The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder - Chapter 73: Foray or Flight

It was known beforehand that in any conflict, wounded were to be taken to Wardenhold where there was a spacious hall for training that could double as an infirmary. Yorvig was still leaning on the reservist by the time he reached it.

“You may go back to your cadre,” he said to the dwarf. The reservist bowed and left. It was Thrushbeard who brought Yorvig a stool.

“Sit,” he said.

“I will stand,” Yorvig said stubbornly.

“Would you rather sit or be seen to fall?” Thrushbeard asked.

Yorvig clenched his jaw but sat after a moment. Already wounded lay in the hall upon padded wool pallets, and the bone-dwarves were moving among them as well as wifs with pitchers of beer. The smell of ürsi blood was strong, but Yorvig knew nothing would help that for the time, as noxious as it was. More wounded were coming in, now, trudging in dripping blood or carried by comrades.

A Warden approached Thrushbeard.

“The tower is abandoned. The bridge is dropped. The adits are all barred.”

“So we are under stone,” Yorvig said.

“They cannot hope to take the mine,” Thrushbeard replied, as if Yorvig doubted it.

He didn’t doubt it, even though he hadn’t thought they could take the walls or towers and they had. No number of ürsi could hope to push the dwarves out of their own tunnels, not against long spears and shieldwalls, murder holes, fire, water, and crossbow bolts to contend with. If they hadn’t come through the roof, not even the walls would have fallen. He realized now that he had blundered. The ridge-top was far more important. He should have put more dwarves there. They should have held it. He did not yet know how the tower had fallen, but there were openings on all sides of the bell-chamber to let out the sound, wide enough for ürsi crawl through. Was that it, or was it a ram?

Hookear hurried in and found Yorvig and Thrushbeard.

“I have twenty-three missing, forty-two wounded,” he said. Yorvig grimaced. To be missing now meant they were almost certainly dead. There would be no traces left.

“Rightauger?” Yorvig asked. Hookear flinched.

“I do not know names,” he said. “The runners have just sent the numbers.”

“Go to his cadre and find out!”

Hookear bowed and left without another word.

Thrushbeard’s count was almost as dire—more so, considering the Ridge Wardens were fewer and better trained. Seventeen missing and twenty-eight wounded. It turned out that most of the Ridge Warden dead and wounded were from two cadres, those posted on the east and south walls. Yorvig thought of those giant bundles of trees flipping down the ridge, of the ürsi pouring through the breach.

Runners came and went, and the hall filled with the last of the lightly wounded who had stayed until they were sure the fighting was over. The adits were shut, and as of yet nothing assailed the stone doors. The Shepherd’s Adit also guarded—by way of a double door—a series of tunnels communicating to sheep folds and herder stoneholds out in the valley, even running beneath the river and beyond. . . but the herders too reported no assaults against their heavy doors.

Hookear stepped back into the hall, and as soon as Yorvig saw his face, his stomach turned. The dwarf seemed to drag himself forward, his face pale.

“Where is Rightauger?”

“He is not with his cadre.”

“Where was his cadre in the fighting?”

“In the wall.”

“In the wall!” Yorvig shouted, rising from his stool and clutching Treadfoot. “You put him on the wall!” His voice echoed in the hall. Wounded and hale alike looked over. Hookear quailed back.

“They were there in need. We will keep looking for him,” Hookear said.

Yorvig felt like he could have murdered Hookear then and there, but the dwarf’s horrified expression was too much. He looked around at all those in the hall who stared, and he set Treadfoot back on the stone and limped to the door. He had to get away from them. Just beyond the door, he pressed his back against the stone and slid down to his buttocks, putting his face in his hand. Hot tears blurred his vision.

Yorvig had called out the reserves. He had called for spears on the wall. He had made the right decision for the claim, but not for his family. . . not for his son. What was he thinking, that he would choose the claim over his family? He could not pick and choose cadres in the moment. . . neither could Hookear.

“Rhûl!”

Yorvig looked up. Two reservists approached. One had the rune of a rinlen on his helm, and the other—he wore a warmask stained with blood, and his beard was matted. The same dwarf Yorvig had leaned on. “Rhûl! We have Rightauger!”

Yorvig struggled to his feet, not bothering to wipe his face.

“Where?” he asked.

