Under the whirling old growth canopy she leaned into the storm as limbs rent in great splitting cracks sudden and sharp and fell heavily under the load of newfallen snow. Sharp crystals drove into her eyes and swept across the surface of drifts interminable amid the bare black trunks and white ground and white sky, and the wild rush of the wind and her nakedness under these dropping widowmakers and their scattered broken leavings across her path reminded her of her kin who fell during that night on the span.
She needed to get back to the delving before her da woke. He hated waking alone and she hated the thought of him lying there afraid to call out because what if no one came. Wondering where his daughter went. Worrying something happened to her as had happened to her ma. Ashamed he couldn't do anything about it and afraid to call out. Finally calling her name and weeping and wishing for it all to end.
She pushed on. In places the snow rose past her waist and she was forced to crawl over it. Her hands were cold and damp and her nose pink and dripping. She threw back her hood to hear better and see better. The wind whipped it from her neck like a banner and she scanned the swaying trees and restless drifts for the vanishing trace of her would be prey. She leaned against [Thayne's longarm]. Hundreds of notches etched into its blued barrel like little bodies laid one beside another. Each one an orc or a man. Or an elf if you believed his tall tales. She lowered her face and kept on.
Below a familiar fir the trace ended in six long prints cutting the snow. Three in one direction and a yard opposite three in the other. Two holes between where the talons had stolen her quarry into the storm.
"Damned and brave te be huntin in this mess," she whispered.
She trudged to the next tree and the next, her face down and eyes up, the borrowed [longarm] held in both hands by its grip and forestock or held by one hand pressing down around its barrel whenever she plunged past her hip in the snow. With every step she said the short name of someone lost: hunters better than her and smiths and masons much better and leaders and loved ones who'd never return. One hundred and one dwarves had marched to battle. Less than thirty had come back.
She ran into another track. Partly carried off by wind and partly filled by it. She moved faster. Both hands and [longarm] before her. Forcing through snow as deep as her chest that melted into every seam of her coverings. Whatever she tracked took long steps and sank deep and she wanted it. She squinted against the wind stabbing her eyes. She didn't slow to raise her hood.
For an instant the whiteout cleared and she saw the [elk] framed between two black trunks. Snow stuck to its shaggy brown fur and rime formed on its antlers. They shifted slightly as it took her scent. Its wet eye glinted. Frost sticking on long eyelashes. She raised [Thayne's longarm] and it cracked like an overloaded branch.
She walked to where it lay. A thin geyser of steam jetted from the hole. She unslung her [alpenstock] and tested the adze against her bare thumb. Too soft for granite yet adequate for this. She set to the work. Would that she could spend her whole life in that moment. The cold pressing in all around and the heat releasing from inside. Dragging her [alpenstock] across this slab that yielded to it. Cutting the fruits of life from the body of one ended. No weeping eyes or open mouths or grabbing fingers. No wiry beard pressed against her chest. No clenched teeth.
She [spoke] the sacred words of thanks to the buried stones and then she wrapped and bound enough meat for eight weeks. They needed more but she couldn't carry more. She should've let Khaz come. Perhaps another could use the rest. But who was left to? No foxes or buzzards or beetles with the snow in. No crows in the storm. No wolves. She'd never seen or even heard one of them. She'd never seen an elk either. She wasted most of this one. Eight weeks. It wasn’t enough.
She buried the half butchered carcass in the snow then hefted her load and retraced her track back toward the mountain.
***
The home Khaz shared with Thayne was empty. She found the old [bellower] at the forge and asked after Khaz.
"He went lookin for ye," he said.
"Alright."
She listened to the bellows breathe and watched the coals glow brighter and dimmer and brighter and dimmer. Back and forth like the trees in the wind. Back and forth like her heart.
"It won't be easy te leave him," she said.
"Who?"
"Khaz."
"Yer leavin?"
"Thinkin bout it."
"Well lass, I've been round the sun more times than most. Standin here listenin te the heat gets me rememberin, and when I remember long enough I feel like I can still see the black heart and the first colony. Tell ye the truth I don't know for sure that I ever saw either of em with my open eyes. Maybe they're some other dwarf's memory, or maybe I've started livin some other dwarf's life. Anyway I can tell ye one of the hardest things a dwarf can do is admit that what they've got isn't what they want."
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
She looked at him. "I need ye te do somethin for me."
"Aye and if yer leavin then I expect te know what it is. I can't do it lass."
"Avoidin him isn't changin what's what. He's still yer best friend, and ye know he'd do the same for ye. Hell he might still someday."
Thayne's head sunk between his shoulders.
