She hefted her pack and went up the delving. Her head down and her hood drawn so its fur brushed her cheeks. She passed the dark houses and their unlit children proudly posed but never waking. She thought about them as she walked. About the one she cut and chided and cursed. About what it must be like to be a mother.

She heard raised voices ahead. A band of dwarves gathered at the horn. She'd hoped to slip out without seeing anyone. But here was everyone. Khaz with Thayne leaning on him amid the other survivors of that night, now ungirded with heads and arms and legs still bandaged and bruised. Red rounded eyes shining in the light off the distant forge. All faced a [messenger] and watched him with no expressions whatsoever.

The [messenger] was human and wrapped in a heavy black cloak. Like a buzzard on a snag he leaned over them with snow dripping from his slickback hair and from the hem of his cloak and it pooled around his feet. He expelled hot vapor with every syllable as if his insides burned. Whatever he was saying she interrupted, "What's all this, then?"

The dwarves looked at her when she spoke and the man turned to her with his scavenger's eyes.

"Oy Mym," said Khaz. "Ye never seen six feet of nak shit standin?"

"Aye but not walkin and talkin," she said.

"Remember when he said there weren't more than thirty orcs comin down the seaway?"

"Aye. And I remember him sayin his king's men would meet us at the span."

"By the weepin stones yer right."

"What's he doin back here?"

The man stood taller if such a thing was possible and opened his mouth to speak, but Khaz cut him off.

"Tryin te force himself undermount by spinnin some yarn about ogres and orcs and goblins ambushin those king's men of his."

"He's weeks late."

"Aye."

"Maybe we should send him spinnin down the face."

"Aye, but he says his delay couldn't be helped."

"Oh?" She poked the sharp spike of her [alpenstock] at the man's midsection. "Maybe that ogre took a bite out of him. Open that big black banner of yers and let's see yer hangin guts so we may forgive yer tardiness."

The man drew his cloak tighter around his middle and tried to speak again.

She rolled right over him. "Seems he doesn't have much te say about it. Ye man, the orcs split yer pink tongue in two te keep ye from warnin us about yer absent king?"

The man made a little bow and said, "It is an honor to speak with you again, lastborn."

"Oy, he talks just fine," she said.

"Finer than ye," said Khaz.

"Aye. Well if he can walk and he can talk then we're runnin short on reasons for his dereliction."

"Maybe he's been blinded."

She rubbed a thumb across her chin. "That'd account for his miscountin. Did the orcs take yer sight, human? Bend yer eye stalks on down here so we can see their foggy ends."

The man looked to do no such thing. He said, "Alas I am no soldier. I wish I was. I wish I had been there to help your folk, as does the king and the armiger and all who remember what the white mountain has done for us. I come with their deepest apologies and condolences and the armiger's offers for reparation, though he knows nothing can repair your loss."

She shook her head. "Pity and charity. That's what's got ye all graspin his words like they're starry sapphires? Pity and twice damned charity. We don't want neither."

"The armiger insists," said the man. "It was his orcs that escaped and his ill taken message that sent you intervening. It was his failures that left you facing them alone. Now he will send men with food to help you weather the coming winter. He will send women skilled in mending and making and mules for carrying and whatever else is needed."

"He doesn't owe us anythin and we don't want nothin that'll need repayin."

"But no payment is required."

She shook her head at the man. "And that's why it'll need repayin someday."

"He insists you accept his gifts of service and servants."

"Nobody serves nobody here, human."

Thayne laughed and said, "He won't get it lass."

The man spoke over her head. "Get what?"

Mym said, "We'll not take anythin that absolves ye."

The [messenger] shook his head. "I fail to see why misplaced bitterness and shortsighted pride should preclude our continued fellowship. The orcs are our enemies, not each other."

"Glacier's gizzard hear them words," said Thayne. "When yer done with him just point his mouth at the forge te save me the labors of billowin." The old dwarf patted Khaz's back with his good hand and turned and shuffled down the delving.

Mym swung her [alpenstock] so its adze rang against her nailed boot and those dwarves still congregating broke and began to follow Thayne.

The man raised his arms and called, "Honorable dwarves," but not one turned back. After a moment just Mym and Khaz stood before him and there was naught to hear but the flume's trickle and the man's drippings and a rising wind beyond the horn.

"He delivered his message," she said.

"Aye," said Khaz.

"Yet there he stands."

"An everlastin mystery."

The man dropped his arms to his sides and tilted his face to regard them. His eyes were black and sunken as if he'd not slept in a week.

"Seems he's got more te say."

"Seems so."

"Maybe the real reason why he's here."

"Maybe."

"I already told you why I am here," said the man.

"Men don't give anythin freely," she said.

