The king addressed the foot soldier: “Speak, Harlan. Your king listens.”
The soldier removed his helmet to address the king, but when the earth shook again with the impact of a distant thunder-ball, he thought better of it and put it back on with a sheepish nod to Darrow. “Your Majesty,” he began in the slow drawl of the Middle Shires, “when I was a boy, my family farmed this land. Our house stood hard by that big live oak where the giant stands—” he caught himself and nodded toward Aidan, “—used to stand to taunt us every day. The house is gone now. The Pyrthens burned it to the ground in the first invasion, and we moved away to Bluemoss.”
Another Pyrthen thunder-ball shattered the air. When the noise subsided, Harlan continued. “About fifty strides beyond that oak tree, there’s an underground cave, just a hole in the ground. We used to store cheese and eggs and smoked meat there in the coolness.” Amid the chaos of battle, the old farmer’s slow, meandering way of telling the story was maddening. The noblemen grew fidgety.
Harlan pointed north. “And up this way, about a half-hour’s walk, there’s another cave.”
Selwyn spoke impatiently. “Enough preliminaries! What’s your information?”
Harlan blinked at the nobleman, then blinked again. “Well, sir,” he drawled, “that was the information.”
The captain broke in to explain. “The point is, the two caves might connect underground—like a secret passageway.”
King Darrow was starting to get the idea. “So we might be able to send a troop of soldiers into the very heart of the enemy camp—”
“Right,” answered the captain, visibly excited by the prospect.
“And who knows what havoc they could wreak,” added Radnor.
The captain nodded his head eagerly. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Perhaps they could capture the Pyrthen thunder-tubes,” suggested Lord Halbard.
“If they were part of a larger assault, maybe so,” the king remarked. He spoke to Harlan. “So what are the chances that these two caves connect?”
“Oh, I’d say there’s a pretty decent chance,” answered the farmer-soldier. The growing excitement among the noblemen was palpable. “But that ain’t the problem,” he added.
“Not the problem?” huffed Lord Selwyn. “Then what is the problem?”
“The problem’s finding the way. When that limestone melts away to make a cave, it can leave a maze of tunnels and twisting pathways about like an ant bed.” This news dampened the group’s spirits. Harlan went on. “Then there’s a good chance the path you’re looking for is underwater. Cousin of mine drowned in a cave like that.”
He paused a few seconds out of respect for his cousin. “And dark!” he continued. “Man, you never seen such darkness. No such thing as daytime in a cave!” He shivered to think of his last expedition underground, more than thirty years earlier, before the first western invasion. “Low ceilings, tight squeezes, sore back, bruised knees— I don’t ever want to go in a cave again.”
King Darrow and his advisers were dejected now. Their hopes of finding a secret tunnel to the Pyrthens were all but crushed.
“But then again,” Harlan added cheerfully, “you might get down there and find it’s a straight shot from here to there. You never know in a cave.”
“So to summarize,” sighed Selwyn, “there’s a chance that there’s an underground path from our side of the valley to the Pyrthen camp. There’s a chance it isn’t underwater. There’s a chance this path won’t have places too narrow for armed soldiers to pass through. There’s a chance we’ll be able to find this path. And there’s a chance that if a troop of soldiers actually made it to the Pyrthen camp, they’d be able to do us any good.”
Harlan nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“That adds up to a very slim chance this scheme could work,” moaned Selwyn.
“True,” answered King Darrow, “but these are desperate times. We must try it.” He began pacing back and forth, thinking how best to make this happen. “There’s no point in sending a troop of armed soldiers and hoping they find their way,” he began. “We’ll send a team of scouts to explore the caves and mark a path, if there is one, for the soldiers to follow.”
“How about miners?” Aidan suggested. “Our regular scouts’ skill and training won’t do them much good underground. But miners spend their days inside the earth.”
“The boy’s right,” agreed Lord Grady. “The mines of Greasy Cave are in my shire. Shall we send for some Greasy Cave boys?”
