Discover more about Warhammer Chronicles from Black Library

• THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR •
Graham McNeill
BOOK ONE: Heldenhammer
BOOK TWO: Empire
BOOK THREE: God King

• THE RISE OF NAGASH •
Mike Lee
BOOK ONE: Nagash the Sorcerer
BOOK TWO: Nagash the Unbroken
BOOK THREE: Nagash Immortal

• VAMPIRE WARS: THE VON CARSTEIN TRILOGY •
Steven Savile
BOOK ONE: Inheritance
BOOK TWO: Dominion
BOOK THREE: Retribution

• THE SUNDERING •
Gav Thorpe
BOOK ONE: Malekith
BOOK TWO: Shadow King
BOOK THREE: Caledor

• CHAMPIONS OF CHAOS •
Darius Hinks, S P Cawkwell & Ben Counter
BOOK ONE: Sigvald
BOOK TWO: Valkia the Bloody
BOOK THREE: Van Horstmann

• THE WAR OF VENGEANCE •
Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight & C L Werner
BOOK ONE: The Great Betrayal
BOOK TWO: Master of Dragons
BOOK THREE: The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

• MATHIAS THULMANN: WITCH HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Witch Hunter
BOOK TWO: Witch Finder
BOOK THREE: Witch Killer

• ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Bloodborn
BOOK TWO: Bloodforged
BOOK THREE: Bloodsworn

• MASTERS OF STONE AND STEEL •
Gav Thorpe and Nick Kyme
BOOK ONE: The Doom of Dragonback
BOOK TWO: Grudge Bearer
BOOK THREE: Oathbreaker
BOOK FOUR: Honourkeeper

• THE TYRION & TECLIS OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Blood of Aenarion
BOOK TWO: Sword of Caldor
BOOK THREE: Bane of Malekith

• WARRIORS OF THE CHAOS WASTES •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Wulfrik
BOOK TWO: Palace of the Plague Lord
BOOK THREE: Blood for the Blood God

• KNIGHTS OF THE EMPIRE •
Various Authors
BOOK ONE: Hammers of Ulric
BOOK TWO: Reiksguard
BOOK THREE: Knight of the Blazing Sun

• WARLORDS OF KARAK EIGHT PEAKS •
Guy Haley & David Guymer
BOOK ONE: Skarsnik
BOOK TWO: Headtaker
BOOK THREE: Thorgrim

• SKAVEN WARS: THE BLACK PLAGUE TRILOGY •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Dead Winter
BOOK TWO: Blighted Empire
BOOK THREE: Wolf of Sigmar

• THE ORION TRILOGY •
Darius Hinks
BOOK ONE: The Vaults of Winter
BOOK TWO: Tears of Isha
BOOK THREE: The Council of Beasts

• BRUNNER THE BOUNTY HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Blood Money
BOOK TWO: Blood & Steel
BOOK THREE: Blood of the Dragon

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FIRST OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Trollslayer
BOOK TWO: Skavenslayer
BOOK THREE: Daemonslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE SECOND OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Dragonslayer
BOOK TWO: Beastslayer
BOOK THREE: Vampireslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE THIRD OMNIBUS •
William King & Nathan long
BOOK ONE: Giantslayer
BOOK TWO: Orcslayer
BOOK THREE: Manslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FOURTH OMNIBUS •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Elfslayer
BOOK TWO: Shamanslayer
BOOK THREE: Zombieslayer

Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
An omnibus by various authors
Contains the novels The Gates of Azyr, War Storm, Ghal Maraz,
Hammers of Sigmar, Wardens of the Everqueen and Black Rift

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
An omnibus by various authors
Contains the novels Call of Archaon, Warbeast, Fury of Gork,
Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Various authors

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
Josh Reynolds

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: BLACK PYRAMID
Josh Reynolds

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

RULERS OF THE DEAD
Josh Reynolds & David Annandale

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

GODS & MORTALS
Various authors

MYTHS & REVENANTS
Various authors

HAMILCAR: CHAMPION OF THE GODS
David Guymer

GLOOMSPITE
Andy Clark

THE RED FEAST
Gav Thorpe

WARCRY
Various authors

GHOULSLAYER
Darius Hinks

BEASTGRAVE
C L Werner

~ NOVELLAS ~

CITY OF SECRETS
Nick Horth

THIEVES’ PARADISE
Nick Horth

CODE OF THE SKIES
Graeme Lyon

THE MEASURE OF IRON
Jamie Crisalli

~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~

REALMSLAYER
David Guymer

REALMSLAYER: BLOOD OF THE OLD WORLD
David Guymer

THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer

FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer

GREAT RED
David Guymer

ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer

THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN
Josh Reynolds

SANDS OF BLOOD
Josh Reynolds

THE LORDS OF HELSTONE
Josh Reynolds

THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS
Josh Reynolds

WAR-CLAW
Josh Reynolds

SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors

THE IMPRECATIONS OF DAEMONS
Nick Kyme

THE PALACE OF MEMORY AND OTHER STORIES
Various authors

To see the full Black Library range, visit the Kobo Store.

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it isa land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forestsand vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reignsthe Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands ofthe Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

PROLOGUE

The stink of blood and death was thick upon the plain. A crimson light tainted the sky, turning the midday sun into a smouldering ember behind the unnatural haze. Overhead, the croaking of vultures drifted down, like the impatient muttering of daemons. Again and again the carrion birds circled, never descending, never departing. The reek of death had drawn them from their gruesome rookeries, to linger until they had filled their scrawny frames with their hideous repast.

A man stood upon a small hill, little more than a jagged pile of rocks cast down by the craggy mountains beyond the plain. Like the vultures, he waited, waited for the sounds to fade: the warriors’ din of crashing steel and the screams of dying men. Unlike the vultures, he did not listen to the clamour with a mind greedy with hunger. He was no scavenger, no slinking jackal preying upon the leavings of true predators. The man stood with a pride alien to scavengers and ghouls. His frame was straight and tall, his limbs corded with iron-knots of muscle, his chest swollen with strength. Armour of lacquered bone and boiled leather was fastened around his powerful body, blackened with soot to match the braided scalp-locks that dripped from beneath his gold-masked helm.

A nest of spikes protruded from the rim of the helm, stabbing up at the crimson sky. Crafted from ruby, adorned in jade and obsidian, the crown that circled the daemon-masked helm was more than the affectation of a primitive savage, the boast of a barbarous warlord. It was a talisman of power, a display of authority and might. It was the heraldry of a king, and each of the spikes that jutted from its band betokened one who had stood against its wearer and been cut down by his sword.

It was whispered that no mortal had crafted that crown, that it had come from the Realm of the Gods, that each time another fell to its wearer it was no artisan who placed a new spike of ruby upon the king’s brow, but rather that the crown grew a new blood-thorn to commemorate the deed.

Terror of the Blood-Crown had spread through the Shadowlands, passing in frightened mutterings between the horse-clans of the Hung, the nomad tribes of the Kurgan and the warherds of the beastkin. The name of he who wore it had become a curse on the tongues of a dozen races: Teiyogtei Khagan, the ‘glorious king’ of the Tsavag. Unlike the khagans, who had led the warhosts of the Tong in the past, exploding into the Shadowlands in a storm of slaughter and pillage, Teiyogtei had not led his people back into the forbidden vastness of the Chaos Wastes. The king had remained, and with him the Tsavag, the most vicious tribe to ever emerge from the forsaken realm of the Tong.

Teiyogtei’s eyes closed in thought behind the snarling mask of his helm. He saw again the bloody dream that had drawn him out of the Wastes, into a land where the breath of the gods was a calm breeze rather than a raging tempest. Here, the bloody dream had been cast aside, old oaths and pacts forgotten. Here, a new dream had been forged, cast in the iron of Teiyogtei’s indomitable will, not the dream of endless slaughter but the vision of timeless empire. By his might, by his power, Teiyogtei had conquered the plains and bound the steppes to him with chains of terror. Now it was not only the Tong who swore allegiance to him, but tribes of Kurgan, Hung and beastkin.

Other warlords had forged such warhosts, great hordes as vast as the horizon. They had squandered their power in campaigns of carnage, spending their strength in the vainglorious effort to appease the ever hungry gods. Teiyogtei had a different vision. He saw a land crushed in his iron fist. He saw castles and fortresses rising from the dust of the steppes, mines stabbing into the deeps of the mountains, fields exploding across the forsaken plains. He saw a land reforged in his own image, a domain that would become stronger than the steel that built it. This would be his glory, his legacy, not the empty quest to please the capricious gods, his name forgotten in the murk of time. The domain he built would endure long after he was gone, and through it his legacy would outlast the gods. He had forged powerful alliances with the strongest tribes, gifting their chieftains with mighty daemon weapons in exchange for their oaths of blood and loyalty. His was an army such as the Shadowlands had never seen, the horde of a conqueror, the horde of a king.

The roar of battle drew nearer. Teiyogtei’s eyes snapped open, his armoured hand closing around the sword at his side. With a shrill hiss, he drew the blade from its scabbard of flesh, the flayed husk of Teiyogtei’s first victim. The sword burned like scarlet fire in his hand, fat and crooked, a ripple of lightning captured in crimson steel. Teiyogtei felt himself being drawn into the flickering embers that burned within the blade. The khagan pulled his eyes away, sneering at the greedy malice of the Bloodeater. The blade had feasted upon many souls since the hour it had been forged, but it would never taste that of Teiyogtei.

The warlord stroked the sharp edge, letting it scrape against the iron of his gloves, teasing the weapon’s malignancy with the nearness of his blood. Angered, the Bloodeater would be even deadlier in battle, eager to feed its frustration with death and ruin. Teiyogtei wanted the weapon at its most malevolent. He feared that the battle to come would test its hostility to the full.

A choking death rattle rose sharply from the crimson mist. A hulking shape, little more than a shadow through the curtain of gory fog, pitched and fell, its head rolling free from its shoulders. Dimly, through the veil of mist, Teiyogtei could see mangled heaps of flesh strewn across the ground, scarcely human in their butchered ruin, piled in heaps of broken bones and severed limbs. Amid the wreckage, he could see a handful of warriors still standing, stubbornly refusing to abandon the fight. Two scarred Kurgan warriors lunged deeper into the crimson murk, monstrous axes clenched firmly in their fists. A breath later, Teiyogtei heard their screams, heard the sound of sizzling flesh and the liquid splash of blood upon earth. The khagan dared to glance down at the Bloodeater, reassured to find that its fires burned steadily, a visible token of its smouldering fury.

‘What has come for you can be vanquished, but never destroyed.’ Those had been the words the old Tsavag shaman had muttered as he looked up from the puddled entrails of his sacrifice. A warning from the gods? A threat? No, Teiyogtei had taken it as a challenge. He knew which of the dark gods had sent this creature to ravage his domain. He knew that it would not relent until he had faced it in combat.

‘Vanquished, but never destroyed.’ Teiyogtei sneered at the prophecy. The shaman had paid for his cryptic words, his skull smashed beneath the foot of a Tsavag war mammoth. A man made his own destiny. He did not need the riddles of the gods to lead him astray. Man, monster or daemon, Teiyogtei had yet to encounter anything that could survive the Bloodeater’s ravenous bite.

The clamour of battle faded into a metal echo, only the moans of the dying and the croaking vultures disturbing the silence. The crimson mist swelled, billowing as though moved by an unfelt wind. The rolling curtain stretched towards the hill where Teiyogtei stood alone.

The khagan had forbidden any of his followers to stand with him. Whatever creature had crawled down into his domain from the Wastes, he would face it alone. If he was victorious, it would reaffirm his might in the eyes of his chieftains, bind them all the more to his will. If he fell, it would not matter if a thousand fell with him. Teiyogtei allowed only the four hundred Kurgan who stood beneath the hill to stand against the beast. If four hundred could not stop the monster, no number of mortal warriors and mortal blades would. Teiyogtei would not squander the strength of his horde in useless conflict. It would matter little if he destroyed the monster at the expense of his army. No, if the horde was broken, death upon the creature’s blade would be only too welcome.

The Skulltaker, that was the name the thing had been given, the title it wore in the nightmares of sorcerers and seers: a harbinger of Khorne, the Blood God’s chosen executioner. It had left a trail of destruction across Teiyogtei’s realm, empty villages and broken castles. The khagan’s realm was threatened, not by the Skulltaker, but by the terror that he brought with him. If Teiyogtei were to maintain his rule, he could allow his people to fear nothing more than they feared their king.

At the base of the hill, the crimson mist rolled back, retreating as though pulled away by spectral steeds. As the mist retreated, a lone figure stood revealed beneath the baleful sky. Teiyogtei was surprised to see that his adversary was no daemon, no misshapen monster from the pits of the Wastes. The figure that stood below was that of a man, but such a man as even the khagan had never faced before. Tall, bulky, his body was covered in plates of steel, stained the hue of old blood, a tattered cloak of daemon fur spilling down his back, his head unseen behind a skull-faced helm of iron. Great antlers rose from either side of the helm, jagged horns of bronze, each forming one part of the skull-rune of Khorne. Beside the malice Teiyogtei could feel emanating from the lone warrior, even the fury of the Bloodeater seemed a feeble thing.

The king tried to stare into the skull-faced mask, to see the man behind the iron, but only shadow returned his gaze. A twinge of fear worked through the warlord’s body. This, he knew, was the Skulltaker, and for the first time he truly wondered if his foe could be destroyed. Could anything overcome such pure, raw hatred?

The Skulltaker was still for a moment, letting his enemy take his measure. Then, slowly, his head lifted, staring back at Teiyogtei. The warrior’s voice growled from behind his mask, a sound like steel scraping against bone.

‘Doom,’ the Skulltaker proclaimed. ‘Doom has come to the betrayers.’ The warrior raised his weapon, a thick blade with jagged, cruel edges, as black as a shard of midnight. Teiyogtei could see faces screaming beneath the black skin of the weapon, writhing in torment within the blade that had consumed their souls. The khagan looked down at his own sword, a new doubt working into his mind. There was a kinship between these weapons, but that could not be. Neither man nor daemon could have forged another such blade.

Teiyogtei bit down on his fears. He was Teiyogtei Khagan, the greatest warlord to rise from the Tong, the mightiest people the world would ever know. No foe had ever bested him in battle, no foe ever would. Men could break their promises, but the word of a god was eternal. Whatever he was, whatever had sent him, the Skulltaker would fall before the Bloodeater and become another thorn upon the Blood-Crown.

‘Doom?’ Teiyogtei sneered. ‘I fear no doom. You think to bring me death? Know that Teiyogtei Khagan cannot fall in battle! The Blood God’s oath protects me, and he will not revoke his word when it is given! Doom?’ The king laughed at his silent foe. ‘It is your doom that is come, wretch! The terror of the Skulltaker ends here upon my Bloodeater!’

The khagan’s words had scarcely been uttered when his enemy sprang into motion. With a speed that Teiyogtei would have believed impossible, the armoured warrior charged up the side of the hill, the Skulltaker’s boots gouging into the rock like claws of steel. Teiyogtei sprang to meet the warrior’s attack, the Bloodeater flashing out in a fiery arc only to crash against the blackened edge of the Skulltaker’s weapon. The king’s arm shuddered from the impact, his bones trembling. He recoiled instinctively and the Skulltaker was swift to seize upon his weakness. An iron shoulder crashed against Teiyogtei’s chest, throwing him back, only the king’s amazing reflexes preventing him from collapsing to the ground.

The black sword slashed out at the reeling king, and as it swept through the air the wailing voices of those trapped within clawed at Teiyogtei’s mind. More by instinct than thought, he parried the strike, his bones again shuddering as red blade met black. The two swords were frozen, locked against one another as the two fighters struggled to break each other’s hold. At length, Teiyogtei felt his strength begin to ebb, felt the Skulltaker’s incredible power start to prevail. The king brought his boot cracking into the Skulltaker’s knee, trying to spill his foe to the ground. The warrior’s leg barely registered the brutal impact that would have snapped the bone of a lesser man.

Teiyogtei’s tactic did serve its purpose, however. For an instant, the Skulltaker’s attention was distracted, and in that instant, the king freed the Bloodeater, leaping back before the Skulltaker could retaliate. The iron-helmed warrior lashed out at the khagan, the point of his black sword scraping against the lacquer armour. Red smoke rose from the cut, and Teiyogtei’s nose filled with the sickening stink of the vapour. He did not like to think what havoc even a small cut from the weapon might work should it sink into flesh. Again, the unfamiliar spectre of fear screamed through his mind.

As though smelling his foe’s fear, the Skulltaker struck again, driving his black blade at Teiyogtei from the side. The king hurried to block the attack, but the Bloodeater was caught at an awkward angle, trapped between the Skulltaker’s black blade and his own body. He struggled to fend off the warrior’s immense strength, but the angle of his weapon conspired against him, threatening to snap his arm with the effort. Teiyogtei roared in pain as the lacquer plates began to split beneath the Bloodeater, as his own blade began to gouge into his flesh.

Fuelled by the intense agony, Teiyogtei drew upon the last of his strength. Howling like a beast, the khagan ripped the Bloodeater from his own body, beating back the Skulltaker’s sword. Ropes of gore drooled from the gouge in his side, but the king had not the breath to spare to consider his grisly wound. The Skulltaker was already moving to attack the weakened king, slashing at the khagan’s neck. Teiyogtei ducked under the wound, driving the Bloodeater into the Skulltaker’s belly.

He pressed the sword home, deep and hard, only relenting when he felt it erupt from the warrior’s back. Only then did Teiyogtei give thought to the quivering pain that wracked his body.

He backed away from the stricken warrior, leaving the Bloodeater thrust through the monster’s gut. The Skulltaker watched him retreat, his malevolence seeming to flicker as the Bloodeater drained his soul. Blood bubbled from Teiyogtei’s mouth, spilling from the face of his gilded mask.

It became an effort for him to keep the Skulltaker in focus as his vision began to swim with pain. The king growled against such weakness. He would see the monster dead before he allowed himself to fade into the Hunting Halls.

The Skulltaker reached his hand to his belly, gripping the hilt of Teiyogtei’s sword. With savage, twisting tugs, he pulled the sword free, stagnant blood exploding from the wound. The Bloodeater’s fire was extinguished, smothered by the malignity of that which it had tried to devour. The Skulltaker tossed it aside with an almost arrogant contempt. The Bloodeater shattered against the rocky ground, and the Skulltaker’s boots crushed its shards as he advanced once more upon the king.

Teiyogtei stared at the executioner. Even had he been able, he would not flee. Despite his best efforts, his hour had passed. No man could hope to cheat the gods.

Yet, as the Skulltaker came towards him, Teiyogtei noted that the imposing warrior seemed somehow diminished. It was as though he were draining away with the blood that continued to vomit from his gut.

The khagan had the impression of ice dissolving in water. By the time he drew close to the king, the Skulltaker was a shrivelled echo of the warrior who had fought against him. It was only with a shuddering effort that the Skulltaker lifted his black blade, struggling to strike Teiyogtei.

The black sword slashed at the king’s face, shattering the Blood-Crown and splitting the gilded mask in two, but the edge failed to taste the man within, and Teiyogtei smiled as he saw the Skulltaker crash to the ground, his last effort wasted.

The impression of dissolution was undeniable. The Skulltaker’s body was visibly corroding, melting into a mass of stagnant blood. The sword he had carried crumbled into cinders, fleeing into the sudden wind. The blood seeped into the earth, as though sucked down into the ground. Soon, only the Skulltaker’s carnage bore witness to his existence. Teiyogtei’s laugh of triumph ended upon a hollow note as he recalled the words of his shaman.

Vanquished, but never destroyed.

The haunting words were still echoing in Teiyogtei’s mind as he collapsed to the ground, overcome by his wound. He dimly heard his chieftains rushing up the hill to attend their king, dimly he heard them calling for their healers and witch doctors.

Teiyogtei Khagan could hear the voice of the Skulltaker more clearly.

Doom. Doom has come to the betrayers.

CHAPTER ONE

Rock shattered to dust beneath the immense weight of the mammoth, sending fragments spraying into the scraggly brush. Ninety hands high, its enormity cloaked in matted black fur nearly two feet thick, the mammoth towered over the land, seeming to dwarf even the distant mountains and their claw-like peaks. When the behemoth moved, the world trembled, each plodding step causing stones to topple from the hills around it. The boulders rattled and crashed down step-like terraces to smack against the brute’s legs as they rolled into the plain below.

The mammoth ignored the impacts with godlike disdain, the flesh beneath its leathery hide scarcely scratched. The gigantic head swung from side to side, enormous black eyes studying the slopes around it, curled ivory tusks reflecting the summer sun. The massive trunk, like a bloated jungle python, reared back, coiling against the mammoth’s scaly face. The maw beneath the trunk gaped wide and a deafening bellow boomed from the beast’s body, the roar of a hunting titan.

Men covered their heads as the mammoth’s bellow thundered across the sky, their skulls throbbing from the nearness of the sound. A walled platform had been lashed to the beast’s back, a small fort of ivory and bone covered in hides of fur and skin. Within this fort, men clung to leather straps and watched the land pass beneath them as their colossal steed lumbered through the dusty hills.

Even as they guarded their ears against the trumpeting bellow, the men kept wary eyes trained upon the hills and ready hands upon the short throwing spears that rested in leather baskets beside them.

Each of the men was stocky in build, with powerful thews and bulging muscles. Their dusky skin bore the scars of sun and wind, their broad faces the lean hunger of hardship and travail.

Upon some, strange lesions and bizarre growths marred the uniformity of limb and visage; others carried still more outrageous displays of what was called ‘the gift of the gods’. For these men were of the Tsavag tribe, descended from the mighty Tong, who dwelled deep within the Wastes, on the very threshold of the Realm of the Gods. They wore their armour of bone and fur with pride, and adorned their dark topknots with talismans of ivory and bronze.

There was no arrogance in their adornment, for the Tsavag were too secure in their superiority to feel the need to boast.

A lone Tsavag stood in the cage of ivory chained around the mammoth’s neck. Like his kinsmen, he was dark of skin, with a broad, hungry face. A trick of the gods had made his eyes the colour of gold, shining like coins from their dark setting. Blotches of discoloured skin ran across the tribesman’s body, marking his flesh like the belly of a toad, but there was no aberration in the cords of muscle that swelled his arms, nor the sharp intelligence that peered from the golden eyes.

Dorgo Foecrusher was among the greatest of his tribe’s warriors, son of their khagan, Hutga Steelskin. In his twenty-five summers he had killed a hundred foes in battle. Kurgan, Hung, even the despicable beastkin from the Grey had shed their lives on his blade.

Dorgo had earned the respect of his tribesmen with each victory, but still he yearned for more. There was one Tsavag he had never been able to impress, the only one of his tribe who mattered so far as he was concerned. If he was to succeed Hutga as khagan, he would need to prove himself worthy to the grizzled warlord.

He wondered if it would ever be possible to meet his father’s high demands.

The warrior shook his head, forgetting for a time his mired ambitions. He needed to keep his mind on the hunt.

He lifted his gaze to the rocky hills that peppered the plain. They rose in crumbling mounds, worn down into cracked stumps by wind and rain.

Dorgo could still see the broken fragments of stone towers rising from their summits, could still make out the step-like plateaux that marched up the sides of the hills. Once those steps would have been terraced gardens, overflowing with rice and wheat, and green things of every description. The towers would have been filled with warriors, warily watching over the gardens at their feet. This place had been the granary of Teiyogtei, when that great warlord had carved his kingdom from the desolation of the steppes. The towers, the gardens, even the hills had been built with the sorcery of his shamans and the sweat of his slaves. With his gardens, Teiyogtei would feed his horde and expand his domain across all the Shadowlands.

The whispers of the shining dream still lingered in places like this, calling out to men like Dorgo, who possessed the imagination to hear them. The ruins of Teiyogtei’s dream were scattered across his kingdom like old bones slowly wearing away beneath the unforgiving sun.

In his ambition, the king had not reckoned upon the wrath of the gods and he had been brought low. The Shadowlands never fell beneath the banners of the Tsavag and today only eight tribes remained of what had once been Teiyogtei’s numberless horde.

Dorgo shook his head again, scolding himself for allowing his thoughts to wander once more. It was a failing his father never ceased to observe, scolding Dorgo that there was too much of the dreamer around him to ever make a good khagan. Dorgo’s fist tightened as he recalled the scornful words. Perhaps he was a dreamer, but so too had Teiyogtei been.

The mammoth’s trunk reared back again and the beast’s bellow rolled across the land. Dorgo studied the hills, watching every sign of movement among the rocks.

Despite the years since they had been irrigated, plants still erupted from the dusty soil upon the terraces. This drew goats and elk into the hills where the uneven ground would protect them from wolves. Even men had a difficult time stalking the animals through the old gardens where the treacherous ground forever threatened a murderous fall to the plain below. The other tribes only even attempted the feat in times of famine, but the Tsavag were better, their minds sharper than the dull wit of Kurgan and Hung. They did not climb into the crumbling hills. They made their prey come to them.

The mammoth’s trumpet was a sound to strike terror into any man, and beasts were not immune to such fear. When the mammoth bellowed, more than just rocks were knocked loose from the hills. Deer and elk, goats and sheep, even the sickle-clawed hill tiger would leap from their refuges, scattering through the rocks to escape the angry giant.

In their panic, even sure-footed goats and nimble deer would stumble, to pitch headlong to the plain below. The throwing spears of the Tsavag standing in the howdah made short work of any animals not killed by the fall. It was a method of hunting that had been developed by generations of tribesmen until it had been refined to a precise art.

Dorgo’s people never lacked for meat, even in the hardest winter or the driest summer, simply because they had mastered the Crumbling Hills.

This day, however, only rocks clattered down from the hills. The Tsavag hunters and even the war mammoth beneath them began to sense an eerie wrongness around the hills around them, an unseen menace lurking somewhere nearby. Tsavag hands left the ivory shafts of throwing spears to clutch at the grips of axe, sword and flail. A new urgency crept into the eyes watching the hills, no longer looking for the fleeing shapes of goat and elk.

Every man remembered tales and legends about the strange creatures that sometimes crept down into the hills from the forbidden Wastes. They wondered if such a monster would be bold enough to attack a war mammoth. They wondered if they would be bold enough to meet it, in turn.

Dorgo watched the rocks, waiting for the lurking menace to show itself, waiting for the attack to crash down upon them in an avalanche of violence. The brooding hills defied his vigilance, remaining silent and empty, mocking him with whatever secret they held.

When the attack came, it erupted from below not above. The silence was broken by savage war cries as the slopes of the hills exploded into brutality and violence. Warriors lunged into the sunlight from concealed burrows, like a mass of angered ground vipers. Taller than the Tsavag, their skins pale, their bodies twisted by grotesque knots of muscle, the warriors rushed at the startled war mammoth with panther-like speed.

Dorgo cursed as he saw the ragged armour of hide and bronze lashed around their disfigured frames, as he saw the ghastly masks of flesh that were tied across their faces. The warriors were of the Muhak, one of the Kurgan tribes and the most pitiless rivals of the Tsavag. Each Muhak carried a long spear with a jagged iron head, the edges of the point barbed and cruel. Dorgo saw at once that the Kurgan were sprinting towards the mammoth’s legs, fearlessly charging at the behemoth to reach its soft underbelly. He roared commands to the hunters in the howdah behind him, cursing at them to hurl their javelins and stop the rushing Muhak.

Several of the warriors fell as javelins sank into their brutish bodies, but for each that crumpled to the ground, three darted beneath the mammoth’s pillar-like legs, jabbing up at its belly with their cruel pikes. Dorgo struggled to turn the beast, to bring it around to confront the foe, but the stabbing pain in its vitals broke the Tsavag’s tenuous control of the mammoth.

Maddened by the pain, the brute refused to move, simply bellowing and wailing in anguish. The Muhak beneath it continued to savage its belly, relenting only when oily ropes of entrails spilled from the wounds.

The mammoth reared back on its hind legs, crashing down in a bone-jarring impact. One Muhak, lingering to press his attack against the stricken beast, was smashed beneath the brute’s leg, crushed into a pasty red smear.

The hunters in the howdah forgot their javelins as the platform lurched upward, pointing them at the sun. Hands tightened around the leather straps in desperate, white-knuckled grips as gravity jerked at the men upon the tilting platform.

One Tsavag, slow to seize the strap, pitched in screaming despair to the ground thirty feet below, his head splattering against the rocky ground.

Dorgo whipped the mammoth with the ivory goad he held, trying to force it to obey the runes carved upon the ancient talisman. The gnawing fire of its wounds overwhelmed both training and spell, the mammoth’s painful trumpets tearing at the sky. The Muhak retreated to the safety of the slopes, jeering at the Tsavag, throwing stones at their steed to encourage its frenzy.

The reeling mammoth fell back to earth with a mighty crash. The impact tore leather straps from their fastenings and three Tsavag plummeted from the behemoth’s back to lie broken upon the ground below.

As the mammoth continued to stomp and bellow, the other hunters threw chains down from the howdah. Hand-over-hand they rappelled down the beast’s flanks, desperate to escape its crazed agony. The boldest of the Muhak charged down from the slopes to confront the fleeing men.

Screams added to the clamour of the mammoth’s pain as the Kurgan drove their long spears into the descending men, pinning them to the mammoth’s thick hide as they pierced their bodies.

The few hunters who reached the ground tried to fend off the opportunistic Muhak, chopping at them with axe and sword. Two Muhak fell, too slow in reacting to the threat of foes who could strike back. The others cast aside their long spears, useless at close quarters, and drew cruel, bone cudgels from belts of dried sinew.

The Tsavag rushed the Kurgan, determined to avenge their butchered kin. Bone cracked against iron as the two sides converged, Tong curses mixing with Muhak war cries.

Against the overwhelming numbers of the Muhak, the handful of hunters had little real chance, but the reckoning was to be decided from another quarter. Through the well of pain that raced through its body, the rage of the stricken mammoth fought its way to overwhelm the beast’s mind. Trumpeting its fury, the huge beast spun around, the sudden motion throwing a last Tsavag from the howdah.

The black eyes of the mammoth glared in berserk fury at the little men fighting around it. Lost in a red madness that did not differentiate between Tsavag and Muhak, the mammoth struck, smashing men beneath its ponderous feet, and goring them with its blunted tusks. Dorgo watched the serpent-like trunk lurch upwards, a struggling Tsavag trapped in its coils.

The mammoth tightened its hold, breaking the man’s body in a spray of blood and ruptured organs. The tattered wreckage dripped back to earth and the brute reared back, bellowing as it plunged deeper into its rampage.

Dorgo grabbed the great iron spike resting beside him in his ivory cage. It was the tool of every mammoth master, as vital as the rune-covered goad, but it was one that no Tsavag ever wanted to use. Dorgo hesitated, but then saw the broken remains of a hunter ground into paste beneath the mammoth’s pounding feet.

Snarling, he set the spike against the back of the mammoth’s skull. With a roar as feral as that of the raging beast, he forced the spike through the scaly plates and the thick skull beneath. The mammoth reared one final time as the spike impaled its brain. Strength deserted the beast’s body in an instant.

Dorgo clutched the bars of his cage, bracing himself as the mammoth toppled to the earth. The impact snapped the leather straps that bound cage to neck and Dorgo was thrown across the plain to crash against the rocky slope of the hill. The ivory cage crumpled under the impact, sending painful slivers scything into the Tsavag’s body. He felt one ivory talon rip into his thigh and another punch through his forearm.

Wracking pain shot through his body, every nerve on fire. He tried to move, ignoring the desperate plea of his body to lie still. His arm was caught, transfixed upon the broken ivory bar. Biting down on the pain, Dorgo drew his iron knife and began to saw away at the wreckage.

As he worked, Dorgo could see the Muhak descending the slopes in force. They capered around the fallen mammoth, swatting at it with their clubs, stabbing it with their spears. Gleefully, the Kurgan warriors brained the injured Tsavag hunters, smashing their skulls with their clubs.

Among the celebrating Muhak was a hulking brute, his body so swollen with muscle that he more resembled an ogre than a man. The head that rose up from his thick, tree-stump neck bore the same flesh-mask as the other Muhak, but it had been cut away to allow the man’s jaw to protrude forward and his dagger-like teeth to jut from his shrivelled lip. A latticework of scars and cuts adorned the warrior’s body where it stood exposed by his crude hide armour. In his paw-like hands, he carried an immense mattock, the head of the hammer displaying a riot of blood-crusted spikes.

This, Dorgo knew, was no mere champion of the Muhak, but no less than Zar Lok, chieftain of the entire tribe.

Lok prowled among the dead Tsavag, lifting them from the bloodied ground to stare into the face of each corpse. One and all, he tossed them aside with callous contempt, stomping on to the next body with ever increasing ire. A particularly mangled Tsavag, the face reduced to pulp, provoked the zar’s already fragile temper. He turned upon the nearest of his warriors with a howl of fury, smashing the Muhak with his deadly hammer. The Kurgan’s chest cracked like an eggshell, pitching him to the earth in a shrieking heap.

Lok gave the murdered warrior no further thought, stalking ahead to the bulk of the mammoth and the ruined howdah on its back.

A grim realisation came upon Dorgo. Lok was looking for someone among the dead and there was only one person that could be. The Muhak seldom ventured into the Crumbling Hills, their own hunting grounds far to the west. It had not been chance that had caused them to ambush the Tsavag, the Kurgan had carefully planned their attack.

The way Lok picked his way among the dead, Dorgo was sure he knew who had led the hunting party. Killing Hutga’s son would avenge the death of the zar’s son, who had been slain in a raid against the Tsavag some months before. Dorgo redoubled his efforts to saw through the cage. To fall into the zar’s hands dead would be wretched enough, to do so alive…

The hulking zar moved away from the ruined howdah, roaring in disgusted frustration. Then his eyes caught the gleam of ivory against the slope and the shudder of frantic motion from within. A cruel smile spread across Lok’s face, a smile of long-denied vengeance. He barked orders to his warriors and they began to converge on the wreckage.

Dorgo could hear the hide boots of the Muhak scraping against the rocky slope as they climbed to reach him. The iron knife continued to chew away at the ivory bar that pinned him to the cage. Grinding his teeth against the agony, the Tsavag looked around the wreckage for his sword, but the weapon had been thrown clear when the cage slammed into the slope.

He stared at the small knife, with no illusions about its potency against the clubs of the Muhak or Lok’s mattock. The hammer was a gruesome relic from the time of Teiyogtei, a daemon weapon forged by the king and gifted to the ancient zar of the Muhak. One blow from the weapon was enough to fold iron as though it were cloth. Dorgo had already seen a graphic display of its power against flesh and bone.

Suddenly, the Muhak advance faltered. A sharp cry went up from the plain below, silenced in a liquid gurgle. The stalking warriors spun around in alarm, their powerful bodies coiling for action. Even Lok turned away, the zar’s fists tightening around the heft of his daemonic hammer.

Below, Dorgo could see a lone warrior striding towards the Muhak, his body encased in crimson armour, chased with bronze, his head enclosed within a skull-like helm.

A blade of darkness filled the stranger’s hand, smoke rising from its hungry edge. At his feet sprawled the cleft debris of a Muhak, who had lingered near the mammoth, more eager for loot than helping Lok to claim his revenge.

The armoured warrior marched heedlessly through the spreading pool of gore, his skull-faced visage fixed upon the slope of the hill. Other Muhak scavengers backed away from the apparition, dropping their plunder of ivory and bronze. Their frightened mutters drifted up to Dorgo and the Kurgan around him.

It was the fear displayed by his warriors more than the sight of his butchered man that enraged Lok. Spitting with fury, he roared at the Muhak below, ordering them to kill the stranger. He punctuated his command with a menacing slap of his mattock against the ground, overcoming the trepidation of his warriors with their greater fear of him.

Five Muhak took up their clubs and axes stolen from the slain Tsavag. They began to circle the stranger, like a pack of slinking wolves stalking a lion. The skull-faced helm never turned, the attention of the man within focused upon the slope. There was a sense of disdain in his manner as he marched steadily onwards, ignoring the menacing men who had surrounded him.

The Muhak sprang at the armoured warrior with a savage cry. In a blur of motion, the stranger spun to face them. The strange black sword bit through the arm of the first Muhak, snapping it like a twig and throwing him back in a spray of blood and screams. A second Muhak, leaping at him from the left, caught the point of the sword in his chest.

Still in motion, the stranger ripped his weapon free, chewing through rib and lung as the edge erupted from the man’s side. The third Muhak came at him from behind. He flopped to the ground as the black sword chopped through both legs as though they were brittle desert brambles.

The fourth, striking from the right, caught the tip of the blade slashing through his face. He fell, clutching at the broth of blood and brain drooling from his ruptured eyes.

The brutal assault was over almost before it had begun. The Muhak were accomplished ambushers, skilled as jackals at the art of coordinated attack, but their prey had been faster still, killing four of their number while the echo of their war cry still wailed across the plain.

The last scavenger faltered in his attack, staring with open-mouthed horror at the havoc the stranger had visited in the blink of an eye. Blood exploded from the man’s mouth as the black sword slammed through his gut. The stranger ignored the scarlet that splattered against his armour and the dying hands that clutched at the heavy fur cloak he wore. Callously, he ripped his trapped blade upwards, crunching through bone and flesh until the black sword tore free.

Slashed from stomach to shoulder, the Muhak slumped to the ground.

Something like terror crawled into Lok’s beady eyes behind their mask of flayed flesh. The zar shouted at his warriors, fear lending a new note of rage to his voice. The Muhak hesitated, staring uncertainly at one another, no man eager to be the first to confront this strange and terrible foe.

Lok’s mattock lashed out, pulverising the skull of the Kurgan closest to him, dropping him in a burst of blood and bone. The example was enough, the zar’s tyranny reasserted. Twenty Muhak marauders, swollen bulks of muscle and rage, charged down the slope, their murderous cudgels lifted overhead in savage display.

To Dorgo’s eyes, what followed was slaughter, not battle. Twenty warriors converged on one. When the carnage abated, when the screams had faded into death rattles, when the sound of flesh and bone being torn asunder ebbed, it was the one who stood triumphant.

The havoc of his black blade lay strewn and dying around the armoured killer. Gore dripped from the stranger, coating his crimson armour in a sanguine cloak, but none of it was his. Twenty men had faced him, but not one had landed a blow against their foe. The killer turned his head, studying the butchery. Then he turned his skull-helm once more to the slope where the ashen-faced Lok waited.

The Muhak zar watched the warrior march through the wreckage of his warband, every step causing his eyes to bulge wider with fear. Lok cast his gaze from side to side, but the strength of his followers had been spent. There were no fresh Kurgan to throw at the gore-drenched spectre. The zar spat into the dust, trying to let his fury overwhelm his fear.

‘You still tempt the gods, eh pig!’ Lok snarled, brandishing his mattock. ‘You kill those dogs so you think you can fight Lok?’ He brought the hammer crashing down, exploding a rock into pebbly splinters.

The armoured killer’s approach did not falter, the man within the crimson plates unimpressed by the zar’s bravado.

The air of arrogance goaded Lok’s fury as surely as the ivory hook Dorgo had used on the mammoth. The Muhak chieftain’s jutting jaw dropped open in a howl of rage, his immense bulk hurtling down the slope at his adversary. The armoured killer paused, waiting to meet the zar’s charge. The black sword licked out like the tongue of a dragon, flashing through the chieftain’s belly, spilling it onto the ground. At the same time, the mattock crashed into the nameless warrior, smashing into him like a titan’s fist. The daemonic weapon kicked him back, throwing him through the air. The armoured warrior smashed into the stiffening hulk of the slain mammoth, falling headfirst into the stream of filth oozing from its wound.

Lok wilted onto his knees, the mattock sliding from hands that were desperately fumbling at his ghastly wound. The zar struggled to press the wound closed, to staunch the seepage of blood and bile. In the fashion of a dying wolf, he refused to accept the gravity of his wound, refused to concede the approach of death, but even in his agony, a smile split the Muhak’s brutal face. At least his enemy would follow him into the Hunting Halls.

Even this small joy fled from Lok, draining away with his lifeblood. The figure sprawled amid the muck and gore of the mammoth was rising, picking itself from its own ruin. Despite the ferocity of the blow Lok had struck, fuelled by the zar’s immense strength and the mattock’s obscene power, the warrior yet lived. The armoured killer stood for a moment, wiping filth from his skull-like mask. Then, slowly, remorselessly, he began to retrace his path up the slope.

The Muhak zar took one hand away from his wound, trying to reach his hammer on the ground beside him. The effort brought a fresh stream of pain shuddering through him, but the sight of the approaching destroyer was more terrible to him than any mere physical suffering. Lok felt the warrior’s malignancy grow with each step, coiling around him in a stifling shroud of hate. There was more than death in the killer’s black blade, more than shame. Lok could feel the jaws of hell closing around him, and hear the snarling laughter of daemons in his ears.

The warrior loomed above the zar, kicking the mattock away from his clutching hand. An armoured gauntlet reached down, pulling Lok’s head by its mass of oily black hair. The zar struggled feebly in the iron grip, but could not prevent his head from being pulled back, exposing his throat to the sky. Then the black sword came chopping down, hewing through the thick, stumpy neck.

The chieftain’s body slapped against the earth, his head staring down at the corpse as it dangled from the warrior’s fist. The killer lifted his trophy high, presenting it to the darkening sky.

‘A skull for the Skull Throne!’ the iron voice of the warrior rasped. Lightning cracked across the cloudless heavens, as though in answer to his cry.

Dorgo freed himself from his prison, leaving a spike of ivory thrust through the meat of his arm. It would need the healing arts of a shaman before the shard could be removed, otherwise the wound would bleed and he would not have the strength to make the long march back to his people. It was not mere survival that moved him to caution, nor bearing witness to the fate that had befallen his fellow hunters.

There was a still graver purpose that urged him on, something greater than his fear.

Zar Lok, chief of the Muhak, was dead, butchered by a nameless, tribeless warrior. In all the years since the fall of Teiyogtei, such a fate had never claimed a chieftain of one of the eight tribes. Word of this had to be brought to his father, brought to him before the other tribes discovered that Lok was dead. A delicate balance existed between the eight tribes, and someone had destroyed that balance, setting into motion events that would resound throughout the domain. The sooner Hutga learned of this, the better he would be able to prepare the Tsavag for what was coming.

Dorgo shuddered again, the image of the outlander burned into his mind. He could not shake the impression that Lok had somehow recognised his slayer. Even before he struck the first blow, the Kurgan seemed to know that his doom was at hand. More than the brutality of the Muhak’s death, it was this terrible air of resignation and hopelessness that chilled his marrow.

Dorgo crept cautiously away from the wreckage of the ivory cage. He did not waste time looking for his lost sword, nor linger to claim a weapon from the butchered Muhak. Instead, he mounted the rocky slope, climbing the crumbling mound as the first step on his long journey back to the lands of the Tsavag.

Dorgo left the crimson warrior behind him, crouched beside Lok’s mangled carcass, the zar’s head resting on the ground before him. With slow, careful strokes, the warrior drew his black blade against the chieftain’s head, carving away the flesh, layer by layer, exposing the gleaming skull beneath, cleaning the trophy he had offered to mighty Khorne.

CHAPTER TWO

It took Dorgo three days to hike out of the vastness of the Crumbling Hills. He survived off the small vermin that lived beneath the rocks, slaking his thirst with the juice of the thorny bushes that had replaced the ancient gardens. He fashioned a crude spear from a shard of flint and the leg bone from a partially eaten elk carcass, the abandoned kill of a hill tiger. At night he wedged himself between the decaying walls of the old forts, trying to hide from the predators that prowled the desolation. He awoke many times to hear the scuttling of stalk spiders crawling across the rocks, but the immense arachnids passed him by without investigating the lone Tsavag who intruded upon their domain.

More inquisitive was the beady-eyed rock wolf that watched him for the better part of a day before deciding that the man was still too hale to make easy prey.

Most of the injuries he had suffered when he had been thrown from the mammoth had started to heal, even the pain in his leg had ceased to vex him as it had on the first day of his escape. The wound in his arm, however, continued to pulse with pain. Dorgo had gathered maggots from the elk carcass, setting them on his arm to clean away the dead flesh and stave off infection. The Tsavag had long since come to ignore the crawling sensation against his skin, the oily feel of the worms against his flesh. He had seen too many warriors with swollen, noxious wounds, green with disease and corruption. Most of them became cripples if they survived at all. It was a sorry fate for any warrior. Better to feed the tiny children of Onogal than entice one of the Grandfather’s more grisly gifts.

Beyond the Crumbling Hills, Dorgo would need to cross the Prowling Lands, a great expanse of flatland where, in winter, the hardy snowgrass would defy the elements and the feeble sun to carpet the plain in pallid stalks and leafy blades. The Tsavag would descend upon the Prowling Lands when the first snows came, letting their mammoths glut themselves upon the winter grass, but the gods had not yet unleashed that season upon the domain. For now, the Prowling Lands were deserted, populated only by sickly clumps of thin-trunked trees and yellowed stands of fungus.

The Prowling Lands took their name from the treacherous landscape, where the land shuddered frequently, splitting apart to form deep gullies and jagged ravines. The threat of sink holes was constant. Too small to threaten a mammoth, the holes could easily swallow a man, closing over him and leaving no hint of his doom. Predators too lurked in the Prowling Lands. In the summer, the gullies were home to zhagas, giant lizards covered in a carapace of thorns and capable of swallowing a child in a single bite. In the winter, ice lions called the Prowling Lands home, enormous beasts capable of taking down a small mammoth and possessed of a cruel intelligence that was more than natural for a simple beast.

It was neither sink hole nor lizard nor lion that made Dorgo cautious as he crossed the Prowling Lands. He was wary of a different kind of threat. The Prowling Lands bordered upon the Grey, the twisted, fog-shrouded forest where the Warherd of Kug made their lair. Driven into the Grey by the human tribes of the domain, the beastmen waged perpetual war against Hung, Kurgan and Tong alike. Years of dwelling within the perpetual darkness of the Grey had made the beastmen almost blind, but the monsters had developed other powers to compensate for their lost sight. In the dark of night, they would raid the encampments of men, taking only one kind of plunder back with them into the darkness of the Grey: man-flesh for their cooking pots.

There was little risk of encountering them by day, but Dorgo knew the beastkin sometimes foraged in the darkness of the gullies. They would not chance an encounter with a strong group of men, but a lone warrior, a wounded one at that, would excite their bloodlust if they caught his scent.

Dorgo stared forlornly at his feeble spear of bone and flint. It would be poor protection against any but the smallest beastkin, much less some of the hulking brutes the warherd sometimes produced. He would need to brave the gullies, only in the deep shadows of the fissures was any water to be found in the Prowling Lands. It was a five day march to cross the flatlands, to reach the valleys where the Tsavag made their summer encampment. He might be able to endure without food, but not water. Despite the danger of reptiles and half-men, he couldn’t keep entirely to the high ground. Thirst must eventually drive him down into the darkness.

For the best part of two days, Dorgo managed to press on, chewing on the pulp from a thorn bush to deceive the clawing thirst that tormented him. Several times, the ground had shuddered around him. Twice he had nearly fallen into sink holes that yawned open at his approach. The deep fissures and gullies were almost invisible until the warrior was right on top of them, forcing Dorgo to adopt a slow, cautious pace.

When his thirst at last refused to be put off by the badly gnawed pulp, Dorgo selected a winding gully that sported a thick clump of ugly green toadstools along its edge. It seemed a likely enough prospect to conceal a small spring.

The Tsavag crept to the edge of the depression, peering down into its gloom. Before he could react, the lip of the gully broke away beneath him. Dorgo flailed his arms to catch himself, but the searing jolt of pain that shot through him as his wounded arm caught at the crumbling ground caused his entire body to grow numb. With the grace of a boulder, he crashed to the bottom of the gully, the clatter of his violent descent echoing all around him.

Dorgo was still, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, not wishing to betray his presence by making more noise. The beastkin were almost blind, relying upon sound to stalk their prey. Dorgo was determined to see them before they heard him. At least the clammy chill that filled the gloom of the gully boded well. There had to be water nearby to imbue the air with such dankness. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Dorgo saw something sparkling in the fitful light. He had found not merely a spring, but a pool.

The hunter took a scrambling lunge towards the water, and then froze. A gruesome shape was reflected in the surface of the water. Slowly, Dorgo lifted his eyes to stare at the creature that cast its image over the water. Sprawled across a big rock, knifelike scales running across its back and sides, was a huge zhaga. The lizard regarded him coldly with an amber-hued eye, its forked tongue licking at the air. Dorgo locked his fist around the crude spear he had fashioned, bracing himself for the reptile’s attack.

The zhaga seemed wary rather than aggressive, more interested in savouring the patch of sunlight it had found than lunging for the warrior. Dorgo could see its long, thick tail, bloated with stored fat. A quick glance showed him that bones were strewn all around the pool. Clearly, the lizard had fed well off those who thought to visit its pool, perhaps well enough that it was no longer hungry?

Keeping his eyes locked on the sunning lizard, Dorgo scooped water from the pool into his mouth. It was bitter, foul with minerals, but to the hunter it was like a gift from the gods. Soon, he forgot the menace of the zhaga, his body revelling in the long-denied succour of water. It was with an effort that he finally pulled himself away from the pool, leaving it to the indolent zhaga. He had few delusions about his good fortune as he struggled out of the shadows of the gully and back onto the plain. When thirst next drove him down into the gullies, he could hardly expect to be so lucky again.

On his third day in the Prowling Lands, Dorgo found himself again driven to brave the fissures. He took greater care lowering himself into the depression this time. Once his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he found he was in a shallow ravine, scraggly clumps of weed poking out of its earthern walls. No pool of free-standing water greeted him this time. He only hoped he would be spared the presence of another zhaga, one without a fattened tail. The hunter walked to the nearest clutch of weeds. He knew that the vegetation was his best guide to the presence of water.

Working his spear, he began to dig at the weeds, cutting through the earth to expose the pasty roots. He smiled when he felt the moisture clinging to the weeds. Abandoning the spear, he pawed at the wall with his hands. Soon his efforts were rewarded with a thin trickle of water, the boon of some underground spring. Dorgo scooped out a patch of wall, using his hands to strain the liquid as he drank, trying to force more water than mud into his mouth.

So lost was he in his labours, that the Tsavag almost failed to hear the distant crash of some large creature moving across the plain above. The ponderous boom was repeated, the walls of the gully shaking as the thing stalked closer. Dorgo gathered his spear, ready to scurry down the gully before whatever was tromping across the plain should find him. There were tales of giants living in the Grey, stories that they did not keep to the forest like the beastkin, but roved abroad to meet their ferocious appetites. The thought chilled the warrior. Fear of the giants had kept the tribes from exterminating the beastkin long ago, for no man dared match himself against creatures that were said to be almost godlike.

Still, the hunter’s curiosity had been awakened. Moreover, he knew he should learn in which direction the hulk was travelling so that he might avoid it. Dorgo lifted his head above the rim of the gully, peering across the flatlands even as the ground shook once more. Distant, but distinct, he saw the immense creature that made the earth tremble so. The hunter laughed, springing from the trench with a strength he had not felt in days. His spear raised above his head, he yelled and shouted at the distant colossus. Slowly, the beast turned, moving towards him in long, plodding steps.

By the merest chance, Dorgo had found another of the Tsavags’ war mammoths returning from its hunt. There was no need to brave another night exposed upon the Prowling Lands. Tonight he would sleep in the mammoth-hide yurts of his tribe.

The encampment of the Tong tribe was situated across the muddy floor of a wide valley. Jagged mountains loomed over the expanse, great spires of rock like the broken teeth of a fallen god. Great mouths dotted the jumbled confusion of the mountains, constantly gurgling with hot volcanic mud that would ooze down the slopes to add to the mire of the valley.

A vast array of grasses and shrubs thrived upon the mineral-rich mud, though trees found it impossible to drive roots into the porous mush. It was not the most hospitable environment for men either and the Tsavag yurts were built on stilts of mammoth bone to keep them well-above the quagmire. The mammoths gorged upon the abundant grasses and their muscles were improved by the daily exertion of lumbering through the morass.

The only predators that menaced the valley were the black condors that nested in the mountains, but, while large enough to carry off a full-grown man in their talons, they were too small to threaten the mammoths.

The encampment was alive with smells and noises when Dorgo at last emerged from the hide-walled yurt of Unegen, the tribe’s witch doctor. The scarred old healer had tended the hunter’s arm, rubbing a pasty unguent into the wound after cutting away the stump of the ivory shard with a rune knife. Dorgo’s arm was wrapped tightly in a binding of zhaga skin soaked in mammoth urine.

The witch doctor had warned him to make prayers to Onogal to placate the pestilential god lest his injury become infected despite the healer’s precautions. He also advised making an offering to great Chen, that the Lord of Fate might oppose any ill-sending from the King of Flies.

Dorgo climbed down from the witch-doctor’s dwelling, sloshing into the muddy ground. His wound tended, he had to see another of his tribesmen before he could rest. He had been summoned to a meeting with his father, to explain to the khagan what had befallen his fellow hunters and their mammoth. A feeling of shame rose within him as he recalled the ease with which the Muhak had ambushed them, tinged with guilt as he considered the reason Lok had ordered the attack. More than that, he was afraid as he recalled the strange warrior who had butchered his way through the Muhak and cut the head from their zar’s shoulders.

