Fist clenched, he fixed his stare on the swirling morass of blue null light. Sark listened to the activity around him. Chained fists retrieved picks and shovels. Ore cart wheels screached on iron rails. Bound feet shuffled in the darkness, their pace increasing at barked orders and cracking whips. The glow of a hunched slave blurred before him. The tangerine shape swept low, snatched his pick from the ground. The figure's orange corona, small even for his people, paused a moment. Sark heard their sharp intake of breath, expected words that never came.
"Problem?"
He spat the question through clenched teeth, filled it with as much venom as he could muster. The other dwarf twitched almost imperceptably. Sark lurched from the touch of a calloused finger brushing his forearm.
"Shh," the other whispered, barely audible even to Sark's keen ears.
Hot fists spun the pick, extending its cool blue haft at Sark's gut. A single digit traced a line, primtive arrowheads at each end. With residual heat trails fading into nothing, the intruder moved again. An angular skull, its forehead decorated with an 'x', coloured the wood before slowly fading from existence. Sark's guest bobbed its head, wiping a hand across the shaft's length. It disappeared into the throng of shuffling slaves.
Sark drew a breath, focussed on the exhalation to quell an urge to follow his benefactor with a look. Heart adding speed to it's rhythm, he flexed his hands. The dull ache in his skull thumping a little harder, he took a step deeper into the yawning cavern.
"Death both ways, eh?"
Cool dark blue shimmered in his underlight vision, the lack of heat signatures making him as blind as if he'd closed his secondary, nictating, eyelids. Dust and stale perspiration, a phantom from scores of slaves working the ore seams, stained the air. An undercurrent of dried blood and vomit added to the funk. Sark crept with one hand braced against cold stone, fingers tracing rough gouges and sharp splinters. A breath of air tugged at the fibres of his beard and cooled the sweat on his lithe, muscular frame. The breeze whispered around him, hissing unknowable secrets in his ears.
"That's not right."
Right foot hovering an inch above the stone flooring, Sark froze. Deep wrinkles scarred his stone-coloured brow. Flicking his tongue across dry lips, he cocked his head. Nothing but air and the thumping of his own heart reached his ears. His brain raced through memories of Dunnholme, plotted tunnels, streets and fungus-lined avenues. Access chutes and chimneys that vented smoke Topside dotted the city like spots on a cave skink's skin. Not a single one was within a half-dozen miles of the mine.
In one slow, silent motion, Sark swept a rock from the ground. Adjusting its weight in his split and calloused palm, he tested its heft with a few practice swings. Satisfied with the weapon, he crept deeper into the darkness.
After a half mile of crouched walking, his ruined back rubbed raw by hard rock, Sark's foot struck soft flesh. Accustomed to the touch and stink of death, he crouched beside the obstruction. Stony mace still gripped in his fist, he probed the ground with his free hand. Soft flesh, wet with coagulating blood, met his fingertips. The stink of rot and voided bowels filled his nostrils. In the darkness, he felt his way to the emaciated corpse's feet, grabbed an ankle and dragged it to the passage's centre. Stripping off the cadaver's breech, cloth he bound its arms to its chest. He considered dragging it back to the pit. A sheen of sweat and the shake of overexertion in his limbs made him scrap the idea. Rock held in loosened fingers, he slammed an angry kick into the fallen dwarf before turning back to the waiting darkness.
Warmth and life flashed at Sark's periphery. He spun on a heel. In the split second it had taken him to move, the orange stain vanished into the endless sea of blue. No trace of residual body heat stained the cavern's surface. Not the slightest hint of sound scraped above the ominipresent wind. Nothing but darkness lurked in the tunnel.
"Skink?"
The word was less than a puff of breath. Sark rejected the idea the instant he'd spoken. The short-tailed lizards preferred Dunnholme's upper reaches, where noble dwarfs treasured their bitter flesh and soft bones as delicacies. Sometimes they congregated in the forges, drawn there by the continual heat of burning coal. He knew the chances of even a lone lizard scampering so far from raging furnaces or the the warming sun was a rediculous proposition.
"Rat?"
Cool air streamed through the tunnel, chilliing Sark's sweaty flesh and tustling his hair. A damp, earthy tang lingered in the wind, laced with amoniac undertones. It cleared concussion's fog from Sark's brain, pulling together connections with the mysterious heat flash.
"Of course," he whispered, teeth bared in a victorious grin.
Rock clutched as tight as if it were a talisman of luck, Sark bolted down the corridor. Hope burned in his chest, the unfamiliar emotion adding power to his starved muscles. Cramps fired in his aching legs, the pain threatening to slow his pace. Sucking air through his teeth, the dwarf kicked harder with each stride, working flexibility back into fossilised muscles. His grin stretched wider as he turned a corner. Certain whatever had crept into his field of vision had fled back this way.
The gentle breeze became a chill wind. Sweat-slick hair billowed behind him with the ferocity of a war master's pennant. Despite his exertion, a shiver passed through his spine. Puckered flesh on his arms pulled small hairs to attention. Chest heaving with every breath, he drank in the stink of vegetation and decay with a thirst greater than any he'd had for a doxy's perfume.
The tunnel narrowed, became a dwarf-sized hole burrowed in rock. From beyond the crevice, sounds echoed. Insects chirruped in the darkness, silencing as bats shrieked their huntng call. The rhythmic slap of water aganst stone rose from the crevice, feeding the unfamiliar sensation in Sark's chest. Arms pumping with a fury, Sark ducked his head and charged the opening. Pinpricks of orange burned like stars in the wide expanse. Larger heat stains zipped around after each tiny sun. Though the ambient temperature made any guess at the cavern's size impossible to gauge, echoes of lapping water and sounds of the hunt hinted at an enormous expanse.
Overcome, Sark swallowed past a lump in his throat. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. Exhaustion ripping through his burning muscles, he battled the urge to collapse. Only when icy water swallowed his naked feet, awakening his flesh with its painful embrace, did he drop. Cupped hands splashed into the liquid. He shovelled it into his mouth. Tasting its pure, chilled freshness, he planted his hands on the lake bed and plunged he face in deep. Lips wide, he drank until his lungs burned for air.
"You took your damned time."
Hope slithered from his body as if it had never existed. Sark leaped to his feet. Fist balled into knotted hammers of flesh and bone, the dwarf turned to face the rasping voice. Four silhouttes burned against the chamber's entrance, two to each side. Handprints blossomed on cold steel shovels. Subtle movement brought the hiss of drawn blades to Sark's ears.
"You're here now," the throttled voice said again, its owner adjusting its grip on a spade as he approached.
"Though you won't be for long."
