It is the 18th of Malachite, year 256.Magnus shifted around in her bed, and tried to sleep. It did not go well, but that was to be expected these days, with all the work that was going on both above and below her. It was amazing how quickly she had got used to this level of activity, and to the dozens of fellow dwarves that now called Ilrom Ziril home. On some days, having awoken in a fine bedroom of her own, eaten an expertly prepared meal for breakfast, greeted her friends and marveled at the industry all around her, she wondered if her time in the Mountainhome had all been nothing more than a horrible dream. This fortress was her life now, her present and her future, and she loved every minute of it. Still, the noise sometimes kept her awake at night, and on those nights her thoughts often reached back to the quiet solitude of the first years, when they had been only a handful of dwarves sleeping huddled together in a messy tunnel they had dug on a whim. This was one of those nights.
In just under two months they had managed to realize most of the original fortress plans, chiefly on account of Beirus' truly legendary mining work. However, Than402 had proved an able student, and although he was nowhere near able to keep up with her yet, he had become a far cry from the unskilled laborer he once was. Looking at him now, one saw a professional miner in the mould. And Neblime, by Armok that dwarf knew his masonry! Yes, he could be an insufferable git sometimes, and was as stubborn and unyielding as the gabbro he spent his days working into shape, but the numerous doors in the fortress all belied a master craftsdwarf beneath the grouchy exterior. All of them swung easily on their hinges without making a sound, and if one was locked there was not a dwarf in the world who could get it open.
Magnus herself was also becoming quite the carpenter. Her beds were widely praised throughout the fortress for their comfort and (especially by Skaia, for some reason) their sturdiness, and there was always a desperate need for her bins and barrels. Indeed, all the dwarves she knew were becoming highly capable in whatever profession they held. The metalworks in the Glow had finally been completed a week ago, and Taupe had been positively ecstatic as she pulled her first copper pick out of the cooling trough, parading it around the workshops like a newborn child. Beirus had weighed the child in her hand and found it adequate, and thrown it to Than402, who in turn weighed it in his hand and found it superb. Later that night he had taken his old one up to Iamblichos, who was inaugurating the new furnaces, and she had snatched it out of his hand without even looking at it, laughing madly as she fed it to the infernal maw while treading the lava pump as if her life was at stake. Taupe had found her on the platform the next morning, blissfully snoring on a pile of shiny copper bars. Magnus had proceeded to craft them both a number of wheelbarrows to ease the burden of hauling all the heavy metal to and from the platform ("Lucky! Lucky, kobold bold lucky lucky kobold!"), and once the second drawbridge was complete the work there would go even more smoothly. Life was good, thought Magnus and smiled.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the extra dwarfpower they had received a month ago. An entire village's worth of able hands, gathered at their doorstep! At first they had panicked, believing that the goblin horde had finally found them, and was now here to extinguish the Peak's fire and reclaim their slaves. Dwarobaki had even charged at the invaders, wielding a wooden pole as a makeshift spear, and Than402 and Beirus had not been far behind, twirling their picks with grim determination. Then they saw that these goblins had beards, and soon all of the dwarves were exchanging merry greetings. What a surprise it must have been for them, thought Magnus, to have traveled so far in order to establish a sanctuary of their own, only to find an existing one well underway to becoming a fortress. From what she had learned they came from a similar situation as hers had been, having lived between the hammer of the goblins and the anvil of their own corrupted nobledwarves. The newcomers had been welcomed inside, and soon they were all busy with carving out new bedrooms, as well as a loom, a farmer's hut, a tannery, and... Magnus could not even keep track of all the new workshops.
Now the craftsdwarves all had apprentices, and most of the hauling duties were taken care of by the newcomers ("KOBOLD!"). The ones with no particular skillset had joined in a collaborative effort to smooth and polish the floors and walls of the barracks, and although this was the chief source of the noise that kept her awake, Magnus was astonished by the difference it made whenever she found herself there. It had been many, many years since she had last seen her own reflection, but in the barracks it was right there in the walls, smiling back at her and following her around the rooms. The other source of disturbance came from the tunnel being dug out underneath her bedroom. It would lead to a new farming area inside the western slope of the Peak, where the volcanic sand would yield enough crops for a whole fortress' worth of hungry dwarves. The beardcount was now 37, to be exact. The larder was in turn being expanded to accommodate the estimated influx of cave wheat, sweet pods, and of course the ubiquitous plump helmets. "More barrels," mumbled Magnus, "always more barrels..." and she drifted off to sleep.
As she was heading down to the workshops the next morning she ran into Iamblichos, who was followed by her apprentice, the fattest dwarf Magnus had ever seen. The latter was carrying a large chunk of ore, and sweating profusely. Magnus greeted them both good morning, and asked how the smelting was going. Iamblichos grabbed the ore from her apprentice, who looked immensely relieved, and shoved it into Magnus' hands with a reverent look on her face.
"Sphalerite!" she said, her left eyelid twitching.
"Eh?" answered Magnus, and examined the rock as though it could explain further.
"We found it in the new larder! It's in a marble layer, like the dining room, but it also has a vein of sphalerite! Do you know what you get if you smelt it?" Magnus did not know.
"Umm, you get zinc, right?" asked the apprentice hopefully, and wiped her brow with her sleeve.
"YES!" shouted Iamblichos and threw her hands up in joy. "You get zinc! And what, my fellow dwarves, does this wonderful zinc yield when alloyed with copper in a forty to sixty ratio?" The silence was tangible.
"BRASS!" She began playing an invisible trumpet and marching around in a circle. "Sweet, shiny brass! We're all going to be rich! Filthy, stinking rich! Come, Peregar, we've got a lot of work to do!" She snatched the ore back, tossed it to Peregar and disappeared up the stairs.