That memory brought a quickness into Dorgo’s step. He was not sure why, but he felt a terrible foreboding as he recalled the sinister warrior, a sense of lurking menace that would not relent. A new danger had entered the domain, something clothed in the shape of a man, something that was powerful enough to butcher its way through a score of Muhak killers and still have strength to slaughter Lok as though the chieftain were a feeble old greybeard.

If the stranger stayed in the Crumbling Hills or contented itself with killing Muhak, that would be one thing, but Dorgo could not shake the feeling that it would not remain in the Crumbling Hills for long.

As he walked down the path, which writhed its way between the raised yurts, Dorgo felt his mood darken. He watched the young boys practising with their throwing spears, the blunted weapons springing back from targets of mammoth-skin stretched tight across ivory frames. He saw little girls weaving baskets from marsh reeds, or carefully mending fur vestments with bone needles and sinewy thread. The grown women, their cheeks scarred with the marks of their households, were gathered together on the massive wooden platform where the old mammoths were slaughtered after their time was past. A great old cow mammoth, her tusks curled back upon themselves until they resembled the horns of a ram, had finally been killed by Qotagir, the wiry mammoth master who tended the beasts upon which the tribe depended so greatly. The women were busy carving steaks from the cow’s flanks while others carefully cleaned the animal’s thick skin, readying it for tanning in one of the sweltering smoke huts that stood at either end of the encampment.

Qotagir, with several of his burly assistants, was carrying the carcasses of several antelope to the rocky ground where the mammoths had their pen. The animals would be butchered, ground into miniscule portions and then mixed into the pebbly feed the Tsavag used to supplement the mammoths’ diet of grass and roots.

The beasts would not touch feed that had been mixed with the flesh of their own, but they accepted the meat of antelope and elk readily enough. The meat helped to sharpen the minds of the brutes and increase their aggression in battle, or at least so Qotagir’s forefathers had taught him. Next to the khagan and Yorool, the high shaman, Qotagir was the most important man in the tribe and even the brashest warrior was careful to show him respect.

Beyond the pens, in the place of honour closest to the great mammoths, stood the khagan’s yurt, its walls of hide daubed with the marks of the Tsavag households he commanded, its ivory supports festooned with dangling trophies taken by the tribe in the hunt and in battle. Dorgo saw the iron helms of Vaan warriors, the sharp horns of beastkin, the ragged tatters of Hung banners, even the immense clubs of Muhak marauders and, in a place of honour, the petrified head of a basilisk. The trophies were a display for the benefit of the warriors who waited upon their chief, a reminder that there had always been great warriors among the Tsavag, a humbling lesson for men grown arrogant in their own accomplishments.

The humbling display was not lost upon Dorgo as he climbed the ladder up to the platform of his father’s hut. He looked at the prayer flags waving in the wind above the ivory crown of the yurt, one for each of the hunters who had been killed by the Muhak. Normally, the bodies would have been left for the condors, the great messengers of Chen, to bear up into the afterworld, but they still lay far away in the Crumbling Hills. Instead, Yorool would paint their names upon large prayer flags, that the birds might see them as they flew above the valley and inform Mighty Chen of the lost souls that would seek entrance into the Realm of the Gods.

His rescuers in the Prowling Lands had questioned Dorgo carefully, making certain that he had indeed seen his comrades killed. It was no small thing to paint the mark of a living man upon a prayer flag. Chen might seek out his soul and tear it from his body while he still lived if the god felt that he had been deceived.

The floor of the yurt was covered with furs, the hides of bear and sabretusk warring with those of yhetee and tiger for space. The walls were clothed in murals painted upon the skins of zhagas, each painting representing some great event from the time of their ancestors. Dorgo felt his eyes drawn to the ancient mural that showed Teiyogtei, the king, uniting the tribes of the domain into his mighty horde.

A little pride found its way into the warrior’s heart, despite his fears and shame. The eight tribes of the domain all claimed to be the heirs of Teiyogtei’s power, but only the Tsavag were his true sons. They were of the Tong, the same great people that had unleashed Teiyogtei upon the world, the same blood as that of the king flowed through their veins. Theirs was the true legacy, beside which the claims of Hung, Kurgan and gor were nothing more than envious jests.

‘Approach, shamed one,’ a voice called from the gloom of the chamber, crushing the small ember of pride that had started to show upon Dorgo’s face.

The warrior turned at the sound of the voice, turned to face the throne of Hutga Khagan, chief of all the Tsavag, lord of the war mammoths, wielder of the iron moon: Hutga Khagan, his father.

The Tsavag chieftain was a massive, powerfully built man, despite his many years. Streaks of iron stained the black sprawl of his beard and wrinkles burrowed across his face from the corners of his frost-coloured eyes. The khagan’s hair was shaved into a trio of woven braids that fell well past his broad shoulders. Nodules of steel peppered Hutga’s skin, like metal fungi pushing up from within his flesh.

Some among the tribe said the growth was the curse of a Sul sorcerer whose wicked knife had injured Hutga in his youth, others held that it was a mark of favour from the gods. There was a lesson in the whispered stories, Dorgo felt. With the Dark Gods, it was difficult to tell blessing from curse.

Hutga gestured with a steel hand, motioning for his son to approach. Dorgo stepped towards the throne-like seat of ivory and fur, bowing before the chieftain. Hutga stirred within the mass of mammoth hide that swaddled him, shifting from a slumped, comfortable posture to one of dominance and command. The warrior felt a twinge of sympathy for his father. Because of the metal growths, Hutga found it hard to keep warm, the heat of his body draining out of him into the steel nodules. Indeed, he was surprised not to find several of the chieftain’s wives squirming around him, trying to warm his clammy flesh.

Instead of the nimble Tsavag girls, Dorgo found his father’s throne flanked by grim-faced men. Togmol, the khagan’s champion and the greatest warrior of the tribe stood on Hutga’s left, his crescent-bladed ji cradled in his brawny arms. The champion stood a head taller than Dorgo, his beard plaited into elaborate rings, his cheeks deeply scarred with the tally of his deeds. Togmol’s forehead was pitted with bony stubble, like a crazed field of fledgling horns. Another of the capricious marks of the gods.

Beside Togmol stood Ulagan, the wiry hunter who had led the party that found Dorgo in the Prowling Lands. He was dwarfed by the hulking warrior, like a fox beside a wolf.

Ulagan’s scalp was shaved bare, even his topknot cut away. He was in mourning for his wife, who had been claimed by the gods while giving him a son the previous spring. The hunter had been deeply devoted to the woman, one of Togmol’s daughters, and showed no hint of growing out of his sorrow. The flabby, worm-like tentacle that served Ulagan for an arm was coiled tightly around an amulet he wore around his neck, a lock of his dead woman’s hair. The hunter’s other arm, its normalcy jarring after the spectacle of its opposite, gripped the ivory length of an iron-tipped spear.

To the right of the throne, crouched against the arm of the khagan’s seat, was the withered shape of Yorool, the shaman’s scrawny body nearly hidden beneath his leathery robe and cowl of mammoth hide. A pinched face with sharp, fang-like teeth, grinned from the shadow of the hood, grey whiskers sprouting in unsightly patches from the wrinkled folds that had consumed the left half of the shaman’s face. A little ivory rod was pressed between the folds, struggling to keep them from flopping over Yorool’s left eye.

The eyes of the shaman were mismatched, one the colour of amber, the other a little pit of jade fire. Yorool’s expression, such as the right half of his face could muster, was grave and solemn.

‘This one,’ Hutga’s booming voice growled, his thick hand pointing at Ulagan, ‘tells me that only you returned from the Crumbling Hills.’ The chief’s statement brought colour into Ulagan’s face and the hunter could not meet Dorgo’s gaze. ‘You were attacked by Muhak, he says. You were attacked by Zar Lok. This dog says that all the hunters with you, even the war mammoth, were killed by Lok and his cringing jackals.’

Dorgo felt each word like a lash against his skin, the scorn in his father’s voice a fiery welt against his dignity. As each word cut him, he felt his anger grow. Hands clenched into fists, he glared back into Hutga’s contemptuous eyes. ‘I cannot help what Ulagan has told you, any more than I can help it if you will not listen to truth when you hear it!’ he spat. The warrior’s tone brought venom into the khagan’s eyes. Hutga’s muscles tensed, his face quivering with restrained rage. A moment passed and the thin veneer of control was swept away. Hutga lunged to his feet, spilling the heavy hides onto the floor. He thrust his finger at Dorgo as though it were a blade.

‘It is enough that my son shows himself as coward!’ the khagan roared. ‘That he is a liar as well is more shame than I will accept!’

Dorgo bristled at the accusation, scowling at Ulagan, before returning his attention to the furious chieftain. ‘If you have been told the story as it was told to the men who found me in the Prowling Lands, then there is no lie in it!’

Hutga snorted in disgust at the remark, sinking back into his chair. ‘There is spine in you after all, to dare insist upon lies while you stand in your khagan’s hall! Too bad your courage did not show itself when your kinsmen were being butchered by the Muhak!’

Dorgo took a step towards the throne, shaking with rage. ‘They were already dead when I made my escape,’ he snarled. ‘There was nothing more I could do for them. I was cheated of even the chance to avenge them.’

‘Yes!’ roared Hutga, ‘by a nameless warrior who came from nowhere to strike down the Muhak!’ The khagan’s stare bored into Dorgo’s eyes. ‘You dare to repeat this nonsense to me? One man against a score of Muhak! You dare to tell me this is what you saw?’

‘I can only tell you what happened,’ Dorgo snapped back.

Hutga shook his head in disgust. ‘Your lies are overbold, pup! You have the audacity to claim this stranger, this warrior in crimson armour, fought Lok and killed him! Not even another of the eight warlords of the domain could have killed Lok in battle, and you have the belly to tell me some lone stranger killed him and took his head?’

Dorgo was silent in his rage, feeling his father’s ire feeding his anger. He felt the wound in his arm start to bleed as the tension in his muscles tore at the witch doctor’s dressing.

‘Take this dog from my sight,’ Hutga hissed at Togmol. ‘Bind him in the smoke lodge until he feels like telling me what really happened!’ He turned his face from Dorgo, glaring instead at Ulagan. ‘Gather the best scouts among the Tsavag,’ he told the hunter. ‘Take them to the territory of the Muhak and bring one of them back with you. If the truth will not shape itself to fit this dog’s crooked tongue, then perhaps a Kurgan will speak it for him!’

Dorgo shook Togmol’s arm from his shoulder as the warrior started to lead him away. He cast one last, hateful look at his father, but Hutga had already turned away from him. The khagan was in conference with Yorool, his head leaning close to the shaman’s hooded face. Whatever emotion might have been on Yorool’s grisly countenance, Dorgo could not see, but there was no mistaking the expression that had supplanted rage on the powerful face of Hutga.

For the first time he could remember, Dorgo saw fear in his father’s eyes.

CHAPTER THREE

The desert shone like a great ball of silver fire, casting the light of moons and stars in fantastic reflection across the horizon. Great spires of crystal, tall as mountains and sharp as knives, scratched at the sky, their smooth skins of glass shining in the dark. No product of a sane world, the spires were things more akin to trees than rocks, growing with the seasons, sprouting jagged offspring that would ooze from their sides until gravity broke them free. The spires rose from the floor of a great bowl-like depression. The basin was littered with shimmering dust left behind by fallen crystals, saturating the ground with a layer of shard-like ash.

No tree or bush, not even the most desperate of weed or rugged cactus grew in the desolation beneath the spires. No plant could thrive in the glassy ground, and nothing could endure the hideous heat that infested the basin as sunlight was magnified and twisted by the reflective crystal peaks.

Yet there was life in the Desert of Mirrors, a corrupt and abominable breed of life. In caverns deep beneath the blazing shard-sand, things crept and slithered, hiding from the hateful day. In the warmth of night, as the crystals surrendered the heat they had absorbed from the sun, these creatures abandoned their troglodyte existence, emerging upon the desert floor to prowl and hunt and kill. The nocturnal creatures were strange and abhorrent, grisly in form and mien, but there were none so vile as those that clung to the shape of man.

Their burrows beneath the shard-sand were little better than those of beasts, earthen tunnels chewed into the earth by the rudest of tools. Bones and debris marked the entrances, the loathsome stink of those who dwelled below wafting upwards in a noxious fume.

No animal was too base for the cave dwellers to feast upon, the husks of centipedes mingling with the skeletons of rats and the carapaces of stalk spiders. The bodies of men and all his kindred creatures were scattered upon the offal heaps, though these bore the marks of a more abominable appetite.

Flesh was cut, burned and scarred and organs ripped from still living-breasts in diseased rite and ritual, the debased worship of Neiglen, the abhorred Crow God of the Hung. However great the famine, none but the bloated daemon flies fed upon the wreckage of the sacrifices, even the hungriest of scavengers shunning bodies marked with the puckered pox-rune of the Plague God.

As the night engulfed the eerie silence of the desert, the tunnels spewed their wretched inhabitants. Scrawny with privation or bloated with disease, they scrabbled from their holes, scraps of black cloth striving to cover their leprous frames. Most wore masks of bone held together with strips of sinew and leather, each crude helm a rough representation of a crow skull.

Even those without masks bore the image of their god upon them, their flesh cut and torn to display the pox-rune. As they emerged from their holes, the sickly throng was faced with their image reflected a thousand times from the facets of the crystal spires and the shimmering wreck of the shard-sand.

Every night of their lives, the tribesmen emerged from the festering darkness to be confronted by their own diseased images, reminded by the silent mockery of the mountains what they were, how far from the shape of man they had fallen.

Anguish stabbed into their hearts, the bitter misery of something lost and forsaken. Their pain filled them, turning to envious hate. Nothing deserved to live whole and pure; whatever walked or crawled upon the land must be as vile as they were. They would bring the cursed touch of Neiglen to anything that strayed too near the Desert of Mirrors, destroying its blasphemous health with the taint of corruption.

Hate was the only thing left to them, the only thing to nourish them in their misery. It was the gift of Neiglen to his children, the gift of life where all should be death. In return, the Crow God asked only for their flesh, flesh to decay and infest with his noxious blessings.

The Veh-Kung had been horsemen once, like all the tribes of the Hung, but no longer. They had been drawn to the beauty of the Desert of Mirrors, had thought to dwell within its fabulous valleys. None had known the plague that was hidden behind the beauty, the corruption that lurked within the crystal spires and the shard-sand. Their horses had died, struck down by the taint.

The Veh-Kung had not been so lucky, for men have souls to amuse the gods while beasts have none. In their dreams, the shamans of the Veh-Kung had seen the Crow God, had heard his bubbling voice promise them life and sanctuary if only they would bow to him and accept his blessings. In their despair, the tribe had accepted the god’s terrible offer.

Generations later, the once proud horse warriors had become diseased troglodytes, cowering from the sun in their holes, their lives consumed by the endless struggle for sustenance upon the desert and the endless struggle to feed the spectral hunger of their god.

The tribesmen stared up at the moon, letting their eyes adjust to the bright silvery disk. After the gloom of their burrows, even the moon was dazzlingly bright, for few among the Veh-Kung could still endure the full sun for all but the briefest span.

Sickle-bladed swords and brutal axes of bone and copper filled the Veh-Kung’s hands as they turned away from the moon. The hours of darkness were few and there were many to feed in the tunnels. Such game as the desert offered was scant, but the tribesmen knew it would have to be stalked and found. There was never enough to lay stores against famine. When hunger came to the Veh-Kung, it was solved in the manner it had always been solved, by sacrificing those the tribe could no longer feed to Neiglen. The warriors whispered their fawning prayers to the Crow God so that they would find game this night. Each man knew that when the Starving Times came upon the tribe, those first to feed Neiglen were the hunters who returned empty-handed.

The ragged throng of the Veh-Kung slowly spread out across the desert, wading through the piled dunes of shard-sand, their eyes watching the glass for any sign of disturbance. Sometimes they would stop, digging into the sand with gloved hands to root out a centipede or scorpion. The stings of such creatures stabbed ineffectually against the leprous flesh of the hunters.

There was little pain one touched by Neiglen could still feel. Beside the cancerous blessings of the Crow God, the venom of a scorpion was as docile as a soft caress.

As the pestilential warriors spread through the Desert of Mirrors, they spied a strange thing. A lone rider was heading into the shimmering landscape, a solitary warrior mounted upon some fantastic beast. The stink of blood was on the stranger, so powerful that even at such a distance it was able to overcome the reek of the Veh-Kung’s bodies and imprint itself upon their senses.

The warriors hissed and gibbered, excited by the prospect of such easy prey. The beast they would carve for their fires, the man would be carved upon the altar of Neiglen.

Excitement passed in a silent pulse through the desert, drawing dozens of warriors to the ambush being laid by those who had first spotted the rider.

They quickly lent their efforts to the attack. Masters of the desert, the Veh-Kung knew how to find concealment even in the mirrored expanse, using the spires to cast deceptive reflections to misdirect their prey.

Many times, overly bold scouts of the Kurgan and other Hung tribes had fallen victim to the deceit of the desert and those who knew how to exploit it. The tactics that had consumed entire warbands would make short work of a solitary horseman.

Spiteful smiles twisted the broken faces of the Veh-Kung behind their bone masks. Surely the horseman was a gift from the Crow God, a blessing from their beneficent patron.

The first misgivings began to spread when the strange, loping trot of the rider’s steed became evident. The beast he rode was no horse, nor any kind of creature the Veh-Kung knew from experience or legend. In shape it was something like a wolf, but it moved like a reptile. Its hide was shaggy and black beneath the moon, its belly scaly and bright. A long, barbed tail lashed the ground behind it as it ran and monstrous dewclaws gouged the ground beneath its feet. Sword-like horns protruded from its wolfish head, stabbing back over its neck.

The stink of blood and slaughter was upon it, the carrion-scent of battle and its leavings.

Upon the beast’s back, his armoured bulk filling a bronze saddle, sat a huge warrior in dark armour. The man’s head was hidden behind a grotesque skull-faced helm, antlers rising from its sides forming the war-rune of Khorne.

In one hand, the warrior held a massive chain, which was fastened around the neck of his steed. In the other he gripped a fang of solid darkness that smoked and fumed, a sword that looked to have been torn from the heart of a moonless night. An aura of menace joined the blood-stink of the beast as the Veh-Kung saw the sword, the innate fear of prey when it hears the tread of the predator.

Anxiously, the Veh-Kung kept to their hiding places, waiting for the sinister stranger to enter their domain and fall into their trap. Fearsome as he seemed, the Veh-Kung feared their chieftain Bleda more, and the kahn would not be pleased if they allowed the intruder to invade their lands. Better to stand their ground and face the enemy where they had numbers and terrain to their advantage.

However favoured he might be by Khorne, whatever strength the Blood God might have invested him with, there was no escape for the stranger.

Dozens of tribesmen were already waiting for him, every moment bringing more drifting into position from deeper in the desert. By the time the paws of his steed touched shard-sand, a hundred Veh-Kung would be waiting for him.

Even if he was a powerful war-chief, the stranger could hardly hope to kill them all.

Enek Zjarr turned away from the pillar of blue fire, tearing his eyes away from the scene revealed by the heatless flame only with the greatest effort. His hand was trembling as he cast salt into the witch-flame. With a whoosh, the fire vanished, leaving behind only a wisp of foul-smelling smoke and the charred bones of the sacrifice from which it had flared into life. The blackened skull of the victim grinned at the sorcerer from the ashes.

The Hung mystic felt a tremor of fear run through him, reminded of the deathly helm of the warrior he had seen revealed in the fire. Despising the sensation, Enek Zjarr flicked his tattooed fingers at the skull, a burst of invisible force shattering it into dust.

The sorcerer paced slowly away from the circle of ash, disturbed by what his scrying had shown him. The stone walls of his sanctum threw back the echoes of his steps as he walked. Imps watched him from the wooden shelves that lined the hall, cowering behind alembics and piles of musty scrolls as their master passed. Suckled upon the sorcerer’s blood, they felt the anxiety and doubt that plagued his mind.

Enek Zjarr ignored the cringing daemons and stepped towards a stone altar. His painted hand waved through the air once more. The iron braziers set to either side of the dais smouldered into life, surrounding the altar in an orange glow.

Enek Zjarr stalked into the light. Tall and thin, his body swaddled in a heavy robe of spider silk, the sorcerer moved behind the ancient altar. A massive iron-banded book rested upon the stone surface, fixed to the rock by thick chains.

The sorcerer turned his dark eyes towards the tome, an expression almost of reverence pulling at his broad, cruel features. He stroked his long, drooping moustache with a lean, talon-nailed hand, closing his eyes in thought.

Finally, a decision reached, Enek Zjarr removed one of the barbaric talismans that dripped from his salmon-hued robe, snapping its cord in his impatience. He gripped the talisman, the skeletal finger of a man, tightly. A preternatural chill oozed into his bones as he held it, feeling its lingering antipathy seep into him. The sorcerer smiled, an expression colder than the feel of the morbid relic. The owner of that finger had been his greatest rival in life, but he had not been able to stop Enek Zjarr from overcoming him and assuming his position as kahn of all the Sul. As a warning to others, Enek Zjarr had ensured that his father’s death was not an easy one. In the end, only a single finger had remained as token of the Sul chieftain’s passing. It was all of his father that Enek Zjarr needed.

The sorcerer pressed the decayed finger against the leather cover of the tome, stabbing it into the brass lock that crouched above the binding. Tiny metal jaws snapped closed around the bone, gnawing at it with daemonic rapacity.

As the metal teeth tore into the bone, the lock slithered off the book, crawling across the altar and into the shadows. Enek Zjarr gave the eerie device no further consideration. His hand pulled back the heavy cover, chains rattling as it slapped against the stone altar. Thin, wisp-like pages stood exposed to his gaze, their surfaces covered in painted Cathayan characters.

Enek Zjarr leaned down, letting the blunted bulb of his nose almost touch the thin fragility of the book. Carefully, he exhaled against the book, letting his breath turn the pages. Leaning back, he watched as the pages flipped past, turned by their own energies.

Slowly at first, then faster and ever faster, the pages whipped by, searching for the knowledge the sorcerer desired. After a time, and with an abrupt suddenness, the book fell still once more. Enek Zjarr stared at the page, reading the elaborate Cathayan glyphs. Colour drained from his face and stunned dread entered his eyes. He turned away, wondering if he dared believe what the tome had told him.

Enek Zjarr looked again at the pile of ash from which the blue fire had risen. A haunted light crept into the black pools of his eyes.

He wondered if he dared not believe.

With a bubbling wail, the Veh-Kung warrior lunged at the intruder, falling down upon the rider from above. A dozen of his tribesmen took up his war cry, leaping down from the sides of the crystal spires. The iron fingers of their gloves shimmered weirdly in the moonlight, crystalline dust coating the metal talons. Like diseased lizards, the Veh-Kung had crawled up the crystal spires, gouging handholds in the living mineral with their claws. They watched from the heights as the stranger penetrated deeper into their lands, as his strange wolf-like beast loped through the shard-sand of the desert.

The first attack had been butchery, the hunters slaughtered nearly to the man by this eerie invader. Their carcasses where strewn through the silent canyons, mangled and torn by blade and fang. The stranger’s black sword had been as remorseless as the elements, carving a swathe of blood across the desert. The jaws and claws of his ghastly steed had been no less deadly, spilling entrails and snapping spines with every swipe of its immense paws, crushing bodies with every flick of its powerful tail.

The hunters’ weapons had broken against the armour of the warrior, splintering like rotten sticks against the dark plates. Wherever they attacked, however carefully they laid their ambush, the stranger was ready for them, almost seeming to welcome the chance to kill. From mazes of mirror that would have confused even a daemon’s twisted mind, the Veh-Kung struck again and again only to have their attacks falter and fail, waves crashing around the uncaring shore.

At last, the few hunters remaining had broken, fleeing back to their burrows to warn the rest of their tribe. Their cowardice earned them death beneath the sacred talons of the Crow God, only the warning they carried allowing them any trace of honour as the shamans’ chain-whips flayed the flesh from their bones. They had found a foe too deadly to overcome, but if the invader thought the men he had slaughtered represented the strength of the Veh-Kung, he was sorely mistaken.

Scores of warriors, each a hand-and-a-half taller than the degenerate hunters, each armoured in plates of reptilian hide boiled to the toughness of bronze, each bearing blades of iron, emerged from the darkness of the tunnels to answer the intruder’s challenge.

The first of the Hung warriors came crashing down against the rider, knocking him from his bronze saddle. The two men struck the ground in a cloud of shimmering dust. Other warriors hurtled earthward, their iron weapons slashing at the wolfish steed. The brute spun and howled as they hit it, gouging deep wounds in its shaggy hide. Warriors were sent reeling as the beast’s massive paws struck at them, slashing through their scaly armour as though it wasn’t there. The barbed tail cracked like a whip behind the creature, knocking men into the shard-sand with each lash of its brutal length. One Veh-Kung, bolder than the rest, landed upon the brute’s back, trying to stab its skull with the rusty curve of his sword. The blade cracked against the monster’s horns, notching as it struck the impossibly thick bones.

Before the warrior could recover, the beast twisted its head around, sinking its jaws into his leg. With a savage jerk, the wolf-beast ripped the man from its back, pitching him into the sand. Even as he started to rise, the beast pounced on him, collapsing his chest beneath its tremendous weight. Teeth bared at the warriors still prowling around its flanks, the monster brought one paw smashing down into the squirming thing pinned beneath it, flattening its victim’s head into a mash of brain and bone.

The shimmering dust that had claimed the Veh-Kung champion and his prey slowly settled. One figure stood, his dark armour dripping with shining sand and putrid gore, his black blade drenched in the blood of his foe, his clawed gauntlet locked around the slimy wetness of his enemy’s throat. At his feet, the rest of the Hung’s body shivered in a mire of its own filth. The intruder’s eyes glared at the other Veh-Kung warriors from behind the steel mask of his helm.

There was contempt in his silence, contempt in the way he tossed the torn flesh of their hero aside. A hungry wail pulsed through the night as the smouldering malignancy of the killer’s sword shuddered in his hand. A tremor of fear ran through the ranks of the Veh-Kung warriors. The invader seemed to savour their terror as he marched towards them, murderous blade at the ready.

Fear fired the Veh-Kung warriors, filling their brutal hearts with such bitter shame that even thoughts of death and butchery could not hold them back. The diseased fighters roared from behind the beaked visages of their bone helms, their voices loathsome and foul. A dozen stalked away from the circle of iron that had grown around the embattled wolf-beast, leaving only a handful of their fellows to keep the brute at bay.

The stranger did not wait for his enemies to charge, but lunged into their midst even as they approached him. The black sword swept down, crunching through rotten armour and putrid flesh, carving its gruesome path through tainted flesh and corrupted blood. One Veh-Kung fell back screaming, clutching at the spurting stump of his arm. A second fell, his body cleft from crown to collar.

A third, trying to strike at the rushing killer, was caught in the steely grip of his foe’s free hand. With a wrenching twist, the killer broke the Hung’s arm, driving his own pitted blade back into the warrior’s chest.

From above, a pair of Veh-Kung sprang at the invader, dropping from their handholds in the crystal spires. The strange killer spun as he heard them utter their bubbling war cries. The black sword swept through the moonlight, its mephitic smoke streaming behind it.

Cries turned to liquid groans as the daemon steel chopped through the hurtling figures, splashing their wreckage across the shard-sand. The intruder turned away from the dissected human debris, lashing out at the warriors who had thought to exploit the distraction. Screams pierced the night as a leg was cut from its body, as a head was shorn from its shoulders and an arm ripped from its socket. Corroded swords crashed against darkened armour, buckling and snapping as they futilely sought weakness in the unyielding mail. Weaponless, stunned warriors backed away, broken swords dropping from slackened fingers. Now they were at the stranger’s mercy.

He showed them none. The death rattles of the Hung warriors rose in a strangled chorus, pawing at the shimmering spires as they faded into the night wind. The armoured killer waded through the slaughter, an engine of butchery, sparing none in his path. The great wolf-beast entered the battle alongside its master, adding its primitive savagery to the massacre.

When the last Veh-Kung fell, the monstrous creature threw its head back, its massive frame shaking as a thunderous howl of triumph echoed across the desert.

The lone killer did not savour the massacre as he stalked among the dead, pacing through the mire of the battlefield. There was an expectant, brooding quality to his movements, like a panther waiting for its prey.

Again and again, he circled the carnage, giving no notice to the dying things that littered the ground, waiting, waiting for what would come, waiting for what he had come here to kill.

The stranger froze suddenly as he circled the dead. He turned his face from the battlefield, his eyes boring into the shadows between the crystal spires. Long he watched the black valley as sound slowly crawled from the gloom, the heavy tread of marching feet crunching through the shard-sand. A rancid, green glow began to banish the darkness, a sickly light that caused the facets of the spires to smoke as it fell upon them. A shape slowly manifested within the green light, a great palanquin of bone and sinew borne upon the shoulders of dozens of scrawny, stumbling figures.

By degrees, the stranger could see that they were youths, their leprous flesh pitted by the marks of plague and decay. They watched him with cold, feverish eyes set far into the pits of their near-fleshless skulls. Above the labouring wretches, upon the sides of the palanquin, braziers of corroded metal smouldered and smoked, giving off the pestilential glow. Basking in that glow, sprawled upon the cushioned seat of the carriage, was an oozing bulk, more toad than man.

The thing’s pallid flesh stood naked beneath the stars, covered only in welts, boils and lesions, its entire mass marked with thousands of tiny pox-runes that wept slime and filth across the thing’s enormity. Hairless and swollen, the thing’s flabby head grinned down at the stranger.

Almost absently, it raised a chubby hand to the great antlers that jutted from its face, pulling at strips of decayed meat impaled upon the horns. A tongue the colour of scum and stagnation flickered from the thing’s ghastly maw, snatching maggots from the rotting flesh with a tiny mouth of its own.

‘You kill my hunters,’ the bloated creature said, the sound wheezing from its obesity like the gargle of a drowning whale. ‘You kill my warriors,’ it said, brushing a worm from its cheek. ‘You invade my lands, a place sacred to the great Crow God.’ There was no hint of anger in the jovial croak, only a subdued amusement. The palanquin creaked and the litter bearers struggled as the thing leaned forwards, letting the brown pits of its eyes focus more closely upon the lone warrior. The haughty smile spread impossibly wide across its flabby visage. ‘All by yourself. I applaud the audacity of such madness.’

The thing’s stumpy hands clapped together like sides of raw beef. ‘How are you called, madman? The Crow God will be pleased when I offer up your flesh to him.’

The stranger stood silent, a grim shadow among the carnage of the battleground. The face of the fat warlord twitched in annoyance. More than the slaughter of his minions, more than the invasion of his lands, more even than blasphemy against his god, he found the stranger’s discourtesy upsetting. He licked at a second strip of meat, oozing back into his throne.

‘I am Bleda Carrion-crown,’ the bulk announced with a slimy burp. ‘Kahn of the Veh-Kung, Master of the Desert of Mirrors, Chosen of the Crow God, Tabernacle of the Divine Rot.’

The grotesque warlord shifted his tremendous mass, his flabby hands closing around a strange weapon dangling from the arm of his throne. It was sections of metal rod connected by rusty links of chain. Seven in number, each rod was pitted and foul with decay, dripping with some internal corruption.

‘This is my Chain of Seventy Plagues,’ Bleda said, caressing the weapon with obscene fervour. ‘No man has ever stood against it. I ask again, who you are and where you have come from. Is it the Vaan who have dared such foolishness? The Sul? Surely not the Tsavag? What people spurred you to this madness, for I would favour them in my prayers to Mighty Neiglen!’

The skull-masked stranger shook his head, staring at the swollen hulk of Bleda. ‘A steel rain has come to cleanse with blood and terror,’ his voice rasped, the slither of sword against sheath.

For an instant, fear flared within Bleda’s rancid eyes as he heard the stranger’s spectral voice, as he saw the warrior stalk forward. His hands shivered against his oily flesh, clutching at his throat in alarm. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the pox-runes of Neiglen. The touch of his own afflictions reassured him. Was he not the chosen of his god? Did not the power of Neiglen course through him?

Bleda’s laughter bubbled up from deep within his corrupt bulk.

‘Die nameless then, fool,’ the kahn croaked. Like a sea beast floundering upon the shore, he surged up from his throne, waddling down the seven steps that fronted his palanquin. The ground seemed to cringe beneath him as his feet sank into the shard-sand. Behind him, Bleda’s slaves set down the heavy palanquin and formed a leprous mass around their warlord.

‘You speak of rain and blood and terror? You wear the skull rune of Khorne? Fool! This is the desert, where it has not rained since before the days of Teiyogtei! Blood and terror? Here they belong to one man, one man alone, Bleda of the Veh-Kung! This is the sacred land of Neiglen, where the Blood God has no part.’

Bleda’s voice wheezed with fury as he spat his words onto the sand. He flicked his chain-staff through the air, the rods and links buzzing like a swarm of flies as the wind fled before it. ‘I am the Tabernacle of the Divine Rot,’ the kahn croaked. ‘Behold the power of the Crow God!’

With a flick of his hand, the kahn slapped a flabby finger against the leprous flesh of a slave. Instantly the man collapsed in a groaning, twitching mass. Skin sloughed from his bones and flesh darkened beneath a sheen of filth. A great horn of twisted bone erupted from the slave’s forehead even as his eyes slithered across his face to merge into a single putrid orb at the centre of his head. Hands lengthened into talons and organs swollen with rot burst through his skin. Great fangs dripped from a suddenly gaping maw. A sword-like growth oozed from the slave’s side until at last its weight tore it loose from his body.

The stricken slave moaned, retching as it stooped to retrieve the blade his body had grown. When it stood again, its claws were wrapped tightly around a length of twisted corrosion, a crust of decay flaking down its blade.

Bleda laughed as his slave was consumed by the Divine Rot of Neiglen, his mortal being devoured by the daemonic essence his kahn had infected him with. The plague bearer moaned again, and then started to stumble towards the defiant stranger. Bleda’s corrupt laughter bubbled forth again as he pressed his hand against a second slave.

Hutga sat in the silence of his yurt, staring at the ancient weapon cradled in his lap. The ji had been handed down from the khagans of the Tsavag for centuries. It was a sign of their authority, a testament to their fitness to rule over the Tsavag. He could feel the weight of years as he ran his hand along the moon-shaped blade and its ivory heft. He could almost hear the echoes of his fathers and their fathers, back to the beginning of his people. The mighty weapon was more a part of the khagan than his own skin, more a part of him than his own blood.

The chieftain sighed as the thought came to him, as doubt and disappointment stabbed into him. He had driven his son hard, had done everything he could to make him strong and proud, a true Tong warrior, a man fit to rule when Hutga’s time at last came, but however hard he drove Dorgo, however much he tried to test the boy’s limits, Hutga always felt that his people needed more.

He wondered if perhaps he had driven Dorgo too hard, had set unfair expectations for him. Did he drive the boy so hard because he worried about his fitness to lead, or because he was afraid his love for his son would temper his judgement, would place a man unfit to rule upon the throne of the Tsavags? Did he test Togmol and others who were not of his blood half so severely?

Hutga shook his head. It didn’t matter now. Dorgo had been proven unworthy with his cowardice and his lies. If he had fallen in battle with Lok, his father would have mourned him. For him to return, disgraced and vile, cowering in his falsehoods like some faithless Hung, was more than Hutga could endure.

When Ulagan and his scouts returned with the truth, there would be an end of the matter. Dorgo’s tongue would be cut out for daring to tell such lies and the boy would be cast out from the tribe. The khagan was under no illusion what exile meant: a lingering lonely death in the wilds, if Dorgo did not fall victim to one of the other tribes first. It was debatable which was a worse way to die.

Still, the boy’s cowardice and lies had earned him no less a fate, even if he was the khagan’s son.

What if he had told the truth, though? What if he had seen someone, some stranger from beyond the domain, kill Lok?

Hutga stared hard at the blade of his ji, looking past its keen edge into the dim days of legend when it had been forged by Teiyogtei. None of the other chieftains could have killed Lok.

There was a balance in the domain, some capricious force that prevented the tribes from ever annihilating one another. Each of the eight chieftains was a powerful warlord in his own right, but none was mightier than any other, and none could prevail against one of his rivals. Their strengths and weaknesses were too evenly matched, the balance too close for any one warlord to overcome another.

Dorgo had said the man who killed Lok was not another chieftain, however. That gave Hutga pause. Never in the history of the domain had an intruder been the equal of a chieftain.

Only once in the ancient sagas was such a being recorded. Hutga felt a chill course through him as he pondered the possibility.

The flap of the khagan’s tent was pushed aside and Yorool’s disfigured frame hobbled into sight. The shaman bowed, making obeisance before his lord.

‘The scouts have returned,’ Yorool said. ‘They have captured one of the Muhak.’

Hutga noted the same haunted look in the shaman’s mismatched eyes as he made his report. The khagan forced his own doubts from his face. It was not wise to show weakness, even before the old shaman.

‘He has been taken to the place of questions?’

Yorool nodded, a grim smile spreading on his lip. ‘The Muhak will speak when you ask him to speak. He is only flesh and bone, after all.’

Hutga rose from his throne, smoothing his moustache. ‘Then let us talk with him,’ he told the shaman. For the life of his son, Hutga hoped that the prisoner would bear out Dorgo’s story. For the sake of his people, he prayed that everything Dorgo had told him was a lie.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lashed across the wooden platform, limbs stretched and spread away from his body, chained to small, rounded protrusions, there was little the Muhak captive could do but scream. The Kurgan were noted for their toughness, and the Muhak were rugged even by the grim standards of their savage race, but everything mortal had its breaking point, that stage where mind and soul were at last overwhelmed by pain and the fear of pain. When that point was reached, there was no secret that could not be given voice.

Hutga could see the Muhak’s flesh writhing beneath his skin as the blood-grubs Yorool had set into the Kurgan’s wounds burrowed into the exposed muscle. The insects would gnaw and tear their way deep, never relenting until they found the moist darkness where they could lay their eggs.

The khagan’s face was stern as he watched the Muhak shudder and struggle. The chains would hold even one of his brawny breed. They were the sort of fetters used to hold juvenile mammoths and keep them close to their mothers when the tribe was on the march. Beside that power, the strength of the mightiest Kurgan was nothing.

Hutga looked away from the captive’s screaming face, watching as Qotagir circled the platform. The old Tsavag held an ivory goad in his weathered hand, motioning with it to guide the enormous creature that moved with him, following his every step as though it were his shadow.

Baru’s bulk blotted out the light as it lumbered around the platform, the wood quivering with the mammoth’s every step. The oldest and wisest of the herd, Baru was almost human in its understanding of the commands Qotagir shouted to it. The mammoth was covered in glossy grey hairs, its pillar-like legs coated in old scabs and bruises, its long trunk split into four separate, mouth-like noses. There was a cruel intelligence in Baru’s bulging, crust-rimmed eyes.

Looking into them, Hutga knew that the beast fully appreciated the havoc its master asked of it.

The Muhak’s screams grew louder, more desperate as Qotagir and Baru circled him. His body thrashed against its bonds, at least what was left of it did. His left leg was little more than a mash of pulp pressed deep into the log it had been chained to. He stared at the mangled limb, tears flowing from his eyes. Then his head turned back to Qotagir and the mammoth.

The leathery Tsavag lifted the ivory goad as Baru moved into position. In response, the gigantic animal raised its foreleg. The captive struggled, striving desperately to pull his arm back towards his body. The chains were too secure and his arm didn’t budge. Qotagir’s wizened face split in an ugly grin. With a quick gesture, he brought the goad hurtling downwards. At the same time, Baru brought his huge leg pounding down into the top of the log.

The Muhak’s shrieks intensified as his arm was crushed beneath Baru’s immense weight.

Hutga waved Qotagir away, walking towards the weeping, pleading captive. The last of the warrior was gone and all that was left was tortured flesh and screaming pain. It was time to ask the questions. Now he would hear nothing but truth from this man, and if not... The khagan looked aside to see Qotagir already moving Baru towards the prisoner’s other arm.

‘You will enter the Hunting Halls broken and ruined,’ the khagan told his captive, pointing at the bleeding paste where the Kurgan’s shield-arm had been.

‘The dogs of the Blood God will make sport with one so wretched,’ Hutga spat. ‘Tell me what happened in the Crumbling Hills!’

The Muhak glared at Hutga, despair rising above pain in his gaze. ‘What more can I say that your fat Tsavag ears have not already heard, Hutga Iron-belly! How many times must I tell you what I saw with my own eyes!’ The Kurgan’s voice dropped into a snarl of ferocity. ‘Kill me and be done!’

Hutga gestured at Qotagir. The Muhak followed the motion, watching with horror as Baru lifted his leg into the air. ‘Your sword-arm is next,’ the khagan warned. ‘There will be no place in the Hunting Halls for you.’

‘The plagues of Nurgle wither your manhood, dung-eating swine!’ the Muhak roared. ‘I can say it no differently! We fell upon the long-nose as your kin intruded upon our hunting grounds. Zar Lok bade us wait in ambush for the long-nose, to pierce its belly with our spears. Then we killed the dogs who rode upon the beast. They died like women beneath our clubs!’

The khagan smashed his fist into the Muhak’s bloodied face, splitting his lip and cracking his teeth. This much of the story he knew to be the truth, though the Muhak refused to admit that his zar had been hunting Dorgo, not protecting some imagined claim upon the Crumbling Hills.

It was what followed that Hutga did not believe, what he desperately did not want to believe.

‘The Muhak are accustomed to killing women,’ Hutga growled. ‘They find it challenge enough to test their courage.’ He raised his fist again, satisfied to see the captive cringe in anticipation of the blow. ‘Spare me the boasting of murderers, it is what happened after that I would hear.’

A shudder swept through the Kurgan, a trembling that had nothing to do with the pain that ravaged his body. A deeper fear crept back into his eyes, a terror beside which even the threat of Baru was made small. ‘What I have told you before,’ the captive said, his voice a broken whisper.

‘You dare insist that a lone outlander killed your zar and twenty of his warriors!’

‘A thing of darkness and blood, he was,’ the Muhak gasped, ‘his face hidden behind a skull of steel, his body locked within armour of blood. The sword in his hand was black as death, shrieking and smoking as it hacked down our men.’

‘Lies!’ Hutga roared, smashing his fist against the platform beside the captive’s head. The Muhak flinched at the impact. ‘Your soul will belong to Chen the Deceiver if you die with lies upon your tongue!’

The Muhak sneered up into Hutga’s rage. ‘Look for yourself. Seek the outlander, Hutga Iron-belly, and your head will hang beside Lok’s!’

Hutga backed away, trembling as the threat struck him. The Muhak spoke from ignorance and spite. He did not suspect the horror of what he said, the hideous power he courted with his words. He did not even guess what it was he had seen, what had driven him to abandon his zar and hide in the hills like a frightened rabbit until Ulagan’s scouts found him.

No, the Muhak did not know, but Hutga Khagan did.

The chieftain turned away from the captive, walking to where Yorool waited for him at the edge of the platform. The shaman’s face was as dark as Hutga’s. Hutga shook his head as he saw the fright on Yorool’s mutated face. ‘Lies,’ he insisted again.

‘Then we will question him more?’ Yorool asked. The inquiry stabbed at Hutga like the thrust of a lance. The Muhak’s threat continued to send shivers through his powerful body.

‘No,’ the chieftain said. He lifted his hand in a tightened fist. Qotagir turned Baru around, marching the huge animal from the platform, leading it back to the pens. ‘The pig would only tell us the same lies.’ Hutga opened his hand.

The crowd that had been watching from the periphery of the platform set up a savage, bestial howl of fury, rushing forward in a hate-maddened mob: wives, daughters and mothers of the men who had died in the Crumbling Hills, each woman’s hand clenched tightly around a dull stone knife.

Hutga descended from the platform as the women took their vengeance. There were some things that turned even a warlord’s stomach.

‘What if he was telling the truth?’ Yorool asked, struggling to keep up with Hutga as the two men walked back to the chieftain’s yurt. ‘What he described, what your son described… there is only one thing it could be.’

‘Summon the war chiefs of the tribe,’ Hutga said, cutting him off. ‘I would confer with them. Send for Ulagan and his scouts. I will need them as well.’

‘And your son?’

Hutga did not look at Yorool as he asked the question. He did not want the shaman to see the doubt that wracked him as he thought of Dorgo. The Muhak’s tale supported what Dorgo had told him. Hutga knew the tortured warrior had told him the truth, however much the chieftain tried to deny it. His son was restored to him, redeemed from the shame that had fallen upon him.

The relief he felt was bitter and he felt like a traitor to his people for feeling it. Yes, his son was his again, but at what cost? What cost would his people pay?

‘Bring him to the council,’ Hutga told Yorool. ‘He is neither a liar nor a coward. The Muhak dog confirmed that much.’

‘Then you do believe.’ Yorool’s voice shuddered as he heard his khagan confess his acceptance of the story, and what it implied. It was the shaman’s turn to look away. ‘Long has it been prophesied this day would come, but I had hoped it would not happen in my time. What will you tell your men?’

‘We will tell them only what they need to know,’ Hutga said, struggling to keep his voice strong. ‘Tell them what it is that menaces our people, our land and the whole of the domain.’

Yorool closed his hands in the sign of Khorne, crushing his fists against his chest, bowing his head as he muttered a quiet prayer to the brutal god of battle and slaughter.

‘He has come,’ the shaman hissed, his desperate effort to deny the truth overwhelmed by the fear that pulsed in his heart. The air grew cold as he named his terror.

‘The Skulltaker.’

The Skulltaker.

The blood froze in Bleda’s putrid heart as he realised just what it was he had so boldly challenged. The bloated Veh-Kung chieftain stumbled back, eyes bulging with horror, prayers to his debased Crow God slobbering from suddenly numb lips. The seven-section chain hung limp from fingers grown flaccid.

Bleda continued to watch the strange warrior before him in the dark armour. No mortal man, this warrior. Nothing mortal could move the way he did, striking and slashing in a relentless cascade of violence: tireless, remorseless, unstoppable. The black blade rose and fell in a butcher’s dance, hewing and hacking, ripping and tearing. Bleda had spread the Divine Rot to his entire entourage, sending wave after wave of possessed slaves to attack the warrior.

The daemons charged at him, chopping at him with their corrupt plagueblades. The daemonic steel simply recoiled from its impacts against the man’s unholy armour, sending even the daemons reeling. The warrior gave his foes no quarter, no mercy.

His smoking blade was everywhere, stabbing into rotten lungs, splitting open decayed bellies, lopping off limbs and heads.

The plaguebearers did not falter even in the midst of massacre, but their numbers, the foul vapours that surrounded them, the poisonous touch of their swords, none of these were enough to prevail against their foe.

The slow, sickly movements of the daemons were unequal to the swift, murderous attacks of the warrior. The plaguebearers fought with a hellish vitality beyond that of anything merely mortal, enduring wounds that would have brought the strongest man low.

They did not know pain. They did not fear death. They only knew what their master demanded of them, and so they fought on, oblivious to the carnage slowly consuming them all.

A lion among jackals, the warrior carved a gory swathe through the festering, moaning daemons. Again and again, his blade cut through their diseased flesh, spilling their foul ichor across the shimmering sand until there was too little of the mortal shell left to contain their noxious essence.

Plaguebearers fell beneath his sword, hacked to pieces, collapsing into pools of putrescence as their daemonic essences fled back to the realm of the gods.

It was while the warrior was fighting a crook-backed, fly-faced daemon that his heavy cloak was slashed by a plaguebearer’s sword. The stranger’s side was exposed and for the first time, Bleda could see the chain that crossed the man’s chest from right shoulder to left hip. A grisly trophy grinned at him from the chain: the skull of a man, the chain looped through its sockets, its forehead branded with the rune of Khorne. That was the moment, the moment when Bleda recognised his enemy for who and what he was.

The Skulltaker brought his sword smashing down into the fanged visage of a plaguebearer, rupturing its cyclopean eye and collapsing the bone beneath. The thing staggered away, swiping blindly at him with its claws.

The warrior pursued the maimed daemon, pausing only for the instant it took to chop the hand from a daemon closing upon him from the other side. Returning to his first foe, the Skulltaker stabbed his blade into the thing’s chest, impaling it upon his sword. With brutal savagery, he ripped his weapon free, sending a spray of stagnant black ichor and splintered ribs across the faceted side of a crystal spire.

The warrior did not pause, pivoting as he won his sword free, bringing the blade around in a shrieking arc that slashed through the leg of another daemon. The thing bleated and pitched forwards. Before it could rise, the Skulltaker brought the edge of his weapon down upon its head.

Only five of the daemons remained. They circled the Skulltaker, ropes of filth dripping from their wounds, drool slopping down their faces. The pus-hued eyes of the plaguebearers burned into those behind the skull-mask of the warrior’s helm, blazing with a corrupt inner fire. The Skulltaker glared back, his black blade screaming hungrily in his hand. Shard-sand crunched beneath his boots as he pivoted to watch the daemons as they shuffled around him, tightening their circle.

As one, the fiends rushed at him, hooves and peeling feet slapping against the sand. The first daemon flung its body at the man, exulting as his sword smashed into it, erupting from its back with volcanic fury. The dying daemon’s arms twisted impossibly backwards, grabbing the smoking metal piercing its body.

With all the strength left in its mortal shell, the daemon held the Skulltaker’s sword, keeping it sheathed in the monster’s corrupt flesh. The other daemons rushed the Skulltaker, crushing him beneath their diseased mass, smashing him to the earth beneath their oozing weight.

A nervous laugh wheezed through Bleda’s swollen lips while he watched the plaguebearers tear at the man pinned beneath them with their claws and stab awkwardly at him with their corroded swords. Not a monster from the pits of legend after all, only a man. One who would soon offer up his soul to Neiglen when the daemons ripped it from his body.

The chieftain marched forwards, his flabby face twisting in a sneer of triumph made bitter by the memory of his moment of terror.

Bleda’s step faltered abruptly and his sneer fell from his face. The heap of plaguebearers shifted upwards, exploding in a burst of primal strength and savagery. Daemons were hurled to the ground as the Skulltaker rose once more. The warrior’s hand was locked around the neck of a daemon, the steel fingers digging into its throat, filth gushing from the wound. The man’s armour was pitted and gouged, his cloak torn and ragged. Bleda could see something, something hot and black dripping from the Skulltaker’s wounds.

Even as he watched, the flow became a trickle and the rents in the armour closed, oozing shut as though they had never been.

One of the fallen daemons lunged at the Skulltaker as he strangled its fellow. The warrior spun around, whipping the body of the daemon he held, smashing the one with the other. The rising daemon crumpled under the impact, its collarbone shattered. The daemon he held slipped from his hands as the force of the impact tore its head from its shoulders.

The thing slopped against the ground, shuddering as the diseased spirit abandoned its desiccated husk, fleeing back into the void.

Bleda saw the other two plaguebearers charging at the Skulltaker, but he no longer had any illusions who would prevail. The Veh-Kung started to back away again, wondering if he had time to flee back into his tunnels, wondering if the Skulltaker would be able to find him even in that dank, noxious gloom. Then his eyes closed upon the plaguebearer impaled upon the Skulltaker’s sword.

The daemon’s body had largely disintegrated into a pile of sludge, but the sword was still there, mired in the filth. He looked again at the warrior, facing off against the daemons. A desperate hope came to the Hung chieftain. He scrambled across the shard-sand, his huge frame moving with a speed that belied his obscene bulk. He hurried towards the black sword. If he could use the weapon against the Skulltaker, kill the monster with his own sword…

The Skulltaker turned from the mangled ruin of the last plaguebearer, his skull-mask turning towards Bleda as the fat chieftain rushed for the sword. The warrior moved to intercept his foe, Lok’s skull slapping against his hip as he stalked after the Hung.

Bleda stopped, raising his seven-section chain. His chubby arms whipped the weapon through the air, lashing out at the Skulltaker with the flailing lengths of rod and chain. The warrior staggered as the corrupt bronze segments smacked into him, sizzling against his armour as they struck. A filthy green smog rose from the wounds, steaming into the air.

Bleda snarled, inching closer to the black sword even as he continued to whip the chain through the air. A droning buzz sounded from the chain, the sound of vermin on the wing, as its wielder swung it faster and faster, creating a blinding curtain of crushing metal and poisonous fumes.

As Bleda edged towards the sword, the Skulltaker fought his way through the crashing bronze rods. His breastplate smouldered where the rods had struck him, the left horn of his helm partially melted by the corrosive touch of the weapon.

Blood, dark and steaming, bubbled from new rents in his armour, sizzling as it dripped onto the shimmering sand. Bleda’s satisfaction at the damage his enchanted weapon visited upon the monstrous warrior was tempered by the fact that its touch had not broken the man.

