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After what seemed like a mad eternity clawing through the dark, torrential acid, it finally spit the Warmaster out in another tunnel. He floated the final few centimetres before scraping across the plasteel tracks left behind from the Before. When he hauled himself up, he steps out of the ditch and examined his carefully crafted armour. Much of it was ruined, parts melted away entirely exposing burning, melty flesh, and even the parts that remained attached looked worse for the wear.

Morbid curiosity about the depth of his wounds drove him to feel the shattered section of his face. Without any feeling left in the area, he only realized the acid-coated fingers were jabbing at the empty socket of his eye once he hooked them on the bone. Deep within, he fed on the energy of his daemon. It kept him here, among the living, when so many others fell to those who had no idea of the cost.

Slamming a fist into the chestplate of his armour, Zalok attempted to get the internal radios working. Through some miraculous luck, they did. This far from the cold Northlands no message would reach his people... but any message would reach the metal creature. She promised, and proved it. In his absence, she would relay his orders to the Warband, and even on the other side of Arkangel they would hear and obey.

"157723X..." His voice rumbled quietly, barely audible. "Karavnograd. Nine teams. You know." He waited for whatever sent it across the mountains and through the ground. He waited for the machine-creature's response. It was a simple noise, but one in the affirmative. She would see his vision done. But for now, the Titanfang lay down and slept. In that state he remained, loitering at death's door.

Even this did not deter him. When he next stood, he began a journey south. Charting his passage through the numerous tunnels with scrapings and sigils done in clotting blood scraped from his own wounds, he navigated ever further into unknown territory. Weeks, with only the odd mutant and stagnant pool to slake his needs, he forged ahead. Weeks dragged on even longer, until even he forgot how long he wandered.

Until he found it. A shaft of light, piercingly bright, stabbed down from above. Latching onto the rusted ladder, he made his way to the surface. Emerging into an old building set above the station, he blinked away the sudden blinding light. Lumbering forward, he examined the doors of the building. Someone outside had sealed them shut long ago. Slamming his shoulder into them, they burst open, releasing him into this new realm.

~

Heat. Heat and wind. For the last few hours, it was like this for the men and women of the 415th Fighting Cavalry Regiment. The entire group was thundering along down the plain, in pursuit of the large mutant horde they had been tasked to hunt. For the last three stinking hours, it was like this. Sweltering heat, thubbedy-thubbedy of horseshoe against dried earth, the occasional crunch and stumble of a rider as shoe met a dried-out bone that was the constant indication of the price of failure in this Wasteland.

Smell of hot horse, smell of hot self. And the harsh prickle of radiation in the air that stung at them was omnipresent. This was how it was for the 415th. Namely, this was how it was for Major Samuel Tomas, who rode near the fore of his formation and who was trying desperately to polish his coat's buttons.

They were to the south-and-southwest of a small cluster of settlements in the state of Rodesia, the state to the leftmost of the Great Southern Land. Despite being the furthest away from the border - that is, the Chaos Wastes to the west and the Badlands to the southwest - the state was still at high risk of attack. The fertile plains of the state made for great farmland, with a full 5 percent of the state being converted into food-producing labour fields. Naturally, this made it a large target for mutants.

Major Tomas thought back to what he had been briefed. This horde of mutants had desecrated the settlements of Aroughs, Bree, Munnwether and Hillsdale - this meant that the horde had swelled to some six dozen in number. His men were mainly lancemen and musketeers - one group charging forward and engaging while the other would kite around and rake the mutant mass, as well as picking off any stragglers.

It would make for efficient hunting, as their supply caravans would not be able to stay long. Their loads were getting dangerously light, a mere twenty-three tons of supplies between forty carriages. Considering the approximated forty klicks to the nearest base, this was grim tidings indeed.

"Sammy!" a rambuctuous voice to his right cried out. Tomas grimaced and looked to his uncle, who was riding with revolver-pistols in both hands on his tan mare. Jerry was always the outgoing one, making the loudest noise in the messes and taking center stage in every engagement. Privately, Tomas thought it was a miracle that he was promoted to the Officers' Cadre and not his uncle.

"Yes, Marksman Sawyer?" he asked in a long-suffering tone. Discipline was impossible with that man.

