A Fistful of Elven Gold

by Alex Stewart

  No, not quite. One of the distant figures paused, turned its head, and, as if aware of his scrutiny, glanced down into the pit, right at where Drago was standing. Drago felt a sudden tightening of his stomach muscles. He couldn’t be sure at this distance, but he was convinced he was looking at Graymane, and, irrational as it was, that the elf had recognized him too.

  “You want a pick, or a shovel?” the Gaffer asked, and, brought back to himself, Drago turned to answer.

  “Either, I suppose,” he said, noting the glance of mutual amusement which passed between the Gaffer and Clovis in response. He looked back at the cliff top, but Graymane, if it really had been him, had disappeared from view. “What do you reckon?”

  “Wheelbarrow,” Clovis said, and the Gaffer nodded.

  “Good idea. But you can have these too.” He selected a pick and a shovel from a rack of tools just inside the shed, dropped them into a waiting barrow, and turned to Drago. “Bring them back at the end of your shift. Clovis will show you how to book them in.”

  “Will do,” Clovis agreed, picking up a piece of chalk, and using it to scrawl his name on a slab of slate mounted on the wall just to the left of the tool rack. It had been divided up into a grid by neatly incised lines, with names and items of equipment chalked into the resulting spaces. Next to his name, he wrote Pick. “Basically, you sign on the board for everything you take out from here. I’ll do yours too, save a bit of time.” He added “Appleroot, Barrow, Spade, Pick” on the next line.

  Drago nodded. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. You can take this for me.” Clovis dropped the pick he’d signed for in the barrow, where it clattered against the tools the Gaffer had selected for Drago. “When you finish your shift, you just put everything back where it came from, and rub out the chalk, ready for tomorrow.”

  “And don’t forget,” the Gaffer said, “the boss’ll be checking who’s got what later on, and if anything you signed for goes missing, it’ll come out of your wages.”

  “Right,” Drago said. At least three ways of pilfering tools and deflecting the blame onto somebody else had occurred to him already, and he was sure there would be others, but perhaps there were safeguards in the system he hadn’t been told about yet. And gnomes tended to be honest, at least compared to the other races; something to do with living in a confined space underground, perhaps, where transgressing the social code would be swiftly noticed. Not that he hadn’t met a few who could give a goblin or a human a run for their money in the venality stakes, but, like him, they’d lived in more cosmopolitan communities. “Is there anything else?”

  “That’s about it,” the Gaffer said. “Just ask Clovis if you have any questions.”

  Clovis waited expectantly for a moment, and when none were forthcoming, strode out of the shed with a cheery wave. “This way.”

  Drago seized the handles of the barrow, and set out after him across the rough ground, the tools rattling and crashing together in raucous syncopation. It was harder to steer than he’d imagined, bouncing over the uneven surface, and tilting from one side to the other in response to every rut or large stone the single wheel encountered, or the shifting weight of the tools inside it.

  Clovis glanced back. “You’ll soon get the hang of it,” he called encouragingly. Drago hoped so. Otherwise the next few days were going to be awkward, to say the least.

  Clovis led the way into one of the tunnels, which, as Drago had expected, were both lower and narrower than the passageways of the burrow. The walls and ceiling were of rough, unfinished rock, but at least the floor was a little smoother than the surface of the quarry, and he found he was able to control the barrow a great deal more easily. Which was just as well, considering the number of other gnomes they passed. Several were pushing barrows like him, a steady stream of them going in the opposite direction, laden with chunks of stone, and a couple nodded greetings as they passed. The illumination was dim, the lanterns spaced three or four times further apart than in the burrow, but still more than adequate for gnomish eyes, and Drago was able to keep Clovis in sight easily as they penetrated deeper into the heart of the hill. Which was just as well, he reflected, as a number of side tunnels led off from the main shaft, which wasn’t exactly straight itself, and he could easily have got lost without a guide.

  “This one,” Clovis said, disappearing down one of the turnoffs with barely a backward glance, and Drago followed, finding the going becoming a little rougher again. There was almost no light at all along here, but a little seeped in from the tunnel behind, and after a few moments he began to discern a faint glow up ahead, so he was able to remain orientated without much difficulty.

  Then Clovis disappeared abruptly, his silhouette against the distant light vanishing, to be replaced by a diffuse illumination delineating the mouth of the tunnel. He must have reached whatever was at the end, and stepped aside into a wider space.

  Having deduced that, Drago was more or less prepared for the cavern he entered after another dozen or so paces, but the size of it took him by surprise nevertheless. Some ten or twelve yards wide, and double that deep, it was well over six feet in height. At the far end, ladders led up to a ledge some three feet from the floor, where a trio of gnomes was digging into the rock face, throwing the lumps of stone they were extracting down to where a couple of others were loading them into barrows like the one Drago was pushing. Presumably at some point, when the ledge had been extended too far to drop the rocks down easily, the lower level would be dug into as well, extending the floor area, and making it easier to mine the upper level again.

