SummerWhile collecting the bodies of the fallen, Bembul the marksdwarf was attacked by a snatcher who sprang from hiding.
Unimpressed, she shot him in the foot. The goblin screeched in rage and stabbed her again, targeting the exact place where she had been wounded by Bosa a year ago. She screamed and fell to the ground with a re-broken rib, and the snatcher limped away cursing. Dr Kosotham would have yet another patient, and he wasn't even done with Udib or Dodok yet. At least Udib's hand injury was minor. Dodok the presser had lost the use of her arm.
Medtob came out to bring Bembul to the hospital. The bodies of the four fallen dwarves were brought in and laid gently on the grass, awaiting proper burial. Our best mason was a dwarf named Etur Ritharathel, a recent migrant. I asked her to do the necessaries.
It was a reminder to finally do what I'd been intending to do for over a year, and dig out a proper resting place for the bodies of the three dwarves who had been interred in wooden caskets. Their remains were reburied in stone.
On the 13th Hematite, Yem gave birth to her second child, a boy.
A week later, a new small group of just seven migrants arrived, bringing Soaplanterns' population back to 131. They brought with them the usual miscellany of livestock and pets.
As the domesticated cow is to the wild aurochs, so the rock worm is to the voracious cave crawler. Although gentle, it will slap with its tail if threatened, and can do a lot of damage this way. It is a fairly demanding grazer. Both genders are milkable for rock worm essence, which can be further processed into rock worm spice.
"Snatcher!
Snatcher!"
A goblin thief had been spotted in the pastures, right beside a young racing snail. The snail surged away, huffing in alarm. Dwarves dropped what they were doing as Soaplanterns' entire militia descended on the hapless thief. There were half a dozen marksdwarves aboveground, and bolts flew in all directions.
By some miracle, no civilians got caught in the crossfire.
"Count the children," I ordered grimly. None were missing. "How in Kovest's name did a goblin get past
all of you? Weren't you in the barracks?"
"Zon and I were," Momuz said unhappily. "We were sparring. But we never saw him..."
Dogs, I thought. That's what we need--dogs. Amante's right. But the three puppies we had still weren't big enough to train. We'd have to wait it out until then.
Shortly afterwards, another snatcher was spotted--this time in the barracks. He made a break for it, stupidly running deeper into the fort instead of back out through the barracks. Bolts spewed at him from all sides. Most of them missed; Ahra was the one who chased him down and finished him with a spear to the brain.
I had hoped that we might see some human merchants this year, but summer gave way to autumn without any sign of them.
The fortress's wounds had healed a little with time, but the death of Ushrir left a hole in our defenses that would not easily be filled. I called the Crystalline Oceans to a meeting.
"We lost
five dwarves to that ambush, four of them defenseless civilians. I don't need to tell you this is unacceptable. We cannot afford to take these sorts of losses."
"We can't be everywhere at once," Ahra said angrily. "If Ushrir had only had a breastplate--"
"I know! But look, we have a total of twelve weapons grade metal bars in this whole fort, and half of those are silver! What do you want me to do?"
"Build us a danger room," Momuz said.
"
We are not having a danger room."
"What have you got against danger rooms, anyway?"
"I don't want to talk about it. Look, there's got to be another way to give you people some weapons experience."
"Well, what about the prisoners?" Katana said.
The prisoners. We had ten goblins in cages, taking up space and resources. Surely a weaponless, naked goblin couldn't do much damage even against unskilled recruits.
Woodworker 'somebody' Gidthurtekkud, who was skilled with an axe, was drafted in as the militia captain of the Crystalline Oceans. She wasn't Ushrir, but she was the best of the non-drafted dwarves. Oddom Dedukmeng, an engraver, had used a mace before. A third dwarf, Velg Litastmusish, expressed an interest in learning to use a dagger; after all, we had several of them just lying around gathering dust. That brought the Crystalline Oceans up to nine dwarves.
9th Limestone"Ready?"
"Ready!" Nevyn yelled.
"All right, chuck us the next one!"
12th Limestone"That went quite well, I thought," I said. "Except for the master thief who managed to escape, of course. But marskdwarf-Muthkat shot him, so we still won."
"Let's put some cage traps back up at the gate," said Medtob. "That should stop the snatchers, and give the soldiers more practice material. billybobfred's a decent mechanic, she can make us some more mechanisms."
