Upon rounding a bend, I halted at the sight of the horde of rats scurrying just inches behind Curly, Lady Gabriella, and her two old servants. Curly was doing his best to fend them off whenever one latched on to him or Lady Gabriella, but the older couple wasn’t able to go fast enough to outrace the rodents.
I raised my torch higher, hoping to shine it upon the rats to slow them down since apparently the light hurt their eyes. But the flames seemed to have the opposite effect, making them scuttle faster to outrun the light.
If the brightness was hurting them, there was only one thing left to do.
“Curly! Catch!” Whether he was ready or not, I tossed the torch. It soared through the air and clattered to the ground behind him, knocking into several rats. The flames touched their brittle hair and ignited them.
At the growing flames and heat, the remaining creatures stopped and screeched. The brilliance temporarily blinded them. To escape the glow, they turned, squeaking in both terror and anger, and they scampered toward me.
I crouched and prepared for battle.
Chapter
4
Gabriella
I was frozen in place. I needed to continue onward, helping Benedict and Alice reach the safety of the surface, but I couldn’t move. I could only stare down the passageway at the new slave who’d somehow appeared from nowhere and was now preparing to single-handedly combat a pack of rats.
At the very least, I ought to rush to his aid. Or encourage Curly to help him. But my friend was standing and staring with as much shock as I was as the new slave swung his hammer at one rat and slashed at another with what appeared to be a knife.
I’d heard some of the others referring to him as Vilmar, and all week I’d been curious about the man who’d risked his life for me. But when I’d gone to his hut to thank him, his olive-skinned companion came to the door and informed me Vilmar was indisposed.
Taken aback by the rude refusal to see me, I’d done my best to put Vilmar out of my mind. The task was made more difficult because the other slaves oft talked of him, admiring his strength and good looks as well as his humility. Even Curly had a measure of regard for Vilmar he normally didn’t hold for new slaves.
Now as the scorched flesh of the burning rats rose into the air along with the shrieking of the others, Vilmar expertly wielded his knife, slitting throats and slicing open one rat after another, until within seconds they lay dead at his feet.
When finished, he toed the heap, his weapons poised to finish off any rodent that moved. The curved blade was coated in blood and should have repelled me, but I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Such weapons were forbidden, and the overseers would flog Vilmar if they caught him with it. And though the overseers allowed our mining tools, we had to subject them to periodic checks to make sure they remained dull. Some, like Curly, sharpened stones to use as weapons. But being caught with a sharp rock was cause for flogging as well.
Ever since I’d started formulating my plan for revenge, I knew I needed a weapon to kill Grendel. Once I had a weapon, I needed someone to train me to use it. Although I’d been sharpening a stone to use, my efforts were feeble. And I was running out of time.
With the attention on his knife, Vilmar lowered it. I caught the movement of his olive-skinned companion behind him, close enough to help yet a safe distance away.
Curly bent and retrieved the torch without taking his gaze from Vilmar.
“I heard screaming,” Vilmar said, as though explaining his presence to Curly. “I hope no one is hurt.” He peered beyond us to where Benedict and Alice stood, their shoulders hunched and faces shadowed.
“Our light went out again.” I squeezed first Benedict’s, then Alice’s hands, reassuring myself they were unharmed. “And it only takes a few minutes of darkness for the rats to come out.”
“Then none of you were bitten?”
I started to shake my head, but Curly spoke first. “It be too close this time, Gabi. Too close. What if I’d waited to check on ye for another five minutes?”
“We would have outrun them.” I infused my voice with confidence, but I wasn’t so sure that we could have. I had only to think of last week when we’d started up the steepest passageway and how slow Alice had been. If not for Curly’s rescue, we surely would have been bitten.
Curly held the torch over the remains of the charred rats. Vilmar had acted decisively by throwing the flaming stick. Not only had he killed some with the fire, but he’d diverted the rest away from us straight into the blade of his knife.
“Ye need to be staying with the group from now on,” Curly said, as he had after the last rat escapade.
“You know I cannot.”
“I’ll not be giving ye a choice this time.” Curly jutted his chin, the torchlight highlighting the jagged scars along his jaw, his cheeks, and even on his forehead.
I set my shoulders and would have pulled myself up to my full height of five feet, four inches, but I’d learned during the early days of slavery not to bump the sharp rocks that formed the ceiling. “I refuse to leave Alice and Benedict to fend for themselves.”
“You must go.” Benedict spoke forcefully, as he always did whenever I got into this argument with Curly. “All we want is for you to be safe.”
“And all I want is for you to be safe.”
“Your two servants can come with,” Vilmar cut in.
“’Tis not possible.” I attempted to keep the exasperation from my tone. After all, Vilmar wouldn’t know the details of the situation, how Alice had nearly slipped and fallen to her death the last time we’d gone with the others. “The climb up and down the shaft is too treacherous.”
“If we combine our rope belts, we can fashion a sling to lower and raise them through the shaft.”
A sling? Why hadn’t we considered that before?
“We could also use such a lift to hoist the full buckets at the end of the workday.” Vilmar watched Curly expectantly. “That is, if Curly is agreeable.”
Curly was silent, his expression guarded. “It might work.”
“We can try, can we not?” This time Vilmar looked directly at me. His eyes were a light crystal-blue that seemed to see right through me to the deepest secrets of my heart. I realized in that moment the rumors regarding his good looks were entirely true. Not only were his eyes a beautiful color, but everything about him was beautiful—his chiseled face, muscular frame, and even his broad hands. His jaw and chin had a layer of scruff, and his brown hair was overlong and pulled back into a leather strip. Nevertheless, he held himself with the bearing of nobility and not a common man.
Who was he? And how had he ended up as a slave in the mine pits? Of course rumors were already circulating that he’d displeased his father and, as punishment, was sent here. But I sensed this man’s story ran deeper than he’d revealed.
We retrieved our buckets and made our way to the shaft that led to the newest drift. Curly made quick work of descending and gathering up as many ropes as we needed to assemble the sling. Vilmar tied the knots and then lowered Alice down without so much as a scratch. By the time we were all back at work, I doubled my efforts at chipping away the rock. Because of the lost time, we would be hard-pressed to meet our daily quota. Thus, I was surprised when I dumped a handful of crumbling stone into Alice’s bucket, that it was nearly full.