Haley opened her eyes.
The back of her head ached like the time Muro had punched her there, for eating before he had. Muro? Fear ran through her. No, that was a different time, a different life. May his bastard soul be frozen with him on the Great Ice.
Still hurt the same.
She pushed herself up with her hands. Beneath her was the broken stalk that had absorbed the worst of her fall. She tore a piece of stubborn leaf and wiped sap off her long legs. Even dry, it was ice cold. Off to her left, her basket was still where she’d set it down before climbing the stalk. Her body ached in a way men had left her, but never her Master. She picked up the basket and got to her feet.
Where am I?
She looked up - stray beams of late afternoon filtered down through the leaves.
Not doing that again.
Her stomach growled and her tongue felt like desert sand.
How long have I been out? Surely, just a few hours?
She looked about in the gloom, put her basket over her back, and set off.
I’m already lost. What does it matter? Anywhere is better than here.
***
She stopped sometime later, her foot treading something that had no place being there.
She crouched in the darkness and touched it. It was freezing cold - she held it up, trying to make out in the gloom.
In the hot, Darfuri desert?
She dusted the hailstone off and ate it; the first water she’d had since morning. She started walking again and soon stepped on another hailstone. The ground was freezing cold, it bit into her fingers as she searched for more.
The gloom lifted somewhat, further along - she could make out fist-sized hailstones across the ground. Blood drained from her feet and she clutched her arms around her chest for warmth.
What’s that?
She didn’t move. Just a few feet away, crouched on the ground, was a form. Her heart pounded in her ears, but it was just another slave girl.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was ragged and dry.
The girl didn’t respond.
“Hey!” Haley walked to her.
Before she reached the girl, Haley realized it was a frozen corpse. The unfortunate was curled in a foetal position, a torn leaf pulled over her for warmth. Beside her was a jagged stone she’d used to cut the leaf. Haley got down and brushed the brunette’s hair aside.
“I’m sorry I left you, Saska.”
She picked up the jagged stone, cut a lock of the dead girl’s hair, and tied it under hers behind her ear. Then, she filled her basket from Saska’s, and started walking again.
***
Sometime later, she saw a patch of light.
The clearing! Thank the gods!
She made her way to the place Saska had shown her earlier. She stepped into the clearing. The light was fading and the stalks had dried. The torn leaves on the ground had shriveled.
Is this the same place?
She looked about, frowning.
It is - but these leaves can’t have dried so fast! Why would-
She screamed.
At the edge of the clearing, facing directly at her, was a stone statue. It had the form of a giant, skeletal ape; huge arms, a domed head, a chest as wide as a man. It’s feet and hands ended in barbed suckers like lamprey mouths. It had no eyes, and a stinger-like tongue protruded from its cone-shaped mouth. Folded over its back was a pair of immense wings. The stone was black but shot with veins of gold and green malachite. It seemed poised to start moving.
Haley’s heart was gripped by the same terror a fleeing rodent feels when it can hear wings right behind it.
The statue, however, worn and faded by time, remained a statue.
Haley’s mind returned from the places it had fled to. One impossible step after the other, she approached it.
It had no plinth, its feet were pressed into the ground. Haley squatted and studied the earth - it was the grey, clumpy dirt the corn grew in - and nothing like the coarse, tan sands outside the field. She rubbed some between her hands, dusting them grey.
She stood and walked around the monster, ready to run.
You weren’t here in the morning.
Her mind flitted back to the winged beasts she’d seen passing across the moon.
How long have I been here?
The clearing dimmed as the afternoon moved into the evening.
She picked up her basket and walked around the edge of the clearing. She soon found the footprints she and Saska had left, earlier.
That way and I’m out!
She took a last look back at the statue and left.
***
“Is that the blonde bitch you found yesterday?”
Men rushed into tents and half-restored stone buildings. Fires roared in barrel-shaped braziers along the dirt roads of the fortress camp. A man tied tarpaulins down around a slave pen. A slave girl peered past him, up at the sky. The man snarled and slapped her.
“It is! I thought she’d died!”
“Mi-Go Tits, man! She look dead to you?”
Haley walked faster. Which way to turn? The voices of Scar Nose and Black Beard were as clear as an order given at whip-point.
“Get her!”
