The sheep huddled together in tight little clumps, moving as if they were a single creature of diverse parts. The pigs were already tearing up the ground of the dell. Goats stood atop boulders and piles of rock. The day's sunshine had just reached the bottom of the dell.

"We will be moving the flocks to find forage," the herder said. He was a mature dwarf, perhaps ninety years in age. He called himself Crookleg and was the patriarch of one of the herder families. Yorvig had not yet figured out which of the gilna and gilke were his, for the herder children seemed to keep together as much as the sheep.

"And when will they lamb?"

"Next spring."

"No lambs this year?" Yorvig asked. That was not good news.

"They would have lambed on the journey. The lambs would not have prospered. We traded our bred ewes for hoggets."

"Hoggets?" For some reason, Yorvig blushed. He was ignorant about flocks and beasts, as were most dwarves reared beneath the stone and not in the canyons or mountain slopes. Herders were not held in high esteem—even less than cultivators—for the beasts were thought unclean. Was that why Yorvig hated to show his ignorance to Crookleg? It didn't matter. He had to learn. Herders may be the butt of snide remarks, but they had sold their meat and milk and cheese dear to other dwarves, and were not poor for it. Like the cultivators, they were growing fat in Deep Cut before the Council regulated the prices and even threatened confiscation of whole flocks.

"Yearlings. They were not exposed to rams in the fall, but they will be this year."

"I see."

One of the herder gilke jogged past, carrying a small long-legged creature looking for all the world like a lamb.

"I thought there were no lambs?" Yorvig said, watching him go.

"That is a goat kid," Crookleg said. "We bred the goats. They are a hardier stock, and we carried the weaker."

Yorvig knew there were sheep and goats, but he could not recall seeing their offspring before.

"And besides pasture, what do you need?"

"Folds," Crookleg said. "Lend us some miners to dig a fold in the rock."

Yorvig sighed. Always he was spreading out the miners.

"A few," he said. "But you will need to dig with them."

Crookleg pressed his lips together.

"When we are not watching the flocks. Until we have a fold, we must stay with them both day and night."

Hobblefoot's cadre of engineers was busy down near the tailings pond, but two of the dwarves were measuring along the cliff and marking distances for vents. A herder with a staff guided a small group of sheep and goats by them, and the engineers put their backs to the stone and watched with crinkled noses until the beasts had passed.

"I will spare you what I can."

Though he knew the others would not like it, the truth was that the flocks should take precedence.

Up until the arrival of the families, Yorvig had assigned the duty of cooking to a rotation of the unskilled kulhan, but the results had been decidedly mixed. This practice continued for a week after the arrival of the herders, when a delegation of the four new-come wifs cornered Yorvig, stating with a matter-of-fact resolve that they would take over the preparation of meals. Yorvig did not want to impose duties on them, as they had their own babes and holds to keep, and their dwarves were already laboring for pay. Wifs did not swear kulhan oaths. Somehow, he managed to offend them, and when the meeting ended, the cooking and its logistics had been put into the hands of the wifs—how it had been put there or by whom, Yorvig was unsure. Nevertheless, the results had greatly improved their fare, and so it remained. The wifs took over an as-yet unused cliff-side workshop, had forced Hobblefoot to have his dwarves drill vents. That done, the wifs constructed their own ovens and cookforges.

So, when Yorvig stepped into the brewer’s hold, behind him walked two dwarf-wifs carrying platters of food. The brewer turned around from his preparations with a confused furrow of the brow. The chamber smelled of mash and fermentation, and it was lined with casks and the snaking tubes of a distillery. The wifs set the two platters of food down on the floor opposite each other, then left as Yorvig had directed them beforehand. When the wifs were well gone, he spoke:

“You look hungry, friend. Have a seat and eat with me.” Yorvig sat cross-legged by his platter. The brewer had no way of reasonably denying this, though his face made it clear he sensed something more than unusual, and he sat slowly. Yorvig lifted a baked radish and took a bite, and the brewer—who was fittingly known as Masher—followed suit. He was a hefty dwarf, grown heftier still since his arrival. They ate in silence for a time as Yorvig let the discomfort continue. At last, he wiped his beard and spoke.

