by Warhammer
Dorgo seized the hunter’s waist, throwing his arms around the man as he desperately tried to pull free. Already, Ulagan’s right shoulder had vanished into the black face of the rock. The force pulling on the hunter was immensely strong, and Dorgo could feel his feet sliding as he was dragged after Ulagan. The man’s face was sinking into the stone, his screams becoming muffled as he faded into the shiny obsidian facet.
Powerful arms wrapped around Dorgo’s waist. He heard Togmol roar as the big warrior threw his strength and weight into a massive effort. Inch by agonising inch, Togmol’s brawn tilted the balance. Slowly, Ulagan began to emerge from the ghastly angel trying to devour him. First, his terrified face emerged, and then his vanished shoulder. Finally, the ropy length of his mutated arm was free, but it was not alone.
A slimy, leathery claw was clenched tightly around Ulagan’s limb, fingers like bloated slugs tearing into the man’s flesh. The snout-like beak pushed free from the face of the rock, snarling and spitting its ghastly hunger. Dorgo could see the thing’s swollen eye staring at him from the shadowy world within the stone, could feel its evil malignity glaring at him with timeless hatred.
Then there was a resounding crash, like the roar of an avalanche. The stink of ozone filled the air and a terrible, slobbering shriek stabbed at the Tsavags’ ears. The men fell to the ground as the terrible grip on Ulagan’s arm was broken. The scout looked in alarm at the dismembered claw still fastened to his limb. Panicked and disgusted, the hunter brushed the offending filth from his body. On the ground beside the empty face of obsidian, the severed trunk of a snout-like beak dripped and oozed.
‘I said to watch your thoughts,’ Sanya scolded the men. One of the amulets around her neck gave off a purplish glow as whatever power the sorceress had invoked withdrew back into the talisman. ‘The Wastes have their own kind of life. Some of it feeds on flesh, some of it feeds on emotions and ideas. All of it can bring death. Remember that if you want to survive.’
The Tsavags watched in silence as the sorceress turned and began to pick her way back down the slope. The strange episode and its stranger conclusion had impressed them. Even Ulagan was not likely to soon forget the witch’s power, whatever her other assets might be.
Togmol looked out across the blood-bog, the trackless waste of sucking mire. The big warrior scowled and shook his head. ‘Maybe we were better off staying behind and fighting the Skulltaker,’ he said.
Gazing out across the desolation, staring up into the threatening sky, Dorgo could not help but wonder if perhaps his friend was right.
Zar Ratha’s ire rose with every passing breath. It was inconceivable, intolerable, that his carefully laid plans should be jeopardised in so outrageous a fashion! The attack against his rear had been an eventuality he’d prepared for. No dregs from the slave-pits watched the mouth of the valley; he’d positioned a band of two hundred of his finest axemen to form his rearguard. Although he doubted the Sul would move to rescue their Tsavag allies, it was still a possibility that he had taken into consideration. The sorcerers relied upon the terror of their magic as much as its intrinsic power, much like the Tsavag and their mammoths.
The Vaan were a breed taught to forget fear, the emotion burned out of their bodies before they were old enough to wield their first sword. There was no room for weakness, no allowance for timidity in the Vaan. They were a warrior race, men who knew neither mercy nor pity, taught that death in battle was the only glory a man could ever claim. When a man accepted the honour of death, he forgot fear.
Now, the Vaan were remembering what they had forgotten.
A lone warrior, a sinister apparition armoured in crimson, prowled through the ranks of Ratha’s rearguard like a raging lion. Butchered, bleeding hulks of Vaan axemen were strewn in his path, a bloody litter of the dead and dying. He was one warrior, yet he’d slaughtered his way through dozens. Every slash of his smouldering blade visited ruin upon another Vaan fighter, splashing severed limbs and spilled entrails across the ground. Men who had stood fearlessly against giants and ogres, who were prepared to defy the black sorceries of warlocks and daemons, faltered before the awesome spectacle of a single champion as he carved a gory furrow through the iron wall of their formation.
The Skulltaker. Ratha heard the name pass in an awed whisper through his army, saw fear worm its way into the eyes of his men. The rearguard broke, scattering before the advance of their terrible foe. Their panic threatened to infect the rest of the tribe as they fled. Men looked anxiously to their chieftain, weapons slipping in sweaty hands.