She turned down a tent alley. The smell of lentil soup and fresh-baked bread came from one. Inside a man sat on a box, eating. A Shemite slave looked up at him hopefully, on her hands and knees. She was chained at her collar to the box. In another, men sat in a circle around a board, rolling dice and cheering (and cursing). They didn’t notice an urchin child stuffing food into his shirt. He looked out at the sky and his face fell. He put the food back, head down.
“There she is!”
“You go round!”
She turned down another road. At the end of it was one of the rickety, wooden, feeding towers, a naked girl lay chained upon it. In front of the tower, in the street, four men were tugging at the reins of a cart lizard. It brayed and snorted, refusing to move. Beside them were two more men - they yelled and jabbed their fingers at each other. One pushed the second. The second punched the first. The four with the reins cursed, pulled the two swearing and spitting men apart, and dragged them to the nearest tent. The cart lizard turned and galloped off, the ground shaking as it went. The girl on the feeding tower whimpered.
Just fifteen feet ahead, Black Beard stepped out into the road. He grinned, pulled a whip from his belt, and licked his lips.
“There you are, you upstart slut!”
Haley cried out as she was shoved to the ground.
“Master Jus-”
Juskar, wearing leather armor and a hoplite-style helmet, slapped her. She yelped and held up her hands. He grabbed and crossed them, roping them together.
“Thought you’d slip away and enjoy some men?” his words were loud. “I’ll teach you to keep your legs together!”
He gagged her with a dirty cloth and yanked her to her feet. She looked at Black Beard: he was no longer smiling. He glared at Haley, then at Juskar.
“Hey, Soldier Boy!” Scar Nose came running up from behind, panting. “That there is our bit of meat!”
“The only meat you’re getting tonight,” he yanked Haley to her feet, “is that pink rat tail between your legs! You’re out past curfew: get off the street!”
“Mi-Go Tits on a stick!” Black Beard spat. “who put you in charge?”
“Give us her, now,” Scar Nose’s hand went to the knife at his belt.
Juskar drew his sword.
“When we’re done with you,” Black Beard grimaced, shaking his head as he drew a notched dagger, “you’re going to-”
The girl on the feeding tower screamed. The sound was more animal than human. She screamed again, tugging at her chains, arching her back.
From other towers, answering screams came.
Black Beard and Scar Nose turned and ran.
“Come on,” Juskar tugged Haley’s rope, “I don’t want to be out when those things arrive.”
***
“What are you doing here, Slave?”
The stone room was cold. A small fire flickered in the fireplace. To one side was a straw bed. To the other were a bare table, leather armor, and a helmet piled next to it on a stool. A slit window through a three-foot stone wall looked out on darkness.
Haley stood on her tiptoes, her wrists cuffed and chained to an iron ring in the ceiling. Juskar stood in front of her, a whip at his side. He removed her gag and tossed it to the floor.
“Thank you, Master. Master Gerard sent me to enter the camp, to learn what I could of the Servants’ weaknesses.”
“He is late! Why has he taken so long to get here? I’ve been here so long, I’ve been promoted!”
“Master Fogrim did not wish to come, Master. He-”
“Do not look at my face,” he grabbed her by her throat, his hand like a vice. “You will look down, Slave. I am not your Master Gerard, who spoils you.”
“I am sorry, Master,” she looked down at the stone floor.
“Do not think I will not punish you, just because you belong to another man. What happened to Fogrim that he would abandon purpose?”
“Master Fogrim wanted to see his son. But, they found the man caring for him was dead, and his farm had been destroyed. They think the Servants were involved, so they came - with warriors.”
“How many?”
“Fifty horsemen armed with spear and bow.”
“Only fifty!” he grimaced. “And those two fools are running around in the ruins!”
“Master? May I ask if you have seen them?”
“Yes. I found them just this morning, but they ran from me and joined a search band before I could let them know it was me inside that,” he pointed to his helmet. “It is dangerous out there, especially for Fogrim. If any may survive the evil that is there and make safe return it is them, but they will be gone for days.”
“Master, may I speak of what I have learned?”
“You may.”
“I have been in the black corn, Master. It is more than just food for these Mi-Go. Hail falls from the sky there, though there is not one cloud above Aymund. Cold winds blow that can only have come from across hard-frozen lands. The very soil is different. And, in the sky - there are things I do not understand, Master.”
“Speak plainly.”
“I saw the Moon at night, Master, though I knew it was day. I climbed the corn to see, and I was in a different land. There were beasts in the air the sight of which sickened me with fear.”
