The Sinners of Erspia

“What if I simply take it up in the air then crash it, killing everyone on board?"

“You would die too."

“I do not like being forced to do something."

Mezzen, with what Laedo thought was uncanny perspicuity, approached the control board. His eyes darted quickly about the slides and keys. Suddenly he turned to the others.

“Take him away. We will experiment."

As he was hustled through the door, down the steps and across the ash-covered ground, Laedo took comfort in the fact, incredible though it seemed at first, that the gnomes had not relieved him of his handgun. The reason was obvious once he thought of it. The object was not a weapon in their eyes. It was simply an ovoid shape, moulded to provide a handgrip.

Now, he thought, should be the time to use it. But the prospect of one of those metal bolts tearing through his body stayed him. Besides, he did not know if he would have the stomach to kill the number of gnomes necessary to make his escape.

Perhaps under cover of darkness he could slip away from wherever he was to be held and recover the ship ... Such vague thoughts in his mind, a bolt-laden crosspiece still nudging his back, Laedo was marched beneath the huge catapult machines which he now saw closely for the first time. The beams on which the small cabins were perched were angled high in the air. Whole batteries of windlasses worked winding mechanisms for forcing down those arms, ready to be released with bone-shattering force.

Now they passed a line of blast furnaces and searing heat scorched Laedo's skin. The gnomes tending the furnaces seemed able to work incredibly close to their roaring mouths, as though they were impervious to heat. Further off could be seen a complex of metal-roofed sheds, probably factories and workshops.

A great mound of tailings loomed ahead. Laedo was conducted round it and saw, some distance away, the entrance to a downsloping tunnel. The gnomes urged him towards it, and soon he was being taken underground.

The walls of the tunnel were rough-cut rock, the roof buttressed with timber supports. Flickering light came from sputtering lamps set in cressets. At intervals side tunnels appeared, into which or out of which gnomes passed, carrying digging tools: pickaxes, shovels and rakes.

Was iron ore or coal mined here? Laedo presumed Klystar had stocked the planetoid with both, otherwise the gnomes would quickly have denuded their world of its forests in their need for charcoal for smelting.

His question was answered when a wagon went past them hauled by a team of four sweating gnomes. It was piled high with what he presumed to be ore.

At length he was pushed roughly into a side tunnel. A gnome of unusually large size confronted them, fangs reaching up half his face, a whip dangling in one hand.

One of the two who had brought him here spoke. “This is a prisoner, not a slave. He is not to be put to work unless otherwise ordered."

The big gnome trailed the lash of his whip negligently on the dust-strewn floor of the tunnel. “He can be quartered with the others just the same."

The others left, clearly assuming that the big fellow could handle Laedo if need be, even though armed with nothing but his whip.

Still Laedo did not resort to his gun. This was the first he had heard that the gnomes used slaves, and he was curious. The overseer, if that was what he was, cracked the whip and inclined his head on its bull-like neck, indicating that Laedo should proceed down the side tunnel ahead of him. Laedo obeyed.

About fifty yards along an opening led into a bulbous chamber.

It was a slave sleeping quarters. When Laedo saw the ‘slaves’ he received a surprise. Four naked, begrimed fairies lay on the floor, looking up with sleepy woe as he and the gnome entered. They seemed to shrink instinctively away from the whip which the overseer trawled absent-mindedly to and fro in the dust.

Yes, they were fairies, but something was wrong. Twin stumps jutted from their backs.

Their wings had been cut off.

“Stay here until you're sent for. Don't wander off. Food will be brought to you."

The overseer left. Laedo stared at his fellow prisoners, who stared back with little sign of interest. Two were male, two female, and their backs were scarred from whipping.

“How long have you been in Gnomeland?” he asked.

After a pause, one of the males answered in a listless murmur.

“We were born here."

“There are others? Fairy folk, I mean?"

“A few."

The gnomes must have contrived to bring back prisoners during one of their earlier excursions to Fairyland, Laedo reasoned. These were their descendants.

The slight, light-boned fairies would hardly make ideal slaves. Physically they were puny compared with the gnomes. Probably they were used in a spirit of triumph and domination—a grim foretaste of what would transpire should the gnomes gain possession of the other world. As it was, it looked as though these four were being worked to death.