Greal might have kept his promise of scrubbing thrice times three. Yorvig scrubbed his fair share, too. They brought up bucket after bucket from the Low Adit, not feeling like they could get clean down below even though the water bubbled up from the artesian well there. Onyx hadn’t touched the ürsi, but she took a bucket away to her own chamber. Just being in those old delvings was enough to foul the clothes and leave a lingering scent in beard and hair, and dwarven noses were easily offended by foulness. They could detect the unique aromas of different minerals and types of matrix rock, and they could identify each other and their relative locations in the pitch darkness. The world was a constant thrum of scents. Even being above ground could be overwhelming at times, with the winds and breezes carrying so many different smells. But nothing had Yorvig ever encountered like the rotting corpse of an ürsi. The nausea of it remained with him for a day, and even the memory could trigger the smell.

They ate a meal of radish and smoked Great Antler, which was what the dwarves had started to call the massive beast Sledgefist had killed. Then, they separated to find something to occupy their hands. Hobblefoot and Greal were to stand the first watch, taking turns patrolling to the Low Adit and the terrace doors, listening for any sound of activity. Warmcoat had unwrapped his head to bathe. His wound had stopped bleeding but was swollen around his split ear to the size of half an onion. He settled down to whetstones and stropping leather to sharpen weapons, one after another, until their edges were razors.

What Onyx worked in her own chamber, Yorvig didn’t know. He labored to break the fibers in hardened tanned furs from their hunting trips. They’d been soaked with brain, then smoked, and now he rubbed the pelts over a wooden plank held in place by two legs slotted into the stone. It was made specifically for this purpose. Back and forth he stretched and pulled and scraped the hide across the wood as the fibers in the hide loosened and softened. It was a mindless task, though a necessary one to turn the pelt into anything but dried rawhide. Ideally, the pelts would have been broken over days as they slowly dried, but it was just one more task he could not prioritize at the time. Besides, he did not begrudge a mindless task to allow him to wander in his own thoughts. He mostly wondered about the expedition back to Deep Cut. Had he sent them to their deaths? Thankfully, no one had spoken of it yet, but he feared that was only because they did not want to make it real, or deal with the fears in the open. Neither of the night watches resulted in anything to relate. All was quiet within and without.

Before dawn the next morning, Yorvig let Hobblefoot and Greal mine while Onyx and Warmcoat kept an eye—and more importantly an ear—out for ürsi. The labor at least provided distraction. Yorvig even pitched in a bit himself. Warmcoat was feeling too dizzy for heavy labor, and Onyx could work on her links of fine gold chain while also keeping an eye on the High Adit door and making rounds elsewhere. Yorvig had forbidden her to smelt, as the coal must be kept for smoking the meat when the last of the wood ran out.

It was barely an hour later when Onyx found Yorvig in the stope.

“I smell ürsi at the terrace door.”

Yorvig grimaced and followed her up the stone. He smelled it too when he put his nose to the edge of the door—not strong, but there.

“Let’s hope they don’t ruin the beds,” he said, though he had little hope. Onyx squinted.

“Did you hear anything?” he asked.

“No, just the smell.”

What a waste. All that work in the gardens. At least they had enjoyed radish and turnip in the summer. But Onyx said she hadn’t heard anything. Maybe they had just come to scout the door, dropping from above by rope or somehow managing to scale the cliff face.

Hours passed in sewing patches of animal pelt over torn knees and elbows in clothing or filing burs off the edges of chisels, and all the time Yorvig tried to come up with any kind of plan.

In the evening, Hobblefoot and Greal took first watch again. Yorvig sat in the smithy not far away, examining his walking hammer and wishing he had some metal other than gold—as mad as that was—when Hobblefoot stepped into the smithy. Warmcoat was also there, using hammer and chisel to carve a mug, and Onyx was staring down at her tools laid out on the stone worktable.

“Something is happening,” Hobblefoot said.

They followed him to the stone door. They could hear ürsi in the dell. There were yips and gibberings. Then, a high piercing shriek cut the night, and the gibbering and yips and howls rose like a wave before receeding.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“They were quiet last night,” Greal said. "After we let it go."

This was only the third nights since the attack. It felt longer.

“Should we go up to the terraces and look?” Warmcoat asked.

“No. Let's not draw attention. If anything is happening, it’s happening without us." He also feared that the ürsi might try to lure them out onto the terraces to ambush them. "We'll keep watch on the adits. Otherwise, we rest.”

Through the night, the same noises continued in the dell. During his watch, Yorvig sat at the High Adit door and occasionally thumped through the drifts with his walking hammer, checking down the hatch or spiraling up the stairway to listen at the terrace door. There was no sound of anything, and the smell of ürsi had faded. Clean air filtered through.

