Swinging from hangman's nooses, next day afternoon, were three of our scouts.
It was in the early morning when we learned what was coming. From the hostel we were bunking in, we heard hammering outside; every last nail and curse. I joined a crowd of bleary complainers outside, staring, and speculating.
“They caught some spies,” one cultist told another.
“Spies?”
“That’s what I heard. Sneaking around the hills.”
“Only thing sneaking around is your mother, after I fucked her flopping cunt,” said a third man.
“There are no spies.” said the second man. “Who would come and spy?”
“Priest King Mammon’s men,” said the first.
“They’d send a legion, not a spy.”
“A legion of spies?”
“You lot,” one of the carpenters looked up. His face was as pleased as a toad, carrying a bigger toad, that was taking a shit. “Want to keep prattling like penniless bastards outside a whore house, or will you lend aid to honest work?”
“Who’s getting hanged?” asked the first man, quite unmoved.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
Some of the group drifted over to help the carpenters. The rest formed knots, murmuring amongst themselves. Fogrim and I exchanged glances.
“Will the scouts talk?” I whispered.
“Probably. Let us hope Gorol thinks to move the camp when they do not return with morning’s report.”
I counted the nooses going up.
“Five nooses! They there are five of us are here!”
“We must return to our camp at once.”
“No,” I shook my head. “I can’t leave before finding Juskar and Haley. Who knows what they’ve learned? Especially Juskar.”
“If we do not leave, we could end up on those ropes.”
“We don’t know that. And, it will be harder to get back in, now that they know this fortress has been discovered and is under watch. I’m staying.”
“Ever the stubborn fool. Let us make haste and find them, and pray we do not return here as a spectacle, for cheering enemies.”
***
We set about searching the camp for Juskar and Haley. I found no sign of either: there were easily three thousand cultists at least as many slaves. None were going to sit still for us.
What complicated matters were that guards were out searching for us. They wore full, leather armor, their faces hidden by hoplite-style, bronze helmets. Teams worked checkpoints, interrogating passers-by. Others went from building to building, asking questions. Fogrim was right - it was just a matter of time.
We had arranged to meet back outside the hostel, come afternoon. Well before, I’d realized we should have indeed left that morning. ‘Stubborn fool’ indeed.
I had noticed men leaving to gather at that thoroughfare. As I was making my way back there, I heard a big cheer going up. They had hanged our comrades.
I was relieved to see three men and not four, but that was the only solace I could find. One scout had had his hands and feet cut off. Another had had his eyes poked out and his teeth removed. The last had been hanged already dead - a cage of hand-sized beetles was fitted around his belly. They were eating into his organs.
“Do not grind teeth so loudly,” Fogrim tapped my shoulder and stepped up beside me. “And do not look at that. We will have our time to pay back this deed, and others, a thousandfold. But first,” he indicated to a team of guards interviewing people in the crowd, “first, we must flee!”
One of the guards seemed to look right at us. His face was hidden inside a helmet. He tapped another guard and pointed to us.
“We’re fucked.”
“Come with me,” Fogrim turned and walked.
“We’ll never make it past the gate,” I caught up with him. We walked as fast as we dared. I kept waiting to hear ‘stop!’ or even worse, ‘get them!’
“We’re not going to the gate,” he pushed past a group lost in their own conversation. “Not the one you’re thinking of.”
“Why we are we going East?”
“That way are the ruins. The gate there is in ruins, and unguarded.”
“Aren’t the ruins cursed?”
“We’re better cursed than dead.”
We lost the guards in the crowd and ducked into an alley. At the end of it was a mound of garbage. Rats scampered over it, unafraid. Ten feet from them, a man had pushed a brunette slave girl against a wall. She squealed as he fucked her, his hands holding her wrists against the wall. The man paid us no heed.
The guards went past without stopping. We waited a few moments before stepping back out.
“Do you have any coin on you?” he asked. “I have a debt to pay.”
