The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

Sledgefist leaned into Yorvig's chamber as he slept.

"Chargrim!" he said, his voice was stern. Yorvig rolled out of his alcove and landed in a crouch, grabbing for Treadfoot. His mind reeled to ürsi.

"What is it?"

"There's been an accident in the kulhan drift. Come."

Yorvig left Treadfoot and followed, nearly hopping on his poor leg to keep up with his brother's quick pace. They entered the kulhan drift and saw a cluster of dwarves down toward the end. They waited silently and parted as Sledgefist and Yorvig approached.

Sledgefist led him to the new-carved door of a miner's ten, one of the allotments given to the new kulhan. The door passage was carved, and inside it opened into an unfinished chamber. Yorvig grimaced and had to fight the urge to turn away when he saw the scene inside. A facet of the ceiling had sundered and fallen. It had caught the young dwarf beneath and crumpled him down into what remained of a fetal position, bursting his innards behind him. There was a smell like a gutted animal.

"Shit."

He looked up at the ceiling, looking for a reason.

"There was a fracture under stress," Sledgefist said. "He should have recognized it. If he had done an apprenticeship, it wouldn't have happened."

Yorvig could see the signs. There was the fracture, and it ran down through the new chamber at a downward angle from front to back. There was seeping moisture there. The dwarf had carved beneath it, not recognizing the stone above him was not held true. Judging by the facets of the break, it had popped suddenly, a few tons of stone. Had the dwarf been a foot further back, he might have lived.

The cadres were under supervision when they were digging on their shifts, but they had free hand to carve their own chambers. Yorvig had not expected it to be an issue. Even a gilke in a miner's family would likely have recognized and mitigated the danger—especially with the leaking moisture. But was this dwarf even from a mining family? His father could have been a smelter or anything else. Eagerness likely played a part. Ten feet by ten feet, it was the most stone this dwarf had ever had to himself, no doubt. Yorvig had heard the stories of what it was like when Tourmaline and Salt led the folk into the caverns of Deep Cut after so long above ground, so few of them experienced miners.

"Who knew him best?" Yorvig asked, looking at the dwarves clustered around. Their faces were somber, but none looked grief-stricken.

"He called himself Yellowkettle," one of the kulhan answered.

"It was his own fault," Hobblefoot said. "Thankfully, he was not a skilled miner. We will not feel his loss so dear."

Yorvig stared at his cousin blankly for a moment, shocked. Then he turned to the kulhan.

"We will feel his loss. And when we find out who his family is, they will be paid his wages as if he had fulfilled the term of his oath. He will be interred under stone until his bones may be returned to them."

Hobblefoot frowned, not liking the indirect censure, but it was necessary. They had all been unskilled at one time. And whose fault was it that so many unskilled dwarves were mining in their claim? Yorvig's, mostly.

"He was in my cadre," Sledgefist said. "An eager hand. My dwarves will clear it in the morning."

"No," Yorvig said, then spoke to the kulhan again. "The rest of you, go on your way. The owners will clear this now."

There wasn't enough of Yellowkettle's face left for Yorvig to know what he had looked like, and he didn't know all the kulhan well enough to miss a face out of the crowd, either. It bothered him that he would never know what the dwarf had looked like, even though he must have seen him. It was unlikely that they had spoken to each other. Yellowkettle had made the journey to the dell only to die like that.

Spring strengthened, the snow atop the ridges receded higher and grew ragged, and Yorvig heard more reports of prospectors, mostly from Tonkil and his hunters. Thankfully, only three dwarves who had sworn their oaths to the claim were reported missing as the weather turned. They three had always stuck together in their free time, never started digging their own chambers like the others, and their tools and bedroll were all missing as well, so Yorvig did not bother to order a search. They had gone prospecting, using the safety of the expedition to get them there and waiting for better weather.

Nor did Yorvig make a fuss over it before the other dwarves. They all knew. Yorvig hadn’t known them well at all but they had been split between Sledgefist's and Warmcoat’s cadres. If they showed up again, they would be recognized. Yorvig wasn’t sure what he would do if they did show up again. There were penalties for such things in Deep Cut, but what did that matter here?

Back in the Waste above Deep Cut, the hot season would already have begun. Shineboot and Khlif should be underway with the herds and flocks, with dwarves cutting a foot-path as they came snaking through the Red Ridges following streams and gaps and rivers. Buds swelled on the trees, and along the river grasses and other tender shoots displayed dark green already. The brewer had managed to direct the collection of a huge amount of sap along both sides of the river. Already, the dwarves had ample rations of maple and birch beers, and the brewer was distilling liquor. Tonkil and his hunting party continued to bring in fish and game. They weren’t keeping up with consumption yet—not to comfortable rations. They needed flocks and gardens. But if they could hold at this rate of hunting, Yorvig hoped that they could last a couple more months—long enough for the garden to begin to help with early radishes and turnips. Yorvig had given the gardeners a contingent of kulhan even as the brewer’s need for them ended. The new terraces taking shape in the cliff, but the cultivators said it would take ten such terraces to feed all the dwarves expected, and that would take much more time. So, the upper reaches of the dell were carved into terraced garden beds using mullock-pile rock for retaining walls, and the gardeners planted there even as the new terraces were being carved into the cliff.

