The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

Two days later, the three dwarves left, carrying amethysts, gold, smoked meat, and their weapons. Sledgefist carried his crossbow. Yorvig was loath to send it from the mine, but he felt the travelers would be safer with it. He kept the other back for hunting. Yorvig and Warmcoat watched them depart from the vantage of the adit tower, until Shineboot in the rear slid down the embankment beyond the tailings pond and was gone from sight.

“Good speed,” Warmcoat said, and turned to go back into the mine. Yorvig stared a little longer, doing sums in his head again. This time, he was trying to figure out how soon they could expect the reinforcements. He didn’t doubt the gold would lure some. He may have overstated the case to the others, but then, they were more experienced dwarves than he, and they could assess the risks and benefits themselves. On the other hand, it had been that concern—that they couldn’t or weren’t assessing the risks—that had led Yorvig to this mad position of rinlen in the first place.

The next week passed with mining, and Yorvig even let them refrain from hunting that week, as with the others gone, the supply of fish from the weir was supplying them better. The autumn chill had just started to tinge the evenings, reminding Yorvig they needed to prepare, but they all wished to focus on the gold for at least a short time. They would want a hoard of it mined and smelted to pay any newcomers that arrived. And they would also need to dig a treasure hold with a locked and secure door. He trusted these dwarves to deal honestly, but newcomers? They would sink the treasury at the end of their drift of private stoneholds, though only Onyx had done any digging there. Yorvig would have to decide where to portion out rock for the newcomers to delve their own chambers. He thought on these things as he swung his pick.

When the dwarves first arrived in the caverns of Deep Cut, exuberance had outpaced wisdom. The folk had dug wherever they wished, however they could. It had resulted in collapses and a hopelessly convoluted system of drifts and chutes and halls. They needed to avoid such errors in their claim. It must be ordained ahead of time.

Everyone kept quiet and steady that week and into the next, but he did not know what occupied Onyx, except it be gardening. She had not even smelted. He hadn’t checked in on the terrace plots. Onyx had been managing it, and Yorvig was happy to let her and concern himself with other things. Yet he had not seen more than a glimpse of her in days. She had taken to spending more and more time in the terraces. Gardening must be demanding, but that demanding? He needed to know how it went and what they could expect the yield to be for winter.

So on the ninth day since the expedition set out for Deep Cut and after he had mined for a sixteen hour shift, Yorvig drank a ladle of water from the drinking cask of river water—unwilling to drink from the brook outside the low adit so long as the ürsi remained there. For all they knew, they were rotting dead in the stream inside. Refreshed, he headed toward the spiral stair. Part of him knew he was just going to see Onyx, and part of him asserted the need to check on the garden beds. Both were true. It mattered for the sums. And the last conversation they’d had kept replaying in his mind. Had he been pompous?

He walked into the first terrace. The two long raised garden beds stretched out to either hand, sporting many rows of little turnip and radish plants. No one was there. He climbed to the next terrace where he knew he would find cabbages growing from seeds Onyx had kept back from the first planting. She was hoping these would ripen in time. More cabbage grew in the dell below alongside the leafy hill-smoke bushes that would be ready to harvest and hang to dry soon. Had Onyx planted the third terrace? He climbed up the next turn of the stair and as soon as he reached the top, he saw her. She was standing on the terrace at the end of the drift, her arms folded beneath her chest, staring up at the mountain ridge above the dell and the gnarled cap of the rocky peak.

From the perspective of the dell, it was difficult to see the peak above them, so steep was its rise. Only a narrow chunk of the conglomerate spire rose above the trees that furred the mountainside. The pink hues of the dying sunset stained the rock, even as dusk settled on the dell below. To the west, the next ridgeline gave much grander vistas—wide swaths of undulating ridges and jagged outcrops, the tops still bearing the light—but then, those weren’t their mountains. Their mountain sheltered them, wrapped its arm-like lower ridges around them, even though they could not see it well for closeness. Yorvig let his footfalls sound heavily as he approached, out of courtesy. Onyx glanced over her shoulder, then looked back out across the dell.

The garden beds on this terrace were empty. At Onyx's direction, they had piled up the soil atop small sticks and leaves and pine needles to keep it from packing down too much.

“Nothing up here yet, then,” Yorvig said.

“No,” Onyx answered, not looking over.

"What can we count on for a harvest?"

