The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

The hunters were in a sour mood when Tonkil and Yorvig rushed into the camp and harried them into action, shaking awake two who had dropped off in warm dreams by the fire. After reminding them that there could be maids among the newcomers, the dwarves rose a little more readily, though still grumbling. Taking up the hides of meat again, they headed north along the ridge as night fell. Yorvig suspected that the herders would camp along the river where they had easy water, still a couple miles south of the claim. That might give them a chance to reach the mine and prepare. Yet again, the newcomers had made better time than he expected.

It was the middle of the next day when the flocks and herds arrived. Yorvig stood with the other owners near the bridge, waiting as they approached. It was the closest he’d been to Onyx, and he wished he could speak with her, but there was no opportunity, not in the group. He had not yet found words, anyway. When he glanced at her, she was looking away. As she had when the first expedition of newcomers arrived, she wore no veil, and her braided hair was piled in a great sheaf on her head, well-oiled. Shineboot and Khlif were at the fore of the newcomers with wide grins as they hurried up to them. Greal and Khlif embraced, and Shineboot clasped hands with each of them in turn, except for Onyx. To her he nodded only, still smiling. Yorvig was truly pleased to see Shineboot. He had missed the level-headed dwarf.

“You are here in good time!” Yorvig said.

“I know,” he answered. “We pushed out of Deep Cut at the earliest possible, and in truth we have had an easy enough way. The herders know their business.”

Baaing and squealing began to fill the air as scores of sheep, pigs, and goats were pushed along the riverbank by herders wielding long crooks. There was also a cluster of dwarves carrying axes, but they no longer looked for trees to cut and mark. They had arrived, and they looked glad of it. There were families, too. He saw a few wifs with their dark cloth and maids that could have been gilna or rhundaela, it was difficult to tell. There were a few younger gilke and gilne that might only be ten years. It felt strange to see children after so long, and it gave him a thrill of nervousness to think of them there in the wilds.

“Come,” Yorvig said to Khlif and Shineboot. “There is much to tell, no doubt, and in the meantime we have prepared a feast in the dell for the new arrivals.”

Indeed, they had prepared a feast of the salted elk, radishes, cabbage, and pitchers of sap beer upon trestle tables of hewn wood set up in long rows, with a head table for the claim owners. Two whole herder families had come, along with the wifs and children of two of the gardeners. It was quickly circulated among the dwarves of the claim that there were not one, but two young maids who had just reached rhundal, one just during the trip there. Beyond the two herders with their families, five single herders had come, though some were brothers and cousins, and seven hale dwarves in the path-making cadre.

In all, twenty-eight more dwarves were joining them, not including a small group of prospectors who had followed for safety and guidance. The lower dell crawled with pigs and goats and sheep grazing on the green growth that had sprung up with vigor after the clearing of the trees. A couple pigs spooked and crashed into one of the trestle tables, and the dwarves there just managed to hold it steady and save most of the food from falling. Just over a hundred head of combined stock had finished the journey. In Deep Cut, the few herds were penned at the bottom of the ravines and fed upon turnips and radishes grown on the terraces. More herds grazed the western slopes of the Red Ridges, where at least some coarse grass grew in season. Now they grazed upon the vibrant green growth of the dell with zeal.

Even as Yorvig chewed his elk and heard without listening the chatter and joy of the dwarves of the claim around him, he was doing sums. Eighty-eight dwarves in the mine eating daily. That was close to one-hundred-thousand pounds of food in a year. Even if they ate every animal that had come, it wouldn’t last them a third of the year. And they would have to keep many for breeding. The gardeners—who alone of the dwarves gobbled down some food and hurried to keep erecting strong fences around the gardens to keep the stock out—had assured him that the harvest would support hundreds. He hoped they spoke the truth.

