by Warhammer
The giant limped on through the fog, sniffing at the air for its prey, its enormous eyes watching for any trace of motion within the misty shroud of the Grey. Slowly, Korg stopped, the giant’s head lifting as it drew a deep breath down its nose. Its brain processed the information of its senses lethargically. The same heaviness of thought conveyed itself into the giant’s enormous body as Korg turned to glare at the pines to its left.
Something moved in the branches of a tree taller even than the giant. Korg was just raising its huge club when that motion launched itself at the brute. Sharp, stabbing pain flashed through the giant’s body as daemon steel crunched through flesh and bone. The Skulltaker kept a tight hold upon his sword as the blade ripped into the giant’s breast.
Momentum and the warrior’s armoured weight dragged the edge down, digging a wide gash down the monster’s breast and ribs. Bone splintered, muscle tore and veins burst beneath the champion’s screaming blade.
The giant’s howl was deafening. The pine club dropped from its hand, crashing against the ground.
The Skulltaker ripped his sword from the wound, falling to the ground thirty feet below. An instant after his leap, Korg’s huge paws slapped at its chest, trying to crush its tormentor. The giant’s fur dripped with gore, the brute swaying drunkenly as the ten-foot long gash bled copiously, but the Skulltaker had missed his mark. Intending his steel for the giant’s heart, he had missed the vital organ by a foot and more.
Wounded but not slain, Korg’s fury was terrible, elemental in its magnitude. The giant’s hooves smashed into the ground, trying to stamp out the man who had struck it. Narrowly, the Skulltaker leapt from the path of the descending pillars of bone and fur, his blade scraping ineffectively against the solid hooves.
Korg bellowed again, one immense hand shooting downwards to seize the lone warrior. The Skulltaker spun as the huge clawed fingers reached for him, the black edge of his blade licking out, slashing through a finger larger than his own leg, all but severing it from the monster’s hand.
The giant howled again at this fresh wound, recoiling instinctively from the blow. It lifted its hand to its face, intending to lick the gushing cut. Korg did not smell the tiny figure clinging to the dangling flesh of its mangled finger. Too late, the giant’s shocked senses registered the sensation of the Skulltaker as he pulled himself onto the back of the hairy fist. Before Korg could swat the man, the Skulltaker’s sword flashed out, cutting across the giant’s snout.
The giant’s hands clapped automatically to the deep cut against its sensitive nose. As the huge paws shot upwards, the Skulltaker jumped. Armoured gauntlet and spiked boots fought for purchase in Korg’s mangy, shaggy hide. The Skulltaker struggled to keep his hold on the giant’s shoulder. Even as he felt air rushing past him, as he felt Korg’s hand swinging down to slap him from the giant’s body, the Skulltaker’s sword licked out.
Flesh and fur parted like parchment beneath the gnawing edge of the blade. A stream of bright crimson spurted into the gloom as the smoking daemon sword severed one of the giant’s thick arteries.
The giant’s fist threw the Skulltaker through the air as though he’d been struck by an avalanche. The warrior crashed into the pines, branches snapping and bursting beneath his weight as he plummeted downwards.
Korg clenched its mangled hand to its neck, trying to staunch the arterial blood streaming from its wound. The giant reached down, reclaiming its abandoned club. Bellowing and roaring, the brute lashed out, smashing down the trees where it had thrown the Skulltaker. Ancient pines cracked and fell beneath the giant’s blows, the earth trembling beneath its pounding hooves. Korg’s rage and pain clawed at the sky like the roar of an angry mountain. The entire vastness of the Grey seemed to tremble before the giant’s wrath.
Yet with each passing instant, the strength of the giant’s blows lessened and the power of its smashing feet weakened. The club fell once more, bouncing against the loamy earth as it tumbled from slackened fingers. Korg’s steps became awkward, its body swaying with every effort to move.
Blood continued to shoot from between its fingers as its enormous body continued to pump fluid through its severed artery. Spots danced before the giant’s eyes and dull ringing sounded in its ears. Korg lurched forwards again, and this time its legs buckled beneath it. With a quaking crash, the giant slammed into the earth, trees splintering beneath Korg’s massive body. The forest shuddered when the giant fell, a dire echo that rolled through the whole of the Grey.