"Except disease," said Khaz.

"Aye."

"And unasked for advice."

"That too. Come on man. Out with it. We're listenin so ye can tell yer lordy lord ye said what he told ye te say. Ye won't get another chance."

The man looked past them as if judging the distance to the dwarves who'd left and when he spoke he spoke loud enough for them to hear. "Honorable dwarves," he said, "the orcish revolt took much from many, even you, though you hide it well. Thanks to your aid it has passed these lands, but it is not gone from our body. Like a cancer it emerges elsewhere, and like a cancer it must be excised."

Mym leaned on her [alpenstock] and raised her palm as if commanding the flume to halt its flow. "I'm goin te stop ye there before ye say what I think yer goin te."

The man's face reddened and he took a step deeper into the delving. "We know where they are going. We know some sank already when the whalers scuttled their ship. Five hundred orcs aboard."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She turned to Khaz. "Five hundred he says."

"Thought there were only thirty."

The man spoke even louder. Tendons stood from his neck. "We soon embark to hunt the remainder. The armiger raises an expedition at seaway's end. Veterans from the rising front and scorpions and mounted skirmishers and his own person and guard. He hopes the great champions of the white mountain might lead his van. Trackers and stonespeakers storied to trace a sparrow's flight over bare granite and to raise the very ground in their favor. Will they come?"

"No," they said together.

"Will you not honor the armistice?"

"Honor," said Mym.

"It's what he said," said Khaz.

She looked at the man. "If honor and dishonor are things te move the likes of dwarves then this boy's earned a voyage over the flume as quick as a thunderbolt."

"Yer talkin sense."

The man put up his hands and put on a smile but his eyes widened as if she'd grown a third arm and set to beat him with it. "Just wait a moment," he started.

She said, "And if honor and dishonor aren't things te move the likes of dwarves then we'll just say some things happen and some things don't, and there's neither honor nor dishonor in their happenins."

"Aye that makes sense too," said Khaz.

"Neither honor nor dishonor in trickin allies te come and die."

"Nay."

"Just how it is."

"Aye."

"No honor or dishonor in a man's screamin and foulin up good water as he goes over the edge."

"Such things are just happenins."

She nodded at him. "Aye, and happenins don't need accountin."

Khaz closed his fist around the man's cloak and yanked him onto his hands and knees and dragged him toward the horn and the precipice beyond.

She followed watching the man claw at the pavers as they passed under him and she heard his screaming about offenses and indignities and other shit that didn't matter anymore and never had in her lifetime. Khaz slung him and he slid across the icy road to the precipice of the flume's thousand yard drop. He tried to scramble away and Khaz cast him back and his head hit the pavers under the horn with a satisfying crack.

She put her boot on his chest. "We heard yer man's message. Now it's time he hears ours."

The man turned his face and saw the rush of water and the swirling white beginnings of the coming storm and the invisibility of his doom in their murk. "Please. I have a wife and son."

Khaz looked at her. The wind drove strands of his hair across his face. "What's he say?"

"Says he's got a widow and orphan."

"Oy he's a regular dwarf. Just split him in two waistwise and cut out his middle and sling his hangin aortas around his uncapped knees and slap him back together. Go on Mym. Honorably save him the hike out of here. See if he can count past thirty on the way down. See if he lands in more pieces or fewer."

She looked into the man's wild eyes. "Should I do what he says?"

"No. Please." He shook his head from side to side so that it rolled back and forth on the wet stone and spattered wax and his hair stuck to it. His hands fumbled against the sole of her boot but it wasn't moving.

She dug her heel into his chest and slid him farther over the edge. His head and shoulders hung over empty space.

"Please," he screamed. "I only do what I am told. He wants you. Any you can send. Go get the dwarves he said so I came to do it. I only do what I am bid. Only that. Go and get any they can send. They will be vengeful and we must honor them he said."

Khaz stood away from the man and sneered. "Shiverin bedrock. Put the kid out of his misery."

Snow was falling upward and sticking against the side of the man's face. His hands around her foot were red and swollen. His cheeks wet. She stepped off of him.

"Get up."

He rolled over slowly and sat on the ground with one leg folded underneath and one outstretched and an elbow planted behind him in a lurid pose. "The armiger mourns with you." His voice shook.

"Fuck yer armiger," said Khaz.

"You would honor him by coming to seaway's end."

Mym shook her head at him. "Stop usin that word like you understand it."

The man looked over at the track that traversed the mountain's face and at the storm building overhead. He didn't look over the precipice nor did he look at her. "May I burden your hospitality?" he said.

"No," they said.

They left him sitting there.

Halfway down the delving road Khaz said, "We should've sent him over."

