by Ari Marmell
Mind racing and hope for freedom burning bright for the first time in weeks, Nycolos allowed his shoulders to sag in only partly feigned exhaustion and moved to meet them.
___
It was remarkably average, as cudgels go. Not quite thirty inches of hardwood, narrowed at one end, a heavy knot at the other, very similar to those carried by many of the guards and several of the First among slaves. And like those others, it had recently been altered to better serve against the mountain fey. Nails had been hammered into the knot and along much of the length, creating makeshift but brutally effective iron studs.
The only thing that made this particular club at all significant, as compared to the others like it, was that Nycolos wielded it.
Justina Norbenus was no fool. Although she was, indeed, concerned with precedent, with ensuring the complete dependability of any slave to whom she granted the tiniest sliver of authority, she recognized the severity of the immediate threat. Clearly not all the tales she’d heard of Nycolos’s performance against the fey were accurate; some were contradictory, and many described feats of strength or prowess that were blatantly impossible. In the terror and chaos of the battle, the workers’ eyes must have deceived them. That he had proven effective, however, and that his initial warning had saved the lives of many, was in no doubt.
Thus, though she had laughed off the suggestion as ridiculous only weeks earlier, she had indeed promoted Nycolos to the ranks of the Firsts.
Rasmus hadn’t been thrilled with the notion, the slowly recovering Veddai even less so, but the others were grateful to have him at their side, watching their backs. The other slaves, too, seemed happy with the situation. Nycolos was still one of them, having achieved his position without playing sycophant to the overseers, and he seemed to take his duties seriously. He proved immediately that he had no interest in spying on his fellow captives for infractions, but was focused solely on standing sentinel against the return of the fey.
Or so he made himself appear, while he worked out how to go about the next steps of what he generously and jokingly called his “plan.”
“So what are we waiting for, Master?” Smim asked one night as they huddled against the wall, side by side in the barracks. As a First, Nycolos could have claimed a larger space for himself, but he preferred to leave his living conditions as they were. If nothing else, it allowed him to keep having these conversations with his goblin companion.
“Them.” Nycolos tilted his head, then emitted something equal parts growl and sigh.
Smim followed the gesture across multiple pallets to Keva and Safia, who were engaged in a similar conversation of their own. “I see. Is there something in particular that they ought to be engaged in?”
“Something in particular I’ll need them for.”
“And you don’t believe they’ll be amenable?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. They very well might, but I don’t know. If I ask this of them and they refuse, if they report me, the entire plan falls apart.”
“A conundrum indeed,” the goblin said. And then, “Now that you are a First, perhaps you might explain something to me.”
The subject change was obvious and, Nycolos knew, quite deliberate. It was something Smim often did when playing the part of adviser, to let a topic sit for a few moments, let the mind work on it while the mouth was occupied elsewhere.
Though Nycolos never had entirely figured out if the goblin did it so he could ruminate on the subject, or so his master could.
“Yes?”
“If the overseers knew they were watching for an attack from the fey, why were they not already equipped with weapons of iron? Why were you required to improvise?”
Nycolos snorted. “That was the first question I asked. Apparently they just assumed that fey of mountains and stone wouldn’t have the vulnerability to an ore that legend ascribed to their woodland brethren.”
“I… suppose I can see some degree of logic in that.” Smim sounded dubious.
“Logical, maybe, but not accurate.”
“Indeed. Why do you suppose the mountain fey share the sensitivity to iron?”
“I have no idea. Why don’t you invite them over for wine or tea and we’ll ask them.”
“Do they drink wine or tea?”
“You can ask them that, too.”
Neither said another word for long moments, either lost in thought or listening absently to the idle conversation or low snoring from the room’s other quarters.
Until, finally, Smim spoke once more. “Tell me, Master…”
“Hmm?”
“How well does your plan hang together if you never ask Safia and Keva to aid you, for fear of their reply?”
