Warriors of the Chaos Wastes - C L Werner

by Warhammer

  Hutga collected himself, despising the pride that had made him give voice to his rage. He had come here as a beggar, not a warlord. Whatever treachery Enek Zjarr had worked against them, the Sul were the only hope his tribe had left.

  ‘Forgive my words,’ Hutga said, almost choking on his shame. ‘They were unjust. I ask Enek Zjarr’s indulgence.’

  ‘There is no sanctuary here for you,’ Thaulan called down. Some sorcerer’s trick caused his voice to carry to even the most distant of the Tsavag mammoths, ensuring that even the oldest ears heard him. ‘But grovel all you like if it soothes your soul.’

  ‘Do not condemn my people because of my harsh tongue,’ Hutga implored.

  ‘I condemn them because of their stupidity,’ Thaulan hissed. ‘I condemn them because the Tsavags have stood in the way of the Sul for too long!’

  ‘Let me speak to Enek Zjarr!’ Hutga insisted.

  ‘He will not speak to you, Ironbelly,’ the sorcerer repeated.

  ‘Damn you!’ Hutga roared. ‘At least take in the children!’

  Thaulan’s malevolent laughter was like the yap of a jackal. ‘Keep your brats, they’ll make fine sport when the end comes. I will tell you one thing, though, Hutga Ironbelly. Enek Zjarr was sincere when he said he needed your help to destroy the Skulltaker. You ask where your son is and I shall tell you. He is in the Wastes. Even now, he approaches the Black Altar.’

  Hutga blinked in disbelief at Thaulan’s scornful words. ‘Then he is alive? There is hope?’

  ‘No, Ironbelly,’ Thaulan said. ‘There is no hope for you. The hour is already late.’ The sorcerer’s gloved hand lifted, pointing from the window, out across the dusty plain. ‘For the Tsavags, it is later still.’

  Hutga turned, following the direction of Thaulan’s gesture. Nearly every man in the tribe was doing so. What they saw sent a tremor of fear running through the entire company. In the distance, a dark speck could be seen moving across the landscape: a lone rider.

  ‘The Skulltaker comes,’ Thaulan hissed, a vile note of expectancy in his tone. ‘The Sul have already taken steps to protect ourselves from him. Can you say the same, Hutga Ironbelly?’

  The sorcerer’s laughter was still dripping down on his ears as Hutga ordered the tribe back on the march. There was no sanctuary for them here. He had been a fool to think there would be. There was no escape for them. No matter where they ran, the Skulltaker would find them.

  Hutga looked back at the gold-masked shape staring down from the palace. Maybe it was already too late, but if the Tsavags were to die, at least they could do so without jackals for an audience.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dorgo looked down from the fanged ledge of the Black Altar, watching as streams of dark fire burst from the bubbling surface of the pit far below. Somewhere in that inferno, Togmol had met his doom. He’d traded his life for Dorgo’s and Sanya’s, and for the chance to save the Tsavags. Dorgo was not going to let his friend’s sacrifice be in vain. The Skulltaker would die and Dorgo was going to make it happen.

  Sanya stood away from the warrior, massaging her cramped limbs in the shadow of the structure’s overhanging jaw. The Sul rubbed the chafed skin where the cords had dug into her flesh, trying to ease the stiffness from her body. Satisfied at length, she set her skin bag down, opening it to ensure that its contents were still safe. She glanced back at Dorgo, studying the solemn warrior. What little warmth was in her eyes turned cold. She fingered the talisman around her neck, the talisman she had stolen from Enek Zjarr. It was one of the most potent items of power possessed by the Sul, said to be carved from one of Great Cheen’s fiery tears. With its power coupled to her own, even a strong, brave Tsavag warrior was an insignificant obstacle.

  The woman frowned, looking again at her bag. She let her fingers slip away from the amulet. No, she decided, Dorgo still had a part to play.

  ‘Dorgo,’ she called to him. The distracted Tsavag slowly turned around at the sound of her voice. ‘We mourn our dead later,’ she told him, injecting sympathy into her words.

  Dorgo nodded and stepped away from the fang-lined edge. He joined the witch in the shadow of the upper jaw. A wide corridor stretched before them, perhaps twenty feet across and at least half as high. Ten feet in, the darkness of the corridor was cut off by great panels of bronze that shimmered with an inner flame. Sanya approached the sealed doorway, peering at it with her eyes only a few inches from the hot metal plates.

