The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

The next morning, the dell was full of dwarves. The miners were rotating shifts—which meant that some were off duty—but Yorvig sent all the on-duty miners and engineers to work on the tower under the guidance of one of Shineboot’s trusted cadre dwarves. Shineboot was up early making sure they had proper direction. Yorvig, too, was in the dell before daylight.

“What am I to do with so many hands?” Shineboot asked. “They’ll just be stepping on each other.”

“Have them fracturing rock for roof slating,” Yorvig said. “They’ll be done by evening and you’ll have enough to cover the tower roof.”

Shineboot squinted.

“Don’t you think they’ll know that you’re trying to make a point?”

“That should help them understand it,” Yorvig said, smiling.

And so that morning there were just over a hundred dwarves around the tower, many of them with lighter labor than they were used to, observing the strange meeting in the dell. Yorvig, each of the other owners, Thrushbeard, and Boltring all stood face to face with Crookleg and a few other herders. The herders had already done much preparation. There was a pen erected of stripped branches in front of the door to the sheep fold. It narrowed into a long double-gated chute. The herder wifs and gilna had fires burning in the dell with water heating in cauldrons atop them.

The herders ran the flock out of the fold and into the pen, guiding them down the chute until it was full. Then, one of the shepherds slipped between the rails and closed the back gate of the chute, pinning the sheep inside the narrow passage. The owners watched the beasts pressed close and baaing, goats and sheep together.

“We’ve already prepared the drench,” Crookleg said.

“What is the drench?” Yorvig asked.

“For worming. An herb slurry, mostly garlic.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Why do we care about worms?” Sledgefist asked at the same time.

“The garlic helps kill the worms in their guts,” Crookleg said.

“Wait, there are worms in their guts?” Sledgefist asked.

Yorvig felt just as surprised.

“Ay, they pick them up from grazing. The closer they’re kept together, the more they get. We’ve had them penned in here most of the winter.”

“Do the worms hurt them?” Onyx asked.

“They make them skinny,” Crookleg said. “If it gets too bad, they die. Here.” He slipped between the rails as the flock pressed to get away and deftly snagged the leg of one of the ewes with his crook. The ewe tried to leap free, but he held her fast, grabbed her fleece, and flipped her over onto her rump. As soon as he had her in that position, she stopped fighting and looked more mystified than upset. Crookleg pulled down the lower lid of her eye.

“See?” he asked. “She’s too pale here. That should be nice and red.”

“I see,” Yorvig said. This was an entirely different world.

“What are the wifs doing?” Onyx asked.

Crookleg turned the sheep back over and she scurried away.

“Preparing to boil the wool.”

“To clean it?”

“To harvest the lanolin.”

Lanolin was much beloved by dwarves. It was an oily wax that softened and soothed chapped hands and skin. Yorvig looked down at his own hands. They had softened of late, just from not being able to spend the time he was used to in hard labor.

“I want to go with the wifs,” Onyx said to him under her breath.

“Afraid?” Yorvig asked.

“They are better company.”

“Stay at least until we send them wool.”

The work began, and the herders divided up their help as best they could, but it quickly became apparent that it was not as easy as they made it appear. Farstock flipped a sheep on its haunches and began demonstrating the shearing, using only two sharpened blades connected by a half-loop of springy steel. He showed them how to hold the sheep’s skin taut, warned them against trying to cut against loose flesh and harming the sheep, and how to watch for the nipples of the ewes.

“We will do the rams,” Crookleg added. There were only a handful, and they were impressive specimens. “Which of you first?” He held out the shears. Yorvig had to suppress a smile. Now that he saw it, he felt even less confident, but he knew he should make an example, so he ducked between the rails. He had handled slaughtered animals, but he had a strange hesitation in handling the living stock. There was nothing for it, though. Over the course of the day, they all tried their hand more than once at shearing under the watchful eyes of the herders, nicking the sheep more often than Yorvig could count, so they had to go back after themselves and smear salve on the wounds. The sheep struggled and kicked until the novice dwarves got the hang of sitting them on their rumps correctly, keeping their heads turned, and switching them from side to side. Yorvig thought himself strong—with the exception of his leg. But there was something especially demanding about staying bent over for so long at a time, rather than standing more upright to swing pick or hammer. On top of that, his leg ached. Thankfully, the herders did not truly expect them to keep up.

They not only sheared each sheep or goat, but they trimmed excess growth off of their cloven hooves and stuck a pipe down into their mouths until they seemed to gag. Down the pipe the herders poured the garlic slurry. Slowly, they fed more sheep into the chutes, and the shorn ewes were released with their lambs into the dell to crop at the sparse vegetation, looking markedly smaller than they had. Yorvig noticed a few of the ewes headbutting each other.

"Why are they doing that?"

Farstock looked over.

"Oh," he said. "They don't recognize each other with the wool off. They'll figure it out soon."