“Yes,” answered the king. “Grady, go to the captain of their regiment. Tell him to muster a team of five experienced miners for a special mission—a mission that might save their kingdom.”
Then the king added, under his breath, “An all-important, near-impossible mission.”
Aidan broke the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Er … Your Majesty? … Could I go with the troop of miner-scouts?”
The king shook his head. “Young Errolson, you’ve risked your life enough today.”
“But, Sire,” Aidan insisted, “don’t you think someone small should be in the party?”
Harlan chimed in, “There’s some mighty tight spots in a cave.”
“And the miners I know,” added Aidan, “are pretty broad about the chest and shoulders.”
The king thought on this. “You may be right, Errolson. The miner-scouts might need someone who has the body of a boy but the wits of a man.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Miner-Scouts
The leader of the miner-scouts was Gustus, the eldest of the company and their foreman at the mines of Greasy Cave. His thick beard was turning gray, but he was still a man of tremendous strength and vitality. His gruff way of talking didn’t disguise the tenderness he felt toward his men or his commitment to their well-being. Of the four other miner-scouts, three—Cedric, Ernest, and Clayton—were all made from the same mold as Gustus. They were short, burly men, accustomed to the perils and difficulties of working below the earth.
One of the miners, however, was different from the others. Arliss was a teenager, only three or four years older than Aidan. He was tall and lanky and didn’t much look like a miner. He hadn’t yet grown into his full strength, so he lacked the other miners’ skill with pickax and shovel. Nevertheless, he had a vital part to play in the mission.
Gustus had selected Arliss for the company because he had what people around Greasy Cave called “the miner’s head.” In the sheer blackness of the underground, it is a rare person who can maintain a sense of place and time. In an unfamiliar mine, or a mine that was not properly marked, even a miner with many years’ experience could get turned around and find himself lost for days. But Arliss, like his father and his grandfather before him, had an uncanny ability to navigate underground. Without sun or stars to guide him, he could always find true north. Without reference to horizon or landmark, he could always judge how far he had traveled. Arliss lacked the experience of the other miner-scouts, but, as Gustus was well aware, they were headed to a place where nobody had any experience. At some point, they would have to rely on instinct and intuition. They would have to rely on the miner’s head.
Aidan rounded out the group. His chief contribution was his small size. Should the way get too narrow for the miners to pass, it would be Aidan’s job to scout ahead. Otherwise, the young hero would mostly trail along with the group and try to stay out of the way.
The moon had not yet risen when the miner-scouts lit out for the cave entrance on the Corenwalder side of the valley. The night sky was clear, and the stars provided only enough light for the little troop to pick its way through the wiregrass. They all wore oaken miner’s helmets, and each carried a rope and climbing hook, a pack with hardtack biscuit, a tinderbox for lighting fires, a few basic supplies, a water bladder, and a bundle of seven torches made of river cane and pine pitch.
Each of the miners, as always, had a pickax and shovel strapped to his back. Even aboveground, the mi
ners pitched forward when they walked, as if they were in a low tunnel. They had orders not to talk above a whisper until they were underground, so as to avoid the notice of any Pyrthen patrols that might be in the area. But the miners were a talkative bunch. In the dark and gloomy holes where they spent their days, a constant stream of chatter and argument kept their spirits up. They couldn’t help talking now.
“Hey, Gustus,” called Clayton, “tell me again how we’re going to find a hole in the ground on a wide plain in the dark of night.”
“Harlan said to look for two big cedars growing so close together they look like two branches of one big tree,” answered Gustus, “about a half-hour’s walk to the northeast of the camp. He says the cave hole is ten or fifteen strides to the east of the trees.”
“And how long has it been since he’s seen this cave hole?” asked Cedric.
“Well, let’s see …” Gustus was figuring. “He said they quit this country after the first western invasion and he hasn’t been back since, so what’s that, thirty years or more?”