***
We reached the East Gate staging area. There were a few guards but they did not seem to be searching for us. Queued up and ready to leave were what looked like three dog sleds - except that slave girls drew them. Each had a team of four girls held by leather harnesses. Nine men stood behind the sleds, packs on their backs. A tenth held a grey horse by its reins and fed it a treat.
We passed them.
“Hey!” a guard yelled from behind us.
“Keep walking,” I muttered.
“Hey! You two! Where do you think you’re going?”
Fogrim stopped and took my arm. I looked back. A guard stood behind us, his hand on a club at his belt. The men in the search band were staring at us. The one with the horse looked up.
“Are you the tenth?” the horseman called out.
“Yes,” we both replied.
“Typical. Well, I can’t take you both.”
The guard stopped and regarded the horseman. The horseman waved him away.
“You,” he pointed to Fogrim, “You’re late. Get geared up and fall into line,” he pointed to the cluster of men. They were very much not in a line.
“Take my friend,” said Fogrim. “He is strong and does not tire.”
“Strong is he? Tell me ‘friend,’” he addressed me, “do you not eat or drink? Because I have supplies to keep eleven men alive, not twelve. You’ll have to wait for the next band, tomorrow morning. May I suggest not being late?”
“He can take my place,” said a pudgy, older man with circles under his eyes. He shifted the weight of the pack, uneasily. It seemed to already be straining him. “I’m a fruit-seller, not a maniac.”
“You will be grateful for your sentence,” said the horseman, “and the chance to do good works for our Mi-Go lords.”
“Commander, I will fry in the sun, and the smell of my own bacon will draw the giant vultures to pick me to death. How can I serve anyone then?”
“Would that your talent for words extended to other areas.”
An attendant brought Fogrim a pack and a waterskin. Another gave him a stone-bladed spear.
“Can I not have an iron one?” he asked.
“Iron is only for those going out a second time,” the attendant replied.
“The iron is worth more than our lives,” the mouthy fruit-seller said.
“Enough from you, there will be order,” said the commander. “We are off!”
He rode out of the camp. The slave sleds followed, men cracking whips behind them. The rest followed in the back. The fruit-seller was the last of all.
I watched as the search band left. Fogrim looked over to me, I smiled and nodded. I’ll be fine, I mouthed.
Entirely how, I wasn’t sure.
They had gone barely twenty meters before the fruit-seller dumped his pack and took off.
“He flees!” a man looked back and yelled. “The craven bastard flees!”
The band stopped. The commander cursed and brought his horse around.
“Don’t just stand there!” he yelled at his men. “Get him!”
Several men dropped their packs and ran after the fruit-seller.
Fogrim drew back his spear, aimed, and flung it.
It struck behind the man’s neck. He jerked forward and fell, landing hard on his face.
“What did you do?!” the horseman spat.
“He is the wrong man. Take my friend, he will not run. If he does, I will kill him. For the Mi-Go, Lordship.”
The commander looked at me.
I smiled and waved.
“He’s dead!” a man yelled, kneeling by the corpse.
“You’re down a man,” I said. “I’m your tenth, after all.”
He paused a moment.
“Hurry up,” he waved to me. “We’ve wasted enough godsdamned time!”
I came over. However, as I approached, Fogrim ran past me, and back into the camp again.
“Give me an iron spear,” he said to the attendant. “I am going out a second time now.”
***
“It is best we stay with these tomb raiders, Gerard.”
Six campfires marked out our camp in the darkness. Come dusk, we had set down in an open stretch of sand. To our right was a field of fallen and half-fallen columns. To our left, a collapsed cellar or crypt. The second man on watch carried a bowl of stew, to the first. The first thanked him and ate, pointing out features of the land he was nervous about.
Twelve, small, sun-bleached tents circled the fires. From some came the moans of slave girls and the slapping of flesh on flesh. There wasn’t a separate tent for the slaves - we had divided them up once the tents were pitched. It was a good practice and common on caravans. Morale improved, and slave girls tented with men did not escape.