Nhaa crept towards the fallen giant, unable to believe that Korg had been struck down. The beastlord could hear the giant’s heavy, laboured breathing as air rasped through its immense lungs. Nhaa had heard the Skulltaker crash into the trees when Korg threw him. It had seen the giant’s rampage through the same trees, smashing and crushing everything before it.
Even if Korg had been slain, there was still every reason to believe that the giant had served its purpose.
As Nhaa drew closer to the giant’s body, the laboured breathing finally stopped. The beastlord’s senses were overwhelmed by the stink of the giant’s blood. Everywhere, the crimson stain of Korg’s life was spread across the ground in streams and puddles. As the sound of the giant’s lungs faded, Nhaa could discern another sound, a sound that had been drowned out by Korg’s breath. The beastlord backed away from the sprawled carcass, fear shining behind its milky, swollen eyes.
The faint rattle of armour grew. Nhaa could see the Skulltaker emerge from behind the giant’s corpse. This time his sword had not failed to strike the monster’s heart. The man’s body was torn, mangled by his brutal fall through the trees, but where Korg had weakened with every step, the Skulltaker grew stronger. Nhaa could see bones knitting together and wounds close. The torn armour of the Skulltaker melted together, forming once more into smooth crimson plates.
Nhaa backed away, the dreaded fighting claws fastened to its hands feeling small beside the awful power of the warrior. The Skulltaker glared at the beastlord, the eyes behind the champion’s mask terrible in their cold promise of doom.
‘Run,’ the Skulltaker’s grinding voice hissed. The black blade was a smoking ember in his hand, lines of fire showing beneath its surface as it consumed the blood that stained its length. ‘Run,’ the champion repeated as Nhaa turned and fled from him. ‘You cannot hide from doom.’
The sun stood bright and burning in the brown, dusty sky as a lone mammoth lumbered across the plain. The Barrens of Nuur were named for the enormous lake that had once filled its expanse. In the aftermath of the king’s death, the powers of the gods had turned the lake to steam, leaving behind a terrible desolation of dust and ruin.
Few things even tried to force an existence from the parched, unforgiving wasteland. Biting winds tore across the Barrens, polluting the air with choking dust. Ghastly wind-daemons whirled across the sunken basin of the ancient lake, threatening man and beast alike with gruesome death. Beneath the caked layers of dried mud, gigantic toads yet slumbered, twisted and perverted by the mutating touch of the gods. The slightest tremor in the ground was enough to rouse them, to bring them bursting up from the earth in a frenzy of rapacious hunger.
Qotagir had assured Dorgo that at least they would not need to fear the toads. The amphibians were ravenous, but not stupid. They knew that a mammoth was too large to eat, and knowing that, they would keep to their underground burrows. Wind-daemons, of course, were another matter. They would need to trust to the spells of their shaman, Yorool’s apprentice Gashuun, and perhaps the magic of the Sul sorceress Sanya. Dorgo did not find such recommendations reassuring.
The presence of the Sul witch might be a necessary evil, but it did not make Dorgo any happier about the fact. The Wastes beyond the domain were a sinister land, a place where distance and time were not constant, but mutable, forever in a state of ebb and flow.
The further north one travelled, the closer to the Realm of the Gods one came. These lands were governed by the whims of the gods, where a mountain rang
e might rise overnight or a great forest might crumble into a bleak desert in the blink of an eye. There were no maps of such lands, thought and desire were the only guides a man could call upon to lead him where they would, desire and, perhaps, the sorcery of a witch.
Dorgo had seen the gruesome talisman Sanya claimed she could use to guide them to the Black Altar. She had displayed the daemon claw, not to reassure the Tsavags, but to remind them of her power, of the power of her tribe.
As watchful of treachery as he and his tribesmen were, the sorceress was even more so. She knew that Dorgo and the others would just as soon be rid of her. Her safety depended on a careful balance of need and threat. The Tsavags needed her sorcery to reach the Black Altar, and if that was not enough, she took pains to make the Tong understand that killing her would be a costly undertaking. For the moment, Dorgo saw no way to easily circumvent either problem, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep looking.
