The thing’s stumpy hands clapped together like sides of raw beef. “How are you called, madman? The Crow God will be pleased when I offer up your flesh to him.”
The stranger stood silent, a grim shadow among the carnage of the battleground. The face of the fat warlord twitched in annoyance. More than the slaughter of his minions, more than the invasion of his lands, more even than blasphemy against his god, he found the stranger’s discourtesy upsetting. He licked at a second strip of meat, oozing back into his throne.
“I am Bleda Carrion-crown,” the bulk announced with a slimy burp. “Kahn of the Veh-Kung, Master of the Desert of Mirrors, Chosen of the Crow God, Tabernacle of the Divine Rot.”
The grotesque warlord shifted his tremendous mass, his flabby hands closing around a strange weapon dangling from the arm of his throne. It was sections of metal rod connected by rusty links of chain. Seven in number, each rod was pitted and foul with decay, dripping with some internal corruption.
“This is my Chain of Seventy Plagues,” Bleda said, caressing the weapon with obscene fervour. “No man has ever stood against it. I ask again, who you are and where you have come from. Is it the Vaan who have dared such foolishness? The Sul? Surely not the Tsavag? What people spurred you to this madness, for I would favour them in my prayers to Mighty Neiglen!”
The skull-masked stranger shook his head, staring at the swollen hulk of Bleda. “A steel rain has come to cleanse with blood and terror,” his voice rasped, the slither of sword against sheath.
For an instant, fear flared within Bleda’s rancid eyes as he heard the stranger’s spectral voice, as he saw the warrior stalk forward. His hands shivered against his oily flesh, clutching at his throat in alarm. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the pox-runes of Neiglen. The touch of his own afflictions reassured him. Was he not the chosen of his god? Did not the power of Neiglen course through him?
Bleda’s laughter bubbled up from deep within his corrupt bulk.
“Die nameless then, fool,” the kahn croaked. Like a sea beast floundering upon the shore, he surged up from his throne, waddling down the seven steps that fronted his palanquin. The ground seemed to cringe beneath him as his feet sank into the shard-sand. Behind him, Bleda’s slaves set down the heavy palanquin and formed a leprous mass around their warlord.
“You speak of rain and blood and terror? You wear the skull rune of Khorne? Fool! This is the desert, where it has not rained since before the days of Teiyogtei! Blood and terror? Here they belong to one man, one man alone, Bleda of the Veh-Kung! This is the sacred land of Neiglen, where the Blood God has no part.”
Bleda’s voice wheezed with fury as he spat his words onto the sand. He flicked his chain-staff through the air, the rods and links buzzing like a swarm of flies as the wind fled before it. “I am the Tabernacle of the Divine Rot,” the kahn croaked. “Behold the power of the Crow God!”
With a flick of his hand, the kahn slapped a flabby finger against the leprous flesh of a slave. Instantly the man collapsed in a groaning, twitching mass. Skin sloughed from his bones and flesh darkened beneath a sheen of filth. A great horn of twisted bone erupted from the slave’s forehead even as his eyes slithered across his face to merge into a single putrid orb at the centre of his head. Hands lengthened into talons and organs swollen with rot burst through his skin. Great fangs dripped from a suddenly gaping maw. A swordlike growth oozed from the slave’s side until at last its weight tore it loose from his body.
The stricken slave moaned, retching as it stooped to retrieve the blade his body had grown. When it stood again, its claws were wrapped tightly around a length of twisted corrosion, a crust of decay flaking down its blade.
Bleda laughed as his slave was consumed by the Divine Rot of Neiglen, his mortal being devoured by the daemonic essence his kahn had infected him with. The plague bearer moaned again, and then started to stumble towards the defiant stranger. Bleda’s corrupt laughter bubbled forth again as he pressed his hand against a second slave.
Hutga sat in the silence of his yurt, staring at the ancient weapon cradled in his lap. The ji had been handed down from the khagans of the Tsavag for centuries. It was a sign of their authority, a testament to their fitness to rule over the Tsavag. He could feel the weight of years as he ran his hand along the moon-shaped blade and its ivory heft. He could almost hear the echoes of his fathers and their fathers, back to the beginning of his people. The mighty weapon was more a part of the khagan than his own skin, more a part of him than his own blood.
