“And you?” Maritia was taken aback.
He bowed in the saddle, moving as gracefully as a minotaur. “This one’s Grand Khan has been without him for too long! As you report to your father, I must report to my master. If it is possible, I will join you to help at the climactic showdown.”
Nagroch snorted.
“Is Nagroch capable of taking over your leadership,” Maritia demanded to know, “at this late stage?”
“Most definitely! The khan is the Fist of Rule, the Teeth of Strength.…” Golgren went through half a dozen other titles glorifying the khan. “This one has been personally trained by his magnificence!” He snapped his fingers. Nagroch nodded attentively. “There is much to do! I must even now prepare! Nagroch will stay close by your side from here on, this is promised! He will do what is needed.” Golgren ignored Maritia’s frown. “Great victories lie ahead, son of Hotak! You are fortunate, yes!”
With one last flourishing bow, the Grand Lord urged his huge, broad-shouldered mount away. The ogres awarded him one last cheer of “Sarak H’kan” before returning to their looting.
Maritia’s eyes narrowed. “Sarak H’kan … Sarak H’kan … I think I do know that phrase after all.…” She stared at Nagroch. “It means … it means ‘leader’ … doesn’t it?”
The squat, round-faced ogre was as all innocence, as only one of his kind could be. “Aye, son of Hotak. Leader …” He chuckled, a harsh sound. “Or ‘khan.’ ”
The mine collapse had been expected by the workers, for their masters never saw fit to reinforce the tunnels that were under such constant pressure, but they had been given no choice but to dig, and dig. Thus, when the ceiling did crumble, several were instantly crushed to death, while others lingered. Their screams, the cracking of bone, the rumble of tons of rock and earth … they were reminders to the survivors that next time would be their turn.
Sahd saw the perpetual cycle of devastation as carelessness on the part of the slaves … and that meant inflicting punishment.
Faros had only been at the camp for three weeks, the first time in his memory the mines collapsed, but he had been brought there a lifetime ago. The place had still been a shock to him and to the other newcomers, like him, who were used to at least the veneer of civilization maintained at Vyrox.
The tall, black, foreboding hills surrounding the mines made Faros feel as though he had been tossed into one of the huge fire pits of Vyrox. The land had been scorched horribly some time in the distant past and still exuded heat above and below. Twin rivers of molten earth flowed with slow deliberation along the eastern and western edges of the circular camp, causing some of the older minotaurs to have named them “Argon’s Tears.”
Perhaps the lost god did cry for his fallen select, or, more likely, the slaves merely pitied themselves. The slaves had quickly learned not to expect any sympathy from the ogres, who saw them as much a focus for their generations of hatred of the minotaur race as for any benefit to be gained from their slave labor.
Each day, Faros had seen the cruel penalties that Sahd doled out almost at whim. Slaves were hung by their thumbs or their feet, often for days. One had been buried up to his neck next to the vast garbage pit located south of the mines. There, unable to move, he had to suffer the disease-ridden bites of the great black flies, the harsh scavengers that survived on the worst waste products. A piece of live flesh unable to strike back made for a grand meal, and when one fly materialized, hundreds soon followed.
With the exception of the occasional whipping or punch or kick by a surly guard, Faros had for a while managed to avoid the worst treatment—and Sahd’s personal notice. On the day of that initial collapse, though, he caught the eye of the evil taskmaster—the first of many, many times that were to follow.
And all because Faros had been the last one out of the ruined shaft.
Choking, blood seeping from a jagged cut on his arm, he had plunged outside just as the ogre leader had arrived on the scene. The leering visage of the brutal taskmaster instinctively fixed on the lucky, gasping survivor. What little remained of Sahd’s lip curled up farther, fully baring his yellowed, skeletal teeth.
“L’har! G’ran Uruv Suurt!” he commanded.
Two guards seized the startled minotaur slave, dragging the still-coughing and gasping figure to their hulking master. At the same time, Sahd glanced over at the other survivors, including one crumpled on the ground being ministered to by another slave.
