Icevein: Chapter 43
Rightauger approached the two wardens standing beside the door to his father’s holt. They made an effort to look stern, avoiding eye contact, but Rightauger grinned at them.
“Yég, Tenflip, Fillnigh, you crusty oelgi, don’t act like I’m the left rugh of Queen Jade, herself.”
Both wardens broke composure, their teeth appearing in their beards like flashes of candlelight as they laughed.
“Hobblefoot and Shineboot are a little behind me,” Rightauger said. He wanted to say: “trip the fat one.” It was the type of thing that would both shock and delight the wardens, but he had to be careful not to jest about Owners, especially in front of kulhan. He paused at the door and waved away Fillnigh’s hand as the dwarf reached to open it. “Did you end up at your brother’s claim?” he asked.
“Ay, yes,” Fillnigh said. He had gone on a patrol to the Shy Creek gulch where his oldest brother had a claim.
“Has he struck?”
Fillnigh shrugged.
“He did find some quartz points,” he said. “Mighty clear ones, too. Mostly taken to dredging, though.”
“But he’s keeping?”
“Ay, keeping.”
Rightauger nodded.
“Well,” he said, and opened the door himself before either of the wardens could. “If you try not to fall asleep, so will I.” With that, he stepped inside.
His sister sat at an oblique angle near the corner of the table, and his father sat in his usual spot on the far side, kneading the back of a cat that lay on the table in front of him. A trail of smoke rose from a pipe in his other hand. The smell of hill-smoke was strong, but it was mixed with mead and cave bread and spice-radish and garlic spread. He had spent a shift at Shineboot’s workings before training with Sledgefist’s Hammers, and at the smells his stomach informed him in clear terms that he was hungry.
He strode to the table and grabbed a wide piece of cave bread. With a knife, he slathered the radish across its half-charred surface. Folding it in half, he took a bite, even as he poured a mug of still-warm mead with his other hand. His father’s map—the result of many compilations of other charts, accounts, and maps from both dwarves and humans—lay open on the other side of the table, held down by game ingots.
“I’m glad you made it first,” his father said as Rightauger sat down in a chair near the opposite corner from Peridot. Rightauger nodded, taking a drink even as he continued to chew.
“What are we meeting on?” he asked. A warden had come to him in the workings before he had gone to train with the Hammers, but all the message said was that his father required him at a meeting at the end of the next shift.
Chargrim motioned to the map.
“More of the same,” he said.
“The rest of the Owners did not sound eager.” Rightauger glanced at Peridot. She wore a plain yellow wool dress, her thick hair braided tight and wrapped around the crown of her head. She wore no veil, but even with her face exposed, he could only guess at what she was thinking. Even as young gilna and gilke, he had struggled to understand her, but she was a different sort of creature, now. She was a maid, for one.
“No,” Chargrim said. ‘They did not.”
“Will you do it anyway?” he asked.
“The discussion is far from over,” his father said.
Rightauger looked over at the map.
“South?”
“North.”
“Why?” He looked at Peridot, but she didn’t meet his gaze. “I thought it was mined out?”
The door opened, and Shineboot and Hobblefoot entered.
“Well, Chargrim,” Hobblefoot said, his voice filling the chamber. “We’re here. What have you got for us, now?”
Sometimes, Peridot felt like Hobblefoot and Sledgefist competed to be the loudest, but she wondered if Hobblefoot’s bluster was not a cover, this time. She thought she caught an almost nervous glance.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on NovelPhoenix. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Her father stood, pushing himself up by the arms of his chair.
“Welcome,” he said. “Here, eat and drink.” He poured mugs for both Shineboot and Hobblefoot. Hobblefoot also took a piece of cave bread, slathered it with garlic-radish, and folded it.
“A good day in the workings?” Chargrim asked Shineboot.
“I do not like the trend of the lode in the second working. I am not sure it will hold.”
“Can you descend from there and drive a shaft to Warmcoat’s lode? Come at it from the top?”
“It is possible,” Shineboot said. “Though I am not certain we would reach it before his exhausts as well.”
“It may be time to turn eastward,” Chargrim said. “If the loads do fail.”
“You did not bring me here to plan drifts,” Hobblefoot said through a mouthful of cavebread.
The dwarves had all settled into chairs, Hobblefoot and Shineboot between Rightauger and Peridot.
“I remember you used to care an awful lot about where the drifts went,” Chargrim said. Hobblefoot shrugged.
“I used to care an awful lot about getting rich,” he said. “Now I am rich, and I care an awful lot about using it. After all, we should be using wealth to build, not hide away in fear.”
Chargrim raised his hand.
“That didn’t take long,” he said. “But good news. I have brought you here to discuss your engine.”
