The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

A thaw came, enough for the dwarves to retrieve their dead and raise a cairn for them in the center of the dell. Another storm struck after the thaw, then another thaw melted that snow, and with this one the first lying scents of spring rose from the slush and mud, only to be followed by a freeze without snow that hardened the mud and covered the river in dark ice. No fresh signs of ürsi were seen. Under guard the herders sallied and stripped pine branches and tree bark and dug beneath remnants of drifted snow for dried reeds and river grasses to keep the herds alive until the tender shoots of spring could rise from the soil.

Yorvig squinted as he approached the High Adit door. It was three months since the siege. The bridge was down, but it led to nowhere. The High Adit tower was being rebuilt with stone. Yorvig stood on the ledge and surveyed the progress. It would take a month, but instead of an increasingly rickety post-and-beam tower of split logs, they would have a sturdy fortification with stair and a treadwheel crane elevator. The tower might not be absolutely necessary yet, but the labor was. At least the tower provided more security, rather than more ore piled to await smelting. Another cadre was charcoaling, and until then the smelters were cold. Yorvig would have happily thrown all their efforts into preparing for conflict. The problem was, these dwarves did not come here for that. The kulhan swore oaths as miners, and they were paid on a share of what was mined in the claim. If they weren’t mining, they weren’t getting paid, and they knew it. These dwarves had come for wealth, not war. Yorvig could anticipate nothing other than rightful desertion if he pushed it too far. But how far was too far? He had to rely on the kulhan’s sense of urgency, but he knew from experience that not everyone agreed on such things. He could not stop the workings of the goldmine if they wanted to survive, anymore than he could stop the gardening or shepherding or the hundreds of other tasks. They had to be all things. Time, labor, and everything they had were pulled between competing priorities.

The wind was brisk, and they were all hungry. The kulhan spoke of the dreams they had in the night, and all the dreams were of food. Yorvig was accustomed to the hunger, as much as one could be, but he saw the familiar pallor on the faces of many of the kulhan. This was a time of learning for them; learning the reality of the wilds. They would never forget it.

The newcomers still did not know the struggles the few had faced at the beginning. Yorvig felt a strange sense of loss for those days, as awful as they had been. It was an effort to get the original dwarves together even to meet or eat, so busy they all were with labors and in the case of Warmcoat and Shineboot, preparation for marriage. They were trying to finish their holds by spring, but much had drawn their attention away. Yorvig was helping them as much as he could, but time was short.

Armed dwarves still paced the curtain wall around the dell. The snow was brown and trodden within from sheep and dwarves. The smell of manure and urine was strong. It was not the dell it had once been. But spring would come, and with it the sap would flow, and they would brew beer again, and the weddings would take place. Warmcoat and Shineboot were holding out for the sap. If food was short for their marriage feasts, they would ensure that intoxication was not. Yorvig smirked at the thought.

Movement at the bottom of the dell caught his attention. Dwarves were being let in at the gate and directed toward the Low Adit. Even from there, he could see how wearily they trudged. Another group of three. They’d trickled in since the battle—those who had managed to dig deep enough or find food enough to survive the ürsi were making their way to the dell, their cheekbones nearly pressing through their skin. They were stretching the meager supplies even further.

What was the number, now? Yorvig had been having that problem more and more lately—remembering the sums. It wasn’t that his mind was flagging, it was that the numbers were increasing.

At least twenty more dwarves since the siege, anyway. They would turn none away, but even prospectors who had fled to the dell earlier in a similar state grumbled now when they saw new faces.

If only they could eat gold.

He’d thought it before, and likely he’d think it again.

Shineboot was overseeing the tower construction, and so Yorvig felt confident that nothing would go too terribly wrong. The angles looked properly set as the next level rose. They had all inspected the foundations together. It was set upon the solid living rock. Within the mine, Sledgefist continued with a skeleton crew of miners working for the gold ore. Hobblefoot was busy and suitably distracted with his engineers, expanding the water-powered ventilation bellows and overseeing the sluices. Soon, Hobblefoot would build a treadwheel lift at the top of the new tower. Yorvig drifted in thought as he stared out, until a voice behind brought him back.

“Irik-Rhûl."

