Read Online Dragon Weather by Lawrence Watt-Evans - Free Book Online

overseers, and Arlian remembered how far down he had come when he was first brought here, and that the entry had been at the foot of a cliff. He was deep inside the earth—he didn’t know how far, but he knew it was deep.
    The possibility that someday they might tunnel into a natural cave or cavern had occurred to him, but it seemed unlikely—and if it did happen, everyone knew that dragons lived in deep caverns. Much as he wanted to destroy those dragons, he didn’t care to face them barefoot and armed only with a pickax.
    Up the shaft—that was the only sane way out.
    So he watched the lifting operations with intense interest, trying to devise some way that he might get up to that entrance tunnel. The hopper was always carefully stored up at the top, with all the ropes pulled up out of reach; the stone walls were angled inward as they rose and polished smooth, making a climb impossible. The pile of rags used as a buffer for the hopper, and also as a stockpile for the miners’ clothing, was too low to be of any real help.
    The hopper was almost invisible now, above the area lit by the mine’s lamps and not yet into the glow of the torches and lamps used by the wagon crews. Arlian leaned out of the tunnel mouth to peer upward.
    He saw the jerk an instant before he heard the snap; one corner of the hopper dropped abruptly, then caught a few inches lower.
    Then a second snap sounded, and the entire end of the hopper dropped, swinging down; two of the four cables had broken.
    The top layer of ore spilled from the hopper with a thunderous roar that echoed deafeningly from the limestone walls; a hundred jagged head-sized chunks of heavy gray stone poured in a torrent.
    And Bloody Hand, who had stepped forward to watch the hauling better, was standing directly underneath.
    He raised his arms to shield his head and tried to dodge, but not in time—a stone struck him squarely on the temple, and he crumpled sideways, landing on the rag heap.
    Arlian started out of the tunnel, then caught himself.
    This was Bloody Hand, the overseer, the man who had flogged Dinian to death. And the hopper was still mostly full and swinging about wildly as the teamsters at the top tried to regain control; at any moment the rest of the ore might spill out. Only a tiny fraction had fallen as yet. The remainder was hanging by a thread.
    A single chunk of stone the size of a man’s chest had killed Fist instantly, and that dancing hopper held several tons of ore.
    But Bloody Hand was still a fellow human being. Dinian aside, the rumors and stories aside, Arlian had never seen him deliberately harm anyone.
    And Arlian had seen too many men die in the mines. He had no desire to see another death, not even Hand’s.
    He ran forward and grabbed the dazed Hand under both arms, hauling him free of the little heap of scattered stone. Arlian pulled him toward the nearest tunnel mouth, walking backward and dragging Hand along as quickly as he could. He was halfway to the safety of the tunnel’s mouth when he heard a twang, and another snap, and saw an avalanche of gray stone pouring down out of the darkness.

6
    The Price of Mercy
    Arlian was coughing, choking on the clouds of rock dust, as he staggered backward; he had dropped Bloody Hand, but the dust in his eyes was so thick he couldn’t see where. All he wanted for the moment was to get clear himself, so he could wipe his eyes and see what was happening.
    â€œAri!”
    Arlian recognized Wark’s voice. “Here!” he shouted in return.
    Other voices were shouting somewhere; Arlian paid no attention to them as he stumbled into a tunnel mouth and cleared his vision.
    A few seconds later Wark was there beside him, wiping away dust; Arlian turned and peered out into the pitshaft.
    The lamps on one side had gone out, so that great black shadows reared up—and some were moving, dancing, as the now-empty hopper, dangling from one line, swung crazily. A