The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

The next morning, Yorvig awoke to find Savvyarm and Warmcoat preparing for their departure. Striper the cat was nowhere to be seen, but two of her half-grown kittens sat nearby, swishing their tails as they watched the preparations with glinting eyes. Yorvig had been sleeping in the storeroom, and even though Savvyarm and Warmcoat were moving quietly, for what it was worth, they woke him as they filled sacks with the chosen portion of the amethyst crystals. There was little else to take, but the two dwarves were packing the crystals into wool sacks with old leaves jammed between them to try to prevent chipping or shattering.

Yorvig rose to his feet.

“Good waking,” he said. The others nodded. Their expressions were subdued. Warmcoat mumbled something that might have been “good waking.” Yorvig sighed. He did not envy the two envoys. He was still tired from his long journey to the claim. Winter was mild enough in the Waste around Deep Cut, but in the Red Ridges snow would likely be falling long before Savvy and Warmcoat could hope to return. At least they could get some good meals, beer, and hill-smoke in their family stoneholds before returning.

Yorvig prepared his harness and tools and headed into the adit drift and toward the mine shaft. When he reached the top of the ladder, he heard angry voices below.

“The amethyst was from the vent, not the seam!” Hobblefoot snapped.

“The vent is barely two feet in diameter,” Sledgefist yelled back. “That pocket left a fifteen foot stope!”

“The quartz could only form in gaps—gaps from a vent!”

“The same with quartz.”

“The quartz is not in crystal points.”

Both of the dwarves were yelling. Yorvig knew why. Obviously, Sledgefist wanted to follow the quartz seam upward, while Hobblefoot wanted to mine downwards along the vent which had filled and solidified as a mineral intrusion ages ago. Either way could produce a variety of minerals, or open into a lode. Or neither.

What Yorvig was sure about was that he didn’t want to step in-between Hobblefoot and Sledgefist. Sledgefist did not get his name in vain, though Hobblefoot was the broader and perhaps stronger of the two. Yet to strike kin would be beyond a travesty. Yorvig didn’t think it would come to that. The arguing would go on until one of them gave in. The problem was, he’d never known either to give in, and if he was there with them, Sledgefist would expect Yorvig to take his side.

So instead, Yorvig backed away from the shaft. He met Warmcoat and Savvyarm coming out of the storeroom. Warmcoat must have read Yorvig’s face, for the dwarf raised his thick eyebrows and gave the slightest smirk.

“Good fortune,” he said.

“Good fortune,” Yorvig replied.

It was mid-day, and Yorvig was up on the cliff face, mining in his new adit when he heard Sledgefist calling.

“Chargrim! Chargrim!”

Yorvig poked his head out of the adit, his beard full of chips of sandstone and quartz. His brother stood within the warning zone of cave rune stakes, near the pile of broken ore and stone at the base of the cliff.

“Chargrim, would you get down here and help already? We need you in the mine, not hiding up there.” Sledgefist looked as irritated as his words. Without arguing, Yorvig readied his tools and rapelled down the rock, landing on the broken ore. Sledgefist was already striding down the slope toward the tailings pond.

By the time Yorvig entered the adit, Sledgefist had made it to the bottom of the shaft ladder. Shineboot was at the top of the shaft, pulling on the rope of the block and tackle, raising up sacks of ore. He was cussing under his breath. Yorvig hurried to help him unload, setting the sacks against the adit wall, but Shineboot fell silent as soon as Yorvig rushed up. The sound of rapidly striking picks rose from below.

“Which way did they choose?” Yorvig asked.

“They chose nothing. Each is mining their own drift.”

Yorvig sighed. Maybe it was for the better.

“Is there more to lift?”

“More than I can manage,” Shineboot said. “I think they’re trying to outdo each other.” The dwarf looked at Yorvig appraisingly. “I know he’s your brother, but Hobblefoot is the eldest.”