There were fleeces of black, of white, of brown, of mixed greys, and spotted fleeces, too. For each the shepherds seemed to have terminology, and commented on quality.

“This is the crimp,” Crookleg told him at noon as they carried more fleeces over to the wifs watching over the steaming pots. Crookleg pulled on a little curlicue of wool. "The tighter the crimp, the finer the wool. The upper back and neck are finest. You could swaddle a babe in this fleece. This ewe carries that fine crimp from my great-grandfather’s ram. Old Blackhorn had the finest.”

Yorvig wasn’t entirely sure if old Blackhorn was the great-grandfather or the ram.

The spirits of the herders grew lighter as the day went on, and they laughed and sang songs. They could hardly even count the sheep without singing songs. Yorvig’s hands were greasy and dirty from the lanolin and soil, and his boots had dung on them. Whether the dwarves working around the tower watched them through the hours, he had lost track, engrossed in the labor. He glanced over at Onyx. She leaned over a great fleece, carding out bits of twigs and leaves using what looked like a board with hundreds of fine wires embedded into it. One of the herder’s wifs leaned over her, pointing and talking and running her hands through the wool. Yorvig wasn’t sure if either veiled wif was pleased or angry or merely deep in their labor.

They only made it through half of the flock that day. The herders had prepared forage of fresh rushes which they piled on either side of the pen fence so the sheep could eat in proximity to each other. The herders would stand watches through the night over the divided flock, but they did so in a convivial spirit; the fires burning to reduce the lanolin in the hanging kettles now heated herb tea and stewed spring radishes, leeks, and garlic. The singing and music continued late into the night.

The next day, the sky was grayer, and the novelty had worn off, leaving only the repetitive, hard labor. He sent Shineboot and the other rinlen back to keep the kulhan occupied. He hoped he’d made his point. He kept Boltring with him, though, and Onyx arrived again unasked to rejoin the herder wifs. Yorvig noted that Boltring began to converse a little with one or two herders—though he and Farstock kept their distance. Crookleg watched the sky, fearful of rain as the gray pall deepened, but they pressed hard and finished the last of the herd as evening approached, only a short time before the clouds unleashed.

“What will the wifs do?” Yorvig asked as the rain damped his shoulders. It didn’t look like they had gotten through even a small portion of the fleeces.

“That work will continue for months,” Crookleg said. “But the flocks are tended, and that is most important.”

Yorvig nodded as he watched Onyx help the wifs shuttle the fleeces into the Low Adit and carry the still-hot kettles hung on poles. There were young gilke and gilna among the herders, and they helped move the precious wool inside.

“How many are yours?” he asked, knowing Crookleg was a father of more than just Shineboot's new wif.

“Seven in all,” he said. “And in only thirty-five years of marriage. My father said, ‘give a wif a hold, and she will fill it with babes.’"

“Isn’t that the point?”

“I’m sure there's a point or two to go along with it," Crookleg said with a grin.

Yorvig stared at him, starting to blush.

"We trust you’ll know about babes soon.” Crookleg said, and then turned to face Yorvig. His tone change. “I thank you for today,” he added.

Yorvig knew what he meant but decided to deflect.

“I do not think we sped you along. You may have finished sooner without us.”

Crookleg squinted, but smiled.

“Maybe,” he said. “When the next caravan comes, if you will pay for the dictation of a letter, I will send word to my brothers and cousins. Give them more than they make on the slopes, and they will come.”

“How much is that?”

“In gold? Not much.”

"I would think that owning your herds, you could do better than kulhan wages."

"We could, if we were allowed to set our prices. But the Council sets the prices. Do we really own them if we cannot sell them for what we wish?"

"What about East Spire?"

"There, the herders must pay Hardeye for grazing rights."

"Couldn't you refuse the Council's prices?"

"Then we can't sell to Deep Cut."

"Then Deep Cut starves."

"Then Deep Cut sends Jackals to confiscate herds."

Yorvig stared at Crookleg, mouth open. The herder saw his expression.

"If you think it hasn't happened before, you are mistaken. We herders know it."

"Have they killed?"

"There is much they can do to make our lives untenable, short of killing us. But I would not trust the Council to refrain even of that, if it came to it."

Yorvig had been ignorant of this; he'd never paid attention to matters of flocks before coming to the wilds. It did answer some questions, though.

"I will pay for the dictation." He looked up at the sky. "And I will get out of this rain."

Yorvig limped into his private hold and trudged to their own chamber where they kept a keg of fresh water with washbasins. When he opened the door, he found Onyx already within, an oil lamp burning. Her dress was let down and she was scrubbing her arms. Her face was flushed from scouring. Yorvig forgot his purpose as he watched and stepped near to draw her close.

“I am still disgusting,” she said. “Don’t touch me.”

“You are finer than thrice-refined gold.”

She sighed.

“You wouldn’t notice the difference.” She tossed one of the wet rags at him. “You’re even more disgusting.”

Yorvig washed beside her, and when next he drew her close, she did not object.