Another foe would be reduced to a quivering mess, retching and shivering as the vile influence of the chain’s power polluted his body. The Skulltaker kept coming, daring the tempest of Bleda’s chain. Foot by foot, he was closing upon the puddle of ruin and his terrible sword.

The Hung kahn gave a bubbling shout, jerking the chain savagely in his hand. The rods whipped around the Skulltaker’s body, coiling around his left arm. Bleda grunted in satisfaction, putting his entire weight into one savage pull on the chain. The Skulltaker staggered as the trapped arm popped from its socket, hanging limp and useless beside his body.

Bleda shuddered to find that even such an injury had drawn no cry of pain from the warrior. His horror at the observation was diminished as he found the nearness of the pool and the black sword.

Still keeping his hand firmly around the seventh of his chain-weapon’s bronze rods, Bleda lunged for the gruesome blade.

Bleda’s fat face twisted back into its triumphant sneer as his chubby fingers closed around the hilt of the sword. Bubbling laughter oozed from the warlord’s mouth as he tore the weapon free from the filth of the plaguebearer.

Laughter decayed into a drawn-out scream. The sword fell from Bleda’s mutilated hand, fat and flesh dripping from the charred extremity in greasy ropes. The black sword fell to the ground, its edge smoking, its eerie voice raised in a ravenous howl.

Bleda pitched to the ground as the chain in his other hand was ripped from his grasp. The chieftain coughed in terror as he saw the Skulltaker free himself from the coils of the chain, casting the magic weapon aside as though it were so much rubbish. Then the killer was advancing on him once more, the grisly scars in his armour healing more with every step.

Croaking wheezes and wracking coughs slopped from Bleda’s swollen face as the chieftain tried to summon the hideous power of his god. Curses and poxes, spells to wither and ruin, hexes and blights, were all known to the lord of the Veh-Kung, for Neiglen was indulgent with his servants, but none could ooze their way onto his tongue, while the searing agony of his mangled hand pulsed through his thoughts and thundered through his blood.

Bleda fought to calm his spirit, to draw upon the powers he had been taught, but the pain would not relent.

The Skulltaker loomed over the reeling kahn. He reached to his shoulder, wrenching his left arm back into place with a dull crack. The warrior’s skull-mask glared down at the quivering chieftain.

Reaching down, he retrieved the black blade, metal gauntlets tightening around the smoking weapon. The scene lingered, the silent warrior towering over the broken, obese hulk of the gasping chieftain.

The molten touch of the black blade had spread up Bleda’s arm, reducing muscle to strips of fried meat, exposing bones that were burnt black.

When Bleda looked up, when the kahn stared into the murderous embers behind the warrior’s helm, when the Skulltaker saw the terror and defeat in the chieftain’s eyes, only then did he strike. In one fluid motion, the black blade was drawn back, and then flashed forwards in a brutal sweep of smoke and sound.

Bleda’s swollen head, with its grotesque antlers and bulging eyes leapt from the kahn’s shoulders, dropping into the shard-sand with a wet plop. The headless trunk of the chieftain crumpled in upon itself, sagging to the ground like a ruptured boil.

The Skulltaker kicked Bleda’s lifeless bulk aside. Stalking across the shard-sand, he knelt beside the chieftain’s staring head. He lifted it from the ground, brushing the clinging slivers of glass from the bloated flesh. Then he brought the keen edge of his sword against his new trophy, stripping the warlord’s features from his head.

Only when the rune of Khorne, branded upon the bone beneath Bleda’s flesh stood exposed beneath the blazing stars, did the warrior relent. He lifted the flayed skull to the sky. Thunder roared in the cloudless night, causing the crystal spires to shiver: the growl of a hungry god.

The atmosphere in Hutga’s yurt was tense, a subdued silence filling the hide-walled hut. The gathered war chiefs and leaders of the tribe stood in a circle around the throne of their khagan, the eyes of every man focused upon their brooding chieftain.

His thoughts were dark, frightened: the troubled mind of a leader who knows his people face crisis and destruction. He glanced across the Tsavag champions, his gaze piercing, haunted.

Only when he saw Dorgo standing beside Togmol did the khagan’s eyes soften. The corroboration of his son’s story, the restoration of his honour was the only blessing hidden within the black words of the dead Muhak and the awful horror which they portended.

‘You have heard the words of my son,’ Hutga said, his voice like gravel grinding beneath a mammoth’s foot. ‘You have heard the words of the Muhak. Zar Lok is dead.’ That statement brought gleams of satisfaction onto the faces of the warriors and smiles onto their scarred visages. Hutga raised his hand, cautioning his war chiefs. ‘Do not be quick to rejoice in his death. The same doom that came upon the Muhak threatens the Tsavag.’

Hutga’s voice dropped to a fearful whisper. ‘The outlander, the warrior who killed Lok, he is doom long threatened in the old prophecies. The Skulltaker has returned.’

The revelation brought a frightened murmur rippling through the room. Powerful warriors, men who had not faltered in battle with the most hideous of beasts and monsters knew fear as they heard Hutga speak the terrible name: the Skulltaker, a figure from the most ancient of the Tsavag legends, the crimson spectre whose menace had hovered above the domain since its very beginning. Even the youngest of the Tsavag was taught about the bloody-handed executioner of Khorne.

‘The Skulltaker,’ Yorool repeated.

The shaman shuffled forwards, his twisted body moving to the centre of the circle. ‘You have all heard the traveller’s tales about him. You have heard of the hungry daemon, the Blooded Wanderer who tests the pride of those who would call themselves warriors. You have heard how he stalks the land, cloaked in a mantle of skulls, his fiery touch searing the flesh from his prey. You have heard how he rides the plains upon a great daemon-beast, killing all who have offended Great Khorne.

The stories of the Skulltaker are many: how he killed the dragon Shaneeth and placed its bleeding heads at the foot of the Skull Throne; how he rode against the ogres of the Marrowchewer, and alone scoured them from the land; how he dared face the Sin Stealer of the decadent Ulvags and vanquished the daemon from the realm of mortals for a thousand years; how he visited destruction upon the blasphemous city of Po and left not one of Lashor’s children alive within its accursed walls.

‘Before any of these things,’ Yorool continued, ‘he was known as the Slayer of Kings. The Skulltaker appeared in the lands of Teiyogtei, to bring low the mightiest of khagans. He stalked across the domain, slaying what he would, leaving a trail of slaughter in his wake. None could stand against him, not the craftiest Hung, the strongest Kurgan or most monstrous gor. All who did battle with him were cut down, their bodies left heaped in great carrion mounds. No tribe or nation had been able to defy the armies of Teiyogtei, but the Skulltaker cut a path through them as though they were feeble children.

‘Teiyogtei could not let the horde he had forged, the land he had carved from the desolation, be destroyed by this champion of havoc. He ordered his armies to stand aside, to make no more battle against the Skulltaker. The great khagan alone would face the monster and decide the fate of the land. Teiyogtei fought the Skulltaker upon a barren hill. For seven days, the mighty lord struggled against the terrible killer.

‘Each wound Teiyogtei suffered was returned against the Skulltaker, but neither could deliver the killing blow. As the seventh day faded into the eighth, Teiyogtei called out to the grim Blood God, asking him to guide his hand, to bring him victory against his awful foe. Khorne answered Teiyogtei’s prayer, and the Bloodeater burned like fire in Teiyogtei’s hand as he drove it into the Skulltaker’s body. Even as the death blow was struck, however, the Skulltaker’s black blade smashed into Teiyogtei, shattering the Blood Crown. The great khagan fell, stricken unto death by the hand of the Skulltaker. Our great lord was taken into his tent, where the sorcerers and healers laboured over him long into the night, but before the eighth day perished and the ninth dawn broke, Teiyogtei’s spirit had gone to the Hunting Halls. His chieftains quarrelled after their lord’s death and divided the domain between them, denying the right of the Tsavags as the true heirs of the king.’

Yorool lifted his misshapen hand, pointing his finger meaningfully at the men around him. ‘This is the tale every child knows,’ the shaman said. ‘There is more to the legend, a secret passed down among shaman and khagan. You were led to believe that Teiyogtei killed the Skulltaker, that all the other tales about him were some other mortal champion whom Khorne had made his executioner. This is wrong. There has only ever been one Skulltaker.

‘The destroyer of cities, the killer of dragons and daemons, is the same warrior who fought against the great king. Teiyogtei knew the terrible prophecy, that the Skulltaker could never be destroyed. He prayed to the gods for victory, but he could only vanquish the Skulltaker, not kill him. Like a daemon, his defeat banished him from the domain of Teiyogtei, but the king knew that the Skulltaker would return when ill stars burned in the heavens and the curse of years was broken.’

‘Ill stars glow in the night,’ Hutga’s solemn voice declared. ‘The Skulltaker returns, returns to destroy the domain of Teiyogtei and all within it.’ He shook his head, feeling the weight of his words, the hopelessness in them. ‘Teiyogtei’s united horde could not stand against him. Now the tribes war against one another, the hand of each turned against the other. Where the horde was broken, the Tsavag must stand alone.’

Grim silence stretched across the room, seeping into the murals and trophies, reaching into every corner. The Tsavag warriors stared at the floor, none of them willing to face his fellow, none of them able to accept the dread that filled their hearts.

Dorgo broke the silence. Brandishing his sword, he lifted his voice in a defiant snarl. ‘If these be the last days of the Tsavag, let us give praise to the gods that they have sent a foe worthy to oppose us! When he comes, we will give him a battle that will shame the wrath of dragon and ogre!’

Hutga rose from his throne, casting aside the heavy blankets that shrouded his massive frame. He strode through the circle, laying his hand against his son’s shoulder. For once, all doubt was gone.

Here was a warrior fit to lead the Tsavag. ‘The jackals take legend and prophecy!’ he roared, turning to face his war chiefs. ‘Here stands one who has seen the Skulltaker! He has seen the monster, and he would fight against it! Does he fight alone! Are there still men among the Tsavag!’

His answer was another roar. The fists of Tsavag warriors struck the air and swords clattered in their sheaths. Dorgo’s boldness and the words of their khagan goaded their courage, fanned the flames of their pride. Where dread had held them only a moment before, now they snarled their defiance. Hutga felt pride flooding through him: pride in his people, that they could still rear such warriors, and pride in his son, that he should be the first to lift his sword and raise his voice.

The khagan’s attention was pulled away from the shouting warriors, drawn to a young Tsavag boy, his cheeks unscarred, who crept timidly into the yurt. The boy dropped to his knees as he saw Hutga look in his direction, grovelling in obeisance before his chieftain. Hutga recognised him as one of Qotagir’s helpers. The boy was pale beneath the layer of dirt that covered his limbs, beads of sweat dripping from his brow.

‘Mighty khagan,’ the boy said. ‘A… a stranger… in the encampment. A sorcerer,’ he added with a shiver.

Hutga marched to the youth, lifting him from the floor by his arm. ‘What is this?’ he demanded of the frightened boy. ‘Who is this sorcerer and how did he pass unchallenged into the camp?’

He had to shake the child to force words from his stammering lips.

‘He… he came from… the sky,’ the boy stuttered. ‘He is one of the Hung. Says he bears a message for our khagan from the Sul.’

Hutga released his hold on the youth. The shouts of the war chiefs faded away as they heard the boy’s words.

A Sul sorcerer in their camp! Every man’s thoughts turned to his family and his home. They knew well the carnage a sorcerer could wreck. Their blood already up, the warriors began to rush from the tent. Hutga moved to impose his metal-studded bulk in the path of his men.

‘Relent, my wolves,’ he told them. ‘I would hear what this Sul rat would say.’ Hutga’s face darkened, twisting into a snarl. ‘Then the sorcerer can die,’ he promised.

Warriors gathered around the wooden platform, spears and swords held in clenched fists. The wreckage of the Muhak captive had been cleared away, only the dark stains in the wood giving silent evidence of his fate. In the pens nearby, the mammoths trumpeted their displeasure and unease, their handlers hard-pressed to pacify the brutes.

There was a foulness in the air, a spectral taint that tortured the animals’ sharp senses. Even the men could feel it, crawling up their spines like icy worms.

At the centre of the platform, impossibly suspended above it, was the thing that evoked such disquiet. It was a great oval of glowing light, the suggestion of shape and form just barely perceptible within the glare. There was the impression of a flattened, disc-like body and a gaping, fang-ridden maw.

The light around the thing faded from one colour to the next, like a prism turning in the sunlight.

Hutga and his war chiefs approached the platform. The khagan’s eyes did not linger on the levitating daemon, but rose to stare at the man who stood upon its back. He was short and stooped, his limbs long and wiry. A black robe was draped around his body, a collection of charms and amulets hanging around his neck. A great helm of gold enclosed his head, its face smooth and without openings, its crown sporting a plume of feathers that changed hue in tandem with the daemon beneath the man’s boots.

‘Hutga Steelskin,’ the faceless man said, his voice a rasping hiss as it escaped from behind his helm. ‘I bring you tidings from the great Enek Zjarr, Kahn of all the Sul, Prophet of Mighty Chenzch.’ The messenger bowed his head ever so slightly, making the briefest of obeisance to the Tsavag chieftain.

The khagan stared back at the sorcerer, unimpressed by the titles of his dark master. Even among the Hung, the Sul had a foul history of betrayal and subterfuge, their every word as crooked as an adder’s tongue. Only the terrible potency of their sorcery and the impossibility of attacking their fortress had prevented the other tribes from wiping them out long ago.

Hatred of the Sul was often the only thing that the different peoples of the domain had in common.

‘You are overbold, Thaulan Scabtongue,’ Hutga said, spitting after he spoke the sorcerer’s name. ‘Do you think I have such fondness to hear the deceits of your master that I would not see your head upon a spear?’ As their khagan spoke, the warriors around him bristled. Dorgo took a step forwards, edging to his father’s side.

Yorool’s eyes darkened and the chill in the air grew colder as he began to evoke his familiar spirits.

‘Hold, khagan,’ Thaulan said, raising his slender, feathered hand. ‘I come here under a truce.’

‘We honour no truce with the Sul,’ growled Togmol, his voice shaking with anger. He had nearly died in battle with the Vaan four summers past, part of a costly war between the two tribes, a war that had been fuelled by Sul lies and Sul manipulation.

The sorcerer turned his faceless helm to the enraged warrior, hate exuding from the polished golden veil. Slowly, Thaulan looked back at Hutga. ‘Even the Tong honour the Call,’ the sorcerer told him. ‘None of the tribes of Teiyogtei has ever forsaken the Call.’

Hutga nodded his head slowly, his thoughts darkening with the sorcerer’s every word. ‘Who summons the chieftains?’ he demanded.

‘Enek Zjarr would confer with his,’ the sorcerer paused, his voice dripping with arrogant contempt, ‘brethren. His divinations have uncovered a threat, something that imperils not only the Sul, but all of the domain.’

The men who had stood with Hutga in his yurt and listened to Yorool relate the grisly tales of the Skulltaker turned anxious glances towards one another. Hutga knew their minds. If there had been any last chance for doubt, the Sul messenger had broken it.

With their sorcerer’s tricks, the Sul had learned of the menace that stalked their lands, the monster that had stepped out of the mists of legend to reap a harvest of death.

‘Tell your dog of a master that Hutga Khagan will answer the Call,’ the chieftain told Thaulan. He looked aside at Dorgo, meeting his son’s troubled gaze. ‘There is much the Tsavag can tell Enek Zjarr about this “threat” he has seen, things we have learned without daemons and scrying stones. Return to him and tell him the Tsavag will meet with the other chieftains to decide how to fight this menace to our peoples.’

If it is not already too late to stop, Hutga thought.

CHAPTER FIVE

The isolated hill stood in a narrow pass, surrounded by craggy towers of jagged rock. The slopes of the rise were barren, devoid of even the merest weed, the stink of death exuding from the very rocks. A great monolith, a huge dolman of black stone, rose from the top of the hill, its surface pitted with angular runes. The monolith had been worn down by time and the elements, its once sharp edges smoothed by wind and rain. An aura of antiquity clung to it, discernible even through the murk of death that hovered around the hill.

The weight of centuries imposed itself upon Hutga Khagan as he marched towards the hill. It had all started here, where Teiyogtei had fought his battle against the Skulltaker so long ago. The king was entombed within the hill, beneath the monolith his horde had raised to honour their fallen warlord. The place was sacred to all the tribes of the domain. Even the brutish warherd of the gors paid honour to the king. It was the one place where no tribe could take up arms against another, a taboo that had never been broken.

Hutga took only one warrior with him as he marched to the hill. Each chieftain was allowed only one companion when he attended the gathering. More might tempt an ambitious man to break the ancient taboo. Hutga allowed his son the prestige of accompanying him.

One day, if the gods willed it, Dorgo would become the leader of the Tsavags. Attending the gathering would allow him the rare opportunity to observe the men who would be his most dangerous foes, to take the measure of his rival chieftains and prepare his people in the struggle against them.

The khagan smiled at the thought. If the Skulltaker was not stopped, there would be no one for Dorgo to lead, no other tribes for him to oppose.

The Skulltaker would scour the domain of life as surely as one of the firestorms that swept through the Barrens of Char when the moons waxed full and the solstice drew near. There would be nothing left behind, only mounds of heads to the glory of Khorne. No man would be shown mercy and neither woman nor child would know pity. Only death had a place in the Skulltaker’s march.

As he approached the hill, Hutga could see a company of warriors in black armour emerge from one of the passes. The coal-black iron plates, the horned helms and crimson banners marked the warriors as belonging to the Vaan. Most powerful of the Kurgan tribes, the Vaan were more dangerous in their way than the Muhak.

Lacking the mutant strength of the Muhak, the Vaan used discipline and cunning to win their battles. Legions of goblin slaves toiled in the mines beneath Blood Rock, the ancient fortress of the tribe, feeding the forges and smithies of the Vaan, helping them build their terrible war machine, to equip their legions of iron-skinned axemen, to craft the cruel missiles of their spear-throwers and the spiked bludgeons of their berserkers.

Despised and reviled as they were, Hutga knew that but for the sorcery of the Sul, the Vaan would have swept aside the other tribes long ago.

The procession of armoured warriors stopped at the mouth of the pass, forming a wall of grim iron across the opening. A huge man emerged from their ranks, towering over the others. The plates of iron that covered him were edged in gold, his gauntlets set with gemstones. A broad, boar-faced helm covered his head, tusks curling up from its sides to form a pair of forward-jutting spikes.

In his hands, the man carried a grisly weapon, a long thick-bladed axe of bronze, scalps dangling from silver rings set into its haft. Runes of slaughter and carnage were etched into the blade and its edge glowed with a scarlet sheen. The inward surface of the hoop was lined with sharp metal teeth and great bladed prongs slanted outwards where the circle of steel lay open.

The weapon was infamous among the tribes: the holy weapon of the Vaan, which they called ‘Crippler’, handed down to their first chieftain by Teiyogtei when the Kurgans were absorbed into his horde. The warrior who carried it could only be their zar, Ratha, a brute upon the battlefield, as arrogant and terrible as his god. Like the Skulltaker, the Vaan were devoted to Khorne alone of the great powers. That fact wouldn’t spare them the attentions of the Skulltaker, however. Khorne’s minions, more so than the followers of other gods, were notoriously unconcerned about what manner of blood they spilled and who died upon their blades.

Like Hutga, Zar Ratha left his procession behind, taking with him only a single warrior bearing the crimson standard of his tribe: a field of blood upon which two blackened axes were crossed. The Kurgan left behind by the zar set up a shout as Ratha walked away, crashing their axes against their shields, a din that echoed from the craggy slopes. Hutga felt a moment of anxiety. He’d left his retinue far behind in the pass, a few score warriors and a pair of mammoths.

Ratha’s force was larger, and much closer. Even the Vaan would not violate the taboo, but there was nothing to prevent them from slinking through the passes and murdering him as he left the gathering. Hutga shook his head. Such untoward tactics were the province of the Hung tribes. Ratha had too much arrogance, too much contempt for his rivals to resort to underhanded strategies. If the Vaan were to attack, it would be in the open where their gory god could look down upon their deeds.

‘Keep your eyes open, your wits sharp and your hand on your blade,’ Hutga whispered to Dorgo just the same.

Even if the Vaan had no penchant for ambush and assassination, the other tribes had few qualms about taking every advantage of their enemies. The Hung tribes, the Sul, Veh-Kung and Seifan, in particular took a cruel delight in treachery and deceit. Killing enemies after the gathering would appeal to their wicked nature.

Dorgo nodded his understanding, and Hutga could tell that the only way his enemies would claim him was over the corpse of his son. In normal times, there would be little danger. The tribes knew the prophecy that guarded their chieftains, that they could not fall by the blade of even another chieftain, but if word of Lok’s death had spread, it might have caused strange thoughts to spread through the domain.

Hutga reached the hill at almost the same time as the two Vaan began to mount the barren slope of brittle red stone. Up close, he could see that what had appeared to be armour from across the plain was in fact a variety of iron plates grafted onto the bare flesh of the warriors. The gold edging was the bronzed skin of the Kurgans showing between the metal plates. Ratha’s boar-faced helm stared silently at the two Tong emissaries, and then his iron-covered hands rose, lifting it from his head.

The countenance beneath was rugged, the nose splintered by an old wound, the chin square and heavy beneath its hairy black beard. Eyes like chips of ice regarded the Tsavags with frigid disdain.

‘Ironbelly and his pup,’ the Vaan zar sneered. ‘Any other time, in any other place, I would praise Khorne for such an opportunity.’ His fingers tightened around the bronze heft of his axe until his knuckles cracked. ‘Thank your ancestors that the Vaan honour the truce of the barrow.’

‘One day our herds will trample Blood Rock flat,’ Dorgo snarled. ‘The Tsavag are not belly-licking goblins to crawl beneath the boots of mongrel-scum like the Vaan.’

Ratha smiled at the young warrior, his expression as cold and cheerless as a viper’s. ‘Your pup has a tongue, Ironbelly. Teach him to curb it or I’ll pluck it out and make him eat it.’

Hutga pushed his son back, scolding him for his emotion. The chieftains played a twisted game among themselves at the gatherings, trying to goad each other into flying into a rage and breaking the truce. Such a chieftain could expect the full fury of all the other tribes.

Several times, to stave off disaster, a chieftain had been compelled to kill his own tribesman who had broken the truce. It was the only appeasement tradition allowed for one who shamed himself at the council. Hutga did not want to consider the possibility of being forced to kill Dorgo under the gloating eyes of Ratha and his ilk.

The Kurgan laughed as Hutga restrained his son. Turning on his heel, Ratha began to climb the hill. He froze after a few steps, dropping into a wary crouch, his weapon held defensively before him. A shape loomed up among the rocks, a form at once massive and twisted. The clatter of hooves on stone trickled down from above and the stink of filthy fur washed down on them from the heights.

An inhuman, braying peel of laughter took up Ratha’s broken mirth. The Vaan chief cursed and straightened as he saw the creature creep into the light.

In form, it was not unlike a man, though the legs were bent upon themselves, impossibly lean beneath the knee and ending in a hoof rather than a proper foot. Mangy brown fur clung to the muscular chest, hanging in knotted clumps from broad shoulders and bulging biceps. The furry arms ended in short-fingered hands upon which a set of wicked-looking bronze fighting claws had been fastened with barbed iron nails.

Like Hutga’s ji and Ratha’s axe, the fighting claws were the ancient heirloom of the creature’s tribe, gifted to its predecessor long ago by Teiyogtei. The head that rose from the brute’s shoulders on a thick stump of neck had nothing in it of the human. The face was pulled into a broad muzzle, fangs jutting from its powerful jaws. Great spiral horns curled up from its scalp, doubling in upon themselves to form thick knobs of bone.

The beastman’s eyes were enormous and pale, like bowls of milk bulging blindly from the pits of its face.

Hutga knew this to be Nhaa, beastlord of the Warherd of Kug. Ratha was wise to show caution before the brute. Of all the chieftains, Nhaa was dangerously unpredictable, savage beyond anything a man could comprehend. The warherd had been driven into the Grey long ago, forced to survive in that grim forest of nightmare and shadow.

The centuries had done nothing to lessen their hatred for the tribes who had banded together to hunt them down. Revenge was one of the purely human drives the beastmen could still claim, and one they never tired of trying to satisfy. It was a testament to the cautious respect even the beastmen afforded their sorcery that the Sul had been able to summon even the beastlord to the gathering.

Nhaa regarded Ratha’s combative pose, snorting loudly as it smelled the surprise that tainted his scent. The gor uttered another braying snicker and began to pick its way back up the hillside, moving with an eerie jerkiness to its gait. Hutga was reminded again that the inhabitants of the Grey were all but blind, relying upon other, less natural senses to navigate their surroundings.

Ratha cursed again and followed after the beastman, his standard bearer behind him. Hutga motioned to Dorgo, warning him again to be wary, but also not to allow himself to be goaded into anything by the other chieftains. Now, above any other time, they could not afford to antagonise the other tribes or allow themselves to be antagonised in turn. The Skulltaker was enemy enough for any of them... for all of them.

The top of the hill was as barren as its slopes, only a few heaps of broken stone and the towering mass of the monolith rising above the crusty red soil. Closer to the monolith, the heavy weight of age was almost overpowering, a sinister air of lost ages and vanished empires. Hutga could almost imagine Teiyogtei’s ghost glaring down at the assembled chieftains, furious at the petty squabbling warlords who had broken his horde between them. Even after so many centuries, the thought of the king’s fury sent a chill shivering through Hutga’s body, and he clutched his heavy mammoth-skin cloak tighter around his shoulders.

The Tong emissaries were among the last to arrive. Nhaa and Ratha had preceded them up the hill. Two of the other chieftains were already there, resting upon jumbles of red-veined granite. They sat far apart, their companions glaring at one another, waiting for an excuse to strike.

The first to catch Hutga’s gaze was Csaba, the zar of the Gahhuks, one of the Kurgan tribes. Csaba was lighter of build than Ratha, though his skin bore the same bronze hue and his hair the same dark cast. Csaba’s armour was simple, strips of leather studded with spikes of iron, his helm open at the face and bereft of adornment save for the horns stabbing outward from its sides.

The Gahhuks were horsemen, priding themselves on their speed and craft. Moreover, armour would hide the chief conceit of the tribe. From crown to foot, the Gahhuks tattooed their bodies, each swirling pattern of lines and circles denoting some great deed the warrior had accomplished.

Csaba, as chieftain, had skin that was nearly black from all the boasts inked into his flesh. Upon their backs, both Csaba and his companion wore bamboo frames across which were stretched flayed skins, each sporting the distinctive Gahhuk tattoos. These were the boldest of their displays, grisly back-banners that incorporated the flayed skin of an enemy defeated in single combat.

No Gahhuk youth was allowed to become a full warrior until he had slain another Gahhuk and stretched his skin upon a bamboo frame.

The other chieftain was Tulka of the Seifan, a tribe of the Hung. Tulka was shorter than the Kurgans around him, but stoutly built and with a panther-like toughness in his wiry limbs. The kahn’s skull was misshapen, lacking the symmetry of a healthy man, with a cluster of eyes peppering his forehead and cheeks. Unlike the dusky hues common to the Seifan, his hair was like spun frost, cascading around his shoulders in glacial streams. The lengthy moustache that fell from his otherwise shaven face was likewise a shocking blue, the tips trapped inside little beads of jade.

The man with Tulka was not unknown to Hutga. Taller than his kahn, with an almost reptilian broadness around his features, Shen was Tulka’s war chief and lieutenant. In the treacherous ways of the Hung, Shen was at once his most trusted underling and his most despised rival. Unlike Csaba and his guard, the Seifan wore elaborate suits of lamellar armour, the scales of copper and iron woven together with thick strips of leather. Round helmets with skirts of copper chain rested on their heads, snakeskin plumes draping down from their peaked crowns.

Beyond the two chiefs, Hutga could see Nhaa, the beastlord perched atop a rock, looking as though it might pounce onto the men around it at any moment. Unlike the others, it appeared that Nhaa had come alone, perhaps as a display of its contempt for its human enemies. For all Hutga knew, the vile creature might have eaten any comrade it had planned to bring with it!

Ratha assumed a place as near to the monolith as possible, defiantly planting his standard in the red earth. Hutga shook his head at the Vaan’s bravado. The crypt of Teiyogtei lie beneath the monolith, and the sounds that rose up from the subterranean tomb could not be explained away by the presence of the priest who tended it. Someday, Ratha’s arrogance would be his downfall. Hutga hoped he was there when something reached up from underground and dragged the Kurgan below.

The last men upon the hill were two Muhaks, their faces hidden beneath masks of tanned flesh, their muscle-ridden bodies a network of scars, naked save for the leather breech-clouts and fur capes they wore.

Hutga was puzzled by the presence of the Muhak, wondering if perhaps one of them was the successor to Lok. Neither bore the fallen zar’s mattock, nor was there the same sense of power that was discernible even in a debased creature like Nhaa. Moreover, the Muhaks were visibly ill-at-ease.

The clatter of rocks and a sharp curse from Ratha pulled Hutga’s attention away from the Muhak emissaries. He saw the Vaan chieftain backing away from the monolith, scowling as something emerged from the pit below. Any hope that the spirits of the tomb were at last reaching out to claim the Vaan were quickly dashed.

It was no spectre of the grave that emerged into the light, but the tall, thin figure of the war-priest who tended the shrine. There had always been a war-priest watching over Teiyogtei’s bones, always an outlander, always entering the domain alone.

The war-priests never left the hill. How they found food or took water was a mystery to the tribes. Even more of a mystery was how a new priest knew to make the pilgrimage to the monolith, to take up the lonely vigil when his predecessor died. Many whispered that Khorne spoke to them in their dreams and guided their steps through these bloody visions.

The war-priest was garbed in a long, tattered cloak of bearskin, its surface painted with gory runes and sigils. A tall, narrow helm of silvery metal framed his thin face. The beard that fell across his neck was a vivid red, the colour of rubies and blood. In his slender hands he carried a long staff of gnarled wood, a slim blade of the same silvery alloy as his helm lashed around its tip.

The outlander was of a people neither Hung nor Kurgan nor Tong; a Norscan from a land far beyond the boundaries of the domain, beyond even the Shadowlands. Alfkaell the Aesling had come far to answer the call of Khorne, lurking within the solitude of Teiyogtei’s tomb through the long years, waiting with a fanatic’s patience to hear the voice of his god again.

The Norscan simply scowled at the men gathered around the hilltop. He removed an object from beneath his cloak, the yellowing brainpan of a skull. Alfkaell stalked towards Ratha, waiting expectantly for the Kurgan to remove the talisman he wore around his neck. A finger-length spike of ruby, a shard from the Blood-Crown of Teiyogtei, the gem rattled as it fell into the macabre bowl.

The war-priest sneered at the zar, and then turned and marched to the other chieftains. By turns, Tulka and Csaba both presented their talismans to the war-priest. When he reached the Muhak emissaries, however, the new zar hesitated before dropping his talisman into the skull, holding it in such a way that it was hidden from view by his hand.

Alfkaell backed away, a murderous grin splitting his face. With one hand, he reached into the skull, lifting from it a finger-sized piece of painted stone. His other hand swept forwards, driving the tip of his spear-staff into the breast of the Muhak who had tried to pass the false talisman. Dark heart’s blood spurted down the length of the staff as Alfkaell pierced the Kurgan, wrenching his blade savagely in the wound.

‘Blasphemer,’ the Norscan snarled, the dying Muhak hanging from his spear like a piece of spitted meat.

At the cry, the other Muhak turned to flee. Instantly, Nhaa leapt down from its stone, scrambling after the man with bestial glee. The two Seifan added their own part to the savage scene, tripping the Muhak with their long axes. They laughed as Nhaa’s weight smashed down into the prone, screaming man. The beastman’s bronze claws slashed through the Kurgan’s powerful shoulders, crunching into the bones beneath.

With frenzied slashes, the gor dug deep into its victim’s body, relenting only when it pulled something wet and glistening from the quivering wretch. Nhaa’s fangs tore into the stringy mess of tissue and it turned away, leaving the man to bleed out.

‘What trick does that scum Lok think to try?’ Csaba observed, stabbing a finger at the dead Muhaks. ‘Why did he not come himself? What was he thinking, trying to pass those fools off on us?’

‘Lok thinks nothing, brothers.’ Every man upon the hill spun as the voice seemed to materialise from nowhere. Where a moment before had been only broken rock and barren hill, stood two figures. One was the tall, robed shape of Enek Zjarr, kahn of the Sul. Behind him stood a smaller, slighter figure, a woman with the dark hair and sallow features of the Sul. Like Enek Zjarr, her robes were covered in mystical symbols, and a riot of amulets and charms hung around her neck.

‘Lok did not come, because Lok is dead,’ Enek Zjarr continued. He strode forwards, boldly marching into the centre of the hilltop. Almost contemptuously, he dropped his talisman into the skull held by Alfkaell. The war-priest glared back at him, annoyed by this man, who refused to be intimidated by his strange powers. It was a dangerous thing to tempt the ire of Alfkaell. Unlike the chieftains, he was not bound by any taboo to honour the truce of the gathering.

The sorcerer’s statement brought exclamations of disbelief from the other chieftains, each alarmed by Enek Zjarr’s words. Hutga could guess their thoughts: Enek Zjarr had managed to tip the balance, had found a way to defy prophecy and kill another chieftain. He’d gathered them here to boast of his accomplishment and to threaten the other tribes with his new power.

Hutga’s shock was of a different nature. Already aware of the Muhak zar’s death, his surprise lay in Enek Zjarr’s awareness of the event. It was eerie proof of the efficacy of the sorcerer’s arcane powers.

Ratha was the quickest to compose himself. Hands locked around the haft of his mancatcher, the Vaan snarled at the sorcerer. ‘What trickery is this, warlock? What lies are these on your crooked tongue?’

Csaba lifted his broad-axe, the moon-like blade glistening in the sunlight. His voice joined that of his fellow zar. ‘Dare your spells against me, wizard, and you’ll find a Gahhuk tougher to kill than a miserable Muhak!’

Nhaa loped towards the sorcerer, its fighting claws bared, its fangs exposed in a feral grin. Tulka leaned back, his eyes hooded as he watched the situation unfold, the immense dadao still sheathed at his side. The treacherous Hung was waiting to see which way the wind would blow before committing himself. Similarly, Alfkaell kept his distance, brutal amusement on his face, clearly enjoying the spectacle of watching the chieftains slaughter one another.

‘It is no trick!’ Hutga roared. The chieftains glanced his way, trying to keep one eye on the Sul emissaries. While he had their attention, Hutga hurried to speak. ‘My son saw Lok die,’ he said, gesturing to Dorgo. ‘It was not Enek Zjarr who killed him, but an outlander.’ The khagan’s voice dropped into an awed hiss. ‘It was the Skulltaker.’

Silence once again hovered over the hill for a moment, as the chieftains worked their minds around Hutga’s statement. Again, it was Ratha who was first to speak.

‘The Skulltaker is a myth,’ the zar sneered, ‘a bogey man to frighten children.’ He gestured with his mancatcher at Enek Zjarr. ‘If Lok is dead, it was this dog’s black sorcery that killed him.’

Dorgo drew his sword, stepping around his father to brandish the weapon at Ratha. ‘Call me a liar again, Kurgan, and the Muhak won’t be the only tribe without a leader!’

‘They aren’t,’ Enek Zjarr said. ‘The Veh-Kung no longer have a kahn.’

‘Bleda?’ Tulka asked, suspicion in his tones. ‘You are telling us Bleda is dead?’

‘Even for a wizard, bearding that fat maggot in his damnable desert would be a fine trick!’ Ratha scoffed. A dangerous thought came to him. ‘Unless he was killed away from the desert, lured by the words of the Sul!’

Rage flickered across Enek Zjarr’s face. The sorcerer’s hand twisted into a claw, gripping something unseen. Light flickered around the Sul’s fingers and a blackened shaft of metal with a bronze, bladed head suddenly manifested in the sorcerer’s grip.

He leaned on the naginta, the dreaded spear-axe that was Teiyogtei’s gift to the Sul. ‘Do not bait me, Kurgan, or the Skulltaker will not need to seek your head!’

The sorcerer’s threat did not faze Ratha, but the menacing words did give Csaba and Tulka pause. Nhaa backed away from the display of sorcery, the fur on its back bristling as it retreated. Hutga shook his head, disgusted. The tribes had warred for so long against one another, so long had they plotted and schemed that even faced by a common foe, they couldn’t set aside their animosity.

Still, for the good of his people, for the good of all their people, he had to try.

Hutga stepped forwards, putting himself between the sorcerer and the zar. He glared at Ratha, and then at Enek Zjarr. ‘You have seen the doom that threatens all of us,’ Hutga scolded the sorcerer. ‘By your words, I gather he has taken the head of Bleda to hang beside that of Lok.’ Enek Zjarr nodded, confirming Hutga’s supposition. ‘Then there can be no doubt that the Skulltaker means to kill us all. If we are to stop him, we must work together, not spend ourselves on petty squabbles!’

‘Ally with the Sul?’ Ratha spat. ‘I’d sooner trust Nhaa with my children and a cooking pot!’ The oath brought a snide laugh from Tulka and a warning growl from the beastlord.

‘If the Skulltaker has come back, he won’t stop with the Veh-Kung and Muhak!’ Csaba shouted, an element of fear in his voice. ‘Hutga is right, he’ll be after all our heads!’

Tulka laughed at the Gahhuk. ‘Because the Tong has been deceived by the sorcerer doesn’t mean I have to play the fool! If I’d known you were such an idiot, Csaba, I would have invaded your lands long ago!’

Csaba bristled at the Seifan’s taunt, the guard behind him stalking towards Tulka and Shen. The two Hung simply grinned back, sharing a sly look, fingers tightening around their swords.

Harsh laughter rolled across the hilltop. The furious chieftains turned to scowl at Alfkaell. The Norscan priest stood in the shadow of the monolith, a cruel smile behind his beard. Without ceremony, he dumped the ruby talismans onto the ground.

‘Such brotherhood and trust among the blood of Teiyogtei,’ the war-priest hissed. ‘Such unity of purpose! Such lofty vision! Even when the wolf prowls inside the tent, still you argue over who gets the warmest blanket: the heirs of Teiyogtei, the men chosen by the great king to inherit his domain and guard it against the gods!’

Alfkaell shook his head. ‘Better he had bent his knee to the Blood God and begged his mercy than leave his legacy in the hands of such fools! Even united, do you think you could stand against the Skulltaker? He will kill you all and set your heads before the Skull Throne! Khorne will consume the land Teiyogtei promised to him, the domain he tried to cheat from a god!

‘Scatter or stand,’ Alfkaell laughed, turning and stalking back into the crypt beneath the monolith. ‘It will not matter. You are all going to die.’

The chieftains were silent, watching until the war-priest had vanished from sight. The Norscan’s malevolent laughter continued to drift back to them. Ratha scowled, spitting at the war-priest’s footprints.

‘Outland scum! We’ll see who will run and hide!’ he raged. ‘No man, no daemon, has ever been able to face the Vaan on the field of battle! This Skulltaker will be ground beneath our axes and it will be his head, not mine that will sit before the Skull Throne!’

Ratha’s oath brought similar boasts from the other chieftains, each declaring their defiance of the Skulltaker, but any illusion of consensus was quickly shattered when they started to discuss plans for joining their forces. The council degenerated quickly into threats and curses, old suspicions and old hates rising again to the fore.

Hutga turned away, motioning for Dorgo to follow him. There was nothing more to discuss. Alliance between the tribes was impossible, the leaders too petty to set aside their differences for the common good. As he made his way back down the hillside, Hutga remembered Alfkaell’s daemonic mirth, the war-priest’s words about the land passing into the Blood God’s realm. The ancient legends claimed that the domain Teiyogtei conquered had been vibrant and fertile. The ruins of that prosperity littered the landscape. After the Skulltaker killed him, the land had been scourged, hellish places like the Desert of Mirrors and the Grey springing into existence as the fell power of the Wastes washed over the domain.

If the Skulltaker were to kill the men who were Teiyogtei’s heirs, those who bore the blood of the khagan within them, what greater perversion might be visited upon the land? Could the domain truly be consumed by the Blood God?

CHAPTER SIX

There was a cruel smile on Zar Csaba Daemontamer’s face as he rode away from Teiyogtei’s hill. A plan had occurred to the Kurgan chieftain as he listened to the other chieftains squabble. He had lost no time abandoning the bickering council, hurrying back to where his riders waited for him to return. With indecent haste, they lashed their tall, powerful stallions to their best effort, hurrying through the narrow passes between the mountains.

It was not fear of attack that filled Csaba with such urgency, but the opportunity that fired his mind. He did not believe Enek Zjarr’s outlandish claims that the Skulltaker had killed Lok for an instant, even if the Tong fool Hutga had been taken in by the sorcerer. Something had clearly happened to the Muhak zar, however. He would never have sent minions to the gathering. Whatever devilry Enek Zjarr had worked with his black magic, Csaba was certain of one thing: the Muhak were weak, weaker perhaps than they had ever been. Without their chieftain they were vulnerable and ripe for conquest: sheep waiting for the wolves.

Csaba licked his lips as he imagined his riders sweeping down on the Muhak villages, enslaving the muscle-bound oafs before they even knew they were under attack. With the strength of the Muhak his to command, with their lands added to his own, the Gahhuk would become a major force in the domain, equal to the mighty Vaan and the mammoth-riding Tsavags.

He would use that strength, use it to annihilate the filthy Seifan. No more would the Hung raid his lands, stealing women and cattle. They would be broken upon the blades of the Gahhuk host.

The bloody visions that filled Csaba’s mind turned sour when he reflected that others at the council could not have failed to see the same opportunities that he had seen. The Vaan were too far away to act quickly, for there were few horsemen among the great army that Ratha commanded.

Nhaa and his warherd were bound to the Grey, twisted by the ghastly power of their dark home until only the strongest of them could endure the light of the sun for any considerable time. Hutga was convinced that the Skulltaker had killed Lok and he would be preparing his people to ward off the legendary wraith.

Thinking of the Sul gave Csaba pause. Who could say what sinister plot the damnable sorcerers were unfolding?

The mind of a Hung was crooked enough, but when it was further twisted by the dark arts it became a maze that no one could travel. Perhaps Enek Zjarr had somehow orchestrated Lok’s death, perhaps his bold claim that Bleda was dead was also truth rather than deception.

Whatever the Sul were planning, Csaba had no intention of hiding behind the metal walls of his stronghold, Iron Keep, and cowering while he let them work their craft throughout the domain. No, he would strike! The Gahhuks would reap the spoils of the Muhak.

If the Sul had indeed killed Bleda, let them take possession of the Desert of Mirrors and its cursed poxes!

The Seifan were a more tangible threat to the Gahhuk. Their territories bordered the lands of the Muhak, just as Csaba’s did. The Seifan were horsemen like the Gahhuk, boasting scythe-wheeled chariots and fang-toothed steeds that were superior to the rugged stallions bred by the Gahhuks.

Tulka could not fail to see the possibilities presented by the weakness of the Muhak, nor fail to appreciate the consequences of not exploiting them. Yes, Csaba concluded, the real threat lay with Tulka. The Hung kahn would rally his armies to ride against the Muhak as quickly as he could, but Tulka had lingered longer at the council and had farther to travel when he left.

If Csaba was quick, his army would already be in the saddle before Tulka was even within sight of Seifan territory.

Soon, the black horses of the Gahhuks left the mountains behind, racing through the foreboding Vulturewood. A forest with a reputation nearly as fearful as that of the Grey, Vulturewood formed the frontier between the lands of the Muhaks and Gahhuks. The gaunt, scraggly-limbed trees rose like skeletal talons from the spongy, fungus-infested earth, forming an imposing fence between the rival Kurgan tribes. The reedy branches of the trees sagged brokenly towards the ground, bent by the weight of their grisly burdens.

For generations, the two tribes had hung the bodies of their victims in the forest, both to boast of their killings and to frighten their neighbours. The stench of death and decay had sickened the forest, turning it ever fouler and more wretched. The streams had become poisonous trickles of filth that reeked of rotten flesh. The trees had become sick and withered, the smaller plant life perishing altogether.

Only the most vile animals continued to haunt the forest: ravens and jackals, rats and shrikes, and the ever-present vultures with their scabby heads and crooked beaks. Darker things also prowled beneath the corpse-ridden boughs, trolls and worse horrors, things that took abominable sustenance from the carrion fruit dangling from the trees.

Men were lost to the Vulturewood, never to be seen again, but those claimed by the forest had been stupid enough to brave it alone or in small numbers. Csaba did not feel any great menace for his company of riders, twenty strong, armed and wary, mounted upon their rugged warmblood steeds. Beasts and even trolls usually had sense enough to leave such a dangerous band of men alone, finding less dangerous meals to stalk.

Yet, as they penetrated deeper into the forest, Csaba could not shake the uneasy feeling that came over him. It was not sound that caused the tingling of his blood, for he could hear nothing above the croaking cackles of the vultures overhead; it was nothing his eyes had seen, for the thick stands of thin trees blocked vision beyond a few dozen yards; it was nothing he smelled, the decaying reek of the forest overwhelming even a Kurgan’s sense of scent, but there was something, something beyond his senses, something beyond his reason that tugged at him, warning him to flee.

As the horses continued to gallop, the Gahhuks no longer had to urge them to greater speed, but had to fight to maintain control of the animals as they lunged recklessly through the trees. Csaba could see the nervous anxiety on the faces of the men around him, could see the outright fear in the eyes of their steeds. Whatever nameless evil he felt, those around him felt it too. So, it must be more than imagination.

Csaba’s hand dropped to the hilt of his dadao, the huge, fat-bladed bronze sword that was his tribe’s gift from the great khagan Teiyogtei. The daemon-forged weapon felt icy beneath his hand, as though it too felt the threat in the air.

Suddenly, the calls of the vultures were silenced. Csaba looked upwards to see the birds scattering into the sky, abandoning their grisly rookeries for the safety of the heavens. He did not ponder their retreat long, however, for in the ensuing quiet he became aware of a new sound. It was the sound of something large and heavy crashing through the forest.

The noise was loud, but too subdued for the clatter of hooves. Csaba was minded of unshod feet or the padding of immense paws. He wondered if perhaps a troll had decided to try them after all, but knew it was something more dire. A lurking band of Muhak, or riders of the Seifan? The shiver of fear that raced through his body told him otherwise. It was a primal sort of fear, something baser and more primitive than thought, something that struck horror into his soul.

The reek of blood washed over Csaba as he clung to the neck of his plunging horse, overpowering even the carrion stink of Vulturewood. Through the trees, he could see something converging on their path. In shape it was like a wolf, but far larger and with bright crimson-hued fur. A long, barbed tail streamed behind the loping beast and upon its back sat…

Csaba shouted to his men, shouted to his horse. His studded riding whip crashed against the flank of his steed, encouraging it to still greater effort without thought of control and no care if the brute’s heart should burst from the strain. Only speed, only flight had room in the zar’s frantic thoughts.

Csaba did not dare to glance back at what he had seen. One look had been enough to tell him what manner of foe hunted him through the forest. It was enough that his ears told him of the monster’s progress as he pursued the chieftain.

He could hear the screams of horses and the cries of his men as the enemy closed upon them, as the smouldering black sword he had seen gripped in the rider’s hand struck and cut them down.

He could smell the blood-stink strengthening as the foe drew ever nearer. The gaunt, twisted trees of the forest flashed past, corpses favouring the Gahhuks with rotten grins as the riders raced onward. The sense of cold, ancient evil clawed at Csaba’s heart, filling his brain with one terrible thought, one ghastly name from the mists of legend: the Skulltaker!

At last, Csaba saw light ahead, a break in the withered forest of Vulturewood. His horse shared his sense of frenzied desperation, plunging through the clawing branches to reach the open plain beyond. The zar gave a savage bark of triumph as relief surged through his body.

Certain that the grim forest would be his doom, feeling the bright sun against his skin struck him as almost miraculous, like the blessing of his savage gods. Around him, other riders broke from the grisly net of the forest, their banners tattered and torn by the jagged, low-hanging branches. Csaba’s dread flared back into life when he saw how few of his men remained. He had drawn his bodyguard from the toughest of his warriors, veterans of countless battles. Twenty had entered the forest with him. Only ten remained.

The chieftain shouted an order to his men, commanding them to rest their flagging steeds. Like their zar, the Gahhuks watched the edge of the forest, eyes trained on the shadowy mass of trees. They tried to tell themselves they watched for any sign of their missing tribesmen, but in truth it was the sinister, armoured rider they looked for.

As seconds stretched into minutes, Csaba began to believe the impossible, that somehow they had lost the Skulltaker in the woods, that perhaps the gruesome warrior was bound to the forest and could not stray from its haunted environs. These desperate hopes were just beginning to secure themselves in Csaba’s mind when a scream, sharp and piercing, rose from the trees.

A horse came galloping from the forest, racing wildly past the resting Gahhuks, its eyes mad with terror. A torn and mangled thing flopped obscenely in its saddle, hacked asunder by a single brutal slash. Csaba and his men were no strangers to violence and savagery, yet they were stunned by the inhuman strength required to render such a blow. A troll might work such carnage upon a body, but certainly not anything human!

One of the Gahhuk warriors gave voice to a piercing cry of alarm, snapping the others from their shock. From the forest, fast on the track of the dead man’s horse came the loping red beast and its ghastly rider. Csaba’s eyes went wide with terror as he felt the Skulltaker’s gaze settle upon him. The zar roared at his men, ordering five of them to ride down the oncoming foe. As they hesitated, Csaba ripped his dadao from its sheath, plunging the fat-blade into the gut of the nearest man. The rider fell from his horse, groaning pitifully as he rolled upon the ground.

The other men needed no further encouragement. Voices raised in trilling war cries, four Gahhuk’s charged the Skulltaker. Csaba lingered long enough to see the foremost close upon the monster, to see the black sword flash at the man, hewing arm and shoulder from the Gahhuk rider in a single savage stroke. The zar did not wait to see how the other three fared. Turning his horse around, he smashed his whip into its flank, spurring it away from the combat, spurring it away from the Skulltaker. The remains of his entourage raced after their fleeing chieftain.

The Iron Keep, Csaba thought, if I can only reach the safety of its walls. This time he risked a look over his shoulder, screaming as he saw the Skulltaker cut down the last of the men he had left to confront his enemy. Already, the wolf-like beast was racing after the Gahhuk riders, eating the dusty plain in long, loping bounds. Ahead, the fastness of the keep was only a small black splotch against the distant hills. The zar despaired as he considered the distance, knowing how far the race must run.

A second look back reassured him. He had seen the chain lashed across the Skulltaker’s chest and the two trophies jangling against his armour as he pursued the chieftain. There was no mistaking the mutated skull of Bleda with its twisted antlers. Csaba knew his fate should the Skulltaker catch him.

Panic cracked the zar’s voice as he ordered two of his guards to break off, to fall back and delay the Skulltaker. A flourish of his fat-bladed sword convinced them, and the two warriors turned their horses. Csaba had no delusions about their chances. He was playing for time, time and distance. If he could hinder the Skulltaker enough, perhaps he might win through.

Once he was behind the walls of his fortress, even the Skulltaker would not be able to reach him. Once behind the walls of his fortress, Csaba would be free to unleash a force no foe could stand against, even if he was the mythic Skulltaker!

The howdah swayed beneath Hutga’s feet as the immense war mammoth made its slow, ponderous way back to the lands of the Tsavag. The khagan’s ivory throne had been removed from his yurt and lashed to the floor of the platform after the custom of his people. Hutga sat there, nestled in his blankets and furs, his metal-studded flesh chilled by the darkening night. His mood was dark and the warriors who had made the long journey to the monolith with him kept their distance, fearing their chieftain’s anger. Only Dorgo and Yorool lingered near the throne, fully aware who it was had provoked Hutga’s temper.

‘Fools!’ the khagan cursed in a spiteful mutter. ‘Blind yapping rats! How can they not see past their jealousies and hates? The whole domain could burn and they wouldn’t lift a finger if it meant helping another’s tribe!’

Dorgo could feel his father’s frustration. His fear had been that he would be unable to make the other tribes believe the Skulltaker had been responsible for Lok’s death. He had hoped that if he could make them understand the dire threat they faced, they would band together against the common foe.

United, perhaps, they would stand a chance against the remorseless killer. Dorgo had dared to share his father’s hope. Now, he knew better. The chieftains were too arrogant, too obsessed with their ambitions to set aside their differences. Making them believe the Skulltaker had returned wasn’t the problem. Making them understand that they could not defeat him on their own was.

‘Csaba is probably already moving on the lands of the Muhak,’ Yorool observed. ‘Now that he knows Lok is gone, the Muhak will be easy prey for his riders. That is, if the Seifan haven’t already invaded the Muhak.’

‘Nhaa will slink back into his forest,’ Hutga considered. ‘That brute will stay there, bide his time and wait for the stink of weakness to reach him. The real threat will be from the Vaan. Ratha won’t worry over Csaba or Tulka, he’ll let them weaken themselves picking over the Muhaks. He knows Nhaa will stay in the Grey for now. No, he’ll see us as the only threat to his ambitions.’

