“There must be a hundred of these damn things. Please, take some!”
The Mazgar legion marched into the desert that evening.
They walked in formation, three infantry squares in the front, three all the way in the back. The cavalry rode on the flanks in two wings. A mammoth walked alongside each cavalry wing. Albino White was the vanguard of the force.
In the long, packed middle marched a mass of almost ten thousand slave girls. Most were dark-haired women rescued from the Mi-Go’s giant-breeding lab. The marched in coffles of ten girls each, wrists cuffed, with supplies strapped to their backs. Slave drivers walked alongside them, wearing skull masks and carrying whips and daggers. If any slaves fell behind, they would slay them. Such life and death gauntlets were not uncommon after a mass slaving. Slave girl are most likely to die in their very first week in bondage. It is when slavers look to rid themselves of the sickly and the resistant.
It was with mixed emotions that the Darfuri watched the Mazgar leave. A bond had formed in battle and in faith, but well before the legion disappeared, it began weakening. Men spoke of how good it was to be rid of their enemy, and if they rode fast enough could they warn a Darfuri city in time that it could send troops to intercept?
Centuries-long rivalries do not end in days.
“No, you should take a third. A third is your rightful share!”
The Darfuri militiamen left shortly afterwards. We said our goodbyes - myself, Fogrim, and Juskar would travel on our own. Gorol gave Fogrim the most thoughtful gift of a boiled and cleaned skull of a cultist high priest. Fogrim gave him an ancient, stone statue of Yog he had found in a search band treasure chest.
As soon as both the Mazgar and the militia were out of sight, Fogrim, Juskar, and I we down into the Temple of Tsathoggua. I had stashed something there - something rather precious that I had no intention of sharing except with my brothers.
We found Perfect Feet and the other slaves right where I had left them - along with twenty other girls who had taken refuge with them during the chaos of the battle.
“Master!” The tall, stunning, dark-haired beauty came running, throwing herself at my feet. “Master, I knew you would come!”
I made her perform the Morning Lotus, then and there in the cave. It is a tender, gentle, and utterly degrading sex dance. Perfect Feet was utterly submissive - her performance was magnificent.
We had a few enjoyable hours before returning to the surface, all the slaves shackled and coffled. I had expected to share these girls with Fogrim and Juskar, but they declined the offer most firmly.
“They are your slave girls,” Fogrim said. “You won them. Not us. We will win our own, should we choose.”
“This is too much. This is just far too much.”
We left the next morning - into the ruins of old Aymund. Before we left, I had to see if Megaros the Hermit had survived and if he needed help.
We made good time, and camped for the night in a wide, open area. The slaves we secured in several tents, each girl lying face down with their wrists and ankles crossed and cuffed. Outside, we set burning torches around the camp in a ring, and offered prayers (but no sacrifices) to Tsathoggua. It was enough: nothing harassed us that night.
We sat around a fire eating a surprisingly large, fat, and tasty lizard Juskar had caught, largely by stumbling over it. It was then that I’d mentioned the bag of rock crystals Mong had gifted me with. Juskar, being talented in other ways beside stepping on lizards, pointed out they were not simple rock crystals - but large, uncut, diamonds.
“Now you can buy back your farm!”
Juskar laughed and sucked the marrow from a bone.
“What? Don’t you want that?”
“These stones are from Mong, to you.”
“Then they are now from me, to you.”
“No, I cannot accept them, Brother. I already had all the reward I could want - I was a beggar in the streets, with no hope, Gerard. I could never have imagined that I would soon serve the Empire against an evil menace - and win. I don’t want to buy my farm back, Gerard. I could never go back to living like that. Now, I would rather follow you.”
“Me? I’m going to settle down.”
“Then I will settle alongside you. You will need men, yes? To manage your brothel? I would be one of those men, if you would allow it.”
“You should be a partner.”
“No,” he tossed the bone into the darkness. “This is your dream - and your plans are - they are strange. Let me work for you, for coin. I would like to see the Mist Wall, and these wonderful Borderlands. I would enjoy chasing a Landing Beast, and driving wandering beauties still maddened with landing sickness, into cages, to recover and find they have become my slaves.”
I could just pay him surprisingly well: that would work. He was right too - I’d need people I could trust, and it would be waste to the world for a person like him to return to subsistence farming.
“Fine,” I got to me feet, “But you’re getting a signing bonus now.”
“A what?”
I went to one of the tents and lifted aside the flap. My slaves lay in row like packed sardines. They watched me as I crawled inside.
My hand closed around a well-shaped, slender, ankle.
“Master?” Ashtala lifted her head and looked back, the chain at her throat clinking.
I uncuffed her ankles and unchained her from the coffle. I left her wrists cuffed behind her back. Locking my arm around her neck, I dragged the lovely treasure out.
“Here,” I pushed her down in the sand before him. “She is yours now - consider her an advance payment.”
She looked up looked at her new master.
“Are you sure?” He dug his hand into her long hair and made a fist. “She’s a fine bitch!”
“She’s worth ten gold,” I sat back down. “And she’s yours. That’s all the matters.”
“Thank you!”
Right then and there, he rolled Ashtala on to her belly, and jerked her legs apart.
Her chin and chest pressed to the dirt, the slave bent her knees to raise up her behind. The move bared her vagina.
