Omega point

CHAPTER 19

Lord Hog's lair was an inverted mountain. Its splayed roots faced heavenwards, peak pointing down in the direction of the other place. Its stone was the colour of a corpse killed by asphyxiation. If geological processes had forced such a mountain into being, they are best left undescribed.

Although it was called the Anvil, it was more akin in shape to a clawed hand. Within the palm lay the temple of Hog, from where, Tarquin said, he ruled his subjects with an iron trotter.

Only the broad sweep of these details was visible to the stowaways on board the cable car, intent as they were on hacking away at the roof.

"Come on! We've not got much time!" said Richards. The car was closing in on the final pylon; from there the cable descended steeply to a turnaround at the base of the mountain.

"We're going as fast as we can, sunshine," grunted Bear, as he punched at the roof. It was ancient wood, seasoned by evil purpose. It splintered slowly and, although already there was a hole big enough for the men to slip through, Bear would not fit.

"Phew!" said Bear, "this stuff is harder than it looks." His gauntlets and fur were smudged with sticky creosote.

"Don't stop, man! We will be there in seconds."

"Tarky," said Bear, "I don't think it matters. I'm not going in. If I'm in there I'll blow the plan. They'll never think I'm a pig. Look, you lot go in there and hide. I'll lie flat on the roof."

"There'll be lookouts," warned Richards.

"Nay, I think not," said Piccolo. "We venture right into the heart of Hog's power. He will be complacent."

"But what if he isn't? We don't want to blow the game," said Tarquin.

"Boys, boys, boys. I'll climb up the outside of the mountain. You lot go in with the pigs. That way, if anything goes wrong, I can come and rescue you. I'm good at rescues. Sound OK?"

"I suppose," said Richards.

"Indeed," said Piccolo.

The final pylon neared; beyond, a steep run of cable. The men hurried through the hole, pushing squealing swine out of the way. The pigs defecated in fright, and huddled away from them.

"Here we go," said Bear. He laid himself spread-eagled upon the roof. "Watch out below!" he shouted, then rammed his claws into the wood as far as he was able. The car approached the last pylon.

The truckle wheel above the car bounced upon some device within the pylon's frame. The rope continued to move, but the truck was no longer being pulled along with it.

The boxcar slowed for a moment, seeming as if it would stop. There was one final bump, and it went over the edge. Richards watched through a crack in the wood as the car dropped. His stomach was left trailing as the car hurtled down toward the mountain. The pigs squealed. The mountain's topsy-turvy base rushed up to meet them. There was a metallic rumble as something connected with the wheels above, the entire car lurched violently forward as its truckle grabbed at the rope, and it was moving slowly again.

"Ow!" whispered Richards. He rubbed his face where it had smacked into the wood. He put his eye back to the crack. The cable ahead curved round a series of wheels bolted directly into stone. The terminus was ahead.

"Mr Richards!" hissed Piccolo. "Get away from there! We must make ourselves ready to disembark!" A sound of cracking wood came from above and Bear's claws disappeared from the ceiling.

There was a series of muffled thumps and the car came to a standstill. The pirates and Richards took out their weapons.

"Ready, men?" whispered Piccolo.

"Arrr!" whispered the pirates.

"As Odysseus was before Polyphemus," growled Tarquin.

The sound of bolts being drawn back preceded a loud bang as the door was pulled down to form a ramp. The sound of fluting voices came up through the floor, accompanied by the grunts of frightened pigs. There were several levels to the enormous car, and Richards and company were at the top. As each floor was cleared, a section of floor was let down to make a ramp to the level lower, and the pigs herded out. Each time it was done, a fresh chorus of terrified squeals echoed through the boxcar as the floor dropped away underneath the swine. As they went out, there was a further commotion, sounds of pain, the clang of hammers, the hiss of hot brands on skin. The boxcar filled with the aroma of burning hair where it competed with the stench of shit. Every new piggy cry sent a palpable wave of fear through the remaining animals, so by the time the swineherds reached the third floor the boxcar was rank and noisy.

The fourth floor was unloaded. Only one more lay between the stowaways and Lord Hog's servants. Richards tried to catch sight of them through cracks in the floor, but all he could make out were blinking shadows. Their words were tangled with trotter scrapes and fearful oinks, but whatever they were speaking, it was no human tongue.

Piccolo gestured to two of his crew. He pointed to the corners behind the trapdoor and moved a finger across his throat. The pirates nodded and, as quiet as cats, secreted themselves, knives in hands, amongst the pigs.

