fanmtl Icevein: Chapter 12
Icevein: Chapter 12
Gretti’s attempt to reach Glint had been foiled by the Ridge Wardens, but he had heard plenty about Chargrim’s paranoia in limiting entrances and creating chokepoints. It was nearly impossible to slip into Glint unobserved, or so it was said. He’d been almost certain that the remaining Highlodes were taking refuge near Glint, or possibly within the colony itself. He’d thought that if he laid low at Sledge Rock for a time, he could try again, but the rumor of Tornheft’s presence in East Spire changed his plans.Gretti knew East Spire; he had been there before, and it was vastly different from Glint. The colony had started out nearly two-hundred years prior as a cluster of galena claims. The massive igneous spire that broke up through the ridge-top was veined with mineral-laden quartzites, and the ancient cataclysmic vent that gave it birth descended into unfathomable depths below. The most valuable lodes in the colony were still galena veins, but pockets of garnets could be found mixed with the quartzites in the fractures running through the upper sandstones.
East Spire was one of the oldest mines in the Red Ridges. The earliest prospectors had chased the interlacing lodes in spidery drifts running out from the igneous extrusion, creating a web of drifts, chutes, and stopes that interconnected in a confusing and un-planned pattern, descending to ever increasing depths. They were dug without a plan, but the ancient extrusion was like the hub of the wheel.
Many entrances pocked the surface. In the early days, there was no Irik-Rhûl to direct the workings, and prospectors dug adits wherever they thought most useful. Since the Council of Deep Cut had taken over the colony, and especially since the starvations and exodus caused by the ürsi raids, the Jackals had blocked most of the adits, but there were still many ways a dwarf could slip under the stone without drawing attention—especially in the summer. The meagre cadre of Jackals left in East Spire was nowhere near enough to prevent smuggling, for no one in the Red Ridges wished to pay Deep Cut tariffs.
Gretti waited until evening before he approached the western ridgeline. There was an adit he had used the last time he was there, a low door intentionally left unbolted. He found it unbolted again and soon padded along a narrow drift, often turning sideways to fit in narrow cuts and dragging his pack along in his hand. Sledgefist had given him enough by way of supplies and worn tools to appear as a regular prospector. Gretti had also shaved his heavy locks and braided his beard. If Tornheft had put a razor to his head to help him go undetected, Gretti could play the same game. A few of the Jackals might remember him from before; he had escaped them during his last visit, and he would kill beneath their noses again if he could find the Highlodes.
He was still at least a mile away from the spire, and he had to keep his wits about him to not take a wrong turning. The drifts often passed under or above each other or took sudden departures from true where the miners had chased a vein, and there was the danger of open chutes into deeper stopes or connecting shafts. With limited Miner’s Eye in the peripheral drifts, Gretti had to rely as much on the smells of the minerals, the sensation of the air currents on his face and beard and skin, and incomplete memory of the route as he did on sight. He also used his voice when in a bigger stope, listening to the echoes to get a bearing on the space.
In Deep Cut, he had worked in the coal shafts mostly, and he knew the dangers and how to read cave runes by sight or by touch. Thankfully, even the early prospectors of East Spire had not abandoned carving cave runes into the openings and transitions of their drifts and stopes, so he could feel the arches and sidewalls to find the chiseled marks that helped guide him further into the ridge where the bulk of the colony’s population resided near the spire. After an hour or more, he started to smell the colony—smoke, cooking, dwarves, hot metals in working forges. The drafts showed him the way, and he needed cave runes no longer. He walked an upward-sloped drift toward one of the great open excavations of the extrusion, a stope nearly fifty yards across and almost as high, the back upheld by pillars of andesite. Here, old colonies of Miner’s Eye grew thick in the veins of rock, and he saw a few dwarves coming and going from rows of doorways and drifts lining the five tiers of the stope walls.
It was said that East Spire had lost over half its population from starvation or emigration back to Deep Cut. Once, this great stope would have been full of busy dwarves. Now, its size only made it feel deserted. Gretti knew that in another month, the stope would be full of goats and sheep and fodder as the colony hunkered down to weather the ürsi raids. He had seen it two winters ago. The last thing he wanted was to be trapped in East Spire again, but if Tornheft was there, then it was the Highlode who would be trapped with Gretti.
Across the stope, a group of young dwarves issued from a narrow stone door, spilling light and smoke outward. Gretti headed that way, head down. The dwarves passed him without a word, paying him no heed. He stepped through the narrow stone entryway and into the smoky interior of the stew hall. It was a long, narrow chamber, with a trestle table down the center and rows of benches along either side. The smell of thick coagulating stew filled his nostrils along with hill-smoke and the bodies of many dwarves eating between their shifts. It must have been shortly before or after one of the changes, because the benches were nearly full. Gretti had to make his way down to the far end of the long table to find a spot. He slid his pack between his feet as he sat.
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An old dwarf with a limp approached and held out his hand. Gretti fished down his first shirt and brought out a small pebble of flattened copper, dropping it into the dwarf’s hand. The proprietor rolled it between his fingers, shrugged, and walked away. Gretti was relieved; he recognized the dwarf, but the proprietor saw far more faces than Gretti. What were the odds here remembered everyone? Gretti was strongly built, with unusually wide shoulders and a stout neck, but he was not the only dwarf of such proportions.