  “Right.” Clovis waved in the direction of the burrowing gnomes, to make sure Drago was giving them his full attention, and raised his voice a little to carry over the constant clinking of steel against rock. “I’m not sure how you’d get on digging into the face, as you haven’t got the experience of reading the rock yet, so you’re on removal.” He indicated the pile of spoil, which the other two gnomes on the ground were shoveling into their barrows, stopping every now and again to split a particularly large chunk of rock with a pickaxe. One of them looked familiar, and when she glanced up and waved, he recognized Della from the previous night. Deciding that she had enough for a decent load, she picked up the handles of her barrow and trotted away toward the tunnel mouth, steering with an effortless precision Drago could only envy.

  “Seems simple enough,” he said, moving over to the remaining spoil.

  “It is.” Clovis retrieved the tools from the barrow, lining them all up neatly against the nearby rock face. “Provided you remember to keep an eye out for falling rocks.” As if to emphasize the point, a chunk of stone almost the same size as his head crashed to the ground a couple of feet away. Clovis didn’t even flinch.

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Drago said feelingly. Gnome skulls were tough, something he’d had reason enough to be grateful for on more than one occasion in his line of work, but not tough enough to shrug off a blow like that.

  “All you’ve got to do is load up, and run the ore outside,” Clovis said.

  “Right.” Drago picked up the shovel, rammed it into the pile of stones, and lifted it. It felt unwieldy rather than heavy, and he pitched the shovelful into the barrow, spilling a couple of the smaller pieces onto the ground in the process. “What about the big ones?”

  “That’s what this is for,” Clovis said, handing him the pick, and taking the shovel.

  “Got it.” Drago swung the blade of the pick at the head-sized rock which had almost brained his friend. It rebounded, with a judder which reverberated up his arms, a shower of sparks, and a loud clattering noise as the rock skittered away.

  Clovis seemed to be holding in a grin. “Like this,” he said. “Look for the flaws.” He leaned the shovel against the barrow, swung his own pick, and the large rock shattered into three roughly equal chunks and a scattering of fragments. “There’s always a flaw somewhere. That’s what I meant about reading the rock.”

  “I see,” Drago s
aid, although he wasn’t entirely sure that he did. Picking out another large piece he examined it carefully, this time noting a couple of hairline cracks in the surface. Feeling faintly self-conscious he swung the pick again, felt it connect cleanly with its target, and watched the rock split into two with a surprising sense of satisfaction.

  “That’s the way.” Clovis nodded with evident approval. “I guess you can take the gnome out of the burrow . . .”

  He watched Drago split another couple of rocks, then, apparently satisfied, clambered up the ladder to take his place alongside the gnomes working on the upper gallery. With a fresh appreciation of the skills involved, Drago watched them carving into the rock face for a moment or two, every stroke bringing down a new chunk of stone, before returning to his own job. Though it wasn’t physically taxing for gnomish muscles, he found the process of loading the barrow required skill as well as strength, and was surprisingly tiring. By the time it was three quarters full he had to pause for breath, and to take a mouthful of ale to wash the dust from his throat.

  “Not bad for a beginner.” Della had come back while he was engrossed in his shoveling, the other barrow gnome departing in the interim, and she was watching him appraisingly. “Try not to overload the shovel, though. You’ll spill less, then you won’t have to collect it all up again.”

  “Right.” Drago followed her advice, and found he got more in the barrow and less on the floor of the cavern. After a few more minutes he had a respectable load. “Where do I take this?”

  Della grinned, her own barrow already more than half full. “Just follow the others. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  “Be back soon, then,” Drago said. He lifted the handles, and leaned into the barrow, which resisted for a moment before it started moving. If anything it seemed even harder to control than before, wobbling wildly until he managed to stabilize it. He made a mental note to try to even out the weight of the next load a little more carefully. Aiming at the mouth of the tunnel, he almost clipped the edge of it, but managed to get out of the cavern without any embarrassing collisions.

  Now that it was rolling, the weight of his load made the barrow seem relatively easy to push, and he rattled and jolted along to the main shaft with surprisingly little effort. He tried to slow as he approached the wider tunnel, fearful of a collision, but the barrow resisted him; he had to lean back, tugging as hard as he could on the handles, to slow it down, and even then it trundled out into the shaft at a sluggish walking pace rather than stopping completely as he’d intended. Fortunately no one was coming, and he was able to wrestle the barrow round the corner and get it moving again without much more than a single anxious moment when it appeared as though the whole thing was about to topple sideways, spilling rocks everywhere.

  Making a careful mental note of a distinctive seam of marbling in the tunnel wall next to the side passage he’d just emerged from, as getting lost on the way back to the work face would have been embarrassing in the extreme, Drago headed for the mine entrance at a brisk trot; partly because the barrowful of rock was building up a fair bit of momentum on the relatively level floor, and partly in response to the faint current of fresh air and the distant gleam of daylight.

  As he moved out of the tunnel and hit the surface of the quarry, the barrow began to judder so much it felt as if his bones were rattling. The day was overcast, clouds almost the same color as the stone surrounding him, but after the gloom of the tunnels it seemed almost dazzling. The faint patch of lighter cloud, betraying the presence of the sun, was higher in the sky than he’d expected, leaving him surprised at how much time had passed while he was underground.

