Clint Werner: Blood for the Blood God

Flesh was cut, burned and scarred and organs ripped from still living-breasts in diseased rite and ritual, the debased worship of Neiglen, the abhorred Crow God of the Hung. However great the famine, none but the bloated daemon flies fed upon the wreckage of the sacrifices, even the hungriest of scavengers shunning bodies marked with the puckered pox-rune of the Plague God.

As the night engulfed the eerie silence of the desert, the tunnels spewed their wretched inhabitants. Scrawny with privation or bloated with disease, they scrabbled from their holes, scraps of black cloth striving to cover their leprous frames. Most wore masks of bone held together with strips of sinew and leather, each crude helm a rough representation of a crow skull.

Even those without masks bore the image of their god upon them, their flesh cut and torn to display the pox-rune. As they emerged from their holes, the sickly throng was faced with their image reflected a thousand times from the facets of the crystal spires and the shimmering wreck of the shard-sand.

Every night of their lives, the tribesmen emerged from the festering darkness to be confronted by their own diseased images, reminded by the silent mockery of the mountains what they were, how far from the shape of man they had fallen.

Anguish stabbed into their hearts, the bitter misery of something lost and forsaken. Their pain filled them, turning to envious hate. Nothing deserved to live whole and pure; whatever walked or crawled upon the land must be as vile as they were. They would bring the cursed touch of Neiglen to anything that strayed too near the Desert of Mirrors, destroying its blasphemous health with the taint of corruption.

Hate was the only thing left to them, the only thing to nourish them in their misery. It was the gift of Neiglen to his children, the gift of life where all should be death. In return, the Crow God asked only for their flesh, flesh to decay and infest with his noxious blessings.

The Veh-Kung had been horsemen once, like all the tribes of the Hung, but no longer. They had been drawn to the beauty of the Desert of Mirrors, had thought to dwell within its fabulous valleys. None had known the plague that was hidden behind the beauty, the corruption that lurked within the crystal spires and the shard-sand. Their horses had died, struck down by the taint.

The Veh-Kung had not been so lucky, for men have souls to amuse the gods while beasts have none. In their dreams, the shamans of the Veh-Kung had seen the Crow God, had heard his bubbling voice promise them life and sanctuary if only they would bow to him and accept his blessings. In their despair, the tribe had accepted the god’s terrible offer.

Generations later, the once proud horse warriors had become diseased troglodytes, cowering from the sun in their holes, their lives consumed by the endless struggle for sustenance upon the desert and the endless struggle to feed the spectral hunger of their god.

The tribesmen stared up at the moon, letting their eyes adjust to the bright silvery disk. After the gloom of their burrows, even the moon was dazzlingly bright, for few among the Veh-Kung could still endure the full sun for all but the briefest span.

Sickle-bladed swords and brutal axes of bone and copper filled the Veh-Kung’s hands as they turned away from the moon. The hours of darkness were few and there were many to feed in the tunnels. Such game as the desert offered was scant, but the tribesmen knew it would have to be stalked and found. There was never enough to lay stores against famine. When hunger came to the Veh-Kung, it was solved in the manner it had always been solved, by sacrificing those the tribe could no longer feed to Neiglen. The warriors whispered their fawning prayers to the Crow God so that they would find game this night. Each man knew that when the Starving Times came upon the tribe, those first to feed Neiglen were the hunters who returned empty-handed.

The ragged throng of the Veh-Kung slowly spread out across the desert, wading through the piled dunes of shard-sand, their eyes watching the glass for any sign of disturbance. Sometimes they would stop, digging into the sand with gloved hands to root out a centipede or scorpion. The stings of such creatures stabbed ineffectually against the leprous flesh of the hunters.

There was little pain one touched by Neiglen could still feel. Beside the cancerous blessings of the Crow God, the venom of a scorpion was as docile as a soft caress.

As the pestilential warriors spread through the Desert of Mirrors, they spied a strange thing. A lone rider was heading into the shimmering landscape, a solitary warrior mounted upon some fantastic beast. The stink of blood was on the stranger, so powerful that even at such a distance it was able to overcome the reek of the Veh-Kung’s bodies and imprint itself upon their senses.

The warriors hissed and gibbered, excited by the prospect of such easy prey. The beast they would carve for their fires, the man would be carved upon the altar of Neiglen.

Excitement passed in a silent pulse through the desert, drawing dozens of warriors to the ambush being laid by those who had first spotted the rider.

They quickly lent their efforts to the attack. Masters of the desert, the Veh-Kung knew how to find concealment even in the mirrored expanse, using the spires to cast deceptive reflections to misdirect their prey.

Many times, overly bold scouts of the Kurgan and other Hung tribes had fallen victim to the deceit of the desert and those who knew how to exploit it. The tactics that had consumed entire warbands would make short work of a solitary horseman.

Spiteful smiles twisted the broken faces of the Veh-Kung behind their bone masks. Surely the horseman was a gift from the Crow God, a blessing from their beneficent patron.

The first misgivings began to spread when the strange, loping trot of the rider’s steed became evident. The beast he rode was no horse, nor any kind of creature the Veh-Kung knew from experience or legend. In shape it was something like a wolf, but it moved like a reptile. Its hide was shaggy and black beneath the moon, its belly scaly and bright. A long, barbed tail lashed the ground behind it as it ran and monstrous dewclaws gouged the ground beneath its feet. Sword-like horns protruded from its wolfish head, stabbing back over its neck.

The stink of blood and slaughter was upon it, the carrion-scent of battle and its leavings.

Upon the beast’s back, his armoured bulk filling a bronze saddle, sat a huge warrior in dark armour. The man’s head was hidden behind a grotesque skull-faced helm, antlers rising from its sides forming the war-rune of Khorne.

In one hand, the warrior held a massive chain, which was fastened around the neck of his steed. In the other he gripped a fang of solid darkness that smoked and fumed, a sword that looked to have been torn from the heart of a moonless night. An aura of menace joined the blood-stink of the beast as the Veh-Kung saw the sword, the innate fear of prey when it hears the tread of the predator.

Anxiously, the Veh-Kung kept to their hiding places, waiting for the sinister stranger to enter their domain and fall into their trap. Fearsome as he seemed, the Veh-Kung feared their chieftain Bleda more, and the kahn would not be pleased if they allowed the intruder to invade their lands. Better to stand their ground and face the enemy where they had numbers and terrain to their advantage.

However favoured he might be by Khorne, whatever strength the Blood God might have invested him with, there was no escape for the stranger.

Dozens of tribesmen were already waiting for him, every moment bringing more drifting into position from deeper in the desert. By the time the paws of his steed touched shard-sand, a hundred Veh-Kung would be waiting for him.