"I hope for six or seven bushels of radishes and turnips together, and maybe fifty heads of cabbage."

They had grown more radishes and turnips than that, but they had eaten many throughout the summer.

"In the terraces or altogether?"

"Altogether. The hill-smoke has done best of all, but it will not feed us. There are mints for teas. The mangelwurzels did not do well in the dell. I fear the soil was too shallow. I will keep what seeds we have until next spring. The onions too are small. Garlic will not be ready until next spring. "

He looked out across the dell. It was a struggle to be optimistic. The vegetables were better than nothing. He wasn't sure how long they would keep in the cool dark of the mine. They had no salt to brine or ferment them. They may not be able to eat the hill-smoke, but a pipe would be nice after so long. They stood in silence for a time.

“I’m sorry if you wanted to go home and not return,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking that. As soon as the newcomers arrive, we can arrange for your return.”

“I don’t want to go back,” she said.

That stumped him. After their conversation, it had occurred to him that maybe she wanted a one-way journey. She had complained that her brothers had tricked her. He couldn’t wrap his mind around her.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Onyx sighed.

“I wanted to see mountains,” she said, after a moment. “In my life, I wanted to see mountains.”

That didn’t answer his question, exactly.

“You can see the Brown Hills from Deep Cut,” Yorvig said.

She shot him a sharp glance.

“I think I know that.”

Of course she does.

“They’re no Kara-Indal,” he said, trying to recover. It was true. They were low, brown, coarse hills veined with iron but little else. So little rain fell there that the rock felt coarse even on the surface.

“They’re no Kara-Indal,” she answered. “This is as close as I’m going to get. They say the Kara-Indal are ten thousand feet high, with glaciers and valleys no one has seen, not even in the days of the Crippled King.”

“So they say.”

“I don’t know why Tourmaline didn’t lead us back there.”

Striper yowled and bolted from alongside the garden bed, fleeing to the stairwell. They watched her run. Yorvig hadn’t even realized she’d padded up there with them.

“The north is brutal,” he said, turning back to the conversation. “We never would have made it there, not with trolls and ürsi and worse and our folk so few. Auntie Tourmaline and Uncle Salt knew better than anyone. They'd been there.”

“I know why,” she said. “I just don’t know why. Why it all had to happen like that.”

This maid makes no sense. He'd just said why.

“They say the kingdom of Laith has reached the southern foothills,” she went on.

“The downs are good for flocks, I hear. But the ürsi and trolls still have the Kara-Indal.”

“Ay, yes.”

“You didn’t answer me,” he said.

“About what?”

“About what you want, now. You’ve seen the mountains.” He gestured vaguely toward the ridge.

“What makes you think you’re entitled to know?” She looked over at him, her eyes piercing above her yellow veil. She still wore her hair covered, as if traveling. It wasn’t usual for a maid to hide the glory of her hair.

“Not entitled. Just asking.”

That response seemed to take a little of the bite out of her gaze, and she hesitated.

“I will see what becomes of this claim. I will look at these mountains and wonder what lies beneath. I will see these mountains swathed in snow and think of the days of Ice-Cloak."

"For all your days?"

"One day I will marry."

“Most willing maids are wed within a couple years of rhundal.”

“You have a talent for telling me what I know,” she said.

“Then tell me what I don’t know.”

“The right dwarf has never asked.”

“Something tells me that so far no one could be the right dwarf, regardless.”

“You’re not made as much of granite as you seem,” she said with a chuckle, tapping her temple once.

It irritated him, but he chose not to bite at the insult paired to the compliment.

“I will tell you this,” she said. “I know now that my brothers knew of Sledgefist’s and Hobblefoot’s intentions, and they did not tell me. I have also learned what you swore. Know that I value a dwarf of his word."

Yorvig's muscles stiffened, and his jaw clamped together.

She stood there, staring at the fading light on the high ridges for a time. Then, she sighed and turned away. “Are you staying here?” It was an invitation to walk with her.

“No,” he said, turning—but for some reason, even as he took the first step to follow, he glanced back out at the dell and flinched.

There were ürsi cresting the low ridge across the dell. Onyx followed his gaze.

“Let the kulkur burn,” she cursed, looking past him.

They came swarming down toward the dell, and at the same time more scrambled up the pond embankment. None turned aside to the Low Adit, still blocked by a mound of heaped stone. Instead, they came straight for the High Adit tower.