Runebound 01 Rune Empire

by Sandell Wall

  Dranzen loitered at the edge of the hole, obviously waiting for something. The work shift had already changed, so he was alone as he looked down into the pit.

  Brax craned his neck to look into the distance outside the city. “There’s a wagon train about to be loaded,” he said. “He’s waiting for the stone to be activated so he can descend into the hole.”

  Confused, Aventine watched Dranzen drop to his hands and knees and scurry out onto a long wooden plank that jutted over the abyss. After the horn sounded, and the spire was activated, Dranzen used handholds on the beam to scramble underneath it like a spider. Aventine gasped. Despite knowing that he would not fall without the pull of the earth, it was hard not to believe she had just seen the heir of Lome commit suicide.

  Dranzen was gone. Aventine looked at Brax, who seemed to know what Dranzen was up to. “Come on,” he said, and they launched themselves through the air to the edge of the hole. At the top of the pit they caught themselves on nets set up for that very purpose. The view spread out below her took her breath away.

  What Brax called the “hole” was a huge chasm that dwarfed the city above it. Hundreds of feet below, it looked like an entire metropolis had been excavated from dirt and stone. Tunnels split off from the main excavation where diggers had followed ancient roads deep into the earth. The floor of the pit was crawling with workers. Most of them were laborers hacking at the dirt with shovels or pickaxes, but there were a few teams of archaeologists at work.

  Without a word of warning or explanation Brax dropped to all fours on the wooden plank and crawled beneath it just as Dranzen had. This time, however, she could see what happened next. Brax stood to almost his full height, standing straight up with his head pointing directly down into the ruins. Moving in slow motion, he coiled his legs beneath his body and launched himself towards the canyon floor. He floated effortlessly downward.

  She gulped, but forced herself to follow. Being weightless did nothing to stop the vertigo that washed over her as she crawled underneath the plank and stood up. The sky was beneath her feet, and above her head was a hundred-foot drop. Unable to bring herself to look down, she screwed her eyes shut and leapt after Brax.

  Aventine glided through the air. Once she was moving, the vertigo left her, and she was able to open her eyes. Exhilarated, she would have laughed out loud at the joyous sensation of flying had they not been pursuing Dranzen. Instead, she focused on Brax, who had grabbed a handhold about fifty feet above the floor of the pit. Dranzen was moving into a section of the ruins that had already been fully explored. The area he was entering looked deserted. Seeing this, Brax must have opted to stay as high above their quarry as possible to avoid being noticed.

  When she landed next to Brax he said, “There’s no telling when they will shut down the spire. Assume it could happen at any time and make sure you have a firm grip on something as we move.”

  They moved along a ledge above Dranzen as he slipped into one of the smaller side tunnels, swimming through the air from handhold to handhold. The shelf they were on did not follow all the way down the excavated passageway that Dranzen was entering, but they could see that the path he was following terminated in a dead end several hundred paces in front of him.

  When he reached the end of the passage, Dranzen stopped and waited, floating a hand’s breadth off the stone floor. Isolated from the main excavation, he could not be seen by any of the workers. In front of him, the passage ended in a cube of three stone walls. Each of the three walls contained an arched doorway. Aventine and Brax knelt behind a boulder, watching Dranzen from their perch on the ledge. He waited before the stone portals as if he expected something to happen.

  Without warning the spire shut off and there was a clatter as tools, rocks, and people dropped back to the earth. Aventine was thinking how novel it was to feel her armor again when a figure emerged from the middle doorway in front of Dranzen. She heard a sharp intake of breath from Brax, but he said nothing.

  What stepped through the doorway could not be human. At least three feet taller than Dranzen, it had to duck its head under the rock archway. Flawless silver armor reflected the faint light in the tunnel. Its helmet was featureless save for dark eye slits and two long metal horns that tapered to needle points above its head. Lean and long limbed, the figure’s stride was slow and calculated. The way it moved reminded Aventine of what it felt like to walk through deep water. The aura of menace surrounding it was unmistakable. As was Dranzen’s fear.

