by Warhammer
‘A Sul would never fight in the open,’ Dorgo commented. ‘He would use his spells and daemons to achieve victory.’
‘Your pup speaks out of turn, Steelskin,’ Thaulan warned, his voice echoing from behind his golden helm.
The khagan glared at the black-robed mystic. ‘The truth never sits easily on the ears of a Sul,’ he said. ‘We have had our taste of how your kind gives battle, so do not pretend that my son’s words offend your honour. A Sul has none.’ Hutga shifted his huge body beneath the layers of furs draped across his throne, staring again into Enek Zjarr’s cruel features. ‘The question remains, sorcerer. Why do the Sul continue to need the Tsavag?’
Enek Zjarr stroked his long moustache, his eyes narrowing into thin slits as the mind behind them considered the chieftain’s question, deliberating upon how much he should disclose to his allies. ‘The Black Altar is the only place where the Bloodeater may be restored: the furnace of a daemon’s soul, the very place where the great king Teiyogtei crafted his mighty weapons. To destroy the Skulltaker, the Bloodeater must be taken back to the Black Altar.’
‘This much you have already told us,’ Dorgo said, interrupting the sorcerer. Suddenly it came to him why the Sul still needed them, why they did not try to seize the shards of the sword and make the journey on their own. ‘The Black Altar is sacred to Khorne! Sacred to the Blood God. Your magic will not work there!’
‘Because our powers could not be called upon in Teiyogtei’s tomb, do not presume that we would be impotent before the Black Altar,’ hissed Sanya, fire glinting in her dark gaze.
‘You would not care to take the chance,’ said Hutga. ‘You would not risk your one hope of killing the Skulltaker on such a gamble. That is why you still need the Tsavag, to defend you against any guardians you encounter.’ The chieftain shook his head in disgust. Such cringing, duplicity was something even the lowest Tsavag would shun. A man might not live with honour, but at least he could die with some manner of respect.
‘The Black Altar lies within the Wastes,’ Thaulan said, ‘in lands soaked in the Blood God’s power. Any sorcery will be, at best, hindered by such malevolent energies.’
‘So even the mighty Sul must put their trust in blades and brawn,’ sneered Togmol.
‘The Skulltaker is a threat we all share,’ replied Sanya acidly.
‘And that is the only reason I have granted this audience,’ said Hutga. The chieftain bent his head to one side, leaning into Yorool’s cowled face. The khagan and his shaman spent several minutes in whispered conference.
‘Very well, sorcerer,’ Hutga said after consulting Yorool. ‘We will go to the Black Altar. The menace is shared by all our peoples, a truth that even your lies cannot deny, but this time we will share the danger equally.’
‘No,’ declared Enek Zjarr. He raised his hand to petition the angry Hutga for time to explain. ‘You and I must stay behind with our people. If the other tribes were to learn that we had gone, they would smell weakness and strike our lands. What good would it serve to save the domain from the Skulltaker only to lose it to Zar Ratha and the Vaan? No, khagan, we must stay behind. We must send a small band of our people, the best of the Tsavag warriors and the best of the Sul warlocks, large enough to brave the dangers of the Wastes, but small enough not to attract the notice of the worst the Wastes have to offer.’
Hutga nodded, seeing sense in Enek Zjarr’s words even as he tried to see past them for any hint of a double purpose. ‘I will allow one of your sorcerers to lead the way,’ he said. ‘Pick whichever of your minions you like.’
He looked aside to his son, pointing at Dorgo. ‘My son will lead the expedition and one of our shamans will accompany him, to ensure your representative is not the only one bending the ears of the gods.’
‘It is agreed then,’ Enek Zjarr said, his voice a thin sliver of threat rather than concession. ‘Sanya will serve as my surrogate in this venture. I will instruct her in the craft she will need to lead your son to the Black Altar. Choose your warriors and have them ready in all haste. The Skulltaker will not wait long for our heads, Hutga Khagan.’
The three Sul stalked away from the camp of the Tsavags. The Tong had not allowed the sorcerers to bring their daemon steeds into the camp this time, forcing them to leave the glowing, disc-like abominations in the marshland well away from both man and mammoth. Enek Zjarr ranged ahead of the others, leaving Thaulan Scabtongue and Sanya to confer alone.
