Blood for the Blood God

3

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 swordlike 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.