The chieftain sighed as the thought came to him, as doubt and disappointment stabbed into him. He had driven his son hard, had done everything he could to make him strong and proud, a true Tong warrior, a man fit to rule when Hutga’s time at last came, but however hard he drove Dorgo, however much he tried to test the boy’s limits, Hutga always felt that his people needed more.
He wondered if perhaps he had driven Dorgo too hard, had set unfair expectations for him. Did he drive the boy so hard because he worried about his fitness to lead, or because he was afraid his love for his son would temper his judgement, would place a man unfit to rule upon the throne of the Tsavags? Did he test Togmol and others who were not of his blood half so severely?
Hutga shook his head. It didn’t matter now. Dorgo had been proven unworthy with his cowardice and his lies. If he had fallen in battle with Lok, his father would have mourned him. For him to return, disgraced and vile, cowering in his falsehoods like some faithless Hung was more than Hutga could endure.
When Ulagan and his scouts returned with the truth, there would be an end of the matter. Dorgo’s tongue would be cut out for daring to tell such lies and the boy would be cast out from the tribe. The khagan was under no illusion what exile meant: a lingering lonely death in the wilds, if Dorgo did not fall victim to one of the other tribes first. It was debatable which was a worse way to die.
Still, the boy’s cowardice and lies had earned him no less a fate, even if he was the khagan’s son.
What if he had told the truth, though? What if he had seen someone, some stranger from beyond the domain, kill Lok?
Hutga stared hard at the blade of his ji, looking past its keen edge into the dim days of legend when it had been forged by Teiyogtei. None of the other chieftains could have killed Lok.
There was a balance in the domain, some capricious force that prevented the tribes from ever annihilating one another. Each of the eight chieftains was a powerful warlord in his own right, but none was mightier than any other, and none could prevail against one of his rivals. Their strengths and weaknesses were too evenly matched, the balance too close for any one warlord to overcome another.
Dorgo had said the man who killed Lok was not another chieftain, however. That gave Hutga pause. Never in the history of the domain had an intruder been the equal of a chieftain.
Only once in the ancient sagas was such a being recorded. Hutga felt a chill course through him as he pondered the possibility.
The flap of the khagan’s tent was pushed aside and Yorool’s disfigured frame hobbled into sight. The shaman bowed, making obeisance before his lord.
“The scouts have returned,” Yorool said. “They have captured one of the Muhak.”
Hutga noted the same haunted look in the shaman’s mismatched eyes as he made his report. The khagan forced his own doubts from his face. It was not wise to show weakness, even before the old shaman.
“He has been taken to the place of questions?”
Yorool nodded, a grim smile spreading on his lip. “The Muhak will speak when you ask him to speak. He is only flesh and bone, after all.”
Hutga rose from his throne, smoothing his moustache. “Then let us talk with him,” he told the shaman. For the life of his son, Hutga hoped that the prisoner would bear out Dorgo’s story. For the sake of his people, he prayed that everything Dorgo had told him was a lie.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lashed across the wooden platform, limbs stretched and spread away from his body, c
hained to small, rounded protrusions, there was little the Muhak captive could do but scream. The Kurgan were noted for their toughness, and the Muhak were rugged even by the grim standards of their savage race, but everything mortal had its breaking point, that stage where mind and soul were at last overwhelmed by pain and the fear of pain. When that point was reached, there was no secret that could not be given voice.
Hutga could see the Muhak’s flesh writhing beneath his skin as the blood-grubs Yorool had set into the Kurgan’s wounds burrowed into the exposed muscle. The insects would gnaw and tear their way deep, never relenting until they found the moist darkness where they could lay their eggs.
The khagan’s face was stern as he watched the Muhak shudder and struggle. The chains would hold even one of his brawny breed. They were the sort of fetters used to hold juvenile mammoths and keep them close to their mothers when the tribe was on the march. Beside that power, the strength of the mightiest Kurgan was nothing.
