Fires of Prophecy: The Morcyth Saga Book Two (44 page)

They continue like that for a while, chip
away the stone before carrying it over to the wagon. Miko’s arms
begin to tire and his hands become sore, as blisters start to
form.

Nate notices that he’s slowing down and
says, “Keep up.” He nods over to where Essin is watching another
pair, “You don’t want Essin to think you’re slacking.”

Doing the best he can, Miko continues to
chip away with the pickaxe despite the sores on his hands. After a
little while longer, his back and arms begin to ache and hurt.

Essin hollers, “Rest break!”

All the slaves give out a sigh of relief,
especially the new arrivals, as they rest their pickaxes on the
ground. They go over to where Essin is standing with another slave
who is holding a bucket of water and a sack containing stale bread.
The slave goes around the group, giving each a piece of bread and
drink of water that he draws from the bucket with a ladle.

“We get three such breaks every day,” Nate
informs him. “They’re not doing it to be nice, but so we can have
the strength to continue removing the ore all day.”

“Oh,” says Miko as he takes his piece of
bread and drinks from the ladle.

It seems like he just received his bread
when Essin announces, “Back to work!”

With a groan, the new slaves return to the
wall with their partners and resume the arduous work of removing
the iron ore.

Shortly after the break, Miko turns as he
hears Essin’s whip strike out and hit someone. “Who gave you
permission to stop working?” he shouts at one of the new
arrivals.

“But my hands are sore and bleeding,” the
man wails as he holds his hands out, showing Essin.

“I don’t care if they fall off!” he shouts,
knocking the hands away. “Grab your pickaxe and continue
working!”

When the man hesitates, Essin lashes him
twice more. The man grabs his pickaxe and starts chipping at the
wall again.

“See,” Nate tells him, “you don’t want to be
slacking. He got off easy because he’s new. If he’s caught again,
he’ll be put to much worse jobs.”

“Worse?” ask Miko after striking the wall
again.

“There’re always worse jobs,” he explains.
“Don’t ever forget that. Certain sections of the mine cave-in more
often than others, the trouble makers and slackers are the ones who
get to work those areas. You understand?”

Miko just nods his head as he continues to
wield his pickaxe. As bad as this is, he definitely doesn’t want to
go where it’s ‘worse’.

After a couple more hours of mining, the
sores on his hand begin to rub raw and every strike now causes him
pain. His shoulders and back feel like they’re on fire, their
strength beginning to fail.

Nate sees how he’s struggling to continue
and says, “I’ll do this and you take the rocks over to the wagon,
okay?”

Too tired for words, Miko just nods in
relief and begins to carry the rocks over to the wagon.

When their group has filled its second wagon
since Miko’s arrival, Essin announces it’s time to head up to the
surface. “Take your picks with you,” he tells the new arrivals.

Grabbing his, Miko rests it on a shoulder
and follows Nate as they begin to leave the mines for the night.
“When they first started mining here,” Nate tells him, “they used
to have the slaves remain within the mines all the time. But many
kept getting sick and dying so they started bringing them out every
night and the sickness began to go away.”

“Quiet back there!” Essin hollers back to
them.

Whispering, Nate continues, “Remember worse?
The ones at the very furthest end aren’t allowed out at night. They
stay down here a week at a time as punishment, few make it more
than a month.”

A shudder runs through Miko when he thinks
about having to stay in the mines for days at a time, never seeing
the outside or having fresh, clean air to breathe.

They make their way back toward the winding
road that leads to the surface. Other slave groups join them as
they make their way up and out of the mine. Able to breathe fresh
air again, Miko begins to feel a little better and some of his
strength returns. Essin leads them over to a large, single story
building with many doors spaced along the outside. Coming to one,
he opens it up and leads them inside. “This is where you will be
spending every night,” he tells them as the new arrivals drop to
the floors, one even passing out. “No one is permitted outside
during the night.”