‘You are certain you can do this?’ Thaulan asked the woman. Much depended upon her, and though she had been closer to their kahn than anyone, privy to more of his secrets than even the council of hierophants, Thaulan still had his doubts.
Sanya reached into a pouch on her belt, removing from it a long, clawed digit that smelt of burnt flesh and dried blood. Red and leathery, the thing had never belonged to any human hand, but had been cut from the fist of a daemon. ‘This will guide the way,’ she assured Thaulan. ‘Enek Zjarr called the bloodletter from the Hunting Halls especially for such a purpose. He would not risk invoking a daemon of Khorne unless he was certain of the potency of a talisman such as this.’
Thaulan nodded his golden head, reassured somewhat by the conviction in Sanya’s voice. ‘The kahn has trusted you with many of his most potent charms,’ he said, a sour note in his voice.
‘Jealousy ill-becomes you,’ Sanya said, running a slender finger along the smooth surface of the faceless helm. ‘Enek Zjarr paid much for my favours, more than he expected.’ Her hand fell from the faceless helm and rested against the side of a hide bag dangling from her belt.
‘Is there anything so dangerous as a woman’s ambition?’ Thaulan wondered aloud. ‘I could almost feel sorry for our kahn.’
‘Do not let his doppelganger hear you,’ warned Sanya. ‘Already it shows signs of believing itself to be the man whose shape it wears.’
‘Enek Zjarr has destroyed dozens such simulacra before,’ Thaulan said. ‘This one will be no different, now that it has served its purpose.’
‘Everything has its purpose,’ observed Sanya, ‘the Skulltaker, the Tsavags, even the Blood God. It is how those purposes serve the Sul that matters. It is the only thing of consequence.’
For the denizens of the Grey, the centre of their world was the herdstone, a great slab of green star-stone. The herdstone was ancient beyond the reckoning of any within the warherd, for even their shamans kept no written record of their history. It had been the token of Kug, the beastlord who had first sworn loyalty to Teiyogtei Khagan and whose name was still revered by the beastmen. When the other tribes had driven the warherd into the Grey, the gors had carried the herdstone with them in their retreat, for Kug would not leave it behind in the lands of men.
In the myths of the gors, the herdstone endowed them with strength, and allowed their shamans to commune with the gods. They made offerings of food and metal to the huge rock, their chieftains etching their names and deeds into its sides. Heaps of bone were littered around the thirty-foot high stone, the rusting ruin of armour and weapons mixed among the piles of offal and dung that the savage creatures left in supplication to the dread powers of Old Night.
Only the strongest, most privileged of the gors were allowed to make their encampments around the herdstone. It was a place of status and honour among the brutish creatures, who believed that the beasts birthed near the cyclopean stone would be favoured by the gods, born stronger thanks to its power. For all the primitive savagery, the feral, fractious instincts of the beastmen, they respected the herdstone with fanatical fervour. From the lowest to the mighty wargors, they would die to protect it.
Cunning, possessing neither love nor loyalty for its people, Nhaa had told the warherd nothing that it had heard at the council. There was nothing to be gained by telling the other brutes about the Skulltaker, sharing the fear of that name with them. Some shaman might take it in mind to meet with the dreaded warrior and offer him Nhaa in exchange for the lives of the rest of the warherd. Nhaa could easily believe suc
h possibilities, because that was what would occur to its treacherous mind were their roles reversed.
Instead, as soon as the warning had reached Nhaa that the Skulltaker was abroad within the Grey, the beastlord had summoned the scattered encampments of its kind to the herdstone. With no talk of protecting their chieftain, it was the defence of the herdstone to which Nhaa rallied its kind. From all across the Grey they came, scrawny brays in their dozens, satyr-like ungors, porcine tuskgors, bestial centigors, brutish beasthounds and other, even less sane things that had emerged from the wombs of gor cows. Mightiest of all were the hulking, bull-headed minotaurs, each towering over the largest of the gors, twice the size of any human warrior, however fierce.
The minotaurs in particular would never have answered any call to protect Nhaa. The blessings of the herdstone had set them above the rest of the warherd and so they became the guardians of the megalith, devoted to the stone in a manner beyond that of even the shamans.