In less humid climes, Nycolos’s glare might well have ignited something nearby. “You know I’m permitted to club you senseless now, right?”
The goblin shrugged. “If that’s part of the plan…”
Nycolos looked down at his feet, in part to hide the faint grin he couldn’t quite suppress. Only when he’d wrestled it back under control did he speak again, his voice deathly serious. “I’m… not accustomed to making decisions without more information. Or with so little time to ponder them.”
“Or that require you to trust others?” Smim added knowingly.
“Not others whom I haven’t known for a long time, and who owe me no fealty.”
The goblin offered no reply. He didn’t have to.
It didn’t matter what he was accustomed to, and Nycolos knew it. He hadn’t the resources, the power, the lifespan to do things as he would prefer, as he once had. Time to accept that, at least for the time being, and behave accordingly.
No more waiting, then. Tomorrow. He would speak with Safia and Keva tomorrow, and deal with whatever followed.
___
“Fire!”
As alarms went, it was one of the last anyone wanted to hear from within a mine. A bracket holding a hanging lantern against the wall had given away, and at the worst possible time. It fell hard against the edge of the rock cart, splashing burning oil down both sides of the old wooden contraption. The vessel caught almost instantly, igniting with a sharp crackle and a dull whoomp. Flames danced high, and smoke swiftly accumulated in a swirling maelstrom around the ceiling.
Everyone, slave and overseer alike, dropped what they were doing and raced for buckets of sand or water to douse the conflagration before it spread. Or rather, almost everyone. Panicked and distracted, nobody noticed when one of the Firsts stepped back into the shadows of the corridor and disappeared into a side passage.
It would turn out, eventually, that none of the panic, and not even all the dashing about, was necessary. As bad as the situation initially seemed, the mine itself—and its workers, so long as everyone kept their heads—had been in little danger. When the cart had caught fire, it stood well distant from any of the wooden crossbeams that supported the weaker lengths of ceiling. Surrounded by nothing but earth and rock, the fire would have burned for a time, and the smoke could have proved dangerous to anyone who lingered, but barring the most unlikely stroke of ill fortune, it could never have spread.
In the soggy, smoky aftermath, workers and guards congratulated themselves on their efforts, offering prayers of thanks—depending on the faith in question—to God, gods, or the elemental spirits called vinnkasti, that what had at first appeared so disastrous had proved relatively benign.
All save two, a pair of slaves in particular, who exchanged furtive, guilty looks and shared hopes. Hope that nobody would ever learn it was they who had arranged and orchestrated the “accident”; that nobody would notice that someone had slipped away during everyone’s distraction, and hadn’t been present to assist in battling the blaze; and that whatever scheme Nycolos had involved them in would prove worth it and wouldn’t get them, or anyone they cared about, killed.
___
Nycolos was far less concerned about anyone realizing he’d been absent during the fire. Since before he’d approach
ed Safia and Keva to play their part in his diversion, he’d already worked out his excuse. The fire, he would claim, might have been a deliberate distraction, a precursor to another fey attack. Once he saw everyone else had it under control, he’d stepped aside to keep watch for just such a possibility.
No, he fretted as he stalked swiftly down the shadowed passage, his eyes transformed to golden, slitted orbs so he might find his way more easily in the dark, his only worry—highly improbable, if his allies had done their job well, but not impossible—was that someone might come looking for him too soon, before he was finished.
Still, this couldn’t be rushed. He had to get far enough from the main tunnel even to start, and after that… They would come when they chose, if they chose. All he could do was call.
When they finally did, he nearly missed the signs. From the low-hanging ceiling above, a faint bulge in the stone abruptly developed shallow hollows that opened, closed, shifted, twisted, blinking eyes and smacking lips. A nose sprouted between them, little more than a crooked stalactite, and the first of the mountain fey gazed down upon him from above.
