Blood for the Blood God

4

Lashed across the wooden platform, limbs stretched and spread away from his body, chained to small, rounded protrusions, there was little the Muhak captive could do but scream. The Kurgan were noted for their toughness, and the Muhak were rugged even by the grim standards of their savage race, but everything mortal had its breaking point, that stage where mind and soul were at last overwhelmed by pain and the fear of pain. When that point was reached, there was no secret that could not be given voice.

Hutga could see the Muhak’s flesh writhing beneath his skin as the blood-grubs Yorool had set into the Kurgan’s wounds burrowed into the exposed muscle. The insects would gnaw and tear their way deep, never relenting until they found the moist darkness where they could lay their eggs.

The khagan’s face was stern as he watched the Muhak shudder and struggle. The chains would hold even one of his brawny breed. They were the sort of fetters used to hold juvenile mammoths and keep them close to their mothers when the tribe was on the march. Beside that power, the strength of the mightiest Kurgan was nothing.

Hutga looked away from the captive’s screaming face, watching as Qotagir circled the platform. The old Tsavag held an ivory goad in his weathered hand, motioning with it to guide the enormous creature that moved with him, following his every step as though it were his shadow.

Barn’s bulk blotted out the light as it lumbered around the platform, the wood quivering with the mammoth’s every step. The oldest and wisest of the herd, Baru was almost human in its understanding of the commands Qotagir shouted to it. The mammoth was covered in glossy grey hairs, its pillar-like legs coated in old scabs and bruises, its long trunk split into four separate, mouth-like noses. There was a cruel intelligence in Barn’s bulging, crust-rimmed eyes.

Looking into them, Hutga knew that the beast fully appreciated the havoc its master asked of it.

The Muhak’s screams grew louder, more desperate as Qotagir and Baru circled him. His body thrashed against its bonds, at least what was left of it did. His left leg was little more than a mash of pulp pressed deep into the log it had been chained to. He stared at the mangled limb, tears flowing from his eyes. Then his head turned back to Qotagir and the mammoth.

The leathery Tsavag lifted the ivory goad as Baru moved into position. In response, the gigantic animal raised its foreleg. The captive struggled, striving desperately to pull his arm back towards his body. The chains were too secure and his arm didn’t budge. Qotagir’s wizened face split in an ugly grin. With a quick gesture, he brought the goad hurtling downwards. At the same time, Baru brought his huge leg pounding down into the top of the log.

The Muhak’s shrieks intensified as his arm was crushed beneath Barn’s immense weight.

Hutga waved Qotagir away, walking towards the weeping, pleading captive. The last of the warrior was gone and all that was left was tortured flesh and screaming pain. It was time to ask the questions. Now he would hear nothing but truth from this man, and if not… The khagan looked aside to see Qotagir already moving Baru towards the prisoner’s other arm.

“You will enter the Hunting Halls broken and ruined,” the khagan told his captive, pointing at the bleeding paste where the Kurgan’s shield-arm had been.

“The dogs of the Blood God will make sport with one so wretched,” Hutga spat. “Tell me what happened in the Crumbling Hills!”

The Muhak glared at Hutga, despair rising above pain in his gaze. “What more can I say that your fat Tsavag ears have not already heard, Hutga Ironbelly! How many times must I tell you what I saw with my own eyes!” The Kurgan’s voice dropped into a snarl of ferocity. “Kill me and be done!”

Hutga gestured at Qotagir. The Muhak followed the motion, watching with horror as Baru lifted his leg into the air. “Your sword-arm is next,” the khagan warned. “There will be no place in the Hunting Halls for you.”

“The plagues of Nurgle wither your manhood, dung-eating swine!” the Muhak roared. “I can say it no differently! We fell upon the long-nose as your kin intruded upon our hunting grounds. Zar Lok bade us wait in ambush for the long-nose, to pierce its belly with our spears. Then we killed the dogs who rode upon the beast. They died like women beneath our clubs!”

