Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (16 page)

At least he had been able to get a lantern before opening the airlock, finding one hanging on a hook near the door. He lit it now, and the greenish light of the chemicals burning within played across the floor and walls of the hangar.

Huang wasn't sure which of the passages was most likely to lead to the mine shaft, but one was as good as another. It was likely to be large enough for a man to crawl into, at least, since the miners had originally come this way, but it was a moot point since Huang
couldn't
get into any of the passages too small for a man to enter. So Huang simply picked the closest passage of sufficient size, a dark round shadow on the wall a short distance off, and went in. There was no point in waiting around for someone to discover him gone.

Huang checked the jury-rigged repairs to his breather mask, turned up the lantern's light, and entered the cave.

 

The breather mask failed before the lantern did, but it was a close race.

At first, Huang thought he was simply getting fatigued, his breathing becoming labored, his head starting to swim. He'd been descending the gently sloping passage for some time. He wasn't sure how long, only that it seemed as if his whole world had shrunk to a roughly cylindrical cave, the walls close enough that he couldn't stretch out his arms in both directions at once and had to take care not to bump his head on the ceiling, with nothing but dark shadows beyond the small circle of sickly green light cast by the lantern. His teeth had stopped chattering some time before, though his fingers and toes were numb with the cold, and his dry eyes stung.

He stopped occasionally, leaning against the wall of the passage, catching his breath before continuing on, trying to ignore the aches of his protesting muscles, the cramps in his legs. It was when he almost nodded off, sleeping standing up with his shoulder against the wall and the lantern almost slipping from his limp grasp, that he realized that he wasn't managing to catch his breath at all. Quite the contrary. His breath, and the air, were slipping away from him.

His hearing was all but completely muffled by the thin atmosphere, so he couldn't hear any hiss of air from the crack in the mask, but when he held the lantern up before his face, he could see a small cloud of condensation slipping away as the warmer air from the mask hit the colder air of the cave.

He wasn't sure how much time the breather mask had left, but it couldn't be long. His head swam, and the cave seemed to spin before his eyes.

Even if the passage
did
lead to the mining shaft, which seemed increasingly unlikely, he wouldn't survive long enough to make it there. He'd suffocate long before he reached the lower altitudes where he could survive without a mask.

He had no choice. He had to return to the airlock and the pressurized sections of the Aerie. Return to imprisonment and a life as the bandits' pet. It was better than suffocating and freezing to death, at least.

But even getting that far was hardly a certainty. Light-headed and dizzy, Huang turned and started back the way he had come, leaning heavily against the passage wall. Returning was more difficult than the descent, though, even leaving out the fact that he was now scarcely able to breathe, since now he was climbing against gravity's pull.

Still, the alternative was to stop climbing and wait to die, which hardly seemed an attractive option. So Huang continued, pushing one foot in front of the other, gritting his teeth with the exertion, climbing as fast as he could, hoping his meager supply of air lasted long enough to reach the airlock.

Then, of course, the lantern failed, and Huang found himself plunged into darkness. Which seemed, somehow, only fitting.

 

Afterward it seemed like a dream. Or a nightmare, rather, of cold and climbing and darkness. But though his memories of the event were muddled, he had a dim recollection of opening his eyes to sudden bright lights, lying on his back, and of a figure whose face was obscured by goggles and a breather mask leaning over him, looking more like some enormous insect than a human being.

There his memory stopped again.

The next thing he remembered was waking up back in the dining chamber. He was stretched out on the floor, lengthwise. When he tried to sit up, he found a heavy weight pulling on his neck, and found that in place of the braided cord that had secured him before there was now a heavy chain, the links as big around as one of Huang's fingers, welded to an iron collar fixed around his neck.

Huang struggled into a sitting position and went to rub the sleep from his eyes, then recoiled in horror. He held his hands before him, his eyes wide. On his left hand, his smallest finger was completely gone, and the next finger ended at the first knuckle. On his right hand, his middle finger ended at the second knuckle. All three terminated in lumps of puckered red flesh, over which clear adhesive bandages had been secured.

