"The Gods only know what happened to them. The Gods can keep them too, for all I care!"
I sat in the chambers of the Master Breeder Rugaru, high priest of the god Shub Niggurath and esteemed public servant of the town of Ebugal.
He was an old man hunching behind a long, gray beard that he had tied in a knot to keep out of the way. He wore a black linen tunic embroidered with a blue, tree-like symbol.
Behind him was a floor-to-ceiling set of shelves crammed with human skulls: each carved with endless lines of runes. Before him on the table were clay tablets, one still dripped with water, the stylus forgotten in his fingers. He had the long-suffering look of a man robbed of sleep and who didn’t not know when he would get some next.
From outside the door came the screams and curses of women. Angry men’s snarls answered them, followed by the cracking of whips and sharp screams. This prompted still more female yelling.
The man stopped and listened, he seemed to be debating getting up. After winning (or losing). He regarded me.
"Five girls," he said. "You’re hear about five, common, slum dweller girls brought in just days ago."
We both winced at the sudden sound of several girls shrieking as loud as they could.
"Satrap Kolus is breathing down my neck about it,” he went on, “but what am I to do? I have no time for this nonsense. I have not time for anything!"
There was a pounding of feet running past the door. Men yelled and came stomping along after it.
"I’m sorry Master Breeder,” I cleared my throat, “but is it always like this here?"
Master Breeder Rugaru gave me a look that made me want to run and hide.
"No! It is not always like this! I have run the Great Mother’s breeding pit for two generations! What's going on outside is what happens when foolish, young, town-level satraps decide to play games, to chase the favor of those abundantly their betters! I do not have time for-"
"Sure you do," I pushed a gold coin in front of him. "Go ahead and let it all out, old man."
He picked up the coin, studied it, and gave it a bite. He gave me a new look of even greater suspicion.
"Hey," I held up my hands, "I have recently become quite a generous guy. If you give me a tour of this place - and tell me what I need to know to hunt down this bounty - there's another one is for you."
"It is not for a servant of the town, our great Priest King Mammon, and the Great Mother Shub Niggurath, to enrich himself with his station. I must decline,” he pushed the coin back to me. “"You are foreign, Yes?" He raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. "Very foreign?"
I paused. "Yes. Why do you ask?"
"Young warrior, when a man brought to this world by a landing beast, enters into a breeding pit, it does not benefit him to hide this fact. I do not want your gold. But, you I do want something much more valuable from you. Come with me, Bounty Hunter. I will tell you what you need to know about the stolen girls."
He led me out of the room, and into the breeding pit, proper.
Breeding pits of Shub Niggurath are a combination of surface-level garden, subterranean dungeon, and private temple. We passed through adobe administrative buildings and came to a tall, mud wall painted white. It enclosed an area about the size of a baseball pitch. It’s entrance was an iron-barred door wide enough for a wagon to pass, two guards in black hoods and holding long scythes bowed to Rugaru and opened them.
Inside was a grove of black trees. They were tapering spires four or five stories tall, without any branches or even leaves. They twisted and turned, their trunks bending, curling, even coiling around other trunks.
There were no birds or flying lizards. The ground underfoot was springy, the soil rich and dark. I kicked the dirt with my boot: gleaming white worms as thick as my fingers squirmed and burrowed away.
"These are not trees," I stopped and stared, my head tilting back.
"Of course they are," said the master breeder. "The Dark Trees grow when watered. They bear bountiful fruit. Their roots run deep."
On the ground between the tree trunks were pits with ceilings made from crisscrossing iron bars. I looked down into one as I began following the old man again. Lying inside was a naked brunette, a heavy iron manacle around her ankle chained her to a ring fitted in the floor. She looked up at me: her lips were stained blue-white.
"We go in through there," said the master breeder pointing to a stone entrance with steps going down into the earth. A black-robed guard was dragging two naked slaves down them, yanking on the ropes that bound their wrists. They grunted and tugged back.
"I don't understand all this disorder," I grabbed each girl by the throat and forced him down to their knees. Then I locked my arms around their throats, and pulled them forward, guiding them down the stairs.
"I have only 20 brother priests here," said Rugaru. "20 to manage 240 slaves at a time. We needed triple that number but Satrap Kolus never gives me what I need; only impossible, unplanned tasks to be finished in too little time."
Even on Hyperborea it seemed, middle management grumbled.