His black mane streaked with gray fluttering in the hot wind, the imposing ogre stalked over to the injured minotaur. Out came the feared nine-tailed whip. Sahd drove the others from the injured slave then ordered the minotaur to get on his feet.
Faros, arms held painfully behind him, watched as the helpless worker tried to obey, but it was clear that at least one leg was broken and the ankle on the other was badly swollen. After several attempts, during which Sahd and the other ogres mocked his troubles with laughter, the taskmaster suddenly pointed at the minotaur and shouted, “G’ran Uruv Suurt i Fafnirn!”
Faros did not understand what Sahd had said, but the minotaur on the ground apparently did. Eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, he tried to lunge at the legs of the ogre as a last desperate attempt to defend himself. With a contemptuous laugh, Sahd kicked him in the swollen ankle. The minotaur cried out and rolled over.
Four guards took hold of him while the rest shoved the other slaves down on their knees. Dangling the whip over his shoulder, Sahd led the four guards and their struggling burden toward the fenced pens where the ogres kept their pet lizards.
Only then did Faros learn what Fafnirn meant in the ogre tongue.
Sahd abruptly turned, pointing at Faros. The guards pulled him forward despite his attempts to resist. They brought him to the edge of the pen, so he was almost within reach of the gaping, snapping jaws and eager, blood-crazed eyes of the meredrakes.
Sahd walked up next to Faros and, without warning, jammed his nailed thumb into the bleeding wound in his arm. Faros bit his tongue and moaned as the crimson stream poured into the pen.
A frenzy arose among the meredrakes; the mere drops of blood were enough to make them fight with one another viciously, vying for tastes. Sahd, his vicious black eyes watching under a thick brow ridge, chuckled and licked the blood off his thumb, letting a few more drops spatter over the other side of the pen.
That is when the four guards threw the wounded minotaur over the side.
A near revolt started among the other slaves, but the ogres quickly pummeled the protesters into submission. Faros tried to look away, but Sahd grabbed him by the neck and forced his head around, saying in crude Common, “Look, Uruv Suurt … or join.”
The huge reptiles set upon the poor, wounded slave the moment that the minotaur landed among them. Slavering jaws snapped tight on limbs, rending flesh. Talons quickly ripped apart the victim’s muzzle, a moment Sahd, judging by his chuckles, found particularly entertaining. A tug of war ensued, with the victim shrieking.
One meredrake ripped off an arm just below the elbow. Another tore apart one of the slave’s already-ruined legs. Blood spattered everywhere, but still the minotaur did not die. His cries grew increasingly feeble, yet continued on long, despite Faros’s silent prayer that his suffering would end for his own sake.
Only when two more of the savage reptiles tore into his chest, ripping out his intestines, did he at last stop screaming.
The appalling carnage ensued for several minutes more; Sahd refused to end the spectacle until the beasts had satiated themselves. By then, a silence had fallen over all else; even some of the hardened guards clearly wished to leave the scene.
But Sahd was not done, not him, not yet. He snapped his whip, and this time the guards shoved Faros down on his face, planting his snout hard against the slats of the fence. Some of the meredrakes took an interest, scratching at the fence to see if they could reach the new meat. A long, flickering, forked tongue darted through, tasting Faros’s bruised muzzle. The tongue lef
t in its wake bits of food, which almost made the minotaur vomit.
With quick, practiced hands, the ogres bound his wrists to the slats, leaving him half lying on his stomach, there to tantalize the monstrous beasts, only just out of reach.
“J’karah i f’han, Uruv Suurt,” Sahd muttered to him. “Remember … or die.”
And with that, the metal hooks of the whip tore into Faros’s back. His cry only stirred the meredrakes, and they pounded against the pen, trying to bite and claw—anything for a part of him.
Again and again the whip tore into him, as Sahd laughed. How many times the act was repeated, Faros did not know, for he eventually blacked out. Even then, though, he could feel the horrific pain and hear the eager, ever-hungry hisses of the reptiles.