Huang's legs were stretched out before him. His feet were bare against the cold stone and felt strange. His heart in his throat, he looked down and saw that several toes on each foot were likewise missing, both feet swathed in clear bandages.

“Serves you right,” said a harsh voice from above.

Huang looked up to find the gaunt-faced bandit named Ruan standing over him.

“Been up to me, we'd have left you there in the hangar to die,” Ruan sneered. “But the chief didn't want to lose his precious pet, and in you came.”

The bandit swung back one foot, and then kicked the chain that bound Huang to the wall, sending the heavy links swinging and the collar tugging painfully at Huang's neck.

“You won't be going too far with
that
, though, I don't think.” The bandit's face slowly split in a devilish grin. “And try it again, if you can, and you'll lose more than a few fingers and toes to frostbite, you can be sure.”

Huang looked back down at his hands, savaged by the cold. He felt incomplete, deformed.

“Leave him be, Ruan,” came the voice of the chief, and Zhao stepped into Huang's field of vision. He crouched down on his haunches, to get a better look at Huang's injuries. “Healing nice enough, looks like.” He glanced up at Ruan and then back to Huang. “Still, can't really blame him too much for trying to escape. I'd have done the same in his place. He brought harm to no one and nothing but himself, so what's the cost?” Then the chief smiled. “Besides, now he's one of us, eh?” He stuck his own left hand in front of Huang's face, and wiggled what was left of his severed ring finger. “A few fingers down and you fit right in, eh, Hummingbird?”

The chief laughed again, then stood.

“Come on, Ruan, let the pet get his rest, eh? We'll put him back to work soon enough.”

When they had gone, Huang held his mutilated hands to his face, covering his eyes. Then his shoulders shook, first once, then again, then repeatedly, rhythmically. As he sat all alone in the dining chamber, chained to the wall, there was no one to hear the sounds of his weeping.

 

In the days and weeks that followed, Huang gave up any hope of rescue. He came to accept that his dreams of Bannermen storming the Aerie and liberating him had never been anything but fantasy.

Huang's life fell into a monotonous, grinding routine. He was woken every morning by the bandits, who unchained him from the wall and set him to work. He labored all day under watchful eyes, doing the most degrading, backbreaking work on offer in the Aerie. And then he ended his day chained once more in the dining chamber, watching the bandits eat and then making do with the scraps they left behind.

Still, as horrible and numbing as his situation might have been, it was not entirely bad. As harsh as his treatment was at the hands of some of the bandits, others of them treated him with more equanimity. The bandit chief Zhao, for one, seemed to care for Huang as he would a valued beast of burden, if not perhaps a cherished pet. He made sure that Huang got sufficient food and drink each day, and if ever Ruan or one of the others threatened to work Huang to the point of fatal exhaustion, Zhao would step in and insist that Huang be given some respite, or some lighter task at least. And not just Zhao, but some of the other bandits as well. Scar-faced Jue, for one, seemed to treat Huang almost as an equal, joking with him, working beside him instead of watching Huang sweat and strain from one side, even taking the trouble of asking Huang a bit about himself and where he came from. All of the bandits called him Hummingbird, as Zhao had insisted, but on the lips of some of the bandits the name sounded like a curse, while on others it was almost a term of endearment.

Which was not to say that Huang wasn't still eager to escape, however unlikely the prospects for it now seemed. But he was forced to admit, as time rolled on, that he might have been overly judgmental in his initial assessment of the bandits' worth. These were not men and women who had allowed themselves to become beasts, as he'd thought. These were people who had been driven by circumstance to be what they were, or so they thought. Huang could not bring himself to accept their reasoning and disagreed with their assessment of the governor-general, sure that they had simply fallen on hard times and looked for the most convenient scapegoat for their troubles. But Huang did admit to himself that they seemed sincere, if nothing else, and seemed genuinely to believe what they said about themselves and their lot.

