How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath to say to me that thou art out of breath?
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Thursday, Août 6th, Year 1734 in the Thorian Calendar
I paused to wipe the stinging sweat from my eyes with my torn and dirty shirt. It didn’t help. There wasn’t a dry or clean spot left for me to even use. I groggily realized this with a stoic frown, then slowly raised back up my wheelbarrow of silver ore. I somewhat was proud of it all, in a vain sort of way. I’d so far collected more silver than any of the other men here, and managed to mine it all in half the time. Now I just had to haul the load up towards the mine’s lift shaft.
All around me, the other men in the large silver chamber were swinging their pickaxes with a fervor. Our detail was behind on our quota, and every man knew we needed to get back on track soon if we wanted to avoid the lash.
Just as I had started to leave the chamber and head up the tunnel towards the mine's lift shaft, a deep, echoing voice stopped me short.
“Simon! Get your ass over here!”
I immediately felt a flash of anger, hot and heavy. What did that arrogant fuck want from me now? Didn’t he see I was already busy? Murderous thoughts began to fill my head, but I did my best to push them down. The man who wanted my attention was not a man to be trifled with. Even if I were ever left totally alone with him to... solve our differences... the odds were better than not that I'd be the one beaten to death at the end of it all.
I dropped my wheelbarrow onto the ground with a bang, and very slowly walked towards this adamant admirer of mine. It was petty, and ultimately a rather weak gesture of defiance, but I was not above such pettiness. Alexander was a bastard, and I hated his guts with a passion.
Alexander had quickly been appointed the benevolent king of our little work detail. Out of the thirty men assigned to our group, including myself of course, Alexander had become the leader due to… due to… Well, the grace of his amazing leadership skills, his pleasant personality… and of course the fact that the man towered at least a foot and a half over all the other laborers here. I sincerely doubted there was even one man in a thousand who surpassed his stature. If size alone hadn't been enough to win him support, the constant threats of violence on his part certainly helped. When the guards had first asked us to elect our supervisor, the voting had been almost unanimous. Almost.
As I finally got within a few feet of the man, I stopped, giving him a false smile and a half sarcastic retort.
"Greetings Alex! What can I possibly do to help my good friend?"
Alexander's sweat soaked red hair had fallen across his face, giving him a devilish look. He gave me a grin that was all teeth, and the edges of his smile couldn't have reached further away from his eyes if he tried.
"Well… friend… As you may or may not know, I have just returned from my long trip from up high and I’ve got some new orders. The lift in this sector’s broken. Has been all morning. Truly a tragedy, I must say. Maybe I'll write you a poem about it.”
He laughed heartily at his own meager joke. The man couldn’t write a poem to save his life. He couldn’t even write his name. He was completely illiterate, same as most of the men imprisoned here. However, unlike most of the men, he recognized my accent, and he knew what it meant. I think that when he first saw someone like me, down here in a place like this, well, it might've been one of the happiest moments of his life. He continued where he left off.
“However, as sad as that little accident may have been, we down here can no longer get any ore up to the surface. So as I'm standing here, looking around for some men who can go up there and operate the lift manually, who do I see but my good buddy Simon? Seeing as my good buddy would be wasting his time carrying that ore up to the lift, I took the initiative and decided to give him some more fulfilling work."
Alexander's fake grin faded, but the malice never left his eyes.
"The warden’s been generous today. He offered me an entire bottle of wine if I can get it done before tomorrow, and a lashing if I don't. Seeing as I’m no freak, I would quite prefer the bottle of wine to the lash. I want you to get that job done, and I want you to get it done NOW!"
If I'd been a little less exhausted, or a little less shocked, I might've been too worried about losing my teeth to respond. But respond, I did.
"What? Is the warden insane? Are YOU insane?!? You'd need the muscle of thirty men to operate that lift manually. Fifty even! Besides, if the runes on the lift have failed, it's that Gods’ damned mage's job to fix it, not ours!"
Alexander's face reddened. "Do you think me a dullard? I asked these questions to the warden. Turns out, the mage is drunk. Again."
