Clint Werner: Blood for the Blood God

The air of arrogance goaded Lok’s fury as surely as the ivory hook Dorgo had used on the mammoth. The Muhak chieftain’s jutting jaw dropped open in a howl of rage, his immense bulk hurtling down the slope at his adversary. The armoured killer paused, waiting to meet the zar’s charge. The black sword licked out like the tongue of a dragon, flashing through the chieftain’s belly, spilling it onto the ground. At the same time, the mattock crashed into the nameless warrior, smashing into him like a titan’s fist. The daemonic weapon kicked him back, throwing him through the air. The armoured warrior smashed into the stiffening hulk of the slain mammoth, falling headfirst into the stream of filth oozing from its wound.

Lok wilted onto his knees, the mattock sliding from hands that were desperately fumbling at his ghastly wound. The zar struggled to press the wound closed, to staunch the seepage of blood and bile. In the fashion of a dying wolf, he refused to accept the gravity of his wound, refused to concede the approach of death, but even in his agony, a smile split the Muhak’s brutal face. At least his enemy would follow him into the Hunting Halls.

Even this small joy fled from Lok, draining away with his lifeblood. The figure sprawled amid the muck and gore of the mammoth was rising, picking itself from its own ruin. Despite the ferocity of the blow Lok had struck, fuelled by the zar’s immense strength and the mattock’s obscene power, the warrior yet lived. The armoured killer stood for a moment, wiping filth from his skull-like mask. Then, slowly, remorselessly, he began to retrace his path up the slope.

The Muhak zar took one hand away from his wound, trying to reach his hammer on the ground beside him. The effort brought a fresh stream of pain shuddering through him, but the sight of the approaching destroyer was more terrible to him than any mere physical suffering. Lok felt the warrior’s malignancy grow with each step, coiling around him in a stifling shroud of hate. There was more than death in the killer’s black blade, more than shame. Lok could feel the jaws of hell closing around him, and hear the snarling laughter of daemons in his ears.

The warrior loomed above the zar, kicking the mattock away from his clutching hand. An armoured gauntlet reached down, pulling Lok’s head by its mass of oily black hair. The zar struggled feebly in the iron grip, but could not prevent his head from being pulled back, exposing his throat to the sky. Then the black sword came chopping down, hewing through the thick, stumpy neck.

The chieftain’s body slapped against the earth, his head staring down at the corpse as it dangled from the warrior’s fist. The killer lifted his trophy high, presenting it to the darkening sky.

“A skull for the Skull Throne!” the iron voice of the warrior rasped. Lightning cracked across the cloudless heavens, as though in answer to his cry.

Dorgo freed himself from his prison, leaving a spike of ivory thrust through the meat of his arm. It would need the healing arts of a shaman before the shard could be removed, otherwise the wound would bleed and he would not have the strength to make the long march back to his people. It was not mere survival that moved him to caution, nor bearing witness to the fate that had befallen his fellow hunters.

There was a still graver purpose that urged him on, something greater than his fear.

Zar Lok, chief of the Muhak, was dead, butchered by a nameless, tribeless warrior. In all the years since the fall of Teiyogtei, such a fate had never claimed a chieftain of one of the eight tribes. Word of this had to be brought to his father, brought to him before the other tribes discovered that Lok was dead. A delicate balance existed between the eight tribes, and someone had destroyed that balance, setting into motion events that would resound throughout the domain. The sooner Hutga learned of this, the better he would be able to prepare the Tsavag for what was coming.

Dorgo shuddered again, the image of the outlander burned into his mind. He could not shake the impression that Lok had somehow recognised his slayer. Even before he struck the first blow, the Kurgan seemed to know that his doom was at hand. More than the brutality of the Muhak’s death, it was this terrible air of resignation and hopelessness that chilled his marrow.

Dorgo crept cautiously away from the wreckage of the ivory cage. He did not waste time looking for his lost sword, nor linger to claim a weapon from the butchered Muhak. Instead, he mounted the rocky slope, climbing the crumbling mound as the first step on his long journey back to the lands of the Tsavag.

Dorgo left the crimson warrior behind him, crouched beside Lok’s mangled carcass, the zar’s head resting on the ground before him. With slow, careful strokes, the warrior drew his black blade against the chieftain’s head, carving away the flesh, layer by layer, exposing the gleaming skull beneath, cleaning the trophy he had offered to mighty Khorne.

It took Dorgo three days to hike out of the vastness of the Crumbling Hills. He survived off the small vermin that lived beneath the rocks, slaking his thirst with the juice of the thorny bushes that had replaced the ancient gardens. He fashioned a crude spear from a shard of flint and the leg bone from a partially eaten elk carcass, the abandoned kill of a hill tiger. At night he wedged himself between the decaying walls of the old forts, trying to hide from the predators that prowled the desolation. He awoke many times to hear the scuttling of stalk spiders crawling across the rocks, but the immense arachnids passed him by without investigating the lone Tsavag who intruded upon their domain.

More inquisitive was the beady-eyed rock wolf that watched him for the better part of a day before deciding that the man was still too hale to make easy prey.

Most of the injuries he had suffered when he had been thrown from the mammoth had started to heal, even the pain in his leg had ceased to vex him as it had on the first day of his escape. The wound in his arm, however, continued to pulse with pain. Dorgo had gathered maggots from the elk carcass, setting them on his arm to clean away the dead flesh and stave off infection. The Tsavag had long since come to ignore the crawling sensation against his skin, the oily feel of the worms against his flesh. He had seen too many warriors with swollen, noxious wounds, green with disease and corruption. Most of them became cripples if they survived at all. It was a sorry fate for any warrior. Better to feed the tiny children of Onogal than entice one of the Grandfather’s more grisly gifts.

Beyond the Crumbling Hills, Dorgo would need to cross the Prowling Lands, a great expanse of flatland where, in winter, the hardy snowgrass would defy the elements and the feeble sun to carpet the plain in pallid stalks and leafy blades. The Tsavag would descend upon the Prowling Lands when the first snows came, letting their mammoths glut themselves upon the winter grass, but the gods had not yet unleashed that season upon the domain. For now, the Prowling Lands were deserted, populated only by sickly clumps of thin-trunked trees and yellowed stands of fungus.

The Prowling Lands took their name from the treacherous landscape, where the land shuddered frequently, splitting apart to form deep gullies and jagged ravines. The threat of sink holes was constant. Too small to threaten a mammoth, the holes could easily swallow a man, closing over him and leaving no hint of his doom. Predators too lurked in the Prowling Lands. In the summer, the gullies were home to zhagas, giant lizards covered in a carapace of thorns and capable of swallowing a child in a single bite. In the winter, ice lions called the Prowling Lands home, enormous beasts capable of taking down a small mammoth and possessed of a cruel intelligence that was more than natural for a simple beast.