"I heard that there's a big one in their midst! Red horns, worth three chalk at the least!" the pistolier said, referring to Rodesia's system of measuring the worth of mutant pelt, where it was measured not in the quality of the beast's pelt but in the difficulty of taking the thing down. His uncle had said that it was at the 'chalk' tier - a nasty thing that would fight viciously till exhaustion and likely beyond, and with the three serving to indicate that it was a bipedal thing, most likely top heavy and vulnerable to surprise attacks.

Tomas nodded, solemn concern evidently . His uncle sharing information like that warranted no less than a challenge between the two men - that, or he could simply call for a duel between them. But that was his uncle. Samuel would never do that. Instead, he nudged his steed a little bit closer and nodded.

Jerry nodded vigorously with a cackle. Samuel resumed his position in the formation, and they rode on. As they crested a hill, the Major loosed his antique Powered Sabre - a gift from the Officers' Cadre of Fort Garand and the icon behind which his men now rallied.

They saw the enemy; a horrific mass of slavering, howling things stained either with sanguine carminolent, the colour of dried blood or any other number of hues acquired by rolling in various parts of soil and brush. This horde had been one of the more successful ones - the 451st which even now was preparing to strike was the thirteenth that would attempt to despose of it.

A score-dozen warcries filled the midday air, and the mutants howled and growled as they scrambled to their relative feet. The padding of heavy paws against thick grass was drowned out as the shooters broke off from the blade-oriented men-at-arms of the regiment.

Jerry howled out for victory and glory, and the battle was met.

~

Hours in the baking heat did nothing to improve his thirst, hunger, or general attitude. Zalok hated this land unconditionally. The boring terrain, the heat, and the sheer expansiveness of it bothered him. Even in the tunnels below, some life showed itself.

The sounds of a battle reached his remaining ear. Perking up, he drew the great daemon sword from his back, trotting off towards the sound. Drawing from inner reserves, he soon ran full-tilt towards the sounds of screaming and dying. Cresting over a small hill, he saw a band of mutants ahead. Somewhere, he saw a massive set of red horns towering over the mass. Then and there, he decided to take them. They would make great ornaments on his armour when he returned to the Northlands.

Surging into the back of the mutants, he swung his massive greatsword through the one closest to him. It squealed in pain, but the sound quickly petered out. Its soul slithered into the sword, and it gave the life energy to Zalok. With renewed strength, he cleaved forward though more and more mutants until he reached the front of the scrambling charge. Those few mutants that dared try to stop his mad rampage met his blade.

There, just in front of him, his goal lay. Sprinting to keep up with the massive creature, the Warmaster howled long and loud. It turned to face him, just in time to meet his eye. The daemon blade cleaved into its neck, then through it. Swinging with the momentum, he brought it back to carve through the beast's chest. Ripping off the remains of his helmet and clipping it to the magnetic dock on his waist, the Titanfang returned his weapon to its place on his back. He hopped forward, digging into the fresh corpse-meat with a rabid hunger.

~

Major Tomas didn't notice what hit the mutants. He was much too busy fending off a paw here, staving in a skull with his saber's hilt there, stabbing into the throats over here, and signalling to his men at the sides with their rifles and pistols to shoot down swaths and droves of them, until finally there were barely half the amount that were there to begin with.

He had shimmied his horse backward with a lanceman taking up the gap he had left, and his steed cantered him around and away from the battle to where he could survey. His uncle and the men accompanying him had done an admirable job - either that, or these mutants were unusually stupid. Perhaps both. Then something caught his eye - a mutant corpse. But not the corpse itself, in the way that it was cut.

Sliced completely in half. By something large. He saw another one killed in the same manner, and another. They formed a trail of dead, dying or gruesomely bisected mutants until the howl of something big and bloodthirsty sounded out.

Tomas rode down until he was amongst his men once more, though their number had diminished. And he glanced back into their ranks where the last few mutants were being dispatched by his men with strikes from lance, sabre and from shots of gun and musket to see the leader-beast of the horde; a stupendous thing at what Tomas had guessed was twelve feet tall. Though its back was to him, and a crimson streak flew up to lop off its head, and then after a meaty slice it fell backward.

What darted forward wasn't quite well seen, but by the Major's eyes it was a fast, mean brute of a man with a blood-soaked great sword upon his back. Promptly, he had knelt down and began to sickeningly eat the corpse of the mutant.