‘What about the Sul?’ Dorgo asked.

Hutga thought around the question for some time. ‘I can’t say what plan moves the Sul. The mind of a Tong is not twisted enough to follow their schemes, but I cannot forget that Enek Zjarr called the council, that he was aware not only of the Skulltaker’s return, but that Lok and Bleda have fallen to him. I think, of them all, the Sul understand the danger that threatens the domain.’

‘So, what will they do about it?’ wondered Yorool. ‘I do not think Enek Zjarr is so foolish as to think the likes of Ratha would ever forgive the past intrigues of the Sul, even when faced by a menace such as the Skulltaker. There is some greater craft behind his gathering the chieftains together.’

‘Aye,’ Hutga agreed. ‘That is one thing upon which I can agree with Ratha. I’d sooner trust the mercy of the Skulltaker than the word of a Sul.’

‘Even if it means the destruction of our people?’ Yorool pressed.

The question gave Hutga pause. Suddenly, he seemed frail and weak in Dorgo’s eyes, weighted down by the burden of his leadership. The khagan shook his head, not liking the paths the question asked him to consider.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Hutga said at last. ‘Whatever plot Enek Zjarr had to unite the tribes has failed. We are all left to fend for ourselves. As I see it, we have two choices. We can run, flee the domain and try to escape into the Shadowlands.’

‘That would be a hard journey,’ Dorgo cautioned. ‘The perils of the domain are at least known. Those of the Shadowlands are forever changing. There would be no guarantee of grazing lands for the mammoths, no certainty of shelter when the snows come. The old and the very young would not survive such an ordeal.’

‘And we do not know that the Skulltaker would not follow,’ Hutga added. ‘That leaves one other choice, the same choice that stood before us before Thaulik Scabtongue’s visit.

‘We ready our warriors, we sharpen our blades, and we wait for the Skulltaker. Let the last stand of the Tsavags be such that it will be the stuff of legend even in the Hunting Halls.’

The Skulltaker’s sword crunched through the breast of the last of Csaba’s riders. With fatalistic abandon, the warriors had ridden back to confront their enemy, throwing themselves upon his sword to give their chieftain time to escape. The Skulltaker watched the last wretch slip from his saddle, his dying body landing in a heap of broken bone and spurting blood. The killer might have found the futility of the warrior’s fearless death amusing.

There was no escape for the men who bore the brand of Khorne beneath their flesh, not in the mortal realm, not in the world of the gods. Death was their doom, death in the name of the Skull Lord, death to honour the Skull Throne. The soul so long denied the Blood God would be his. Nothing would stop the slaughter this time.

The grey, dark walls of Iron Keep loomed ahead, over the scraggly plains, perched upon a broad hillock of weathered pumice.

Ancient and forbidding, its walls had been raised by the magic of Teiyogtei’s sorcerers and strengthened by their dark arts. When the king died and the power of the gods swept across his domain, the taint had infected rock and stone, tree and stream, sand and sky.

Some places bore the marks of the gods more heavily than others. The fortress had been reared by Teiyogtei to protect the long desolate orchards of which only the twisted Vulturewood was a reminder. Now it was the stronghold of the Gahhuks, an impregnable vastness that had defied both siege and sorcery countless times during its long history.

The Skulltaker could see his prey cast a frantic look over his shoulder, the flesh beneath his tattoos pallid with fright, but a smile slowly gripped the man’s features, and the zar uttered once more his shrill bark of triumph. The sacrifice of his guards had not been in vain! The enemy was too far away, his loping beast too slow to cover the distance between chieftain and sanctuary. Csaba’s laughter drifted back to the Skulltaker as the chieftain revelled in his escape.

Neither door nor gate marred the smooth, unbroken walls of Iron Keep. Indeed, it was as if the structure had been built from a single piece of metal. Towers and battlements flowed seamlessly into the massive walls, never betraying rivet or nail. Fifty feet above the floor of the plain, sentries watched from the battlements as their zar galloped towards the sanctuary of his fortress. At Csaba’s shouted commands, the men cast spears at the sinister apparition pursuing him. Several spears struck home in the shaggy wolf-beast, evoking irritated snarls from the horned brute. Others glanced from the Skulltaker’s thick armour, scattering into the dust.

Cries of alarm sounded from the Gahhuk guards as they saw the Skulltaker charge through the barrage. Csaba risked another look back, horrified to see the silent killer closing upon him, gaining ground with every bound of his savage steed. The zar’s whip smashed ruthlessly against the flanks of his horse, driving it to one last, supreme effort. The blank face of Iron Keep reared up before him, but he did not relent. Behind him, the Skulltaker lifted the smoking blade in his hand, ready to strike down the fleeing chieftain.

As Csaba’s horse lunged towards the unbroken wall, the dark metal surface oozed open before it, forming a tunnel through which the zar and his steed plunged. Immediately, the living iron of the fortress wall shut once more, flowing back together like quicksilver.

The Skulltaker brought his monstrous mount rearing back, the brute’s claws pawing at the air. He brought his sword slashing against the metal wall, the daemon steel cutting deep into the strange iron. Molten metal dripped from the grisly scars as the Skulltaker attacked the vanished portal, but just as quickly the wounds closed, restoring the smooth surface of the wall.

‘Batter the walls ’til the crack of doom!’ snarled Csaba. He leered down at the frustrated killer. ‘Armies have broken against these walls! Giants and daemons have failed to breech this fortress! The Iron Keep knows its own and will suffer no intruder! Stay out there and rot, Skulltaker, you won’t take this head for one of your trophies!’

The Skulltaker’s lupine steed dropped back onto its feet, its black eyes glaring up at the jeering chieftain. The Skulltaker leaned back in his bronze saddle, the mask of his helm turning towards the battlements overhead. Csaba flinched as he saw the monster stare at him, the security of his stronghold’s iron walls suddenly seeming fragile and weak. His cringing reaction, his instinctive retreat before the Skulltaker’s gaze was all that preserved the zar’s life.

With a single motion, the killer hurled his smouldering blade at the chieftain. The black sword flashed before Csaba’s face as he recoiled, crashing to the flagstones of the courtyard beyond. Csaba could see the weapon trembling, shrieking where it had stabbed deep into the flagstones. As he watched, the fires within the sword blazed into hellish life. Gahhuks fled from the flaming blade, retreating before the weapon’s sorcery as quickly as their chief had from the monster who had thrown it. The fires consumed the weapon, crumbling it into a mass of ash and cinder.

A spectral gale burst across the courtyard, gathering up the ashes and sweeping them through the air. The stream of cinders billowed upwards, flying over the walls. Csaba dared to look over the battlements once more, watching in terror as the Skulltaker stretched forth his armoured hand. The stream of ashes swirled around the killer’s gauntlet, spiralling faster and faster around his hand. A shape began to form, a long thick shape, bearing a cruel edge. Csaba cringed away from the wall as he saw the ashes re-form into the Skulltaker’s shrieking blade.

The Skulltaker could hear Csaba’s voice shouting at his tribesmen behind the walls of the fortress. More spears rained down upon him as he urged his mount to circle the castle, looking for any break in its unnatural metal walls. As before, they dealt no lasting harm, the wounds on his monstrous steed too shallow to penetrate its heavy hide. Csaba’s voice became more desperate and more outraged with the passing of each breath.

New voices rose in answer to Csaba’s terror. Sharp and clear, the new voices lifted above the walls of Iron Keep in a deep, murderous chant. The Skulltaker paused in his prowl around the stronghold, listening to the brutal prayers. He urged his canine mount to withdraw from the base of the walls. The brute backed away, both beast and rider keeping their eyes trained on the walls. The Skulltaker kept his black sword at the ready, an expectant hiss escaping from behind his mask.

The chanting voices continued to rise, growing louder and harsher, like knives stabbing at the sky. Csaba’s gloating laughter rang out from behind the walls, mixing with the chants of his shamans. Once again, the iron walls oozed open, this time not to allow something in, but to let something out.

Two immense shapes thundered out from the two tunnels in the iron wall. As big as a bull rhinox, built like gigantic oxen, the creatures were things of bronze and brass rather than flesh and bone. Gigantic, hound-like heads jutted from their thick, armoured shoulders, sporting fangs the size of daggers and eyes that burned like fire. Steam sizzled from their jaws, rising into the air in puffs of scarlet mist. The stench of blood and death was upon the creatures, an aura of dread echoing that of the Skulltaker. Upon each of the bronze dog-heads, etched across muzzle and forehead, was the skull-rune of Khorne, the mark of the Blood God upon his fearsome daemons.

The juggernauts pawed at the ground, their clawed hooves slashing the earth into bloody grooves. The skull-rune blazed with the fiery rage of the daemons as they drew the scent of their foe into their huge bodies. The Skulltaker’s steed growled at the daemons, its rider silently awaiting the coming attack.

There would be no quarter given between these creatures of Khorne, no sense of kinship or shared purpose that would subdue their wrath. Destruction of the foe was the only outcome that would appease man or daemon.

The Blood God would settle for nothing less.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The first juggernaut charged the Skulltaker like an avalanche, its heavy hoof-claws churning the earth as it thundered towards him. The warrior waited, watching in silence as the huge bulk rumbled over the ground, its steaming breath hissing between its fanged jaws of brass. The juggernaut roared, a sound like grinding steel, and lowered its head as it made ready to smash into its enemy.

The instant the daemon’s head lowered, the wolf-beast was in motion, leaping from the juggernaut’s path. The Skulltaker’s sword lashed out, hacking at the brute as it barrelled past. Molten blood burst from the daemon’s bronze hide as the sword bit home, crimson steam spurting from the grisly wound carved into its side. The juggernaut’s body ploughed through the earth as its foreleg buckled beneath its weight, severed nearly in half by the Skulltaker. Its enormous mass gouged a deep trench as its momentum drove it onwards until at last it vanished behind a cloud of dust and steam.

The second juggernaut lingered behind, letting its fellow daemon initiate the attack. As the Skulltaker struck the kindred horror, the other daemon stamped its clawed hooves and charged. Again, the warrior’s lupine steed tried to leap from the daemon’s hurtling path, but there was more than a brute’s cunning locked within the bronze shell of the juggernaut. It anticipated the wolf-beast’s leap and was prepared for it. Even as the Skulltaker’s mount leapt, the juggernaut changed its path, smashing into the creature as it landed upon its broad paws.

Bones cracked under the jarring impact as the juggernaut’s thick metal skull rammed into the Skulltaker’s steed, hurling it a hundred yards through the air. The steed landed in a broken pile, snarling and snapping as it tried to force its splintered body to rise.

The juggernaut did not give the wolf-beast any chance. It sprinted across the ground with another burst of frenzied speed, roaring its metallic shriek. Its clawed hooves trampled the wolf-beast beneath them in a ferociously savage display, shattering bones beneath its colossal weight and shredding flesh with its razor claws. Brass fangs tore chunks of meat from the mangled mass, blood sizzling as the heat of the daemon’s inner fires consumed it.

An armoured shape reared up behind the raging juggernaut. With powerful strides, the Skulltaker sprinted towards the bronze daemon, fury shining behind the sockets of his skeletal mask. Thrown when the brute struck his steed, the warrior had swiftly recovered from his violent descent, the unholy power bound within his body sustaining him where a mortal should lie smashed and broken. He rushed at his terrible foe, the smoking darkness of his sword clenched tightly in his fist.

The juggernaut sensed its peril, turning reluctantly from the mash of bones and blood that its hooves had made of the Skulltaker’s steed. Its burning eyes glared balefully at the charging warrior, its maw opening in a steaming roar. The daemon’s fierce display did not cause the Skulltaker to falter. He lunged at the metal monster, and with a single tremendous leap he landed upon its broad bronze back. Powerful legs locked around the daemon’s midsection as the juggernaut strove to unseat the sudden burden, its savage bellows searing the air.

The Skulltaker was oblivious to the daemon’s wrath. Both hands locked around the hilt of his blade, he lifted the black sword high above his head. In a single, brutal thrust, he brought the weapon flashing down. Bronze shrieked as the blade bit through the metal hide of the juggernaut, molten blood exploding from the wound in a burst of steam.

The Skulltaker ignored the burning molten ichor that spattered across his armoured frame, but kept his hands locked around his sword, working it savagely across the wound he had struck. The tear he had gouged in the back of the juggernaut’s head ripped wider as the black sword worried at the cut. Fiery blood cascaded from the wound, the raging daemon frantically trying to buck its tormentor from its back.

The Skulltaker held fast, wrenching his blade back and forth. Crimson steam filled his vision, burning ichor dripped from his arms, his ears rang with the tortured metal shrieks of the daemon, and still he would not relent. Mercilessly, he hacked away at the juggernaut’s neck, ripping wide the wound he had carved. The daemon reared back, trying to press its head against its shoulder and protect its neck.

The motion caused the wound to tear wider, and with a searing wail of rage, the juggernaut lurched forwards. The weight of its massive bronze head was too much for its mangled neck and it tore free, thudding to the earth in a shower of steaming ichor that burned like molten fire upon the ground, a hollow bell-like ring following it as it rolled away.

The headless body staggered, struggled, and then sagged to the earth liked a weary child. The Skulltaker leapt from the bronze hulk as it started to shift, jumping clear before the heavy mass crashed onto its side.

A seething roar singed the air as the Skulltaker paced away from the bronze husk of the juggernaut. The warrior spun around, ready to confront his enemy. The first juggernaut stomped forward, its movements awkward and clumsy. He could see the great dripping wound that had been gouged in its side, one of the daemon’s forelegs held away from the ground, the limb nearly cut through by the Skulltaker’s sword. Even crippled, the smouldering rage of the Blood God still filled the daemon, still drove it to attack and to kill.

The Skulltaker gestured at the bronze monster, waving it forwards with a contemptuous curl of his fingers. The daemon threw its head back, brass jaws chewing the sky as it bellowed its fury.

With berserk frenzy, the juggernaut thundered towards the warrior, crushing rocks beneath its pounding hooves. The warrior’s body grew tense as he lowered into a crouch. The earth trembled beneath his feet as the daemon’s heavy limbs struck the ground. The Skulltaker held the monster’s fiery gaze, eyes locked upon the hellish flames flaring from the juggernaut’s hound-like face. Closer and still closer the bronze titan sped towards him, like the descending hammer of death.

Just before the juggernaut reached him, the Skulltaker pounced, throwing himself at the charging daemon. Smoking steel stabbed into the broad, dog-like head, puncturing the bronze snout just beneath the skull-rune etched across it. The Skulltaker held fast to the embedded sword as the juggernaut reared back, lifting him from the ground. The daemon lashed its head from side to side, trying to throw the man clinging to the sword. Steam sizzled from its jaws and fire flared from its nostrils as the daemon’s fury swelled.

Molten ichor bubbled up around the sword as the monster’s efforts caused the blade’s edge to saw into the bronze skin, widening the wound. At last, as the juggernaut whipped its head around, the sword was torn free, hurling man and weapon into the dirt. The Skulltaker slid across the ground in a tumble of armoured limbs, the black sword rolling free of his fingers. Like the juggernaut before him, he was lost in a cloud of billowing dust.

The juggernaut spun around, its rage a volcanic flame roaring through its bronze body. The brute’s head swung from side to side until it spotted the cloud of dust and the dark figure slowly rising within it. The daemon bellowed its bloodlust, stamping its hooves as it prepared to charge again.

In its wrath, the daemon forgot its mangled limb. It lowered the injured leg, letting too much of its weight rest upon it. The hollow bronze shell snapped like a rotten tree limb, spilling the juggernaut onto the ground. The daemon’s hooves pawed at the ground, trying to secure a grip, trying to right its immense body. Seething grunts of enraged frustration hissed from the juggernaut’s bronze jaws while burning ichor spurted from its severed leg.

Before the daemon could recover, the dark figure of the Skulltaker loomed over it. The juggernaut turned its head, trying to snap at the man, to crush him in its brass jaws. As it tried to bite him, the Skulltaker brought the point of his sword stabbing forwards, thrusting the smoking blade into its fiery eye. The bronze hulk shuddered as the screaming steel stabbed at its very essence. A dull, grinding moan wheezed from the gigantic daemon.

With a final, wracking shiver, the juggernaut was still, its infernal essence cast from the mortal world by the Skulltaker’s sword. Crimson steam seeped into the air as the daemon’s unnatural life fled from its metal shell.

Screams of disbelief and horror echoed from the walls of Iron Keep. The Skulltaker rose from the husk of the juggernaut and turned to face the stronghold of the Gahhuks. He could see Csaba’s face, pale and sweating, among the frightened ranks of the Gahhuks. He gestured at the man with his sword, the man the Blood God had marked for death. Csaba’s voice rose in a stream of frantic commands, a litany of snarled curses and dire threats. Spears clattered around the Skulltaker as the Gahhuks cast them at him.

The Skulltaker turned his back on the Gahhuks. It was not their spears or their numbers that concerned him, it was the unnatural walls of their stronghold that kept him from his prey. Csaba, however, had been too crafty in his attempt to kill the Skulltaker. By unleashing his caged daemons against his enemy, Csaba had given him the tools he needed to breech the unassailable walls of Iron Keep.

For long hours, the Skulltaker laboured over the carcasses of the juggernauts. When he turned again to the walls of the fortress, the black sword was sheathed. In its place he held an immense weapon, a gigantic maul that made Lok’s mattock look like a cobbler’s hammer. The bronze skull of one juggernaut formed the head, the iron spine of the other served as the haft. With his new weapon, the Skulltaker stalked towards the walls. Frightened cries and desperate shouts sounded from the stronghold, the screams of women and children rising above the voices of the warriors on the battlements. Spears and stones rained down around him as he strode to the smooth, unbroken iron barrier.

Iron Keep shuddered as the Skulltaker brought his daemon hammer cracking against it. The malevolence and destructive power of two juggernauts of Khorne had been bound into the grisly maul, the fury of two vanquished daemons eager for revenge. The concentrated malice caused the walls to shiver as the Skulltaker smashed the maul against them. On the third hit, cracks appeared in the unmarred surface, cracks that the living iron did not ooze up to repair. On the fifth strike, flakes of quicksilver exploded across the length of the stronghold’s perimeter as the walls began to fracture. On the seventh blow, the structure rocked as though the entire rise had been shaken by an earthquake.

When the maul cracked against the walls for the eighth time, Iron Keep broke beneath it. Towers shattered like broken glass. Like a crashing glacier, the walls toppled. Gahhuks wailed in horror as their fortress collapsed around them, burying them in mounds of twisted iron, crushing them beneath the weight of their fortress.

As the walls tumbled down, the Skulltaker cast aside the maul and drew his sword. The blade flared into life, screaming hungrily as it smelled the blood of the vanquished Gahhuks, as it heard the moans of the maimed and the dying. The Skulltaker ignored the broken wretches crawling from the rubble as he stalked into what had been the courtyard. Only one Gahhuk concerned him this day.

Wherever he was, Zar Csaba Daemontamer would not escape the Skulltaker.

The tension within Hutga’s yurt was scarcely less intense than that of the disastrous council at the monolith. A dozen of the Tsavag’s best warriors stood at the ready, weapons bared, each face filled with hate and suspicion. They had good reason to be anxious. The Sul had sent no lesser sorcerer than Enek Zjarr to meet with their khagan this time.

The sorcerer-kahn of the Sul stood before Hutga’s ivory throne, a sinister figure cloaked in black, the dreaded naginta of his tribe clutched in his bony hand. ‘Soulchewer’ the weapon had been named by those who had faced it in battle, for its cruel edge was said to strike not merely a man’s flesh, but his spirit as well. More forbidding even than the sacred weapon were the unseen powers that lurked within the sorcerer, the ghastly spells and magics only a sorcerer could master. The Tsavag warriors had reason to be tense, each of them wondering if his blade could strike faster than Enek Zjarr’s sorcery.

Alone among the Tsavag warriors, Dorgo kept his attention not upon Enek Zjarr, but on the woman who had accompanied him to the encampment. She was the same raven-haired companion who had been with the sorcerer at the council. Now he had time to look at her closer, he was struck by the beauty of her slender features, her narrow emerald eyes and full red lips.

Enek Zjarr had introduced her as Sanya and she was both apprentice and consort to the sorcerer. Like her master, she wore a long robe of black silk, a riot of talismans and amulets draped around her neck and across her rounded chest. Her hands, when they emerged from the confines of her robe’s embroidered sleeves, were slim and almost childishly smooth, sporting an array of jewelled rings and bracelets of silver and gold. Around her waist, a heavy chain of silver circled her body, pouches and flasks of strangely hued liquid dangling from its links.

If Enek Zjarr’s face was one of serene indifference, that of his apprentice was even more inscrutable, her smile as empty as it was enigmatic. Dorgo could not shake an impression of lurking danger around the woman and knew that his tribesmen were wrong to restrict their wariness to the sorcerer. The witch could just as easily work magic as her master could and probably with no less dire consequences. Indeed, with everyone focused upon the kahn, Dorgo regarded Sanya as the more immediate threat.

‘Prosperity and security be yours, most beneficent khagan,’ Enek Zjarr said, his words slithering through the tent. For all the humility of his speech, there was an undercurrent of withering scorn in the sorcerer’s voice, a note of mocking contempt that caused Dorgo’s hair to bristle. The temerity of the Sul was second only to their perfidy. ‘I am pleased you have allowed an audience to this most unworthy one.’

Hutga scowled at the sorcerer’s feigned deference. ‘Speak your words, magus,’ the khagan said. ‘You did not come here to play lickspittle and I weary of listening to a jackal play at courtesy. What causes you to bring your foul magics to the land of the Tsavags? Surely you do not intend another council?’

A sad look came over Enek Zjarr’s countenance. ‘No, I fear that would avail us nothing. The other chieftains will not acknowledge the menace, which threatens us all, until it is too late. Their heads will hang from the Skulltaker’s belt before they will listen.’

‘And you think I will?’ Hutga challenged.

‘You, at least, are aware of what it is that stalks these lands,’ Enek Zjarr said. ‘You know it is the Skulltaker, returned to claim the flesh of Teiyogtei, to cut the legacy of the king from the bellies of his warlords. You know that the Skulltaker is a foe that no man, not even a chieftain, may face in battle. Tell me, Hutga Khagan, did you plan to flee the domain with your tribe or withdraw to the burial grounds of your race and make a final hopeless stand against an unbeatable enemy?’

Hutga clenched his fist, growling at the sneering sorcerer. ‘It is better to die fighting than die running!’

Enek Zjarr bowed by way of apology. ‘What if I told you there was a third path you could take, a path that could save your people and destroy the Skulltaker?’

‘I would call such claims the crooked lies of a Hung,’ Hutga replied, his voice as cold as the iron nodules beneath his skin.

‘One does not need to tell lies to a dead man,’ Enek Zjarr said plainly. ‘Only united could the tribes have met our enemy in battle with any hope of success. Before we were even aware of the threat, two of our number were already dead. Six, perhaps, might have been enough, for that number is sacred to Lashor, Khorne’s most dire adversary among the gods, but the others would not lay aside their quarrels long enough to confront our foe.’

‘And you have found a way to destroy the Skulltaker without the others?’ Hutga scoffed.

‘Indeed,’ Enek Zjarr replied. ‘After the council dispersed, I returned to my palace and consulted my familiar spirits. My imps and daemons searched the forbidden places of the ethereal world, long into the night, hunting for the knowledge I required. Shall I tell you what I discovered?’ Hutga made a surly motion with his hand, impatient for the sorcerer to speak his piece. ‘They told me there is a way, dangerous, perhaps as deadly as the Skulltaker himself, but a way nonetheless.’

‘Teiyogtei Khagan could not kill the Skulltaker,’ observed Yorool. The shaman had been crouching before Hutga’s throne, muttering prayers of protection against any sorcery Enek Zjarr thought to visit upon his chieftain. Now, the sorcerer’s presumption broke Yorool’s concentration. He pointed an indignant finger at the Hung wizard. ‘If the great king could not kill him, nothing mortal can!’

‘Ah,’ cooed the sorcerer, ‘but our vanquished king did kill the Skulltaker. It was the will of Khorne that the monster did not stay dead. Perhaps Khorne will be less indulgent if his champion falls a second time.’

Enek Zjarr paused, letting his words sink in. ‘The Bloodeater was born in the Black Altar, created from the raw hate of a fallen daemon. Before he descended upon the Shadowlands, Teiyogtei Khagan created the Black Altar from the corpse of a daemon and used its raging spirit to craft the weapons of power he would later use to bind the loyalty of his warlords and build his mighty horde. He kept the most powerful magic for himself, however, binding it into his own Bloodeater. Alone, the weapon was powerful enough to vanquish the Skulltaker, to destroy his mortal shell and banish him from the lands of the domain for five hundred and twelve generations of men!’

Hutga shook his head. The sorcerer was mad. ‘The Black Altar lies deep within the Wastes, if it still exists at all. It is daring the wrath of the gods for a man to challenge the Wastes, worse than suicide for any who would try.’

‘Are the chances for life so very good with the threat of the Skulltaker looming overhead?’ observed Sanya. ‘He serves the Blood God, seeking to deliver the domain to Khorne’s hunger. But for the strength of Teiyogtei, this land and all within it would have been devoured by the Skull Lord long ago, sucked down into his world of blood and slaughter. Now, Khorne again stretches his hand to claim what the king tried to keep from him!’

‘Even if the Black Altar could be found,’ protested Yorool, ‘the Bloodeater was broken by the Skulltaker in his battle with Teiyogtei.’

‘What has been broken can be reforged,’ said Enek Zjarr. ‘The shards of Teiyogtei’s sword lie within his barrow. If they were gathered, if they were taken to the Black Altar, the blade could be remade.’

Hutga considered the sorcerer’s claims, scratching his chin as he mulled over the Hung’s words. He concentrated not only on what Enek Zjarr said, but what he left unsaid. ‘Why do you need me?’ the chieftain asked. ‘For that matter, how do I know it is Enek Zjarr I meet with and not a sorcerer’s simulacrum?’

Enek Zjarr’s face twisted into a withering scowl. ‘Do you think I would trust a doppelganger with Soulchewer?’ he snarled, letting the butt of his weapon smack against the floor of the yurt. ‘If I had a choice, do you think I would come here, begging the aid of a filthy Tong warlord and his brood of mammoth-suckling whelps! I come to you because I need you, because to get the shards of the Bloodeater I must go to the one place in the domain where my powers are useless! The mark of Khorne is upon the tomb of Teiyogtei Khagan and no magic can overcome the Blood God’s curse. It is men of swords, not sorcery, that are needed to prevail against the guardian of the tomb. Strong in magic, alas the Sul have no affinity for base weapons of blade and bludgeon.’

That at least sounded like the truth to Hutga’s ears. Whatever schemes the Sul might be plotting, there was one fact even the sorcerers could not escape: the Skulltaker was after them as much as he was the other tribes. If Enek Zjarr had truly divined a way to fight the Skulltaker, Hutga owed it to his people to investigate the claim. He motioned to one of his attendants, pointing to a heavy flagon hanging from the hide wall.

‘We will drink the venom of alliance,’ the khagan decided, locking eyes with Enek Zjarr, looking for any last sign of deception. He grunted derisively. The Sul were such masters of treachery that they wore their faces like the mask of a Muhak when they wanted to hide something.

There was no hesitancy in Enek Zjarr as he accepted the flagon, drawing a deep draught of syrupy amber liquid from the leather jug. The venom of alliance was an old tradition among the tribes, a powerful poison that each tribe brewed from the venom of stalk-spiders and the spores of fungi. The combination was unique to each tribe, requiring its own antidote known only to the shamans.

If the chieftain seeking alliance broke his word, the offended tribe would withhold the antidote, condemning him to months of excruciating agony as the poison ravaged his body. It was not potent enough to kill, no poison was strong enough to kill one who bore the daemon weapons of Teiyogtei, but the pain was enough to make even a chieftain wish for death.

‘You are satisfied?’ Enek Zjarr asked, wiping amber poison from his lips.

‘I will be when we have journeyed to the monolith and I see for myself the shards of Teiyogtei’s sword,’ Hutga answered. ‘Twenty of my best warriors will go with us… for protection.’

‘Forty would be better,’ interrupted Sanya.

Hutga laughed at the woman. ‘Forty men just to deal with that Norscan swine Alfkaell? We are warriors, wench, not feeble Sul mystics!’

Enek Zjarr simply smiled at the khagan’s boast. ‘Who said the Norscan is the only guardian of the tomb?’

The sorcerer’s warning echoed in the silence that suddenly filled the yurt.

Blood bubbled from Zar Csaba’s mouth as he slowly, painfully crawled across the courtyard. Cast down with the walls of his fortress, the chieftain had been smashed beneath the rubble, his back broken by the heavy iron debris. All around him, he could hear the moans and cries of his people still buried in the ruins, calling out for help that would never come. Those still whole were scattering across the plains, fleeing before the ghastly being who had brought destruction upon their fortress.

Csaba stabbed his fingers into the dirt, dragging his battered body across the ground. He ground his teeth against the pain. He was one of the eight warlords of Teiyogtei, flesh of the great king. The legacy he had drawn into himself when he became zar of the Gahhuks would sustain him, would heal even a broken back over time. He could rise from his ruin as strong as before, if he could escape. It was not the Skulltaker alone who menaced him now. Weak and crippled, Csaba had to fear his own tribesmen. Any one of them might seize the opportunity to kill their zar and become chief of all the Gahhuks.

Thinking about his many enemies, Csaba slumped against the ground. He reached to his belt, dragging his fat-bladed sword from its horsehair scabbard. The hilt of the weapon felt cold and strong against his palm, reassuring the Kurgan’s flagging spirits.

An armoured boot crunched down upon Csaba’s hand, grinding its heel against his fingers. The dadao slipped from his grip, clattering against the ground. The zar looked up, finding himself looking into the pitiless death-mask of his executioner. Blood flew from Csaba’s mouth as he spat his defiance at the grim apparition.

The Skulltaker’s black blade came sweeping down, ending the reign of Zar Csaba Daemontamer.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The crimson hill and its sinister monolith were no less forbidding than the last time Dorgo had seen them. The air of menace and antiquity still impressed itself upon his senses, the feeling that something unseen was watching his every move, watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike. He could see the same unease on the faces of the other Tsavag warriors as they climbed the red slopes of the hill.

Bold against any mortal foe, this place of the dead king oppressed their spirits. Boasts of past battles, rude curses against the enemies of the tribe, these went unsaid as the men trudged up the silent slopes beneath the black mantle of the night sky.

The Sul sorcerer-kahn and his apprentice marched among the Tsavags. The silence that surrounded the Hung was different from that of the warriors around them, expectant rather than fearful. There was no deciphering the enigmatic expressions the two wore, serene as clay effigies. If Enek Zjarr thought to put his reluctant allies at ease with his placid indifference, the sorcerer had miscalculated. Togmol followed close behind the two Sul, an axe at the ready. Hutga had given the warrior the strictest of commands. Any sign of treachery was to be dealt with swiftly.

At the top of the hill, the giant stone monolith still towered over the men, seeming to have grown over the course of their ascent. The black entrance of Teiyogtei’s tomb yawned beneath its base, a gaping wound in the blood-hued hill. The smell of death rose from the hole, a carrion reek that had even the Tsavags clapping hands to their noses as they approached.

‘Beware the Norscan!’ hissed Sanya.

Both of the Sul had drawn back, placing the mass of Hutga’s warriors between them and the tomb. Dorgo remembered Enek Zjarr’s claim that their sorcery would not work within the tomb, that it was a place sacred to Khorne and as such was anathema to all magics. He remembered too the warning Yorool had impressed upon all the Tsavags. The war-priests of Khorne were not like shamans who served other gods. Their power was not that of spells, but the strength of steel and battle. Few men could hope to match a war-priest in combat for there was no trick of sword or axe that had not been revealed to them by the Blood God.

‘Why should such a formidable warband fear a lone outlander?’

The mocking voice rose from the darkness of the pit, its tones clipped by the heavy Norscan accent. Alfkaell emerged from his subterranean burrow, his elfin helm gleaming in the starlight. If the faces of the Sul sorcerers had been enigmatic there was no mistaking the amused contempt written across that of the Aesling.

‘Forty Tsavag warriors and their chieftain,’ the war-priest continued. The nearest of those warriors backed away at his approach. ‘With the magics of the mighty Sul to make a mockery of honest battle,’ he added, jabbing the point of his spear in the direction of Enek Zjarr and his apprentice. ‘Surely such a union of strength and treachery has nothing to fear from a single man, whoever he might be.’

Alfkaell’s sneering voice reminded the warriors surrounding him of their doubts and fears. Distrust of the Sul brought more than one face turning towards the sorcerers. Fear of the Skulltaker made the skin crawl on the necks of others. Where was the monster Alfkaell so casually evoked? What people did he stalk on his grim hunt?

‘We have come here for Teiyogtei’s sword,’ Hutga said, brandishing his ji. The khagan knew he had to take command of the situation before Alfkaell’s caustic mockery undermined the courage of his already anxious warriors. He was pleased to see men stand their ground as the war-priest came still nearer, emboldened by their chieftain’s voice. ‘Do not stand in our way, outlander,’ he warned.

The Norscan laughed, a sound like wolves tearing flesh. ‘Who moves you to such folly, Hutga Khagan? Do the Tsavag listen to the lies of the Sul?’ Alfkaell gestured at Enek Zjarr with the blade of his spear once more. ‘Ask your new friend if he knows what awaits you in the tomb of the king. See if he dares share the danger he would ask you to brave.’

Hutga rounded on the Sul kahn. The mask of placid serenity had dropped away from Enek Zjarr’s face, replaced by an expression of rage. The sorcerer’s hand tightened around the shaft of the naginta he carried, the sacred weapon of his people. Almost, it seemed, the kahn was going to rise to the Norscan’s baiting tones.

‘What of it, sorcerer?’ Hutga demanded. ‘Is there something that threatens us?’

‘No tomb is without its guardians,’ Enek Zjarr replied acidly. ‘What man can say what manner of abominations have been called up by this outlander and his predecessors down through the years?’

The protest was too quick and too hollow to be convincing. The attitudes of the Tsavag warriors darkened. Men turned away from Alfkaell, re-evaluating which was the greater threat: Sul or Norscan.

‘Suppose we find out together, wizard?’ Hutga growled.

Enek Zjarr recoiled at the suggestion. ‘I have told you, my spells will not work within the tomb. Why else do you think I need your help?’

‘Share in the rewards and not the risks?’ scoffed Hutga. ‘You strike a poor bargain with your allies.’

Dorgo could feel the atmosphere of distrust and menace swelling around him, reaching a point of no return. Most of the warriors had turned on the two Sul, blades that had moments before menaced Alfkaell now pointed at the Hung. He glanced at the war-priest, marking the gloating amusement with which the Norscan watched the disagreement escalate. As much a creature of Khorne as the Skulltaker, it no doubt pleased Alfkaell to see this chance to stop the monster’s rampage, killed before it could even begin.

‘Wait,’ Dorgo told his father as Hutga started to sling further accusations of treachery against Enek Zjarr. ‘If the sorcerer will not enter the tomb, then let him send a surrogate in his stead.’ He stared into the kahn’s cold eyes. ‘A symbol of his trust and faith in his allies.’

‘Of course,’ Enek Zjarr smiled. ‘Such is only to be expected.’ His hand closed around Sanya’s shoulder, pushing the woman towards Hutga. ‘My apprentice will go in my stead, a measure of my faith in your abilities to bring the Bloodeater… and my dear little flower… back safely from the crypt.’

Sanya glared at the sorcerer, looking for the moment as though she would fling herself at her master. Dorgo laid a restraining hand on the woman’s arm, flinching as her withering stare focused upon him. He found himself hoping that whatever power blocked Enek Zjarr’s sorcery applied to his consort as well.

‘I am afraid, sorcerer, that it was not your woman I spoke of,’ Dorgo said. ‘A more substantial measure of your trust is needed to satisfy the Tsavag.’

The eyes of both of the Sul smouldered like embers of hate as they fixed upon Dorgo. Sanya’s hand came up, scratching at his face. Dorgo caught the slender arm, pinning it to her side. He laughed openly as the witch struggled in his grip, making a show of his contempt for her magic, trusting that the display would not be lost on his tribesmen. Fears of sorcerous retribution could wait.

‘What my son means,’ Hutga’s stern voice intoned as the khagan caught the intention behind Dorgo’s words, ‘is that we need something you cannot replace. Give me Soulchewer to take down into the pit and I’ll trust you to remain above.’ Hutga watched Enek Zjarr’s face contort with outrage. ‘Otherwise our pact concludes here. The Bloodeater remains with Teiyogtei’s bones and our tribes must face the Skulltaker alone.’

Sanya accompanied the Tsavag warriors down into the mouldering tomb. She had been compelled to by her master. It was with great reluctance that Enek Zjarr had given over his naginta. Even then, he had not trusted the weapon to Hutga or any of the Tong, but had insisted that Sanya carry it. The look of hate and betrayal the woman gave him caused Dorgo to wonder at the sorcerer’s foolishness in entrusting the weapon to her. It also impressed upon the warrior something else, something his father had suspected: Enek Zjarr knew what kind of menace lurked in the tomb. That it could cause even a sorcerer such fear did not reassure him.

The sorcerer had remained behind, along with a pair of Tsavags who understood what was expected of them should the others not return. Alfkaell had stayed above as well, sitting upon one of the rocks, chuckling evilly as the expedition descended into the barrow.

Candles of mammoth fat carried by every third warrior illuminated the blackness of the tomb. The stink of death was overwhelming, bringing tears to the eyes of the men. They were forced to linger in the barren antechamber of the tomb, letting their senses become accustomed enough to the reek to allow them to proceed. Dorgo thought he heard something, a curious shuffling sound just audible beneath the gagging, retching disorder of the other warriors. Ulagan appeared to hear it as well, his brow knitting in concentration.

‘When we enter the tomb,’ cautioned Sanya, her voice a fearful whisper, ‘be careful of the walls. Touch nothing unless it be the Bloodeater itself.’ The witch swayed weakly, using the bronze haft of the naginta for support. Some false show of weakness on her part, or was it evidence of the magic-negating influence within the tomb?

Togmol snorted derisively at Sanya’s warning. The tall warrior strode to the huge stone door of the tomb, pressing his back against the portal. He waved aside other warriors who came forwards to help him. Slowly, by inches and degrees, the massive door swung inwards. A carrion reek even worse than what had afflicted the Tsavags before hissed out from behind the stone door. Dorgo felt his gorge rise. Sanya blanched and vomited against the wall. Hutga wiped tears from his face.

‘Nameless children of the Horned One!’ the chieftain cursed. ‘Have the bones of Teiyogtei been rotting these thousand years?’

Several candle-bearing warriors rushed forwards, fighting their way through the stench to show their bravery and be the first to enter the tomb. One of the Tsavags uttered a moan of horror, another took several steps back, prayers to gods and ancestors mumbling from his lips. Dorgo took the candle from the man and pushed his way past him.

Dorgo was not sure what he had expected to find in the tomb of the almost legendary king. Certainly there was treasure, heaped gold and piled gems, suits of armour and stacks of weapons.

A huge, fang-faced idol crouched over the wealth, the skull-rune etched into its horned brow, gigantic bloodstones shining from its eye sockets. A black slab of obsidian stood before the idol, upon which shreds of armour and bits of bone continued to linger. Something shone red from the top of the slab, like a puddle of scarlet tears.

It was not the idol, nor the wealth nor the bones of their ancient king that struck Dorgo and his fellows with disgust. The walls of the tomb were carpeted in decaying meat and long strings of gore dripped from the ceiling. The crypt was more charnel house than grave and carried with it the filthy stench of an abattoir. As he took a step across the threshold, Dorgo found his legs sinking up to the knee in a mire of rancid blood and chewed flesh.

‘When the great king was buried, all the tribes mourned his loss.’ Sanya said. She had appeared at the doorway, staring in horror at the room. ‘To show their grief, the eighth part of each tribe was chosen to be entombed with their lord.’

Dorgo could see the revolting details of the hideous chamber, the shape of some of the things dripping from the walls. He considered the fell power of this place, a power that maintained carrion against the ravages of time and decay, that allowed such a grotesque reminder of ancient horror to linger on through the centuries. He imagined the hundreds who had been buried with Teiyogtei, condemned to die in the dark of the crypt. He imagined the long days in the eternal blackness, without food or air or water. He could see that moment in his mind, that terrible moment when they turned upon one another, to feast upon the only flesh to be had.

‘Blood of all the gods!’ exclaimed Togmol as he waded into the crypt. His knuckles were white against the haft of his axe. Other warriors followed him into the tomb, sloshing through the ghastly filth.

‘Let us get the sword and be gone,’ ordered Hutga as he descended into the mire. ‘The sorcerer was right to shun this place.’

Dorgo followed his father as they waded towards the obsidian slab and the bones of Teiyogtei Khagan. The other warriors spread out, watching the shadows for any sign of the lurking danger that Enek Zjarr had feared.

‘The filthy Norscan has been living here!’ cried out one warrior in shock and revulsion. He gestured with his sword at a crude pallet of wood floating upon the bloody pond. Animal skins were draped across it forming a rough sort of bed. A small waterskin and an assortment of dried meats completed the humble possessions of the war-priest.

‘Living like an animal among all this wealth!’ coughed another warrior. ‘The scum must be mad!’ He reached a calloused hand out to pull a jewelled necklace from one of the piles of treasure. Instantly, Sanya’s voice screamed through the crypt.

‘Touch nothing!’ the sorceress shouted, but the reminder was too late. The warrior had already pulled his prize from the heap, turning it around in his hand as he held it up to the flickering light of his candle. If he heard the woman’s warning, he gave no sign, captivated by the play of light against the sapphires and emeralds. He could see the crypt around him reflected in the stones, somehow less gruesome when viewed in the blue mirror of a sapphire.

Then something appeared that even the facet of a gemstone could not soften. It did not swim like a fish or a man or any living creature, it rose, bobbing up from beneath the surface of the pond like a rotting log rushing up from the depths of a lake.

At first, it was nothing more than a bulbous hump of flesh, bereft of anything that suggested life or menace. Then it opened some of its eyes, opened some of its mouths, opened some of its hands. The warrior who had seized the necklace screamed and the sound was echoed in an idiot chorus from the distorted faces scattered across the hump’s surface.

Before the Tsavag could scream again, a coil of flesh thicker than his leg flickered out from the undulating hump. It wrapped around his neck with such brutal force that it snapped like a twig. Before any of the other warriors could react, the tentacle was retreating back to the loathsome, shrieking body, dragging the corpse of their tribesman with it. The men could only watch in horror as the dozens of faces littered around the thing’s body began to chew the Tsavag’s flesh.

‘Kill it!’ Togmol roared, his voice more sturdy than his trembling hands. The warrior launched himself at the feeding fleshbeast, chopping at it with his axe. Puny, withered arms swatted ineffectually at him from the abomination’s bulk, like so many sickly children trying to fend off a lion. Then another of the massive, ropy tentacles erupted from the thing, smashing into Togmol’s chest like a ram. The Tsavag was thrown back, crashing against a pile of armour. The faces tearing at the body of the warrior the beast had killed became frantic in their efforts to strip the meat from his bones as the hulk surged towards the stunned Togmol.

Before the fleshbeast could move far, other warriors were upon it. Spears stabbed into the quivering hulk and swords slashed at its gibbering faces. Eyes ruptured beneath the blows of maces, while spindly arms were hacked away by the keen edges of axes.

The abomination was oblivious to its injuries, lashing out at the men around it with its flailing tentacles. Faces and gnashing teeth lined the horrific limbs as they whipped and tore at the Tsavags. Warriors retreated as comrades fell, huge chunks bitten from their bodies. Each Tsavag who fell was dragged back to the ox-sized bulk of the thing, to be devoured by its ravenous maws.

‘Get the sword!’ Hutga yelled at Dorgo. The chieftain did not wait to see if his son followed his command. Holding his spear before him, he charged through the knee-deep slush, a war cry ripping from his lungs. The fleshbeast shifted its slobbering, shrieking mass in his direction. A thick, slimy tentacle struck at him, lashing through the air like solid lightning. The chieftain was knocked from his feet, flailing face-first into the muck.

Breath wheezed from Hutga’s body as the tentacle smashed down against him, pressing his body deeper into the mire. He could feel the filth of the tomb slopping down his nose and ears, even as his lungs started to burn from lack of air. Mouths, loathsomely human in their feel, gnawed at his armour and worried at his iron-studded skin. The powerful khagan tried to free himself from the fleshbeast’s vile clutches, but the mass crushing down on him was heavier than a tree and the slimy floor of the tomb offered him no purchase. Drowned or chewed by the fleshbeast, either way he realised that his bones would be joining those of Teiyogtei.

The pressure against his back relented, abruptly and the biting mouths withdrew. Hutga broke the surface of the blood pond, sucking down great gasps of the unclean air. Tsavag warriors worked all around him, savaging the ghastly monster from every quarter. Berserk fury gripped the men, enraged that their khagan should fall before such filth. Togmol led the attack, chopping at the fiend with a double-bladed axe that he had looted from the treasures of the tomb.

Hutga looked around him, sickened by the mangled bodies floating in the ancient gore. At least a dozen of his men had been claimed by the monster, its sucking tentacles still slithering blindly through the soup to drag corpses back to its drooling mouths.

The khagan ground his teeth together. Hefting his spear, he rushed once more at the thing. The ji bit into the monster’s side, blazing like sunfire against its dripping flesh. The thing’s idiot faces did not change their vacuous expressions, but their shrieks became shriller, more agonised than before.

The fleshbeast surged towards Hutga, forcing the chieftain back. The tentacle that whipped out from its body never reached the khagan, however. It was slashed in mid-strike, nearly cleft in half by the blow of a sword. Hutga stabbed at the injured limb with his ji, completing the job. Part of the tentacle shot back into the oozing bulk of the monster, the rest flopping and writhing in the filth of the floor.

While the thing reeled in pain, Togmol and six other warriors converged upon it, cutting and slashing it mercilessly. Greasy black putrescence bubbled up from its wounds and even its maddened mind began to lose the taste for battle.

It tried to sink back into the mire, but the raging Tsavags would not be denied. Togmol’s axe slashed through the hump of flesh, splitting faces as it dug through the leathery shell and into the sludge-like foulness within. The fleshbeast shuddered as pulpy brown paste erupted from this new wound. Laughing vengefully, the other warriors tore and ripped at the quivering abomination, widening the gouges made by Hutga’s spear and Togmol’s axe.

Hutga turned away from the dying monster. It was on his tongue to thank the man who had come to his aid, but in turning he found that he owed his life to Dorgo. Gratitude warred with his concern that Dorgo could so easily have become another of the monster’s many victims. Such an end was ignoble enough for Hutga to have exposed himself to, the thought of his son dying in such a manner was too abhorrent for the khagan to entertain.

‘I told you to get the Bloodeater,’ Hutga scolded his son, finding a different excuse for his distemper.

‘It is not fitting for any but the khagan to bear Teiyogtei’s sword,’ Dorgo protested, bowing in deference to his father.

Hutga nodded by way of accepting his son’s excuse. He gestured for Dorgo to lead the way. More than ever, he was eager to secure the sword and be gone. There was no telling whether the tomb harboured any more monsters. He scowled as he saw a figure standing over the obsidian slab, her dark robes stained by the bloody slush that filled the crypt.

Dorgo reached the slab before his father, before Sanya could make off with her prize. The bones of Teiyogtei were mostly dust, his armour little more than tatters and strips of gilding, but the Bloodeater remained, a clutch of crimson shards each the size of a finger. Sanya had gathered them together on a black cloth, rapidly folding the silk to secure the fragments. Before she could hide the bundle, Dorgo was upon her. He had already noted how sorely the baleful influence of the tomb had affected the witch. Her struggle to retain the bundle of fragments was almost pitiful. Dorgo presented the treasure to his father as Hutga advanced upon the sepulchre.

‘That belongs to the Sul!’ Sanya snapped as Hutga accepted the bundle from his son.

The khagan smiled at her outburst. ‘Tsavag blood was spilled to claim these,’ he said, jostling the bundle in his hand. ‘That makes my people’s investment the greater.’ He looked across the crypt to where his warriors were finishing off the fleshbeast. ‘We’ve fought Enek Zjarr’s monsters, but if he thinks the Tsavag are fools, he has much to learn.’

‘The sword is useless to you!’ protested Sanya.

‘Yes, but I’ll feel better holding onto it,’ said Hutga. ‘Enek Zjarr has some scheme to get the sword to the Black Altar. If he still intends to remake the Bloodeater, then he will share that plan with me. Then I’ll decide if the Sul are still worthy of my friendship.’

‘Traitor,’ Sanya hissed. Coming from a Hung, it was almost a compliment.

‘Not at all,’ Hutga laughed, ‘simply prudent. Come, let us tell Enek Zjarr how things stand now that the Bloodeater is mine.’

The khagan laughed again as Dorgo herded the sorceress away from the king’s tomb. ‘As a measure of my good faith,’ Hutga said, ‘I’m even going to let you give him back Soulchewer.’

Alfkaell watched the Tsavags descend the slope of the hill, returning to their waiting mammoths. He did not have to be told what they had taken from the tomb of Teiyogtei, he could sense its taint on the Tong warriors as they emerged from the barrow. He did not need to be told what they hoped to do with the fragments of the Bloodeater. The thought brought a sinister smile to the Norscan’s face. The fools clung to hope like jackals to an old bone.

The war-priest knelt, grabbing a clutch of dirt from the ground, letting the grains sift through his fingers as he held it. The once red, vibrant earth was changing, becoming dead and grey even as he watched. Alfkaell lifted his head, staring at the towering monolith above the barrow. The once imposing standing stone showed cracks, deep fissures spreading through it like wrinkles across the face of a withering man. The smell of battle and carnage that had lingered around the hill down through the centuries was dissipating, scattering to the winds. Khorne’s power, once so heavy upon the site, was being withdrawn. When the Tsavags took the Bloodeater from the tomb, they had performed an irrevocable desecration. The tomb, a sacred testament to the Blood God’s power, was sacred no longer.

Alfkaell turned his eyes to the west. There was nothing to keep him here any longer. He would return to his own lands, his own people. The Aeslings would welcome him back as a Bloodfather, a seer of Khorne. Such would be his reward for obeying the command of his god.

The Norscan looked again to the south, where the war mammoths were slowly lumbering away, plodding back into the narrow valleys.

The Tsavags and the Sul thought to defy the command of the Blood God. They thought they could live when Khorne had ordered that they should die. It was the folly of mortals that they thought they could trick the gods. Teiyogtei thought he could defy the will of Khorne, but his soul would enter the Molten Pit and endure the tortures of the damned. Hutga and Enek Zjarr thought they could destroy the champion that Khorne had sent to claim their heads. They thought they could remake the Bloodeater by taking it to the Black Altar. They thought they could use the legendary blade of the king to destroy the Skulltaker.

Alfkaell smiled as he started to descend the western slope of the greying hill. It was a malevolent smile, the knowing wickedness of one who has seen danger and held his tongue.

The sorcerers had planned well, but they had not reckoned upon one thing. Sleeping in the tomb, Alfkaell’s dreams touched upon the sanguine realm of Khorne, brushing against the power of his god. Sometimes, images and impressions lingered to affect his waking mind. Scarlet tomorrows and crimson yesterdays filled Alfkaell’s thoughts, more vivid than his own memories. The Norscan laughed as he considered how feeble the divinations of the Sul were beside the visions granted by a god.

By their very deceit, by their bold and reckless scheme, perhaps it was not their plan that the Sul followed, but that of the Blood God.

The Skulltaker sat upon the bronze husk of a juggernaut, carefully stripping the flesh from Csaba’s skull. The rune of Khorne stood livid upon the dead zar’s forehead. Soon, it would join the other trophies hanging from the chain lashed across the warrior’s chest, another skull to lay before the Skull Throne.

Nearby, the carcass of the Skulltaker’s steed had disintegrated into a mash of gore, corroding until it was nothing more than bloody pulp strewn across the soil. Movement from the puddle drew the warrior’s attention. A broad paw with savage, scythe-like claws emerged from the filth. It was quickly followed by a second, both of the feet gripping the ground fiercely with their talons. A lupine shape pulled itself from the mire, shaking gore from its shaggy crimson pelt. Like the mythic phoenix of distant Khemri, the Skulltaker’s steed had arisen from its destruction, reborn from its ruin. The wolf-beast was smaller than it had been, just a pup compared to the murderous brute that had been trampled by the juggernaut. It turned its hungry gaze on its master, watching him for long minutes while he resumed his gruesome work.

A low, ravenous growl rumbled from the creature, a sound too large for its small size. Turning from its master, the wolf-beast loped towards the devastation that had been Iron Keep. It paused before the mangled body of a Gahhuk, who had tried to drag himself from the ruins only to expire from his injuries. Powerful fangs ripped at the corpse, stripping gobbets of flesh from its bones. With each morsel of flesh, the wolf-beast seemed to swell a little more, its body expanding to contain the carrion meat.

