by J. V. Jones
The murmur in Raif’s heart was deafening now. When a rock hammer swung toward his neck he did not hear it coming, and only Linden Moodie’s newly drawn sword stopped him from taking a mortal blow. Moodie’s weapon was an old-fashioned broadsword with a single edge, black as iron and heavy as a log. It bent as it absorbed the hammer blow, but did not break.
The miners were losing ground. Not one of them could stand against Stillborn. His fury was relentless, and while his sword was in motion he raged at them. “Come on, pretty boys! Here’s your chance to take me, big ugly bastard that I am.”
Once he’d started spotting openings, Raif couldn’t stop. In a way it was like watching Yelma, waiting to see where she’d swing. The miner’s line was crumbling, and there was dead air between the men. Raif moved in and out of it, spiking elbows and knees and necks. Fighting miners wasn’t the same as fighting sworn clansmen. The battle fury wasn’t there. One wound was enough to discourage them.
Finally the line broke, and the miners began to scatter. Behind him, Raif was aware of Addie picking a few of them off with his bow. Stillborn chased one man down and put a sword through his guts, and the sight of that made the other Maimed Men sober up. Breathing hard, they lowered their weapons, some bending to wipe the blades on the bodies of dead miners. Half a minute passed while they got their wind back. One Rift Brother, a big southerner with a bald head, had a nasty-looking gash in his forearm where the edge of a pickax had fallen. The ragged hole was full of blood.
Raif wiped sweat from his eyes, and his palm came back black with mud. His heart would not calm down. He wondered where the outlander was, for he had not seen him during the fighting. Yustaffa was there, but he had kept to the edge, claiming something about the miners possessing no swords for him to break. Still, there was blood on his curved scimitar, and his chest and belly heaved as he pulled in air.
The mist had turned stringy and was receding. Raif could see all the way back to the shanty now. All was quiet as miners returned home to nurse their wounds.
“Right,” Linden Moodie said. “First things first.” He held his bent sword blade up to the lamplight. “Anyone got a spare?”
The Maimed Men managed a kind of groaning laugh. Stillborn held out his longknife by the blade for Moodie to take.
“Gully. Kye. Hold the entrance. Rest of us’ll take a look inside. If one of those miners as much as looks at you the wrong way, holler like you’re on a hot spit. D’you understand?” Moodie paused to let the two Maimed Men nod. Satisfied, he told Addie to fetch one of the lamps hanging from a nail on the upright bracing timbers, and then lead the way into Black Hole.
THIRTY-NINE
Black Hole
The smell of bad eggs was the first thing that got you, not strong exactly but persistent. You couldn’t turn your head away from it because it was carried on the up-mine breeze. Raif was aware of it, but not in the same way as the other Maimed Men who were blowing air through their nostrils and grimacing. Something was turning around in his head, and he didn’t know what it was.
Something about the moment he entered the mine, something about the light . . . He shook his head, unable to push his mind through the black spot. It was probably nothing.
But it unnerved him.
The entrance tunnel to Black Hole was braced with square-set timbers and its roof was lagged with heavy planks. Sections of the floor were also lagged, and from time to time the Maimed Men’s footfalls would ring out, marking a hollow space below. Ladders led down. Wheeled muck-carts had been lined up against one wall, some still heaped with ore. All was cool and still. Addie carried the lamp as steadily as if it were a candle floating in oil.
They had already come thirty feet, and still there was no sign of the locked room where the gold was reportedly held. No one doubted its presence—miners had lost lives attempting to bar them from this place—but it appeared Traggis Mole’s information was slightly off. Once Linden Moodie started grumbling, others followed. The Maimed Men lived in a city facing south and open to the elements: mines made them uneasy.
Stillborn had not sheathed his sword. After another ten feet, he sent Raif to take a look down one of the ladders. Raif had noticed they’d passed an unlit safe-lamp a short way back and ran to fetch it. Addie gave him a light.
