One hundred and one dwarves marched down the delving's road from undermount past their great horn and down through icefalls to the first gnarling bristlecones and down to the silver stream that shepherded the valley's forest across its floor. The melt from the flume trickled into the stream there to swirl over booted feet and to burble tales of the first colony and the time of ice when water harder than steel towered higher than mountains and sculpted all the world's forms. Birch and ash crowded the banks and chattered as the autumn wind stole their voices one leaf at a time and cast them to the ground. Atop the thinning canopy a solitary crow scolded the wind for blowing and the sun for hiding, and her cries climbed gray walls of sheer granite whose scraped faces listened to everything below and whose overhanging arches and massive crevices had provoked ancient questions of ancient power from humans both learned and lay: Which were carved by dwarves and which by ice? Which followed which in their long retreat up the mountains' slopes? If the dwarves knew they never told.
As the hundred and one splashed through the place where the flume met the stream one hundred began to sing a dirge in voices below human hearing that recounted the one’s true name: not Mym or Waz or Thayne or Khaz, which were mere threads of a tapestry, each a single syllable condensing a thousand eons of stones uplifting and ice receding and dwarves sweating and bleeding and cutting, as a battle's seen and unseen suffering and known and unknowable heroics are all folded into the name of the field they hallowed. When one song finished their voices fell sharp and severe as a hammer to anvil, and when the next began they rose as a mountain takes an age to rise and sang the next dwarf's true name. Each lasted an hour or more, its meaning known only to dwarves and perhaps to the valley's walls that [heard] and remembered.
At noon on the fifth day their songs ended and it was their turn to [listen] and remember. Lonely boulders beside and within the stream recalled memories of centuries past and the songs of dwarven companies gone before, five hundred strong, five thousand strong, their hands rough and faces chalked from delving and masonry, marching in teams bound by exchanged oaths or exchanged blood to push or pull or haul mechanical engines of timber and metal and mystery along the stream's narrow banks, the rattling and creaking and crashing over ruts muffling their clanking arms, their black and red beards and red and white banners fluttering in the valley's forenoon inhalation and evening exhalation, the white mountain at their backs and the sweat down their necks soaking silks and linens and cloth traded from the far side of the world with stories as long as the names of those wearing them.
The hundred and one [asked] the boulders what had happened to their once great folk. The boulders didn't tell.
They passed beyond the granite walls and errant glacial erratics to a stoneless land of diminishing foothills that ushered the stream like two palms side by side lifting cool refreshment to pursed lips. In shadowed folds between the hillcrests tributaries fed by other valleys ran to meet the white mountain's stream, and it swelled to a black river with fish striking its surface for their dusky meals and making waves of the graying sky and browning land mirrored therein.
Khaz walked beside Mym as if it was where he belonged. He was tall for a dwarf and his nose uncommonly large and his eyes gray with flecks that sometimes glinted green in sunlight like reeds twisting in a current. As she was the white mountain's last daughter he was its last son and together they bore its expectations. Over the decades he'd done little things, sweet things, to help her endure their weight whenever he thought she needed it. She never did yet he'd often thought it.
"Looks like rain," he said.
She didn't look. She didn't need to. She'd seen the clouds readying to break, to spill, to grow good green life from dearth. As if progenesis was as simple as that.
When she didn't answer he pitched his thumb back toward her da and Thayne who walked behind them. "What're they on about?"
"Don't know," she said. "Not listenin."
"They're always after each other about somethin. Next dwarf born could be named for their arguin. Ye hearin em?"
"Aye. Somethin about the call te arms."
"Oy? Half of what they're sayin I can't understand, and the half I can is gold plated nak shit."
She smiled. "They're old and hardenin. Try makin yer mind more like a stone."
"And my tongue too? I can't even tell what words they're usin."
"You sound like my ma."
She [listened] as if the old dwarves were stones already. After a while she said, "Thayne's just sayin we shouldn't go any and every time humans come askin. It's an old argument I've slept through more times than I've heard. Guaranteed they have too."
"Aye but he's got a point. We got ourselves te think of. We go and get te dyin and what? No Naz left te make another Khaz'o'naz. Meanswhile humans go and make more and more like a whole warren of rabbit. Ye ever seen two together?"
"Aye sure. Last time the armiger came undermount he brought a score of em."
"Those were all men. I meant a man and a woman."
"Just the emissary's girl before they got on."
"Ye meanin Daraway. Shit, ye didn't act like she was just a girl whenever ye were together."
"That was then. Then isn't now."
The sky grew heavier. Ready to burst. She could smell it in the breeze.
"Well ye put a man and a woman together and watch what they get te," he said.
"Elves used te say that about us."
"Used te. like ye said, then isn't now."
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"Wonder what they'd say if they were up on that hill watchin our wee company pass."
"Keep wonderin." He looked up the column. "I'm goin up the line. Walk with me?"
"No. Go on."
"I didn't mean it that way. I just meant for the sake of the argument that maybe yer da should listen to old Thayne for once."
"I know."
"I didn't mean we'd get te dyin."
She looked at him. "I said I know. I don't plan on dyin."
"Me either." He grinned and slapped her back then stepped off the road and jogged ahead.
From behind she heard her da say, "Braw lad and solid. Ye should run on after him."
She half turned to him. "You done arguin?"
"I wasn't arguin."
"Say another word bout me and Khaz and ye will be."
