Erki scowled, but without his pack he trudged upward, making it a point to stay a few steps in front of Draysky. The nerve near Draysky’s collarbone pinched between the straps, spreading a dull ache into his neck, and his heart throbbed through the arteries constricted by the weight. After two minutes, his breath started coming hard, heat building up underneath his heavy coat and perspiration coating his face despite the biting wind.
“See, not so easy, is it?” asked Erki, and Draysky gritted his teeth as they started gaining on the group again. The Keepers would be watching for weaklings, he knew, and already the other two chiselers were far ahead. The hardest workers would be given first choice of pickaxes, avoiding those with wobbling heads or splintering shafts. They would also be allowed to choose their team. It could not be the team of their fathers, though, for in the event of a shaleslide, a father and son shalestruck at the same time would devastate their remaining family. That meant beggars, and charity was not a priority among the Keepers. But the population of beggars always reset each year, for without firewood, winter eliminated them more efficiently than the gallows. The shale would stack alongside their house, burying it as the years passed, and eventually a new one would be built upon the forgotten grave.
Draysky’s thighs burned as the top of the mountain came into view, but by now he had reached Oliver, who spotted their approach and pursed his lips. But he said nothing as they fell in behind him, and Draysky focused on following his footsteps, avoiding any areas where the shale looked unsteady. Slipping here, sandwiched by packs on his back and front, could mean a much longer tumble than he expected.
“Hold!” came a shout from the front, as the other Keeper stopped. They could hear the rumbling from the ridge now, and he scanned the upper slope high above, his eyes squinting. Here there was little to no snow on the surface, only in the cracks where it collected after being shaken from any loose ground, and the Keeper studied the surface, searching for areas with the least build up. Raising a finger, he drew three shapes in the air—grey runes, all identical, that shimmered in unison as he completed them. Puffs of snow flew up the mountain side as Erki whispered beside Draysky.
“My da told me about this: He’s tapping. That’s why we’re safe, he’s hitting the unsteady rocks and making sure they don’t start tumbling before we walk underneath. So see, no rush.”
“You want your pack back then?” asked Draysky, and Erki shut his mouth, watching as Oliver repeated the motion on a separate region of the mountain, then slid back on his white velvet glove and shouted for them to continue. The stones beneath their feet now shook with the rumbling, and even the most experienced of ridgers kept their eyes upward, moving closer to the Keepers. Ten minutes later they finished the final stretch, cresting the mountaintop and catching up with the two other chiselers.
“Don’t even look real,” whispered Linus, whose build was nearly as stout as he was tall, and whose father had been shalestruck two years before. He was still a year too young to be a ridger, but his mother needed the pay as her providing brother grew older, and his near accidents on the mountain grew more frequent.
“Not in the least,” Draysky agreed, dropping both his packs from his shoulders, the sound of the rumbling now reaching a roar.
A crater spanned the top of the mountain, an irregular circle a half mile wide, the edges forming a jagged beige line against the cloudy backdrop. Shale arced down from those points, in a steep decline that dragged loose rocks inward.
But it was the center that drew Draysky’s attention.
Rocks crashed together at the bottom of the pit, rolling in ocean-like waves, crushing and tumbling over each other in a roar of dust and sand and shale. The depression bucked, spraying shale high into the air where it rained down upon the sides and trickled back down, the occasional piece flying high enough to lodge itself at the crater’s lip. At the far end, a small plume of dust rose as one of the mounds gave way, spilling down the mountainside as more shale leapt up to replace it. Then the process repeated, the center gnashing and pulling rock downward like an enormous gurgling drain, then spraying its contents back up like a geyser.
“Aye, enjoying the view?” asked one of the ridgers, leaning against his pickaxe as another began to set up the rigging. “Loses its appeal after you’re down in there, and your ears are left ringing when you go home. And when you see what the Grinder can do to a pickaxe.”
“That’s where you get the crystal from?” Draysky asked, taking an involuntary step back. “How can anyone survive that?”
