelled to entertain three of their duplicitous allies. Enek Zjarr had brought both his apprentice Sanya and Thaulan Scabtongue, the messenger with the faceless helm. Today the sorcerers were all bluster and rage, Enek Zjarr furious over his treatment at the tomb of Teiyogtei. Dorgo noted with some amusement that the kahn had come without his sacred naginta. Indeed, Yorool had already posed the question of whether they met with Enek Zjarr or one of his doppelgangers.

“Do you think I would risk Soulchewer to your capricious moods a second time?” the kahn snarled. “Be thankful that I still need the Tsavags or I would have you answer for your treachery!”

“Treachery?” laughed Togmol. “The Sul could teach the gods new meanings of the word!”

Hutga waved aside the warrior’s outburst and the smouldering hostility of the Sul. “You played us an ill trick at the tomb, sorcerer,” he said. “I believe you, however, when you say that you still need the friendship of the Tsavags. Otherwise I do not think the prospect of open war would keep you from trying to capture the shards of the Bloodeater.”

“A Sul would never fight in the open,” Dorgo commented. “He would use his spells and daemons to achieve victory.”

“Your pup speaks out of turn, Steelskin,” Thaulan warned, his voice echoing from behind his golden helm.

The khagan glared at the black-robed mystic. “The truth never sits easily on the ears of a Sul,” he said. “We have had our taste of how your kind gives battle, so do not pretend that my son’s words offend your honour. A Sul has none.” Hutga shifted his huge body beneath the layers of furs draped across his throne, staring again into Enek Zjarr’s cruel features. “The question remains, sorcerer. Why do the Sul continue to need the Tsavag?”

Enek Zjarr stroked his long moustache, his eyes narrowing into thin slits as the mind behind them considered the chieftain’s question, deliberating upon how much he should disclose to his allies. “The Black Altar is the only place where the Bloodeater may be restored: the furnace of a daemon’s soul, the very place where the great king Teiyogtei crafted his mighty weapons. To destroy the Skulltaker, the Bloodeater must be taken back to the Black Altar.”

“This much you have already told us,” Dorgo said, interrupting the sorcerer. Suddenly it came to him why the Sul still needed them, why they did not try to seize the shards of the sword and make the journey on their own. “The Black Altar is sacred to Khorne! Sacred to the Blood God. Your magic will not work there!”

“Because our powers could not be called upon in Teiyogtei’s tomb, do not presume that we would be impotent before the Black Altar,” hissed Sanya, fire glinting in her dark gaze.

“You would not care to take the chance,” said Hutga. “You would not risk your one hope of killing the Skulltaker on such a gamble. That is why you still need the Tsavag, to defend you against any guardians you encounter.” The chieftain shook his head in disgust. Such cringing, duplicity was something even the lowest Tsavag would shun. A man might not live with honour, but at least he could die with some manner of respect.

“The Black Altar lies within the Wastes,” Thaulan said, “in lands soaked in the Blood God’s power. Any sorcery will be, at best, hindered by such malevolent energies.”

“So even the mighty Sul must put their trust in blades and brawn,” sneered Togmol.

“The Skulltaker is a threat we all share,” replied Sanya acidly.

“And that is the only reason I have granted this audience,” said Hutga. The chieftain bent his head to one side, leaning into Yorool’s cowled face. The khagan and his shaman spent several minutes in whispered conference.

“Very well, sorcerer,” Hutga said after consulting Yorool. “We will go to the Black Altar. The menace is shared by all our peoples, a truth that even your lies cannot deny, but this time we will share the danger equally.”

“No,” declared Enek Zjarr. He raised his hand to petition the angry Hutga for time to explain. “You and I must stay behind with our people. If the other tribes were to learn that we had gone, they would smell weakness and strike our lands. What good would it serve to save the domain from the Skulltaker only to lose it to Zar Ratha and the Vaan? No, khagan, we must stay behind. We must send a small band of our people, the best of the Tsavag warriors and the best of the Sul warlocks, large enough to brave the dangers of the Wastes, but small enough not to attract the notice of the worst the Wastes have to offer.”

Hutga nodded, seeing sense in Enek Zjarr’s words even as he tried to see past them for any hint of a double purpose. “I will allow one of your sorcerers to lead the way,” he said. “Pick whichever of your minions you like.”

He looked aside to his son, pointing at Dorgo. “My son will lead the expedition and one of our shamans will accompany him, to ensure your representative is not the only one bending the ears of the gods.”

“It is agreed then,” Enek Zjarr said, his voice a thin sliver of threat rather than concession. “Sanya will serve as my surrogate in this venture. I will instruct her in the craft she will need to lead your son to the Black Altar. Choose your warriors and have them ready in all haste. The Skulltaker will not wait long for our heads, Hutga Khagan.”

The three Sul stalked away from the camp of the Tsavags. The Tong had not allowed the sorcerers to bring their daemon steeds into the camp this time, forcing them to leave the glowing, disc-like abominations in the marshland well away from both man and mammoth. Enek Zjarr ranged ahead of the others, leaving Thaulan Scabtongue and Sanya to confer alone.

“You are certain you can do this?” Thaulan asked the woman. Much depended upon her, and though she had been closer to their kahn than anyone, privy to more of his secrets than even the council of hierophants, Thaulan still had his doubts.

Sanya reached into a pouch on her belt, removing from it a long, clawed digit that smelt of burnt flesh and dried blood. Red and leathery, the thing had never belonged to any human hand, but had been cut from the fist of a daemon. “This will guide the way,” she assured Thaulan. “Enek Zjarr called the bloodletter from the Hunting Halls especially for such a purpose. He would not risk invoking a daemon of Khorne unless he was certain of the potency of a talisman such as this.”

