Another lash ripped open the dwarf's pale grey skin. Knotted leather parted flesh and set rich, red blood flowing from the open wound. Mouth a twisted rictus, Sark Ore balled his hands into tight fists. Broken nails bit into his palms. More blood leaked from his body, painting the tips of his fingers a birght incarnadine. Hissing air into his lungs, the slave braced against another stroke. Savage pride roared silent in his chest as the bitter scourge ravaged his body. He had not cried out once during the entire ordeal. He would die before he begged for mercy.
"On your feet, maggot."
The taskmaster's boot accompanied her words. A steel toe cap, wrapped in the cured hide of a subterranean lizard, arched toward Sark Ore's ribs. Hunched in the dirt, brain fogged from pain and exhaustion, the pit slave had no chance of evading its trajectory.
"I said get up, scum."
Her kick hammered Sark's side, sent the dwarf-slave rolling onto his side. Pain flared hot and bright. Cracking ribs echoed in the tunnel's close confines. Head spinning, Sark struggled up on shaking legs. He barely registered the hollow click in his chest that accompanied each breath.
"Where's your pick?"
Underlight vision a swirling mass of cold blue blotches, Sark Ore scanned the cavern floor for his tool. Patches of shimmering orange, his own blood, cooled on the azure stone. Hot bodies, their iron picks working a mineral seam in near silence, glowed near-white before his eyes. Forcing back the fist of panic strangling his gut, Sark scanned the ground for any hint of the heat trail he'd left on the axe hilt. The last drops of moisture evaported from his parched throat as the guard's glowing signature warmed his peripheral vision.
"Forgive me," he started, his voice the whisper of shifting sand.
Thick fingers seized the orange hair sprouting from his chin. The guard twisted his beard in her fist, forcing her arm toward the cavern's ceiling and dragging the slave onto the tips of his naked toes.
"You dare address me, filth?"
She shoved her rounded nose an inch from Sark's. The stink of rotten meat and mold wine, brewed from fungus native to Dunnholme's naturally cool cadaver pit, filed the slave's throat. Sark swallowed, raising his hands in submission. He prayed to the burrowing gods that the cool, wet line tracing its way down his grey cheek did not register blue in her underlight vision.
"Forgive me, mistress," he began, adjusting his footing on the cold floor. It did nothing to ease the pressure ripping at his bristles.
"Your might is great. The correction you delivered addled my mind. I forget my place."
Her grip fell from his facial hair. He dropped to his knees, splitting open scab-crusted wounds on his back and shoulders. Cold, jagged rock bit into his joints, spilling more of his life's fluid. Sark placed his hands on stone, pressed his forhead into the ground. Old dirt and blood tantalised his nostrils. His gut growled with constant, gnawing hunger. Silent, fighting to control a shiver of pain and adrenaline ripping through his body, the dwarfish slave awaited her sentence.
"You take a beating well."
Her whip cracked again, its sinewous tail striking empty space. The guard's throaty laugh rode its echo. Allowing the deivce of pain to dangle from her flat-knuckled fist, she dragged its serpentine tip across the ravaged expanse of Sark's back.
"Maybe you have other uses, slave. Who is your master?"
Sark swallowed bitter fear. Dragging his tongue across parched lips, he raised his head from the cold stone. Icy sweat tricked from his pores. The staccato rhythm in his chest reverberated through his skull.
"Mistress Fisk, your grace."
Sark winced as the whip traced a threatening pattern across his ruined back once more. His eyes fixed on his tormentor's glaring silhouette, he tried to ignore the white patches stark against her orange form.Again the whip tasted his flesh, its knotted fall dragging deliberately where his wounds gaped widest.
"Her abode is in the eastern quarter?"
Sark nodded, his bushy beard rebounding from his naked chest. He cleared his throat, spoke an affirmative that broke across his trembling lips.
"Yes, mistress."
Glowing silhouette shifting to a hipshot posture, Sark's tormentor reached behind her back. Iron and wood clattered against roughly cut tunnel flooring. Her cooling handprints illuminated the haft of his pick.
"Feel free to misplace it again."
Augmenting her words wth a cruel laugh and a savage whipcrack, the sentry moved deeper into the tunnels. Barely moments passed before her acidic tones echoed in the darkness. This time, a yelp of pain answered the rasp of her scourge.
Sark set to work with trembling hands. Drawing breath in ragged gasps, he sank his teeth into his lower lip. Fresh blood lubricated his back with each swing. The click in his chest snapped louder as exertion increased his breathing rate. Tremors rippled through arms thinned by exhaustion and starvation. Bright lights flashed before his eyes. The dwarfish slave ignored it all, pushed away the pain and discomfort in favour of following the mineral seam and falling into a rhythm with his axe.
"Close call there, friend."
The voice drifted from Sark's left. It's jagged rasp cut into his subconsciousness, breaking his timing as he wondered weather the reptilian lilt was the result of a slaver's noose rather than stealth. Either way, Sark Ore ignored the words. Adjusting his double-handed grip on his wooden hilt, he aimed a blow at the cavern wall.
"That's Brig," his fellow slave murmured, a mucosal rattle in his words convincing Sark the rasp was not natural.
"She likes a dwarf who doesn't scream."
Fear and fatigue fossilised in his gut. Sark curled his lip. Embracing the anger burning in his veins, he took a swing at cold stone. The iron tool met the wall with a loud clang. Bright sparks lept from the impact, burning tiny stars into his retinas. He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes tight to disperse distraction. Phantom pinpricks remained when he peeled back his primary eyelids.
"You ain't been chasing ore long then, lad?"
Sark let the question hang unanswered. The other dwarf's conversation seemed friendly, but Sark had been raised in Dunnholme's dark corridors and knew the comraderie was a poor attempt to gather information that would make the speaker's life more bearable. Twisting his bearded lips into a grim sneer, Sark swung his axe at the rock. To find his rhythm, he pulled forth memories of his torture. Every time his pick struck stone, a fantom lash scoured flesh from Brig's shoulders