The khagan smashed his fist into the Muhak’s bloodied face, splitting his lip and cracking his teeth. This much of the story he knew to be the truth, though the Muhak refused to admit that his zar had been hunting Dorgo, not protecting some imagined claim upon the Crumbling Hills.

It was what followed that Hutga did not believe, what he desperately did not want to believe.

“The Muhak are accustomed to killing women,” Hutga growled. “They find it challenge enough to test their courage.” He raised his fist again, satisfied to see the captive cringe in anticipation of the blow. “Spare me the boasting of murderers, it is what happened after that I would hear.”

A shudder swept through the Kurgan, a trembling that had nothing to do with the pain that ravaged his body. A deeper fear crept back into his eyes, a terror beside which even the threat of Baru was made small. “What I have told you before,” the captive said, his voice a broken whisper.

“You dare insist that a lone outlander killed your zar and twenty of his warriors!”

“A thing of darkness and blood, he was,” the Muhak gasped, “his face hidden behind a skull of steel, his body locked within armour of blood. The sword in his hand was black as death, shrieking and smoking as it hacked down our men.”

“Lies!” Hutga roared, smashing his fist against the platform beside the captive’s head. The Muhak flinched at the impact. “Your soul will belong to Chen the Deceiver if you die with lies upon your tongue!”

The Muhak sneered up into Hutga’s rage. “Look for yourself. Seek the outlander, Hutga Ironbelly, and your head will hang beside Lok’s!”

Hutga backed away, trembling as the threat struck him. The Muhak spoke from ignorance and spite. He did not suspect the horror of what he said, the hideous power he courted with his words. He did not even guess what it was he had seen, what had driven him to abandon his zar and hide in the hills like a frightened rabbit until Ulagan’s scouts found him.

No, the Muhak did not know, but Hutga Khagan did.

The chieftain turned away from the captive, walking to where Yorool waited for him at the edge of the platform. The shaman’s face was as dark as Hutga’s. Hutga shook his head as he saw the fright on Yorool’s mutated face. “Lies,” he insisted again.

“Then we will question him more?” Yorool asked. The inquiry stabbed at Hutga like the thrust of a lance. The Muhak’s threat continued to send shivers through his powerful body.

“No,” the chieftain said. He lifted his hand in a tightened fist. Qotagir turned Baru around, marching the huge animal from the platform, leading it back to the pens. “The pig would only tell us the same lies.” Hutga opened his hand.

The crowd that had been watching from the periphery of the platform set up a savage, bestial howl of fury, rushing forward in a hate-maddened mob: wives, daughters and mothers of the men who had died in the Crumbling Hills, each woman’s hand clenched tightly around a dull stone knife.

Hutga descended from the platform as the women took their vengeance. There were some things that turned even a warlord’s stomach.

“What if he was telling the truth?” Yorool asked, struggling to keep up with Hutga as the two men walked back to the chieftain’s yurt. “What he described, what your son described… there is only one thing it could be.”

“Summon the war chiefs of the tribe,” Hutga said, cutting him off. “I would confer with them. Send for Ulagan and his scouts. I will need them as well.”

“And your son?”

Hutga did not look at Yorool as he asked the question. He did not want the shaman to see the doubt that wracked him as he thought of Dorgo. The Muhak’s tale supported what Dorgo had told him. Hutga knew the tortured warrior had told him the truth, however much the chieftain tried to deny it. His son was restored to him, redeemed from the shame that had fallen upon him.

The relief he felt was bitter and he felt like a traitor to his people for feeling it. Yes, his son was his again, but at what cost? What cost would his people pay?

“Bring him to the council,” Hutga told Yorool. “He is neither a liar nor a coward. The Muhak dog confirmed that much.”

“Then you do believe.” Yorool’s voice shuddered as he heard his khagan confess his acceptance of the story, and what it implied. It was the shaman’s turn to look away. “Long has it been prophesied this day would come, but I had hoped it would not happen in my time. What will you tell your men?”