  Dorgo watched her with suspicious interest. He didn’t know what the witch was looking for, but he knew she’d better find it. From where he stood, the bronze portals looked as solid as a wall, betraying neither gap nor hinge.

  At last, Sanya ended her study, stepping back, a knowing smile on her face. She reached beneath her tattered robe, producing a dagger that had been fastened around her thigh. The appearance of the weapon gave Dorgo a start. He hadn’t realised that the woman had carried the blade.

  Sanya approached him, holding the dagger in her fist. ‘Hold out your hand,’ she said. Dorgo hesitated, shifting his gaze from the woman’s cunning eyes to the ugly iron blade in her hand. ‘What pains you, warrior? Afraid of a little cut?’

  Knowing it was stupid, but feeling the sting of insulted courage, Dorgo held out his hand to the sorceress. Sanya grabbed his wrist, twisting his hand so that his palm was facing upwards. With a swift, deft stroke she brought the edge of the dagger slicing against Dorgo’s skin. Blood bubbled up from the cut, but Dorgo did not feel it until his eyes told him it was there.

  ‘Place your palm against the door,’ Sanya told him.

  Dorgo hesitated for a moment, trying to read Sanya’s intentions, trying to imagine what black sorcery she would use his blood for. He shook his head, almost laughing at his suspicions. It was much too late to distrust the sorceress. He stepped boldly up to the bronze panel. He could see what looked like dancing flames writhing inside the metal, could feel the hot shimmer of the door reaching out to him.

  He reached back, in turn, slapping his bloodied palm against the panel. Instantly, he pulled his hand away, the heat of the door searing his skin. He looked down at his singed palm, finding that the hot metal had cauterised his cut. Dorgo cast a foul glance over his shoulder at Sanya.

  ‘You might have warn–’ He never finished the admonition. A sudden intensification of the heat emanating from the door drove him back. He could see the bloody mark of his palm fading into the bronze, rushing through the panels like poison through a vein. He shielded his eyes as the glowing shimmer of the door grew blindingly bright. He heard a strange sound, like raindrops splashing against stone. As the glow started to abate, he opened his eyes, marvelling at the sight that greeted him. The thick bronze portals were melting, disintegrating like wax under a flame. The molten metal pooled, slowly draining out of small notches in the floor.

  ‘What magic is this?’ he hissed, astonished by the eerie display.

  ‘The only magic Khorne respects,’ Sanya said. ‘The magic of blood sacrifice. The one key that would open this door.’

  Dorgo looked back at the bronze panels. They had nearly completed their disintegration, their residue already largely drained away. Beyond, he could see a large round room with walls of black iron. Loathsome etchings in the metal displayed riotous scenes of slaughter and carnage, abominations of such savagery that even Dorgo was shocked as he saw them so vividly and laboriously depicted. Then his eyes were drawn away from the walls to the thing that squatted at the very centre of the room.

  It was as much like a well as a furnace, a great round stump of what looked to be charred flesh. Its upper surface was open, an empty hole ringed with tooth-like projections. Beneath the teeth, a faint ember of light smouldered from the depths of the opening.

  Dorgo knew that this was the forge at the heart of the Black Altar, the place where Teiyogtei had made his weapons, the gifts that would buy the fealty of his warlords, the tools to carve a kingdom from the Shadowlands. Behind the strange forge, a nest of chains an
d pulleys hung above a gaping hole that stared straight down into the bubbling pit below.

  Dorgo jumped over the last dregs of molten bronze and approached the forge with tremulous, awed steps. He could feel its power calling out to him, demanding to be used. He could feel its unimaginable hate tearing at his mind, filling it with visions more terrible than those engraved on the walls.

  ‘The soul of Krathin,’ Sanya gasped, crossing into the chamber. There was a feverish, almost lustful gleam in her eyes as she spoke the name of the bloodthirster. She approached the forge, sweat dripping down her face.

  Dorgo felt a wave of murderous jealousy thunder through his brain. Kill! the emotion told him. Kill! Kill! Kill! His body shivered with the effort of holding back, denying the roaring urge that burned in his veins. That part of him he understood as intelligence and self railed against the mental command, fighting to keep control of his rebellious flesh. That part of him that was instinct and feeling was already enslaved, exerting itself to snap the fragile rule of his reason.

