End-Ero: Brother Mine

Nemo worked by the light of a smoky torch, driving his pick into the rock in a steady rhythm. Men and boys worked to his left and right, swinging picks and hammers, picking out chunks of ore, dragging sleds to and fro. Over and over again he swung, the sharp sound echoing back to him from either end of the tunnel until his entire world was overtaken with it. He hated that sound, hated the damp darkness of the mines, hated the crushing weight of the mountain above his head. Every moment was a hell of noise and sweat and dread, and only Shor’s unreliable blessing kept the abyssal darkness from swallowing them all forever.

And yet he worked on, forcing himself to the task. He was Ironborn, and that meant that he did what was necessary. It was necessary for him to be in this awful hole in the world, chipping away at the stone bit by bit until his arms ached and his mouth was caked with the dust. Only temporary, he reminded himself, the thought revolving in time to the sparking strikes of his tool. Ten more days. Only temporary. Ten more days.

“Working a good piece?” The voice was a bass rumble in his ear, a shout reduced to a whisper by the clamor.

Nemo let his pick fall once more, then turned to face his brother. They were alike in the blackness of their hair, darkness of eye, and the shape of their face, but where Nemo was long-limbed and quick, Omen was as heavy and compact as a bear, all despite his greater height. Older by a matter of minutes, his twin, always bigger, healthier, heartier. Nemo knew brothers who would have built rivalry and even hatred over such, but between himself and Omen, there was only fraternity. Well, and all that came with it.

“It’s trash rock here,” Nemo said, shouldering his pick and sucking deep, steadying breaths in through his nose. Omen could work for hours without pause, carving the rock like a wheel of cheese with mighty blows from hammer upon chisel. After two hours since the last called-stop, Nemo could hardly raise his dry voice to the needed bellow to make himself heard an inch from his brother’s tilted ear.

“Nothing for me, helping Rasten. Good vein,” he added, waving his free hand to the right where his work-mate labored without pause.

“As one,” his brother said piously. Nodding his head, Omen straightened up to his full height, bristling hair brushing the ceiling. Reaching up to his neck, he fingered the whistle hung on a chain there for a moment, looking up and down the tunnel. Then he put the device to his lips and blew a long, clear note. Slowing and then stopping, men relaxed from their work, the tunnel now sounding with their muted groans and remarks.

“Lunch!” Omen shouted, now clearly audible the whole length of the tunnel. Before Nemo could stop him, his big brother took the pick from his shaking hands and laid it over his shoulder, scraping the curve of the tunnel with the head in the process. “Shit. Anyway, come sit with me. I want to talk to you.”

“We can talk tonight,” Nemo said uncertainly. This was an oddity, a break in routine. Only ten more days, his mind wailed. “I have to--”

“Yeah, go get your pail. I’ll go grab the spot. Don’t take all day talking.” Stooping down to avoid the irregular juts of rock threatening his head, Omen lumbered off, stepping through the detritus underfoot with practiced ease.
----------
Outside, Nemo shaded his eyes against the searing light of noon. Behind him was the yawning maw of the cave, a natural formation in the base of the mountain through which the first Ironborn had found the ore from which they took their name. It was here that the ancestors had brought Shor’s blessing of light in the darkness, bearing torches deeper and deeper into the earth with every passing generation. Nemo’s father had been a miner, and his father before. Back before that, a smelter, and a whitesmith, and a hunter. That was as far as stories went for his ancestors, all who came before lost to the silent night. More than some, worse than others, but no doubting that his blood was of the tribe, let no man speak it.

As was usual at lunch time, the meal when Shor was brightest in the sky, women had made the climb to bring food to their menfolk. Mothers and sisters for the young men and bachelors, wives for the handfasted. Some came in pairs or trios, and carried three or four pails among them, either because their family was blessed with fertility, or to feed those who had no blood to carry for them. For Nemo, it was once again a matter of worse than some… and better than others.

Even Shor’s light seemed to pale in comparison to that smiling face, and the stars of night sky could not hope to outshine her eyes. He had caught his breath long since in the walk up the sloping tunnel, but it was driven out of him once more, as it always was. Straightening his back, and with no need to feign a returning smile, he strode over to her and made a polite gesture with his hand.