Before the Major could order it, a staccato of clicks from guns and a hefting of blades and lances sounded out. Samuel was quietly pleased at the cohesiveness of his unit before he turned his attention to fully survey the man before him.

Unpreturbed by the change in events, he continued devouring bits of the mutant corpse. When he finally looked up, he seemed to ignore the Major's men entirely, instead opting to rip the mutant's horns from its nearby head. If the show of force bothered him, he gave no indication of it.

Tomas caught the eye of another of his Marksmen - Hugh Cross. The Major gave the order, signalling to shoot for the mutant's head. Eager to please, the young man did so.

The bullet flew straight and true, sinking into the beast's skull straight between the bloody lumps where the bases of horns had once come up from the skull and sending a spray of blood up into the face of the man. Whoever or whatever he was, they wouldn't be stopped.

Tomas turned his head slightly to survey the man, who looked more annoyed than anything else.

~

Wiping the monster's blood out of his remaining eye, Zalok stared at the strange humans. At first, he'd thought they were two-headed mutants with four legs. It wouldn't be the first time something that hideous passed him, and certainly not the last. After a few moments of careful consideration, he realized they were humans, sitting on unfamiliar creatures.

Standing up, he gathered up the mutant's horns in one hand, and placed his hand on the pommel of his sword with the other. "Do not shoot again." The words were just loud enough to cross the distance between him and the strangers. His sword rumbled, the daemonic jaws working back and forth on the blade. It sensed its master's thirst, and it keened loudly in sympathy.

The subtlest ripples of shock passed through his men, before it was gone. Major Tomas dismounted, stepping forward slightly to stand just on his side of the distance between his lines and that man. If Samuel were to take a guess, he was around the six-foot mark. Fearsome, then, considering he felled a beast nearly twice his height.

"My name is Samuel Tomas. I am a Major of the men under arms of the Great Southern Land. Who are you, and may I ask what you are doing here?" the Major said, putting up a cool front to the swordsman in front of him.

"Eating," He replied. Leaning down, he took another bite out of the mutant's corpse to drive the point home.

Major Tomas knew a smartass when he saw one. He drew his own pistol - a semi-automatic one available only to officers - and fired again, right over the man's shoulder and it would have been clipping his ear had he leaned even slightly to the right.

"Well, Mister Eee Ting, I'm going to have to ask you to come with us. You will be held in a military establishment until further notice. Do you understand?" It started with a touch of sarcasm, but near the end, his jaw tightened up because of the man's blade seeming to open at the hilt. It was some time before he got to grips with the fact that there was indeed a sharp-toothed jaw there, and furthermore it was clacking in boredom.

"You do not command me." The man took a few steps towards the assembled Confederates. Everything in his posture suggested he fully intended to go down fighting if it came to that. A soft intake of breath on the parts of many men to steady their aim was immediately forthcoming, like a breeze had momentarily sprung up.

"This is your only warning. Come with us, or you will be shot." In his head, Samuel began a slow countdown from ten.

He spread his arms wide, "And why should I follow you? You who do not even follow the truth of Chaos? Tell me this!"

As soon as he said the word 'Chaos', his men were thrown into action. One man actually affixed his bayonet and would have charged the man, had he not been restrained by his comrades at Tomas's bellowed order of "HALT!". Now the urge to kill the man before them was rising, drastically. Hell, Tomas could barely hold it in himself, as the 'big fucking savage traipsing around with a screaming sword' did just up and declare that he was as mad as any of them...

The Major decided he had enough. Taking a look at the large, musclebound and heavily armoured man, he decided that drastic measures were necessary.

"We have clean, non-irradiated water. The nearest water source is fifteen kilometers away." The Major had lain down his card. Time to see how it would fold out.

The stranger removed his hand from the massive greatsword. It slowly quieted, but the eyes at the hilt still stared at them from above his shoulders. Taking a few steps forward, he finally introduced himself. "I am... Warmaster Zalok. I will go with you."

A small smile broke out on the Major's face, for appearance's sake. His men, on the other hand, were not happy at all. Though the man didn't look, he could sense it, easily. As he turned, his men didn't follow.

"Break it up! Get moving! Someone hand me a spare canteen!" he barked out. The cavalry, startled into action, began to move out. A medic - Johansson, if Tomas recalled correctly - came over with a spare canteen. Dead and dying men were thirsty.