The proprietor returned, setting a deep stoneware bowl of thick stew and a tall ceramic mug of light beer in front of him. There was a sheen of grease atop the stew.
“Any outfits looking for miners?” Gretti asked the dwarf, tucking his braided beard down the neck of his shirt to keep it from getting into his food.
“Piecework, ay,” the proprietor answered.
Gretti pulled his own carved wooden spoon from his pack. He hadn’t had warm food since he left Sledge Rock.
“What about Defthand?” he asked.
“Defthand? No. At least, not likely. That is a low west claim. Wasn’t much to begin with, and it’s nearly worked out from what I hear.”
“Not entirely,” said a dwarf on the opposite side of the table. He’d clearly been listening. “The vein opened up. They’re working a stope. They’ve a full compliment, though.”
“There you go,” the proprietor said, and walked away.
“Do you have experience?” the dwarf asked.
“Piece work in Deep Cut,” Gretti answered. He had never been fortunate enough to have a formal apprenticeship. Another group of dwarves entered the stewhall in a raucous mood.
“I work for a deep igneous quartz claim,” the dwarf said, raising his voice. “We could use piece work this shift, and more after, like as not. It’s chucking spoil, mostly, but you look like you can manage that.” The speaker was a dwarf of indistinct age, with a yellow beard and a knitted wool hat pulled down over his ears. His patched clothes spoke of mine labor; he was just the sort of dwarf Gretti knew best.
“I’ll take it,” Gretti answered. He had to fight the urge to go looking for Defthand right away. He had also made his agreement with Sledgefist.
“Why did you name Defthand?” asked the second dwarf. “It’s a small claim.”
Gretti should have come up with a reason, first.
“It’s the only name I knew,” he answered. “Heard it mentioned on the way.”
“Just arrive?” the dwarf asked.
“To East Spire. Been looking up north this summer.”
The dwarf nodded. It was approaching the timeof year when luckless prospectors returned to some of the busier colonies or sold their labor in established claims before ürsi raided. Nothing about Gretti should appear out of place—so long as no one recognized him. Gretti had avenged blood in East Spire not so long ago.
“Well, eat up and you can come with me,” the dwarf said, and Gretti dug into his bowl with vigor. This was why folk came to the Red Ridges, shit on the ürsi; piece-workers in Deep Cut could hardly hope for such quick good fortune. In the ridges, there was still more work than there were dwarves to do it, especially in East Spire.
“Come on then,” the dwarf said as soon as Gretti had emptied his bowl and drained his beer. Gretti shouldered his pack and tools. The other dwarf carried nothing but his pipe, a spoon tucked in a pouch at his belt, and his camp knife. “What do they call you?” he asked as they left the stewhall.
“Ironleg.”
“I’m Bluehaft,” the dwarf said. “I am kulhanto the Needle Claim this seven years. If you work well, you could become kulhan, if not with us, somewhere else. There is opportunity here.”
“I’d rather return to the ridges come spring.”
Bluehaft nodded.
“If that is your wish,” he replied.
They made their way across the great stope and descended a spiral stair leading down the outer edge of the extrusion of andesite. A draft in this stair carried the smell of fresh workings. The East Spire workings had sunk deep, and they passed through a few levels of worked-out stopes and drifts before they heard the sound of active mining, though the creak of water and steam wheels lifting spoil-rock and pumping air and water followed them the whole way. The great steam-powered central lift rumbled incessantly.
It grew darker; Miner’s Eye did not grow well in dusty environments, but Bluehaft knew his way. It was little trouble for Gretti to follow even down the narrow ore-chute ladders.
“Here we are,” Bluehaft said, turning down a narrow drift that followed one of the veining seams of quartz running away from the extrusion. Signs of the cataclysm were plentiful in the stone. These veins were the filled-in fissures of the great catastrophe that had rent the foundations of the world. They arrived at what clearly served as a makeshift common-room. Sleeping shelves were cut into the walls, tattered blankets covering the openings. Bluehaft retrieved his tools where they hung with others on a peg-wall. At the opening of the drift.
The shifts were changing at the Needle claim, so Gretti met nearly the entire population of the workings—fifteen kulhanand two owners, one of whom served as rinlen. They had little to say to Gretti but assured him that they would have use for to move spoil rock to the central lift. The lift was shared by many claims at a fixed rate paid to the Irik-Rhûl
The Needle Claim was opening up new stopes to follow a division of the vein, producing copious piles of spoil rock. They offered a typical wage, and Gretti made his formal agreement. Sledgefist had given him a secret store of some gold in case of need in the fulfillment of his mission for the Hammers, but until he could learn more about the situation, he must appear to belong in East Spire. He must ask questions before he could make any move, and maybe someone in the claim knew something.
So began his shift in the Needle Claim, shoveling broken rock by lamplight with a scarf across his face. It was labor he had known since he was a gilke, labor that had helped build his imposing frame. No one would complain at the amounts of spoil he moved to the lift. It felt good to work again, but always in his mind, shovel after shovel, his mother’s voice asked: