The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

Hobblefoot and Greal lay down in the smithy near the adit, but Onyx must have gone back to her own chamber. The stone door sat just behind the bridge, hinged to open outward. They had given it massive braces of timber from cedar they'd brought in for temporary mine supports. It would take immense force to pull the door open from the outside—an impossible task without machines. But the presence and construction of the door meant Yorvig couldn’t see much of anything in the dell. Daylight shone in, passing through the slat in the bridge and the slat in the stone door, but it meant looking through both rock and wood with a gap between. He could only see a small patch of the opposite ridge straight across the dell. Nothing moved on it.

There were three entrances into the claim. One for the terraces, one for the Low Adit, and there at the High Adit. All three were now guarded by stone. It would be hard for well-equipped dwarves to break in without making plenty of noise. Still, it was best one of them remained awake.

Yorvig walked to the storeroom and looked into the cask of river water. It was three-fourths full. Thankfully, they’d filled it the day before the attack. They should have kept more on hand. Enough for a siege. It was fear again. Fear had kept him from thinking of the worst, and so kept him from readiness. Some of the meat in the smoke closet was not yet fully cured, and much of their supply of wood and charcoal were yet out in the dell. They had only enough for a week inside. In an extended siege, some of the newer meat might spoil. They must never make these mistakes again.

That is, if they got an opportunity to make any mistakes again.

He started doing the sums, and he didn’t like what they said. As he mulled them over, a nagging grew in his mind. He tried to figure out what it was, and then terror hit him like a thump to the chest, spreading out in waves of heat and panic. The ürsi had come over the south ridge. Sledgefist, Shineboot, and Khlif had gone south. In the midst of the confusion and onslaught, he’d had no time to think of it. Even when he lay down, his mind had remained fixed on the fight and the immediate threat.

The expedition had gone south nine full days ahead of the ürsi’s arrival. How many eastern mountain gaps had they skirted in that time? Three? Yorvig couldn’t remember each pass he’d seen on his trek to the claim over a year before. And why did he assume the ürsi came into the river-valley from the east?

He did more sums. Sums and fears together.

He returned to the new stone door where Striper sat, staring as if she could see through the rock, her tail lashing back and forth.

It was early evening when Hobblefoot emerged from the smithy. He looked at the new door as if inspecting to see whether he was still satisfied after having rested.

“Well,” he said. “That ought to hold them. Anything new today?”

“Nothing,” Yorvig said. “I want to go to the terraces to look down into the dell.”

“Best wait till the others are up for that. Just in case.”

“Ay, best.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, until Hobblefoot nodded and said:

“Well,” and ambled down the drift toward the storeroom.

He was getting a drink of water, no doubt. A few gulps less in the cask.

Warmcoat came out of the smithy looking sullen. There was a bulge beneath the wrap of his bandage, showing the swelling. He too went to the storeroom. They had returned to Yorvig at the door when Greal emerged, didn’t even make eye contact, and walked to the storeroom. Onyx appeared far down the drift, and Yorvig knew she was heading to the storeroom for a drink. Even with only the fading light entering through the narrow slat in the door, they needed no lamp or candle. He waited until Greal and Onyx approached before speaking:

“I’m going to the terraces,” he said. “Arm yourselves.”

While Warmcoat and Hobblefoot took up spears, Yorvig headed down the drift to the stair. He already had his walking hammer, and he wanted it for more than just a weapon; his leg was bothering him today even more than his side. Odd. He didn’t remember anything that would have caused it hurt, though he had sprinted across the bridge and the fight itself was patchy in his memory.

They arrived at the door to the terraces. Yorvig put his nose to the edges of the door and sniffed. Dwarven doors were carved with channels on the outer edges to allow airflow, unless they had a reason otherwise, which was rare. They had carved the terrace doors to allow plenty of ventilation. Yorvig stepped back, and Onyx put her nose to the opposite side, inhaling. She shook her head.

With that, Yorvig and Onyx drew the bolts and swung the door back as the others held their spears at the ready. The short drift to the first terrace was empty. They stepped past the door. The opening to the second stairwell was just past.

“Stay here,” Yorvig said, pointing to Warmcoat and Greal. The rest of them proceeded to the first terrace. It was empty of ürsi. He could see the far half of the dell over the wide garden bed, and there were ürsi there, lounging in loose circles.

“Let’s check the other two,” Yorvig said. Those terraces were clear as well. At the top terrace, Yorvig stepped up onto the garden bed and to the edge of the cliff. Onyx and Hobblefoot stepped up with him. The dell was full of scattered bands of ürsi. Onyx made a distressed noise, and Yorvig followed her gaze. The garden beds down in the dell were destroyed. The plants had been trampled and torn. It must have been obvious to the ürsi that the dwarves had tended them, whether or not they knew why.

“There goes the hill-smoke,” he said. “So close, too.” In another week they would have harvested enough to last them through the winter.

“Look there,” Hobblefoot said, pointing across the dell.

On a small promontory on the far ridge, there was a cluster of ürsi. They were big ürsi, or at least bigger than the ones they had seen. By the look of it, these would stand eye to eye with the dwarves, if not a bit taller. There was a fire burning on the promontory—in fact, there were multiple fires smoldering throughout the dell, around which the ürsi were gathered, the smoke rising and joining in a haze not far above.

