The next morning we left Ebugal.
Fogrim was delighted with the gift, who he renamed Soft Lips – for the prominent ones between her legs. He lined her up with all other slaves, who we chained together. Each girl’s throat chained at the back to the front of the next girl’s collar. Their wrists were cuffed behind their backs, and pannier baskets mounted on their backs. Not all girls had panniers, and not all panniers were full: Fogrim had not bought the supplies he had come here for.
I had kept Galena hooded till we left the town, then marched her right in front of me. She seemed delighted by everything: the ground beneath her bare feet; the sound of giant mayflies hunting; the smell of tree sap from a fallen, giant, cycad.
“I have not seen such things before, Master! Is this the life of a slave girl?”
“Do not talk,” I struck her across the backs of legs with a whip. She yelped and raced ahead.
Her long legs and ample behind a welcome distraction. In the days that followed, I got over the shock (if not the guilt) over Yura's death and Fogrim's losses. Soft Lips had helped with this. More than anything else, though, it was being away from the drama of Ebugal. It gave me time to think finally.
What did it matter to me, what the Cult of the Servants was doing in Darfur? These weren't my people. I had no lands or business here. If the Darfuri were going from proud and independent warriors who worked the land, to dominated and weakened masses, what impact would that have? They would just be swept away by the next group of warriors, as they did to the Runa before them. The laws of Hyperborea were inviolate: all prospered, kneeled, or died before the blade. A priest with a thousand worshipers was not safe from a determined man with a sword.
This just wasn’t my problem. My purpose here on this world, like my values, were mine to choose.
These thoughts freed me. By day we made good progress in the bright sun and cool air of the Darfuri highlands. By night, I enjoyed Haley, Ashtala, and Galena, collared and chained, moaning under me.
Perhaps it was enough for me to live well and be true to my friends. I could return to the town of Dura, east of the ‘Battleground of the Gods.’ I had friends there, like Scar the blacksmith. I didn’t want to farm, but what if opened a slave brothel? Girls and gold...
Fogrim's humor also rose as we progressed. He would speak more and more of his son, how bright he was, how strong, the silly things he would do. It saddened me that a father so obviously caring for his son would live apart from him, but Fogrim had made his choices – the regrets were his to own.
On the fifth day, we were, at last, coming up on the farm.
“You will like Zatandar,” said Fogrim, “He brews a strong, dark, yam beer, and you will drink the creamiest milk from his slave girls’ tits!”
We climbed up a worn trail that lead up a grassy hill. Tall stands of dark trees were up ahead and covering the neighboring hills. In the distance were snow-capped mountains. I looked about and could see no other signs of settlement; no terrace cut farms, no dams in the valley below, no fires from hilltop hermit shrines.
“He must like being on his own. So he’s a dairy farmer?”
“He had thirty girls in his slave pits, the last I was here. He keeps eight ‘in milk’ at all times.”
“Thirty! How did he get so many?”
“In the summer, he leaves these hills to raid other farms for fresh females. Those warriors who give chase lose him in these wild lands and must return. As they leave, he pursues and slays them, a man at a time, each night."
“He's no farmer; he’s a bandit! How did you get to know him?”
“We were both raiding the same farm one day. Fortunately, there were four girls worth taking and not three or five. We didn't-"
He stopped talking.
“You didn’t what?”
Fogrim had stopped walking. The coffle of slave girls stopped; they were not permitted to walk ahead of him.
“What's wrong?" my hand went to my sword hilt. Haley and Galena looked back at me; their eyes were worried.
“Smoke,” Fogrim pointed. “Too much smoke. Secure the slaves.”
We made the girls lie flat on the ground and crossed and cuffed their ankles. Then we gagged each one; we would not have them give themselves away. Then, we drew our weapons and approached Zatandar's farm.
The first thing to greet us along the path was a slave girl’s corpse. It lay tumbled in the dirt as if she’d been running when she died. Her head had been crushed as if by a great weight – blood and tissue had sprayed as if a giant tomato had been struck with a mallet. There were deep cuts along her back.
“What is this?" Fogrim squatted by the corpse. He tossed aside a millipede half as long as his arm and reached into a cut with the indifference of a cannibal butcher (which he was). "Her lung is missing. And her heart."
“What about the other lung?” I tried not to look at the body.
“It is there,” he parted another cut and peered. “This is the work of a butcher.”
“That’s not what a butcher does with a head.”
He said nothing.
“She can’t have died too long ago. Everything is fresh.”
“This happened last night," he stood "or early this morning."
“Fogrim, look at the ground.”
It had been flattened around the corpse, as if by something weighing several hundred pounds. There were grooves in the dirt – grooves matching those I had found back at the bandit camp after the Mi-Go lights had visited it.
“No!" his face was ashen, and he stepped back. “This cannot be! This cannot be! We have the blessings of the gods!”
“Come on.”
“This cannot-”
“Come on!”
We continued our way along.
Zatandar had built his farm in a clearing overlooking most of the hill, giving him a clear view and warning of any visitors. The core of the farm was three, large, barn-like structures each two stories tall and about sixty feet long. Around them, he'd build smaller sheds for tasks like metalworking, milking, and leather tanning. In the center between the three barns was a slave pit covered over with logs.
Two of the barns were still smoking, now collapsed tangles of blackened beams and smashed mud bricks. The third had been smashed open as a giant hammer had bashed in through its roof out through its doorway. The secondary huts had been flattened into the dirt as thoroughly as the dead slave’s head.
In a row on the ground were the decapitated bodies of three slave girls that had been husked – there's no other word for it. The legs and arms had been amputated, and the ribs cut and opened, as if the bodies had been boxes. All the organs had been removed.
The missing parts and organs – along with the remains of a dark-skinned man - had been stapled to a tree. Fogrim cried out when he saw the man’s remains – I could guess who it was.
“My son!” he looked left and right, eyes wide, “where is my son?”
We searched the ruins but found no other signs of life.
“What have they done?” Fogrim pulled a still-smoldering log aside, burning his hands. What have the Mi-Go done to my son!?”
“He’s not here.”
He roared at the sky. The rage cracked at the end and turned to despair.
“Forgrim, that's a good thing he’s not here, it means he might still be alive! Look,” I gestured to the slave pit; its roof had been torn and flung aside like it had been made of pencils. “The slaves are gone – and there’s no blood. They were taken away and alive. He could be with them.”
He became very still and quiet.
“Fogrim? Fogrim?”
He reached into his pack and pulled out the statue of Yog I had given him. His hand quivered as he raised it, and smashed it to the ground. He picked up a rock and slammed it against the idol, screaming. Down on his knees, he broke it to pieces.
“Let us go to Aymund,” he said at last. His voice was quiet, cold, steel. “I’ll get my son back. I’ll kill Mi-Go.”
Hyperborea’s first atheist stood and started walking back down the hill.