Thaulan nodded his golden head, reassured somewhat by the conviction in Sanya’s voice. “The kahn has trusted you with many of his most potent charms,” he said, a sour note in his voice.

“Jealousy ill-becomes you,” Sanya said, running a slender finger along the smooth surface of the faceless helm. “Enek Zjarr paid much for my favours, more than he expected.” Her hand fell from the faceless helm and rested against the side of a hide bag dangling from her belt.

“Is there anything so dangerous as a woman’s ambition?” Thaulan wondered aloud. “I could almost feel sorry for our kahn.”

“Do not let his doppelganger hear you,” warned Sanya. “Already it shows signs of believing itself to be the man whose shape it wears.”

“Enek Zjarr has destroyed dozens such simulacra before,” Thaulan said. “This one will be no different, now that it has served its purpose.”

“Everything has its purpose,” observed Sanya, “the Skulltaker, the Tsavags, even the Blood God. It is how those purposes serve the Sul that matters. It is the only thing of consequence.”

For the denizens of the Grey, the centre of their world was the herdstone, a great slab of green star-stone. The herdstone was ancient beyond the reckoning of any within the warherd, for even their shamans kept no written record of their history. It had been the token of Kug, the beastlord who had first sworn loyalty to Teiyogtei Khagan and whose name was still revered by the beastmen. When the other tribes had driven the warherd into the Grey, the gors had carried the herdstone with them in their retreat, for Kug would not leave it behind in the lands of men.

In the myths of the gors, the herdstone endowed them with strength, and allowed their shamans to commune with the gods. They made offerings of food and metal to the huge rock, their chieftains etching their names and deeds into its sides. Heaps of bone were littered around the thirty-foot high stone, the rusting ruin of armour and weapons mixed among the piles of offal and dung that the savage creatures left in supplication to the dread powers of Old Night.

Only the strongest, most privileged of the gors were allowed to make their encampments around the herdstone. It was a place of status and honour among the brutish creatures, who believed that the beasts birthed near the cyclopean stone would be favoured by the gods, born stronger thanks to its power. For all the primitive savagery, the feral, fractious instincts of the beastmen, they respected the herdstone with fanatical fervour. From the lowest to the mighty wargors, they would die to protect it.

Cunning, possessing neither love nor loyalty for its people, Nhaa had told the warherd nothing that it had heard at the council. There was nothing to be gained by telling the other brutes about the Skulltaker, sharing the fear of that name with them. Some shaman might take it in mind to meet with the dreaded warrior and offer him Nhaa in exchange for the lives of the rest of the warherd. Nhaa could easily believe such possibilities, because that was what would occur to its treacherous mind were their roles reversed.

Instead, as soon as the warning had reached Nhaa that the Skulltaker was abroad within the Grey, the beastlord had summoned the scattered encampments of its kind to the herdstone. With no talk of protecting their chieftain, it was the defence of the herdstone to which Nhaa rallied its kind. From all across the Grey they came, scrawny brays in their dozens, satyr-like ungors, porcine tuskgors, bestial centigors, brutish beasthounds and other, even less sane things that had emerged from the wombs of gor cows. Mightiest of all were the hulking, bull-headed minotaurs, each towering over the largest of the gors, twice the size of any human warrior, however fierce.

The minotaurs in particular would never have answered any call to protect Nhaa. The blessings of the herdstone had set them above the rest of the warherd and so they became the guardians of the megalith, devoted to the stone in a manner beyond that of even the shamans.

Nhaa considered the twisted host of mutant creatures, children of the dark gods and their corrupt power. It was not an army such as the Vaan or the Seifan might boast; for there was no drill or discipline among them, but it could be depended upon to fight mercilessly with no thought of plunder or quarter to distract it from its rage. Blood and slaughter were what moved the warherd when it marched into battle. Such purity of thought would serve them well against a foe like the Skulltaker.

There was one other beast upon which Nhaa was counting. The Skulltaker had killed Lok, had butchered his way through the diseased ranks of the Veh-Kung and Bleda’s daemons, had even turned the ambush of beastmen into a one-sided massacre, but Nhaa had a champion it was sure not even Khorne’s chosen one could defeat.

The ground trembled and the bones strewn about the herdstone shivered as though life were quivering through them once more. Even Nhaa’s milky eyes could sense the dark shadow that filled the herdstone’s clearing. The beastlord’s nostrils drank in the scent of its prize champion and a braying bark of laughter rolled past Nhaa’s fangs.

“Korg,” the beastlord hissed, and the name was taken up by the beastmen around Nhaa. Soon it became a chant that rose from every member of the warherd able to shape it upon their tongue.

“Korg!” a thunderous voice bellowed, the word sounding like two mountains smashing together. The ground shook again as a foot the size of a Tsavag yurt smashed against the ground. “Korg!” the voice boomed from above the clearing once more.

It had been born, like all the other misshapen things in the clearing, but the power of the gods had shaped it like no other. It loomed sixty feet above the clearing, dwarfing even the huge herdstone. Its hooves were like boulders, its shaggy legs thicker than trees, and its arms, bulging with muscles the size of small hills, dangled to its crooked knees. It had a monstrous head, its horns spiralling out from its brow to a length of twenty feet, its teeth the size of mammoths’ tusks and its pallid eyes bigger than chariot wheels.

“Korg!” the giant thundered and the warherd repeated its cry. Korg shook its shaggy head, reaching down with an immense hand to rip a full grown pine from the ground. It lifted the tree high, and then clenched its fist tight around its trunk. The pine exploded beneath the pressure, showering the warherd in splinters.

“Korg!” the monster shouted again.

Nhaa grinned as it watched the giant work itself into a frenzy. Let the Skulltaker come. Korg would soon be picking its teeth with the warrior’s bones!