“I can feed you more than anyone else in this mine,” Yorvig said. “And I can cut rations as well. I know you are making secret stock for trade. I will overlook it, so long as it stays. . . reasonable. But if I find you are trading with dwarves from outside the claim, you will leave here with nothing, even if it be the dead of winter. I promise that.”

Yorvig had spoken when Masher had a mouthful of food, and now the dwarf forced himself to chew and swallow. He nodded.

“I understand.”

Yorvig smiled.

“Good,” he said. “I have duties to attend to. Go ahead and finish mine as well. Return the platters to the kitchen.”

If Yorvig’s plans were to succeed, prospectors who needed supplies of food and drink and whatever other necessities would have to come deal with the claim directly, and so they stood to absorb some of what the newly arriving gold-seekers gained. They might not be able to claim the entirety of the eastern ridges, but they could become the hub of all trade—so long as they could control their own kulhan. In the coming days, he had similar conversations with the gardeners, the herders, and all the rest who had reason to handle the claim’s supplies or foodstuffs, and judging by the redness of some of their faces, it was not undue. The hardest conversation was with Crookleg, who listened to Yorvig with a flat demeanor and said next to nothing.

The early summer arrived. More and more prospectors streamed by the claim, often stopping for a day or two before branching out in whatever direction seemed best to them. Tonkil tried to speak with as many as he could. They all reported no sightings of ürsi, and most believed it a tale to keep them away. The stories of the ürsi attacks might have had the opposite effect on them than Yorvig had expected—tales to keep them from their share of the wealth.

Yorvig was eating a meal of mashed radish and drinking watered-down sap beer in the old stope that served as a gathering hall. These days, he rarely even ate without attending to some matter or another. Tonkil must have seen Yorvig frowning as he related yet another conversation with prospectors.

"You are uneasy."

"I simply do not like to be called a liar, both inside my mine and out."

"Cunning, perhaps. The kulhan fear too much to call you liar."

"Respect of a rinlen oft ends with the oath."

"It's not just the oath. Ürsi or no, you are youngest of the owners, and yet they made you rinlen. That is strange. Folk fear what is strange."

"There must be stories of why."

"The more stories, the more uncertainty."

"I. . ." Yorvig hesitated.

"You need not tell me, rinlen. Wisdom would tell no one. Let the fear remain."

"I thought fear was foolish?"

"I never said it wasn't useful."

Tonkil made the slightest grin, the deep lines of his face hardly moving.

"Well," Yorvig said. "Keep talking with them as they come."

Tonkil nodded.

"I know what the ürsi are," he said. "I will warn them." With that, the old dwarf headed toward the stair to the drift, out to yet another hunt. They were hunting every day, returning when they had a kill. Often, they went to camps as much as five miles away, then split up. Yorvig had assigned another two dwarves to the hunting, despite not having volunteers. Tonkil had not argued about it, though Yorvig suspected he wanted to.

There were problems, as there always were. They were hitting running water in the mine—a spreading, trailing damp down the rock as of yet, but there were concerns of breaking into a more substantial pocket of water, or of weakened stone above. They struck a cleft of decomposed iron, another sign that water and air were making their way into the ridge. Caution needed exercising. But these were normal problems, and nothing unique to the wilds.

