Clint Werner - Blood for the Blood God

There was contempt in his silence, contempt in the way he tossed the torn flesh of their hero aside. A hungry wail pulsed through the night as the smouldering malignancy of the killer’s sword shuddered in his hand. A tremor of fear ran through the ranks of the Veh-Kung warriors. The invader seemed to savour their terror as he marched towards them, murderous blade at the ready.

Fear fired the Veh-Kung warriors, filling their brutal hearts with such bitter shame that even thoughts of death and butchery could not hold them back. The diseased fighters roared from behind the beaked visages of their bone helms, their voices loathsome and foul. A dozen stalked away from the circle of iron that had grown around the embattled wolf-beast, leaving only a handful of their fellows to keep the brute at bay.

The stranger did not wait for his enemies to charge, but lunged into their midst even as they approached him. The black sword swept down, crunching through rotten armour and putrid flesh, carving its gruesome path through tainted flesh and corrupted blood. One Veh-Kung fell back screaming, clutching at the spurting stump of his arm. A second fell, his body cleft from crown to collar.

A third, trying to strike at the rushing killer, was caught in the steely grip of his foe’s free hand. With a wrenching twist, the killer broke the Hung’s arm, driving his own pitted blade back into the warrior’s chest.

From above, a pair of Veh-Kung sprang at the invader, dropping from their handholds in the crystal spires. The strange killer spun as he heard them utter their bubbling war cries. The black sword swept through the moonlight, its mephitic smoke streaming behind it.

Cries turned to liquid groans as the daemon steel chopped through the hurtling figures, splashing their wreckage across the shard-sand. The intruder turned away from the dissected human debris, lashing out at the warriors who had thought to exploit the distraction. Screams pierced the night as a leg was cut from its body, as a head was shorn from its shoulders and an arm ripped from its socket. Corroded swords crashed against darkened armour, buckling and snapping as they futilely sought weakness in the unyielding mail. Weaponless, stunned warriors backed away, broken swords dropping from slackened fingers. Now they were at the stranger’s mercy.

He showed them none. The death rattles of the Hung warriors rose in a strangled chorus, pawing at the shimmering spires as they faded into the night wind. The armoured killer waded through the slaughter, an engine of butchery, sparing none in his path. The great wolf-beast entered the battle alongside its master, adding its primitive savagery to the massacre.

When the last Veh-Kung fell, the monstrous creature threw its head back, its massive frame shaking as a thunderous howl of triumph echoed across the desert.

The lone killer did not savour the massacre as he stalked among the dead, pacing through the mire of the battlefield. There was an expectant, brooding quality to his movements, like a panther waiting for its prey.

Again and again, he circled the carnage, giving no notice to the dying things that littered the ground, waiting, waiting for what would come, waiting for what he had come here to kill.

The stranger froze suddenly as he circled the dead. He turned his face from the battlefield, his eyes boring into the shadows between the crystal spires. Long he watched the black valley as sound slowly crawled from the gloom, the heavy tread of marching feet crunching through the shard-sand. A rancid, green glow began to banish the darkness, a sickly light that caused the facets of the spires to smoke as it fell upon them. A shape slowly manifested within the green light, a great palanquin of bone and sinew borne upon the shoulders of dozens of scrawny, stumbling figures.

By degrees, the stranger could see that they were youths, their leprous flesh pitted by the marks of plague and decay. They watched him with cold, feverish eyes set far into the pits of their near-fleshless skulls. Above the labouring wretches, upon the sides of the palanquin, braziers of corroded metal smouldered and smoked, giving off the pestilential glow. Basking in that glow, sprawled upon the cushioned seat of the carriage, was an oozing bulk, more toad than man.

The thing’s pallid flesh stood naked beneath the stars, covered only in welts, boils and lesions, its entire mass marked with thousands of tiny pox-runes that wept slime and filth across the thing’s enormity. Hairless and swollen, the thing’s flabby head grinned down at the stranger.

Almost absently, it raised a chubby hand to the great antlers that jutted from its face, pulling at strips of decayed meat impaled upon the horns. A tongue the colour of scum and stagnation flickered from the thing’s ghastly maw, snatching maggots from the rotting flesh with a tiny mouth of its own.

“You kill my hunters,” the bloated creature said, the sound wheezing from its obesity like the gargle of a drowning whale. “You kill my warriors,” it said, brushing a worm from its cheek. “You invade my lands, a place sacred to the great Crow God.” There was no hint of anger in the jovial croak, only a subdued amusement. The palanquin creaked and the litter bearers struggled as the thing leaned forwards, letting the brown pits of its eyes focus more closely upon the lone warrior. The haughty smile spread impossibly wide across its flabby visage. “All by yourself. I applaud the audacity of such madness.”

The thing’s stumpy hands clapped together like sides of raw beef. “How are you called, madman? The Crow God will be pleased when I offer up your flesh to him.”

The stranger stood silent, a grim shadow among the carnage of the battleground. The face of the fat warlord twitched in annoyance. More than the slaughter of his minions, more than the invasion of his lands, more even than blasphemy against his god, he found the stranger’s discourtesy upsetting. He licked at a second strip of meat, oozing back into his throne.

“I am Bleda Carrion-crown,” the bulk announced with a slimy burp. “Kahn of the Veh-Kung, Master of the Desert of Mirrors, Chosen of the Crow God, Tabernacle of the Divine Rot.”

The grotesque warlord shifted his tremendous mass, his flabby hands closing around a strange weapon dangling from the arm of his throne. It was sections of metal rod connected by rusty links of chain. Seven in number, each rod was pitted and foul with decay, dripping with some internal corruption.

“This is my Chain of Seventy Plagues,” Bleda said, caressing the weapon with obscene fervour. “No man has ever stood against it. I ask again, who you are and where you have come from. Is it the Vaan who have dared such foolishness? The Sul? Surely not the Tsavag? What people spurred you to this madness, for I would favour them in my prayers to Mighty Neiglen!”

The skull-masked stranger shook his head, staring at the swollen hulk of Bleda. “A steel rain has come to cleanse with blood and terror,” his voice rasped, the slither of sword against sheath.

For an instant, fear flared within Bleda’s rancid eyes as he heard the stranger’s spectral voice, as he saw the warrior stalk forward. His hands shivered against his oily flesh, clutching at his throat in alarm. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the pox-runes of Neiglen. The touch of his own afflictions reassured him. Was he not the chosen of his god? Did not the power of Neiglen course through him?

Bleda’s laughter bubbled up from deep within his corrupt bulk.

“Die nameless then, fool,” the kahn croaked. Like a sea beast floundering upon the shore, he surged up from his throne, waddling down the seven steps that fronted his palanquin. The ground seemed to cringe beneath him as his feet sank into the shard-sand. Behind him, Bleda’s slaves set down the heavy palanquin and formed a leprous mass around their warlord.