“We will tell them only what they need to know,” Hutga said, struggling to keep his voice strong. “Tell them what it is that menaces our people, our land and the whole of the domain.”

Yorool closed his hands in the sign of Khorne, crushing his fists against his chest, bowing his head as he muttered a quiet prayer to the brutal god of battle and slaughter.

“He has come,” the shaman hissed, his desperate effort to deny the truth overwhelmed by the fear that pulsed in his heart. The air grew cold as he named his terror.

“The Skulltaker.”

The Skulltaker.

The blood froze in Bleda’s putrid heart as he realised just what it was he had so boldly challenged. The bloated Veh-Kung chieftain stumbled back, eyes bulging with horror, prayers to his debased Crow God slobbering from suddenly numb lips. The seven-section chain hung limp from fingers grown flaccid.

Bleda continued to watch the strange warrior before him in the dark armour. No mortal man, this warrior. Nothing mortal could move the way he did, striking and slashing in a relentless cascade of violence: tireless, remorseless, unstoppable. The black blade rose and fell in a butcher’s dance, hewing and hacking, ripping and tearing. Bleda had spread the Divine Rot to his entire entourage, sending wave after wave of possessed slaves to attack the warrior.

The daemons charged at him, chopping at him with their corrupt plagueblades. The daemonic steel simply recoiled from its impacts against the man’s unholy armour, sending even the daemons reeling. The warrior gave his foes no quarter, no mercy.

His smoking blade was everywhere, stabbing into rotten lungs, splitting open decayed bellies, lopping off limbs and heads.

The plaguebearers did not falter even in the midst of massacre, but their numbers, the foul vapours that surrounded them, the poisonous touch of their swords, none of these were enough to prevail against their foe.

The slow, sickly movements of the daemons were unequal to the swift, murderous attacks of the warrior. The plaguebearers fought with a hellish vitality beyond that of anything merely mortal, enduring wounds that would have brought the strongest man low.

They did not know pain. They did not fear death. They only knew what their master demanded of them, and so they fought on, oblivious to the carnage slowly consuming them all.

A lion among jackals, the warrior carved a gory swathe through the festering, moaning daemons. Again and again, his blade cut through their diseased flesh, spilling their foul ichor across the shimmering sand until there was too little of the mortal shell left to contain their noxious essence.

Plaguebearers fell beneath his sword, hacked to pieces, collapsing into pools of putrescence as their daemonic essences fled back to the realm of the gods.

It was while the warrior was fighting a crook-backed, fly-faced daemon that his heavy cloak was slashed by a plaguebearer’s sword. The stranger’s side was exposed and for the first time, Bleda could see the chain that crossed the man’s chest from right shoulder to left hip. A grisly trophy grinned at him from the chain: the skull of a man, the chain looped through its sockets, its forehead branded with the rune of Khorne. That was the moment, the moment when Bleda recognised his enemy for who and what he was.

The Skulltaker brought his sword smashing down into the fanged visage of a plaguebearer, rupturing its cyclopean eye and collapsing the bone beneath. The thing staggered away, swiping blindly at him with its claws.

The warrior pursued the maimed daemon, pausing only for the instant it took to chop the hand from a daemon closing upon him from the other side. Returning to his first foe, the Skulltaker stabbed his blade into the thing’s chest, impaling it upon his sword. With brutal savagery, he ripped his weapon free, sending a spray of stagnant black ichor and splintered ribs across the faceted side of a crystal spire.

The warrior did not pause, pivoting as he won his sword free, bringing the blade around in a shrieking arc that slashed through the leg of another daemon. The thing bleated and pitched forwards. Before it could rise, the Skulltaker brought the edge of his weapon down upon its head.

Only five of the daemons remained. They circled the Skulltaker, ropes of filth dripping from their wounds, drool slopping down their faces. The pus-hued eyes of the plaguebearers burned into those behind the skull-mask of the warrior’s helm, blazing with a corrupt inner fire. The Skulltaker glared back, his black blade screaming hungrily in his hand. Shard-sand crunched beneath his boots as he pivoted to watch the daemons as they shuffled around him, tightening their circle.

