by CW Tickner
Harl scrambled for the ladder and reached him in moments. A crowd had already formed, so he forced his way through. Ryker lay there limp and lifeless. Harl hesitated, but then stepped forward and checked for a pulse.
‘He’s alive,’ he said.
A collective sigh ran through the crowd.
‘Thank the gods,’ Troy said. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he frowned and locked eyes with Harl.
They both looked up to see the One True God peering into the world.
Was this some kind of retribution?
The god yawned and walked away.
Harl clenched his fists as stretcher-bearers arrived to cart Ryker away. Had the god done this? He stepped back to let the men lift Ryker onto the stretcher, but his thoughts were still boiling with anger.
No. This wasn’t the god. The god didn’t have the power to do this. They were here for one reason only. The Eldermen.
Chapter 8
My illness has started to get the better of me. If I can afford the treatment then I can continue, but I need a different approach than just studying these creatures in my garden.
Harl sat staring into the fire. Word had returned that Ryker was recovering at the healers. It would take many cycles for his leg to mend and he would probably always walk with a limp. It pained Harl to think of the strong man struggling through life that way. It seemed wrong. Ryker was a strong man, stoic, grim, but there was a mirth buried deep inside, like some kind of treasure to be mined.
The shift had changed well into the dark cycle. When they returned to the camp the cooks had given them the news about Ryker. After that they had settled down to wait. Sleep seemed far off. Rain fell around them as smoke rose from the sputtering fires.
Troy poked a stick into the fire and a breath of fiery sparks erupted into the air.
‘You’re quiet,’ he said.
Harl watched as a hot ember collapsed into the glowing coals. It was true. He hadn’t spoken during their meal. His thoughts were too much in torment. It wasn’t just Ryker. His accident was a horror that had cut deep, but Harl was thinking far beyond that.
The woman.
He hadn’t told anyone about her yet. Part of it was selfishness. While she was locked away in his thoughts she belonged to him. She was something he could treasure, a gem gleaming with hope through all the darkness that was gathered around him. But sharing his story meant more than just sharing the fact of her existence. It meant trusting someone with the implications. To tell someone about her meant revealing that the world was bigger than they had ever believed. It would change everything they knew. Did he have the right to do that?
Troy was still waiting for an answer. He stirred the embers again and sparks soared into the air. Harl flicked his gaze up from the fire and smiled half-heartedly.
‘What would you have me say?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Any good jokes?’ Troy winked, but there was a sadness in his voice.
Harl tossed a log on the fire and watched tongues of orange flame lick at it. The warmth was a blanket of comfort in the surrounding dark.
‘I’ve never thanked you, you know,’ he said at last.
Troy cocked his head to one side. ‘What for?’
‘You’ve always been there for me. You’re my truest friend.’
Troy rolled his eyes. ‘Is this a proposal? Only if it is, it’s not very good. Where’s the ring? Where’s the flowers? I expect to be wined and dined you know.’
Harl laughed and shook his head. Troy grinned.
‘There’s no need for thanks. We may not be brothers by blood, but we’re family, Harl.’
Harl nodded. His expression turned serious and he locked his gaze with Troy’s.
‘That’s why you’re the only one I trust in this world.’
Troy raised an eyebrow. ‘This world? I’ve never heard anyone say that. It sounds so strange.’
Harl let the words hang and then turned back to the fire.
‘I’m going to find the girl of my dreams,’ he said.
‘Oh yes,’ Troy said with a grin. ‘Now that’s more like it. Women I can deal with. And which lady has the pleasure of being chased by a rogue such as yourself?’
‘I’ve seen her only once,’ Harl said.
‘She must be a rare one’ Troy said, interested. ‘Who is she then? Chloe?’ He watched Harl’s expression sour. ‘No, I can see that it’s someone else. Interesting...’
Harl leaned back against the dusty stone wall behind him. ‘I don’t know her name, but even the priests would believe she is more beautiful than the Sight itself.’