Gashuun was the youngest of the Tsavag shamans. His presence in the expedition was one of necessity, a counterbalance to the Sul sorceress. If or when Sanya betrayed them, the Tsavags would find it reassuring to have magic of their own to call upon. Gashuun was a sinister, ghastly creature. His mammoth-hide robes could not quite hide the bumpy welts that bulged from his skin. The shaman went without helm or hood, his scalp shorn so that it was as bare as an egg. His features were sharp, almost rodent-like, with cunning eyes that seemed to transfix a man’s soul with a single glance. A distorted, half-sized copy of that face protruded from the back of his skull. This second face was fully functional, its eyes always watching the shaman’s back, its mouth muttering an accompaniment to his rituals and prayers. When he ate, Gashuun shared his food between both faces, favouring neither.
In addition to the shaman, Dorgo had been provided with twenty of the strongest warriors in the tribe. Led by the powerful Togmol, each of the warriors was the scarred veteran of dozens of battles. Their hide armour was reinforced with scales of copper and iron, and their swords and axes were forged of bronze. The finest weapons and armour the Tsavags could produce had been lavished upon the men, each according to his need. Dorgo appreciated the great honour his father showed him, allowing him to lead such men.
Ulagan and a pair of his best scouts had been included to compliment the warriors. The expedition could scarcely hope to carry all the provisions they would need, and Ulagan’s people would be invaluable at hunting game when the need arose. There was also the unspoken reason for their presence. If Sanya led them false, it was hoped that the scouts would be able to lead them back to the domain.
Finally, Dorgo was given Qotagir, the Tsavag mammoth master, and Devseh, the strongest beast in all the herd. Devseh towered over even its fellow mammoths and possessed a fierce spirit that made it a terror upon the battlefield. Its shaggy pelt bore the scars of hydra claws where it had been mauled by a beast of the Gahhuks, an attack even few war mammoths could have fended off. Devseh had done more than fend off the hydra, it had trampled the reptile beneath its enormous feet, grinding its bones into the soil of the Prowling Lands. It was a measure of the importance of their task that Devseh had been chosen to carry them into the Wastes. In times of war, Hutga rode Devseh into battle. Of all the men in the tribe, only Qotagir could claim true control over the fierce brute.
Dorgo could see Qotagir, sitting in the ivory cage lashed around Devseh’s neck, a gold-studded goad clutched in his leathery hands. The mahout seemed as tireless as his beast, constantly whispering an old Tsavag chant to calm the mammoth and soothe its dislike for the howdah strapped to its back. After his experience in the Crumbling Hills, Dorgo was more than happy to be back riding in the howdah rather than leading up front in the cage.
The collection of warriors, hunters and sorcerers that had been placed under his leadership were scattered throughout the howdah. There was little space to move, bundles of food and skins of water piled everywhere, some even hanging over the sides of the ivory-walled howdah to slap against Devseh’s shaggy hide.
Men were sprawled everywhere, catching such sleep as the rocking, lumbering steps of the mammoth would allow. Gashuun sat upon a raised wooden platform, consulting his bones and painting mystical symbols upon a sheet of tanned hide. A few warriors slept in the very shadow of the shaman, muttering uneasily in their slumber as Gashuun’s magic intruded upon their dreams.
As cramped as conditions were, however, no man intruded upon the rear corner of the howdah. There, beneath a tarp of black silk, the sorceress Sanya had established herself. She had brought with her some quantities of strange powders and herbs, and arcane equipment of glass and copper.
The warriors had a grudging respect for the rites of Gashuun, but had nothing except fear for the uncanny sorcery of the Sul. Dorgo wondered how much of her effect on the men was deliberate and how much was genuine. Even for a sorceress, Sanya looked too young to be steeped in such evil.
At least one member of the expedition had failed to be impressed by Sanya’s sinister airs. Dorgo walked between sleeping warriors to where Ulagan stood, leaning against the swaying wall of the howdah. The scout was looking at the silk veil at the rear of the platform, a hungry gleam in his eye.
‘You should get some sleep,’ Dorgo advised the scout, clapping him on the shoulder.
‘Who can sleep knowing that is down there?’ Ulagan asked, pointing his chin at the makeshift tent.
‘Two days away from your wives,’ Dorgo laughed, shaking his head.