As one, the fiends rushed at him, hooves and peeling feet slapping against the sand. The first daemon flung its body at the man, exulting as his sword smashed into it, erupting from its back with volcanic fury. The dying daemon’s arms twisted impossibly backwards, grabbing the smoking metal piercing its body.

With all the strength left in its mortal shell, the daemon held the Skulltaker’s sword, keeping it sheathed in the monster’s corrupt flesh. The other daemons rushed the Skulltaker, crushing him beneath their diseased mass, smashing him to the earth beneath their oozing weight.

A nervous laugh wheezed through Bleda’s swollen lips while he watched the plaguebearers tear at the man pinned beneath them with their claws and stab awkwardly at him with their corroded swords. Not a monster from the pits of legend after all, only a man. One who would soon offer up his soul to Neiglen when the daemons ripped it from his body.

The chieftain marched forwards, his flabby face twisting in a sneer of triumph made bitter by the memory of his moment of terror.

Bleda’s step faltered abruptly and his sneer fell from his face. The heap of plaguebearers shifted upwards, exploding in a burst of primal strength and savagery. Daemons were hurled to the ground as the Skulltaker rose once more. The warrior’s hand was locked around the neck of a daemon, the steel fingers digging into its throat, filth gushing from the wound. The man’s armour was pitted and gouged, his cloak torn and ragged. Bleda could see something, something hot and black dripping from the Skulltaker’s wounds.

Even as he watched, the flow became a trickle and the rents in the armour closed, oozing shut as though they had never been.

One of the fallen daemons lunged at the Skulltaker as he strangled its fellow. The warrior spun around, whipping the body of the daemon he held, smashing the one with the other. The rising daemon crumpled under the impact, its collarbone shattered. The daemon he held slipped from his hands as the force of the impact tore its head from its shoulders.

The thing slopped against the ground, shuddering as the diseased spirit abandoned its desiccated husk, fleeing back into the void.

Bleda saw the other two plaguebearers charging at the Skulltaker, but he no longer had any illusions who would prevail. The Veh-Kung started to back away again, wondering if he had time to flee back into his tunnels, wondering if the Skulltaker would be able to find him even in that dank, noxious gloom. Then his eyes closed upon the plaguebearer impaled upon the Skulltaker’s sword.

The daemon’s body had largely disintegrated into a pile of sludge, but the sword was still there, mired in the filth. He looked again at the warrior, facing off against the daemons. A desperate hope came to the Hung chieftain. He scrambled across the shard-sand, his huge frame moving with a speed that belied his obscene bulk. He hurried towards the black sword. If he could use the weapon against the Skulltaker, kill the monster with his own sword…

The Skulltaker turned from the mangled ruin of the last plaguebearer, his skull-mask turning towards Bleda as the fat chieftain rushed for the sword. The warrior moved to intercept his foe, Lok’s skull slapping against his hip as he stalked after the Hung.

Bleda stopped, raising his seven-section chain. His chubby arms whipped the weapon through the air, lashing out at the Skulltaker with the flailing lengths of rod and chain. The warrior staggered as the corrupt bronze segments smacked into him, sizzling against his armour as they struck. A filthy green smog rose from the wounds, steaming into the air.

Bleda snarled, inching closer to the black sword even as he continued to whip the chain through the air. A droning buzz sounded from the chain, the sound of vermin on the wing, as its wielder swung it faster and faster, creating a blinding curtain of crushing metal and poisonous fumes.

As Bleda edged towards the sword, the Skulltaker fought his way through the crashing bronze rods. His breastplate smouldered where the rods had struck him, the left horn of his helm partially melted by the corrosive touch of the weapon.

Blood, dark and steaming, bubbled from new rents in his armour, sizzling as it dripped onto the shimmering sand. Bleda’s satisfaction at the damage his enchanted weapon visited upon the monstrous warrior was tempered by the fact that its touch had not broken the man.

