I led Amber, Lena, and my Shang slave who I have not bothered naming yet, to a nearby stream. They crawled on their hands and knees, my hand holding their leashes.
The stream was fast flowing with small, armored fish darting between water plants and trying to burrow their heads into the mud. They came away with small, wrinkly, white worms. A pair of large dragonflies had been stalking them, their huge wings making a low droning sound. I tried to wave them away but they were top predators and would not budge. Then I knocked one off its perch with a stone, and they finally retreated.
"Get in the mud," I pointed to the dark shore. "And find your food."
"Yes, master," said Amber, crawling forward into the mud.
I watched as she and Lena began clawing through the mud, feeling with their fingers. The Shang stared at them, perplexed. Then suddenly Amber pulled her hand out of the mud, a pink, wriggling might the size of a fist in her hand. She dashed it against a rock until it was still.
This was a Trigonotarbid; the ancestor of all spiders. Amber and Lena showed the Shang how to catch them and soon there was a pile of smashed mites forming on the shore. Once I felt there was enough, I made them carry them back to the bandit campsite, by the armful.
When I arrived back I saw several slaves carrying sticks and kindling to make a fire. Others were on their hands and knees, trying to dig a large pit using their bare hands and fragments of broken pots. Fogrim sat on a log watching them, a whip in one hand.
Kneeling between his legs were two slaves; the Shang he had taken quite the liking to, and Ashtala, the Darfuri girl. Both had their wrists cuffed behind their backs. The Shang sucked his penis. Ashtala had lowered her head to lick his testicles.
"Hard at work I see," I said. I motioned to a spot on the ground and my slaves piled the dead, pink, arthropods there.
His Shang woman stopped and stared at me, surprised no doubt to see a man walking up to her master while he was using her. Ashtala continued unfazed: Hyperboreans think nothing of such things.
"They are indeed," said Fogrim, gripping the Shang by her hair and shoving her head back down over his penis. He held her head there, not letting go. "The pit is for the corpses."
"You care to bury the bandits?"
"No. But it is good slave-breaking to have them dig such a pit with just their hands, and to handle corpses. I would not have the new females go to market - or my slave pen – without knowing their place."
Whether a slave girl had worn a collar for just a day, or for 10 years, when a Hyperborean comes to own her he will quickly make clear to her her status. Usually this is just a thorough whipping and a night on her back in his bed chamber. It was more complicated though in a case like this where we had suddenly come into several females, each. A group activity was more effective. Putting off the activity was a bad idea; this was the chance to reinforce the tone for their slavery.
“They should eat now," I said.
Fogrim nodded. He stood up, kicking Ashtala aside. He still held the Shang by her hair, forcing her to rise up on our needs.
"Slaves," he cracked his whip in the air and pointed to the pile of dead arthropods. "Eat."
The slaves rose and went to feed.
"Let this be the only meal the new girls have today," said Fogrim.
Ashtala crawled on knees to feed, her wrists still cuffed. Fogrim did not release his Shang. He sat back down and she got back to work, her head thrusting back and forth.
“I think I will name this one ‘Yura’,” he said idly. “What say you?”
“A good a name as any.”
And so the Shang was named.
Amber and Haley fetched some cracked, clay bowls that we used for slave feeding. They passed them around, one bowl between three females. I watched as the slaves began cracking open the Trigonotarbid shells and scraping the white, creamy innards into the bowls. They dipped their fingers in and ate.
"Do not use your hands," I said.
All the slaves stopped. Several looked at me, and then put the bolts down on the ground. Then they held their hair aside, lowered their heads, and ate like dogs.
Lena was closest to me; the tanned Iberian with jet black hair. I noticed her eating from her bowl without any disgust or hesitation; this one was no stranger to slavery.
I would have to work a little harder with her.
I kicked over her bowl. She gasped and shrank back in surprise, and looked up at me with large, fearful, dark eyes.
"Eat off the ground, Slave."
"Yes, Master!"
"And what do you say?"
"Thank you Master!"
She quickly put her head down and ate the white mite flesh. She watched me as she did so, her large eyes checking for approval.
That was more like it. She was quite a beauty: long, slender limbs, a large behind, well formed breasts with brown nipples.
I looked forward to using her.
***
I left the campsite to go see Naya. I found her very much as I had left her; hanging from a tree by her bound ankles. Her wrists were tied behind her back. A large cloth bag had been tied over her head. Her petite body fidgeted as she twisted in the breeze. Her pale skin was coated in a thin sheen of sweat.
It was also covered in red whip marks. I marveled at the extent; Haley had not just been thorough: she had been merciless.
Naya jerked as she heard me approaching. I stood in front of her and grabbed her by her leg to hold her steady. Her skin was soft, the muscle firm beneath it. I studied the whip strokes and was relieved - they would fade within the day.
Which of course, meant that she could then be whipped again.