He handed the canteen over to this Zalok character. Then when he got close, the Major saw the condition of his armour and how badly he was wounded. At his order, the medic came closer and asked Zalok to take off his armour.

The huge man did so, or tried to as the medic just pushed it back so that he was covered once more. "Too fuckin' big... go to one of the carts, we'll do what we can" the man had said before walking off. Tomas was already back on his horse, and approached as the Warmaster as he finished his drink.

"Done, then? Come, we'll be heading back to our base. We have food, and anti-radiation medicine. What's more, with all the corpses around there's likely to be Beasts wandering about this night. Drat it all, I guess we just gave them a good feed." The Major smiled thinly.

Zalok slowly inclined his head. Whatever to remained a mystery, as he immediately launched into a question, "Who are your people?"

Tomas quirked an eyebrow, but it was hidden under his hat. "We are the Tuzkinn Confederacy. The twenty-three states of the Great Southern Land. United by circumstance to generally survive. Major Tomas." he ushered his horse forward, and tenatively held his hand out to shake. For a moment, Zalok stared at the hand, then back to the Major, completely unaware of what he wanted.

"You... shake? Clasp and..." The Major dropped his hand, awkwardly shrugging.

"A strange concept." Suddenly, the Warmaster smiled, revealing massive, gleaming metal fangs that had no right to fit in his mouth. "But I believe your people might have something in common with mine. This is a good thing."

"Hm. Well... what's your version of it?" the Major awkwardly inquired. Not the best of first contacts with other cultures, but it would have to do.

Thinking it wise to demonstrate the practice first, Zalok balled both of his fists and knocked them together. A piece of corroded plate broke off of one of his gauntlets. Extending a fist to the Major, he waited for his response.

The Major was too far a distance away from the Warmaster to adequately make this happen. So he curled his hand up into a fist, set his horse forward and then felt the shudder as his arm lanced into the larger man's hand. He was certain this Zalok character was laughing at him internally. Shaking his hand slightly from the pain, - those gauntlets hurt, spiked or not! - the Major nodded at hulking man whose head was only slightly lower than his shoulder. On horseback.

"Let's get going. You can have however much you want off any of the supply carriages, and you'll ride in one as well. I doubt any horse we've got could carry you anyway."

~

Later in the cool if irradiated night where the wind was whipping at the riders' tighly covered faces, they were riding through the cool night with the starry skies above them, the moon illuminated stunted if not sickly trees growing over a barren patch of land, which kicked up stinging dust. The howls, roars and growls of Beasts were easily audible to the riders, whose senses were open and wary for attack. Night-time was the absolute worst time to be attacked by the Beasts - though they had the element of luck - they were but two klicks away from the nearest base.

Major Tomas was riding further back in the ranks than in the cavalry leader's customary spot amidst the front ranks. Not completely in the lead, as that would be stupid, practically inviting a sharpshooter to take them down. Instead, he was around three horses deep behind the front, and slightly to the left.

The formation was greatly depleted - they had lost approximately a quarter of their number. The Major had

Beside him, his uncle again rode. Despite the tumultuous, flowing nature of mounted movement, Jerry Sawyer managed to do it with ease. He was never far away from Semuel - a fact that had saved the Major's life too many times to count.

"So."

The man was unusually quiet. The Major turned to regard the Marksman. "This Warmaster fellow." Samuel quietly grimaced. That man was lounging about, slowing down the lightest-loaded and fastest cart and was putting away resources that were precious; clean - non-irradiated, at least - food was hard to come by, and water in a similar state was simply impossible to find.

Tomas swallowed. This was by no means an easy conundrum.

"Yes?"

"Well... what are we going to do?"

The major was silent for a while, pondering what indeed they would do. He assessed the situation, his relation to Chaos, all of it...

He decided it wasn't his to decide. Warmaster sounded up near the rank of General, not a lowly major such as himself. He made the call - this Zalok character would go with them to Brooke's Redoubt and then he would contact Headquarters - the famed Nikeii Citadel. It was not for no reason that it was the first and longest-holding military establishment in all of the great southern land. Someone up there would take care of this mess.

Then he got a clod of dirt to the face, and any thoughts of the Southern Land being great was dispelled as he flailed and tried to brush off the glowing maggots that were kicked up by a horseshoe.

This was going to be a long two-kilometer ride. As he and his company rode, cold, understrength and hungry, the Beasts bayed for their blood around them.