Once they’re all in, he says, “In a little
bit, someone will bring you food and water.” He glances around at
the exhausted new arrivals and then to the one who has passed out,
“Use this time to rest. I expect you hard at work in the
morning.”

Just before he leaves, he says, “Share the
food evenly, those who don’t will go without food for a day.” He
glares around at everyone before leaving the room and shutting the
door.

When the door closes, the new arrivals begin
to quietly complain and bemoan their situation. “Shut up!” one of
the old timers says.

“You’ll get use to it after a while,”
another adds.

“Yeah,” a third says, “the first couple days
are the worst, but your hands will toughen up.”

Miko looks at his hands in the dim light
coming through the cracks in the walls and the one lone window.
Open, oozing sores cover his hands, each one adding its voice to
the throbbing pain.

When the food arrives, the old timers make
it a point to share evenly with the newcomers. In fact, Nate
actually gives Miko some of his portion, saying, “You can have some
of mine, it looks like you need it.” The old timers know that a
poorly fed worker only hurts the group, and it’s the group that
counts down here. Everyone looks out for each other, those who
don’t, tend not to make it long.

“Thank you,” he says gratefully as he takes
the offered portion. The bread and meat they’re given isn’t the
freshest he’s ever had, but after all the exertion in the mines, it
tasted wonderful. Not nearly enough to fill him completely, but
enough to quiet the grumbling in his stomach.

After he’s done eating, he goes over to a
corner where he quickly falls asleep.

It seemed like he no sooner fell asleep
before Essin is there waking them up. After a quick meal, they’re
again marched back down into the mines. His arms and back are stiff
and aching, it’s all he can do just to carry that heavy pickaxe as
he descends into the mines. They arrive back at the same spot they
worked the day before and commence to mine the ore.

After the first couple of swings, his arms
begin complaining and by the first break, his back and arms are
again on fire. His hands are slippery from the oozing sores that
the swinging of the pickaxe has reopened from the day before. Nate
does his best to help him along, he’s thankful that his partner is
so nice and helpful. As Nate chips away at the wall, he carries the
rocks over to the waiting wagon and deposits them inside.

When Essin calls for the first break, Miko
is dazed and exhausted even though his day isn’t even half over.
When the slave comes over to give him his bread and water, he at
first doesn’t realize it, but then his eyes focus on who the slave
is. Black Tooth!

When he reaches for his bread, Black Tooth
gives him a dark look and drops it to the ground before he can take
hold of it. When he gives him the ladle, he finds that it’s only
half full of water.

Black Tooth gives him an evil grin as he
takes the ladle back. Nate, standing beside him doesn’t fail to
notice what is going on. After Black Tooth is gone and the break is
over, they return to mining the ore.

“You know him?” he asks, referring to Black
Tooth.

“Yeah,” Miko replies as he carries the rocks
over to the wagon. “He lost his hand because he tried to attack me
one night and the guards cut it off, probably because he had a
knife.”

“That’s the general rule,” he says. “I take
it he doesn’t care for you too much, then?”

“You could say that,” agrees Miko.

“You’ll never survive if he only gives you
half rations,” Nate tells him.

“What should I do?” Miko asks.

“If he does it again,” he explains, “tell
Essin. I’ll back you up on it.”

“Alright,” he says, “I’ll do that.”

The rest of the day passes pretty much as
the previous one had. Apparently their quota was four wagon loads a
day. “And there better not be just rock in there either!” Essin
keeps telling them. At the second to last break of the day, Black
Tooth is again the one to bring their bread and water. Miko figures
he’s given that job because a one handed man is of little use
otherwise.

When he comes to Miko, he gives him another
of his crooked grins as he fills the ladle again only half full.
Instead of taking it, Miko hollers over to where Essin stands,
“He’s only giving me a half ration of water!”

Black Tooth’s smile disappears as he quickly
dips the ladle back in before Essin has time to come over to see
what he’s doing.

“What’s going on over here?” he asks,
obviously not pleased at having been disturbed.