One of the big ürsi on the ridge seemed to see them. It stepped forward. It wore a thick ruff of long yellow feathers around its shoulders, atop what looked like old rusted mail armor. With one hand, it pointed at them and with the other it raised a spear into the air. If it was a dwarf, Yorvig would have thought it a salute of some kind. Some of the other ürsi around the dell had noticed the dwarves, now. They were rising to their feet, clutching their weapons and staring up in silence.

“I see sixty-three,” Onyx said. Yorvig hadn’t even counted, but he was glad for the number.

“How many do you think we killed last night?” Hobblefoot asked. Yorvig leaned over. The ground beneath the tower was bare of dead ürsi, although the rock piles showed stains of dark blood. Blood had darkened the tower platform, too, but he saw no bodies there, either. He thought they had left some. The ürsi must have moved them at some point, but Yorvig wasn’t sure when. As soon as the stone door went up, their view was so restricted that they couldn't even see the tower platform.

He looked down the dell. An ürsi lapped water from the tailings pond, but they seemed thinner in numbers down there. Most were gathered in a wide arc around the High Adit tower. The pile of stones remained undisturbed in front of the Low Adit. If the ürsi knew how the dwarves had trapped the others within, they did not seem to think it worth exploring.

“We have to go into the Low Adit,” Yorvig said.

“Why?” Hobblefoot asked.

“We’ll need water very soon.”

Hobblefoot thought about it for a moment.

“I don’t like having only one way out, anyway."

“We left the ürsi down there,” Onyx said.

“It has been a long time," Yorvig answered.

“Gah, it’ll smell.” Hobblefoot shook his head. “We may have to smoke all the tunnels down there for a month to make it bearable, though we don’t have the wood for it.”

“What if they. . . what if they’re in the water?” Onyx asked.

“We move them. The spring has never stopped flowing as long as we’ve been here. It will renew. Come on.”

The others had the same conversation, more or less. This was why Yorvig preferred to state his plans when they were all gathered together. Regardless, within half an hour they were arrayed around the hatch to the Low Adit. Even Striper had followed Yorvig there. They removed the stones weighing down the hatch. The ladder had been cut in two so they could fit it up into the drift. They would hang half of it down, then one would climb to the bottom, hang, and drop so they could hand down the ladder.

“Ready?” Hobblefoot asked. He and Greal crouched to either side of the hatch. Yorvig nodded.

“Go ahead.”

There was a sucking sound as the air changed. The stench hit them instantly. Yorvig wrinkled his nose. Striper bolted away.

“Foul,” muttered Warmcoat.

Yorvig looked down the hatch. He didn’t see anything in the light of the fish-oil lamp that Warmcoat held.

“Ladder,” he said. They fed the ladder down and attached the top to its two hangers carved in the rock.

“Who first?” Hobblefoot asked.

Yorvig listened and watched down the hatch for a time, but there was no sign of movement below. There were other foul smells wafting up, not just the regular reek of ürsi. He didn’t want to send anyone else down there first, nor did he want to go. But it was necessary.

“Cover me with the crossbow,” he told Greal. Greal had a bolt ready and Yorvig turned to step down onto the ladder, holding his walking hammer with one hand. Slowly, he descended. The first half of the ladder brought him through the overburden of rock and within six feet of the bottom of the drift. There was a nerve wracking bit when his lower body was exposed in the drift below but his head was still in the narrow chute, restricting his vision. But nothing happened. He let himself hang from the bottom of the ladder, then dropped the couple feet to the stone, trying to land with the bulk of the force on his good leg.

The adit was dim. The flicker of the lamp came down from above, but the rocks piled over the adit door blocked any daylight from entering through the door slat. The sound of flowing water was the same as ever, but the air was foul.

“Alright,” he called up faintly. Greal came next, handing down the rest of the ladder to Yorvig from above. Then, Hobblefoot passed Greal his spear and Greal descended the rest of the way. Warmcoat came next with the light, then Hobblefoot. Onyx came too. Yorvig glanced at her, but he decided against sending her back. She had done her part in the assault, after all. Her eyes were watering from the smell, the moisture glinting in the lamplight. She was not alone in that.

The two doors to either side of the drift remained closed. Hobblefoot approached and confirmed they hadn’t been opened. Dwarves had many methods for determining that. In this case, they had placed quartz grit into the top of the hinges so that if they were opened the grit would be displaced. A dwarf might be able to re-do and leave no sign, but they did not think an ürsi would detect the subterfuge.

“Looks like they’ve been scraping around them,” Hobblefoot said, looking from one door to the next. “Haven’t been open, though they’ve chipped some rock away.” He nudged a broken club with his foot.

Yorvig walked up next to Hobblefoot. He saw claw-marks on the stone as well. They went to the main adit door and saw more of the same. The dwarves had spoken to each other about hearing sounds in the early days after they’d trapped the ürsi, but there was no way the ürsi could have escaped without tools and knowledge.

“Where are they?” Onyx asked.

The stream flowed out from the blocked water-wheel room, down its channel and into a little pool that had backed up behind the adit door. The stones piled on the other side had inhibited its outflow, but not by much. There was no sign of any ürsi bodies.

“The delvings,” Hobblefoot said, nodding back toward the ladder and the chute at the back of the drift. Standing as they were in the light of the oil lamp, it was difficult to see far down the passage. Slowly and with spears lowered, they approached the ladder. Their caution was mostly nerves. Yorvig did not expect to find any threats after so long.

They reached the ladder leading down into the darkness.

“I’ll go first this time. Follow me with the light, Warmcoat,” Hobblefoot said.