‘You think the Krodans have it right, ain’t that true?’ Cade went on. ‘Think they’ve got the measure of the world, better than us Ossians ever did. You trust in their justice.’
‘I mean …’ Aren was struggling. ‘I never said it was a perfect system, but it’s the best we ha—’
‘So what if they knew what they were doing when they came to your house, eh?’ Cade snapped, talking over him. ‘What if justice was done? What if your da was a traitor?’
Aren went cold, and his voice became flinty and sharp with threat. ‘My father was a good man.’
‘You can be a good man and a traitor both,’ said Cade. ‘’Specially if you’re ruled by a bunch of squarehead scum who murdered your queen, stole the Ember Blade and put your people under the boot.’
Aren had never witnessed such bald sedition. It shocked and frightened him to hear it from his friend. ‘Take that back!’ he cried; but he wasn’t sure if he meant the accusation against his father, or against the Krodans.
But Cade wouldn’t be stopped. He was in full flow now, his voice rising, and he was grinning. ‘Think about it, Aren! Your da was away all the time. He could have been doing anything! And didn’t you say he was up near Salt Fork when the rebels took that town? He was, wasn’t he?’
Their argument had drawn the attention of the nearby prisoners, and even the guard glanced over and scowled. But Aren couldn’t quiet himself. He’d believed he could suffer any abuse, absorb any blow to win his friend back, but he was wrong. All his good intentions were pushed aside as rage swelled uncontrollably. He wanted to drive a fist into the face of the stranger before him. This leering, cruel impostor wasn’t the friend he knew.
‘My father was loyal! He raised me like a Krodan!’
‘Aye, just what I’d do if I wanted to keep my son in the dark.’
‘You’re lying!’ He wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t let it be true. And yet there was a horrifying kind of sense to it, if he dared to admit the possibility. Could it be that his rendezvous with Sora had never been discovered, that her father had said nothing to the governor? His father had seemed hunted the night of the ghost tide, and that was before Aren met with Sora. Had he read something in those letters Aren hadn’t dared ask about? Had he known what was coming?
What if justice had been done, and a traitor had been executed?
Cade pushed the knife in. ‘For all your money and education, you’re as helpless as I am.’ He was gloating, actually gloating. ‘Know why? Because you’re an Ossian. They’ll let you dream of being like them, but all it takes is a wave of their hand and it’s all gone. I reckon your da knew that. Reckon he was a better man than I gave him credit for. At least he fought back.’
Aren lunged at him, seizing him by the throat and driving him up against the tunnel wall. He drew back his fist to silence Cade, but the blow never fell because Cade was giggling now, a high, manic giggle tinged with madness. Aren saw his tongue move as he shifted something between his gum and lip, then began to chew.
The pieces fell into place. Cade had been behaving strangely all along, but Aren had been too wound up to see it.
‘What have you done?’ Aren breathed.
‘You two! Settle down!’ the guard shouted in Krodan from along the tunnel. It was plain he didn’t want to leave his conversation to deal with them, but the disturbance had become too much to ignore.
Aren paid no attention. His fury had gone out like a candle, snuffed by anxious disbelief. ‘You’re using ragweed? Are you mad? Don’t you know what that does to you?’
Cade stuck out his tongue to show Aren the soggy wad of black weed there. His smile said: I don’t care.
‘You won’t last a year chewing that stuff!’ Aren was pleading now. He could barely believe his friend had done this, that he’d surrender this way. ‘You’ll work yourself to death and you won’t even know it!’
‘We’re already dead,’ Cade said. ‘Both of us. I’m just making it easy on myself.’
‘We’re not dead!’ Aren shouted. ‘I won’t let us die!’
‘You can’t stop it,’ said Cade bitterly. ‘You can’t do a thing.’
‘Curse you, that’s enough!’ snapped the guard. He came storming up the tunnel, club in hand. The other prisoners shrank back against the wall.
Cade and Aren hardly noticed. ‘You keep waiting, if you like,’ Cade sneered. ‘Keep waiting for Krodan justice to set you free. I’m done.’
