Chapter 139

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As Grud and his ten men entered the gates of the Deep Lake tribe, the first thing they noticed was that their houses were built around a rather wide clearing in the center. But then he noticed people sitting in the clearing with what seemed to be fishing poles in hand, and that was when it clicked, the clearing in the center was as the tribe's namesake, a lake that was frozen over, but they had managed to find fish under the frozen surface.

"I see your tribe has managed to survive very much the same way mine does. But how does such a small lake provide for the whole tribe?" Grud asked.

The shaman nodded as they walked, "At the bottom of the lake, there is a cave system, our best divers have tried to explore it, but even our best swimmers say that the cave is just a tunnel of endless darkness. We suspect that this underwater cave system leads to other bodies of water, that is most likely where the fish come from."

Grud and his men eventually entered the shaman's home and were all sitting before the shaman. "Shaman Obua, before we begin talks, where is your chieftain?"

Obua shook his head and said with sadness, "This tribe does not currently have a chieftain. He was killed in battle while defending the tribe against cannibals last year, and his son has yet to come of age, so the responsibility of leading the tribe falls to me."

Grud nodded, "May he rest with the Spirits. It seems that the same problem causes our woes, the reason I am out here is because my son was most likely killed by the same people, which brings us to the main subject, what do you know of these raiders that have been destroying the surrounding villages? And if they are the same cannibals you are referring to, that could explain the lack of bodies from all the destroyed tribes."

"That is most likely the case, so far we have fended off more than five arracks from these crazed cannibals, and when we sent out people to either search where they came from or call for help, none of them ever returned. It was during the third attack, they brought one of our scouts and ate that man alive in front of us as a warning, that was when we knew what we were dealing with." Obua said as he clenched his staff at the recounting of such a horrid memory. "Besides that, the only information we gathered is that they came from somewhere north-east of my tribe."

Grud nodded, happy with the first solid lead, "And do you know of their numbers?"

Obua shook his head, "I would say around three hundred, but I think there are more because every time they attacked, their numbers did not seem to decrease."

"Is there any other information you have on them?" Grud asked, to which Obua shook his head.

"I wish I had more to offer, but we are effectively isolated, and I do not want to lose more people than I already have." Obua said.

"That will have to do then, thank you for your hospitality, I will be going to crush these beasts in the form of man." Grud said as he stood and returned to his men to give them their marching orders.

***

For two weeks, Grud and his men headed north-east, his forces split into multiple hunting groups and spread out in a wide net to look for any tracks. This brute force method yielded results, but not the results that Grud expected.

Seeing that they had spread quite a wide net, it was hard for one group to keep a line of sight with another group, but if someone were to shout, there was a good chance that another group would hear it, especially now that there was hardly any sounds of nature.

So when one of the groups to the right let out a blood-curdling cry, followed by others bellowing their battle cries, Grud bolted from his place in the search line towards the sounds of the battle cries.

When Grud arrived, he saw that this group of his men was outnumbered ten to six, and three of his six men were already dead, and the three that were alive were about to be surrounded and killed.

Bounding from tree to tree, Grud landed hard on one who he thought to be the leader who was calling the shots. Grud landed feet first on his back, crushing him onto the ground, and lashed his spear out to the right, decapitating two others.

This gave his men the space to get out of the encirclement and stand beside Grud. Hearing the crunching of snow from his left, Grud swung his spear to his left and effortlessly cut two more men in two. 

"I am Grud, chieften of the Rock Claw tribe, surender or die!" Grud shouted at them, hoping that he could extract information from them, but the reaction he was expecting did not happen, he saw recognition in their eyes at his name, but instead of fear, he saw hunger, greed, and madness.

"Powerful one! He is mine! I will be the strongest!" one of the remaining five assailants raved in a deranged manner as he charged Grud, imminently followed by the other four.

Of course, just four men were nowhere near Grud's equal, and he did not even need to use his weapon to beat the four men until they could no longer move, but while Grud was beating them, he found something weird. These men were ignoring the pain from buried flesh, twisted joints, and broken bones, they just kept moving while trying to kill him, regardless of their limbs hanging limp by their side.

When Grud took a closer look at the broken men, he noticed that their eyes were bloodshot and dilated, and his sensitive nose picked up a herbal scent coming from their mouths. "Beware, these men are high on something."

Grud squatted down in front of the man who charged him first and lifted his head by his hair to see him face to face, "Where are the rest of you? Who is your leader?" 

The only replay Grud got was the man jerking his body forward with his mouth wide open, trying to go for Grud's throat. All he got for his effort was Grud pushing his head onto the hard ground, but even then, the man was madly raving, "Your blood will give me strength! Your flesh will elevate me to a master of men! I will feast on you!"

Grud yanked at his hair and slammed his head on the ground a few more times, "I ask again, where are the rest of you, and who is your leader? There will be no next time." Grud asked coldly.

Groggily, the man said, "The Blood Ascendant will feast on you all! When the long winter ends, you will all be at our mercy, we will be the masters of the land!"

Seeing that this man was too far gone in whatever fantasy world he made up in his mind, Grud decided to use him as an example for the other four and smashed the man's head into the ground a lot harder than he did before, leaving a bloody mess and a caved in skull from where Grud's hand pushed down, he then looked at the other four, "Anyone willing to talk? If not, you can always end up like him." Grud said as he shook off blood and brain matter from his hand.

Grud had to crush two more skulls before one of them was lucid enough to realize that he was in no position to fight and was about to die from Grud performing head compression on the ground with his head, but it did take a few seconds of Grud slowly increasing the head crushing pressure before he came to this epiphany.

Grud did not even need to repeat his question before the man started shouting all the information he knew. Turns out it was not much, he and the men he came with men who surrendered during the raid on their tribes and were assimilated into this Blood Ascendant tribe.

From what he knew, these so-called Blood Ascendants were led by a shaman who he only knew as the Blood Priest, who 'blessed' them with 'Spirit's Blood' to make them 'invincible', and the strongest amongst them was the Blood Champion, who quelled all decent and conquered all the nearby tribes.

When asked where they were hiding and how many there were, the man said there were further north-east, based in some deep mines, as for their numbers, there were around eight hundred fighting men. When questioned why he only mentioned fighting men, it was revealed that there were captured women who were given out to men who performed great deeds, while the Blood Priest and Champion made large harems for themselves from these captured women.

When asked what happened to the missing bodies, he hesitated to say, but after Grud bent a few fingers in directions that they should not be in, he said that those who did not submit were slain and used as food, especially the weak and old.

Hearing this made the blood of Grud and all his men boil. It was slightly more understandable if they were all starving and resorted to cannibalism of their dead, old or weak, but from what the man described, it seems like these Blood Ascendants had made a culture of predating on the life and flesh of their fellow man, and instead of keeping their numbers low to keep the mouths to feed to a minimum, they seem to be growing in number with every raid.

This… Grud could not accept. He could not accept that such madness had taken one of his sons from him. In a fit of rage, Grud smashed the man's head into a pulp with his bare hands and ordered the rest to be executed.

Before the remaining captives could utter more than a few words of protest, they were cut down by Grud's men, and they did it with the same expression that Grud did. To Grud and all his men who listened in on the interrogation, they were now no longer taking another human life, they were simply putting down rabid beasts.

Soon after, Grud's forces were recalled and reorganized into larger battle groups to avoid being outnumbered as they moved forward. Now that he knew who and where the enemy was, Grud was going to take much pleasure in avenging his son and ridding this abomination of a tribe from the world.