He moved a few steps closer towards me, using his enormous stature as a not so subtle escalation in the conversation. He raised his voice when he spoke to me again.
"Are you a dullard by chance?!? Did you perhaps miss the part where I said it needed to be operated manually?!?"
I'd always been a mild mannered man before coming here. I still attempted to convince myself I was. Maybe it was even true. But exhaustion and heat had a way of fueling a man's anger beyond all reason. And I was exhausted, overheated, and fucking furious. I didn't care if he attacked me, I didn’t care if he killed me, I wasn't going to do a Gods' damned thing for him.
"Then we need oxen or horses! You cannot operate that equipment with just a few men. You are asking me for the impossible!" I excitedly replied.
"I'll be sending eleven men alongside with you. That's all I can spare. Make do." Alexander's malicious grin had returned.
"Look you bastard, use your fucking head for half a second! We physically cannot operate that---"
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I was brought short mid sentence by a sudden, violent shaking that occurred under my feet. Soon after the first tremors all the other men stopped what they were doing as well. An eerie silence settled over the chamber. The air became as still as that of a tomb.
"Ah, Shit." A voice echoed out, its reverberations penetrating into every corner of the chamber.
The tremors continued. Instead of slowly abating as I and all the others desperately hoped, they slowly began to intensify. Tremors such as these didn’t come from a simple cave in.
A few of the men collapsed on the spot, either from shock, or because, in their exhaustion, they welcomed their fate. Most of the men, however, understanding the gravity of the situation, burst into furious action.
"Get to the lift! Move, Move, Move!" A voice shouted, followed by a man taking off a dead sprint that would've put a Visigothian racehorse to shame. The other men, those standing at least, broke off at a dead run up the tunnel towards the lift. It would be of no use of course, but they didn't know that. They were running towards their graves.
"Earthquake." Alex casually remarked, looking towards the fleeing men, then turning back to me. All anger had drained from his face. "And the lift's broken. Of course the lift's broken. Why wouldn't it be?"
This wasn’t good. If the tremors didn't stop, or Gods' forbid, increased in intensity, we might have only minutes before the wooden support beams collapsed. Once that happened a thousand tonnes of rock would come crashing down right on top of us. It'd be a blessing to be crushed during the initial avalanche. A far worse fate awaited those who avoided being grounded into a paste.
Images of myself choking on dirt and rubble instantly filled my mind, and my breath began to come to me in quick bursts. I could feel the rising tide of panic clamp down like a vice upon my heart. I did not want to die in this place. As much as I might wallow in self pity and self loathing every night for my lot in life, the honest truth was I wanted to live. More than anything, I wanted to live.
I was not going to stand here and wait to die choking on dirt.
Before panic took ahold of me, I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths, then furiously ran through my mental map of the tunnels, trying desperately to think of any possible escape. The access tunnels to the lift mechanics were the obvious choice, they lead right towards the mine's upper levels, and from there, the surface. That was probably the route Alexander had just come down from. The only problem was that you had to pass by the lift itself before reaching the access tunnel. If I tried to go there, the panicking men would realize where I was headed when I passed them by, and they'd stampede over me to reach it first. And that was assuming they hadn't already realized the lift was broken and weren't stampeding there at this very moment. Either way, that plan was a dead end. Only two or three men could go up the tunnel at a time, and my chances of pushing, kicking and elbowing all the other men out of the way were slim to nil.
My panic was starting to win out, and my mental map began to falter. I redoubled my efforts at maintaining my concentration. I needed to think dammit, not panic. Calm men lived, frightened men died.
If I couldn't go up, could I go down? Was there any room close by that could potentially survive an earthquake? I thought frantically, but came up blank. All that was nearby were the flooded chambers and tunnels. Diving into some of the deeper ones might prevent me from getting crushed by rock falls, but would almost guarantee me a slow death by suffocation once all the air pockets turned into rubble.
Wait. Weren't we supposed to start building a drainage tunnel for the northwestern chamber Saturday? Building drainage tunnels this far underground was notoriously dangerous, and without magical assistance, dozens of men could potentially drown before it was completed. In order to avoid this, runic air masks were usually given out to the laborers, each one granting two hours of air in case of disaster. There had to have been some air masks placed in the unflooded connecting chamber in preparation for Saturday, right?
