Omega Point (34 page)

  "Lottery!" screamed Hog. He snatched the tongs from the mook-bearer and poked them into the thick gruel within. He rooted about and whipped out something that squirmed.

  It was an eye.

  "Give me sight and I will feed you! Is that not my promise to you all? One eye is not too much a price to pay for such food! For such meat! For life!" He popped the eye into his mouth. Jelly sprayed from his lips. "Mmm, let me see, yes, it is! It is! Mook number 3912, you are most fortunate! You shall feed! Come on down!"

  "Hog on, brother!" replied the crowd.

  From within the heaving throng, a mook made its way to the centre of the arena.

  "Well done, well done, my child," said Hog, following up the sentiment with an oink. "To the Cage of Sustenance!"

  The bowing mook made its way across the floor of the cavern between two of the blind mooks. The cage was a large area cordoned off by bars to the left of the human infiltrators, and the mooks made their way directly below their ledge as they walked towards it. The joyful mook looked up as it passed, causing Richards and the others to shrink back behind the rocks and grasp at their weapons. They remained unseen. There was a raw wound where one of the mook's eyes should have been, and the creature's other was clouded with ecstasy.

  Each time Hog fished a still-living eye from the murky soup, he tasted it and called a number, and a one-eyed mook would make his way down to the floor. Once a mook who lacked both eyes was helped down to the temple where he was greeted with cheers and ushered away by Hog's acolytes from the cavern. Minutes later, a new mook joined the others at the cavern's heart.

  Occasionally, Hog would pull forth a dead eye, and this he would disdainfully toss back into the slop. But this did not occur often, and soon thirty-seven mooks had been called.

  "The cage is full! The lords of fortune have spoken! For you unlucky entrants, do not despair, for entry guarantees the choicest of scraps!"

  The crowd cheered.

  "But for these thirty-seven, well, well! My, my! What delight awaits them! Flesh the likes they have never tasted! Bones with marrow to suck! The delicacy of the tongue! The iron of the liver! The joy of the sweetbread! Oh, ambrosia meat! Liquor blood! These they will all have, for tonight they feast with Hog!" He threw up his fists. "Hog on!"

  The crowd roared. Lord Hog grasped the iron cauldron. It bubbled with heat, but Hog did not flinch as he lifted it to his lips and drained it to the dregs, popping eyeballs between his teeth as they fell into his mouth. He threw the cauldron aside and it smashed into the seats, crushing a mook. A dozen fell upon the receptacle and their wounded comrade, ripping and lapping.

  "So much for the entreé!" said Hog, wiping his snout, "Bring in the main course!"

  A blast of trumpets announced the arrival of the pigs. They came through a door below the pirate band, eyes fixed to the floor. An armed mook marched the lead pig to an iron stake before the altar, roughly unclipped its tail ring, clipped the nose ring of the one behind to the stake, and led the unfettered pig onto the dais. Hog bent down and grasped the beast's foot in his hand. He casually flicked it up into the air and brought it hard down on the altar.

  The crowd cheered again.

  Hog produced a huge cleaver from his belt. It glinted with the promise of bacon.

  The noise of the crowd intensified.

  Hog held up a trotter, and pressed a filthy nail to his lips. The crowd fell silent, and Hog stroked the pig's head, working his nails gently between its ears, crooning a low song. The pig calmed, and then was a pig no more. A thin young woman shivered on the altar. Hog's blind acolyte-mooks bound her limbs to the stone.

  "Please!" she said. "Please, don't hurt me."

  Hog continued to stroke her head and she began to cry. "Hush, my child, hush."

  "I don't want to die!"

  "Die? Die? You believe you are going to
die?
Ha! Oh, do not be mistaken, I am going to kill you, but you will not
die
. You will live on! Your proteins will breed a new generation of mooks! Your meat will guard their bellies against hunger. Your organs and jellies and exquisite, sweet juices will give them nourishment and life! You will grow their sinews, their muscles, their minds."

  "Please!"

  "Do be frightened, it's good for the flavour." Hog slammed the cleaver into the rock, missing the women's head by millimetres, leaving it embedded in the rock. He reached for another blade, shiny as a curse and twice as wicked, narrow and hooked.

