by Warhammer
More hideous still were the smaller, shrieking bundles that twisted and struggled across the ground, trapped inside cocoons of tentacular vegetation. While Dorgo watched, a Tsavag warrior attacked one of the cocoons, hacking at it with an axe. Where the blade struck the leafy appendage, pulpy black syrup exploded, spraying across the grey earth.
Everywhere the filthy sap struck, bloody fingers of grass sprouted from the ground. They did not grow with the slow, eerie grace of their predecessors, but burst into full murderous size with a rapidity that was almost faster than the eye could follow. The warrior who thought to rescue his fellow was surrounded in an instant by slobbering, ravenous weeds that lashed at him with their slimy limbs.
The man fought against his hideous foes, but every blow simply spattered more sap across the ground, birthing more of the horrors. Soon, he was pulled down, his body criss-crossed by sucking, gnawing tentacles. Muffled screams struggled against the suffocating mass clapped around his head.
Dorgo started to rush towards his trapped tribesmen, but was restrained by a firm clutch upon his shoulder. He spun to find Sanya at his side. The Sul’s expression was grim, forbidding, her eyes as hard as chips of steel.
‘There is nothing you can do,’ she told him, her voice pitiless and commanding. ‘This land has claimed them.’
Dorgo pulled away, glaring at the sorceress. He fought down the impulse to strike her down, knowing that to do so would doom his people.
Seeming to read his thoughts, Sanya smiled. ‘If you die here, the last hope of your people dies with you. Throw your life away trying to save men who are already dead and you abandon the entire domain to the mercy of Khorne and the Skulltaker!’
The woman’s words ripped into Dorgo like the fangs of a viper, his agony all the more keen because her’s was the poison of truth. If he fell here, if the Bloodeater was lost, the Tsavags were lost with it. He had seen what the Skulltaker was. He knew there would be no mercy from such a creature, not for his people, not for anyone.
‘You’re not going to listen to the witch?’ Togmol demanded. He clenched a long axe in his fists, every muscle in his body twitching with the urge to attack. When Dorgo did not answer, Togmol cursed him and made to lunge past his leader. Dorgo caught him by the arm, spinning Togmol back around.
‘Don’t you think I want to attack that filth?’ Dorgo growled, his voice bristling with violence. ‘Rescue our kinsmen, or avenge them if they are dead? But the witch is right, we would be damning more than ourselves if we tried! The entire tribe is depending on us.’
Togmol cursed him again, spitting at his feet, but the big warrior made no further effort to charge into the writhing field. Like an angry panther, he stalked away.
Dorgo watched him, and then reluctantly turned back to face the weeds. The cocoons strewn across the ground were still, the fronds pulsing as they drained every last drop from their victims. Devseh was all but lost beneath a layer of leafy tentacles. Qotagir continued to scramble across the mammoth’s body, trying to cut away the foul appendages. His efforts were worse than futile, spattering more blood and sap across the ground, encouraging still more stalks to sprout from the earth. Dorgo felt even more sharply the guilt and self-loathing that his decision had forced upon him. There was no way to reach the old mahout, no way to rescue him from the bloodsucking weeds that surrounded him. Dorgo forced himself to turn away before Qotagir saw him. He knew that if he met the doomed man’s gaze, the memory would haunt him all his days.
They would find the Black Altar. They would remake the sword of Teiyogtei. The Skulltaker would pay for the men devoured by this filthy land. This Dorgo swore by all his ancestors and the one god who favoured oaths of vengeance and blood, the same god the Skulltaker served: Khorne.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Yorool knelt over the hairy, sallow-faced messenger, a thin-bladed knife in his warty hand. The shaman stared into the man’s quivering features, watching sweat drip down his face. The Seifan’s features were rough and evil, twisted with all the sneakiness and cunning characteristic of the tribes of the Hung. Blood crusted the man’s face, matting his slender beard. Thin threads of lizard gut pinched the Seifan’s eyes closed, rendering him as blind as the formless denizens of the Screaming Swamp.
