Nate skidded round to the left and headed east, keeping the path in sight as he ran parallel to it. The forest began to thin. All round him, the chorus of night creatures filled the air. Fromps coughing and quarms hooting and squealing, and nattertoads croaking their alarm as his heavy footsteps hammered past.
Nate noticed none of them. He was concentrating on ordering his thoughts, working out a way through the nightmare that was threatening to envelop him. He remembered how, when he was a child, his father would carefully adjust the lamp beside his bed, setting it to just the right glow to keep the shadows in the corners of the room at bay. Now, Nate knew, he would have to adjust the lamp for himself – or risk not seeing the dawn of another day …
By the time the pithead loomed into view, its angled roof silhouetted against the golden glow of the Twilight Woods beyond, a plan had formed and Nate knew what he had to do. He also knew that it would not be easy.
Checking all around, he emerged from the trees and sprinted across the bare earth to the entrance to the mineshaft. He crouched down and caught his breath. There was no one about. The night shift was seldom as well patrolled as the day shift. With the mine sergeant asleep in his barracks back at the stockade, the guards usually sloped off behind the tally wagon to play a few hands of splinters. Nate glanced back over his shoulder, then darted inside and, keeping to the side wall so that he could slip behind a wooden strut or stanchion at a moment’s notice, he hurried down ‘the Sanctaphrax Forest’.
At the bottom – where the tunnel opened out into the store gallery – he paused to take a lamp from a hook and light it. The scraping and hammering sounds of mining echoed back along the tunnels from the galleries. Nate frowned. Slip should be asleep by now. It meant that Nate needed to head for one of the empty funnel galleries, for it was there – in the tall, dark, stormphrax-stripped chambers – that the scuttlers had their quarters.
Glancing round over his shoulder once more as he reached the entrance to gallery number one, Nate slipped inside. Hanging from the crossbeams of the abandoned scaffolding overhead were dozens of small hammocks, each one containing a sleeping scuttler. Crudely fashioned from tilderhides – with ropes tied to the boned legs and the fur still in place – the hammocks resembled nightbats, sleeping upside down in a cave.
Lowest of the low in the pecking order of the phraxmine, scuttlers were recruited by the mine sergeants to keep the shafts clear of rubble and vermin. The wages were poor, the conditions terrible and the risk of twilight madness a constant threat. Despite this, there were always fresh recruits willing to take their chances. For all scuttlers dreamed that one day they themselves would become miners and have the opportunity to make their fortunes before the mine destroyed their minds.
Nate stepped gingerly forward, trying to avoid the pools of brackish water, thick with slime. The stench was overpowering. He climbed a section of the scaffolding – making sure with each step that the rotting timbers would support his weight – and shone the lamp down into each of the hammocks in turn. There were groans, whimpers and the occasional barely audible curse as Nate patiently worked his way along the line of sleeping scuttlers until he found his friend.
‘Slip,’ Nate whispered and, leaning down, prodded the sleeping goblin.
Slip muttered and rolled over onto his side. Moments later, a rasping snore echoed round the gallery.
‘Slip,’ Nate hissed a second time.
This time, the small creature sat up on his elbows, his eyes wide with terror. He raised his arms protectively.
‘Slip didn’t mean to oversleep,’ he said, his husky voice high and tremulous. ‘Slip’s a good worker, he is. He’ll get up now. Get to work at once …’
Nate leaned forward and touched Slip reassuringly on the shoulder. The goblin flinched and let out a little cry of alarm.
‘Listen, Slip …’ he began.
‘Yes, Slip. That’s what they call me. Grey goblin, nineteen years of age and in his twelfth year of service. And never, not in all that time, has Slip overslept. Not once. Not never …’
‘Slip, it’s all right,’ said Nate. He shone the lamp into his own face. ‘It’s me, Nate. Remember?’
‘Nate?’ said Slip. ‘Nate.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Nate Quarter. Son of Abe Quarter. Yes, Slip can see that now …’
‘Slip,’ said Nate, breaking across the wide-eyed goblin’s babbling. ‘Slip, we’ve got to get out of here.’
The scuttler fell abruptly still. His wide eyes grew, if possible, wider still.
