Blackhearts: The Omnibus

by Nathan Long

  ‘Sigmar blast it!’ Reiner ran into the entrance, grabbed Oskar by the collar and dragged him through the supports to where the rest of the men had turned at the noise. The floor was clearer here, and the posts fewer. He stopped and looked back.

  There was a crack, loud as a pistol shot, then another. First one post, then two more began to bend and fold, then another three.

  ‘Back!’ Reiner shouted. ‘Back!’

  The men ran into the darkness, Franz helping to drag Oskar further down the tunnel.

  With a thunderous crash the ceiling above the entrance collapsed, deafening them. A cloud of dust, invisible in the utter darkness, blew around them, making them choke and cough. Sharp rocks spat at their shins and ankles.

  At last, with a few final thuds and plinks, the avalanche ended and the men’s coughing and retching dwindled off into silence. It was pitch black.

  ‘Everyone here?’ asked Reiner. He called out their names one by one and they answered. All but Oskar.

  Reiner sighed. ‘Strike a light, someone.’

  Hals got a taper going and they looked around for Oskar. He was still on the floor, clutching his knees and looking around him wildly. As the flame grew brighter he looked beyond them to the sloping mound of rock and mud that blocked the entrance. He cried out, an animal sound, and scrambled forward on his hands and knees. As the men watched, non-plussed, he began to scrabble at the rocks with his bare hands. ‘Dig! We must dig! We must get out! No air! There is no air!’

  The rocks were impossible to shift. Oskar began pounding on them, bloodying his hands and shrieking wordlessly.

  The men grimaced and turned their heads, but Reiner had had enough. ‘Sigmar’s balls!’ he blasphemed, stepping forward, ‘Will you shut up!‘He spun Oskar around by the shoulder and punched him as hard as he could in the jaw.

  Reiner’s knuckles flared with pain at the contact, but the result was extremely gratifying. Oskar flopped bonelessly to the ground and lay there, silent at last—out cold.

  Reiner turned to the others, sucking a bleeding knuckle. They beamed appreciatively at him. He tried to think of something witty to say, but he couldn’t. Exhaustion suddenly overcame him. His knees nearly gave way.

  ‘Well,’ he said wearily. ‘I think this day’s gone on long enough. Let’s make camp.’

  TEN

  Let The Wind Be Your Guide

  WORN TO A frazzle though he was, Reiner still had some difficulty getting to sleep. He might have sneered at Oskar’s panic, but he had punched the artilleryman because he’d felt it spreading to his own heart as well. He too had been overcome with an overwhelming sense of doom when the roof collapsed. And of guilt. He had done this. If he hadn’t lost his temper and thrown Oskar into the posts it might not have happened. He had trapped them. Anything that happened to them now would be his fault. If they couldn’t find another way out? His fault. If something crawled out of the dark, unexplored tunnel and devoured them? His fault. If the air became so sour they couldn’t breathe? His fault. If they starved to death? If they went mad and ate each other to stay alive? His fault.

  But at last even guilt couldn’t keep him awake. Exhaustion dragged him down like a mermaid pulling him beneath the waves, and he slept the sleep of the dead until, sometime later, the scratching and squeaking began. He ignored it for as long as he could, drifting in and out of dreams where it was his old dog scratching at his door, a harlot of his acquaintance combing her hair on the creaking bed in his apartment back in Altdorf, a tree branch rubbing against the roof of his tent on the march up from Wissenberg, but finally images of rats and giant insects and bloodsucking bats forced him to open his eyes and look around.

  There was nothing to see, of course. It was still as black as an orc’s armpit. He could tell by the snores that the rest were still asleep. With a grunt of annoyance he fished around in his pack until he found his flint and steel, then struck a spark onto his tinder paper and lit a taper.

  His moving around woke some of the others and they sat up blinking in the unaccustomed light as Reiner raised the taper and looked for the source of the scratching.

  It was Oskar again, whining and clawing dispiritedly at the pile of stone. Reiner winced. The gunner must have been at it for hours. His fingernails were gone, ripped away, and the tips of his fingers were bloody shreds.

  ‘Oskar,’ Reiner called.