Fogrim sat on a rock, tending the fire with a stick. On her knees between his legs, was a pale, small, blonde. Her head bobbed up and down, making small, sucking noises. On the inner sides of her buttocks were the lines of a black tattoo. I could not make out the full design; it went in, deeper.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, dipping some bread into a bowl of stew. The bowl was held by a young, slim, brunette who knelt facing me. Large, brown, nervous eyes stared up at me. A lock fell across her face; she shook her hair back. Straight and silky, her hair fell well past her shoulders. “Let’s leave tonight! We should be able to give the watchman the slip.”
A zealot walked past our fire, a skinny, bare-chested man. His skin was translucent with prominent blue veins. His ribs and spine showed through. Swarming over his back, and arms were tattooed prayers to the Mi-Go. As he passed he regarded us like we were insects, best crushed under his boot.
Yeah well, fuck you too, buddy.
“If we leave tonight,” replied Fogrim, “they will know we are the ones the guards were seeking,” he gripped the small blonde by her hair, bunching it.
“Fogrim, I’m not sure we should be talking about this in front of slave girls.”
Fogrim raised an eyebrow.
“It’s only you that talks to cattle,” he slapped the blonde’s ass and fondled it. In his doing so, the full tattoo was revealed: an eight-spoked star around her anus. An eight-pointed star was the sign of Azathoth, the blind, ‘idiot god’ of chaos. “It is one of your more amusing quirks.”
I remembered the Mazgar spy being updated by his slave spies back at the inn.
“I wouldn’t be so-”
He held up his hand for silence and pressed the blonde’s head forward. His thighs closed around her head like a vice as he came. Then he pulled her head off, the blonde was flushed and her lips were wet. She winced as he held her steady while he wiped himself on her face. Finally done, he kicked her away. She sprawled in the sand, panting. Her ankle was chained to a post in the sand.
“Also, if we leave tonight,” he did up his belt, “they will send word back to the fortress, or worse, give chase,” he continued. “We will not be able to return to the fortress again.”
“You want to return?”
“Why not? We can find Juskar and Haley. What they know and what we know, is all that can be learned of our enemies. When the legions come, let us arm them with this.”
I scraped up the last of the stew with my bread. The tall, young, slave girl checked the bowl was empty before lowering it. Tattooed in red ink on her belly was a star of Azathoth. Her collar was unusual; a thin, iron ring that hung loose around her neck. Instead of a lock, there was a disk with an engraving of a closed eye. Behind the disk, the metal had been melted; permanently fused.
I finished my meal and gestured to her to lower the bowl.
“Yes, Master,” her voice trembled. Slave girls fear all masters but they are most afraid of new ones.
“Here you go,” I held my hand in front of her face.
Palms on her knees, she leaned forward and began licking my fingers clean.
To lick a master’s hand clean was a treat for a slave. For them, meals are served in troughs or spilled onto the floor. Right before these sled girls had been divided, they’d been fed. I’d watched this one, on her hands and knees, feeding from a metal pan with two other girls. She’d sat up to wipe the white slurry of stomped-on tubers and insect guts from her lips - in that moment she’d noticed my eyes on her. She turned and crawled away, behind another girl.
It had done her no good.
“That’s right, lick it all up.”
Her tongue was warm, snaking up and down. The tip dug into the creases of my hand, lips brushed my palm. The firelight cast dancing shadows as her breasts jiggled. I wondered how they’d taste.
“It is done, Master,” she said in her quiet voice. I reckoned she was about 18. “Shall I continue?”
“You can stop,” I wiped my hand. “What is your name, Slave?”
“Onska, Master.”
“Fetch water, Onska.”
“Yes, Master.”
She got to her feet, stepped over the other girl, and went to a sled.
“It is like watching a man talk to a stool,” Fogrim shook his head and grinned.
“Enough out of you. We need to measure up our fellow tomb raiders.”