“Why are we feeding them?” Sledgefist asked. Yorvig looked up. His brother was staring at a group of dwarves near the end of a trestle table. They were the prospectors who had joined in with the herders for safety on the last leg of the journey, but who did not intend to stay on at the claim. At the moment, Tonkil was leaned over speaking with one of them.

“Have we forgotten all rules of hospitality?” Yorvig asked.

“These are the wilds, and we were here first."

“Let’s hope for their sakes that we aren’t here last.”

“What do you mean?”

Yorvig shrugged.

“Just talking,” he said. That was partly true. But there was a deeper fear there, a sense that they had to be prepared. Maybe it was the lingering horror of the siege. Maybe those days had gotten into his bones. Yorvig hoped that was all it was. One of Striper's kittens, now a mature cat, darted underneath one of the trestle tables. Onyx sat at the end of the owners table between her brothers, bare faced with shining hair. It was distracting, but unlike last time, all eyes were not on her. At least, not all the time. The dwarves in the dell were also sharing ample glances at the other two unmarried maids, and sometimes back and forth between them as if sizing them up. The two new-come maids wore half-veils, though they left their hair unwrapped.

Tonkil approached Yorvig at the table. The old dwarf looked uncomfortable around so many.

“The prospectors saw no ürsi, either,” he said. “But a bear mauled one. The fool had harried her young. That's what led his companions to join the herders.”

"Did the dwarf die?"

"No," Tonkil said. "But his brother took him down to East Spire, instead." It was a relief to Yorvig.

“Thank you.” He had asked Tonkil to inquire of every prospector he met. He’d also told him to make sure they knew to come to them for aid in need, though most did not take it seriously.

Someone caught Yorvig’s eye as they passed by the end of the trestle tables.

“Oi!” Yorvig called. The dwarf stopped and looked, cowing a little as if he were a caught gilke. At the same moment, Yorvig realized he’d forgotten the dwarf’s name. He had made special inquiries about the names of all the skilled dwarves, and he’d known this one's name, but it had fled. It was the young beekeeper. He motioned him over. He’d been meaning to speak with him but had not had the chance.

“Have you met Tonkil?” Yorvig asked the beekeeper.

“No, though I’ve seen him,” the dwarf said, then turning to Tonkil he added with a half-bow: “I am called Balmhand, Uncle.”

Tonkil nodded to him.

“Balmhand is trapping our bees,” Yorvig said, relieved that the tactic had worked to reveal the dwarf's name.

“I see.”

“How fares the process?” Yorvig asked.

“Slowly. We have two colonies this summer.”

“Just two?”

“It will take great care to grow them and split them into more. For now, we focus on keeping these well and thriving and hope for more next year.”

“And how many pounds of honey can we expect from these?”

“Perhaps twenty pounds each.”

“So little?”

“We cannot risk taking too much. The winters here are much harsher than Deep Cut."

“I had noticed,” Yorvig said. He saw the dwarf’s expression fall, and he felt sorry for it. Yorvig waved his hand to the side as if to say, worry not. "Tell me more."

“If we take too much, we risk that they will not have enough to last them to spring.”

“And how much mead might a pound of honey produce?”

“A pound? The brewer would know more than I. There are different recipes.”

“Venture a guess.”

“Two pounds for a dry.”

“For how much mead?”

“A gallon.”

A gallon. No wonder mead was costly. He wasn’t sure if it was better to brew the honey or to save it for flavoring or preservation.

“Thank you—“ He paused for a frightening moment, but then had it: “—Balmhand.”

Balmhand nodded, backed away from the table, and hurried on to wherever he was going. Tonkil smirked, gave a half-bow, and left to go sit among the hunters again.

