After half an hour of absolute darkness and silence, it seemed that they could safely light the torches and everyone let out sighs of relief. All except Oskar. The calming effects of Gustaf's syrup were wearing off, and he was beginning to look around uneasily and mumble about the weight. The stones. No air.
"Why the hell did you decide to become a gunner, soldier?" grumbled Hals. "Isn't there anything you're not afraid of?"
"I never wanted to be a soldier." Oskar muttered, slurring his words a bit. "I was secretary to my lord Gunter. I wrote his correspondence for him and read it to him, too. He was illiterate, the old fool. But one day..." he sighed and fell silent.
The others waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have forgotten he was talking.
"One day, what?" asked Pavel, irritated.
"Huh?" said Oskar. "Ah... yes. Well, one day I was with my lord while he was overseeing some land he owned. He wanted to build a..., a hunting lodge, I think it was. And while the overseer was using the plumb bob and yardsticks to calculate distances and heights, I was calculating by eye with almost absolute precision. I was making out distant things that the overseer needed the spyglass to see. 'By the gods, my boy, you have the makings of a good gunner,' Gottenstet told me. And he didn't stop until he got me to enlist and become part of a gunner's crew."
"To me, a scholar! I tried to tell him that although my eyesight was good my insides were weak, but he wouldn't even listen to me." He shrugged. "Of course, it didn't help that I was first in my class. I liked the job: aiming, determining grades, but on the battlefield..." He shuddered and again shrugged his shoulders. "Have you ever seen skyfire, that thing with mouths?" He looked around in surprise, as if awakening, and his eyes bugged out as he gazed at the nearby stone walls and low ceiling. "The weight." he muttered. "May the gods save us. The weight. I can't breathe."
Reiner grimaced, uncomfortably.
"Gustaf, give him another sip, will you?"
The corridor penetrated deeper and deeper into the interior of the mountains. Sometimes there were passages branching off to the left or right through which shiny rails led away into the shadows. Some were closed by barricades behind which there was evidence of crumbling, but there was no doubt as to which to follow. The deep ruts of the cannon wheels always pointed them in the right direction.
A while later the rails began to rattle, and before long there was a metallic clang. The men extinguished the torches and hid in a side tunnel. A moment later, a train of ore-laden wagons passed by, each pushed by a group of expressionless-eyed slaves. The Nordic foreman was reclining in the first wagon and carried a lantern at his side.
Once they had passed, Franz cursed in a whisper.
"They are many and he is one! Couldn't they strangle him? Throw him into a well?"
"And then?" asked Reiner.
The boy grunted in frustration but could not answer.
As the rumble of the wagons receded, sounds could be heard closer: the dull thud of pickaxes striking rock, the cracking of whips, the barking of mastiffs. They returned to the main corridor and looked ahead. Faint light showed distant sections of wall and glimpses of rails.
Reiner looked at the ruts of the cannon wheels continuing straight ahead of them, and sighed.
"It gives the impression that the war host has passed where the task force is. We'll have to go by side corridors to dodge them, and hopefully we can find the tracks on the other side. Keep the torches off. We'll just use the flashlight."
They continued on down the main tunnel until the reflected light became strong enough for them to see each other's faces, and then they set about looking for corridors through it. The sounds of the miners came mainly from the left side of the main tunnel, so they made their way to the right, following narrower passages and others, winding ones, through which they had to crawl.
After a while, they found a promising corridor that ran parallel to the main tunnel. It was almost as wide and in the center ran rails that looked newer than the ones they had followed from the ironworks. The sounds of the miners came to them like distant echoes from the left. Reiner was almost beginning to feel hopeful. Provided they could find a way back to the main tunnel from there there was a good chance that they would manage to outrun the work party without incident.
But just as he thought about it, the rails began to tinkle and shudder. Trolleys were approaching.
"Damn it!" growled Reiner.
There was a small side tunnel a little farther on.
"Let's go in there. It has no rails." They hurried in. It ended thirty steps ahead in an already excavated circular area that had no other way out: they were trapped.
"Right." Reiner said. "We'll wait here until they've passed."
The resounding rumble of the wheels suddenly grew louder and the glare of the torches brighter, as if the wagons had turned a bend. The men turned toward the entrance with their hands on their guns. Giano closed the dull lantern and hid it behind his back. A Nordic guard followed the wagons with a torch in one hand and a huge mastiff attached to a scraper wheezing at his side. The barbarian continued forward, kicking pebbles, but the mastiff stopped to sniff the tunnel entrance. The barbarian tugged at the leash, but the animal refused to move. Reiner's shoulders tensed.
"Go away." He whispered. "Go away. Go away!"
The barbarian stopped and cursed the mastiff. The animal snarled at him and barked into the corridor.