"Ready?" said Piccolo very quietly. All present nodded. "Remember, lads, quietly! Do not advertise our presence, lest we bring the whole mountain down on us."

Tarquin growled. In this confined space he could not shift his hide or Richards would be hampered by a corset of stone. Richards fingered his gun and sabre nervously.

The seconds stretched themselves out. The pigs on the floor below were driven out, and the herders undid the bolts beneath. There was a crash as the door fell open and one luckless piggy tumbled through. The creatures started up the ramp.

The creatures were of the same species that Circus had been, only larger. He had been, after all, in some respects, a true dwarf. At a metre and a half they would have towered over the transmogrified Pl'anna. They were heavily muscled, shock-pikes gripped in their kangaroo-paws.

They gabbled their singsong tongue, jabbing at pigs with their sticks. One of them stopped and grabbed at the other's naked arm.

Their frog-eyes widened; the hole in the roof. They walked toward it cautiously, pikes outstretched. They were handspans from Richards when they stopped and poked at the edges, exchanging swift sentences of alarm.

They died silently as two pirates stalked up behind them and slit their skinny throats.

Another creature came to the bottom of the ramp, calling out for his colleagues. He had time for a look of deep surprise before a thrown knife took him in the eye. Three pirates crept down the ramp onto the floor below. They gestured that it was clear.

Three more of the grey-skinned gabblers were dispatched before the band of men reached the outside. By a brazier full of coals another fell, taken in the throat by a crossbow bolt. The last, armed only with a branding iron and a pair of tongs, charged forward shouting to die upon the point of Piccolo's sword. The men held still for a moment, until sure there was no sound of alarm.

"That was, if I say so myself, not too troublesome," said Piccolo, wiping his quill-blade clean. "If we survive the world's end, that's a pot of grog I owe the each of you."

They had emerged onto a flat shelf of grey rock jutting out from the base of the mountain, which grew huge and heavy above their heads. On a broad workbench were the tools of the drover's trade: chain, nose rings, anvils, branding irons, bronze tags, paint and the like, a tall pile of clothes heaped to one side of it.

The upside-down peak of the mountain was a few yards wide, like a fat column. There was a door hewn into it. Within, the beginnings of a staircase.

"And that would be the way into the Anvil," said Richards.

"There is only the one way," said Tarquin. "Where is the secret way?"

"They are one and the same," said Richards. "Trust me."

"Shall I lead, or shall ye?" said Piccolo.

"You go ahead," Richards said, his eyes moving from the top of the car to scan the empty rockface. He frowned. "I hope Bear's OK."

The stair was damp and stank. Generations of terrified swine had left their mark in rills of ossified urine. The steps were worn and slippery with effluvia and old blood.

The group proceeded, checking every shadow in the rough passage. There was little to be seen; no other ways led out from the blue gloom. Despite their cautious pace, they soon reached the back of the line of pigs processed before their assault on the drovers' camp. These had been chained together in inhumane fashion, a ring forced through the nose of each, a second piercing the flesh above the tail. Chains had been passed through these to link the pigs together in a long train. They walked slowly, heads down, their fear-haunted eyes an indication that they had not always been as they were.

The pirates matched apace with the rearmost swine. The steps wound upward, becoming broader with each turn. As they grew in width, so the light grew brighter, filtering down through fissures in the stone along with cold drops of water. The screeches of small things scuttling in the dark stung the ears of the band.

They came to a rough crossroads. A narrow fissure went through the stairs, a stone bridge carrying them across. To one side the fissure widened out, its sheer walls plunging to depths unknown. But to the other it was narrow. Richards shut his eyes and consulted the information given to him in Secret. It was a strange sensation, this form of clear memory. He'd become so used to being bound in flesh he'd come close to forgetting what he truly was.

"Look," said Richards as quietly as he could. "On this side the ravine goes up. It is climbable. This is the secret way in."

Piccolo joined him, craning his head at the distant light. "That is the truth, Mr Richards."

"We have to go up here. These stairs go right into the middle of the mountain, and we will not be safe there."

"Quite," said Tarquin. "You'll still have to announce yourself to Hog."

"I'm working on that," said Richards.

"If he does not listen, my friend, we are lost no matter what. At least this way we may go down with a shout, if little else," said Piccolo.

The climb was easy, for the walls were rough and close enough together that they could brace themselves in the gap. They reached the top quickly and hauled themselves out into a shallow cave. Behind them rose another cliff, to their front the heart of the Anvil.

