Out of the Darkness

Being an Unkerlanter, he even understood why his countrymen had yanked him out of freedom-or what passed for it hereabouts-and sent him to the mines. If he’d gone back to his farm, to his life with Obilot, he would have come into the town of Linnich every so often, to sell his produce and buy what the farm couldn’t turn out. And he might have talked about what he’d seen in Algarve. That, in turn, might have made other people wonder why they couldn’t have so much their enemies took for granted. Oh, aye, I’m a dangerous character, I am, Garivald thought. I could have started a rebellion, a conspiracy.

A lot of the men in the mines were no more truly dangerous than he was. But he knew some who were. That fellow from Plegmund’s Brigade who’d once tried to comb his band out of the forest west of Herborn sprang to mind. No one would ever make Ceorl out to be a hero. He didn’t pretend to be one, either. He was a born bandit, a son of a whore if ever there was one.

And he flourished here in the mines. He led a band of Forthwegians and a couple of Kaunians. They hung together and got good food and good bunks for themselves. When other gangs challenged them, they fought back with a viciousness that made sure they didn’t get challenged often.

And Ceorl seemed to like Garivald, as much as he liked anyone. That puzzled the Unkerlanter. At last, he decided being old enemies counted almost as much as being old friends would have. Out in the wider world, the notion would have struck him as absurd. Here in the mines, it made a twisted kind of sense. Even seeing someone who’d tried to kill you reminded you of what lay beyond tunnels and barracks.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ceorl kept saying to whoever would listen. His Unkerlanter was foul; listening took effort. But he spoke his mind-spoke it without the least hesitation. “We’ve got to get out. This place is a manufactory for dying.”

“A man at the head of a gang can live soft,” Garivald told him. “Why do you care what happens to anybody else?”

“I spent too fornicating much time in gaol,” Ceorl answered; Forthwegian obscenities weren’t too different from their Unkerlanter equivalents. “This is another one.” He spat. “Besides, this cinnabar stuff’s poison. Look at the quicksilver refineries. And even the raw stuff’s bad. I was talking with somebody from a dragon groundcrew. It’ll kill you-not fast, but it will.”

Garivald shrugged. He didn’t know whether that was true, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. The mines weren’t run as health resorts for miners. “What can you do about it?” he asked reasonably. “Run away?”

“No, of course not,” Ceorl said. “I wasn’t thinking of anything like that. Not me, pal. I know better, by the powers above.”

He spoke louder than he had been, louder than he needed to. Looking over his shoulder, Garivald saw a grim-faced guard within earshot. He doubted Ceorl had fooled the guard; of course any captive in his right mind wanted to get away. But the Forthwegian couldn’t very well say he wanted to break out of the captives’ camp and mine complex. Escape was punishable, too.

A couple of days later, at the end of a blind corridor, Ceorl picked up the thread as if the guard had never interrupted it: “How about you, buddy? You want to get out of here?”

“If I could,” Garivald said. “Who wouldn’t? But what are the odds? They’ve got it shut up tight.”

The Forthwegian laughed in his face. “You may be tough, but you ain’t what anybody’d call smart.”

Garivald marveled that the ruffian found him tough, but he let that go. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“There’s ways,” Ceorl answered. “That’s all I’m gonna tell you-there’s ways. Maybe not if you’re a redhead or a blond, but if you’re the right kind of ugly, there’s ways. Speaking the lingo helps, too.”

As far as Garivald was concerned, Ceorl didn’t really speak it. But his own Grelzer dialect made a lot of his countrymen automatically assume he’d been a traitor. Unkerlanter came in a lot of flavors. Maybe people somewhere in the kingdom talked the way Ceorl did.

Garivald rubbed his chin. “You aren’t the right kind of ugly if you keep that beard.”

Ceorl grinned. “Aye, I know it. I’ll get rid of the fornicating thing when the time comes. Till then, though …” He eyed Garivald. “If you don’t feel like staying here till you croak, wanna come along?”

“If they catch us, they’re liable to kill us.”

“And so?” Ceorl shrugged. “What difference does it make? I ain’t gonna live the rest of my days in a fornicating cage. They think I am, they can kiss my arse.”

For Garivald, it wasn’t the rest of his life. His official sentence was twenty-five years. But he’d be a long way from young if they ever let him out-and if he lived to the end of the sentence. How likely was that? He didn’t know, not for certain, but he didn’t like the odds.