books44 Icevein: Chapter 4
Icevein: Chapter 4
Gretti was tired. Pain tore at his side with every step he took. He held his arm against the barely-closed flesh. A late snow blustered over the ridge as he plodded southward, stoking his anger with every step. He was certain that the remaining Highlodes—Loafhide, Bronzemug, and Tornheft—had fled north of Glint, somewhere into the upper reaches of the Red Ridges. He had visited many claims on the western approach to Glint, but no one knew of their location. Now, Gretti was heading south, beaten back, wounded, dogged by the threat of pursuit. Muddy, wet, hungry, and wounded though he was, he had given the wardens the slip again at the cost of abandoning his hunt for the remaining Highlodes—for now. It wasn’t the first time he had failed, but he was alive, and so he would heal and regain his strength. He hummed to himself, keeping the rhythm.In the end, he would find them. For now, he needed food, drink, new clothing, and maybe even warmth. He’d been cold for a long time. It wore on the spirit after months, even for a dwarf like Gretti. For the past week it had rained the steady drenching early-spring rains, sometimes turning to sleet. There was hardly a stick dry in the valley, and fires would not light. Only once had he succeeded, burning the punky wood on the underside of a fallen log, a fire that smoldered and warmed little.
Though he had nearly frozen to death on the way, it had been frank good fortune to stumble upon those two Highlode cousins at the claim. It had saved his own life and ended theirs. It was yet another sign to him that his purpose was just, though every hold and colony be against him.
He followed the trail through the narrow valley, crossing swollen springs. Sometimes he felled pines across the water-courses where foot-bridges had washed out. The path was well-trodden and there was danger of being seen, but he had grown too weak to trek the ridge. If the wardens came upon him, he could not outrun them again. He wasn’t sure where the trail led—probably to East Spire, considering it wound its way southward. That was alright. He could recoup there, somehow. He had no choice. Strength would return to him. His battered body must submit to his righteous purpose.
“Remember to keep your neck straight,” Onyx said. Peridot sat up. She had hunched over her workbench. Her mother always harped on keeping the body properly aligned. Without it, injury was almost certain over long hours and a score of decades. “Use the glass if you need to see closer,” her mother added.
Peridot nodded and pulled the lens near. It was fixed on an articulated arm to allow it to be moved and adjusted, but she never liked it between herself and her work. She adjusted her lamp to better illuminate the wire, as well. She was using fine needles to adjust the spacing on an intricately woven setting of gold wire supporting cells of garnets. Looking at it closely through the glass, she had to suppress a sigh. The wires were not perfectly straight. To most eyes, even among dwarves, it would hardly be noticeable. The piece would still be worth more than its weight in raw gold and gemstones, but she knew her mother would appraise it with little consideration for the eyes of . It wasn’t that Onyx would be harsh with her. True mastery could easily take another hundred years, if she had the talent for it. Onyx simply believed that identifying the flaws was the only way to grow in the skill of the craft. It was a philosophy she had explained many times.
Peridot risked a glance over at Iolite. She sat between Peridot and their mother, an arrangement which Peridot preferred. Iolite’s posture perfectly mirrrored Onyx’s, though she was somewhat slighter in build than their mother, who had fine strong shoulders. Perhaps time would allow her to fill out. Iolite was six years younger than Peridot, and yet her work was finer. Peridot was diligent and did not grumble, but Iolite the craft and emulated their mother’s techniques with zeal. Onyx must have known that, for when Iolite and Peridot arranged that, rather than switching roles, Peridot would see to the cooking, cleaning, and other tasks of keeping the stonehold while Iolite kept to the workshop, Onyx had not commented upon the change. So Iolite continued her labors uninterrupted while Peridot had more opportunity to step away. In her heart, Peridot knew her mother’s silence on the matter meant she did not see in Peridot the makings of a master. Peridot felt a strange mix of relief and shame at that.
There were few doors within the stonehold. The openings aided ventilation, and ribbon-cut hangings of fine cloth served for separation and privacy. This also meant that voices carried, and the gilke were loud. The often came and went in the workshop, watching their craft or even napping on the sheepskin rugs. Her father’s Mine Runners stalked about as they pleased, and Peridot wished her mother allowed her to have a cat on her lap while she worked, but she was forced to shoo them away again and again.
It was a question by a gilke—Firelip—in another chamber that caught her attention:
“Did he really kill a warden?”
She heard Rightauger respond. He had returned from actually working a shift with Shineboot.
