The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

A few times the next day they thought they heard ürsi shrieks echoing up the drift from the Lower Adit workings, but nothing disturbed the braced stone hatch at the end of the sloping drift to the High Adit. They could see the Low Adit door from the tower still blocked with its rockpile barricade, so they knew nothing had escaped. The ürsi were trapped within. Part of Yorvig hated the idea of starving them, no matter how vile the beast. Slaying in a fight was one thing. This felt different. But it was not worth trying to enter to kill them by violence and so risk themselves. The ürsi would eat the dwarves if they had it the other way around. Maybe it was justice for Savvyarm that the beasts died of starvation.

In the following days, Yorvig saw Striper sitting for hours at the top of the sloping drift down to the hatch, the fur on her neck bristled high, her tail lashing back and forth. Sometimes, she let out a low hiss.

It was a shame that the ürsi might foul the water of the brook. The vernal stream flowing down the dell from the mountain had turned to a bare trickle now that the spring thaws were passing. They had to drip-fill wooden buckets with water daily. Even so, they felt lighter of spirit, for they did not think the one ürsi who escaped posed much of a threat. Yorvig even felt secure enough to send out hunting parties comprised of just three at a time, keeping the others to work. Yorvig did not even go with them.

This continued for two weeks, and while not every hunt was successful, for the first time the smoke closet began to fill with hanging meat faster than it emptied. One day, when Yorvig and Warmcoat walked out to the garden beds they saw peeping up from the soil the red round top of a radish. Warmcoat plucked it from the ground and laughed, taking a bite before he’d even wiped the soil away.

“Ah, isn’t that good after so long,” he said, tossing Yorvig the other half. Yorvig ate it, even the leaves. It was sharp and sweet.

“We better go get baskets for the rest,” he said. Baskets, like buckets and casks and mugs, were the kind of crafts the dwarves were always making to keep their hands busy in those hours when they were not bent upon greater tasks. Onyx had woven the baskets out of peeled bark. She was in the workshop where they also stored most of their tools and supplies and saw them taking the baskets from the stack in the back of the chamber.

“What are you doing?” she asked, curious.

“We go to pick the radishes and whatever else is ready,” Yorvig said. “I dare say we will fill a few baskets.”

“Be sure to leave some,” she said, turning back to the forge. It was burning, though they were running close to the end of their charcoal. That was another thing they had to do—another charcoaling. It looked like she was melting some bit of gold ore.

“Why, they’re ready now?” Warmcoat said.

She turned around, squinting at them.

“Because we need more seeds.”

It seemed their blank expressions spoke plainly for them.

“You have to let some go to seed, or you won’t be able to grow more.” She watched their expressions. “Where do you think seeds come from?”

Warmcoat looked at Yorvig.

Were not the seeds in the plant somehow?

“You are in charge of gardening, now, Onyx,” Yorvig said. “I’m afraid it will take you away from the forge. What aid or labor you need, just say it.”

She sighed, then scattered the hot coals across the forge to let them die.

“Fine,” she said, and took a basket from Warmcoat. “Come with me.”

They harvested four basket-loads of radishes and turnips that day, and left many more that Onyx deemed unready or wanted to go to seed. From that day, she watched the garden more closely. Yorvig still did not allow anyone to venture out alone, so either he or one of the others would go with her when she checked on the plants, watering as she deemed necessary, pulling out weeds, and gathering what was ready. She did not speak much as she worked, and Yorvig kept his eyes averted as she knelt or bent over the beds. Sometimes as they knelt on the ground plucking weeds, she looked up at the broken rock far above on the ridgetop and it seemed she was at least that far away. Yorvig wondered where exactly.

Another two weeks passed as summer came to the eastern Red Ridges. They lit a great charcoal mound-kiln of the logs they’d cut the previous year. Smoke leaked from it, hazing the dell. The river lowered even more as the rains grew less frequent, and now the weir produced fish almost daily. Their store of oil grew, and for the first time Yorvig began to think they may just succeed at this thing. They had mined little more ore, but the terraces were nearing completion. Onyx said that soon she would harvest seeds from the radishes and turnips in the dell, and then they would plant the next crop in the safety of the terraces above.

It was that week that Sledgefist shot a great beast with flat antlers that he stumbled upon as it waded in a shallows at the edge of the river. It had taken all eight of them to pull and push it up the riverbank, part it out, and carry it back to the claim. All in all, they estimated eight hundred pounds of meat came from that one animal, most of an entire month’s food for the dwarves. And so, they opened another cask of sap beer and feasted on rich organs that night around a fire in the forge.

Sledgefist was happier than Yorvig had seen him in a long time, recounting two and three times the moment he first saw the beast, how he had crept close, aimed, and fired a bolt behind its shoulder, how the beast had blared a hornlike call and come rushing toward the bank, looking about with wrath before foundering in the shallow water, staining it red.

They drank to him, though they needed no excuse to drink even that poor bitter brew, taking pleasure in the first true feeling of plenty they had known in many long hard months.

“Ay, yes!” Sledgefist laughed when he caught Warmcoat chewing the warm liver-and-radish fry with his eyes closed. “Eat! Eat the prosperity of Sledgefist, slayer of the mighty beast! Prosper from my hunt!” He was laughing, and feeling the slightest effect of brew. It reminded Yorvig of the stew-halls of home.

