“He’s concerned about the risk of the miners hurting us,” Koradan explained. “He’s not giving me a flat no, but at the same time, he’s not thrilled about helping people who think so little of us.”
“I probably sound like a kid saying this, but sometimes adults have a hard time adjusting to things they don’t expect,” Paul said. Even as he smiled, Koradan would have had to agree – both with his statement and with the idea that it was the sort of thing a child would say. Well, that explained why Paul had been so quick to accept the salases, at least. Paul wasn’t yet old enough to have stopped seeing the world as it was and started overthinking everything. “Give them time. They’ve been taught their entire lives that demons are evil. They’re going to need a couple of days at least to start realising that that’s not necessarily true.”
Teach stupid human, Ashd said, shuffling his front feet up and down – a typical sign of vreki annoyance.Go move rock.
“Okay, well… thank you,” Koradan said, even as he projected a mild disapproval at Ashd over his description of the humans. “But let’s approach them slowly. They’re going to be quite scared of having a dragon closing in on them.”
Not a dragon, Ashd said, with a disdainful huff. Koradan merely rolled his eyes. They’d been over the whole ‘dragon’ thing multiple times.
“He’s agreed to help,” Koradan told Paul. “Let’s get back over there before anyone changes their minds.”
They headed back across the clearing to where the men were waiting. The three of them saw Koradan and Ashd coming, and they set down their work, tense and poised for a fight.
“This is Ashd,” Koradan introduced him, stopping a respectful distance away. “And my name is Koradan.”
“Raul,” one of the men said, keeping a watchful eye on Ashd.
“Don’t tell him your name, you dick,” another man said. “He’ll use it to hypnotise you.”
“He’s already said he can’t do that,” Raul said.
“What, and you just believe him?”
“Nobody’s being hypnotised,” Paul said, more sharply than anything he’d said so far. “This is Vin and Pesh,” he introduced the two remaining men. “Ashd is perfectly tame. I rode on his back to get up here. If you don’t try to hurt him, he won’t hurt you.”
Not tame, Ashd complained to Koradan.
I know, but go along with it for now. We can explain things better later.
“Let’s go and have a look at the entrance,” Koradan suggested, not wanting to give the men too long to contemplate things. The more time they had to think, the more likely they were to decide that Koradan was more trouble than he was worth.
They headed over, and it was immediately obvious what had happened. The entrance to the mine had once been a cave, probably about ten metres wide. But the overhang looked like it had recently collapsed, leaving a mass of rubble. On one side, a huge slab of rock now blocked a good section of the cave. It was about four metres long and not even the vreki would be able to move it. But on the other side, the problem was more manageable. Large chunks of rock probably weighing two hundred kilos each lay piled up in front of the entrance. And behind them, a larger boulder sat, that might have weighed about a tonne. Fortunately, Koradan didn’t think they were going to need to move it far – just enough to create a man-sized gap for the miners to climb through.
“Let me move some of the debris out of the way, then we can try getting a rope around the boulder,” Koradan suggested.
“We can’t move them rocks,” Vin told him. “They’re too heavy.”
Koradan nodded. “Nonetheless, I’ll see what I can do. If I can’t move them, I still need to check and make sure it’s safe for Ashd to get closer.” The second part was true; vreki were cumbersome on land and he didn’t want Ashd to end up in the path of a minor rock slide and not be able to get out of the way. But the first part of his assertion was purely to placate the men. He knew his own strength, and rolling the rocks out of the way shouldn’t be too difficult.
He climbed up the rocky slope and started probing the pile to see what the best strategy would be. He shoved a couple of the more unstable rocks down the pile, letting them tumble to the ground. Paul and the miners stood back a safe distance as they watched.
But only a few minutes after he’d started work, the noise he was making got some attention from inside the mine. He heard a muffled yell and stopped what he was doing to listen.
“Hello,” came the faint call. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Koradan shouted back. “We are trying to get you out.” He enunciated each word carefully, knowing that the rocks would muffle the sound.
“What do you need us to do?” the miner asked, speaking just as slowly and clearly.
“Stand back,” Koradan said. “This might take a while, but be ready to help move some of the rocks.”
Once he’d received an acknowledgement, he went back to clearing the rubble. The fragments were indeed heavy, but a salas’s muscles were thicker and more developed than a human’s. It took a significant effort to move each piece, but from the gaping stares of the miners watching on, it was clear that Koradan’s strength went far beyond theirs. And these men were already well accustomed to hard work.
Finally, there was a clear path in front of the larger boulder where Ashd might be able to haul it out of the way. Koradan had managed to clear enough of a space behind it to allow them to pass a rope around its girth, tying it in a criss-crossing pattern to prevent it simply slipping off.
“Nice work with the knots,” Raul muttered, as he saw what Koradan was doing.
“We had to spend an entire season working with ropes before we were allowed to progress in our training as warriors,” Koradan said, hoping the detail would spark a little bit of curiosity in the men about Chalandros and the salases’ previous lives there. Predictably, they didn’t say anything about it now, but the seed might sprout a day or a week down the track. “Okay, Ashd,” Koradan said to his vreki. “Let’s see if you can get this little gem to move.”
