Dragon’s Kin

Chapter III

As the days turned into months, it seemed to Kindan that nothing much had changed. He still had chores to do. He still had to attend classes with the Harper. He still was bullied by Kaylek. His turns on watch or as runner for the camp were the same as always.

But in truth things had changed. He was now the first up in the morning and was always sure to have klah and breakfast ready for his family. His father asked him to check in on Dask in the mornings, and that was new, too.

In class with the Harper, Kindan started to notice that he saw less of Zenor in class and more of Dalor. In times past, it had always seemed that Dalor was either a very sickly child or that he was being overworked by his father. Either way, he used to miss at least two classes every sevenday, sometimes more.

Now it seemed like Dalor was in classes every day but one each sevenday.

Perhaps that change was explained by the other change: Master Zist. If Kindan had thought that Master Zist was a hard taskmaster when it came to singing, it was nothing compared to how hard he was when it came to teaching. No one could ever do anything well enough for the Master.

“Look at that! Do you call those letters?” Zist growled at little Sula one day. “How are you going to write a new recipe and share it with anyone, hmm?”

Sula had wilted under the interrogation. Everyone knew that she was hoping to join her mother, Milla, as a baker.

Another day, the Master reduced Kaylek to a red-faced gibbering wreck just by a series of probing questions on multiplication. “And how, young Kaylek, are you going to calculate the load a mine’s supports must bear if you can’t even figure out the area of the ceiling?”

Dalor got off no easier because he was the head miner’s son. All the same, Kindan noticed that whenever the Master had been hard on Dalor before the lunch break, he would take special care to soothe Dalor’s nervousness in the afternoon.

Kindan was the most obvious exception to Master Zist’s hard teachings. When Cristov and Kaylek began to notice it, Kindan started to wish that the Harper would treat him as roughly as the rest of the camp’s children.

“What is it with you?” Cristov sneered at him one day at break time. “Is it just because you can sing so well?”

“Can’t be for much else,” Kaylek decided.

But Kindan knew exactly why Master Zist never bore down too harshly on him. Early on, not long after Silstra’s wedding, Master Zist and he had had another contest of wills similar to the heated exchange they’d had on the day they’d met. As before, neither had truly won the argument, but Kindan had recognized something in Master Zist’s stubborn insistence that his students try their hardest and not be afraid to ask for help—and Kindan had decided to accept the challenge.

It had been difficult at first, but soon Kindan found himself relishing his time with the surly Master. He discovered that, by exercising a level of diplomacy that he had never attained before, he could survive the Harper’s harshness and give back as good as he got without ever being branded as “disrespectful.”

Kindan found, as he approached his eleventh birthday, that he could even work with Kaylek. His elder brother, plagued by Master Zist’s remonstrations about his class work, had actually turned to Kindan for help.

Kaylek was smart enough to realize that work in the mines was dangerous and required more wits than temper. So he had swallowed his pride—as best he could—and had learned from his littler brother.

The morning of Kaylek’s first day in the mines with his father and his brothers, Kindan was surprised to be awoken by a warm cup of klah thrust into his hands.

“I thought you might want to see us off,” Kaylek said shyly.

Recognizing Kaylek’s actions as a peace offering, Kindan quickly pulled himself out of bed. “Sure.”

It was the dark of night. Kaylek and the rest would be going down in the shift that ran from just after nightfall to just before dawn, rightly called the “watch-wher” shift because that was when watch-whers were awake.

Careful not to disturb Jakris and Tofir, Kindan pulled on his clothes and followed Kaylek into the kitchen.

“Dad said nothing about you,” Dakin said when he noticed Kindan.

“I’m just going to see you off,” Kindan answered.

Dakin shrugged. “All right,” he said. “You know Sis used to do that.”

“Where’s Dad?” Kaylek asked, looking around the room.

“In the shed with Dask, of course,” Jaran, the second eldest, replied matter-of-factly.

“Let’s go out and see if he needs any help,” Kaylek suggested to Kindan.

“Only if you want Dask to snap at you, you will,” Kenil said. Kaylek glanced at Jaran and Dakin for confirmation and saw that both older boys were nodding their heads.

