“You should join us, Gerard.”
The mid morning sun beat down on an army preparing to march. Tents were struck and rolled up. Sharpened stakes were pulled out of the ground and loaded on to carts. Two harassed-looking quarter masters were yelling at each other, surrounded by bales of hay. Obsidian Black, hitched to a sled that could have been a house’s roof, stole one with its trunk and ate it like a candy. I watched a Mazgar with a long whip driving a team of ten slave girls in a coffle. Each girl strained with a brace of sealed, clay pots tied to their backs. I heard water sloshing as they passed.
Akingin and I sat in a crumbling courtyard, a remnant wall to our backs giving us shade. He had a quiver of iron-tipped javelins over his back, and a bone club fitted with iron, crushing studs at his side. Kneeling behind him were three slave girls. I recognized one - the tall, athletic, Shang girl he had prevented from jumping to her death back at the cultist outpost. Her bare body was marked with red and yellow body paint. On her belly was a fresh, black tattoo of stylized fangs. All three girls were on a coffle with packs tied to their backs.
“Join the Mazgar?” I asked. “That’s quite a compliment, but I’d rather head north, back to the Borderlands and the Mist Wall.”
“I did not mean come with us,” he shook his head, “but to join us as an ally.”
“I’m not taking any part in the coming war between Mazgar and Darfur. And if I had to, I would fight for Darfur.”
“You have the seen inequality in their lands. The theft of lands from their farmers. The distraction of their leaders. How they wall-in their own people and make them poor, to farm them for soldiers and slaves.”
“And if you were to conquer them, you would learn those same ways and become the same. As their ancestors did when they came here. Their Mazgar ancestors.”
Akingin looked about him, then leaned towards me.
“I had to convince Mong to come here,” his words were barely louder than whispers. “He did not care at the time. What sold him was war against a cult for the glory of Yog. Only now does he see that the Mi-Go were the true menace.”
“What are you saying?”
“We live in this world among gods, and must suffer whatever they will upon it. But, there are other beings that walk and stand like men, that would claim this world from us. They seek our extermination, Gerard. We must fight them. You seem a man who understands these things. A man who looks beyond wars between mere nations.”
I said nothing and watched as a group of skull-masked mahouts tried to get Obsidian Black to leave the hay alone. It turned its head to glare at them and they ran. Finally an old, bent mahout who propped himself on a stick, appeared. He railed at the beast and threw a stone at it. The mammoth trumpeted and stepped back like a scolded child.
“What will you do now?” Akingin asked. “You mentioned going north.”
“Yes. There’s a small river town named Dura. The weather could be better, but I have friends there. And now, I have gold, and some treasures I picked up here and there in this place. And I have slaves now, Akingin.”
“You will start a farm?”
“I will start a brothel. A big one - the kind no one has really thought about out here, yet. The gold will build it, and buy more slaves, fresh from the slave camps. There’ll be girls chained under every table. Pleasure cells where a man can do what he likes. Oiled dancers. You name it. The very best slaves I’ll keep apart in my harem. I’ll train them in the Hataduri way till they are even more servile.”
He nodded, taking it in.
“It is an ambitious and unusual. Like yourself. I have something that will help you then,” he reached into the back on his Shang slave’s pack. He produced a leather bag as big as a waterskin - it was bulging and heavy.
“I know you are displeased by death. So then know that without your aid, all our warriors would have died - and many more besides. If the Mi-Go army had come, who knows what fate Darfur would suffer? And Mazgar? So know that you have earned this ten times over.” he handed the bag to me. “The War Priest sends his thanks.”
I opened it. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Some traditional gift made from glass or crystal?
“That’s very gracious of him,” I said. My thanks to him, and you, for the gift!”
I had never seen Akingin surprised before.
“Of course,” he eyed me like he’d decided all of a sudden that he had been quite wrong in his reading of me. “And I have gift for you, as well.”
What was this, Hyperborean Christmas?
“You shouldn’t have, I didn’t get you anything this year!”