Description
After what seemed like a mad eternity clawing through the dark, torrential acid, it finally spit the Warmaster out in another tunnel. He floated the final few centimetres before scraping across the plasteel tracks left behind from the Before. When he hauled himself up, he steps out of the ditch and examined his carefully crafted armour. Much of it was ruined, parts melted away entirely exposing burning, melty flesh, and even the parts that remained attached looked worse for the wear.

Morbid curiosity about the depth of his wounds drove him to feel the shattered section of his face. Without any feeling left in the area, he only realized the acid-coated fingers were jabbing at the empty socket of his eye once he hooked them on the bone. Deep within, he fed on the energy of his daemon. It kept him here, among the living, when so many others fell to those who had no idea of the cost.

Slamming a fist into the chestplate of his armour, Zalok attempted to get the internal radios working. Through some miraculous luck, they did. This far from the cold Northlands no message would reach his people... but any message would reach the metal creature. She promised, and proved it. In his absence, she would relay his orders to the Warband, and even on the other side of Arkangel they would hear and obey.

"157723X..." His voice rumbled quietly, barely audible. "Karavnograd. Nine teams. You know." He waited for whatever sent it across the mountains and through the ground. He waited for the machine-creature's response. It was a simple noise, but one in the affirmative. She would see his vision done. But for now, the Titanfang lay down and slept. In that state he remained, loitering at death's door.

Even this did not deter him. When he next stood, he began a journey south. Charting his passage through the numerous tunnels with scrapings and sigils done in clotting blood scraped from his own wounds, he navigated ever further into unknown territory. Weeks, with only the odd mutant and stagnant pool to slake his needs, he forged ahead. Weeks dragged on even longer, until even he forgot how long he wandered.

Until he found it. A shaft of light, piercingly bright, stabbed down from above. Latching onto the rusted ladder, he made his way to the surface. Emerging into an old building set above the station, he blinked away the sudden blinding light. Lumbering forward, he examined the doors of the building. Someone outside had sealed them shut long ago. Slamming his shoulder into them, they burst open, releasing him into this new realm.

~

Heat. Heat and wind. For the last few hours, it was like this for the men and women of the 415th Fighting Cavalry Regiment. The entire group was thundering along down the plain, in pursuit of the large mutant horde they had been tasked to hunt. For the last three stinking hours, it was like this. Sweltering heat, thubbedy-thubbedy of horseshoe against dried earth, the occasional crunch and stumble of a rider as shoe met a dried-out bone that was the constant indication of the price of failure in this Wasteland.

Smell of hot horse, smell of hot self. And the harsh prickle of radiation in the air that stung at them was omnipresent. This was how it was for the 415th. Namely, this was how it was for Major Samuel Tomas, who rode near the fore of his formation and who was trying desperately to polish his coat's buttons.

They were to the south-and-southwest of a small cluster of settlements in the state of Rodesia, the state to the leftmost of the Great Southern Land. Despite being the furthest away from the border - that is, the Chaos Wastes to the west and the Badlands to the southwest - the state was still at high risk of attack. The fertile plains of the state made for great farmland, with a full 5 percent of the state being converted into food-producing labour fields. Naturally, this made it a large target for mutants.

Major Tomas thought back to what he had been briefed. This horde of mutants had desecrated the settlements of Aroughs, Bree, Munnwether and Hillsdale - this meant that the horde had swelled to some six dozen in number. His men were mainly lancemen and musketeers - one group charging forward and engaging while the other would kite around and rake the mutant mass, as well as picking off any stragglers.

It would make for efficient hunting, as their supply caravans would not be able to stay long. Their loads were getting dangerously light, a mere twenty-three tons of supplies between forty carriages. Considering the approximated forty klicks to the nearest base, this was grim tidings indeed.

"Sammy!" a rambuctuous voice to his right cried out. Tomas grimaced and looked to his uncle, who was riding with revolver-pistols in both hands on his tan mare. Jerry was always the outgoing one, making the loudest noise in the messes and taking center stage in every engagement. Privately, Tomas thought it was a miracle that he was promoted to the Officers' Cadre and not his uncle.

"Yes, Marksman Sawyer?" he asked in a long-suffering tone. Discipline was impossible with that man.