"Why won’t he give you want you need?" I asked.
"Because even as you offered me gold to betray my God and station, so do others weight our most honored satrap’s open hands with their gold. If I keep my pits full, then the slave traders in the market must sell their slaves for cheaper, and the farmers around Ebugal will have their grain levies increased.”
“Have you suggested to the Satrap that many cheap slaves will make Ebugal boom, and make him richer in the end?”
“But only in twenty years when those born today, are dragged out of the slums. Gold tomorrow is not gold today, Bounty Hunter, To greedy men like Kolus, one gold now is worth more than ten he must wait for."
A pair of men brushed past us hauling a struggling, naked, brunette between them. She swore hysterically, her accent very much like Naya’s. She must've been about 20. The corridor sloped down into the pit network.
"So why does he suddenly care now? There’s a lot of girls down here.”
"Because our most beloved Priest King is also a young man who cannot wait. The banners and skulls his dead father captured, taunt him in his throne hall. And so, he musters an army to attack the Mazgar, across the lake. He is offering to ennoble the satrap who reports the highest slave breedings this year.”
“I don’t see the connection. Why breed slaves now, for a war now?”
“To replace those men who will die.”
We passed a cell where a Bharaji slave girl knelt on her hands and knees, her ankles and wrists held apart and chained to the ground. The shadow of a Dark Tree fell through the barred ceiling. A man entered the cell, pulled down his pants, and settled into place got behind her. She made no sound as he began buffeting her, his hands gripping her waist.
“Look at him,” Rugaru’s lip curled in disgust. “That thin-blooded boor is just a town guardsman, not a decorated veteran or a strong foreigner. There are not enough good men, and the Satrap would have a thousand girls bred before the Priest King’s messenger arrives next week from Razgal to take count. A thousand in less than a week. So that Kolus may press case to Mammon that he send slaves here, that Kolus may ‘see to their breeding’ as well."
A guard threw a bucket of water through the bars at an unruly group of females. They shrieked and shrank back; I could make out raw, unhealed, circular brand marks on their thighs. Several girls even still wore clothing.
"Look, I’m no one to tell you how to do your job, but most of these women are not slaves. The men working here seem to know this, but they don’t what to do, or how to handle them."
"They are untrained and unbroken,” Rugaru sighed, “But they are slaves. They are debtors taken from the slums."
“There are that many debtors?”
“Their debt is to the tax collectors. Most in the slums cannot pay the tax, nor can they afford to leave. When it suits the satrap, the tax collectors visit those families in arrears with attractive young women and strong sons. The sons are conscripted for the Priest King’s colonies and armies. The daughters are enslaved. For five years Satrap Kolus has stayed collection. Now, they are bringing in five years worth of slum girls."
He led me to a pit cell two town guards stood in front of, clubs at their sides. They gave me a stern look but bowed to the master breeder, who shooed them out of the way.
"Come inside,” he opened the cell door, “this is where three of the stolen girls were held."
I stepped in after him.
The cell was 9 feet by 9 feet, with stone packed against its walls to hold them up. Small, black, root-like structures squeezed between them and ran down to the floor. They looked like tiny versions of the huge trunks that rose up outside.
The cell had no ceiling: the crisscrossing iron bars were missing. Instead there was a small ladder propped against the wall, leading outside.
"Where's the ceiling?" I asked.
"That is the wrong question, Bounty Hunter."
I looked about the cell. There were several iron rings that had been set into the flagstones. However, there were no ankle fetters chained to them. I noticed a broken, iron chain-link wedged between two flagstones. I crouched down to study it: it had been twisted apart like soft clay.
I climbed the ladder and went up and outside. On the ground a few feet away, crumpled like a ball of paper, was the rusty, iron frame that had been the cell’s ceiling.
I looked about the ground. There were depressions in the soil as if something heavy had been there, but I could make out no prints, neither human nor Mi-Go.
Was it something else entirely?
The Dark Trees knew but kept the answer to themselves.
"What did this?" I called back down into the pit.
"I do not know, Hunter. But we have made sure that word has not got out that something with the strength of a war mammoth, has been here to steal slaves."
"No one heard the attack?"
"In the early hours of the morning there was a commotion from this area of the pits; many slaves were screaming. However, there were no witnesses, but one."
"Where is he? Can I talk to him?"