Aren grabbed the front of Cade’s shirt, stared hard into his eyes. ‘You’re not giving up, Cade,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’
Cade laughed hysterically in his face.
‘I warned you, you eel-eating sons of dogs!’ the guard shouted as he closed on them. He raised his club, ready to bring it down on Aren’s head. Aren threw up an arm in instinctive defence, but it was too late to escape the blow. He braced himself for the impact—
And the guard froze as a twittering, urgent melody danced through the air. Slowly he turned his head towards the cage where the cavepipers were kept, hanging from a hook driven into one of the beams.
The cavepiper sang again. It fluffed its breast feathers in agitation and its companion sang back. Two dozen terrified men watched their every move.
Together, they burst into a frenzy, flapping against the bars of the cage, shrilling the alarm that all elarite miners dreaded to hear.
It was the trigger for chaos. The prisoners surged to their feet, shouting in alarm, some pushing down others in their haste. The guard forgot about Aren and Cade and ran for his life in the direction of the mine entrance. His colleague, who’d been guarding a detail in the next tunnel, tried to follow but ran into the crush of prisoners and was felled by an elbow. There was no fear of Krodans now. Sarla herself stood among them.
Aren hauled Cade up with him. Even now, Cade struggled to throw him off, resenting his touch; but Aren held on until Cade was upright. The cavepipers were silenced as their cage was knocked from its hook and crushed underfoot. Someone screamed to put out the lantern, douse the flames. A panicked prisoner smashed it where it hung, but instead of bringing darkness, flaming streaks of oil lashed through the air, splattering skin, setting sleeves and trousers afire.
The tunnel turned hellish, echoing with screams and lit by the flailing shapes of burning men. A jumbled tide of limbs and shoulders swept Aren and Cade along. People tried to run, but the shackles round their ankles were too short and they tripped. A prisoner fell against Aren and he staggered and went to his knees, the man’s weight across his back. He fought to rise, thrashing with frantic strength, knowing that to go under would mean never coming back up. The prisoner slid off his back and was lost beneath the boots of the stampede. Aren surged to his feet and plunged onwards as the people behind him tumbled over the fallen man and were trodden down in their turn.
Frightened, desperate faces lurched around him. He searched for Cade’s, but in the jostle he’d lost him. Ahead was a dim light, the mouth of a larger chamber where the walls widened, promising relief from the deadly crush. He was carried into it and immediately moved to the side, where he stood, panting, scanning the crowd as they passed, looking for his friend.
The chamber was at the junction of several tunnels, one with the entrance painted yellow, indicating the way out. The prisoners hurried for it as fast as their shackles would allow, falling and getting up again, desperation pushing them onwards. But Aren wouldn’t leave until he was sure his friend was safe. All the hard words they’d traded were irrelevant, now the cavepipers had sung.
Where is he?
He felt a sudden pressure inside his ears; his hearing went dull; the skin of his cheeks crawled as he sensed disaster. Then there was a sound from deep in the mine like the footfall of a god, and the mountain shook hard enough to make Aren stagger. A plume of black dust and smoke, shot through with licks of fire, blasted out of the tunnel into the chamber, knocking prisoners flat. Behind it came a crunching, tumbling thunder, as if Meshuk herself, Aspect of Earth and
the fires within, was grinding her stone teeth. It tailed away gradually until, at last, a kind of silence returned. By then, the only ones left in the chamber were the fallen and the injured, moaning and sobbing as they tried to pick themselves up again. The fallen, the injured, and Aren.
He coughed as he drew in a lungful of dust. The mountain groaned and cracked uneasily, and every instinct screamed at him to run towards the light. There could be another explosion at any time. The ceiling might collapse and crush him. A rockfall could block the way out, entombing him in a black void beyond imagining.
Yet still his feet took him back towards the entrance to the tunnel, because he hadn’t seen Cade escape, and so he couldn’t be sure.
The tunnel was dark, but lit in patches by flickering spots of flame where oil still burned. Smoke and glowing particles swirled in the air. He heard moaning from within, the sound of trapped and wounded men scraping and scratching as they tried to claw themselves free. One wall had collapsed inwards, obstructing the tunnel but not blocking it entirely.
