"Grampa! Grampa!" The high-pitched young voice rang out through the hallway where Urvad was sitting. Passersby looked around and dodged the young boy racing towards the bench in the alcove. Urvad's old eyes crinkled at the corners as he saw his grandson Urist running towards him, dodging between the other dwarves in the familiar careless head-down rush of all small children everywhere.
"Grampa..." the young dwarf's voice broke as he gasped for air. "Ma said... Ma said... that you... need to come... the elf trader... is here." The old man chuckled and ruffled his grandson's hair. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the broker's chain of office, heavy gold links glinting and clinking as he set it on the bench beside himself.
"Well, it's a good thing I brought my chain, isn't it?" The young dwarf's bright eyes sparkled as he looked at the chain; Urist had loved to play with the shiny links when he was a baby, and even now the chain was a familiar and beloved sight. "The elves come every year. I don't think old Glitterbritches will explode if I don't come trade this very minute... have a seat, why don't you, and catch your breath." The young dwarf covered his mouth and giggled at the image of something like that happening to the very proper and formal old elf who was chief bargainer for the local tribes. Wandering over, he sat on the bench next to his grandfather and kicked his short legs in the air.
Young Urist looked around at the familiar setting as he caught his breath. His grandfather loved to sit here, so the sights were familiar. There was a statue of someone important in front of the bench. There were little patches of flowering moss set around to make the place look nice. Today, something was different, though... there was a branch of some sort of small white flower in front of the statue. The flowers smelled sweet, and he jumped up and ran over to them to sniff the delicate fragrance.
"Urist," said the old dwarf, "do you know who that statue is?"
The child examined the statue carefully, but the features didn't look like anyone he knew. It was a female dwarf, wearing armor, holding a war hammer. Long braids ran down her back from under the helm. She looked very tough and kind of scary, and Urist was surprised he had never really looked at her before. "No, grampa. Who is she?"
The old dwarf chuckled and said "That's your grandmother, boy. Fancy you not knowing that." He looked away, eyes seeming to stare off into the distance. "You didn't know her. She was quite a woman."
Urist examined the statue again with a newfound respect. "She looks tough."
"Ha! She was that, my boy. Tough as nails, my Ingish."
"Do you miss her, grandpa?"
"Heh..." the old dwarf nodded sadly. "Yes. Yes I do. I miss her every day, my boy. Every day." He shifted on the hard bench, sticking one foot out. "Cold stone is hard on old bones." Looking into the youngster's eyes, he continued. "I miss her, but I suppose soon enough I'll see her again."
"What happened?" Something about the young face staring up made Urvad sigh - he looked so sweet and earnest. So much life ahead of him, so many joys and sorrows. Urvad didn't remember ever being that young.
"Well, my boy, that's quite a story. I'm sure you have better things to do than listen to an old dwarf talk." Now they were on familiar ground; Urist loved nothing more than his grandfather's stories. He sidled over and swung from the old dwarf's arm, back and forth.
"Please tell me what happened, grandfather... pleeeeease...."
Chuckling, Urvad gave in. "Fine, fine, don't wheedle. Not becoming in the grandson of a broker, not at all." He smiled and looked up at the statue again. "Your grandmother's full name was Ingish Fountainloved. She later earned the title the Crown of Dragons, but when we met we weren't much older than you are now. Those days were far ahead of us."
Young Urist was bouncing up and down in excitement. "Grandpa, wait... my grandmother was the CROWN OF DRAGONS? We heard about her in school! There's a song about her and everything! I didn't know she was my grandma!"
"Yes, she was. Well, we first met when I was just a boy, barely out of short pants. I was always a bookish sort, nose in a scroll all day and half the night. Never one for the mines or the farms, but I loved to read and count. Broke my father's heart. Your great-grandfather, my dad, was a miner. A good one and a proud one. It almost killed him that I preferred literature and research to what he always called 'an honest day's work'. He used to accuse me of being lazy, shiftless, wasting time, all sorts of things." The old dwarf shook his head sadly. "He didn't understand what I did, or that I was good at it, really good! The bookkeeper from the fortress took me in, taught me recordkeeping and sums, praised me daily, but she couldn't do much to calm my father down."
"I don't understand," said Urist. "Why would great-grandpa be upset? Being a broker or bookkeeper is an honor! Miss Leatherbloom told us so!"
"Yes, well, some dwarves are like that. They have ideas of how things are supposed to be, and they aren't willing to listen to anything that doesn't suit those ideas. Don't grow up to be like that, my boy. Helps nobody. But anyway, as I was saying... I was a bookish young thing, and no mistake. Thin and pale, always reading. A wave of migrants came in one week, and I heard about it but didn't pay much mind to the news. Why would I? When I got to the dining hall that night, though, I saw her for the first time. It was like the Moon had come up in the middle of the fortress just for me. Oh, she was so beautiful, I can't even begin to tell you. Hair as dark as nethercap, but shining in the light; skin as smooth as polished stone. Eyes the color of turquoise... She never noticed me, of course." Urvad grinned, remembering. His grandson stared, spellbound.