The Skulltaker watched the monster devour the dead Kurgan, flesh and bone vanishing down its gullet with almost unbelievable haste. When it had finished, the beast was twice the size it had been. It lowered its head, snuffling at the ground. A quick yap of satisfaction escaped its jaws as it caught the scent it was searching for. Quick bounding steps soon carried the creature into the ruins, its claws digging at the heaps of shattered iron to ravage the meat buried beneath.

The Skulltaker nodded. Soon his mount would be restored to its old size and strength. The flesh of the Gahhuks would make certain of that. Then it would be time to resume the hunt, to collect the fourth skull for his infernal master.

CHAPTER NINE

The immense trees of the Grey rose up from the thick, clinging mist like veiled giants, dampness dripping from their pine needles, greasy black mushrooms sprouting from their trunks. The trees were huge beyond the reckoning of those that flourished in wholly mortal lands, for the power of the gods lurked within the spongy loam of the forest.

The king had been the soul of his land, the spirit binding it together and keeping at bay the powers of hungry gods. The vitality of the land and the life of the king had been inseparable, the pulse of Teiyogtei’s heart a shield against the forces that would devour the realm he had built. When Teiyogtei died, the dread energies of the Wastes swept through his former domain. Every rock, every tree, every grain of sand and blade of grass had been twisted by the radiant winds of the north. The corrupting aethyr had struck some places heavier than others. The Desert of Mirrors had been one such place. The forest known simply as the Grey was another.

The name was misleading, for the mists that swirled beneath the thick trunks of the pines were of no single colour. Like wisps of rainbow, they shifted and changed, at once all colours and none at all. No freak of wind or weather spawned the mists, for it was from the polluted soil that the corrupting fog was born, rising from the ground in snakelike tendrils.

Nothing endured the touch of the mists without being changed by them. The pines were twisted into tortuous shapes, their limbs deformed, their wood pitted and scarred. The grass upon the ground was thick and abnormal, each blade sharp as a knife and black as pitch. The birds that still lingered within the mist-shrouded forest were wizened and scabby, with crooked backs and misshapen beaks.

Once the Grey had sported all manner of strange beasts: deer the size of bears with molten fire for blood and horns made of stone; rabbits with scales instead of fur and the ravenous diet of wolves; legless elk that slithered across the earth like giant hairy worms, and fouler things that stalked the land in search of human prey.

The monsters of the Grey, as much as its poisonous mists, had caused the tribes to shun the place. When the Warherd of Kug was driven into the Grey by the human tribes, it had been assumed by all that the beastmen would perish in the ghastly forest, devoured by the strange creatures that called it home.

Instead, the beastmen had become masters of the Grey, hunting the monsters into extinction within only a few generations. Now, they were forced to range out from their forest in search of food, stalking places such as the Prowling Lands, caring little if their prey should walk upon four legs or two. But however far they wandered, they always returned to the safety of the Grey.

Within its misty expanse, they were the lords. Men, with their feeble senses, their dependence upon their eyes to find their enemies, were no threat to the gors when they strayed into the Grey. By scent and sound the gors soon found any man so foolish as to invade their territory, and where scent and sound were not enough, the gors could rely upon their eerie, piercing wails to find their enemies, seeing more with their shrieks than men did with their eyes.

A pack of beastmen stalked through the gloom of the Grey. A motley band of hairy, corrupt figures, the brutes showed every caprice of anatomy. Some hulked larger than true men, their heads shaped like those of goat, ox and elk, their feet hardened into bony hooves, their hands displaying long claws. Some were still more twisted with extra limbs sprouting from shoulder and rib and thigh, misplaced organs staring and slobbering from chest and back.

Where one possessed an arm, another had a barbed, chitinous member, like the oversized leg of a spider or crab. Where one had great curling horns, another might have a frilly crest of quills or a comb of ruffled feathers. Only in their swollen, milky eyes did the gors display any unity of form, the blind organs inflicted upon them by lives spent within the preternatural murk of the Grey.

Other things roamed with the hulking gors, smaller, wretched things with leathery skin and manlike faces, their pelts thinner and scattered haphazardly around their bodies; brutish things that loped upon all fours, their backs crooked, their fur shaggy and matted, their tails ending in club-like nodules of bone and sharp, knifelike spines.

They were the least of the warherd, those beastmen born weak in body or mind, the brays and beasthounds, the runts and atavisms of their corrupt blood.

The beastmen hunted with purpose, their nostrils flaring as they sucked the scent of their prey from the air. Hairy hands clutched stone axes and spears of sharpened bone, clubs of wood and the odd blade of rusted iron. The gors were silent as they loped through the forest, each step unerringly falling upon the soft, loamy earth, never upon a lying stick or lurking stone.

The Grey was their world and the beastmen were its masters, able to navigate it perfectly even in their blindness, animal instincts guiding a thinking brain. It was what set them apart from true beasts, however mutated in shape and habit. The gors had an awareness of their world not unlike that of men, fully capable of appreciating their existence and able to harbour feelings alien to the animal mind like hate and revenge.

The leader of the pack was a huge brute with a goat-like face and the gnarled horns of an ox. Its powerful, human torso was married to a massive, horselike body, almost as though it had been moulded in the womb as a parody of a mounted rider. The brute’s chest was covered in strips of lacquered armour stolen from previous invaders of the Grey, and the weapon it held in its clawed hands was a broad-bladed axe of bronze. Savage talismans of feather and bone were strung through the piebald mane that ran down its back from neck to tail. The centaur creature craned its head around to yip a warning to its followers. The other beastmen scattered at their leader’s command, vanishing into the murk of the forest. Only a handful of the largest gors remained behind. They studied the gloom with flared nostrils and canted ears, waiting for the approach of the prey that the centigor had scented.

The intruder came boldly, making no effort to hide his mount’s advance. To the keen ears of the beastmen, the steed’s progress through the forest was like the crack of thunder. They did not need their useless, milky eyes to watch the stranger pass through the trees; sound was enough.

Chirps and clicks echoed through the gloom of the forest. Where another might dismiss the noises as the squeal of a rodent or the call of a bird, they carried a different story to the ears of the gors. They told of lurking hunters slithering into position. They told of a noose being drawn tight.

The centigor yipped again, the sound rumbling from its misshapen bulk. There was a surly, challenging quality to the brute’s growl. Some of the calls that had sounded from the forest had betrayed a note of fear, the pack leader reminding its followers to do their part. Those who betrayed the hunt were nothing more than prey themselves.

There was reason for the fear, and even the centigor felt an uneasiness in its bestial heart. That reason was the peculiar scent that was carried to them, the stink of battle and blood, death and carnage.

The smell was intimidating, menacing. It spoke of strength and power, brutality and slaughter. The beastmen learned early to distinguish the smell of another predator, to discern its formidable nature by scent alone. Their instincts railed against this scent, sounding a warning in their savage minds. Primitive hate fought against primal instinct to quell their fear.

The Grey was the warherd’s territory and none had ever trespassed upon its lands with impunity.

A bleating scream rang out in the murk of the forest, calling the centigor’s creatures to the attack. From behind thorny bushes, from beneath scraggly shrubs and clumps of overgrown knife-grass, the pack sprang into action. Feral grunts and bellows ripped through the air as the beastmen charged the lone rider who had entered their land. Crude weapons, gleaming fangs and wicked claws flashed through the darkness, driven by the blind bloodlust of the half-men.

The Skulltaker met their attack with the cold detachment of a machine. A gor was hacked in half by the warrior’s smoking sword as it rushed at him with a stone axe. A snarling bray collapsed as a blow from the Skulltaker’s armoured hand crushed its face. The canine steed slashed and tore with its deadly paws, spilling its foes to the ground with each sweep of its claws and slap of its barbed tail.

The hooting, growling cacophony of roars rising from the beastmen was gradually replaced with groans and shrieks.

As the Skulltaker ripped his blade free from the horned skull of an attacker, one of the baser creatures among the throng launched itself at him. The beasthound crashed into the man, pitching him from the saddle, twisting around so that it might conspire to land atop him as he crashed to the earth.

The Skulltaker’s hands locked around its hairy throat, digging into its leathery flesh, preventing the brute’s powerful jaws from tearing into his neck. The beasthound’s plated tail whipped around, stabbing at the man pinned beneath it. Leprous yellow, tipped with a jagged stinger and bloated venom sack, the extremity was more like that of an enormous scorpion than a shaggy, dog-like brute.

Driven by the superhuman strength of the hound’s muscles, the stinger punched its way through the crimson armour of the Skulltaker, the venom sack pulsating as it expended its poison into the man’s body.

The beasthound was surprised when, instead of slackening, the fingers locked around its throat tightened, ripping through the flesh. Corrupt black blood gushed from the creature’s mangled neck. It tried desperately to pull free from the killing grip.

The hound’s strength was beyond that of any normal creature, brute or man. So was that of its foe. With a sickening tearing sound, like soggy leather slapping against stone, the hound lurched upwards, exposing the dripping mess of muscle and bone left by the Skulltaker’s fingers. It struggled for an instant, and then flopped gamely against the Skulltaker’s side, its life draining out through the gaping wound in its neck.

The Skulltaker tried to rise, but was dragged back down by the weight of the hound’s tail. Still stabbed into his side, the tail continued to pulse with venomous life even as the hound expired. The Skulltaker snarled, closing his hands around the plated, pallid extremity. The warrior pulled, exerting his prodigious strength. Flesh ripped, bone snapped and the tail was torn free from the beasthound’s carcass.

Feral growls greeted the Skulltaker as he regained his feet. A pair of goat-faced gors glared at him with inhuman hate, fingering their spears. Behind them, bleating encouragement, goading them on, was the massive centigor, its bronze axe gripped tightly in its claws. The Skulltaker glared back at the monsters, and then shifted his head, looking for his fallen sword.

The gors seized the moment of distraction, lunging at the warrior. Too late, they learned that they had been deceived. Whipping around, the Skulltaker grabbed the foremost by the waist and shoulder, giving no notice to the crude spear that shattered against his breastplate. In the same spinning motion, he twisted the brute’s head down and around. The Skulltaker’s momentum forced both man and beast into the path of the second charging gor.

Like the first, the primitive spear buckled against the warrior’s armour, snapping like a dried twig, but it was not the destruction of its weapon that broke the impetus of the beastman’s attack. It was the sharp, two-foot spike of its comrade’s horn crunching through its sternum that ended its assault. The weight of the flailing, dying brute snapped the neck of its killer, dragging both bodies to the ground.

Even as the two brutes fell, the Skulltaker was beset by their leader. Raging not over the deaths of its fellows, but over the loss in status and prestige that those deaths signified, the centigor reared above the man, kicking at him with its forelegs. A single kick from the monster’s hooves would be enough to shatter bone like eggshell, and the centigor added to the menace of its attack by slashing at the warrior with the cruel edge of its axe.

Grunting, snorting laughter rumbled from the centigor as it watched its enemy reel before its assault. With the heavy length of the beasthound’s tail still impaled in his side, the Skulltaker was scarcely able to avoid the ferocious efforts of his foe, even less to prevent its cunning stratagem of placing itself between the man and his sword.

The centigor’s brutal features spread in a toothy grin. It had seen the savagery of this warrior, and knew that here was a foe to be feared, even without a weapon. However, it also saw the venomous tail hanging from his body, and could see the dismembered extremity continuing to pump poison into him. How he had survived so long, the beastman did not know, but it was certain that nothing could stave off the effects of the poison indefinitely. When the man faltered, the centigor would rush him, smash the invader’s head with its hooves and carry the corpse back for the fires of the warherd, testament to its strength and power.

The moment was not long in coming. Retreating before a brutal sweep of the centigor’s axe, the warrior stumbled, hands clutching painfully at the disembodied tail thrust into his side. The centigor roared in triumph, springing at the Skulltaker. The next instant, its roar became a howl of pain. The man’s weakness had been a feint, luring the monster into recklessness. Tearing savagely at the venomous tail, the Skulltaker ripped it free, cracking it against the centigor’s head like a bludgeoning whip. The monster clutched at its face, the jaw nearly broken by the impact of the tail.

The Skulltaker seized on his foe’s distraction. Reversing his grip on the tail, he leapt at the centigor.

The warrior ignored the brute’s armoured torso, instead sinking the barbed, dagger-like stinger into the equine shoulder beneath. The venom sack continued to pulse with obscene and deadly life. The centigor’s howl of pain became one of terror. The bronze axe dropped from its claws as it tried to seize the gruesome weapon. The Skulltaker had chosen his spot well, however, and the centigor’s hands struggled in vain to reach the poison-pumping tail.

Only when the brute bent its legs and trapped the torn end beneath one of its hooves was it able to rip the plated extremity free. By then, it was much too late. Venom already pulsed through the beastman’s body, racing through its veins like burning fire.

Unlike the Skulltaker, the centigor was not immune to the beasthound’s poison. Foam bubbled from its mouth, pink with blood. Its eyes rolled back in its head and its limbs stiffened in a spasm of agony. Then the brutish creature toppled, crashing to the ground like timber. Its hooves drummed wretchedly against the loamy earth.

The Skulltaker did not watch the death throes of his foe, but the remnants of the centigor’s pack did. They lost all taste for battle when they saw their leader fall, scrambling back into the murk of the forest, desperate to escape this new, grim terror that had invaded the Grey. The Skulltaker did not try to stop them, nor did his wolf-like mount pursue. As he recovered his screaming sword from where it had fallen, only one thought was on the warrior’s mind: to find the creature he had come to kill, not the mere leader of a small hunting band, but the chieftain of the entire warherd, the beastlord Nhaa.

Lifting himself back into the bronze saddle of his steed, the Skulltaker knew the survivors of the ambush would carry word back to their chieftain. The beastlord would be ready when he came to collect its skull. It was of small consequence. The will of Khorne would not be denied.

Sul sorcerers stood within the hide walls of Hutga’s yurt for a second time, and this time the Tsavags were compelled to entertain three of their duplicitous allies. Enek Zjarr had brought both his apprentice Sanya and Thaulan Scabtongue, the messenger with the faceless helm. Today the sorcerers were all bluster and rage, Enek Zjarr furious over his treatment at the tomb of Teiyogtei. Dorgo noted with some amusement that the kahn had come without his sacred naginta. Indeed, Yorool had already posed the question of whether they met with Enek Zjarr or one of his doppelgangers.

‘Do you think I would risk Soulchewer to your capricious moods a second time?’ the kahn snarled. ‘Be thankful that I still need the Tsavags or I would have you answer for your treachery!’

‘Treachery?’ laughed Togmol. ‘The Sul could teach the gods new meanings of the word!’

Hutga waved aside the warrior’s outburst and the smouldering hostility of the Sul. ‘You played us an ill trick at the tomb, sorcerer,’ he said. ‘I believe you, however, when you say that you still need the friendship of the Tsavags. Otherwise I do not think the prospect of open war would keep you from trying to capture the shards of the Bloodeater.’

‘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 such 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 brute. 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.

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 range 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 discover 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.

From the chariots, spearmen cast their javelins at the Tsavags. The Tong fighters took shelter behind the walls of the howdah until they realised that they were not the spearmens’ targets. Each cast was directed at Devseh, the spears biting into the mammoth’s shaggy hide. Many slipped free, unable to penetrate deep into the thick flesh of the brute, but others stabbed deeper, securing their barbed heads in Devseh’s sides. Long ropes of woven horsehair dangled from the embedded spears, dragging through the dirt as the mammoth sprinted across the Barrens.

Screams echoed from the desert as Gashuun threw balls of clay at the chariots. Where the strange projectiles struck, black smoke exploded in a billowing burst. The men and horses who passed through the smoke emitted screams of agony, their flesh cracking and flaking away from their bodies. The other riders skirted around the smoke and the twitching wreckage of those who had been claimed by it. Whatever terror the shaman’s magic provoked, it was not enough to make them turn back.

Not to be outdone by Gashuun, Sanya stood upon the raised platform at the centre of the howdah. Arms flung wide, she called upon the terrible gods of the Sul, hurling curses down upon the Seifan. She flung a bolt of white light from her palm. Striking a charioteer, the light became flame, roaring as it devoured the man, twisting and changing his body with its unholy power even as its heat consumed him. The spearman riding in the chariot threw himself from the platform, deciding that broken bones and a shattered skull were preferable to the doom that had claimed his tribesman.

More riders galloped around the mammoth, slashing at Devseh’s flanks. Dorgo hurled a javelin at one of the horsemen, his missile punching through the man’s chest. Shrieking, the rider toppled from his horse. As he rolled across the ground, the dirt exploded. A huge, shrivelled shape pulled itself from the ground, its gash-like mouth snapping at the wounded man, closing around his midsection. Quick as its appearance, the warty bulk of the toad retreated back beneath the ground, intent upon its meal.

New shouts of alarm brought Tsavags rushing to the left side of the mammoth. Seifan riders had seized the dangling ropes, using the tethers to pull themselves from their saddles and climb the side of the beast. The Tsavags could see the cruel, broad features of the Hung, their faces painted with stripes and whorls as they made war against the Tong.

Spears stabbed down at the men, frustrating their climb. One Seifan, pierced through the shoulder, lost his grip on the rope. Slipping free, he shrieked as the pounding feet of the mammoth smashed his body.

Gashuun’s shouts announced still another threat. Some distance away, a lone chariot thundered across the Barrens. Unlike the rest of the horde, this chariot made no effort to close upon the mammoth. Unlike the rest, this chariot was drawn not by a horse but by a fanged, two-legged reptile. The lone occupant of the vehicle made no effort to control his strange beast, instead his focus was upon the prayer wheel he held. Clad in the skins of daemons, the man waved his hands over the prayer wheel, his thin voice scratching at the heavens.

In answer to the Seifan mystic’s spell, an orange haze formed above his chariot. Dark shapes appeared out of the haze, hovering over the Barrens on leather wings. They were not hawks nor bats nor serpents, but abominable combinations of all three. Even from a distance, their daemonic presence could be felt and the malevolent intelligence in their piercing cries could be heard: furies born from the mindless void between the worlds of gods and men, feral daemons summoned to work the will of the Seifan.

At a gesture from the shaman, the furies flew at the mammoth, streaking through the sky like dusky meteors. They easily avoided the Tsavags’ hurled spears, and the thrown spell-spheres of Gashuun.

Croaking their malicious laughter, the furies descended upon the howdah, ripping and clawing as they came. One warrior was lifted into the air, his arm clenched in the fanged beak of one fury while another daemon chewed at his scalp. Another warrior fell over the side, his face slashed away by the sweep of a daemon’s claw.

Gashuun crumpled in a puddle of his own entrails, his body rent by the talons of swooping horrors. Togmol stabbed at the shaman’s killers, his spear skewering one daemon through its leathery back. The fury’s flesh oozed away from the impaling weapon, shifting and re-forming away from his spear.

The creature snarled at the man, slapping him with a backhanded sweep of its claw. Togmol reeled back, catching himself before he could slip over the side of the howdah.

Dorgo and Ulagan were forced back by the shrieking daemons, pressed towards the raised platform. Here, at least, Sanya’s sorcery was keeping the furies at bay. Dark ribbons of flame snaked from her splayed fingers, burning daemons from the sky.

Yet the woman’s eyes could not be everywhere. A fury dropped down onto the howdah, creeping towards her on taloned feet. Dorgo leapt at the daemon before it could pounce, slashing at the creature with his sword. Metal sliced through the leathery wing, biting at the scaly shoulder. The fury hissed at the warrior, enraged by this little man who had the temerity to strike it. Claws slashed at Dorgo, striking for the man’s throat. Dorgo raised his sword to block the attack. The blade shattered beneath the daemon’s touch, fragmenting like rock beneath a hammer. The impact forced Dorgo back. Staggering, he knew he could not fend off the monster’s next attack. The fury threw itself at him, pouncing like a sabretusk.

Black lightning seared through the fury as it leapt, sizzling through its unnatural substance. The reptilian visage of the daemon contorted with pain, green ichor vomiting from its mouth. The thing slumped to the floor of the platform, its body collapsing into reeking muck as its life force fled back into the void.

There was no time to thank Sanya for her intervention. The sorceress had already turned her attention to the other furies, daemons that now displayed greater caution in avoiding her spells. Moreover, the daemons were not the only menace that faced the men on the howdah. The furies had driven the Tsavags away from the walls of the platform, had distracted them from their efforts to prevent the Seifan from mounting Devseh’s sides.

Half a dozen painted Seifan warriors were at large upon the howdah, giving battle to the already beleaguered Tsavags. Dorgo could see a pair of them rushing towards the mammoth’s neck, intent on stopping the beast by killing it, or Qotagir, or both. The old mahout was turned around in his cage, jabbing at the would-be slayers with a long ivory spear, preventing them from gaining purchase on the treacherous footing of Devseh’s neck.

A roar of rage snapped Dorgo’s attention away from Qotagir’s distress. Another Seifan warrior was climbing over the side of the howdah, but Dorgo recognised him. He had seen the moustached warlord at the ill-fated council of the tribes.

The murderous, armoured invader was no less than Tulka, kahn of the Seifan. The chieftain recognised Dorgo in turn and remembered the son of his hated rival Hutga. Even more importantly, Tulka knew that Hutga would have trusted the Bloodeater to no one else.

‘Give me the sword, pup,’ Tulka growled. The chieftain’s fat-bladed dadao clenched in his fist, his frosty hair dripping from the skirt of his helm. There was nothing but contempt in his eyes as he stared at his enemy.

Dorgo spat at the warlord’s feet. ‘Come and take it, nag-fondler,’ he cursed. ‘If you think you can!’

Tulka smiled as he noted the warrior’s empty hands. The chieftain of the Seifan was loath to risk himself in battle. When he could, he allowed others to take those risks for him, but the challenge of a weaponless warrior was one that appealed to his cruel spirit. Battle was distasteful to him, but murder was an indulgence he regarded with the keenest appreciation.

‘You’re going to die, boy!’ grinned Tulka. ‘I’m going to pass water on your bones before I leave them to the jackals!’

‘Big words for a coward,’ Dorgo sneered. His hand clutched at his belt, feeling the hidden pouch and what had been concealed within it. Above all else, he knew that the Seifan could not be allowed to gain possession of the Bloodeater. That would spell the doom of his people as surely as the Skulltaker’s rampage.

Tulka lunged at the Tsavag warrior. Overconfident, goaded by the warrior’s baiting words, the murderous warlord reacted precisely as Dorgo expected. It was not the careful charge of a warrior that impelled Tulka forward, but the enraged rush of a maddened beast. The warlord did not need caution or skill. No chieftain of the domain had ever fallen in battle, not to any mortal at least. He would not fear an armed antagonist, how much less did he care about an unarmed one?

The slashing sweep of the kahn’s fat-bladed sword was powerful, but sloppy. Dorgo ducked beneath the flashing bronze edge of the dadao and then drove upwards as the blade passed over his head. He pinned everything on one desperate attack. If he had guessed wrong, he would pay for his mistake with his life. Tulka would not miss again.

The bronze sword clattered against the floor of the howdah, falling from nerveless fingers. The kahn’s eyes widened with disbelief, his mouth gaping in shock. A jewelled sliver of daemonic metal gleamed behind the teeth. Dorgo had put all of his strength in that one mighty thrust. Hidden in his fist, the shard of the Bloodeater had been driven beneath the warlord’s chin, punching up through his mouth and into his brain.

For an instant, Dorgo feared he had guessed wrong. Tulka remained standing, as though rejecting the injury he had been dealt. Every Tsavag had heard stories about the invincibility of the chieftains, about how they recovered from even the most ghastly wounds. Dread filled Dorgo as it seemed that Tulka would do the same.

The instant passed. The clamour of battle faded away as Tulka crashed to the floor of the howdah. Those Seifan still fighting on the mammoth’s back screamed in terror, scrambling over the sides and sliding down their ropes. The furies shrieked, fleeing into the sky, vanishing as they retreated towards the horizon.

Dorgo released his relief in a great sigh. His gamble had won. He had reasoned that any weapon strong enough to destroy the Skulltaker would be powerful enough to kill a chieftain. Even a shard of the Bloodeater had been enough to settle with Tulka.

‘That’s one pig that won’t be stealing any more women,’ snarled Ulagan. The hunter sported an ugly gash across his forehead where the claw of a fury had struck him, but otherwise he’d come out of the battle unmarked. Six of the warriors could not make that claim. Taken by Seifan axes or daemonic claws, their spirits would not leave the Barrens.

Dorgo leaned over the kahn’s corpse, struggling to pull the ruby shard from his head. He gratefully accepted an iron knife as it was handed down to him. Quickly, he cut away at the throat of the corpse, exposing enough of the sword sliver to allow him a firm grip on it. Dorgo deftly pulled the shard free, wiping Tulka’s blood from its translucent edge. He handed the knife back, only now realising that it was Sanya not Ulagan who had given it to him.

‘Quick thinking,’ the sorceress told him. She stared at the corpse, seeming almost to delight in the sight of the chieftain’s carcass. It was the echo of the hateful glare Dorgo had seen her direct against the Suls’ own kahn, Enek Zjarr, at the tomb of Teiyogtei. ‘You’ve prevented this expedition from failing before it has even begun.’

‘We’re not free of them yet,’ warned Togmol. The massive warrior gestured to the lake-bed below. Dead warriors and dead horses littered the expanse, and here and there the broken wreckage of a chariot was scattered across the ground.

Away from the bodies and debris, the Seifan riders were regrouping, waving their weapons angrily over their heads. The berating shouts of their leaders carried over to the men in the howdah. Fired by hopes of replacing their fallen kahn, the boldest Seifan warriors were urging their fellows back into the fight.

‘Maybe we can still outdistance them,’ suggested Dorgo. He did not harbour any great hope of escaping the determined riders, much less with Devseh weakened by their spears and blades. When battle was joined again, there would be no chance of throwing the Seifan into disarray by felling their chieftain. It would be a fight to the finish, a fight where the sheer numbers of the Hung would ensure their victory.

Sanya pointed at Tulka’s corpse. ‘Give them the body of their kahn,’ she said. ‘You can’t outrun them. Our only hope is to give them something else to occupy them.’ The sorceress frowned when she saw the confusion on the faces of the Tsavags. ‘Don’t question, just do,’ she swore. The sound of hooves pounding across the desert was already rising once more.

Shrugging his shoulders, Dorgo helped Togmol to lift the dead kahn from the howdah. A heave sent Tulka toppling over the side of the platform, to crash in a cloud of dust on the plain below. The Seifan riders ignored the body, thundering past it, intent upon the fleeing mammoth. Dorgo shook his head. Sanya’s plan had failed.

Then a shout went up from one of the rearmost Seifan riders. The dust had settled enough to give the man a clear look at what had been thrown down from the howdah.

Seeing the chieftain’s body, the rider dropped from his saddle, scrambling towards the corpse. His shout had been heard by the others. In quick order, they turned their steeds around, racing back to the body. Men sprang from their saddles, running through the dust to reach Tulka.

Angry yells and filthy curses rose from the Seifan as the marauders began punching and kicking one another.

Dorgo realised that they were fighting over the corpse. Nor were the Seifan confining their internecine conflict to fists. Screams of pain, and the clatter of metal striking metal sounded from the feuding mob. All thought of the Tsavags and their treasure had been abandoned. Incredibly, the only thing that seemed to concern the Seifan now was Tulka’s body.

Dorgo turned a questioning look on Sanya. How had she known?

‘An old tradition,’ she said, answering his unspoken question, ‘common to all the tribes, though most are less injudicious about its secrecy than the Seifan, allowing only their shamans to keep the hidden truth. To become chieftain of one’s tribe, it is necessary to eat the heart of the old chieftain, to consume his strength and power, to become the flesh of Teiyogtei.’ Sanya nodded as she saw the revulsion on Dorgo’s face. Among even the Tong, cannibalism was taboo.

‘Yes, even the Tsavags pass on their legacy in such a fashion,’ she continued. ‘If you would lead your people, one day you must eat your father’s heart and draw his power into your body: the flesh of Teiyogtei, a tradition unbroken since the breaking of the horde. The king’s warlords drew his power into themselves when they bore his broken husk from his battle with the Skulltaker. Knowing their king was dying, they cut his heart from his body and divided it among them. Each drew Teiyogtei’s strength into himself, becoming one with the flesh of the king.

‘That is what the Skulltaker hunts, Dorgo. He hunts the flesh of Teiyogtei, to destroy the last trace of the king.’ Sanya’s eyes grew hard, her hands balling into fists at her side. ‘With every skull he takes, the power of Teiyogtei fades from the domain. When it has passed completely, the Blood God will consume all. Earth, flesh, water and sky, all will be sacrificed to the hunger of Khorne.’

The clearing of the herdstone stank of fear and blood. The twisted masses of the warherd had retreated to the imagined safety of the treeline, their bestial faces peering out from behind the foliage to watch doom descend upon their home.

Some had not retreated, staying behind to protect their sacred herdstone. Their remains were splashed across the ground, torn asunder by the invader’s smouldering blade. The warherd’s shamans were among the dead. The horned sorcerer-priests had struggled to fell their human enemy with spells of death and ruin. Their efforts called lightning from the mist, evoked green flames that blackened the earth, and summoned dreadful winds that stripped bark from the pines with their unseen touch. All the savage magics of the beastmen were called down upon the man’s head. Yet it was the Skulltaker, not his enemies, who still walked the Grey.

Spells crashed against the Skulltaker’s crimson armour, shattering like ice against stone, casting sparks and embers of frustrated magic across the ground. Curses fell upon the champion of Khorne and turned to scarlet ash, sliding from the smooth plates of his mail.

Hexes struck at his soul and were consumed, burned away by the malice of a hungry god. Then the shamans died, their protective charms and amulets useless against the black sword, their magical wards and talismans broken by the shrieking steel. Their brutish bodies were cut down like wheat, their spirits devoured by the ravenous blade.

The destruction of the shamans had broken the feral courage of the warherd. Nhaa’s bestial army had evaporated, slinking into the shadows, tails curled between their legs. Only the huge minotaurs remained, determined in their primitive way to defend the herdstone even with their last breath. Against any other foe, Nhaa would have been certain that the bull-headed monsters would be victorious. Against the Skulltaker, against a man who had killed the giant Korg, the beastlord had no delusions. Strength, force, savagery, these would not be enough to kill the human. Nhaa paced behind the fearsome line of its minotaurs. If raw power was not sufficient to stop the Skulltaker, perhaps treachery would be. After all, even kings died beneath the knives of traitors.

The minotaurs stamped the earth, pawing the ground with their hooves, bubbly froth dripping from their snouts as they anxiously awaited the approach of their foe. The smell of blood had all but overwhelmed their tiny brains, sending violent urges snaking through their gigantic frames.

Twelve feet tall, each minotaur was sixty stone of primal fury waiting to explode in an orgy of bloodshed and carnage. Their paw-like hands opened and closed impatiently around the hafts of their weapons: great axes of sharpened bone, and clubs of knotted wood and pitted stone.

Only the snarled warnings of their chieftain kept the brutes from charging their enemy on the instant. Nhaa didn’t want the minotaurs to attack the Skulltaker piecemeal. Together, they might have some small chance against the champion, or at least provide enough of a distraction to allow Nhaa the opportunity it was watching for.

The Skulltaker marched through the mangled wreckage of the shamans, his boots sloshing through the muck of pooled blood and offal. A wounded shaman tried to crawl from the warrior’s path, dragging its body through the sludge with a mangled arm, bleating pitifully. The Skulltaker did not break stride as he walked past the crippled beastman, simply reversing the grip on his sword and stabbing the point through the creature’s neck, ending its pathetic ordeal.

The sight of the shaman’s callous execution snapped the already fragile restraint of the minotaurs. Snorting and bellowing, the huge monsters charged, their weapons raised, their horned heads lowered. The ground shook beneath their ploughing hooves, like the rolling quaking of a stampede. Even the faintest gleam of intelligence was washed from their eyes as brute fury took hold over them.

The Skulltaker stood, implacable, immobile before the oncoming rush of the minotaurs. The warrior’s arm swept forwards, driving the black blade into the lowered head of the first minotaur, piercing its skull with a sickening crunch. He ripped the sword free, spinning around as the lifeless bulk of the monster smashed into the ground in a spray of blood and brains. In the same motion, he dropped into a crouch, bringing his sword scything through the knee of a second minotaur. The brute bellowed, toppling as the slashed bone of its leg snapped under the weight of its body.

The Skulltaker did not give the maimed creature a further thought. He was already turning to face a third. The smoking edge of his sword screamed as it chopped through the monster’s horn, sending it dancing through the air. The minotaur roared, bringing its huge club of bone and stone smashing down. The earth beside the Skulltaker exploded beneath the tremendous impact, but the man avoided the crushing blow. His sword licked out at the monster again, hacking through its wrist. The minotaur’s paw leapt from its wound in a gush of blood, flopping to the ground. The monster’s body lurched to one side, the weight of the bludgeon it held in one hand dragging its entire mass away with it. Before the minotaur could recover, the point of the Skulltaker’s sword was burrowing through its ribs, skewering its heart.

A fourth minotaur crashed into the Skulltaker while he dispatched its fellow. The brute’s horns caught the man, sending him flying through the air. The minotaur did not give the stricken champion time to recover. Rushing onwards, its head lowered, its horns lashing from side to side, the beast smashed into the prone man, trying to grind him into the dirt with its horns. The warrior’s body was battered and mangled beneath the minotaur’s savagery, bones cracking before the brutality of the monster’s attack. Armoured hands clutched at the minotaur’s head, wrapping around its horns in an effort to fend off the assault. The monster’s powerful jaws snapped at the man sprawled beneath it, the fangs scraping against the darkly stained armour of his breastplate.

Probing hands slipped away from the minotaur’s horns, groping desperately at the monster’s face as they dropped away. There was purpose behind the desperation. Even as the minotaur mauled him, Khorne’s champion thought not of escape, but of attack. Armoured fingers pressed brutally into the minotaur’s beady yellow eyes, stabbing into them like iron knives. The minotaur threw its head back, howling in agony as the wreckage of its eyes slithered down its face.

With his enemy’s attack broken, the Skulltaker turned to find his sword. His vision settled on the quivering body of the third monster he had killed, at the smoking blade still buried in its side. There was blood dripping from his armour as the warrior dragged himself back towards his sword. Broken bones ground together, and ruptured organs pumped pain through his body. No mortal could have endured the mauling delivered by the beast, but it had been many lifetimes since the Skulltaker had known mortality. Every limping step brought the Blood God’s power surging through him, mending flesh and knitting bone. Khorne had legions to die for him. The Skulltaker was marked out for a different purpose.

From near the herdstone, Nhaa watched the Skulltaker hobble away from the last minotaur. The beastlord’s eyes narrowed with cunning when it saw that the man had lost his terrible sword, as its slippery mind contemplated the obvious gravity of the Skulltaker’s wounds. Nhaa scraped the blades of its fighting claws together, knowing that it would never see a better opportunity. Cautiously, the chieftain began to circle the battlefield, watching for its chance.

When it had circled around to the warrior’s back, Nhaa struck. With panther-like speed, the beastlord rushed at the human. Only a few feet from the Skulltaker, Nhaa leapt into the air, hurtling at the man like a missile. Nhaa slammed into the Skulltaker’s back, its fighting claws tearing through the warrior’s armour, impelled by the chieftain’s momentum. Nhaa’s growls ripped through the clearing as its bronze claws dug deeper into its foe’s body. Sadistic ferocity twisted the gor’s bestial face as it wrenched the claws around in the wounds it had dealt, widening the gashes in its victim’s back. Nhaa almost forgot its disappointment that the warrior did not cry out as it felt the man’s blood running down its arms.

The Skulltaker slumped to his knees, lurching forwards as the beastlord’s fighting claws burrowed into his flesh. Nhaa leaned down to maintain its grip on the failing warrior. The gor’s fangs gleamed in a feral snarl. More than just the instinctive man-hate of the beastmen, Nhaa exulted in its victory as a display of its power. The Skulltaker had slaughtered and killed his way through the lands of the human tribes, unstoppable as the fist of Khorne, but he had not prevailed in the Grey. In the Grey, the doom bringer had found his doom.

Metal hands locked around Nhaa’s throat as the beastlord leaned over the warrior. The chieftain’s eyes went round with panic, and the snarl slipped from its face. The grip around its neck was not the weak, fragile clutch of a dying man. It was a grip of steel, fingers of iron tearing at the beastman’s flesh. As it felt those fingers tighten, as it felt its skin rip, as it felt its neck being twisted, Nhaa understood the enormity of its mistake. Weak, battered, broken, the Skulltaker was still more than the beastlord could overcome.

A loud crack announced the breaking of Nhaa’s neck. The gor’s horned head sagged obscenely against its shoulder, sightless eyes staring emptily into space. Nhaa’s body crumpled to the ground, crashing beside that of its killer.

Long minutes passed. The near-blind eyes of the warherd were focused upon the clearing, fixed upon the still, unmoving shapes of their chieftain and the terrible warrior who had slain it. Slowly, with tenuous, anxious steps, the bolder elements of the tribe began to filter out from the trees. The gors advanced towards the dead bodies of chieftain and champion, sniffing at the blood-drenched ground.

Then the gors were scrambling back to the trees. One of the bodies moved, rising from the ground. The Skulltaker did not even glance at the retreating beastmen. Instead, he closed his bloodstained hands around the bronze claws still stabbed into his flesh. Slowly, painfully, he ripped Nhaa’s blades free from his body. The Skulltaker stared down at the chieftain’s broken body, letting its bladed arms flop back against its chest.

The Skulltaker consider Nhaa’s carcass for only a moment. The warrior set one of his armoured boots on the beastman’s chest, and closed his hands around Nhaa’s curled horns. The Skulltaker leaned down over the monster, and then exerted his tremendous strength, pulling at the horns while his boot kept the body pinned in place.

A wet, tearing sound rose from the corpse. With a final, furious tug, the Skulltaker ripped his prize from Nhaa’s shoulders. The lingering beastmen gave voice to their terror as they saw the champion lift Nhaa’s head into the air. They fled, scrambling back into the depths of the Grey, praying to their savage gods that they would be spared the fate of their chief.

The Skulltaker ignored the frantic, scrambling noises that rose from the forest around him. He was still weak from the minotaur’s mauling and Nhaa’s treacherous attack. It would take him a long time to heal from such injuries, to recover his strength after such a trial, but he would not be idle while he rested.

Dragging Nhaa’s head by its horn, the Skulltaker stalked towards his sword. Soon, a fourth skull would dangle from the chain lashed across his body, a fourth offering to the Blood God’s rage.

Silence reigned within the great hall. Obsidian walls cast eerie reflections across a floor of polished ebony. A great crystal, three times the size of a man, rose from the centre of the floor, suspended in the air by unseen chains of force. The smooth, globe-like skin of the crystal glowed with strange lights that burned from within. The glow was captured by the black stone walls of the chamber, shining across them in great, sprawling images. The scenes projected by the crystal played like moving tapestries along the black walls.

A sombre group of men watched the images cast by the crystal. Cloaked in robes of black, their faces dark, their expressions grim, the elders of the Sul knew the gravity of what they witnessed. The Skulltaker had claimed another head and with it brought the entire domain of Teiyogtei one step closer to oblivion.

‘Nhaa has fallen,’ declared one of the sorcerers, his plaited beard streaked with golden thread. ‘The Skulltaker has another offering to place before the Skull Throne.’

‘And now Tulka is dead,’ observed another, his eyes stretching from his sallow face on leathery stalks. ‘One less for the Skulltaker to hunt.’

‘Tulka does not matter.’ This time the words came from the gold-masked Thaulan Scabtongue. ‘His power has passed into his lieutenant. The Seifan still have a chieftain, one who has eaten the flesh of Teiyogtei. With the power he has consumed, the heir of Tulka inherits the deathmark that lingered over his predecessor. The executioner must yet collect four skulls before doom descends upon our land.’

‘The flesh of Teiyogtei is all that keeps the Blood God from devouring the domain,’ cautioned the gold-bearded sorcerer. ‘Without that link to the great king, there is nothing to defy Khorne’s hunger. It is a dangerous game we play, Thaulan. The risk is great.’

‘The reward is greater,’ Thaulan replied. ‘Even as he serves the Blood God, the Skulltaker serves the Sul. With every skull he claims, our enemies are diminished.’

‘But if he should kill all the chieftains…’

‘Death is not enough,’ Thaulan said. ‘He must have their heads, trophies to bear back to the Black Altar. Only then will Khorne be satisfied.’

‘Then everything depends upon Sanya,’ the stalk-eyed Sul announced. ‘Our one hope for survival rests with her and a clutch of half-witted Tong.’

‘Not our hopes,’ corrected Thaulan, ‘but our ambitions. We have seen the power even a shard of the Bloodeater possesses. When it is reforged, even the Skulltaker will be destroyed.’

‘What of the Tsavags?’ objected gold-beard.

‘Sanya will attend to them,’ Thaulan said. ‘She made provisions that were not in Enek Zjarr’s original vision.’ The faces of the assembled elders lifted into cruel smiles. Their kahn’s treachery and cunning were infamous throughout the tribe, but that of his consort was impressive even to the Sul. They could leave the Tsavags to her devious plan. The mammoth-rider was never born who could see through the deceptions of the Sul.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A purple sky hung overhead, sprawling across the heavens like an angry bruise. Black clouds boiled through the haze, flickers of lightning burning behind their sombre depths. The clouds moved independent of the howling wind, scattering in every direction as they slowly rolled across the sky. The wind was a fierce, biting gale driving down from the north, shimmering flickers of energy trapped within its coils, dragging the essence of the gods with them as they raged their way southward.

This was the edge, the borderland between the world of mortals and the Wastes. There was no name for this place, this desolation saturated in the malignity of the gods. Perhaps it had once been a part of the Barrens of Nuur, perhaps it had once been a forest like the Grey or a place of towers and gardens like the Crumbling Hills. Now it was nothing, a blight that stretched away to where the black gloom of the clouds reached down to consume it. The ground was parched, grey and lifeless beyond even the desiccated lake bed of the Barrens. More than lifeless, it was a cursed place. Great hills littered the landscape in lonely piles of black stone, as though shunning the company of their fellows. They were almost shapeless, these hills, like piles of oozing mud or the molten stumps of mountains.

More than the black hills, the grey earth and the purple sky, the borderland was dominated by the mouldering shine of bleached bone. The plain was covered in skeletal heaps, broken bones scattered as far as the eye could follow, betokening some ancient slaughter beyond imagining.

Qotagir guided Devseh into the field of bone. The mammoth’s strength was waning, despite the efforts of the Tsavags to tend its wounds. The Seifan had been vicious in their attack, and it was a testament to the endurance and tenacity of the beast that it had been able to travel so far without being allowed to stop and rest.

To stop would allow the Seifan riders another chance to overtake them. They had lost half of their number fighting against the Hung. A renewed attack would finish them. There was no choice, they had to press on and hope that Devseh could endure.

The decision seemed to have been the wise choice. They had reached the borderland, a place no Tsavag had gazed upon for generations. They could feel the power of the gods flowing down from the north, and smell the clammy taint in the air. In many ways, they were reminded of the otherworldly aura of Teiyogtei’s tomb, an eerie sense of dread that tugged at the back of the mind, goading it towards violence. Even Devseh felt the sensation, the mammoth’s temper flaring in trumpeting outbursts and mindless attacks against boulders and piles of bone.

‘He must rest soon,’ warned Qotagir, calling back to the howdah from his ivory cage on the mammoth’s neck.

Dorgo looked back at the Barrens, watching for any sign of dust rising from the dry lake bed. The desolation was silent, as dead as the land before them. If the Seifan yet pursued them, the Hung were still far off.

‘Try to find some high ground,’ Dorgo told Qotagir. They would be in bad shape if they lost Devseh, but their condition would be worse if they failed to spy the Seifan crossing the Barrens.

Dorgo continued to watch the land pass away behind them as the mammoth slowly lumbered towards one of the crude piles of rock. The warrior’s skin prickled with dismay as he saw grotesque red weeds sprout from the grey earth behind them, erupting in a rough line that matched Devseh’s footsteps.

He cast his eyes downward, watching the ground as the mammoth plodded on. Blood continued to trickle from some of the animal’s wounds, splashing to the lifeless earth in drips and spurts. Wherever the blood struck the ground, the scarlet grass fought its way up through the grey dirt and scattered bone.

It was an eerie, ugly sight, made even more uncanny by the hideous, writhing life displayed by the weeds. They were like bloody fingertips trying to claw free from a shallow grave. Dorgo shuddered at the image, trying his best to banish it from his thoughts.

‘You look troubled, warrior.’

Dorgo started as the soft voice intruded upon his grim imaginings. Soundlessly, Sanya had crossed the platform to join him at the side of the howdah. The confidence and arrogance of the sorceress, the bold superiority that she had lorded over her Tsavag companions since they had departed many days ago were gone. Once again, she had the haunted, frightened look that Dorgo had seen at the tomb.

‘Far less than you,’ Dorgo replied. He shook his head, making a contemptuous gesture at the patches of writhing weeds. ‘This is a filthy land,’ he said.

‘The Blood God’s touch hangs heavy here,’ Sanya said. Her eyes narrowed as she studied Dorgo’s face. ‘You can feel it too. The air is heavy with the Blood God’s malice and the Blood God’s hate. The earth lusts for blood, the sky screams out for pain.’ She pressed her hands to her head, pressing her long dark locks against her ears, and screwing her eyes shut in an expression of suffering. ‘This place knows we are here. It wants to destroy us, to devour our flesh, our souls.’

‘It will be cheated,’ Dorgo scowled. He spat into the grimy dirt below. A red weed poked up from the grey ground, but found spittle less sustaining than blood. It withered as quickly as it sprouted, leaving only a brittle yellow husk behind. ‘We did not brave the Barrens and defy the Seifan to add more bones to this desert.’

Sanya’s face twitched into a less than reassured smile. She turned away from Dorgo, watching as the huge mammoth continued its drive across the desolate grey earth. Bones crunched beneath its laborious steps, providing a strange accompaniment to its heavy, rasping breath. The Sul watched as a stretch of broken ground came into view, a region pierced by hundreds of tall, slender poles. Not poles, the sorceress quickly realised. Stakes. With that realisation, the sorceress understood that if this place was without name, it was not without history.

‘This is where it happened,’ she whispered in a voice subdued with awe.

Catching the woman’s tone, Dorgo took leave of his careful vigil of the retreating Barrens. There was little enough about this quest that was to his liking: the enormity of his task, the grave consequences for failure. Most of all, he disliked the company of the Sul sorceress. A witch was unpleasant enough to be around, a Sul one was worse. Even after their battle with the Seifan, Dorgo found himself watching Sanya for the smallest warning of treachery. He distrusted every display of emotion, and every trace of feeling in her voice. He disliked riddles, disliked challenges that went beyond strength and courage to solve.

‘Where what happened?’ Dorgo asked suspiciously. Sanya’s surprise seemed genuine, but he knew that the Sul wore their faces like the Muhaks wore their masks. It took a craftier mind than his to know for certain what was really going on behind the visible display.

Sanya ignored the caustic challenge in Dorgo’s question. She pointed to the field of stakes, to the broken ground beneath them. The litter of bones was heavier here, mixed with old pieces of crumbling armour and the splintered wreckage of axes and swords. Heaps of skulls, piled far too orderly to be some caprice of the elements, grinned at them from between the stakes.

‘This is where Teiyogtei Khagan brought his army down from the Wastes and into the Shadowlands,’ Sanya said, ‘where the great king led the Tong in battle against the Dolgans.’ She waved her hands at the piled skulls and the sinister, spindly wooden stakes. ‘The Dolgans were the first tribe to oppose Teiyogtei when he emerged from the Wastes, the first obstacle to his dreams of conquest and empire. The king’s horde met the armies of the Kurgans here in a mighty conflict that raged for a week and a day. When it was over, the Tong built mounds of skulls to honour Khorne for their victory. They cut down an entire forest and fashioned these stakes to stand over their offerings and upon each they impaled a Kurgan captured in the battle.’

The sorceress’s eyes were vibrant, feverish as she recounted the ancient slaughter, and Dorgo was reminded again that the Sul considered themselves the legitimate heirs of Teiyogtei as did each of the eight tribes of the domain.

‘When the last Kurgan was impaled,’ she continued, ‘the Tong built a great statue of bloodstone to honour their king, that he might forever watch over the battlefield he had won.’

‘Be sensible, witch,’ Dorgo scoffed. ‘Hundreds of generations have passed since Teiyogtei led my people down from the Wastes. How could sticks and bones endure for so long without collapsing into dust? It is a battlefield, I grant, but it has nothing to do with the king!’

‘Time is a deceit that does not exert its tyranny in the Wastes,’ Sanya snapped. ‘The gods decide what fades and what endures in the places that feel their touch. Mountains crumble while trophies offered to the Blood God remain through the ages. Who are you to question the power of the gods?’

Dorgo bristled at the woman’s scorn. Devseh was passing between the narrow ranks of the wooden stakes, snapping them as the beast pushed its bulk down the narrow path. Skulls fell from their stakes as the mammoth’s pounding footsteps disturbed them. Dorgo felt the menace, the eerie unseen hatred of the place, crushing down around him. He felt the mouldy touch of antiquity, the long ages since the crash of axe and shield had echoed across the plain. Still, he defiantly clung to his denial of Sanya’s claims.

‘If this is the battlefield, then where is the statue of Teiyogetei?’ he demanded.

Sanya had no need to answer his question. The broken wreckage of a great colossus was strewn at the base of the hill that Qotagir was guiding Devseh towards. The bloodstone from which it had been carved, at once both crimson and black, was sprawled across the grey earth like pools of frozen gore. Dorgo could see the snapped pillar of a leg, the jagged stump of an arm. The chest bore the familiar outline of lamellar armour worn by Tong khagans. The decapitated head was proud, its features powerful and stern, the spiked circle of the Blood-Crown stretching across its brow. Intact, it would have towered two hundred feet into the air. Now it was only so much rubble, dwarfed by the hill behind it and the bleached mound that loomed beside it.

Dread pawed at Dorgo’s heart as he looked upon that mound. It was a mountain of skulls, making the trophy piles beneath the stakes look like the work of children. Thousands, no, millions, of heads had been taken to build the morbid monument. The skulls of men, beastmen, giants and ogres, wolves and tigers, and beasts without number or name had been cast into the pile. Upon the forehead of each was branded the rune of Khorne, the fell symbol of the Blood God.

The icy crawl of fear made its way down Dorgo’s spine as he looked once more upon the shattered colossus of Teiyogtei Khagan. Broken into eight pieces, only one had been further defiled. Carved into the dark forehead of the statue was the crossbar symbol of Khorne.

Dorgo knew that he looked upon the work of the Skulltaker.

Qotagir urged Devseh to its knees some small distance from the toppled colossus. The mammoth snorted in protest, but did as it was told. Closer to the ground, Dorgo and the others riding in the howdah began tossing gear and supplies down from the platform. Their task completed, the Tsavags and their Sul ally followed the equipment, lowering themselves over the shaggy side of the mammoth and dropping the remaining distance to the grey earth.

There was no time to unfasten the howdah from the huge beast, and once the last of the passengers was clear, Qotagir goaded his charge to lie down on its side. Devseh gave no argument, slumping wearily against the ground. Qotagir tossed aside his goad-stick and rummaged around the packs of supplies for the ointments and salves that the expedition had brought with them. Even as the mahout rushed back to tend the mammoth’s wounds, Dorgo could see red weeds sprouting up all around the injured beast.

The Tsavags began to explore their surroundings, gazing with superstitious awe at the mound of skulls and the broken image of their ancient king. Dorgo called out to his men, snapping quick orders to keep them from wandering off. He sent Ulagan to climb the nearby hill. The scout had the sharpest eyes of any in the small band and would have the best chance of spotting any Seifan crossing the Barrens. The hunter wrapped his wormy arm around the haft of a long spear and set out at a jog for the pile of melted stone.

Dorgo watched the hunter for a space, and then turned away, walking towards the broken bulk of the colossus. Surely magic had gone into the construction of such a monument, for no mortal hand could build on such a scale. As he rounded the cracked shoulder of the statue, he found himself gazing upon a massive base of granite, the snapped feet of the colossus still thrusting up from the top of the cyclopean slab. Sanya was standing before the base, staring up at it with an expression of barely restrained terror. Dorgo wondered what her witch’s senses were telling her, what hideous vision her eyes alone could see.

Approaching the sorceress, Dorgo discovered that she was not gazing upon the statue and its granite slab. Set before the feet of the colossus was a single tall stake. Unlike the others that peppered the borderland, this one was made not of wood, but of bronze, its tip still wickedly sharp and cruelly barbed even after so many years. It stretched twenty feet into the air, and much of its length was caked in a crust of blood and filth. There was something sinister and ominous about this lone spike. Dorgo did not wonder that it had seized Sanya’s attention.

‘This is where the seed was sown,’ Sanya said, her voice trembling. ‘The king planted the seed of his ruin here.’

