The asteroid struck six months later.
It was at dusk, that day. The sky was in reds and shifting into darkest blue. Shredded clouds made a poor showing; it was the height of the dry season. Winged reptiles flitted about, screeching as they hunted insects.
I was at the brothel, as always. I walked the wooden deck of the second floor, testing it. The boards creaking under my boots. I got down and peered across the deck - the surface was perfectly flat, the wood planed and polished. You have no idea how hard it is to get Hyperboreans to build things straight. I would complement Hagar and his carpenter’s tomorrow.
Below, a pale, blonde, Siberian girl wearing a sash of black cloth and nothing else, lit braziers along the footpath with a long taper. Mina, I think I had named her. Mina was a bright, hardworking girl, whether on her feet or on her back. Beyond her in the grounds, a pair of Shemites were laying out bolos on a table and testing lassos. Across from them were the night’s catches-to-be: five, amazons. Three stood in a circle rubbing oil over each other. The fourth girl was brushing the fifth girl’s hair. The fifth girl lifted her arm up and sniffed her armpit. Tonight was a slave hunt - it was a silver to play, and even if you lost you got a girl for the night. Dockworkers and miners liked games - but they had to find a way to bring gambling into everything. I didn’t run gambling, but I took a cut from the bookie who had a permanent table in the corner - I just made clear he wasn’t allowed to impoverish anyone.
I was about to go downstairs when I saw it.
At first, I thought it was a landing beast, but it was coming down much too close and it shed glowing sparks behind it. It seemed to arc as if climbing up out of the horizon, it then crossed the sky, then seemed to sink as it dipped under the horizon.
Down below, Mina stood staring up, the taper burning away. The shemites and the oiled girls stood staring, as well. Doors opened downstairs and the cook and the barmen stepped outside.
The shockwave hit moments later. There was a sound like a thunderclap going off right in front of you. It felt like being hit by a giant pillow; I jumped back and grabbed a wooden pillar. The tables rattled and the chairs moved out of place. A tremor ran through the building.
Insects and birds erupted into the sky, screeching and cawing. Dogs began barking, some howled. Beyond the walls, I could see people running into the street. All the braziers had gone out.
Juskar came running up on to the deck.
“By the gods! Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. We need to check and make sure no one got hurt.”
“What was that?” he took an uneasy step forward and peered up at the sky.
“I don’t know. Look, wherever that came down-”
“It came down?”
“Well - um - probably. But wherever it did, that’s a long, long, way from here.”
“It came from the Mist Wall,” he folded his arms.
“No, it came from Space.”
I could see how little a difference that made, right after I’d said it.
“Come on. Let’s make sure the kitchen slaves haven’t cut their fingers off.”
***
It was a poor night. Dockworkers and miners stay home when the gods are at war. Dura’s old folk had their attention instead; telling tales of the last time they’d seen such a thing when they were just small children. How an army of cold water Deep Ones, exterminating their way up the coast of Zidon, had been burned from the world in a single day by the god Kyn-Gnartha. The fire in the sky. The terrible yell. The birds that fell dead with fright, the sacrifices for days, afterwards. And then, the Hunger.
All bloody nonsense. I had the cook send the food that would go waste to the Settite temple to feed the poor, gave the men and (free) women a pep talk, and took two of the oiled girls with me, to bed. The morning would bring another day.
Except that it didn’t.
I stared out the window at the darkness, alert and wide awake. A well-tanned brunette with wavy hair lay across my legs, her ankle chained to the bed. She wore a copper nose ring and had twining snakes tattooed on her legs. My brand marked the small of her back.
Kneeling next to her, head lolling as she slept, wrists hanging from cuffs suspended from a ceiling chain, was a dark-haired Anatolian. She wore an armlet of crocodile teeth and anklets made of bronze coins strung together.
I pushed the brunette aside and got out, to go look out the window. It was still dark - but I could see no stars. Had the clouds come in? The mist?
The Anatolian stirred.
“Come back to us, Master,” she smiled, a lock of tousled hair fell across her face.
I poured myself some water and climbed back into bed. I tried to fall asleep, but I was too wide awake. Wasn’t it later in the day? How was it still dark? Damn this world without its clocks. There was a water clock in the library, but that was across the grounds. Bored and unable to sleep, I uncuffed the Anatolian. She giggled and took my penis in her mouth - practice and demanding men had taught her to use her tongue with great skill. The brunette awoke and soon both girls were giggling and sucking my cock, licking the shaft and nuzzling my ball sack. I held the brunette down and came between her breasts, giving her a pearl necklace. The Anatolian licked her clean and spat the cum into the brunette’s mouth. They embraced and lay in the bed, cum-swapping and stroking each other. Only when they knelt before me, lips parted to show mouths spilling over with semen mixed with saliva, did I let them swallow.