“Good day, Sai Gen,” he said. Lost in those eyes, he was, even as they crinkled with pleasure at his ever-awkward greeting. Well, dammit, what did one say when all the words that came to mind were ‘I love you’ and ‘Marry me’? Couldn’t say that, of course. Of course. Ten more days.

“Good day, Sai Nemo,” she purred, bobbing at the knee in a brief curtsey, her free hand tugging her skirt away from the red dusty ground. Her throaty voice was balm upon his ringing ears, a gentle caress that soothed his aching head. “I hope you’ve been working hard. I expect you to eat all your lunch, on which I spent half the morning. With your mother,” she added, her words becoming pointed.

“Ah, Mother!” Snapping back to reality from the reverie that was simply looking at Gen, Nemo turned to face Missus Gita, from whose loins he had sprung once upon a time. She was a short, rather plump woman, regarding him with a knowing squint; not a suspicious squint, for that would require her mind to be in doubt. Her mouth was pursed in an equally world-weary smirk.

“Try not to chew your own tongue off, boyo,” she said, swinging the pail at his belly lightly. “Wouldn’t be difficult, the way it’s hanging out of your mouth. Doesn’t it get dirty like that?”

“Dreadfully,” Nemo returned, catching the pail against himself with a mock ‘Oof!’ and leaning in to peck his mother’s cheek. Lifting one corner of the cloth covering his lunch, he went on, “So lucky to have…Woo, a nice barley to wash it down! And a smoked sausage, and cheese… Fresh bread...” Doubt formed. Suspicion grew. Brown eyes squinted. “Who died?”

“Go talk to your brother,” the two women chorused, grinning in a manner that Nemo could only think of as ‘diabolical’. Gen reached out to give him a push with both hands, the tips of her fingers brushing his shoulders. “Go, go!”

And so he went, if rather unwillingly, back towards the cave entrance. Instead of going within, he went around and down a narrow path, worn by the press of booted feet rather than cut with tools. It led to a shady stand of sparse foliage, gnarly trees with vicious thorns and tiny green leaves. There was a ring of tumbled stones in a clearing near the center, upon one of which Omen was already seated. A tinplate pail nearly identical to Nemo’s own sat between his feet, and a half-loaf of steaming bread stuffed with meat, cheese, and vegetables was in his hands, rapidly disappearing into a steadily working mouth.

“And how is Missus Freda today,” Nemo asked with flat politeness, taking a seat on a nearby stone and unpacking his provisions. Cold beer, hot meat, crusty brown bread. Bliss.

“Delightful as always,” Omen said, an honest man with an honestly happy spouse. “And how is Miss Gen today?”

“Delightful,” Nemo said, with rather heavier emphasis, “As always.” Grinning, they set to filling their bellies with the bounty of the field.
--------
“So,” Omen said, wiping his mouth with the clean kerchief his wife had left him, “I want to talk.”

“So,” Nemo said, upending the last of his beer into his mouth and corking the bottle, “Talk.”

“I’ve been offered a position at the Meet.” Leaning forward on his stone, Omen clasped his heavy hands between his knees, brow furrowed. “They want me to be the new mining Overseer.”

Nemo rocked back, rolling his bottle between his hands. To be one of five Overseers was to be a real power in Irontown. Miners, Smelters, Smiths, Watch, and Women. The five pillars of Ironborn society, and the four men and one woman who stood atop them who decided any issue brought before them by majority.

“Well, congratulations?” Nemo could not quite help the slippage of his voice, turning the well-wish into a question. “I didn’t think you were going political on me, brother. I would have backed you. You’ll be good for the town.”

“Believe me, it’s a surprise. You know I don’t want it, but…” Trailing off, Omen rubbed his palms down the outer seam of his trousers, jaw working with suppressed agitation. “They don’t want a politician, the miners. They want someone who can get in there with both hands and break some rocks, and if those rocks are Gil and Pit’s heads--”

“Ha, that’s Harden talking or I’m a pile of slag!”

