Free Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1) by Lindsay Buroker

would have a hard time defending the continent
against a superior naval force.
    Ridge had written a report, but there was
nowhere to send it, not until the next supply ship came in two
weeks. Someone had mentioned a pass over the mountains but that it
was only accessible during the summer months. How helpful.
    “What’re they staring at?” the lieutenant
muttered, looking back and forth uneasily.
    Ridge’s group was walking down a wide
corridor, and a squad of miners was approaching from the opposite
end, on their way off shift, their dirty clothes and weary faces
implied. An armed soldier following the workers watched his flock
carefully, not saluting—he held his rifle in both hands—but giving
Ridge a respectful nod. The miners were staring at Ridge’s little
troop.
    “It’s either me or you, Lieutenant,” he
responded. “You tell me, am I the pretty one or are you?”
    The lieutenant cast a glum look over his
shoulder. His nose had been broken a time or two in his career—or
perhaps before it. “Definitely you, sir.”
    The miners slowed down, and a few muttered to
each other. They wouldn’t think to attack him with so many armed
men present, would they? All they had for weapons were pickaxes and
shovels. Yes, those heavy picks could do damage, but only in close
quarters. Of course, in the tunnel, Ridge’s group would have to
pass within close quarters.
    “This is why the general never came down
here,” the lieutenant muttered, resting a hand on the butt of his
pistol. He must have read danger in the troop as well.
    The first miner, a scruffy bedraggled man
wearing a bloodstained shirt and a bandana around his throat,
stepped toward the center of the passage. He removed a
sweat-stained cap, pressed it to his chest with one hand, and
raised the other—it was devoid of picks or other weapons.
    “Colonel Zirkander, sir?” he asked.
    “Yes?” Ridge had only been in the fort for a
few hours; he hadn’t realized the news of his arrival had preceded
him down here.
    “I, uh, we want you to know… ” He waved at
his grimy comrades. “We’ve heard about your fighting out there in
the skies. Sometimes someone who can read catches hold of a
newspaper, and there’s a former pilot down here that tells some
stories about your early flights—he claims to have met you, but I’m
not sure that’s the truth. Still, real entertaining stories. We
appreciate them. And that you’re out there, fighting for our
country.” The miner eyed the infantrymen, who had their fingers on
the triggers of their rifles. “We just thought you should
know.”
    It was a moment before Ridge could come up
with an answer. He’d had the king’s subjects thank him for his
service before, and received his share of hero worship from young
pilots, but he hadn’t expected felons to care about their country
or those defending it.
    Ridge stepped away from the lieutenant, met
the man in the middle of the tunnel, and stuck out his hand. “Thank
you… ”
    “One-fourteen,” the miner supplied, gripping
his hand.
    Ridge raised his eyebrows. “And the name your
mama gave you?”
    The miner blinked a few times. “Kal.”
    “Thank you, Kal.” Ridge walked down the line
and shook more hands and got more names and numbers and was
surprised at the shyness, considering all the broken noses and
missing teeth in the group. “How’re you all being treated down
here? Tough but fair? Getting enough food?”
    With the questions, he opened himself up to a
volcano of grievances, but he listened without making too many
promises. If the fort was attacked in the future, he needed these
men—
all
of the men—to stay put in the
mines and not make trouble. That would be asking a lot—he had been
a prisoner of war once, and he had used the first diversion he
could to escape—but Ridge might need to siphon more of his soldiers
into defense.
    As he continued his tour, he crossed a lot of
apathetic miners who didn’t care a yak’s back teats about