"There ye be thinkin only of yerself, not wantin remindin of what's comin for ye. Thinkin yer goin te live forever. Ye won't. Ye got a thousand years on me yet ye still haven't figured a way te face their endin. No time better than now."
He put up his hands as if she'd stop but she kept on.
"Ye left him alone on the line. I saw ye goin. Ye left him alone and look what happened. Now yer goin te do what's right or the guilt of it'll break yer back. Look at me when I'm talkin te ye, coward."
She went home after. She didn't feel good about what she'd done, but still she did it. That's the dwarven way. She was sick of it.
Her da slept in the sling with one hairy arm hanging in space. Its loose skin gathered at his elbow and wrist. He didn't eat much anymore and what he did get down didn't stay there. Eight weeks of smoked elk might last him to twelve. More if he didn't get better.
"Oy ye wizard," she said. She laid her palm across his brow. Colder than it should've been.
"Oy Mym," he whispered, eyes still closed. "Khaz came round for ye."
"Did he now?"
"Ye aren't fixin te climb the sky after old Grizzly Serac, are ye?"
"I was til stonefall split the path."
"What's that then?"
She told him about the [armiger]'s envoy and the expedition mustering at seaway's end.
His eyes opened. "Then it'll be uncle Barzun's way. Khaz said somethin of it te me. Said some humans were comin undermount te learn delvin and stonespeech. Outsiders livin in the delvin. Can ye believe it? I thought I dreamt it. "
"I heard somethin of that."
"Ye'll be hearin more now."
"It won't be the first time humans lived here. Daraway's family stayed for years."
"Don't I wish they hadn't."
"Oy. They were yer friends and mine too."
"That girl was unnatural. What she did isn't somethin deserves forgivin, accident or no."
"Well I forgave her a long time ago."
"Course ye did."
He adjusted as best he could in the sling.
He said, "Barzun never came back Mym. I should've gone lookin for him but I never did. Now ye want te go crossin," he gazed down his nose at his pallid feet and wasting legs and collapsed chest and his arm hanging off the sling.
She tucked it back beside him then placed her hand back on his forehead.
He said, "Ye should go. Go and get what needs gettin. The delvin's done, and those orcs need killin. Plenty of honor in it."
"Te hell with honor. Honor's what strung ye up here, da. It put yer friends in the ground as much as any orc. Shit like honor's the last resort for folk who have nothin else te hang onte."
"Yer wrong there lass."
"Look at yerself and tell me that."
She watched his eyes fall again to his legs and she regretted her words.
"I'm sorry da. It just isn't for me."
"Well whatever yer hangin onte it better not be me. I can't bear my own weight and this stringy hammock's too cozy for two."
"Ye'll get better."
"Not plannin on it."
"Ye will, and in the meantime I've got vengin te keep me warm."
"Oy. Careful with that."
"I'm goin te find yer alpenstock." She bent and grabbed a hunk of elk meat and held it where he could see. "And yer goin te strengthen up."
"I'm not fit for that. Listen lass. I need ye te end it. I can't live like this. It isn't livin."
"Are ye not seein this? I took an elk today, da. An elk, and in winter no less. Brought up eight weeks of meat, and Thayne's fetchin more te ye. He's goin te look after ye, goin te make sure ye build back what ye've lost."
"Build back nothin." He closed his eyes and a tear crept out from under the lid of the good one and pooled in the corner until it found a crease and slipped away into his beard.
She stacked the slab of meat back on top of the rest.
He said, "I feel like I'm dyin but I'm afraid I won't."
She reached to soothe his forehead as she'd done before. As he'd done countless times when she was just a lass terrified by tales of the [doomstone] haunting the wynds.
He turned away from her touch. "If yer goin ye better be goin."
"Da."
"Go on now."
"Look at me."
But he wouldn't. Nor did he speak again.
Leaving him was the hardest thing she'd ever done. Staying would've been harder.
----------------------------------------
> +1 [Vengefulness] ...the difference between revenge and forgiveness is a pound of regret... (8/10)
> -3 [Belonging]: She grew up hearin a dwarf undersky ain't no dwarf at all. Then she gets a taste for it. Reckon she liked it. What's that say about who she is? Go and ask anyone still livin what was wrong with her and they'll all tell you the same thing and it starts with a woman witch standin six foot tall. It ain't worth speculating about what coulda gone different. What happened happened and we're stuck with the consequences. Ain't no starvin man worried about burnt chicken... (0/10)
> [Belonging] Title Lost: [Settled]
> [Belonging] Title Gained: [In Exile] Unsettlement is the beginning of change, not the end.