by Adam Browne
Rolling on his side and bringing his pickaxe to bear with both sore, bandaged paws, Rufus began chipping away at the rock. Flecks of chalky, wet, warm stone spattered in all directions, bouncing off the walls and the would-be miner’s muzzle. He squinted to defend his metallic-green eyes from the gritty missiles, rendering himself almost blind to anything but the imperium vein, which shone brighter and sharper with every blow as the translucent rock thinned.
Suddenly a spurt of water, then a stream, then a torrent, tumbling through the hole in the rock and washing over Rufus’s shoulders. The wolf gasped and spluttered, turning his face away from the tepid flow.
“Chief?” Madou called, doubtless getting wet paws as water spilled across the cave. “What’s happening?”
“Just a tick!” Rufus shouted over the surge.
The Howler could see the imperium crystal shimmering brightly through the greenish water. Afraid he would lose it to the violent rapids he grasped it with a paw – at the very same moment his collar tightened unbearably.
“Gaaagh!”
Then the entire, weakened rock face collapsed in a flood of gritty, chalky stone, instantly entombing Rufus in dark, warm, burbling mass!
With every fibre of his being the panicked wolf pushed and kicked, struggling to squirm backwards out of the suffocating pile, but Mother Erde had this thief in her grasp and would not let go so easily. Within seconds Rufus’s lungs began to pang for air, to burn and throb.
By Ulf, it’s all over!
Someone grabbed Rufus’s breeches, then his waist, those big tough hyena paws again. Please get me out of here, Madou. By Ulf don’t let it end like this!
Rufus could hear Madou’s muffled shouting as the hyena tugged on him with all his might.
“Hold on chief!”
With a gurgling, sucking sound, Rufus was dragged from the crevice and reborn into the world of the living. Blinded by dirt and half-deaf, he could feel Madou looming over him, feel his corona coiling with his.
“Rufus!” the hyena barked, rolling the spluttering wolf over and trying to clear his airways with his thick fingers before someone obligingly tipped a bucket of relatively cold water over his face.
Splosh!
“Gagh! Pleh! Pppst! Ugh!”
Spitting grit and sand all over, Rufus wiped his stinging eyes and sat upright. Slowly the mines came into focus, the slick, humid, dew-laden walls punctuated by wooden struts and flickering imperium lanterns.
“You all right?” Madou asked, his big, dark, rounded-off muzzle filling Rufus’s sharpening vision.
“Yes… thank you,” the wolf assured him, a picture of calm without, even whilst his body trembled within. “Thought I’d bought it then,” he admitted jokily, tugging at his unyielding collar with a muddied paw.
Madou grunted, “Mother Erde doesn’t appreciate us stealing her riches, chief. Better luck next time.”
Amidst a wry smile, Rufus presented Madou with a clod of dirt, like a cub offering a mud-pie to a parent. The hyena was baffled, until the wolf flicked the mud from his fist, revealing the unmistakable pure shimmer of a white-imperium crystal the size of a pebble, its rough facets quite beautiful.
“Hahaaaa!” Madou woofed, grasping Rufus by the upper arms and giving him a fond shake. “Well done, chief!”
The rest of the team leant in, a motley crew of beasts; a big hog, a second and much skinnier hyena, and a fellow wolf who was as robust and as he was athletic. Everyone wore the same obligatory uniform of Gelb inmates – stripy yellow and black shirts, matching breeches and cloth caps. Rufus could scarce conceive a more tasteless look. Any fugitive would of course stand out a mile away in such a bold getup, even if the colours were faded and obscured by time and filth.
“Look at the size o’ that nugget!” whistled the peach-skinned, tusked hog, himself the size of a house. The black and yellow stripes of his threadbare convict’s shirt bulged and warped to the contours of every rippling muscle and, it had to be said, his distended belly. “Well done, Rufe!”
The skinny hyena merely nodded and grunted. He was a sorry-looking beast compared to the mighty Madou, with grey fur and black spots instead of the typical browns and tans. He did however sport an impressive upright mane running down his long neck, something Madou lacked.
Rufus’s fellow wolf, meanwhile, glanced nervously about the deserted throat of the mine before settling his aquamarine eyes on the imperium crystal.
“Rufus,” he said, “Here, I hide it this time.”
