The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

Yorvig stayed in the dell until the grey dawn came, and then he went under stone to inquire after the wounded. The injuries included deep lacerations and broken bones. It took tremendous force to break dwarven bone, but a sling could whip a rock at screaming speed. Cavebender had indeed suffered a broken collarbone, and when Yorvig found him he was already deep in whiskey. Someone had bound and pulticed him decently enough, and now Cavebender drank and cursed.

Four of the wounded dwarves insisted they were well enough to continue their duties, but one Yorvig refused. He’d suffered a gash on his face that opened his cheek up into his mouth. One of his friends was sewing it up with boiled gut-thread and bone needle, and the dwarf was bearing it with greater stamina than Yorvig suspected he would have had, himself.

“You’ll serve us better guarding the dell,” Yorvig said to the grimacing dwarf.

Yorvig was informed that two other prospectors had made their way to the dell the previous afternoon, this time from eastward overtop the ridge. The ürsi were raiding in the next valleys, as well.

Yorvig recruited them to the expedition; he was still determined to move south to try to rescue as many from the claims there as he could. Doing so risked the lives of his dwarves, but it might result in gathering even more. Doing sums with lives felt wrong. But that was the role he had accepted.

Time was their enemy. He allowed the tired dwarves only two hours of sleep, while he himself slept none. He had only a few moments alone with Onyx to assure her he was well. She was busy enough in the mine, working with the gardeners to bring in and preserve what they could, and to arrange for rationing the stores.

After leaving more guards over the gardens and flocks, a weaker party moved south than had moved north, Hillmane guiding them to the nearest claims. Though Yorvig had been afraid of what they would find, fewer in the south seemed to be so severely assaulted, though they still found two claims with the occupants obviously slaughtered and carried away. More dwarves came down from the hills at the sound of horns and the new bells Brownfoot the smith had crafted. Soon, their numbers swelled to over forty. Seven miles south of the dell, they made camp for the night at a claim in a sheltered cove of rock where nothing could easily assault them.

They heard the cries of ürsi far off in the hills and south along the river through the night, coming at times from multiple directions at once. This only seemed to confirm Yorvig’s fears. Their foe had returned in great numbers, but they were raiding and attacking in small groups, hunting the dwarves through the valleys and ridges. Even a great number of dwarves were vulnerable to harassing attacks, as they had found out during the previous night's skirmish. A few solitary dwarves stood next to no chance of survival. Thankfully, they suffered no attack that night.

They continued their attempts at rescue the next day, moving further south and even venturing into a narrow gap, using the knowledge of the rescued prospectors to guide them to other claims. That day, their numbers swelled to over fifty, but nearly ten miles from the dell, Hobblefoot and Sledgefist asked Yorvig how far they could really go on. Yorvig's leg ached from days of walking, but he tried to ignore the pain, clinging to Treadfoot.

“We cannot seek out every claim in the ridges,” Hobblefoot said.

“I know. Tomorrow we return.” He hoped that all was well with Warmcoat. The ürsi had not scrupled to attack them on their way back from the north, and they'd had a larger group than Warmcoat. Yorvig should have given him more of the crossbows. He tried not to dwell on the should-haves.

They set out in the grey pre-dawn, pushing north to reach the dell. Part of him cried out to go further south and east, to try to find more of the dwarves who must be spread out for scores of miles. But was that realistic? He had to agree with Sledgefist and Hobblefoot; they must preserve the dell, the flocks, and the gardens, or else they would all die. The ground along the river showed the tracks of ürsi, but they had not seen the creatures themselves since the attack to the north. Still, they could be heard far and near, especially at night.

It was midday and they were making good time north when they came to a place where the valley was narrow. They approached a curve in the river when the wind shifted and the smell of ürsi hit them. They stopped and crouched low without Yorvig even issuing a command. Once smelled, no dwarf forgot the stink of ürsi.

The trees were dense. Any fight must be close as a result, which favored the dwarves.

“Are there any clearings up ahead, or wide places?” Yorvig asked Hillmane. Yorvig had been along the river before, but it was difficult to remember each turning and bend. If anyone knew, it was one of the hunters. They must be six miles south of the dell, now.

“There is a rise beyond the bend, with a bald rock escarpment,” Hillmane said.