‘We were overheard. You and me,’ Nate explained, speaking slowly and clearly. ‘A mine guard heard you warning me about the mine sergeant, and now he wants us both dead. They’ve already killed Rudd. We’ve got to get out of here.’
Slip took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Killed Rudd?’ he repeated, his words barely audible. ‘Your friend, the cloddertrog? But that’s terrible. He was a good’un. Always treated Slip kindly, did Rudd …’
‘He saved my life,’ said Nate, his eyes misting over. ‘Now we’ve got to get out of the phraxmine.’
The scuttler reached out and seized Nate’s arm. ‘Slip can’t,’ he said. ‘He can’t get out of here. This is where he works. In the phraxmine. His job, his home …’
‘But if you don’t, you’ll die,’ said Nate. ‘You don’t want to die, do you, Slip?’
The scuttler lowered his head. He scratched his ear. When he looked up again, he was shaking his head.
‘Slip knows about dying,’ he said. ‘Slip’s brother died. A phraxcrystal crushed him in his sleep. He went still and silent. And cold. Icy cold. Slip doesn’t want to be icy cold. Slip doesn’t want to die.’
‘Then come with me,’ said Nate.
Without another word, the scuttler picked up the small leather bag he’d been using as a headrest and slung it over his shoulders. He climbed from his hammock and descended the scaffolding. Nate followed him down. Side by side, they left the darkness of the abandoned funnel gallery behind them.
With the night shift still in full swing, the main tunnel was comparatively empty, most of the miners hard at work at the phraxface. A couple of lamplighters on their rounds nodded to Nate. A blank-eyed scuttler carrying canteens of water elbowed his way past them, and a convoy of pit prowlgrins trundled across their path. But as they reached the store gallery, Nate stopped and put his arm out, bringing Slip to a halt.
He put out his lamp and looked more closely. One of Grint Grayle’s hammerhead guards was seated on a low stool, a phraxmusket resting on his lap, guarding the entrance to ‘the Sanctaphrax Forest’. What was more, Nate recognized him. It was Thuggbutt.
‘Trapped,’ murmured Nate bitterly. There was no way past the great hulking brute.
‘Fined three months’ wages,’ the hammerhead was growling to his companion, a mangy mobgnome with a jutting lower jaw. ‘Three months!’ He shook his great tattooed head in disbelief. ‘And stuck down here on guard duty! And for what? It ain’t my fault the lamplighter got away, is it? But high-and-mighty Mine Sergeant Grint won’t listen. Oh, no, not him …’ He picked up the phraxmusket and passed it from one huge hand to the other, and back again. ‘I tell you, just as soon as the shift’s over and those scuttlers come out to play, there’s one of them that’s going to get a nasty shock, and no mistake …’
Nate turned to Slip, expecting that he’d have to comfort the terrified little goblin. Instead, he was surprised to see a broad smile on his face.
‘Don’t look so worried, Nate Quarter,’ said Slip, patting him on the shoulder. ‘We’re going up top. Slip will show you how.’
‘You will?’ said Nate, astonished.
‘Of course. Slip does it all the time. Ever since your father died and they stopped scuttlers going up top, Slip’s been going anyway …’
‘Show me,’ said Nate.
The scuttler took his arm and led him back into the main tunnel, where he stopped and whistled softly. For a moment he stood, silent and still, his big eyes peering through t
he twilight glow, before his face broke into a delighted grin.
A pit prowlgrin came bounding towards them, pushing a wagon before it. Slip greeted the creature by blowing into its flared nostrils, and then motioned for Nate to climb into the wagon. Nate did as he was told, and was joined by Slip, who pulled a dusty tarpaulin over them both.
The wagon jolted into movement, and Nate felt them being transported through the tunnel, past the hammerhead guard and his companion, and up the sloping tunnel towards the pithead. It was a journey of a few minutes, and yet, with each shudder and jolt, Nate knew he was one stride closer to leaving the mine and his old life for ever; one stride closer to escape …
Suddenly, they juddered to a halt and, throwing off the tarpaulin, Slip jumped out of the wagon. They were at the pithead, with not a guard in sight. Slip reached into his bag and drew out a dead rat, which he fed to the prowlgrin, before sending it back down the shaft with a pat on its haunches.
