The man’s eyes drifted over to Ashd. Ashd dipped his head and gave a little wriggle. “And this is Ashd,” Koradan introduced him. “He’s very pleased to see you free again.”
“Well fuck me sideways and call me stupid,” Mitch said. “I’m Mitch. Gods above, I never thought I’d see the day my life was saved by a dragon.”
Behind him, two more men had been freed from the cave, both of them having a similar reaction to Mitch when they saw Koradan and Ashd standing there.
“Are you injured?” Koradan asked, wanting to do something useful. “Do you need anything?”
“Water,” Mitch said. “We’ve been a full day without any.”
Paul rushed over to the bag of supplies and fetched one of the water canteens, bringing it back to Mitch, then he took another one over to the other men.
“Looks like we’re going to have to get more of this,” he said to Koradan. “We only brought enough for three men.”
“Easily done,” Koradan agreed.
Once all five of the men in the cave were free, Paul introduced them all to Koradan. They were surprisingly accepting of the news that a demon had helped free them – but then again, perhaps they were just too grateful to be free to care who was responsible for it. Then Paul gave them a brief rundown of the situation back at the village, including the assistance to clear the road from two more amiable ‘dragons’. “The landslide should be clear by mid afternoon. As soon as it is, you can go back home and everyone else can get up here to start figuring out what to do next.”
“Gonna be a long trip back,” Mitch muttered. “Vernon got hit with a rock when the quake hit. Think he’s got a broken arm.” One of the other men was indeed cradling his arm awkwardly, though he hadn’t made any complaint about it.
“Mum’s got a pile of supplies ready to treat any injuries,” Paul said. “She’s just waiting for the road to be clear so she can get up here.”
“And how the hell did you get here?” Mitch asked. So far, he seemed a far more moderate sort of man than the three who had met them when they’d arrived. He was watching Koradan with caution, but no overt hostility.
Paul grinned. “Koradan and I flew on Ashd.”
Mitch’s eyebrows rose almost to the top of his head. “You flew? On a gods-damned dragon?”
“It was amazing,” Paul said, not even trying to hide his enthusiasm.
“Does your mum know you’re here?” Mitch asked, and Paul rolled his eyes.
“Yes. She threw a fit about me coming, so that’s not going to be fun when I get back home. But it was worth it.”
“Flaming heck, lad, you got some balls on you.”
“It’s fun,” Paul said, still grinning. “You should try it one day.”
Behind them, Ashd snorted. “Hey, be nice,” Koradan scolded him. “No one’s forcing you to do anything.”
“He doesn’t like that idea, does he?” Mitch asked.
“He can be a little fussy,” Koradan admitted. “But I should probably mention that Ashd can understand everything you say. He’s not an animal. He can’t speak, but he does understand spoken language.”
Mitch stared at the vreki for a moment… then simply shrugged. “Dragons are intelligent,” he said, in a resigned sort of tone. “Honestly, that’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened in the last day.”
Perhaps there was more of a story there, but for the moment, they had bigger issues to deal with. “What we also need to know is how many more men are trapped in the mine, and if you know where they might be,” Koradan said. “I have four of my men with me. They’re bigger and stronger than humans, and we intend to help rescue the rest of the miners, but we need to know more about where they are and the layout of the mine.”
“There are sixteen more men inside,” Mitch said. He picked up a stick, then crouched down and began drawing in the dirt. “This here is the entrance. And that’s the cliff face. Then the main tunnel runs downwards like this.” He drew a line that sloped backwards into the mountain. “There’s a secondary tunnel over here, but nobody was working in it yesterday. This main tunnel splits in two here.” He added a couple of lines to the drawing, one tunnel heading horizontally, the other continuing on a downward slope. “There were eight men working in this main tunnel.” He pointed to the part just before the split. “It’s relatively narrow, and if the gods favoured us, most of the structure should have held during the quake, so there’s a good chance at least some of them are still alive. But there was a rock fall at the back of the entrance, so we can’t get past it to find out exactly what’s happened. We tried yelling to see if they could hear us, but we haven’t heard anything back.”
His depth of knowledge was impressive, given that any exploration the men would have done in the last twenty-four hours would have been in pitch darkness.
“The main tunnel does a U-turn and runs back towards the cliff face here… then it opens up into a chamber where there’s one of the main copper deposits.” He drew a larger circle to indicate an excavated chamber, which on the crude map looked to be almost directly below the entrance chamber. “There were eight men working down there. There’s a ventilation shaft that runs down into the chamber…” He drew another line on the map. “So there’s a possibility that that might allow us access to those men, but honestly…” He paused, grinding his teeth together. “Big open chamber like that. It doesn’t have as many supports as the tunnels. The chances of anyone surviving down there…”
“Where was Markon?” Paul asked, and Koradan remembered him being mentioned as the unofficial village leader.
“He was in the bottom chamber down here,” Mitch said, pointing to the map.
“Where does this ventilation shaft come out?” Koradan asked.