It stank of charred pork in there. Hungry as he was, his stomach turned. That wasn’t pig cooking.
He hesitated at the threshold. Going on was idiocy. Cade was probably halfway to the outside by now; there was no reason to think otherwise. Yet there was something stronger than fear driving him. For all that he dreaded dying down here in the dark, the thought of abandoning Cade was worse. If there was even a chance that he was in there, Aren couldn’t turn away. Though all sense railed against it, he stepped into the tunnel.
The dead lay about his feet, scorched and torn. He made himself look at them. Blank eyes stared from bloody and blackened faces. Some he recognised. One of them was Hendry.
A prisoner waved the stump of an arm. He sounded like he was trying to call out, but he could only manage strangled gasps. Help him, said the sly voice of cowardice. You can’t leave him like that. Help him to the entrance and the light. Then you can see if Cade is outside.
Afterwards, he told himself. After he’d made sure. He steeled his will and went on.
The timbers of the beams overhead creaked ominously as he eased around the fallen wall. Beyond, the tunnel continued for a short way before ending in a mass of tumbled stone. The beams had split beneath the sagging ceiling and the poles that supported them were splintered and broken, unable to bear the terrible weight of the mountain.
‘Just to the end,’ he said to himself. If Cade wasn’t there, then he could do no more.
The air reeked of burning fat. A corpse, face down, still flickered with flame and shadows jumped back and forth, setting the scene in queasy motion. He made his way deeper into the tunnel, searching the faces of the dead, hoping with all his heart that he wouldn’t see Cade among them.
He heard men groaning, saw some of them stir. A prisoner he didn’t know lurched out of the gloom and staggered past him as if he wasn’t there. Horror pressed in on all sides, shortening his breath, forcing itself upon his senses. He flinched away as a tongue of flame ignited in the air above a burning spot of lamp oil. There was still fire-fume in the tunnel, and it could be building back up to explosive levels already.
‘Just to the end,’ he whispered again.
He found a Krodan guard trampled to death beside a half-starved Ossian who’d died the same way. It was said that death made all men equal, but their condition and their clothing told a different story. Only one of them wore shackles.
Aren stared at those shackles. He wondered how many more would have escaped if they’d been able to run. Instead they died down here, chained like animals, far from the touch of the sun. Whatever crimes they’d committed, nobody deserved such a fate. Krodans would never treat their own people so harshly, but they thought it acceptable for Ossians. Something in his gut curdled and turned bitter at that. How could their masters condone something so barbaric?
A wounded guard further down the corridor saw him and began begging for help. Aren turned towards him, but his heart jumped as he spotted Cade instead, lying motionless on his side, one arm flung across his face. Aren hurried over, shackles clanking, the guard’s cries ignored.
‘Cade! Cade, I’m here!’ He dropped to his knees next to his friend. A grin of relief broke across his face as he saw Cade’s chest rise. He patted Cade’s cheek, felt the ragweed plug behind his lower lip. On a reflex, he dug out the soggy wad and flung it away in disgust. ‘Cade!’ he said again, and patted him harder. Cade’s head lolled to the side and Aren saw blood in his blond hair. Relief faded into dread.
There was a long, loud creak above them. Aren looked up at the bowing beams that held up the tunnel and knew their time was short. He had to get Cade out of there. Now.
His bruised ribs blazed with agony as he hauled Cade from the ground, and he gritted his teeth to hold back a cry of pain. He shifted Cade’s weight onto his back, draping his arms over his shoulders, and stood with a grunt of effort. Cade didn’t weigh what he once had, but Aren wasn’t as strong, either. It was sheer determination that powered him back down the tunnel, step by shuffling step.
The ceiling cracked as the beams split further. The guard began screaming as he saw Aren leaving him, but Aren had no help to give. He stumbled between the dead and the mutilated, murmuring a prayer to the Primus that the rock would hold long enough for him to get out. But the sound of Krodan prayer in his ears rang horribly false today, and he found he couldn’t continue. His words petered out and he fell silent.
He wouldn’t ask for help from the Primus. There was no point.