‘I’ll be worse when it is three days,’ Ulagan said. ‘Witch, assassin or daemon, she’s a fine looking woman.’
‘Better to take a viper into your bed than a Sul.’
Ulagan smiled at Dorgo. ‘Now you sound like Togmol,’ the hunter said, laughing. ‘If I’d known you’d turn out like that grim oaf, I’d have left you to the zhaga!’
‘You’re liable to get turned into a zhaga if you start pursuing a witch,’ Dorgo said.
‘That wouldn’t be so bad,’ Ulagan replied after a moment of consideration. ‘Not a bad life, being a zhaga. Nothing to do but eat and breed.’
‘And worry around when some bold Tsavag hunter is going to turn you into boots,’ Dorgo pointed out.
Whatever answer Ulagan had for Dorgo’s observation went unspoken. The silk veil of the tent was pulled back violently, Sanya rushing from the confines of her seclusion. Warriors stumbled to their feet as the woman sprang past them, making for the fore of the howdah. Ulagan blanched, wondering if perhaps the sorceress had been reading his lecherous thoughts with her spells. She ignored him, however, fixing her gaze on Dorgo.
‘Danger threatens us already,’ Sanya told him. ‘I have sent my familiars abroad and they have seen much. A menace rises from the south, pursuing our course!’
Dorgo felt icy fear crawl down his spine. Did she mean the Skulltaker? Had the champion of Khorne somehow discovered what they were doing and was coming to stop them? He fought to control his fear. He had seen the monster once and survived. To save his people, he would do so again.
‘The witch seeks to panic us,’ snarled Togmol, rising to his feet. The warrior’s hand clutched the haft of his axe. ‘There is nothing chasing us. Is your magic so potent that it sees where our shaman cannot?’ He pointed at Gashuun, still crouched upon the raised platform, consulting his bones.
‘He looks to the path ahead,’ Sanya said. ‘I look at the road behind.’
The woman’s words made a grim sort of sense to Dorgo. He moved to the side of the howdah, gripping the ivory guardrail and leaning over. He looked into the distance. He could faintly see something on the horizon. A dust storm, which Qotagir claimed was common enough in the Barrens. Yet he was slow to dismiss it, given Sanya’s warning. The cloud might also be caused by a large number of riders striking out across the Barrens. He turned back to the woman. She smiled as she saw the question in his eyes.
‘Yes, they are riders,’ she answered. ‘Men on horses and in chariots. How they discovered us, I do not know, but disco
ver us they have.
‘The armies of the Seifan are on the march.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fierce war cries split the air as thundering hooves pounded through the dust. Dozens of squat, sallow-faced riders, their wolfish bodies covered in heavy furs and lamellar armour, galloped through the parched landscape, waving sabres and axes above their heads. Behind the riders, chariots of wood and copper raced through the Barrens. Each of the wheeled platforms carried two men and sported vicious blades that projected from the hubs of the iron-banded wheels. Tattered banners of wood and bone rose above the chariots, their horsehair talismans whipping crazily in the wind.
The Seifan seemed as numerous as lice to Dorgo as he watched the human vermin pursue them across the desert. Vicious opportunists, even in this moment of crisis, the Seifan had seen a chance to advance their power. There could be only one reason for an attack in such force: the Seifan knew the Bloodeater had been recovered and they knew it was in the possession of the Tsavags and their Sul allies.
At first, Dorgo had hoped that they would be able to outdistance the Seifan. Qotagir assured him that while the horses had greater speed, Devseh had greater endurance. Over a long chase, the steeds of the Seifan would tire and lose ground to the mammoth. Unfortunately, the Seifan had no intention of prolonging the chase. The horsemen and charioteers lashed their mounts mercilessly, closing the gap between hunter and prey with each breath.
As the Seifan closed, the Tsavags responded. Short throwing spears rained down on the attackers. Riders and horses crashed through the dust, their broken bodies tripping those who followed close behind. Devseh lashed its massive head from side to side, knocking Seifan ponies into the dirt with its enormous tusks. Yet for each Hung warrior who fell, ten others took his place. They charged fearlessly at the mammoth, slashing at its legs with cruel axes and curved swords.