"Too bad." He walked alongside her and she put her arm around his elbow. "Past time ye gave him another whack. He's a good match for ye, always was always is. Steady head, steady hands, big heart."
"Leave it."
"Look I know yer feelin like yer stuck with the spares, but ye can't ask for diamonds in coal."
"I said leave it."
"Heed wean. If ye don't want te sculpt my granddaughter from stone then ye need te try with Khaz."
"Da."
"Just sayin. Everybody's waitin. I'm tired of bein the last father. Ye got my blood in ye. More important ye got yer ma's blood in ye."
"So I need some Khaz in me?"
He grimaced. “Oy oy oy there. That’s me daughter yer talkin bout. Don't be lewd."
“Then don’t give me reason te be.”
"Look. I’m just sayin it worked for yer ma and me, and a hundred other generations of dwarves before wee Mym first told her da no."
"No."
The rain started. Big cold drops making wide rings in the river and mud from the road, knocking on iron helms and nak leather and stone pavers like rocks down a sluice. She rolled the lid of her da's pack to keep his [alpenstock] and [longarm] out of the wet and he rolled hers.
"I love ye, Mym," he said.
"I love ye too, da."
"I just don't understand why yer mad all the time."
"Cause I got yer blood in me. I'm done talkin bout this. What were ye and Thayne blowin over?"
He glowered and she took his arm again. He said, "That old stonefart's thinkin white mountain shouldn't hold up our end of the peace. Thinkin we're too few and too rare now te run out whenever the human king calls."
"Maybe he's right."
"Like hell he is."
She tilted her head so that she might look him in the eye. "Some might say we're out of our heads te go warrin when we can't go birthin," she said.
"And I say it's better te die with honor than live in shame. The king holds up his end we hold up ours. He sent his armiger te check on us. Brought us medicines te help our, our difficulty."
"Ye can say it, da. Isn't any shame in it."
"They help us and we help them. Heaps of dwarves and humans gone te crows and worms te make it that way. White mountain isn't goin te hide from the call te arms. Especially over, what, twenty orcs?"
"The armiger's man said thirty."
"Thirty. Any dwarf's worth three of the brutes. Hundred and one can handle half a thousand. Maybe a scratch'll need cleanin and a busted bone settin, maybe a bite or two'll need cauterizin. Won't be worse than that. Hell, you and me together'd work the whole thing, but the others would whine bout missin out."
She smiled. "I'll try to save one or two for ye."
"Oy. Yer already on about it. And the armiger's sendin a company of men too. Thayne's an idiot. Caution won't keep orcs from comin right on up our valley, right on up te the delvin. Bluster alone won't blow em off the mountainside. Humans are doin their part, we got te do ours. They may be young and shortsighted, but they can still teach us good ways te be and ways te be good. Remember that."
"I've known that longer than ye."
"Hell." He wrung rain out of the tail of his beard. "Get on and find Khaz, aye?"
"Da."
"Ye don't know less ye try."
"We did. We been tryin for years."
"Oh,” he said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know."
She didn't tell him it was fine because it wasn't.
They walked together a while. Side by side when the road was wide enough and single file to cross little streams trickling out of the hills and into the river. Rain cells drifted overhead like molten lead congealing in smelted ore. The sky darkened further.
"There's still sculptin," he said. "I got a good block of granite out of the black heart of the world my da's ma hauled way away back when this started. Never laid a tool te it. It'd make a beautiful granddaughter, maybe."
"No."
"Undermount's dependin on ye."
"They can depend on someone else awhile."
Gradually the rain lightened until it quit altogether. The clouds began to break up and glow pink and gold and violet from the setting sun, and marmot and grouse and midges came out for the last slice of red sunlight before the gluttonous world swallowed it.
Her da swung his pack around and drew his [alpenstock] to check its edges for damp. "If ye ever change yer mind bout sculptin ye don't hide it like ye hid the other things, aye? I need ye te tell me so ye can use my stock."
"Mine's fine."
He shook his head. "Ye need the shard's air for it te work. Steel won't do it right. Steel alone hasn't never worked."
"That's because nothing'll work."
"It's how they made the first dwarf. It's how we'll make the last. Ye'll use my stock for it, and I'll show ye. Ye'll change yer mind."
"I won't."
He nodded and said, "Ye will," because the fathers of dwarves and the fathers of women are not so different.
The clouds turned dark blue and the sky gray, then the clouds turned gray and the sky black, and in dusk's last gloaming the dwarves came to the edge of a great cliff. The river slipped over its rim as smooth and silent as a knife in the gut and the road turned right to follow the rimrocks toward the old tower span that bridged the lands of dwarves and of humans. The dwarfroad met the seaway there, and there the hundred and one readied to repel orcs said to number thirty.
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> +1 [Stonespeaking] Aye the lass had a knack for a few things. Shootin for starters and ye know already she was a surefooted goat on the side of any mountain tween here and the black heart. One other thing was stonespeakin, though she came late to it. Almost too late if I'm tellin it true but that's what happens when ye don't have yer ma around te learn ye... (1/10)
> [Stonespeaking] Title Gained: [Neophyte] Her ears dead and her tongue sharp.
> -3 [Belonging]...they was facing the end of their world at the time, though I suppose that ain't changed none. My point is there's only so far you can push a girl before she starts pushin back. And when the one you're pushin is already holdin up the world then you best not push too hard else she's liable to drop it direct on your head... (5/10)