Death from Below (Swords and Salt, Tale 3)
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About this ebook
A visit from Yanko’s older brother is interrupted when an alarm blasts through the mine. Mutilated workers have been found dead in a newly opened tunnel.
Yanko has been studying to become a mage, and his brother is a soldier, so they believe they are prepared to deal with this unknown threat, but what awaits them in the subterranean depths is nothing the mine has seen in its hundreds of years of operation.
Death from Below is a 13,000-word novella.
Lindsay Buroker
Lindsay Buroker war Rettungsschwimmerin, Soldatin bei der U.S. Army und hat als IT-Administratorin gearbeitet. Sie hat eine Menge Geschichten zu erzählen. Seit 2011 tut sie das hauptberuflich und veröffentlicht ihre Steampunk-Fantasy-Romane im Self-Publishing. Die erfolgreiche Indie-Autorin und begeisterte Bloggerin lebt in Arizona und hat inzwischen zahlreiche Romanserien und Kurzgeschichten geschrieben. Der erste Band der Emperor’s-Edge-Serie „Die Klinge des Kaisers“ ist jetzt ins Deutsche übersetzt.
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Book preview
Death from Below (Swords and Salt, Tale 3) - Lindsay Buroker
Death from Below
(Swords & Salt, Tale 3)
by Lindsay Buroker
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2013 Lindsay Buroker
Part 1
Yanko dumped his five or six thousandth shovel of salt into the cart, hoping the dull ache in his back signified that he neared the end of his shift. If not, his work here might be aging him more than hardening
him, the term his father had used when sending him to the mines to prepare for his warrior-mage tests. He imagined showing up before the pedagogues on the committee hunchbacked and with gray threading his black hair.
You’re muttering,
the woman on the other side of the cart said as she dumped a shovelful of her own. Clad in a fur vest that left her muscular arms bare, Lakeo had doubtlessly never had a sore back or any other type of frailty in her life. Her frizzy hair nearly brushed the grayish-white tunnel ceiling when she stood straight, which wasn’t often. She kept shoveling, toiling away without breaks. It’s not about that girl again, is it?
No.
Aware of the miners working farther down the tunnel, cracking their pickaxes into the marble-hard walls of salt, Yanko did not stop shoveling to talk. Though she’s older than you, so it’d be appropriate to call her a woman, don’t you think?
How do you know?
That it’s appropriate to call her a woman?
Lakeo gave him one of the scathing looks she was so good at. No, how old I am.
As always, Yanko wanted to give her an equally scathing return look, but he had been raised to respect women and his elders—or at least to appear to do so—so he pretended indifference to her grating personality. Secretly, he wished his uncle would stop pairing them together. He suspected it had to do with keeping all of the troublemakers in one place, rather than any perception of their compatibility.
You have that arrogant I-know-everything-about-the-world-even-though-I’ve-never-been-anywhere attitude that suggests a certain immaturity.
Hm, that hadn’t been entirely respectful. Yanko smiled so he could pretend he had been teasing.
I see. What kind of maturity would be suggested if I cracked you in the head with a shovel?
Yanko,
came a call from farther up the tunnel.
Yes?
he responded, though he didn’t take his eyes from Lakeo’s shovel. Some dogs were all bite; this one wasn’t. But she had already returned to work.
Uncle Mishnal walked into view, stepping around piles of freshly chiseled salt, his white and orange controller’s robes stirring the fine crystals as they brushed the floor. You have a visitor. He’s waiting in my office.
Yanko’s belly twitched with unease. Father. It had to be. Had he come to check on his son’s progress? What else? The tests were only a month away. Shall I see him now, honored Uncle?
Yanko lifted the shovel, silently asking if he could leave his shift early.
You’ve eight minutes to go until the hour, but I suppose I can be lenient in this matter.
The corners of Mishnal’s eyes crinkled. With amusement? Surely not.
Can I go too?
Lakeo asked. The ore cart would get filled lopsidedly with just me shoveling.
A catastrophe, no doubt.
Uncle Mishnal had either given up on making her use the correct form of address when speaking to superiors or he simply didn’t care today. Her gifted hands—she was carving a new series of salt statues in the chapel—gave her an interesting sort of protection incongruous with her peasant social status.
I’m thinking of the efficiency of the operation,
Lakeo said. A lopsided cart might tip when it’s being hauled to the higher levels. The whole mess could overturn on the unsuspecting man loading the carts fifty meters below, causing severe injury or even death.
Yes, yes, you’re dismissed as well.
Mishnal waved a hand at her, then focused on Yanko. "I hope you’ve been practicing the thermal science as diligently as your