The Kin

  ***

  The entrance to the mine was situated in the most tranquil of settings, with the melodious singing of the birds in the trees adding to the scenic views down to the river and across the mountains. Nowhere was there any evidence of the suffering and agony experienced by the men who had worked and died bringing the precious metals from the earth. The grass had grown over the deep scars and ivy had covered the gouges in the rock around the dark hole that led down into the underworld filled with monsters.

  Marius’s three hundred men waited nervously for the order to go in. Each man was clutching a wooden spear in his hand with another three stakes in case of an emergency, and they all held flaming torches.

  Marius looked at his men. They’d all fought the Kin now, but still this wasn’t going to be an easy assignment and it would probably haunt them for the rest of their days.

  “Stay together and no one goes off alone. Don’t go too far, we don’t know these passages and I don’t want anyone getting lost. If it gets cramped and you can’t stand, come back. Don’t go exploring. Got that?” The men looked impassively back at him and Marius knew that they understood the rules. He nodded and began to move into the dark interior with the men following in ordered ranks behind him.

  He’d gone only a few paces when he stopped. Staring at him from the darkness were several pairs of wide eyes. He thrust the torch in front of him and saw a group of scared children cower and hide themselves. For a moment he was struck dumb with shock. The children were nothing but skin and bone and dressed in torn dirty rags. It was obvious that no one was caring for them and they’d been left to their own devices. He vaguely remembered Junius condemning the young Kin as being reckless and breaking up families by separating mothers from their children.

  Angrily, he barked at the closest men to remove the children, take them back to the fort and get someone to look after them. Immediately, five men moved forward and led the surprisingly docile youngsters out into the daylight.

  He’d hated the Kin before, but now Marius was furious, and he knew that this anger was shared by the men and especially by the fathers who were standing in the mine with him.

  They found the first of the Kin only a few metres away; they hadn’t even bothered to try and hide. Dispatching them was easy; they were lying together, dead to the world in groups and didn’t move or flinch when the spears sliced down through their hearts.

  Slowly the men dispersed through the labyrinthine passages until every accessible route was clear. Then they began to make their way back to regroup outside.

  Marius ordered thirty men to stay and secure the entrance then he and the rest went off to the other caves and did the same. At every site he left a group of soldiers behind to keep watch in case the cave hadn’t been completely secured.

  By the middle of the afternoon, Marius arrived back at the mine entrance content that they’d killed as many of the Kin as they could in that first day. Tonight when the creatures emerged from their lairs, they’d be in for a nasty shock, because Marius and his men would be waiting for them, and they’d remain there for the next few days until he was sure that he’d killed as many of them as possible. After that, he’d lead the men to the higher caves, and by then Junius and his friends should have been long gone, but if they weren’t, then they too would share the fate of their younger brethren.