Chapter 70: Thirty-One Years Later
Thirty-One Years Later
(Forty-eight years since the staking of the claim)
The bells rang up and down the Gold River Range for four days, but one by one they fell silent. At last, Yorvig called for the bells of Glint to cease as well. They had no purpose now.
Over seven hundred dwarves had fled to Glint from surrounding claims and holds, swelling their population beyond five thousand. Others, Yorvig knew, would be holed fast in their claims and mines, hoping that the hordes of ürsi would bypass them or that Glint would be victorious before their food stores ran out.
Yorvig was standing at the River Gate, awaiting his brother. Runners had brought word of the approach of Sledgefist’s party days ago. He had left the southern outpost—called Sledge Rock by all—when the ürsi first began pouring through the gaps in such numbers that the Ridge Wardens could do nothing but fly before them.
Sledgefist's troop came into view around the riverbend. A few score dwarves arrayed in heavy armor and wielding spiked warhammers tramped on either side of a cluster of wifs and maids, gilna and gilke. Their shields bore the stone fist, the mark of Sledgefist's Hammers. As Yorvig watched them approach, he saw a second group of dwarves coming a few hundred yards behind at a quicker pace—four Ridge Wardens.
Yorvig met Sledgefist inside the gate with a hug, though it was more a hug of Sledgefist's armor than the dwarf, himself. The years had turned Yorvig's brother into a formidable warrior, and he wore the finest faceted plate that gold could procure. “They have come as you predicted, brother” Sledgefist said, skipping other greetings. “They are without number. We barely stopped in our flight.”
Sledgefist's face was unclouded by fear, but it was also unclouded by shame. That told Yorvig he had not even considered giving the foe battle. The year had come.
“Have you seen the mark?”
“I did not stay to watch for it.”
Yorvig nodded.
“Your hold is prepared for you, and your dwarves will be seen to with honor.”
Sledgefist hugged him again, then called to his column.
“Come!”
Of all the owners, Sledgefist had turned the most warlike in the fighting of the past decades. The ürsi had raided more and more fiercely, further and further into the ridges over the past twenty or so years, but until now, they had not approached Glint in mass. Sledgefist and his Hammers had held the southern gap with great slaughter against the ürsi for the past three autumns, so that his own name had gone out beyond the Red Ridges in song—"The Fist of Sledge Rock." Some of Yorvig's gold may have encouraged the composition of the song and its dissemination, but he would not tell Sledgefist that. His brother deserved it, regardless. Despite the victories, though, the toll in dwarven lives had been severe. It was hard to replace veteran warriors. Yorvig was glad Sledgefist had not attempted to hold the rock this time but had obeyed Yorvig's order to fall back against hopeless odds.
Yorvig smiled and bowed as Sledgefist’s wif and children passed. There was no love for him in that wif, but she was kin. She didn’t look at him as she passed. Hopefully she and Onyx avoided each other.
Moments after Sledgefist’s column had gone, the Wardens came jogging in, breathing hard.
“Rhûl, they are no more than two miles behind.”
Yorvig turned to one of the runners who always trailed with him, now.
“Let sound the horn and bar all the gates and adits.”
He turned to a second runner.
“Bring me Crookleg. I will be at the top.”
He turned, heading to the tower on top of the ridge above the High Adit. He wanted to watch One-Ear’s arrival.
Of course, he didn’t go alone. More dwarves tailed him, waiting for orders. He hadn’t been alone in weeks. Thrushbeard caught up to him as he climbed the stair.
“Are they all in?” Yorvig asked.
“They are. The High Ridge Garrison just came down. The ürsi come from the east as well.”
Yorvig knew that a couple of the eastern watch posts had been overrun. Whether the Wardens had closed themselves in or been caught unawares, Yorvig did not know. Per orders, the Wardens were to shut fast their doors and wait if the ürsi came too quickly for escape. Their stock of food must hopefully last.
