Blood for the Blood God

18

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’ 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’ 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 halfheartedly 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.