  The gunner didn’t respond. Reiner stood and stepped to him. Oskar’s lips were moving. Reiner leaned in to hear what he was saying.

  ‘Nearly there. Nearly there. Nearly there. Nearly there. Nearly there. Nearly there. Nearly there.’

  Reiner put his hand on Oskar’s shoulder and shook him. ‘Come on, Oskar. We’re going to see what’s down the hall. Might be another way out, eh?’

  Oskar pulled violently away. ‘No! We must dig! We’ll all die if we don’t dig!’ He began digging with renewed vigour, but no better results. The rock he was clawing at was stained a brownish-red from his blood.

  Reiner sighed and turned. The others were frowning sleepily at him and Oskar. Reiner found Gustaf among them. ‘Gustaf. Have you anything in your kit to quiet him?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said the surgeon dryly. ‘I’ve just the thing.’

  Reiner caught his tone and shot him a hard look. ‘If he dies of it, you’ll follow him.’

  Gustaf shrugged, and began unbuckling his kit.

  ‘But, captain,’ said Hals, ‘why not just put him out of his misery? He has no mind no more, the poor fellow. He’s no use to anybody, least of all himself.’

  Reiner shook his head. ‘With Erich deserting us, we need every man we have. Do you think we should leave Pavel behind just because he’s having trouble keeping up?’

  Hals stuck out his chin. ‘No, sir. No, I wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘I’m feeling much better now, sir,’ Pavel piped up anxiously.

  Gustaf stepped forward and held out a small black bottle and a tin spoon. ‘Here. A spoonful will calm him. Juice of the poppy. Nothing poisonous.’

  Reiner took the bottle. ‘Thank you. I’m familiar with it.’

  Gustaf smiled slyly. ‘I’ve no doubt.’

  Reiner flushed. He pulled the cork and inhaled. The sweet, cloying scent teased his nose. He fought the urge to have a spoonful himself. It would be so nice to drift away from all this unpleasantness and get some real rest, but that was a bad idea. He had been down that road once before and nearly lost his way.

  He filled the spoon and squatted beside Oskar. ‘Here, lad. It’ll give you strength for your digging.’

  The gunner turned his head without stopping and opened his mouth. Reiner spooned some of the liquid into him. He felt like a nurse feeding an infant, which was near enough to the truth.

  He stood and turned to the men. He sighed. It was time to face the music. ‘Listen, you lot. I want to speak to you.’ He paused, hesitant to go on, then cleared his throat and continued. ‘It was I who got you into this mess. I led us up into these blasted mountains, I picked this path instead of the other one, and I threw poor Oskar into those posts and brought the roof down on us. I’m about ready to stop playing at captain and let someone else take over. In fact, I’m a little surprised someone didn’t murder me in my sleep just now and assume command.’

  The others said nothing, only stared at him.

  He swallowed. ‘So, if anyone else wants the job, speak up. I’ll step down, and happily.’

  More silence, then finally Pavel coughed.

  ‘Sorry, captain,’ he said. ‘We’re only rankers. Peasants and merchants’ sons and the like. Ye be gentry. Yer meant to lead. It’s yer job.’

  ‘But I’m making a mess of it! Look where we are! I did this! We are trapped in here because I lost my temper. You ought to be mutinying by now.’

  ‘Naw, captain,’ said Hals. ‘We don’t blame you for all that. You done your best, and none can ask more than that. It’s when a captain starts to worry more about his own skin than the skins of his men. Thats when
… er, well, when things might happen.’

  Reiner blushed, embarrassed. They thought so highly of him, and he was such a villain. His own skin was exactly what he was worried about. He’d taken the lead because he wanted the rest of the men around to protect him if things went wrong. It was only because he was endangering himself by doing so terrible a job that he wanted to pass the baton to someone more competent.

  He sighed. ‘Very well. If no one will take the burden.’ He turned and began packing up his bedroll. ‘Let’s find a way out of this hole.’

  By the time the others had collected their gear and choked down a dry breakfast, Oskar was slumped against the boulders with his eyes closed.

  ‘Well done, Gustaf,’ said Reiner. ‘Now dress his wounds and tend to him. He’s your patient now. Keep him moving.’

