“Muds to smash,

Mudders to cleave,

Chiefs to deceive—

Give me, Farseer,

Hounds on which to feast,

Wenches to sunder

And whelps to feed the Beast.”

-Cull’s Breakfast Song

So Cull mused in his mind for three days and two nights as he lay sodden in filth at the base of the mudmaze crap pit, urinal and gore depository. This had been Trek’s idea, for which that conniving devil would flee through the bowels of Hel for eternity with Cull hungrily on his heels, or whatever people got around on in Hel’s madcomb realm. But for now, their foe was identical despite their opposite beliefs. It vexed Cull to no end that he must beseech Farseer in his silent prayers rather than his patron Thunderer, the God of Real Men, not the idling patron of wily pondering types, of the sort that might cook up an idea about having the greatest slayer of the Nords entombed in shit and piss for three days and three nights!

Trek had preached like a reverent on the habit of the Muds situating their refuse pits to the windward flank of whatever intact mudmaze they occupied, usually with a hall that intersected with the main corridor and fell off below toward the bowels of the maddening unnatural mudmaze, nestled within the greater waste of the mudcomb. The refuse pit was the one place where the hounds and more alert Mudders would not sense Cull’s death-dealing reek, for it was the artifice of his cult of Hel-Cursing slayers, to never bathe once whetted with enemy blood, and to wear battle hides quilted of bearskin cured with the brains and urine of enemy chiefs and matted in the blood and gore of slain warriors.

So he had lain, for two nights and three days in his glory, entombed beneath ancient shit, and the new shit of the vanguard of Muds who had struck down the Cumber River behind them when they had descended the Mud River. Even as Est raced northward to catch the vanguard of Muds headed for the Reverent Shrine at Broodhome, and Trek avenged his body brother Dusk by leading the remaining scouts of the Southern horde to their doom, Cull must be shat and pissed upon by that very scouting band of cowardly archers and weak-bodied Mudders as they camped here and he lay at the base of their refuse trench. He was even covered with the guts of Dusk, which the Mudders discarded as they ate his battle brother roasted over the fire—and he was not permitted, according to his own sacred oath given over the prostrate and suffering from of Reverent Chandler, who did bless this deed in the name of Farseer—to avenge that!

Then they left, the two bands of cowardly brown round-headed archers, and their three needle-toothed black Mudder hunt masters who had eaten many a Nord, leaving their waste soaking him to the skin—which had been artfully preceded by the waste of his kin, who Trek had convinced to add to the deception with their own vile excretions.

“Gggggrrrr!”

A deep snarl rumbled in the sunken casement latrine even as full fifty Mud warriors, short stout and brown, armed with machete and shield, bivouacked at this site, scouted by their huntsmen, on the traditional raiding route taken by their kind deep into Nord lands in the past, usually to end in disaster. There were also two massive brown war chiefs, as Mud command units were in 25s as their courage lacked and they needed group reinforcement for their wan mud spirits. Each of these chiefs, he knew would have a Mudder or two for runners and bodyguards, tall, rangy, black, pointy-teethed eaters of the Nords, bloodhounds of human kind, sleek and remorseless. Nord must slay these first.

By the tramp of brown sandaled feet—where the Mudders went barefoot and the Nords wore hide stockings—he was aware of their presence on what was probably the falling of the sun on the third day of his disgraceful entombment. There was nothing worse for such a fearsome warrior, than to be reduced to a blind reeking confinement, with the only means for determining the time of day, the movement of the enemy’s bowels! Cull had, however, by the coming of the time for his mud song to be roared heavenward, become something of an expert on enemy diet and digestion. This accomplishment, however, did not comfort his turbulent soul, but riled it to a boiling roil. It was at this moment, that Cull realized that Trek the Devious was his friend, and had plotted this ruse not just to trick the foe, but to bring Cull's legendary madness to a refined apex—to draw a mud song from his slathering lips that would shake that whore-slit Farseer from his throne and place Thunderer righteously upon it.

For once in his life, Cull, MudSlayer of the Nords, who had raped a mother black bear in her den in his twenty-seventh year—for his seed was considered too toxic for women—found his piety, his holy purpose, his sacred reason for being, found it at the base of a latrine, his eyes caked with foe shit.

He imagined fires lit in the various chambers Trek had pointed out—the Mudder runners camping here, the chiefs and their Mudder companions there, and the Mud warriors around and about in this rat hole, in that snake pit and in this other dog den!

Then came the parade of worshippers at his shit shrine, fifty and more men relieving themselves—even coughing up lung mucus to spit where they pissed and shat—upon him, recumbent in his vile tomb, his breath drawn through a cunning straw, his mouth and nose covered with hide—for all the goddamned good that did!

Having duly cursed the chief of his pitiless gods, Cull, MudSlayer, rested beneath his increasing, seeping, reeking burden, wiggling his tired toes within his iron shod bear clawed battle stockings, wiggling the fingers of his axe hand within the steel plated battle glove, and flexing the elbow above the stump lost to him against those three Mudders he slew in his youth, the old pain in the stump reminding him of his hate, his death oath, and his blood madness, insuring that the massive steel hook on that iron shod arm would catch true in the guts of axe meat and hold it for the cleave! He shook in an ecstasy of anticipation, even as some big Mudder deposited a bear’s worth of misery upon his already filth sodden face.

His great bearded axe, entombed in filth, quivered in his mad hand, thirsty to repay this insult 56 times over.