Indicating Black Tooth, Miko says, “This man
here is only giving me half rations of water.”

Essin speaks to Black Tooth and gets a
reply. “He says you just want seconds,” he says to Miko.

Nate steps in and says, “I’ve seen it. He’s
been shorting Miko because of an old grudge.”

Essin looks from Nate, Miko and then to
Black Tooth. Making up his mind he says something to Black Tooth
and then walks away.

Black Tooth gives Miko a dark look, dips the
ladle and gives him a full measure. Miko takes it and says, “Thank
you” to him very pleasantly just to irritate him.

“What did Essin say to him?” Miko asks Nate
once they’ve returned to work.

“He said if he ever shorts one of his
workers again, he’ll have the other hand cut off,” he replies.

“Good,” Miko says with malice. He really
doesn’t care too much for Black Tooth.

Near the end of their shift, there’s a
rumble from off in the mines and then someone comes running and
says something excitedly to Essin.

“Leave your picks boys,” he tells them.
“There’s been a cave-in and we’ve been told to go help dig ‘em
out.”

He turns and leads them at a quick pace down
a side tunnel that has dust belching out of it. They go down it a
ways and arrive at a spot where the ceiling has fallen in and has
either trapped or killed the men that had been working this
area.

They begin to clear the rubble as fast as
they can, sometimes several of them have to work together to move a
sizeable boulder. Miko works diligently and suddenly sees an arm
sticking out of the rubble after removing a stone. “Someone’s under
here!” he hollers.

Everyone begins to clear that section until
the body can be removed. Miko gets sick when he sees the skull has
been smashed and the man’s brains are oozing through the
cracks.

They find three more bodies before they
break through to the other side where the rest of the crew had been
trapped. One has a broken arm and another a broken leg, the rest of
the crew are unscathed.

After they’ve removed the rubble and the men
are being taken to the surface to mend, Essin leads them back to
their area. On the way back, Miko sees a group of men coming with
timbers and hammers to shore up the fallen area.

Once back and again picking away at the
wall, his mind keeps returning to the cave-in and he can’t get the
picture of the man’s skull, crushed by the fallen stone, out of his
mind. The tunnel feels smaller than it had before and every noise
he hears, scares him as he thinks the tunnel is caving in.

When they at last head back up to their
room, Miko is happy to be out of there. All night long, he has
dreams of being trapped inside the tunnel as it caves in around
him.

_________________________

The day before, they headed south as
directly as they could and had put many miles behind them. Several
times they came across dead soldiers and horses, all having been
flayed by the storm. Every corpse had a good portion of their skin
removed, some even with bones exposed from where the flying debris
had shredded the skin and tissue from them.

They remained out of sight of the road to
the west while paralleling its course south. Once they detoured
further to the east to avoid patrols and each time James had
dreaded the thought of possibly having to do magic to escape them.
But thankfully, they managed to avoid detection and hadn’t needed
to use magic.

Close to nightfall, they come across a small
spring and made camp. Barely three foot across and two deep, it
held enough water to quench their thirst and satisfy the horses. By
the time they were done with drinking and filling their water
bottles, they had practically drained it dry. By morning, though,
it had refilled to its previous level and they were able to top off
their water bottles again before setting off.

Prior to leaving, James pulls out his mirror
to see if he can determine Miko’s whereabouts. When the image
begins to appear, he starts to panic because it is so dark. At
first he thought he was looking inside a grave but then a light
appears and he sees Miko with a pickaxe in hand, swinging it
against a rock wall.

“I found him!” he announces excitedly. “It
looks like they have him inside some kind of mine.”

“A mine?” Jiron asks. “Can you determine
where?”

He tries to expand the image but to no
avail. Shaking his head he says, “All I see is the inside of the
mine, others are there working beside him.”

“Must be a big place then,” Jiron
figures.

“Perhaps,” he replies. “I’m sure the locals
would know of it, but we don’t dare inquire.”