Dragon Weather

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Because of what he did to poor Dinian,” another miner said angrily. “Whipped him until the blood sprayed everywhere. Cut him open to the bone.”

  Arlian swallowed. “Did he die?”

  “Eventually,” the oldest miner said. “Not of the whipping itself, but his wounds festered, and he took fever and died. And Bloody Hand didn’t do a thing for him.”

  One of the miners turned away and hoisted his pick.

  “You can tell him your stories later,” he said, as he swung the pick and bit the point deep into soft gray stone. “If we want to eat tonight, we need to fill that cart, and two more after it, before the Gaffer gets here. The boy’ll have the rest of his life to listen to us talk.”

  The others mumbled agreement and lifted their own tools; one of the shovel-wielders beckoned to Arlian.

  “You get the pieces we miss,” he said. “Throw them in the cart. Keep the floor clear, so she’ll roll. Understand?”

  “I understand,” Arlian said.

  It was simple enough, after all. He could do it; it was honest work, not harming anyone.

  There would be plenty of time for escape and vengeance later. He was just a boy. He had his whole life ahead of him.

  And he would not spend it all here in the mine!

  5

  In the Mines

  Arlian hauled on the rope, and the mine cart tipped up, spilling its load of ore into the waiting hopper. Wark leaned over with the rake and scraped out the stones and dust that hadn’t slid out on their own; powder swirled up in dark coils that cast shadows on the walls of the pit.

  When Wark raised the rake to signal that he was done Arlian let the cart fall back on its wheels; then he unhooked the heavy rope.

  “One more,” Bloody Hand said.

  Arlian and Wark didn’t bother replying; Wark was already pulling the empty cart away from the hopper while Arlian crossed to the remaining loaded cart and braced himself to push it into position.

  They didn’t need to be told what to do; they had been doing it for longer than Arlian cared to recall. He didn’t know how long he had been in the mine—years, he was certain. There were no seasons down here, no heat in the summer nor cold in the winter; there were no days or nights. He had not kept count of the shifts worked—and he did not even know whether there were really two shifts a day, as most of the miners assumed, or whether that might vary. Time did not matter to the miners.

  But he had grown to man-height here, and was now one of the taller miners, with a respectable beard that reached to his chest, so he knew years had passed. He was sure he must be at least sixteen by now, and feared he was over twenty. He wasn’t the biggest man in the mine, by any means—Swamp, named for his foul odor, was a head taller and a handsbreadth wider across the shoulders—but Arlian was tall and strong, and in the prime of life.

  Of course, part of that height came from standing straight; many of the men in the mine were bent and stooped from years of labor, or from imperfectly healed injuries. Arlian had been lucky in that regard; he had never yet been struck by a runaway cart, nor injured by flying chunks of ore from a badly aimed swing of the pick, nor suffered any other serious mishap. Oh, he had burned himself with spilled lamp oil or by carelessly picking up a hot lamp, and he’d had his share of cuts and bruises, but he had never broken a bone or lost a finger, and his injuries had always healed rapidly. When the fever had spread through his team he had only had a very mild case and had recovered quickly to help nurse the others.

  Not everyone had been so fortunate; Arlian frowned at the memory. Old Hathet had died of that fever. Arlian had been there, wiping the old man’s forehead with a wet rag to ease the pain, when it had happened. Hathet had been talking in a thin whisper about his distant and perhaps mythical homeland of Arithei, far to the south, when he had begun coughing, and his mouth had filled with bright red blood, and he had spasmed and choked and died.

  Arlian had cried off and on for days after that, even while he tended others who had taken ill; right from that first day, when Arlian had been dumped into the pitshaft and left in Bloody Hand’s care, Hathet had been his best friend among the miners, a font of wisdom, guidance, and companionship despite his peculiarities. Hathet had been the one who taught Arlian the systems under which the mine operated, so that he had been able to settle into work right from the start—many new arrivals took days before they learned enough to earn their meals, as only those who met their quotas of ore delivered to the pitshaft were fed. Most of the miners were too busy earning their own keep to help out a beginner, but Hathet had taken the time to show Arlian the ropes.

