The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

A flash of light entered the drift, then vanished again. The sound of a bar slipping into place followed. Someone had entered the adit. Yorvig sat up. The pain was mostly gone from his ribs and his hand. He swung his legs carefully over the edge of the alcove. Footsteps approached down the drift—Shineboot carrying a lit pine-tar taper. The smell reached Yorvig first, but this time the strong scent of pine did not nauseate him.

“Chargrim,” Shineboot said. “How do you feel?”

“Better.” Yorvig looked at Shineboot for a moment. The dwarf did not look as pale as he had. Yorvig suspected they had eaten well off the meat.

“So you made pinesap tapers?”

“They work well enough for now.”

The properties of pine tar were not unknown to the dwarves. Many pines grew in the dry uplands above the Wastes and the western side of the Red Ridges. Every few decades fires would kindle in those hills, leaving a swath of blackened destruction which would spring again to new life in a matter of a few years. Hunters said the best game ranged after those fires.

“And the meat?”

“Still smoking. I just unloaded a barrow and replenished the wood.”

“Any sign of ürsi? The smell of the smoke—”

“None yet. But we’ve a solid door, and a grate to look out before we go.”

Yorvig nodded.

“That’s good. I’m hungry. Is there—”

He stopped. From up the mine shaft, he heard the sudden exclamations of two dwarves yelling angrily. In his waking, he had not yet remembered their quarrel. A surge of his own anger rose.

“Are they still at each other?”

“Ay, yes,” Shineboot said, sighing and shaking his head.

“Send them to me.”

“What?”

“Bring them to me.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Shineboot’s eyes widened for a moment, but he decided not to argue and tramped down the drift to the ladder instead. The sounds of argument still continued up the shaft.

Yorvig wondered what there was to say. In tradition, he should say nothing. They were his elders, but. . . the flare of anger rose again. They were acting like fools. Kith na maemim, the old dwarvish saying went. Mining with their skulls.

The shouting below ended. It wasn’t long before the creak of the ladder warned of their approach. Yorvig wasn’t certain what he’d say, or if it wasn’t a terrible idea, but he waited, banking his anger like hot coals, protecting it, not letting it go out. He didn’t turn to look as they approached up the drift.

“Shineboot said you needed us,” Sledgefist said when he arrived. “It’s good to see you up.”

Yorvig glanced at Shineboot, who pursed his lips. Well, he’d gotten them here, anyway.

Sledgefist and Hobblefoot appeared side by side in the drift, their faces red. Those faces used to be flushed instead with mirth and ale as they had carried on side by side in the stew halls of Deep Cut. Yorvig remained seated on the edge of the sleeping alcove, not yet ready to trust his legs unaided. He would need a crutch. It was a bizarre feeling, for by custom younger dwarves did not sit in the presence of a standing elder, nor presume to berate them. Yorvig blew on the embers of his anger, letting it rise. He had to remember the anger and not lose it, cowed in the face of the two older dwarves. So, he rehearsed.

“I go off into the wilds in search of food to feed your starved bones, nearly get killed and eaten by ürsi, nearly die of a festering wound, just to come back here and listen to you two arguing like fools without sense.”

“Watch how you speak to us!” Sledgefist said, more surprised than angry.

“Really? Because you act like fatherless gilke.”

“That’s enough, Chargrim!” Now Sledgefist curled his hands into the fists where he got his name, but he kept them clenched at his side. “You must still be fevered to speak to me like this.”

“I’ll talk how I want. I’m in a mine with no rinlen, in the middle of the wilds, with two rockskulled fools who think that arguing over drifts and starving to death is why we all came out here. I may have managed to feed you, but I’ll regret it if I have to put up with this shit for one more shift. "

“If you can’t quiet your brother, how do you expect to rule a mine?” Hobblefoot asked Sledgefist.

“Oh, save it Hobblefoot,” Yorvig said, turning to him. “You knew when you came out here there was no agreement. Did you just think you’d have your way, claiming a double portion, as if the rest came out to serve you? Some friend.”

“Your opinion is of little account.”

“We’ll see, but it’s not just me. It’s Shineboot too.”

Shineboot actually jerked his head up, eyes widened again.

“Or am I wrong?” Yorvig asked. Shineboot opened his mouth, but failed to speak. “But if you think my word of little account, you will find that my labor is not. Come to an agreement, determine the shares as friends among equals, and swear an oath to abide. If not, I will take the meat I hunted, and I will wait and watch. It is mine by rights. And Shineboot will join me if he’s half the sense. We will not haul your ore. We will not clear your drifts. We will not share our provision. If you do not want to be one mine, then you can look after yourselves alone.”

Yorvig saw that Hobblefoot’s hands had formed fists as well as Sledgefist, and they both stared at him, their faces seeming to pulse with fire.

“Good. Go ahead. Strike a wounded dwarf. Finish what the ürsi failed to do. Show me your worth.”

Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke.

“I see. Then let my word stand. I give you three days. If you cannot reach peace by that time, I will go to Deep Cut though it take me two winters and I break a crutch every week, and the tale I will bear will not be to your praise.”

“You’re sick,” Sledgefist said at last.

“But not of my wounds. Not anymore. Three days, and that is more than you deserve. I am ashamed for you.”

The four of them stood there for a time, unmoving and unspeaking. Sweat beaded on Yorvig’s brow, and a sense of panic began to rise where anger had been. What if he’d blundered?

“Go,” he said. He just wanted them gone. “Leave me to rest. Go on.”

Dismissing an elder dwarf in such a way would be scandalous in Deep Cut and possibly result in a beating. Such custom was drilled deep into young gilke by the older gilke who still demanded to be respected as elders even though they had not passed rhundal. The only difference was, gilke would beat the juniors without fear of a deadly feud, so long as no true injuries were given. By the time the gilke reached the age of rhundal at three decades and the stakes rose, such customs of respect were well-learned.

Whether chastened or in shock, Sledgefist and Hobblefoot walked away toward the shaft. Shineboot remained a moment longer, his eyebrows nearly raised to his greasy hair, but he too left. Yorvig felt tired after his outburst, but he also felt a weight lifted. Would he actually go back to Deep Cut? He hadn’t planned on saying that, but the idea of staying here with the two of them refusing to work in peace was. . . it was unbearable. Dwarves either worked together in harmony and order—such words were practically the same thing—or they parted. In parting there was no shame. The state of this claim, though, it was shameful, and they should know better. The strike had addled them.

And in the rough adit cut into the rockface higher in the dell, a stone hid a vein of gold that could make them all wealthy—wealthy enough for bride prices. . . Wealthy enough to prove themselves beyond doubt, to each have posterity beneath the stone and not just the eldest of the families.

He hadn’t thought of that strike in days. The thought had not been in his fevered dreams. But it returned now like a great weight. At least it made him more confident in the words he’d spoken. They must come to agreement—sworn agreement—before such a strike could be revealed. There must be order beneath the stone.