He lay unconscious for a day before the overseers had other slaves rouse him to waking. Still bleeding, his back cut to ribbons, Faros was pushed back to his job. Physically he had survived that first test, survived the many others to come, but within, something that even Vyrox had been unable to break, died—
“Faros?”
He jerked, forced back into the present. Glaring at Grom for having startled him, Faros returned his attention to what the three minotaurs were doing, perched on a fragile ledge. Watching.
This view overlooking the ogre mines had resurrected all of Faros’s deeply buried memories. At Vyrox, the main mining camp of the minotaur empire, the prisoners had been fed twice daily and had lived in windowless barracks filling the ash-covered compound. They thought they had descended to the lowest level of existence, but they were wrong. That was before Sahd’s Camp.
Seen in the unearthly light of the surrounding lava flows, Sahd’s kingdom looked like a spectral world. Ridges of black rock led up to the most productive shafts. Where the dark, burning light of the molten earth did not reach, torches either set in place or carried by shadowy sentinels illuminated these entrances to the mines. Worked for so long by the ogres, the northern face of the camp was littered with many shafts, as though some huge worm had burrowed in and out repeatedly.
Wagons stood ready next to the protruding shafts, wagons that each day had to be filled to the maximum with specified ore, or else the workers would suffer according to the whims of Sahd. The heavy, ill-tempered horses that the ogres used to pull the carts were always tethered near the western side of camp. This put them far from the wagons until the latter were ready to roll.
The ogres also kept their huts near the western flow, easily within reach of an ancient stone bridge undoubtedly built by their august ancestors. Up close, one could still make out symbols in the High Ogre language sprinkled across the length of the old bridge. One of the two protective walls had broken off at some point and cracks crisscrossed the granite floor, but somehow the bridge still managed to hold the weight of the ore-laden wagons.
The ogre huts were combinations of wood brought in from far away and the ever-abundant stone dug locally. Past slave labor had built the high, rounded huts, and current slave labor kept them in repair.
Goatskin flaps covered the entrances to all the huts save Sahd’s. No one who visited Sahd’s hut could say for certain what creature had been sacrificed for the taskmaster’s unique entrance flap, and the tint of the creature’s skin clouded the issue of whether the victim might have once walked on four legs, or two.
The ogres slept six to a hut, save for Sahd, and his hut stood on a slight rise nearest the bridge, overlooking the whole camp.
In the center of the camp, four shadowy structures loomed over all else. Even Faros, in spite of all his bold talk, kept his gaze from those structures, recalling their function.
“They’ve finished locking the slave pens,” Grom murmured bitterly, indicating the four pens on the eastern perimeter.
Four circular pens stood there, with walls too high to scale. Inside the four pens, Faros and the rest had grown accustomed to sleeping … if they could. They had no protection from the elements, not even room to lay flat without brushing up against one another. The pens were the home of the minotaurs—and that of the various other creatures captured by the ogres—as long as they lived and slaved in the mines.
The guards shoved both water and a grayish green broth through a wooden gate at mealtimes, and the bowls were expected back within a quarter hour. Inside the pens, the necessities of nature were dealt with as the slaves could. Sahd cared not a whit whether they rolled in their own filth. The complete degradation of the minotaurs before he worked them to death seemed his ultimate goal.
Sahd commanded the camp in the name of the Grand Khan of Kern, and from the slave labor, he was supposed to supply the raw materials—especially iron and copper—needed by the minotaurs’ hereditary foes for their alliance against the humans and elves. The disfigured ogre was good at meeting his high quotas, but only just barely, and any infraction was enough excuse to punish the slaves, and to appeal for fresh workers from the Grand Lord Golgren.
The heat during the day was intense, suffocating. Due to the higher altitude, at night the temperatures plummeted, despite the nearby lava flows. The workers were then left huddled together, shaking and weak, even their furred bodies insufficient to fight the constant chill. Each week, some of the curled bodies lay unmoving when the morning gong sounded. The guards would prod the stiff forms, and if they did not stir, they were either added to the meredrakes’ larder or, depending on what lesson Sahd wanted to teach, tossed unceremoniously into one of the molten rivers.