  Hathet had also told any number of stories of his past that Arlian thought were lies, but his instructions about the mine had all been sound.

  Arlian had done his best to pass that on to newcomers, as he had tried to use the rest of what Hathet told him. Some of the others—Rat, and Bitter, and Stain—had made fun of Hathet’s manner of speech and called him a crazy old man, but Arlian, while accepting that some of what Hathet said was probably nonsense, had found a great deal of wisdom in the old man’s chatter, and had taken comfort in his presence. His death had been hard.

  Nor was Hathet the only one of Arlian’s fellow miners who had died. The old man the others had called Wrinkles had simply not woken up when called for his shift one day. The big, stupid man called Fist had gotten careless in a fit of temper after an argument with Rat and Swamp, and a wild swing of his pick had brought a chunk of tunnel ceiling down on his head, dashing out his brains. Wark’s brother Kort had sickened and died, taking a long time about it—Wark was still grateful to Arlian because Arlian had never lost his patience with Kort during that slow decline, had never tried to steal Kort’s share of the food and water.

  Disease, age, and accidents had killed dozens of slaves, while Arlian had grown from a lost, frightened boy into a man who knew everything there was to know about tunneling, digging and hauling ore, and working the various systems that bounded his life. He had absorbed what Hathet had taught him and learned more on his own.

  And through it all he had never once accepted that this was where he would live out his life. Someday he would be free, someday he would hunt down Lord Dragon and his looters, someday he would find a way to punish the dragons for what they had done to his family and the rest of humanity. Someday he would have justice.

  Justice—he had learned a great deal about justice in the mines, and about injustice. He had come to understand that the world was not the fair and balanced place he had believed it to be when he was a child; he had heard a hundred stories from the other miners about wrongs left unpunished, courage and goodness left unrewarded. His horror and outrage at the unfairness of it all had faded—but had never died completely.

  He had seen events play out in the enclosed world of the mines that taught him by example what the stories of the outside world described. He had seen how a crime left unavenged would rankle, would fester in the victim’s heart like a disease, would make the offender harder and harsher, would cut them both off from the tiny society in which they lived. He had seen how just retribution would bring together the miners—except perhaps the criminal against whom the retribution was taken—content that justice had been done. He had joined the others in restraining Rat’s worst swindles by stealing back extorted belongings, in keeping Fist from beating miners whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he had seen that life was better because these wrongs were prevented or avenged. Even Rat, well after the fact, usually acknowledged as much.

  There were rules, and when men understood and obeyed the rules, life was better. That was true in the mines, and true in the outside world.

  The world might be an unfair place, but Arlian swore he would do everything he could to make it a little fairer, either here in the mines, or when he once again found his way out. Someday he would punish those who had destroyed and looted his home, and any other wrongdoers he found.

  Someday.

 
He pushed the cart into place and snugged the hook securely into place under the handlebar.

  “Ready?” he called.

  “Pull,” Bloody Hand ordered, his hand on his whip.

  His hand was always on that whip when he gave orders, but in fact he used it less than Lampspiller, the other overseer. The general opinion was that this was only because he wasn’t often given an excuse to use it. Everyone in the mine knew the tale of how Bloody Hand had flogged poor Dinian to death, and nobody cared to risk a similar fate …

  Arlian had begun to wonder, some time back, whether Dinian had ever really existed, or whether the tale had been started by Bloody Hand himself, long ago, to cow the workers into obedience. He had asked one of the older surviving miners at the time—Hathet and Wrinkles were dead by then, but Olneor was still around—whether he had actually seen the infamous flogging.

  “By the dead gods, boy, I did!” Olneor had told him. “’Twas the very first day that red-handed, black-hearted bastard set foot down here. He hadn’t yet troubled to tell us his name, just set to ordering us about, and didn’t know the first thing about what he was doing. Dinian tried to tell him how the cart rotation works, and Bloody Hand wouldn’t hear a word—he ordered Dinian to shut up and do as he was told, and when Dinian wouldn’t he said he’d flog him if he didn’t get down the tunnel where he belonged.”

