books44 Icevein: Chapter 14
Icevein: Chapter 14
Hobblefoot was too distracted to nod to the two Ridge Wardens standing outside of the Rhûl’s Holt with short mine-spears in their fists. He passed between them and opened the door without so much as a by-your-leave; he was an owner, and the wardens were used to his comings and goings. Chargrim was standing in front the shelves on the rear wall, facing away from the door. He turned at the sound of Hobblefoot’s entrance and his gaze dropped to the rolled paper under Hobblefoot’s arm.“Is this it, then?” he asked.
“It is,” Hobblefoot said, approaching the stone table that served Chargrim for a desk. There was an Ingots stone in the middle of the table, and Hobblefoot looked at it and waited. Chargrim pushed it aside and Hobblefoot unrolled his paper, grabbing a handful of ingots from the stone and using them to weight the corners.
“I’ll come around,” Chargrim said. Hobblefoot had unthinkingly unrolled the paper facing himself.
“You can see we have settled on three feet for the rail spacing,” Hobblefoot said as Chargrim arrived beside him.
“How much can one of these carry?” Chargrim asked, pointing at the schematic of one of the hoppers.
“That depends, ah, on it is, of course.”
“By weight.”
“Five or seven tons per hopper. At least. I hope for more.”
“And how many carriages can the engine pull?”
“It is limited only by the weight. I am confident my engine will pull at least five hundred tons.”
“Five hundred tons,” Chargrim said, shaking his head. “Seven thousand pack donkeys.”
“And we feed it coal and water, not fodder. And it doesn’t eat when it is not burning.” An engine was superior to an animal in every way. He just hoped Chargrim had the eyes to see it.
“How much coal? For a mile, say?”
“It depends on the load.”
“Fully loaded. The five hundred.”
Hobblefoot rocked his head back and forth as he did when he was calculating.
“It will take experimentation, but perhaps fifty pounds.”
“So forty miles per the ton.”
“Estimated, only. It may well be less.”
“Or more.”
Hobblefoot nodded but didn’t reply. Chargrim stared down at the plans.
“I could see it being useful near Deep Cut,” Chargrim said at length.
“It could be useful here as well.”
“A donkey is better at climbing hills.”
“We would have to grade paths, yes. Or tunnel through the ridges.”
“The work of many years to cross to the Waste, and all the while no return.”
“Ay yes, but think about the future, Chargrim. It would take a fraction of the time for a trip back and forth to Deep Cut, and carrying far more.”
Chargrim walked back around the table and sat in his chair, his hand resting on his hurt leg.
“A donkey we can feed in Glint,” he said.
Hobblefoot understood the implication. They had no coal of their own.
“Deep Cut has coal in abundance.”
“If only I could trade with Deep Cut ,” his brother said. “The Council will not reduce their tariffs. With so much coal needed. . .” He shook his head.
“The benefits would be in our favor.”
“I will do the sums,” Chargrim replied.
“The sooner we can begin fabrication, the better. I was thinking that we could send surveyors with the Ridge Wardens to plan a route.”
“I certainly won’t stop you from fabrication, if you wish,” Chargrim said. Hobblefoot had an increasing sense of dread. He knew his brother well enough to know that he was not enthusiastic about the idea.
“But,” Hobblefoot said.
Chargrim let out a deep breath and smiled.
“The ürsi,” he replied. “The ürsi, and the quantity of iron needed for rails spanning so many miles. It is the same as our last discussion.”
“But that is the brilliance of this new design!” Hobblefoot said. “Did I not tell you? I forgot.” No wonder Chargrim was not persuaded. Hobblefoot hurried on: “No. The rail is mobile. It comes in lengths, and as the engine moves forward, it is taken up and run ahead. So long as we have a level grade, we do not need to cover the whole way in iron.”
“So there are dwarves outside of the engine and hopper wagons, running with lengths of rails?”
“Ay yes,” Hobblefoot said, though even as he said it, he saw the problem. “Maybe not during the raiding season, I know.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Even the number of yowgan needed to cut the path, and the wardens to guard them. It is a marvelous engine, Hobblefoot, truly it is, but so long as the ürsi plague us, we cannot commit to it.”
Hobblefoot stared down at the plans, trying to sort out his feelings. Was it anger? Grief? Frustration? Towards Chargrim, or towards the ürsi? Or both?
“I understand if you want to go to Deep Cut,” Chargrim said. “I’ve always understood.”
Hobblefoot took a moment without replying. He had left Glint once, already. He had spoken to Chargrim in the self-same chamber years before:
But then the Jackals came to East Spire, and he had fled back to Glint with his family. His best machinists and engineers had come to him after the worst of the danger had passed.
“Shit on the kulkur,” Hobblefoot muttered. He had decided not to be angry at Chargrim. Not much, anyway.
“The ürsi?” Chargrim asked.
“All of them. Ürsi. The Jackals. The damned thieving Deep Cut Council.”
“Shit on them,” Chargrim agreed, but he smiled encouragingly. “Don’t give up hope, Hobblefoot.”
Hobblefoot continued to stare at his plans. He didn’t want to meet Chargrim’s gaze. Something touched his leg, and he flinched. It was an orange Mine Runner rubbing against his boot and purring. He nudged it away. Chargrim and his blastedcats.