‘Did Slip do well?’ the scuttler asked, turning to the lamplighter.
‘Very well!’ said Nate delightedly. ‘Very well indeed!’
• CHAPTER SEVEN •
The pair of them picked their way back through the forest, keeping some ten strides or so away from the path. Clouds had gathered overhead, blocking out the moon and turning the forest pitch black. Nate couldn’t see a thing, but the goblin – his wide eyes accustomed to the darkness of his underground gallery – steered them both through the undergrowth.
‘Fallen log,’ he would whisper back to Nate. ‘Thorn branch. Muddy hole …’
When they came into view, the lights of the stockade seemed especially bright. Slip held back at the edge of the clearing and crouched down behind a dense combbush. Nate stopped beside him and took in the scene. Over the stockade wall was the cluster of sleeping cabins beneath the towering wheelhouse, the hammelhorns of the night shift taking the rubble carts out to the slag heaps beyond the stockade as the phraxrubble rumbled down the light funnel. High above the smoke and dust, the spindly silhouette of the docking gantry stood out against the slowly brightening sky.
‘That’s where our escape lies,’ said Nate, pointing to the gantry. ‘Not back in the woods, but up there,’ he whispered, ‘in the sky.’
Slip followed Nate’s gaze, his eyes wider than ever.
‘But first, there are things to do,’ said Nate. ‘And we’re running out of time. Come on, we’ll go in by the back door.’
Avoiding the pools of light that spilled from the tall perimeter lamps inside the stockade, the two small figures scuttled round the fringes of the forest. Then, at a narrow gap in the perimeter wall – where a hungry weezit had been digging for barkgrubs in the rotten timber – they squeezed through and ducked down behind a pile of freshly-sawn scaffolding timber. Nate peered out.
‘Just as I thought,’ he groaned.
One of the tattooed hammerheads was standing guard outside his cabin. He turned to Slip.
‘I need you to climb onto the roof of that cabin over there and get in through the thatch as quietly as possible – as if you were trapping a rat. Can you do that?’
Slip nodded.
‘Under the third bunk, there’s a small ironwood chest. I want you to bring it to me. That, and the small leather knapsack you’ll find hanging on my hook. I’ll be waiting for you up there.’ Nate pointed above the steaming wheelhouse to the docking gantry beyond. ‘Up there is escape. Understand, Slip? Escape.’
The goblin nodded earnestly. ‘Escape,’ he repeated, eyes wide.
Nate watched the bandy-legged grey goblin scurry away. ‘Earth and Sky be with you,’ he whispered as Slip climbed, swiftly and silently, up the side wall of the cabin and onto the roof, before disappearing headfirst through the thatch. He picked himself up and hurried off. ‘And with me!’
He crossed the sleeping mining camp, keeping to the shadows between the cabins, then circled round behind the wheelhouse and the fortified phraxkeep beside it, where all the stormphrax produced by the mine was carefully stored, awaiting weekly shipment to Great Glade. In the shadow of the phraxkeep was a solid-looking three-storey cabin, its upper floors decorated with ornately carved balconies and elaborate gargoyles.
It was the mine barracks – the blockhouse – home to the mine sergeant and the guards. While the rest of the camp lay quiet as exhausted miners caught up on much-needed sleep, the lights in the ground floor of the blockhouse blazed.
Head down, Nate dashed across to one of the lower windows. He grabbed hold of the sill, pulled himself up and peered inside. For the first time since his father had brought him to the camp – and how long ago that now seemed – he found himself looking into the notorious mine sergeants’ mess.
Even though it was the middle of the night, the place was heaving. Visiting mine sergeants and pit drivers, ministered to by a shuffling gaggle of gabtrolls, were shouting their demands for food and drinks over loud thumping music. Grint Grayle was standing by a roaring fire, leaning back against the fireplace with one arm on the ironwood mantelpiece, a semi-circle of cronies before him. His dark eyes were glaring; his face was flushed.
‘If that little barkslug of a lamplighter shows up in the stockade,’ he sneered, ‘I’ll have him tied to the docking gantry and flogged to death in front of the whole camp. You all saw how he tried to kill me last night in the Hulks, didn’t you? You’re all my witnesses!’
The cronies nodded in agreement.
