by Warhammer
Yorool lifted his misshapen hand, pointing his finger meaningfully at the men around him. ‘This is the tale every child knows,’ the shaman said. ‘There is more to the legend, a secret passed down among shaman and khagan. You were led to believe that Teiyogtei killed the Skulltaker, that all the other tales about him were some other mortal champion whom Khorne had made his executioner. This is wrong. There has only ever been one Skulltaker.
‘The destroyer of cities, the killer of dragons and daemons, is the same warrior who fought against the great king. Teiyogtei knew the terrible prophecy, that the Skulltaker could never be destroyed. He prayed to the gods for victory, but he could only vanquish the Skulltaker, not kill him. Like a daemon, his defeat banished him from the domain of Teiyogtei, but the king knew that the Skulltaker would return when ill stars burned in the heavens and the curse of years was broken.’
‘Ill stars glow in the night,’ Hutga’s solemn voice declared. ‘The Skulltaker returns, returns to destroy the domain of Teiyogtei and all within it.’ He shook his head, feeling the weight of his words, the hopelessness in them. ‘Teiyogtei’s united horde could not stand against him. Now the tribes war against one another, the hand of each turned against the other. Where the horde was broken, the Tsavag must stand alone.’
Grim silence stretched across the room, seeping into the murals and trophies, reaching into every corner. The Tsavag warriors stared at the floor, none of them willing to face his fellow, none of them able to accept the dread that filled their hearts.
Dorgo broke the silence. Brandishing his sword, he lifted his voice in a defiant snarl. ‘If these be the last days of the Tsavag, let us give praise to the gods that they have sent a foe worthy to oppose us! When he comes, we will give him a battle that will shame the wrath of dragon and ogre!’
Hutga rose from his throne, casting aside the heavy blankets that shrouded his massive frame. He strode through the circle, laying his hand against his son’s shoulder. For once, all doubt was gone.
Here was a warrior fit to lead the Tsavag. ‘The jackals take legend and prophecy!’ he roared, turning to face his war chiefs. ‘Here stands one who has seen the Skulltaker! He has seen the monster, and he would fight against it! Does he fight alone! Are there still men among the Tsavag!’
His answer was another roar. The fists of Tsavag warriors struck the air and swords clattered in their sheaths. Dorgo’s boldness and the words of their khagan goaded their courage, fanned the flames of their pride. Where dread had held them only a moment before, now they snarled their defiance. Hutga felt pride flooding through him: pride in his people, that they could still rear such warriors, and pride in his son, that he should be the first to lift his sword and raise his voice.
The khagan’s attention was pulled away from the shouting warriors, drawn to a young Tsavag boy, his cheeks unscarred, who crept timidly into the yurt. The boy dropped to his knees as he saw Hutga look in his direction, grovelling in obeisance before his chieftain. Hutga recognised him as one of Qotagir’s helpers. The boy was pale beneath the layer of dirt that covered his limbs, beads of sweat dripping from his brow.
‘Mighty khagan,’ the boy said. ‘A… a stranger… in the encampment. A sorcerer,’ he added with a shiver.
Hutga marched to the youth, lifting him from the floor by his arm. ‘What is this?’ he demanded of the frightened boy. ‘Who is this sorcerer and how did he pass unchallenged into the camp?’
He had to shake the child to force words from his stammering lips.
‘He… he came from… the sky,’ the boy stuttered. ‘He is one of the Hung. Says he bears a message for our khagan from the Sul.’
Hutga released his hold on the youth. The shouts of the war chiefs faded away as they heard the boy’s words.
A Sul sorcerer in their camp! Every man’s thoughts turned to his family and his home. They knew well the carnage a sorcerer could wreck. Their blood already up, the warriors began to rush from the tent. Hutga moved to impose his metal-studded bulk in the path of his men.
‘Relent, my wolves,’ he told them. ‘I would hear what this Sul rat would say.’ Hutga’s face darkened, twisting into a snarl. ‘Then the sorcerer can die,’ he promised.