Dorgo nodded, understanding the woman’s fear if not her words. Looking at the bronze stake was like staring into the unblinking eyes of a zhaga, waiting for that cold gaze to betray the instant the giant lizard would strike, knowing all the while that it would never give any warning. The warrior felt every sense crying out in alarm, felt the lurking unseen danger of the borderland gathering around him. In some way he did not understand, the bronze stake was the focal point for all the evil of this place.

Dorgo reacted to the threat in the only way he knew. In one fluid motion, he tore his sword from his belt and brought the weapon crashing against the metal stake. He felt fire course through his arms as his blade struck the unyielding bronze. Darkness flared before his eyes, and a grinding shriek like the murmur of a murderous wind filled his ears. As he collapsed to the grey, dead ground, Dorgo felt his mind slipping away, vanquished from the lands and the time that he knew.

He could not explain how he knew he was still in the borderland. The miserable melted hills were no more, in their stead were mighty mountains with tree-lined slopes and strange snake-birds hovering around their summits. The earth was sandy, coarse and pallid beneath a bright, gleaming sun. The distant boundary of the Wastes was lost behind a billowing veil of scarlet smoke. The air was hot and dry, lacking the taint of blood and ruin. Dorgo knew he looked upon the borderland as it had been, long ages past.

A great host of warriors stood beneath the trees, bodies encased in armour of blackened iron chased with gold, leathery faces turned to the scarlet veil. They were Kurgans, drawn from the tribes of the Yusak, the Gharhars, Avags and the Tokmars, united beneath the wolf banner of the Dolgans, the mightiest host the Shadowlands had seen in a thousand years. Dreams of blood, visions of hate and slaughter had drawn them here, lured to this desolation by their hundreds and thousands to answer the siren call of hungry gods.

The words of shamans and seers had brought them to this place, but it was the will and power of one man, the Dolgan Zar Vrkas, that had forged the disparate warbands into an army. A hundred warlords had fallen to the Dolgan’s axe, but with each defeat the warriors of each chieftain had sworn their allegiance to the wolf banner.

The Kurgan host watched and waited all through the hot hours of the morning sun. They waited for the prophecies of their shamans to be fulfilled. They waited for the great horde that would emerge from the Wastes to test the strength of the Kurgans.

When the sun hung high overhead, the vigil was ended. A mighty horde exploded from the scarlet smoke, screaming their war cries, and chanting the names of their gods. As the dreams had foretold, the dreaded Tong had once more been unleashed upon the Shadowlands. They were as vast as an ocean, numbers beyond counting, stretching across the horizon: horsemen on shaggy ponies with fanged jaws and flaming eyes, infantry in armour of leather and bone and huge war mammoths that shook the earth. At their head rode a warrior wearing a helm of gold and a crown of crimson.

The Tong horde was like a crawling sea as it spread into the borderland. Even the Kurgan host was dwarfed by comparison, less than a pebble in the path of a titan. Some among the Kurgan host lost heart and turned to flee. Their fellows cut the wretches down to a man. Death was better than shame.

The Kurgans wheeled towards the slopes of the mountains, trying to use the broken terrain to counter the riders of the Tong, but the hulking warriors, encased in their mail of iron, covered the ground slowly. The riders were upon them before they had covered half the distance.

Behind the riders came the mammoths and after them the infantry in their armour of polished bone and boiled skin. The Kurgans fought with the vicious tenacity of doomed men, sparing no thought for survival or victory, devoting their efforts solely to the pursuit of carnage.

The battle did not last for the week and a day of legend, but when the Tong stood triumphant upon the field, not a man among the horde failed to appreciate how sorely their victory had been won. For each Kurgan slain, three of the Tong had spilled their blood on the sand. Hundreds of ponies and dozens of mammoths had been felled by the Kurgans before they were broken and butchered by the vengeful horde.

Almost to a man, for as Teiyogtei Khagan, the great king of the Tsavags, walked through the battlefield, his attention was drawn to one last scene of violence playing out on the field of slaughter.

A cluster of Tong warriors had surrounded a lone Kurgan, jabbing at him with their spears and swords. The Kurgan was a huge brute, towering over his tormentors. A breastplate of black iron encased his chest, and a heavy bearskin cloak hung from his back. Scars and wounds notched his arms and legs. His helm had been knocked from his head, exposing a scarred visage of wrathful defiance.

Even the king paused when he felt the Kurgan’s fiery eyes turn towards him. Those eyes promised death, and even with his horde all around him, Teiyogtei felt a tremor run through his body as he met that gaze.

The Kurgan roared, swinging the great axe he held in a wide, sweeping arc. A Tong spearman’s arm was split in two by the cleaving stroke, the swordsman in front of him slashed from thigh to rib. The Tong warriors spat vengeful curses on their foe, converging on him in a stabbing, thrusting mob. The battleaxe hacked through armour, chopped into flesh and crushed bone. Screams of agony replaced curses and shouts. The mob of warriors relented, recoiling from their awful foe, leaving five of their number maimed at his feet.

Teiyogtei knew that this could only be Vrkas, the zar of the Dolgans, leader of the Kurgan host. He pushed his way through his warriors, confronting the defiant zar. An awed hush swept across the battlefield as the Tong watched their king square off against the murderous Vrkas. Teiyogtei knew that this was the true challenge Khorne had set before him: not the massacre of an outnumbered Kurgan army, but the defeat of this mighty warrior, this man so terrible that he caused a king who had vanquished daemons to know fear.

Vrkas did not wait for the king to close upon him. The Kurgan rushed Teiyogtei, chopping at him as he emerged from the circle of warriors. The king narrowly dodged the blow, but the Tong warrior beside him was not so fortunate. The blade of the axe buried itself in the man’s chest. The dying warrior clutched desperately at the weapon that had killed him, bloody froth bubbling from his mouth.

Teiyogtei lashed out at Vrkas while the Kurgan’s axe was still enmeshed in the dying warrior’s body. The Bloodeater raked across the zar’s breastplate as he feinted to one side. With a display of raw, savage power, Vrkas ripped his axe free, flinging the dead Tong at the king. The body collapsed at Teiyogtei’s feet, tripping him up as he lunged again at the Kurgan.

Vrkas charged the unbalanced king, bringing his axe hurtling down in an overhanded stroke. Teiyogtei slid around the hurtling blade, catching the stroke along his shoulder instead of his head. Armour and skin were sliced away by the cleaving edge, blood spilling from the ugly gash. Vrkas recovered quickly, cracking the butt of the axe handle into Teiyogtei’s stomach as the king backed away. However, the lacquered armour protected the khagan, absorbing the brutal impact.

Teiyogtei swung his jewelled blade at the Kurgan’s face, driving him back as he lunged once more to the attack. Vrkas’s scarred face was made still more horrible as it twisted into a snarl of frustrated bloodlust. The king took note of his enemy’s fury and used it against him.

He swung the Bloodeater in a wide arc, a blow Vrkas easily parried with the haft of his axe, but the Kurgan was unfamiliar with the preternatural sharpness of the king’s daemon-forged blade. The haft of the axe splintered beneath the stroke, the wreckage of the weapon spilling from the Kurgan’s hands.

The king rushed the reeling Vrkas before he could recover. Again, the Bloodeater flashed out as Teiyogtei slashed at the man. This time the blade caught him in the side of the head. Had Teiyogtei struck him with the edge, he would have shorn Vrkas’s skull in half. Instead, the king caught him with the flat of the blade. Fiery eyes rolled back as the Kurgan fell to the ground, stunned by the bludgeoning impact.

Teiyogtei stared down at the insensible zar. No clean death for this one, this man who had made a king know fear. Tong warriors were already felling the forests to carve stakes for those Kurgans that had been captured during the battle. These wretches would be impaled, condemned to a slow, lingering death above the field of battle. They would allow Vrkas the dignity of his position as leader of the army. His stake would be higher than the others, forged of bronze instead of wood. There the zar would die, his body a ruin of pain and suffering, the gods weary of his cries for mercy.

Vrkas hung upon his stake for many days, his blood lubricating the shaft as it slowly worked its way through his belly and out through his back. Flies gathered around his wounds, vultures circled overhead, and jackals lapped at the puddle of gore beneath his lofty perch.

Any mind but that of the zar would have accepted death, would have welcomed its cold caress as a release from his pain. Something stronger than death, something stronger than life or flesh burned inside his heart. When, days after he had been impaled, the Tong horde continued its southward march, Vrkas used that inner fire, allowing its strength to flow through his wasted, maimed body.

Inch by agonising inch, Vrkas pulled himself up the stake, dragging the bronze spike through his body. It was more than mortal strength that fired his muscles and made him numb to his pain.

For an entire day, Vrkas worked his body up the gory shaft. It was night when he reached the top. Free from the stake, he let his wracked body fall to the ground, smashing into it with an impact that shattered half of his bones.

Hours passed before the broken wreckage began to move again, dragging itself across the bloody battlefield. Vrkas did not crawl south, after the lands of the Kurgans and the departed Tong. The fire that burned inside him, that sustained him, drew him north, towards the smoky veil. There he sensed an even greater fire calling out to him, a fire that burned with flames of hate and the need for revenge.

Vrkas’s hatred dragged him onwards, past the borderland, guiding him to that greater hate: the timeless rage of gods and daemons.

Sharp, biting pain pulled Dorgo from the ghastly vision of the past. Blood was oozing down his arm from a shallow cut puckering his flesh. Togmol stood before him, wiping his knife clean on his fur cloak. Dorgo reached for his blade, but froze as his foggy brain became aware of the sounds filling his ears: shouts and screams, the pained trumpeting of Devseh and something else, an abominable sucking sound like a child slurping dregs from a bowl.

‘You would not waken,’ Togmol started to explain, but Dorgo had already dismissed the hulking warrior from his thoughts.

He reached down and recovered his sword from the lifeless dirt, stunned to see the blade deeply notched where it had struck the bronze stake. Sword in hand, he started to race back through the jumble of bloodstone rubble, running towards the sounds of violence. Togmol called after him, the big Tsavag cursing lividly as he chased after Dorgo.

Rounding the broken head of the colossus, Dorgo found himself looking on a scene born from a nightmare. The loathsome red grass he had noted before had grown into huge, ten-foot tall stalks of oozing, writhing foulness.

Frond-like tentacles twitched around the tip of each stalk, each frond marked with slobbering, sucking mouths along its length. The huge weeds were all around Devseh, their tentacles canvassing the mammoth’s shaggy body, wrapping tightly across the beast and holding it fast. Devseh seemed to be visibly withering as the hellish plants gorged themselves upon its blood.

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 arm 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 warriors 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…

He would send riders to the Sul. There were questions he would have answered. He wanted to know what Enek Zjarr would say about the Seifan claims. He would hear what speeches the sorcerer would make to reassure him. He needed to hear these things, to know if they were truth or lies. If they were lies, then Dorgo was trapped in those lies, a captive of the Sul as surely as if they had cast him into the dungeons of their fortress.

The smooth slopes of the stumpy hill made climbing difficult. There were no sharp edges to grip, no sure handholds to support a man’s weight. Every foot of the climb was a matter of luck and chance, with a long fall to the plain below as the price for relying too much upon capricious fortune. Even so, Dorgo preferred to take his chances on the reckless climb and the clean death of a broken neck to lingering upon the blighted plains of the borderland.

Filthy red grass continued to sprout across the ancient battlefield. Suckled upon the blood of their victims, the crimson weeds burst with loathsome life. Pulpy flowers bulged from their stems, spitting barbed spores into the sky. As the spiny spores drifted through the air, blood dripped from their spikes, staining the grey earth. It did not take long for new sprouts to burst from the ground in answer to the summons of the drifting spores.

Where the abominable plants had been clustered around the carcass of Devseh and the Tsavag warriors, who had fought to free the beast, now a crawling carpet of red weed was spreading throughout the plain. Dorgo could almost feel the vampiric hunger of the plants as he looked at them. Better a fall to destruction than the slow sucking death promised by the vile vegetation.

The warrior’s few remaining comrades shared Dorgo’s feelings and followed his lead up the slopes of the hill. Dorgo had only three following him: Sanya the Sul witch, the huge Togmol, and Ulagan the scout. Ulagan had not been present to observe the hideous struggle against the weeds, but he had been sufficiently impressed by the grave expressions of his tribesmen to accept their abhorrence for the plain. Ulagan had been the first to try climbing the smooth slope, attempting to reach the height to keep a watch for the Seifan. He had just given up on the attempt when he found Dorgo and the others rushing towards the hill. Their alarm convinced him that he should try again.

Long hours passed as the four survivors endured the dangerous ascent. The earth below them was alive with writhing crimson foliage, their wormy fronds quivering excitedly whenever a loose stone was knocked down the hillside. There was no illusion that it was anything but death to fall, but the prospect of a clean death of broken bones and shattered skull was in doubt. To fall, alive, into the trembling tendrils of the red grass was a thought that almost paralysed them all with fear.

No thought, beyond escaping the red grass, had driven Dorgo to start the climb. So it was with great surprise that, as his hand discovered an uncharacteristically flat and even shelf of rock and he pulled himself over its edge, he found himself on a level rise, staring into the yawning cavity of a deep cave. He waited for the others to join him before approaching the opening. There was a rank, evil smell drifting out from its depths. Dorgo was not certain what could be worse than the red grass, but he had little desire to find out.

The others shared Dorgo’s opinion of the cave when they joined him on the rocky shelf. Ulagan inspected the ground, finding scrapes and marks on the rocks that told him they were not the first to find this place. Whether whatever had disturbed the rocks was man or beast, Ulagan was unable to tell. That something had been there was all he could say.

Sanya crouched close to the ground, removing the daemon-finger talisman from her belt. The clawed digit flopped to the rocks where she dropped it. The woman’s voice fell to a spitting whisper, struggling with sounds meant for no mortal voice. The finger twitched in response to the sorceress, scrabbling against the ground as though trying to crawl towards the cave. Sanya smiled and recovered the grisly talisman.

‘What do you find to be so gleeful?’ demanded Togmol, glaring at the witch.

Sanya pointed to the cave, favouring Togmol with her most withering sneer. ‘Even a brute like you must appreciate our predicament. The plain has blossomed with the red scourge. To try to cross it would be certain death. To stay on this hill, however high we climb, is only to invite a slower death for want of food and water. Either way, we do not help our tribes against the Skulltaker.’

‘And you know another way?’ asked Dorgo. ‘Your magic has found a way past the weed?’

‘The talisman Enek Zjarr made will point the way to the Black Altar,’ she told him. ‘It cannot be deceived by time or distance, and will always point true. I have consulted the daemon’s spirit, asking it where we should go. You saw where it pointed.’

Togmol laughed, shaking his head. ‘It is a poor enough choice to listen to a witch,’ he said. ‘Now we would trust her daemons?’

‘It would not lie,’ Sanya said. ‘Only its finger is here with me. If the daemon were to betray me, it knows what the Sul would do to the rest of it. There are tortures which even a daemon can be taught to fear.’ She looked across at each of the men, waiting for them to agree. Slowly, reluctantly, Dorgo and Ulagan nodded their heads.

‘We can’t follow her!’ protested Togmol. ‘March blindly into that cavern! Anything might be lurking down there!’ He rounded on Ulagan, tugging at his arm, pointing at the scarred stones. ‘You said you had no idea what made those marks, whether man or beast!’ He released his hold on the scout and turned to Sanya. ‘The witch means to lead us into a trap!’ he accused. ‘Lure us into the jaws of some daemon’s spawn!’

‘Enough!’ growled Dorgo. Togmol’s protests were becoming more panicked and ridiculous with each breath. He wondered at the warrior’s unrestrained display of fear. Togmol was one of the most renowned battlers in the tribe, a man who had faced enemies countless times in combat. Even the red weed had failed to make the man back away, yet he was almost overcome with terror. It was something more than the cold, evil stink of the cavern, something more than fear of daemons and monsters. Dorgo tried to appeal to the faltering warrior’s reason.

‘If Sanya meant to deal us false,’ he told Togmol, ‘why wait until now? The Sul could have attacked us on the Barrens as easily as the Seifan, and much more effectively.’

‘I’m not going down there,’ Togmol insisted, backing away and shaking his head.

‘Let the coward rot,’ Sanya snarled. ‘I am the only one you need to guide you to the Black Altar.’

Dorgo spun around, glaring at the woman. ‘I’ve left enough men dead in this forsaken land, I won’t leave any more behind!’

Sanya scoffed at his outburst. ‘You should be thinking of your tribe, your women and children, the ones who will be destroyed if the Skulltaker isn’t stopped! Beside that, what do the lives of a few warriors matter?’

Dorgo clenched his fists. The witch was right, and he hated her for it. Togmol had been a friend since before he was old enough to hunt his first zhaga. Leaving Qotagir and the others to the red grass had been loathsome enough. Abandoning Togmol was something that made his flesh crawl. The lives of his entire tribe, the trust his father had placed in him, his friendship with Togmol could never overcome these things, but that understanding did not make it any easier to do.

‘Please,’ Dorgo said, appealing to Togmol one last time. ‘There is no other way.’

‘Go then,’ Togmol told him. ‘I won’t stop you, but I won’t go with you.’

‘The tribe is depending on us,’ Dorgo said. ‘Whatever might be down there, it can’t be worse than what will happen if we leave the Skulltaker free.’

Dorgo’s words seemed to reach through Togmol’s fear. For an instant, the big warrior’s jaw became set in a grimace of determination. He forced his body forwards, following Dorgo as he led him towards the cave. Then, as the mephitic smell washed over them, as the shadowy gloom of the cavern closed around them, Togmol’s resolve broke. The warrior turned and retreated back to the shelf.

‘No good,’ Togmol said. ‘I can’t go down there.’

‘We have to,’ Dorgo replied. Already Sanya and Ulagan had passed them, their outlines only dimly visible in the shadows that filled the cave. ‘There’s no other way.’

Togmol smiled, nodding his head in grim agreement. ‘I can’t follow you,’ he said, ‘not if Khorne’s hound was snapping at my back. The gods watch over you, my friend. Fix that gaudy bauble and when you sink it into the Skulltaker’s gut, tell the bastard that Togmol is waiting for him in the Hunting Halls.’

The gods watch over you as well, Dorgo thought as he turned and strode back into the cave. The evil stench of the place was overpowering, the shadows almost alive in their suggestion of malice. What feeble light existed within the cavern was provided not by the clean brilliance of the sun, but by the sickly green phosphorescence of glowing clumps of moss. The exact size of the cavern was difficult to determine, the roof lost somewhere in the darkness, the walls largely indistinct suggestions of shadow pockmarked with patches of luminescence.

The drip of water falling from stalactites echoed from the unseen walls. A furtive, scratching noise tugged at the edge of Dorgo’s hearing. The cavern played strange games with the sounds, making it impossible to tell if whatever made them was smaller than a rat or larger than a wolf. Dorgo was reminded of the indistinct marks on the shelf. Clearly, whatever had made them would be an inhabitant of this black netherworld. He fingered his sword, but could take no comfort in the cold metal in his hand. This close to the Wastes, there was no guarantee that whatever haunted the darkness would respect sharp iron enough to die when it was struck.

‘This way,’ Ulagan said, his faint whisper crawling into Dorgo’s ears. He could just faintly make out the scout, a dim shape where he blocked the luminescence of the glow moss. He thought he could see the hunter’s hand extended before him, a feather dangling from his finger. It was an old trick, used to find the direction of the wind. Here, in this black ever-night, Ulagan was trying to use the same system to discover a current in the air, a current that might lead them through the cavern.

Dorgo followed Ulagan’s lead, taking hold of Sanya’s arm and guiding the woman. He wasn’t going to risk losing her in the dark. Too much depended upon her. Too much had been lost just to bring her this far.

The current Ulagan followed proved to emanate from a broad-mouthed tunnel at the rear of the cave. The opening stabbed down into the hill at such a steep angle that they were forced to stretch their arms wide and brace themselves against the walls as they made their descent. Dorgo could still hear the furtive, slithering whispers, sounds that almost seemed more suggestion than observation. The evil stink of the place rose as the tunnel stabbed its way deeper and deeper. Dorgo was reminded of the zhagas of the Prowling Lands and their musky reek.

At last, the tunnel became reasonably level. Where before it had plunged straight into the hill, now it became a winding corridor, twisting and doubling upon itself in a maddening confusion of switchbacks and intersections.

Ulagan suddenly called a halt. Dorgo was uncertain why the scout stopped so abruptly. Then he saw where the man’s hand pointed. Glow moss littered the floor of the tunnel in heaps. Something had scraped it from the walls, creating patches of almost perfect blackness. The reptile stink was more pronounced as well.

Dorgo drew his sword, backing away from the sinister patches of darkness. Sanya caught his alarm. He could hear her fumbling among her amulets and charms. Ulagan lowered his spear, his ropy tentacle slithering around the haft to secure his grip.

The furtive, scratching sounds returned, and this time Dorgo knew that they were no trick of his imagination. He could hear something scraping against the earthen floor of the tunnel, something that took laboured, hissing breaths, something that came not only from the tunnel ahead of them, but from the passageway behind.

Yellow eyes winked open, shining from the nearest patch of darkness, reflecting the glow of the phosphorescent moss. Another set of eyes appeared beside the first, and then a third. Dorgo could see other eyes shining from further down the tunnel. The scrape of bodies surging down the passage behind them caused shapes to rush at them from the darkness ahead. Dorgo did not waste any effort trying to number their foes. It was enough to know that they were few against many.

Too many.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Snapping, snarling, hissing, the fiends of the dark fell upon Dorgo and his companions like a black tide of shadow. Dorgo lashed out with his sword, feeling the blade chop through something too soft to be human flesh, like cutting into boiled mutton. Runny treacle, stagnant and cloying, spurted from the body of the shadow he had struck, spattering his face with syrupy filth. Dorgo gagged at the revolting stench, the smell of spoiled fruit and sour wine. The ichor burned where it touched him, sending a fiery numbness through his face.

The haunters of the tunnel did not relent, surging over the ruin of their mangled kindred to close upon the stunned Tsavag. Dorgo rallied against the lethargy the smell of the creature’s treacle evoked in his limbs and in his mind. Through the warm, fuzzy cloud that closed around his thoughts, Dorgo imagined the vision of his people, of his father, being butchered by the Skulltaker. The hideous rune of Khorne flared from the helm of the Skulltaker, shining like sunfire in his brain.

It was Dorgo’s turn to snap and snarl and hiss. His blade flashed through the gloom of the tunnel, hacking and tearing into the delicate meat of the things in the dark. Bubbling cries, half-human moans of death and agony, echoed through the blackness. A flare of purple fire blazed from somewhere behind him and a new smell filled the passageway, the stink of something burning in its own fat and the rancour of scales crumbling into ash.

Dorgo heard Sanya gasp in fright, and he wondered what she had seen by the light of her spell. Then there was no time for questions as the nameless, hissing horde descended upon them once more.

There was something, some vile suggestion of speech and intelligence in the susurrus that whispered through the darkness. Dorgo had the impression of arms and faces striking at him from the shadows, felt crude clubs of bone crack against his mammoth-hide hauberk. He felt claws clutch at his hair, stumbled as something thick and wormy tried to coil around his leg. Fangs ripped at his arm, sinking deep into his flesh as they stabbed through his armour. How many had he cut down? It seemed to him like dozens, hundreds, yet still there were more. Were these degenerate things men? Were they even mortal?

Sanya’s voice rose in a piercing scream. Dorgo struggled to free himself from the clutching press of horrors clustered around him, clinging to him like flies on a carcass. Across from him, he could hear Ulagan struggling to do the same. It was more than their need for the sorceress, the desperate knowledge that without her the Skulltaker could not be stopped. The fact that she was human was enough to goad them on, to strive against the clawing mass of their numberless foes. Nothing human should be abandoned to such a fate.

Trying to reach Sanya was like swimming against the tide. Her screams became faint, distant as she was borne away by her attackers, carried off down one of the side passages. The effort had taken a terrible toll on the two Tsavags. Their bodies were masses of cuts and bruises, battered and clawed by the violent attentions of the things in the darkness.

With hideous clarity, Dorgo understood that the only reason they were still alive was because the things didn’t want to kill them. They had some other purpose, some vileness beyond ambush and murder in store for these men who had invaded their forbidden world. The realisation made Dorgo fight all the harder to free himself from the weak, wormy limbs that clung to him, trying to pull him down. His hand was an iron fist moulded around the hilt of his sword, defying the claws that strove to tear the weapon free.

Again and again, Dorgo felt his legs buckle, felt his strength ebb. His endurance was failing against the merciless assault, and he knew that soon he must succumb. He spat curses on his foes, damning them by gods and ancestors both. Raspy laughter hissed from the throng. They knew that their victory was at hand.

A fierce war cry roared through the blackness, drowning out the diseased mockery of the creatures. Dorgo’s flagging spirit lifted as he heard that piercing shout: a Tsavag war cry, the blood-howl of a Tong warrior. The shout was followed by the sound of metal sheering through flesh, and the whimpering moans of the things as their bodies were ripped apart by the avenging blade.

Dorgo felt the clinging grip around his limbs abandon its hold abruptly as first one and then all of his attackers retreated into the darkness. A rustling, crawling noise fled down the tunnel as the creatures slithered back into their holes. With the retreat of the monsters, the meagre illumination provided by the moss on the walls was able to reassert itself, no longer blocked by the bodies of the degenerate horde.

By the feeble light of the moss, Dorgo could see Ulagan leaning against the opposite wall, his spear a broken shaft around which his tentacle was coiled, his normal arm dripping from a grisly gash in his shoulder. The scout’s face was purple with bruises, one eye swollen shut. While he watched, Ulagan spat a tooth into the passage, and then stooped to recover it, fearful that some witch might collect it and use it to enslave his soul.

Dorgo did not need a mirror to know that he was in little better shape than Ulagan. He could feel every cut and bruise flaring with pain as he moved. Somehow, despite the beating they had suffered, Dorgo felt that their rescuer managed to look even worse.

Togmol stood almost in the very centre of the tunnel, his eyes so wide with fear that they looked like they belonged to an owl, not a Tsavag warrior. His breath came in short, hurried gulps, and his skin was so pallid that it was almost corpse-like. Togmol barely registered the presence of the men he had saved, looking instead at the walls and ceiling, turning his head in quick, panicked jerks. Finally, he dropped his broad-axe, slapping one palm against the wall and another against the ceiling of the tunnel. Veins popped out in his neck as Togmol exerted his tremendous strength against the unyielding stone.

Cautiously, Dorgo stepped over to Togmol, laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The warrior flinched at his touch. A flicker of reason edged its way into the fear-crazed eyes. He relented in his vainglorious effort to widen the narrow tunnel.

‘Our lives are yours,’ Dorgo told Togmol. ‘If you hadn’t come down after us, we’d be lost.’

Togmol only briefly glanced at Dorgo as he spoke. The warrior’s eyes kept straying back to the moss-splotched walls. ‘Find something else for me to kill before I regret the choice,’ he said, every word pushed through clenched teeth.

Dorgo nodded grimly. He could see how greatly being down in the narrow, suffocating tunnels was taking its toll on Togmol’s courage. Cheen the Deceiver, it was said, placed within every brave heart some terrible secret fear, a weakness that the god could exploit if ever he sought the man’s ruin. In the grip of his fear, every breath was an effort for Togmol, an ordeal the other Tsavags could only imagine.

‘Have a look at what you’ll be killing first,’ said Ulagan. The scout had draped a bunch of moss over the splintered end of his spear, fashioning a weird flameless torch. He held the improvised light over one of the creatures killed during the battle. It was nearly man-sized, lean and wiry with long thin arms that seemed almost boneless. The head was wedge-shaped, pulled into a flattened snout. Even in death there was a crazed depravity in the thing’s beady pink eyes. Slender curved fangs protruded from the wide mouth, while the nose was only a pair of holes set between the eyes. The body was a greasy grey, coated in fine scales that felt at once smooth and cold.

The first corpse Ulagan inspected lacked legs. Beneath the creature’s trunk was nothing but a snakelike tail as thin and wretched as the rest of its degenerate body. Others were more human in their form, though all were stunted and starved, gangrel things from some obscene world beneath the borderland.

The loathsome sight of the abominations impressed even Togmol, distracting him for the moment from the pressing closeness of the tunnel. Dorgo spat, his skin crawling with the knowledge that such creatures had touched him.

‘We might have to fight more of them to get out of here,’ Ulagan warned, noting the disgust on Dorgo’s face.

‘We will fight more of them,’ Dorgo agreed, his voice sharper than steel. ‘They’ve taken Sanya. We have to get her back.’

Ulagan cursed, kicking the ophidian skull of the closest creature. ‘Harpies take that witch!’ the scout snarled. He pointed to the passageway behind Togmol. ‘The snakes took her down there.’ He turned and stabbed his finger in the other direction. ‘The current is coming from that way. Let the worms keep the Sul slut!’

Dorgo stalked towards the scout, grabbing his hide tunic and pulling him close. ‘No one is running,’ he growled. ‘The life of the tribe depends on us bringing back a weapon that can kill the Skulltaker. To do that, we need Sanya!’

‘How do we do that?’ Ulagan returned, shaking free of Dorgo’s grip. ‘The animals scattered in every direction when they fled! How do we find the ones that took the witch?’

‘They didn’t scatter in every direction,’ Togmol said. ‘None passed me when I attacked.’ Ulagan scowled as Togmol spoke, but Dorgo failed to appreciate the importance of his words. ‘If any of them withdrew back down the tunnel, they did so before I arrived,’ he explained. ‘The only ones that would have had cause to do so would be the ones carrying off a captive.’

The explanation brought a flicker of hope to Dorgo. He turned back to Ulagan, gesturing at the floor of the tunnel. ‘Some of them were wounded. You can follow their trail?’

‘The way out is the other way,’ protested the hunter.

‘If we do not find Sanya, there is no way out,’ Dorgo corrected him in tones colder than the murk of the tunnel.

Hutga looked across the valley behind him at the assembled warhost of the Tsavags: nine-hundred warriors and their families, over a hundred full-grown mammoths and a dozen more too old or too young to bear the tribe. It was a gathering that had been drawn from every encampment across the territory of the tribe, a gathering such as had not been seen since before the days of Hutga’s great-grandfather when the dragon Kohba had invaded the domain. Many were dead before the dragon was brought down, and long was the mourning.

He hoped this gathering would not have such tragic echoes, or perhaps he hoped it would. For there to be tears, there must be men to shed them. That meant that the tribe would survive. It was survival that they were fighting for, survival against a force that the Seifan and Vaan were too foolish to see. There had been a Skulltaker. He had been the ruin of Teiyogtei Khagan, the greatest scourge to ever strike against the domain and the people of the Horde. He had returned, returned to claim those who had taken the flesh of Teiyogtei, who wore the tatters of his crown.

The valley of Ikar’s Refuge backed into the mountains, into passes only the Tsavags knew. The tribe could fend off even the army of the Vaan for months if they had to. It would be a hard fight and many of the old and the young would die from the privations they would be forced to endure. Holding off the Vaan would not be the problem. Beating them was the problem.

The khagan sighed as his tired eyes scanned the horizon. Where were the Sul? The messengers he had sent to the sorcerers had returned. They had promised to aid their allies, to meet them at Ikar’s Refuge. With the magic of the Sul, the Tsavags could beat the Vaan and the Seifan. Retreating into the barren passes would be unnecessary.

A shout came up from the lookouts at the mouth of the valley. Hutga started, leaning forwards on his throne as he saw the men scrambling down from their perches among the rocks. Before they could finish their descent, black shapes swooped down on them from the darkening sky: furies, called up by the black magic of the Seifan. The Sul had waited too long to bring aid to their allies.

Hutga roared at his tribesmen, ordering everyone to climb into their mammoths’ howdahs. War was upon them sooner than they had expected. Men hurried to load their families onto the platforms of ivory and wood. Ropes were cast down, and food and water pulled up onto the backs of the huge shaggy beasts.

Hutga scowled at the confusion. Men who fought fearlessly could still know panic when the lives of their women and children were in peril. He wondered if it would have been better to send them ahead into the passes, but realised that leaving them undefended would be an even worse burden to place upon his warriors. The Seifan were a slippery enemy, one that could be anywhere.

Hutga’s mistake had been believing that the Hung would not attack without their Kurgan allies. Craven scavengers, he had expected the Seifan to wait until the Vaan could march with them. He had not reckoned upon them acting alone.

Riders appeared at the mouth of the valley. Hutga could see the horsehair standards of the Seifan rising over the host: hundreds of horsemen, dozens of scythe-wheeled chariots. Shen, or whoever was master of the Seifan, had mustered the entire tribe for war. Hutga spat as he saw the Hung assemble. For all their tricks and bravado, the Seifan were overly bold. Numerous as they were, they did not consider the strength of the Tsavags. Each of Hutga’s warriors was worth five of the cringing jackals of the Seifan. Each of the Tong’s mammoths was worth a hundred of their horsemen. It had been too long since the Seifan had faced Hutga’s people in open battle. The Hung would pay for their inexperience.

The boom of drums thundered across Ikar’s Refuge, and the roar of bronze horns echoed from the heights. The riders of the Seifan drew aside, making way for the marching columns of their allies. A crawling carpet of black armour surged into the valley, skull-tipped banners flying above their massed ranks: the Vaan, in the past, a force mighty enough on its own to unite the tribes of the domain against it. Now, that balance was broken. Ratha smelled the long-frustrated destiny of his people in the wind.

Hutga cursed as he climbed up the side of his war mammoth, abandoning his throne in the grass below. He had underestimated the cunning of the Seifan. Even as they sent their messenger to him, the Vaan had been on the march, near enough to support their allies when Hutga rejected their treacherous scheme.

Perhaps that had been their intention all along, to goad Hutga into gathering his people into one place where they could be vanquished in one fell swoop.

Retreat into the passes was a bitter choice. The Seifan riders would be able to overtake the mammoths in the short run. Giving battle to the Seifan would cost the Tsavags time, time that the Vaan would use to bring up their warriors. Hutga thought little of the fighting abilities of the Seifan, but he knew better than to dismiss those of the Vaan. Fighter for fighter, they were the equal of the Tsavags, Hutga conceded bitterly. Vaan spear-launchers would reek havoc among the mammoths, and with the Seifan cavalry to cover for them, it would be desperate work to fight a path to the fiendish Kurgan weapons.

Hutga cast his eyes to the heavens and cursed again. Where were the Sul? The sorcerers had just as much to lose from a Vaan victory as the Tsavags. Ratha would spare nothing to destroy his most hated rivals, and with the Tsavags defeated, there would be nothing to prevent him from bringing the full fury of his tribe against Enek Zjarr.

Hutga shuddered as he suddenly considered why the Sul hadn’t come. It need not be treachery. Perhaps they didn’t come because they couldn’t come. Perhaps the sorcerers had abandoned their allies because they were beset by a worse foe.

It was too much to believe that a small thing like war would make the Skulltaker idle.

A gigantic cavern yawned below them, stretching it seemed to the edge of the world. Forests of glowing moss dripped from the walls, and hung from the ceiling in drooping clumps. A great river of black water crawled through the cavern sluggishly, gurgling loudly as it dropped into a deep pool, a sunken lake that sprawled across hundreds of yards at its widest point. It was from the lake that the cold, rancid smell of primordial evil emanated, filling the tunnels with its corrupt stench. A fell luminescence shone from far beneath the black waters, a soft dim light that was at once alluring and repulsive.

Above the rush of subterranean waters was another sound, a tumult to chill the blood of even a Tsavag warrior. It was a hissing chorus of debased voices raised in a slithering chant, like a nest of vipers singing praises to their reptilian gods.

By the glow of the moss, the men could see a vast throng of pale, scaly things writhing and swaying to the discordant harmony of the chant. Gazing upon it was like looking at a leprous sea of deformity and corruption, an idiot ocean of abomination and degeneracy. Had these things been men once? It was a horror to strike loathing into any man’s heart.

The gods were capricious in their gifts and terrible in their wrath, yet to see such evidence of their horrific power as these snake-men was as humbling as it was terrifying.

Dorgo steeled his heart, gesturing beyond the swaying, hissing mass of snake-men to the crude altar beyond them. Cut from some sickly green stone, veined with strange ores of purple and alabaster, the altar was crafted in tremendous proportions. Twenty feet high, nearly twice as long, it looked as though it had been carved by giants.

Strange, twisted shapes adorned its sides, crude inhuman figures that cavorted around the altar in scenes of grotesque lasciviousness. The carvings leered out from the stone, mocking, enticing, daring those who gazed upon them to look away.

Lashed across the top of the altar, looking as tiny as an infant upon the oversized stone, was Sanya. Her cloak and raiment had been torn away, leaving her body bare before the serpentine eyes of her captors. Two snake-men, hideous in their deformities, sat upon the altar beside her. Each held a hollowed skull in its hand, into which they dipped their scrawny claws. When the claws emerged, they were stained black with oily pigment. Carefully, hissing their vile litanies, the serpent-creatures painted crawling runes on Sanya’s skin, consecrating her flesh in some abominable rite.

‘Waste of a good woman, even if she is a stinking backbiting Sul,’ swore Ulagan. ‘But that puts an end to it. There must be hundreds of them down there!’

‘These things fight like rats,’ growled Togmol. ‘I won’t run from vermin.’ The big warrior was a little more at ease in the vast cavern, though he still cast suspicious glances at the rocky roof overhead.

‘Vermin or men,’ Dorgo snarled, ‘we can’t let them keep her.’

Ulagan glared at his companions, incredulous at what he was hearing. His tentacle-arm twitched angrily around the splintered length of his spear. ‘We don’t have a choice!’ he snapped. ‘There’re three of us and an entire mountain of these things! You say we need to rescue her or we’ll never find the Black Altar. I say how will we find it if we’re dead!’

‘Togmol is right,’ Dorgo said. ‘These creatures are poor fighters, no match for men.’

‘They did a fair job in the tunnels,’ protested Ulagan.

Dorgo’s eyes turned from the altar-stone and the swaying snake-men. The three Tsavags had entered the cavern through a narrow passage that opened upon a shelf of rock. The shelf overlooked the cavern like a balcony, projecting some distance into the vast chamber. Unlike the slopes of the hill above this underworld, the walls were rocky and jagged, offering easy handholds for anything less twisted in shape than the snake-men. Whether because they feared no enemy in this holy of holies or because they were unable to descend from the shelf, the snake-men had placed no sentries. Every degenerate in the cavern was focused upon the obscene ritual.

‘That is because they surprised us,’ said Dorgo. ‘This time we surprise them.’ He did not give the scout time to voice new protest, partially because he feared Ulagan’s words might sway him from his purpose. For all his brave words and display of self-assurance, Dorgo had few delusions about their chances. Still, the gods sometimes favoured the hopeless, at least if they were bold in their rush to self-destruction.

Dorgo scrambled down the jagged cavern wall like some toe-clawed zhaga. His grip failed him before he reached the floor. The warrior braced himself, falling the final ten feet. He could feel the impact in his bones as his feet smacked into the rocks below, his knees buckling as they absorbed the shock. The instant of numb confusion quickly passed, and in a flash his sword was back in his hand, his eyes glaring at the reptilian throng. Whatever noise his violent descent made, it was lost in the hissing chant of the snake-men.

A clatter of stones and curses announced the end of Togmol’s descent. The big warrior landed in a jumble of limbs and obscenities, his broad-axe clattering across the rock floor. Embarrassment more than pain coloured Togmol’s face as he rose from the ground and scrambled to recover his axe. Even the din caused by his fall had failed to impress itself upon the snake-men. Dorgo stared in disbelief at the creatures as they continued to sway and hiss. The things had to be deaf not to have heard Togmol fall!

By contrast, Ulagan landed on the ground with a grace and silence that shamed his companions. The hunter rolled his eyes as he watched Togmol jog back from recovering his weapon, and then turned towards Dorgo. ‘I still say this is madness,’ he whispered.

‘Put as much energy into killing as complaining and we’ll do all right,’ Dorgo told him. He gestured with his sword at the swaying, serpentine shapes. The throng was only a hundred yards from them, yet they hadn’t shown the slightest sign of noticing the men. Maybe they weren’t deaf. Maybe they were so mesmerised by their ritual that they were oblivious to everything else. Either way, the snake-men would regret their lack of caution. ‘These worms won’t know we’re here until we send a few heads rolling across the floor.’

‘What then?’ Ulagan challenged. ‘You don’t think we can kill them all, do you?’

‘No, but I’ll have fun finding out,’ growled Togmol. He cast one last, worried look at the ceiling overhead, and tightened his grip on his axe. A bellowing roar erupted from the big man’s lungs and he charged towards the snake-men.

Dorgo grinned at Ulagan, happy that the die had been irrevocably cast. There was no more time for thinking, for weighing every decision, for considering every move. There was only carnage and the feel of flesh beneath his blade.

‘You heard the man!’ he shouted at the scout. Dorgo’s feet pounded against the uneven floor as he raced after the charging Togmol.

Even as Togmol rushed at them, the snake-men gave no sign of reaction. They continued to hiss and sway, writhing in the throes of some debased fervour. The Tsavag was upon them, his axe cleaving through a wormy neck to send its wedge-shaped head flying through the gloom. The things around the butchered reptile gave no notice to the slaughter, but continued to hiss and sway.

A second snake-man was cut down, and then a third. Dorgo was among the monsters, his sword stabbing through the buttery flesh of the abominations. Ulagan howled the death chant of the Tsavags, thrusting the ruin of his spear into scaly backs, and raking the edge of his weapon across sinewy necks.

A dozen or so of the reptiles were cut down before Dorgo became aware of the scent. Sweet and seductive, at once horrible and wondrous, it drowned his senses. His head swam and his eyes watered. He heard the dull clatter of metal against stone as Togmol’s broadaxe fell from his slackened grip.

Ulagan crumpled against the ground, shuddering in the clutch of some ecstatic fit. Dorgo fought to tighten his hand around the hilt of his weapon, but he could feel it slipping through his numb fingers.

The snake-men upon the altar had finished painting their slithering sigils upon Sanya’s skin. They looked down upon her would-be rescuers, a hollow amusement shining from their cloudy eyes. The strange power that held their kindred, the terrible force that exerted itself against the Tsavags, did not seem to affect these two.

Priests or sorcerers, the foul power did not hold them within its coils of desire and devotion, mindless slaves to their ardour. One of the snake-shamans took notice of Dorgo’s efforts to retain hold of his weapon. The observation increased its cruel amusement. Its claw began to glow with a pearly light and as it swept its talon through the air, a burning rune was scorched into the emptiness above the altar. It was a sign that Dorgo knew: the horned sun, the mark of Shornaal, the Prince of Forsaken Delight, the Great Tempter.

Like all of the greater gods, Shornaal was a force to be feared as much as worshipped. He could destroy a man from within, using his secret desires, the denied passions of the flesh to corrupt and overwhelm. A mighty warrior became drunkard, lecher, root-fiend and worse under his consuming touch. Old joys faded into bitterness, old pleasures became empty as those bearing his mark forced themselves ever further to find new experiences to replace the small delights that no longer stirred their spirits.

Shornaal promised much to those who bent their knee before him and abandoned all other powers, but in return he demanded everything. Debased and vile, the snake-men had found the final foulness wearing the chains of Slaanesh.

Dorgo felt the god’s seductive power flooding through him, the burrowing whisper of Shornaal’s voice in his mind. Mocking promises, enticing lies, and a thousand depraved images called out to all the vileness in his soul. The warrior could almost feel his soul being leeched from his body as it reached out to the phantom delights of Shornaal’s hollow kingdom. Dorgo forced what little remained of his will into his hand, into the slackened fingers that still brushed against the hilt of his sword.

His arm hung limp at his side, the sword dragging against the ground beside him as he stumbled towards the altar and the black pool beyond. With every rock it scraped against, every faltering step, the sword threatened to spill from his numbed touch. Dorgo knew that if he lost the weapon, he lost his only anchor to reality, his only protection against the sweet lies of the voice crawling through his soul.

The luminescence in the pool began to grow more vibrant, as though something was rising from the black depths of the subterranean lake. It burned with the same pearly light that had surrounded the claw of the snake-man, and as it rose, Dorgo felt the seductive perfume of the cavern grow stronger and the words and urges of the voice grow fierce and demanding. The hissing chant of the snake-men became a deafening susurrus, their swaying contortions frenzied.

The black waters of the pool bubbled and boiled as the light continued its rise. Dorgo’s entranced march had brought him past the altar, past the gloating serpent-priests and their captive. He felt the icy water of the pool splash against his feet, yet even this sensation, the knowledge that some loathsome doom was about to consume him, could not break the siren-spell that held him.

Blindingly, the light burst from the depths. It was light without form or shape, burning like some carnal star in the dark below the world. Water crashed around it, swirling in a spout of violence and fury. If the light was without shape, the tempest was not. Wraithlike, bodies took form within the coils of the tempest, contorting and writhing in lascivious obscenity, a spectacle of revulsion born from the madness of a depraved god. These were the spirits of those trapped by the lies of Shornaal, bound forever in the emptiness of their corruption.

The swirling water spout rose from the pool, wrapping itself around the shapeless luminescence. Tighter and tighter, faster and faster, the water and the spirit-shapes bound within it closed around the light, binding it within a shell of foulness. The light infused the waters, leeching the darkness from them, turning them from black to yellow. The liquid shape became firm, solid, a thing that looked to Dorgo to be flesh and bone. With horror, he realised that this thing was not unknown to him. Many terrible daemons were recorded in the legends of the Tsavags, but none so foul as Ya’sheen, the Yellow Worm.

It was more serpent than worm, a great viper with six eyes of glistening pearl and a vast body, smooth and shiny with slime. What Dorgo thought were knots of purple veins showing beneath the daemon’s smooth flesh proved to be the writhing figures of its slaves, locked in their unending abominations. The daemon’s face was pulled into a tapering snout, narrow and somehow insect-like. A great, lash-like tongue oozed from the thing’s toothless mouth, flicking through the darkness.

The tongue of Ya’sheen flashed across the water. Dorgo felt its sting against his cheek as it whipped around his head. The oily, slimy evil of the thing made his flesh crawl with foul excitement. He could actually feel the envy of the snake-men, the resentment of Togmol and Ulagan, that he had been embraced by this living fane of Shornaal. Dorgo knew he was lost, knew he was damned, and knew that he did not care.

The wetness of the daemon’s tongue slithered through his hair, down his face. He felt its dampness against his mouth, against his eyes, against his mind. Thoughts and memories drained out of him as the daemon drank them, savouring every experience that had marked his young life. He saw his first love vanish into the daemon’s hunger, and the face of the first man he had killed devoured by the daemon’s appetite. Every meal, every smell, every touch, all of it faded into the Yellow Worm’s lust.

Then the daemon shuddered. Dorgo could dimly see the twin rows of eyes on Ya’sheen’s head darken, fading from pearl to amber. Beads of crimson trickled down its ophidian face, tears of blood. The tongue, once so warm and enticing became dry and leathery. It recoiled from Dorgo, shooting back into the daemon’s tapered snout. He felt his memories crash back into his mind. First among them was the one that had struck the daemon with such horror. It was the memory of a lone warrior with a skull-faced helm and bronze antlers that formed the rune of Khorne.

The returned memory was clouded by the perception of Ya’sheen. Where Dorgo had seen a man, the daemon had seen the power within. Dorgo could see a great shadow surrounding the Skulltaker, and a ravenous hunger that made the appetite of Ya’sheen tawdry by comparison. There was rage and fury and havoc, and the iron stamp of terror and carnage. Now Dorgo understood. He knew what it was that hunted his tribe.

Slackened fingers became a fist of steel around the hilt of his sword. No longer did the seductive musk of the Yellow Worm hold him in its clutches. That power had been burned from his mind by the image of the Skulltaker. Before the wrath of that power, the fury of Khorne, all the lies and promises of Shornaal were but wisps and illusions.

The Yellow Worm reeled from the hostile force it had drawn into itself. A thing of emotion and thought, the memory it had drawn from Dorgo was more deadly than any blade. The daemon did not bother to discard its shape, to become once more a thing of light and shadow. It sank back into the depths with shameless abandon, the clinging stink of its terror filling the cavern.

Dorgo spun as something launched itself at him from the side. His sword crunched through the breast of one of the serpent-priests. The creature scrabbled madly at him as its syrupy blood bubbled from its chest. Dorgo ripped his weapon free as the dying monster flopped into the turbulent pool, sinking after its fleeing god.

All around the cavern, the hissing chant of the snake-men had been broken. A cacophony of fear echoed from the glowing walls, the near-mindless terror of degenerate horrors that had forsaken the right to be called men. Bound body and soul to the seducing musk of the daemon, they were similarly consumed by the daemon’s fear. A slithering, wailing mob scattered into the gloom, pursued by the vengeful blades of Togmol and Ulagan. The routed snake-men offered no resistance to the Tsavags. It was butchery, not battle.

Dorgo leapt up the uneven blocks of stone that formed a crude stairway behind the altar. Alone of the snake-men, the priests had been immune to the numbing perfume of their god. So too had they proven immune to Ya’sheen’s terror. One had ended its life gamely on Dorgo’s blade. The other moved with more cruel purpose in its mind. It had guessed why the men had invaded its sanctuary, what they had hoped to accomplish. It did not know how Dorgo had hurt its god, but it knew how it could hurt Dorgo.

The serpent-priest was poised above Sanya, a dagger of bone in its hand. The thing turned its head in the warrior’s direction, its scaly lips pulling back in a contemptuous sneer of hate. Dorgo despaired as he saw the monster’s arm sweep downwards, striking for the woman’s pale breast.

The bone dagger never struck. Before it could sink into Sanya’s heart, a blaze of sapphire light gathered around the snake-man’s head. The snake-man seemed to soak up the burning light, absorbing the blue brilliance into its skull. An instant later, the skull exploded, splashing blood and brains across the altar. The priest’s body collapsed against Sanya, twitching and writhing as life drained out of it. Dorgo kicked the squirming carcass off the woman, watching as it fell over the side of the platform.

‘Get me free!’ snarled Sanya. The sorceress tugged at the strips of scaly hide that bound her to the stone. Dorgo smiled at the woman. For a moment, he was almost able to forget that she was both a Sul and a witch.

‘I’ll look better with this filth washed off me,’ Sanya complained, scowling at him.

Dorgo’s sword slashed through the thongs, freeing her arms. He left the legs for her to see to. He pointed to a disordered heap lying beside the altar, the jumbled pile of her clothes and equipment.

‘Your belongings are over there,’ Dorgo said, turning his back on Sanya. He started to climb down, to catch Togmol and Ulagan before they chased the snake-men too far into the tunnels.

‘Sanya?’ he called out. He looked back and saw the woman watching him. There was something uncomfortable about her expression, and he reminded himself again that she was a Sul.

‘If you take a bath, I’d advise against dipping into the pool,’ he said, and then hurried to find his kinsmen. Facing all the snakes under the mountain was safer than the things he was turning over in his mind.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Hutga could see the enemy forces fall into formation as they marched into the valley. From his vantage point high in the howdah of his mammoth, he watched in brooding silence as the Seifan horsemen and Vaan infantry manoeuvred through the narrow gap between the hills.

The presence of the Seifan riders meant that he could not withdraw into the maze of passes deeper in the mountain range, a rearguard would need to stay behind to keep the horsemen at bay while the rest of the tribe lost themselves in the labyrinth. Once in the passes, the Tsavags could fight the running battle that Hutga had envisioned when he brought his people into Ikar’s Refuge, but to do that, they had to hold the Seifan back long enough to allow such an escape.

The Seifan spread out across a wide front. A small number of chariots were scattered along the centre and right flank, a ploy to gull Hutga as to where the Hung were concentrating their strength. With his view of the enemy deployment, he could see the heavy numbers of war chariots gathering behind a loose screen of cavalry on his left. Unused to fighting the Tsavags and their mammoths, the Seifan kahn didn’t appreciate the better view of the battlefield the height of the towering beasts afforded the Tong. He would learn soon enough, Hutga thought, snapping orders to his warriors, redeploying his men to meet the brunt of the Seifan attack.

Hutga saw something else the new kahn had failed to take into account. The infantry marching forwards to support the Seifan were light skirmishers, warriors with much poorer armour and arms than the regular Vaan force. He could see the muscle-swollen masses of Muhaks and the tattooed faces of Gahhuks among the skirmishers.

Ratha wasn’t committing his best troops to the fight, he was sending forward the dregs of his army: slaves, prisoners and refugees. The heavy troops, the true fighting force of the Vaan was hanging back, moving into the valley at a snail’s pace, content to allow the Seifan and the conscripts to draw further and further away.

The Seifan weren’t the only ones with a mind towards treachery. Zar Ratha was too cagey a warlord not to see an opportunity when it presented itself. He saw the coming battle as a chance to rid himself of both the Tsavags and the Seifan. He would let the Hung engage the mammoth riders and bear the brunt of the fighting. Deceived by the presence of the skirmishers, in the thick of battle the Seifan would not realise until too late that the Vaan army was not with them. Even if they did realise Ratha’s strategy, it would be too late. The Seifan would be trapped between the iron wall of the Vaan line and Hutga’s mammoths. There would be no escape for the Hung.