“This must come to point,” He stretched the end of his whip, “or I will teach you to hold tongue without prattling.”
“Master, I do not think the black corn is truly there. I think it is in Yarth-Tanophk. There is a bridge between the two lands. That is why slaves - and masters - fear to enter it. It is in the land of the Mi-Go. I have been there, seen them, and returned with their soil on my hands.”
Juskar’s expression became worried.
“The Mi-Go are coming,” he said. “The Arrival is in three weeks.”
“Master, some horsemen left to Ebugal, Eibon, and Koval to warn the satraps there.”
“The Priest King’s legions will take too long to come. This post I have brought you to, it is a lookout post. It looks down over a hill where there is a hidden, underground passage. That passage was built for escape from the very heart of the fortress. You must tell Gerard of this, it is the only way any force will be able to seize it. But, it must be done before the Arrival.”
“Yes, Master.”
“I will open this post’s gates to their men, that the guards here be silenced and attack be kept secret, and I will show them where the passageway is. It is large enough for an army to pass through.”
“Yes, Master.”
“It is too dangerous now, the Night Beasts hunt. Tomorrow, I will take you to the ruins, and send you in the direction Gerard and Fogrim went.”
Haley’s eyes became wide.
“Master, will you be coming as well? Into the ruins?”
“No. If I leave here, I will be missed. I will be replaced, or worse. I have to be here to open the gates, or they will not take this post in time. You must find Gerard and Fogrim on your own.”
“Yes, Master,” she nodded.
“I will give you some supplies - and a map. I know exactly where they are going. Just travel by day, and hide by night, and you will be safe. Follow the route I draw, and you will encounter no other searchers. You will get to them in three days.”
“I will not fail you, Master.”
The distant scream of a girl on a feeding tower reached them.
“Do not,” he uncuffed her wrists. “Or all Darfur may soon be the hunting ground for those things.” He turned her around, and recuffed her, with her hands behind her back.
He gripped her by the back of her throat and led her to the table.
“Oh!” she gasped as he bent her over it. Obedient, she spread her legs wide. The roots of her hair screamed out as he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back.
A few moments later, he entered her. She felt him hard inside her, back and forth, back and forth. He sighed and pushed in deep, as he came.
And just like that, it was done. He wiped his penis on the back of her thigh and dragged her by her hair to the bed.
“Down,” he pointed to the floor.
“Yes, Master,” she got down on her knees, semen dripping down her leg.
“Down,” his foot pressed between her shoulder blades. She lay down on the cold flagstones.
His hand grabbed her ankle and pressed a rough metal cuff around it. It snapped as it locked, Juskar chained it to a ring alongside the bed.
Then, he climbed into bed and was asleep in ten seconds.
Outside, another girl screamed.
Haley did not sleep.
***
Haley peered across the ruins, shielding her eyes against the midday sun.
Fallen columns and cracked walls ran from horizon to horizon. Sand dunes filled avenues wide enough for marching, triumphant, armies. Sand heaped against mausoleum pyramids and half-buried statues. A shadow raced across the ground - she squinted as she peered up and the patient, giant vulture.
She pulled the water skin from her pack and took a sip. She gave it a shake - it sloshed reassuringly. Less water, though. There was a spring on Juskar’s map - she had another day before she’d reach it.
She put the water skin away, realizing she’d die if anything happened to it.
She opened up the crushed map that Juskar had drawn for her.
Not as nice as Masters’, she traced its lines. Where is the great sewer entrance?
She climbed a fallen column to get a better view. The desolation of stone and sand expanded. To the East were the all-too-regular mounds of giant scorpions. Pulmonoscorpius Master had called them. Dog-sized monsters that hunted in packs. To the West was the half sand-drowned statue of a screaming man. Worn by sandstorms, it seemed to stare at her.
Why isn’t that on the map?
Then she saw it - the sinkhole-like shape set into a ring of grey-red stone.
Right! There and left towards-
What’s that sand cloud?
There were no clouds in the sky, the air was still. Yet, to the North East, a dust cloud came into view. It seemed to grow.
She looked about for shelter. Twenty feet away was an overhang made from the giant blocks of a crumbled tower. She climbed down the pillar and ran to it. She stayed off the sand, jumping from stone to stone.
She lay flat, squeezed herself under the overhang, and watched.