Nhaa considered the twisted host of mutant creatures, children of the dark gods and their corrupt power. It was not an army such as the Vaan or the Seifan might boast, for there was no drill or discipline among them, but it could be depended upon to fight mercilessly with no thought of plunder or quarter to distract it from its rage. Blood and slaughter were what moved the warherd when it marched into battle. Such purity of thought would serve them well against a foe like the Skulltaker.
There was one other beast upon which Nhaa was counting. The Skulltaker had killed Lok, had butchered his way through the diseased ranks of the Veh-Kung and Bleda’s daemons, had even turned the ambush of beastmen into a one-sided massacre, but Nhaa had a champion it was sure not even Khorne’s chosen one could defeat.
The ground trembled and the bones strewn about the herdstone shivered as though life were quivering through them once more. Even Nhaa’s milky eyes could sense the dark shadow that filled the herdstone’s clearing. The beastlord’s nostrils drank in the scent of its prize champion and a braying bark of laughter rolled past Nhaa’s fangs.
‘Korg,’ the beastlord hissed, and the name was taken up by the beastmen around Nhaa. Soon it became a chant that rose from every member of the warherd able to shape it upon their tongue.
‘Korg!’ a thunderous voice bellowed, the word sounding like two mountains smashing together. The ground shook again as a foot the size of a Tsavag yurt smashed against the ground. ‘Korg!’ the voice boomed from above the clearing once more.
It had been born, like all the other misshapen things in the clearing, but the power of the gods had shaped it like no other. It loomed sixty feet above the clearing, dwarfing even the huge herdstone. Its hooves were like boulders, its shaggy legs thicker than trees, and its arms, bulging with muscles the size of small hills, dangled to its crooked knees. It had a monstrous head, its horns spiralling out from its brow to a length of twenty feet, its teeth the size of mammoths’ tusks and its pallid eyes bigger than chariot wheels.
‘Korg!’ the giant thundered and the warherd repeated its cry. Korg shook its shaggy head, reaching down with an immense hand to rip a full grown pine from the ground. It lifted the tree high, and then clenched its fist tight around its trunk. The pine exploded beneath the pressure, showering the warherd in splinters.
‘Korg!’ the monster shouted again.
Nhaa grinned as it watched the giant work itself into a frenzy. Let the Skulltaker come. Korg would soon be picking its teeth with the warrior’s bones!
CHAPTER TEN
Trees shivered as the giant’s steps pounded the earth. Each fall of Korg’s immense hooves sent a trembling boom rolling through the forest. Birds rose skittishly into the air, scattering before the giant’s path. Such small game as lingered in the Grey scrambled through the brush, driven from their burrows by the quaking footsteps.
Ahead of the giant, the bestial shapes of brays and ungors crept through the mists, stalking through the bush in search of their prey. Korg’s senses were no less keen than those of the smaller beastmen, but its primitive brain was far slower interpreting the information conveyed to it by those senses. The brays would react faster to an unusual scent, an incongruous sound or a disturbed patch of earth. Then they would be able to guide Korg to the man who had invaded their territory.
Nhaa followed close behind the giant. The beastlord was determined to see its creature destroy the Skulltaker, to smell the blood of Khorne’s executioner as it dripped from Korg’s fingers. Then Nhaa would know it was safe, that the menace to its life was gone. Then the chieftain could turn its mind to other thoughts, such as expanding the range of his warherd beyond the confines of the Grey.
The tribes already decimated by the Skulltaker would be easy prey for the gors.
The pack had not gone far into the wilds of the Grey before ungor scouts gave voice to a chorus of sharp barks and growls. They had caught the scent of the human, had found his trail in the spongy ground. Nhaa howled back at the beastmen and they set off at a run to bring down the enemy.
Korg bellowed and followed the smaller beastmen, the giant reacting on an instinctive level to the excitement of its brutish kin. Nhaa raked the blades of its fighting claws together, salivating as its cruel mind considered the Skulltaker’s destruction. If Korg left enough of the man, the beastlord intended to claim his head as a trophy.