The rinlen looked a little startled, but pointed to the other reservist. “Here,” he said.

Yorvig stared. Did Rightauger have a warmask? The reservist’s beard was plaited and matted with blood. He had never seen Rightauger wear his beard like that, though it was popular among the warriors. Through the stench of the ürsi, he could not smell him, either. The reservist wore a full kit of armor that Yorvig had never seen, also besmirched and soiled. But there, hanging at his belt—a warhammer with gold filigree.

“Father,” the reservist said. The voice took away all doubt. Yorvig grabbed and clutched him, and wept again.

Yorvig bathed three times—twice with fresh water and once with birch beer. He even scrubbed out his nose and at Onyx’s advice, dabbed honey in his nostrils. He still smelled the ürsi with every breath. At last, he collapsed on the lamb skins in his sleeping alcove.

When he had stumbled into the family hold, Onyx and Peridot had rushed to him, but they had stopped short. He couldn’t even realize how bespattered with ürsi blood he had become. Since the attack, a whole day and part of another night had passed before he had gone home.

He was woken from sleep far sooner than he would have wished. He dressed and proceeded to his reception chamber. He asked an aide for a pot of hot tea. He knew he should be hungry—he hadn’t taken time to eat at all since the battle—but he wasn’t. He took a second to consider the time. It must be evening of the second day since the fight.

Yorvig had barely sat down and his tea was not yet brought when Thrushbeard and Hookear arrived, their faces puffy and dark. They both looked freshly woken.

“Rhûl, there is activity at the adits,” Thrushbeard said.

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“Rams?”

Thrushbeard hesitated.

“No,” he said. “It sounds like. . . They are throwing rocks.”

Yorvig stared at Thrushbeard.

“Throwing rocks?”

“Piling them, I think. . . By the sound.”

Yorvig actually laughed.

“He’s trying to block us in.”

“Then he’s a fool. You cannot trap us under the stone. We can dig free in a day,” Thrushbeard said.

“Ay, yes,” Yorvig said absently. Was One-Ear being. . . ironic? He shook his head.

“Should we wake Sledgefist?” Hookear asked.

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“No,” Yorvig said. “Let him sleep. You both go back to rest. Until they try to breach the mountain, we can let our warriors recover.”

Thrushbeard and Hookear left and Yorvig’s teapot arrived. After it was set upon the table, Yorvig waved the aide away. They had to institute the use of runners and aides years ago during ürsi season, and it worked, but Yorvig did not like being waited upon, either. Maybe he was a hypocrite, trying to get Onyx to take on help in their hold when he was loath to accept help. He looked at the bottom of a mug sitting on his table. It wasn’t too dirty so he poured some tea and held it up beneath his nose. He shook his head again. One-Ear. Surely he couldn’t be that foolish, to think he could trap the dwarves under stone like he had been trapped. Yorvig waffled from thinking of the ürsi as absolute mindless brutes to considering One-Ear something of a mastermind.

On the one hand, if the ürsi thought they could trap the dwarves by piling rocks, perhaps they would leave once it was done. It would explain how they had been willing to sacrifice hundreds upon hundreds in the assault on the walls. If that was the case, the dwarves might be saved.

Or One-Ear was taunting him. Would One-Ear sacrifice so many of his horde just for a symbolic victory? Just to taunt him? Did the lives lost matter to One-Ear? He thought of the ürsi numbers. They could only have lost the merest fraction. They would be fewer mouths to feed, maybe.

What would Yorvig do in One-Ear’s place?

He would starve them. Just like he starved One-Ear.

A horrifying sense of certainty gripped Yorvig, and he felt himself flushing as sweat broke on his forehead. That was what One-Ear was telling him. He would do to them what they did to him. Yorvig shook his head, as if he could shake away the belief. Yorvig still didn’t know if One Ear was there or still alive, or if he was simply a ghost foe to haunt Yorvig. Still, his heart pounded in his chest. What a fool he had been not to kill the vile creature all those years ago. But then, if he hadn’t, would they even be there now?

