The sight of these obscene carts filled with stunned and defenceless greenskins was a visceral reminder of what the shaman was up against. That many orcs would pose a threat to any market town in the Empire, but here they were - what? Tools? Currency? Or perhaps as Ashirk had said, simply meat for the table.
I had a horrible sense-memory of the roasted, mushroomy haunch that my jailer had fed me after I had met the Prophet, and shook off the creeping sense of realisation.
Once the procession had passed us, we walked on in the shadows, through the otherwise silent hall. At the far end were the large gates through which the wagons had passed. They ground shut slowly, but Ashirk seemed as always to know his way, and led us to a hole in the wall. What awaited beyond I had guessed at, but never truly seen.
The skyline of the dark lands glowered in the night air, and great billowing torches and braziers lit a vast flattened mesa ringed with brutal stone walls. The size of this was larger even than the forge-yard, and it was laid out with a rigidity that had been absent higher up the fortress. Where the daemonsmiths had each pursued their own somewhat chaotic labours, large and small, here the scene was one of absolute order.
Armed dwarfs in towering headwear were dotted about in knots of three or four, armed with large axes or flute-ended firearms quite unlike those of Hamazi’s warriors. In the centre of the forum was an enormous empty square, and around it layers of pens and cells made of dark iron, divided in a strict grid. The great way up to the gates of Mourngard through which we came was broad enough to have many carts abreast, but in the moments after the passage of Meshe’s slaves, a stillness had descended. There were no further carts rolling up behind, and so the doors of the fortress stood shut in the heat haze of the early night.
Everything here was intentionally exposed, and thanks to the light cast by raging fires that hung from great pillars above the cages, there were few shadows for Ashirk to slink into. The omnipresent guards eyed us persistently, their dawi countenances as still as stone, heads turning like owls observing prey. Within the dark iron cages I saw dim silhouettes of collapsed figures, some the familiar brawn of orcs, others the scrawny hunch of goblins, and yet more I did not recognise. These pens were worse than any Hochland pigsty; the only source of hygiene or relief was low gash in the iron floor, serving as a trough, through which a trickle of water flowed. I passed a goblin, conscious but clearly weak, drinking from it on all fours like a whipped dog. All the greenskins seemed subdued, half-conscious as most, those few who were moving doing so with a limpness uncharacteristic of even the weakest of their kind. And yet, there was no sign of this slave-smoke, as he had called it. The smell was simply of filthy animals and sour, acrid Dark Lands air I had become accustomed to during my abduction.
It occurred to me once again that despite my bitter misery, I was fortunate. I had not been through this place. Ashirk had arrived at a low, small grotto entrance to the Fortress and taken me up directly himself. There had been many moments of indignity on our journey, but lowering myself to drink from a trough like a beast was not one of them.
We approached a crossroads when a high-pitched scream echoed off in the distance. It pierced the air, getting slowly louder, drawing the attention of guard and slave alike. It was at once an otherworldly sound and a profane one - like the cry of an animal in fatal pain, heard through a tin cup pressed to a sewer grate.
Ashirk stopped me immediately and pressed me against the side of an empty slave-pen. He looked around us with an almost wild twitch, and I felt the surge of urgent tension across the arcane bond. He was looking for a place to hide in a space designed specifically to have none.
The scream grew louder, coming from some point in the distance past the lines of pens, and it was steadily joined by a rattling, clanking din that echoed the sounds of the forge-yard. Again, there was something wrong with the sound, though I could not yet pinpoint what it was.
On the far side of the brute stone wall that had obstructed the sunset, I saw two great doors begin to grind open, and through them billowed a cloud of thick black smoke.
The din coming from within the cloud was unbearable. The screech, I realised, was originating from a steel whistle atop a long black-metal tube sticking up towards the sky. The smoke itself was filthy, and billowed in great dark swirls that seemed to respond to no earthly wind. Heat emanated from the advancing cloud, along with the oppressive magical weight that I had by now become almost accustomed to. Dim orange and yellow lights seemed to flash within the miasma, and indistinct shapes, limbs, spikes, skulls, claws, all seemed to appear or be illuminated or form out of the smoke for a split second, disappearing again as if pulled back inside - or perhaps never there at all.
The noise, above all, I struggle to relate. Steel clanked against steel and a mechanically rhythmic beat was discernible, but it was all buried within the screeching of the whistle, the shouts of the crew, and the endless irregular banging and pounding that sounded like a herd of caged beasts battering themselves to death against the walls of the contraption. It was a blend of the order I had seen in the forge-yard, and a horrible daemonic anarchy, barely contained by the artifice of three or four wicked dawi who scuttled across it as though managing a perpetual crisis. The machine seemed at once to be in perfect operation and on its absolute last legs. It seemed to be beset from within by the frantic wrestling of iron daemons. It rolled forward steadily, trailing smoke and sparks and flecks of what looked like magma. The whole artifice began to emerge visibly from the smoke, which started to dissipate somewhat, though whether this was intentional or not I could scarcely tell. Perhaps some fel wards on the gate calmed the magics within; perhaps the crew had tightened some ineffable valve; in hindsight, writing this now from the comfort of home, I think I know the truth - but to explain that, I must first carry us forward to the point where it will make a kind of perverse sense.
For the machine trundled on, into the great dusty road of the forum, and some of the knots of dawi guards began to make towards it with a leisurely pace. Others stayed firmly in place, watching their pens. I noted that the ones advancing were those who had been gathered around pens that were empty - and that was most of them.
I could see why. Behind the abominable machine were cage-carriages, each one filled with greenskins of every shape and size. Atop these cages, perched on the bars or on flat metal platforms, were all manner of knife-wielding hobgoblins. These creatures were some of the most alike Ashirk I had ever seen, and one or two eyed at him or gestured as their carts passed. Most hovered observantly over their cage, eyeing the greenskins within suspiciously, blades drawn. One or two nearest the front had been slapping themselves or gnashing their teeth bitterly, for they had been caught in the heaviest billows of the bitter smoke from the engine that led them on, and were unsurprisingly disoriented. Towards the rear of the trailing line of cage-carriages, the greenskins seemed more alert.
Eventually, after perhaps a dozen carriages had trailed past, I saw that the cages became a little different. Now they were fitted with manacles and chains, with many of the orcs bound in great bundles of rope or weighed down with solid iron about the ankles. One or two seemed to be powerful or particularly brutish orcs, isolated or otherwise held down with greater intensity, and watched by packs of two or three hobgoblins whose weapons were drawn and focus was total. Lastly came a wave of icy chill through the air, and a final carriage that was a solid cast black-iron box, with a dozen or more doors around it. This was crewed by thickly armoured dawi with low, ornate hats and heavy iron clubs. They wore masks, but not the kind Hamazi’s men wore; these masks were a protective cage of curved bars, allowing the wearer to breathe, see and speak freely. I knew the look immediately - these were beast-handlers of some kind. They were dressed as I would have dressed to handle a young hippogriff, or a pachyderm in musth, or perhaps an Indan tiger cub. Their weapons were those of a night-watchman or cutpurse - blunt, heavy, to stun or crush. What their sinister contraption held within I would soon discover, but even in ignorance the value of their cargo was clear.
At last, this final carriage was through the gate, and the machine wound on only a little further as the assembled slave-guards took their places. The hobgoblins leapt down from their perches, and after a momentary pause, a great bronze gong rang out.
All at once I was drowning in the sound of whips.