CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Awake in a new chamber of limestone, hundreds of stalagmites and stalactites warping the floor and ceiling into a great maw of rock, flowstone and columns aplenty, the dwarf winced. He’d taken several blows the night previous at the hands of the chieftain and felt each one clearly. He’d acted in the interest of death and received pain and pickaxe instead. The latter did lay beside. He ignored it and staggered over to the great lake trapped beneath the earth, little light from above illuminating the crystal waters. It was no bad sight, but the dwarf would have rathered one of Waspig.

“Ain’t it nice, rock digger?” began a gruff rasp. “A nice view and you still get to live.” Balto stepped out from darkness and dwarfed the dwarf. “You’ll be taking your meals here today. Tomorrow you’ll mine.”

The dwarf lunged, slipped, and crumpled beneath Balto. Stubbled chin lowering and rising with laughter, Balto delivered a kick to the bearded heap and walked off. Coming back, he dumped a handful of dried meat, gone after with a looming return left on the rock digger’s mind. His large hand grabbed at the mineral crusted meat, brushing it somewhat clean, and downed it. The taste, besides the odd rock, was not poor, and he missed their being by their end. But to Balto’s discredit, he’d underestimated the dwarf’s suicidal insistence. Onto the shore he dropped to his knees and sank his beard beneath the surface of the lake. The first tugs of natural panic hit as they had in the bottom fourth floor of a snow topped ruin, as a drowning could not avoid. His body’s aches and pains could not smother the desperation to release his head from knowing demise. But the dwarf persisted. And he was suddenly on his side out from the water, boot kicking into his spine.

“Idiot!” berated Balto. He dragged the sputtering dwarf over to a post in the softer part of the ground and ushered over a compatriot: the stout Caltraz. “Watch him.” And Balto went away.

“Fearless bastard, aren’t you?” asked Caltraz, chin clean. The dwarf did not respond but in coughs. “I can’t say I understand this. What’s some hard labor for a few days? You don’t believe we’ll let you go?” But the dwarf did gather the strength at this to nod. “Smart man. Of course we aren’t. But we don’t wanna kill ya. You comprehend?” The dwarf did not.

Droplets fell in faster paced spurts onto rock and ripples. Caltraz craned his stout neck back at the high ceiling and pointed fangs.

“Raining hard I bet.”

“Indeed, and some equipment flooded. Damned cave,” mused Balto appearing beside the two.

“Not mine?”

“Maybe. Why don’t you run and see?” spoken with a pointed grin. “Thanks for watching the brat.”

Caltraz hesitated but evacuated quick on his heels away into the tunnels upward leaving the dwarf with Balto. The former only then noticed the latter’s spool of thick chain.

“Oh yes,” laughed the bandit. “Ain’t it gonna be a fine solution?”...

The night was spent alone in the limestone maw. The cold was not accounted for courtesy of the chieftain, Balto had informed, and so the dwarf on slippery rock stuffed himself as far into a corner as the leash of chain allowed. Pickaxe confiscated (to be a nightly routine), he shivered without the means of clear escape. Drowning could not be attempted. The barbarian act of bashing his own head against the wall was dismissed--he hadn’t nearly the resolve to try. No sword came down upon him nor gouged his chest. He whimpered and thought himself lower than a dog--his own ones like sheep led better lives. By some miracle the dwarf found slumber and awoke to familiar rasp.

“Today you work.”

Balto tossed the pickaxe, a surprisingly fine iron instrument, onto the hard ground before the dwarf.

“Show us what you can do in an hour and we’ll see about breakfast.”

The dwarf did not make movement to rise. Balto in turn grabbed at his beard pulling him onto his legs. He bent and thrusted the pickaxe into the dwarf’s hands and pointed at a deposit of iron. The dwarf threw it some feet away. Balto backhanded the rock digger, retrieved the pickaxe, and shoved it against the dwarf’s chest. He tossed it again and stubble lowered in the letting loose of a scream, dwarf slammed against the rock wall with two hands gripping his damp, dirty gi.

“You want me to kill you?” asked the bandit. Slumped against a stalagmite, the dwarf gave no answer nor rose. The bandit lightly tapped his boot against rock pensively, and did not break his concentration for some time. He then threw himself atop the dwarf and ripped his collar from the chains, dragging him by the neck over to the shore, flipping him over and forcing his head below the surface. The motions so violent, the dwarf could not help but allow away bubbles and just as the darkest corners of his sight grew in intensity beneath a low lit pool he was yanked out, choking up water in bursts. The dwarf protested just as his head submerged again, the dwarf struggling out from Balto’s hold on him. As he rose from the water for the second time the dwarf attempted a head bash, but his target could not be found and the act seemingly further enraged the bandit, submerging the dwarf for the third time shaking him all the while. The dwarf’s mind struggled to comprehend the intense events crashing up against physical suffering, blanking. As he thought death had come, the grip on his neck loosened and a weight crashed into the lake. The dwarf was pulled from the water yet again but by the stout arms of Caltraz.

“Dumb bastard,” he chided. The dwarf vomit. “Well not your fault he nearly killed you. Fool lost his temper is all. If it wasn’t me it’d be the chieftain.”

The bandit beside the sputtering dwarf fell to his knees and fished the corpse of Balto. As the dwarf recovered, fallen to his side beside the shore, he could not help watching over the looting of Caltraz’s fallen compatriot. At Caltraz’s noticing, his clean chin gave way to a laugh.

“Well I obviously get first call.”