  Drago glanced around, wondering where he was supposed to go, and loath to bring the hurtling barrow to a halt while he found out; getting it moving again on this uneven ground would be far from easy. Luckily, Della’s assurance that he’d be sure to know the way seemed well-founded; a tangle of wheel ruts, their depth mute testament that the barrows which had made them were laden at least as heavily as his, ran straight from the mouth of the mine, and, once noticed, were easy to follow. As was the steady stream of other gnomes pushing barrows of their own, either in the same direction he was, or coming back the other way, a couple of yards to his right. A few of these smiled at him, either in friendly greeting or amusement at his evident inexperience and difficulty in controlling his barrow, but for the most part they seemed focused on nothing more than getting back to their work faces and picking up a fresh load.

  Peering round the jolting barrow, Drago saw he was approaching the buildings guarded by the elven soldiers, most of whom carried crossbows in their hands. They formed a loose picket line, presumably intended to prevent any stray gnomes from wandering too close to the processing plant, but didn’t seem particularly alert, watching the endlessly moving line of barrows with disdainful boredom.

  “Watch it, shortarse,” one of them said, his tone reasonably friendly by the standards he’d come to expect from Marchers, “you’ll have that over the edge.”

  Distracted by his professional interest in the security arrangements around the buildings, Drago had reached his destination without realizing it. Leaning back against the momentum of the laden barrow, he brought it to a halt a few feet from the edge of a wooden platform which reminded him of the wharves the Rippling Light had tied up at along the Geltwash. There was no water below this one, though, apart from the scum-flecked surface of the foul-smelling lake a few dozen yards away, just a heap of rubble directly beneath where he was standing.

  “Thanks.” Drago tilted the barrow, letting the contents rattle down onto the pile below, where it instantly vanished as though it had never existed.

  He straightened up, taking his time, using the opportunity to get a good look at the building Clovis had told him was used to extract the metal from the ore. Wide doors on the lower level were open, to admit the rocks the gnomes were delivering, this time conveyed by surly-looking elves who clearly felt the task was beneath them. The one in charge wore a thick leather apron, burned and stained, and with an interesting variety of scars on his face and hands, the universal signs of a practicing alchemist. He seemed irritated by something, glancing back into the depths of the building from time to time, talking to someone Drago couldn’t see, and manifestly resenting having his attention diverted from the job in hand.

  Then Graymane emerged into the light, nodding dismissively. “Thank you for your cooperation,” he said, in tones which implied that cooperation had been scant to say the least. “I’ll be sure to mention how helpful you’ve been to His Majesty.” The alchemist bristled visibly, but was wise enough not to reply. Then Graymane glanced up, his attention attracted by the rattle of another barrowload of ore dropping onto the pile beside him, and noticed Drago loitering on the loading platform. He raised a hand, though whether in greeting or warning wasn’t entirely clear. “Stay where you are,” he said. “I want a word with you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “You don’t waste much time, do you?”

  Drago hesitated, considering his options, while Graymane strolled unhurriedly to the end of the platform and began to climb a rickety-looking staircase leading to the upper level. The alchemist watched his retreating back for a moment with undisguised loathing, then snapped a few orders to his underlings and disappeared inside the building.

  The way Drago saw it, he had two choices. Stay where he was, and see what the elf wanted, or leave now, keeping as far away from him as possible. Both had pros and cons: leaving would sidestep any potential confrontation in the short term, but if he read Graymane as well as he thought he did, would merely reinforce whatever interest the elf had in him. Better to have it out now, in daylight, with plenty of witnesses around. Although if it came to violence, that probably wouldn’t mean much: the elven soldiers would back up whatever version of events Graymane chose to give. Unless Drago killed him, of course, which wouldn’t be easy by any means, and was almost bound to end with a short dance at the end of a
long rope; none of the watching gnomes would be likely to either intervene or give testimony on his behalf.

  So he decided to stay where he was, waiting with as much of an air of disinterest as he could manage to project, and see what happened.

  “They’ve put you to work, I see,” Graymane greeted him, and Drago shrugged.

  “That’s what I came here for,” he said.

  “Oh, I sincerely doubt that.” Graymane glanced in the direction of Drago’s belt, and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Not wearing your sword today?”

  “I didn’t think I’d need it,” Drago said, keeping Graymane’s in his peripheral vision. The leather covering its hilt was worn, like his own, but the elf’s hand wasn’t hovering near it, so he couldn’t be intending to attack; at least not straight away. Drago resisted the temptation to scratch casually at his leg, just above his boot top, and surreptitiously ensure that his dagger was loose in its scabbard. Graymane was undoubtedly experienced enough to know what the gesture was meant to conceal, and if he didn’t realize Drago was armed after all, tipping him off about it would be a really bad idea. Of course he probably took it for granted that the gnome had a hidden blade about him somewhere; Drago certainly would, if their positions were reversed. “What with the digging, and all.”

  “Getting anywhere with that?” Graymane asked, clearly not referring to the extraction of ore.