  ‘A pleasure, sir,’ said Gustaf. But he didn’t mean it.

  Gustaf bound Oskar’s fingertips and got him on his feet while Hals lit two of their precious torches and Veirt’s slotted lantern. Then they all shouldered their packs and they started into the darkness. Giano took point, creeping down the tunnel twenty paces ahead holding the lantern close-shuttered. Reiner and Franz led the rest. Ulf walked behind them, then came Pavel leaning on Hals, and Oskar leaning on Gustaf. They walked into a steady breeze, which gave Reiner hope. Moving air meant some passage to the outside. What was curious was that the breeze was sometimes cold and sometimes warm.

  The tunnel joined another almost immediately, this one with two iron rails running down the centre fixed to wooden ties. Some of the rail was missing, and the ties rotten.

  ‘Which way?’ asked Giano, turning back to them.

  ‘Let the wind be your guide,’ said Reiner. ‘Take whichever passage it blows from.’

  Giano turned into the wind and they followed the glow of his lantern further into the mine. The tunnel dipped and turned eccentrically as it followed a seam of ore through the earth, and the longer they paced it the more cross tunnels and branching ways they passed. Sometimes it opened it out into wide columned areas where a particularly rich deposit had been found, only to narrow down again.

  After a quarter of an hour Giano came hurrying back flapping his free hand. ‘Douse torches!’ he hissed. ‘Douse torches.’

  Reiner and Hals stabbed their torches into the dirt of the tunnel floor as Giano closed the lantern’s slot. They were surprised to find that they were not in total darkness. A faint flickering glow reached them from around a bend in the passage, and the tramp of heavy feet echoed in the distance.

  ‘Kurgan,’ whispered Giano.

  Reiner and the others drew their weapons and held their breath as the light grew brighter and the footsteps got louder. They began to hear gruff voices mumbling in a barbaric tongue. Reiner found himself gripping his sabre so hard that his knuckles ached, but after a long moment when it sounded as if the Kurgan were standing beside them, talking in their ears, the voices and the light faded again, and then disappeared altogether.

  The party breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  ‘Well,’ said Reiner, trying for jocularity. ‘I’m fairly sure there’s another way out now.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hals. ‘Through them.’

  They relit the torches, then rounded the bend and entered an intersection. The wind blew from the direction the Kurgan had taken. The rails went that way too. They took it.

  ‘Just don’t catch up with them,’ Reiner said to Giano.

  The Tilean grinned and returned to point position.

  Soon they began to hear great clankings and groanings, and the susurrus of hundreds of voices shouting and talking. Harsh cries rose above the murmur, and crackings and clashings. A steady red glow filtered down the tunnel, and the wind gusted hot and cold. It began to smell of sweat and smoke and death.

  As Reiner passed a right-hand tunnel he was buffeted by a blast of oven-hot air. He stopped. A spur of the rails branched into the tunnel. Red light shone on the rocky walls at the far end and the clanking and roaring was louder here.

  ‘Giano,’ he called softly. ‘Back here.’

  Reiner led his companions into the cross tunnel, edging cautiously toward the red light. Thirty paces in, the tunnel came to an abrupt end at a rough arch. Through it they could see under-lit clouds of smoke rising from below. There was no floor beyond the arch, just two short lengths of twisted rail and the splintered remains of a wooden trestle jutting out over a precipitous drop.

  Reiner slid forward and peered down into an enormous cave, the floor of which was a good forty feet below them. The others crowded in behind him, craning their necks. A hellish panorama spread out before them. Directly below the opening was the source of the smoke—two giant, pyramid-shaped stone furnaces, each as big as an Altdorf row house. The smoke belched from square openings at their apexes. Into these holes two endless lines of slaves were dumping buckets of red-streaked black rocks. The slaves crawled up the sides of the pyramids like ants, dropped their burdens into the smoking chimneys, then filed away again to the far side of the cave to great mountains of the reddish stuff, where they filled their buckets again and repeated the journey, over and over again.

  ‘So much ore,’ said Ulf, awestruck. ‘This rivals the ironworks of Nuln.’

