But what had made Reiner recoil in fear were the occupants of the room. A circle of Nordic armored men standing against the walls chanted incessantly. Their heads were uncovered and their eyes were completely blank. Lines and sigils had been drawn in blood on their chests. The focus of their attention was the dais in the center of the room. There, where one might have expected a pagan altar, was a huge iron anvil with a glowing furnace beside it and a wide, low-rimmed basin in front of it, filled with a red liquid that could only be blood.
Behind the altar, a huge, burly blacksmith was operating a massive bellows. He was at least six feet six inches tall and his gigantic muscular arms appeared to be the same diameter as Reiner's ribcage. His torso was covered with a series of scars and burns that looked more decorative than accidental. The straight black hair hung over his face and concealed it, but Reiner saw the glint of white fangs protruding from the corners of his mouth and two blunt horns piercing the skin of his forehead.
A shaman with demented eyes, a stubble beard and a shaggy habit that appeared to have been fashioned from scalps stood to one side and led the chanting in a hoarse voice. Two Norse warriors stood at the edge of the dais and held a bent slave between them. Behind him were more slaves.
As Reiner and the others watched, the giant blacksmith pulled a gleaming sword blade from the furnace by the bare tang and placed it on the anvil. He raised a mammoth hammer overhead and began tapping the blade's edge. Although the blade glowed orange-white, the sparks that flew each time the hammer fell were a mysterious green that burned Reiner's eyes as if he were looking directly into the sun. The host of barbarians grunted in unison with each hammer blow.
With a final blow, the blacksmith finished shaping the blade and held it flat on the anvil. When the chanting ascended to a feverish pitch, the shaman advanced. In his hands he carried a smaller hammer and an iron object that resembled a wine bottle. He placed the base of the iron bottle on the leaf, just above the spike, and struck it with the hammer as the warriors shouted a two-syllable word. More green sparks flew and the blacksmith raised the blade. It was stamped with a crude runic symbol from which Reiner's eyes averted uneasily.
At a gesture from the shaman, the Nordic guards pushed the slave forward. In unison, the blacksmith, the shaman and the assembled barbarians shouted a short guttural incantation, and then the blacksmith pierced the slave with the still-hot blade. The slave let out a shriek and bent at the waist. The blacksmith, with inhuman strength, lifted the slave pinned to the tip of the blade off the ground and held him aloft until blood gushed from the wound, crackling and boiling, and down the blade to fill in the stamped rune.
Reiner involuntarily pulled back again because, as the blood touched the rune, it suddenly seemed that the blade had a presence. The feeling was that a malevolent entity had entered the temple. The warriors fell to their knees and raised their arms in a fawning gesture.
Reiner and the others retreated behind the curtain, grimacing, as the smith handed the sword to the shaman, who held it above his head and showed it to the circle of warriors, who roared with approval.
"Are we tainted just by looking at it?" asked Franz.
"It's painful." Hals said. "To see a hammer used for such an evil purpose."
Ulf raised a hand.
"The slaves return."
The group retreated back into the shadows as the two slaves, a man and a woman, they saw, both skinny as skeletons, returned to the door and passed to the other side of the curtain. After a moment they reappeared, dragging behind them the body of the slave pierced by the sword, and plunged back into the dark corridor.
After waiting a moment, Reiner motioned them forward. Franz shuddered.
"I'm afraid to see what's at the end of this."
Reiner patted him on the shoulder.
"What can there be in death that is worse than the life these poor souls have suffered in slavery?"
As they continued to move down the corridor, the stench of death increased. Before them there was also some light. A faint glow of torches shone behind the curtains of two other doors, each on one side of the corridor. They reached the one on the left first, and Reiner peered cautiously inside.
It was a huge room that, though not very wide, was so long that the ends remained in darkness. A wide door in the opposite wall led directly into the cavern where the furnaces were located, and through it Reiner saw the rows of slaves carrying buckets and making their endless rounds. The room was filled with crudely made plank bunks stacked six high, none of which were wider than Ulf's shoulders.
The beds to the left of the door were empty. Those to the right were occupied by bony huddled forms whose elbows, knees and hips were sore and bruised from the pressure of their bodies against the bare wood. They groaned, coughed and shuddered in restless sleep or, worse, did not move at all.
As Reiner watched, a curious procession came into view between the rows of beds. A barbarian guard walked at a brisk pace, followed by four slaves pushing a flat cart where several bodies were piled. The barbarian carried a sharp stick and with it whipped the sleeping slaves one by one. Most of them gasped and screamed. For those who did not, the barbarian would whip them again, this time with more force. If the slave continued to be unresponsive, the barbarian would drag him off the plank and throw him into the wagon.
When they reached the end of the row the cart was already full and the barbarian barked an order. Reiner stepped back as he saw the slaves turning the cart towards him, and by gestures he motioned the others back down the corridor into the shadows.