“Hey, Gustus?” It was Clayton again. “How do we know the cave hole on this side leads to the cave hole on the Pyrthen side?”
“We don’t know for sure,” said Gustus.
“Well, if anybody can find a path underground, it’s us,” answered Cedric, a little defensively. “We were made for this sort of thing.”
“True,” said Gustus. “But even so, the caves and tunnels we’re used to were dug by human hands. We got maps. We got long experience.
“But these caves,” he jabbed his finger toward the ground for emphasis, “these caves were hollowed out by the earth itself—by seeping water that melts away rock like spun sugar. The tunnels of a limestone cave don’t give up their secrets very easy. Anybody who goes down that hole, boys, better have a good reason for it.”
The company walked on in silence, chewing on what the foreman had said. Ernest was the first to break the silence. “Am I the only one who’s not sure this is a good idea?” Nobody answered, so he continued. “I came here to fight Pyrthens, not to get lost in a cave and starve to a skeleton. Appears to me, Corenwald needs all the fighting men it can muster.”
Ernest’s remarks were met with a general mumble of agreement. But above the mumble came the boyish voice of Arliss, the youngest of the miners. “You’re looking at it all wrong.” He quickened his step to catch up to Ernest. “Sure, we came to fight, but the truth is, none of us is any great shakes when it comes to soldiering. We’re all of us handier with a pickax than a battle-ax.”
“What’re you saying, Arliss?” grumbled Clayton.
“I’m just saying, it might be that all the days we’ve spent in the mines were just getting us ready for this day. There’s a whole lot we don’t know about this mission. We don’t know if the cave is passable; we don’t know if it goes all the way to the Pyrthen side; we don’t know if we can find the way even if it does. But we do know that, whatever this mission turns out to be, there’s nobody readier for it than we are.”
“Live the life that unfolds before you.” It was the first thing Aidan had said since they left camp.
Everyone turned toward Aidan. “What’s that, son?” asked Gustus.
“Who knows what the future holds? Only the One God,” explained Aidan. “You just live the little bit of life that you can see in front of you. You live it well. And that gets you ready for whatever unfolds next.
“Yesterday you were miners. Today, you’re scouts. Who knows, this might be a big waste of time—or worse. But maybe you’re the men who will deliver Corenwald from the Pyrthens. And the brave miners of Greasy Cave will be remembered forever in story and song as the heroes of the Bonifay Plain, whose bravery brought an end to the fifth western invasion.” He broke into an impromptu song:
Oh, the miners brave of Greasy Cave,
They did not think it odd
To make their way beneath the clay
Where human foot has never trod.
Fol de rol de rol de fol de rol de rol
De fol de rol de fiddely fol de rol.
Oh, the miners brave of Greasy Cave,
Came out the other side.
They braved the gloom, they challenged doom,
They made an end to Pyrthen pride.
Fol de rol de rol de fol de rol de rol
De fol de rol de fiddely fol de rol.
The miners were unaccustomed to being spoken of as heroes. They rather liked it. Without their even realizing it, their shuffling steps locked into a soldierly march as they sang the refrain from Aidan’s song:
Fol de rol de rol de fol de rol de rol
De fol de rol de fiddely fol de rol.
Gustus stopped short. “The twin cedars,” he said excitedly, pointing ahead. About a hundred strides away, Aidan could just make out the silhouette of the big, bushy trees. The company quickened their pace to keep up with their foreman.
Standing to the east of the cedars, Gustus scanned the landscape in front of him, but he saw no cave entrance. “Ten or fifteen strides to the east of the twin cedars,” he said to nobody in particular. “That’s what Harlan said. About where that clump of bushes is.”
Aidan’s heart sank. “Are you sure these are the right trees?”
“Have to be,” answered Gustus. “There aren’t many trees on this plain, much less big twin cedars. But how can a cave just disappear?”
