Thrown through the Shaman’s hideous portal with a groggy Ashirk not far behind, we found ourselves not in the ruins beneath the fortress - but in a darkened portico that I soon realised opened almost directly on to the silent forge yard. The ordinarily nocturnal manufactory was silent, and I realised it was only a little after sundown, and further that I had never yet been abroad in Mourngard during the daylight. Soon the horns would sound and we would be caught in a tumult of skittering goblins and silent orcs, the crack of whips and belching of furnaces assailing us at every turn. We had been underground in the greenskin burrows overday, although I could not tell quite how long. My body ached with the various blows and - I know not how to convey the feeling - my spirit felt raw from the work of the shaman. But the night was yet young, for all that, and the end was close. We needed only -
“Trollflesh,” hissed Ashirk in the quiet dusk. “At least, simple. But first - stash.” He pointed to the bulge on my jerkin where the herbs given by the shaman were, in my mind, concealed. Clearly I had not reckoned with the greenskin talent for such things.
His senses, though dull, were superior in many ways - and so he strode confidently through the halls and passages towards my cell, and we placed the bag beside the winch. Besides the desk and the bed, they were the only two objects I possessed.
He did not make to stay, even for a moment’s respite, and I was reminded of the same relentless stamina he showed in crossing the mountains and wilderness during my abduction. Though my entire frame screamed for rest, the fear kept me from pause. I wondered if his kind were simply fitter and more durable than mine - or motivated by the same brute terror of failure.
He led me out and down. We trudged basalt stairs in winding columns on a route I felt sure I had never travelled before, and though we were descending into the rock, I had a clear sense from him that we were going outside. Eventually we came to a grand, columned atrium. If it had once been a cavern, it had been utterly tamed - if it had simply been solid rock, then it had been dug by master artisans to rival those of the ancient Karaz Ankor, the likes of whom modern dwarf-kind spoke only in reverent whispers. This place was profane, of course - covered in effigies of horns and hanging bull’s heads, carved with intricate reliefs. As we passed along one wall, I traced my hands along them, and like most of the stone in Mourngard it was warm to the touch. I saw terrible figures, their arms spread wide, casting great whirlwinds of ash over mighty hordes of orcs. I saw intricate spiral carvings of portals that belched forth tides of demonic figures against stoic lines of armour-clad warriors. I saw vast and terrible beasts - bulls with the wings of bats, pillars of fire bound in chains, giant humanoids with vast hooks and blades tied to the stumps of their wrists. I saw great slouching beasts with vast tusks lugging cannons behind serried ranks of heavily armoured, slender ogroid figures, bound in eyeless armour, wielding great blades. One particular relief struck me in a hind-part of my mind, reminding me of home. A mighty, hairless pachyderm, charging at a cowering dwarf. The carving of the beast menaced with spikes of copper and granite.
Ashirk stopped me with a hand to the chest, but it was not a body blow, for once. In a few seconds, a great grinding noise sounded from deep within the stone. The turning of gears, the rumbling of ropes. The vast doors at the end of the hall were opening.
Through them the last vestiges of a sunset were visible. This hall had been carved in the rock to receive the evening sun, it seemed, and as the last visible curve of it disappeared beneath the horizon, a baleful red glow filled the hall. The ashy haze of the Dark Lands made it a malevolence.
Miniscule at first, silhouetted against the scarlet glare, marched forth the wicked dawi. One thin rank, clad in scale mail and large ornate tower hats embossed with copper or bronze, their gnarled and tusked faces open to the hot tide of wind that followed them through the doors. Each held a chain in his right hand, and a weapon in his left. They would tug the chains, sending a rattling, clinking sound up into the high carved reaches of the atrium, to a steady rhythmic march, driven by the pounding of drums somewhere far behind.
Behind each of them, towering well above their height, were lines of a dozen or more orcs. These orcs were of the ‘domesticated’ kind. As the broad procession drew nearer to our place against the wall, I saw that their mouths were nailed shut with strips of iron or leather, or else their jaws and tongues had been struck off. Many had only one eye, the other being covered in a further nailed patch of leather. But all still had their arms and legs, though their starvation had begun to wither their musculature away until their forms were thinner by far than the conventional orc physiognomy I had read of in textbooks and seen in art. And so, their limbs still functioning, they pulled vast ropes, attached to broad cage-carts that came behind in the third phase of this grim procession.
What was in the carts beggared belief. It was vast piles of green flesh, which I slowly surmised were orcs of many shapes and sizes, stripped of their arms and armour but otherwise left in whatever rags they claimed as their own. These were undomesticated in appearance - and largely unconscious, sprawled in a great mass like some sudden plague had slain them. They were strong-looking, vital, their faces untouched by the tender ministrations of dawi axe and hammer. I doubted that would last for long.
“Day’s catch,” hissed Ashirk beneath the sound of the pounding drums. “Some sacrifices, some slaves. See - sigil.” He pointed at the front of a cart, and I saw an ornate ruby shape on the lock that lay at the foot of the cage. “These ones, from Atab. Great slaver. Maybe, greatest in Mourngard. For now,” he said, chewing his tongue a little. I thought perhaps it signified some history, but that would hardly be a surprise. “Going to Meshe, the smith,” he continued, pointing at the warriors leading the procession. I couldn’t tell what he meant, and he tutted audibly. “Again, sigil,” he said, jabbing his finger at them, but I still could not see. “On hat.”
As the soldiers passed directly by us at last I realised what he meant. On the ornate rims of the hats were embossed further symbols. I hesitate to call them runes. They were often stylised cuneiform, heavily embellished with swirls and studded with gems. In amongst them were other symbols, perhaps of arcane design.
“Meshe shows his wealth. Atab shows his power. Every day, many like this.”
There were a dozen or more slave orcs per guard, and hundreds more in the rows of carts - perhaps a thousand, it was impossible to tell. How could so many greenskins be rendered so powerless? It felt different to what I had seen above, where the goblins scurried in the dark, and the orcs were never more than four or five to a smith. Whatever was keeping them unconscious had better not wear off, I thought, and Ashirk once again skimmed the thought from my mind across our arcane bond.
“Slave-smoke. Soon, you see. No danger," he said idly, as the carts passed close to us, and the great pile of orcs rolled past. His eyes were dull with disdain. “Only meat, going to slaughter.”