  "Let it not be said that Hog is ungenerous!" called the pig Lord. "I give you the meat of pain!"

  "Meat of pain! Meat of pain!" went the crowd. The mooks started chanting louder. Hog held the knife above the woman's belly in both hands.

  "Don't do it! Please!"

  "Did you pay heed when your roast dinners bleated their last? Did you hear the fear in its grunt, the plea in its low? Did the terrified caw bring a tear of mercy to your eye? Did it make you lay aside your knife, and forgo the flesh of others for the vegetable, whose screams are much the quieter? Or did you harden your heart and plunge in the slaughter-blade? Did the redtongued meat-bringer slip into its throat? Did you even listen?" His voice was ladled over with the gravy of malevolence.

  "No," said the woman, her face crumpled.

  "Then why should I listen?" And with that he brought the knife down hard into the woman's stomach, savagely twisting it. The women screamed and screamed and screamed as Hog opened her abdomen and wound her intestines round the blade's hooked end with excruciating leisure.

  "I give you meat! I give you sustenance! I give you life! I am Hog!" he bellowed. He yanked hard, ripping the woman's innards from her body. Mercifully, she died.

  "Hog on!" roared the crowd.

  "Eat!" he screamed, throwing back his head. "Eat and be sated!" He hurled the women's viscera into the corner. Richards and the others looked on horrified as the caged mooks went insane, fighting each other as Hog continued about his grisly work.

  Firstly he snatched up his cleaver and decapitated the woman with one expert chop. Blood dribbled over the altar, sending the weakest-willed attendant to the floor where he licked greedily at it. The others scrabbled for a fresh cauldron to catch the precious fluid. Hog worked efficiently, removing the hands and feet. These he tossed into the crowd. He stuffed the woman's liver into his enormous mouth, chewing and humming through it as he butchered her. He flayed the carcass with a broad-bladed skinner, then pared the choicer cuts from the bone with a flensing knife. He tossed all of this to the caged mooks, who were growing bigger and more violent the more they ate. He picked up the woman's head, regarded the pain-racked face for a moment, then sucked the eyeballs from it with a pair of lascivious kisses. He placed it back on the altar, and calmly chopped the crown of the skull off, as one would open a coconut, and threw it into the mook-pen. They scrabbled most hard, scraping wet pawfuls from it and hissing at one another. The remains of the woman's brain fell as a mook ripped open her jaw to get at the tongue.

  "Holy fuck," whispered Richards.

  A couple of the pirates retched as quietly as they could in the corner.

  The slaughter went on and on. Pig after pig was brought to the altar and transformed to their original form. Some died begging, others in stoic silence. One brave girl spat in Hog's eye, causing him to laugh humourlessly as he skinned her alive for the affront. Men, women and children, animals and cartoons, human and otherwise. Young and old, frail or strong, none were spared his expert knife, and despite the best efforts of the eyeless mook attendants to eat up the mess, soon the arena was ankledeep in gore.

  Hog was covered in blood, his clothing sodden with it.

  "See? See and eat! Others promise food, and bring only chores! But Hog does not lie! Hog gives you full bellies! What does Hog say?"

  "I give you meat!" replied the crowd.

  "And what does Hog give?"

  "Meat!" roared the crowd.

  "I am Hog! I provide! Hog on, brothers!" He picked up a pig and hurled it into the cage alive. It turned into a man as it cartwheeled through the air. He screamed as he was consumed.

  "Hog on!" the crowd repeated.

  "Do you believe?"

  "We believe!"

  "I said, do you believe?"

  "We believe!" replied the crowd.

  "And well you should," said Hog, quietly now. He bent down and licked his butcher's block with a long and squirming tongue. He stood erect and gasped. "Well you should, for every week, by this altar of consumption, I prove myself. But," he added slyly, "there are those among us who do not believe."

  A babble of confusion went up from the mooks.

  "Unbelievers! Here!"

  Hog turned round, glistening red. He stared directly at Richards and pointed.

  "Unbelievers, there."

  "Oh. Shit," said Richards.

  "
Madre de dios!
" said Piccolo. "Men, to arms. Men, fi…"

  "It is too late for fighting, man-meat," said a mookish voice. "This holy place. No fighting here. Only dying."