He needed the ability to see what took place on the surface. There were other ways out of the mine. Certainly the ürsi were not blocking all the sheep folds, and then there was the Under Way, a tunnel Shineboot’s cadre had dug below the river to connect the folds there. Yorvig had a secret drift dug up into the west ridge five years ago as a way to get behind the ürsi if need arose. They had told the miners it was to sample the rock there. It was well concealed and blocked by heavy doors. He had forbidden Sledgefist to use it during the siege because it was not worth risking a sally only to be overwhelmed by ürsi, if they did not even know where One-Ear was.

The sounds fell silent outside the adits after two nights. Even the High Adit and the terrace doors were blocked by the ürsi piles of rock and rubble. Yorvig ordered the digging of a short drift near the top of the cliff with a hole bored through the rock only four inches wide, enough to peer out at the dell and beyond the lower ridge. It told him all he needed to know. Ürsi had taken up residence inside the walls, and it looked like their encampments stretching miles downriver had actually swelled, smoke trailing up from hundreds of domed huts and palling the sky. But then, they’d had all winter to hunt the vast Red Ridges in freedom. The last of the snow was melting away, and the small bit of air that came through hinted of springtime.

The ürsi had not left.

“If we do not plant soon and get the flocks on pasture, we will not survive,” Yorvig said. It had been decades since the last siege, but somehow he always felt like he faced the same problem. The cave-bread grown in the abandoned stopes—never enough to sustain a dwarf alone—only slowed their starvation. The vats of tallow from mutton suet could do little for so many. They had missed the flowing sap. If only they had bile like the foe.

The eight owners sat around the nine-sided table, Onyx to his left and the empty chair to his right. It had been decades since Savvyarm’s death. Many others had died since then following Yorvig’s commands, and yet they were all summed up in the memory of Savvyarm’s face, always seated in the empty space at the table, always present for the decisions. To Yorvig, it was the loudest seat in the council of owners.

“How much time do we have?” Shineboot asked.

“For planting? A month at most for the longer growth crops,” Onyx said. “Even so it will be difficult. The fields and beds need worked first.” All these years, and she had kept an interest in the reports of the gardeners.

“Maybe not even that long for the flocks. They are beginning to starve,” Yorvig added. “If we do not preserve enough. . .” He lifted a hand in sign of futility.

“Then we have no choice but to strike,” Sledgefist said. His expression was intent and grim. Even he knew the difficulty of any true victory in surface warfare against a foe who would disperse and lure, ambush and harry. They had given up on sorties months ago, as the cost of losing trained warriors far outweighed the benefit of the few ürsi slain.

“I do not think we could win,” Hobblefoot said. He looked at his cousin. “You have become a great warrior, Sledgefist. Your name is known beyond the Red Ridges. It is an honor. But even with you and your Hammers, the ürsi would overwhelm us.”

Sledgefist looked at Hobblefoot as if startled.

“It is an honor to sit with such a great engineer,” he said after a moment. “Your machines are displayed in Deep Cut. I only wish we could have worked these ridges without our foes.”

Yorvig watched stupidly as the two complimented each other. He wasn’t alone in staring.

“We are family,” Warmcoat said. “Kin by labor and trials if not by blood.”

“Maybe kin by blood before long,” Greal said. “We have enough gilke and gilna to make formal the ties.”

They would all be lying if they denied matching their children together in their minds—or even in open conversation. In a generation, they would have been one family, a clan. But Yorvig’s hope was wavering. . . What was more important than kin? He should have taken his family away years ago. They could have lived anywhere and still been rich.

Or was that true? Where was safe for the dwarves, if they did not stand their ground? Deep Cut? Beneath an inhospitable land, unwanted even by their foes, unable to sustain the dwarven population any longer? It was no Kara-Indal, but perhaps Onyx and their children could be safe there, aided by their wealth. Yet many would starve in Deep Cut if the Red Ridges fell.

“We still haven’t decided what to do,” Onyx said.

“There are two choices,” Yorvig replied, even while a third formed itself in the secret of his mind. “We attempt to flee, keeping the wifs and maids and children in the center and trying to march out of the ridges, or we sally with the greatest strength we can muster and attempt to fight it out.”

They were all silent as they thought. No doubt they’d all been thinking of both options. Both options had problems. In order to plant and pasture, they had to protect far more territory than they had the numbers, even if they stayed on the surface night and day, so the foe must be broken. But Yorvig didn’t find it likely the ürsi would meet them in a pitched battle, and they could not take the foe by surprise. There were many ways to emerge, but five thousand dwarves did not emerge unnoticed. The Battle of the Blizzard was told in song as far away as Deep Cut, but it was fought over ground now partly inside the walls. In this war, it would be counted a mere skirmish; the ürsi were spread for miles.