“There are still tweaks that can be made,” he said, pointing to the boiler. “I wonder if the curve might be too little. . . Too flat. With a greater curve, there is more surface that will be in contact with the water.”
Chargrim sat and watched as Hobblefoot took a piece of charcoal from his stained pockets and drew something on the paper. “Ay yes,” Hobblefoot said. “It can be better.”
“And there’s nothing stopping you from building the engine. You could test your theories in the bottomland during the summer.”
“But I will also need to test it in snow at some point. Snow and ice.”
“Of course.”
Hobblefoot rolled up the paper and stuck it back under his arm.
“I will make the adjustments,” he said, and strode from the chamber.
After sleeping for a few hours in one of the dark abandoned upper drifts, Gretti worked another two shifts moving spoil rock for the Needle Claim. After, he ate a hurried meal in the stew hall, his hat pulled down low and his beard tucked into his shirt. Tucking the beard was a common practice during labor or hurried eating, but Gretti intended to hide any recognizable features. Hopefully, the dwarf he had waylaid from the machinists’ workshop was wise enough not to go to the Jackals to complain, but that didn’t mean he or his friends wouldn’t want to pay back the insult. He did not injure more than the dwarf’s pride, but it certainly would not increase his welcome were he identified.
After eating and paying with his meager wages from the Needle Claim—a few chunks of galena—Gretti headed southward across the great stope. Like many developed mine workings, at the heart of East Spire was a shaft and elevator, a monstrous machine that raised ore and water from below in great hoppers fixed upon a never-ending loop of iron chain. The links were the size of Gretti’s head, and the main mechanisms and gears were high in the mine. He knew from his previous visit that the lift could use both water or steam to power the cogs, depending on the rains and the availability of coal from Deep Cut. A sluice gate could release water from a reservoir that collected runoff from the spire. Springs and seeps could also be diverted if needed, and water was pumped up from the depths. Gretti was fairly sure that the machinist workshop that Oneye had belonged to spent much labor maintaining the lift.
All claims from the upper to the lower levels could use the lift to raise ore. The operators of the elevator kept each hopper-full in account. Each claim was required to pay twice a year, though the lift of water from the lower levels was the responsibility of the Irik-Rhûlof East Spire, who was little more than a puppet for the Jackals and the Council of Deep Cut.
Because of the importance of the elevator’s, it was the heart of the network of drifts, stopes, and claims that spread away in many levels down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the rock, deeper every year. A series of long stairs twined around the elevator, and Gretti followed them down. Eventually, stairs gave way to ladders. Feeling the mine runes with his fingers, he set out along a broad drift that had clearly followed a wide vein of quartzite at one time, though it was now thoroughly worked out.
Gretti paused at the mouth of one branching drift that descended into the rock.
Low Damp.
He smelled it, the invisible gas that collected underground. It was deadly, given enough quantity and time. Dwarven noses warned of its presence. The Low Damp was another testament to the gradual abandonment of East Spire; no one had come to vent it away. East Spire was still a significant claim—a colony, even—but it had suffered much from the deprivations of the ürsi, losing refugees west to Deep Cut and north to Glint. It could no longer maintain its own extensive workings.
Low Damp always collected into low spots in mines. Most believed it was heavier and so settled. Rising Spark was another danger, often pooling near the ceilings of stopes and upper chambers where an errant spark could ignite it. Thankfully, it also had a recognizable odor. The nose of a dwarf was his guide and guardian under stone. Gretti remembered his father’s grim expression as he led Gretti into the workings of Deep Cut when Gretti was a gilke.
“Smell that,” his father commanded, standing in the entrance of a stope.
“What is it?”
“Low Damp,” he answered. “Smell it and remember it.”
When they left the coal stope, they passed another father with two young gilke walking behind him, also on their way to learn the smell of Low Damp. It was one of Gretti’s earliest memories. His father had been a dwarf of few words, but he had never shirked his duty to teach his sons. Gretti missed him.
Keeping to the same level and following a series of branching drifts, Gretti pressed onward in search of the Defthand claim. He hadn’t come up with any new ideas for striking the right vein in the death of Sledgefist’s Hammer, Oneye. As much as he disliked failure, he could risk it in that task, but he could not sacrifice the honor of his stonehold.
The Defthand claim truly was out of the way, and it took him nearly two hours to finally locate a drift with the symbol of the hand and the cave rune for “near”, their chosen marker. He listened for some time, and though it was distant, he could hear the sounds of working within. The drift cut away from an irregular stope. Almost no Miner’s Eye grew so close to the workings, so he sat himself back in a crevice and waited in the near total dark. A passing miner would likely smell him before he saw him. The hours passed.
No one came or went from the claim. There were no moon or stars to gauge the passing of time, only the slow drip of a distant moisture seep, but he knew that at least fourteen hours had passed. He rose, unable to keep awake any longer, and left to find a safer drift in which to sleep, somewhere far away from his potential enemy.
Twice more in as many days, Gretti waited in the dark stope for anyone to come or go from the Defthand claim, but he saw none. In between watches, he worked another shift at the Needle Claim, ate at the stew hall, and slept for a few hours. He could not risk asking the other dwarves in the stew hall much about the Defthand claim, for persistent questions from a stranger could easily raise suspicion, especially if anyone in the claim was wary and had friends. His best choice was to wait and watch, but with every hour, his patience waned.