"Um, goodbye m'lady Magnus, sir!" said the confused Peregar and hastened after her master. Magnus scratched her head. "I'm really going to have to talk to Iamblichos about her work hours."
"LUCKYYYYY!!!" agreed LuckyKobold, who had appeared in the stairwell and was racing past her in a wheelbarrow, pumping his fist in the air and clattering down the steps with an incredible racket. He had requested one with four wheels, and now Magnus knew why. She couldn't help but laugh.
Later that day..."All right, maggots." Dwarobaki looked over the recruits that had assembled in the barracks, each one handpicked by himself, Wallace and Burnie. "I don't care where you're from. I'm not here to listen to your complaints. I am not your friend, and I'm certainly not someone you want as your enemy. What I am, is the one who's going to WHIP your sorry HIDES into SHAPE!" Dwarobaki had recently acquired a copper spear from Taupe, and it was his dearest possession. He used it for eating. He used it for limbo dancing. He used it for pointing out directions to the newcomers. Sometimes, (and he made absolutely sure to lock his bedroom door on those occasions), he cuddled up against it when he slept. And now, he was using it to punctuate certain words in his drill speech by hammering it against the polished floor. Burnie, who had almost made a full recovery from his illness, had a similar relationship with his spear. They were both military dwarves through and through.
"There is a war out there, maggots, a great and terrible war. I assume you are all familiar with goblins, so you know what I am talking about. THAT is our ENEMY! Some of you may have killed a few of them, and I applaud you for it, but what you all lack is DI-SCI-PLINE! When this war comes to our doorstep, and it WILL come, we will be REA-DY! Those of you who are not, those who run and hide in fear, in short, those who lack DI-SCI-PLINE, will be DEAD! And there are worse things than goblins out there. To the east is a city where the dead walk, and unless you want to become one of them you will do AS I say, WHEN I say it! No matter what foul creations of the night come crawling up our mountain, we will STAND and FIGHT! Have I made myself clear?!"
"YES SIR, OFFICER DWAROBAKI!" shouted the recruits.
"Good. Now, the first thing we need to do is... wait a minute." Dwarobaki had just noticed that was a hole in the ranks where a marksdwarf should be. "We're missing a recruit! Looks like someone thinks they're too important to do their duty! Who is it?! Who's the slimy, little, beardless goblin-fondler down here who just signed his own death warrant?!"
"Sir, it's Melbil, sir!"
"Melbil, is it? And where is this Melbil, I wonder?"
"Sir, she said she was working on a project, sir!"
"A PROJECT?!"
"Sir, she's claimed a workshop and won't leave it, sir! She's asking for logs, and... bone!"
Dwarobaki's face turned as red as the Glow. He took a deep breath. "YOU WILL ALL STAND HERE WHILE I TEACH THIS DESERTER SOME DI-SCI-PLINE!!!"
He stormed out of the barracks and down the stairwell, muttering furiously under his breath. "Project! PAH! I'll teach her to be a craftsdwarf, all right. She can craft bolts for us, and then we'll use her for target practice!" If there was one thing he hated besides goblins and the undead, it was artsy dwarves. He marched into the workshop area and bellowed: "MARKSDWARF MELBIL! PRESENT YOURSELF!" One of the haulers pointed at a workshop in the corner. There was Melbil, furiously tinkering on an object Dwarobaki could not see. He approached her, slowly and silently. "So close... almost ready..." she whispered to herself, oblivious to the world. Dwarobaki crept up behind her, and was about to pound the workbench with his spear and yell something, when she raised her creation up above her head and shouted "IT'S FINISHED! BEARGHOSTS THE ILL DAYS IS FINISHED!"
It was a mace. A quite lovely mace. In fact Dwarobaki had never seen a more beautiful mace in his life.
For a moment, he forgot who he was and why he was so angry. Then he remembered, but it no longer seemed to matter as much. It really was a very nice mace.
"Did you... did you make that?" he asked, rather anticlimactically.
"Yes! Uh... yes, I did, officer Dwarobaki... sir." Melbil, as opposed to Dwarobaki, was suddenly both aware of and rather terrified by the situation she had put herself in. This would not look good on her military evaluation.
"May I hold it?" Dwarobaki still did not look at her, his eyes were fixed on the mace.
"Uh, yes, sir." She gave him the mace, wondering if he was going to beat her with it.
"Bearghosts the Ill Days, you said?" He swung it at a couple of imaginary goblins, cracking their skulls like rotten apples. It was perfectly balanced. "I quite like that. Has a certain ominous ring to it. Who's that on the picture there?"
Melbil, still not completely sure if she was out of the woods, answered. "It's Mosus Hamemyths, sir. One of the barons, from... where I came from."
"A BARON?!" Dwarobaki snapped out of his infatuation. If there was one thing he hated besides artistic dwarves, it was noble ones.
Melbil was about to give an apologetic answer, when they were interrupted by an unholy noise coming from the stairwell. It did not sound like any creature anyone had ever heard before, and indeed not like anything meant to walk this earth. It was a shrieking, blood-curdling howl. The haulers and craftsdwarves all stopped what they were doing, and gazed at the stairwell in terror. Another howl, louder than the first, sounded from it again. Whatever it was, someone or something had angered it.
"Bloody Burnie," muttered Dwarobaki. "I've told him not to practice his singing voice when he's on duty! It lowers the morale!"
"Sir," said Melbil. "I don't think that's Burnie."
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Topic: Ilrom Ziril: The Peak of Fire (Read 32727 times)