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…'
