We were just passing the abandoned tunnel, when I turned to him and stopped. "I just want to ask you one favor," I said, in my most contrite voice, my eyes downcast.
I needed to make sure we were alone. Gonzolo was always the last man to leave the tunnels, and he automatically looked around for stragglers. The last men rounded the bend in the tunnel ahead, and we were alone.
"You have the right to ask nothing, marrano!" he hissed, and swung the whipstock at me again.
Mateo's fencing lessons at last bore fruit. I parried the blow with my double-headed mine hammer, then smashed him in the nose with its iron top. Grabbing him by the throat, I dragged him into the abandoned tunnel and slammed him into the wall.
"Die, you son of a whore, die!" I hissed in his face.
I backhanded the hammer into his left temple, killing him instantly—a death far more merciful than any he had dispensed.
Now I had two choices: blow this mountain to kingdom come or be tortured to death by an army of mine guards.
I hurriedly packed the rest of the hidden black powder into the crack and inserted the fuse. Down tunnel was the fire stove where we lit the brands we used to light the powder. I hurried down tunnel. I had to get to it before the next shift reached the shaft.
At the stove I took a brand—a small shank of wood soaked in pitch at the tip—from the brand box and lit it.
A guard shouted, "You, prisoner, what are you doing here? Where's Gonzolo?"
Another guard's voice said. "Why aren't you with the rest of your shift?"
I raced back to the abandoned shaft as fast as I knew how.
I beat them to the shaft and lit a fuse. I had no idea how effective it would be. It was little more than twine soaked in urine and black powder. I had no idea how fast it burned. It might burn in five seconds. It might not burn at all. I hadn't had time to test it.
Cupping the blazing brand, I lit the fuse as the two guards charged into the tunnel.
Both were armed with short swords, and again Mateo's instructions saved my life. When the first guard—a short, skinny africano with close-cropped hair and no front teeth—thrust at my throat, I slipped into my fencing-dancing posture and ducked. His momentum carried him into me, throwing him off balance and, at the same time, blocking any assault the other guard might be planning.
I drove my fist into his Adam's apple—while my heavy hammer pulverized his pelvis. He screamed and went limp in my arms.
Using his body as a shield I dodged his partner's sword blows while I groped for the short sword his partner had dropped on the tunnel floor. At last I had it in my hand. Letting the guard fall groaning, I faced the other guard, sword in one hand, hammer in the other.
Mateo had taught me that when fighting with rapier and dagger, the only practical use for the dagger was as a stabbing weapon. In other words, I was to occupy my opponent with my rapier, then kill him with my knife.
Well, this short sword wasn't a rapier and my hammer wasn't a dagger, but the strategy still seemed sound. Especially when combined with Mateo's other piece of irrefutable wisdom: Always stay on the attack.
I sprung at the man like a crazed tiger, the hammer raised and pulled back in my left hand, the sword blade flashing and feinting, cutting and thrusting in my right.
Seeing himself closely confined with an armed maniac, he turned and fled; and I raced after, thirsting for blood, crazed with rage.
Which was the only thing that saved my life. For the fuse worked all too well. It's two-foot length exploded in less than half a minute, sympathetically detonating a full two pounds of black powder I had hidden in the tunnel wall but had not had enough time to relocate down the tunnel and well out of the blast radius.
The explosion buried the guard and myself in a small mountain of collapsing rock. I came to slowly, groggily. By now I could hear voices coming from up the shaft. The next shift, plus guards, would be coming straight here to clear the rubble and learn what had happened.
I had killed a supervisor, two guards, and blown up half the shaft. I had to make good my escape. I scrambled back down the shaft to the abandoned tunnel. It had caved in too and was filled with rock and rubble almost to the ceiling. But through rock and rubble something else had broken through: light.
I scrambled over the deadfall like a cat. With hands and hammer I began clearing a jagged, foot-high crawl space. I could make it to the outside, I thought, except for one rocky scarp jutting up near the exit. I hoped and prayed I could break it off with my hammer.
The shouts up shaft were growing louder, and the crevice was groaning and shaking. I didn't have much time. Soon the guards would be here—and the mountain would come back down, resealing my escape hatch.
I shouldered my way into the crevice.
It was a tight, jagged, bloody crawl to the light, and what lay beyond God only knew. By the time I reached the bloody scarp, I was a mass of cuts and blood. Furthermore, I could hear men entering the abandoned shaft, meaning they would hear my hammer blows.
To hell with it.
I laid into the rocky scarp with both hands as hard as I knew how. The din of my hammer blows was loud enough to wake the damned, and the screams behind me grew louder. On the fourth blow, the scarp broke off and went flying off through the crevice. At the same moment, some man behind me grabbed my sandaled foot, crawled up the tunnel, and grabbed my thigh. I turned and was about to hammer his skull to pieces, when he shouted, "I'm coming with you!"
"Then come along," I shouted, "wherever the hell we're headed!"
Grabbing the outside edge of the crevice, I poked my head out. I had had several minutes to gradually adjust to the light, but still it was blinding. I shielded my eyes and kept moving. I had to get out before the guards came and grabbed us both.
I was halfway out of the crevice when my eyes adjusted enough that I could see the escape route. To my right, perhaps a hundred feet away, was a slanting fissure in the cliff face, transversing a good four or five hundred feet I couldn't see how far down it went, but it was my only shot I had to scramble across that vertical cliff and then work my way down the fissure.
Now the prisoner behind me was in hysterics. A guard had worked his way into the crevice and had his ankle.
"No, no!" he screamed. "I can't go back."
I shared his sentiments completely. The crevice—with a million tons of rock pressing down on it—was groaning and screaming like a dying animal. I groped a couple of handholds and swung out over the abyss. My sandals went flying off my feet, falling what looked to be forever into the roiling, white-water rapids below. It was just as well. My bare feet would be better in feeling out footholds.
I found one and started out across the cliff face toward the fissure.
One hundred feet, a foot at a time, as I worked my way across that wall of rock, it seemed more than a hundred miles. My feet and fingers trembled in agony, bled profusely, and, as if in sympathy, the mountain itself groaned, moaned, vibrated, as if agonizing over all the horrible pain I'd caused it.
Still I almost reached it. I was within five feet of the slanting fissure, down which I could climb, perhaps to safety. At least I wouldn't have to crawl across this cliff face like a frightened bug.
But the mountain would have none of it. I had hurt her too badly; and being a mountain, her vengeance was vast. My black power blasts had collapsed tunnels all over the mountain. Long-forgotten cracks and holes and fissures along that cliff face were exuding smoke and dust. To my right black smoke was still pouring out of the crevice I'd crawled through.
In fact a guard's head was poking out of the opening. He was black with mine dust, as was I, and he was screaming obscenities I could not hear because the mountain was also screaming. It was shaking and trembling, thundering and roaring—and a million tons of rock came down on the crevice, sealing it forever. From my perch I could hear and feel more and more tunnels collapsing all up and down the mountain. More puffs of smoke and dust billowed out of the cliff face.