"I heard that there's a big one in their midst! Red horns, worth three chalk at the least!" the pistolier said, referring to Rodesia's system of measuring the worth of mutant pelt, where it was measured not in the quality of the beast's pelt but in the difficulty of taking the thing down. His uncle had said that it was at the 'chalk' tier - a nasty thing that would fight viciously till exhaustion and likely beyond, and with the three serving to indicate that it was a bipedal thing, most likely top heavy and vulnerable to surprise attacks.

Tomas nodded, solemn concern evidently . His uncle sharing information like that warranted no less than a challenge between the two men - that, or he could simply call for a duel between them. But that was his uncle. Samuel would never do that. Instead, he nudged his steed a little bit closer and nodded.

Jerry nodded vigorously with a cackle. Samuel resumed his position in the formation, and they rode on. As they crested a hill, the Major loosed his antique Powered Sabre - a gift from the Officers' Cadre of Fort Garand and the icon behind which his men now rallied.

They saw the enemy; a horrific mass of slavering, howling things stained either with sanguine carminolent, the colour of dried blood or any other number of hues acquired by rolling in various parts of soil and brush. This horde had been one of the more successful ones - the 451st which even now was preparing to strike was the thirteenth that would attempt to despose of it.

A score-dozen warcries filled the midday air, and the mutants howled and growled as they scrambled to their relative feet. The padding of heavy paws against thick grass was drowned out as the shooters broke off from the blade-oriented men-at-arms of the regiment.

Jerry howled out for victory and glory, and the battle was met.

~

Hours in the baking heat did nothing to improve his thirst, hunger, or general attitude. Zalok hated this land unconditionally. The boring terrain, the heat, and the sheer expansiveness of it bothered him. Even in the tunnels below, some life showed itself.

The sounds of a battle reached his remaining ear. Perking up, he drew the great daemon sword from his back, trotting off towards the sound. Drawing from inner reserves, he soon ran full-tilt towards the sounds of screaming and dying. Cresting over a small hill, he saw a band of mutants ahead. Somewhere, he saw a massive set of red horns towering over the mass. Then and there, he decided to take them. They would make great ornaments on his armour when he returned to the Northlands.

Surging into the back of the mutants, he swung his massive greatsword through the one closest to him. It squealed in pain, but the sound quickly petered out. Its soul slithered into the sword, and it gave the life energy to Zalok. With renewed strength, he cleaved forward though more and more mutants until he reached the front of the scrambling charge. Those few mutants that dared try to stop his mad rampage met his blade.

There, just in front of him, his goal lay. Sprinting to keep up with the massive creature, the Warmaster howled long and loud. It turned to face him, just in time to meet his eye. The daemon blade cleaved into its neck, then through it. Swinging with the momentum, he brought it back to carve through the beast's chest. Ripping off the remains of his helmet and clipping it to the magnetic dock on his waist, the Titanfang returned his weapon to its place on his back. He hopped forward, digging into the fresh corpse-meat with a rabid hunger.

~

Major Tomas didn't notice what hit the mutants. He was much too busy fending off a paw here, staving in a skull with his saber's hilt there, stabbing into the throats over here, and signalling to his men at the sides with their rifles and pistols to shoot down swaths and droves of them, until finally there were barely half the amount that were there to begin with.

He had shimmied his horse backward with a lanceman taking up the gap he had left, and his steed cantered him around and away from the battle to where he could survey. His uncle and the men accompanying him had done an admirable job - either that, or these mutants were unusually stupid. Perhaps both. Then something caught his eye - a mutant corpse. But not the corpse itself, in the way that it was cut.

Sliced completely in half. By something large. He saw another one killed in the same manner, and another. They formed a trail of dead, dying or gruesomely bisected mutants until the howl of something big and bloodthirsty sounded out.

Tomas rode down until he was amongst his men once more, though their number had diminished. And he glanced back into their ranks where the last few mutants were being dispatched by his men with strikes from lance, sabre and from shots of gun and musket to see the leader-beast of the horde; a stupendous thing at what Tomas had guessed was twelve feet tall. Though its back was to him, and a crimson streak flew up to lop off its head, and then after a meaty slice it fell backward.

What darted forward wasn't quite well seen, but by the Major's eyes it was a fast, mean brute of a man with a blood-soaked great sword upon his back. Promptly, he had knelt down and began to sickeningly eat the corpse of the mutant.