Warriors gathered around the wooden platform, spears and swords held in clenched fists. The wreckage of the Muhak captive had been cleared away, only the dark stains in the wood giving silent evidence of his fate. In the pens nearby, the mammoths trumpeted their displeasure and unease, their handlers hard-pressed to pacify the brutes.
There was a foulness in the air, a spectral taint that tortured the animals’ sharp senses. Even the men could feel it, crawling up their spines like icy worms.
At the centre of the platform, impossibly suspended above it, was the thing that evoked such disquiet. It was a great oval of glowing light, the suggestion of shape and form just barely perceptible within the glare. There was the impression of a flattened, disc-like body and a gaping, fang-ridden maw.
The light around the thing faded from one colour to the next, like a prism turning in the sunlight.
Hutga and his war chiefs approached the platform. The khagan’s eyes did not linger on the levitating daemon, but rose to stare at the man who stood upon its back. He was short and stooped, his limbs long and wiry. A black robe was draped around his body, a collection of charms and amulets hanging around his neck. A great helm of gold enclosed his head, its face smooth and without openings, its crown sporting a plume of feathers that changed hue in tandem with the daemon beneath the man’s boots.
‘Hutga Steelskin,’ the faceless man said, his voice a rasping hiss as it escaped from behind his helm. ‘I bring you tidings from the great Enek Zjarr, Kahn of all the Sul, Prophet of Mighty Chenzch.’ The messenger bowed his head ever so slightly, making the briefest of obeisance to the Tsavag chieftain.
The khagan stared back at the sorcerer, unimpressed by the titles of his dark master. Even among the Hung, the Sul had a foul history of betrayal and subterfuge, their every word as crooked as an adder’s tongue. Only the terrible potency of their sorcery and the impossibility of attacking their fortress had prevented the other tribes from wiping them out long ago.
Hatred of the Sul was often the only thing that the different peoples of the domain had in common.
‘You are overbold, Thaulan Scabtongue,’ Hutga said, spitting after he spoke the sorcerer’s name. ‘Do you think I have such fondness to hear the deceits of your master that I would not see your head upon a spear?’ As their khagan spoke, the warriors around him bristled. Dorgo took a step forwards, edging to his father’s side.
Yorool’s eyes darkened and the chill in the air grew colder as he began to evoke his familiar spirits.
‘Hold, khagan,’ Thaulan said, raising his slender, feathered hand. ‘I come here under a truce.’
‘We honour no truce with the Sul,’ growled Togmol, his voice shaking with anger. He had nearly died in battle with the Vaan four summers past, part of a costly war between the two tribes, a war that had been fuelled by Sul lies and Sul manipulation.
The sorcerer turned his faceless helm to the enraged warrior, hate exuding from the polished golden veil. Slowly, Thaulan looked back at Hutga. ‘Even the Tong honour the Call,’ the sorcerer told him. ‘None of the tribes of Teiyogtei has ever forsaken the Call.’
Hutga nodded his head slowly, his thoughts darkening with the sorcerer’s every word. ‘Who summons the chieftains?’ he demanded.
‘Enek Zjarr would confer with his,’ the sorcerer paused, his voice dripping with arrogant contempt, ‘brethren. His divinations have uncovered a threat, something that imperils not only the Sul, but all of the domain.’
The men who had stood with Hutga in his yurt and listened to Yorool relate the grisly tales of the Skulltaker turned anxious glances towards one another. Hutga knew their minds. If there had been any last chance for doubt, the Sul messenger had broken it.
With their sorcerer’s tricks, the Sul had learned of the menace that st
alked their lands, the monster that had stepped out of the mists of legend to reap a harvest of death.
‘Tell your dog of a master that Hutga Khagan will answer the Call,’ the chieftain told Thaulan. He looked aside at Dorgo, meeting his son’s troubled gaze. ‘There is much the Tsavag can tell Enek Zjarr about this “threat” he has seen, things we have learned without daemons and scrying stones. Return to him and tell him the Tsavag will meet with the other chieftains to decide how to fight this menace to our peoples.’
If it is not already too late to stop, Hutga thought.