The dust cloud grew, but it did not tear about like a dust devil. It came closer, steady and slow, almost directly towards her. First, three giant forms appeared out of the dust. They marched in a wide, unhurried row - one obsidian black, the second clay-red with tan mottling, and the third and by far the largest, a white albino.
By the Gods, Mammoths!
The Obsidian Black mammoth had a skirt of chainmail hanging over its head. Iron barbs as long as a man had been mounted at the ends of its curving tusks. Smoke rose from censers mounted along the edges of its howdah. The howdah was built from wood painted bright red and banded with iron. Riding it were tall, dark-skinned men carrying bows and pikes.
Clay Red’s fur had been painted with swirling, yellow ochre designs; symbols of Yog. It wore a clattering skirt of human thigh bones chained one to the next. They had been drilled and hollowed into flutes. They waved back and forth on their chains, making a low hooting as Red walked. An iron pole ran between its tusks, blades mounted along it like the tines of a giant fork. Then men in its howdah wore white body paint of cracked and crusted earth. They howled and danced, black hair done in top knots. Some blew on thigh-bone flutes. Others hung off the sides of the howdah, waving iron and stone axes.
Albino White wore a skull frame of black iron. Weathered, human skulls had been nailed to it in places, through their foreheads. The mammoth mammoth’s tusks were shod with serrated, iron, sleeves. It glared at the world through pink eyes.
The howdah it carried was different from the others; larger and two-tiered. The lower tier was crammed with archers wearing black hoods and white body paint. Their bows were made from the antlers of some giant, horned animal much larger than a man. At the very front, two bald men in red sarongs beat a giant skin drum between them.
The raised, second tier, held a throne. It was cut from a single, twisted, black tree trunk. The wood had wound its way around old bones and captured weapons, covered in gold leaf and set with gems. Sitting on the throne was an enormously obese man covered in crusty, white, body paint. He was bald and wore a bright red sarong. At his left was a massive, bone, cudgel made from an animal’s femur, fangs and eyes were carved into the head. Mounted on a blackened pike at his right, was a grilled, human, torso. The design of Yog had been cut into it. Hanging from long poles around the throne were cages, sitting in each was a naked slave girl. They wore cuffs and chains made of gold, their bodies were marked with white ash and red tattoos.
Following the mammoths came men on horseback. The riders wore armor made from armored fish bone plates and insect chitin. They carried lances tipped in iron or sharpened bone. Over their backs were wooden shields banded with iron. They rode in groups of ten, one in each group shouting orders in a language she’d not heard before. The shouters wore sabretooth cat pelts around their shoulders and necklaces of strung-together fangs. Haley counted eight sets of riders.
Following the riders came a sea of infantrymen. Her heart raced as they chanted as one, their feet pounding the sand in a steady brump-brump-brump.
“Haran Mazgar! Haran Yog!”
They kicked up sand with each step, feeding the dust cloud. They carried shields of stretched leather and iron-bladed, bone shafted, axes. Some carried large jawbones bound to staves, the teeth replaced with iron barbs.
She stopped trying to count once she realized there were hundreds of them.
The army passed by her, barely two hundred feet away. Haley felt the vibrations of their marching through the stone overhang. The dust cloud hit and she covered her eyes, peering through slitted fingers. When it became too much, she closed her eyes and covered her nose, instead.
“Haran Mazgar! Haran Yog!”
Finally, the army passed.
She waited till she could no longer hear the marching, and slowly squeezed her way from under the overhang. She got to her feet, dusting sand off her body, and turned to look-
Standing behind her, wearing a sand-colored cloak and hood, was a Mazgar. He had white around his eyes, his dark skin was pitted with ritual scars. He grinned at her with teeth filed to points.
Haley ran.
She went fifteen feet before a bolo wrapped her legs and she went tumbling into the sand. Before she could get up she felt him come down on her, his knee pressed between her shoulder blades. She screamed as he crossed her wrists behind her back, and bound them tight. He caught her kicking legs, bent her heels back to her spine, and bound her feet.
He rolled her on to her back and peered down at her face. He spoke in the same, unknown language, his words guttural with hard stops.
He licked her face.
Haley jerked her head away and spat at him.
The Mazgar laughed, wiping her spit off his face and tasting it as if trying a region’s delicacy for the first time. Then, he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and walked after the army.