That night and the next day were busy. Oaths were sworn at the end of the feast. The new drifts were long enough for the newcomers to have tens and the families their twenty-fives, but Yorvig had Warmcoat divvy them up as he aided the herders in preparing pens and paddocks for the swine and sheep and goats. The dell was transformed by nightfall. The herders had asked for miners to help with the cutting of a sheep-fold into the bottom of the cliff-face, to allow them to shelter the stock inside during poor weather or from wild predators. Yorvig assured them he had seen no jackals, but he kept from mentioning worse. He gave orders to the cadres to send miners to aid the herders. Hobblefoot grumbled that so many dwarves were detached to work on terraces and now the sheep-fold, but it was nothing more than grumbling, and Yorvig reminded him that they had seven new hale kulhan who had come as axe-dwarves. They would be added to the cadres, and two of them had completed apprenticeships. The detachment for the sheep fold was sent.

He was just heading to his private chamber to sleep when he met Onyx at the door to the Owners Drift.

“Well worked,” Yorvig said with a smile, using the customary greeting or farewell for after the completion of labors. She seemed startled by his sudden appearance at the door.

“I’m sure,” she said, keeping her head low. She brushed past him without word or glance, not even stopping. He turned and watched her go, confused. In Deep Cut, no one would have responded with anything but “well worked,” in return to the greeting and certainly not brushed by so curtly unless willing to make their coldness known. The warmth drained from his face. She did not turn and look back once before she reached the smithy. What was she doing there? Was she going to see someone? He wanted to follow her. But no. He would not stoop to such indignity.

Turning, he continued to his private chamber and slammed the door, breathing hard as if he’d exerted himself. Nothing about the maid made sense. Did she want him or not? Or was she merely cruel, playing with him like a cat with a mouse, to be discarded when no longer amusing?

There was a scratching at the door. Yorvig opened it. Striper was on the other side. She seemed to have a sense for when he would sleep, but she refused to look eager. So he stood there with the door open as she stretched and yawned languorously before finally taking a few ginger steps across the threshold. Yorvig shook his head and closed the door once more. Like a maid, always dictating the terms. Even if they want inside, they do not make it simple. Yorvig reached deep, looking for anger to replace his confusion and hurt. But just as he started to find it, he realized he didn’t want it, or maybe he found fatigue instead, though he had worked no harder than normal. Sleep would be his friend that night, to let him forget for a time.

“We’ve struck more hematite, and more amethyst of middling quality,” Sledgefist said.

“And there are granite intrusions,” Warmcoat added. "That is slowing us somewhat."

“It’s all bent together. It’s one massive fold and twist of seams,” Hobblefoot added. “And the veins are branching too much for single stopes.”

They were together, all the original miners of their number—Sledgefist, Hobblefoot, Warmcoat, Shineboot, and Khlif too—save one. Yorvig thought of Savvyarm. He wished that dwarf was there with them, with his friendly and cheerful way. Yorvig could have used a good long drink with him and so much talk about nothing in particular.

“Then it’s room-and-pillar, now,” Yorvig said. It was a method of mining where a whole level plane was mined out, leaving pillars at intervals sufficient to hold up the mine back—the roof. They’d already joined the new delvings to the Low Adit drifts that Hobblefoot and Sledgefist had first mined.

“It must be,” Hobblefoot agreed.

“The question is at what depth and what height?” Shineboot said.

Depth meant what plane they would begin digging at, but what height meant how high the rooms would be dug from that plane.

“Let it be a stacked room-and-pillar. Begin with three by one. Let it be three stacks of twenty.” It meant that they they would cut a three-hundred foot-long and one-hundred foot-wide section of rock at twenty feet high, and once cleared, would cut the next twenty feet down, and the next twenty after that.

“You’ve got Deep Cut on the mind. That’s more common for salt," Sledgefist said.

“This way we know we’ve gotten what we want from that stone, and we control the drifts better than pursuing every seam and every lode in every direction.”

“Ay, that’s true,” Warmcoat said.

“We can always change course as needed,” Yorvig added. “But let’s begin as if that is the plan.”

“Ay, alright.” Sledgefist rubbed his callused hands together.

“Anything else?”

The dwarves looked at each other.

“Alright then,” Yorvig said. “Let’s begin. But not Hobblefoot’s cadre.”

