Clint Werner - Blood for the Blood God

The only predators that menaced the valley were the black condors that nested in the mountains, but, while large enough to carry off a full-grown man in their talons, they were too small to threaten the mammoths.

The encampment was alive with smells and noises when Dorgo at last emerged from the hide-walled yurt of Unegen, the tribe’s witch doctor. The scarred old healer had tended the hunter’s arm, rubbing a pasty unguent into the wound after cutting away the stump of the ivory shard with a rune knife. Dorgo’s arm was wrapped tightly in a binding of zhaga skin soaked in mammoth urine.

The witch doctor had warned him to make prayers to Onogal to placate the pestilential god lest his injury become infected despite the healer’s precautions. He also advised making an offering to great Chen, that the Lord of Fate might oppose any ill-sending from the King of Flies.

Dorgo climbed down from the witch-doctor’s dwelling, sloshing into the muddy ground. His wound tended, he had to see another of his tribesmen before he could rest. He had been summoned to a meeting with his father, to explain to the khagan what had befallen his fellow hunters and their mammoth. A feeling of shame rose within him as he recalled the ease with which the Muhak had ambushed them, tinged with guilt as he considered the reason Lok had ordered the attack. More than that, he was afraid as he recalled the strange warrior who had butchered his way through the Muhak and cut the head from their zar’s shoulders.

That memory brought a quickness into Dorgo’s step. He was not sure why, but he felt a terrible foreboding as he recalled the sinister warrior, a sense of lurking menace that would not relent. A new danger had entered the domain, something clothed in the shape of a man, something that was powerful enough to butcher its way through a score of Muhak killers and still have strength to slaughter Lok as though the chieftain were a feeble old greybeard.

If the stranger stayed in the Crumbling Hills or contented itself with killing Muhak, that would be one thing, but Dorgo could not shake the feeling that it would not remain in the Crumbling Hills for long.

As he walked down the path, which writhed its way between the raised yurts, Dorgo felt his mood darken. He watched the young boys practising with their throwing spears, the blunted weapons springing back from targets of mammoth-skin stretched tight across ivory frames. He saw little girls weaving baskets from marsh reeds, or carefully mending fur vestments with bone needles and sinewy thread. The grown women, their cheeks scarred with the marks of their households, were gathered together on the massive wooden platform where the old mammoths were slaughtered after their time was past. A great old cow mammoth, her tusks curled back upon themselves until they resembled the horns of a ram, had finally been killed by Qotagir, the wiry mammoth master who tended the beasts upon which the tribe depended so greatly. The women were busy carving steaks from the cow’s flanks while others carefully cleaned the animal’s thick skin, readying it for tanning in one of the sweltering smoke huts that stood at either end of the encampment.

Qotagir, with several of his burly assistants, was carrying the carcasses of several antelope to the rocky ground where the mammoths had their pen. The animals would be butchered, ground into miniscule portions and then mixed into the pebbly feed the Tsavag used to supplement the mammoths’ diet of grass and roots.

The beasts would not touch feed that had been mixed with the flesh of their own, but they accepted the meat of antelope and elk readily enough. The meat helped to sharpen the minds of the brutes and increase their aggression in battle, or at least so Qotagir’s forefathers had taught him. Next to the khagan and Yorool, the high shaman, Qotagir was the most important man in the tribe and even the brashest warrior was careful to show him respect.

Beyond the pens, in the place of honour closest to the great mammoths, stood the khagan’s yurt, its walls of hide daubed with the marks of the Tsavag households he commanded, its ivory supports festooned with dangling trophies taken by the tribe in the hunt and in battle. Dorgo saw the iron helms of Vaan warriors, the sharp horns of beastkin, the ragged tatters of Hung banners, even the immense clubs of Muhak marauders and, in a place of honour, the petrified head of a basilisk. The trophies were a display for the benefit of the warriors who waited upon their chief, a reminder that there had always been great warriors among the Tsavag, a humbling lesson for men grown arrogant in their own accomplishments.

The humbling display was not lost upon Dorgo as he climbed the ladder up to the platform of his father’s hut. He looked at the prayer flags waving in the wind above the ivory crown of the yurt, one for each of the hunters who had been killed by the Muhak. Normally, the bodies would have been left for the condors, the great messengers of Chen, to bear up into the afterworld, but they still lay far away in the Crumbling Hills. Instead, Yorool would paint their names upon large prayer flags, that the birds might see them as they flew above the valley and inform Mighty Chen of the lost souls that would seek entrance into the Realm of the Gods.

His rescuers in the Prowling Lands had questioned Dorgo carefully, making certain that he had indeed seen his comrades killed. It was no small thing to paint the mark of a living man upon a prayer flag. Chen might seek out his soul and tear it from his body while he still lived if the god felt that he had been deceived.

The floor of the yurt was covered with furs, the hides of bear and sabretusk warring with those of yhetee and tiger for space. The walls were clothed in murals painted upon the skins of zhagas, each painting representing some great event from the time of their ancestors. Dorgo felt his eyes drawn to the ancient mural that showed Teiyogtei, the king, uniting the tribes of the domain into his mighty horde.

A little pride found its way into the warrior’s heart, despite his fears and shame. The eight tribes of the domain all claimed to be the heirs of Teiyogtei’s power, but only the Tsavag were his true sons. They were of the Tong, the same great people that had unleashed Teiyogtei upon the world, the same blood as that of the king flowed through their veins. Theirs was the true legacy, beside which the claims of Hung, Kurgan and gor were nothing more than envious jests.

“Approach, shamed one,” a voice called from the gloom of the chamber, crushing the small ember of pride that had started to show upon Dorgo’s face.

The warrior turned at the sound of the voice, turned to face the throne of Hutga Khagan, chief of all the Tsavag, lord of the war mammoths, wielder of the iron moon: Hutga Khagan, his father.

The Tsavag chieftain was a massive, powerfully built man, despite his many years. Streaks of iron stained the black sprawl of his beard and wrinkles burrowed across his face from the corners of his frost-coloured eyes. The khagan’s hair was shaved into a trio of woven braids that fell well past his broad shoulders.

Nodules of steel peppered Hutga’s skin, like metal fungi pushing up from within his flesh.

Some among the tribe said the growth was the curse of a Sul sorcerer whose wicked knife had injured Hutga in his youth, others held that it was a mark of favour from the gods. There was a lesson in the whispered stories, Dorgo felt. With the Dark Gods, it was difficult to tell blessing from curse.

Hutga gestured with a steel hand, motioning for his son to approach. Dorgo stepped towards the thronelike seat of ivory and fur, bowing before the chieftain. Hutga stirred within the mass of mammoth hide that swaddled him, shifting from a slumped, comfortable posture to one of dominance and command. The warrior felt a twinge of sympathy for his father. Because of the metal growths, Hutga found it hard to keep warm, the heat of his body draining out of him into the steel nodules. Indeed, he was surprised not to find several of the chieftain’s wives squirming around him, trying to warm his clammy flesh.