  As he fought, Dorgo saw Sanya turn towards him. Her dagger was once more in her hand as she slowly strode across the chamber. He could see nothing but crazed bloodlust in her eyes, nothing but murder on her face. This time, he knew, it would not be his hand she cut.

  Sanya’s other hand slowly, tremblingly, lifted to her neck by inches and degrees, so slowly it almost seemed the hand wasn’t moving. Dorgo felt his desperate effort to keep control of his body start to slip away, to drain out of him the way the bronze doors had vanished into the floor. If he failed, he knew he would surge forwards in a berserk rush. He could see his hands grabbing either side of Sanya’s face, wrenching her head full around and snapping her neck like a twig. If he didn’t fail, Sanya would sink her dagger into his chest and bury it in his heart. The image ran through his mind again and again. Either outcome would suit the malevolent power of the Black Altar equally well.

  Only a few steps separated Tsavag and Sul. Dorgo felt fear oozing into his thoughts as the moment when the dagger would strike drew ever closer. Like acid, it gnawed at his desperate hold over his treacherous body. He felt his body lurch forwards, his hands curling into beast-like claws.

  Then Sanya’s free hand closed around its objective. The woman’s fist clenched tightly around the amulet she still wore, the silvery rune of Cheen the Changer. Horror flashed through her eyes, unseating the bloodthirsty hatred that had filled them. She gave a sharp bark of fright as she saw Dorgo lunge towards her. Like a striking adder, she dropped her dagger and grabbed his wrist.

  Instantly, Dorgo felt reason restored to him. Something growled through his body as it recoiled from a bright, searing energy. He could feel its frustrated wrath as it was driven out, like a lion cheated of its kill. Then it was gone and he was master of his flesh once more.

  Sanya and Dorgo stared into each other’s eyes for a long time, watching for any hint of the murderous madness. At last they were satisfied. Sanya released her hold on his wrist and drew away from him.

  ‘I hadn’t expected it to be so strong, not after all this time,’ she said, almost apologetic in her tone.

  Dorgo didn’t look at her, but kept watching the walls, trying to find the source of the attack, some hidden lurker that had cast a spell upon them. ‘Wasn’t it you who said that time is without meaning in the Wastes?’ Dorgo replied acidly.

  Sanya gave him a thin smile, irritated that a brutish mammoth rider made the connection, more than irritated that she had never considered it. ‘Whatever you think you’re looking for, you won’t find it,’ she told him. ‘There is only one shape the spirit of Krathin can wear now.’ She gestured to the grotesque forge. Dorgo could see the charred mass of flesh crawling with some abominable inner motion, like worms writhing in a corpse. ‘When Teiyogtei slew the bloodthirster, he had bound the daemon’s spirit into a shape that would serve him and imprisoned it within the Black Altar.’

  ‘It still lives?’ Dorgo asked, repulsed by the suggestion.

  ‘No,’ Sanya said in an almost soothing voice, though Dorgo could not be certain if it was his or her fear that she was trying to allay. ‘It is not alive, but a daemon does not die the way we understand death. Just as it would be wrong to call it alive, it is wrong to say it is dead.’

  ‘What is it then?’ Dorgo scoffed, annoyed by the sorceress’s riddling words. ‘Sleeping?’

  Sanya shivered visibly and he saw that her effort to quiet her fears was ruined. Her reply was a singled word, hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Waiting.’

  Dorgo didn’t like the word. He didn’t like the memory of the ferocious urge burning through his veins. He didn’t like the image of the colossal, bestial shape they had climbed, alive in its full malefic magnificence, dripping with a timeless lust for destruction and terror.

  ‘What is it waiting for?’ he asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.

  ‘What it must never have,’ Sanya answered with a shudder, ‘not if the Sul… and the Tsavags are to survive.’ She forced her features to harden. ‘It will never ascend,’ she declared. ‘Teiyogtei enslaved it and a slave it will remain.’

  ‘But, this place,’ Dorgo said confused. ‘The Black Altar… I have seen it. I know it. When I struck the stake in the borderland… the vision I had. This is where… where Vrkas became the Skulltaker. The daemon used its power to make the Skulltaker.’

  The ghastly forge trembled with excitement as Dorgo spoke the dreaded name. Somehow, the impression of a faithful dog wagging its tail at the sound of its master’s voice suggested itself to the warrior as the writhing worm-meat of the forge shivered.