  “And Dinian didn’t?”

  “Of course not! He didn’t have a cart to fill, and he knew he wouldn’t get supper if he didn’t, so he tried to argue—and Bloody Hand lashed him across the face. That bastard was so mad he was trembling with rage, and Dinian hadn’t done anything wrong!”

  “Then what happened?” Arlian had asked.

  “Then Dinian tried to grab the whip, and Bloody Hand hit him again, and again, and around the third or fourth blow Dinian realized he’d better give up. He went down on all fours and covered his head and tried to wait it out, but Bloody Hand just wouldn’t stop—he flogged Dinian’s tunic to rags, and then flogged his back to tatters as well, and didn’t stop until there was blood everywhere and Dinian was just a heap on the stone.”

  Arlian had shuddered, and had stayed well clear of Bloody Hand for weeks after that—but with time he had begun to wonder again.

  Maybe Hand had been more frightened than angry, alone down here with a score of men who had reason to hate him. Maybe he had misjudged. Maybe he had been too scared to try to do anything for Dinian.

  The others all said Hand was a cruel, vicious creature who took delight in the suffering of others, that he’d beaten Dinian to death for fun—but Arlian had never seen Bloody Hand hit anyone, despite frequent threats. If he enjoyed tormenting the miners, why had he held off so completely for all these years?

  Hathet used to say that there were usually two explanations for everything, the obvious one and the true one; Arlian suspected that this applied to Bloody Hand.

  But sometimes the obvious explanation was the only one. For example, whatever Bloody Hand’s motives might be, Lampspiller enjoyed hurting people, and made no attempt to hide the fact. His name came from a little game he had invented, not long after the day he had first turned up instead of the Gaffer for the second shift, where he would secretly pour the oil out of a miner’s lamp, and then send the man alone down one of the tunnels on some invented errand. The light would go out, and the miner would find himself in utter darkness, unable to find his way back. He would call for help, and Lampspiller would forbid anyone to respond until he heard a satisfactory note of genuine terror and desperation in the victim’s cries.

  More often than not, it was Lampspiller’s laughter that guided the lost miner back.

  Several of the miners had felt Lampspiller’s whip; he had never flogged anyone to death, but he often used a little sting of the lash to hurry men along. Most of the miners were only too glad to curse both overseers, and to bemoan the day the Gaffer had retired—if he had; no one knew for certain what had happened to the old man. One day Lampspiller had come down the pit instead of the Gaffer, and none of the slaves had ever seen the Gaffer again.

  Arguing who was worse, Bloody Hand or Lampspiller, was a popular pastime.

  In Arlian’s opinion, Lampspiller won easily—but he knew that Dinian’s ghost might well think otherwise.

  The final ore cart tipped up, and the gray stone spilled into the hopper—or began to, at any rate; the hopper was now full enough that Arlian had to hang on the rope for two or three minutes, holding the heavy cart up, while Wark raked out the ore.

  At last it was done, though. Arlian unhooked the cart and pulled it clear; he and Wark stepped back.

  “Go on,” Hand said, waving them back. He didn’t need to explain what he wanted; they knew the rules. No slave was allowed in the pit while the hopper was being raised up and the ore transferred to the waiting wagons.

  Wark and Arlian retreated toward the mouth of their home tunnel and watched as Hand signaled to the teamsters on the upper level.

  “Hyaah!” someone shouted, unseen, and the two young men heard the crack of a whip, followed by the rattle of chains and the creaking of ropes and wood as the mules began hauling. The hopper shifted, ore clattering and ropes twanging, and began to lift.

  Arlian watched as it rose. They didn’t have to wait here; it would be a good half-hour before the ore had been transferred and the hopper lowered again with tonight’s supper in it. There were empty carts available, and the two of them could easily have returned to work at the rock face in Tunnel #45 and perhaps filled half a cart before returning for their ration. Still, Arlian preferred to watch.

