Why Your Cities Burn, Part III

...Gobayth’s mind was nearly crushed, this was his life now, it appeared, and all sorts of depressing thoughts flooded his mind that first half-year. Was this what life was really like for most of the souls in this world? An endless, unpaid drudgery, with slashing whips always unfurled? Was this how ‘settled’ people lived? Is so, then why bother with life? How could those outside tolerate something so blatantly not right? How could the know half of these slaves were of their own Black Flint people? Did they not value their own kind to tolerate such an evil? And then his thoughts got darker still, recalling when he was still free, he began to ask of the gods, ‘Why did you do all this to me?’ Had his free life out on the moors just been a very long set-up to contract with this life of pain, with these conditions cruel and rough? Were the gods laughing at all this, did they enjoy his suffering? Had this whole life been one big joke, just an excuse for their laughing? Eventually he reach a point when he felt he no longer cared, his mind a tired, broken mess, fully convinced it would die there. But then new slaves were brought inside, and he saw there, amongst the swell, one of the captives was a girl, he doubted she was more than twelve. He knew not why they’d brought her here, she was too small to swing a pick, but when the guards approached the girl, the awful truth began to click. She was of the Black Flint people, and of them it was sometimes said they used kids as collateral when they had to take out a debt. And as the dragged her to their huts, then screamed throughout all of the rape, he asked what father would do this to get out of having to pay? And what sort of people allowed this to happen to their own kind? Now anger replaced the fatigue that had been degrading his mind. The guards abused their new plaything, they put the poor child through hell, did not even go easy when her thin body started to swell. The screaming stopped as the girl’s mind broke under the endless assaults, for many months he wondered if the girl was still alive at all. Until, about six months later, they dragged the young woman outside, her toothless mouth spouted madness, and red blood coated both her thighs. Her belly was still distended, and she bellowed in agony, he realized it was childbirth, but it had come much too early. Not a soul did move to help her contracting there, down in the dirt, it was clear that something was wrong as blood came out of her in squirts. CONT.