Clint Werner: Blood for the Blood God

This, Dorgo knew, was no mere champion of the Muhak, but no less than Zar Lok, chieftain of the entire tribe.

Lok prowled among the dead Tsavag, lifting them from the bloodied ground to stare into the face of each corpse. One and all, he tossed them aside with callous contempt, stomping on to the next body with ever increasing ire. A particularly mangled Tsavag, the face reduced to pulp, provoked the zar’s already fragile temper. He turned upon the nearest of his warriors with a howl of fury, smashing the Muhak with his deadly hammer. The Kurgan’s chest cracked like an eggshell, pitching him to the earth in a shrieking heap.

Lok gave the murdered warrior no further thought, stalking ahead to the bulk of the mammoth and the ruined howdah on its back.

A grim realisation came upon Dorgo. Lok was looking for someone among the dead and there was only one person that could be. The Muhak seldom ventured into the Crumbling Hills, their own hunting grounds far to the west. It had not been chance that had caused them to ambush the Tsavag, the Kurgan had carefully planned their attack.

The way Lok picked his way among the dead, Dorgo was sure he knew who had led the hunting party. Killing Hutga’s son would avenge the death of the zar’s son, who had been slain in a raid against the Tsavag some months before. Dorgo redoubled his efforts to saw through the cage. To fall into the zar’s hands dead would be wretched enough, to do so alive…

The hulking zar moved away from the ruined howdah, roaring in disgusted frustration. Then his eyes caught the gleam of ivory against the slope and the shudder of frantic motion from within. A cruel smile spread across Lok’s face, a smile of long-denied vengeance. He barked orders to his warriors and they began to converge on the wreckage.

Dorgo could hear the hide boots of the Muhak scraping against the rocky slope as they climbed to reach him. The iron knife continued to chew away at the ivory bar that pinned him to the cage. Grinding his teeth against the agony, the Tsavag looked around the wreckage for his sword, but the weapon had been thrown clear when the cage slammed into the slope.

He stared at the small knife, with no illusions about its potency against the clubs of the Muhak or Lok’s mattock. The hammer was a gruesome relic from the time of Teiyogtei, a daemon weapon forged by the king and gifted to the ancient zar of the Muhak. One blow from the weapon was enough to fold iron as though it were cloth. Dorgo had already seen a graphic display of its power against flesh and bone.

Suddenly, the Muhak advance faltered. A sharp cry went up from the plain below, silenced in a liquid gurgle. The stalking warriors spun around in alarm, their powerful bodies coiling for action. Even Lok turned away, the zar’s fists tightening around the heft of his daemonic hammer.

Below, Dorgo could see a lone warrior striding towards the Muhak, his body encased in crimson armour, chased with bronze, his head enclosed within a skull-like helm.

A blade of darkness filled the stranger’s hand, smoke rising from its hungry edge. At his feet sprawled the cleft debris of a Muhak, who had lingered near the mammoth, more eager for loot than helping Lok to claim his revenge.

The armoured warrior marched heedlessly through the spreading pool of gore, his skull-faced visage fixed upon the slope of the hill. Other Muhak scavengers backed away from the apparition, dropping their plunder of ivory and bronze. Their frightened mutters drifted up to Dorgo and the Kurgan around him.

It was the fear displayed by his warriors more than the sight of his butchered man that enraged Lok. Spitting with fury, he roared at the Muhak below, ordering them to kill the stranger. He punctuated his command with a menacing slap of his mattock against the ground, overcoming the trepidation of his warriors with their greater fear of him.

Five Muhak took up their clubs and axes stolen from the slain Tsavag. They began to circle the stranger, like a pack of slinking wolves stalking a lion. The skull-faced helm never turned, the attention of the man within focused upon the slope. There was a sense of disdain in his manner as he marched steadily onwards, ignoring the menacing men who had surrounded him.

The Muhak sprang at the armoured warrior with a savage cry. In a blur of motion, the stranger spun to face them. The strange black sword bit through the arm of the first Muhak, snapping it like a twig and throwing him back in a spray of blood and screams. A second Muhak, leaping at him from the left, caught the point of the sword in his chest.

Still in motion, the stranger ripped his weapon free, chewing through rib and lung as the edge erupted from the man’s side. The third Muhak came at him from behind. He flopped to the ground as the black sword chopped through both legs as though they were brittle desert brambles.

The fourth, striking from the right, caught the tip of the blade slashing through his face. He fell, clutching at the broth of blood and brain drooling from his ruptured eyes.

The brutal assault was over almost before it had begun. The Muhak were accomplished ambushers, skilled as jackals at the art of coordinated attack, but their prey had been faster still, killing four of their number while the echo of their war cry still wailed across the plain.

The last scavenger faltered in his attack, staring with open-mouthed horror at the havoc the stranger had visited in the blink of an eye. Blood exploded from the man’s mouth as the black sword slammed through his gut. The stranger ignored the scarlet that splattered against his armour and the dying hands that clutched at the heavy fur cloak he wore. Callously, he ripped his trapped blade upwards, crunching through bone and flesh until the black sword tore free.

Slashed from stomach to shoulder, the Muhak slumped to the ground.

Something like terror crawled into Lok’s beady eyes behind their mask of flayed flesh. The zar shouted at his warriors, fear lending a new note of rage to his voice. The Muhak hesitated, staring uncertainly at one another, no man eager to be the first to confront this strange and terrible foe.

Lok’s mattock lashed out, pulverising the skull of the Kurgan closest to him, dropping him in a burst of blood and bone. The example was enough, the zar’s tyranny reasserted. Twenty Muhak marauders, swollen bulks of muscle and rage, charged down the slope, their murderous cudgels lifted overhead in savage display.

To Dorgo’s eyes, what followed was slaughter, not battle. Twenty warriors converged on one. When the carnage abated, when the screams had faded into death rattles, when the sound of flesh and bone being torn asunder ebbed, it was the one who stood triumphant.

The havoc of his black blade lay strewn and dying around the armoured killer. Gore dripped from the stranger, coating his crimson armour in a sanguine cloak, but none of it was his. Twenty men had faced him, but not one had landed a blow against their foe. The killer turned his head, studying the butchery. Then he turned his skull-helm once more to the slope where the ashen-faced Lok waited.

The Muhak zar watched the warrior march through the wreckage of his warband, every step causing his eyes to bulge wider with fear. Lok cast his gaze from side to side, but the strength of his followers had been spent. There were no fresh Kurgan to throw at the gore-drenched spectre. The zar spat into the dust, trying to let his fury overwhelm his fear.

“You still tempt the gods, eh pig!” Lok snarled, brandishing his mattock. “You kill those dogs so you think you can fight Lok?” He brought the hammer crashing down, exploding a rock into pebbly splinters.

The armoured killer’s approach did not falter, the man within the crimson plates unimpressed by the zar’s bravado.