Warriors of the Chaos Wastes - C L Werner

by Warhammer

  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.

  The daemons charged at him, chopping at him with their corrupt plagueblades. The daemonic steel simply recoiled from its impacts against the man’s unholy armour, sending even the daemons reeling. The warrior gave his foes no quarter, no mercy.

  His smoking blade was everywhere, stabbing into rotten lungs, splitting open decayed bellies, lopping off limbs and heads.

  The plaguebearers did not falter even in the midst of massacre, but their numbers, the foul vapours that surrounded them, the poisonous touch of their swords, none of these were enough to prevail against their foe.

  The slow, sickly movements of the daemons were unequal to the swift, murderous attacks of the warrior. The plaguebearers fought with a hellish vitality beyond that of anything merely mortal, enduring wounds that would have brought the strongest man low.

  They did not know pain. They did not fear death. They only knew what their master demanded of them, and so they fought on, oblivious to the carnage slowly consuming them all.

  A lion among jackals, the warrior carved a gory swathe through the festering, moaning daemons. Again and again, his blade cut through their diseased flesh, spilling their foul ichor across the shimmering sand until there was too little of the mortal shell left to contain their noxious essence.

  Plaguebearers fell beneath his sword, hacked to pieces, collapsing into pools of putrescence as their daemonic essences fled back to the realm of the gods.

  It was while the warrior was fighting a crook-backed, fly-faced daemon that his heavy cloak was slashed by a plaguebearer’s sword. The stranger’s side was exposed and for the first time, Bleda could see the chain that crossed the man’s chest from right shoulder to left hip. A grisly trophy grinned at him from the chain: the skull of a man, the chain looped through its sockets, its forehead branded with the rune of Khorne. That was the moment, the moment when Bleda recognised his enemy for who and what he was.

  The Skulltaker brought his sword smashing down into the fanged visage of a plaguebearer, rupturing its cyclopean eye and collapsing the bone beneath. The thing staggered away, swiping blindly at him with its claws.

  The warrior pursued the maimed daemon, pausing only for the instant it took to chop the hand from a daemon closing upon him from the other side. Returning to his first foe, the Skulltaker stabbed his blade into the thing’s chest, impaling it upon his sword. With brutal savagery, he ripped his weapon free, sending a spray of stagnant black ichor and splintered ribs across the faceted side of a crystal spire.

  The warrior did not pause, pivoting as he won his sword free, bringing the blade around in a shrieking arc that slashed through the leg of another daemon. The thing bleated and pitched forwards. Before it could rise, the Skulltaker brought the edge of his weapon down upon its head.

  Only five of the daemons remained. They circled the Skulltaker, ropes of filth dripping from their wounds, drool slopping down their faces. The pus-hued eyes of the plaguebearers burned into those behind the skull-mask of the warrior’s helm, blazing with a corrupt inner fire. The Skulltaker glared back, his black blade screaming hungrily in his hand. Shard-sand crunched beneath his boots as he pivoted to watch the daemons as they shuffled around him, tightening their circle.

  As one, the fiends rushed at him, hooves and peeling feet slapping against the sand. The first daemon flung its body at the man, exulting as his sword smashed into it, erupting from its back with volcanic fury. The dying daemon’s arms twisted impossibly backwards, grabbing the smoking metal piercing its body.

  With all the strength left in its mortal shell, the daemon held the Skulltaker’s sword, keeping it sheathed in the monster’s corrupt flesh. The other daemons rushed the Skulltaker, crushing him beneath their diseased mass, smashing him to the earth beneath their oozing weight.

  A nervous laugh wheezed through Bleda’s swollen lips while he watched the plaguebearers tear at the man pinned beneath them with their claws and stab awkwardly at him with their corroded swords. Not a monster from the pits of legend after all, only a man. One who would soon offer up his soul to Neiglen when the daemons ripped it from his body.

  The chieftain marched forwards, his flabby face twisting in a sneer of triumph made bitter by the memory of his moment of terror.

  Bleda’s step faltered abruptly and his sneer fell from his face. The heap of plaguebearers shifted upwards, exploding in a burst of primal strength and savagery. Daemons were hurled to the ground as the Skulltaker rose once more. The warrior’s hand was locked around the neck of a daemon, the steel fingers digging into its throat, filth gushing from the wound. The man’s armour was pitted and gouged, his cloak torn and ragged. Bleda could see something, something hot and black dripping from the Skulltaker’s wounds.

  Even as he watched, the flow became a trickle and the rents in the armour closed, oozing shut as though they had never been.

  One of the fallen daemons lunged at the Skulltaker as he strangled its fellow. The warrior spun around, whipping the body of the daemon he held, smashing the one with the other. The rising daemon crumpled under the impact, its collarbone shattered. The daemon he held slipped from his hands as the force of the impact tore its head from its shoulders.

  The thing slopped again
st the ground, shuddering as the diseased spirit abandoned its desiccated husk, fleeing back into the void.