More and more terraces stood out against the cliff face. The sheep fold took shape, and new storerooms for garden produce were cut in the Low Adit. More radishes, lettuces, and cabbages than Yorvig thought possible were daily added to the sums, and for the first time, he started to believe the gardeners' predictions. They had so staggered their plantings as to produce a nearly continuous harvest of radishes and leafy greens. Turnips were starting to ripen, as well. The gardeners assured him that the greatest supply would come at the end of the summer, in the fall when the great gourds and grains and mangelwurzels would be ready for harvest. The mushrooms long ago planted in the old storeroom of the Low Adit now added extra savour to their food. And the same chamber, where the dwarves had first kept their stores long ago, was full of tracing lines of Miner’s Eye. The luminescent fungus must have spored from their first seeding and begun spreading through the chamber with its blue-green glow. In Deep Cut, they had the red-orange variety, too, but it was much more difficult to propagate and did not grow well near the dust of a working mine or near damp.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yorvig had calculated the meat that the flocks and herds represented, but he had not calculated the goat milk. The herder wifs made cheese and cream and butter and whey and curds, which tasted to Yorvig like something out of a dream after years without. Nor had he anticipated the profligacy of the swine; three sows gave birth to massive litters. They had to toss the pigs some of their produce and allow the swine to root up the dell and areas along the river, turning them into lumpy brown messes.

The gardeners made it clear to Yorvig that they could be making much better use of the produce with salt. With salt, they could ferment the cabbage in stone crocks, keeping it for long periods of time. They had already asked Yorvig to send an expedition back to Deep Cut for salt. He was considering it, but without a wagon road, they would have to rely on the strength of donkeys—which would have to be purchased or hired at significant expense—or use sleds during the wintertime, which was itself a strenuous labor.

The kitchen had grown full of hanging bundles of dried herbs and seasonings like rosemary, thyme, chicory, sage. These now flavored their meats and blessed their nostrils.

The hunters found a massive old honey tree in the next valley. It was smoked, and hundreds of pounds of bee-gold were brought to the mine. That night they ate elk roasted with a glaze of honey and rosemary over a bed of cabbage and roasted radish. It was better than anything Yorvig could remember.

Looking at the dell, now, Yorvig would not have believed it the same spot. The memory of trekking up along the dry creekbed and seeing the standing timber rise from the beginnings of the tailings pond was yet fresh. Now the dell was full of many dwarves and much busy labor. They had accomplished so much. He should have reveled in it. He knew that.

Every night, Yorvig returned to his chamber. Somehow, Striper always seemed to rush up at just that moment, leaping up into the sleeping alcove. He lay with the cat purring beside him and thought of Onyx. He had built so much there, but did they need him, now? Should he throw away what he’d become for a maid? Not just a maid, but the possibility of a maid. He could go to Deep Cut and have his choosing. Hope and despair roiled, and all the while he knew that he had no joy and peace as rinlen, not with this choice before him. It had to be made. It had to be dealt with. And yet how? When he looked at the newcomer maids he felt nothing. They were not ugly. What maid was not lovely, a promise for her folk? One had hair like spun gold, another was dark as night, one with eyes like sapphire and the other jasper.

Yorvig had nearly run into one of them as he strode through the mine, Treadfoot tapping along with his own footfalls. He'd been heading to the terraces to speak with Foundstalk about the mangelwurzels growing in the dell. Crookleg of the herders had asked Yorvig to settle a matter about how many were destined to feed the flocks in winter and how many were destined for dwarven stomachs. Yorvig hated being between them in such matters, but neither the cultivators nor the herders wanted to relinquish any claim on the crops, and neither group would be satisfied with his decision, made to please no one. As Yorvig stepped through the mine, one of the new maids rushed out of the terrace stairwell carrying water buckets, talking over her shoulder at a gilke and not watching where she was going. She nearly collided with Yorvig, and one of her buckets slammed against Treadfoot.

Her eyes went wide as she saw him, and then she lowered her head and stood straight, squaring her shoulders.

"I am sorry, rinlen," she said.

Yorvig had been startled, but he wasn't angry. He squinted at her. Obviously she was the maid who had come with the gardener's family.

"What are you called?" he asked.