Standing with Madou’s help, Rufus brushed his fellow wolf’s offer aside with far greater ease than the dirt clinging to his fur, “No no, I’ll do it.”
“I want to help,” the wolf insisted.
“My corona is stronger. It’ll disguise the crystal.”
“But you always smuggler. Is not fair on you-”
“Tomek!” Rufus snapped, then pinched the youth’s cheek and tutted, “Behave. There’s a good chap. It wouldn’t do to get you in more trouble. I owe you my life already, let’s not compound my debt.”
“There is no debt, we’re equal,” Tomek replied, twisting free and rubbing his cheek.
He looked to Madou, who ignored him.
Clearing his throat to distil the tension, Rufus reached up and set Tomek’s stripy cap straight so that both his perky grey ears projected through the holes.
“Wear your cap properly,” he advised, “don’t give the guards an excuse to hit you.”
Tomek nodded in consent to Rufus’s good sense.
Bzzzzzzzzt!
All ears pricked to the dreaded electronic address system echoing down the damp silence of the mines.
“All gangs return to base camp,” the austere announcer warned. “All gangs return to base camp. You have ten minutes. Loiterers and idlers will be punished. That is all.”
Hurriedly stowing the imperium crystal into a pouch sewn into the inside of his soggy breeches, Rufus grasped his gang’s rickety old mine cart and made to push it along the rails. Before he could get it moving, the massive hog brushed him aside and took over.
“Rest, mate, you’ve earned it after that,” he said through his mighty tusks.
Rufus gladly accepted. “Much obliged, Helmut,” he said, allowing the hog to push the cart, which was piled high with glittering imperium ore.
It was safe to say there was no danger of ‘Scarab Gang’ falling below their quota today.
“We’d all be dead without yer,” Helmut snorted, recognising the very fact as he trotted along, the cart apparently weightless to him, “I dunno how you do it, Rufe. How’d you feel a decent imperium vein amongst all the ambience? You’ve a gift, even for your kind. You’d make a great imperium douser. You could be a rich beast!”
“In kinder circumstances,” Rufus admitted, taking his stripy shirt from the back of the mine cart and slipping it over his soiled shoulders, “maybe.”
Aided by the powerful Madou, Helmut pushed the cart along the winding, deserted tunnel for some five minutes – this was an old shaft, mined out, or so they had been warned by the kinder guards as they passed. Rufus’s nose, his inner Howler nose at least, had proven them false. No doubt some of the other teams would hear of Scarab Gang’s success today and swarm this way tomorrow to try and repeat their good fortune, but they hadn’t Scarab’s ‘secret weapon’, as Helmut had lately dubbed Rufus, and would fail.
Scarab’s ‘secret weapon’ just hoped nobody around here suffered unduly because of his meddling. Well, nobody more at any rate. It was too late for young Tomek Usenko, who had been sent down thanks to Rufus.
Apparently, so far as Rufus could discern matters through the fog of Tomek’s broken dialect, the Bloodfang Elder Watcher had been humiliated by Vladimir’s sudden intervention regarding Rufus’s summary execution, despite his facade of cordiality at the time. As the Elder Watcher saw it, his authority had been challenged by Amael and Vladimir, two know-it-all, inner-city Howlers who thought they were better than the gate-guarding Watchers. The i
nvestigation into who was to blame for such an affront to the Elder Watcher’s prestige had quickly percolated right down to Tomek and that phone call he had made to ALPHA.
Tomek’s act had been construed as abetting a prisoner, and his punishment, enacted by a Bloodfang court marital, was a stint down Gelb. Rufus knew in reality it was because Tomek had gone to ALPHA like a tattletale that he was being punished.
‘I sent down only for one year,’ Tomek had insisted, the day he had bumped into Rufus in the Gelb. ‘Is not so bad.’
He was optimistic, to be sure.
Rufus felt terrible, especially since he at least was here on a mission for ALPHA and had a way out. He could say nothing to Tomek or the others about it, only his fellow agent.
And where in Ulf’s name is this agent? Rufus thought. Two months and no sign, not even a note thrust into my paw. Something’s up. Whoever he was, he’s died down here, or betrayed us to the conspirators, or been extracted because everything’s gone to pot and I’ve been left to rot to cover ALPHA’s tracks and maintain deniability, just like Silvermane warned me.