Another foe would be reduced to a quivering mess, retching and shivering as the vile influence of the chain’s power polluted his body. The Skulltaker kept coming, daring the tempest of Bleda’s chain. Foot by foot, he was closing upon the puddle of ruin and his terrible sword.

The Hung kahn gave a bubbling shout, jerking the chain savagely in his hand. The rods whipped around the Skulltaker’s body, coiling around his left arm. Bleda grunted in satisfaction, putting his entire weight into one savage pull on the chain. The Skulltaker staggered as the trapped arm popped from its socket, hanging limp and useless beside his body.

Bleda shuddered to find that even such an injury had drawn no cry of pain from the warrior. His horror at the observation was diminished as he found the nearness of the pool and the black sword.

Still keeping his hand firmly around the seventh of his chain-weapon’s bronze rods, Bleda lunged for the gruesome blade.

Bleda’s fat face twisted back into its triumphant sneer as his chubby fingers closed around the hilt of the sword. Bubbling laughter oozed from the warlord’s mouth as he tore the weapon free from the filth of the plaguebearer.

Laughter decayed into a drawn-out scream. The sword fell from Bleda’s mutilated hand, fat and flesh dripping from the charred extremity in greasy ropes. The black sword fell to the ground, its edge smoking, its eerie voice raised in a ravenous howl.

Bleda pitched to the ground as the chain in his other hand was ripped from his grasp. The chieftain coughed in terror as he saw the Skulltaker free himself from the coils of the chain, casting the magic weapon aside as though it were so much rubbish. Then the killer was advancing on him once more, the grisly scars in his armour healing more with every step.

Croaking wheezes and wracking coughs slopped from Bleda’s swollen face as the chieftain tried to summon the hideous power of his god. Curses and poxes, spells to wither and ruin, hexes and blights, were all known to the lord of the Veh-Kung, for Neiglen was indulgent with his servants, but none could ooze their way onto his tongue, while the searing agony of his mangled hand pulsed through his thoughts and thundered through his blood.

Bleda fought to calm his spirit, to draw upon the powers he had been taught, but the pain would not relent.

The Skulltaker loomed over the reeling kahn. He reached to his shoulder, wrenching his left arm back into place with a dull crack. The warrior’s skull-mask glared down at the quivering chieftain.

Reaching down, he retrieved the black blade, metal gauntlets tightening around the smoking weapon. The scene lingered, the silent warrior towering over the broken, obese hulk of the gasping chieftain.

The molten touch of the black blade had spread up Bleda’s arm, reducing muscle to strips of fried meat, exposing bones that were burnt black.

When Bleda looked up, when the kahn stared into the murderous embers behind the warrior’s helm, when the Skulltaker saw the terror and defeat in the chieftain’s eyes, only then did he strike. In one fluid motion, the black blade was drawn back, and then flashed forwards in a brutal sweep of smoke and sound.

Bleda’s swollen head, with its grotesque antlers and bulging eyes leapt from the kahn’s shoulders, dropping into the shard-sand with a wet plop. The headless trunk of the chieftain crumpled in upon itself, sagging to the ground like a ruptured boil.

The Skulltaker kicked Bleda’s lifeless bulk aside. Stalking across the shard-sand, he knelt beside the chieftain’s staring head. He lifted it from the ground, brushing the clinging slivers of glass from the bloated flesh. Then he brought the keen edge of his sword against his new trophy, stripping the warlord’s features from his head.

Only when the rune of Khorne, branded upon the bone beneath Bleda’s flesh stood exposed beneath the blazing stars, did the warrior relent. He lifted the flayed skull to the sky. Thunder roared in the cloudless night, causing the crystal spires to shiver: the growl of a hungry god.

The atmosphere in Hutga’s yurt was tense, a subdued silence filling the hide-walled hut. The gathered war chiefs and leaders of the tribe stood in a circle around the throne of their khagan, the eyes of every man focused upon their brooding chieftain.