Others crawled from the walls, spindly fingers parting stone like curtains, or clambered from beneath the floor. Chittering and grinding, the sound of their words blending with the rumble of tiny earthen joints, they came; a pair, a dozen, a score and more. In seconds Nycolos found himself not merely unalone but surrounded. Forcing himself to remain calm and still—to refrain from transforming his skin to an armor of indigo scales, his nails to shredding talons—meant stomping hard on every instinct he possessed.
It was, he knew, only the flimsiest thread of curiosity that kept them from attacking, but it was a thread he counted on. It wouldn’t do to be the one to sever it.
“I am grateful you have come.” Again he felt the pain of forcing his mouth, and especially his throat, to speak their language. It was an unlovely tongue, full of harsh glottal sounds—some of which could only be made, at least by humans, while inhaling rather than exhaling—flowing without pause into prolonged chains of almost musical vowels. Combined with a dearth of concepts that most languages took for granted, such as tenses and notions of time, it was nigh impossible for anyone but the fey themselves to master.
A fact that clearly hadn’t escaped the fey themselves. “How do you learn our speech?” one demanded of him.
Nycolos couldn’t be certain, so similar were many of the so-called gnomes, but one near the forefront had height and proportion, wings and half-formed features, that might mark it as the same to whom he’d spoken earlier. For lack of any more propitious choice, then, he had addressed his greeting to that one in particular, and it was this one that questioned him now.
“I am taught…” He allowed himself one deep breath. Not only might the creatures react poorly to his answer, Nycolos wasn’t entirely certain how he himself would handle it. He’d shied away from speaking the name since he’d abandoned the body that had borne it.
“…by Tzavalantzaval.”
The roar of the fey was the rumble of a hundred tiny earthquakes. Their stone fingertips clashed and clicked together like a hailstorm of rock. Nycolos found himself bracing for an attack before he knew his body had moved.
“The wyrm is our enemy!” the gnome to which he’d been speaking cried. “It kills us! Sends its servants to hunt us!”
Nycolos straightened, nodding slowly. Well, perhaps if you hadn’t slaughtered my emissaries, if you’d consented to serve as the wyverns and the cliffside goblin tribes… Or at least hadn’t tried to invade my home, steal what was mine, shattered and slaughtered my first clutch in a hundred years…
He spoke none of these thoughts aloud, of course, saying instead, “The wyrm is gone.”
That, at least, brought some welcome silence to the echoing chamber. “Dead?” one of the other fey asked hesitantly.
Not remotely, you wretched…! “I do not know. Perhaps. But many of Tzavalantzaval’s servants flee. The goblin within the mines is another such.”
“Mines?!” It was the first fey who responded again, enraged once more. “Wounds! Gashes and gouges in our world!” The others again grew agitated, rumbling and clicking. “That you escape from our enemy gives you no right—”
“We do not intrude on your domain by choice!”
Again the noise subsided. The fey said nothing more, but their gaze—already somewhat empty, thanks to the stiffness of their stone façade—showed no comprehension at all.
It was all Nycolos could do not to sigh, or to curse aloud at the uncomprehending gnomes. The mountain fey held no concept of government, of hierarchy. Most wanted the same thing, and acted accordingly. Those that didn’t were left to do as they pleased. Rarely, if ever, was there conflict between or among them.
This would have been so much easier with the wyverns. If the mines were only several days travel further south, if he could have gotten outside and up into the foothills as easily as he’d slipped into this side passage, if he could have convinced the wyverns who he truly was…
All right, perhaps not easier. But less frustrating, for certain.
“You wish the humans out of your domain. Some of the humans wish the same, but other humans—stronger humans—do not allow it. I have a plan that allows you to drive the humans away, with little battle, little loss of your own. But it works only if you do as I suggest.”
For a time the mountain fey rasped and grumbled among themselves, puzzled and untrusting. At last, however, the first one replied. “We listen.”
Which was not, Nycolos noted, remotely any sort of promise to cooperate.