The nearest ladder led down through the mine floor and into the first under-level. All looked pretty much the same as above, except the entire surface of the floor was lagged and the tunnel was noticeably narrower. Just as he was about to shout, “Nothing here!” he heard a cry from above. Racing up the ladder, he emerged in time to see Stillborn raise his sword to the chest of a miner. The tunnel branched into a crossroad directly ahead of him, and Stillborn must have flushed the miner out of the shadows.
“Where’s the gold, pretty boy?”
The miner shook his head. He was young and dirty, dressed in pieced hides and with thick buckskin gloves tucked under his belt. His fingers were closed around a silver-handled dagger, but no one had bothered to tell him that holding a single-edged knife with its blade down, instead of up, was a mistake.
The same nameless anxiety that had struck Raif upon entering the mine reasserted itself. Something was turning over in his mind. The lamp shining outside the mine, the halo of amber light it created . . .
“Don’t know about no gold,” the miner cried, breaking through Raif’s thoughts. “We dig silver here. Silver!”
Stillborn nodded reasonably. The point of the Forsworn sword dropped from the miner’s sternum to the little dimple in the man’s hide shirt that marked the location of his navel. Stillborn made a show of thinking. “So if it’s only silver you have here, then, you’d better tell me where the rare yellow kind is. You know, the kind that a man like me might kill for.”
“Where is it, dirt shoveler?” Moodie hissed, impatient.
Stillborn tutted; it was unclear at whom. “Best tell me where that special yellow silver is, boy.”
The miner’s eyes darted between Moodie and Stillborn. Black mud streaked both men’s faces, crusting in the scar tissue, and bleeding out like the spokes of a wheel around their eyes. The knife wobbled in the miner’s grip. He let out a breath and Raif could see his chest deflating. “It’s down the north fork, locked in the old stope room, ’bout sixty paces on the left.”
Stillborn nodded. “Interesting. Now lead the way.”
The Maimed Men followed the miner down an inclined tunnel leading north from the mouth. The walls were hewn rock braced with cross-timbers, and they narrowed sharply after the ten-foot mark. A pale light shone in the distance, and the miner headed toward it. He still held the knife, but loosely, without intent. Raif spied a rough plank door set into the mine wall, fixed with a large shield lock, the kind clan had to trade with city men for.
Stillborn waved a halt. “Anyone in there?” he asked the miner.
The miner shook his head. “I just left.”
“Then you’ll have the key.” Stillborn held out his hand, palm up, fingers twitching. When the miner didn’t move, he wagged his head toward Yustaffa and said, “See that fat man over there? He could pick his way out of the nine spiraling hells if he had a mind for it. And he may have to do just that—seems he’s currently considering killing a man in cold blood.”
Yustaffa obligingly raised his scimitar and smiled.
“So the way I see it, while you’re just saving us time by handing over the key, you’re actually saving yourself from a considerable shortness of breath.”
The matter-of-fact tone of Stillborn’s voice seemed to calm the miner. “You swear you won’t kill me?”
Stillborn’s gaze was clear and true. “I swear. Now hand over that key.”
Raif watched as the miner pulled the key from a slit in his belt, and Stillborn unlocked the plank door. Raif’s apprehension was growing, but he hardly knew why. His eyes were developing the same black spots as his thoughts; places where his perception couldn’t go, details that his gaze jumped over. Amber light, spilli
ng across the ground . . .
He switched back into the present as Stillborn opened the door. A lamp was burning low, outlining the stark lines of the room. It was small, no more than eight paces across, with timber cribbing bracing the walls and a floor of chiseled quartz. Two lead troughs lay against the far wall. The first contained rusted shovel heads, a headless pickax handle, chisels, an ancient windlass missing its rope, a pair of moldy boots, and a safe-lamp with a cracked guard. The second trough was covered with an oiled tarp.
“Gentlemen,” Yustaffa said, pushing past Stillborn and Moodie to reach the tarp. “Step aside. I believe a little flourish is called for.” Using the point of his scimitar to hook the tarp, he uncovered the contents of the trough. “Gold,” he pronounced, beaming. “I could smell it across the room.”
