The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

The others looked grim when he told them the next day. But what were they to do about it? No one had any ideas. In the meantime, work continued on the terrace cuts. Despite the threat, Yorvig wanted to satisfy a curiosity, so he asked Warmcoat and Shineboot to accompany him. They took the crossbows and Yorvig carried his walking hammer. They climbed eastward up the dell and retraced Yorvig’s route to the top of the ridge above the High Adit. It was much harder for Yorvig than it had been when he'd first climbed it and lowered himself down by rope. In some ways, he was hardier than he had been, but not his leg.

This time they had no intention of rappeling and kept going, across the ridge and down the other side. It was easier to see the areas with exposed rock from a distance than when they were among the trees on the ridge itself, but sure enough they found a space where the rock was too steep to hold any soil for even the hardiest seedling to root.

“Look at that,” Yorvig said, pointing as they approached the rock. It was a seam of the same type of quartz they’d found on the other side. They could only see the top of the seam before it dipped below the level of loam and scree, but it was there. Yorvig had brought a hammer and chisels, and they cleared away enough debris to get a purchase and work a fracture-line. Shineboot picked up the chunk of rock when it cracked free. He held it to the light, close to his eye.

“Well. . .” he tossed the rock to Yorvig. Yorvig did the same, holding it up close, and then he grinned and tossed it to Warmcoat. Soon, Warmcoat shook his head.

“I never imagined,” he said. “This whole ridge could be. . . just. . . full of gold.”

“It’s not as rich as the other side,” Shineboot said. “Just a few flecks.”

“The richer stuff was deeper in than this,” Yorvig answered. "This was on a surface fracture. Much of it will be weathering out. That's how you traced it in the stream coming up the dell."

“There’s no way we could extract all this ore in our lifetime. Not and crush the quartz for sluicing the finer gold.”

Dwarves could work prodigiously, and they often lived in excess of 250 years when blessed with strength and hardihood. Still, this was greater than their strength. It was nearly half a mile south through rock to the Dell. Together, the dwarves could have carved a tunnel straight to this spot in a year through harder rock than sandstone and quartz, but following the right seams in the right directions, let alone crushing and smelting and sluicing was more complicated than simply cutting a path through soft stone. And this was just one narrow arm jutting out from the true ridge that towered thousands of feet above them to the east.

“No,” Yorvig agreed. “Not alone.”

To excuse their expedition, they tried to hunt their way back up the ridge and home to the dell, but there was no indication of living thing. Even the cry of crows sounded distant. They returned by midday and with the others as reinforcements, they went to check the weir. Thankfully, it produced two large silverskin carp and a long rilleye that they pulled out with their net woven of beard-hair.

They also found ürsi tracks in the soft silt at the river’s edge, between two stones by the weir.

“Same as you told us," Greal said in the morning as they drank fish-bone broth. "They were hanging about the Lower Adit door. Whole cluster of them.”

“Why are they so interested in the Lower Adit?” Sledgefist asked. “Did they try to get in?”

“They sniffed around, but they didn’t do anything else.”

“How many?” Yorvig asked.

“Counted only three, but it was hard. Low clouds.”

There was silence apart from slurps from stone-carved mugs.

Sledgefist shrugged.

“What do we even do?” he asked.

It was a refrain grown common among them. But an idea was forming in Yorvig’s gut. He didn’t like the idea, but. . . What else? The thought of the ürsi tramping around the dell in the night grated like chewing gravel. It was their claim.

And he finally knew why Striper hissed at the door in the dark.

It was two more days before Yorvig could no longer deny his plan had taken shape, only awaiting the doing. He still didn’t like it, but they needed to take the initiative and gain some advantage. They needed to hunt. The little plants in the garden beds were getting taller, but they needed more tending, and Yorvig had been limiting their visits in case the ürsi were watching or might catch on. If they realized the plants had value, they'd destroy them. Still, it might only be a matter of time.

The direness of the sums grew as they ate through their meat. So, in their morning work huddle, he took a breath and changed the subject from whether to use a single angle on the terrace roofs or two to go from a steeper pitch to a shallower at the halfway point. Onyx was present but rarely spoke, retreating back to her own delving after the morning meetings. With Khlif’s help the short drift was cut and she had opened into her chamber rock. It would not now be long until she had a small sleeping space of her own.

“We’re not digging today,” he said.

The others fell silent.

“We all know about the ürsi.” They had been a point of discussion each morning, as each morning the watchers reported they had been seen around the pool and the Low Adit door. The numbers changed. There was only one seen the night before last, but that morning three came a few hours before dawn, briefly, as if they were stopping in only to check before moving on to other business.

Yorvig had tried to imagine what he would do if he were trying to attack creatures he did not understand. As of yet, they did not seem to anticipate when the dwarves would leave the dell. Intentionally, the dwarves varied their routines, never checking the weir at the same time or now even daily. They always went armed and as a group. Their hunting expeditions must also have seemed unpredictable to the ürsi. And if the ürsi preferred to hunt at night, it would be difficult for them to keep perfect track of the dwarves during the day, unless they posted watchers of their own. And maybe they did. They were all in danger. Untenable danger.

If Yorvig was one of the ürsi, he would watch and wait for a mistake. Maybe a dwarf who ventured out alone, or an entrance to the mine left ajar. It would be easy to tell, just stepping over the embankment of the tailings pond, that the bridge was drawn up. But the Lower Adit door? What if it had been left open a crack or left unbraced? They would have to check it. The ürsi must be camped within a few miles, and so they checked each night, biding and waiting for an opportunity to strike, for the dwarves to be careless and leave a way open into the mine.

“We’re going to trap the ürsi,” he said. A few eyebrows rose, but no one spoke. “We cut doors for the waterwheel and fungi chambers and seal them with a drop bolt. They shouldn’t be able to figure that out if they’ve never seen one.” I hope, he thought. He didn't want the fungi ruined or the waterwheel destroyed. “We draw up the ladder to the upper drift and build a hatch that we can secure. They won’t be able to climb up and get in the High Adit tunnels.”

The others stared off, imagining the steps.

“Then we leave the Lower Adit door ajar. Not all the way, just a crack.”

“You want them to go in?”

“I do.”

“And we shut the door behind them,” Hobblefoot said, squinting. There was a bit of a smirk at the edges of his mouth, twitching the hairs of his mustache. “Serves the kulkur right.” He laughed and slapped his leg.

“We could kill them all,” Sledgefist said.

“We’ll try.”