Before the Major could order it, a staccato of clicks from guns and a hefting of blades and lances sounded out. Samuel was quietly pleased at the cohesiveness of his unit before he turned his attention to fully survey the man before him.

Unpreturbed by the change in events, he continued devouring bits of the mutant corpse. When he finally looked up, he seemed to ignore the Major's men entirely, instead opting to rip the mutant's horns from its nearby head. If the show of force bothered him, he gave no indication of it.

Tomas caught the eye of another of his Marksmen - Hugh Cross. The Major gave the order, signalling to shoot for the mutant's head. Eager to please, the young man did so.

The bullet flew straight and true, sinking into the beast's skull straight between the bloody lumps where the bases of horns had once come up from the skull and sending a spray of blood up into the face of the man. Whoever or whatever he was, they wouldn't be stopped.

Tomas turned his head slightly to survey the man, who looked more annoyed than anything else.

~

Wiping the monster's blood out of his remaining eye, Zalok stared at the strange humans. At first, he'd thought they were two-headed mutants with four legs. It wouldn't be the first time something that hideous passed him, and certainly not the last. After a few moments of careful consideration, he realized they were humans, sitting on unfamiliar creatures.

Standing up, he gathered up the mutant's horns in one hand, and placed his hand on the pommel of his sword with the other. "Do not shoot again." The words were just loud enough to cross the distance between him and the strangers. His sword rumbled, the daemonic jaws working back and forth on the blade. It sensed its master's thirst, and it keened loudly in sympathy.

The subtlest ripples of shock passed through his men, before it was gone. Major Tomas dismounted, stepping forward slightly to stand just on his side of the distance between his lines and that man. If Samuel were to take a guess, he was around the six-foot mark. Fearsome, then, considering he felled a beast nearly twice his height.

"My name is Samuel Tomas. I am a Major of the men under arms of the Great Southern Land. Who are you, and may I ask what you are doing here?" the Major said, putting up a cool front to the swordsman in front of him.

"Eating," He replied. Leaning down, he took another bite out of the mutant's corpse to drive the point home.

Major Tomas knew a smartass when he saw one. He drew his own pistol - a semi-automatic one available only to officers - and fired again, right over the man's shoulder and it would have been clipping his ear had he leaned even slightly to the right.

"Well, Mister Eee Ting, I'm going to have to ask you to come with us. You will be held in a military establishment until further notice. Do you understand?" It started with a touch of sarcasm, but near the end, his jaw tightened up because of the man's blade seeming to open at the hilt. It was some time before he got to grips with the fact that there was indeed a sharp-toothed jaw there, and furthermore it was clacking in boredom.

"You do not command me." The man took a few steps towards the assembled Confederates. Everything in his posture suggested he fully intended to go down fighting if it came to that. A soft intake of breath on the parts of many men to steady their aim was immediately forthcoming, like a breeze had momentarily sprung up.

"This is your only warning. Come with us, or you will be shot." In his head, Samuel began a slow countdown from ten.

He spread his arms wide, "And why should I follow you? You who do not even follow the truth of Chaos? Tell me this!"

As soon as he said the word 'Chaos', his men were thrown into action. One man actually affixed his bayonet and would have charged the man, had he not been restrained by his comrades at Tomas's bellowed order of "HALT!". Now the urge to kill the man before them was rising, drastically. Hell, Tomas could barely hold it in himself, as the 'big fucking savage traipsing around with a screaming sword' did just up and declare that he was as mad as any of them...

The Major decided he had enough. Taking a look at the large, musclebound and heavily armoured man, he decided that drastic measures were necessary.

"We have clean, non-irradiated water. The nearest water source is fifteen kilometers away." The Major had lain down his card. Time to see how it would fold out.

The stranger removed his hand from the massive greatsword. It slowly quieted, but the eyes at the hilt still stared at them from above his shoulders. Taking a few steps forward, he finally introduced himself. "I am... Warmaster Zalok. I will go with you."

A small smile broke out on the Major's face, for appearance's sake. His men, on the other hand, were not happy at all. Though the man didn't look, he could sense it, easily. As he turned, his men didn't follow.

"Break it up! Get moving! Someone hand me a spare canteen!" he barked out. The cavalry, startled into action, began to move out. A medic - Johansson, if Tomas recalled correctly - came over with a spare canteen. Dead and dying men were thirsty.

