closing in and I wanted out of there in a bad way. Maybe I had a touch of claustrophobia after all.
“Why did you have to show me this?” I demanded to know.
“Because it is very important that you understand how desperate the situation is for the Milago,” Osa said.
I wanted to scream. Osa was setting me up. She was showing me how bad these guys had it so I’d feel sorry for them and agree to lead their revolution. But why? Osa didn’t seem like a fool. She could see that I wasn’t the kind of guy who could lead a revolution. Her daughter figured it out pretty quick. Why wasn’t Osa with the program? I didn’t want to argue here in front of these poor miners, so I headed for the tunnel that led to the ladders.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home!” was my simple reply. I hurried across the cavern, hopping over the railroad tracks and dodging the ore cars. Then just as I was about to enter the tunnel that led to the ladders, somebody ran in front of me. It was Figgis. But this time he didn’t stop to try and sell me something. He was in a hurry and I’m not even sure he knew it was me who he cut off. I watched the little guy run down the tunnel toward the ladders and was about to follow him when I felt the ground start to shudder. Uh-oh, was this an earthquake? Or a cave-in? A second later there was a huge explosion! I spun to look where the sound came from and saw black smoke billowing out from one of the tunnels. Many of the miners were looking at the smoking tunnel with confusion.
Now, I’m no expert, but these guys have been doing this mining thing for a long time. Surely they had been through an explosion like this before. You’d think that they would have instantly kicked into emergency gear and either evacuated the mine or started damage control. There could be miners trapped in there who needed to be rescued. But that’s not what happened. The miners just looked to each other with a mixture of fear and confusion. It was like they didn’t know what to do.
Finally Osa called out, “Are there men in there?”
One of the miners shouted out, “Rellin!” This seemed to wake the others up. They quickly came to their senses and headed for the smoking tunnel to rescue their leader. One of the miners tied a rope around his waist, boldly fought the smoke and entered the tunnel. Another few miners held the other end of the rope. I guess the idea was that if he passed out, they could drag him back to safety. Brave guy.
The ground didn’t shake again. Whatever damage the explosion caused was only in that one tunnel. I didn’t feel I was in any danger and I wanted to stay and see if Rellin was okay.
“How often do they have explosions like that?” I asked. Osa kept staring at the smoking tunnel and then said something I never expected to hear.
“What is an explosion?” she asked.
Huh? How could she not know what an explosion was? This woman knew everything there was to know. It couldn’t have been a language thing because Travelers understood all languages.
“You know,” I continued. “Explosion. That big bang. From dynamite or something.”
Osa looked at me with confusion and said, “I have never seen anything like that happen here, nor in my home territory. You are saying that loud noise caused the damage? Like lightning?”
This was deeply weird. Though maybe it explained why the miners reacted the way they did. They probably had no idea what happened either. But then what had caused the explosion? Maybe they tapped into some underground gas pocket.
Before we could talk more about it, the miners holding the rope began to frantically pull on their end. Other miners gathered to watch with concern. They stared into the smoky tunnel, waiting to see what came out. After a few seconds, the miner on the other end emerged from the smoke and in his arms…was Rellin. The chief miner was full of black soot and there were traces of blood around his forehead, but he was okay. Dazed, but okay. He was helped to sit down and brought a leather skin full of water to drink. Rellin took a long drink, swished it in his mouth, and spit.
Then an odd thing happened. Rellin looked up at the other miners, gazing at each one in turn, and began to laugh. The other miners didn’t know what to make of this. Maybe the total relief from his brush with death came out in nervous laughter. Or maybe he was crazy. I sure didn’t know and from the confused looks of the miners, they didn’t know either. I have to admit, it was kind of creepy. I think Osa felt the same way because she put a hand on my shoulder and said, “We should go to the surface.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was down that tunnel and up those ladders in an instant. As I climbed, I looked up at the circle of blue sky that grew larger and larger the higher I got. It was the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel and I couldn’t get to it fast enough. When I poked my head out into the fresh air, I took a deep breath and promised myself that I would never go down in that hell hole again. One of the miners who hoisted up the basket of glaze was leaning against the wooden frame of the pulley system, watching me. The other miner was gone.
Then I sensed something strange. For some reason the miner didn’t turn away after we made eye contact. He kept on staring at me.
Osa poked up out of the hole, jumped onto the ground, and said, “Tell me more about this thing you call… explosion.”
Before I could answer, Osa’s attention was caught by something behind me. I turned to look and saw the miner who had been staring at me. Osa walked past me with her eyes fixed on the man. He just stood there, still looking at me with a dumb expression on his face. Osa walked right up to him, stared at him for a moment more, then quickly spun back toward me and shouted, “Pendragon, run!”
“Huh?”
Before Osa could say another word, the miner toppled over and fell at her feet. My eyes fixed on the wooden arrow that was sticking out of his back. Yeah, the guy was dead. That wasn’t a dumb look on his face, it was a dead look. I had never seen a dead man before. I couldn’t move. Osa ran to me, grabbed my hand, and started to drag me toward the forest. We had only gone a few steps when four of Kagan’s knights leaped out in front of us. Now I knew what had happened to the miner.
“We’ve come for the boy,” they announced. There was no mistaking it this time. Unlike the knight named Alder who I mistook for an enemy back by the river, these guys were not on our side. They carried clublike weapons and, judging from the poor dead miner with the arrow sticking out of his back, they wouldn’t hesitate to use them for whatever mayhem they thought fit.
Osa didn’t move, but I could feel her tense up. She let go of my hand and slowly turned sideways. I knew what this meant. It was exactly what we were taught to do in karate class. Turning sideways made you a smaller target. Yeah, there was going to be a fight and I was in the middle of it. Osa wasn’t about to make the first move. She was too smart for that. If something was going to happen, it would be the knights who would start it.
One raised his club and took a step toward us. I froze. Osa bent her knees, ready to defend herself. The knight let out a bellow, began to charge and…whack! He suddenly went down in a heap as if he had been shot. The other knights were just as surprised as I was, but I saw the reason for it before they did.
Standing behind them was Loor, holding her wooden stave. Nice shot. She had another weapon and quickly tossed it to her mother. Osa caught it and crouched into attack mode. Now they were both armed and the odds became a little better. But still, these knights were professional fighters. I wasn’t so sure how these warrior women would do against them.
Things happened fast. Before the knights could recover from the surprise of seeing their buddy do a face plant, Loor grabbed the club from the hand of the knight she had just whacked and in one quick movement she threw it to me. I caught it just as Loor took up position next to her mother. It was now three-on-three. Well, two- and-a-half-on-three because the chances of me using that club to attack one of those hairy knights were about the same as me sprouting wings and flying out of there.
“Fight, Pendragon,” commanded Loor.
At that instant the three knights charged. Osa and Loor ran to meet them. I stood frozen. My prediction about Osa and Loor being warriors turned out to be a hundred percent correct. These two were awesome. They swung their long wooden weapons like martial arts experts. If I weren’t so terrified, I probably would have enjoyed the show. They spun and twirled the long staves so quickly they were nothing more than blurs. The knights, on the other hand, fought awkwardly. They would swing their clubs, but the women would either bat the attack away with a deft flip of their stave, or dodge out of the way and answer the attack with a ringing smack to the body. If this were a toe-to-toe slugfest, I would have bet on the knights. But Osa and Loor never stood still long enough for the knights to get a solid shot at them. It was like watching lumbering bears being attacked by vicious bees. And the
