A Crash of Symbols by Stephy Dewar

Author:Stephy Dewar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, medieval, adventure, epic
Publisher: Stephy Dewar
Published: 2018-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

Gourien dropped the pickaxe and with the weariest of sighs, along with a decided creaking of limbs, sat down on the large and sharp stone next to him. His shift was now over, his hands blistered and bleeding, his back a mass of agonising waves and his fingers tingled. For a few moments he rested before being called to 'get up and effing well get off his effing backside, the next shift was moving in.' He could barely see to move to the cave where the Adammites were giving the daily soup ration, the intensity of his migraine blinding him. He was hungry and nauseous at the same time. He knew he had to eat, but couldn't face the slop they offered, he'd probably be sick from it.

The hacked cliff face loomed around him as he stumbled towards the cave. It was a large, steep quarry, bright during the day with goldish-coloured stone, bright at night too, lit with torches as the next shift started. It seemed the Adammites needed stone twenty four hours a day. A pit by the side of the quarry showed the toll on dwarfish lives, bodies thrown in as they died, the stink abominable, nothing left but a warning to the living.

The weather on this Nightturn day was bitter, the short calico shift he wore - highly undignified for a dwarf - offered no protection, nor did the thin sandals on his bloodied feet. Stone was a bad thing to hew at any time, but doubly bad without proper protective clothing. Adammite humans thought all dwarves had rock hard skin, whipped them mercilessly to make them get on with their work. Unfortunately this was not the case, they bled just as any human, and some more than most. One big bully particularly enjoyed inflicting pain on the old philosopher, wielded his whip regularly on him. The blood on Gourien's back stuck to the thin shift, sometimes came unstuck and the wounds bled profusely again.

He looked out to a world turned sepia with pain, darkening in reality as evening came on early, now winter was close. 'My blood, sweat and tears are on that quarry floor,' he thought morosely. 'I can't take much more, I was never set up for this.'

The large cavern was lit with just a few torches, short trimmed and short-lived, when they went out later it would be pitch dark in the cave.

The dwarf ahead of him in the soup queue looked just as bad, in fact they all did, a motley selection of dwarves from all over the country. They were the unwanted ones, dwarven males with no physical skills - teachers, philosophers, scientists, some businessmen and entertainers - not a proper muscle between them. Try telling the Adammites that, any dwarf was a beast of burden as far as they were concerned. So, the quarry was as good a place as any to put otherwise useless beings.

He wondered where the female dwarves had been sent to - probably maidservants

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