‘Okay,’ Troy said. ‘You’ve got me curious. What does she look like or is this just a dream girl of your own making?’
‘She has golden hair, bright blue eyes, and she appeared before me at the Sight’
‘Golden hair and blue eyes!’ Troy exclaimed throwing his hands up. ‘You’re crazy. She must have been a dream girl, my friend.’
‘No dream, although you may think it more of a nightmare when you know the rest.’
‘The rest?’
‘When I saw her she was beyond the Sight.’
He explained how he had seen her. Troy’s eyes widened with each word of the tale.
‘Ha!’ Harl laughed, ‘that’s the exact same look she gave me.’
‘You really are crazy, aren’t you?’ Troy said. ‘Just how much dust did you inhale in those tunnels?’
‘She’s real, Troy. I speak only the truth here.’
Troy frowned and started poking at the fire again.
‘But how can that be true?’ he said. ‘Only the gods exist beyond the Sight.’
‘So we are led to believe.’
Troy’s head snapped up. ‘You doubt that?’
Harl shrugged. ‘How much of what we’ve been told is a lie?’
‘Do you think she didn’t know either then?’ Troy asked, sitting forward to keep the conversation private.
‘I assume she didn’t. Her surprise was as much as my own. But it does make sense, and is the only reasoning I can think of to explain why she appeared. You do believe me then?’
‘I believe you,’ Troy stated, ‘but how, for so long, could no one have known about this other world you speak of? I mean, if it truly exists, surely there must be a way to get through to them?’
‘I have thought much on it already,’ Harl said, ‘and no sure way presents itself to me’.
‘Okay,’ Troy said. ‘Do we go to the elders with this?’
‘No,’ Harl said. ‘They’d think us mad and after the stunt that landed us here, we would probably end up doing more of this bloody penance. We must try to get through ourselves.’
Troy looked dubious at this. ‘The elders would find out too quickly. They’re going to be keeping tabs on us from now on and we’re in no position to just go smashing things at the barrier in hopes no one would see or hear us. So what can we do?’
‘Maybe,’ Harl said, ‘we could dig under it. I can get the tools for the job.’
They talked long into the dark cycle, coming up with one extraordinary idea after the next, until they fell asleep, their dreams filled with golden-haired women.
Harl sat up when the light beamed down, the smell of the dying fire and his powder-coated jerkin in his nostrils. He looked around at the four dust-covered men hunched up close to the fire and propped against large boulders. They were thin but not starving. Even Troy’s slim frame had shed weight since they got here. He supposed those going into the tunnels needed to be small-framed or risk getting stuck.
They were up on the second tier of the quarry pit where the guard housing and kitchens had been built. As the others yawned and stretched he kicked a snoring Troy.
‘Get up, lazy. Time to start digging these boulders again.’
Troy stirred.
‘Not the butcher’s wife,’ he mumbled as he turned over.
Harl crouched and shook him. ‘Come on. Get up.’
Troy squint
ed in the full light and looked up at him, resentfully.
‘I’m sick of this penance,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘My back aches and no matter how many times I wash, I can’t get rid of the dust.’ He patted himself down, sending a cloud of dust into the air around him.
‘Well there’s good news to that,’ Harl said, watching Troy splash the contents of a waterskin over his face. Rivulets of dirt dripped off him. ‘I’ve been thinking and, if I’m right, then its only another cycle until we’re out of here, then you can have a proper bath.’
Troy looked pleased at the news and made for his mining pick.
‘Good,’ he said, a smile on his thin face. ‘Then we can go in search of golden-haired beauties to our heart’s content.’ Troy seemed to think better of it. ‘After a drink, though.’
They made their way from the dingy huts shared by the workers towards the boulder. The last shift shuffled the other way, shoulders slumped with fatigue. Harl studied their faces. They all looked haggard and without hope, dust and small bloodied cuts marking their faces from the day’s work. He let his eyes climb the tangle of scaffold ahead. The boulder was massive, higher than twenty men standing on each others’ shoulders, and was apparently far bigger than others the god had ever placed in the world. Cracks radiated out across its surface.