The description brought it to Yorvig’s mind. The escarpment itself was more like the end of a low ridge, the top of which was too rocky and barren for tree-growth. Its blond sandstone was shot through with quartz and shone in the light. Trees did grow up its sides, and it was within a slinger’s throw from the river. While the top of the escarpment was bare, it would be nearly impossible for a dwarf with a crossbow to shoot up through trees and at such a sharp angle.

“We cut inland, then,” Yorvig said. “Come down to it from above.”

Hillmane nodded.

The dwarves moved away from the river and up the ridge before turning north again. It might be a waste of time, but Yorvig didn’t want to be caught beneath that strong place. The further they moved inland, the more the smell of ürsi faded. They climbed above the height of the escarpment. They could have passed it by from above, but Yorvig wanted to see what they could. No doubt, with so many of them moving through the trees together, the ürsi would know exactly what they were doing. He left the main host behind while he took ten with him and crept down the ridge. It was only a few dozen yards before he could see the top of the escarpment through the trees.

Standing there on the bare rock was an ürsi wearing a yellow feather ruff. It reminded Yorvig of the chief ürsi who had worn the old mail during the siege, but this ürsi was not large as it had been. Surrounding the feather-mantled ürsi was a knot of warriors wielding javelins and long serrated clubs. Yorvig wanted a better view, and there was a gap in the trees just ahead. It would be a difficult slingshot uphill, so Yorvig stepped out from behind the trees to look down.

The ürsi with the feather mantle stared straight up at him, a wide belt brimming with knifes draped diagonally across its chest and a spiked club hanging at his side. Even from a hundred yards away, their eyes locked. Yorvig felt a sinking in his stomach. The ürsi captain was missing an ear. If any of their hideous visages could be recognized, Yorvig recognized that one. It was One-Ear. The ürsi reached down to his club and lifted it up into the air, pointing at Yorvig with his other hand. Hillmane stepped up next to Yorvig.

“Why are they just standing there?” he asked.

There were seven ürsi clustered around One-Ear, but Yorvig did not doubt many more were sheltered in the trees below. The dwarves had not fallen into their ambush, and yet One-Ear had waited there. He must have known the dwarves were higher up the ridge.

“He wants us to see him,” Yorvig said.

“Why?”

Yorvig didn’t answer. He suspected he knew why. One-Ear was responsible for this assault. One-Ear had coordinated it, possibly with other tribes of ürsi. He would not give up. The beast lowered his club, still staring up at Yorvig.

One-Ear did not move from the escarpment. It was Yorvig who turned away, heading back to rejoin the main host and continue north. As soon as he turned, the ürsi on the escarpment released a chorus of shrieks and gibberings, but they did not pursue.

Before evening, the dwarves marched up the dell. Yorvig was relieved to find Warmcoat and the others already there, though Warmcoat reported his own ambush and the loss of three dwarves with more injured.

Still, he had returned with thirty-nine, while Yorvig’s host numbered fifty four. What was more, an additional two groups of dwarves had made it to the dell on their own, bearing harrowing tales. In all, Yorvig summed a total of one-hundred and forty-seven dwarves in the dell. Their number had nearly doubled. But the sum was also disturbing. Hundreds of dwarves must still remain scattered in the ridges or had already met their doom.

The wounded Yorvig sent into the mine, but the able-bodied miners and prospectors he kept in the dell. He went to Brownfoot with the order that the making of crossbows and bolts and spears should not cease, but he knew they had little iron, as Brownfoot made sure to remind him. Those wounded who could work he ordered to mine for any hints of limonite or hematite they could find. There may yet be some limonite to be had in the old lower workings, at least. It would need heated, hammered, and smelted. They had enough coal—for now. He told Brownfoot to make the most of what he had. For spears, long thin spikes on the ends of hafts would do.

Yorvig was exhausted, having only slept in snatches over the past days, but they could not waste time. The northern side of the dell was still buried beneath mullock piles of broken rock from the mining. It was time to put it to use. Hobblefoot had already begun the building of the lower embankment in the summer. It had begun to flood behind it, and there was the beginnings of a causeway.

“What are we doing now?” Shineboot asked. He, Sledgefist, Warmcoat, and Hobblefoot were gathered around Yorvig again.

“We protect the flocks.”