The man on watch took out a flask. He looked about to see if anyone was watching, realized that he didn’t actually care, and downed it in one go. He looked sadly at the empty flask, shook out a few more drops, and flung the flask into the darkness.
“That one is plainly a drunk,” said Fogrim. “Let us hope nothing dangerous prowls close while he is on watch.”
“I’m not too impressed with our ‘commander,’ either,” I said.
The man was sitting around a fire with two others. Those two had South Asian features and wore clothes of unfamiliar styles. One was mashing herbs in a wooden bowl with a pestle. The other was talking to the commander and making marks in the sand with a stick. The commander followed along, nodding and pointing at the marks. The man with the stick, elaborated.
“What’s going on over there?” I pointed. “He seems to be asking for their advice, and listening.”
“He did not seem one to listen to the counsel of others.”
The commander thanked the two and left.
“No, he doesn’t. I’m going to go talk to them,” I stood and dusted the sand off my pants, “and see what’s so interesting.”
I walked over to the men. They looked up as I approached and smiled. One gestured for me to join him on the reed mat he sat on. The other kept mashing his herbs. Beside him was a bottle of wine. Through the opening of the tent behind him, I could see three girls. Two were Shang, and the third a dark-skinned Darfuri. They were lined up and lying on their bellies. Each girl was hogtied, gagged, and blindfolded.
Three girls for two men?
“Hey there!” I waved. “I figured I’d come say hello since we’re all stuck together for the foreseeable. I’m Gerard.”
“Well met Gerard!” said the man on the mat. His accent was unusual and difficult to follow for my untrained ear. “I am Razin, and this is my brother, Kamo. We are tomb raiders from Hatadur.”
Hatadur was a great landmass, two continents to the west. It was covered in endless forests of cycad trees, some large as California redwoods. The air was so humid, puddles took weeks to dry. The sun was hot enough that eggs could cook on a temple’s steps. Cities warred with colossal hives of giant insects for dominance of the continent. It was a rich, decadent, and cruel land: I hoped to visit soon.
“It’s not every day I meet men from Hatadur,” I sat down. “What brings you out here, so far from home?”
“We are thieves,” said Kamo, still muddling herbs. “We’ve been robbing the crypts of our departed betters, since we were but children. We were in a port in Shem when a galley came, carrying pale, red-haired men who were unafraid of the jungle sun. They wanted tomb raiders versed in the plundering old and already plundered ruins.”
“They told you they were going to Aymund?”
“No,” Kamo frowned. “They did not. They told us they would take us to a drowned port on the Darfuri coast. But, that deceit is a small matter. We would have still come to Aymund anyway, had they spoken honest words. This is our profession. We follow rumors and gold.”
“But Aymund is dangerous,” I said. “The Darfuri refuse to raid it. They think it is cursed against them.”
“All old places in the world are dangerous,” said Razin. “And the Darfuri are wise to fear this place. There is a great power here, and it remembers them. No Darfuri can work these ruins and expect no befall no harm.”
“That same power knows the Servants of Yarth-Tanophk, as well,” said Kamo. “And it will punish you for what you have done here.”
“What have we done here?”
“When you visit a man’s home, do you spit on his god’s shrine?”
Just that time I thought it was an outdoor sink.
“Of course not.”
“And yet, that is what was done to that great temple of Tsathoggua. My brother and I once stole the deathwives from our own grandfather’s crypt, before they could join him in the afterlife. But, we have never insulted the gods, or other powers, in any place we have worked. But, if you will listen to my brother and I, we will guide all of you back to your fortress, safely.”
So that is what they sold the commander - they were con men.
Onska came up, carrying a sloshing clay jar and a cup.
“What is this loveliness?” Kamo stopped muddling and stared up and down her long legs.
She knelt, poured me a cup, and offered it with both hands.
“Your water, Master.”
“Such a pretty one,” Razin tapped the soles of her feet with his stick. “Let us have her this night. I will give you five silver for the privilege.”