Hutga knew, then, that Ratha’s skirmishers would start the battle, seeking to force the Seifan into action before they had any opportunity to discover the zar’s ploy. The Vaan would allow the Tsavags and Seifan to slaughter one another, and then sweep forward in a wall of iron to cut down the exhausted victor.

With their spear-throwers and long axes, and the devilish tactic of scattering iron caltrops across the battlefield, the infantry of the Vaan would be the true fight ahead of Hutga’s mammoth riders. A war mammoth was, at its core, a weapon of terror, depending as much upon the panic it could inflict upon an enemy’s ranks as it did upon its immense size and strength.

Looking out upon the sea of blackened iron that was Ratha’s army, Hutga could not imagine the formidable force shattering like some ill-disciplined rabble. Iron resolve was the weapon in Ratha’s arsenal that the Tsavags had to fear more than any other.

Yet, even as Hutga looked upon the imposing army, he saw confusion rear its head among the rearmost ranks. Warriors scattered, pressing back into the valley, pushing the forward ranks deeper into Ikar’s Refuge. Shouts of alarm and, yes, fear, sounded from the rearguard, drowning out the furious commands of war chiefs and officers. Something had happened; some new threat had emerged to sow disorder among Ratha’s disciplined troops.

Hutga dared to hope that Enek Zjarr and the Sul had finally arrived. Striking at the rear of the Vaan, Ratha would be trapped, caught between the mammoths of the Tsavags and the sorcery of the Sul. As the rearguard of the army continued to scatter, however, as the solid ranks of the Kurgans began to disintegrate, Hutga felt a knot of terror rise in his throat.

The mouth of the valley was strewn with Vaan corpses, dozens at the very least, but it wasn’t sorcery that had felled the warriors, it was steel. Not the steel of a rescuing army, but the steel of a lone man, a red phantom that stalked relentlessly through the ranks of the dead.

Another army had arrived, an army of one, an army called the Skulltaker.

After the brooding horror of the snake tunnels, Dorgo thought there was nothing beneath the clean sky that could be so abominable. He was more wrong than he could have believed possible. When Ulagan led their small group out of the other end of the tunnel, following the draught of air, Dorgo knew that they were no longer in the Shadowlands. However strange the borderland had been, it had still been a place at least anchored in reality as a mortal mind understood it.

What he looked out upon was madness. The sky was burnt orange, the clouds lazily drifting across it like splotches of rust. The sun was red, casting a crimson shadow across the land. Such a land Dorgo had never seen, a vast expanse of apparently endless marsh, its unmoving waters revoltingly blood-like in hue. The warrior reflected that a blood-bog was not the most impossible thing chronicled in the legends and myths of the Wastes. The thought did nothing to put him at ease.

The tunnel opened out upon the slopes of a mountain, despite the impossibility of ascending to such a height when every tunnel in the underworld had been descending. It was an even stranger formation than the hill they had entered in the borderland. The mountain was black, its stones sharp and displaying angular facets. It seemed to be constructed of obsidian, though Dorgo resisted calling it such. Certainly no natural mountain had ever been formed from pure obsidian.

From his vantage point, Dorgo could see the sprawl of the land for leagues in every direction except south, or at least where south should be if the strange red sun was where it should be. He could see nothing he recognised, not even the faintest speck on the horizon that might be the weird borderland they had left behind.

‘We are in the Wastes,’ Sanya told them, as if there were any doubt. She fingered her amulets, taking some visible comfort in their promise of protection. ‘Watch your thoughts as well as your feet,’ she advised as she started to climb down the sharply faceted slope. ‘A misstep in either can be death, and worse than death.’

Dorgo watched Sanya start her descent. At least her ordeal in the tunnels hadn’t diminished her arrogant self-assurance.

‘I’ll give her some thoughts,’ Ulagan hissed. The scout was watching Sanya with a great deal less detachment than Dorgo. There was a lascivious gleam in his eye as the woman made her awkward descent. Her robe had been torn to tatters by the snakemen, and the crude garment she had improvised from the remains left little to the imagination, though it seemed that the scout’s mind was still willing to accept the challenge.

‘Haven’t we enough trouble already?’ Dorgo asked, sighing.

Ulagan smiled at his leader. ‘Not of the right kind,’ he said. The wiry scout almost doubled-over as Togmol’s huge hand slapped him on the back.

‘When she turns you into a toad, I promise to step on you,’ Togmol said. The big warrior was almost jubilant to be out under the open sky again, even if it was a different sky than the one that hung over the lands of their birth. ‘Though it might be hard to tell,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

Ulagan curled his lip in a sour expression of distaste, and then suddenly became alert. He started forwards, staring at an outcropping of rock. His wormy tentacle slithered across the sharp facets of the obsidian, eyes peering suspiciously at the stone.

‘What is…?’

Dorgo never finished asking his question. A shape, a phantom form rose up from within the stone, like some ghostly fish rising from the depths of a black ocean. It was pale and putrid, dripping with blood and slime, only a mocking semblance of decay proclaiming its kinship to anything that might once have been alive. Dorgo got the impression of a great, limpid eye, of a leathery, snout-like beak and flabby reptilian claws. Then he was much too busy to see anything more.

Ulagan screamed and lurched forwards. Dorgo could not be certain if the scout had slipped or been pulled. The impossibility of his distress was enough to confound the warrior. By some incredible process, Ulagan had sunk into the obsidian, and was being dragged down into its black depths!

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 who 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, powers 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.

A flash of pain against his cheek removed the fog of terror that gripped him. Dorgo found Sanya glaring at him, her face twisted into a furious snarl.

‘Idiot!’ she spat. ‘Khorne is not merely the god of blood and slaughter. He is the lord of terror, the king of doom! As the master, so too the slaves!’

Dorgo could faintly hear a sound rising from the silence of the bone-field. It took him only an instant to recognise the noise as something howling, something hungry, something evil.

Sanya spun around, turning her fury on Togmol and Ulagan. The Tsavags were staring into the distance, trying to find the source of the howl. More terrible than the cry of the biggest wolf, more hideous than the roar of troll or tiger, the sound pawed through their souls to claw at the most instinctive fear in a man’s heart: the terror of prey for its hunter.

Other howls sounded, scratching at the ebony sky. From all around them, the lupine cries pierced the twilight world, singing of fang and claw, singing of meat and flesh. In his mind, Dorgo could see them, loping through the darkness, their scaly paws crunching across the bony litter: lean and ravenous, their jaws agape, tongues lolling against their wolfish faces.

Cruelty beyond the simple predator gleamed in their eyes, a pitiless wisdom horrible and malignant. Heavy manes matted with clotted blood flowed across their racing, dog-like bodies. Fleshy frills dripped around their collars of blackened bronze, and upon each collar, a single rune, smouldering like flame: the skull-rune of Khorne!

‘Run you spineless maggots!’ Sanya shouted at the Tsavags. ‘Your fear calls out to them! We must run, and beg the gods that we find the Black Altar before the fleshhounds find us!’

The sorceress did not waste further words. Turning, she raced away, desperately following where her talisman pointed. Dorgo did not linger, nor were Togmol and Ulagan slow to hurry after the woman. Whatever doubts and suspicions they harboured against her, the howls of the daemons drowned them out.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Terror drove Shen Kahn through the narrow mountain passes, down into the flatlands. The Seifan retreat was a rout, riders and chariots scattering in every direction as they emerged from the valley. Shen made no effort to control their flight. Things had gone too far to worry about leadership of the tribe and control of the domain. Now the only thing that Shen held in his heart was fear for his life.

Ratha had been cut down, butchered by a monster, who had carved a bloody path through the ranks of the Vaan. It was beyond belief that a single creature, be it man or daemon, could kill so many, even less when its victims were the elite warriors of the Vaan. Shen tried to cling to his conviction that the killer was no more than some daemon conjured up by Enek Zjarr, but he could taste the lie in his thoughts. He knew. However much he tried to deny it, he knew. The Skulltaker had indeed returned, this time for the heads of Teiyogtei’s heirs.

Screams rose from the valley behind him. Shen turned to see men and horses, their eyes wild with fright, bolting into the flatlands. For a moment, his gaze rested on the fugitives, and then his eyes turned to the thing that pursued them.

The Skulltaker was once again mounted upon his wolfish beast, the canine monster charging out from the shadow of the mountains in great loping bounds. Shen’s desperate hope that the killer would pursue Hutga and his Tsavags turned bitter in his mouth. There was no question, the Skulltaker had marked him as the next to die.

‘Faster!’ roared the warlord, snarling at the charioteer beside him. Already, the man was lashing the gasping horses with a ruthlessness born of panic. The big animals, a hand-and-a-half taller than the shaggy ponies ridden by most of the tribe, galloped frantically through the long grass of the flatlands.

‘If I push them any harder, their hearts will burst!’ complained the charioteer.

Shen glared at his tribesman. The man was afraid, but not nearly afraid enough. It wasn’t his head the Skulltaker meant to claim!

‘Then maybe they are pulling too much weight,’ Shen said coldly.

One of the kahn’s hands seized the reins of the chariot horses. The other slammed into the charioteer’s side, burying a fat-bladed knife in his side. The warrior gasped, shuddering as Shen drove the knife deeper. The murdered man clutched feebly at Shen’s armour, and then slumped to the wooden floor of the chariot. Shen wrapped the reins around his arm, and then grabbed the charioteer’s head, using height and leverage to tip the man headfirst from the chariot. The dying warrior smashed into the long-grass, tumbling end over end in a sprawl of snapped limbs and shattered ribs.

Shen struck at the horses, urging them on. The whip snapped at their flanks, drawing blood from their savaged flesh. The kahn looked back, horrified to see the Skulltaker’s weird steed closing the distance. Seifan were fleeing in all directions, but the grim killer never wavered. Something beyond mortal senses told him which of the fleeing riders was the man he sought.

If the Skulltaker would not chase his minions, Shen knew he must look elsewhere to find the time he so desperately needed, the chance to escape this domain and leave the killer behind.

The answer appeared before the fleeing kahn’s darting eyes. The flatlands gradually sloped downwards as they stretched away from the mountains. Eventually, they sank into a watery mire, a blighted region shunned by Hung and Kurgan alike: the Swamp of the Devourer.

Shen could see the edge of the swamp, where the long-grass stubbornly struggled to survive in foetid shallows. The sickly green vapours of the swamp clung thickly around the scraggly clumps of grass, like strangler’s fingers wrapping around so many throats. Ugly trees, tall and thin and barren, thrust up through the scummy waters, like some sinister wall separating the foulness of the swamp from the world beyond.

Many were the tales of horror told about the swamp, evoked around the winter campfires: stories of ghastly death and fates worse than death, accounts of loathsome creatures neither daemon nor man. None were more terrible than those told of the Devourer, a thing that was not a beast, but rather the living malice of the swamp.

It lurked behind that wall of trees, waiting for what flesh dared to intrude upon its forsaken realm. It did not consume its victims with tooth and fang, but sucked them down into the mud to rot and fester in the living muck of the swamp. A man was alive when his body was dissolved in the belly of the Devourer.

Shen weighed the horror of the swamp against the horror of the Skulltaker. It was a choice of evils, but Shen was reminded that men had escaped the swamp to carry their stories back to their tribes. From the Skulltaker, there was no escape.

Yelling at the horses, Shen wheeled his chariot around, plunging into the muddy dampness of the swamp. He watched the rancid waters with a keen eye even as he urged the stallions to greater effort. Where the long-grass struggled to grow, there the water was shallow. Where it was absent, where only floating scum rose above the water, the ground had dropped away in deep sink holes.

Water sprayed from the wheels of the chariot, surrounding Shen in a curtain of stagnant filth. He struggled to watch the surface of the swamp, trying to keep track of where it was shallow and where it was not. The horses neighed and snorted in protest, upset by the rancour of the swamp. Shen’s whip cracked out again with vengeful fury. Less concerned with the danger ahead than he was the danger behind, Shen had no patience for the timidity of his steeds.

Disaster was quick to overtake the fleeing kahn. Reckless and desperate, he had gambled too hard on his flight into the swamp. Where a man might have navigated a safe path between the patches of shallow muck, there simply was not room enough for a chariot.

Equine screams rose as one of the wheels slipped into an unseen hole. The copper-bound wood splintered from the lurching impact. The chariot, its balance lost, crashed and slid through the slime, pulling the horses as they had pulled it. The ruined chariot spun around, and then slipped from the shallows into one of the sinkholes that peppered the terrain. The panicked horses were dragged after the reeling carriage, their hooves flailing uselessly at the mud.

Coming to rest, the chariot sank in the deep water, scum bubbling as the mire sucked it down. Shen released the death-grip he had taken upon the armoured side, springing clear as his refuge disappeared. He found himself hip-deep in muck and slime, every step an effort as the sludge beneath his feet clung to him.

Shen could see the horses struggling in the shadows, trying to keep the chariot’s weight from dragging them down with it. He reached to his belt for his dao, intending to cut the beasts free. He might have lost his chariot, but with a horse under him there was still a chance he could lose the Skulltaker in the swamps.

The Hung’s face went white as his fingers closed on emptiness. He looked in disbelief at his belt, finding only a torn strip of leather flapping against his waist. The sword had been torn free during the violent crash. Shen did not think of the history, the tradition the sacred weapon represented for his people, nor even the supernatural power the weapon possessed. He thought only of the weapon he could have used to keep himself alive, something that was lost to him.

Shen had almost decided to tear the leather tethers binding the horses with his bare hands when a new sound intruded upon the screams of the horses. It was the splash of something moving through the stagnant waters, something big, moving at speed. The kahn did not turn to look. Coming from the edge of the swamp, where mire met flatland, there was only one thing it could be: the Skulltaker’s ghastly steed.

Shen bolted into the swamp, no longer watching for patches of shallow and the scum-covered sinkholes. He splashed through the reeking pools with crazed desperation, hardly slowing when he sank to his knees in stagnant water, or sloshed through flooded pits deeper than his waist. Escape! Escape was the only thought drumming through his brain, the shivering mindless terror of the prey. Every second, every breath was a small triumph, his entire existence collapsing into these insignificant instants of cheated death.

The kahn’s hands groped at a clump of rotting long-grass, pulling him from a rancid pool onto another rise. The scraggly trees of the swamp had thinned, forming a sort of clearing, a solemn circle surrounding a bleak morass of brown, lumpy mud.

Some warning instinct made Shen recoil from the muddy expanse, some primitive alarm of danger. The mud rippled, trembling with a wet spasm of unspeakable loathsomeness. He could see the quivering muck sloshing away, parting as something thrust its way up from the stinking heart of the swamp. He did not need to see more. In escaping the Skulltaker, he had found the Devourer.

Shen backed away, hardly daring to breathe as the obscene lord of the swamp oozed up from the depths. A hint of something black and oily showing beneath the dripping mud was enough. The kahn turned to find another way through the maze of trees and sunken pits. He froze as his eyes left the Devourer’s pool.

A mounted figure stared back at him, the lips of the Skulltaker’s wolfish steed curled in a silent growl, exposing its gore-crusted fangs. The expressionless mask of the killer’s helm gave no hint of the thoughts hidden within. Shen gave a little cry of horror as he saw the chain of trophies stretched across the champion’s chest, the skulls of the chieftains who had already met their doom.

The skull of Zar Ratha, still wet with the Kurgan’s blood, grinned at Shen, seeming to welcome the onetime ally of the Vaan.

For a moment, hunter and quarry looked upon one another, each man waiting for the other to act. Shen’s heart pounded against his bones like a hammer, his limbs tingling with fear. He could not tear his eyes away from the Skulltaker’s trophies, from the chain that would soon be wound through the empty sockets of his own skull.

The instant passed. Slowly, the Skulltaker dismounted, dropping from the back of his fearsome beast. He drew his black sword from its sheath, the weapon’s sizzling voice hissing through the stagnant vapours. Each splashing step sounded like the tramp of a giant to Shen. As he advanced, the trophies rattled against the Skulltaker’s armoured breast, seeming to beckon to the doomed Seifan chief.

Screaming, Shen turned and tore back through the trees, back to the pool of the Devourer. Death, any death, was preferable to the grisly fate the Skulltaker promised, to join the skulls of the vanquished in shame and defeat. He could not beat the Skulltaker, Shen knew it was madness to even try, but he could still cheat the monster of his victory.

The thing that had been rising from the pit was clearer now. Mud had dripped off its ghastly bulk, puddling around its enormity. Shapeless, formless, it was like some great quivering mound of blackened meat, its surface pitted with oozing sores. Devoid of eye or ear, or nose, it still detected Shen’s presence, lurching through the muck towards the crazed Seifan, undulating like some rogue wave upon a stagnant sea.

His horror of the Devourer lost, Shen threw open his arms as the immense, oozing slime reared up before him, pulsating with vile hunger. Pseudopods of dripping jelly burst from the thing’s black mass, wrapping around the kahn in a burning embrace. Shen could feel the acidic excretions eating through his skin as the tendrils pulled him back to the Devourer’s body.

In all the eons of the abomination’s existence, Shen wondered if any of its victims had laughed as they were consumed.

The dripping tendrils collapsed back into the Devourer’s body, dragging Shen with them. As the chieftain struck the oily skin of the creature, he sank into it, feeling its burning touch wash over him. Inch by inch, slowly, hideously, he was absorbed into the monster, absorbed into its formless bulk to be consumed.

Suddenly, the slime trembled, shivering with a motion that was outside its mindless urge to feed. Shen could feel its pain all around him, even through the wet, searing agony of his own body. His suffering intensified as the Devourer’s acids increased their labours against the engulfed kahn’s flesh.

Again, the substance of the Devourer trembled, shuddering like water before the wind. Strangely, the burning around Shen lessened, the wet embrace of the slime weakening. Something more solid than the amorphous coils of the Devourer closed around Shen’s arm. He felt iron fingers fumble at his partially digested flesh, sinking into the burnt meat, and tightening around the bone beneath.

Shen did not know if he was pulled free or if the Devourer simply relinquished its prey, its shapeless mass sliding away from him like spray dripping from a stone. Through the one eye that had not been blinded by the slime’s acid, he could see it sinking back beneath the mud. The clearing was splattered with clumps of oily darkness, some still quivering with the last echo of life.

The firm hold around Shen’s arm released him and the raw debris of the kahn’s body flopped obscenely into the mud. The Devourer’s acids had worked havoc on Shen’s body, leaving muscle and fat glistening where his skin had dissolved. Patches of bone stood stark beneath weeping wounds. Blood and bile seeped from his exposed stomach, dripping into the ruptured entrails below.

The Skulltaker did not care about Shen’s wounds. The killer looked down upon the twitching wreckage of the chieftain with a merciless gaze. He had not charged the oozing mass of the Devourer to save his life, nor to preserve his rule had the Skulltaker carved his way through the burning bulk of the monster.

There was enough reason left in Shen’s tortured body to know despair as he saw the Skulltaker’s black blade come chopping down.

Dorgo’s muscles felt as though they were on fire, every pounding crash of his boot against the grisly field of bone sending a spasm of pain shooting through him. Endurance, even that of a breed as rugged and strong as the Tsavags, had its limits. He knew that he was quickly reaching his. Ulagan was already faltering, falling behind with every breath. Stronger than either of his tribesmen, Togmol was only now starting to show signs of fatigue.

Sanya, somehow, kept ahead of them all. The Sul woman’s lithe figure pranced before them, nimble and graceful as a doe. Dorgo knew that she was using her sorcery to strengthen her, no bandy-boned Hung was the equal of a Tsavag, much less one of their women. She would not be the first of her sorcerous kin to use magic to overcome the natural power of better men.

Or was it sorcery? The chilling howl of the fleshhounds screamed from the distance, but not so distant as before. Sanya knew better than all of them the kind of daemons that stalked their trail. She knew the kind of death they could expect when the pack fell upon them. Perhaps it was knowledge, not magic, that lent speed to her feet.

The pack! Dorgo’s weary eyes scanned the bleak horizon. They should be able to see the hounds, or at least pick out their dark shapes from the bleached terrain. There was nothing. Even when he looked in the direction from which one of the howls sounded, there was nothing.

Sanya had warned that the Wastes were partly mortal in their essence, lacking the true etherealness of the world of the gods. Were the fleshhounds hunting them not from the Wastes, but from that other existence, that shadow realm just beyond the mortal coil? Hunting them from their phantom world until they tired of the chase and chose to claim their prey?

Dorgo looked back at Ulagan and felt a pang of pity for the hunter. Ulagan had saved his life in the Prowling Lands, but there was nothing Dorgo could do to help him now. Ulagan’s face was clenched in an expression of mortal terror, greater even than Togmol’s claustrophobic misery in the caverns of the snake-men. He knew the ways of predators on the hunt. He knew that they invariably singled out the weak, the stragglers. He tried to keep up with his companions, to keep from lingering behind, but his flagging strength betrayed him. He knew he would be the straggler, the easy kill that would draw the predators to him, but would they go for the easy kill?

Wolves in shape, the fleshhounds were more than beasts in mind. Daemons of the Blood God, dogs of Khorne, they were spectral manifestations of the Skull Lord’s savage hunger. Beasts would go for the straggler, allowing the rest of the prey to escape. Daemons, however, had the intelligence to take both the weak and the strong.

Ulagan suddenly pitched and fell, sprawling in the gravelly litter of bones. Dorgo slackened his pace, jogging back to help the failing hunter to his feet. From somewhere beyond his vision, the hungry howls of the hounds drew closer.

‘Leave him!’ snapped Sanya. The witch had stopped when she saw Dorgo turn back. She stood, hands pressed against her hips, drawing deep breaths into her starved lungs. ‘He won’t make it.’

‘We didn’t abandon you,’ Dorgo retorted, scowling at the woman.

Sanya’s face split in a withering sneer. ‘You needed me. You don’t need him.’ Togmol rounded on the witch, fingering his broadaxe. She met his hostile gaze and smiled. ‘Let the pack have him and we buy ourselves time.’

‘We’re not leaving him,’ growled Dorgo. Ulagan sagged limply in Dorgo’s arms as he helped him up. The howls sounded closer, more excited and eager.

‘Then we’ll all die here,’ Sanya told him. She glared at Dorgo, matching his rage, defying him to tell her she was wrong.

Togmol snarled something at the witch and slowly stalked away from her, moving to help Dorgo with Ulagan. The dazed hunter lifted his head weakly, cheered by the approach of the big warrior. Dorgo started to give voice to his gratitude when he saw Togmol’s axe lash out. The wide blade chopped down into Ulagan’s leg, splitting it to the bone. Savagely, Togmol ripped his weapon free. The stricken Ulagan toppled from Dorgo’s grip, rolling on the ground in a ball of pain.

Dorgo’s sword was in his hand, the point sweeping towards Togmol’s throat. The big warrior blocked the strike with the haft of his axe. ‘Leave him for the hounds,’ Togmol warned. The words only outraged Dorgo further. Again, the sword slashed at Togmol’s body. This time he retreated before the blow, scorn in his face as he backed away.

‘We have to worry about more than rescuing our kinsmen or avenging them if they are dead,’ Togmol said, his voice pained. ‘The entire tribe is depending on us. If we don’t bring Teiyogtei’s sword to the Black Altar, who will save our people from the Skulltaker?’

Dorgo stared at his friend in stunned silence, struck dumb by the ghastly irony of Togmol’s words. He remembered telling Togmol the same thing when he would have rushed into the red weeds in a hopeless effort to save Qotagir and the others.

The words were being thrown back at him and he hated the cruel wisdom in them. The tribe was depending on them, his father was depending on them. Beside that burden, even the debt he owed Ulagan counted for nothing.

Slowly, Dorgo nodded, returning his sword to his belt. He did not look back at the crippled hunter, pretending that he could not hear the man’s desperate pleas. The howls of the daemons drew still closer. First Sanya, and then Togmol started to run again. They did not look back.

Dorgo could hear Ulagan’s cries turn to curses as he ran away. The hunter cursed them by gods and ancestors, heaping prayers of ruin and death upon their heads. Dorgo tried not to listen, every word twisting in his gut like a dull knife.

Then, suddenly, Ulagan’s voice was gone. The howling of the daemons was gone. The landscape and even the sky, seemed somehow different, as if they had stepped from one room into another. Dorgo looked back, amazed and horrified to see neither the abandoned hunter nor the gruesome mountains he had studied with such anxious eyes for so very long.

‘No reward without sacrifice,’ Sanya said, laughing. The sorceress cast aside the guiding talisman, the daemon finger crawling obscenely through the bone shards, dragging its chain behind it. Beside her, Togmol was gaping at something on the horizon, struck dumb by some awesome sight.

Dorgo did not understand her glee, any more than he could understand why she had thrown away her talisman. Only a few yards separated him from the witch. He closed the distance with cautious, wary steps, watchful for some new treachery. Within a few paces he saw it, and he knew without being told that he gazed upon the Black Altar.

How a few paces could have hidden it from his sight, he did not understand, some trickery beyond mere distance, that much was certain. It appeared in the manner of a conjurer’s trick, winking into sight as soon as Dorgo stepped near enough to pierce its unseen veil.

He had thought the colossus of Teiyogtei was immense, now Dorgo understood that it was a dwarfish runt beside the enormity that the ancient king had tried to ape. It looked taller than the mountains, taller than the sky, a black cyclopean effigy rearing into the heavens, gigantic and eternal. It was folded into a crouch, crumpled on its knees. Its chest was thrown back, its hound-like head lolling against its broad, powerful shoulders.

Thick, mighty arms dangled from those shoulders, the clawed hands brushing against the ground. Immense wings, like the pinions of some gargantuan dragon, were folded against its body, flattened against its sides. The giant shape was covered in great plates of armour, their surfaces crawling in runes and etchings. The entirety was carved in a strange, brittle-looking stone, blacker than pitch and dull as rusting iron.

The evil air of horror that exuded from the thing was like an ugly whisper, the lingering stink of something rotting away. Dorgo could see that the statue’s breast was ripped open, cut in the manner of some ghastly wound. From where its heart would be, a fiery crimson glow shone.

‘It must have taken a thousand tribes to build this,’ Dorgo gasped in open wonder.

Sanya shook her head. ‘No, it only took one man.’ She pointed at the gigantic shape. ‘This is no statue. It is the carcass of Krathin, the bloodthirster, he who was called the Lash of Khorne. Long ago, before he was a king, before he led the Tong down from the Wastes, Teiyogtei slew Krathin in a battle that shook the heavens. From his husk, Teiyogtei built the Black Altar, fuelling it with the vanquished spirit of the daemon.’

‘That glow where its heart should be,’ Dorgo observed, ‘that is where the Black Altar is.’

Again Sanya shook her head. ‘That is where Teiyogtei placed the door. The Black Altar is beyond.’

Togmol stared up at the enormous daemon, wincing as he considered the dizzying height at which the horned, dog-like head rose from the broad, armoured shoulders. ‘We have to climb up there, don’t we?’

‘Unless you think you can fly,’ the sorceress told him.

Stragglers were still descending from the mountains long into the night. The panic and confusion of the battle in Ikar’s Refuge had sent the Tsavags racing into the passes and valleys, desperate to protect their families. Only the rearguard had lingered long enough to see the breaking of the Vaan host, the butchery visited upon them by a monster from the mists of myth. If there had been any doubt in Hutga’s heart that the killer stalking the domain was in truth the Skulltaker, it died with Ratha.

Maybe it was the lack of doubt that filled his mind with woeful thoughts. Hutga had been reared on legends about Teiyogtei Khagan, the great king of the horde. He had heard all the tales of his mighty deeds and fierce battles, of the armies and monsters he had slain, and of the daemons he had vanquished. Later, grown old in the traditions of his people, grown strong in his power as chief of the tribe, he had come to question all the old stories. If Teiyogtei had been so mighty, how could a lone warrior be his nemesis?

Now he believed again, for he had seen that nemesis. What hope remained for Hutga and his people lay in the lingering power of their ancient king, in the faith that a weapon that once struck down the Skulltaker would do so again. There was no other way. The spectacle of slaughter he had seen in Ikar’s Refuge was mute testimony that force of arms could not defeat the Skulltaker. Something more than mortal strength and steel was needed to destroy the destroyer.

Hutga thought of the Sul and their magic. Steeped in sorcery, the Sul were a power apart from the mortal world. Theirs was a power far beyond the mean spells of shamans and warlocks, a power second only to that of the gods, but was it enough to protect them from the Skulltaker? Hutga had seen the limits of Sul sorcery at the tomb of Teiyogtei. Even Enek Zjarr was helpless before the malign power of Khorne, unable to work his magic within the sanctuary of the Blood God. Against Khorne’s champion, how much trust could even the Sul place in their sorceries?

Was that why Enek Zjarr had not come? Not from fear of the Vaan or the Seifan, not from some secret alliance of treachery and deception with the chieftains, but from fear of the Skulltaker. Enek Zjarr said that he had used his magic to spy upon the Skulltaker, to see him strike down Csaba and Bleda Carrion-crown. Had the sorcerer seen the approach of the Skulltaker here as well? Was that why he and his people cowered in their floating citadel?

Hutga looked at the bedraggled, frightened faces of his tribesmen as they marched their mammoths down from the mountain. Never had he seen his people look so broken, so desolate.

‘We will seek out the Sul,’ Hutga decided. He turned to his sub-chiefs. ‘Spread the word among the people. We will wait an hour, no more than two, for others to come down, and then I want the entire tribe on the march.’

‘To Enek Zjarr’s castle?’ one of the Tsavag war chiefs asked. There was a haunted, crushed taint in his eyes that it pained Hutga to see.

‘Enek Zjarr stays behind his walls,’ the khagan explained. ‘Clearly he thinks they can protect him.’ Hutga’s face split in a fierce grin. ‘I mean to have him extend that sanctuary to his loyal allies. Or I mean to hold his heart in my hand.’

The savage words seemed to bolster the withered spirits of the war chiefs as they walked off to spread the khagan’s orders to the rest of the tribe. Yorool, however, was not deceived by Hutga’s hollow words.

‘Enek Zjarr has abandoned us,’ the shaman pointed out. ‘That Seifan jackal was right when he said that every head the Skulltaker claims helps the Sul.’

Hutga nodded, troubled to hear Yorool voice his doubts. ‘With Ratha dead and the Skulltaker on the trail of the new Seifan kahn, only the Tsavags stand between Enek Zjarr and control of the entire domain.’ The chieftain rubbed his arms, trying to ease the chill from his metal-ridden skin. ‘I don’t know. You saw the Skulltaker. Do you think even Enek Zjarr could control something that powerful?’

‘He does not need to control him to profit from his works,’ Yorool said.

‘You forget,’ Hutga replied, ‘the Skulltaker wants Enek Zjarr’s head as well as mine.’

‘That,’ Yorool observed, ‘may be the reason he sent your son to reforge the Bloodeater, not to protect the domain or the Tsavags, but to protect Enek Zjarr.’

Ice crept into Hutga’s eyes, the cold fury of a father who has risked his son for a lie. ‘We’ll discuss that with Enek Zjarr,’ he vowed, ‘and if I don’t like his answers, the Sul will discover that the Skulltaker isn’t the only one who can kill.’

Dorgo and his companions passed through the open chest of the dead daemon, into the boiling light glowing within its corpse. The world around them was washed away by the burning, hellish glow. As the angry glare blinded them, they could feel their bodies being pulled and clawed by wraithlike hands. The air in their lungs became a stinging ash, the sound in their ears a sullen roar. Heat, infernal and searing tore at them and around their hearts a cold malice of timeless hatred closed its phantom talons.

There was no stepping back, no time to relent the desperation that had brought them to this place that was not a place. The mortal world evaporated around them, steaming into the nothingness of beyond. Blind, deafened, wracked by the malevolence of another reality, they continued their crawl through the daemon’s charred husk. Groping, stumbling, they fought back the terror that burrowed into their brains, exciting forgotten, primitive fears.

Slowly, vision returned to their tormented eyes, the hellish glow lessening into a gory crimson light. No more did they stand within the tunnel-like wound in the daemon’s chest, but upon a narrow ledge of red-veined rock, overlooking a vast pit filled with bubbling molten fire. Great tongues of black flame licked up from the depths, shooting hundreds of feet from the churning surface of scarlet magma, bringing with them the stink of burning blood. The walls of the pit were like the terrain of the horrible boneyards surrounding the monstrous carcass of the bloodthirster. Pale and bleached, things made of bone instead of stone formed a latticework of megalithic bones interwoven in grisly union. The walls of bone descended far into the pit, far overhead they stretched until at last they formed a rounded cone, through which a sky of bruised, ghostly stars could distantly be seen.

Immense chains of bronze stretched across the pit. Anchored into the walls, each link in the chains was bigger than an ox and covered in dark runes of vile aspect. The chains were spaced evenly around the funnelled walls, eight in number and none less gigantic than its fellows. Where the chains met at the centre of the pit, they were anchored to a structure of blackened metal, a building cast in the shape of an immense skull with sword-like antlers. The mouth of the skull gaped wide, but whatever was within was concealed by a veil of shadow and smoke. Only the chains anchored in the walls supported the structure above the boiling surface of the pit far below, and with each blast of black flame from the pit, the skull-shaped building swayed slightly as it was buffeted by the elemental fury below. A curtain of smaller, mortal-sized chains dripped from the bottom of the structure, sporting a wild array of metal hooks and buckets. Ugly, shrivelled things hung from some of the hooks, grisly in their charred suggestion of human forms.

This, Dorgo knew, was their goal. This was the Black Altar, the spectral forge where Teiyogtei crafted his mighty weapons. Where the Bloodeater had been made and where it must be remade if he would save his tribe from the Skulltaker.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It took more courage than Dorgo thought he had left to step out onto the closest of the monstrous bronze chains. Feet planted on the surface of the horizontal link, arms wrapped through the loop of the vertical link, he felt the entire chain sway under his weight. Below him, at an almost impossible depth, the boiling fury of the pit sent bursts of heat and fire searing up at him. The metal was hot, unpleasant if not intolerable beneath his touch. The leering, horned skull of the Black Altar seemed unimaginably far away, as if the structure had retreated from him when he set foot upon its moorings, or the funnel cone had grown in its dimensions in response to his intrusion.

Dorgo shook his head, rubbing at his eyes, trying to force the cruel deceit from his vision. In the Wastes, Sanya said, belief was its own reality. Believe he could never reach the structure and he never would. He struggled to force his senses to perceive his surroundings in a new way, but it was impossible to discredit what his eyes saw, what his flesh felt.

The chain shivered again. Dorgo saw Sanya creeping out to join him on the link. She had torn strips from her robe to wrap her hands against the hot metal. For all her knowledge of the gods and their secret powers, the sorceress looked even more anxious than he did, regarding their perilous crossing.

He might have felt some sympathy for her, if the memory of her cold, dismissive acceptance of the loss of Ulagan and the others wasn’t so fresh in his mind. He needed Sanya’s knowledge, her arcane art, to reforge the Bloodeater. That was as far as his sympathies went. It was better to trust a viper than a Sul.

Dorgo carefully edged his way along the first link, keeping one arm wrapped in the loop of the vertical link. For a perilous moment, he dangled over the pit as he stepped from one link to the next, his legs not quite able to traverse the gap between the two horizontal surfaces. He tightened his hold around the loop of the vertical link, pulling himself across with his arms until his groping feet touched metal once more. He sucked a stinging lungful of air into his body, trying not to look down as he released his hold on the vertical loop and lunged for the next link.

For a horrible instant he was unbalanced, and then his flailing arms caught at the hot bronze, throwing themselves around the loop in a fierce embrace. He’d made the crossing between two links in the chain. His heart felt like a diseased lump in his breast when he looked at how many more lay between him and the Black Altar: a hundred, perhaps twice that.

Despair wracked Dorgo’s mind. He could never do it, never cross such an awesome distance. It was beyond endurance, beyond the endurance of any man. Then the image of his tribe flashed before his eyes: men, women and children strewn across a desolate landscape, butchered and torn. The crossing might indeed be beyond human endurance, but he would make it anyway.

Togmol’s voice cried out from behind him, warning Dorgo and Sanya to brace themselves. The big warrior stepped out onto the bronze chain, following Dorgo’s example as he made his crossing from the first link to the second. The two Tsavags grinned at each other, revelling in their pathetic accomplishment like youths returned from their first hunt. They could do this. They would do this.

Dorgo looked back at the first link. Sanya was poised at the edge of the horizontal surface, but was unable to repeat the example of the burly Tsavags. Powerful in mind and magic, the Sul were weaker in body than the puny runts the Kurgan tribes left out for the wolves. Repeating Dorgo’s feat of pulling himself across the emptiness between links was beyond her strength.

‘Stay there,’ Dorgo warned. He turned his body around with desperate caution, and started to retrace his steps.

Togmol caught hold of his arm. ‘What are you doing?’ the warrior demanded.

‘I’m going back for her,’ Dorgo said.

‘Leave the witch,’ Togmol snarled, making certain his words were loud enough for Sanya to hear. ‘She got us here, that is enough. We can work out how to use the Altar for ourselves.’

Dorgo shook his head. Togmol’s suggestion appealed to him, cried out to all the petty bitterness in his soul, but he knew he could not take the chance. Too much depended on their success. Togmol groaned in disgust as Dorgo crept back across the link, and then pulled himself over the gap and back to where he had started.

‘I can’t,’ Sanya started to tell him. Dorgo waved aside her explanation, pushing her back to the rocky ledge. He began removing belts and straps from his armour and gear, dumping the heavy mammoth hide on the ground. He glanced at Sanya, and then tore at the heavy chain around her waist.

‘Remove that and anything else you don’t need,’ he told her. ‘Anything like cord or rope, you give to me.’

Hesitantly, timidly, Sanya began to discard the many charms and amulets she bore. Lead flasks of strange humours, tomes of spells bound in serpent-skin, strange foci of every description and shape soon littered the ground. Besides her torn robe, she wore only a single charm, a silver representation of the Eye of Cheen the Changer. Dorgo nodded in approval when the woman finished stripping away her excess weight, and then glowered at her as she stooped to retrieve her bag.

‘Leave that with the rest,’ he scolded.

Sanya glared back at him. ‘If it stays, so do I,’ she snapped.

‘It looks like it weighs more than the rest combined,’ Dorgo snarled.

‘That is my worry,’ Sanya told him, defiantly standing her ground.

The warrior glared at her, furious at her idiotic obstinacy. What was so important that she would risk both their lives and those of their people? Dorgo took a menacing step towards her, tempted to seize the damned thing and throw it into the pit. He relented only when he saw Sanya edge towards the lip of the shelf, her intention clear. If the bag went, she would follow it.

‘It’s my worry if I’m going to carry you across that damned pit!’ he growled, backing away.

Sanya stared at him for a moment, as though not fully understanding what he had said. Briefly, a look that could almost be described as gracious came over her pretty face. Quickly, it vanished and the usual expression of smug arrogance returned. ‘I have abandoned much of my magic already,’ she told Dorgo in a withering tone. ‘I will not leave it all. The bag comes with me, or you can try to puzzle out the secrets of the Black Altar for yourself.’

Dorgo lividly cursed the woman’s stubborn insistence. He looked away from her, testing the strength of the cords and straps he had collected from the discarded gear. A few snapped under his brutal efforts, but others held fast. He coiled them around one forearm. Turning back to Sanya, he scrutinised her from head to foot, appraising her as he might appraise a mammoth calf. He felt confident that he could carry her, even with the bag, but the distance they would have to cover was not to be discounted. Dorgo felt sick at the thought of trying to cross the chain with the added strain on his muscles, but there was no other way. She had to get across.

Dorgo stepped in front of the sorceress. ‘Onto my back,’ he said. ‘Grab me from beneath the arms, clasp your hands behind your neck.’ Sanya didn’t question the order, but pressed herself against his body. Dorgo took one of the cords from around his forearm, tying Sanya’s wrists together. It was an awkward process, relying upon touch rather than sight, but he would rather have the pressure against the back of his neck than have a choking knot around his throat.

‘Legs,’ he said, slapping his belly. He felt Sanya’s weight drag on him as she shifted her body to comply. The sorceress’s slender limbs wrapped around him, crossing over his midsection. With her arms secured, he took the leather length of his belt and lashed Sanya’s legs together crosswise against his stomach. He could feel every curve of the woman pressing against him as he made the strap tight. He almost forgot the kind of creature she was, sorceress and Sul. Then he looked again at the bronze chain and the boiling pit and remembered exactly what she was: dead weight.

He stood for a moment, taking a few experimental breaths, making certain that the bindings would not restrict his breathing. Dorgo let himself become accustomed to the added burden of the woman. Tied to his back like a Muhak mother’s baby-basket, Dorgo hoped he had done everything he could to prepare. With a last prayer to gods and ancestors, he stepped out onto the first link, slowly edging his way back across the ghastly span.

Togmol shook his head as he watched Dorgo retrace his path with Sanya tied to his back. A blast of black fire set the entire chain swaying, forcing both Tsavags to grab desperately at the vertical loop of the strange bridge. Togmol swore. Dorgo was mad trying to cross with the witch. However long their chances were of deciphering the Black Altar alone, the chances of making the crossing with a Sul sorceress hanging off his body was even worse.

Dorgo motioned for Togmol to move ahead. The big warrior understood what his friend was telling him. They had both felt the way the chain had swayed when they moved. Coupled with the fiery temper of the pit, it was an added hazard they could do without. The idea was to move in sequence. Togmol would press ahead to the next link, and then Dorgo and Sanya would follow. They would keep an empty set of links between them, so they did not risk unbalancing one another when they made the desperate scramble from vertical link to horizontal.

It would make for a slow, tedious, backbreaking crossing. One look down, however, was enough to vividly display the price for haste.

Hours seemed to pass as they crossed the swaying span. How many times they had nearly been knocked from the chain by a tempestuous blast of force from below, how many hideous moments of terror had stolen upon them as their hands and feet desperately struggled to secure a hold as they lunged from one link to the next, none of them liked to consider. Whatever favours or fortunes the gods owed to them had been spent a hundred times over in the perilous crossing. None of them dared hope such indulgence would continue to the end.

The end was near, however. Only twenty links separated them from the grisly blackened skull that loomed above the pit. Closer, they could see its strange contours, its angled cheekbones and glaring sockets. The horns were etched with savage runes, and the teeth filed into spear-like fangs. From the depths of the open mouth, they could see an angry, infernal glow, burning with a sanguine light.

There was movement in that light, something dark and fearsome. Dorgo had the impression of several men moving around in the shadows. Then the shapes emerged from the black recesses of the structure into the hellish light of the pit, not men at all, but a grotesque semblance of human form. They were tall, their bodies swollen with muscle and strength, their skins leathery and crimson. There was nothing human about their heads, elongated skulls with barbed curls of black horn coiling against their sides. Their faces were cruel and inhuman, bleached fangs grinning from wide mouths, blood-black eyes staring from the pits beneath heavy brows.

Dorgo felt Sanya gasp in fright. ‘Bloodletters,’ she hissed. ‘Armsmen of Khorne!’

The daemons crept to the edge of the open jaw, smiling with vicious mockery at the men struggling so hard to cross the distance to reach them. One of the monsters stared full into Sanya’s pale face. It lifted its hand, splaying wide its talon-tipped fingers. With a growl, it folded one of the digits against its palm. In using the finger of a daemon to guide them here, Sanya had not considered that she was betraying their intentions to that same daemon.

The bloodletter snarled something to its fellows, something that brought feral barks of amusement from the daemons. The beasts advanced upon the bronze anchor chain that Dorgo and his comrades were crossing. With an incredible display of brute power, the daemons grabbed hold of the bronze links and began to tug at the chain.

Slowly at first, the Tsavags felt the effect of the daemons’ efforts. The chain began to lurch upwards, then outwards, and then down, in a terrifying rolling motion. The men tightened their holds around the vertical loops, screwing shut their eyes as they endured the ghastly ride.

After what seemed like hours, the daemons tired of their sport. Neither of the men had lost his hold, no satisfying scream had risen from the pit as the impertinent mortals fell to a fiery doom. Instead of stepping away from the chain, the daemons waited for its momentum to subside, fairly drooling in wicked anticipation. Just as the chain became stable again, it once more shuddered from the attentions of the bloodletters.

The daemons were crawling out onto the chain, leaping from link to link with a contemptuous ease that sickened the men watching them.

Togmol began to retreat back along the chain, hurrying to keep ahead of the bloodletters. The entire span swayed and bounced as the daemons howled in anticipation of the blood that would soon stain their claws: worse than the buffeting caused by the spurts of flame from the pit, worse than the jouncing violence of their lunges from link to link, Togmol nevertheless did not falter in his hurried, desperate retreat. As he passed Dorgo, however, there was no fear on the big warrior’s face, only a resigned determination.

‘Hold fast,’ Togmol warned in a low voice as he crept past. Then he was gone, lunging for the horizontal link behind Dorgo’s. The warrior landed with a grunt, his legs sliding out from under him. Togmol’s hand coiled around the loop of the horizontal link. It took his full strength to lift himself back onto the swaying surface. All the colour was drained out of him when he again had the hot metal beneath his feet. He crouched there, his entire body quivering from the terror of his near-accident.

Dorgo turned away from his friend, alarmed by Sanya’s warning shout in his ear. Ahead, the bloodletters had drawn much closer, scuttling across the links like great red rats. Their eyes shone with murderous anticipation, and their jaws gaped in hungry excitement. Six links separated them from their prey... five.... four.

Togmol’s roar snapped Dorgo’s head away from the daemons. He saw the big warrior, his broadaxe raised high, his legs wrapped through the loop of a horizontal link, drive his weapon crashing against the chain. Dorgo could feel the impact shiver through the entire span. He could hear the bloodletters snarl in sudden alarm. Then Togmol’s axe struck again, and Dorgo understood his warning to hold tight.

The link shattered beneath Togmol’s second blow. The chain snapped in half, sending the span behind Togmol’s axe shooting down and back, crashing against the wall of the funnel. The span before the bite of the axe swept forward, towards the skull-shaped dome of the Black Altar.

The tension of the chain gave it considerable momentum, cracking it like a whip through the emptiness beneath the structure. Dorgo felt his body cut and torn by the nest of hooks and chains beneath the Black Altar as the thick bronze length passed through them. Shrieks echoed from the cavernous walls as loathsome red bodies hurtled into the abyss. The bloodletters had not kept a tight enough grip on the links as they swarmed across the span to reach their prey. They paid for their hubris, splashing into the molten fire below.

Dorgo closed his eyes, biting down on the pain that wracked his body as the momentum of the bronze chain sent them crashing again and again through the nest beneath the Black Altar. Finally, the chain began to slow, its motion becoming lethargic and measured. When it finally stopped, Dorgo opened his eyes again. He could see the edge of the structure above them, a dark lip of twisted fangs around which the anchor of the chain was looped. Twenty links still separated them from their goal, and what had been a terrifying crossing, now became an even more horrifying vertical climb.

He looked down to thank Togmol for his quick thinking. Dorgo went cold when he saw only a set of empty links below him. The big warrior had somehow lost his grip during the violent episode, joining the daemons he had dispatched to a fiery oblivion.

‘We still have to reach the altar,’ Sanya reminded him, as though reading his thoughts.

Dorgo continued to stare at the empty chain and the boiling pit below. He wondered how much was too much. How much could be sacrificed before the burden was too great, the victory too small? He shook his head in disgust. A bitter victory was still better than defeat.

‘Why not?’ he decided with a sigh and began the long, laborious climb to the Black Altar.

Pyre-Rock, it was called. It was not hard for any who looked upon the sky castle of the Sul to understand why it had been so named. Once, the dreary dust bowl that sprawled between the wooded foothills and the stagnant pits of the Devourer’s swamp had been the capital of Teiyogtei’s kingdom. A great city had once stood here, its towers rearing up into the night, its battlements stretching a league and more around its houses and courtyards.

It had all gone. Not even a hint of rubble was left to show what had been. The city had been razed in the war that followed the passing of the king, as each warlord tried to assume command over all the domain. As the capital, as the city Teiyogtei had built, the settlement became a powerful symbol in the wars for domination.

The first to hold it had been the Sul and they had used the city as a formidable stronghold to prosecute their campaign of conquest. Alliance between the Vaan and Tsavags had spelled their undoing, however. After a terrible siege, the thick walls had been breached and the raging Vaan had put the city to the torch.

The conflagration quickly spread through the wooden structures, engulfing entire districts in the blink of an eye.

Even with their sorcery, the Sul had been unable to stop the destruction. Every flame they quenched was reborn elsewhere by a Vaan warrior’s torch. In the end, the sorcerers retreated to the alabaster walls of their palace, leaving their common tribesmen to perish in the flames. They combined their magic, bending it towards a single purpose, but not the salvation of the city, the salvation of themselves. Instead of extinguishing the raging fires, they encouraged them, exciting the flames higher and higher.

The conflagration swirled through the city, turning on the berserk warriors of the Vaan, driving them back. Only the white palace was spared. Outside its walls, the fire burned fiercer than anywhere, melting the earth, and gouging a deep furrow into the bedrock upon which the foundations had been set.

In a moment of awesome power, the palace was torn free from the earth, and carried up a hundred feet into the smoky sky, supported upon a pillar of white fire. The soot from the dying city rose up and swept across the palace, staining the alabaster walls an ashen grey, imprinting upon it forever the stench of death and destruction.

The pillar of white fire was still burning, generations later. With their common men gone, the Sul became a tribe of sorcerers and witches, perpetrating the most obscene rites to preserve their power and their sanctuary, the sanctuary that Hutga, desperately, prayed they would share with the Tsavags.

The mammoth-riders approached the eerie pillar of smokeless flame, gazing up at the grey walls above them. The mammoths stamped and snorted in alarm at the taint of fell sorcery. The men in the howdahs could feel it too, a clammy foulness that slithered across their skin and sickened their senses. Babies wailed and children cried, old men made the signs of the gods and women hid their eyes from the sinister fortress.

The power of the gods was a strange and terrible force, a thing to be revered and respected. Sorcerers like the Sul were the ultimate in blasphemy. They did not wield their powers through service and humility, but exulted in their magic, believing that they were masters, not servants or slaves. They met with daemons as though they were equals. They appealed to the gods not with prayers, but with pacts and plots, schemes that each sorcerer ultimately intended to twist to his own benefit. Madness was too small a word for such vainglorious pride.

Yet these madmen were his people’s final hope to escape the wrath of the Skulltaker.

Hutga stared at the silent, lifeless walls. Where were the sorcerous dogs? Had the Skulltaker already been here? Had he somehow made his way into the floating Sul fortress and taken the head of Enek Zjarr?

A snarl crawled onto Hutga’s face. No! This was simply more Sul trickery! Enek Zjarr might not be controlling the Skulltaker, but he meant to profit from him. The Tsavags were the last obstacle in his complete domination of the land. Why wouldn’t he abandon his allies, when it served his purposes?

‘Enek Zjarr!’ Hutga roared, his voice so loud that even the mammoths swayed uneasily at the sound. ‘Enek Zjarr! Show yourself you lice-suckling dung-worm! Hutga Khagan would hear more of your lies! He would hear more fables about Bloodeaters and Black Altars!’

The chieftain’s voice echoed across the empty landscape, startling a few rock rats from their holes. At first, only silence answered his roar. Then he saw motion behind one of the frosted windows of the palace. The portal slowly swung open. The faceless gold mask of Thaulan Scabtongue looked down at him.

‘Why does a dead man howl outside my walls?’ the sorcerer challenged Hutga. ‘You should be making peace with the gods before you see them. Beg them to forgive the weakness of the Tsavags and maybe they will even allow such a wastrel mob into the Hunting Halls.’

‘Dog!’ Hutga shouted, brandishing his spear. ‘Whoreson spawn of serpents! I won’t lower myself to speaking with your vile kind! Fetch me Enek Zjarr, I would speak with that treacherous liar!’

‘He will not speak with you, Hutga Ironbelly,’ Thaulan sneered from behind his golden visage. ‘Enek Zjarr communes with the gods. He has no time to waste with Tsavag vermin!’

Hutga’s face turned crimson with rage. He leaned back, pulling his arm back to cast his spear at the mocking sorcerer, caring little that he would lose the sacred weapon in doing so. Yorool’s panicked grip on the weapon was the only thing that stopped the murderous impulse. Sullenly, Hutga wrenched the spear from the shaman’s grip. He let the bronze shaft fall to the floor of the howdah, scowling with disgust at what he had almost done.

Above him, Thaulan laughed. ‘Play the warrior, Ironbelly, if you think that can save you!’

‘Traitors! Traitors all!’ Hutga hurled the words up at the palace as though they were stones. ‘You have used my people all along! What have you done with my son?’

‘What we told you,’ Thaulan said. ‘He has gone with Sanya to find the Black Altar and reforge the one weapon that can kill the Skulltaker.’

‘Liar!’ Hutga snapped. ‘You never intended to destroy the Skulltaker!’

‘For one who came here to seek sanctuary for his people, you are most ungracious Hutga Ironbelly,’ said Thaulan, his tone icy with contempt. ‘No man is the friend of the Skulltaker and only a fool would try.’

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 and 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 than 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.