"She didn't even see me. I mooned about after her for weeks, and then months... she didn't know I existed. I was too tongue-tied to speak to her. Good as I was with words, I stammered like an idiot when she even walked by." The old man laughed. "My friends knew, of course. They found out the story for me. She was training to be a warrior. Spent her days in the barracks, weapons drills mostly. She was learning the spear and axe at first, but as she got stronger she spent more and more time studying the war hammer. First woman to wield the big hammer in over twenty years here at Bloodshield, she was getting plenty of attention.
"Ablel was the guard captain. Huge, muscle-bound brute of a dwarf, he used the war hammer too. Spent all day watching her; 'sparring', he called it." Urvad shook his head. "I was so jealous. I just knew he was going to steal her away. I wanted to kill him, I used to sit and just dream of what I could do to him... all empty, of course. Nothing I could do."
"But..." Urist looked confused. "What happened? How did you get to meet?"
"Well, fate has a way of sticking a finger in from time to time. I was sent to the deep caves to count the wood stocks, and prepare a stocks forecast for the Baron. Have you ever been down that far?" The young dwarf shook his head, eyes huge. "Well, stay away if you can. There are forests down there of mushrooms. Beautiful enough, in their way, but there are lots of things that live in the caverns that like to kill and eat each other... and us." The child covered his ears and shivered; he had heard plenty of stories about things that lived in the deep places, but they still scared him.
Almost immediately, he pulled his hands down and said "You didn't see something scary, did you?" Urvad laughed out loud; leave it to his grandson not to let a moment of fright interrupt a good story!
"I did indeed." Rolling up his sleeve, Urvad showed his grandson the long scar that ran up his left arm. "There was a giant purple worm that snuck into the lumber yard, a cave crawler. I was sorting logs, trying to figure out which end went with which, when before I knew it this giant purple thing was practically on top of me. One of its tentacles left this mark. I don't mind telling you, I ran. I was terrified. I heard the alarm bell ringing, but all I could think of was to get up the stairs. No sooner did I get to the entryway, though, I slammed into someone running the other way. Danger, I said, big purple worm! Then I looked up and realized it was her." Urvad grinned and shook his head sheepishly. Urist was spellbound; he loved nothing more than a good cavern-story, and this one was about his own family.
"Well, I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to do. Here I was, running away from something, and the girl I was crazy about was coming to defend me. She didn't say a word, but I could tell that she actually saw me for the first time. I don't know how to describe it, but there was a difference. She smiled at me, then pushed me into the stairs and said 'Stay there, I'll tend to it.' I watched and she ran into the cavern, shouted once to attract it's attention, and WHAM!" Little Urist almost jumped out of his skin in surprise, and then laughed delightedly. "She hit it once in the head with that giant hammer, and that was it; off the big purple body went to the dump, and everything went right back to normal. Killed it with one blow." Urvad smiled. "That night she brought me some water in the hospital, said she wanted to make sure I was being tended to. After that for some reason I wasn't as tongue tied with her. So I set out to win her heart." His grandson stared up at him, eyes shining.
"Ablel wasn't having it, though. He was mad that he hadn't been first in the door when the danger had occurred; felt like she had showed him up. He was always showing off, trying to impress her." A sour look crossed the old dwarf's face. "Funny, I haven't thought about him in years. He was constantly following Ingish around, giving her big ostentatious gifts I could never have afforded. She thanked him and took the gifts, but treated him the same as she did everyone else. I wrote her poems and love letters, once we started talking... really personal stuff. She basically ignored them. She would always smile and shake her head, give me a friendly hug or punch in the arm, and then head back off to the barracks. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. It was driving me crazy... and to be fair, it was probably driving poor Ablel just as crazy. All his gifts were doing was wasting his money. All my words didn't seem to be able to produce a result. She was her own dwarf, and she was never too comfortable discussing emotions and the like. Honestly, I don't know if she ever would have settled down... but then the great beast came.
"It started quietly enough. The haulers started complaining that there were strange sounds in the darkness of the caverns. Over the next few weeks, we started finding dead animals; the caves started to stink of rot and death. Crundles, mostly. Some torn apart, some wrapped in sticky webs. We worried that one of the big spiders had come. Traps didn't catch anything, though. Then the troglodytes vanished. The cave swallow men that had lived down there for ages... all gone. The only sign they had ever been there was a broken blowgun left in the moss. Vanished. The haulers and woodcutters got to where they were flatly refusing to go in the caves. Something was in there, they said... something bad. Nobody ever saw anything, but it felt tense... a waiting feeling. There were strange rustlings and knockings coming out of the deep caves. Everyone swore they could feel something watching them." The young dwarf moaned softly and subconsciously hunched closer to his grandfather.
