Clint Werner: Blood for the Blood God

The black sword slashed at the king’s face, shattering the Blood-Crown and splitting the gilded mask in two, but the edge failed to taste the man within, and Teiyogtei smiled as he saw the Skulltaker crash to the ground, his last effort wasted.

The impression of dissolution was undeniable. The Skulltaker’s body was visibly corroding, melting into a mass of stagnant blood. The sword he had carried crumbled into cinders, fleeing into the sudden wind. The blood seeped into the earth, as though sucked down into the ground. Soon, only the Skulltaker’s carnage bore witness to his existence. Teiyogtei’s laugh of triumph ended upon a hollow note as he recalled the words of his shaman.

Vanquished, but never destroyed.

The haunting words were still echoing in Teiyogtei’s mind as he collapsed to the ground, overcome by his wound. He dimly heard his chieftains rushing up the hill to attend their king, dimly he heard them calling for their healers and witch doctors.

Teiyogtei Khagan could hear the voice of the Skulltaker more clearly.

Doom. Doom has come to the betrayers.

Rock shattered to dust beneath the immense weight of the mammoth, sending fragments spraying into the scraggly brush. Ninety hands high, its enormity cloaked in matted black fur nearly two feet thick, the mammoth towered over the land, seeming to dwarf even the distant mountains and their claw-like peaks. When the behemoth moved, the world trembled, each plodding step causing stones to topple from the hills around it. The boulders rattled and crashed down step-like terraces to smack against the brute’s legs as they rolled into the plain below.

The mammoth ignored the impacts with godlike disdain, the flesh beneath its leathery hide scarcely scratched. The gigantic head swung from side to side, enormous black eyes studying the slopes around it, curled ivory tusks reflecting the summer sun. The massive trunk, like a bloated jungle python, reared back, coiling against the mammoth’s scaly face. The maw beneath the trunk gaped wide and a deafening bellow boomed from the beast’s body, the roar of a hunting titan.

Men covered their heads as the mammoth’s bellow thundered across the sky, their skulls throbbing from the nearness of the sound. A walled platform had been lashed to the beast’s back, a small fort of ivory and bone covered in hides of fur and skin. Within this fort, men clung to leather straps and watched the land pass beneath them as their colossal steed lumbered through the dusty hills.

Even as they guarded their ears against the trumpeting bellow, the men kept wary eyes trained upon the hills and ready hands upon the short throwing spears that rested in leather baskets beside them.

Each of the men was stocky in build, with powerful thews and bulging muscles. Their dusky skin bore the scars of sun and wind, their broad faces the lean hunger of hardship and travail.

Upon some, strange lesions and bizarre growths marred the uniformity of limb and visage; others carried still more outrageous displays of what was called “the gift of the gods”. For these men were of the Tsavag tribe, descended from the mighty Tong, who dwelled deep within the Wastes, on the very threshold of the Realm of the Gods. They wore their armour of bone and fur with pride, and adorned their dark topknots with talismans of ivory and bronze.

There was no arrogance in their adornment, for the Tsavag were too secure in their superiority to feel the need to boast.

A lone Tsavag stood in the cage of ivory chained around the mammoth’s neck. Like his kinsmen, he was dark of skin, with a broad, hungry face. A trick of the gods had made his eyes the colour of gold, shining like coins from their dark setting. Blotches of discoloured skin ran across the tribesman’s body, marking his flesh like the belly of a toad, but there was no aberration in the cords of muscle that swelled his arms, nor the sharp intelligence that peered from the golden eyes.

Dorgo Foecrusher was among the greatest of his tribe’s warriors, son of their khagan, Hutga Steelskin. In his twenty-five summers he had killed a hundred foes in battle. Kurgan, Hung, even the despicable beastkin from the Grey had shed their lives on his blade.

Dorgo had earned the respect of his tribesmen with each victory, but still he yearned for more. There was one Tsavag he had never been able to impress, the only one of his tribe who mattered so far as he was concerned. If he was to succeed Hutga as khagan, he would need to prove himself worthy to the grizzled warlord.

He wondered if it would ever be possible to meet his father’s high demands.

The warrior shook his head, forgetting for a time his mired ambitions. He needed to keep his mind on the hunt.

He lifted his gaze to the rocky hills that peppered the plain. They rose in crumbling mounds, worn down into cracked stumps by wind and rain.

Dorgo could still see the broken fragments of stone towers rising from their summits, could still make out the step-like plateaux that marched up the sides of the hills. Once those steps would have been terraced gardens, overflowing with rice and wheat, and green things of every description. The towers would have been filled with warriors, warily watching over the gardens at their feet. This place had been the granary of Teiyogtei, when that great warlord had carved his kingdom from the desolation of the steppes. The towers, the gardens, even the hills had been built with the sorcery of his shamans and the sweat of his slaves. With his gardens, Teiyogtei would feed his horde and expand his domain across all the Shadowlands.

The whispers of the shining dream still lingered in places like this, calling out to men like Dorgo, who possessed the imagination to hear them. The ruins of Teiyogtei’s dream were scattered across his kingdom like old bones slowly wearing away beneath the unforgiving sun.

In his ambition, the king had not reckoned upon the wrath of the gods and he had been brought low. The Shadowlands never fell beneath the banners of the Tsavag and today only eight tribes remained of what had once been Teiyogtei’s numberless horde.

Dorgo shook his head again, scolding himself for allowing his thoughts to wander once more. It was a failing his father never ceased to observe, scolding Dorgo that there was too much of the dreamer around him to ever make a good khagan. Dorgo’s fist tightened as he recalled the scornful words. Perhaps he was a dreamer, but so too had Teiyogtei been.

The mammoth’s trunk reared back again and the beast’s bellow rolled across the land. Dorgo studied the hills, watching every sign of movement among the rocks.

Despite the years since they had been irrigated, plants still erupted from the dusty soil upon the terraces. This drew goats and elk into the hills where the uneven ground would protect them from wolves. Even men had a difficult time stalking the animals through the old gardens where the treacherous ground forever threatened a murderous fall to the plain below. The other tribes only even attempted the feat in times of famine, but the Tsavag were better, their minds sharper than the dull wit of Kurgan and Hung. They did not climb into the crumbling hills. They made their prey come to them.

The mammoth’s trumpet was a sound to strike terror into any man, and beasts were not immune to such fear. When the mammoth bellowed, more than just rocks were knocked loose from the hills. Deer and elk, goats and sheep, even the sickle-clawed hill tiger would leap from their refuges, scattering through the rocks to escape the angry giant.

In their panic, even sure-footed goats and nimble deer would stumble, to pitch headlong to the plain below. The throwing spears of the Tsavag standing in the howdah made short work of any animals not killed by the fall. It was a method of hunting that had been developed by generations of tribesmen until it had been refined to a precise art.