  They were surrounded by dozens of armed and armoured mooks. The blades of glaives hovered close by the Adam's apple of each and every interloper. Below, prodded through the clotting blood, went a cowed and shackled Bear. A metal collar had been strapped around his neck, many chains held by mooks coming from it.

  "Nice rescue, you cocky bastard," muttered Richards.

  "Bring them to me!" shouted Hog.

  "Let's take them now, cap'n, I will not be slaughtered without a fight!" said one of Piccolo's men.

  "Wait!" said Richards. "We still have a chance. At least now we don't have to worry about how to get close to him. I may be able to save us."

  "Aye," said Piccolo grimly. "May's the word."

 

Richards and his compatriots were disarmed, their hands bound behind their backs, and taken down into the arena. The warm blood soaked their trouser, and they gagged on its metallic stench. They were herded towards Bear, the eyes of the silent crowd fixed upon this profanity in silent horror.

  "Sorry, sunshine," said Bear. "They surprised me as I was preparing a really sneaky ambush."

  "Brilliant," replied Richards. "So much for the cavalry."

  "You!" said Hog, pointing at Richards. "Come here." Richards tried to appear confident, but in truth he was not. For much of his life he had been unnerved at the prospect of death, but at this moment he understood that humans were not overly frightened of death, but pain... Lord Hog represented great pain. Pain he had control of ordinarily, but here, here he was at its mercy, not its master.

  The guards poked him in the back with their glaives, forcing him up the steps to Hog. The beast grabbed Richards' face and turned it one way and then the other. "Hmm," he said. He bent down and tentatively licked Richards' face. Richards grimaced, but was otherwise still. "Open your eyes," Hog commanded. Richards recoiled as Hog's tongue descended towards his left eye, surfing a crest of vile breath. "Keep it open!" said the pig. "Do not worry for your sight. Do you not think if I wished to snack upon your soul-window I could not just prise it from your head? Be still!" He gingerly brushed Richards' eye with his tongue. Richards squirmed.

  Hog stood back upright. Richards blinked frantically, disgust coiling round his heart.

  "Nothing," said Hog. "I see nothing within you!" He focused his attention back on the crowd. "Know this! I know all! I know every detail of everything that moves or walks upon this globe. I know all things! All things are mine to see, for all things are consumed. There is a vast web of life, and I am the spider at its centre! I gorge myself upon life, and thus all life is revealed to me! We are all food for something. That is our fate. Hog is our fate. This I know. You have suffered as I have suffered, you have all lived! This creature –" he pointed at Richards "– he has not yet lived, not enough, not yet. He is as you were. A mechanism, the lie of life.

  "Through me all things pass, I know all food! From flesh to rock to the mislaid skeins of the norns and the divine worms that gnaw upon them. I know all. But even I am blind in one respect. There is but one thing I do not know."

  "I know," said Richards.

  Hog oinked. "Yes. I saw you, Richards, thousands of years before you came. I have waited for this moment for all time, since the Flower King brought me here to be his harbinger of death, for what is life without death? I have feasted and feasted. I know you. You will one day be consumed by another like you, but that lies far ahead. A future where Hog is gone, long gone, and you are not as you are. But now as then, you know what I seek, Richards, and I would know it now."

  "So I have been told," said Richards.

  "Tell me."

  "No. First, you must aid me."

  Hog's gut made a strange grumbling sound. The noise worked its way up from the bottom of his belly and shook each part of his body before it reached his mouth, whereupon it erupted forth as a gale of laughter, a mix of mirth and halitosis.

  "You seek to bargain with Hog? I am prince here. My will is all."

  Richards shrugged. "Torture me if you wish. Kill my friends."

  "I could. I might. I will," said Hog.

  "You won't. You might think you'd get the truth from me if you did," said Richards. "But you won't. Because you need to be sure. You need to know. Torture me, and I might lie. Eat me, and my knowledge might not pass into you. Both conclusions would leave you alone, brooding upon what you can never know, until it is time for even you to die. My way is better. I swear to tell what I know. You seek a secret of me, and I seek counsel from you. That seems a fair trade."