“Come,” he stood and went back around the ruined wall.
On the other side stood a pair of armed survivors. They wore captured cultist armor but with the symbols scraped off. Around their right arms were bands dyed in black, red, and yellow: the colors of Mammon, Priest King of Darfur. They stood to attention as we appeared.
On the ground between the two guards was a tight cage made from wicker and branches. Crouched inside it and clutching at the bars was a naked, dark-skinned girl with white ash around her eyes. She was tall, long-limbed, her figure toned. Her belly was flat and her breasts were large and perky, they swung as she fidgeted. Long, black hair fell below her shoulders, curling gently like black smoke. She must have been 20 or 21 years old.
She looked exactly as I remembered her.
“The girl you had at the market!” I stepped up to the cage, marveling. She was as beautiful as Haley or Naya. The beast glared at me with recognition and snarled. “You kept her!”
“She proved unsellable that day,” Akingin smiled at her like a man might at a pet snake. “But I saw that she caught your eye. Enjoy your Mazgar slave, Gerard. That is, if she does not kill you.”
***
It was not an exaggerated warning. Between myself and the two guards we got her out and - somehow - put her in irons. She put up a hell of a fight, kicking, punching, and biting: I could see why the guards had worn armor. Her screams were bloodcurdling - and not of distress. Soldiers stopped to come and see what was going on.
“I’ve been searching for you all over,” said Juskar, “and I find you here with this - animal.” He looked down at her with utter disgust.
Gleaming with sweat and lying in the dirt, ankles and wrists crossed and shackled, she returned the look, with interest.
“Tell me you will not keep it.”
“I am taking her all the way back to Dura with me.”
He gave me a pained look.
“She looks diseased. Rabid.”
“I’ll have her purring like a kitten.”
He crouched down and peered at her. She turned to face him, large, dark eyes taking in her prey.
“I doubt that, Brother,” his hand drifted near her face. “You should-”
“Watch out!”
Juskar jumped back with a cry and a curse. He clutched at his hand - the bitemark looked like something out of a zombie film.
She smiled at him, blood on her lips.
“Bitch!” he drew his dagger.
“Juskar!” I snapped.
Chastised, he put it away and sucked his cut. It wasn’t deep - she hadn’t tried to take a piece out of him. I could see the calculating behind her eyes -- she would try for a piece, the next time.
“It’s a dangerous, feral animal!”
“Then treat it like one, and don’t give it your hand, you moron.”
“What are you going do to with her?” the veteran of the Battle of Aymund clutched his hand like he wanted his mother to kiss it. “You can’t lead her on a chain! You should just cull and skin her.”
The Mazgar beauty glared up at me. I wondered if she could understand Low Hyperborean.
“Can you see if there’s someone in this place who can get me some smithing tools?” I cracked my knuckles. “I’m going to need to find a furnace, one that can melt iron.”
“You can smith?”
“I earned my keep in Dura. All this adventuring is what my people call a ‘side hustle.’ Smithing is my thing. I’ll make you a real sword one day.” I cracked my knuckles. “I’ll also need several collars.”
“Why several? She can only wear one.”
“Yes, but its going to take several for her to wear one.”
***
Late Afternoon
“Juskar, what is he doing in there?”
Fogrim brought his horse to a stop outside the shed. Hammering came from inside it. Black coal smoke rose through holes in the ragged thatching. Outside in the sunlight sat Juskar and a guard, hunched over a board set on a crate. Bone carved figures were at various points on the board. To one side was a clay cup filled with dice. On the other, two stacks of bronze coins. Juskar’s stack was smaller.
“Great Cthulhu only knows,” Juskar replied. “But, it is not his side hustle. Whatever that means.”
“We have to get ready to leave! We don’t have time for this!”
The guard took the dice and rolled them. He grinned at the numbers with a mouth with a few blackened pegs for teeth. Juskar frowned and moved another coin into the guard’s pile.