“He is that,” Yorvig said, not wanting to get into it. It didn’t matter to him if Hobblefoot became rinlen of the mine, though the demand for a double portion was not fair to Warmcoat or Savvyarm. And Yorvig doubted there was any way that Sledgefist would give in. It was true that no one had come there with an agreement on who was rinlen. No one had taken oath, but they were all present at the staking of the claim. That made them partners and owners. If Hobblefoot could carry the argument, it would take a nearly unanimous decision by all the stakeholders. . . Sledgefist was Yorvig’s brother. To go against him in something like this—Sledgefist would never forgive it.

Yorvig climbed down the ladder, and what he found surprised him. Hobblefoot and Sledgefist must have been mining with all the strength they had, for already yards of material was piled waiting to be removed from the drifts. Having to load it, raise it fifty feet by hand-pulley up the shaft, and then carry it down the adit for sorting, sluicing, dumping. It was a hopelessly inefficient way of dealing with it. They still needed to eat, but no one was even foraging. They would go to sleep hungry.

With only four dwarves left in the claim, they needed a better way. They needed many better ways.

After allowing himself little sleep, it was still dark when Yorvig awoke. Dwarves kept only loosely to the patterns of sun and moon, keeping more to their own rhythms of working, and there was much to do. Yorvig pulled the straps of his harness through the buckles, tightening them. The tool harness was a standard bit of mining kit for dwarves, more a series of interlocking belts with loops and clips for tools. This was the second time that Yorvig had to tighten his harness since he’d arrived at the claim. This time he had to tighten the thigh straps as well. He was losing weight.

Dwarves loved belts in general, not just the miners. Many dwarf maids and wifs also wore belts, often many at once, encrusted or gilded or stamped or tooled, colorful, woven or engraved. Though it went beyond practicality, it was never entirely devoid of it, and in this case, his belts were telling him that they needed food, or else winter would go ill for them.

A stubborn, foolish determination had come over both Sledgefist and Hobblefoot. Neither would switch mining with Shineboot or Yorvig, or discuss again the plans for the claim. Shineboot could not keep up with the ore and stone alone, and Hobblefoot had yelled at Shineboot the day before for helping Sledgefist at all.

“You’re my brother!” he’d shouted, not even stopping his hammer-blows to berate his brother.

Sledgefist and Hobblefoot had both rolled into their alcoves to sleep after twenty or more hours of digging, but still begrudging the pause. Dwarven male children were called gilke and females called gilna until they reached thirty years of age and underwent their rhundal ceremony. Sledgefist and Hobblefoot were acting like gilke. Had that strike so addled their heads?

Yorvig was certain now that the Hardfell brothers were right not to come. He’d been naive, maybe, to come himself. But what else could he do? He had little other family left, and no desire to mine salt for the rest of his life. Back in Deep Cut, everyone knew precisely their place. In the mine, everyone had their rank and discipline was unbroken from the rinlen down to the least apprentice miner. The council of elders ruled all major decisions for the colony, and within the dwarven families, everything was determined in unyielding order of heredity and birth, each stonehold a small kingdom. If the four dwarves left in the mine had been brothers, they would defer to Hobblefoot without question, not because he was always right, but because deferring to the elder in the family was always right. The problem was extra complicated by the fact that Hobblefoot and Shineboot were their cousins, and though Hobblefoot was older than Sledgefist, Sledgefist and Yorvig’s father was older than Hobblefoot's and Shineboot’s father. Hobblefoot was the eldest in the mine, but of the second line of their grandbeard’s hold.

In such situations of dispute, it was best to split apart and form separate stoneholds, claims, workshops, or whatever else was at stake. Then, the family leaders could interact as independent lords of their own rock. But Sledgefist and Hobblefoot had always been friends, close almost like brothers. Until now, they had directed their hot-headed, stubborn ways at the world around them, not at each other.

Yorvig didn’t know how to fix it. So he set about something he could fix. He went out of the claim. The woods in the dell were quiet. He heard the flow of water over the tailings dam. A few crickets sounded, but already the woods were growing quiet with the hushed approach of autumn. It took only five minutes to fell a straight cedar along the path to the weir. He limbed it and used hammer, chisels, and axe to split it into long strips. The process would be easier with a draw knife, but he could use his axe well enough to rough-hew what he needed. He did this with three trees. He’d counted out what he needed of boards and pegs as he’d lain on the stone before sleep. Once finished, he carried his new lumber back to the adit.