“He did. And he badly wounded another. I knew the dwarf he killed. He was brave and true to his word.”
“How could he escape? How could he do that and escape?”
“They say he is strong,” Rightauger answered after hesitating.
“I heard he is part troll, and that his eyebrows are so long he braids them into his beard with the wax from his ears.” It was Coaleye in his familiar mischievous tone.
“That’s not true!” Firelip yelled, clearly afraid that it might be.
“What’s true is that he is a murderer and a fiend, and he is still out there.”
“Peridot,” Onyx said, her voice stern. “Go stop that foolish talk.” Onyx would not stoop to shout in her own stonehold.
Peridot slipped off her stool and headed toward the door.
“Just send Rightauger to me,” Onyx said, her tone somewhat less harsh.
Peridot returned with Rightauger a few moments later.
“Ay yes, mother?” Rightauger asked.
“Son, I don’t want you speaking about such things with the gilke.”
Peridot sat back on her stool, managing to keep her irritation from her face. Rightauger was a gilke, too, though their mother appeared to forget that at times.
“I’m sorry mother. But. . .” He hesitated.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“But what?”
“But it is the talk of the claim.”
“It won’t be the talk of this hold.”
“As you say, mother.”
There was a pause as Rightauger waited to be dismissed.
“How is Shineboot’s wif? Is the babe well?”
Shineboot’s hold had a new gilke, just a week old. Peridot and Iolite had delivered meals to their hold three times already, even though Shineboot allowed servants in their hold. Food from a friend is sweeter, the saying went. It was a challenging birth, and the mother was still in seclusion. Not even Iolite and Peridot had seen her when they delivered the food.
“I don’t know,” Rightauger said. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Did you ask?”
“No.”
Onyx shook her head.
“It is the eighth day tomorrow. I will visit her.”
Rightauger didn’t respond.
“You can go,” their mother said at length, and he fled without hesitation.
Sledgefist trode with his at his flanks, returning through the river pass below Sledge Rock. He carried his longhammer in his hand, the loop on his belt empty. He always felt more comfortable with the hammer in hand. Birds were singing. This might be the true thaw, the last breaking of winter. The sun actually had some force to it, and the ice and mud mixed. Patches of dirty snow still crunched underfoot in the shadows. Sledgefist had taken a hard bash to the nose a few years prior, and he found it difficult to breathe through his nostrils, but he could practically taste the stench of ürsi on the air, though the worst of the smell of the slain had not yet arisen. Dwarves moved through the rocks and down the slope, dragging the ürsi carcasses to the piles for lighting. They had already secured those few bodies of dwarves not carried away by the foe.
Sledgefist didn’t like springtime. He preferred to be beneath the stone and out of the mud, but he had decided to walk the pass once more. The ürsi had made a last great push up the river pass—even fiercer than the previous year. It was the best pass in the eastern ridges, and beyond it lay many a vulnerable claim as well as the main road between Glint and East Spire, but the ürsi did not need to take the pass. They could go to others—also defended, though not as formidably—or they could make the more difficult climb across the crests. Some did so. Bands of ürsi always crossed the ridges to harry the prospectors, but still they pressed him at Sledge Rock.
Why?
Sledgefist halted, staring at a boulder near the river. Scraped into the moss was the rudimentary shape of one long ear.He narrowed his eyes and heard the muttered curses of his behind him. Sledgefist moved along. There was no reason to dwell on it. It was sign. Why did he do it? Why did One-Ear sacrifice so many of his fighters?
Sledgfist reached the narrowest portion of the pass, where the nearly sheer slopes almost reached each riverbank. He had spent years turning this place into a killing ground, and the snow here had been melted by hot blood, staining the rocks and dirt. He wrinkled his nose. Even half-frozen, the ürsi dead were rank. Bastions on either slope gave ample view of the pass that lay open to javelin-hurling engines, crossbows, pots of boiling urine, and many another instrument of death.
It was a terrible way to fight, flinging death from above. Many of the bodies were half crushed or torn apart. There was no joy in it. When he had first held the pass against the ürsi years ago, it had been a scrap, the fighting up close and brutal. The numbers had also been a fraction of what they were now. There was still hand-to-hand fighting to prevent any of the ürsi from getting through; their numbers were simply too great even for his defenses. In the end, hammer and shield stopped them pouring into the valleys, until arms grew sore and hands had to be pried from the hammer-hafts. But every year, he lost good dwarves.