It was Thrushbeard, who Yorvig had placed in oversight of the sentries and the dell gate. No one had seen ürsi since the battle, but when Yorvig called for volunteers to hunt, no one stepped forward except Thrushbeard—and only once he saw no one else volunteer. They all knew what had happened to Tonkil and the others. For the foolishness of volunteering, Yorvig had made Thrushbeard hunt captain and chief sentry. Hillmane, the last of Tonkil's hunters, had packed meager supplies and left the claim without a word, taking a crossbow without permission. Whether he was returning to Deep Cut or heading elsewhere, no one knew. To try to raise confidence, Yorvig picked hunters by command and led a three day expedition, himself. They saw nothing, barely even any fresh tracks. No doubt the ürsi had depleted game for miles.

“Ay?” Yorvig asked.

“Three more,” Thrushbeard said. “Prospectors all.”

“I saw them. Any news?”

“They knew of one other claim, but it is one we knew as well, downriver.” Thrushbeard made a slight shake of his head to indicate that the second claim had been wiped out.

“That brings it to. . .”

“Twenty-four since the fight,” Thrushbeard said.

Yorvig nodded. It was a small remnant of survivors. He pitied the nightmare the winter must have been for them so far.

“Anything else?” He turned and actually looked at Thrushbeard. The dwarf had a light complexion and a nearly colorless beard, but it was his clothes that caught Yorvig’s attention. One sleeve was rent from shoulder to wrist, hanging open and flapping in the breeze that came in at the adit. Thrushbeard saw Yorvig’s glance and shrugged.

“No.”

There was nothing for it. They were out of cloth and out of thread. The flocks could be shorn in the spring and the wool felted, but that would only go so far. The making of clothes from scratch was brutally time consuming, to go from wool to washing to carding to spinning to weaving or knitting, not to speak of sewing.

“Continue on,” Yorvig said, nodding and giving an apologetic smile to Thrushbeard. He felt responsible for the fact that they were as ragged as they were, but what could he do?

It was night. The second shift of dwarves was working. The labor was divided into two shifts throughout the claim, to keep it going at all times. This provided the room to work more effectively, and also allowed the sharing of limited tools.

It also meant that Yorvig needed to be aware of the goings on of both shifts, and so his sleep pattern had been disrupted. Now, he returned to his chamber and sat on a stool. He had a stone dish of glowing wood-coals he had carried back with him, thinking he may heat some water to drink. The warm water masked the hunger. Onyx slept upon the alcove beneath a ragged wool blanket. He watched her chest rising and falling in sleep.

He was so tired that he lacked the motivation even to strip and lie down, and Onyx was near the edge of the alcove bed. He’d have to climb over to the wall, and it would certainly wake her. He didn’t want to do that. So he sat on the stool and stared in the dark and tried to think.

Whether he somehow slept sitting up or whether all thought simply fled him, he was startled when Onyx spoke:

“What are you working on?” she asked.

She had sat up and was sitting on the edge of the bed. The coals had dimmed. She wore only her long-shirt, leaving her calves bare as they hung over the rock. If Yorvig had not been so tired. . . but he was so tired.

“I’m making a list,” he answered, though he was struggling to remember what the list was about.

“You need a scribe. Someone who can write things for you. You can not keep track of all things, now.”

“I’ll put that on the list.”

“What list are you making?”

“I plan to send to Deep Cut with orders for supplies and maybe to find another blacksmith or engineer who may come. We need many bolts of cloth as well. Buying whole clothes would be too dear. And to send news of the victory.”

“News of an ürsi defeat will embolden others. More prospectors may flood to the ridges."

"Word will go out as soon as anyone gets back to Deep Cut. Besides, we need more dwarves. We need more everything."

"How many more mouths can we feed?”

"I don't know."

He had already caused the deaths of many. But if they would survive here, they needed more yowgan to labor, and that meant more mouths to feed. He was past the point where he could afford decisions made in cowardice or even regret. He must choose by calculation. He would not lie about the danger; all who came to the Red Ridges took their lives in their own hands.

“You will need to send gold for supplies. Who can you trust to send it?” Onyx asked.

Yorvig had thought of that, but it kept bringing him up short. Handing a large sum of precious gold to a dwarf and sending them off to Deep Cut might easily go awry. They must either have loyalty, such as one of the owners, or integrity, or. . . fear. Fear of reprisal. If such betrayal happened once, how could Yorvig punish it? Could he make the folk fear him?