One warm spring morning, Yorvig found himself standing in the upper terrace looking at the dell and the gardeners working below. The vernal stream rushed over its boulders and cobbles down from the heights, the tailings pond overflowing its banks in cascading sheets, and for a moment he felt good. He felt proud. They had done this. He had done this. It was only for a moment. Then he thought of Savvyarm and . . . his mind blanked. It took him a few horrifying moments to remember it: Yellowkettle. He had almost forgotten the dwarf's name.

That was when he heard footsteps and turned to see Onyx. She wore a veil as she approached, but as she came to stand next to Yorvig, she unpinned the corner and let it hang to the side, revealing her face. Yorvig’s stomach lurched. She took a long, deep breath of the air that smelled of thawing soil and mineral-laden water.

“They say they could feed two hundred with the plantings, as you asked,” she said. “But it won’t have the variety of Deep Cut. Some things won’t grow well this high and cold.”

“They can’t wait for warmer weather to plant?”

“It won’t be warm long enough.”

Yorvig had asked that the gardeners plan to feed two hundred, both because he wanted to lay in stock of food, pickling in crocks if need be, and because he was worried about a siege. He mentioned that part to no one. He was also worried about all the prospectors flooding into the area. For every dwarf they saw coming to stake a claim, Yorvig suspected there were plenty of others either crossing the ridgeline to the south or passing undetected. They couldn’t feed them all if they came begging, but after the experiences of these past two years, part of him wanted to. Not that he wouldn’t let them trade whatever gold or gem they'd found for food, either.

Yorvig looked at Onyx, squinting as if he was thinking about what she’d said. In truth, he was looking at her only to look at her. What was she doing, coming to stand beside him and take down her veil? And why had she done so before the whole mine that first day?

“You have refused my brother and Hobblefoot,” he said.

“More than once.”

“They are good dwarves and will be rich.”

“I told you before, the right dwarf has not asked.”

“By the sound of it, nearly every dwarf in this claim has asked.”

“Not nearly.”

Yorvig’s heart was pounding again. Was she playing with them? Was she just cruel, enjoying this to their torture?

“I do not understand you.”

“What part of what I’ve said don’t you understand?”

“It’s not what you said. It’s what you do.”

“I look after my business.”

“Sometimes I wish you’d never come,” he said. He was surprised he said such a thing. But he was angry, or at least he wanted to be. No matter what he accomplished, he felt no peace. The dead stayed dead, and besides the dead, she was the biggest splinter in his self-content.

Onyx’s brow darkened and she looked at him for the first time during the conversation.

“Why?”

Yorvig raised his hands in exasperation.

“You are a problem I cannot solve.”

“Why can’t you solve it?”

“Because I swore an oath!” Yorvig snapped. “You know this.” He regretted it as soon as he'd said it.

“I heard that you swore an oath not to pursue me as rinlen. Is that not so?”

“It is.”

“Then stop being rinlen.”

Yorvig gaped at her.

“You mean—what?”

“Stop being rinlen and pursue me then. Or convince the others to release you.”

“You would have me abandon my position?”

“If you wish to pursue me."

Yorvig couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The very idea was a struggle to understand. It went against everything he’d ever heard about why and how maids chose a dwarf. Was she mad? Was she trying to trick him, to let another become rinlen so she could marry them instead? He didn't even bother thinking of the second option. Even if Hobblefoot and Sledgefist settled for other maids, he believed they would enforce that oath. Better no one win than they lose. More than that, he couldn't help but feel that to ask release from the oath would be to break it.

“That. . . that makes no sense.”

“I own an eighth of this claim by rights. What care I for your position? For any dwarf's? I am as wealthy as you. I need make no decision from poverty. I could marry the poorest dwarf in Deep Cut by my choosing, and still be rich. I could marry the wealthiest.”

“So why don’t you then!”

“I may one day. But I won’t be their ornament, nor they mine.”

“You’re infuriating,” he said.

Onyx smiled, but Yorvig couldn’t tell what was behind it. She casually reached up to her veil and re-pinned it across her face with one hand, watching him all the while with those eyes.

“Are you saying you would marry me if I abandoned my position?” he asked.

“No,” she said, beginning to turn away. “I said you could pursue me.”

“Would you want me to?”

“You are a dwarf of many qualities, Chargrim, but in this you lack sense. I make no promises. I am not bound. All I said was how you could be free of your oath.”

“You didn’t answer me. Would you want me to—” he hesitated, then added: “Me, more than others. Do you want me to pursue you?”

She cocked her head to the side and looked at him.

“You come dangerously close to pursuing me by that question," she said. "I told you I like a dwarf of his word." With that, she walked away.

Yorvig barely held back a shout of rage and frustration as she entered the drift toward the stair.