  Like a man who had stumbled across a lethal predator in the wild, Dranzen’s entire body flinched as the silver-clad creature stalked slowly forward. Impossibly fast, the thing’s hand flashed out, long, talon-like fingers grasping Dranzen’s throat. Dranzen struggled to keep his toes on the ground as he was lifted bodily by his neck. Aventine’s heart skipped a beat. The sinister entity turned Dranzen’s face into the light to inspect the injuries she had inflicted. Dranzen squirmed. Aventine could hear his gagging echo down the stone corridor. Still holding Dranzen by the throat, the thing placed a roll of parchment in his hand and then dropped him to the stone floor. As quickly as it had appeared, it turned and disappeared back through the doorway it had emerged from.

  On his hands and knees, Dranzen trembled for a few heartbeats before staggering to his feet. Any attempt at subtlety abandoned, he sprinted out of the tunnel and into the populated area of the ruins. Aventine and Brax flattened themselves against the wall of the ledge when he passed beneath them. They watched Dranzen start the long climb back to the city. Without the spire activated, his grueling ascent would take at least an hour.

  Aventine looked at Brax, a hundred pressing questions demanding to be answered. But they all died on her lips when she looked in his eyes. She saw something she had never expected to see in the indomitable champion of the Guard. She saw fear.

  Chapter 7

  REMUS SLAMMED THE LID on the water tank closed in disgust. It had been four days since he left the smithy. Finding work had not been easy. His agricultural ignorance had led to a rude education, courtesy of the amused farmers of Delgrath. “Don’t you know we only hire laborers during harvesting season, boy?” had been the common refrain. Many of the farmers had been suspicious of his motives. Why was he looking for work? Didn’t he have a perfectly good job working for Holmgrim in the smithy? His reluctance to answer these questions meant he had no choice but to accept the first job offered. With none of the plantations hiring, he had walked out to the quarry fifteen miles from Delgrath. By the time he stumbled into the gaping pit that was the Burtick quarry he had been out of money and famished.

  With smoke and dust seeping out of it, the quarry looked like a great steaming cauldron buried in the earth. Several battered and ramshackle wooden buildings, built in the flat area in the bottom of the pit, housed the miners and the foreman. At least a hundred feet deep, the crater smelled like ozone from the constant blasting. From working with Holmgrim, Remus knew that the quarry was one of the few sources of black marble in the empire. For generations the Burtick family had shipped the marble back into the empire as one of their primary sources of wealth.

  All that had mattered when he arrived at the quarry was that he was offered a job, food, and a bed. Later, too late, he learned about the brutal reputation the place had. The quarry was owned by the Burtick family, but the day-to-day operations were controlled by the foreman. Foreman Crast was a vicious lump of a man, short and twisted in appearance, but gnarled and tough from a lifetime of hard work. His anger and cruelty were legendary in the quarry, and Remus had unwittingly walked into his power.

  Laborers in the Burtick quarry were little more than slaves. Beatings from Crast were routine. The smallest infraction, or perceived slight, would launch the foreman into an apoplectic rage. His weapon of choice was an old blackened club that he wielded with sadistic effectiveness. Blood was spilled and bruises were raised but bones were never broken. Crast held power over the laborers because only the most desperate would work in the pit.
Fugitives, outlaws, and outcasts all of them, they had nowhere else to go. And if one of them wanted to escape Crast’s wrath, they had to abandon Delgrath completely. If anyone left the quarry, the little tyrant made sure they could not find work elsewhere in the province.

  Remus was the newest worker, so it fell to him to pump up the water that would be used for the day’s operations. Cutting marble required lots of water to keep the saw blades cool. He winced. His ribs were bruised where Crast had hammered him with the club earlier. He had not been moving fast enough for the foreman’s liking. The rest of the miners would be up soon, and he was required to have two pails of fresh water ready for them. With a full bucket in each hand he turned to leave, but then his ear caught an odd sound coming from behind the water shed. Curious to see who else was up, he stepped around the corner to look.

  Working alone, a tall, gaunt man was dragging wooden sleds into place, prepping them to haul the day’s extracted marble. Remus had learned the hard way that the sleds were heavy, weighing at least several hundred stone apiece. But this miner yanked them about with one hand like they weighed nothing. The man wore threadbare clothes that were too big for him, and a large wide-brimmed straw hat. He looked like a scarecrow.