His thoughts were dark, frightened: the troubled mind of a leader who knows his people face crisis and destruction. He glanced across the Tsavag champions, his gaze piercing, haunted.

Only when he saw Dorgo standing beside Togmol did the khagan’s eyes soften. The corroboration of his son’s story, the restoration of his honour was the only blessing hidden within the black words of the dead Muhak and the awful horror which they portended.

“You have heard the words of my son,” Hutga said, his voice like gravel grinding beneath a mammoth’s foot. “You have heard the words of the Muhak. Zar Lok is dead.” That statement brought gleams of satisfaction onto the faces of the warriors and smiles onto their scarred visages. Hutga raised his hand, cautioning his war chiefs. “Do not be quick to rejoice in his death. The same doom that came upon the Muhak threatens the Tsavag.”

Hutga’s voice dropped to a fearful whisper. “The outlander, the warrior who killed Lok, he is doom long threatened in the old prophecies. The Skulltaker has returned.”

The revelation brought a frightened murmur rippling through the room. Powerful warriors, men who had not faltered in battle with the most hideous of beasts and monsters knew fear as they heard Hutga speak the terrible name: the Skulltaker, a figure from the most ancient of the Tsavag legends, the crimson spectre whose menace had hovered above the domain since its very beginning. Even the youngest of the Tsavag was taught about the bloody-handed executioner of Khorne.

“The Skulltaker,” Yorool repeated.

The shaman shuffled forwards, his twisted body moving to the centre of the circle. “You have all heard the traveller’s tales about him. You have heard of the hungry daemon, the Blooded Wanderer who tests the pride of those who would call themselves warriors. You have heard how he stalks the land, cloaked in a mantle of skulls, his fiery touch searing the flesh from his prey. You have heard how he rides the plains upon a great daemon-beast, killing all who have offended Great Khorne. The stories of the Skulltaker are many: how he killed the dragon Shaneeth and placed its bleeding heads at the foot of the Skull Throne; how he rode against the ogres of the Marrowchewer, and alone scoured them from the land; how he dared face the Sin Stealer of the decadent Ulvags and vanquished the daemon from the realm of mortals for a thousand years; how he visited destruction upon the blasphemous city of Po and left not one of Lashor’s children alive within its accursed walls.”

“Before any of these things,” Yorool continued, “he was known as the Slayer of Kings. The Skulltaker appeared in the lands of Teiyogtei, to bring low the mightiest of khagans. He stalked across the domain, slaying what he would, leaving a trail of slaughter in his wake. None could stand against him, not the craftiest Hung, the strongest Kurgan or most monstrous gor. All who did battle with him were cut down, their bodies left heaped in great carrion mounds. No tribe or nation had been able to defy the armies of Teiyogtei, but the Skulltaker cut a path through them as though they were feeble children.

“Teiyogtei could not let the horde he had forged, the land he had carved from the desolation, be destroyed by this champion of havoc. He ordered his armies to stand aside, to make no more battle against the Skulltaker. The great khagan alone would face the monster and decide the fate of the land. Teiyogtei fought the Skulltaker upon a barren hill. For seven days, the mighty lord struggled against the terrible killer.

“Each wound Teiyogtei suffered was returned against the Skulltaker, but neither could deliver the killing blow. As the seventh day faded into the eighth, Teiyogtei called out to the grim Blood God, asking him to guide his hand, to bring him victory against his awful foe. Khorne answered Teiyogtei’s prayer, and the Bloodeater burned like fire in Teiyogtei’s hand as he drove it into the Skulltaker’s body. Even as the death blow was struck, however, the Skulltaker’s black blade smashed into Teiyogtei, shattering the Blood Crown. The great khagan fell, stricken unto death by the hand of the Skulltaker. Our great lord was taken into his tent, where the sorcerers and healers laboured over him long into the night, but before the eighth day perished and the ninth dawn broke, Teiyogtei’s spirit had gone to the Hunting Halls. His chieftains quarrelled after their lord’s death and divided the domain between them, denying the right of the Tsavags as the true heirs of the king.”