He explained the details of what he had in mind. The ürsi would not be able to take the mine by force, there was no question of that. Even if they had a steel ram that could somehow break through stone doors, they could not take the High Adit, nor dislodge the dwarves from their chambers of stone by force. The greatest fear was starvation. They had to preserve the dell—the gardens first. Where the dwarves had burned and cut away the forest, grasses and undergrowth had grown up, drinking in the sunlight. It was still not enough to sustain the flocks and herds. Since arriving at the claim, the herders had been cutting the trees further up and downstream, feeding the leaves and branches to the goats and sheep while letting the pigs root and eat the forest mast. Such efforts were now far too dangerous without a significant guard. Even with the expansive gardens of mangelwurzels and turnips that the herders and gardeners had planted in the cliff terraces and in the upper dell, it would be difficult to keep the flocks through the winter until they could establish more extensive grassy pastures.

Those worries were for the future. They had labored all summer to have enough food to survive starvation. It was their chief defense. Without food, nothing else they could do would matter. Yorvig set nearly eighty dwarves to the raising of drystone walls and towered fortifications to stretch from the cliff-face above the dell gardens curving south and down to the embankment of the original tailings pond. From there, it would turn again to join the cliff face near the Low Adit door. All in all, the wall would need to be nearly half a mile in length, but they had extensive store of rock in the mullock piles. A hundred dwarves working with a mission, weapons at their sides at all times for fear of the foe, could labor to the extreme. Even so, it felt futile. Walls would not keep the ürsi out; they were too long. By Yorvig's sum, standing shoulder to shoulder, every dwarf in the dell could barely make a line three hundred feet long. Walls wouldn't even protect the flocks, because ürsi on the ridges could sling stones down into the dell. But drystone walls might make it more difficult to stage a sudden assault, and the labor would occupy yowgan. If they needed to be outside to watch over the livestock, they may as well be building something.

In rotations under heavy guard, the flocks and herds went into the forest close by to graze, but by the third day, the smell of ürsi clung to the wind along with the first chill of Autumn, and the grey-skinned beasts were seen lurking in the trees. No more dwarves arrived. Even as they worked on the wall, they saw ürsi on the ridges above the dell, occasionally sending stones spinning at them from their slings. Yorvig kept dwarves with crossbows always on watch to keep the ürsi at bay and set lookouts in the terraces of the rock face. In all things, they operated as under siege. Mining had stopped except for the quest for limonite. Everything but tending the flocks, bringing in the harvest, and preparation for war ceased.

He thought of the guards in Deep Cut; they had steel bucklers, helms of enameled steel, warmasks, greaves, vambraces, coats of plates. . . All that was out of their reach. Perhaps they could fashion screens from river reeds or build some form of shields from wood. But the reeds were better for livestock forage, and how to make the shields? They had trees but no sawmill, not even any long crosscut saws. They could rough-plank wood with axes, chisels, and draw knife. They certainly couldn't slot the joints fine enough for planked shields; Yorvig didn't know of any joiners present to do that kind of work, certainly not on the large scale. Maybe they could split tree trunks by axe thin enough to carry, but that would be along the grain, and planks of any width would likely sunder at a blow. They could cross the slats, then drill holes and bind them with cordage or drive wooden pegs smeared with pine tar. There was not enough iron to spare for nails and little leather to use for straps. Some rope they might spare. Such shields would be bulky, messy things, but perhaps better than nothing. Most of the hides they'd gotten hunting had to go for clothes or rough slippers or bellows or any other number of uses just to keep the claim functioning. They barely kept the rags on their back with patches. Nothing went to waste. As awful as it was, the dwarves who died would have their clothes cut to pieces so others could mend.

What other resources did they have? Nothing that could account for so many dwarves. Still, Yorvig set fifteen of the prospectors to begin laboring on the cutting of spear-hafts and fashioning any kind of shield they could, even squared walls that could be set upright on the ground and moved. At least they could cut some timber under guard.

Yorvig spent precious few hours in Onyx’s company. When they did meet, it was difficult to think of anything other than sleep, wrapping their arms around each other for brief moments before exhaustion granted them short respite. She for her part worked like the rest, and Yorvig drove himself until his head and leg throbbed. He stamped around the dell with Treadfoot, working when he could and answering twice a hundred questions. The walls rose, first to three feet, and then by the seventh day to five feet. The ürsi watched, often standing in the open at dawn or dusk, but so long as the dwarves stayed close behind the walls, they were safe from stones. From time to time, Yorvig saw One-Ear with his guard high above the dell on the south ridge, looking down on their labors.