  Bleda saw the other two plaguebearers charging at the Skulltaker, but he no longer had any illusions who would prevail. The Veh-Kung started to back away again, wondering if he had time to flee back into his tunnels, wondering if the Skulltaker would be able to find him even in that dank, noxious gloom. Then his eyes closed upon the plaguebearer impaled upon the Skulltaker’s sword.

  The daemon’s body had largely disintegrated into a pile of sludge, but the sword was still there, mired in the filth. He looked again at the warrior, facing off against the daemons. A desperate hope came to the Hung chieftain. He scrambled across the shard-sand, his huge frame moving with a speed that belied his obscene bulk. He hurried towards the black sword. If he could use the weapon against the Skulltaker, kill the monster with his own sword…

  The Skulltaker turned from the mangled ruin of the last plaguebearer, his skull-mask turning towards Bleda as the fat chieftain rushed for the sword. The warrior moved to intercept his foe, Lok’s skull slapping against his hip as he stalked after the Hung.

  Bleda stopped, raising his seven-section chain. His chubby arms whipped the weapon through the air, lashing out at the Skulltaker with the flailing lengths of rod and chain. The warrior staggered as the corrupt bronze segments smacked into him, sizzling against his armour as they struck. A filthy green smog rose from the wounds, steaming into the air.

  Bleda snarled, inching closer to the black sword even as he continued to whip the chain through the air. A droning buzz sounded from the chain, the sound of vermin on the wing, as its wielder swung it faster and faster, creating a blinding curtain of crushing metal and poisonous fumes.

  As Bleda edged towards the sword, the Skulltaker fought his way through the crashing bronze rods. His breastplate smouldered where the rods had struck him, the left horn of his helm partially melted by the corrosive touch of the weapon.

  Blood, dark and steaming, bubbled from new rents in his armour, sizzling as it dripped onto the shimmering sand. Bleda’s satisfaction at the damage his enchanted weapon visited upon the monstrous warrior was tempered by the fact that its touch had not broken the man.

  Another foe would be reduced to a quivering mess, retching and shivering as the vile influence of the chain’s power polluted his body. The Skulltaker kept coming, daring the tempest of Bleda’s chain. Foot by foot, he was closing upon the puddle of ruin and his terrible sword.

  The Hung kahn gave a bubbling shout, jerking the chain savagely in his hand. The rods whipped around the Skulltaker’s body, coiling around his left arm. Bleda grunted in satisfaction, putting his entire weight into one savage pull on the chain. The Skulltaker staggered as the trapped arm popped from its socket, hanging limp and useless beside his body.

  Bleda shuddered to find that even such an injury had drawn no cry of pain from the warrior. His horror at the observation was diminished as he found the nearness of the pool and the black sword.

  Still keeping his hand firmly around the seventh of his chain-weapon’s bronze rods, Bleda lunged for the gruesome blade.

  Bleda’s fat face twisted back into its triumphant sneer as his chubby fingers closed around the hilt of the sword. Bubbling laughter oozed from the warlord’s mouth as he tore the weapon free from the filth of the plaguebearer.

  Laughter decayed into a drawn-out scream. The sword fell from Bleda’s mutilated hand, fat and flesh dripping from the charred extremity in greasy ropes. The black sword fell to the ground, its edge smoking, its eerie voice raised in a ravenous howl.

  Bleda pitched to the ground as the chain in his other hand was ripped from his grasp. The chieftain coughed in terror as he saw the Skulltaker free himself from the coils of the chain, casting the magic weapon aside as though it were so much rubbish. Then the killer was advancing on him once more, the grisly scars in his armour healing more with every step.

  Croaking wheezes and wracking coughs slopped from Bleda’s swollen face as the chieftain tried to summon the hideous power of his god. Curses and poxes, spells to wither and ruin, hexes and blights, were all known to the lord of the Veh-Kung, for Neiglen was indulgent with his servants, but none could ooze their way onto his tongue, while the searing agony of his mangled hand pulsed through his thoughts and thundered through his blood.

  Bleda fought to calm his spirit, to draw upon the powers he had been taught, but the pain would not relent.

  The Skulltaker loomed over the reeling kahn. He reached to his shoulder, wrenching his left arm back into place with a dull crack. The warrior’s skull-mask glared down at the quivering chieftain.

  Reaching down, he retrieved the black blade, metal gauntlets tightening around the smoking weapon. The scene lingered, the silent warrior towering over the broken, obese hulk of the gasping chieftain.

  The molten touch of the black blade had spread up Bleda’s arm, reducing muscle to strips of fried meat, exposing bones that were burnt black.

  When Bleda looked up, when the kahn stared into the murderous embers behind the warrior’s helm, when the Skulltaker saw the terror and defeat in the chieftain’s eyes, only then did he strike. In one fluid motion, the black blade was drawn back, and then flashed forwards in a brutal sweep of smoke and sound.

  Bleda’s swollen head, with its grotesque antlers and bulging eyes leapt from the kahn’s shoulders, dropping into the shard-sand with a wet plop. The headless trunk of the chieftain crumpled in upon itself, sagging to the ground like a ruptured boil.

