Warrior Mage (Book 1) (5 page)

“Is there another way up?” Lakeo asked. “There better be. There’s no way we can climb up that shaft.”

Gold Hawk could have levitated himself up. Shame wrapped around Yanko. He was too afraid of falling to even try. He had called upon the wind and manipulated air before, but to use it to push himself up hundreds of meters? He couldn’t imagine it, nor did he want to imagine the fall that would await him if he made it part way and his powers failed him.

“In the back,” one of the miners said, waving his pickaxe. He had a thick accent. A Turgonian? His skin was a darker bronze than the typical Nurian yellow-brown, and he had the shoulders of an ox. “The carts go that way. You can get as far as the screw before you have to start climbing some walls.” He raised his bushy eyebrows at Yanko. “I’ll show you if you look the other way when I disappear in the mess.”

Yanko was on the verge of saying he could find the route himself, but what did the prisoners matter at this point? He needed to find his uncle, make sure he was safe, and then help in whatever way he could to drive these invaders away, whoever they were. Could it be the Turgonians? It was hard to imagine any of Nuria’s other enemies being so brazen as to attack this far inland, but the new republic had been talking of making peace of late, not war. Not that such words couldn’t be a ruse. Or a distraction.

“Let’s go,” Yanko said, waving for the man to lead.

* * *

The explosions continued on the levels above them, each one causing the tunnels to shudder and the wooden support posts to groan and creak. Yanko and Lakeo followed the big miner until he recognized the area. They had climbed up long switchbacks in the bowels of the earth, following those cart tracks, and even at a jog, it had taken nearly a half hour to rise from the eighth level to the second. With every passing moment, Yanko had worried he was too late to help, too late to be any good to his family and the property they were charged to protect. He thought of the miners, too—men who had no swords, no firearms, no true means to defending themselves.

When they reached the bottom of the screw, they came across the first body. Yanko stared down at the overseer, the man who usually beat the drum from atop the platform overhead. His neck was broken. It looked like he had fallen from the landing above—or been shoved.

Whatever had happened up there, the platform appeared to be empty now. From fifty feet below it, he could not be certain. He tried reaching up with his mind to check, but a sharp stab of pain behind his eyes warned him that he had been doing much more of that than he was accustomed to—he had been using his senses to search the tunnels ahead for enemies at every turn.

“We climbing up?” Lakeo grabbed the thick rope attached to the cart lift.

The men who had been accompanying them—eight miners of various nationalities—grumbled amongst themselves as they eyed the body. They had to be thinking of hiding somewhere and waiting out the attack, rather than barreling into sword-wielding strangers. Yanko could not do that.

He jumped and caught the rope above Lakeo’s hand. “Yes. I’ll go first.”

Despite the burgeoning headache, he made himself inspect the platform above them as he climbed. He didn’t sense any more living beings in the area, though he could hear clangs and shouts in the distance. It made him uneasy that the offices, storage rooms, and living quarters were in that direction.

Even though he trusted his senses, he paused when he reached the bottom of the platform and poked his eyes over the top before committing himself. Three more bodies lay near the screw, two bare-chested miners and a third man in leather and black silks with a scimitar and
kyzar
that had dropped from his hands when he fell. Those were traveling clothes, not mining clothes, and the man’s hair was in a topknot.

Yanko pulled himself up, waved that it was safe for the others, and walked over to the body. He had assumed their attackers would be foreigners, invaders from across the sea, but this man had the clothing and skin color of a Nurian. More, the hair implied he was from a
moksu
family. Of course, the man could have chosen the style in an attempt to disguise himself, but the penalty for feigning a position in a class above oneself was steep in Nuria. Few people dared to try. So who was this then? Internal strife on a large scale was rare these days. The Great Chief squashed out rebellions, and thieves and bandits were dealt with before they could form into groups substantial enough to harry towns and clans. Even when groups did crop up, they usually targeted banks and bank-owned transports, rather than something as large as a mine. An invading army would be more likely to want to take over resources useful in supporting their troops.

“Friend of yours?” Lakeo asked, coming up behind him. She nudged the body with her boot.

