The King of Embers

UNDER THE WALL

Letomos (summer)

554, A.F

Menshid, Capital of the Eastern League

A rumble from above made the dark, enclosed world around Macrin shiver. He felt a trickle of dust rain down on his head, and the candle in his hand flickered, threatened to go out. Putting a hand over the flame as more dust and loose soil was disturbed, the Stelari edged his way onwards, through the tunnel.

The wet earth sludged below his feet, sloshing the oozing water up as he pushed onwards, his spare hand feeling the walls either side of him. The air was thin, the temperature boiling, and the smell of stagnant water sickening. He twisted and struggled on, back hunched from the low-ceiling, until he eventually came across a T-section. Stopping, he craned his head either side and saw two shafts stretch into gloom. To his right a silhouette flashed, darting its hunched form out of sight. Its footsteps stopped, then returned, and coming up from the shaft a boy appeared.

Under a boiled leather cap the youth's face was caked in mud, slack-jawed as he panted. He didn't threat a salute; the boy just stood there, eyeing up the officer with dead eyes. "You the new Stelari?" he whispered.

Macrin nodded. "I am. What's your name, sapper?"

"Shovel."

The officer frowned. "What?"

Grinning, Shovel turned and moved back into the shaft. He stopped, looked back, and then beckoned for Macrin. "Come, sir," the boy said, "The Sergeant's this way." Then he disappeared once more.

Macrin looked down at the candle dripping wax onto his index finger. He hadn't noticed it, the heat of the tunnel matching whatever dropped onto his hands. The flame had eaten almost half the candle. He squinted down the tunnel ahead of him, then moved on into the darkness.

Turning a corner a glow of light painted the dead-end ahead. On the wall perpendicular to it, a door-frame had been cut through the earth and a room opened up, the flickers of lamps, and a hushed laughter spilling out. He walked towards it with weariness knotting in his gut.

In the small square room a dozen men lounged, some sleeping in their cots, others collecting around a central table where two men held out wooden cards in their hands. Shovel stood behind one of the two men. This one had long hair spilling out from under his skull-cap and fanning over his shoulders, and Macrin knew him to be the sergeant.

"Sergeant," Macrin said, tilting his head as none of the men acknowledged him. Shovel tapped the Sergeant's shoulder, and he shot an eye to Macrin. He closed in his cards and set them face down on the table as he got up, the crudely-made chair spreading out the men grouped behind it.

"Stelari, sir," he said, scratching his stubble with all the fingers of his left hand. Even he didn't snap to a salute. Macrin didn't comment on it, and instead made sure to lock firm his glare on the man. The sergeant smiled, breaking the tension swelling in Macrin. "Name's Deran - though the boy's here call me Thump."

"Thump?" Macrin said, staring.

Deran nodded. "Aye, 'Thump'." He pointed to the table, and the black-skinned man sitting at it, a fan of cards in his hands. The man stood up, then spoked.

"The sergeant here is lucky, damned lucky. Like a rabbit's foot - a rabbit's foot thumps," the man said, nodding to 'Thump' and sitting back down.

Macrin flared his eyes wryly, then said, "Very clever."

Deran pointed once more, this time to the boy he had met earlier. "That there's Shovel. Likes to get dirty, good here in the tunnels. Over there on the cot," he moved his finger to the muscled brown-skinned easterner, "is Jarin." The easterner groaned and nodded.