No, Jan, dear Jan, you wouldn’t just leave me down here. Would you?
“Halt!” snapped one of the guards standing at the shaft’s crooked exit, thankfully plucking Rufus from his swirling riptide of depressing thoughts.
“Stand away from the cart!” said the other.
Hogs they were, dressed in a revolting vomit-yellow Politzi-like uniform. The guards were not particularly big or muscular individuals, rather flabby if anything. They packed no imperious abilities, no pistol, just a truncheon and a strange black box that hung around their necks on ribbons.
One might think that the Scarab Gang, with two Howlers, a Chakaa hyena and an enormous hog like Helmut to their name, could easily overpower an army of such poorly-equipped sentinels and thus make a bid for freedom.
But this was Gelb and they had methods.
“Eyes down, Usenko!” the first hog snorted at Tomek, who made the simple mistake of meeting eyes with him. The youth looked down at his toes, but too slowly and with too much hatred in his imperious eyes to get away with it.
It was no mistake on Tomek’s part, Rufus knew, but an act of defiance as usual.
“I said eyes down, you maggot!” the hog bellowed.
Out came the truncheon, straight to the stomach, knocking the wind from Tomek and sending him down on all fours. Then another blow to the back, knocking him flat to the wet, gritty erde. The tough youth didn’t yelp or scream, just grunted and coughed.
Rufus looked on, fists clenching and unclenching.
Don’t you fool, he told himself, his collar tightening somewhat as his rage boiled, you can’t afford to get in trouble again. Lupa can’t afford you to. Keep out of it.
Whilst hog one kicked Tomek in the side, hog two took the black box dangling around his neck and, eying up the other convicts, placed his fingers on the dial. Rufus and the others braced themselves.
Nothing, hog two was merciful… this time.
Leaving Tomek coughing on the ground, hog one inspected the cart. “Quite a haul, Scarab,” he sniffed, pushing the glittering imperium ore around with his truncheon, “You’re doing well. The Warden will be pleased.”
He ran his beady eyes over the condemned, at the muscled Madou, his fellow skinny hyena, the giant Helmut, before settling on the relatively little Rufus. He trotted slowly over to the red wolf.
“You look even filthier than usual, Valerio,” he said, lifting the prisoner’s chin with his truncheon. “You find any good stuff, down there, eh? Any white schmutz?”
Rufus said nothing and kept his green eyes averted.
“Well, scum?”
“No,” Rufus said. “No good stuff, sir.”
“Not with your famous ‘nose’?” the hog mocked.
“Not this time, sir, this mine’s exhausted… for now. But I’ll be sure to let you know when I do find some.”
“I’m sure you will,” the hog chuckled maliciously. He suddenly jerked forward and sniffed Rufus all over, so hard his nostrils vacuumed up his fur, before withdrawing. “Cor, you stink!” he derided, waving his truncheon at him and the rest of the gang. “You all stink! Get outta here before I catch the rot off you pathetic imperium-junkies. Go on!”
Pulling Tomek to his feet by the back of his shirt, Rufus wordlessly led his team past the bullies and onward.
Leaving their claustrophobic shaft behind, the Scarabs pushed their trundling cart into an open, airy cave with stalactites dangling from the roof like grotesque fangs. One of the giant stalactites had, at some point in its ancient life, met the equally vast stalagmite growing beneath it and together formed a natural, rippling pillar of smooth stone around which imperium lamps and speakers were strung in equal number like some demented Wintertide ornament.
Bzzzzzzzzt!
“All teams return to base camp. You have five minutes. That is all.”
The cave’s pale, glittering walls were pocked with dark, circular openings, some high, some low, like the gasping mouths of suffocating fish piled one on top of the other. Rails spilled from these ghoulish shafts like iron tongues, lolling across the floor of the huge cave and converging at an elaborate checkpoint operated by yet more vomit-clad hogs. Wretched beasts dressed in stripes and throttled by imperium collars pushed carts along the rails, heading for the checkpoint. Gelb’s inmates were wolves mostly, ex-Howlers in the main, sent down for some misdemeanour or other, but there was many a hyena and hog in the mix, even a few cats and a bear or two. However, there were no little beasts; sending their like to Gelb was considered a waste of labour, for they would quickly expire from the workload and bullying. Desperate noble beasts would as likely steal a little beast’s rations as look at them – it was bad enough for wee beasts in the real world, let alone this pit of inequity.