“No.”

“Good.” She stuck her hammer and chisel in her belt and grabbed the fallen scimitar and
kyzar
.

The miners had reached the platform, as well. They eyed the bodies, but seemed more interested in finding a way out than in figuring out who was attacking.

Yanko took the lead again, wondering if he should have been the one to grab the swords. If they encountered the enemy in the tunnels, he might not have time to summon a magical defense. The passages on this first level had been hollowed out hundreds of years earlier and were wider than the ones below. That should give him more space and more time to react, but it would also allow a number of people to attack them at once. He held the makings of a barrier in his mind as they advanced, following the cart tracks toward the lift and the way out.

More bodies scattered the passages, the white-gray floors stained with fresh blood. A few of the leather-and-silk-wearing enemies had fallen, but far more miners had been killed, men who probably hadn’t even wanted to fight. Or who might have been willing to turn on their captors. Indeed, at one point, they passed an overseer who had been brutally mauled, his face unrecognizable, and Yanko suspected only someone seeking revenge would have lingered to do so much damage. It chilled him to think of the miners at his back deciding to turn on him if he blocked their way, or simply because they thought they could get away with it.

He glanced at Lakeo, glad she was with him. She wasn’t
moksu
, and even if she voluntarily worked here, the miners would likely see her as one of them. But she should stand beside Yanko in a fight—after all, he had made countless tree and plant illusions for her over the last few months. Maybe that would make them less likely to attack him.

As they drew closer to the offices, living quarters, and kitchen, the air stank more and more of smoke. They turned a corner and nearly smacked into a rockfall blocking the passage.

“Guess that’s what we heard down below,” Lakeo said.

“Sh,” Yanko whispered, sensing people up ahead.

The explosions and shouts from earlier had faded. He hoped that meant his people had driven out the attackers, but he couldn’t assume that was the case, especially when the invaders had all been armed. The guards in the shack at the top of the lift must have been caught by surprise.

Yanko crawled up the broken slabs of salt. They didn’t completely block the tunnel, and he could squeeze through at the top, but he paused before doing so. Two men had walked out of a storage room, each carrying bags of salt over their shoulders. These also wore the traveling garments, but their hair was cut short in the military style favored by the common man, and swords swayed at their hips.

Yanko took too long debating if he should try to capture and question them, and they disappeared around a bend ahead. He crawled the rest of the way over the fallen salt slabs, crouched and used his mind to probe the other nearby storage rooms. A draft of fresh desert air whispered across his cheeks. Odd. One didn’t usually feel that until one was rising out of the mines on the lift.

A scream of pain traveled down the tunnel from ahead, halting his investigation. That scream had sounded familiar.

“Uncle?” Yanko whispered.

Lakeo slid down the rock pile and landed beside him.

“Watch my back,” he said, barely aware that he was giving her an order. He sprinted up the passage without waiting for an answer. It made sense that the enemy would interrogate Uncle Mishnal if they had captured him. After all, he ran the mine. If there were any government secrets to be known about the salt and where it was distributed, he would know them.

Yanko almost crashed into a man walking out of a side room carrying ropes of sausages. Not wanting to slow down, Yanko slammed an elbow into his sternum and tore the intruder’s
kyzar
from his belt before the man had done more than drop the food. Yanko took advantage of his surprise, smashing a palm into his foe’s face at the same time as he stepped in close, driving the blade into his chest.

He had never killed before, and remorse caught up with what had been instinctive reactions. He stared as the man fell back, landing on the floor, death in his eyes as he gasped for his final breaths of air.

The clang of steel near him told him Lakeo had passed him and also found an opponent. There was no time to linger. He pulled out the dying man’s second weapon, a two-edged longsword, then raced up the tunnel to help Lakeo. She had stumbled across two men who had been carrying a trunk of cheeses out of a supply room. They had flung their load down and were pressing her, both attacking at the same time. Predictably, the miners accompanying Yanko and Lakeo hung back. They had pickaxes, but did not rush to engage in the battle.