  The Skulltaker kicked Bleda’s lifeless bulk aside. Stalking across the shard-sand, he knelt beside the chieftain’s staring head. He lifted it from the ground, brushing the clinging slivers of glass from the bloated flesh. Then he brought the keen edge of his sword against his new trophy, stripping the warlord’s features from his head.

  Only when the rune of Khorne, branded upon the bone beneath Bleda’s flesh stood exposed beneath the blazing stars, did the warrior relent. He lifted the flayed skull to the sky. Thunder roared in the cloudless night, causing the crystal spires to shiver: the growl of a hungry god.

  The atmosphere in Hutga’s yurt was tense, a subdued silence filling the hide-walled hut. The gathered war chiefs and leaders of the tribe stood in a circle around the throne of their khagan, the eyes of every man focused upon their brooding chieftain.

  His thoughts were dark, frightened: the troubled mind of a leader who knows his people face crisis and destruction. He glanced across the Tsavag champions, his gaze piercing, haunted.

  Only when he saw Dorgo standing beside Togmol did the khagan’s eyes soften. The corroboration of his son’s story, the restoration of his honour was the only blessing hidden within the black words of the dead Muhak and the awful horror which they portended.

  ‘You have heard the words of my son,’ Hutga said, his voice like gravel grinding beneath a mammoth’s foot. ‘You have heard the words of the Muhak. Zar Lok is dead.’ That statement brought gleams of satisfaction onto the faces of the warriors and smiles onto their scarred visages. Hutga raised his hand, cautioning his war chiefs. ‘Do not be quick to rejoice in his death. The same doom that came upon the Muhak threatens the Tsavag.’

  Hutga’s voice dropped to a fearful whisper. ‘The outlander, the warrior who killed Lok, he is doom long threatened in the old prophecies. The Skulltaker has returned.’

  The revelation brought a frightened murmur rippling through the room. Powerful warriors, men who had not faltered in battle with the most hideous of beasts and monsters knew fear as they heard Hutga speak the terrible name: the Skulltaker, a figure from the most ancient of the Tsavag legends, the crimson spectre whose menace had hovered above the domain since its very beginning. Even the youngest of the Tsavag was taught about the bloody-handed executioner of Khorne.

  ‘The Skulltaker,’ Yorool repeated.

  The shaman shuffled forwards, his twisted body moving to the centre of the circle. ‘You have all heard the traveller’s tales about
him. You have heard of the hungry daemon, the Blooded Wanderer who tests the pride of those who would call themselves warriors. You have heard how he stalks the land, cloaked in a mantle of skulls, his fiery touch searing the flesh from his prey. You have heard how he rides the plains upon a great daemon-beast, killing all who have offended Great Khorne.

  The stories of the Skulltaker are many: how he killed the dragon Shaneeth and placed its bleeding heads at the foot of the Skull Throne; how he rode against the ogres of the Marrowchewer, and alone scoured them from the land; how he dared face the Sin Stealer of the decadent Ulvags and vanquished the daemon from the realm of mortals for a thousand years; how he visited destruction upon the blasphemous city of Po and left not one of Lashor’s children alive within its accursed walls.

  ‘Before any of these things,’ Yorool continued, ‘he was known as the Slayer of Kings. The Skulltaker appeared in the lands of Teiyogtei, to bring low the mightiest of khagans. He stalked across the domain, slaying what he would, leaving a trail of slaughter in his wake. None could stand against him, not the craftiest Hung, the strongest Kurgan or most monstrous gor. All who did battle with him were cut down, their bodies left heaped in great carrion mounds. No tribe or nation had been able to defy the armies of Teiyogtei, but the Skulltaker cut a path through them as though they were feeble children.

  ‘Teiyogtei could not let the horde he had forged, the land he had carved from the desolation, be destroyed by this champion of havoc. He ordered his armies to stand aside, to make no more battle against the Skulltaker. The great khagan alone would face the monster and decide the fate of the land. Teiyogtei fought the Skulltaker upon a barren hill. For seven days, the mighty lord struggled against the terrible killer.

  ‘Each wound Teiyogtei suffered was returned against the Skulltaker, but neither could deliver the killing blow. As the seventh day faded into the eighth, Teiyogtei called out to the grim Blood God, asking him to guide his hand, to bring him victory against his awful foe. Khorne answered Teiyogtei’s prayer, and the Bloodeater burned like fire in Teiyogtei’s hand as he drove it into the Skulltaker’s body. Even as the death blow was struck, however, the Skulltaker’s black blade smashed into Teiyogtei, shattering the Blood Crown. The great khagan fell, stricken unto death by the hand of the Skulltaker. Our great lord was taken into his tent, where the sorcerers and healers laboured over him long into the night, but before the eighth day perished and the ninth dawn broke, Teiyogtei’s spirit had gone to the Hunting Halls. His chieftains quarrelled after their lord’s death and divided the domain between them, denying the right of the Tsavags as the true heirs of the king.’