“I’ve told him this more than once, Brother. He insists he is almost done. Gerard! Gerard!”
“I’m almost done!” came a yell from behind the shed door. The hammering did not abate.
“He’s been saying that for the past hour.”
“No really! I’m almost done!”
Juskar looked at Fogrim and shrugged.
Fogrim climbed down from his horse and opened the shed door.
“Gerard?” he peered into the dark, his eyes adapting.
“There! Finished!”
Gerard stepped out, his face and arms blackened with coal dust, a leather apron and gloves on. He held out a circular device of metal plates and rods. Fogrim took it, staring.
“What’s this?” he asked. “And can we attend to important matters now?”
Gerard went back into the hut. There was a scuffling and a woman grunted in anger. He came out, dragging the Mazgar slave girl over the floor by a rope bound to her leg irons. She twisted and spat, jerking her legs. She glared at the men outside.
They glared at Gerard.
“A ruined collar?” Fogrim held it up. “Is that what you have to show while we have been waiting for you? Gorol may not be commander of an invading legion, but he deserves the respect of your timely attendance.”
“I’m very sorry, I lost track of time in there. I’ll make it up to you guys, but this,” he took back the device, “this gentlemen is going to change everything!”
He took the device back. With his foot he rolled the slave girl on to her belly. She snarled and snapped her teeth at him, making a loud click. He ignored her, and squatted down over her back, pinning the girl.
“Ah!” she cried out as he grabbed her long, straight hair and jerked her head up and back. Her throat was bared. He slipped the device around her throat and fastened its end. The plates hung loose, bare skin visible between them. The rods lay slack against her throat.
“It is flimsy,” said Juskar.
“It is a very ugly necklace, Gerard,” said Fogrim.
“I like it,” said the guard with rotting teeth.
Gerard fixed a chain to the collar, giving it a tug to test it. Then, he cut away the rope at her feet, and removed her ankle shackles.
“What are you doing?” Juskar stared. “She’ll run!”
“Will she now?” Gerard stepped away, holding the end of the chain leash.
The dark-skinned beauty got to her feet; her legs were long, slim, fit. She shook her long hair back and her breasts jiggled as she moved. She looked about at the men like a beast assessing threats.
She screamed one of her blood-curling cries, and charged Gerard.
He twisted the chain.
The metal plates of the collar clenched together and the rods dug in. The slave stopped short, choking and bending forward, her eyes wide.
He turned the chain back.
The plates went limp and the rods retracted. She gasped and took in deep breaths, staring at Gerard. She seemed stunned.
“What just happened?” asked Juskar.
“Exactly what’s supposed to! This is called a choke collar. It-”
She charged again.
Gerard twisted the chain and pushed her. The slave collapsed to the sandy ground, choking and wheezing, her eyes bugging out. She looked up at him, eyes now filled with fear.
“Do you want to breathe?” Gerard stepped up to the choking girl. “Do you want to breathe? Then you have to behave.”
He turned the chain back.
The slave girl lay panting on the ground, her magnificent chest heaving. Slowly, she got up on one knee. Then, she stood. She eyed Gerard with an uncertainty that hadn’t been there before.
She charged him again.
He shoved her off and twisted the chain. Again, she choked and writhed on the ground.
He kept the chain twisted.
“Kneel,” he said. “Kneel, or you will die here. Kneel, Slave.”
Choking, her eyes tearing, she got to her knees and knelt like a slave. She looked up at him, eyes imploring.
He turned the chain back and let her breathe.
“Stand,” he said a few moments later.
The Mazgar woman stood.
Juskar’s jaw dropped and the Fogrim laughed and clapped his hands.
“Heel,” he ordered.
She heeled. He lead her back and forth ten paces, three times.
“Who is your Master?” he asked.
The tall slave said nothing.
He lifted up his end of the leash chain.
“You are my Master,” she said in heavy Mazgar accent.
“That’ll do, for now,” Gerard tugged on the chain. “She’s ready to be marched.”