The barbarian led the slaves out of the barracks through the door on the other side of the corridor. After a pause, Reiner advanced cautiously there, at once impelled by curiosity and terrified at what he might see. The others followed him. Reiner looked out wishing against hope that what was there was some kind of embalming chamber and waste pit. It wasn't. It was what his nose had told him it would be: a kitchen. He stepped back, disgusted, and pushed Franz beyond the door.
"Don't look, boy. Keep walking."
Franz protested, but Reiner rudely pushed him down the corridor. He and the others passed one by one and two by two as prudence dictated, and continued on down the corridor, shuddering in disgust at the spectacle of the kitchen. Reiner wished he could get rid of the smell of meat that had lingered inside his nose.
A little further on, Ulf stopped before another open door.
"Wait." He whispered. "In here."
He stepped into the room and the others looked inside. Ulf was rummaging through piles of crudely made picks and shovels that were stacked against the walls along with piles of cobwebbed torches, coils of rope, wooden buckets, chains, sections of iron rails, iron wheels, aprons, and leather gloves. Everything was shoddy, made by slaves for slaves.
"If we go a long way underground," Ulf said as the others came in. "We will need torches and ropes, and possibly picks and shovels too. We should all grab what we can."
"We don't all have a packhorse constitution, engineer." Hals said. Ulf slung a coil of rope over one shoulder.
"We've already encountered a cave-in. We may have to dig our way out of another. Then there are the dangers of camouflaged holes, impassable chasms, unclimbable precipices. We might have to widen a passageway to get through. Or block one to prevent them from chasing us. Y..."
"All right, Ulf." Reiner hastened to say. "You've convinced us. We don't want Oskar to have a nervous breakdown again. Everyone grab torches and ropes. As for the rest of you, you can do as you please."
They all did as he asked. Hals, though he had protested the most, took a pickaxe and gave Pavel a shovel. When they had packed everything up, they set off again.
♦ ♦ ♦
The passage ended fifty paces ahead, at a doorway through which the red glow of the main cavern was visible. Reiner and the others advanced carefully to peer through it. The door was located just behind the two huge furnaces; the slaves feeding the fires and their overseers were less than three strides away. Reiner could have spit on them. Instead, he glanced toward the shaft located just across from the furnaces, to the right. It was close. With a short run they would reach the protection it offered and leave, but that run was fraught with danger.
At least twelve kurgan guards were between them and the mouth of the furnace, and there were a hundred within voice range. Reiner frowned. If only they had some way to distract them, to attract the attention of everyone in the cavern for the few seconds they needed to get through that space unnoticed....
And just as I was thinking this, a grandiose, almost musical din resounded in the cavern. All heads were raised, those of the Norsemen as well as those of the slaves. The din was heard again. Reiner craned his neck and saw, to the left, a Norse playing a cracked gong hanging from a rope just as a procession of slaves stumbled out of the wide doorway leading to the sleeping quarters, stumbling under the weight of huge steaming cauldrons on long poles.
The overseers shouted orders to their work parties and gestured for them to advance to the center of the cavern, where the kitchen slaves were setting the cauldrons on the floor. There was no need to give orders. The slaves dropped the tools and trooped forward toward the cauldrons, like wolves pouncing on a deer, licking their lips and fighting each other to be in the front row.
Pavel looked away, shuddering.
"Don't hold it against him, boy." Reiner said. "Blame the monsters that brought them to this point. Now, remake yourselves. We can't miss this opportunity."
The ovens were abandoned. Reiner and the rest ran around the one on the right and took cover behind its massive bulk. They were instantly bathed in sweat from the heat it radiated. To the left, the cavern wall narrowed until it was lost in the blackness of the mouth. Crouching low, they slipped along it.
Halfway to the entrance they ran out of anything to hide behind. They would have to cover the last ten meters in the open. Reiner stood on tiptoe to see where the barbarians were. They all seemed fully occupied near the cauldrons, as the overseers stretched out their hands to rob the slaves of the most appetizing morsels. He turned to look at the men.
"Ready, boys?"
They all nodded except Oskar.
"Make sure he goes in the right direction." Reiner said to Gustaf, then took one last look toward the center of the cavern. "Right." He said. "Run."
The men ran swiftly; Gustaf kept Oskar bent over holding him by the scruff of the neck. The run lasted only a few seconds, but to Reiner, who could have sworn he felt the eyes of every barbarian in the cavern turning toward him, it seemed like an eternity. However, as they ran into the black entrance of the mine, no shout or gong rang out in the cavern, nor did any arrows bounce off the rocks around them. When they had gone twenty paces into the gloom, they stopped and looked back. No one was following them.
"Did we make it?" remarked Giano, smiling.
"Yes." Pavel replied dryly. "The first step of a journey of a thousand leagues."
"Less of that, pikeman!" growled Reiner, unconsciously imitating Barrister. "Now, come on. I want to get as far away from here as possible."
"As do I." Hals nodded.
They set off down the long dark passageway, not yet sure enough about their surroundings to light torches. Behind them, Reiner could hear Oskar whimpering as the blackness closed in completely around them.