With deft, practised strokes, Yorool cut the thread binding the messenger’s eyes. The Seifan blinked painfully as vision returned to him. He found himself standing within the savage splendour of Hutga’s yurt. Blinded, he had been conducted through the Tsavag encampment to his rendezvous with their chieftain. The Tong were taking no chances with the Seifan, ensuring that he could not bring back reports to his masters about Tsavag numbers and readiness for battle. If he dared to try to slip beyond the confines of the yurt, if his eyes once settled upon the size of the encampment, his hosts would cut him down. It was no less than any tribe would do once it had assumed a war footing. Centuries of strife and conflict had made even the slowest inhabitants of the domain cautious.
Hutga glowered at the wiry Seifan messenger, wondering at the purpose of his visit. In the days since the Bloodeater had been taken from the tomb of Teiyogtei, much had changed in the domain. There were stories of an attack against the Gahhuks, and reports of beastmen fleeing the Grey in great numbers.
The Vaan, it was said, were marshalling their armies. The balance of power in the domain was in turmoil such as it had not seen in many an age. Uncertainty was in the air, colouring the land as much as the gory doom promised by the Skulltaker. Hutga knew Enek Zjarr had been wise in his council. Dire as the threat of the Skulltaker was, even that grim champion of the Blood God was but one of many threats to their people.
Days had passed since his son had departed on his desperate quest to find the Black Altar and remake the sword of Teiyogtei, the only weapon to ever vanquish the Skulltaker. Hutga knew it was too soon to expect word from the expedition, but the knowledge did nothing to ease his fears.
The Wastes were a land of nameless horrors and unspeakable nightmare, where reality was bent and twisted by the whims of the gods. The ancestors of the Tsavags had called the Wastes home, had survived and even prospered in the forbidden world between the Realm of the Gods and the mortal coil. Many generations had passed since the Tsavags had come down into the Shadowlands, however. Time had worn them down, eating away at the fierce strength that had once been theirs. Now they were more like the Kurgans and the Hung than their Tong ancestors. Stronger perhaps, but Hutga wondered if any in his tribe were strong enough to endure the Wastes.
Perhaps it would have been best to accept fate and keep Dorgo with his people, to face the Skulltaker when he came, and to die with such courage as would not shame their ancestors. Then, at least, there would have been someone to see his son’s death. The thought of some lonely fate claiming Dorgo as he struggled across the Wastes was more forbidding to Hutga than any of his fears for himself and his tribe.
The khagan’s face curled into a snarl as the Seifan messenger abased himself before the chieftain’s throne. Hutga was not fooled by the man’s display of deference and humility. The Seifan were a sly breed, better than jackals when it came to sniffing out weakness, and the opportunity to glut themselves on easy prey.
‘I have neither time nor patience for the grovelling of worms. What brings a Seifan rat slinking into the territory of men?’ Hutga growled.
The messenger lifted himself from the hide rug stretched before the throne. He faced the chieftain, abandoning his fawning subservience. ‘Rat’, Hutga had called him, and there was something of the vermin about the sharp nose and narrow eyes of the man. Like a rat, there was a petty viciousness in the messenger’s gaze, the sullen fear of an animal that knows its enemy is too powerful for it to overcome.
‘I bring greetings and honour from the Seifan,’ the messenger bowed, ‘to our brothers, the mighty Tsavags.’
Hutga shifted in his throne, pulling the furs tighter around his chilled body. One of the iron nodules jutting from his forearm brushed against the ar
m of his chair with a dull metallic thump. As though he did not have enough to occupy him, from the discomfort of his flesh to the discomfort of his thoughts, he also had the unwanted irritant of hollow praise from a Hung to annoy him.
‘The Tsavag are no brothers of the Hung,’ Hutga said, his voice low with warning. ‘Our sons are not suckled by jackals, our men do not scurry around in the shadows like spiders. There is more valour in the bandy-legged ponies of the Seifan than there is in the craven swine who ride them. Call me “brother” again, cur, and Tulka will be looking for your head in the Prowling Lands.’
Hutga’s words made little impact on the messenger. On the whole, the Seifan were a people with too few illusions of pride to take offence at a man’s words. Only when he heard the name of Tulka mixed into the khagan’s abuse did the messenger react. His thin lips spread in a coy smile.
‘The mighty khagan has not heard then?’ the messenger asked. ‘Tulka is no longer kahn of the Seifan.’
