Dan Parkinson: The Swordsheath Scroll

Only when things went poorly did any deputy stand before the dignitaries. That was because, as Shalit Mileen had noted, when things went well it was the Master of Mines who received the credit, while if something went wrong, it was always one of the deputies who took the blame. Shalit Mileen had seen four of his peers so used in past years. Three of them now were slaves, though not in the same mines they had once ruled-a master become slave would last no time at all among the slaves who knew him. The fourth had been blamed for a cave-in that so displeased the high-borns that the man had been executed where he stood.

Rarely did the various deputies ever meet in a group, but Shalit Mileen had heard their individual comments from time to time and shaken his head in disbelief. Each deputy was, like himself, a strong, brutal man. But unlike him, the others were no better than sheep. They lacked the ambition to scheme for better positions for themselves, or the courage to make such schemes work.

All of which suited Shalit Mileen very well. He had no such lack. He had heard that there would be a new ruler in Klanath, and he intended that new ruler's favor to fall on him. One way or another, he intended to make himself look good to Lord Kane, and to make old Renus look like a fool.

If he had his way, Shalit Mileen would soon be Master of Mines and have deputies of his own.

He kept his plans to himself, trusting no one, but as the season of inspection approached he governed his pits carefully, preparing. The best ores he withheld, hoarding them in unworked shafts, waiting for the time when he could "discover" rich new lodes. He guarded the energies of his slaves, plied his overseers with the best of food and drink, bribed the captain of the guard company assigned to his pits, and stockpiled the best tools. When the inspection came, the inspectors would hear from Renus a report of hardly better than average production in the soft-ore pits. They would hear that the pits were producing, but only at quota. Then they would see a far different thing. They would see riches rising from Shalit's mines, far beyond what Renus had reported.

Renus would be shamed, maybe even suspected of stealing metals for his private use. And Shalit would make his move then. He would make his own report to the new ruler, Lord Kane.

Days passed, and Shalit busied himself at the ore pits. In this area there were four deep, wide pits, a rectangle of great scars on the slopes below Tharkas. They had begun as scour mines, where armies of slaves had worked with sledges and skids to haul away the soil overburden from the stone below, exposing veins of ore that were then mined with spike and drill. But the pits had expanded in recent months. As the veins were followed, deep tunnels had been delved downward and outward from the bottoms of the pits. Now there was a vast network of shafts deep in the mountain's underbelly, and the "pits" were only the staging areas for deeper mine operations.

The layout was well suited to slave mines. The four pits were interconnected by large tunnels, where guards and overseers went to and fro. Each pit had its own slave con-, tingent of about two thousand, and each had a single, \ delved "cell" large enough to contain all of that pit's slaves. But there was only one access to the entire complex — a steep, narrow ramp that was always heavily guarded. For the slaves brought to the pits, the world lay beneath the surface. They spent their lives there and escaped only in death, when their bodies were hoisted out for disposal.

Now Shalit Mileen stalked the floors of the pits, reading his charts, checking his calculations, readying his plans. \ He spoke only to his overseers, but their words carried to the throngs of slaves coming and going among the shafts and were passed along in whispers.

"The pit boss is misdirecting his digs," a broad- tshouldered dwarf laden with ore buckets told another. "In | that seventh shaft, and in the ninth, he's hoarding the best I ores from all the shafts. The sappers say there's a fortune in fine, rich ore just waiting there."

"Maybe he doesn't know what's there," the second dwarf surmised. "Or maybe the sappers lie. Maybe they're just making trouble."

"Not them," the ore carrier frowned. "Those deep-delvers are all Daergar. They might lie about what day it is, or who got what bowl at slops, but they don't lie about ore. Where mining is concerned, the Daergar are all fanatics."

"Then the pit boss is up to something," another dwarf whispered. "Maybe he wants to save the good stuff for himself."

The ore carrier shrugged and went his way, but the rumors spread, as rumors do, and at the midday break for feeding, Vin edged close to Tap. "You heard?" he whispered. "The pit boss is hoarding the best ores."

"I heard." Tap nodded. "What does it mean?"

"I think it means the inspection is coming soon." The large-eyed dark-seer squinted as he spoke. "I think the humans are plotting against one another."

"Means nothing to us," Tap said. "I'm more interested in what that Hylar is doing. I've been watching him. He's been busy, with his chisel, but for the past two days he hasn't touched it. I think those rivets are gone, and he's ready to make his move."

"Ah." The dark-seer nodded. "Good timing. He's planning to break when the inspectors are here. In the confusion, he just might make it. The humans will be diverted then."

"He might succeed," Tap agreed. "One dwarf alone might slip away. But what of the rest of us?"

Vin stood silent for a moment, thinking. "With enough of a diversion, we might escape, too. Of course, such a thing could spoil all of the Hylar's plans, if he is planning a break as we believe."

"To rust with his plans." Tap frowned. "I tried to get him to include us. He refused. It would serve him right if we let him be our diversion."

To one side, an old, gray-bearded dwarf paused, set down the slops pail he was carrying, and wiped sweat from his brow with his only hand. Old, crippled, and slow, Calan Silvertoe no longer wore chains. He had been a mine slave as long as most there could remember, and had become as much a part of the pits as the stones themselves. He went about doing trivial jobs such as dishing the slops for the mine slaves' meals, and hardly anyone ever noticed him. Where his left arm had once been, now was only a short stump, and the weathered features of his face, where not hidden by his whiskers, were as dark and creased as old leather.

Only the clear blue eyes squinting from what might once have seemed a shrewd, jovial face, and the traces of gold in his silver hair and beard, marked him as what he had once been-a full-blooded Daewar dwarf, a person of note. And only the sharpest of ears might have noticed the slight traces of accent in his speech that said that this was no hill dwarf, but one who had once been of the under-mountain realm of Thorbardin.

In fact, few in Klanath had ever noticed any of that, and it had been a very long time since anyone-master or slave-had really noticed Calan Silvertoe at all. He went his own way, he spoke little and stayed out of the way of others. In many years as a slave, he had learned much. He managed always to be busy and never to be conspicuous, and he attracted no attention to himself. And always, he watched and listened. And he waited.

Now, though, he suspected that his waiting was at an end.

Inconspicuously, he made his way to one of the shadowed walls of the pit, where he hung his basket from a peg and glanced around. No one was watching him, so with a quick motion, he stooped, stepped into shadows, and ducked behind an out-thrust shoulder of rough-hewn stone. The opening there was virtually invisible. Had anyone been watching, the old dwarf would have seemed to disappear into the stone wall.