He didn’t know why the ürsi pushed him so, but as long as they pushed him, he would kill them. He was good at it. His brother might be good at running a mine, at keeping ledgers—Chargrim had even sent engineers to lay out the defenses—but Sledgefist was good at killing ürsi. Many decades ago in Deep Cut, they had called him Sledgefist for a reason.
Nearby, two dwarves pried ürsi carcasses up from a bank of ice using crowbars. If they didn’t burn these bodies in the next day or two, the smell would drive them all out of the pass. Even underground, it would permeate their holds through the vents. The ürsi would accomplish in death what they had failed in their assault. The thought gave him a meager glimmer of humor.
“You may reduce guard by half,” he said, speaking to no rinlenin particular. No rinlen responded, but he knew his orders would be obeyed. Sledgefist turned and scanned the faces of the dwarves that attended him. Yes, Mudboot was there, the rinlen of Sledgefist’s kulhan laborers.
“Get these kulkurburned,” he said, “but keep your dwarves beneath stone by night.” Sledgefist wouldn’t trust their safety above the stone, not until the buds burst at least.
Sledgefist looked at the weary faces of the other five rinlen. They wererinlenof his Hammers and his cadres of crossbows and engineers. The Hammers were named for Sledgefist’s favorite weapon and the weapon with which they were equipped. It had been hard fighting, that winter, and much deprivation for those still hunting ürsi in the rivervalley.
“Tomorrow we will feast the Thaw by shift, and allowances for visits to Glint and East Spire will resume by seniority.”
His rinlentried to hide their relief, but he knew the dwarves well, and he could see. They’d lost good comrades, and they needed a rest.
“Carry on, Mudboot,” he said, and to the others: “you’re dismissed to your shifts.”
With that, Sledgefist turned and headed back through the pass, beyond the first lines of fortifications. His off-shift rinlentrailed quietly behind, allowing Sledgefist his space.
There were still good hours in the day, and the laborers would accomplish much. They were busy throughout the gap, but he left them behind as he climbed the approach to Sledge Rock, itself, a natural promontory of the ridge at the opening of the pass. It dominated the entire Gold River Valley, the pass eastward toward the ürsi plain, and the road south toward East Spire. The forward face of Sledge Rock had been carved snub, an imposing edifice. While it looked flat and whole, it was lined with openings of hinged rock that could swing outward to reveal javelin throwers. Some of the bolts were the length of a dwarf, and the engines commanded the western reaches of the pass and the slope leading down to the valley.
His brother had discouraged the making of so many openings in the rock, but Sledgefist had done it, anyway. Chargrim believed that the more openings, the more vulnerable they were; he favored defense and protection. That might be good for Glint, but Sledgefist cared about killing ürsi. Chargrim had shrugged and made him promise to flee if he could not hold the pass—not to allow himself to be besieged. Sledge Rock was not to be a tomb.
The great adit door was open. Sledgefist was expected, and the Hammers standing guard raised their weapons in silent salute. He gave a half nod in response and proceeded inside, past the first and second bastions with their pitfalls and murder holes, down the narrow stair that led into the deeper rock and on to his stonehold. The door to his hold was unguarded. He did not allow guards at his own door; it irritated him, as if he could not fight his own fights. He swung the door open and strode inside.
He could instantly tell from the quiet that his family was asleep. There was no chatter of , no steam from the samovar, no bustle in the larder. Not even the servants were astir. That was well. He did not feel like words or explanations. The fine thick Deep Cut carpets silenced his footsteps as he proceeded to the great stone cistern that held water. He filled a silver basin and stripped himself of his harness, laying out his plate and mail, the finest of its kind,engraved with silver and gold and fiery copper. He spared no expense on his arms. His kit was still clean except for mud splattered on his boots andgreaves. He had already washed it since the last fighting. Only the leathers would need replaced, to fully purge the stench of ürsi blood. No servant was permitted to attend to his armor and weapons; he himself would clean and burnish, oil and grease. Naked, he sat upon a stool and bathed himself with a rag from the basin. His beard he unbraided, oiled, and re-braided. The glow of Miner’s Eye comforted him. It was the blue variety, for the reds and yellows struggled to grow at Sledge Rock, but he had grown up with the blue, and it felt more homey. The day had been bright, and the dimness soothed his eyes.
Fatigue weighed on his limbs and head. He let his eyes close, too tired even to rise and find his sleeping alcove. If he woke his wif, she would make a fuss over him, likely waking the others. He would rather the peace of stillness.