As Nhaa pursued the lumbering giant and the prowling beastmen, it did not occur to the chieftain to wonder at the direction of the chase. The Skulltaker had first been seen close to the edge of the Grey, and then his trail had been discovered no small distance from the herdstone at the centre of the forest. Now, the warrior’s scent led them back towards the edge of the Grey once more.
It was a question that might have risen to prominence in a mind less feral than Nhaa’s.
The answer to that question came with a bleating scream. The first cry was quickly followed by other animalistic shrieks of pain. Nhaa froze as it heard the screams, the chieftain’s body growing tense as it tried to discern from what quarter danger had struck the beastmen. Through the haze of mist and the milky veil of its vision, Nhaa saw a bray vanish, sinking into the earth. A sharp squeal of agony rose from where the bray had been, carrying with it the tang of fresh blood.
Understanding came quickly to the beastlord, and it knew the deadly trap into which the man-scent had carried them. Nhaa had expected the Skulltaker to explode into the midst of the warherd like a blood-crazed Vaan berserker. It had not considered that the warrior would use craft as well as brawn to claim his prize for the Blood God.
Nhaa began to back away, drawing towards where the man’s smell was weakest, where the Skulltaker had not lingered to dig pits to claim his hunters. Carefully, testing every step, Nhaa retreated into the pines.
Korg was slower to understand what had happened than its chieftain. To the giant’s brain, the screams told of battle joined and its plodding pace quickened. The giant rushed forwards to confront the enemy that Nhaa had summoned it to kill, eager to feel the human’s bones crack inside its fist.
Not once did the concept of danger occur to Korg, for the giant had never encountered anything that could threaten it. Even the smell of blood, the sight of beastmen writhing in shallow pits, their bodies impaled upon crude wooden stakes, did not impress the giant. When Korg’s hoof landed upon one of the concealed pits, it broke through, crushing the wooden spears beneath its thick mass. The giant grunted at the trap, barely slackening its pace to lift its foot free from the shallow hole.
The giant lurched onwards, stumbling as its hoof smashed into another pit. Korg growled its annoyance, a sound that shook nearby trees. Distracted, Korg did not see a dark shape rush out from the mist, a shaggy fur cloak draped around wide, powerful shoulders.
No war cry, no shout of aggression or warning came from behind the figure’s skull-shaped mask. Only the rattle of armour accompanied the warrior’s charge. The first Korg was aware of the Skulltaker’s attack was when the champion’s black sword slashed at the enormous br
ute. The smoking steel screamed as it ripped into the giant’s leathery flesh, biting deep into the tarsus above its hoof. Greasy blood bubbled behind the blade, strips of fur and meat hanging from the jagged tear.
Korg’s immense jaws opened in a howl of pain, and the giant bent double, reaching down for its injured leg. The brute’s hands clamped around the bleeding, trying to press the wound closed. Its nostrils flared at the smell of its own blood and at the lingering trace of the scent that was already vanishing back into the mist.
The Skulltaker had not lingered to prosecute his attack against Korg. The warrior knew that to try to stand in open conflict with such a foe was useless. After making his strike, he had withdrawn back into the shadows to await a new opportunity.
Korg was not alone in witnessing the Skulltaker’s attack. Witnessing the warrior’s retreat, Nhaa felt emboldened by it. The man knew fear, and it was his turn to feel terror. The beastlord loped towards the giant, snapping orders to the brute.
‘Follow!’ Nhaa howled, pointing a claw at the retreating warrior. ‘Korg! Follow! Kill! Kill!’
The giant lurched back to its feet, its face twisting into a snarl. Korg reached towards the nearest pine, its massive fist closing around the trunk. Almost without visible effort, Korg ripped the tree from the ground. It pounded the pine against the ground, knocking clumps of earth from the tangle of roots. The giant roared, its anger rippling throughout the Grey.
‘Follow!’ Nhaa repeated. ‘Kill!’
Korg lurched after the beastlord, stripping bark from its makeshift club as it lumbered on. The giant wanted a tight grip when it brought the weapon crushing down into the man who had hurt it.
As the scent of their prey grew stronger, Nhaa allowed the giant to range ahead. It would serve no purpose for the chieftain if Korg were to kill the man after the Skulltaker had already claimed the beastlord’s head. Nhaa had not reigned so long as chief of the warherd by taking chances it could just as easily pass on to others.