Still, it was a simple plan, all things considered; it should work. If they agreed. If he could get them to understand the necessity of timing, of waiting; of striking not just at the intruders within their mountain, but outside of it, in the outer world where they rarely traveled and for which they cared not a whit; of a handful of other details straightforward to most anyone else but utterly alien to the gnomes’ way of thinking… it should work.
Nycolos idly rubbed at the pain in his chest, the true source of all his woes, and began—with great care and deliberation—to explain.
Chapter Four
With the passing of the days, life in the Norbenus mines settled back toward normal, miserable as “normal” was. The soldiers never let down their guard, but they and the slaves ceased panicking at every sound and every shadow. Hopes that the gnome attack had been a one-time disaster, that no further assault would come any time soon, began to rise.
Only Nycolos, never certain that the mountain fey truly understood what he had asked of them, always wondering if this would be the day they somehow bungled the entire affair, remained on edge.
Still, nothing went awry, or at least nothing he could observe. His only other problem during those tense days—and more a nuisance than genuine trouble—came in the form of Safia and Keva. Both of his fellow slaves and potential friends remained furious, vexed by his refusal to explain in any detail what he had done with the time their diversion had granted him. Over and over they asked, and over and over he would tell them only to be ready to act when he gave the word. Smim alone, on whose silence Nycolos could utterly rely, was privy to the entire plan.
Less confident in it than Nycolos was, horrified at how much of it relied on not merely the cooperation but the comprehension of the mountain fey, but privy to it.
Another night fell. Exhausted and filthy, the slaves marched sullenly to their barracks, flopping out across their pallets while awaiting their meager evening fare. Nycolos and the other Firsts, save those who were overseeing the cooking in a neighboring shack, sat about the only table, playing a few rounds with a set of poorly carved handmade Suunimi dominos. Nycolos wasn’t especially skilled at the game, having learned it only within the past couple of weeks, but he was fast improving.
He heard the first faint sounds of struggle—the clash of metal and stone, the shouts of frightened or injured sentries, from deep within the mine—lon
g before anyone else, and he had steel himself to continue playing as though nothing was amiss. It wouldn’t do to react too soon.
It didn’t require long. Muttered conversation fell silent, ripples of quiet spreading through the barracks as first this group, then that, became aware of something happening beyond the walls. The Firsts looked up almost as one, listening with growing panic—or, in Nycolos’s case, excitement—as they began to understand what they heard.
“We need to get to the guards!” one of the Firsts shouted as she rose from the head of the table. “Arm ourselves!”
Another, the man who’d been a close friend to Veddai and whose life Nycolos had saved, was shaking his head as though trying to dislodge it. “No! We’re safe as long we stay out of the mountain!”
“I don’t understand!” wailed yet a third. “They never come at night! There’s almost nobody in the mines after dark!”
“No.” Nycolos, too, had risen to his feet, though only after casting a meaningful glance behind him at Smim. “Not anymore. The gnomes won’t hold themselves to the tunnels this time. They’ve come to understand that they cannot merely drive us out, that they must bring the fight to us out here, in our homes…” He couldn’t keep a bitter, twisted sarcasm from tainting that last word. “…if they are to rid themselves of us.”
The lot of them—and not just the Firsts, but many of the other slaves within earshot—stared in open-mouthed horror. “How do you know that?” the woman at the table’s head whispered, her voice shaking, almost sifting, through quivering lips.
“Well… I explained it to them.”
Veddai’s friend died first, his face forever frozen in almost comical shock. With strength far greater than any normal man his size, Nycolos lashed out, driving his elbow into the man’s throat, crushing cartilage and bone within. His other hand was less than half a second behind, cracking into another First’s skull.
Slaves retreated from the table, some scampering and scooting back with heels and hands, not even taking the time to stand. Most of the surviving Firsts had yet to recover from their shock, but a few began to act. Two of them moved around the table toward Nycolos: one a woman with her fists raised, the other a heavily bearded man hefting a chair as a bludgeon. The First nearest the door turned and dashed for the portal, screaming for the armed guards stationed without.