  Pricker.

  Remus was no fugitive or outlaw, and the rest of the miners knew it. For no other reason than that he was different, they pushed him. In little ways at first, but his fellow laborers were growing bold in trying to provoke him to violence. The only thing that had saved him thus far was that none of them wanted to test his strength, earned over forge and anvil, in a fair contest. The other miners were mean, but Pricker was scary. Even Crast acted wary around Pricker.

  Pricker stopped his work and looked up at Remus. He stood a little taller than Remus, but everything about him seemed too long, like he had been made of clay and stretched thin to inhuman proportions. As Remus watched, the man’s long, thin fingers twitched like the legs of some hideous spider. Sallow skinned, and with bulging yellow eyes and horse-like teeth, Pricker was one of the ugliest people Remus had ever seen.

  The man’s appearance alone was enough to draw a second look, but it was what Remus saw in Pricker’s eyes that gave him pause. What looked out of those bloodshot eyes was suffering. In Remus’s brief time in the quarry he had seen the wide berth the other miners gave Pricker. The thin man’s attitude was mercurial, sometimes silent and watching, other times caged fury ready to explode. But right now, a different person looked out of those yellow eyes. A person in a great deal of pain.

  Pricker’s eyes flicked to one of the water pails Remus carried and then back to Remus’s face.

  “You want a drink?” Remus said, hefting the wooden bucket in his right hand.

  Pricker did not respond.

  Hesitant, but feeling that he should, Remus stepped forward and offered the bucket to Pricker.

  Pricker looked at the water and then back to Remus. Slowly, he reached out a long arm and took the pail, raised it to his lips, and drained the entire thing in one long chug. He handed the empty container back to Remus, and stood, unmoving, until Remus walked away.

  “Well, all right then,” Remus said awkwardly.

  Creepy blighter.

  Back at the pump Remus refilled the pail. Doors banged open as the rest of the miners staggered out into the light of day. More irritable in the morning than usual, the miners moved to congregate in the center of the big open space outside their communal living quarters. Foreman Crast expected them to be assembled and waiting for orders every morning before the sun was visible over the edge of the quarry. Woe unto the man who was late.

  Quietly approaching from behind, Remus hoped to go unnoticed as they stood and waited for Crast. He glanced behind him, expecting to see Pricker following, but the man had disappeared.

  “I hate this blasted hole,” a dirty old man was saying.

  “Haw,” came a brutal, nasal-sounding laugh in response. “It’s heaven compared to the prison you should be rotting in.” The laugh came from an ugly blob of a man covered in greasy black hair and putrid stink. Remus had at first dismissed the man as grossly corpulent but soon discovered that while he may be fat, he was also strong. Gringe, they called him, and second to Crast and Pricker, he was the most feared man in the quarry. Gringe had taken a keen interest in Remus since first laying eyes on him.

  “Where’s that pretty lil boy?” Gringe said, looking around for Remus. Seeing his target at the back of the group, he turned and used his massive belly to shove his way towards Remus. “Ohhhhhh yes, I had almost forgotten that pretty lil face.” The rest of the miners formed a semicircle behind Remus. They sniggered at Gringe’s ongoing commentary.

  Remus tried not to gag at the man’s stench. He had no idea how to handle the situation, and could only hope that Crast would arrive soon.

  I have got to get out of this place. I never should have come here.

  “I’m TALKING to you, BOY!” Gringe shouted, getting visibly agitated. The watching miners tensed, craving violence. “Do you know what we do to pretty faces here, hmmmmmm?”

  Stall him.

  “No, Gringe, I don’t know. What do you do to them?” Remus said, trying to sound unconcerned.

  “We fix them!” Gringe said. “Twist, show him!” He glanced over his shoulder at someone cowering at the back of the crowd.

  Timid and pathetic, eyes never leaving Gringe’s face, a man stepped forward for inspection. Shattered and warped, his face had been disfigured and not allowed to heal properly.