The Maimed Men stood speechless. The trough was filled with perfectly shaped rods of gold, lined up like the pipes of a flute, all shining with dazzling brilliance. Addie Gunn swallowed. Moodie’s hand rose to his garrote scar and massaged it gently. Stillborn’s hand closed around the miner’s arm. “You’re wi’ me, boy, till I decide otherwise.”
Moodie shook himself. “Let’s get loading it on the ponies.”
Yustaffa did a little jig as the Maimed Men began to organize themselves. The big wounded southerner was sent to bring the ponies to the mouth of the mine, while Moodie and Stillborn argued over the best way to carry the gold to the surface. Addie lifted one of the bars and sniffed it. “It’s heavy enough,” he said to no one in particular.
Raif felt nothing at seeing the gold. The black spot in his mind was like a sinkhole; it was a struggle to pull anything out. His body felt lit by tension, pulled in opposing ways . . . but ready. Ready.
When Yustaffa touched his arm, he jumped.
The fat man raised his hands in mock fright. “On my mother’s grave I promise not to take more than my fair share.”
Raif said nothing. Trading barbs with Yustaffa seemed a feat far beyond his resources. It was all he could do to understand the words.
Yustaffa moved close enough to breathe on him. “Did you enjoy the mist, eh?” Noting Raif’s confusion, with a tiny smile of satisfaction, he continued, “Argola’s piss-maker. You did know it wasn’t real? Conjured it out of the lake, he did. I warned him it might harm as much as help us, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Said that there were some amongst us who’d be able to see right through it.” A sly glance. “I really can’t say what he meant.”
“Go away,” Raif said to him.
Yustaffa closed his mouth. He waited a moment, perhaps hoping for something more, but when it became obvious that Raif was done speaking, he turned smartly on his heels and walked away. A few seconds passed, and then Raif heard him tutting loudly as he began passing on fictional details of their conversation.
Light on the ground near the entrance to the mine. Something glinting . . .
“Raif.”
Raif felt a hard object being thrust into his hands. Stillborn stood before him, holding out one of the rusted shovel blades from the first trough.
“Take this. Load it with gold, then move out the tunnel sharpish. Take the lamp. See what’s happened to Jake. Make the outlander get a move on wi’ the horses.”
Raif nodded. The shovel blade was large and curved; it took two hands to hold it. As he crossed to where Addie was waiting to load him up with gold, Stillborn placed a hand on his arm and said one last thing.
“You did good tonight, lad.”
The words were sucked into the black spot.
Gold rods chinked softly as Addie laid them on the flat of the shovel. Light reflecting up from them made the cragsman’s face glow like a painting. Addie kept tally of the number; out of habit he said, like with sheep. The shovel grew heavier, and Raif settled it against his chest. When Addie judged the weight sufficient, he hooked the lamp over the shovel’s tang. “You’re done. Don’t be long, now. You’re leaving six of us here and one lamp.”
The incline leading from the stope room seemed sharper than Raif remembered, and his thigh muscles had to work to support the weight of the gold. The lamp swung loosely with each step, sending crazy flashes of light along the walls. Now that he was alone the black spot was growing strangely fluid, expanding then contracting, allowing glimpses of something, then snatching them back.
As he approached the crossroad the up-mine wind raised hairs on the back of his neck. Something glinting by the entrance to the mine, a sword fallen from a man’s hand . . .
“So it is you,” came a familiar voice. “I thought it, but I didn’t want to believe my eyes.”
Bitty Shank stepped out from the shadows. He was heavily armored in iron plate fitted with chain webbing at the arm and neck holes, and he held a thick-bladed shortsword in his hand. He had lost the tip of two of his sword fingers to the ’bite, but Orwin Shank bred strong sons, and Raif could see where muscle had grown large on the saddle of his thumb and the rise of his wrist to compensate. He wore no helm, and his fine blond hair was caught in a single knot braid. As his gaze passed over the gold rods in Raif’s grip, his mouth twisted in contempt.
Raif felt the shame burn him.
“You killed Darren Cleet, Rory’s brother. It was his first time out as a sworn yearman. He’d just taken over my watch when you shot him.”
An armored corpse glowing pale in the lamplight, an arrow growing from its chest.