I pulled the bag off her head. Her long, dark hair fell, almost touching the ground. Her dark eyes fixed on mine: there was something new there.
Fear.
I stood there, just staring down at her. After a few moments, at last she spoke.
"Please; I am hungry."
I continued staring.
"Master, may I have something to eat?"
It was the first time she had called me Master. It had been hard to believe such a petite young woman that I could carry off in one arm had put up so much resistance. Now, it was equally hard to believe that she was breaking.
"Master, may I please have some food? I am so hungry!"
"I will give you food - when you crawl before me, spread your legs apart, and beg me to mount and use you. Not before. Do you understand?"
She said nothing.
"No doubt, you are thirsty as well," I undid my belt. "It may be a while before you are given water to drink. You can have this for now."
She cried out and shut her eyes tight as I urinated on her face. She turned her head aside but that did nothing to help her. When I was done, her neck, face, and hair were dripping wet.
"There, that's plenty," I did my belt up again. "Lick it off before it drips away."
I put the bag back over her head and tightened the draw string. As the morning sun rose, it would bake the bagged urine and that would fill her every breath. She would not suffocate: there were holes enough in the bag and I had used it before without incident.
I left: I would share the idea of the bagged urine with Fogrim. It was the sort of thing he would enjoy doing to his girls out of just sheer idleness.
***
On returning to the campsite I found the Fogrim had set the slaves back to work (even Yura). My own females had joined the ones digging the pit. It was about 2 feet deep so far; slaves work harder, whatever their tools and circumstances, when a man is standing over them with a whip.
I snapped my fingers and called Amber. She quickly climbed out of the pit and knelt before me, staring down at my feet.
"How is the sick Shemite doing?"
“Well, Master. The fever is completely gone. I moved her to one of the bandit tents to sleep, away from the sun. She is eating and drinking again. She wants to move, but I told her to stay another day and rest.”
"Good. Tomorrow, she will take her place alongside the others."
"Thank you Master," said Amber, suddenly looking up at me. Her eyes were bright as sparks. "Thank you for not culling her."
“Back to the pit,” I pointed.
She turned and climbed back into it.
"I'm going to take some of these girls for a while," I said. "I think I will need four."
"Four!" Fogrim looked quite surprised. "Your stamina is much increased it seems!"
“I have something else in mind for them.”
"What?"
"Science."
***
"By the hunger of Yog, what madness is this?" Said Fogrim.
On the ground before us was the giant. It's corpse had been stretched out to form an "X". Haley knelt beside it, her hands covered in blood. With a basalt blade she slit the corpse from neck to belly.
Then she and an equally bloody Darfuri slave peeled away fat and muscle with their bare hands. Meanwhile, dark-haired Lena was hacking through the giant’s forearm bones with a copper hand axe. A Bharaji girl giggled as she plopped the giant’s severed testicles into a clay bowl.
"You said the Mi-Go created this monster," I said, my hands on my hips. "I want to see what they did."
"What does this achieve?" He shook his head.
"I don't know. But you don't dislodge an alien species that's claimed the south of a continent, by standing around."
Fogrim laughed and shook his head.
"You think to challenge the power of the Mi-Go?"
"They are not gods. You have no reason to fear them "
"they have the power of gods. That is reason enough."
Frustration and annoyance rose within me.
"Have you not told me they are a danger to your people?”
“That was a long time ago. When my grandfather's grandfather lived."
"Cosmic beings like the Mi-Go have been on this world for millions of years. Do you think any period in the memory of men, is anything but an unremembered pause to them?"
He frowned.
"That may be, but they have been quiet in their cities. We give them no cause to seek quarrel with us, and that has kept their raiders out of our skies."
"They are not your skies, if you cannot keep them clear in the first place. You cannot simply be content because you may not have to deal with their return during your lifetime, because you think leaving them alone is the answer. Someone will have to face them. Would you not see your descendants prepared? What about your son?"
He gave me a glare, turned, and left.
I was no man of medicine, but I documented what I saw as best I could. The slaves cracked open some of its large bones and I sketched the structure inside. As far as I could tell, they seemed no different from humans bone: just larger. It had testicles so I imagined it was able to breed, though I could not think what with. Things got interesting once we broke open its ribs. Its lungs were only about as large as a normal humans: except that it had six of them. I wondered why the Mi-Go would create additional lungs, rather than simply scale the existing structure. It also had two hearts.
When Lena got to its spine she got a shock, literally.
"Oh!" she jumped back, a copper knife in her hand.
"Do not shirk, Slave!" My hand went to my whip.
"It stung me, Master!"
"What? Move aside."
I knelt down over the corpse to see what she had been doing. Sticking out, wrapped around the spine, was what seemed like a gleaming, black snake. I reached down to touch it-
"Ow!" I drew my hand back. I had just got an electric shock.
I put on a pair of thick gloves for insulation, and got to work.