Yorool lifted his misshapen hand, pointing his finger meaningfully at the men around him. “This is the tale every child knows,” the shaman said. “There is more to the legend, a secret passed down among shaman and khagan. You were led to believe that Teiyogtei killed the Skulltaker, that all the other tales about him were some other mortal champion whom Khorne had made his executioner. This is wrong. There has only ever been one Skulltaker. The destroyer of cities, the killer of dragons and daemons, is the same warrior who fought against the great king. Teiyogtei knew the terrible prophecy, that the Skulltaker could never be destroyed. He prayed to the gods for victory, but he could only vanquish the Skulltaker, not kill him. Like a daemon, his defeat banished him from the domain of Teiyogtei, but the king knew that the Skulltaker would return when ill stars burned in the heavens and the curse of years was broken.”

“Ill stars glow in the night,” Hutga’s solemn voice declared. “The Skulltaker returns, returns to destroy the domain of Teiyogtei and all within it.” He shook his head, feeling the weight of his words, the hopelessness in them. “Teiyogtei’s united horde could not stand against him. Now the tribes war against one another, the hand of each turned against the other. Where the horde was broken, the Tsavag must stand alone.”

Grim silence stretched across the room, seeping into the murals and trophies, reaching into every corner.

The Tsavag warriors stared at the floor, none of them willing to face his fellow, none of them able to accept the dread that filled their hearts.

Dorgo broke the silence. Brandishing his sword, he lifted his voice in a defiant snarl. “If these be the last days of the Tsavag, let us give praise to the gods that they have sent a foe worthy to oppose us! When he comes, we will give him a battle that will shame the wrath of dragon and ogre!”

Hutga rose from his throne, casting aside the heavy blankets that shrouded his massive frame. He strode through the circle, laying his hand against his son’s shoulder. For once, all doubt was gone.

“Here was a warrior fit to lead the Tsavag. The jackals take legend and prophecy!” he roared, turning to face his war chiefs. “Here stands one who has seen the Skulltaker! He has seen the monster, and he would fight against it! Does he fight alone! Are there still men among the Tsavag?”

His answer was another roar. The fists of Tsavag warriors struck the air and swords clattered in their sheaths. Dorgo’s boldness and the words of their khagan goaded their courage, fanned the flames of their pride. Where dread had held them only a moment before, now they snarled their defiance. Hutga felt pride flooding through him: pride in his people, that they could still rear such warriors, and pride in his son, that he should be the first to lift his sword and raise his voice.

The khagan’s attention was pulled away from the shouting warriors, drawn to a young Tsavag boy, his cheeks unscarred, who crept timidly into the yurt.

The boy dropped to his knees as he saw Hutga look in his direction, grovelling in obeisance before his chieftain. Hutga recognised him as one of Qotagir’s helpers. The boy was pale beneath the layer of dirt that covered his limbs, beads of sweat dripping from his brow.

“Mighty khagan,” the boy said. “A… a stranger… in the encampment. A sorcerer,” he added with a shiver.

Hutga marched to the youth, lifting him from the floor by his arm. “What is this?” he demanded of the frightened boy. “Who is this sorcerer and how did he pass unchallenged into the camp?”

He had to shake the child to force words from his stammering lips.

“He… he came from… the sky,” the boy stuttered. “He is one of the Hung. Says he bears a message for our khagan from the Sul.”

Hutga released his hold on the youth. The shouts of the war chiefs faded away as they heard the boy’s words.

A Sul sorcerer in their camp! Every man’s thoughts turned to his family and his home. They knew well the carnage a sorcerer could wreck. Their blood already up, the warriors began to rush from the tent. Hutga moved to impose his metal-studded bulk in the path of his men.

“Relent, my wolves,” he told them. “I would hear what this Sul rat would say.” Hutga’s face darkened, twisting into a snarl. “Then the sorcerer can die,” he promised.