Hutga leaned forward at the statement, heedless of any advantage the Seifan might find in his show of interest. The chieftain’s mind was afire with questions and fears. Had the Skulltaker struck again? Was Tulka’s head among the champion’s trophies? With each tribe the Skulltaker struck, Hutga knew that the time left to the Tsavags grew shorter, and the chances against Dorgo finding the Black Altar and returning became longer.
The messenger did not fail to appreciate the chieftain’s sharp interest. There was a sadistic mockery in the way he allowed silence to stretch after his report. ‘He was killed,’ the Seifan elaborated, noting that he most certainly had Hutga’s undivided attention. ‘A disagreement among the leaders of the tribe. Shen is our new kahn.’
Hutga’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. If the Skulltaker had struck, then there could be no new kahn, certainly not a legitimate one. It made sense for the Seifan to claim otherwise, that Shen had taken rule of his people in the manner laid down by tradition: Tulka, slain by his lieutenant, his heart cut from his body and eaten by his successor, the power of Teiyogtei passing into Shen. Yes, it made sense for the Seifan to profess such a deceit. Had they not been pillaging the lands of the leaderless Muhak with wanton abandon? It would also explain the reason a messenger had been sent to the Tsavags. Shen was trying to maintain the illusion of strength before rumours of disaster could spread.
‘You lie,’ Hutga told the messenger. Panic flickered across the messenger’s face, the despair of a liar caught in his lie. Strangely, the khagan’s next words dispelled that panic, instilling a new boldness in the Seifan’s demeanour. ‘Tulka was killed by the Skulltaker, not Shen. The Seifan are without a legitimate kahn, their lands and people free to be taken by those tribes still tied to the blood of the king.’
‘Shen is our kahn, as true as the flesh of Tulka. It is the Skulltaker who is the lie!’ hissed the messenger. ‘You are right to suspect deception, Hutga Ironskin, but it is not the Seifan who have betrayed you!’
Hutga rose from his throne, stalking towards the wiry Seifan. The smaller man retreated a step, and then a second as he felt the chieftain’s angry stare boring down on him. ‘Speak plainly snake,’ Hutga demanded. ‘I know the Skulltaker has returned to the domain. The Muhaks and Veh-Kung have already felt his blade, aye, and maybe the Gahhuks and beastkin too! Perhaps even the Seifan!’
The messenger stopped retreating. He thrust his sharp face forwards, like a weasel peeking from a hole. ‘Yes, the lords of the Muhaks and Gahhuks, the Veh-Kung and the warherd have been slain,’ he admitted. ‘The eyes of the Seifan are everywhere and they see much. Our scouts have seen the monster who struck down the tribes.’
‘Then you know that the Skulltaker is no lie,’ Hutga snapped.
‘The monster is real,’ the Seifan agreed, ‘but who has said it is the Skulltaker?’
A sick chill rushed through Hutga’s body, his eyes gaping as the enormity of the Hung’s suggestion struck him.
‘There are only the words of Enek Zjarr to tell us that this killer is the Skulltaker,’ the messenger continued. ‘Some may choose to believe the kahn of the Sul. Tulka did. Shen did not. It can be reckless to put faith where it does not belong.’
‘What do you mean?’ Hutga asked, trying to keep uncertainty from his voice.
‘I ask you, great khagan, which is more to be believed? That the Skulltaker, the same monster that was vanquished by Teiyogtei, has returned after so many generations? Or is the truth that someone, someone steeped in sorcery and magic, has called up some terrible daemon to strike down his rivals, hiding its true nature behind the myth of the Skulltaker?’
‘You say that the Sul are behind these attacks?’ Hutga asked, his mouth becoming sour with bile as he considered the enormity of such a deceit. The meeting of the chieftains, the violation of Teiyogtei’s tomb, even the expedition to find the Black Altar, were they all nothing more than elements in some grand scheme by Enek Zjarr?
‘Has this monster attacked the Sul?’ the messenger challenged in turn. ‘The Desert of Mirrors is closer to the lands of the sorcerers than those of the Gahhuks. Why did this monster not strike the Sul when it had finished with the Veh-Kung? Unless of course it had no intention of attacking them.’