"Finally the nobles decided enough was enough, something had to give. Morale was terrible, and work just wasn't getting done. People were twitchy. Everyone in the fort was startling at nothing. Tempers were frayed, and fights were starting over stupid things. Even worse, wood wasn't being cut, gems weren't being mined, fish weren't being caught... everything that depended on the caverns was at a standstill. So they came up with the idea to send the militia to sweep the caves. 'To prove', quoting Ezum Rebelcoal the mayor, 'there's nothing down there that hasn't always been there'. Poor old Ezum, he was a good dwarf but a lousy mayor, charming as hell but dumb as a bag of broken rocks. Ablel, Ingish and all the rest went trouping off into the caverns. Then all hell broke loose."
"Ingish wouldn't talk much about what happened. She still had nightmares about it years later. As best I could tell, they made it to the big lake, where the fishers would normally be working. Everything was dead still, too still, and they walked up to the edge of the water where a pier stuck out into the lake. Something... huge... came up out of the deep water. Tentacles twenty feet long, all teeth and scales and horror. I saw it once it was dead. None of the bestiaries mentioned anything even vaguely like it." Urist was shivering now and hiding his eyes, but Urvad kept speaking, lost in his story. "Some people claim now that it breathed fire, or poison gas, but it didn't. Nobody would have survived that. It was just huge and tough and deadly. Ablel saw a chance to impress Ingish, and ran at it, swinging his hammer - the tentacles ripped him in half before anyone knew what happened. Half the squad died that day. While it was busy fighting, Ingish ended up next to it. She saw a chance and she took it. She swung that hammer over and over, praying that she would hit something vital. When the beast was dead, they said she killed it, and named her the Crown of Dragons. Years later, though, she told me she never really knew if her hits killed it or not. She was just hitting it as hard as she could, praying to live."
"W-what happened next, grandpa? She killed it, right? That was Ozud the Unseen Maze?"
"Yes my boy, that was Ozud. Ozud Cloakechoes the Unseen Maze. She killed it and we ate it, of all things, in a huge feast. To prove a point, the mayor said. She was the guest of honor, and sat at his right hand. Five good dwarves died that day, including Ablel, my rival. Five families lost a child that day.
"I had heard that she liked the desert roses that grew in the canyons. That day, I made it my business to get them for her. I wandered the dunes for hours gathering them and I took a big bunch with me to the hospital. When I got there, she was surprised when I gave them to her, but just thanked me like usual and acted like nothing had changed. That night, though..." The old dwarf cleared his throat. "That night she was waiting for me at the door to my room. Said she knew now that time was short." The old dwarf sighed gustily, and shook his head. "Others were in mourning, but I was rejoicing. When we got married, I was the happiest dwarf alive. Even my father came to the wedding, and publicly embraced me... oh it was a fine time.
"Ingish never gave up fighting, though. She loved that warhammer like a jeweler loves his gems. Your mother was born on the battlefield with the goblins; your uncle as well. Ah, those were the good times. Through the years, I kept her in desert roses. Not a day went by that I didn't smell that sweet smell and think of her, even when she was away fighting."
"Did the goblins kill her, grampa?"
"No, not at all. I guess that's where the irony comes in." Urvad looked away. His eyes glittered. "She was a hammer lord and a champion; after all, she was the Crown of Dragons! Couldn't be beaten on the battlefield or off it. She had victory after victory. Got to the point where just saying her name to the goblins was enough to send them running. We were married for eight beautiful years. Oh, those were happy times." A tear ran down the old dwarf's seamed cheek. "Came a day where she was finally off duty... first leave she'd had in months. She left me in the room, said she wanted to bathe and clean off the grime and sweat of patrol before bed. A... a giant spider came up through the well while she was there. It was just bad luck."
Urist's mouth was hanging open. "It... it killed her while she was bathing?!"
"No, not my Ingish!" laughed Urvad. His voice broke. "She killed it with her shirt, of all things. Beat it to death as soon as it appeared... but it managed to bite her first. She could kill the spider, but the poison... the poison got her." He looked away, wiping his eyes. "I visit her tomb from time to time, but that stone box isn't anything like her. This statue doesn't look a lot like her, but the determination, and the hammer - that's my Ingish all the way." The old dwarf made his painful way over and picked up the flowers at the base of the statue. "Oh, my desert rose." he looked up at the statue's grim face where it brandished its war hammer at the world. "the caverns gave you to me and the caverns took you away. It's never been the same since you left me."
Urist hung his head, but his grandfather tousled his hair and said "Enough sad stories, eh? Let's go see what the elves brought!" Hanging the broker's chain around himself like a sash, the old dwarf looked back as his grandson pelted off down the hallway at full speed. He made his way over to the statue and replaced the white blossoms in front of it after kissing them softly. In silence, the old dwarf shuffled slowly away down the hall.
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Topic: The Love Song of Urvad and Ingish (Read 1608 times)