Ratha chose a frightened face, and then drove his axe through the coward’s skull. He kicked the mangled carrion from his blade and spat on the twitching corpse. ‘Dogs! Whoreson swine!’ the zar thundered. ‘Stand your ground! You are Vaan, the mightiest breed to ever crawl from the womb of woman! Stand fast or be damned by your ancestors as craven vermin!’
The chieftain’s rage, boomed over the ranks of his army, but Ratha could sense that even shame could not unseat the fear that had taken root in his men. It was something that was almost tangible, like frozen fingers rushing down his spine. The zar bellowed in fury, calling upon the Blood God to steel his heart, to enflame the courage of his men and bring destruction to their enemy.
The last of the rearguard had broken, leaving a field strewn with the mangled husks of their abandoned comrades. Ratha felt pride as he saw another band of warriors move into the opening, huge brutes, bearing massive flails of chain and spiked iron. They were men who had been trained for battle against the Tsavag mammoths, to strew caltrops in the path of the gigantic beasts as they charged. These were men who had accepted their grim charge with an almost eager fatalism, desiring nothing more than to enter the Hunting Halls with the blood of such magnificent adversaries fresh upon their weapons.
The Skulltaker vanished from Ratha’s sight as the mammoth-cripplers surrounded and rushed him. The clatter of arms, the roars and screams of battle rose from the crush. Long minutes passed, and with each lengthening moment, Ratha’s heart grew black with doubt. A single man, and his mammoth-cripplers took so long to kill him? One man against a hundred of the Vaan’s elite? It wasn’t a question of battle, it was a matter of slaughter! Yet still the clash of weapons, the meaty smack of metal slashing through flesh, the screams of slayer and slain rose from the centre of the Vaan attack.
At last, a gurgling shriek wailed from the melee. The mammoth-cripplers pulled back, pulled away from the combat swirling at the middle of their formation. Impossibly, the Skulltaker still stood, his smoking sword shearing through the arm of one warrior, and then slashing through the chest of a second. A third turned to flee, only to have his back cut through like a twig. His crippled body flopped to the blood-soaked earth, moaning in agony as he tried to crawl away from his killer.
Even from a distance, Ratha could see the terrible rents and gashes in the Skulltaker’s armour. Blood, black and foul, drooled from his wounds. Ratha snarled in satisfaction. Whatever the champion’s terrible power, he could be hurt, and if he could be hurt, he could be killed.
Then the wounds began to ooze closed, the armour flowing together like water, sealing itself, making itself whole once more. In the space of only a few breaths, the Skulltaker’s grisly figure was as unmarked as newly fallen snow. For all the violence visited upon him, even the closest of the Vaan could find no sign of injury.
The mammoth-cripplers broke, fleeing in such frantic disorder that even the lowest of the tribe’s goblin slaves would have felt shame. They scattered like a mob of frightened rabbits, breaking in every direction without order or reason. As they broke, so too did much of Ratha’s army.
The zar raised his voice in a roar. He would kill this monster. He would show the mongrel dogs who had dared call themselves Vaan that this thing was no demigod. It was nothing more than some foul sending of the Sul, a trick conjured up by their sorcery. Ratha would send it back to the hell from which it had been called, and then he would seek out the cowards w
ho had shamed their blood!
Ratha’s snarled orders brought a small group of warriors to his side, men encased in steel rather than iron, steel engraved with the runes of Khorne. Immense collars circled their necks, and upon these bronze bands still more runes of dread power had been etched. Each man bore a huge axe of cold-wrought iron, and upon these blades again appeared the skull-rune of Khorne. These were Ratha’s daemon-killers, men chosen to bear the most sacred of the tribe’s arms and armour, weapons that would guard them against any daemon’s fell might.
The chieftain led his small force through the broken ranks of his army. He had to act quickly, and kill the supposed Skulltaker while there was still a chance to restore order to his host. There would be time enough for retribution later.