Hutga looked away from the captive’s screaming face, watching as Qotagir circled the platform. The old Tsavag held an ivory goad in his weathered hand, motioning with it to guide the enormous creature that moved with him, following his every step as though it were his shadow.
Barn’s bulk blotted out the light as it lumbered around the platform, the wood quivering with the mammoth’s every step. The oldest and wisest of the herd, Baru was almost human in its understanding of the commands Qotagir shouted to it. The mammoth was covered in glossy grey hairs, its pillar-like legs coated in old scabs and bruises, its long trunk split into four separate, mouth-like noses. There was a cruel intelligence in Barn’s bulging, crust-rimmed eyes.
Looking into them, Hutga knew that the beast fully appreciated the havoc its master asked of it.
The Muhak’s screams grew louder, more desperate as Qotagir and Baru circled him. His body thrashed against its bonds, at least what was left of it did. His left leg was little more than a mash of pulp pressed deep into the log it had been chained to. He stared at the mangled limb, tears flowing from his eyes. Then his head turned back to Qotagir and the mammoth.
The leathery Tsavag lifted the ivory goad as Baru moved into position. In response, the gigantic animal raised its foreleg. The captive struggled, striving desperately to pull his arm back towards his body. The chains were too secure and his arm didn’t budge. Qotagir’s wizened face split in an ugly grin. With a quick gesture, he brought the goad hurtling downwards. At the same time, Baru brought his huge leg pounding down into the top of the log.
The Muhak’s shrieks intensified as his arm was crushed beneath Barn’s immense weight.
Hutga waved Qotagir away, walking towards the weeping, pleading captive. The last of the warrior was gone and all that was left was tortured flesh and screaming pain. It was time to ask the questions. Now he would hear nothing but truth from this man, and if not… The khagan looked aside to see Qotagir already moving Baru towards the prisoner’s other arm.
“You will enter the Hunting Halls broken and ruined,” the khagan told his captive, pointing at the bleeding paste where the Kurgan’s shield-arm had been.
“The dogs of the Blood God will make sport with one so wretched,” Hutga spat. “Tell me what happened in the Crumbling Hills!”
The Muhak glared at Hutga, despair rising above pain in his gaze. “What more can I say that your fat Tsavag ears have not already heard, Hutga Ironbelly! How many times must I tell you what I saw with my own eyes!” The Kurgan’s voice dropped into a snarl of ferocity. “Kill me and be done!”
Hutga gestured at Qotagir. The Muhak followed the motion, watching with horror as Baru lifted his leg into the air. “Your sword-arm is next,” the khagan warned. “There will be no place in the Hunting Halls for you.”
“The plagues of Nurgle wither your manhood, dung-eating swine!” the Muhak roared. “I can say it no differently! We fell upon the long-nose as your kin intruded upon our hunting grounds. Zar Lok bade us wait in ambush for the long-nose, to pierce its belly with our spears. Then we killed the dogs who rode upon the beast. They died like women beneath our clubs!”
The khagan smashed his fist into the Muhak’s bloodied face, splitting his lip and cracking his teeth. This much of the story he knew to be the truth, though the Muhak refused to admit that his zar had been hunting Dorgo, not protecting some imagined claim upon the Crumbling Hills.
It was what followed that Hutga did not believe, what he desperately did not want to believe.
“The Muhak are accustomed to killing women,” Hutga growled. “They find it challenge enough to test their courage.” He raised his fist again, satisfied to see the captive cringe in anticipation of the blow. “Spare me the boasting of murderers, it is what happened after that I would hear.”
A shudder swept through the Kurgan, a trembling that had nothing to do with the pain that ravaged his body. A deeper fear crept back into his eyes, a terror beside which even the threat of Baru was made small. “What I have told you before,” the captive said, his voice a broken whisper.
“You dare insist that a lone outlander killed your zar and twenty of his warriors!”
“A thing of darkness and blood, he was,” the Muhak gasped, “his face hidden behind a skull of steel, his body locked within armour of blood. The sword in his hand was black as death, shrieking and smoking as it hacked down our men.”
