Clint Werner - Blood for the Blood God

Other mammoths staggered and stumbled as the flailing giant slid into them. Some fell, others turned around, abandoning the herd in their pained confusion. Men were thrown from the bucking howdahs, smashed between the bodies of the lumbering brutes. Screams and the anguished trumpeting of fallen mammoths added to the turmoil, scattering men and beasts like birds before a storm.

The Skulltaker’s gruesome steed charged into the upheaval. When the bulk of a fallen mammoth reared in its path, the beast sprang, its claws digging into the shaggy hide as it lighted upon the living obstacle. The mammoth spun its head towards the beast, swatting at it with its trunk, trying to gore it with its tusks.

Before the wounded mammoth could concentrate its efforts, the wolfish beast was leaping again, pouncing like some rock lion onto the flank of a fleeing animal. Again, sharp claws sank into leathery flesh, latching onto the hurtling mammoth like some enormous tick.

Men cried out in horror as they saw the brute beast and its fearsome rider appear behind the howdah. Most cowered with their families, trembling in their terror. A few, reckless or crazed, jabbed ineffectually at the killer with their spears. The Skulltaker ignored them all, disregarding even the pained thrashings of the mammoth as it tried to dislodge his steed. The grim mask of the Skulltaker’s helm looked across the thundering herd, studying the desperate rout with the chill stare of the true predator. From the vantage point of the mammoth’s towering back, he was allowed the view he needed.

A kick of the Skulltaker’s boots and his grisly mount retracted its claws and sprang away from the bellowing mammoth. The hound-like beast crashed heavily against the shaking earth. It paused for only a moment, and then the beast was running through the moving canyon of shaggy flesh.

With great, loping bounds, the Skulltaker’s steed bore him through the maddened herd, darting between the smashing legs of the mammoths, dodging the flashing tusks and flailing trunks as they passed each brute.

Ahead, the Skulltaker had seen what he wanted: the banners and trophies, the steel-ringed tusks and tattooed ears of the khagan’s mammoth. Dimly, he could remember when he had last seen the war-steed of a Tong khagan. Revenge denied was revenge savoured.

Through the smashing, crashing, stomping panic of the herd, the air filthy with dust and dung, past the tattered wreckage of howdahs, and over the ruptured paste of crushed men; onward, onward to rage and ruin and revenge.

The Skulltaker’s steed emerged from the press of the herd. Its jaws snapped irritably at the air, trying to blot the taste of dust from its mouth. Then it spun, racing a parallel course to one of the mammoths at the fore of the herd, the mammoth with painted ears and steel-ringed tusks.

Gradually, the wolf-beast slackened its pace, allowing its prey to close upon it. Throwing spears crashed into the dirt around the beast, but its preternatural agility foiled the aims of desperate men. A fiery vapour burst into life around the wolf and its rider, and then vanished just as quickly, broken by the power of the runes the Skulltaker wore.

The wolf-beast sprang backwards as the mammoth’s spiked tusks swept towards it. The beast landed in a crouch, every muscle tightening into a steel coil. Then it sprang again. This time the creature leapt in an almost sidewise motion, twisting its body as it jumped.

Once again, the wolf-beast’s claws dug into the shaggy fur and leathery flesh of a mammoth. This time, however, its rider was not content to stay in the saddle. Even as his steed secured its gruesome footing, the Skulltaker was moving, jumping from the back of his beast and into the bed of the howdah.

The impact of his armoured body smacking against the platform as he landed caused the entire structure to shake.

A Tsavag rushed at the invader, struggling to keep his footing as the mammoth’s body shuddered beneath him. He swept a sickle-bladed axe at the monster’s horned helm, roaring the battle cry of his ancestors. The warrior never finished his charge, his arm and shoulder cut from his body by a single hideous sweep of the Skulltaker’s shrieking blade. The shuddering corpse toppled against the wall of the howdah, and then pitched into the dim blur of the landscape, whipping past the mammoth’s hurtling bulk.

The Tsavags stood frozen in shocked silence, hands closed around the trembling walls of the howdah. It was not merely fear of being thrown from the crazed beast’s back that held the men.

Confronted by this fiend from legend, the graphic display of their kinsman’s slaughter held them in an icy grip. The Skulltaker lifted his gaze from the transfixed warriors, staring up at the raised platform and the hulking figure of the man he had come so far to kill.

Hutga Khagan glared at the Skulltaker with the steel courage of a man who knows his doom is upon him. The chieftain cast aside his fur cloak, exposing his muscular chest and its nodule-like metallic growths. He gripped the polished haft of his ji, the wickedly keen spear-axe that had been gifted to the first warlord of the tribe by Teiyogtei. The broad spear-point and the cruel crescent of the axe-blade behind and beneath it shone in the failing light as dusk descended upon the domain.

Hutga thought it ironically appropriate that this fight should happen now, as the day died away and night stretched its black fingers over the land.

The chieftain could feel the daemonic force within his weapon surging through his veins as he drew its power into his body. Enough to overwhelm any mortal foe, he knew it would not be enough to destroy the Skulltaker. Seeing Ratha cut down made Hutga understand how delusional such an idea was. No, he could not win, but he wouldn’t crawl either. He’d give the monster a fight that the Skulltaker would remember.

“Do your worst,” Hutga spat at his foe.

The Skulltaker’s grinding voice echoed from behind his mask. “I won’t have to.”

As he uttered the mocking insult, the Skulltaker was in motion, stalking towards the raised dais with broad, hungry steps. Hutga felt his stomach turn sour, horrified by the Skulltaker’s grace and ease, the surety of purpose and motion. The Skulltaker might have prowled the unbending floor of a marble hall rather than the jostling, swaying surface of the howdah, apparently oblivious to the threat of being thrown by the mammoth’s frenzied charge.

A scrawny, miserable figure interposed itself between the Skulltaker and his intended victim, clutching an ivory support to keep his balance. Yorool screamed at the monster, the names of gods and daemons dripping off the shaman’s tongue as he called upon powers he was forbidden to invoke.

Black coils of energy whipped around the Skulltaker, surrounding him in a writhing shimmer of profane power. The planks beneath the Skulltaker’s boots turned brown, withering with rot. A warrior standing too close was caught by the gnawing unlight. His skin turned white, crumbling from his bones as the curse of years consumed all the days yet to come. The dust collapsed against the floor of the howdah, dust and a few miserable bits of decayed bone.

The Skulltaker forced his way through the cloying, devouring unlight, like a swamp troll trudging through a quagmire. No sign of leprous rot, no trace of crumbling decay marked his armour as he won his way clear of Yorool’s magic. There was no hint of weakness in his step as he moved towards Hutga’s throne.

The black blade came scything down before Yorool could call upon another spell. It bit through the shaman’s cowl and his disfigured face, splitting him from crown to jaw. The Skulltaker wrenched his weapon free in a brutal spray of teeth and brains, kicking the slain shaman from his path.