Nate didn’t stay to hear more. Lowering himself to the ground, he went to the corner of the cabin and climbed up. At the second storey, clinging onto the rough bark with his fingers, he eased himself along the horizontal logs to a jutting balcony. He climbed over the balustrade and paused. The din from downstairs continued without letup.
The balcony shutters were unlocked. Nate opened them, stepped inside the room – and gasped.
Grint Grayle had been up to something, that much was clear. His father had known it. He knew it. What neither of them had realized was just how successful the mine sergeant had been.
The huge room was stacked from floor to ceiling with crates, boxes, baskets and sacks which, as Nate went through them, revealed every commodity, luxury or medicine from the three cities. There were silks, wall hangings and fine fashions from Great Glade, crates of the very best vintage wines from the caves of Hive, not to mention ointments, salves and priceless elixirs from distant Riverrise. Nate could hardly believe his eyes. So much wealth – and in the Eastern Woods, wealth meant power. It was no wonder that, with such riches at his disposal, Grint Grayle’s mess was full of cronies prepared to do his every bidding.
But how had a mine sergeant in a stockade out in the Eastern Woods been able to amass this treasure house of luxury? Nate had a pretty good idea, and he wasn’t going to leave the mining camp until he’d uncovered Grint’s dirty little secret. He owed that to himself and to his father.
Nate made his way through the extraordinary warehouse to Grint’s private chamber beyond. A comfortable sumpwood bed hovered in one corner, a large double washstand in the other, with an ornate full-length mirror in a blackwood frame against one wall. He was turning to go, when something caught his eye.
There was a greasy smudge on the right of the otherwise spotlessly gleaming mirror. Nate took a closer look. It was a handprint: spatula-fingers, large and splayed. Nate raised his own hand and laid it over the mark. His fingers were longer but thinner than the ones on the glass. Pressing firmly, he leaned forward. There was a muffled click and a low swoosh as the concealed door swung back to reveal a secret staircase behind.
‘So, this is it,’ Nate murmured.
He stepped through the narrow doorway and climbed the creaky wooden stairs. The stairwell was dark and dirty. Thick nightspider webs, heavy with dust, dangled from the corners. None, though, touched Nate’s face. Clearly, someone had been this way before him – and recently.
He found himself in a low, flat-ceilinged loft. There was a small unglazed window to his right, slatted
shutters bolted securely across it. Ribbons of light from the perimeter lamps of the mining camp poured in through the gaps in the wood. To his left were a couple of broken picture frames, a statue of a leaping tilder fawn – its head and one leg missing – and some rusty lamps that had leaked their oil across the dusty boards …
At the centre of the attic sat a large wooden chest. Nate frowned. He’d seen plenty like it stored in the phraxkeep, their wax seals stamped with the mine owner’s crest, awaiting shipment to Great Glade. Stooping down, he noticed at once that the seal on this chest was broken. With trembling fingers, he reached forward and lifted the lid. As he did so, the gloomy attic was flooded with light.
‘Sky above!’ Nate exclaimed.
The chest contained two exquisite shards of pure stormphrax and more than a dozen gauze bags of refined phraxcrystals. Nate was gripped by a cold rage. The gleaming fragments of lightning represented endless hours of backbreaking toil carried out by countless miners – many bone-thin and ravaged by phraxlung – only for the mine sergeant to steal them for himself. For every ten lightchests sealed and shipped to Great Glade, Grint Grayle must have been taking and hiding one for himself. This was just the latest.
Nate reached inside the chest, the golden glow of the phraxlamp set into the lid staining his fingers, and picked up one of the crystal shards. He frowned, turned it over in his hand, then shook his head. There was no doubt about it. This was the very crystal that he had mined on his last shift. He looked back into the chest. And, yes, the other was Rudd’s phraxcrystal. He remembered the hook-like twist at its end. Fifty gladers they’d been worth. With the right buyer, Grint Grayle would stand to make fifty thousand. Sky alone knew how much the whole chestful was worth. The mine sergeant was rich enough to buy all the luxuries the three cities could offer, and bribe anyone he couldn’t bully – except, that is, for Abe Quarter. Nate was more convinced than ever that Grint Grayle had been behind his father’s ‘accident’.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 5