“Dig faster, you lazy bastard!” the harsh snarl of the overseer was punctuated by the sharp crack of his whip swiftly followed by the sickening sound of the scourge gouging into flesh. The man next to Josef groaned and stumbled to the ground as the whip struck him again, flecks of blood splattered onto Josef’s face as he drove his pick into the hard face of the coal seam. Splinters of coal pricked at Josef’s face as he prised the pick back and forth and watched another lump of the black rock fall to the floor.
He raised the pick again and struck the face of the seam even as the man beside him started to scream. Josef stole a glance over his shoulder and saw the overseer laying into the man next to him, blood streamed from his back and Josef caught a flash of white bone under the hamburger mess of the man’s back.
A second overseer grabbed the whip arm of the first, “You’re clogging up the face you fool,” he said, “do you want to join the bastards?”
He looped his own whip around the unfortunate victim’s neck and dragged him away from the face. The man sobbed and screamed as the blood from his wounds left a slug trail of red along the rocky ground, “Work harder you pathetic scum,” the first overseer yelled, “you still need to make up your quota even without him!”
Josef strained his aching back even further as he repeatedly prised coal from the stubborn black face. Workers behind him grabbed up the coal and loaded it into small wagons. Josef’s hands bled despite the hardened calluses and his body screamed in pain at the punishment he was going through.
Eventually it became too dark to see and the overseers called time on the shift. The workers shuffled miserably out of the open cast pit and the overseers supervised them as they lined up at the soup kitchen. Hawk-eyed guards pointed rifles at the men as they took the ladle full of broth and a handful of potato from the cooks.
Josef sat on a rock with his food and swiftly began to wolf it down. The potato was raw and full of mould and eyes but the hungry man wolfed it down regardless. He started on the broth but was too late. The dim light of the watch fires was blocked out by dark shadows.
Josef looked up to see three of his fellow workers standing in front of him. The men were filthy and clad in rags. Each of them had prominent ribs and long, straggling beards. Josef paused with his bowl inches from his lips, “That’s ours, boy.” the middle man, a tall Ukrainian with a wall eye and two yellow fangs left in his mouth, “Tax.”
“Go pick on someone else,” Josef said, “this food is mine.”
He caught the red glint of a shiv as the man on the left pulled it from a pocket; Josef sighed as the knife man moved swiftly forward, Josef threw his bowl at the man’s face and stepped to the side. As the knifeman paused to dash away the bowl, Josef lashed his right foot out and caught the man on the right temple with the heel of his ragged boot.
The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor as his two companions closed in on Josef. The lone man lunged forward at the advancing pair and ducked below the wild hay-maker of the tallest thug. Josef hit the man hard in the solar plexus, smashing into the nerve cluster and momentarily immobilising him. As he doubled over, Josef felt the burning pain of a knife slashing across his fore arm.
The last man’s shiv was designed for stabbing rather than slashing and the wound was painful but not deep. Josef stabbed his knuckles at the man’s throat and the last knifeman clutched at his throat and staggered backward. Josef pivoted and grabbed the Ukrainian’s knotted hair as he smashed his face down onto his knee. Josef felt the satisfying crunch of bones shattering and he turned back to the second knife man.
The man was lying on the floor, his windpipe crushed. Josef picked up the shiv and stabbed it repeatedly into the man’s jugular. He left him bleeding out and turned to do the same thing to the ring leader. Josef finished the unconscious man and then quickly searched the three bodies.
The Ukrainian’s boots were in better repair than Josef’s and as they were his size he changed them with his own. He gathered up the two shivs and the half loaf of bread that they had stashed away in a small sack.
Josef retreated to a corner of the open cast mine and gnawed at the black bread as others swarmed over the bodies. The dead were stripped and several men dragged the bodies off into the deep crevasses of the mine. Josef tried not to think about what was going on in the darkness.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the deep cutting and Josef saw several armed guards escorting an officer with highly polished boots and carrying a riding crop.
The man emerged from his guards and said, “I was watching that,” he said, his voice soft and cultured, “what is your name and where are you from?”
“Josef Kowalski, Sir,” Josef replied, “from Gdansk.”
“Interesting,” the officer replied, “and where did you learn to fight like that?”
Josef shrugged, “The streets were hard in my childhood.”
“Hard, my arse,” the officer replied, “now give me the real answer before I have you shot.”
“I was part of the 6th Amphibious Assault Brigade,” Josef replied, “I ended up as an unarmed combat instructor.”
“Thank you,” the officer replied, “now we can really talk.”
“Talk about what, Sir?”
“About your new life in Krakow,” the officer said as he smiled, “people with such fighting prowess as yourself should do well in the fighting pits there. What do you say?”
“Will I get more food than here?”
“Plenty,” the officer said, “in fact, you’ll need a few weeks’ feeding up before you’re up to fighting weight.”
Josef looked around, a few more weeks in here and he’d be dead.
“You have a fighter, Sir,” he replied.
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