Chapter Six
The third warning bell rings while the first rescue crew is still tying on ropes.
Nine miners are trapped beyond the fall. We can hear all nine. For now.
Dust coats the map chamber beneath the eastern cut. Runners come and go while three men explain the same problem at different volumes. Ketill stands across the stone table, both hands planted beside the lower-shaft map. A red line marks the collapsed passage. A second marks the old south crawl.
The mine captain points at it. “That route was sealed two winters ago.”
“I remember.”
He looks at Ketill instead. Sensible. Ketill’s less likely to remove anything important.
“The roof moved,” the captain says. “We open that crawl, we could bring the rest of it down on them.”
“How long through the main fall?”
“Six hours. Maybe eight.”
Another bell rings below us.
Ketill looks toward the ceiling. “They’ve got air for four.”
The captain’s fear sharpens. He knows three of the people on the other side. One is his daughter.
“Open the south crawl,” I say. “Brace every ten feet. Two rescuers at a time, and nobody goes in until Ketill’s seen the first span.”
“My Dróttin—”
“You may waste their air arguing, or you may move.”
He moves.
Half the chamber goes with him. Ketill drags the red marker down the south route. Three clerks crowd in. A runner waits at my right, blood drying at his hairline. The room smells of stone and lamp oil and the fear leaking through every wall in it.
Heat.
Pooling low.
My hand stops over the map.
Her.
Warm skin I can’t see. A touch along her body, and every part of her opening under it.
“Eirik.”
Ketill says my name. Nobody else here does.
I set the marker down. “The upper crew.”
The oldest clerk looks up. “Ready, my Dróttin.”
“Behind the first brace. If the south roof moves, they pull the rescuers out.”
He nods and starts writing.
Another touch. Slower.
Her breath catches, without a sound.
Falki’s bird came at dawn. Three lines.
She’s well.
She’s at Sólvik.
Baldr’s with her.
I burned it before breakfast. Knowing’s done nothing useful.
Pleasure climbs through her. Easy. Trusting. She wants the hands on her—and I know my brother inside that trust.
Damn him.
The marker snaps between my fingers. The whole table goes quiet.
Ketill takes the two pieces from my hand. “You’ve your orders,” he tells them. “Go.”
The clerks look to me.
“Now,” he says.
Chairs scrape. The runner first, then the clerks, then the guards at the door. Ketill sends one to the lower winch and one to the rescue line—finds work for every body in the chamber and shuts the door behind the last of them.
“I didn’t dismiss them.”
“You finished with them.”
Heat tightens again. This time it goes straight through my groin.
I flatten both hands on the stone.
Ketill thinks Falki watches a border and Solveih is a human name I forgot years ago. He’s still put himself between me and the door.
“Move.”
“No.”
Baldr.
His name reaches me without a voice. Her body draws tight around him, each pulse cutting through me. I’m hard beneath the table while my brother takes her apart, a hundred miles of mountain between us, and it changes nothing.
I want my body back.
She trusts him. She has every reason to.
Damn him for being worth it.
I turn and put my fist through the wall.
Stone cracks. So do two knuckles. The pain comes up my arm clean and immediate and mine—the only thing in me that is. I hit it again. A piece the size of my head breaks loose and lands on the floor.
Ketill leaves the wall to me.
Thirteen years I’ve felt her sleep, laugh, grieve, and settle under his hands. This is the first time I’ve had her pleasure with it.
I can empty a hall. I can’t empty myself of her.
Ketill’s walls drop—concern first, then the old steady thing under it. He isn’t braced for mine to fail. He knows they won’t. He stands there so I’m not doing this in front of anyone who’ll remember it.
The damned fool.
I breathe once. Then again. Nothing gets past the silver.
Ketill’s concern doesn’t change.
Below us, the hammers start in the south crawl. Three strikes. A pause. Three more.
I count every one.
The first shout reaches the chamber before the heat eases. Ketill’s walls rise. He opens the door.
We go down.
The south crawl has room for one man on his hands and knees. We’ve put a rescue line through it, two timber runners behind that, and every fool in the eastern cut within shouting distance.
Two miners are already on the gallery floor when we reach it. The first has a strip of cloth tied over one eye. The second is missing two fingers and trying to help the healer wrap them.
“Sit on him,” I tell the healer.
The miner stops arguing.
A third crawls out coughing black into both hands. The fourth comes backward with a rescuer dragging him by the shoulders. His left boot points the wrong way.
Alive. All four.
The captain stands beside the crawl mouth and counts them again. His daughter is still beyond the fall.
The rescue line pulls tight.
A woman appears under the lowest brace. Blood covers one side of her face. She gets one knee onto the gallery stone, sees the captain, and forgets how to use the other.
He catches her before she falls.
Relief pours off him, salt and hot iron against my tongue. Then he looks at the crawl. Four people remain inside, and shame ruins the taste.
“Your daughter’s alive,” I tell him. “You may be grateful.”
His mouth closes. He holds her tighter.
Three hammer strikes come through the crawl.
The timbers answer with a crack.
Every miner in the gallery knows that sound. They move before I speak—healers dragging the injured back, line men bracing their boots, the rescue captain dropping flat beside the opening.