“Ha! No, that’s just where the crystal comes from, where it boils up, you see. Down there is death, but we don’t have to go all the way down there. We just gotta go halfway. Burnsby’s the name, by the way—team lead on this shift.”
Draysky nodded, recognizing the man, as few faces managed to stay unfamiliar in the outpost. His father had pointed him out a few days earlier, making sure Draysky could spot each of the team leaders before his first shift. He’d ended with himself: He’d been managing his own team since two years prior.
Burnsby adjusted his helmet, working out a kink in his jaw and rolling his neck before barking orders at two far younger ridgers who had started unpacking near the lip. One of them produced a metal stake as long as Draysky’s arm, and the other turned the head of his pickaxe around to the end specially outfitted like a sledgehammer. After a few gentle taps to embed the tip, he threw his weight into the blows, driving the stake an inch deeper with each rattling connection. A chorus of other clinks joined as more ridger teams followed with their own stakes, each spreading twenty feet away from their neighbors. Then they looped cord around an eyehole at the end of the stake, tossing the rest of the coiled rope down toward the Grinder.
“Hey, you!” A shout jerked away Draysky’s attention as Oliver approached, his face still reddened from the climb, even though he bore no pack. “Did I say you could put that water down? Move it to the center of the line, before we drop. Let’s go now, move it!”
Draysky picked up a pack in each hand, his shoulders still sore from the trek up and his biceps straining as he edged around the outside of the lip.
“Did I say you could carry two packs? Each ridger gets one pack. You, chiseler, what are you doing watching? Get on over there.”
Erki turned away from the Grinder, releasing a heavy sigh as he slouched and addressed the Keeper.
“Sir, he just carried them both up the mountain, he’s got them both.”
“Did he now?” asked the Keeper, narrowing his eyes on Draysky, who had already started to edge away. Rarely, if ever, was a Keeper’s attention positive. “We have a strong ridger in the making then? Carrying them both by yourself, like you think you’re better than the rest of them?”
“No, that’s not–” Draysky started, but Oliver cut him off.
“Well I think you are better than them! Water is the heavier pack, and if you can take two, that’s a resource we should hardly put to waste. From now on, chiseler, you carry double up the mountain. Since you’ve already proved yourself once.”
The muscles in Draysky’s neck tightened as Erki started to relax, turning back toward the Grinder, but he knew better than to speak. A punishment doled out at a whim was easily forgotten. But one argued about would lodge itself in the Keeper’s mind.
“You hear that?” shouted Oliver to the pairs of ridgers as Draysky walked past. “Extra water rations for everyone! We now have five packs coming up the mountain on this shift.”
“Five?” asked Erki, and Draysky cursed under his breath, wishing the other boy would learn to keep quiet.
“Indeed, five. Two for him, and one for each of the other chiselers. You didn’t think that he would continue carrying your pack, did you?” The Keeper laughed as Erki’s face fell, and Draysky set down the water, propping the packs up for easy access near the other ridgers. “I’ve half a mind to give you two as well. Can always use more water, if not for thirst, then for washing off this damn dust.”
; The ridgers crowded around the water, each taking a quick swig before returning to their station. Then Burnsby brushed shoulders with Draysky, keeping his voice low as he spoke.
“Just keep quiet, boy. If that Erki follows in his father’s footsteps, he’ll soon keep the Keepers occupied. They might not be good ridgers, but one that keeps the Keepers’ attention off the rest of us is a worthy shift mate, whether they intend it or not.”
“Seems like he’s drawn that attention over to me, instead.”
“Aye, but that’s just because Keeper Oliver there has only been leading up the mountain a few weeks now and is looking to make a name for himself. They all come in like that, thinking they’re heaven’s glory sent down from the kingdom. Until they realize they’re just as stuck out here as the rest of us.”
“Unless we pay off our debts,” said Draysky, and the older ridger threw his head back in a laugh.
“Right you are there, boy. Right when we dig to the bottom of the Grinder, because that’ll be coming first.”