Guards lumbered around the edges of the camp, keeping a wary eye on all within. Never in the past had such bestial creatures been allowed to dominate their kind, and the condemned minotaurs were dumbfounded by their fate. And they were no less dumbfounded by gossip accepted as gospel—that the usurper Hotak had agreed to a pact that turned his own people into chattel for the ogres.
Day or night, a wind blew dust up everywhere, adding to the surreal atmosphere of the camp. Such a wind blew now, cold and strong; the crude, rounded huts shook audibly as it passed.
The slaves were amassed forlornly in their pens. A foul smell arose from that area, recognizable to the hidden trio watching with caution as the odor of what passed for food.
Valun sniffed. “Meredrake. One of the beasts must’ve perished from sickness or old age.”
“Such a treat,” grumbled Grom. Meredrake flesh made for foul eating, worse even than the barley porridge the slaves most often received for meals. The better food—the real edibles—was kept in a guarded hut in the southwest corner of the camp, near the meredrakes. There grain, bread, and salted foodstuffs delivered by cart to the facility were stored for the benefit of the keepers.
The supply hut was Faros’s target tonight, and the reason he had decided to keep company with the pair of escaped minotaurs.
Tonight, with the aid of his two companions, Faros intended to ransack the hut, possibly even burn it to the ground. He would take what he could carry, and let Sahd know what it was like to go hungry for a while. Another delivery would not arrive for two weeks, he guessed. The ogres would be forced to slaughter some of their own meredrakes just to survive.
That the slaves themselves would suffer the worst hunger, he did not even consider.
Faros slid down from the ridge top, Grom and Valun quickly following. The pair waited in respectful silence for his orders.
“Everything’s as I said,” he told the two. “We wait until everyone’s settled down and the cold descends … then we strike.”
“Sargas watch over us,” Grom whispered, bowing his head.
Faros snorted then led them off.
Torch in one furry hand, the ogre guard peered into the darkness beyond the camp. He bared his sharp, tusked teeth as he tried to make out shadows and furtive movement. In his other hand, his club dragged on the rock-hard ground. Same as usual: nothing.
Grunting his satisfaction, the hirsute guard turned and surveyed the sleeping camp. There, for his kind, lay the more likely danger. The slaves were beaten and feeble, t
rue, but now and then, one or two grew desperate enough to try to escape. Though he enjoyed the hunts and even on occasion let a slave think he had made it to freedom, Sahd punished the guards if he was in the mood, punished them almost as terribly as he did the prisoners. There had been too many escapes lately. Sahd was in a bad mood.
A shadowy ripple in the camp made the ogre squint. Likely it was another guard on his rounds, but it paid to be certain.
Just then an arm wrapped itself around his throat, pulling him down at the same time. A hand smothered his startled yelp.
Another pair of hands seized his torch and club. The ogre recognized the hated form of an Uruv Suurt—a minotaur—but this one had shattered chains that allowed him full movement, unlike those in the pen.
The arm tightened on the ogre’s throat. He struggled to breathe, grabbing at the suffocating limb.
A third set of hands took hold of his, keeping him from freeing himself.
A moment later, he slumped.
“Carry him this way,” Faros whispered to Grom. “Valun! Keep that torch high, but away from your head.” From a distance, he would appear to be a guard, but his horns and muzzle would immediately give away the truth if he dipped the torch.
Grom checked the ogre. “He’s dead.”
“Good. Hurry up.”
They dragged the body out among the high rocks, and then Faros and Grom reentered the camp. They bent low as they moved from one structure to another, ever aware that other guards might walk by at any moment.
As they passed a pen holding meredrakes, one of the huge lizards lifted its head and quietly hissed. The minotaurs froze, but then the dull-witted meredrake lowered its head again, ignoring them. The giant reptiles made excellent hounds during the day, but at night the cooler weather left them torpid.
Faros waved Grom on. They skirted several of the guards’ huts, hearing heavy snoring inside. The minotaurs moved cautiously, aware that waking one ogre could mean their deaths.
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