Four girls for two men?
Onska stared down at the mat. I drained and handed back the cup.
“Five silver?” I said. “That’s a lot to pay for just one night.”
“We will all be rich men in but a week. Six silver?” he pulled out a purse and jangled it. Coins tinkled inside.
“Let us see tomorrow? This one has taken my fancy,” I lifted her up by her chin. She looked into my eyes and I stroked her cheek. “You know how these things are. Onska, go to my tent and wait for me.”
“Yes, Master,” she got up left. The three of us watched her buttocks and slender legs as she went.
“Of course,” Razin but the purse away. “May she be most pleasing.”
“She will,” I nodded. “And if she isn’t, I have my whip.”
Kamo snorted and shook his head. Razin giggled.
“What?”
“We find women here indisciplined - and craving attention,” said Kamo. “Men here own too many women.”
“One cannot own too many women,” I replied. “The only thing better than five slave girls is six slave girls.”
“True, true,” he laughed and set aside his pestle. “But if you do not enjoy those five fully, then why spend coin - or blood - on more?”
“From the Borderlands to Darfur, there is nothing I have not seen a man take from his slave. Females are enjoyed here, to the fullest extent.”
“They are,” Kamo opened the bottle of wine and poured it into his herbal concoction. It produced a rich, perfumed smell, like red wine mixed with jasmine and nutmeg. “but tell me, if all the slaves in this camp were quartered away from the men; left unchained, and the watchman fell asleep; do you think in the morning all 12 girls would still be here?”
“No, of course not. They would do something stupid.”
“How many do you think would be foolish?”
“One in three, for certain. I’m betting one in two. What are you getting at? Slave girls run; it’s what they do. It’s why we keep them in chains.”
“In Hatadur, only one in twenty will run,” said Kamo. He put his concoction aside, and did not so much as sniff or sip it.
“That’s total bullshit.”
“No. One in twenty, if even that. When a Hataduri master decides his slave girl is ready, he will take her in the morning, into the jungle. On one side of her, he will leave a bag with food, water, and a knife. On the other, he will make a fire and heat a brand in it. He unchains the girl and makes her choose. If she picks the bag, he lets her go.”
“It’s a false choice,” I shrugged. “She can’t choose with him right there.”
“He takes her there in the morning. He returns, in the afternoon. If she is still there, he brands her, and brings her back in his arms,” Kamo made a carrying gesture.
“You have not seen such as happy and loving a creature, as a slave girl the day she has chosen the brand,” added Razin.
“This conversation is ridiculous. Slaves don’t want to be branded!”
“No, but they want to please their masters,” said Kamo. “They crave submission, to be dominated by them, to be powerless at their feet. They crave submission as much as we crave to put them to it. That is why they kneel naked for us and take our cocks in their mouths. If ever there is one who does not, she is rendered barren so she cannot bear children, and freed.”
“You ‘render barren’ and free slaves who aren’t submissive?”
“We are not monsters,” said Razin, “like you foreigners.”
“So - what’s your Hataduri secret?”
Kamo and Razin exchanged looks.
“Do you truly wish to hear us break words upon the matter?” asked Razin.
“Yes.”
“Very well. That is unusual - most do not care to hear the great wisdom of our peoples.”
“Oh, I’m getting that. But humor me.”
“Three things,” Kamo held up his fingers. “Three things must be done to take a slave girl beyond market-trained. The first is the slave must be made completely helpless. Not,” he pointed to the Fogrim’s blonde, chained at the ankle. “Not like that.”
“She’s not going anywhere - except maybe back to his cock.”
“She can move her hands!” Kamo’s annoyance was of a fine-dining chef hearing that the customer had asked for ketchup. “What can’t one do if one’s hands are free? Her foot is chained yes, but she can still move it. Now see how she changes position, to sit as she pleases?”
“Pathetic,” Razin turned and spat.