Yanko charged up, catching one of her attackers in the side before he could break away to face him. Relentless, Yanko smashed the man’s sword hand, knocking the weapon away. He slammed the
kyzar
into the man’s chest, the blade scraping and grinding against ribs. The reality of the noise made Yanko wince, but the fact that Lakeo was in trouble ensured he did not hesitate. He would have turned to help her with her opponent, but two more invaders were racing down the hall toward them. He had to trust that Lakeo could take care of herself. Even though he usually bested her when they sparred, she had a scrappy unpredictable style that he hoped would serve her well.

One of the approaching men carried a bow and paused to nock an arrow. Since he had a couple of seconds, Yanko did his best to block out the chaos of the fight, the rasping of men’s heavy breaths, the clank of swords, the grunts of pain and frustration. He called upon that draft creeping through the tunnels, channeled it, and threw a blast of air at the archer. The man toppled backward, his shoulder slamming into the wall, and his arrow falling away.

“Mage!” the man started to scream.

Using the same force of wind, Yanko shoved it down his throat, battering his tonsils and forcing the warning cry back into his mouth. The man’s head hammered against the wall, and he slumped to the ground, groaning.

That would have to be enough for the moment, because the second invader had reached Yanko, a bare-armed man with two longswords. He leaped, both weapons swinging for Yanko’s head. There wasn’t time to come up with a magical defense—and he certainly couldn’t concentrate on one with those sharp blades angling for his eyes. He skittered to the side to avoid one of the swings and blocked the other with his purloined sword. The power of the blow radiated up his arm to his elbow, and he almost dropped the weapon. Cursing himself, he jumped back, giving himself room to recover. This was no duel in a practice arena for show. This man wanted to kill him.

His elbow brushed against something. Lakeo. She was still fighting her own opponent.

Knowing he could not back up farther without impeding her, Yanko stood his ground under the next barrage that the man launched at him. Each blow numbed Yanko’s arms with its power, but he blocked them nonetheless and tried to find an opening in the blur of metal dancing in front of him. The man wielded the two blades effectively, but Yanko noticed that the swipes from his right hand weren’t quite as quick and deadly. He must favor his left hand. If Yanko could take that out of action, he might gain the advantage. He wished he could hurl some mental attack at the same time as he fought, but blocking the rain of blows took all of his concentration.

The man’s foot bumped the arm of one of his fallen comrades, and he glanced down. He was only distracted for a split second, but Yanko turned the attack on him. Instead of defending, he launched his own series of blows, first a slash toward the man’s head with the long blade, and then he lunged in, aiming for the vulnerable inner thigh. Getting so close on someone tall and with two swords was a risk—the man’s reach was far greater than his own—but Yanko was fast and believed he could skitter back out again if he needed to. Fortunately, his rapid barrage of blows, half more feints than true attacks, made the bigger man step back. Finally, Yanko found his opening, and he whipped his shorter blade across, the edge cutting into the invader’s dominant hand. The blade bit deep, and the man dropped the weapon.

Yanko ducked, anticipating the frenzied, defensive attack from the other hand. It came, and the longsword sailed over his head, so close that it almost relieved him of his topknot, but in his moment of slight panic, the man swung too hard. The sword struck the wall, biting into the salt.

Before his foe could recover from the wild blow, Yanko leaped in close and plunged his
kyzar
into the man’s kidney.

The intruder gasped, his back going as rigid as a tree. He dropped his sword, clutched at Yanko’s arm, and stared him in the eyes, horror and pain contorting his features. Yanko jumped back, in case the invader had one more attack in him before he passed on, but not before the impression of that face imprinted itself in his mind forever. His stomach churned, and his mouth was drier than desert sand, but he couldn’t stop to dwell on this now, on the fact that he was taking the lives of other human beings.

He turned toward the archer he had attacked earlier, expecting that the man would have recovered by now. But there was a knife buried in his chest.

He turned to check on Lakeo. Blood dripped from a cut at her temple, but she had defeated her opponent, and she must have been the one to throw the knife, as well. She gave him a quick nod and waved her sword to signal she could go on. Her face was pale, and Yanko wondered if she, too, despite all her bravado, had never had to kill a man before.