“He’s been a bit proddy recently,” Dakin explained. He frowned. “I don’t like it, nor does Dad.”

“He’s been like that before, though,” Jaran said, apparently continuing a conversation that Kindan hadn’t heard the start of.

“Come on, lads, time’s a-wasting,” Danil’s voice called from outside.

They all put their mugs in the sink and started out the door, Kindan trailing.

He followed them all the way up to the mine entrance, where a group of miners waited. Kindan recognized one of the smaller ones.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I’m going down to help—my father said I could,” Zenor answered, his voice lull of pride. Talmaric, his father, nodded.

“It’s only for today,” Zenor added when he noticed Kindan’s concerned look. Kindan brightened immediately.

“Wish me luck,” Kaylek called to Kindan as he started into the mine.

“Good luck.”

“What are you talking about luck for?” Kenil asked. “Miners don’t need luck, they need caution.”

“Sorry,” Kaylek mumbled.

They swept from view, and Kindan went back to the cottage and his bed.

It started with a silence. The children noticed it and gathered around the windows. Master Zist noticed only that the children were not paying attention to him.

“Get back here, now!” he shouted. He had just gotten them settled for the first lesson of the morning. One child turned his head toward him but quickly turned back.

Zist growled and strode over to the window, ready to bodily return his students to their seats. The tension in their small bodies unhinged his plan. He followed their gaze—they were all looking at the northern mine shaft.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Dunno,” a girl replied, “something’s wrong.”

“How do you know?” Zist demanded.

One of the children shook his head and made a shushing motion. “Can’t you hear? It’s too quiet.”

The sky outside darkened. Master Zist looked up and saw a thin raft of dark powder drifting down toward the lake from the direction of the mine shaft. Not smoke—coal dust.

“My father’s down there!” one child wailed.

“And my brother!”

“Shh!” said an older child, cocking his head and listening very hard, his eyes never moving from the cloud exuding from the adit.

“There’s been an accident?” Zist asked, catching Kindan’s expression of open-mouthed horror, the look in his wide, shocked eyes.

Just then someone started cranking the mine alarm and abruptly, as if spilled out, people turned out of their houses and made for the entrance to the mine.

Kindan sat down hard on the edge of his desk.

“Are your father and brothers on this shift, Kindan?” Master Zist asked. Kindan shook his head, not as a negative but as a way to throw off the paralysis that had momentarily overtaken him.

“Yes, they are, Master. Dad is a shift leader and he has Dask with him today,” Kindan managed to say. “We all have to go and help,” he added after a moment. “There is a lot we can do, even if it’s only carrying baskets to open a cave-in.”

He stood up, and joined the older children as they began to file out, heading toward the shaft opening. Even as Master Zist tried to prioritize what he should do now, he saw Natalon, shoving his arms in his jacket, coming out of his house to take charge of the situation. Men and women were bringing equipment of all sorts—picks, shovels, baskets, stretchers—to the mine entrance. The thin soot that had first tinted the sky had grown to clouds of black coal dust.

Kindan’s progress toward the mine was at first slow, but then the boy started to run. Master Zist looked around his classroom, now emptied of the older children, those who could be helpful in the emergency. Jofri had not informed him what his duties would be in the event of a problem, but keeping the younger children occupied seemed a good idea, so Zist hastily called his class to order. Through the window, he saw a group of miners, with torches as well as glowbaskets, entering the shaft.

“My dad’s on this shift, Master Zist. May I go, too?”

The girl was barely eight and slight, as well, so Zist could not think what emergency task she’d be useful for.

“Do you have an assigned task?” he asked kindly.

“She’s not old enough yet,” one of the boys said authoritatively. “Nor am I. You have to be eight to be allowed to help. And bigger than Sula is.”

“I could help. My mom has taught me ever so much,” Sula replied with great dignity. “Sis taught her and I watched.”

Zist knew that Sula’s mother was one of the Camp’s healers. He went to the child and pushed her gently back into her seat. “I’m sure you’ll be a great help, once they discover what has happened. Until then, you must stay here.” He gave her thin shoulders a little reassuring squeeze before he went to the head of the schoolroom and decided to teach this part of his class one of the new ballads he had brought with him. At a time like this, music could be a great comfort. Seeing him pick up his guitar caused the children to stop chatting and sit up attentively, though some of them continued to look over their shoulders toward the mine.