“What? Why not?” Hobblefoot asked, throwing up his hands.

“You’re needed elsewhere.”

Yorvig’s cousin Hobblefoot had completed additional apprenticeship as a mine engineer, and it was time to make use of it. They had built a waterwheel well before it was truly needed, and the rudimentary lift Yorvig had made had been disassembled before they'd trapped the ürsi. Now it was time to put the wheel to good use. “You’re going to take your cadre and build rock crushers, and hammer mills with fine sluices. And get the old sluices operational again.”

The lines on Hobblefoot's forehead slowly smoothed, and his mouth turned in a smile.

“And I get my whole cadre?” he asked.

“Ay, but keep them working. If you have too many during the finer tasks, have them move rock from the High Adit. They will build a second berm across the entire mouth of the dell ninety feet below the current tailings pond.”

They had thrown so much rock outside the High Adit that the piles were over halfway up the cliff face again, rolling down in slopes. It risked blocking the ladder to the tower. They had kept all the ore separate, or any rock worth crushing, but they needed equipment. Using water to power a crusher and a hammer mill would save incredible amounts of time crushing ore. The crusher would grind it into gravel, and the hammer mill would smash the gravel into a powder. Then it could be stratified, sluiced, and smelted.

“You’re building a second tailings pond?” Shineboot asked.

“We need to move the rock, anyway” he said. “And we may be able stock it with fish.”

They weren’t short on fish, not with the new weirs in the river that they had completed after the thaw and spring floods. One small weir had taken Yorvig many days. Twenty kulhan had weired nearly the whole span in two. Yet stocking a massive pond would not be a poor idea, especially come winter. But in Yorvig’s mind, it was just another barrier to anything coming up the dell. They would have more and more rock to manage. They may as well use it for defenses until they could be sure they didn’t need them.

“Don’t worry,” Hobblefoot said, still alight with the possibility of the water engines. No doubt he was already dreaming of steam. “We’ll keep them busy.”

"Are we not forgetting something?" Sledgefist asked. It was a tactful way of suggesting that Yorvig was forgetting something. "We have many dwarves, now, and we are digging deep. Room-and-pillar mining creates high ceilings for gas and vapor to collect. Should we not consider vents first?"

"So soon?" Warmcoat asked. "I am sure if we cut the drift high, it will pose no trouble yet. The draw is still strong to the adits."

"It's fine when the adit doors are open so far," Shineboot said. "But there is already an air suck when the doors are closed. They howl at night."

"Then let us not hide from work that must be done, anyway," Yorvig said.

"We're going to need ventilation pumps," Hobblefoot said looking at the ceiling as he planned. Good air pumps were constructed of oiled wood and leather, driven by water and sometimes coal-fired steam back in Deep Cut. Like large bellows, the pumps could move a wind through the mines when well-planned. The dwarves often carved vents in order for the passing air and gases to make a low howl or singing note as they passed out of the channel. This low hum formed a backdrop to their delving. It was ignored, fading into the far back of consciousness—until it stopped.

"Can we use the stream for the pumps also?" Yorvig asked.

"There is not enough head on the artesian well to operate all these things. We can dam it for more. It would still not support the hammer and the pumps."

Head meant the difference between the height of the source water and the location of the wheel workings. The more head and the more volume of water, the greater the power to be harnessed.

"Could we mine the source further? It may elevate," Shineboot suggested.

"Or recede. It is a risk. We would need many more feet of head. If we cut a test drift above the well, say twenty feet, and strike the water, it would tell us. We should not cut below."

"Do it, then," Yorvig said.

"We'll want sets of intake and exhaust vents below the High Adit and more sets above on the cliff face," Hobblefoot went on.

It meant more sub-division of labor for Hobblefoot's cadre, but the tasks were to his liking, and they could be done with time.

"It is in your hands, cousin," Yorvig said. "Just make sure it can all be brought beneath the stone at need."