Stone grinds under us.
The line jerks hard enough to pull one man to his knees. Dust bursts out of the crawl. A rescuer follows it, rolling onto the gallery floor with blood running from both ears.
The second rescuer doesn’t come.
Ketill takes the line with three men and hauls. A hand appears beneath the broken brace. Then an arm. They drag the man free before the roof settles another inch.
“Four still in,” the captain says.
“Three are tapping,” Ketill says.
The captain’s daughter lifts her head from the healer’s shoulder. “Ozur held the last prop. He made us go first.”
“Ozur,” I say.
“Lower cutter.” The captain wipes dust across his mouth. “No family, my Dróttin.”
A man goes into the dark, and there’s no one on the other end of it to be told.
The rescue captain crawls toward the opening.
I catch the back of his harness and pull him away.
“Clear the crawl.”
He twists under my hand. “They’re alive.”
“Which is why you’ll stop feeding the roof more bodies.”
I release him and strip the knives off my belt. Steel wedges in a crawl before my shoulders do.
Ketill watches them hit the ground. “No.”
“You used that word already.”
“The Dróttin doesn’t crawl into a grave.”
I strip off my coat and hand it to him. “Every one of us mends. I’m just the hardest to kill.”
“If the roof moves again, it’ll bury you with them.”
“It will bury one man instead of six.”
Ketill’s anger goes flat and cold. He takes my coat anyway.
“Keep them out,” I tell him. “I won’t dig through fools coming the other way.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Then who stops the fools?”
His jaw works once.
“A cruel use of my competence,” he says.
“You’ve survived worse.”
He moves aside. Barely.
I go in.
The first brace scrapes the mask. The second catches my shoulder. Past it, the crawl narrows until my back drags stone and I have to turn my head to breathe.
The air tastes of dust, lamp smoke, and four people trying not to die.
Three taps sound ahead.
I drag the loose timber out behind me. Stone presses into my spine. My knuckles are already split from the wall; they open again on the rescue line and stay open.
“Dróttin?” a man calls through the dark.
“Save your air.”
He obeys. Excellent. Terror has improved him.
The new fall fills the crawl from floor to roof. A hand could fit through the gaps. Mine doesn’t need to.
I pull the first stone free. The next shifts into its place. I take that one too.
The roof drops against my shoulder.
Pain cracks down my ribs. They break one after another beneath the weight and stay broken. I brace on both knees and shove until the timber runner slides under the load.
Behind it, three people breathe too fast.
“Kick the loose rock toward me,” I say.
They do. Small pieces first. Then one large enough to take skin from my wrist.
Heat returns.
Gods.
Her thighs tighten. Baldr’s hand moves over her again, sure now. He knows what she needs.
The stone in my hands breaks in half.
“Dróttin?”
“Keep digging.”
The gap opens enough for a face. A woman, grey with dust. Blood runs from her nose to her mouth.
“How many breathing?”
“Three.”
“Ozur?”
Her eyes drop.
I tear the opening wider.
The first man has a crushed hand. The woman can crawl. The third lies with his thigh pinned beneath the snapped prop. Ozur is beyond him, half-covered by the roof he held up for the others.
Pleasure gathers low in Solveih. I get every tightening breath without a sound.
I put both hands beneath the rock on the pinned man’s leg.
“When it lifts, pull him.”
The woman grips his harness. The other man takes his shoulders.
I lift.
The slab peels skin from both palms. My right wrist breaks under it. I hold the weight anyway until they drag the miner clear, then let the stone drop.
“Crawl,” I tell them.
The woman looks past me toward Ozur.
“Take the living out.”
She goes.
The men follow one at a time. I wait until all three hands close around the rescue line.
Then the mountain moves again.
The timber above me splits. Rock drives me onto one elbow. My bad hand disappears beneath it.
Solveih arches around my brother.
I wrench my hand free and claw through the last of the fall. Nails tear away. Fingers break against the stone and stay bent wrong, and I dig with them anyway.
Ozur’s shoulder comes free first.
Then his chest.
His head rolls toward me when I pull the last stone away.
Too late.
I drag him into my arms.
Solveih comes.
Her release runs through every nerve the bond has opened. My ruined hand locks beneath Ozur’s knees; something in it gives again. I keep hold of him.
Three survivors drag air into bruised lungs somewhere ahead of me. Ozur’s chest stays still against mine.
Baldr’s name follows her through it.
I lower Ozur long enough to fasten the rescue harness beneath his arms.
“Pull,” I call.
The line tightens.
I crawl behind the body and keep his head off the stone. Every few feet the roof sheds another piece. My hands are ruined and I keep them where they belong.
Light reaches the seams of my mask.
Hands take Ozur’s harness. I shove him through, follow, and get both feet under me.
The three miners I sent ahead are on the gallery floor. Healers crowd them. Someone is laughing. Someone else is sick against the wall.
Eight breathing.
Ketill looks at me. His face gives me nothing. Mine gives him stone dust and nothing under it.
I bend and lift Ozur from the rescue line.
His weight settles into my arms again.
“Prepare his pyre at dawn,” I say. “I will stand for him.”
Nobody answers.
I carry Ozur out.
He stays heavy the whole way up.