Hobblefoot’s eyebrows shot upward.
“You have?”
“Ay, yes. Although I am not yet certain where such a rail should go. East Spire is not market enough, nor do they have much that we want.”
“Deep Cut is the obvious answer,” Hobblefoot said.
“But then Deep Cut controls anything coming from the humans.”
“So, you intend to trade with them after all?”
“I am not sure I can prevent it.”
“So what, north of the Brown Hills, then?”
“It is an option. We would have to establish some kind of depot.”
“I do not know how your friend Reamer would take to an outpost of Glint in the Brown Hills,” Hobblefoot said. “Not if you were going to cut him out of trade.”
“It would be no difficulty for Jackals to disrupt a rail if they wished,” Rightauger said.
Hobblefoot frowned, but he did not disagree. It was hard to argue against what was plainly true.
“Or humans, for that matter,” Chargrim answered.
“Only if they wanted to cut trade,” Hobblefoot said. “Besides, I have told you, we needn’t leave the rail. Sure, it is faster if we do, but it isn’t necessary, so long as we have a path.”
“I understand you have already built the engine,” Chargrim said.
Hobblefoot paused.
“Much of it,” he answered, “but not all. And none is assembled.”
“How long would it take?”
“What are you concocting, Chargrim?” Hobblefoot asked.
“I think your engine should be tested.”
“I agree.” Hobblefoot waited, watching Chargrim with obvious suspicion.
“We’re going north,” Chargrim said at last. “Let us use the engine for this purpose, and if it succeeds, we will build a rail westward.”
“Why north?” Rightauger asked.
“Exactly,” Hobblefoot said. “Why north? The untouched hills are in the south.”
“Across the Ürsi Steppe,” Chargrim said.
“There are ürsi and worse in the north.”
“Because in the north are the fortresses of our ancestors and knowledge of our folk.”
“Songs and stories from eons ago,” Hobblefoot said. “We know nothing for certain.”
“We would if we go.”
Shineboot leaned forward.
“We?” he asked. Even Peridot appeared startled, and Rightauger supposed she knew as well as anyone what was on their father’s mind.
Chargrim stared across the table at Shineboot. After a moment, he sighed.
“Not me. I cannot.” He set a hand on his leg.
Shineboot leaned back and nodded.
“I intend to send an expedition north,” Chargrim said. “I would like them to take your engine, if it functions. They will leave in the waning of winter.”
“You will order the kulhan on this? To their deaths?” Hobblefoot asked.
“No. I will order no one. I will offer wealth and honor. You know as well as I that Glint is full of those who risk their lives for wealth. We will make an announcement. We seek two hundred dwarves, one hundred laborers and one hundred from among the wardens and Hammers. We tell them it is for an expedition in the face of great danger but with promise of great reward and great honor, bestowed either to them or their chosen survivor.”
Hobblefoot shook his head.
“Will anyone be so foolish as to join?”
“You have forgotten the young dwarves in the stewhalls of Deep Cut, laying plans to delve the Red Ridges with eyes full of dreams and stomachs full of hunger.”
Hobblefoot tilted his head, appearing to consider this.
“I still think it better to build westward,” he said at length.
“I am offering you a chance,” Chargrim answered. “I do not believe it doomed. This is a chance to show the merits of your engine. If the Grashal-Indal are what I hope, then we will seek to build a permanent rail, and we will connect it with both Glint and Laith, with a junction here.” He pointed to a spot on the map just north of the Red Ridges. It was the exact spot where Rightauger had found the message from Rothe Stonefoot.
Hobblefoot still had a half-eaten piece of folded cavebread in one hand and a mug in the other, both apparently forgotten. At last, he shrugged.
“And if your expedition fails? There are many reasons it is likely to do so, though my engine will serve.”
“I make no promises,” Chargrim said, “but I will pay for the engine, if that is a concern.”
Hobblefoot waved the suggestion away.
“It is iron, that is all. Iron and time.”
“And skill,” Chargrim answered.
“Ay, yes. And that.” Hobblefoot turned to Rightauger. “You are quiet,” he said. “What say you?”
Rightauger wasn’t sure of what he felt, but with a certainty far deeper than words or reasons or feelings, he knew he would go on whatever expedition left the Red Ridges, whether to north or south. He would have preferred south, yet he would not argue it.
“I am tired of words and fear,” he said. “Go south, go north. Either is better than staying put and waiting for blows that may never fall.”
“Ay,” Hobblefoot said, nodding. “Alright.” He stood. “I will go over the schematics again. And I was not satisfied with the first boiler wall thickness. If they are to leave by winter’s waning, I have much work to do.”
Hobblefoot stood and left the chamber, still carrying his mug and his piece of cave bread.