When Yorvig reached the top of his tower, leaning on Treadfoot and wincing at the pain in his leg, the ürsi were already streaming around the walls of Glint, circumventing the walls further up the east ridge. To the north, ürsi ranged over the valley in groups of twenties or thirties, sniffing at the closed sheep folds that had shut their doors of stone. A network of tunnels joined them to the claim. But sheep were no cave-dwellers. They belonged on the pastures. From this moment, the sums of fodder and store began to decline. Yorvig could almost feel the reverse in his gut.
“They have come from north, south, and east at once,” Thrushbeard said.
It was true, and it was not a good sign. That took coordination. It was not likely to be a happenstance.
“I need you at the High Adit Tower,” Yorvig said.
Thrushbeard nodded and left.
A few ürsi ventured too close to the walls, and Wardens fired scattered bolts. As the next hour passed, the greater part of the ürsi host came up along the river from the south. He tried to estimate, but it was difficult. There were too many. Thousands. . . Tens of thousands.
“Chargrim,” Crookleg said, climbing up the last of the stairs.
Crookleg was one dwarf who never called him Rhûl, and was one of the only dwarves who could get away with it.
“The flocks?”
“We estimate eleven thousand beneath the stone. They are crammed and will grow sick ere long.”
Two days ago, Yorvig had ordered the gathering and slaughter.
“How many in salt?”
“Nine hundred in salt. Perhaps three hundred more smoking. We ran out of salt.”
Cursed salt.
“And the latest on the fodder?” Yorvig had brought in a store of expensive human grains months ago, but the humans had made him bleed gold for it.
“The whole for about four months. Half we could see through to spring. We could not get a quarter through next year.”
This is what Yorvig and Crookleg had expected. They had consulted multiple times over the past month. It was the perpetual problem of living in these narrow mountain valleys. The dwarves could eat so long as they could graze the sheep and goats on the hillsides, but they could not survive for long if kept beneath the stone. The ürsi didn’t have to meet them in pitched battle in order to destroy them. All these years and only the sums had changed, not the principle. The more the dwarves established themselves and put pressure on the ürsi, the faster the beasts bred, throwing themselves at the dwarves with even more wanton abandon. Even hundreds of dwarven warriors could not patrol or protect thousands of square miles of rough country. And it took at least two kulhan miners, three head of livestock, and many other necessities to support the cost of a single warrior for the year. So the ürsi hunted the Red Ridges while the dwarves focused on guarding their flocks in a few narrow vales.
The promontory where One-Ear had set up his hut so many years ago was now within the walls of Glint, for the wall topped that opposing ridge. Yet it was impossible to enclose the great ridge to the east that rose thousands of feet. If the ürsi wanted higher ground, the dwarves could not stop them. The thirty-foot walls were enclosed with a sturdy roof above an enclosed hallway, with loopholes in the walls for crossbows. The roof was steep-sloped and covered with many iron spikes. Dwarves could patrol the walls out of the light in almost complete safety.
Yorvig watched throughout the afternoon as more and more ürsi flowed across the ridges and valleys. Wayward sheep and goats left wandering on the high ridges fled—looking like racing white and black specks as the ürsi hunted them down. There were many hundreds of sheep and goats still grazing the high ridge slopes. They could not herd them all down in time. Vast numbers of pigs rooted on the mast of the forest in the next valleys, waiting to be herded for slaughter, but this year their slaughter would come at the mercy of the ürsi.
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Yorvig was staring up at the high eastern ridge when a Ridge Warden runner spoke:
“Rhûl,” he said, pointing. Yorvig followed and saw a stream of ürsi coming up the river road. They carried tall trees, stripped of their branches and notched at close intervals. There were up to forty ürsi per tree, and Yorvig could already see five of the clusters moving toward the claim.
Ladders. Did One-Ear truly mean to stage an assault on their defenses? They had enough numbers to cross the curtain wall, but they would find death within, and they must take huge losses in order to actually breach any of the strong barred doors, if they could at all. Despite the yearly raids on the flocks, it had been forty-two years since One-Ear had last sieged Glint. The threat was never that One-Ear could actually storm the mine. It was simply that he could wait them out. It was always the same.