Master Zist could see Natalon and Tarik arguing, even as Natalon was urgently gesturing men to enter the shaft. The miners were carrying tools or pushing the wheeled carts that brought the ore out of the mine.

He wondered if that meant there had been a cave-in. But hadn’t Kindan said that Dask was with his father? Watch-whers were supposed to have an excellent sense of smell which allowed them to detect bad air long before a person could.

When miners talked of “bad air” they were referring to either explosive gases or gases which could suffocate—either was deadly.

Strumming the opening chords to the new song, he began to sing, trying to look and sound as cheerful as he could, in order to distract the children.

He had barely succeeded in claiming the children’s rapt attention when the mine’s alarm let off three loud, sustained hoots, and everyone rushed to the window again.

The first thing that Kindan saw as he approached the mine entrance was Dask. His heart fell. Dask would never leave Danil unless ordered—or cut off by the cave-in.

“Where’s Danil, Dask? Where is he?” Kindan asked as he approached. The watch-wher’s flanks were gouged, deep wounds oozing the ichor that was a watch-wher’s blood. He blinked his eyes painfully in the morning light and turned back to the mine entrance. Kindan followed.

“What happened?” Kindan asked, following the watch-wher.

Dask turned his head to look at Kindan and gave him the sound for “bad air.”

“Why didn’t you warn them?” Kindan asked.

Dask made an annoyed bleek and then the sound for “fast.”

“It happened too fast?” Kindan repeated. The watch-wher nodded.

Inside the mine, Kindan could smell gas, sharp and bitter in his throat. It made him cough. The cave-in must have been caused by an explosion of trapped gas, he guessed. It must have been sudden, or Dask would have warned the miners in time.

The watch-wher trotted ahead in the tunnel, leading the rescue party to the jumbled mass of the cave-in. Before the rest of the party could reach him, he had already started clawing at the barrier, using his head to batter at the loose bits. Men stepped out of the way of the debris that his claws were throwing back. One of the men positioned a wheelbarrow so that it caught the flying rocks and dirt, clearing the ground as other men began to dig next to the watch-wher.

Now that the miners knew where to work, Kindan tried to get the wounded watch-wher to stop and save his energy. But Dask ignored him, burrowing on despite the ichor that was oozing from his various wounds.

Hours passed, all the while with Dask digging and the miners carting away the fallen rock. Painfully, they excavated their way through the cave-in.

“Natalon?” Kindan said, grabbing the miner’s arm. “Let me take Dask back. He’s bleeding.”

Natalon looked over at the watch-wher. “We need him here now, especially as he seems to know where our men are.”

“But ... he could bleed to death,” Kindan cried, tugging at Natalon’s sleeve.

“Do what you can for him but don’t stop him, lad,” Natalon said. “Your father’s on the other side.”

Kindan ran all the way back out to where the injury station had been set up. He was surprised to see that the sun was past noon.

“Please, let me have some bandage rolls, Margit,” he said to the woman who was setting out the supplies.

“Have they found anyone alive?” she asked, and he had to disappoint her with a negative shake of his head. He knew that her spouse was in his father’s shift.

“Why would you want bandages then, Kindan?” she asked.

“Dask was hurt bringing out those he rescued,” he said, gesturing toward the three men being cared for by the camp’s healers.

“You want my good bandages for the watch-wher?” she demanded, affronted.

“If he bleeds to death before he finds your mate, it’ll be your fault!”

“Why, you impertinent little scut!” Margit responded, swiping at him with the towel she had in one hand. He neatly sidestepped and, in doing so, scooped two rolls off the table and raced back to the mine entrance, avoiding the two men who were pushing laden barrels out to be emptied.

Kindan was panting with exertion when he reached the cave-in site. Splotches of greenish watch-wher ichor were visible in the light from the glows, but Dask continued to claw at the barrier. Kindan pushed in beside Dask, hearing the laboring gasp of the watch-wher’s breath. When a sudden movement caused more dirt and stone to shower the creature, Kindan pushed up beside him and tried to bandage the deep neck wound that was pumping ichor out at much too fast a rate.