He handed the canteen over to this Zalok character. Then when he got close, the Major saw the condition of his armour and how badly he was wounded. At his order, the medic came closer and asked Zalok to take off his armour.

The huge man did so, or tried to as the medic just pushed it back so that he was covered once more. "Too fuckin' big... go to one of the carts, we'll do what we can" the man had said before walking off. Tomas was already back on his horse, and approached as the Warmaster as he finished his drink.

"Done, then? Come, we'll be heading back to our base. We have food, and anti-radiation medicine. What's more, with all the corpses around there's likely to be Beasts wandering about this night. Drat it all, I guess we just gave them a good feed." The Major smiled thinly.

Zalok slowly inclined his head. Whatever to remained a mystery, as he immediately launched into a question, "Who are your people?"

Tomas quirked an eyebrow, but it was hidden under his hat. "We are the Tuzkinn Confederacy. The twenty-three states of the Great Southern Land. United by circumstance to generally survive. Major Tomas." he ushered his horse forward, and tenatively held his hand out to shake. For a moment, Zalok stared at the hand, then back to the Major, completely unaware of what he wanted.

"You... shake? Clasp and..." The Major dropped his hand, awkwardly shrugging.

"A strange concept." Suddenly, the Warmaster smiled, revealing massive, gleaming metal fangs that had no right to fit in his mouth. "But I believe your people might have something in common with mine. This is a good thing."

"Hm. Well... what's your version of it?" the Major awkwardly inquired. Not the best of first contacts with other cultures, but it would have to do.

Thinking it wise to demonstrate the practice first, Zalok balled both of his fists and knocked them together. A piece of corroded plate broke off of one of his gauntlets. Extending a fist to the Major, he waited for his response.

The Major was too far a distance away from the Warmaster to adequately make this happen. So he curled his hand up into a fist, set his horse forward and then felt the shudder as his arm lanced into the larger man's hand. He was certain this Zalok character was laughing at him internally. Shaking his hand slightly from the pain, - those gauntlets hurt, spiked or not! - the Major nodded at hulking man whose head was only slightly lower than his shoulder. On horseback.

"Let's get going. You can have however much you want off any of the supply carriages, and you'll ride in one as well. I doubt any horse we've got could carry you anyway."

~

Later in the cool if irradiated night where the wind was whipping at the riders' tighly covered faces, they were riding through the cool night with the starry skies above them, the moon illuminated stunted if not sickly trees growing over a barren patch of land, which kicked up stinging dust. The howls, roars and growls of Beasts were easily audible to the riders, whose senses were open and wary for attack. Night-time was the absolute worst time to be attacked by the Beasts - though they had the element of luck - they were but two klicks away from the nearest base.

Major Tomas was riding further back in the ranks than in the cavalry leader's customary spot amidst the front ranks. Not completely in the lead, as that would be stupid, practically inviting a sharpshooter to take them down. Instead, he was around three horses deep behind the front, and slightly to the left.

The formation was greatly depleted - they had lost approximately a quarter of their number. The Major had

Beside him, his uncle again rode. Despite the tumultuous, flowing nature of mounted movement, Jerry Sawyer managed to do it with ease. He was never far away from Semuel - a fact that had saved the Major's life too many times to count.

"So."

The man was unusually quiet. The Major turned to regard the Marksman. "This Warmaster fellow." Samuel quietly grimaced. That man was lounging about, slowing down the lightest-loaded and fastest cart and was putting away resources that were precious; clean - non-irradiated, at least - food was hard to come by, and water in a similar state was simply impossible to find.

Tomas swallowed. This was by no means an easy conundrum.

"Yes?"

"Well... what are we going to do?"

The major was silent for a while, pondering what indeed they would do. He assessed the situation, his relation to Chaos, all of it...

He decided it wasn't his to decide. Warmaster sounded up near the rank of General, not a lowly major such as himself. He made the call - this Zalok character would go with them to Brooke's Redoubt and then he would contact Headquarters - the famed Nikeii Citadel. It was not for no reason that it was the first and longest-holding military establishment in all of the great southern land. Someone up there would take care of this mess.

Then he got a clod of dirt to the face, and any thoughts of the Southern Land being great was dispelled as he flailed and tried to brush off the glowing maggots that were kicked up by a horseshoe.

This was going to be a long two-kilometer ride. As he and his company rode, cold, understrength and hungry, the Beasts bayed for their blood around them.