“Go!” he said.
Zac hoped that he would be the first one out. He hoped that he would win the prize the man had promised them. Giggling, he thrust himself back up into the darkness of the crevice, wriggling for all he was worth. He was almost out — he could see the lights in the vast cavern beyond the next turn — when, with a loud thud, jaws of rock snapped shut before him. The tunnel behind him shook and filled with rubble, thrusting his knees painfully up against his chest. Zac struggled to breathe through the clouds of rock dust enveloping him, stinging his eyes and scouring his throat.
Then there was silence — absolute and terrifying — before the cries of trapped children reached him in the darkness. Zac looked behind him and saw a pale, bloody hand reaching from a pile of rock, the fingers barely grazing his ankle. He heard the shouts of the overseer as if from a great distance, before he was silenced by what sounded like metal ringing on stone.
Zac struggled, but all he could move were his fingers, and these could do little more than weakly paw at the rock before him. It struck him, then, that he might die. He’d never seriously considered his own death before, but now that he did, he realised what a terrible and unjust thing it would be. He wanted his parents; Mummy and Daddy would make it alright. But they weren’t here, and there was no way they could get to him.
Zac yelled for all he was worth and was answered by the many voices of the children trapped in the darkness. Some of the cries were cut short when a tremor shook the walls. The rock creaked and groaned; Zac could feel the floor rippling beneath him and he cried out even louder as panic gripped him.
When a warm liquid began to trickle over his hands, he thought that it was his own tears or blood. But then the trickle became a gush and soon a tepid stream was lapping about his body. There was a strange smell; a charged feeling like the approach of a thunderstorm. Zac blinked as a shaft of light punched through the rock before him. The stone was melting, trickling away like wax before a flame. He could hear movement beyond: adult voices; children responding with delight and relief.
The last of the boulders blocking Zac in dissolved, and he could see a short, bearded man crouched in the half-light of the open shaft. Steam wreathed his hands where he moved them about the tunnel’s walls, and he was muttering something beneath his breath, in a tongue that Zac didn’t recognise. He looked up as Zac crawled towards him and grinned.
“We’ve got a live one here, boss. Come on, wee man, let’s get you out of this mess.”
The man enclosed him in his broad arms and helped him from the shattered mouth of the tunnel. Zac blinked in the lights of the main cavern, seeing other children being helped from the collapsed tunnels by more of the short, bearded men. One whole side of the chamber wall had collapsed, spilling rubble far into the cavern.
At least twenty-five children had been sent into the tunnels; Zac saw only six amongst the men and women who now crowded the chamber. He looked around for the elf who had led them down here and saw his headless corpse at the feet of a squat, broad man, who was cleaning blood from the blade of his axe. He noticed Zac gazing at him, and smiled.
“Don’t yer worry yourself, sunshine. That pointy-eared bastard won’t be bothering you no more.”
The dwarf’s grin scared Zac more than the blood on his blade or the corpse at his feet. The jagged teeth that loomed out of the patchy ginger beard covering his face looked just like the broken stones that surrounded them.
“You might want to stand back somewhat,” said a voice behind him. It was the man who had rescued him. His hands were flat against the cave wall and sweat beaded his forehead as he began to chant. Zac stumbled back as the rock began to give way beneath the man’s hands. One whole section of the wall above him bowed outwards, looming over the dwarf like a great belly of stone. The man looked up nervously, but maintained his litany.
When the stone began to drip and trickle around his hands, the dwarf stepped away from the wall.
“Everyone back,” he shouted. “It’s going.”
Zac was swept aside by a woman with bright red hair as a dark waterfall tumbled into the chamber, sloshing up against their feet in a warm flood and filling the air with the sharp smell of liquid rock. He could see pale shapes tumbling within the wash and as the tide drew back, revealing their true forms, he gasped.
Eight children lay on the cavern floor, their bodies crushed and broken.
“No, no, no!” the dwarf shouted as he attempted to revive one of the children.
“You weren’t to know, Orlok,” the woman holding Zac said. “None of us knew the elves were using child labour in this part of the mines.”
“It was my idea to force our way into this chamber. It was my sorcery that led to the collapse of the tunnels. If we’d come in further up the shaft, none of this would have happened. We’re supposed to be here to liberate the humans, Greta, not kill their young! ”
Orlok’s voice rose to a fierce shriek, startling the surviving children and eliciting fresh cries of distress.
“The longer we stay here fretting over what has been done, the longer the elves will have to mobilise. You can’t throw away our mission because of collateral damage.”
“You call children ‘collateral damage’? Is that really what you think?”
There was a tense silence as the dwarves glowered at one another.
“I knew that this would turn out to be a stupid idea,” Greta finally said. This was met with a collective sharp intake of breath, but though Orlok’s face turned a deeper crimson, he made no move towards the woman.
“I want Mummy and Daddy,” Zac wailed.
Orlok looked at the small boy, the threat of tears glistening in his own eyes. His face hardening, he drew his axe. The double-headed blade caught the light of the cavern and made Zac blink.
“Oh don’t you worry, little man,” Orlok said. “We’re going to find your parents and then we’re going to bring this whole place crashing down around those elven bastards!
“Soldiers!” There was the rattle of metal as a hundred men and women stood to attention. “Move out!”
Katya’s fingers were bleeding. For the last six hours or so she had been standing in the blazing sun, sorting through tray after tray of rocks, picking out the stones with even the faintest glimmer of green mineral before discarding the rest. Although she was aware that she had been assigned one of the most tedious tasks as punishment for her attack on the elf guard, she would much rather be doing this than toiling in the tunnels far beneath their feet.
The mine was located several miles from the city, in a deep valley bordered by precipitous granite cliffs on one side and a thickly-forested ridge on the other. Soot-stained chimneys rose from the valley floor, belching noxious fumes which rose to gather into a dark cloud, turning day to dusk. Beyond the smoke stacks sat the head of the main shaft, crowned with a creaking wooden frame. The frame supported a vast oak axle, on which two iron wheels turned, lowering and raising the huge cage that carried workers into and out of the depths. From the great lengths of rope that played through the metal wheels, Katya assumed that the mineral seams must lie many feet beneath them. She could only imagine the hellish conditions down there; the men and women who emerged from the shaft often appeared to be on the verge of collapse, their bloodshot eyes staring out blankly from faces black with soot.
Two days ago she had seen Illiun, Shalim, Rosalind and their compatriots enter the cage. Before it had descended, Rosalind had reached out to Katya.
“If you see Hannah, tell her that Mummy and Daddy are okay.”
But Katya hadn’t seen their daughter, and when Illiun and Shalim had come back up, Rosalind was no longer with them. Katya had tried to talk to Shalim, asking him what had happened to his wife, but he wouldn’t speak. Katya had been alarmed to see blood on his lips, and had appealed to one of the elves for help, but she had been roundly ignored. Workers, it would seem, were eminently expendable.