"What is that? And what is that smell?"
We had come to a break in the ruins. Before us stretching for several miles at least, was a dune field. All it had were sand dunes, stubborn grasses, and thorn bushes. I found such a large, open stretch peculiar for a city with extensive surface ruins.
"It is exactly what you think it is," said Fogrim, wrinkling his nose.
"But - so large? What could have made that?"
Stikken - now on foot, having lost his horse to a poisonous bush - held up his hand. The search band stopped, all eyes on three, man-sized mounds of black paste. Those who realized what they were looked about, eyes nervous. It is not every day you encounter a turd that is bigger than you.
"Those sand piles," I pointed across the sand, "those aren't insect nests, are they? And what are those trails?"
Fogrim's eye became wide.
"Keep still," he hissed, his spear hand trembling. "Keep absolutely still."
If Stikken heard him, he showed no sign. He went over the immense dung mounds and peered. He jumped back as a translucent, parasitic worm thick as a man's thumb broke out, flailed in the air, and died.
"Spread out," he said, looking across the sand. "And know that the weak have fallen, but that the Mi-Go watch over the rest of us! We will reach the depot in good time."
He stepped forward into the dune field. The other men and the slave-sleds followed him.
"We can leave right now, Fogrim," I said quietly, watching the rest of the group gain distance. "I'm done with this asshole, and it's been long enough that the heat is off."
Fogrim stared across the dunes and said nothing.
Stikken looked back, noticed us, and stopped.
"Move, I say!"
"What made that?" I yelled back. "What are you not telling us?"
"Cthulhu take you! I've had enough of your godsdamned insolence!"
"Just answer the question!"
"Chthonians," said Fogrim quietly. "And they can hear us."
I'd doubted Chthonians existed. There are many creatures Hyperboreans speak of that no one you meet can say they've seen. This is the nature of a planet where sailing galleys are the fastest transport, zoos are private curiosities of the powerful, and most people are illiterate. Chthonians, if they existed, were beings that were part hydra, part burrowing worm. They tunneled through the earth as easily as giant squids through deep water, rising from the sand to devour entire caravans.
"How can you be sure?" I ignored Stikken's shouting.
"I am not. But, this land is open ground: unbroken by constructions of men or gods. You are right; those piles were not made by insects. They were made by something moving under the sand. Do you feel a tremor?"
Stikken was stomping back towards us. I watched him, more than half-hoping something would burst from the sand and claim him.
"Give up your water and your rations and begone," his lip trembled on the edge of rage.
"Apologies, Commander," said Fogrim holding up his hand. "The heat got to my head; my brother was merely concerned for my sake."
He walked forward, passing Stikken. He did not make eye contact.
I followed: I could feel Stikken's glare burning into my back. We passed the black feces mounds: I noticed something gleaming in one. I stepped towards it for a better look.
It was a slave girl's collar.
***
"There, do you see that smoke? Those are cooking fires." said Stikken. "It is the depot. That will be Commander Laram's band."
Rising up ahead of us were large, sandy mounds. Half-dead desert trees pinned them in place. From beyond the mounds, we could see smoke rising - thick, black, and uncontrolled.
The other men cheered, even some of the slave girls. Stikken lead the way.
"Those aren't cooking fires," I said to Fogrim.
He grimaced and said nothing. It was the face of a man who thought he was already dead.
We crested the first mound and saw the depot, or rather what remained of it. Tents lay shredded across the sand; their tent poles snapped like toothpicks. Neatly stacked crates had tumbled into deep fissures and smashed, like eggs dropped from a window. An oil fire raged in one corner where olive oil casks had been stacked. The spill had leaked to a bale of hay; it was burning so bright we could feel its heat from where we stood.
Something had crushed a horse, flattening its flesh and bones into blood-soaked sand. Three scorpions swarmed the remains; I heard the grinding noises their fist-sized mouthparts made. There wasn't much left of the horse.
"Kill them!" Stikken drew his sword and charged.
The other men followed after him, screaming. They fell upon the scorpions, stabbing down with their spears. The scorpions had no chance - those men would have won using their bare hands. I watched the catharsis of men having the luxury of an enemy they could finally face.
"Did Chthonians do this?" I climbed down the mound, looking about.