Hutga digested the Seifan’s claim. It made for a cold, vicious logic. In the past, none of the tribes could prevail against the others. Too evenly matched, even when one was weakened, that very weakness would draw the others in to prevent the victorious tribe from gaining an advantage that could be used against them. An outside force, however, a murderous power that was beyond the tribes, a chieftain could exploit without fear of reprisal. It was just the manner of crooked scheme that would appeal to a Hung tribe such as the Sul.
The messenger watched the play of thought and emotion on the khagan’s features. ‘Shen seeks alliance with our bro… with the Tsavags, alliance against the Sul and their treachery. With the host of the Seifan joined with the war mammoths of the Tsavags, Enek Zjarr will be made to answer for his evil!’
It was the enthusiasm of the Seifan that rekindled Hutga’s suspicion. His excitement was too exuberant, his anticipation too keen for someone proposing war against the dreaded sorcerers of the Sul. In all the centuries known to the lore of the shamans, never had any army laid siege to the floating castle of the Sul.
No, it was something else that excited the messenger. If Tulka had been killed by the Skulltaker, if Shen was the false kahn Hutga suspected him to be, then the Seifan would want protection, the kind of protection an alliance with the Tsavags could offer.
Hutga shook his head. That was only one possibility. Another occurred to him, and the more he thought about it, the greater his suspicion grew. There was one tribe the messenger had failed to mention, one that he seemed to ignore completely.
‘What of the Vaan?’ Hutga demanded. Only because he was watching for it did he see the momentary flicker of anxiety cross the man’s face. ‘How do they figure into Shen’s plots?’ The chieftain’s voice dropped back into a simmering growl. ‘Shall I tell you, dung rat? The Seifan will ride with the Tsavags against the Sul. They will let my people do most of the fighting, let the blood of the Tsavags buy the victory. Then, when the Sul are destroyed and the Tsavags weakened, the Seifan will unleash their true allies, the Vaan, against us!’
‘You see plots where they do not exist,’ protested the messenger.
Hutga’s knobbly finger pointed at Yorool, motioning the shaman forwards. A slim Tsavag girl followed after the disfigured shaman, a wooden bowl resting in her hands, needle and thread resting in the bowl. The messenger blanched as he saw the two approach.
‘You ask me to distrust the Sul and in the same breath you ask me to trust the Seifan,’ Hutga snarled. ‘Both your peoples are Hung, and only a fool trusts the Hung. Tell Shen and Ratha that my people are not listening! I will not march the Tsavags to the slaughter! Tell your masters that if they want the blood of the Tsavags, they will fight to spill every drop!’
The khagan gestured and warrio
rs converged on the Seifan, pulling him to the floor. Yorool bent over the prone captive, retrieving the thread and needle from the girl. Hutga slumped down in his throne, only half-hearing the messenger’s screams as the shaman sewed his eyes shut once more.
Ugly thoughts boiled behind Hutga’s lidded eyes. Thoughts of treachery and war played through the chieftain’s mind. The Seifan and the Vaan would not remain idle. Ambition had stirred them, ambition to seize control of the domain. They had set themselves against the Tsavags and the Sul. The Seifan might slink back into the shadows now that their gamble for easy victory was undone, but the Vaan would not let them. A course chosen, Ratha would not let his ambitions be frustrated merely because they required open war. Indeed, the Kurgan zar would relish the opportunity to win through force of arms what the deceits of the Hung had failed to capture.
The marshes were poor ground on which to fight the Vaan. Their numbers, their discipline and quality of arms would overwhelm the Tsavags and their mammoths in the sucking mire.
Against horsemen like the Seifan, the marshes were a defence, but Hutga knew they needed better ground to face the Vaan, somewhere that the greater numbers of the Kurgan could be contained and made manageable. He would move the tribe into the mountains, to the network of valleys and ravines called Ikar’s Refuge. There they could face the Vaan with some hope of victory. To stay in the marshes would mean a massacre.
His decision made, Hutga turned his mind to the Sul. Simply because he had seen through the Seifan scheme did not mean that he could discount what they had told him around the Sul. Was it possible that Enek Zjarr had called up the Skulltaker with his sorcery, that it was the command of the sorcerer not the will of Khorne that the monster obeyed?
Hutga did not know enough about magic to know what was possible and what was not. Against his better judgement, he had allowed his hope to be married to the words of Enek Zjarr. If it was all a lie…