The dwarves had built a waterwheel inside. It was Hobblefoot’s initiative, no doubt, but they hadn’t followed through, most likely too eager and distracted looking for a strike. Yorvig didn’t understand that. There was so much that could have been improved in their lives with only a few days’ labor. Had no one taken initiative? Had these problems been brewing since the start? He wondered what the long winter had been like there, this waterwheel left alone while they hauled ore up the shaft by hand. That would stop. It had to stop.

One of the others had brought a corkscrew drill with them to the mine, thankfully. Yorvig used that to drill the holes in the lumber where he needed them, after carefully measuring with line and charcoal. Striper meowed and rubbed against his boot as he worked, and he paused only long enough to scratch behind her ears now and then.

“Where are your kittens, eh?” he asked absently. He’d seen one or two, but they had started to hunt on their own, now, and they’d be prowling. Dawn had not yet come.

Shineboot rose first. Yorvig was surprised he hadn’t woken anyone else with the sound of his work, but Sledgefist and Hobblefoot had fallen into deep sleep after their labor.

Shineboot entered the waterwheel chamber and found Yorvig fitting some arms to the mechanism.

“Ay, yes, we meant to do that, but we. . . They wanted to strike as soon as possible. It wouldn't have sped things up.”

“Maybe not if you had two dwarves working the pulley system. This won’t take more than a day, I reckon,” Yorvig said. Shineboot nodded. It looked like he wanted to talk, but he hesitated, then sighed.

“I better get a head start,” he said and walked out of the chamber. Yorvig didn’t look after him. The best thing he could do for Shineboot was to get this mechanism functioning so he could hope to keep up with Hobblefoot and Sledgefist while Yorvig went hunting. Because hunting was what mattered most, now. He wished that Shineboot would aid him, instead of going back to the shaft, but he doubted he could convince him to go against Hobblefoot. It may be better not to try.

Yorvig had to go back out and cut some more timber. The system would have to lift tons of rock and do so again and again. When he returned, he noticed that Sledgefist and Hobblefoot were gone from their alcoves. He could hear the sound of picks echoing up the shaft. He wasn’t sorry that he’d missed them.

By then, he’d already attached the wooden shaft to the hub of the wheel. With more time and care, he would have used a pit wheel in the same chamber as the waterwheel, fitted to a wallower and then a spur wheel system. These were mechanisms every dwarven gilke knew from childhood. They even made miniature toys of wood or brass for teaching such things. Yorvig didn’t have enough time. Instead, he fitted a spur wheel onto the end of the wooden shaft where it stuck out into the adit drift. He was just fixing the spur wheel securely by driving pins when Sledgefist climbed up the ladder shaft and approached him. His brother had a broad visage above his thick curly blond beard, a face that flushed red easily with excitement, anger, joy, or beer. It was a face that was easy to like, easy to put confidence in. Right now, it was a sandy grey with dust, as were his bare arms where the sweat had not streaked and muddied them.

“I need you hauling my ore.”

“What we need is to get a lift working. We’ll starve hauling your ore if all four of us are working the drifts.”

“We wouldn’t starve if Hobblefoot wasn’t so stubborn. I could have used your aid in the argument.”

“I’m giving what aid I can give here and now. Unless you both want to stop mining and make sure we don’t starve this winter.”

“We won’t starve. But we came here to mine, not run about the forest.”

“Someone needs to run about the forest or we won’t live to see the Hardfell brothers again.” If they even come.

“It won’t be me, not yet. I’m close to another strike. I feel that in my bones.”

“I can see your bones,” Yorvig said. “And that’s all anyone will find in the spring unless we prepare.”

“We can hunt after we strike.”

“The stone won’t go anywhere.”

“Go ahead, then,” Sledgefist snapped. “Do as you wish.” With that, he turned and left.