Fuck it, I was going for it. Whether the equipment was there or not was up to fate now. If it wasn’t there when I arrived, then it was just simply my time to die. There was nothing else to it.
The tremors were increasing even more now. My plan of action decided, I snapped back my unfocused eyes to the world around me. Alexander had grown even more pale than before, yet, as far as I was aware, still hadn't said another world. I'd already given him more of my attention and time than he deserved, so I pushed him out of my mind, and took off at a run towards the deeper tunnels. My actions seemed to shock him out of his stupor. I heard his voice ring out behind me.
"Wait you sonofabitch! Where are you going? Do you know a way out?"
I heard the thumping of heavy feet running after me, but I paid it no mind. I needed to get to the connecting chamber of the northwest chamber. If there was any equipment, it'd be stationed there. I ran through the directions in my mind. I would take the right tunnel at the next branch, then turn left into the tunnel carved halfway down the passage. From there, I'd go right at one more fork, and then the entrance would be down the tunnel a little ways on my right.
I ran like I hadn't in years. I ran like I hadn't ever run before.
The mage lamps on the tunnel walls began to give out at the second junction, and not daring to slow down one bit, I yanked one of the last lanterns off its cord and continued unabated. The tremors were so bad now that small rocks and dirt had begun to fall from the ceiling, and clouds of dust now choked my lungs with every ragged breath I took.
I almost missed the entrance due to the haze of dust obscuring my vision, but the changing echo of my footsteps, and the feeble light from my lamp, gave me just enough information to realize the opening was directly on my right. I dived into the room frantically, stopping just in front of the chamber entrance, and then spun my light around all across the walls and floor of the chamber in a panicked fury. After a few terrorizing seconds filled with doubt, I finally saw them. About a dozen of the air masks were arranged in a pile, laid down in a corner just to the right of the entrance. I just now needed to grab one, activate it and-
I suddenly felt as if a horse had run into me, and went flying forward some five feet into the chamber, landing on my back with a heavy thud. My lantern spun and tumbled away from me before finally landing on the ground and lighting the dark room with its eerie blue glow. I laid there quietly, gasping like a fish out of water, unable to catch my breath. Well before I’d had any chance to recover, I felt a pair of hands grab me and haul me to my feet.
"Where the hell is this exit of yours, you FUCK." Alexander's shouted into my ear, his spittle spraying onto the side of my face.
"No… Exit..." I gasped. "Air... masks… over… there..."
I raised my arm and feebly pointed towards the chamber’s corner.
Suddenly comprehending my plan, Alexander threw me back to the ground without another word, and I could hear the sound of heavy footfalls slapping the ground as he ran away from me.
After a few more moments, I rose slowly, still out of breath, and walked cautiously towards Alexander and the masks. There were more than enough for the both of us, and I didn’t think he’d waste time trying to kill me now that we were alone, but I sure as hell wasn’t planning to bet my life on it.
Alexander had just grabbed a mask and was starting to put it on when a severely violent tremor interrupted him, and threw us both off our feet. As we were thrown like rag-dolls across the ground, I could hear overhead the sound of the support timbers snapping, along with the thunder of several tonnes of rock collapsing from the ceiling.
As the tremor slowly abated to a manageable level, I got to my shaky feet and quickly ran my hands over my body, checking myself over for any serious injuries. I seemed to have had one or two cracked ribs, and dozens of cuts and bruises, but all in all I was still in good working order.
Satisfied, I raised my head back up and started trotting towards the air masks, but stopped short after only a few steps. The entire section of ceiling above the air masks had collapsed onto them, crushing the remaining equipment under several tonnes of rock and rubble.
With growing dread I looked around for Alexander, and saw he was just as alive as me, but was still sprawled upon the ground. A few feet away from him, thrown like everything else during the last tremor, lay the one surviving air mask.
It seemed to me that fate had one damn queer sense of humor.