"Where is she," he corrected. "Only three of the slaves came from the cell. The other two were in the one with the witness."
I climbed down the ladder.
"You’re calling a slave a witness; I thought Hyperboreans didn't care for their testimony."
"We do not. But you are not Hyperborean, nor you seem given to foolishness no matter how wise and cultured the fools. Come and see her; she does not have much longer for this world."
***
Rugaru took me to another cell. This too had a pair of armed town guards outside it, but inside were two priests. Between them was a wooden contraption I can only describe as portable gallows. Beside it was a cauldron of black iron with dark brown stains along its rim. One priest was sharpening a bone-handled, stone, ritual knife. They both looked surprised at me but deferred to Rugaru.
In all other aspects, the cell was as the other one had been. The overhead bars were missing and the chains had been ripped out of the floorings.
Except for one; it went to the ankle of a tall, pale girl with a glossy, red hair that fell down her back. She leaned against the pit wall, arms clutched around her knees, knees pressed up against her breasts. She rocked back and forth, muttering under her breath. Her bright blue eyes stared off at something in the distance that none of us could see.
"What did you see, slave?" I asked, standing over her.
She did not look up. She continued mumbling, far, far away.
"Speak, Slave!" I drew my whip from my belt.
The red-headed slave girl continued staring like I wasn’t even there.
“Her mind is lost,” said one of the priests. He had black tattoos on his face and wore a necklace made of what seemed like finger bones. “Have a care that she does not harm you.”
I turned and gave him a look.
“What’s all this?” I pointed to the contraption. “This get up? You going to play one-to-one scale Hangman?”
“She is being culled,” said Rugaru.
“That’s a waste. Get her out of this cell - and this damn mad house - and she’ll be fine with in a couple of days,” I meant it. Slave girls were resilient; those who weren’t, didn’t survive.
“You say that because you have not seen a slave who’s just killed the other girls in her pit, torn the teeth from their jaws, and broken her own by trying to eat them,” said Rugaru. “You do not take chances with madness like this.”
I crouched down beside her, pulled out a tinderbox, and struck a match.
Her eyes focused on it. I moved the match to the left and the right, slowly, her eyes followed. As the match burned down. She looked up at me. She had a lovely, oval face. Her skin was clear and without scar, except the circular brand on her thigh that showed she was property of the town. I guessed she was about 20 or 21.
"What did you see, Slave?"
"A servant of the gods!" She reached out and clutched my arm with both hands, her fingers digging into my skin. "A beast of ice and fire, with a back like the jagged mountains! It took them, by Cthulhu! They begged it for death, but it took them. It's teeth were like the posts that Masters chain us to, and out of its back came wings like a lizard’s, but much larger. It took them, by Yog and Cthulhu! It did not take me! Was I not worthy?" She reached up and stroked my cheek with her fingers. They were cold as ice. Her skin seemed almost translucent and was beaded with sweat.
"Can you describe-"
"There it is!" She pointed up at the sky.
I worked my head around, but there was nothing: just blue sky and the towering black tree trunks.
"Do you not see it, circling over us, Master?" Her face softened into a look of rapture. "It comes for us Master! It comes!"
The slave got to her feet, reached for the sky, and began screaming.
"We have much to do," said the priest holding the ritual knife.
"I'm done," I stepped away from the howling redhead. The priests went to the slave, one pulling her arms behind her back. The other took a rope from the yardarm of the contraption, and tied it around her ankles. He tugged on it to make sure it was tight, then went to back to their machine. He begun turning a wheel at it’s base, and the rope went taut. The other priest moved the slave directly under the yardarm, keeping her from moving.
The first priest kept winching the rope. The slave was pulled off her feet, the second priest keeping her from falling flat. Her legs were pulled up, the second priest only let go when she hung from the under yardarm like a fisherman’s prize catch. Her body swung, her fingers just inches from the floor.
They moved the cauldron under her head.
"Whatever that one saw," Raguru frowned and folded his arms, "it was too much for her mind – and I expect any of ours, either.”
“Sell her to me,” I said. “Whatever her hide and bones are worth, I’ll pay it and walk out of here with her.”
“She has already been promised to the Great Mother.”
The men slit her throat. Blood sprayed: I jerked back as some struck my leg. The slave gasped and squirmed but they held her by her arms. Soon, she was quite still.
"Today, we will water the trees," said Rugaru.
I only then realized what they were watered them with.