  “No one gets to be prettier than me,” Gringe said, sounding sad that he had to inform Remus of the unfortunate rule.

  “Pricker’s prettier than you,” Remus said before he could stop himself. He almost laughed at his own audacity. The effect it had on Gringe was comical. Almost quivering in fear, the bloated hairball spun to look around, as if the very mention of Pricker could summon him into their midst.

  “Pricker ain’t human,” Gringe said, once he was sure Pricker was not around. “No one cares what he looks like, certainly not my boys.” He glared at the assembled miners, his cruel eyes demanding affirmation. “Right, boys?”

  “Right Gringe,” came the assenting murmur.

  “You maggots can socialize on your own time!” a scathing voice cut across the noise. Crast had arrived.

  The miners tripped over themselves as they scrambled to assemble in front of Crast. Remus did his best to stay hidden in the back. With a disgusted look on his face, the foreman watched impatiently. “All set then? Feel like working today? Or do you want to pretend like you idiots have a single thought between the lot of you while you sit here and blow smoke up each other’s arses?”

  They knew better than to answer a rhetorical question from Crast.

  “As I thought,” Crast said, turning to pace up and down before the group. “Yesterday, Gringe and his group found a promising vein. We’ll blast it out this morning, and if we find marble, you worms will begin cutting and extracting.” If Crast noticed that Pricker was missing he did not mention it.

  While Crast was speaking, a man exited the small wooden shack next to the communal barracks. With a huge yawn and an impressive stretch, he slowly made his way over to where the miners were assembled. Bleary eyed and unkempt, the man’s fine dark blue clothes were a marked contrast to the dirty rags of the rest of the workers. A dark leather satchel hung by his side.

  “Would you look at that, boys!” Crast said, noticing the man shambling up. “Pitor has chosen to join us this morning. What fortunate few we are.”

  “Could you not be so loud?” Pitor said, wincing as he moved to stand beside Crast. “I have a terrible hangover.”

  “I can sort that out with my knocker,” Crast said, hefting the bludgeon that hung at his hip.

  Pitor sighed. “Don’t be crass. Now can we please get this done so I can go back to sleep?”

  The foreman looked like he had a lot more to say to Pitor, but instead he turned to the miners and said, “Gring
e, lead us to the vein you found.”

  Gringe set off with a purpose, puffed up with pride over being singled out. There were plenty of exposed marble veins, but a new vein held the potential promise of an easy haul. This new find was deep in the bowels of the quarry. The men following Gringe started to get uneasy when they realized where he was leading them. Even Crast seemed jumpy.

  “Why in the hells were you searching in here?” Crast said as Gringe entered a narrow crevice.

  “Gots to find the good stuff,” Gringe said. “Been a dry spell; not found any new marble this month.”

  “It better be a monster of a find.”

  Remus was walking in the back next to Pitor. “Why are they so scared of this part of the quarry?” he asked.

  “Huh? What?” Pitor said, surprised at having been questioned. “Oh, they think this area is haunted. Poor fools. It’s because that thin one, what’s his name? Pricker. Yes, Pricker won’t come here. Avoids this place like it’s tainted, he does.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Pitor snorted. “That man is insane. Asking why he does anything is as useless a line of inquiry as I can think of.”

  Remus lapsed into silence, contemplating Pricker being scared of anything.

  The narrow crevice opened up into a small area that had been cut from the rock. The bottom of a jagged hole, it was just big enough for all of them to fit in. A small patch of blue, the sky was visible a hundred feet above.

  “By the emperor’s left testicle,” Crast said, “getting marble out of here will be impossible!” The foreman stomped around the confined area. “You’ve wasted our bleedin’ time, Gringe. This is coming out of your pay!”

  “Wait, just look!” Gringe cried. With a grunt Gringe clambered up onto a ledge. After a bit of searching, he stopped and stamped his foot. “Stygian marble. We bored the blasting hole yesterday.”

  Crast stopped his tirade and grew quiet. “Stygian? You’re sure?” The stunted foreman hopped up onto the ledge next to Gringe. After inspecting the area, Crast let out a low whistle. “I’ll be damned. It is stygian!”