"May the gods damn you, you swine." Hals muttered. "Beat that mutt. Make him obey."
But the barbarian had decided that the dog was after something interesting and advanced down the tunnel cautiously as the mastiff continued to bark and tug at the leash.
Reiner and the others retreated back into the circular room and hid.
"Better kill them quick." Reiner whispered as he drew his sword. "But no guns, or they'll all fall on us."
The others also grabbed their weapons.
"We must lure them over here." Hals said. "Attack them from all sides."
"Good idea." Reiner nodded. "Franz, you will be the bait."
"What?" asked Franz, confused.
Reiner shoved the boy hard in the back. Franz stumbled out into the open and was petrified as a rabbit, staring with wild eyes of terror at the barbarian advancing down the tunnel. The barbarian let out a roar and ran towards him as he released the mastiff's leash to pull out a hand axe.
The mastiff leapt forward howling wildly. Franz ran to the back wall.
"You bastard!" he shrieked at Reiner. "You dirty bastard!"
Pavel thrust his spear through before the door, ankle-high, just as the barbarian lunged into the chamber with the mastiff. The beast leapt easily over, but the Norseman fell on his face as long as he was and Hals, Giano and Reiner pierced him with their spears and swords. Ulf struck the mastiff a blow with his mallet and threw it to the side just as it threw itself at Franz.
The monster landed, snarling, and leapt up to meet this new threat. Ulf raised the hammer the instant the beast charged at him and drove the handle between the gaping jaws preventing the fangs from reaching his neck, but with his weight he knocked the man down and began clawing at him with his claws.
The barbarian leapt to his feet, screaming in fury and bleeding from three severe wounds. Reiner feared they had another iron-skinned berserker before them but fortunately, though strong as a bull, the guard was not an elite warrior but a private destined for the mines to guard the slaves while others gained glory in the fields of honor. Reiner cut his windpipe and the barbarian died on his knees, exhaling his last breath through the gash in his neck.
The mastiff was another story. Franz and Oskar swung their swords at it, but the weapons failed to penetrate the beast's matted fur. Ulf, lying on his back under the monster, was pulling its head back with the handle of the mallet, but the animal's claws were tearing his arms to shreds.
Reiner, Hals and Pavel ran towards them. Giano dropped the sword and picked up the crossbow as he drew a quiver from the quiver. Gustaf stood aside, as usual.
Reiner launched a slash at the mastiff's hind legs and ripped off its left. The beast howled and turned, but fell back as it rested on the inert paw. Pavel and Hals thrust the spears into its side, but the mastiff continued to fight, struggling so savagely that it tore the spear from Pavel's hands, weakened by fever, and in its flight parted over Hals' forehead. The mastiff lunged towards the stunned pikeman, but Ulf, now free of his weight, struck him in the spine with all his might. The beast fell as long as it was, with its paws spread wide. Giano advanced and fired his crossbow bolt at point-blank range. The arrow nailed the monster's head to the ground, which died over a pool of rising blood.
"Good job, guys." Reiner said. "Ulf, are you badly hurt, Hals?"
"Just a little dazed, captain." Hals said. "It'll pass."
"I've suffered worse wounds." Ulf replied, grimacing as he examined his lacerated biceps. "Not much worse, though."
"I'm coming." Said Gustaf picking up his satchel. Reiner glanced down the corridor with his ear to the ground in case reinforcements came, and froze, his heart pounding as he saw half a dozen faces staring back at him. Slaves were peering into the corridor and looking anxiously at them. Reiner had completely forgotten them.
"What do we do with all those?" asked Hals as they rejoined him. Pavel looked up.
"Poor devils."
"We must set them free!" said Franz. "Take them with us."
"You're crazy, boy." Giano interjected. "They're holding us up."
"But we can't leave them here" Pavel pointed out. "The barbarians will kill them no doubt."
"The barbarians will kill them anyway, either now or later." Ulf growled as Gustaf cleaned his wounds.
"The decision is yours, captain." Hals said. Reiner cursed to himself.
"This is exactly why I don't want to be the boss. In this case, there is no such thing as a good decision."
He bit his lower lip as he thought, but no matter how many spins he put on it, the outcome was bad.
"The best thing we could do would be to end their suffering." Gustaf said. "They are no longer people."
"What does a degenerate know about being a person?" snapped Hals.
Reiner felt like punching Gustaf, not for talking nonsense but for being right. The surgeon always saw the worst in every situation, had the most skeptical view of human nature, and very often it turned out to be a view that Reiner should have listened to. Killing them would be for the best. The slaves were too weak to follow them and would reduce their supplies too much, but Reiner felt Franz's eyes riveted on him, in addition to Pavel's one eye, and he couldn't give the order.