The rattle of dozens of mine carts and patting paws congregating at the checkpoint combined to make an awful racket, but it at least allowed the prisoners to talk without being noticed and punished by the guards.
“You all right?” Rufus surreptitiously asked Tomek.
“Of course!” the youngster snorted, nursing his stomach through his shirt. “They nothing. Pathetic.”
“You mustn’t provoke them.”
“I didn’t.”
“Tomek… I know it’s hard for a Howler to suffer such bullies in silence,” Rufus sniffed. “How do you think I feel, or Madou, a proud hyena warrior?”
Tomek flashed a brilliant smile and tutted, “Watcher.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m Watcher, not Howler. Only one in thirteen chosen to become Watcher. I is special wolf.”
On that note Tomek laughed – such boasting was a Steppes wolf’s idea of humour, perhaps. Regardless, Rufus allowed Tomek’s infectious laughter to catch on. He couldn’t remain mad at him, the rogue. Between his handsome grey and white coat and marvellous aquamarine eyes he cut a dapper figure even in filthy prison rags.
Whilst Rufus continued to smile, Tomek’s faded. He peered over his shoulder at Madou pushing the cart. The hyena wasn’t laughing and merely returned Tomek’s look with those unflinching purple-tinged eyes. Snorting, Tomek faced forward and twisted his cap sideways, covering one ear completely whilst leaving the other free.
“Foolish pup,” Madou grunted quietly to Helmut.
“Whatever happened between you two,” big Helmut advised, “bury it, mate, that is if you want to live.”
“It’s not me, it’s him.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure Tomek’d say the same thing.”
The gang members lined up beside their carts in front of the wooden checkpoints, arms by their sides.
Bzzzzzzzzt!
Bzzzzzzzzt!
Bzzzzzzzzt!
That’s it, time’s up. Rufus glanced around and behind, checking if any of the teams hadn’t made it back. He couldn’t really tell; there were too many carts to count, too many faces to remember, a sea of filthy, anonymously strip
y beasts, like a swarm of wasps. He could see, however, that some of the carts fell short of full, and the teams responsible for them stood with hunched backs and ears low.
Poor fools are scared out of their wits.
More Gelb hogs appeared and took their positions at the checkpoints. Without fanfare they beckoned the first row of carts forward. The mining teams pushed their rickety loads up to the barrier whereupon the hogs inspected the glittering ore within, pushing it around with their truncheons and snorting in a pretence of criticism even when the quota was fulfilled. Some inmates were lazily frisked for contraband, but with hundreds of prisoners there was no time to check everyone, the system relied on chance to deter thieves.
Rufus was counting on such sloppiness to get his white-imperium crystal through. Tomek kept giving his fellow wolf a sideways glance.
The thought occurred to Rufus, as it did every miserable, back-breaking day, to just fill the cart with a useless pile of rocks and then spread a thin layer of pretty ore on top. However, it was made clear to the inmates on arrival in Gelb that the hogs sitting inside the wooden kiosks weren’t just there to raise the barrier, but were in fact watching over machines sensitive to ambient imperium levels. If a passing cart was lacking in real ore the sensor’s needle wouldn’t budge, and then there’d be trouble. Rufus, however, was convinced it was a ruse; if his own strong imperious senses struggled to cope in the invisible imperium fog of the mines any mechanical contrivance would be utterly useless. Certainly Tomek had never heard of reliable mechanised imperium dousing, that’s why he and the Watchers used sniffer-ants like Scuttle.
The barriers were raised in their own time and the first row of carts wheeled through. Circular tokens were metered out to the gang members as they passed the wooden kiosks; white for a ‘good’, grey for ‘acceptable’, the white tokens being worth twice the rations of the grey.
There was no token for ‘unacceptable’.
The gang ahead of Scarab pushed their day’s labour forth for inspection. The cart wasn’t as full as they might like, and the Gelb hogs looked unimpressed. The convicts were lucky to get away without a beating, let alone without tokens. No tokens meant they would be entitled to no more than a bowl of soup this evening. They would have to do better in future if they wanted to eat properly, let alone buy an imperium fix to stave off the rot in the case of the afflicted and/or addicted, which most inmates were.