“Lies!” Hutga roared, smashing his fist against the platform beside the captive’s head. The Muhak flinched at the impact. “Your soul will belong to Chen the Deceiver if you die with lies upon your tongue!”
The Muhak sneered up into Hutga’s rage. “Look for yourself. Seek the outlander, Hutga Ironbelly, and your head will hang beside Lok’s!”
Hutga backed away, trembling as the threat struck him. The Muhak spoke from ignorance and spite. He did not suspect the horror of what he said, the hideous power he courted with his words. He did not even guess what it was he had seen, what had driven him to abandon his zar and hide in the hills like a frightened rabbit until Ulagan’s scouts found him.
No, the Muhak did not know, but Hutga Khagan did.
The chieftain turned away from the captive, walking to where Yorool waited for him at the edge of the platform. The shaman’s face was as dark as Hutga’s. Hutga shook his head as he saw the fright on Yorool’s mutated face. “Lies,” he insisted again.
“Then we will question him more?” Yorool asked. The inquiry stabbed at Hutga like the thrust of a lance. The Muhak’s threat continued to send shivers through his powerful body.
“No,” the chieftain said. He lifted his hand in a tightened fist. Qotagir turned Baru around, marching the huge animal from the platform, leading it back to the pens. “The pig would only tell us the same lies.” Hutga opened his hand.
The crowd that had been watching from the periphery of the platform set up a savage, bestial howl of fury, rushing forward in a hate-maddened mob: wives, daughters and mothers of the men who had died in the Crumbling Hills, each woman’s hand clenched tightly around a dull stone knife.
Hutga descended from the platform as the women took their vengeance. There were some things that turned even a warlord’s stomach.
“What if he was telling the truth?” Yorool asked, struggling to keep up with Hutga as the two men walked back to the chieftain’s yurt. “What he described, what your son described… there is only one thing it could be.”
“Summon the war chiefs of the tribe,” Hutga said, cutting him off. “I would confer with them. Send for Ulagan and his scouts. I will need them as well.”
“And your son?”
Hutga did not look at Yorool as he asked the question. He did not want the shaman to see the doubt that wracked him as he thought of Dorgo. The Muhak’s tale supported what Dorgo had told him. Hutga knew the tortured warrior had told him the truth, however much the chieftain tried to deny it. His son was restored to him, redeemed from the shame that had fallen upon him.
The relief he felt was bitter and he felt like
a traitor to his people for feeling it. Yes, his son was his again, but at what cost? What cost would his people pay?
“Bring him to the council,” Hutga told Yorool. “He is neither a liar nor a coward. The Muhak dog confirmed that much.”
“Then you do believe.” Yorool’s voice shuddered as he heard his khagan confess his acceptance of the story, and what it implied. It was the shaman’s turn to look away. “Long has it been prophesied this day would come, but I had hoped it would not happen in my time. What will you tell your men?”
“We will tell them only what they need to know,” Hutga said, struggling to keep his voice strong. “Tell them what it is that menaces our people, our land and the whole of the domain.”
Yorool closed his hands in the sign of Khorne, crushing his fists against his chest, bowing his head as he muttered a quiet prayer to the brutal god of battle and slaughter.
“He has come,” the shaman hissed, his desperate effort to deny the truth overwhelmed by the fear that pulsed in his heart. The air grew cold as he named his terror.
“The Skulltaker.”
The Skulltaker.
The blood froze in Bleda’s putrid heart as he realised just what it was he had so boldly challenged. The bloated Veh-Kung chieftain stumbled back, eyes bulging with horror, prayers to his debased Crow God slobbering from suddenly numb lips. The seven-section chain hung limp from fingers grown flaccid.
Bleda continued to watch the strange warrior before him in the dark armour. No mortal man, this warrior. Nothing mortal could move the way he did, striking and slashing in a relentless cascade of violence: tireless, remorseless, unstoppable. The black blade rose and fell in a butcher’s dance, hewing and hacking, ripping and tearing. Bleda had spread the Divine Rot to his entire entourage, sending wave after wave of possessed slaves to attack the warrior.
[Warhammer] - Blood for the Blood God Page 6