Hours of strain, the unending violence of the impact tremors jolting through the mammoths’ bodies, took their toll upon the howdahs. Never designed for such prolonged abuse, some of the platforms began to disintegrate as tethers frayed and bindings snapped. A wreckage of ivory and wood littered the herd’s path as pieces of the howdahs broke away. Some howdahs lost only a few bits and pieces, others had entire planks and walls tear away, carrying with them screaming Tsavags to be pulped by the thundering charge of the herd. A few mammoths lost their entire howdahs, the thick leather straps around their bodies breaking, causing entire platforms to shift and overbalance the beasts.

Men and mammoths alike smashed into the earth in a pile of broken bones and pained cries, cries for help that none of the Tsavags could answer.

Behind the mammoths, the lone, lupine shape of their pursuer steadily gained ground. Faster than the herd, possessed of a savage endurance that defied belief, the wolf-like beast prowled in the shadow of the Tsavags, carrying its rider ever closer to his prey.

Hour upon hour, the beast closed the distance, the smell of its blood-soaked fur driving the mammoths still more wild with fear, the evil aura of its rider overwhelming the desperate occupants of the howdahs with almost mindless terror.

An instant of blood and horror found the Skulltaker among the herd. The smoking length of his black sword was in his hand as his wolf-like steed raced among the towering behemoths.

Like a woodsman felling a tree, the Skulltaker brought his sword slashing into the leg of a mammoth, tearing through the shaggy fur and thick, leathery flesh to scrape against the bone beneath. The mammoth reared up in pain, its trunk groping plaintively at the uncaring sky. Then the mangled leg buckled beneath it, sending it crashing into the ground.

Other mammoths staggered and stumbled as the flailing giant slid into them. Some fell, others turned around, abandoning the herd in their pained confusion. Men were thrown from the bucking howdahs, smashed between the bodies of the lumbering brutes. Screams and the anguished trumpeting of fallen mammoths added to the turmoil, scattering men and beasts like birds before a storm.

The Skulltaker’s gruesome steed charged into the upheaval. When the bulk of a fallen mammoth reared in its path, the beast sprang, its claws digging into the shaggy hide as it lighted upon the living obstacle. The mammoth spun its head towards the beast, swatting at it with its trunk, trying to gore it with its tusks.

Before the wounded mammoth could concentrate its efforts, the wolfish beast was leaping again, pouncing like some rock lion onto the flank of a fleeing animal. Again, sharp claws sank into leathery flesh, latching onto the hurtling mammoth like some enormous tick.

Men cried out in horror as they saw the brute beast and its fearsome rider appear behind the howdah. Most cowered with their families, trembling in their terror. A few, reckless or crazed, jabbed ineffectually at the killer with their spears. The Skulltaker ignored them all, disregarding even the pained thrashings of the mammoth as it tried to dislodge his steed. The grim mask of the Skulltaker’s helm looked across the thundering herd, studying the desperate rout with the chill stare of the true predator. From the vantage point of the mammoth’s towering back, he was allowed the view he needed.

A kick of the Skulltaker’s boots and his grisly mount retracted its claws and sprang away from the bellowing mammoth. The hound-like beast crashed heavily against the shaking earth. It paused for only a moment, and then the beast was running through the moving canyon of shaggy flesh.

With great, loping bounds, the Skulltaker’s steed bore him through the maddened herd, darting between the smashing legs of the mammoths, dodging the flashing tusks and flailing trunks as they passed each brute.

Ahead, the Skulltaker had seen what he wanted: the banners and trophies, the steel-ringed tusks and tattooed ears of the khagan’s mammoth. Dimly, he could remember when he had last seen the war-steed of a Tong khagan. Revenge denied was revenge savoured.

Through the smashing, crashing, stomping panic of the herd, the air filthy with dust and dung, past the tattered wreckage of howdahs, and over the ruptured paste of crushed men; onward, onward to rage and ruin and revenge.

The Skulltaker’s steed emerged from the press of the herd. Its jaws snapped irritably at the air, trying to blot the taste of dust from its mouth. Then it spun, racing a parallel course to one of the mammoths at the fore of the herd, the mammoth with painted ears and steel-ringed tusks.

Gradually, the wolf-beast slackened its pace, allowing its prey to close upon it. Throwing spears crashed into the dirt around the beast, but its preternatural agility foiled the aims of desperate men. A fiery vapour burst into life around the wolf and its rider, and then vanished just as quickly, broken by the power of the runes the Skulltaker wore.

The wolf-beast sprang backwards as the mammoth’s spiked tusks swept towards it. The beast landed in a crouch, every muscle tightening into a steel coil. Then it sprang again. This time the creature leapt in an almost sidewise motion, twisting its body as it jumped.

Once again, the wolf-beast’s claws dug into the shaggy fur and leathery flesh of a mammoth. This time, however, its rider was not content to stay in the saddle. Even as his steed secured its gruesome footing, the Skulltaker was moving, jumping from the back of his beast and into the bed of the howdah.

The impact of his armoured body smacking against the platform as he landed caused the entire structure to shake.

A Tsavag rushed at the invader, struggling to keep his footing as the mammoth’s body shuddered beneath him. He swept a sickle-bladed axe at the monster’s horned helm, roaring the battle cry of his ancestors. The warrior never finished his charge, his arm and shoulder cut from his body by a single hideous sweep of the Skulltaker’s shrieking blade. The shuddering corpse toppled against the wall of the howdah, and then pitched into the dim blur of the landscape, whipping past the mammoth’s hurtling bulk.

The Tsavags stood frozen in shocked silence, hands closed around the trembling walls of the howdah. It was not merely fear of being thrown from the crazed beast’s back that held the men.

Confronted by this fiend from legend, the graphic display of their kinsman’s slaughter held them in an icy grip. The Skulltaker lifted his gaze from the transfixed warriors, staring up at the raised platform and the hulking figure of the man he had come so far to kill.

Hutga Khagan glared at the Skulltaker with the steel courage of a man who knows his doom is upon him. The chieftain cast aside his fur cloak, exposing his muscular chest and its nodule-like metallic growths. He gripped the polished haft of his ji, the wickedly keen spear-axe that had been gifted to the first warlord of the tribe by Teiyogtei. The broad spear-point and the cruel crescent of the axe-blade behind and beneath it shone in the failing light as dusk descended upon the domain.

Hutga thought it ironically appropriate that this fight should happen now, as the day died away and night stretched its black fingers over the land.

The chieftain could feel the daemonic force within his weapon surging through his veins as he drew its power into his body. Enough to overwhelm any mortal foe, he knew it would not be enough to destroy the Skulltaker. Seeing Ratha cut down made Hutga understand how delusional such an idea was. No, he could not win, but he wouldn’t crawl either. He’d give the monster a fight that the Skulltaker would remember.

‘Do your worst,’ Hutga spat at his foe.

The Skulltaker’s grinding voice echoed from behind his mask. ‘I won’t have to.’

As he uttered the mocking insult, the Skulltaker was in motion, stalking towards the raised dais with broad, hungry steps. Hutga felt his stomach turn sour, horrified by the Skulltaker’s grace and ease, the surety of purpose and motion. The Skulltaker might have prowled the unbending floor of a marble hall rather than the jostling, swaying surface of the howdah, apparently oblivious to the threat of being thrown by the mammoth’s frenzied charge.

A scrawny, miserable figure interposed itself between the Skulltaker and his intended victim, clutching an ivory support to keep his balance. Yorool screamed at the monster, the names of gods and daemons dripping off the shaman’s tongue as he called upon powers he was forbidden to invoke.

Black coils of energy whipped around the Skulltaker, surrounding him in a writhing shimmer of profane power. The planks beneath the Skulltaker’s boots turned brown, withering with rot. A warrior standing too close was caught by the gnawing unlight. His skin turned white, crumbling from his bones as the curse of years consumed all the days yet to come. The dust collapsed against the floor of the howdah, dust and a few miserable bits of decayed bone.

The Skulltaker forced his way through the cloying, devouring unlight, like a swamp troll trudging through a quagmire. No sign of leprous rot, no trace of crumbling decay marked his armour as he won his way clear of Yorool’s magic. There was no hint of weakness in his step as he moved towards Hutga’s throne.

The black blade came scything down before Yorool could call upon another spell. It bit through the shaman’s cowl and his disfigured face, splitting him from crown to jaw. The Skulltaker wrenched his weapon free in a brutal spray of teeth and brains, kicking the slain shaman from his path.

The butchery of their shaman broke the grip of terror that held the Tsavag warriors. Men rushed the Skulltaker in a howling, vengeful mob. Several lost their footing as the mammoth’s pounding feet sent tremors rushing through the howdah. Men screamed as their bodies were sent rolling across the platform, smacking against the walls and crashing through the wooden sides. Some kept their footing, managing to stumble and grope their way to their foe. Spears and axes ripped at the monster, and swords stabbed at his body. Only one blade struck true.

The Tsavags backed away from the Skulltaker once more, leaving three of their number strewn at the monster’s feet. They backed away, not in fear, but in awed respect. Their weapons had glanced harmlessly from the Skulltaker’s armour, unable to reach the man inside. However, the daemonic mail had been unable to thwart one weapon. The dagger-like tip of Hutga’s ji transfixed the monster’s throat. Something stagnant dripped down the bronze shaft, something too old to still be called blood.

Hutga stared in open-mouthed wonder, unable to believe what he had done. Then the Skulltaker lifted his hand, grabbing hold of the bronze haft. Defying the weight of the man at the other end of the weapon, he ripped the blade free, pushing it away with what could only be contempt. Hutga nearly fell as the ji was thrust back at him, and stumbled back several paces, his back almost colliding with the ivory edge of the howdah.

Only the lift of the mammoth’s leg and the rise of its body as it rushed on across the steppes prevented the khagan from falling over the side.

The Skulltaker stalked after the chieftain, hacking apart the bodies of the few warriors who half-heartedly tried to attack him. Hutga could see the rent in the throat armour slowly oozing closed again. The chieftain felt despair bite into his heart, and then he remembered the monster’s contemptuous words. It didn’t matter if the thing couldn’t be killed, Hutga Khagan would die on his feet, not his belly!

The chieftain charged at the approaching Skulltaker, the ji flashing at the monster in a blinding display of jabs and thrusts, of spinning attacks where he brought the crescent-edge of the axe grinding against the armour plate, followed with a bludgeoning blow from the club-like counterweight at the other end of the spear.

The Skulltaker struck back at him, but Hutga was always able to interpose the bronze pole between his body and the butchering sword.

So it continued, the desperate contest between mortal man and timeless monster, the chieftain keeping the Skulltaker’s sword at bay, but never able to land a telling blow of his own. A delicate balance of thrust, parry and block had been established. Both combatants watched for the moment when that balance would tip.

Hutga shouted in triumph as he saw that moment come. The Skulltaker’s recovery from a thwarted strike was sloppy and slower than before. Hutga seized the opening, jabbing at the Skulltaker, and then twisting his ji so that the tip of the black sword was trapped in the small slot between axe-blade and pole.

Hutga twisted his weapon again in a manoeuvre that he had practised many times on the field of battle. Trapped in the slot behind the axe-blade, the wrenching motion would tear the sword from the Skulltaker’s hand, disarming the monster.

At least, that is what Hutga thought would happen. He had not reckoned upon the otherworldly strength of his enemy or that of the terrible weapon he bore. Instead of tearing the black sword from the Skulltaker’s hand, the wrenching motion caused the edge of the screaming blade to bite through the bronze pole, tearing through it with disgusting ease.

Hutga reeled back, horrified to find himself holding nothing but a bronze pole. Grinding his teeth together in rage, he rushed back at his foe, striking at the horned helmet with the clubbed end of the shaft. The Skulltaker barely seemed to move, but his black sword came chopping down just the same. Hutga howled in agony as his hand leapt from its wrist and flew across the platform.

The chieftain clutched his bleeding stump to his chest, despising his weakness. He’d lost his hold upon the wreckage of his ji in that moment of shock and pain. The surge of the mammoth’s body beneath him sent Hutga stumbling back, struggling to find his footing. A few of his remaining warriors rushed the monster. Others jumped from the back of the mammoth, more willing to chance the pounding charge of the herd than the Skulltaker’s blade. The mahout in the ivory cage on the mammoth’s neck was one of those who chose to jump, leaving the immense animal with only its panic and pain to drive it on.

A flash of daemonic steel, a spray of blood and screams, and Hutga was alone upon the runaway mammoth, alone with the Skulltaker. He cursed himself for a fool as he cowered before the monster. He understood now that his enemy could have ended the contest any time he wanted. The Skulltaker had been playing with him.

The chieftain struggled to stay standing, but blood loss was making him dizzy. The mammoth’s panic sent an endless tremor through the howdah, rattling planks in their fastenings, and twisting the floor beneath his feet.

The thick, fear-tainted reek of the mammoth’s sweat washed over the chieftain, a sickly odour that sapped his resolve. Despite his efforts, Hutga slumped to his knees. The Skulltaker stared down at him. Hutga glared back at the monster, peering into the fiend’s burning eyes.

Suddenly Hutga knew what was staring at him from behind the sockets of the Skulltaker’s mask, what was encased within the monster’s armour: hate, pure and cold and terrible. He could feel that hate burning into his body, burning into his soul. The timeless rage of the immortal, the icy fury of a thousand lifetimes, all bore down upon the beaten Tsavag chief.

‘End it!’ Hutga snarled. ‘Take your trophy!’

He closed his eyes as the Skulltaker drew back his sword.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The bestial roar of the forge boomed within the iron walls of the Black Altar, drowning out even the boiling din rising from the pit far below. After so many centuries of neglect and loneliness, the daemonic presence of the forge seemed almost eager to work once more, anxious to bind a shard of its evil into a weapon and send a part of itself out into the world again, even if that weapon was going to be used to frustrate its vengeful lust.

Dorgo worked the complex nest of pulleys and chains. He hauled buckets of what looked like molten pitch, but which stank like burnt blood, up from the pit, pouring it into the yawning mouth of the forge. Impossibly, the emptiness within the fleshy forge never seemed to fill, consuming bucket upon bucket of the fiery broth. He could feel heat rising from within the darkness beneath the sharp teeth of the forge, could feel it growing to blistering intensity, but where the magma-like liquid vanished to, the Tsavag could not say.

Sanya watched Dorgo work, her eyes carefully studying both man and forge. She listened to the roar of the forge, concentrated on the clawing touch of heat against her soft skin. She waited for a moment, for the fleeting instant when all her senses would be in alignment, for the moment when the daemon would be ready to do its work.

The moment came. With a sharp cry, Sanya called Dorgo away from the hanging chains and bronze pulley wheels. Her senses told her that he had fed the forge enough, that its fire burned hot enough to serve them.

‘Place your hand against the forge,’ she told him. The warrior stared at her, distrust in his eyes. Sanya laughed at his suspicion. ‘Getting the sword is only half the battle,’ she said. ‘I need someone to wield it, someone fool enough to challenge the Skulltaker.’

‘But not fool enough to burn his hand down to the bone,’ Dorgo growled back.

‘You won’t be burned,’ Sanya assured him, though there was a touch of uncertainty behind her words. ‘The daemon’s spirit requires physical contact to understand what we need of it, to receive its orders.’

Dorgo looked back at the pulsating knot of quivering flesh. He could see the shimmer of heat rising from its gaping mouth. He glanced at Sanya and scowled, clenching his fist and waving it at her. ‘Be warned, witch, I’ll still have one hand to strangle that pretty neck!’ The threat uttered, he walked to the edge of the forge and slapped his hand down against its lip.

His hand didn’t burn. In defiance of the heat and the buckets of molten fire he’d poured down into it, the fleshy surface was cold and damp, slimy like wet offal. It didn’t burn. The sensation that shot through his body was much worse than that.

He could feel something moving through him, crawling behind his eyes. His bones shivered from the deep, murderous growl of the daemon as its presence invaded him.

Then, in an instant, it was gone. Dorgo snatched his hand away and fell to the floor, retching in disgust at the spectral violation. He pulled away as he felt Sanya’s hands on his shoulders.

‘The touch of a daemon is vile,’ she said, her words heavy with the experience of abuse. ‘There is nothing so filthy in this world or the next as the petty splinters of a god’s magnificence. But they are a necessary evil, a bridge between mortals and the power of the gods.’ She pressed forward again, cupping Dorgo’s chin in her hand. This time he did not pull away. Her face was a soothing mask, her eyes limpid pools. There was invitation in the curve of her lips as she smiled down at him.

‘Come,’ she said, guiding him from the floor with the delicate pressure of her hand, ‘see what your suffering has done.’

Dorgo allowed himself to be led back to the forge by the enticing lure of the sorceress. The obscene feeling of the daemon crawling inside him, the bloodthirsty foulness of its murderous spirit was forgotten. He was oblivious to the heat and the stench, the clammy taint of evil in the air. All he could see was Sanya, the slender curves of her body moving beneath the tatters of her robe, the smouldering glow of the forge dancing through her hair.

A change had come upon the forge. The teeth lining its surface had gnashed together, forming a flat, circular disc of polished bone above the mouth of the forge. While he watched, a ripple of motion passed through the disc, the bone surface trembling like the skin of a pond.

A depression began to form in the centre of the strange anvil, a surface that soon bore the unmistakable outline of a sword.

‘Fit the shards to the shape,’ Sanya told him, letting her hand slide from his chin to the side of his neck.

The woman’s touch thrilled him, exciting him, making him forget all his doubt and suspicion. He could only dimly feel the heat rising from the forge, the mephitic haze that rippled across the surface of bone.

One by one, he removed the crimson shatters from their pouch, setting each piece of the Bloodeater into the mould. Somehow, he was not surprised when the pieces fitted perfectly into place.

Sanya led him away from the forge, as mouth-like orifices slobbered open all along its sides. The mouths sucked great draughts of air into the forge’s unseen furnace, feeding its hellish fires. The bone skin above the fire began to glow, first red and then white.

Dorgo was amazed when he saw the ruby fragments of the blade melt into crimson liquid. A fire so hot it melted gemstone was unimaginable. Dorgo had thought that the forge would somehow knit the pieces back together, bind them with some daemon’s trick.

He understood better now. The bloodthirster was too much of a warrior to allow a blade with such weakness into the world. The Bloodeater would be remade from its destruction, like the fabled fire dragon of Cathay. There would be no spider-thin fractures and weaknesses where shard joined shard, but a whole blade cast from a single ingot of ruby, just as it must have been shaped when Teiyogtei first forged it.

While the shards melted, knobbly tendrils of flesh began to ooze from the lip of the forge, rising like boneless arms above the glowing anvil of bone. The tips of the tendrils hardened, becoming stumps of black, shining stone. They were still for a time, waiting for the heat and the fire to do their work. Then, with eerie precision, the fleshy bludgeons came smacking down, pounding against the daemon-bone disc.

Despite the otherworldly surroundings, despite the horrific nature of forge and hammer, despite the impossible substance being worked, the sound that filled the Black Altar was jarring in its normalcy: nothing more than would rise from any mortal smithy.

How long the daemon hammers worked the molten ruby, neither Sanya nor Dorgo could ever say. Hours or days, time meant less than little in the bizarre limbo of the Wastes. At last, however, the hammers no longer struck against the anvil of daemon bone.

Exhibiting the same eerie precision, they were absorbed back into the fleshy substance of the forge. Gradually, the heat began to abate, and then a scorching, searing noise rose from the mouth of the disc. Blood, dark and stagnant, began to bubble up from the depths of the forge, slopping over the sides of the fleshy stump and running across the floor. The anvil and the blade were drowned beneath the rising tide. As steam rose from the mouth of the forge, Dorgo realised that the daemon was using this macabre method to quench the new-born blade.

When at last the bubbling tide of blood abated, Dorgo approached the forge once more. He found himself staring down into a pool of black blood that completely obscured the fang-like teeth and the sword they had held. He thought again of the depthless pit, the unfillable void into which he had poured bucket after bucket of fiery pitch. He felt a twinge of fear, imagining that yawning darkness.

The touch of Sanya’s hand against his arm reassured him. Boldly, he thrust his hand into the still warm mire of blood. His fingers groped through the blackness, brushing against the rough surface of the fangs. Then his hand touched something that was smooth and cold against his skin.

His fingers tightened around the unseen object, clenching into a firm fist as he pulled his arm back and ripped the reborn blade from its daemonic womb.

Bloody filth dripped from the Bloodeater, spattering the floor of the Black Altar. Somehow, the covering of blood could not hide the power and magnificence of the weapon he held. Dorgo knew that all the suffering, all the pain and violation, all the horror and fear had been worth it. He could feel strength pulsing through his arm, throbbing through his body.

He swung the sword through the empty air, shocked by how good it felt in his hand, as if it had always been there. A shimmer of power, like little sparks of crimson light, danced behind the blade as he thrust and slashed at unseen enemies. The warrior laughed, a pure sound, filled with wonder, the voice of a simple, child-like joy.

For the first time, it was not doom that ruled his heart, but hope. He had seen the Skulltaker, had seen what the champion could do. Dorgo had never truly believed that the Bloodeater could destroy the monster. Now, with the blade’s power flowing through him like a fiery river of strength, he did not believe anything could stand against him, even if it was the Skulltaker.

There was hope for his people and his father. There was hope for the entire domain.

‘The Skulltaker will die!’ Dorgo vowed, smiling as he gazed into the scintillating depths of his blade. ‘We will seek him out and destroy him!’

Sanya shook her head. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘If we stay here, the Skulltaker will come to us.’ She pointed at the Bloodeater clenched in his fist. ‘He will know what we have done. He will remember the sword that vanquished him once before. We do not need to seek him out, Dorgo, Hero of the Tsavags. If we wait, he will seek us.’

The wait was not a long one. Even as Dorgo was contemplating Sanya’s plan, trying to weigh its wisdom against his fears for his people, against the desperate need for haste that gripped him, a familiar and unforgettable chill swept through his body. He could see that the sorceress sensed it as well, turning to face the doorway where the bronze panels had once stood.

A figure emerged from the shadows, a hulking shape encased in crimson steel and a horned, skull-like helm. In its mailed fist, the black blade smoked and snarled. Across its chest, the chain of trophies hung, their sightless sockets staring blindly across the Black Altar.

There was a hideous, triumphant quality about the way the Skulltaker marched across the metal, blood-soaked floor. Sanya blanched, growing pallid before the imposing apparition, her arrogance and pride withering in the champion’s grim presence. She retreated behind Dorgo, placing the warrior between herself and the monster. The Skulltaker hesitated for an instant, his deathly mask studying the Tsavag warrior.

Dorgo brandished the Bloodeater, making certain that the Skulltaker recognised the blade he held. He could sense that the champion did. The Skulltaker would remember the power of that weapon better than anyone or anything, the blade that had vanquished him once before. If anything could make him know fear, it was this.

The Skulltaker turned away from Dorgo, looking past him to the Sul sorceress. Dorgo felt his ire rise. Did the monster think so little of him that he looked to the woman as a greater threat?

The Tsavag rushed the Skulltaker, a Tong war cry rising from his throat as he charged. The Skulltaker blocked the warrior’s stabbing sword, knocking the Bloodeater aside with a backhanded sweep of his smouldering blade. Dorgo heard the daemon steel scream in protest as the Bloodeater bit into its otherworldly edge.

Dorgo feinted a jab to his foe’s left, and then thrust at his right, stabbing at the join between torso and pelvis. Again, the Skulltaker’s blade came sweeping down, swatting aside the striking sword. This time the monster followed the block with a sweeping slash from his blade. Smoke stung Dorgo’s eyes as he ducked what would have been a decapitating blow.

The deadly dance began in earnest, thrust and parry, slash and block. The Bloodeater filled Dorgo with such strength that he barely felt the Skulltaker’s intercepting blade as it crashed against his own. He knew that if he could just get through the monster’s defences, if he could once stab his crimson blade into the body beneath the plated mail, that the Skulltaker would be finished. The power of Teiyogtei’s sword would destroy him as it had so long ago.

Against the strength of his arm and the power of his sword, Dorgo was forced to concede his vulnerability. The Skulltaker was far and beyond any foe he had ever faced, combining speed and power in a way that even a formidable adversary like Tulka didn’t come close to matching.

Unlike the champion of Khorne, Dorgo had no daemon-forged armour to guard his body. He had shed his armour before carrying Sanya across the pit. Beside the metal plates encasing the Skulltaker, he was as naked as a babe. It was a sobering thought, when the Skulltaker’s screaming blade came flashing inches from his skin, to consider how deep it would cut him if it struck home.

Dorgo’s sword crashed against the Skulltaker’s breastplate, scouring a deep gash in the dark armour. He quickly pulled back, turning aside the stabbing thrust of the champion’s blade with the hilt of his sword. Even as he knocked the deadly weapon aside, Dorgo felt his ribs explode with pain, the Skulltaker’s armoured knee slamming into him, pitching him to the floor. Hastily, Dorgo lifted the Bloodeater to block the murderous, descending strike of the Skulltaker’s steel.

Then he saw it, hanging from the chain alongside the other trophies lashed across the Skulltaker’s chest: a human skull, disfigured by lumps of metal protruding from forehead and scalp. Like all the others, it bore the brand of Khorne upon its brow.

Long-nourished hope withered and died as Dorgo saw his father’s skull grinning at him from the Skulltaker’s gruesome collection. They had found the Black Altar, and drawn the Skulltaker to them, but it was all done too late. Hutga Khagan had already joined the monster’s victims.

Seven heads: seven vanquished tribes. The strength and power that had filled him when he took up the Bloodeater faded as he felt his stomach turn. It didn’t matter that he had no proof of the thought that burrowed into his brain, he knew his suspicion was right. He knew which head the Skulltaker hadn’t claimed.

The champion’s sword came flashing down in a murderous sweep. The Bloodeater was all but torn from Dorgo’s nerveless clutch as he instinctively lifted his weapon to block the strike. The Skulltaker pulled back for another attack, towering over the fallen Tsavag like some gruesome avatar of death.

Suddenly, coils of blazing blue light crashed around the Skulltaker’s body, sizzling against his armoured plate. The champion spun, glaring at the almost forgotten sorceress. Sanya saw the timeless malice burning behind his mask as he stormed after her. Another blast of eldritch power smashed into the Skulltaker’s body. The monster kept coming, protected from the woman’s magic by the dread power of his god.

Sanya retreated, circling behind the forge, clutching her bag against her breast. The Skulltaker pointed a metal claw at the woman, an imperious gesture that brooked no defiance. He had nothing to fear from her magic, no spell known to man or daemon could penetrate the armour he wore.

Somehow, the sorceress lifted her head, all the hubris of her tribe etched across her features. ‘Work for it,’ she spat scornfully.

A bestial growl rasped from behind the Skulltaker’s mask. With swift, furious steps he closed upon Sanya. Desperately, Dorgo fought to his feet, determined to finish his enemy himself. Then he noticed something strange. Sanya had positioned herself behind the nest of pulleys and chains. Dorgo knew the spot well, having laboured so long to raise buckets from the pit. There should be a great hole in the floor only a few feet from where she stood, yet to his eyes, all that could be seen was the blood encrusted metal floor of the chamber.

Dorgo’s eyes were not the only ones deceived. The Skulltaker did not hesitate in his brutal rush towards the woman. His path carried him straight over the hole, the emptiness that Sanya had cloaked in her magic. With a great, wolf-like howl, the hulking champion, the blood-soaked slaughterer of the domain, plummeted down, hurtling into the burning pit far below.

‘That solves the problem of the Skulltaker,’ Sanya laughed, setting down her bag. There was an ugly, gloating quality to her voice, her features twisted into a harsh scowl. ‘It appears that we didn’t need the Bloodeater after all, just a bit of Mighty Cheen’s power employed in a judicious fashion.’

Dorgo wiped blood from his forehead, trying to keep it from running down into his eyes. He wanted to see the witch, wanted to see the terror in her eyes when she understood that she was going to die. He knew that she had worked some kind of enchantment on him, drowning out his suspicions of her with a slavish ardour. It was gone now, shocked out of him by the sight of Hutga’s skull hanging among the other trophies.

Sanya smiled when she saw the merciless hate in Dorgo’s eyes. She folded her hands together, contemptuous in her display of unconcern. ‘Try,’ she said. ‘Just try to strike me down. You can’t. Ever since we left the domain, I’ve been working my magic on you, whispering to your soul while you slept. You’d sooner destroy yourself than destroy me.’

Dorgo roared, rushing at the sneering Sanya. She continued to grin at him even as the Bloodeater came chopping down. Dorgo struck sure and true, aiming for the woman’s pretty face. Instead, he found his arm twisting around, the blade sweeping harmlessly past her shoulder. He tried again, chopping at her neck. The muscles in his arm grew tense, freezing solid the instant he pulled the sword back to deliver the blow.

Sanya stepped inside his murderous reach, her soft lips brushing against his cheek. ‘You see,’ she told him, ‘I have nothing to fear from you, my mighty warrior.’

‘You lied to me!’ Dorgo snarled, his rage only emboldened by the witch’s mockery. ‘You used us. You used my father and my tribe! You never intended to save anyone except yourself… Enek Zjarr!’

The name of the kahn of the Sul hung in the air, foul with scorn and disgust. Dorgo should have suspected, if he’d considered such cowardly deception possible even for a Sul. If the kahn could make doppelgangers of himself, surely cloaking his form in that of another would come easy to him. The Skulltaker hadn’t been drawn to the Black Altar because of the Bloodeater. He’d been drawn by the one thing he needed to complete his pact with Khorne: the last chieftain’s skull, the head of Enek Zjarr!

Hard laughter rippled from Sanya’s lips as she danced away from the glowering Tsavag. She shook her head, favouring Dorgo with a look that she might bestow on a drooling idiot. ‘Enek Zjarr?’ she laughed. ‘For too long I allowed that worm to use my body. Do you think I’d let him defile it further to hide from the Skulltaker?’

‘You cannot trick me, sorcerer!’ Dorgo snarled. He lowered his arm as feeling returned to it, further enraged by his frustrated helplessness. ‘The Skulltaker needed one more head. Tell me he didn’t need the head of Enek Zjarr! Tell me that isn’t what brought him here!’

Sanya nodded, condescending to applaud the warrior’s reasoning. ‘Oh yes,’ she agreed, ‘it was Enek Zjarr’s skull he needed, but I’m afraid someone already took it.’

Dorgo stared in disbelief as Sanya’s slender hand reached into the bag slung around her shoulder, the bag she had been so determined to keep with her. She pulled from it the secret treasure that she had carried with her for so very long: the dry, fleshless skull of Enek Zjarr, the rune of Khorne branded into its forehead.

‘He’s been dead since before we left the domain,’ Sanya told him, ‘murdered the very night we returned from the tomb of Teiyogtei. His weakness emboldened those who would see him fall. The legacy of Teiyogtei is such that no enemy can kill a chieftain, but as the king was slain by his warlords while he languished from his wounds, so his heirs may be brought to destruction by the hand of a kinsman. Enek Zjarr never saw the dagger I stabbed into him, but I assure you he felt its venom!’

‘But the Skulltaker would simply hunt for the head of the new kahn,’ Dorgo protested.

‘Not if there was no kahn,’ Sanya corrected him and the full treachery of that statement was like a physical blow to the Tsavag. ‘If no one claimed Enek Zjarr’s legacy, if none drew the flesh of Teiyogtei from his heart, then the power would remain bound in his corpse. The head of Enek Zjarr would remain the trophy sought by the Skulltaker. We Sul are smarter than the other tribes. We alone understood that our survival and that of our kahn were not the same. So long as the domain endured, we would endure. Once the Skulltaker killed the chiefs of the other tribes, there would be none to oppose us.’

‘And now the Sul will enslave what is left of the tribes,’ Dorgo growled through clenched teeth. ‘They will bring the entire domain under their rule.’

‘It is the destiny of those with wisdom to rule,’ Sanya said.

‘Not wisdom, witch,’ Dorgo spat. ‘Treachery and trickery! That is the coin the Sul know best!’

Sanya sighed, shaking her head sadly. ‘I could have used you, Tsavag. Thaulan Scabtongue and the other elders will need to be culled if I would be queen.’

‘And you’d make me your king,’ scoffed Dorgo.

‘Consort, perhaps,’ Sanya said after a moment of consideration. ‘After you’d disposed of the elders, of course. But I’m afraid you’d never bend sufficiently to my will. You’re too truculent, too headstrong to make a good slave. The strain of maintaining spells over you is one I can easily do without.’

Dorgo glared at the sorceress, feeling his hatred of her swell with each passing breath. Sanya was terrible in her airs of gloating triumph, revelling in the catalogue of deceit and betrayal that had brought her ultimate victory. All the death, all the suffering that had passed, all the carnage wrought by the Skulltaker, was immaterial to her. It was a mentality as loathsome as it was callous. Even ever-hungry Khorne appreciated each man’s death in his moment of dying.

Sanya strode back across the floor, the skull of her betrayed master in her hand. Slowly, she paced around Dorgo, her fingers playing through his hair. ‘Too bad,’ she decided at last. ‘I’ll have to find another tool to wield the Bloodeater for me.’ Her voice became as cold as a winter tempest.

‘Skewer yourself, dog!’

Against his will, Dorgo’s hands closed around the hilt of the Bloodeater. With agonising slowness, he turned the blade around in his grip, pointing the sharp tip of the jewelled sword towards his gut. He strained against the pull of his muscles, struggling against the dominating will that compelled him. Sanya laughed and he could feel her power over him lessen.

He tried to drop the sword, but even as he started to flex his fingers, he felt her will force them closed again.

She was toying with him, making him die by degrees, savouring the helpless terror of his mind. A more sinister torment it was hard to contemplate, where torturer and victim were one and the same.

A strange sight intruded into his terror. Past the trembling fists of his outstretched arms, Dorgo could see the nest of chains behind the forge. He could see them shivering, trembling with motion as though moved by some intangible wind.

Slowly, at first, then more violently, they began to sway. Initially, Dorgo watched the chains only to distract him from Sanya’s torture, but soon a horrified fascination gripped him. Something was climbing up the chains.

As soon as the thought was in his mind, he felt Sanya’s hold on him falter. The sorceress turned away, rushing to the edge of the opening behind the forge. Dorgo threw the Bloodeater from him, letting it clatter across the floor. He scrambled away from weapon and the sorceress, retreating from both with horror.

The sorceress waved her hands in arcane gestures above the metal floor, banishing the spell of concealment that she had evoked, exposing the gaping hole through which the chains passed. Her face turned pale with horror.

Sanya was too consumed by her fear to notice Dorgo’s escape. She was trembling as she backed away from the opening, shaking like a lonely leaf in a thunderstorm. A red gauntlet closed around the lip of the opening, followed quickly by a hulking body encased in armour. The Skulltaker’s metal mask glared at the sorceress, as pitiless as the face of Khorne.

Crackling lightning flashed from Sanya’s hand as she drew power from her amulet. The sorcerous energy shimmered and danced around the Skulltaker’s body, as harmful as summer rain.

The monster moved towards her, each step echoing like the tramp of doom from the walls of the forge. The hungry, surly roar of the forge hissed back into life, welcoming the Skulltaker’s return.

Sanya continued to back away, continued to unleash her deadly magic against the oncoming monster, but there was no pit to hide from the Skulltaker this time, and no trickery that could ensnare him.

Against the champion, Sanya’s magic was incapable of working any harm. It was the Sul’s turn to know how it felt to be powerless.

With a moan of horror, Sanya felt her back press against the iron wall of the chamber. Backed into a corner by the Skulltaker, she made a desperate lunge for freedom. The champion’s mailed fist caught in her flying hair, jerking her brutally from her feet. The Skulltaker ignored the fallen woman, interested more in the object that had flown from her hand to rattle across the floor. He stalked after Enek Zjarr’s skull, reaching down to pick it up from the floor.

Sanya shrieked, desperate courage filling her. She leapt at the Skulltaker, jumping onto his back, trying to pull him away from the fallen head. The champion reached behind him, closing an iron fist around the woman’s shoulder.

In a single, savage motion, he ripped the sorceress from him, bringing her slamming down in an overhead manoeuvre. A sickening, spine-snapping crack sounded as Sanya struck the floor. Even in her agony, the crippled woman tried to push Enek Zjarr’s head from the Skulltaker’s armoured fingers.

‘Stop him!’ Sanya shrieked as the Skulltaker gained his last trophy. The monster turned away, marching back to the howling forge. The fleshy stump of daemonic malevolence was gyrating and pulsating with excitement, its teeth gnashing in hungry expectation.

‘Stop him!’ Sanya screamed again, her desperate eyes fixed on Dorgo. The warrior could feel only the faintest tug of her will against his, the witch’s pain befouling her powers.

‘If he drops the skulls into the forge, it will be the end of us all!’ Sanya cried. Her eyes went wild with terror as she saw Dorgo turn away from the scene, moving towards the doorway of the Black Altar. ‘It will be the end of the domain! The land and everyone in it will be consumed, absorbed into the realm of the Blood God! Nothing will survive! Think of your people!’

Dorgo turned back. He watched as the Skulltaker dropped the first of his trophies into the greedy maw of the forge. The entire structure shuddered, gripped by some titanic tremor. The howling of the daemon’s spirit rose to an almost deafening din, the blood-stink of the chamber intensifying into an overwhelming reek. Dorgo could feel things scrabbling at the corners of existence, clawing for entrance as old walls began to fracture. Something colossal, a presence gigantic beyond understanding, was looming down from some unimaginable height, casting its shadow of terror across the world.

Dorgo stared into Sanya’s fear-maddened eyes. There was no pity, no mercy in his gaze, only a cold satisfaction. There was enough sanity left in the sorceress to know despair when she saw the ice in Dorgo’s gaze.

‘Everyone will die!’ she pleaded again.

‘Better death than a life of slavery under the Sul,’ Dorgo snarled.

The Black Altar trembled again as the armoured fist of the Skulltaker dropped another trophy into the slavering mouth of the forge. Dorgo struggled to keep his footing. There was no hope, only a choice of evils, but it was his choice.

Dorgo made his way back out onto the Black Altar’s jaw, deaf to Sanya’s wailing screams. He braced himself as the structure shook again, as pillars of black flame leapt up from the pit. He moved out along the jawline, climbing towards one of the immense anchor chains.

Whether he fell into the pit or was consumed by the rising flares, Dorgo could take comfort in one thought.

When the Skulltaker dropped his last trophy into the forge, the Sul would know the choice that Dorgo had made.

Somehow, Dorgo was able to cross the horrific pit. Even in the oldest of his tribe’s legends, even in the tales of Teiyogtei, Dorgo had never heard tell of such an impossible escape. Choking vapours, pillars of fire as tall as mountains, the bucking violence of the chains and their scalding heat, such odds even the boldest liar to assume the mantle of shaman would not have dared to tell. Yet, by the grace of what gods Dorgo did not know, somehow he had reached the other side.

He had emerged from the glowing light set into the breast of the bloodthirster’s corpse, scrambling down its charred husk even as it crumbled away beneath him. Dorgo had barely reached the ground before he saw the enormous body collapse, falling in upon itself like a burning log. Even then, the dissolution of the carcass was not complete. The shapeless chunks continued to fall apart, disintegrating into dunes of blackened ash.

Dorgo stared across the horizon, struck numb by the horror that beset his eyes. The landscape of piled bone and skeletal ground was changing, shifting in subtle, uncanny ways. Mounds of bone resolved into familiar peaks. Trees and rivers began to manifest into phantom shapes. Dorgo found that what he looked upon was horribly familiar, that he looked upon hills and mountains that he knew from the lands of the Tsavags. As Sanya had warned, the domain was being absorbed into the realm of the Blood God.

It was not a clean, pure sort of transference. The arrangement of hills and forests was erratic, far different from the way they had existed in the mortal world. The ghastly landscape the places of the domain intruded upon was not banished, but horribly merged into the substance of mortal stone and mortal tree. The strange image of the lands around the domain being stretched to cover the hole where the kingdom of Teiyogtei had once been suggested itself to his mind and would not be unseated. The domain had not been conquered. The realm of Khorne had not expanded.

The domain had been absorbed, consumed, torn from the mortal world and scattered through the spectral borderland of the Wastes. It was conquest in a deeper, more terrible fashion than the cruellest warlord could understand.

Dark clouds gathered in the sky, scarlet lightning flashing through their sombre veils. Red, pasty drops began to weep down from the clouds, a rain of blood. Dorgo could see stretches of the bone-littered Wastes bubbling and frothing as crimson pools spurted up from beneath the earth. All colour drained away as the crimson gore covered the land. The ground was lost beneath the rising tide of blood. Dorgo sloshed through the growing sea, rushing to gain one of the surrounding hills. A roar that was not thunder rolled through the desolation, and he thought again of that hungry howl in the depths of the forge.

Fierce winds tore at the heavens, sending the blood-rain splashing down in nearly horizontal sheets. Dorgo felt the sting of the drops sizzling against his skin, hot with an unholy fire. Tremors shook the earth, great geysers of black flame erupting from beneath the expanding sea of blood. Terror, brutal and malignant, scratched at his mind, hissing words of doom into his soul.

Dorgo at last reached his hill, scrambling up a surface that was slick with blood: trees covered in thorns, grass as bloated and obscene as that of the borderland, rocks with the sinister suggestion of bony arms. Nothing, not even in the most abandoned reaches of the domain had ever been so malevolent, so eager for a man’s blood. He could almost see the thorny arms of the trees reaching out for him, could almost feel the skeletal rocks clawing at his feet.

Always, there was the pulsing, pounding rage pressing against his skull, turning his brain crimson with thoughts of murder and savagery. Death, destruction and carnage, and the lust to exult in slaughter and ruin, pawed at his mind, trying to twist it, to consume it as the Wastes had consumed the domain. Dorgo screamed, trying to keep his last, tenuous hold on what he knew to be himself, trying to keep from being absorbed into something else, something monstrous and ancient and eternal.

The sea of blood continued to rise, swallowing the hill below him. Dorgo climbed higher, ever higher, fighting his way through brambles and brush alive with knife-edged thorns. The stinging rain became a burning deluge, welts rising up from his scalded skin as it struck him.

Then, with impossible abruptness, all was silence. No rain fell from the sky, no rock clutched at his foot. The terror and the bloodlust withdrew from his mind and soul, draining away. The wind became only the faintest breeze and the bellowing roar was a dim whisper. Dorgo found his gaze drawn back across the swollen waters of the sanguine sea, a sea more vast than anything he had ever seen, where only a few peaks and rises disturbed its surface. His attention was fixed, not to the mountains, nor even to the ocean of darkened gore. What he looked at was beneath those grisly waters, a heap of ash drowned beneath the waves.

Tears of blood fell from his eyes, blood burst from his ears and ran from his nose. He bit his tongue as his mouth opened to scream.

The surface of the sea erupted with a violence beyond that of the geysers, lifting in a great explosion that sent tidal waves rippling in every direction. Immense, gargantuan in its dimensions, the reborn daemon rose into the black sky, its leathery wings fanning the air in great lethargic beats. Molten bronze dripped from its massive hooves, fire falling from its claws. Armour, black and ancient, writhed with the torments of the souls trapped within. Hound-like jaws opened in a victorious howl that ripped across the world, finding its echoes in murders and outrages in a thousand lands. Baleful eyes, black as pits of blood, glared at the heavens with a hate more ancient than time.

Slowly, the apparition faded, vanishing into the ethereal kingdoms of gods and daemons.

Dorgo held his head in his hands, understanding the horror that his revenge against Sanya and the Sul had unleashed. Krathin the bloodthirster, the Lash of Khorne, was free.

EPILOGUE

Dark waves of blood lapped against the skeletal shore of Dorgo’s refuge. Except for a few scattered islands peaking above the crimson ocean, the Tsavag warrior was alone. Only the biting wind stirred the black sky, and only the sound of sluggish waves sloshing against the shore interrupted the silence.

Dorgo paid little attention to the barren world around him. He was locked in the awful realisation that he was the last of his people, the last of the Tsavags. Everyone he had ever known, everyone he had ever loved, respected or admired was gone. Even his enemies had been consumed by this ghastly world of blood and terror: the Vaan, the Seifan, even the Sul. All were gone. In the desolation of his heart, even hatred was denied its place. There simply was no one left.

The clatter of something striking the rocks beside him snapped Dorgo from his gloomy reflection. He spun around, gasping as he saw what had been thrown at him. Upon the rocks, shining with a dull inner glow, was the Bloodeater. The warrior lunged for the weapon, seizing it in his fist. He could feel its strength and power surge through him, pouring fire into his soul. He was alone, but he was also alive, and while he was alive, he would fight. To do less would shame the memories of his vanished race.

Dorgo rose from the ground. He saw a ghastly shape waiting for him at the top of the sunken hill. Blood from the dark sea dripped from the thing’s leathery crimson flesh and sizzled from the length of its smouldering sword. Great talons blacker than obsidian tipped its long, cruel hands. Bestial, reptilian paws supported it, hooked claws splayed wide to maintain purchase upon the blood-slicked slope.

A heavy cloak woven from numberless skulls tumbled from its shoulders, whipping about its body in a charnel breeze. Bronze armour encased its chest, the ancient metal pitted with the marks of battle and the runes of Khorne.

Its head was twisted and savage, four great horns stabbing out from temple and crown, notched and curled with infamy and spite. Its face was a merciless, skull-like visage, crimson skin stretched tight across daemonic bone. Dorgo was reminded of the ghastly bloodletters that had menaced him upon the anchor chain, but looking into the thing’s pitiless eyes he saw a hate that was beyond any mere daemon’s gaze.

‘The ember-like eyes stared down at the Tsavag and he knew the enemy for what it was. Dorgo did not know what terrible metamorphosis had consumed the last vestiges of the man who had been Vrkas. He did not know what inhuman malevolence had been poured into the vengeful champion in his moment of triumph. He could not guess at the abominable marriage of mortal and daemon, the fusion of living flesh and eternal malice that had created the horror which now glowered at him. His mind would not understand the strange path that had led the monster back to him, a spectral trail through forgotten lands and forgotten ages.

It was enough for Dorgo to recognize the daemon, to put a name to its timeless rage. The name of Skulltaker.

‘Your gods have spared you, monster!’ Dorgo spat, finding a terrible joy as hatred was restored to his heart. ‘Now they demand an end to our contest.’ Dorgo slashed the sword of Teiyogtei through the stagnant air, savouring the feel of it in his hand. This time, there would be no distraction, no interruption. The shock of Hutga’s death could not overwhelm him now. This time, it would be a fight to the finish.

‘Come, monster,’ Dorgo snarled. ‘I’ll send you to join your daemons!’

The Skulltaker’s claws crunched against the bony shale as he descended from the high ground. There was no hesitancy in his march, no doubt or question, only the grim resolve of a man who had long ago accepted his fate.

‘No gods,’ the Skulltaker’s grinding voice spoke. ‘No witches. Just warriors.’ He paused in his descent, lifting his wailing sword in a sombre salute. ‘Just warriors and steel.’

As the two warriors charged across the desolate hillside, crashing together in a crush of muscle and metal, both knew the outcome of their battle mattered little.

The Blood God would not care from which carcass the blood flowed.

APPENDIX

Tribes of the Horde

Using the daemon weapons forged in the hellfire of the Black Altar, the great king Teiyogtei Khagan bound the loyalties of eight mighty chieftains and their tribes to his cause. With this mighty horde, he set out to do what no mortal king had ever accomplished: to carve an empire from the fractured wastes of the Shadowlands.

Tsavags

Teiyogtei Khagan’s own tribe the Tsavags are of the Tong race, a savage people dwelling in the heart of the Chaos Wastes themselves. Grotesquely mutated, possessed of strength and endurance far beyond lesser breeds of men, the power of the gods saturates the flesh of the Tong. Keepers of the mighty war mammoths, the Tsavags were great among their people even before the rise of Teiyogtei. Swept up in the king’s vision of conquest and glory, the Tsavags formed the nucleus of what would become his horde. Fierce and proud, fired by their connection to the legendary king, the Tsavags remain a powerful force within Teiyogtei’s shattered domain.

The Tsavags practise ritual scarring, carving marks into their flesh to denote their lineage and accomplishments. By this token, a member of the tribe will recognise the status of a kinsman simply by observing the signs carved into their face.

Sul

A breed of sorcerers and mystics, the Sul are of the Hung race, sallow-skinned horsemen of the east. The dark power of magic burns within the souls of the Sul, twisting and corrupting them from the womb to the grave. Treacherous, cunning and opportunistic, the Sul are loyal to none but themselves. Their magic gives them powers over both the mortal and unseen worlds. Daemons bow before them and beasts hearken to their words. The Sul do not see themselves as servants of the gods, but rather as exploiters of their power. Their fealty to Tzeentch is a matter of convenience, invoking the Lord of Change to protect them from the wrath of lesser gods and daemons. But even the Sul are not so arrogant to believe that such patronage does not come with a price.

Vaan

One of the many tribes of the dark-haired Kurgan race, the Vaan are the most numerous of the tribes of the domain. Militaristic and highly disciplined, the Vaan have ever been willing servants of Khorne. Skilled tacticians and strategists, the zars of the Vaan approach war as a sacred sacrament, believing that carnage without victory is offensive to their god. The Vaan maintain legions of goblin slaves to work the extensive mines and forges that writhe beneath their land. Their warriors sport mail of blackened iron and bear weapons finer than anything born in the crude fires of their rivals. If not for the Tsavags and the Sul, the entire domain would long ago have fallen beneath the iron boots of the Vaan armies.

Seifan

Another of the Hung tribes drawn by the promises of Teiyogtei Khagan, it is said that the Seifan are a people born in the saddle. They measure their wealth in the size of their herds, and they breed the fastest steeds in the domain, fierce animals fattened on flesh and blood. In battle, the Seifan employ scythe-wheeled chariots of wood and bronze. They do not favour any of the gods, but worship each in his turn according to the tribe’s need. Without concept of conscience or honour, the Seifan are dangerous enemies and equally dangerous allies. Their power in the domain lies not from sorcery or force of arms, but from an uncanny facility for playing one foe against another.

The Warherd of Kug

Inhuman beastmen, the Warherd takes its name from the ancient beastlord who swore fealty to Teiyogtei Khagan. Feral, savage monsters, the beastmen found themselves with few friends when the horde disintegrated in the aftermath of the king’s death. Driven into the mysterious wooded expanse of the Grey, the beastmen have long nursed their primordial hate for the races of man. Generations of dwelling within the lightless depths of the forest have rendered the beastkin all but blind, but the mutating influence of the forest has given them new senses in compensation. The beastmen have become the foremost of the terrors of the night, raiding the lands of even the strongest tribes, slaking their savage hunger for human flesh.

Gahhuks

A tribe of Kurgans, the Gahhuks are deadly enemies of the Seifan, viewing the Hung horselords with a bitter enmity born of spite and envy. Horsemen themselves, the Gahhuks see the Seifan as their most immediate rivals in the domain and vie with the Hung for control of the grasslands. The hulking steeds of the Gahhuks bear little resemblance to the shaggy ponies of the Seifan and are bred for raw strength and power rather than speed and endurance. The Gahhuks practise a grisly death-cult, each man forced to slay a rival before he is accepted as a warrior of the tribe. The flayed skin of the vanquished rival is a token of the warrior’s status, stretched across a wooden frame and worn across the back when the warrior rides into battle.

Veh-Kung

Of the three Hung tribes who swore allegiance to Teiyogtei Khagan, the Veh-Kung have strayed the farthest from their origins as horsemen and nomads. Defeated by their rivals, the Veh-Kung were forced to seek sanctuary in the macabre Desert of Mirrors, a weird realm infested with the noxious power of Nurgle, the Plague God. Decimated by the invisible pestilence exuding from the crystalline landscape, the Veh-Kung swore to embrace the worship of the Crow God if he would spare their lives. Nurgle was as good as his promise, and no longer did the Veh-Kung die from the plague all around them. But the god did not spare their flesh and the Veh-Kung became debased, ghastly creatures.

Confronted daily by their decaying reflections in the crystalline spires of the desert, the Veh-Kung burrowed beneath the shimmering sand, carving a network of tunnels beneath the desert to hide not from the sun, but from their own hideous transformation. Now they eke out a troglodyte existence, scratching a starveling subsistence from their unforgiving home. The legacy of their ancestors and their origins upon the eastern steppes is a mocking memory that serves only to remind the Veh-Kung how far they have fallen and to heighten their despair.

Muhaks

The Muhaks are a tribe of Kurgans renowned for their immense strength, if not their subtle natures. Grotesquely swollen with inhuman growths of muscle, the Muhaks more resemble ogres than men. Infamous as cannibals, the Muhaks wear the skins of their victims as visible displays of their strength and power. Even among the fierce tribes of the domain, the Muhaks are seen as vicious barbarians, as dangerous as rabid trolls. No tribe has been spared the depredations of the Muhaks, but exterminating the brutes is a task that even the Vaan hesitate to consider, knowing the losses such a campaign would incur and knowing that the other tribes would be quick to exploit such weakness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C. L. Werner’s Black Library credits include Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy and the Thanquol and Boneripper series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He claims that he was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story was ever published.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by BL Publishing, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Map by Nuala Kinrade and Ian Miller.

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