Muttering reassurances, he tried to get the watch-wher to slow down. Dask turned his head slightly, his eyes gleaming with irritation, and hissed at Kindan. Then he turned back to his task with renewed vigor. Ichor dripped faster.

“He has to stop, Natalon, or he’ll bleed to death!”

Just then, they heard shouts from beyond the cave-in, urging them on. Frantically, Dask dug harder, with less control, showering the anxious Kindan with stones and mud. He shouldered deeper into the tunnel he was digging and renewed his efforts. There was a loud cry as his heavy claws broke through the last of the obstacle; the encouraging shouts from the freed miners were clearly audible.

“Run back to the entrance, Kindan,” Natalon said, “and tell them to bring in stretchers.”

Kindan did not want to leave Dask’s side, but Natalon pulled him from the watch-wher and pushed him on his way. As he ran, Kindan began shouting the good news, as well as Natalon’s request for stretchers, to those waiting outside at the top of the shaft. They came pushing past him in their eagerness to see who had been saved, and Kindan followed more slowly, trying to get his breath back.

Back in the shaft, Dask was lying in a lump, his big eyes fitfully gleaming. He didn’t even pick up his head as Kindan knelt beside him. The first of the rescued men was being hauled out on a stretcher as Kindan tried to staunch the ichor that streamed out of the neck gash.

“Oh, Dask, what have you done to yourself?” he keened as he felt the unsteady neck pulse.

Dask curled his neck, placing his head on Kindan’s lap and sighing sadly. Kindan began to scratch behind Dask’s ears, soothing the beast as well as he could. And so, having led the rescuers to the trapped men, Dask finished his life.

The boy had kept watching for the sight of his father’s face or one of his brothers among those led out and up to the surface. It was when Natalon remarked that the last of the live miners had been rescued, that Kindan gave up hope.

“We’ll get the dead ones out now,” Natalon said. He paused beside Kindan, patting his head kindly. “Your father’s neck was broken, lad. And your brothers are half buried under the rubble. We’ll get their bodies before night falls.”

Kindan sat there a long time, holding the heavy head of the watch-wher, absently scratching ears that were turning stiff, his lap covered in green ichor, until Natalon returned for a final inspection.

“Still here, boy? Come, it’s nearly dark.”

“But Dask is dead, Natalon.”

Natalon crouched down beside the boy and saw his tear-streaked face. He mopped some of the tears from the coal-dust-smeared face and touched Kindan tenderly on the head.

“There’s a big hole not far from here where I will see he is buried, Kindan, but you must come with me now. It’s all over down here.”

Natalon had to help the grieving boy to his feet, ignoring Kindan’s repeated request to stay by the watch-wher.

“He made a good end, Kindan. He was a fine beast.”

Kindan found himself wandering among the wounded, looking for any of his brothers, his throat tight and tears streaming freely down his face. He went from stretcher to stretcher, fighting his way among the crowds, ignoring the calls of the women who were acting as nurses.

He heard a voice croak out his name and turned quickly.

“Zenor!” Abashed to realize that he had completely forgotten that Zenor had gone into the mine that shift, Kindan was at his friend’s side in a second. Zenor was cut, bruised, and in shock. Kindan grabbed the hand Zenor had raised to him and held it with more force than he realized.

“Did—did they get out?” Zenor asked. A look at Kindan’s face told him the answer. “My father?” Kindan shook his head.

“Your father?” Kindan’s tears answered that question, too. “Dask did, though, didn’t he? I heard him clawing through to us.”

Zenor looked right into Kindan’s eyes. “Kindan, he saved me. I would never have thought—”

“Dask was a good watch-wher,” Kindan said over the lump in his throat.

Zenor shook his head. “Not Dask—I meant Kaylek. He and my Dad pushed me back as the mine caved in. He knew what he was doing, Kindan. They both did. But they pushed me back. They pushed me back...” Zenor’s voice faded into sleep as the fellis juice he’d been given earlier took effect.

Kindan held his hand until Margit noticed him, hours later, sprawled beside his friend in sleep. Wiping away more tears from her own face, she fetched a blanket and draped it over him.