Juskar got behind her and gripped her hips.
“Ah!” she cried out as he entered her.
He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, arching her whole back downwards.
Slap!-Slap!-Slap! He got to work.
Ashtala’s jaw dropped. She gave me a quick look - and a smile. It was the last look she would give any other man, for the next few days.
“What about you, Fogrim? Why won’t you take your share?”
“Because it is as he says, those are Mong’s gift to you” Fogrim sat back and stared at the fire, amused. “And I am a farmer. What will I do with diamonds? I cannot plant them.”
“You can buy more land and slave girls!” I persisted.
“I have all the land I want,” he tossed a piece of wood on the fire, scattering embers. “From any of my fields, wherever I throw a stone, that land is mine. If I need more slaves, I will just leave my hill and steal them from my rivals. There is a fisherman who tried to cheat me once, down by the lake. His daughters would look good, stripped, branded, and swallowing my cock… Keep your diamonds, Gerard. You deserve them - and your brothel dream will not be a cheap one.”
I remembered how he had given all his gold to the Yoggite temple. He needed gold. How could I get around his pride?
“What will you do now?” I turned back to Fogrim. “I think our paths have become different.”
“They have Brother, but that is not a bad thing. It is Life. I will go to back to my farm and enjoy being far, far away from the world and its problems.”
“And if there is war between Darfur and Mazgar?”
“I will be safe from it - and it is not my war. I have a son to raise. I have more than enough women, Gerard. Perhaps too many.”
“Too many?” An opportunity knocked.
“Yes. What? You have a very serious face all of a sudden.”
“Layla. I -” the words became heavy. “I want to buy her from you.”
He snorted and laughed.
“I’m sorry Fogrim, I thought I’d just ask. I -”
“No, no. I was wondering when this would come up. She hates you, Gerard. She truly does. But, the very sight of you makes her wet: I have checked her and found this out. When she sees you, I cannot control her. She becomes wilful, distracted, absent minded for days. It is not pleasing to me. I planned to sell her, after she gives birth. I would be happy to sell her to you.”
I felt a warm wave of delight - and power. I was buying a woman, who wasn’t even there to know what was happening to her.
“It is you who should own her, anyway,” he went on.
“Why do you say that?”
“It was you who carried her out of the ditch-trap that day, back at Red River. We all stared at her, marveling. You studied her breasts,” he mimed with clenched fingers, “and even dazed with Transport Sickness, she let you. The man who had just caught, bound, and caged her. I thought you would red cord her, for sure, but you did not. So, I claimed her. The gods brought you to this world for a reason, Gerard. Perhaps they brought her to this world, to be your slave.”
It was a delightful thought. I had hunted down and returned runaways, but Layla was the first woman I had ever enslaved.
“She’s good meat,” I said.
“She is.”
“I will give you ten gold for her. It is what she’s worth.”
He frowned perhaps realizing what I was doing.
“I will give her to you for five.”
“Tell her you sold her to me, for three. I will give you ten gold for her, nothing less, Fogrim. She is good meat. If you would gift her to me for less, than I can gift these diamonds to you, too.”
“Fine,” he sighed. “Three gold? Ha! That pretty bitch thinks she’s worth 30. It will enrage her.”
“That’s what I want. Don’t even tell her she’s to be sold till the day you leave with her; I want her as shocked and angry as possible.”
“It will be amusing,” he grinned.
“I’m going to break her again, as if she was a fresh slave. I’ll go well past what you did with her, back at Rindar’s camp. When she is just quivering clay at my feed, I will rebuild her. All she will think of is pleasing me. She’ll whine for my touch. I’ll spit in her face and it will delight her.”
Fogrim nodded and smiled.
“I - I’m going to breed her too, Fogrim. I know I will. I’m going breed that little bitch and she’ll like it. I can’t explain it. I just know I very much want to do it.”
“That is normal, Gerard, once a man owns a few girls,” Fogrim patted me on the shoulder. “You do not need to explain it, and it needs no reason. But answer this - I know it is not your plan now, but would you ever want to live quietly on a farm?”
I thought of the Dura and the Borderlands - the mists, the cold rain, the greyness. Farming? The only thing that really grew well out there were indigenous marsh rices.
“Or, do you only want wealth, land, and crowded slave kennels?”
“That’s what I want. Is that bad?”
“Not at all. You want power. Don’t think that is bad - this is not your world; its rules have no power or meaning here. This world is large, rich, and very empty. Only those like you can fill it, Gerard. Dura is a small town in a very wild and dangerous land. The Deep Ones are on the move there - fleeing something greater. There are many poor farmers, miners, and woodsmen living outside Dura’s walls. They need protection, but Dura’s rulers are traders, not warriors. They see no profit in guarding anything beyond its walls.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying Dura needs a chief. You should become that chief. When you go back, with all that you have done, your diamonds, these girls, people will see you as a chief whether or not you wish it. Go beyond the walls and visit those farmers. See to their troubles. Assemble a warband and protect their lands - and raid those who would attack them. Then, the farmers will ally with you. They will ask you for your children, that they may raise them as their own - and bind you with them, as a single family. So,” he pointed to the tents filled with my slaves, “Breed slaves all you want, Brother. Understand if you back to Dura, that is what will be expected of you.”