The group crept on and hid behind boulders at the mouth of the cave, raising careful heads over this natural parapet.

The heart of the Anvil was a roofless cavern nestled in the centre of the mountain's cupped plateau, a perfect natural amphitheatre. Stalagmites protruded from the floor, their stalactite counterparts gone, a sky hazy in their stead. A rift in the wall opposite the cave looked out onto this same unclear air. All round the amphitheatre were tiered rows of stone benches, facing inwards to the very centre, the centre where stood the Temple of Hog.

At the very centre of this very centre was an altar of black granite upon a dais carved with frightening reliefs. The sides and top of both stone and platform were stained matt with a substance no one needed to name. Rusted manacles, likewise soiled, were attached to its four corners. A ring of seven Y-shaped columns surrounded the dais, the flat centre of each reached by free-standing bridges arcing in from an outer ring of stone. Set above them was a frieze of dragons, wyrms and chimerae.

In the seats sat thousands of the grey-skinned creatures as still as the statues, as drab as the stone. Were it not for the soft breeze of their exhalations their presence might not have been noticeable at all.

For five minutes it remained like this. The pirates, Richards and his companions exchanged glances, unsure of what to do, too wary to speak.

There came a scuffing of footsteps, loud in that deathly hall. Seven human monks filed into the room and walked round the temple. They wore crimson robes and baseball caps, a badge above each depicting a grinning cartoon pig in a chef's hat brandishing a cleaver. As each Y-shaped column was passed, a monk crossed the bridge and took up cross-legged station within. When the last monk, a senior-looking fellow with a huge peak to his cap, had occupied his place, he produced a small copper gong from his sleeve. He tapped a clean ring from it, and the monks began a nasal chant.

The hall was full of sudden rustling. The creatures blinked, as if waking from a long sleep, and settled into a counter chant to that of the monks, repeating one word over and over again.

"Hog, Hog, Hog, Hog, Hog, Hog." The name grew from a whisper to rumble out like surf and they pounded their feet upon the stone. "Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog!

"Hog!"

The chanting and pounding ceased, and the hall was cast back into silence.

Uneven footsteps, one a brisk click, the second the long, rasping drag of the uninvited, hook-handed maniac, a whistling wheeze singing in each.

Lord Hog limped into the arena.

The crowd went wild.

Hog was a porcine ogre. His fat belly swung low over the top of checked trousers, a filthy apron struggling to keep it in. He wore nothing underneath this, exposing a ruddy torso covered in wiry hair. His fists were three-fingered trotters, his digits spiked with greening nails. Beneath his snout tusks poked from lips whose ill fit caused drool to stream from his mouth. He balanced ungainly upon his trotters, one twisted into a wart-ridden club. Atop his head towered a dirty chef's hat, and about his waist was cinched a thick belt of leather from which depended blades and cleavers of all shapes and kinds, the mark of his trade, the mark of the meatman.

Hog held up a foretrotter. The crowd fell silent.

"Hog!" it bellowed through yellowing tusks. "Hog is here!"

A wave of adulation swept the cavern.

Hog looked about satisfied, nodding his head as a greedy farmer nods when he counts his cows.

"Bella Maria," whispered Piccolo.

"Brothers!" Hog cried, his words poorly formed, each followed by a spray of glutinous saliva. "Disciples! Children! Mooks! Hog is here!"

"Hog! Hog! Hog!"

"We are gathered here today to celebrate the mystery of life! The transformation of flesh into sustenance! Existence through destruction! The world bleeds and dies, yet you, my mooks, will prosper. Hog will provide! Hog will feed his children! Hog on, brothers!" he roared.

"Hog on, brother!" bellowed the crowd.

"Hog on!"

"Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog! Hog!" chanted the mooks.

"Brothers! It is time for the sacrifice, the rotation of the great wheel, the turn of life into death into life! Brothers! Today you will feeeeeeed!" He roared this last deep from within his gut, and the rocks shook.

The mooks became a frenzied mob. Their chanting became a guttural wail, devoid of intelligence.

"Lot-ter-ry, lot-ter-ry, lot-ter-ry, lot-ter-ry," they sang.

"Yes! Yes! O my brothers, o my children! Yes, it is time. Time for the lottery! Hog on, brothers!" he yelled again, his watery eyes wild with delight.

"Hog! Hog! Hog!"

"Fetch me my cauldron! Bring me my tongs!"