The crimson-armoured champion cut a path through the rout, adding to the carnage with every sweep of his sword. A scarlet stain followed him as he pushed through the disordered ranks, cutting down those who turned to face him and those who turned to flee with equal abandon. That they were men did not interest the Skulltaker. That they were in the way did.
Daemon-killers plunged through their fleeing kinsmen, pushing and hacking a way clear for their chieftain. Callously, they marched over the broken bodies of fallen men, showing as little regard for them as the Skulltaker had. Men inured to the worst horrors any mortal might be called upon to face, the misery of their kin was not enough to reach the last shreds of humanity clinging to their souls.
A daemon-killer pushed his way through fleeing axemen only to find himself suddenly facing the skull-masked figure that had provoked such terror. Before he could even raise his axe, the daemon-killer’s head was rolling across the ground. The warrior behind him fared somewhat better, bringing his axe sweeping at the Skulltaker’s legs. The champion darted back, the edge of the axe just scraping against the metal skin of his greaves. Then the Skulltaker’s black sword was stabbing forwards and the daemon-killer dropped, choking on his own blood.
Another half a dozen daemon-killers were dead or dying before the Skulltaker relented. The ghastly figure drew back, waiting while Ratha cleared the last of his fleeing tribesmen. Another dozen daemon-killers stood with him, but the zar waved them aside. Since it had come to this, he would be the one to strike the monster down.
‘I am Ratha, zar of the Vaan,’ the chieftain growled. ‘I understand Khorne has sent you to test me, to take my skull if I am unworthy.’ Ratha laughed and spat at his enemy’s feet. ‘Better than you have tried, monster,’ the chieftain boasted, ‘but Ratha is still here!’
The zar spared no more words, but charged at his foe. Ratha’s axe crashed against the Skulltaker’s arm, splitting the vambrace, staggering the champion. The Skulltaker’s sword struck along the chieftain’s midsection, chewing through his armour and cutting into his belly.
Bleeding, Ratha stumbled back. He expected the Skulltaker to seize the opportunity. His axe came slashing low as the Skulltaker pressed his advantage. The join between the plates guarding the Skulltaker’s knee was torn, hanging in a twisted knot of red metal. The axe swept on, biting into the champion’s knee. Ratha howled with glee as black blood spurted from the wound.
The Skulltaker’s sword was not idle, sweeping down in a cruel thrust that might have spitted the chieftain’s throat. Ratha twisted his head from the murderous stroke, his warrior’s instincts serving him better than his fury. The smouldering sword shrieked as its edge tore through the chieftain’s shoulder, tearing the iron armour as though it were parchment and digging a deep wound in the zar’s shoulder.
Ratha toppled in agony, blood spraying from severed veins. He caught the Skulltaker’s vengeful return with his axe, barely blocking the monster’s attack. He stared in disbelief at the molten notch that had been gouged into the bronze edge of his weapon. He started to understand just what it was he fought. Now, Ratha understood the terror of his warriors.
The attending daemon-killers rushed to their chieftain’s aid. Against any other enemy, Ratha would never have questioned their victory. Against the Skulltaker, he never doubted their defeat. A man raised with iron in his blood, reared on discipline and war, weaned on battle and destruction, Ratha found it within himself to feel sorrow in the useless sacrifice.
All too soon, Ratha saw the Skulltaker turn away from the last of the daemon-killers. The gruesome champion pulled the man’s axe from where it had embedded itself in his side. For all the runes of violence and doom that had been cast into the blade, the wound it left behind closed as quickly and completely as those of any other weapon.
Ratha cast one last look across the valley. His Vaan were dispersing into the hills, fleeing in disordered knots and mobs. The Tsavags and Seifan were likewise fleeing, the Tsavag to the far passes, the Seifan galloping into the western foothills, heedless of who or what they crushed beneath their hooves. Ratha sneered at their retreat. Run however fast, however far, there would be no escape for them. Hutga and Shen would meet the Skulltaker, but they would meet him as cowards, not as men.
Ratha lifted his axe as the Skulltaker approached him once more. Blood poured from his wounds, and strength faded from his arm, but the chieftain would not be denied. He would die fighting this monster to the last. Khorne would accept nothing less.
‘Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows,’ Ratha said, reciting the mantra so oft repeated by the Vaan shamans.