CHAPTER FIVE
The isolated hill stood in a narrow pass, surrounded by craggy towers of jagged rock. The slopes of the rise were barren, devoid of even the merest weed, the stink of death exuding from the very rocks. A great monolith, a huge dolman of black stone, rose from the top of the hill, its surface pitted with angular runes. The monolith had been worn down by time and the elements, its once sharp edges smoothed by wind and rain. An aura of antiquity clung to it, discernible even through the murk of death that hovered around the hill.
The weight of centuries imposed itself upon Hutga Khagan as he marched towards the hill. It had all started here, where Teiyogtei had fought his battle against the Skulltaker so long ago. The king was entombed within the hill, beneath the monolith his horde had raised to honour their fallen warlord. The place was sacred to all the tribes of the domain. Even the brutish warherd of the gors paid honour to the king. It was the one place where no tribe could take up arms against another, a taboo that had never been broken.
Hutga took only one warrior with him as he marched to the hill. Each chieftain was allowed only one companion when he attended the gathering. More might tempt an ambitious man to break the ancient taboo. Hutga allowed his son the prestige of accompanying him.
One day, if the gods willed it, Dorgo would become the leader of the Tsavags. Attending the gathering would allow him the rare opportunity to observe the men who would be his most dangerous foes, to take the measure of his rival chieftains and prepare his people in the struggle against them.
The khagan smiled at the thought. If the Skulltaker was not stopped, there would be no one for Dorgo to lead, no other tribes for him to oppose.
The Skulltaker would scour the domain of life as surely as one of the firestorms that swept through the Barrens of Char when the moons waxed full and the solstice drew near. There would be nothing left behind, only mounds of heads to the glory of Khorne. No man would be shown mercy and neither woman nor child would know pity. Only death had a place in the Skulltaker’s march.
As he approached the hill, Hutga could see a company of warriors in black armour emerge from one of the passes. The coal-black iron plates, the horned helms and crimson banners marked the warriors as belonging to the Vaan. Most powerful of the Kurgan tribes, the Vaan were more dangerous in their way than the Muhak.
Lacking the mutant strength of the Muhak, the Vaan used discipline and cunning to win their battles. Legions of goblin slaves toiled in the mines beneath Blood Rock, the ancient fortress of the tribe, feeding the forges and smithies of the Vaan, helping them build their terrible war machine, to equip their legions of iron-skinned axemen, to craft the cruel missiles of their spear-throwers and the spiked bludgeons of their berserkers.
Despised and reviled as they were, Hutga knew that but for the sorcery of the Sul, the Vaan would have swept aside the other tribes long ago.
The procession of armoured warriors stopped at the mouth of the pass, forming a wall of grim iron across the opening. A huge man emerged from their ranks, towering over the others. The plates of iron that covered him were edged in gold, his gauntlets set with gemstones. A broad, boar-faced helm covered his head, tusks curling up from its sides to form a pair of forward-jutting spikes.
In his hands, the man carried a grisly weapon, a long thick-bladed axe of bronze, scalps dangling from silver rings set into its haft. Runes of slaughter and carnage were etched into the blade and its edge glowed with a scarlet sheen. The inward surface of the hoop was lined with sharp metal teeth and great bladed prongs slanted outwards where the circle of steel lay open.
The weapon was infamous among the tribes: the holy weapon of the Vaan, which they called ‘Crippler’, handed down to their first chieftain by Teiyogtei when the Kurgans were absorbed into his horde. The warrior who carried it could only be their zar, Ratha, a brute upon the battlefield, as arrogant and terrible as his god. Like the Skulltaker, the Vaan were devoted to Khorne alone of the great powers. That fact wouldn’t spare them the attentions of the Skulltaker, however. Khorne’s minions, more so than the followers of other gods, were notoriously unconcerned about what manner of blood they spilled and who died upon their blades.
Like Hutga, Zar Ratha left his procession behind, taking with him only a single warrior bearing the crimson standard of his tribe: a field of blood upon which two blackened axes were crossed. The Kurgan left behind by the zar set up a shout as Ratha walked away, crashing their axes against their shields, a din that echoed from the craggy slopes. Hutga felt a moment of anxiety. He’d left his retinue far behind in the pass, a few score warriors and a pair of mammoths.
