Clint Werner - Blood for the Blood God

At last, Sanya ended her study, stepping back, a knowing smile on her face. She reached beneath her tattered robe, producing a dagger that had been fastened around her thigh. The appearance of the weapon gave Dorgo a start. He hadn’t realised that the woman had carried the blade.

Sanya approached him, holding the dagger in her fist. “Hold out your hand,” she said. Dorgo hesitated, shifting his gaze from the woman’s cunning eyes to the ugly iron blade in her hand. “What pains you, warrior? Afraid of a little cut?”

Knowing it was stupid, but feeling the sting of insulted courage, Dorgo held out his hand to the sorceress. Sanya grabbed his wrist, twisting his hand so that his palm was facing upwards. With a swift, deft stroke she brought the edge of the dagger slicing against Dorgo’s skin. Blood bubbled up from the cut, but Dorgo did not feel it until his eyes told him it was there.

“Place your palm against the door,” Sanya told him.

Dorgo hesitated for a moment, trying to read Sanya’s intentions, trying to imagine what black sorcery she would use his blood for. He shook his head, almost laughing at his suspicions. It was much too late to distrust the sorceress. He stepped boldly up to the bronze panel. He could see what looked like dancing flames writhing inside the metal, could feel the hot shimmer of the door reaching out to him.

He reached back, in turn, slapping his bloodied palm against the panel. Instantly, he pulled his hand away, the heat of the door searing his skin. He looked down at his singed palm, finding that the hot metal had cauterised his cut. Dorgo cast a foul glance over his shoulder at Sanya.

“You might have warn—” He never finished the admonition. A sudden intensification of the heat emanating from the door drove him back. He could see the bloody mark of his palm fading into the bronze, rushing through the panels like poison through a vein. He shielded his eyes as the glowing shimmer of the door grew blindingly bright. He heard a strange sound, like raindrops splashing against stone. As the glow started to abate, he opened his eyes, marvelling at the sight that greeted him. The thick bronze portals were melting, disintegrating like wax under a flame. The molten metal pooled, slowly draining out of small notches in the floor.

“What magic is this?” he hissed, astonished by the eerie display.

“The only magic Khorne respects,” Sanya said. “The magic of blood sacrifice. The one key that would open this door.”

Dorgo looked back at the bronze panels. They had nearly completed their disintegration, their residue already largely drained away. Beyond, he could see a large round room with walls of black iron. Loathsome etchings in the metal displayed riotous scenes of slaughter and carnage, abominations of such savagery that even Dorgo was shocked as he saw them so vividly and laboriously depicted. Then his eyes were drawn away from the walls to the thing that squatted at the very centre of the room.

It was as much like a well as a furnace, a great round stump of what looked to be charred flesh. Its upper surface was open, an empty hole ringed with tooth-like projections. Beneath the teeth, a faint ember of light smouldered from the depths of the opening.

Dorgo knew that this was the forge at the heart of the Black Altar, the place where Teiyogtei had made his weapons, the gifts that would buy the fealty of his warlords, the tools to carve a kingdom from the Shadowlands. Behind the strange forge, a nest of chains and pulleys hung above a gaping hole that stared straight down into the bubbling pit below.

Dorgo jumped over the last dregs of molten bronze and approached the forge with tremulous, awed steps. He could feel its power calling out to him, demanding to be used. He could feel its unimaginable hate tearing at his mind, filling it with visions more terrible than those engraved on the walls.

“The soul of Krathin,” Sanya gasped, crossing into the chamber. There was a feverish, almost lustful gleam in her eyes as she spoke the name of the bloodthirster. She approached the forge, sweat dripping down her face.

Dorgo felt a wave of murderous jealousy thunder through his brain. Kill! the emotion told him. Kill! Kill! Kill! His body shivered with the effort of holding back, denying the roaring urge that burned in his veins. That part of him he understood as intelligence and self railed against the mental command, fighting to keep control of his rebellious flesh. That part of him that was instinct and feeling was already enslaved, exerting itself to snap the fragile rule of his reason.

As he fought, Dorgo saw Sanya turn towards him. Her dagger was once more in her hand as she slowly strode across the chamber. He could see nothing but crazed bloodlust in her eyes, nothing but murder on her face. This time, he knew, it would not be his hand she cut.

Sanya’s other hand slowly, tremblingly, lifted to her neck by inches and degrees, so slowly it almost seemed the hand wasn’t moving. Dorgo felt his desperate effort to keep control of his body start to slip away, to drain out of him the way the bronze doors had vanished into the floor. If he failed, he knew he would surge forwards in a berserk rush. He could see his hands grabbing either side of Sanya’s face, wrenching her head full around and snapping her neck like a twig. If he didn’t fail, Sanya would sink her dagger into his chest and bury it in his heart. The image ran through his mind again and again. Either outcome would suit the malevolent power of the Black Altar equally well.

Only a few steps separated Tsavag and Sul. Dorgo felt fear oozing into his thoughts as the moment when the dagger would strike drew ever closer. Like acid, it gnawed at his desperate hold over his treacherous body. He felt his body lurch forwards, his hands curling into beast-like claws.

Then Sanya’s free hand closed around its objective. The woman’s fist clenched tightly around the amulet she still wore, the silvery rune of Cheen the Changer. Horror flashed through her eyes, unseating the bloodthirsty hatred that had filled them. She gave a sharp bark of fright as she saw Dorgo lunge towards her. Like a striking adder, she dropped her dagger and grabbed his wrist.

Instantly, Dorgo felt reason restored to him. Something growled through his body as it recoiled from a bright, searing energy. He could feel its frustrated wrath as it was driven out, like a lion cheated of its kill. Then it was gone and he was master of his flesh once more.

Sanya and Dorgo stared into each other’s eyes for a long time, watching for any hint of the murderous madness. At last they were satisfied. Sanya released her hold on his wrist and drew away from him.

“I hadn’t expected it to be so strong, not after all this time,” she said, almost apologetic in her tone.

Dorgo didn’t look at her, but kept watching the walls, trying to find the source of the attack, some hidden lurker that had cast a spell upon them. “Wasn’t it you who said that time is without meaning in the Wastes?” Dorgo replied acidly.

Sanya gave him a thin smile, irritated that a brutish mammoth rider made the connection, more than irritated that she had never considered it. “Whatever you think you’re looking for, you won’t find it,” she told him. “There is only one shape the spirit of Krathin can wear now.” She gestured to the grotesque forge. Dorgo could see the charred mass of flesh crawling with some abominable inner motion, like worms writhing in a corpse. “When Teiyogtei slew the bloodthirster, he had bound the daemon’s spirit into a shape that would serve him and imprisoned it within the Black Altar.”

“It still lives?” Dorgo asked, repulsed by the suggestion.

“No,” Sanya said in an almost soothing voice, though Dorgo could not be certain if it was his or her fear that she was trying to allay. “It is not alive, but a daemon does not die the way we understand death. Just as it would be wrong to call it alive, it is wrong to say it is dead.”