The crowd bayed. Into the arena came four fat mooks dragging an enormous pot on poles and chains. A fifth followed the cauldron party in, carrying a pair of tongs as tall as itself. Their eyes were covered with crusted bandages, yet they had no trouble ascending the steps to the dais. They strained as they lifted the steaming cauldron onto the altar. It rocked as they deposited it, its contents slopping upon the defiled stone.

"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 entree!" 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."

Hog snorted and paused. "Aye, I suppose it is. Let not Hog be called half-wise in matters of exchange. A deal it is." He gestured to his monk mooks, who cut Richards' hands free, and spat a gob of yellow phlegm upon his left trotter. He grasped Richards' hand with bone-crushing force and pulled him close.

"A deal, sealed with spittle. Now, tell me what I wish to know."

Richards looked the bloody horror in the eye. "Aid me first."

"Truly?"

"Yes."

Hog squeezed Richards' hand harder. Bones creaked.

"Aid me," said Richards through gritted teeth, "open the doors of the house with no doors, and I will tell you what you want."

"You know what I seek?"

"Yes," gasped Richards. His hand felt as if it would break. Hog let go.

"Well, then, you must taste the bacon of truth." Hog said this as if he were suggesting Richards simply must try the port. He gestured to his mooks again. Richards felt fear grasp his stomach, but he let the blind mooks scoop him off his feet, dump him on the stone and make his limbs fast.

"Mr Richards!" called Bear, and moved towards the altar, ignoring the glaive blades as they tore into his fur.

"I'll be OK, you know me," said Richards, his skin running with cold sweat.

Hog leaned in and ripped Tarquin from Richards' chest, tossing him over his shoulder to be caught by a mookish monk.

"Have a care, monster!" called Piccolo. "This noble beast deserves more respect than to be doused in your gore."

"And you have a care also, pirate fool, in how you address me. Your friend here has yet to reveal what I seek, and you may find yourself still upon my board." He turned to Richards. "Now, soulless thing, you will learn how painful the truth can be!" He slipped a knife as thin as a whisper into Richards' arm, and sliced.

Richards screamed. The pain was like nothing he had ever experienced, growing in intensity with each pass as Hog cut. The pig-man stood, and Richards saw through a miasma of agony that he held a strip of red meat in his hand. Somewhere beyond that, blood ran freely onto the floor.

"Now eat! Feast upon the bacon of truth!"

Richards tried to keep his teeth tight shut, but one of the mooks played a nerve in his ruined arm, and as he screamed the pig stuffed Richards' own flesh into his mouth.

"Now," said Hog, and his evil whisper sliced through the redness in Richards' mind as the knife had sliced the redness of his muscle. "What is it I wish to know?"

Richards could not speak. He choked on pain and his own meat. His only response was to scream, and he did. But it came out as this.

"To know what manner of beast you are."

"Aha! Now we proceed. Good. Then, dear Richards, tell me what manner of beast I am."

Again Richards felt he would shout his suffering to the heavens. The pain burned through him as a wildfire rips through a dry forest, everything black ruin in its wake. But at its whitehot heart, something formed, a glowing truth, and his voice rang out with clarion purity.

"Truth is fate, fate is fear. All are Hog."

"I know this! More!" Another twist of the nerve. But something had changed in Richards, and he felt this only as a man feels a wound from an old life, and talked on.

"Hog is death."

"Yes! Yes, I am!"

"But you are not Hog."

There was a short silence, Hog's face went like thunder. "What do you mean, 'You are not Hog'? I am Hog!"

"You are a thing that believes himself to be Hog. A phantom, a flicker, like me. You will die as this world dies."

"Nonsense! Hog will persist! Hog is all!"

"This world is a phantom, this world is a flicker. You will not persist. You will go on, but for only a while. Think, Hog. Think on what you are."

"I am pain! I am fear! I am fate!"

"No. Hog is the fear of a bad death and the pain it will bring. You are a pain men hope to avoid. And what is fear, without hope? And all things will die. Hope will die. Then Hog will die. Hog will be the last, but he will die."

"What? What?" Hog asked. "This cannot be! What then for Hog?"

Richards was silent.

"What then for Hog?" it roared.

Richards gasped. "You are not Hog."

Hog grabbed Richards and shook him. Richards slipped in and out of consciousness. His blood pooled on the floor by the altar. "How do you know this? How?"

"The shadow comes," Richards said, and then he was there no more.