Harl had never been at the mines before, so he had never witnessed the god lowering boulders into place, or watched it scrape the piles of mined slag away in its fist, but he suddenly found the whole process strange. Why did the god bother with a boulder? Why not provide the raw materials instead? They had need of iron and other useful ore, but there was no need for gold or the gems they sometimes found. Why not gift these materials in their pure form and save them all of the work? Perhaps it was yet another aspect of the god’s harsh nature? Perhaps it wanted to force them to struggle for existence so that it could watch good people like Ryker as he screamed in pain? Did the god feed off their suffering?
Arriving at the first ladder, he hefted his mining gear onto his back and climbed up. A waiting guard directed him to the right along the first level of scaffold, so he threaded his way past the other workers until he reached the busy platform and his heart sank.
A cluster of guards waited near one of the tunnels several paces away. Someone was curled up in a ball on the boards at their feet. He couldn’t make out who, but the figure was small. Queeg was sitting on an upturned bucket with a smug expression on his face.
Harl was ushered towards the group and gave Troy a worried glance. What was going on?
The guards peeled back and Harl got his first good look at the prone figure. It was Chloe.
She appeared to be unconscious. Her bottom lip was split open. Blood covered her mouth and chin and was dripping onto the boards. Above that, one eye was swollen shut and blackening from where she’d taken a harsh blow. Her eyes flickered open and she tried to raise her head, but then slumped back down, breathing hard.
‘Well, well,’ Queeg laughed as he kicked her in the back. ‘Not dead yet.’
Harl glared at the man. Troy nudged Harl in the ribs. When he looked around, Troy lowered his gaze to the boards, but tapped one ear with a finger and arched his eyebrows in Queeg’s direction. Harl stared at the guard, but it was a moment before he noticed what Troy meant. The lower half of Queeg’s ear had been torn away. Harl snatched his eyes back to Chloe. There was too much blood on her face to have come from her split lip.
Queeg got up and pointed his coiled whip at them. ‘This bitch is with you. See how she prefers grubbing around in the rock. She goes in first and comes out last. No food.’
He spat on her and then marched off with the other guards trailing in his wake.
Harl and Troy ran forward. Harl knelt next to Chloe and raised her head off the boards.
‘Get some water,’ he told Troy.
Her eyes flickered open. She stared at him for a moment before swatting his hands away and pushing herself upright.
‘Get your hands off me,’ she said. She winced as she spoke and dabbed at her split lip with the back of her hand.
Troy returned with the water and offered it to Chloe. She snorted in disgust and struggled to her feet.
‘What are you expecting, pretty boy? Am I supposed to wash my face and get fancied up like one of your usual tarts?’ She batted her eyelids at him and then snatched a pick off the boards. Her face blanched and she clutched her arm to her side against her ribs. There was blood on her blouse under her arm. She glared at him. ‘So? What of it? You think I want to grub in these holes?’
Harl raised his hands to ward her off. She snorted again and turned to the tunnel, crawling into it before either of them could say another word. Troy took a swig of water from the waterskin. He wiped his lips with his hand.
‘Well, Harl my boy, you’ve got her all to yourself now. Just watch your ears.’
Harl ignored him and took his place in the tunnel. Chloe’s feet were barely visible ahead as she crawled out of sight. Harl wriggled after her and caught up quickly. She had been crawling blind into the rock without the candle. He shielded the light from his own candle away from his face with one hand.
‘I’ll show you how to dig,’ he said, then dodged her foot as she kicked back at him.
‘Some of us have done this before,’ she snarled.
It seemed that Chloe was no stranger to the tunnels. She dug at a pace Harl struggled to keep up with. Buckets of rubble were filled quickly and each time she passed one back, she tried to kick it in his face. If he grunted in pain or complained in any way, she snorted with laughter, but other than that she said nothing.