  For one thing, if he ever intended to get out of the mine he would probably need to get up that shaft to the entry tunnel. Virtually the only alternative would be to tunnel up to sunlight somewhere without being spotted by the overseers, and Arlian remembered how far down he had come when he was first brought here, and that the entry had been at the foot of a cliff. He was deep inside the earth—he didn’t know how far, but he knew it was deep.

  The possibility that someday they might tunnel into a natural cave or cavern had occurred to him, but it seemed unlikely—and if it did happen, everyone knew that dragons lived in deep caverns. Much as he wanted to destroy those dragons, he didn’t care to face them barefoot and armed only with a pickax.

  Up the shaft—that was the only sane way out.

  So he watched the lifting operations with intense interest, trying to devise some way that he might get up to that entrance tunnel. The hopper was always carefully stored up at the top, with all the ropes pulled up out of reach; the stone walls were angled inward as they rose and polished smooth, making a climb impossible. The pile of rags used as a buffer for the hopper, and also as a stockpile for the miners’ clothing, was too low to be of any real help.

  The hopper was almost invisible now, above the area lit by the mine’s lamps and not yet into the glow of the torches and lamps used by the wagon crews. Arlian leaned out of the tunnel mouth to peer upward.

  He saw the jerk an instant before he heard the snap; one corner of the hopper dropped abruptly, then caught a few inches lower.

  Then a second snap sounded, and the entire end of the hopper dropped, swinging down; two of the four cables had broken.

  The top layer of ore spilled from the hopper with a thunderous roar that echoed deafeningly from the limestone walls; a hundred jagged head-sized chunks of heavy gray stone poured in a torrent.

  And Bloody Hand, who had stepped forward to watch the hauling better, was standing directly underneath.

  He raised his arms to shield his head and tried to dodge, but not in time—a stone struck him squarely on the temple, and he crumpled sideways, landing on the rag heap.

  Arlian started out of the tunnel, then caught himself.

  This was Bloody Hand, the overseer, the man who had flogged Dinian to death. And the hopper was still mostly full and swinging about wildly as the teamsters at the top tried to regain control; at any moment the rest of the or
e might spill out. Only a tiny fraction had fallen as yet. The remainder was hanging by a thread.

  A single chunk of stone the size of a man’s chest had killed Fist instantly, and that dancing hopper held several tons of ore.

  But Bloody Hand was still a fellow human being. Dinian aside, the rumors and stories aside, Arlian had never seen him deliberately harm anyone.

  And Arlian had seen too many men die in the mines. He had no desire to see another death, not even Hand’s.

  He ran forward and grabbed the dazed Hand under both arms, hauling him free of the little heap of scattered stone. Arlian pulled him toward the nearest tunnel mouth, walking backward and dragging Hand along as quickly as he could. He was halfway to the safety of the tunnel’s mouth when he heard a twang, and another snap, and saw an avalanche of gray stone pouring down out of the darkness.

  6

  The Price of Mercy

  Arlian was coughing, choking on the clouds of rock dust, as he staggered backward; he had dropped Bloody Hand, but the dust in his eyes was so thick he couldn’t see where. All he wanted for the moment was to get clear himself, so he could wipe his eyes and see what was happening.

  “Ari!”

  Arlian recognized Wark’s voice. “Here!” he shouted in return.

  Other voices were shouting somewhere; Arlian paid no attention to them as he stumbled into a tunnel mouth and cleared his vision.

  A few seconds later Wark was there beside him, wiping away dust; Arlian turned and peered out into the pitshaft.

  The lamps on one side had gone out, so that great black shadows reared up—and some were moving, dancing, as the now-empty hopper, dangling from one line, swung crazily. A great heap of gray ore covered the rag pile, half obscured by slowly settling black dust. Miners stood in all the tunnels, staring out into the opening, but none had ventured out. Most of the shouting was coming from above.

  And then a rope was flung down, and a man came sliding down it, hand over hand—a man wearing thick leather, with a sword on his belt. He jumped free and immediately drew his blade. The sword was shorter and broader than Arlian remembered a sword being, and he had to stop and think where he had ever seen a sword before.