Of course, they were his captors, so he hardly wished them well. But he found that it was somewhat more difficult to maintain thoughtless hatred of
men
than it was to despise beasts.

 

There came a time, some weeks after Huang's attempted escape, when again all the bandits but the sickest and infirm were required to go on a raiding foray. Since there were not enough bandits on hand for guards to be left behind to keep watch on Huang, it was decided that he would be brought along as well. The cracked and broken breather mask he had used was properly repaired and an ill-fitting thermal suit procured for him. He was chained to the bulkhead in the gondola, feet and hands bound, unable to move.

The raid, as it happened, was the most successful that the bandits had ever had, taking in more plunder than half a dozen other raids combined.

Whatever else they were, the bandits were superstitious creatures, and it was quickly decided that their good fortune was due to the presence of Huang in the airship's gondola. Though a contingent of bandits objected, Ruan chief among them, Zhao and the others agreed that their pet “Hummingbird” was somehow auspicious.

Immediately, Huang became the bandits' good-luck token. And, to Huang's dismay and over Ruan's objections, Zhao decreed that Huang would be taken along on all subsequent forays, to ensure continuing good fortune.

If Huang had entertained any hope of attempting another escape while the bulk of the bandits were away on a raid, those hopes were dashed. And so, like a cherished pet, he was brought along whenever his “masters” left home, however much he saw little more than the interior of the gondola. The one positive of the whole arrangement was that Huang was able, for brief periods at least, to see a sliver of sky through the streaked windows of the gondola. And that seemed, for a short while at least, almost like freedom.

 

Some weeks later, the airship was returning from a foray in the north when the disturbance was first noticed.

Huang was still chained to the bulkhead, as always, but in recent days he had been given a somewhat greater degree of freedom of movement, and though his hands were still bound before him, his feet were unrestricted. No longer forced to crouch like a dog against the bulkhead or sprawl on the cold deckplates, he could now perch on a stool bolted to the deck, which before had been beyond his reach. His eyes were protected by a pair of stained but serviceable goggles, and the breather mask that covered the lower half of his face had sprung leaks only once or twice in recent weeks. His thermal suit, finally, while overly tight in some places and hopelessly baggy in others, was perfectly functional, letting in only the slightest sliver of the cold that otherwise would have frozen him solid.

One of the principal benefits of being able to stand, though, was the ability to approach the windows and look
down
, to see the ground slip below them, even the clouds themselves when the airship rose high enough. So when the navigator raised the alarm, and brought Zhao and his lieutenants from their posts to the forward viewports to see for themselves, Huang was able to lean his head against the window, craning his neck as far around as possible, and catch a glimpse of what had aroused so much excitement.

It took a moment for the shadows and shapes and specks of color far below to resolve themselves into anything intelligible. And even when Huang realized what they were, he wasn't sure at all what he was seeing.

“Bring her down!” Zhao barked from the forward part of the gondola, and the pilot at the makeshift controls nodded grimly before pulling levers and flipping switches to begin the airship's descent.

“What is it?” called one of the bandits who couldn't get near the windows to see for himself.

“Atmosphere mine,” Jue explained, brows knit above his goggles, his scar just visible over the line of his breather mask. “The one that went in two years ago. Looks like the miners are striking.”

“I worked in that mine for a time,” put in another bandit. “But it weren't no mine, it was a damned open grave!”

“Seems the miners agree with you,” Zhao replied. He lifted a pair of binoculars and turned to peer down through the viewport. “They're carrying signs, looks like. Calling for better working conditions. More safety checks. Higher wages.”

“Feh,” Ruan scoffed. “Why don't they just ask for wings, a pony, and their own private moon while they're at it? They're just as likely to get
those
as anything they're wanting.”