Free Carnifex (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 1) by D.P. Prior Page B
Authors: D.P. Prior
let alone had experience driving it.”
“You didn’t hear it, son,” Rugbeard said. “Great booming thuds, they was. I tell you, I ain’t going back there.”
“Marshal on his way?” Carnifex asked.
Kal nodded. “You told me to have him woken. My reckoning, they’ll see this as a major incident, least till we get to the bottom of it.”
“True, laddie.” Carnifex met Rugbeard’s jaundiced eyes. “You want to wait here and explain to Thumil why you made us walk to the headframe, when we could have gone by train, and maybe averted a catastrophe? Or perhaps there’s nothing going on, and you just imagined it.” Which was as good as saying, you sounded a false alarm. The consequences would be severe.
Rugbeard’s jaw worked, as if he were considering his options. Finally, he must have decided returning to the headframe was better than the alternative.
“Come on, then,” he said, leading the way to the rear of the train, where there was an identical carriage to the one he’d emerged from, only its nose pointed back toward the mines.
“Shoofly and what’s-your-name?” Carnifex said.
The red-bearded dwarf came to attention. “Frobe Trinket, sir.”
“Course it is.” Carnifex partially remembered. Reassigned from Lok Tupole’s platoon a few months back, along with a couple of others. Lok lost his command right after losing a stack of tokens on a circle fight, then tarnishing his platoon’s honor when he stepped into the circle to claw back his losses. For all his valiant efforts, he’d earned a broken jaw, two broken arms, a fractured femur, and endured the humiliation of a baresark hacking his beard off with a blunt knife. “Wait here until the marshal arrives. Tell him we’ve gone ahead and will send the train back.”
“What is this thing, anyway?” Kal asked as they stepped inside the carriage. “I always thought the miners went to work in a goat-drawn cart.”
“Homunculus tech, is what it is,” Rugbeard said. He seated himself before a console bedizened with winking lights, and began to toggle switches and turn knobs.
Behind him were three rows of benches. Carnifex, Kal, Muckman Brindy, and Ming Garnik sat on the first two. The panel in the side of the carriage closed with a whoosh.
Rugbeard took a firm grip on a lever and eased it forward. A low, pulsating hum vibrated through the floor. The carriage shuddered and shook, and then they were moving.
Through the window at the front, Carnifex gawped at the sleepers speeding toward them, seemingly gobbled up by the train. They came on faster and faster, until they merged into one continuous blur. And then Rugbeard pulled back on the lever, and the carriage juddered to a stop. He pressed a glowing button, and the side panel slid open onto another platform.
Rugbeard got out first, and led them to an iron ramp that took them down into an underground chamber vast enough to hold a small village. Rubble was heaped into a mountainous pile at the far end, while closer to them was a scattering of ore fragments, most of it scarolite embedded in chunks of granite. There were iron carts heaped with rock, some glistening with gold or pyrite. But it was the headframe looming out of the center that dominated the space, a tower of intersecting steel struts that reached almost to the ceiling a hundred feet above. At its top was a pulley wheel, with a wound steel cable running diagonally down from it to another pulley at ground level. The base of the tower was housed in a brickwork structure with two doors on the side facing them.
Rugbeard led them inside, where the air was heavy with rock dust. There were benches around the walls, and glowstones hanging from chains in the ceiling. The headframe ran through the middle of the chamber, a colossal framework of riveted metal. One end exited the ceiling, while the base entered a massive hole in the ground. And it was no ordinary hole: it had a collar of wrought scarolite, though how this feat of
“You didn’t hear it, son,” Rugbeard said. “Great booming thuds, they was. I tell you, I ain’t going back there.”
“Marshal on his way?” Carnifex asked.
Kal nodded. “You told me to have him woken. My reckoning, they’ll see this as a major incident, least till we get to the bottom of it.”
“True, laddie.” Carnifex met Rugbeard’s jaundiced eyes. “You want to wait here and explain to Thumil why you made us walk to the headframe, when we could have gone by train, and maybe averted a catastrophe? Or perhaps there’s nothing going on, and you just imagined it.” Which was as good as saying, you sounded a false alarm. The consequences would be severe.
Rugbeard’s jaw worked, as if he were considering his options. Finally, he must have decided returning to the headframe was better than the alternative.
“Come on, then,” he said, leading the way to the rear of the train, where there was an identical carriage to the one he’d emerged from, only its nose pointed back toward the mines.
“Shoofly and what’s-your-name?” Carnifex said.
The red-bearded dwarf came to attention. “Frobe Trinket, sir.”
“Course it is.” Carnifex partially remembered. Reassigned from Lok Tupole’s platoon a few months back, along with a couple of others. Lok lost his command right after losing a stack of tokens on a circle fight, then tarnishing his platoon’s honor when he stepped into the circle to claw back his losses. For all his valiant efforts, he’d earned a broken jaw, two broken arms, a fractured femur, and endured the humiliation of a baresark hacking his beard off with a blunt knife. “Wait here until the marshal arrives. Tell him we’ve gone ahead and will send the train back.”
“What is this thing, anyway?” Kal asked as they stepped inside the carriage. “I always thought the miners went to work in a goat-drawn cart.”
“Homunculus tech, is what it is,” Rugbeard said. He seated himself before a console bedizened with winking lights, and began to toggle switches and turn knobs.
Behind him were three rows of benches. Carnifex, Kal, Muckman Brindy, and Ming Garnik sat on the first two. The panel in the side of the carriage closed with a whoosh.
Rugbeard took a firm grip on a lever and eased it forward. A low, pulsating hum vibrated through the floor. The carriage shuddered and shook, and then they were moving.
Through the window at the front, Carnifex gawped at the sleepers speeding toward them, seemingly gobbled up by the train. They came on faster and faster, until they merged into one continuous blur. And then Rugbeard pulled back on the lever, and the carriage juddered to a stop. He pressed a glowing button, and the side panel slid open onto another platform.
Rugbeard got out first, and led them to an iron ramp that took them down into an underground chamber vast enough to hold a small village. Rubble was heaped into a mountainous pile at the far end, while closer to them was a scattering of ore fragments, most of it scarolite embedded in chunks of granite. There were iron carts heaped with rock, some glistening with gold or pyrite. But it was the headframe looming out of the center that dominated the space, a tower of intersecting steel struts that reached almost to the ceiling a hundred feet above. At its top was a pulley wheel, with a wound steel cable running diagonally down from it to another pulley at ground level. The base of the tower was housed in a brickwork structure with two doors on the side facing them.
Rugbeard led them inside, where the air was heavy with rock dust. There were benches around the walls, and glowstones hanging from chains in the ceiling. The headframe ran through the middle of the chamber, a colossal framework of riveted metal. One end exited the ceiling, while the base entered a massive hole in the ground. And it was no ordinary hole: it had a collar of wrought scarolite, though how this feat of