“We would prosper more if we all embraced the strength of our true names,” Greal said.

“Oh will you shut up about that shit,” Sledgefist answered, annoyed at the interruption of mirth. “We didn’t invite you here to proselytize.”

“Easy, Sledgefist. We’re friends here,” said Warmcoat.

“I can be his friend and still think he’s full of shit.”

“Is that so?” Warmcoat asked with a chuckle.

“Who better!” Sledgefist blared.

“I merely seek your good,” Greal said calmly. “Our collective good.”

“So if you believe that shit, why does your sister not go by her true name?” Sledgefist asked.

Khlif stopped chewing, his limbs tensing. Onyx too, was still.

“A maid and a wif are not a dwarf. Theirs is not to show their secrets bold to the world,” Greal said.

Onyx stared down at her plate of liver-and-radish.

“Are you saying that Auntie Tourmaline did not need strength? Did she not strive with the world? In the days when our folk sojourned among the humans, it was maids and wifs who led our folk," Shineboot said.

"Always with the history, Shineboot," Sledgefist said, but seemed pleased his little cousin had countered Greal.

“Our days of captivity do not rule our freedom. If dwarves had led, then, we would not have spent centuries under the thumb of human kings. But we were forced to labor in their mines.” Greal looked none too pleased, but his tone was calm.

"Dwarves let themselves be made slaves," Yorvig said. "And it is the fault of the wifs?"

“Is this why you cultists preach against maids following a trade?” Sledgefist asked, before Greal could answer Yorvig.

The question surprised Yorvig; he hadn’t heard of that.

“That’s. . .” Greal hesitated, glancing at his sister.

“I do not follow their way,” Onyx said, her eyebrows furrowed.

“I keep the ways of the Crippled King as well,” Hobblefoot said to her, leaning forward.

“We speak no ill of the Crippled King, but we do not wish to go to his hall," Greal said.

“Why not? Who with a better hoard?” Sledgefist asked.

“We wish to delve our own. It is in keeping with the spirit of Auntie Tourmaline.”

“Auntie Tourmaline held with the Crippled King,” Hobblefoot said.

It was a common belief that the dwarves contributed to the hoard of each of their forebeards back to the beginning. If a dwarf brought forth a child into the world, and that child did evil, the evil was accounted to the father as well, even if the father had gone to his rest with his fathers. If there were two sons, one good and one evil, they did not cancel out, but such things both went into the store of their ancestors, either shaming or honoring them. Each dwarf had a duty to his folk both past and future, to act with righteousness. No one succeeded in all things. So mothers told their sons, when they were caught stealing cave-bread from the larder, “you have added dishonor to your forebeards,” or a grown dwarf caught in petty theft would be flogged and publicly shamed, trudged through the stew-halls of their district and declaimed: “a stain on their legacy.”

It was thought that somehow, those ancient ones gone beyond memory gathered all the good and evil of their folk, and were responsible for it, adding it to their hoard along with the souls of their descendants. And who more than the Crippled King?

The keeping of a true name was not just a custom, it was an impulse. Dwarves loved to keep and hide, and so they kept and hid their very selves in the true name. It was shared only between bride or groom on their wedding night. Parents knew it, and maybe a close brother or sister. Rarely a deep friend. But the Named of Strength believed that by claiming their true names, they started over, disconnected from the past, each the master of their own life-claims, as if they were the first in their line.

Yorvig thought it foolishness. There was no escaping the past, any more than the future. They lived on the dagger’s edge, taking from the future with one hand and placing in the past with the other. That was not an image of his devising; the pictogram was engraved on many lintels in Deep Cut.

How this all would end, the dwarves did not know. But they knew they would come to account some day. They would go to the halls of their forebeards, or to the Crippled King, or somewhere, and stand before the Maker. For dwarves were makers themselves, and they knew there was nothing that was not made, whether above stone or below it. And like their own craftings, they knew that the mind of the maker was displayed in that which was made—displayed in order. Living packed together in tunnels and caverns and holds, their love of order took the shape of law, often brutal in its application. Crimes such as theft were the most nuanced and varied in punishment. Blood was shed for blood. Rape and adultery were barely heard of. Such jealousy and violation led to violence, and so bands of dwarves scattered themselves to new claims to find isolation and forgetting.

"Ah, shit on you all and your philosophizing," Sledgefist said, wiping his beard with his sleeve. "I have no use for it."

"I have use for this," Warmcoat said, lifting up a piece of liver and taking a bite.

"There is more to life than eating and drinking," Greal said.

"And that, my friend, is why we're mining!" Sledgefist laughed and drank at the same time.

Greal frowned, not finding Sledgefist's jollity to his liking.

“Speak of Auntie Tourmaline, Speak of Uncle Salt," Warmcoat said. "I believe with absolute certainty that Uncle Salt. . . would have asked for more.” He held out his wooden plate. Judging by the laughter that far exceeded the quality of the jest, it was not just Yorvig who was grateful to leave behind the line of conversation.

He may be rinlen, but there were some things no rinlen commanded.

"Who else wants more?" he asked.