In that moment, something changed within him, deep down in his soul. He’d prayed to the Primus all his life, and all the more fervently after he arrived here, begging for some intervention to save them. No answer had come, no hope was offered, but he prayed anyway, because that was all he had. Now, for the first time in his life, his prayers felt empty, just words thrown against the dark. The Primus was a Krodan god, and the Krodans put those shackles on Aren’s legs. The Krodans were responsible for what had happened to Cade.
The Primus didn’t care about Ossians. Not even those who tried their hardest to be Krodan. And if the Primus didn’t care about him, then he was no god of Aren’s. Instead, in his desperation, he directed his appeal to Meshuk, in whose domain he found himself. At least she was a goddess of his own people.
Stone Mother, save us. I’ve never worshipped you, but the one I carry does. Let us out of here, and I swear I’ll never scorn you again.
He dragged Cade past the collapsed wall and saw the entrance to the chamber ahead, and safety. Inspired by the sight, he hurried on, but was tugged back and almost fell as his shackles snagged on a dead man’s boot. He kicked frantically and freed himself, but then he heard a low groan above him and knew the ceiling was about to give. With ferocious effort he surged onwards, an animal cry escaping him as he staggered past his dead countrymen, Cade on his back. Hampered by the shackles, his balance escaped him and he began to tip forwards, but by some unknown grace his feet stayed under him for the distance, and when he toppled, he fell out of the tunnel mouth and into the chamber beyond.
The pain of the impact was drowned out by the terrifying roar from behind him as the tunnel finally caved in. Dust and rock shards billowed all around him, stones crashed and tumbled, and all Aren could do was fling his hands over Cade’s head and tuck his own in, his thoughts lost in the white light of fear.
But when it was done, and the last of the rocks had stopped rolling, he was still alive.
Aching, panting, he raised his head and looked over his shoulder. Where there had once been a tunnel was only piled rubble. Cade was by his side, still unconscious but whole.
Slowly, painfully, he got to his feet, staring at the tunnel in disbelief. Mere instants had separated them from death; it didn’t seem possible that they’d come so close and survived. Then Cade coughed weakly, and Aren was pulled back to the moment. Cade was still injured, perhaps badly, and there was yet work to do. He hauled his friend up once more and began
the long, slow journey to the light.
18
It had begun to rain by the time the prisoners returned to the camp. A fine drizzle misted the grim, unshaven faces of the men filing through the east gate. They trudged across the guards’ section beneath the gaze of Overseer Krent, who watched from his mansion with that omnipresent smile of self-congratulation on his lips, as if this were a day like any other.
Once in the yard, with the gate to the guards’ section securely locked behind them, they hugged themselves and stamped their feet for warmth while they waited to be unshackled. As they were released, Captain Hassan ordered them back to their longhouses until dinner, and most were happy to oblige; they were worn out and weighed down by tragedy, and they wanted the sanctuary of their bunks. When it came to Aren’s turn, he made his way obediently out of the yard, but as soon as he could, he darted off into the alleys and headed for the infirmary instead.
His boots splashed through shallow puddles as he hurried through the back ways of the camp, blistered feet rubbing inside wet socks. Every part of him ached. Those muscles that weren’t already bruised had been strained by carrying Cade out of the mine. He longed for his bed like the others, but rest was out of the question until he knew his friend was alright.
That afternoon had been the longest of his life. In the chaos that followed the explosion, the Krodans had been too busy keeping the prisoners under control to tend to casualties. Only when the rest of the guards from the camp arrived, and the Ossians were safely corralled outside the entrance to the mine, did they begin to load the wounded onto carts. Aren saw Cade, still unconscious, bundled in among men with broken limbs and deep gashes and taken away down the mountain. Those beyond help were hauled aside and abandoned, screaming, until Hassan ordered a guard to put them out of their misery. They were slain within sight of their countrymen, each despatched with a short, efficient sword-thrust between the collarbones, into the heart. The men that were last begged for mercy, but their executioner went on with his work until there was silence. He returned grey-faced, and his hand shook as he cleaned and sheathed his sword.
The Ember Blade Page 13