There was a long, flexible, metal wire wrapped all along the giant’s spine. Attached to it was a translucent, plastic-like, bag. Inside the bag, dark shapes moved.
I had a large, clay bowl placed under the bag. Slowly, carefully, I slit the bag open.
Misty-white liquid poured into the bowl and a gleaming, purple grub-like creature, about the size of a small cat, fell out. It thrashed back and forth in the bowl until I shaded it from the sun with my hands. Metal cubes ran from its underside up into the bag, and into the spinal wire. The grub had rows of flailing arms along its sides. Only once the creature was completely submerged in the liquid did the arms become still.
"What is it, Master?" Said Lena kneeling beside me. She had the fascination of a child discovering a frog for the first time.
I dipped a gloved finger into the milky-white solution. It smelled of ammonia.
"Lick it, Slave," I held my finger in front of her.
Lena looked apprehensive, then stuck her tongue out, eyes tightly shut, and licked my gloved finger. She grimaced at the taste.
"What is it like?" I asked.
"It tastes like piss, Master," she replied. "Piss and fruits, Master."
"Fruits?"
Lena nodded.
I surmised that the ammonia was waste, perhaps accumulating now that the host creature was dead. The sweetness would have been sugar. Perhaps what the beast fed on.
"Put your finger in the liquid."
She obeyed. The moment Lena's finger touched the liquid I saw a blue spark and she cried out, jerking her hand back.
"It stung me Master!" She seemed outraged.
"Very good!" if she had not been smeared in blood and gore, I would've kissed her.
The wire around the creature spine seemed to do nothing besides be there. As such, I suspected that it was a radio antenna. The creature that had extruded the wire (or in some way been mated to it) was no less than a living battery. It ran on glucose it took from the giant’s bloodstream. With a biological battery and a radio antenna, but no discernible links to the giant’s senses, all this probably did was send out radio pulses. The Mi-Go would have used it to track the creature.
I had the "battery leech" gently detached and moved into a larger container with a lid. I added some water and had wild grapes and berries squeezed and added to the pot. The creature thrashed about for a few minutes, then seemed to calm. I left it for an hour before moving into another container, of just clean water and fruit juices. Again, the leech thrashed about, but for a shorter period.
I did not know if it would last, but for better or worse, I had possession of a Mi-Go biological battery.
Only then did the question come to mind of what the Mi-Go might do, now that their radio had stopped transmitting.
***
"We have to leave! Now!"
Haley and Lena rushed past me. Haley quickly knelt and began packing our expedition supplies. Lena picked up a wicker basket and hefted it onto her back. Staggering behind me on a leash was (a quickly bathed) Naya. Her wrists were cuffed and a gag was between her teeth.
"What is wrong?" Asked Fogrim, turning to look back at me. Before him, the slaves in the pit regarded me, slowing at their work. Aware of the whip held over them, they resumed their pace.
"There was something inside the monster, something that told the Mi-Go where it was. I have disabled it. But, now the Mi-Go may come to see why that is."
Fogrim frowned and shook his head. "So often, you string words together in ways that make no sense. I don't-"
"Fogrim, listen to me! The Mi-Go are coming. They're coming here, and they are coming now. Unless you want to meet them, we need to leave."
His eyes became wide and his jaw dropped.
"You have summoned the Mi-Go?"
"Yes," I rushed to settle my horse. "Let's say I summoned them."
"By Yog, Dagon, and Cthulhu, what have you done you fool?"
I stopped and looked back.
I had never seen Fogrim afraid before.
"Listen to me. We will be fine, but we have to go right now. If we make good distance, they won't find us."
"You have brought-"
"You can blame me later!"
The slaves were quickly rounded up and chained, one girl’s throat to the next, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Naya joined the coffle, just like the rest of the meat. Fogrim mounted his horse and led from the front. I followed in the back, on foot. The Shemite girl I put on my horse, tied over my saddle. I followed alongside, dismounted.
"Faster!" The girls cried out as I struck the legs with my whip. "Faster slaves!"
We abandon the half-dug pit, the bodies abandoned in a pile.
***
About 300 feet into our flight, I stopped to hide the clay pot with the battery. I picked out a distinctive, large, rock.
"What is that?" Asked Fogrim. "And how is it more important than our lives?"
"We will live, Fogrim. But I will have none will say we lived in vain."
Day became evening, and evening became night. Still we marched on, getting as far away from the bandit campsite as we could. The slaves stumbled in the dark and the horses moved slowly, but we would not risk lighting torches.
Finally, even Fogrim could not take it.
"I would not arrive in Ebugal with livestock rendered worthless by broken bones. Let us stop and camp for the night, surely we are-" he trailed off and stared at something in the distance behind us.
I turned.
In the direction we had come, about where the bandit camp had been, were the same dancing lights that I had seen back at Fogrim’s farm.