  ‘Krathin deceived Teiyogtei,’ Sanya told him, averting her eyes from the grisly display of quivering flesh. ‘When the king enslaved it, the daemon’s spirit swore to serve the mortal. Teiyogtei only understood his mistake after the pact was made. The forge would serve the mortal. Not an individual mortal, but the mortal world. Yes, Teiyogtei could use the daemon’s power to forge his mighty weapons, but so could any other man. The daemon’s revenge upon Teiyogtei lay in that deceit.

  ‘When he discovered his mistake, Teiyogtei built the Black Altar to imprison the physical essence of Krathin’s spirit, swearing bloody oaths to Khorne to hide and protect the forge from those who would use it against him. Teiyogtei broke those oaths, using the power of the Blood God to build a kingdom instead of the mountain of skulls he had promised. In retaliation, Khorne allowed the spirit of Krathin to reach out from its prison to find a mortal with a hatred of the king equal to its own and bring that hate to the Black Altar. What Krathin found was Vrkas.’

  In his mind, Dorgo could again see that strange scene from long ago, the terrible vision that had reached out to him from the dim mist of years when he touched the bronze stake in the borderland. His people vanquished and destroyed, defeated in battle and denied the honour of a warrior’s death, impaled and left for the vultures, the hatred Vrkas felt for Teiyogtei must have burned like a beacon to the daemon. That hate had bound them together, had given Vrkas the strength to pull himself off his stake and crawl through the horrors of the Wastes until he stood before the Black Altar.

  Vrkas’s scarred face glared at him from those stolen memories. Dorgo felt the pride and fury of the outraged warlord. He knew that this man had sacrificed his very humanity in the name of vengeance. Somehow, the forge had transformed his mangled, dying body into the engine of slaughter that men called the Skulltaker. How pleased the vanquished daemon must have been to serve Vrkas and unleash the Skulltaker upon the world.

  Dorgo forced himself to look again at the loathsome forge. It almost seemed to be smiling at him, the toothy grin of a wolf watching its prey. ‘If this… thing made the Skulltaker, how can we trust it to remake the Bloodeater?’ Dorgo tore the leather strap binding the pouch that lay against his side. He tossed it in his hand, feeling the shards of the blade slap against his skin. They were so close to what they had come so far to do, yet their desperate mission seemed more impossible t
han ever.

  ‘It will obey us,’ Sanya said and her tone brooked no question. ‘It tried to keep us away to the last, but it failed and we are here. It cannot refuse us, the pact of Teiyogtei binds it. It must serve any mortal who commands it.’ The excited crawling tremor of the forge abruptly stopped. The sorceress glared triumphantly at the horrible thing.

  ‘It must serve us,’ she repeated. ‘It must reforge the sword of Teiyogtei.’ Cruel venom dripped from her voice, striking at the imprisoned daemon with sneering contempt.

  ‘It will give us the weapon that will kill the Skulltaker!’

  Fear gripped the domain and all within it. From the emptiness of the Desert of Mirrors, to the abandoned vastness of the Grey and the broken husk of Iron Keep, every creature that walked or crawled, that slithered or flew, knew the cold grip of terror. Doom was reaching out with talons of steel to claim what it had once been cheated of. Upon the desolation of the steppes, desperate men fought to escape the shadow that had fallen around them. Reckless, frantic, goaded by horror, they fled across the vastness, and behind them, death gave chase.

  The earth quaked with the rumble of stampeding behemoths. Fields of saw-edged knife-flowers were trampled flat by the gigantic creatures that ploughed through them. Trumpeting, bellowing, the mammoths of the Tsavags fled across the rolling steppes, infected by their masters’ terror.

  Men clung to the walls of the swaying, rocking howdahs, knuckles white in their frantic efforts to keep their hold. Some failed, their grip faltering beneath the bone-grinding tremors that rose through them each time the immense feet of the mammoths smashed into the earth. The bodies of these unfortunates pitched over the sides of the low-lying howdah walls, crashing into the ground in battered heaps. Impelled by panic and the momentum of their gigantic frames, the mammoths following behind ground the wretches into paste beneath their pounding feet.

  The beasts showed no sign of fatigue, even though many leagues separated them from the eerie fortress of the Sul, where the strange chase had begun. Mountains of muscle and strength, to the prodigious stamina of the war mammoths had been added the volatile fuel of fear. The combination created a blind rush that the mammoth riders had abandoned trying to control.