Twice the ürsi tried to harry the dwarves at their labors, coming close with wide barricades of their own made of bound sticks, using them to block the crossbow bolts as they launched stones at the workers with their slings. Twice Yorvig led assaults against them using their own newly made shields and wooden screens, but the ürsi merely retreated, carrying their barricades with them. As soon as the dwarves turned back, the ürsi followed after, so that the dwarves worked under constant harassment, and the herders could no longer take their flocks and herds out of shelter regardless of how many guards went with them, for the ürsi sought to wound the livestock with darts or stones. A full score of dwarves were wounded as they built the wall and a handful of those severely. One died when a sharp stone pierced his eye-socket. It was a gruesome death. It was doubtful the drystone wall was worth it at all, for the ürsi had already realized that while they could not hit the dwarves who hid behind the wall with their slings, neither could the dwarves hit ürsi close on the other side with crossbow bolts without climbing into exposure. Some daring of the beasts loped in safety mere feet from the working dwarves.

Yorvig sat at the nine-sided table with the owners around him.

“What will be our rations if we have to feed the breeding livestock from the vegetable stores?” Yorvig asked Onyx. She was acting as the go-between for the gardeners.

“No more than four months,” she said. “And that with tight belts.” Tight belts, Yorvig knew, was the half-rations he had told them to calculate by. With half-rations, the dwarves would be losing weight and condition through the winter. It was slow starvation. But the alternative was to run out of food far before any hope of spring. He had told the gardeners to work toward a goal of supporting two hundred dwarves, but that was when they didn’t have to calculate the flocks among the two hundred. Without the herders able to forage with the flocks, they had to rely only on garden produce. Without hunters bringing in meat and losing access to the weir once the river froze, the situation was even worse. Besides, he knew now that the ürsi were poaching the fish from the weir. That must be the only reason they had not tried to destroy it.

“We could slaughter the beasts,” Sledgefist said. “They would see us through to the summer.”

“And then we are without flocks,” Yorvig answered. He had already calculated how far such an action would take them in terms of food. The sums were always in his mind. Even eating the flocks, they could consume two sheep a day and still feel the press of hunger. There were pigs born in the summer that would be slaughtered and smoked rather than fed, though they were not yet full-grown. But the other animals must be bred if the dwarves wished to remain in the Red Ridges.

“Better alive without flocks than starved with,” Sledgefist mumbled.

“You are right in that,” Yorvig said, mostly as a peace-offering.

"We have the cave-bread culture on the rock of the Low Adit chambers," Onyx said. "But it would barely suffice for a family as yet."

Cave-bread was the most nutritious of the fungi, able to be ground into a powder and used like meal to thicken stews and fry a kind of flatbread in grease. It was a common meal among dwarves, but to supply any significant number it took vast surfaces of rock. That was of little account in Deep Cut where worked-out mines could be put to its cultivation. Even so, that took time. It would be no help in the siege.

“Surely they will leave,” Greal said. “The last siege did not last. They cannot stay here through the winter.”

“How many of them are there, really?” Hobblefoot asked. “I have not seen more than forty at a time.”

Yorvig feared that a thousand could be hiding or hunting within a mile and they'd never know it. The ürsi had no reason to show themselves in force. If One-Ear hoped to lure them out. . . Yorvig often wondered how clever the ürsi was. He also hoped Greal was right, and that the ürsi would not tolerate a protracted siege. But his mind went continually back to Tonkil. The ürsi had sieged the Long Downs claims for many months on end until the miners had to make their disastrous retreat back to Deep Cut.

“I wish they would fight us,” Warmcoat said.

A few of the others grumbled agreement. The ürsi would not meet the dwarves in close combat, harrying always from a distance with darts and stones. Yorvig had commanded the building of three great crossbows using thick wooden limbs and twisted rope for torsion. One of the dwarves had seen such things near the gate of Deep Cut and had drawn its working with charcoal. Affixed to a stock, they would hurl darts far beyond anything the smaller crossbows could manage—in theory. With these they hoped to keep the ürsi and their blasted barricades further back.

At half rations, it would be four months before they had to begin butchering the breeding flocks. Until then, they had little need to show themselves. Much could happen in four months.