“Now, look at those,” Kamo pointed to the hogtied girls in the tent. “They cannot move. They cannot talk. They can’t even see! Whether and when they do any of these, is up to me. They are greatly aware of my power over them. In their minds, it is complete power.”
“It’s a bit cruel.”
They both laughed at me.
“You own slave girls, yes?”
“Of course,” I crossed my arms.
“Then you are cruel! Do you not make them crawl on their hands and knees, their throats leashed, and please your cock for no reward but the taste of your cum in their mouths? You are cruel, and you enjoy being cruel. And that is the second thing,” he held up two fingers, “you must be cruel to the slave, beyond what she can take. I will take one girl,” he licked his lips, eyes on the tent, “maybe the Darfuri beauty. She is very tall, yes? Good, long legs, big feet. I will tell her, for the other two to hear as well, that I am going to amuse myself with her. Then, I will cane the soles of her feet, and spank her fine buttocks and thighs,” he clapped to mime it. “I will enjoy her moans, her twisting. I will watch to see how far I have taken her - and if it is more than she can take.”
“And then stop?”
“And then continue. Never stop before her limit! If you inflict pain, always go beyond that point - or it has been for nothing. You will have failed to dominate your slave, but succeeded in boring her.”
I remembered how Fogrim had fucked the blonde. While a little fearful, she did not seem in the least excited by him. Instead, the sex she performed seemed automated, businesslike. There was no emotion, no tension, nothing animalistic. It was completely transactional, Fogrim had used her while having a conversation.
“It doesn’t matter a damn if she’s bored or not,” I said. “It matters she knows her place and obeys. That’s all. I snap my fingers and she is on her knees. That’s dominating a slave.”
“But that is drinking water, my friend,” replied Kamo. “Wherever you get it from, it all tastes the same. What I am telling you, is how to make water into wine. When the pretty Darfuri has taken more pain than she can take, I will remove her blindfold. Then, I will hold her face this close,” he held his hand as if cupping the girl’s jaw, right in front of his face. “So she can see into my eyes. I will become her whole universe as I torture her further! She will feel pain but be helpless to stop it, and see my enjoyment as I do it to her.”
“This point beyond which she can take no more pain is where you must take a slave girl,” Razin cut in. “If a slave knows you will whip her three times for failing to obey immediately, and six times for not being pleasing in your bed, then why would either matter to her? If she can at least take six lashes, you cannot dominate her. She will not be submissive to you - she will hold you in contempt. But, if punishment is always more than she can handle…” he smiled from ear to ear. “Then, it stays with her. If you do this, then whenever you go to the pen all your slaves’ hearts will pound at the very sight of you. They will feel great fear - but also, they will be dripping wet! When you drag one out by her hair, her terror will be matched by her excitement and her passion.”
“The third and final thing,” said Kamo, “Is to do whatever you want to them. Punish with or without reason. Be kind, cruel, or unfair. It does not matter. What matters is that whatever you want to do to her, you do. Being used so with no thought to her own wants will make her completely submissive. It is what she wants. All the world’s slave girls wish to be thoroughly dominated by their masters, and to submit to them completely.”
“That is a sweeping statement,” I said.
“All slave girls,” Kamo insisted. “There are defiant women and submissive slaves. But there are no defiant slaves. Fill your kennels with adoring, submissive beauties who need you like they need air to breathe.”
The only sound for a while was the crackling of the campfire.
“It is of course,” Razin broke the silence, “much more complicated than just that three steps. But, those capture the essence. Make them completely helpless; torture beyond what they can take; use them however you so desire. In adoring and worshiping you, your slaves will find great happiness. And that is why a Hataduri master will almost never lose a girl.”
“That is quite a lot you’ve just laid on me,” I stood and dusted the sand off my hands. “ Thank you - I think. I would love to stay, but the night grows late, and the morning’s march will be hard.”
“Rest well,” Kamo nodded. “And our thanks for lending patient ear to our surplus of words!”
“They were good words, surprising, but much to think about. Goodnight, gentlemen.”