  To the right of the furnaces the cave narrowed down to a yawning black hole into which vanished more iron rails. A long train of slaves was shuffling into the hole, six abreast. They were shackled at the ankles and carried pickaxes over their shoulders. Huge Kurgan overseers herded them forward, bellowing and cracking whips over their heads. At their sides were huge, leashed hounds that lunged and barked at the slaves.

  More slaves pushed large wooden carts out of the hole on the iron rails, then pulled them up long ramps supported by a wooden scaffolding that rose over the mounds of ore. They tipped the contents of the carts onto the heaps, then lowered them back down the ramp and into the hole again.

  The slaves were men, women and children, but so gaunt and starved, so careworn and covered in filth that it was difficult to determine their sex or age. They all looked like stooped old men, hair lank and patchy, faces lined and slack. Their eyes were as dull as dry clay. Many were horribly maimed, missing fingers or hands or arms or eyes. Some limped around on poorly-fashioned wooden legs. Whip marks criss-crossed their naked backs, and shiny patches of scar tissue from countless burns covered their arms and legs. Their overseers took no pity on them, however, kicking and whipping those who lagged or paused in their labours, and beating mercilessly any that showed even the slightest glimmer of fight.

  Franz clenched his fists. ‘The animals! I’ll kill them all!’

  At the backs of the furnaces more slaves fed split logs into roaring fireboxes, while others worked great bellows, as big as rich men’s beds. At the front, slaves in heavy aprons and thick gloves dragged stone moulds shaped like keg-sized loaves of bread under endless streams of white-hot molten iron. As each mould was filled, it was dragged aside and replaced by another. Off to one side, iron loaves that had cooled were knocked out of the moulds with wooden mauls and loaded onto carts.

  Reiner watched a cart as it rolled into a further chamber. It was hard to see through the smoke, but he thought he could make out the fires of forges and the glistening bodies of smiths making armour and weapons with terrifying industry and piling them into great heaps. And beyond that… He squinted and shielded his eyes from a harsh white light. What fresh horror was this? It looked almost like… His heart lurched as he realised that he was looking outside, and that it was daylight. He hadn’t realised how much he’d longed for it. But as his eyes adjusted to the brightness he saw buildings and stables and Chaos troops milling about, and most discouraging of all, the great stone battlements they had seen when they first entered the valley the night before.

  Hals sighed. ‘We’ve to get through all that?’

  ‘We’ll find a way, lad,’ said Reiner. ‘Don’t worry.’ But he wished someone would tell him how. He was about to ask for
suggestions, when something else caught his eye. A wide column of Kurgan warriors was marching into the caves from outside. They looked to be the same fellows who had chased them here in the first place, but instead of the ragged leathers and bits and pieces of plundered armour they had worn before, now they wore matching suits of shining armour that encased breast, back, shoulders and arms. Close fitting helms hid their shaggy heads and long skirts of chainmail covered their legs. All was brand new, undented and flawless, and the spears and axes and swords they rested on their shoulders were freshly made as well, the honed edges flashing red in the furnace glow.

  The column filed into the cave, eight abreast, with no end in sight. It looked like an army on the march, but where could they be marching to? There wasn’t enough room for them all in the furnace cavern. Were they coming to slaughter all the slaves? That made no sense. Were there barracks further into the caves?

  The head of the column wound between the furnaces and the mountains of ore, scattering slaves left and right, then marched straight into the minehead tunnel.

  ‘Where are they going?’ he muttered.

  ‘Maybe there’s been an insurrection in the mines,’ said Franz hopefully.

  Reiner shook his head. ‘Look at those poor fellows. You think they have the energy to revolt? Let alone the will?’

  ‘Captain,’ said Pavel. ‘Look!’

  Reiner looked back toward the cave entrance. The end of the column of troops was at last in sight, and there was a sting in its tail. A phalanx of slaves was pulling a huge cannon on a massive gun carriage.

  Ulf sucked in a horrified breath. ‘Cannon!’ he whispered. ‘They have a cannon.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Hals, pushing forward. ‘Chaos troops don’t have guns. They haven’t the know-how.’

  ‘Then someone has given it to them,’ said Reiner.