Harl was exhausted by their mid-shift meal. Troy just sat there shaking his head with a smirk on his face, while Chloe kept to herself, bloodied and coated in dust. Each time she looked out over the quarry towards the guards there was murder in her eyes. Harl tried to broach the subject of what had happened, but she screamed and threw her spoon at him. It struck him on the forehead, but it was too blunt to do anything other than leave a bruise. The look she gave him cut much deeper.
‘You okay?’ Troy asked as Harl was about to follow Chloe back into the tunnel.
‘Yeah, fine,’ Harl said and wrenched the bucket out of Troy’s hands. ‘She’s dangerous.’
Troy tapped his own forehead and winced. ‘I can see that.’
Harl shook his head. ‘I don’t mean that. Have you seen the hatred in her eyes? What if she tries something against the guards?’
‘She wouldn’t, would she?’
Harl frowned. ‘I just don’t know. She’s different in here. Almost feral.’
Troy lit a candle and handed it to Harl.
‘Watch yourself,’ he said, nodding at the tunnel.
The work was as hard as ever. Chip and scrape, then drag and shovel rubble into the buckets. Chloe kept working in silence, but she had slowed. Perhaps the fire of her anger was burning below the surface now rather than raging out of control.
He cleared rock away from the walls, consciously aware of her ahead of him. Each time she shoved a bucket back, he had to move his own out of the way and scramble back far enough to pass it out to Troy. It was slow going. The rock was unrelenting. Small chips were the only things that ever seemed to break off in this part of the boulder, despite all of the cracks threading the surface.
‘Rest,’he murmured as Chloe pushed another bucket back. She slumped against the rock, her face only a shadow in the flickering candlelight.
Harl pushed the bucked aside. It scraped the side of the tunnel, taking a chip of stone with it. He looked over his shoulder at it and saw the chip split into a crack. Stone began to rain down around him.
‘Rockslide!’ he shouted.
He rolled onto his side, his back against the side of the tunnel as the rocks came down next to him, and pressed himself away from the fall and closed his eyes. Chloe screamed and began to kick at his head.
‘Get back! Get out!’ she shouted at him.
; He raised his hands as a shield against her kicks. Stone tumbled around him. And then suddenly everything fell silent. Once the dust cleared he could hear Troy calling.
‘Harl? Harl? You okay?’
Harl coughed.
‘Yeah. We’re-’ Chloe kicked him in the head. ‘We’re fine.’
He opened his eyes and gazed at the newly exposed side of the tunnel. It gleamed at him and, shoving the fallen rock out behind him, he saw it was a seam.
‘Gold,’ he whispered in awe. ‘We’ve struck gold!’
Chloe wriggled down next to him and he froze. Her back was pressed against his chest and the feel of her breath reverberated through him. She ran her fingers over the veins of gold.
‘This is mine,’ she murmured in a smoky voice, and then dug an elbow into his ribs. ‘Mine. Right?’
‘It’s all of ours,’ Harl said.
She snarled and then slammed her pick into the wall. A sharp crack sent a shockwave through them. They looked at each other and then scrambled backwards as stone began to rain down again.
‘Out! Out!’ Chloe screamed at him, wriggling around as she tried to change places.
He scrambled backwards, shuffling himself out legs first, but they were too tangled up. His belt buckle caught on her clothes and then ripped free suddenly. More rocks tumbled down around them. The cracking sound magnified, rumbling through the rock as though the boulder was venting its rage. His jerkin snagged on the tunnel’s side. He tugged against it, but he was locked in place. Chloe kicked and screamed, but the tunnel was too tight for her to get by. Panic set in. He grabbed a sharp rock and started to slice his jerkin free with it. The cracking rock sounded like Queeg’s whip magnified in the hands of the god. Louder now, angrier.
‘It’s breaking!’ he yelled through the growing noise. ‘Get out!’
Chloe’s arms wrapped around him and she buried her head against his chest. The sound of cursing men was distant, smothered. The collapsing rock was just too loud. He tried to make sense of the sounds as the rock rumbled down on top of them.