Yorvig must have drifted off again.

“Enough for tonight," Onyx said. "There is time before spring." She reached out for him. “Sleep.”

They all grew thin that spring. Yet the gardeners had done more than Yorvig had asked of them. Slaughtering a few weaker beasts in the flocks and those that had miscarried, they would not starve unto death. A few of the bolder prospectors who had come for refuge in the fall decided to leave again, but more stayed.

It was often said among the folk: "not the gold in the hoard but the beards at the table." It meant that hospitality showed true wealth, or the number of kulhan at least. The problem was that you still needed something to feed them.

Some of the dwarves were more susceptible to the low rations than others. A few had bleeding gums and were showing signs of easy bruising. Yorvig put sentries on the meager stores.

"And who will watch the sentries?" Hobblefoot asked.

And like salvation the true thaws came, and the dwarves ranged up and down the river in armed parties, tapping the trees and collecting the plentiful flowing sap. With so many taps, they often drank it raw as it came from the tree, and light returned to many an eye. Thousands of gallons of the sweet birch and maple sap flowed into their ewers and buckets. Other labor within the dell ground to a halt as they slushed through the melting snow collecting, hauling, and emptying the vessels. Multiple fires burned in the dell night and day beneath hanging kettles boiling down the sap to a thicker consistency, and the brewer ran back and forth and begged for more casks to be made. A contingent of dwarves cut cedars across the river for just that purpose. One of the empty stopes in the mine was converted to a storechamber just for the barrels.

At the same time, the herders were busy. The flock began lambing, and bleating was heard as the shepherds separated nursing ewes into special partitions in the fold to be looked after and kept from the elements. Yorvig would have expected this to be a harbinger of good things, but instead the shepherds were more stressed than ever, beseeching him for vegetables from the few stores they had left and combing the river valley for fodder. Yorvig had to ensure that they did not strip any birch or maple trees of bark to feed to the sheep. Lately, the herders had been cutting down sheaves of dried reeds from north in the Marsh Flats where Tonkil had died. Apparently, nursing ewes needed far more to eat than usual. The herders complained that the lambs and kids were already underweight. Quite a number of them were born with goiters, too. Some didn’t make it, unable to keep their body heat. They died shivering in the bosoms of the herders, too weak to bleat. The shepherds’ faces were dark, but they did not waste the tiny carcasses. They went into the pot. Even their bones were soft enough to boil down.

For weeks this labor continued. A late blizzard struck for a day, but the sun shone afterward, and the temperatures rose even more. The river swelled and burst its banks, and the vernal streams roared from the heights. They found that the last of the squash, brown and rotting and suspicious, still made a meal mashed and boiled in reduced birch sap.

The buds swelled and burst. Green things broke the soil. It was spring.

The hunters brought in little enough meat, but they did find fresh prospectors moving up the ridges from the south. The newcomers hadn't even heard of the ürsi siege. By that, Yorvig knew that word had not reached Deep Cut. He had hoped that perhaps some of the prospectors had fled back there and survived. Now he knew they hadn’t. These newcomers were the beginning of a continued stream of prospectors who either passed by the dell along the river or stopped in to gain news or beg further supplies, depending on their need. Yorvig had no food to spare those who would not stay, and mostly the determined went off into the wilds without help. A few even came expecting to find established claims where they could simply offer their labor, and they arrived with little more than a few mining tools. These were the poorest of Deep Cut, rhundaela who had not managed to gain an apprenticeship and who did piecework for whoever would take their labor for a day. They had not the means to bring sufficient supplies, and they arrived hungry and lean, more mouths to feed and hands to put to work. Some were angry when Yorvig forced them into hunting parties and sent them ranging far under Thrushbeard's command, but he had little patience left. If they would leave, they could leave. It was spring, perhaps the safest time of the year, but Yorvig bid Thrushbeard be wary in all things.

Somehow, over the winter the dwarves of Deep Cut had stopped calling it Glintridge and had shortened it to Glint alone, judging by the way the new prospectors spoke. They also had a name for the river and the ridges around it—the Gold River Range. The names caught in the claim almost before Yorvig knew. There was something irritating about it; they did not even get to name their own claim. But then, he had not chosen the name Chargrim, either. It was not possible to bottle the wind.