Clint Werner - Blood for the Blood God

Dorgo roared, rushing at the sneering Sanya. She continued to grin at him even as the Bloodeater came chopping down. Dorgo struck sure and true, aiming for the woman’s pretty face. Instead, he found his arm twisting around, the blade sweeping harmlessly past her shoulder. He tried again, chopping at her neck. The muscles in his arm grew tense, freezing solid the instant he pulled the sword back to deliver the blow.

Sanya stepped inside his murderous reach, her soft lips brushing against his cheek. “You see,” she told him, “I have nothing to fear from you, my mighty warrior.”

“You lied to me!” Dorgo snarled, his rage only emboldened by the witch’s mockery. “You used us. You used my father and my tribe! You never intended to save anyone except yourself… Enek Zjarr!”

The name of the kahn of the Sul hung in the air, foul with scorn and disgust. Dorgo should have suspected, if he’d considered such cowardly deception possible even for a Sul. If the kahn could make doppelgangers of himself, surely cloaking his form in that of another would come easy to him. The Skulltaker hadn’t been drawn to the Black Altar because of the Bloodeater. He’d been drawn by the one thing he needed to complete his pact with Khorne: the last chieftain’s skull, the head of Enek Zjarr!

Hard laughter rippled from Sanya’s lips as she danced away from the glowering Tsavag. She shook her head, favouring Dorgo with a look that she might bestow on a drooling idiot. “Enek Zjarr?” she laughed. “For too long I allowed that worm to use my body. Do you think I’d let him defile it further to hide from the Skulltaker?”

“You cannot trick me, sorcerer!” Dorgo snarled. He lowered his arm as feeling returned to it, further enraged by his frustrated helplessness. “The Skulltaker needed one more head. Tell me he didn’t need the head of Enek Zjarr! Tell me that isn’t what brought him here!”

Sanya nodded, condescending to applaud the warrior’s reasoning. “Oh yes,” she agreed, “it was Enek Zjarr’s skull he needed, but I’m afraid someone already took it.”

Dorgo stared in disbelief as Sanya’s slender hand reached into the bag slung around her shoulder, the bag she had been so determined to keep with her. She pulled from it the secret treasure that she had carried with her for so very long: the dry, fleshless skull of Enek Zjarr, the rune of Khorne branded into its forehead.

“He’s been dead since before we left the domain,” Sanya told him, “murdered the very night we returned from the tomb of Teiyogtei. His weakness emboldened those who would see him fall. The legacy of Teiyogtei is such that no enemy can kill a chieftain, but as the king was slain by his warlords while he languished from his wounds, so his heirs may be brought to destruction by the hand of a kinsman. Enek Zjarr never saw the dagger I stabbed into him, but I assure you he felt its venom!”

“But the Skulltaker would simply hunt for the head of the new kahn,” Dorgo protested.

“Not if there was no kahn,” Sanya corrected him and the full treachery of that statement was like a physical blow to the Tsavag. “If no one claimed Enek Zjarr’s legacy, if none drew the flesh of Teiyogtei from his heart, then the power would remain bound in his corpse. The head of Enek Zjarr would remain the trophy sought by the Skulltaker. We Sul are smarter than the other tribes. We alone understood that our survival and that of our kahn were not the same. So long as the domain endured, we would endure. Once the Skulltaker killed the chiefs of the other tribes, there would be none to oppose us.”

“And now the Sul will enslave what is left of the tribes,” Dorgo growled through clenched teeth. “They will bring the entire domain under their rule.”

“It is the destiny of those with wisdom to rule,” Sanya said.

“Not wisdom, witch,” Dorgo spat. “Treachery and trickery! That is the coin the Sul know best!”

Sanya sighed, shaking her head sadly. “I could have used you, Tsavag. Thaulan Scabtongue and the other elders will need to be culled if I would be queen.”

“And you’d make me your king,” scoffed Dorgo.

“Consort, perhaps,” Sanya said after a moment of consideration. “After you’d disposed of the elders, of course. But I’m afraid you’d never bend sufficiently to my will. You’re too truculent, too headstrong to make a good slave. The strain of maintaining spells over you is one I can easily do without.”

Dorgo glared at the sorceress, feeling his hatred of her swell with each passing breath. Sanya was terrible in her airs of gloating triumph, revelling in the catalogue of deceit and betrayal that had brought her ultimate victory. All the death, all the suffering that had passed, all the carnage wrought by the Skulltaker, was immaterial to her. It was a mentality as loathsome as it was callous. Even ever-hungry Khorne appreciated each man’s death in his moment of dying.

Sanya strode back across the floor, the skull of her betrayed master in her hand. Slowly, she paced around Dorgo, her fingers playing through his hair. “Too bad,” she decided at last. “I’ll have to find another tool to wield the Bloodeater for me.” Her voice became as cold as a winter tempest.

“Skewer yourself, dog!”

Against his will, Dorgo’s hands closed around the hilt of the Bloodeater. With agonising slowness, he turned the blade around in his grip, pointing the sharp tip of the jewelled sword towards his gut. He strained against the pull of his muscles, struggling against the dominating will that compelled him. Sanya laughed and he could feel her power over him lessen.

He tried to drop the sword, but even as he started to flex his fingers, he felt her will force them closed again.

She was toying with him, making him die by degrees, savouring the helpless terror of his mind. A more sinister torment it was hard to contemplate, where torturer and victim were one and the same.

A strange sight intruded into his terror. Past the trembling fists of his outstretched arms, Dorgo could see the nest of chains behind the forge. He could see them shivering, trembling with motion as though moved by some intangible wind.

Slowly, at first, then more violently, they began to sway. Initially, Dorgo watched the chains only to distract him from Sanya’s torture, but soon a horrified fascination gripped him. Something was climbing up the chains.

As soon as the thought was in his mind, he felt Sanya’s hold on him falter. The sorceress turned away, rushing to the edge of the opening behind the forge. Dorgo threw the Bloodeater from him, letting it clatter across the floor. He scrambled away from weapon and the sorceress, retreating from both with horror.

The sorceress waved her hands in arcane gestures above the metal floor, banishing the spell of concealment that she had evoked, exposing the gaping hole through which the chains passed. Her face turned pale with horror.

Sanya was too consumed by her fear to notice Dorgo’s escape. She was trembling as she backed away from the opening, shaking like a lonely leaf in a thunderstorm. A red gauntlet closed around the lip of the opening, followed quickly by a hulking body encased in armour. The Skulltaker’s metal mask glared at the sorceress, as pitiless as the face of Khorne.

Crackling lightning flashed from Sanya’s hand as she drew power from her amulet. The sorcerous energy shimmered and danced around the Skulltaker’s body, as harmful as summer rain.

The monster moved towards her, each step echoing like the tramp of doom from the walls of the forge. The hungry, surly roar of the forge hissed back into life, welcoming the Skulltaker’s return.

Sanya continued to back away, continued to unleash her deadly magic against the oncoming monster, but there was no pit to hide from the Skulltaker this time, and no trickery that could ensnare him.