It was still dark outside. The slaves tried to entice me again but I was done. I put them against the wall, shackling their wrists and ankles so they each stood in an ‘X’ shape. Then, I went downstairs.
Juskar and some of the others were already downstairs. I could smell fresh baked bread. A slave girl brought hot tea and fresh bread buns. Everyone looked wide awake.
“What time is it?” I asked, taking a cup.
“It is the 7th hour,” said Juskar. He was not smiling. None of them were.
“No! It should be getting light by 5, these days!”
“I have checked the water clock,” he replied. “And it is working. Even the animals in the ground are coming out - though they are quiet. There are no stars out, Gerard. But, there is no rain.”
“Come on,” I wolfed down a bread roll, “we need to go the Council.”
“The burghers have not called a meeting.”
“You think they won’t? Juskar, the sun hasn’t come up, and I know exactly why.”
“Why?” the whole table asked.
“Because the gods at war. Something very bad has happened somewhere very far away - and we are all very lucky to be alive.”
***
The sun didn’t come up that day. Nor would it for the next six months. We’d get a gloom that would be as bright as a miserably rainy day by about noon, then again by late afternoon it would became pitch black. People gathered in the streets, anxious and afraid. Rumors and baseless fears set in. Azathoth had woken and the world was ending! The Mist Wall had grown and we were all done for! The impiousness of people had brought the scorn of the gods upon us!
The sacrificial fires at the Settite temple and Yog pit burned day and night. Slave girls were staked along the river outside the town, offerings to Deep Ones who never came. I sent my crew to steal some - I stopped when they ran into a barge from a down river that had had the same idea. The scuffle woke angry fisherman who chased my team off. I didn’t hand back the girls but I paid a compensation - a pot of silver to be thrown into the deeps. I had Haley hand them the pot - a very pointed message; the slave I had cheated Dagon for. With my reputation and position in Dura I could - and did - say whatever I wanted about priests murdering slave girls. But the Dagonites in particular, were scum to me. If they wanted a fight, we’d give them one.
It was a full two weeks later before a sea-going galley arrived bringing news. The crew all wore cloths over their mouths. The gods Ghoggua and Nitha were fighting, and Ghoggua had struck somewhere in Armanea. The ash was coming, they said. Do not breathe the ash or bathe in the black rains.
Even in the most unbearable of disasters, there are those who ignore and pretend. A group of Settites, confident in the river’s biggest temple’s promises of literally brighter days ahead, saw the black rain when it came as an omen, and bathed and drank in it. They were all dead in a week.
Over the next six months of poor light, crops failed all over the planet. Armanea was hit the hardest, its soils the most polluted with heavy-metal rich, asteroid ashes. People began to eat grass. When the grass was gone, they began to eat bark. When the bark was gone, they ate each other. Cities turned on their farmers, confiscating their grain. Then, they turned on each other, armies marching to raid not temples but granaries. Kingdoms fell and new ones emerged. Statues of gods were smashed. The cult of Azathoth, the Primal Chaos, spread to all corners.
But the indigenous marsh rices of the Borderlands, evolved in the shadow of the Mist Wall and growing whever mud would not dry out, thrived. It was not some strange, freak plant - but one that had evolved specifically to live through such times. All over our region, farmers had bumper crops. They brought sacks upon sacks spilling with rice to the nearest and best-placed trading post - Dura.
River barges and sea-going ships came from all over. First, they brought treasures and luxuries: fine silks, silverware, perfume powders, meteoritic iron. Then they brought the refugees: hordes of people from all over the world, some who had given up all their possessions just to come to the fabled Borderlands. Whole streets turned into teeming slums over night. A city of tents emerged beyond the city walls. It spread down the river, men going out each morning to cut trees for the countless fires and to make room for the Slumlands. They wanted food and to avoid war. Behind their eyes you’d see nothing but loss, but triumphant at the surface was hope. They had come to make new lives and seek their fortunes.
It is by such people that great cities are made.
Then, came the slaves.
Ships brought them crammed to the decks, girls kneeling in place for days, held up by the girls around them, shoulder to shoulder, chest to back. Families sold their daughters for a sack of rice. Those who weren’t sold ran away - so that they could eat at a master’s feet. On the other side of Dura from the Slumlands emerged Slaver’s Town. A great sprawl of pits, pens, and auction blocks. The price of slaves collapsed, but still, they kept coming. Slavers kept girls in cages and fed them crushed insects mixed with rotted rice. The slave girls ate, grateful. They knew they were the lucky ones.
Hyperborea had become a new world. Power had shifted and entire nations were in migration. There was an energy in the air, a tension. For many it was filled with dread. For others, it smelled of gold. People called it the New Beginning.
It was a world I was more than ready for.