A sworn clansman.
Raif breathed in and out, in and out, keeping his body still. The black spot was still there, warning him not to think.
A sworn clansman.
Bitty Shank watched him, the knuckles on his sword hand softly flexing. He had matured since Raif had seen him last, and carried himself with measured confidence. The blood drying on his sword had to belong to Maimed Men.
“The miners are Hailsmen, too.”
Raif closed his eyes, receiving the blow. He knew it, had known it before he’d let the first arrow fly. His eyes had seen their lores, the horns of powdered guidestone at their waists, the black thread woven into their hair. His ears had heard their voices, the same as his own. The miner who Stillborn had gutted had died speaking the name of his clan.
What have I done?
“Set the gold down, Raif. I won’t kill an unarmed man.”
Raif shook his head. “No, Bitty. Go.”
“I can’t, Raif. I can’t.”
He couldn’t, Raif knew that. Clansmen had been killed here, and a Shank could not let that go.
Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance.
Raif bent at the knee and lowered the shovel holding the gold onto the mine floor. The lamp was heavy with oil; it wobbled onto its side, and as a reflex he righted it. Bitty’s face was grim and beautiful in the lamplight, and the contempt had gone. Raif would be forever thankful for that.
Bitty Shank moved forward with a clansman’s grace. Even if he won here he would die, he accepted that—had waited for Raif to draw his sword knowing it. Raif turned aside his first strike, letting Bitty’s blade slide down the flat of his sword. Bitty stepped into Raif’s deflection, bringing his weight to bear on his shortsword. The impact jarred Raif, and caused a dangerous bending of his elbow. As he rolled back onto one knee to recenter his weight, Bitty’s sword tip drew a line across his knuckles.
Raif sucked in breath through his teeth. Hot wetness trickled down between his fingers and over the grip of his sword. Instead of parrying to nurse the pain, he sprang forward. His blood made a sound like the first drops of a rainfall as it splashed against Bitty’s armor. His blade made contact with an expertly rolled glancing edge, and slid away from Bitty’s organs with a speed and efficiency that would have made an armorer weep.
Bitty took a breath to pace himself. Quick as lightning he swung to the side, creating a powerful shift in his body weight that he channeled into his sword. Raif raised his own blade vertically in defense, but his feet were still working to find their balance, and he didn’t have the rigidity to brace it.
He nearly lost his sword. The ball of his foot twisted strangely and he had to pull himself back to upright with his toes. Bitty stepped into his retreat.
Kill ugly and kill fast. Stillborn’s words caused a kind of pain in Raif’s head. As Bitty stepped toward him, he stepped toward Bitty. A moment passed where the sword points slid against each other. An oily squeak sounded as the sword points found their level—heavy on the bottom, light on the top—and then Bitty’s sword slid down as Raif’s angled up.
The clansman’s heart was his.
In the blade went, puncturing the armor with a hiss. A whiffle of air was sucked through the tear as Bitty’s heart and lungs contracted. Bitty’s blue eyes widened. His sword clattered to the earth. Raif stepped forward to embrace him, yanking his sword free and falling to one knee as he took Bitty’s weight.
Raif Sevrance looked Bitty Shank in the eye as he died.
Gently, Raif laid the clansman on the ground. Bitty’s sword had many men’s blood on it, and Raif placed it back with the body. Bitty’s hands were soft, and Raif couldn’t get the fingers to close around the grip. He tried, but they kept falling open. After a time he gave up. Bitty Shank had carried his measure of powdered guidestone in the coiled horn of a bighorn sheep. It was heavy, and it took a lot of powder to fill it, and the thin cap of silver that sealed it had to be punched through.
Raif stood and walked the circle for Bitty Shank. He would not name gods he had forsaken, but he would lay his clansman to rest . . . just as he had done for Bitty’s brothers another lifetime before. Even as he completed the last quarter and the circle was joined, he was aware of the sound of footsteps coming from the direction of the stope room.
Picking up the lamp he turned to face them. It was Stillborn, of course, it had to be Stillborn. There was a matter of a sword unresolved between them.