Even the sounds faded by morning.

“Are we going to do anything?” Hobblefoot asked.

“We have more than a month of food if we ration well,” Yorvig answered, though by well he meant something more akin to only starving slowly. “And plenty of clean water. We can let them sit and think for a while. They may grow tired of this. We can’t meet them in the open, anyway. I’m not sure what else we could do.”

“It’s hard to wait knowing they’re out there defiling the dell. You have ideas, so I thought maybe. . ." Hobblefoot shrugged and carried his tools off to the stope. Yorvig watched him go.

"We will make it," Warmcoat said to Yorvig with a grimace he meant as a smile, before following Hobblefoot. Warmcoat had been angrier than any of them about releasing the ürsi, but he never managed to stay that way long.

Yorvig worked with them. They’d begun following one of the branching veins deeper into the rock on a downward slope. Hobblefoot muttered when he acknowledged it, but he thought that it may eventually cross paths with the trajectory of Sledgefist’s lower drift.

That made Yorvig think, too. If Sledgefist would have come across the gold anyway. . . Yorvig could have just supported him as rinlen, and none of this would be his responsibility. At the same time, they might have starved by now. But maybe not. He might have influenced Sledgefist, somehow. What would have happened if different choices had been made? He shook his head. Events had proceeded from one to another, and it felt inexorable. The claim was carved in stone, now, in more than one way.

A few hours after darkfall, the sounds returned. They huddled around the slat in the door listening.

“They're more agitated, tonight,” Hobblefoot said.

“Maybe this is normal, though.” Warmcoat leaned away from the slat, shaking his head. “Maybe this is just ürsi.”

“Maybe,” Greal acknowledged.

Yorvig didn’t believe it. The ürsi must exist by hunting. He couldn’t imagine them tending gardens or flocks. And creatures that hunted needed to be quiet. Unless this was some kind of wartime behavior.

“Alright,” Yorvig said. “Let’s go up top.”

They didn’t smell anything at the terrace door, so with weapons in hand, they unbolted it and swung it outward. They could hear the sounds clearer as soon as the door opened, as if the echoes were being drawn into the terrace cuts and down the drift.

“Stay here,” Yorvig told Greal and Warmcoat, motioning to the door. Then he went with Hobblefoot into the first terrace, dodging carefully past the second stairwell. Onyx followed them. Yorvig realized he hadn't bothered to tell her to stay behind, and he wasn't going to do it now.

Scattered fires burned throughout the dell, but some of the campfires looked like they’d been scattered, embers glowing like a spray of orange stars. The light they cast illumined much of the dell to his dwarven eyes. There were ürsi gathered near the far ridge, beneath that slight promontory from whence the ürsi had pointed at him days before. The ürsi seemed agitated, hopping, sinking into crouches and rising up, as if too excited to remain still. Something was happening, but Yorvig couldn’t make it out. Perhaps fifteen of the beasts clustered near the promontory, yipping and shrieking in sudden outbursts before falling quiet again.

“They are fewer,” Onyx said.

“Maybe the others are hunting?” Hobblefoot suggested.

Maybe. It certainly could be. Two ürsi came running from the top of the dell, sprinting west toward the tailings pond. The ürsi clustered around the ridge watched the two, howling and shrieking as they ran. The running ürsi skirted around the pond and slid down the embankment and out of sight.

“They are strange beasts,” Hobblefoot muttered.

Yorvig wanted to look down the cliff, so he stepped up onto the garden bed.

“Careful,” Onyx whispered. Yorvig looked at her, wondering why she should say so, but noticed she was looking at the garden bed. He realized then that the rows of plants were still there. It was a relief. But why hadn't the foe destroyed them, if they'd truly come up there? Or maybe they had just smelled the wind over the dell, laden with their stench? Or they didn't want the dwarves to know they could reach the terraces. Yorvig hated not understanding things. He hated that these beasts mystified him.

They watched for nearly an hour, but besides seeing a few more ürsi break from apparent hiding around the dell and flee—if that was indeed their purpose—little changed in that time. Yorvig sent Hobblefoot to watch the stair so Greal and Warmcoat could take a look. At last, they returned and shut fast the terrace door.

Yorvig went back up in the morning together with the others, following the same precautions as before. When he looked out over the dell, he saw that all was deserted. Smoke trailed from a few of the campfires, but otherwise there was nothing left.

“What do we do?” Hobblefoot asked.

“It could be a trap," Onyx said.

“Maybe,” Yorvig replied. “I don’t know. But they can’t have gone far yet, even if they were leaving. So we wait.”

One thing Yorvig saw that he didn’t mention—a body lying still on the opposing promontory, larger than the usual ürsi. There was a glint as of metal.