The alternative was for the dwarves to flee hundreds of miles, ürsi swarming around them like bees and harrying their waking and sleeping. Ten thousand slings day and night would throw a hail of death. That is how Yorvig would defeat them, in One-Ear’s place. It was all happening just like it happened in the Long Downs. But the dwarves of the Long Downs were far, far closer to safety. Yorvig’s pulse was racing, and he tried to take deep breaths without showing it.

“Shit,” Greal said after a few moments. He slammed a hand against the table. “Shit!”

“Surely the ürsi must hunger as well?” Khlif said.

“They have ten thousand square miles to hunt and more,” Sledgefist replied. “And I dare say they’re better at hunting than we ever were.”

“I never did understand that,” Shineboot said. “They stink so. I’d rather not die with that stench in my nostrils.”

“Begin preparations for your dwarves,” Yorvig said. “All of them. I will send word to the herders, the crafters, the gardeners. . . Prepare to sally within the week. Every dwarf who can strike a blow.”

“And maids and wifs?” Onyx asked.

“Should we be destroyed, they may hold out long with the food that is left.”

“What difference in the end?”

“I would rather my progeny starve beneath the stone than feed the ürsi,” Sledgefist answered, his tone and brow as dark as his words.

“You do not think they will try to breach the mine, eventually?”

“Prepare the wifs and children,” Yorvig said. “If we aren’t destroyed outright, or if they do not give us battle, we will seek an exodus to Deep Cut south along the river path.”

As Onyx and Yorvig stepped back into their hold after the council, he took her hand and led her to their private chamber. Closing the door behind them, he placed his hands on both her shoulders. There was sweat on his forehead.

“If ever you have heeded me, you will heed me in this,” he said. “I will have packs of provisions assembled for you and the children. You will go to the end of the Under Way when the battle begins. If it turns against us, you will flee. If we march south, I believe One-Ear will bend all his strength toward harrying us. Wait a few days, then flee west. Do not follow the rivers. Stay atop the ridges as much as you can. I will send Rightauger with you.” Yorvig would make him go. “Peridot can wield a spear, too.”

“What? What about the others? Sledgefist’s family and—”

“—There is no hope, except maybe for a few while the ürsi are distracted. Don’t go to East Spire. Go west to the Brown Hills. There are dwarves there, iron miners, far nearer than Deep Cut.” Keeping it a secret among more would also be impossible.

“You want us to abandon our folk?”

“I want you to survive!”

“What about the others? They could flee west with us.”

“Then the ürsi would know and hunt you like beasts. And it could not be kept secret. Order would cease. There must be order beneath the stone. A small group has the greatest chance.”

“You will come with us! Yorvig!” She used his true name. He raised his hand to stop her.

“I can hardly walk five miles in a day anymore. I cannot make it hundreds, and you cannot carry me.”

Even if he could make the journey, could he live with himself if he sent his family away to safety while keeping the rest of the claim to die?

No. He could not.

So he would send them without him. If he couldn’t live with it, he could die with it.

“No,” she said. “I will not go without you. Surely if we must flee, five thousand dwarves can march out.”

“I cannot make the journey. You will be safer without me. I will stay with the folk. I cannot abandon them.”

“Abandon them? What about us? What about Sledgefist’s children? What about the others? Why should I have to live with it?”

“Because by living with it, you give our children a chance to live. I will draw the ürsi away down the river.”

“No!” Onyx said. Yorvig pulled her into his arms.

“I wish you had never come,” he said. “That you were some jeweler’s wif in Deep Cut safe and far from here. Or that the ürsi had killed me instead of just maiming my leg, and none of these souls would be here to die.”

“Shut up,” she said, grabbing the front of his longshirt in her fists. “Shut up. This is fool’s talk.”

“You will do what I say, Ühlvaran.” Yorvig said. “You will obey it. You will not be snuffed out. Guide our children west.”

The cry of the babe reached their ears, coming closer.

“Mother,” Peridot’s voice called through the door. “He is hungry.”