"Aye."

He looked at her. "Ye feelin any better?"

She shrugged.

"Tell me what ye need."

"Tenweight of shard of the sky."

He sideeyed her. "That why yer all kitted te climb? Got yerself set on the black heart of the world?"

"Might be."

"Ye hate it here that much?"

"It's not that."

"I don't see what else it could be. The black heart bested the Grizzly Serac. He's the only dwarf to ever climb the frozen flume. Ye think yer goin te succeed where he failed?"

"No."

"Hell. Ye remember when we scraped ourselves off the top of white mountain? And ye think ye can get up and down the black heart with tenweight of shard of the sky on yer back."

"Didn't say I could. I just don't see much choice in it. Da says stoneshapin won't work without shard."

"It won't work with it, neither."

"I need te try."

"Fer yer da."

She nodded.

"Hell, Mym. It'd be easier te cross the sea and cut down that orc who stole his alpenstock than te climb the black heart. Probably safer too."

"Probably."

They followed the flume through the cool air pushed in by the storm and into the vortex made by orange heat radiating up in waves from the forge and his beard blew against his chest and her hood snapped off of her head. They kept on, stopping at her home. He looked at her and she looked at him and before he could say anything she turned away. "Need te check on da."

"Aye, course. I should check on Thayne." He started down the road past her siblings.

"Oy Khaz?"

He turned to her. "What's now, Mym?"

"Any hint of the keeper and the lot who stayed?"

He shrugged. "Looks like they went into the wynds. Can't say for sure. Stones are quieter than water freezin. It's a damned puzzle and I don't know anyone with the heart to solve it. All's afraid of what the answer might be."

She looked at her daughter's slab. Stupid sorry thing.

"Anythin else?" he said.

"You really think it'd be easier to cross the sea?"

"What with them humans?"

"Aye."

He thought for a moment. "No."

"Alright."

"Anythin else?"

His chin was up and where his cheeks showed above his beard were sunburnt from their last outing. The lines at his eyes' corners were worn so deep she wondered if he was born with them, and she wondered if all dwarven lads favored their fathers and if lasses favored their mothers. She wondered what sort of father he'd be.

"Maybe we try again tomorrow," she said.

"Aye. Tomorrow."

He left. She walked onto the porch where her da slept in the sling. She placed her [alpenstock] beneath him with its spike leaned against the wall of their home. She bent over him. By the forge's uniform light his twisted skin and beard and tunic all blended together with the sling and the facade of their home. He appeared at once part of the mountain. As if all was just an oil painting. Contrasting strokes of a single pigment on a flat canvas as tall and wide as the world. His withered and withering body with its hardened and gnarled limbs and old scars on his arms and legs. The deep one at the place the tall orc had thrust his blade. The lighter stain on his scalp where he'd struck its pommel. Her da's closed eyes and his open mouth were less sour in sleep and his beard curled around and down his neck like creeping moss. She rubbed her strong hands up one forearm then the other, up one leg then the other, feeling the places they'd gone hard as stone and the places they'd cooled like iron in snow, and she pushed her fingers deep into them to loosen and warm them, deep enough to make a healthy dwarf yelp and flinch.

Without opening his eyes he said, "Too much, ma."

"Needs doin."

"Leave me be," but his right hand twitched as if to cover hers. It wasn't much, but it was more movement than anything since that night on the span and she clasped her hand around it and hope took her. Sweat came up on his forehead in tiny dew droplets and his breath came too fast for how cold he felt, and his brow collapsed downward and he frowned and made frightened noises, but hope had her. Its teeth sunk into her heart and pulled her toward its precipice and she yielded herself to be tossed into its oblivion.

"I've ye," she said for the thousandth time since that night. "Don't go slippin now." She squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek and grabbed her [alpenstock]. She ran to beg Thayne's [longarm], and as he fetched it Khaz came out and asked after her, but she wouldn't trouble him. She was tired of troubling him. She made up something and slung [Thayne's longarm] across her back beside the [alpenstock] and jogged from the delving into a swirling blizzard that gnashed the horn and blew all things from the narrow track but the sturdiest of dwarves. She pulled down her sleeves and drew up her hood and stomped down the mountain with hope's hand on her back.

She would do what needed doing and then she would find that boarfucking orc and make him pay for what he had done.

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> Gained Item: [Thayne's Longarm] Hickory and blued gunmetal

> +1 [Vengefulness] ...then he decided to say that word. Truly, what the fuck did he think would happen?... (7/10)

> -1 [Belonging] ...and even if he weren't pushin her she had her whole life behind her fixin to do the job. Like one of them automatonic type things they make up there. You just take your hands off and get the hell outta the way... (3/10)