Arliss, meanwhile, had gone over to the clump of bushes where Gustus had said the cave entrance should be. He was poking at the ground with the handle of his shovel. “Boys,” he called, “what you reckon this is?”
Running to where Arliss stood, Aidan could see that the bushes concealed a slight depression in the landscape. The miners circled around Arliss to see what he was poking at in the sand.
“Looks like a rabbit hole to me,” offered Clayton.
“Little big for a rabbit hole, ain’t it?”
“Well, it ain’t no cave entrance, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I don’t know,” Arliss answered, jabbing at the hole with the digging end of his shovel. “I think it’s a cave-in.” The hole opened a little under the shovel blade. Encouraged, Arliss attacked the sandy soil with renewed vigor. “Fall to, boys!” he called.
The circle of miners pulled out picks and shovels and went at the hole in the ground, uprooting bushes and sending sand flying. In a matter of seconds, the hole grew to the size of a wagon wheel, gaping like a black mouth in the white sand.
“It’s a cave, all right!” shouted Gustus. “It’s a cave, boys!” The mission was on in earnest now, and Gustus took charge. “Clayton, Ernest,” he ordered, “get a climbing rope ready. Tie off on those cedars.”
He put a big, meaty hand on Arliss’s bony shoulder. “Arliss, you’ll be the first one down the rabbit hole.”
Aidan stayed out of the way as the miners made their preparations. Meanwhile, Gustus shuttled back and forth between the cedars and the hole, checking knots, securing packs, encouraging his men. The miners laughed as their foreman sang Aidan’s song in his gruff, tuneless way:
Oh, the miners brave of Greasy Cave,
They did not think it odd
To make their way beneath the clay
Where human foot has never trod.
Fol de rol de rol de fol de rol de rol
De fol de rol de fiddely fol de rol.
The rope securely tied, Gustus gathered his men in a circle. “Strap helmets,” he ordered, strapping his own as he said it. “Kneepads on.” To each of his men he handed two bulky squares of stitched leather stuffed with cotton, which they strapped around their knees.
Gustus threw the free end of the climbing rope down the cave hole. “And now,” he said, “to the One God we commend our lives and this mission.” He turned to Arliss and gestured toward the cave. “Arliss, lead the way.”
The young miner grasped the rope with both hands and backed into the hole. The blackness swallowed his lanky body. Looking up into the s
tarlight, Arliss spoke one last time before he was completely lost in the shadows: “For God! For king! For Corenwald!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Down a Hole
The company of miners peered into the blackness of the cave hole and strained to hear anything that might tell them how Arliss was doing. It seemed an age before they heard his voice echoing up from the depths: “Bottom-tom-tom-om!”
Aidan went next. Backing hand over hand down the rope, he soon lost sight of the winking starlight and found himself in absolute darkness. It was comfortably cool down the hole; the muggy warmth of the summer night didn’t penetrate below the surface. Neither did the smells of the green world make their way into the cave. Above ground, the leafy odors of grass and shrub, the faint perfumes of flower and berry were so constant that Aidan rarely even realized he was breathing them. But down the cave hole, he smelled nothing but muddy clay.
The entry tunnel wasn’t a straight drop but rather a steep slope leading down to the innards of the earth. The limestone offered poor footing. Aidan hugged the climbing rope tightly as he inched through the narrow chute.
The miners above made no noise. Nor was there any noise from below. Aidan could hear only his own short breaths and the pounding of blood in his temples. Of all his five senses, only the sense of touch was left to him, so he was very aware of the textures around him. In places, the limestone was as smooth as wavy glass and just as slippery. In others, it was as rough as embedded gravel, and sliding over it was a misery. Twice he bumped his head on protruding rocks that would have surely left nasty gashes had he not been wearing his miner’s helmet.
At last, Aidan heard a noise below him.
Tchk … tchk … tchk.
“Arliss?” he called tentatively. “Is that you?”
The Bark of the Bog Owl Page 15
