“Uncounted enemies to hew
Amidst the savage din,
Mud curses to spew
Raging within.
Round about Mud heads flew,
Mud bodies fall and spin,
By the edge of The Axe Who Knew.”
-Cull’s Mud Song
Axe Feast
As the face split in twain with a pleasurable crunch a little jabbering devil leaped upon him, pinning his axe arm, wrapping his legs around both arms, grabbing Cull’s beard in his little Mud hands, and biting the nose of the Nord, ripping back triumphantly with a mouthful of unwashed Nord nasal gore, eyes bugged wide. Cull butted the bison horns of his helmet into both muddy eyes, causing the devil to fall howling to the floor, where Cull kicked the dying Mud across the luridly fire-lit room, into the legs of the one who had managed to gear fully, helmet on head, shield on arm, machete in hand.
The little devil sprawled forward but whirled on his nimble butt, shielding and slashing as he spun like a play stone in a big sullen boy’s hand playing “Mud brain rattle bone” in the drinking dish fashioned by Reverent Homily’s hand from the skull of a Mud Papa.
Cull roared, spewing gouts of blood from his missing nose as he sunk into a cleaving squat and arced The Axe Who Knew clean through the splintering, spewing torso of the spinning trickster.
The howls of Mudders and the bawls of chiefs could be heard down the long corridors to his back. Ahead of him, around the pillar and through the archway illuminated in the flickering sentry light, howling, yelling, and slit-whimpering like yammering dogs, he heard his axe food milling, rattling arms, clashing spear hafts as their weapon piles were seized in frightened hands.
He could charge through the arch around the corner where they marshaled. Instead he hooked the great limp portal cover, the wooden hatch which hung half off its hinges, and hurled it across the chamber into the archway, kicking a body under it, axe-slapping a head through the arch, kicking a pair of legs onto the tilted wedge of ancient melt-wood, and axe-tossing the still dying nose-biter into the mess. The Mud fire juice used for their lanterns, contained in the crap steel pot, was then hurled into the archway to the great barracks hall beyond.
A tawny brown head looked around the corner and nearly caught the first fire brand in the face as Cull axe-slapped, hook-tossed and kicked the firebrands of the campfire into the doorway, which went up in a serenading whoosh of crackling Mud skin and popping eyeballs, accompanied by a chorus of frenzied yells beyond in the great hall.
Let them scatter, choke, roast and burn while we feed, Darling, feed on their tribe’s prime seed!
Cull turned like a bear lopping up out of its den, and, grabbing a fire brand, smashed it to his nose, burning the wound closed as he cursed Hel’s brown ass and swore to feed her to her own wicked worm. Keeping the wound-searing brand smoldering in his wolverine pelt helmet band as a way-lighter, a candle by which the ghosts of this damned abode might witness his butchery of their fleshy echoes, he stalked toward his destiny.
A spear took him in the chest, piercing the iron banded bear skin, but glancing from his massive breast bone and furrowing the flesh of his left breast into a rent mess under his hallowed hide.
Hooking the haft and snapping it, he loped off the spear arm of the towering Mudder who had counted too assuredly on one death-dealing thrust, and then sent the woolly head flying back down the corridor with his backhand swing, the tall iron-dark body kicking, seizing and spurting from two stumps.
Screams of agony sounded behind him as lesser Muds were tossed shield first on the flaming mess in the archway while their betters ran over their backs, pursuing him like wolves with shrill calls of frightful anger.
Darling, this is food worthy of your blood beard—with tastier souls yet in front.
The chant of three charging Mudder’s backed by the bawls of their massive brown battle masters echoed down the corridor just ahead of their furiously padding feet, the sounds of their charge mixing with the sounds of pursuit behind him into a dread cacophony.
He roared, and the seared nose held well enough, as his bear call drowned out the other ten voices closing in the corridor at the speed of fright, every lesser voice hurdling toward his inhuman roar.
