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.
Chapter Twenty Five
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.”
Jiron nods in agreement, “Yeah, we would stick out all right, what with us not knowing the language. What do you propose we do?”
Thinking a moment, he takes out a strip of cloth and says, “I’ll keep using this to show us the way and eventually we’ll find him.”
“Even across water?” he asks. “Remember, he was on a ship a few days ago.”
“There’s no reason to believe he’s not on the mainland,” James says. “They could’ve simply used it for quick transport from one city to the next along the coast.”
Looking dubious, Jiron shrugs his shoulders and says, “Either way, sitting here isn’t going to get us any closer.” He tops off his water bottle and then allows his horse a last drink from the spring before mounting. Once mounted, he waits for James to do the same and then they’re on their way.
Jiron looks over to James and sees him holding the piece of cloth as it sticks straight out from his hand. It’s