Warriors gathered around the wooden platform, spears and swords held in clenched fists. The wreckage of the Muhak captive had been cleared away, only the dark stains in the wood giving silent evidence of his fate. In the pens nearby, the mammoths trumpeted their displeasure and unease, their handlers hard-pressed to pacify the brutes.

There was a foulness in the air, a spectral taint that tortured the animals’ sharp senses. Even the men could feel it, crawling up their spines like icy worms.

At the centre of the platform, impossibly suspended above it, was the thing that evoked such disquiet. It was a great oval of glowing light, the suggestion of shape and form just barely perceptible within the glare. There was the impression of a flattened, disc-like body and a gaping, fang-ridden maw.

The light around the thing faded from one colour to the next, like a prism turning in the sunlight.

Hutga and his war chiefs approached the platform. The khagan’s eyes did not linger on the levitating daemon, but rose to stare at the man who stood upon its back. He was short and stooped, his limbs long and wiry. A black robe was draped around his body, a collection of charms and amulets hanging around his neck. A great helm of gold enclosed his head, its face smooth and without openings, its crown sporting a plume of feathers that changed hue in tandem with the daemon beneath the man’s boots.

“Hutga Steelskin,” the faceless man said, his voice a rasping hiss as it escaped from behind his helm. “I bring you tidings from the great Enek Zjarr, Kahn of all the Sul, Prophet of Mighty Chenzch.” The messenger bowed his head ever so slightly, making the briefest of obeisance to the Tsavag chieftain.

The khagan stared back at the sorcerer, unimpressed by the tides of his dark master. Even among the Hung, the Sul had a foul history of betrayal and subterfuge, their every word as crooked as an adder’s tongue. Only the terrible potency of their sorcery and the impossibility of attacking their fortress had prevented the other tribes from wiping them out long ago.

Hatred of the Sul was often the only thing that the different peoples of the domain had in common.

“You are overbold, Thaulan Scabtongue,” Hutga said, spitting after he spoke the sorcerer’s name. “Do you think I have such fondness to hear the deceits of your master that I would not see your head upon a spear?” As their khagan spoke, the warriors around him bristled. Dorgo took a step forwards, edging to his father’s side.

Yorool’s eyes darkened and the chill in the air grew colder as he began to evoke his familiar spirits.

“Hold, khagan,” Thaulan said, raising his slender, feathered hand. “I come here under a truce.”

“We honour no truce with the Sul,” growled Togmol, his voice shaking with anger. He had nearly died in battle with the Vaan four summers past, part of a costly war between the two tribes, a war that had been fuelled by Sul lies and Sul manipulation.

The sorcerer turned his faceless helm to the enraged warrior, hate exuding from the polished golden veil. Slowly, Thaulan looked back at Hutga. “Even the Tong honour the Call,” the sorcerer told him. “None of the tribes of Teiyogtei has ever forsaken the Call.”

Hutga nodded his head slowly, his thoughts darkening with the sorcerer’s every word. “Who summons the chieftains?” he demanded.

“Enek Zjarr would confer with his,” the sorcerer paused, his voice dripping with arrogant contempt, “brethren. His divinations have uncovered a threat, something that imperils not only the Sul, but all of the domain.”

The men who had stood with Hutga in his yurt and listened to Yorool relate the grisly tales of the Skulltaker turned anxious glances towards one another. Hutga knew their minds. If there had been any last chance for doubt, the Sul messenger had broken it.

With their sorcerer’s tricks, the Sul had learned of the menace that stalked their lands, the monster that had stepped out of the mists of legend to reap a harvest of death.

“Tell your dog of a master that Hutga Khagan will answer the Call,” the chieftain told Thaulan. He looked aside at Dorgo, meeting his son’s troubled gaze. “There is much the Tsavag can tell Enek Zjarr about this ‘threat’ he has seen, things we have learned without daemons and scrying stones. Return to him and tell him the Tsavag will meet with the other chieftains to decide how to fight this menace to our peoples.”

If it is not already too late to stop, Hutga thought.