"Maybe," said Fogrim, coming down beside me. "But it was only one."
"Look for survivors," Stikken ordered.
We made our way about the depot, weapons drawn.
About thirty feet in front of the depot was a dead, fire-blackened tree. Ropes hung from its remaining branches. They were of uneven lengths and daubed in red. As I neared the tree, I could make out the same red spattered on the tree's trunk.
I had seen enough death to know what arterial blood spray looked like.
Carved into the trunk was a script I recognized but could not read: I had seen it back at the fortress, written on notices and signs. Zealot went to the tree and studied the script. Then, he looked up at the bloodied ropes, his expression of a man truly mystified.
"They gave offerings," he said to Stikken. "How then, could this have befallen them?"
"Let us find Laram or his men, and ask them," Stikken replied.
"What are they talking about?" I whispered to Fogrim. "And what does this dead tree have to do with it?"
"It is an offering tree," he whispered back, looking this way and that. "They're found where men must live side by side with beings greater than them. The carvings tell what must be offered - and to whom."
"What was offered here?"
"You know well what. And we may soon make such offering, ourselves."
"I can't accept that."
"You will accept many things."
He continued on past the tree.
Making my way through the collapsed tents, I soon saw blood again. I stepped over a sack of grain that had spilled out on to the sand. Bloody footprints ran through it. Wood roaches erupted out of a broken pot, their feet, and antennae smeared with honey. I swapped my stone spear for an iron one, still lying in a neat pile on an untouched rug.
There was the crunching of scorpions feeding. I followed the sound - it lead me to a boulder behind the camp.
"Hey!" I yelled. "I think I found something!"
We gathered around the boulder. Upon it, two more scorpions were tearing into a man's remains. One of the men threw a spear at them, but they ignored it. A second spear skewered one. A third knocked the other down to the sand, where Stikken bashed it to death with a wooden plank.
I climbed the boulder to study the corpse.
The head, arms, and most of the torso were missing altogether. I could make out deep cuts and bones ripped off at joints. Beside the body was a leather satchel: a scroll protruded half out of it.
"A giant vulture did this," I said, pulling out the scroll. It was covered in the same script that had been carved on the offering tree. "Must have eaten its fill and left. But, he was already dead before it turned up."
"How can you know this?" Stikken folded his arms.
"Because he would have fallen off this rock if he'd been struggling," I replied. "And the teratorns aren't afraid of the scorpions; it wouldn't have bothered with dragging the body up here to keep it from them. He was already here."
I noticed a waterskin a couple of feet from the body. I picked it up - empty. I looked back down - just thirty feet from the rock was an undamaged barrel of water.
"He was too scared to come down, even to drink."
"Enough of your fantasies, Tenth Man. Come down, and give me that scroll."
I descended and handed him both the scroll and the satchel. Tucked inside were several more. Stikken unrolled the scroll and started reading.
"These are Commander Laram's," he said, scanning. "That's who that was, poor man."
"Does it say what happened here?"
"No," he turned it over and began reading the back. "But it says enough. There are indeed Chthonians in these sands. Brother!" he waved to the Zealot. "Put up the Darfuri girl."
The Zealot nodded and turned back for the slave sleds. Harnessed to the front of one was a slender, long-legged, dark-skinned Amazon, her black, glossy hair fell past her shoulders. Black vines had been tattooed up her legs and arms. She watched Zealot with alarmed eyes as he stalked towards her. He removed her harness, and she cried out as he grabbed her hair, twisting her head back. He dragged her that way, towards the offering tree.
"Tenth Man," he pulled out some rope and tossed it to me. "help him get her up. Well? Go on then!"
I found my feet moving, taking me to the offering tree.
Zealot reached it first. He stood with relaxed patience, holding one of the girl's arms behind her back, his other arm locked around her throat. She regarded me, trembling, her eyes pleading.
"Bring her," I said, uncoiling the rope.
Zealot held her still while I brought her wrists together and bound them. I threw the other end of the rope over the branch and pulled. She rose off her feet and into the air. I fastened the end of the rope and stood back. The long-legged beauty swung back and forth gently. She was limp as a carcass on a butcher's hook.