Keeper Oliver’s whistle screeched, and the ridgers straightened at their paired positions. One facing the ridge, one facing outward with his heels over the ledge, his gloved hands on the cord that looped through a hole in his belt, and his pickaxe strapped to his back. Then the Keeper’s whistle blew a second time, and half the ridgers fell backward over the edge, clasping the rope as they rappelled down the incline. Plumes of dust rose where their boots bounced off the shale, the rockslides here inevitable but cascading behind them. At a hundred yards they reached the knot at the end of the rope and grasped their pickaxes, as their partners checked the stakes, ensuring they had not shaken loose. Then the Keeper’s whistle blew a third time, and they began striking at the shale, digging and raking with their pickaxes more than smashing. At the lip their partners fastened long shallow buckets over the cords, affixing the handles to a second rope and lowering them down to the waiting ridgers.
When the buckets reached them, the dangling ridgers searched through the shale, up to their arms in the rocks, pulling out pieces and holding them up toward the light before collecting them. Steadily the buckets filled, and too far away to be heard Oliver raised a hand in accompaniment to his whistle, signaling for the buckets to be retrieved. As the first made its way to the lip, Keeper Oliver shouted at the four chiselers, his voice as sharp as their tools.
“Let’s move, let’s move! Chiselers to the drop point, won’t have you wasting your time here. Unless one of you thinks he can be twice as efficient with two chisels, eh?”
Draysky ignored the jibe and made his way to a roped off square, where the first of the upper ridgers was already emptying a bucket. The shale here was different, with darker streaks passing through the otherwise light sandstone color, some of the lines as thin as a spiderweb. Oliver doused one of them with water and held it upward. The contrast now that it was wet was far more noticeable.
“This here, these veins, are crystal. What you do is chisel away at all the waste rock, the stuff that doesn’t matter, then throw it back into the pit. Don’t want to break our precious ridgers’ backs trying to carry excess weight down the mountain at the end of the shift. Now, if I catch you tossing crystal down there, you’ll personally be going in to retrieve it. Last I checked, all the ropes and harnesses are in use. Any questions?”
“Where’s it come from?” Erki asked, as Draysky already picked up his chisel and hammer, the mound starting to grow in front of them.
“What’s it look like? The Grinder, you vapor chewer. Mountain pushes it all up just for you to collect, but crystal is heavy. Flows back down faster than rock, back toward the bottom. But you, you got some spindly arms and legs, look pretty light too. Could fit into all those nooks and crannies in the bottom, a much better use than running your mouth. Now, any other questions?”
The other chiselers shook their heads, and Draysky already had a rock in hand, aiming the tip of his chisel to split it in half, lining up his hammer from his pack with the blunt end.
“Good. And remember, if you work slow, it’s not me you’ve got to worry about. It’s all the rest of the ridgers you’ll have loaded up like packhorses, as they carry more shale down than crystal. Not unheard of for a slow chiseler to find his way into the Grinder. Rumor is the mountain burps after eating flesh, spewing more crystal up to the surface. Wouldn’t want to give your ridgers any ideas.”
Then Oliver departed down the line, shouting orders to the ridgers, blowing his whistle every hour and a half for the ridger pairs to swap positions. As Draysky and the other chiselers worked, each tap of the hammer reverberated through their chilled bones, the skin under their gloves rubbing raw before the sun reached the top of the sky.
The Grinder gnashed, the sound all too familiar from Draysky’s nightmares. And when his bare skin touched crystal, the sound seemed to fill his eardrums, and his coat suddenly seemed too warm for the frigid day.
Chapter 14: Draysky
“Shale!”
The shout came from far down the line, and in unison the other ridgers at the rim repeated the call, in a booming concussive roar that made the chisel jump in Draysky’s hands. Already his fingers were numb, ice covering the backs of his gloves to match his frozen hair, and the pile of crystal separated from shale dismally small for his efforts.
“Shale!” came the boom again, and the ridgers yanked on their ropes, three quick pulls as a warning to those below. A half second later, a thunderous growl reached Draysky’s ears as he leapt up to the rim to see what was occurring below.