‘Khorne does not,’ the Skulltaker’s grinding voice growled. His sword came crashing against Ratha’s axe. So powerful, so vengeful was the blow that the weapon was torn from the chieftain’s hands. Ratha was thrown to the ground by the violence of the strike. The Skulltaker loomed over him, his screaming sword raised high.
‘Khorne cares not,’ the Skulltaker repeated, ‘but I do.’
The sucking blood-bog was behind them. It had not fallen away, vanishing slowly into the horizon. Such sanity was unwelcome in the Wastes. The oozing fields of gore had disappeared as quickly as mist before the morning sun. One moment, the Tsavags’ boots were slogging through the quagmire, the next they were crunching through the gravel of a bleak expanse, all colour sucked from the land by the angry sun.
Except, there was no sun. The crimson sky with its fiery tyrant darkened and faded, to be replaced by a starless blackness too dark to be called night. The blood-soaked sky did not vanish with the abruptness of the bog, but its retreat was too unseemly to betoken normality as Dorgo understood it. Impossibly, without star or moon, with only the black tapestry of emptiness above them, the world around Dorgo remained vivid and clear. Without source, without reason, there was light, a fiery glow that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Even the filthy green luminescence of the tunnels of the snakemen seemed wholesome to him beside this eerie brilliance.
The air was hot and thick, dry and smothering at the same time. There was no breeze, no wind to bring relief. It was as though the atmosphere was tense, coiled into a knot of restrained savagery, brooding upon the moment when it would strike.
The men trudged on, following the lead of their macabre guide. Sanya held the weird talisman she had been given by Enek Zjarr before her. The crimson talon of the daemon stood taut at the end of its little chain, pointing straight as an arrow into the distance.
Pointing to what? Sanya claimed it was guiding her to the Black Altar, but Dorgo wondered if anything could be trusted in this strange, horrible world. He remembered the warning she had given them, that the Wastes were governed by desire and fear, not mortal concepts of time and distance. Want something badly enough, and it would find you. Fear something greatly enough, and it would seek you out.
The daemon’s talon was their token, their key to this ghastly world where the power of Khorne saturated sky and earth. It would navigate their fears and distractions for them, driving them to the place they needed to find, but even a daemon had to be cautious walking through the domain of a god. However great their need, they could not hurry their passage lest powers far greater take notice of their presence, powe
rs that respected neither tokens nor keys.
Across the range of his vision, Dorgo could see great mountains rising from the emptiness, mighty mounds of colourless enormity that loomed against the lightless sky. He felt a chill run through him as he saw the mountains approach.
His eyes studied them with a crawling revulsion, seeing but not understanding details too distant for his consciousness to grasp. The mountains were rugged, with crumbling cliffs and shattered peaks, strange outcroppings jutting from their faces without pattern or purpose. Somehow, he was reminded of squat ugly thorn bushes stretching limb and talon into the dark in the hope of snagging some passing victim.
Limbs and talons: shock gripped the warrior as his mind understood what his eyes gazed upon. Towering over this forbidden world of burning darkness, the mountains were not things of rock and stone. They were skeletal heaps, gigantic piles of death and ruin, the spoils of unimaginable carnage.
Dorgo could see bony arms protruding from the sides of the mountains, and smiling skulls peering from the cliffs. He felt his reason falter as he tried to conceive a number that might contain all the death he looked upon. How many had died to rear these skeletal ziggurats?
Dorgo looked away hastily, his brain pounding inside his skull. It was with new eyes that he looked upon the pallid earth and the gravel he ground beneath his boots. Horror renewed its hold over him. What covered the ground was no more stone than the mountains that rose above it, but fine shards of crushed bone. Aeons had hardened the splinters into a crude mockery of rock, but Dorgo was not deceived. He cast his gaze again across the sunless expanse, at that enormity that stretched into the infinite unknown.
This was slaughter beyond anything Dorgo could understand, challenging his very sense of existence. He knew that this was but a glimpse of the terrible power men tried to bind with names and titles, tried to contain with legends and prophecies. What was he, what were the Tsavags, the Tong, the whole of the domain and the Shadowlands beyond, beside such power? A power, that, in his madness, he had thought could be opposed.