“Yeah, well, he’s the one who brought it up to me. Anyway. I think maybe I can do some good this year. Maybe more good than I could swinging a pick.” If their positions had been reversed, there would have been not a trace of that forlorn longing in Nemo’s voice at the idea of heading back down into the mines for a day of hard labor. Omen loved the work, and what’s more, he was good at it. One of the best. “But there’s something else.”

What else could there be? His brother was going to be a leader of the people, elected to a position of power by acclaim, rising higher than any man named in their ancestry. Higher than Gon Red-Hands, who supervised fifty men in the sinking of a shaft which bore his name and produced to this day. Omen Tall-Heart, Overseer of Mines, representative of and responsible for every man who went under in search of iron.

“Well, if I go up for Overseer, that means my foreman position will be open.” Omen fiddled with his whistle illustratively. Pausing, he opened his mouth, then spread his fingers in an open-handed gesture to Nemo.
Laying it at my feet, thought the slightly younger twin. Feeling like he had been suddenly doused in cold water, Nemo straightened his back. “I’ve only got ten more days until my year-and-one is up. I’ve already got a position lined up in the foundry.”

Sighing like a man with a great burden lifted from his shoulders, Omen levered himself to his feet and set about repacking his lunch pail. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I… didn’t think you’d take it. You hate the mines, everyone knows it.”

“How?!” That was not something he had ever said, not to Omen or Rasten, not even Gen. It was a point of pride for Nemo that he had never once voiced his opinion of that wretched hole his brother seemed to love so much, and power to the big lunk. “I do my job!”

“Yeah, you do your job. And it’s not like you just do the minimum, you pitch in. But you hate it.” There was no accusation in Omen’s tone or expression, but there was no understanding either. Just acceptance. “So, smelting, huh? Guess somebody’s got to.”

Biting his lip, Nemo stood up himself, massaging the knuckles of his right hand with his left. “For a year-and-one.”

“Nemo…”

“And then an apprenticeship with the smiths. Year-and-one.”

“Nemo, the Watch? What about Ma?” There was the accusation, the look of betrayal he had expected to come even earlier than this. “What about Gen?”

“What about them? It pays better than mining or smelting, better than smithing in a good year! I’ll marry Gen, and Ma won’t have to worry about bringing my lunch up the hill any more, or that both her sons are going to have the mountain fall in on their heads!”

“It eats up your life, the Watch. And it’s dangerous, more dangerous than any other job! You think the mines are bad, what about getting killed in a raid?”

Their voices were both rising now, approaching the full-throated bull bellows they used to communicate in the clangor down deep, but full of anger as well as purpose.

“I’m not going to get killed, Omen!

“How do you know?!” His big brother, so strong and tough, scared. That scared Nemo, and he got control of himself. Deep breaths, focusing his mind on Shor’s light warming his skin.

“I know,” he said, calmer and more collected. “You’re right. It is just like in the mines. It’s you and the men to either side, right? Everyone knows that. As one.”

“As one,” Omen echoed, still not convinced, but so set in his ways that he could not help but answer. “You haven’t told them.” It was not a question.

“No. Just you, Reik at the smelter… and Overseer Malk.”

Overseer Malk of the Firewatch, or 'Himself Himself' as some people called him. That gave Omen real cause for hesitation, even as he gathered himself for another bout of argument. “You talked to Malk about this?”

“He came to me, actually. Kind of like Harden with you. Talked a lot about the good of the town, a man’s duty, a place in the world.” Putting a hand to his face, Nemo rubbed the rough stubble on his jaw. “I’m a grown man, Omen. I can’t keep being your little brother forever.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It is, down the mines. Omen and his little brother Nemo. Nemo’s not as big as Omen, not as strong, not as good. He works hard, but he doesn’t measure up. I never said it, I never thought it, but I hear it.” Dropping his hand, Nemo bent down and picked up his pail, setting the bottle inside neatly. He could not meet his brother’s eyes. Very quietly, he said, “Let me go.”

“Ten more days, huh?”