"Hurry up!" Stikken called out to us. "We salvage what we can, and make for those rocky mounds. We stay off the sand tonight."
Zealot turned and left. I looked back at the Darfuri girl; she was staring at the ground - resignation had dulled her eyes.
"What is your name, Slave? Slave?"
"Tela, Master," she replied at last, her voice far away.
"I'm sorry, Tela. At least know that your slave sisters will be safe because of you," I lied.
She said nothing.
"And the Mi-Go will be pleased."
Her face softened at that, and she smiled.
"My life for the Mi-Go!" she sniffed, tears starting to brim in her eyes. "Thank you for choosing me, Master! Thank you!"
I left the sacrificial slave girl.
My mind went to Yura - no, this was not like that poor girl's death. Yura should have lived and instead died for nothing. Tela, however, was dead the moment she'd been allotted to the search bands.
By Cthulhu, I hoped it would be enough.
I joined the others in scavenging. Even the slave girls were put to work; I watched Onska and a Shemite girl shaking the sand off a collapsed tent. I stepped through the chaos of a camp that had been twenty tents large, now reduced to a half-burning trash dump. I picked up a small barrel of water and some jerky I didn't want to study too closely. I had no interest in the rest: it was nothing that would help keep me alive. I was going to head back to the sleds when I noticed some unusual debris spilled out of the box.
It was a collection of what at first seemed to be silver discs; some cut in half, others at other unusual angles. I went over to the broken crate and crouched down. My reflection looked back at me in each of the gleaming, fallen discs. I picked one up - it was heavier than gold.
What was this strange metal?
I found no markings on the discs. I sorted them into piles. Each disc fragment was exactly the same size as every other fragment cut to the same angle. I could find none of the telltale imperfections of simple, bronze, or iron age level casting. These were so perfectly shaped and cut that they could have been machined.
I took a few disks and put them in my bag. What other non-human artifacts were here?
I headed back to the center of the depot, where the others were gathering. There I saw Stikken and the other men collecting together the bent and twisted remains of a bronze frame. It looked like a smaller version of the pyramidal frame I'd seen back at the cultists' temple in Ebugal. The ground where they worked had been heavily turned. Blood squelched as their boots pressed into the sand.
Fogrim sat to the side, shoulders and head down.
"What are you doing?"
"What is it look like, Tenth Man," said Stikken as he handed a metal bar to Zealot. Zealot began hammering it back into shape with a rock.
"It looks like you are trying to repair what got the last crew killed."
Zealot stopped hammering and glared at me. His eyes went to his spear beside him, then back at me.
Try it, you anorexic fuckboi.
"You are saying," Stikken said quietly, "that we should leave the shrine smashed, whether by heathen or beast? To be covered up by the sand?"
"What I'm saying is that this depot was allowed to exist. That is until someone had the bright idea of setting up a shrine to a rival deity to Tsathoggua. Read the ruins man; who do you think this city revered above all? And do you want to bring back whatever did this?"
"I do not know," Stikken picked up another piece of metal, "what it is I dislike about you the most. Your lack of faith or your constant questioning. It is as if you think it is you who leads the search band."
"I really don't care what you think. But know that if you do this, you are inciting the same thing that happened to Laram's band, to happen to us."
"Laram lacked faith," Stikken didn't miss a beat. "Had he completed the shrine, he and his band would have been blessed - and spared. We will not fail that test."
"Perhaps you are the test!" Zealot barked, pointing at me. "You're tongue stings worse than any scorpion, by the Mi-Go!"
"There's just no reasoning with you idiots, is there? Whatever happens, you will just double down on your own stupidity."
Zealot picked up his spear and stomped towards me, murder in his eyes.
"Oh yeah?" I dropped my spear and drew my sword. "Let's go, motherfucker!"
He seemed delighted and rushed at me.
"No!" Fogrim threw his spear.
It struck the ground right in front of Zealot. Zealot stopped short, staring in surprise.
"There are too few of us left now. If there are fewer still, then perhaps none may return. Let us remember why we came here," Fogrim looked at me, "and remain true to our purpose, yes?"
The two other surviving men of the expedition took Zealot by his arms and dragged him back. I put my sword away.
Stikken grinned at me and went back to repairing the frame.
I wondered how he was going to get back at me.