Shale jetted high up into the air from the center, pushed out by a pressurized explosion, a wave of shrapnel that sped toward the ridgers dangling below. In a practiced but urgent motion, they each dumped their buckets, then drew the metal over their heads and bodies as a shield. Like turtles perched on the mountainside, receding into their shells.
The ground bucked, the tremor tossing Draysky off his feet and forward into the crater. A gruff hand caught his collar from behind, stopping him midfall and suspended over the ledge. His breath caught as the shale pelted around the ridgers, denting their buckets with a sound like church bells, then blasting the rock loose above them in a rock slide. Still connected to their ropes, the ridgers pushed off the moving rock wall, bouncing backward as the shale slid underneath, their buckets clanging with each touch back to earth.
“Damn shalestrikes! Stealing all the crystal... That was an hour’s worth of work!” shouted Burnsby, so close to Draysky’s ear that he almost jumped back into the chasm.
“Should have emptied their buckets sooner,” the old ridger continued under his breath as he pulled Draysky back into standing position, his voice too low for the Keepers to hear. “Grinder’s always going to go off, about once a half hour, but only in our direction a quarter of the time. Got too greedy, let the ridgers fill their buckets too high. Better to bank what you have than that.”
Below, the ridgers threw off their bucket shields after a rope yank indicated the danger had passed, then dug furiously through the shale to retain what little crystal was left from the blast. At best, their buckets were filled a quarter of what they had been beforehand, the remainder lost. All except for one ridger, whose bucket remained on the pit’s side, half buried in the shale from the slides.
“We got a man down,” Burnsby said to Oliver, pointing down below to where the rope was pulled tight at the far left. “See that dent? He’s not getting up on his own, you’re going to need to send the team to their left to rescue him.”
“Once they fill their buckets,” said Oliver. “If the mountain blows again, we’ll lose their progress. He’s not going anywhere like that anyway.”
“Besides the afterlife. Lose a ridger now, and the cost will be more long term. Mountain’s not going to blow two times in a row anyway.”
“Or he’s being lazy and trying to milk all he can from an injury. The shale hit the bucket, not him,” snapped Oliver, before turning to Draysky. “And you, is the chiseling done? No? The
n quit gawking.”
Burnsby’s mouth drew tight, and Draysky returned to the crystal pile, constantly looking up and waiting for Oliver to change his mind. But thirty minutes passed before the call to pull buckets, and only then did the team nearest the fallen ridger swing over, connecting their own rope to the still form. Between the two teams, they hauled him up, the body too far away to be seen but for the legs swinging over the side of the bucket.
Then it arrived at the top, and despite Oliver’s shouted protests, the ridgers rushed over, laying the man out on the ground. One of his arms was broken, and blood trickled from the side of his head over his closed eyes. But his chest still rose and fell, the breaths shallow and rapid, his face pale. Burnsby checked his pulse, then poured out the remainder of the bucket, several cups of blood falling to stain the shale below.
“He needs to go back down the mountain. Air’s too light up here, he’s bleeding heavily. Won’t stay warm for long either.”
“He’s still breathing,” said Oliver. “And he lost all his crystal when the blast hit. That’s not the type of behavior I want to reinforce.”
“Because he was knocked out! And if you only send him down the mountain when he is not breathing, there’s no chance to bring him back,” said Burnsby, his voice gruff. The Keeper behind Oliver bristled, his finger glossing over a similar ring to the one that the Silver Keeper had worn as the other ridgers drew in closer, and the fingers in Oliver’s gloved hand twitched. Draysky dropped his chisel, the metal sticking to his glove as blood welled up from a broken blister on his palm through the fabric, and spoke before Oliver had a chance.
“I can carry him back down the mountain,” Draysky said. “Put him on my shoulders, I’ll take him right back to camp. That way there will be no interruption.”
Several of the ridgers muttered in agreement, and Oliver whipped around, his blazing eyes meeting Draysky as his control over the ridgers diminished.
Heaven Fall Page 8