Ratha’s force was larger, and much closer. Even the Vaan would not violate the taboo, but there was nothing to prevent them from slinking through the passes and murdering him as he left the gathering. Hutga shook his head. Such untoward tactics were the province of the Hung tribes. Ratha had too much arrogance, too much contempt for his rivals to resort to underhanded strategies. If the Vaan were to attack, it would be in the open where their gory god could look down upon their deeds.
‘Keep your eyes open, your wits sharp and your hand on your blade,’ Hutga whispered to Dorgo just the same.
Even if the Vaan had no penchant for ambush and assassination, the other tribes had few qualms about taking every advantage of their enemies. The Hung tribes, the Sul, Veh-Kung and Seifan, in particular took a cruel delight in treachery and deceit. Killing enemies after the gathering would appeal to their wicked nature.
Dorgo nodded his understanding, and Hutga could tell that the only way his enemies would claim him was over the corpse of his son. In normal times, there would be little danger. The tribes knew the prophecy that guarded their chieftains, that they could not fall by the blade of even another chieftain, but if word of Lok’s death had spread, it might have caused strange thoughts to spread through the domain.
Hutga reached the hill at almost the same time as the two Vaan began to mount the barren slope of brittle red stone. Up close, he could see that what had appeared to be armour from across the plain was in fact a variety of iron plates grafted onto the bare flesh of the warriors. The gold edging was the bronzed skin of the Kurgans showing between the metal plates. Ratha’s boar-faced helm stared silently at the two Tong emissaries, and then his iron-covered hands rose, lifting it from his head.
The countenance beneath was rugged, the nose splintered by an old wound, the chin square and heavy beneath its hairy black beard. Eyes like chips of ice regarded the Tsavags with frigid disdain.
‘Ironbelly and his pup,’ the Vaan zar sneered. ‘Any other time, in any other place, I would praise Khorne for such an opportunity.’ His fingers tightened around the bronze heft of his axe until his knuckles cracked. ‘Thank your ancestors that the Vaan honour the truce of the barrow.’
‘One day our herds will trample Blood Rock flat,’ Dorgo snarled. ‘The Tsavag are not belly-licking goblins to crawl beneath the boots of mongrel-scum like the Vaan.’
Ratha smiled at the young warrior, his expression as cold and cheerless as a viper’s. ‘Your pup has a tongue, Ironbelly. Teach him to curb it or I’ll pluck it out and make him eat it.’
Hutga pushed his son back, scolding him for his emotion. The chieftains played a twisted game among themselves at the gatherings, trying to goad each other into flying into a rage and breaking the truce. Such a chieftain could expect the full fury of all the other tribes.
; Several times, to stave off disaster, a chieftain had been compelled to kill his own tribesman who had broken the truce. It was the only appeasement tradition allowed for one who shamed himself at the council. Hutga did not want to consider the possibility of being forced to kill Dorgo under the gloating eyes of Ratha and his ilk.
The Kurgan laughed as Hutga restrained his son. Turning on his heel, Ratha began to climb the hill. He froze after a few steps, dropping into a wary crouch, his weapon held defensively before him. A shape loomed up among the rocks, a form at once massive and twisted. The clatter of hooves on stone trickled down from above and the stink of filthy fur washed down on them from the heights.
An inhuman, braying peel of laughter took up Ratha’s broken mirth. The Vaan chief cursed and straightened as he saw the creature creep into the light.
In form, it was not unlike a man, though the legs were bent upon themselves, impossibly lean beneath the knee and ending in a hoof rather than a proper foot. Mangy brown fur clung to the muscular chest, hanging in knotted clumps from broad shoulders and bulging biceps. The furry arms ended in short-fingered hands upon which a set of wicked-looking bronze fighting claws had been fastened with barbed iron nails.
Like Hutga’s ji and Ratha’s axe, the fighting claws were the ancient heirloom of the creature’s tribe, gifted to its predecessor long ago by Teiyogtei. The head that rose from the brute’s shoulders on a thick stump of neck had nothing in it of the human. The face was pulled into a broad muzzle, fangs jutting from its powerful jaws. Great spiral horns curled up from its scalp, doubling in upon themselves to form thick knobs of bone.