"I am called Aster," she said, not meeting his eyes. Yorvig didn't know what the name meant. He knew her family was not Named of Strength, and it didn't sound like a true name, but it wasn't the usual jewel name so often given to dwarf-maids. Next to her, the gilke, probably not yet twenty, stared at him with unbroken gaze.

"This is my daughter!" a voice called.

Yorvig saw Foundstalk rush into the drift from the terrace. He must have seen the conversation.

"I am happy to introduce you," he said. Yorvig tilted his head. Dwarves did not introduce themselves to maids. They approached the maid's kin first, as a rule. It was the kin who made the introduction. Yorvig had already made free asking her name.

"Please," Yorvig said.

"Aster is not yet a year past rhundal," Foundstalk said. "She is a fine hand at the working of flax into thread, and knows the fine ways of our folk's cooking."

Still, Aster did not raise her eyes, looking to the ground. There was a blush on her face.

"Those are fine skills," Yorvig said, seeking for some response. "Tell me, Aster. What would you put your hand to, of your own?"

"Whatever you say, rinlen," she answered.

Yorvig nodded. She still did not meet his gaze. Foundstalk smiled.

"It is an honor to be introduced," Yorvig said. "I do need to speak with your father. You may continue."

Aster left down the drift, carrying her buckets and walking in a far more elegant manner.

Yorvig turned to Foundstalk. It was time to erase the gardener's smile. “Now, let us speak about the mangelwurzels.”

Everyone in the claim thought twice before they spoke around him, now. Even the other owners. Even his brother. More and more, their debates were couched in questions and not challenges. There was respect or fear in the kulhan’s gazes and voices, or hesitancy at the very least. Aster and the other maid were no different. He was a position, an authority. Of all those in the mine, it was the un-oathed, already-married wifs who spoke to Yorvig with the greatest ease. When he walked into the kitchen chamber, he felt a sense of subservience to them as they harangued him for unwashed hands or told him to hold a platter while they loaded it with roasted vegetables. It felt good, though he had little time or purpose there.

It mattered little how he felt about the new maids, for before a month had passed, one had accepted Warmcoat and the other had accepted Shineboot. It did not matter to Yorvig. Greal had already said he would return to Deep Cut in another year and choose brides for himself and Khlif. They would have more choice in the matter, there, he said. Khlif said little, as ever. Their wealth would be such that it would not be hard to win acceptance. Warmcoat and Shineboot did not seem disappointed in their choices, judging from their red faces and broad smiles. Their small company of owners celebrated them with beer and whiskey and a small feast down the Owners Drift. Yorvig watched Hobblefoot and Sledgefist. They looked pleased but reserved. Yorvig wondered if they’d even made proposals. . . at least, to anyone other than Onyx. But then Shineboot was Hobblefoot’s younger brother, and would never have gone against his elder brother if he had wanted the maid.

Onyx herself was little seen in the heart of summer. Even the reports on the gardens came from Foundstalk. Yorvig prepared to go find Onyx and inquire why she was not reporting herself, but then he realized with horror that she had not been seen for at least a week, and that she might be secluded for her Triad. Dwarven wifs and maids secluded thrice a year for their Triad, for what amounted to about two weeks. Yorvig was not clear on the details. The dwarves studiously acted as if the wif or maid did not exist for that time, which made everyone's life easier. If such was the case, he could not go looking for her—and no one would answer him if he did.

In the days of high summer, Warmcoat and Shineboot set to work furiously on their own stoneholds. They would not wed before the holds were prepared. When he wasn’t occupied with the running of the claim, Yorvig aided them, as did the others. Warmcoat and Shineboot’s current chambers would serve only as reception-ways for the familial dwellings they now envisioned. It was a time of excitement, and as much as Yorvig wished to join whole-heartedly in their joy, he found his nights full of doubt. When he helped Warmcoat and Shineboot, he felt miserable. He wanted to dig his own family hold. Yet hours and hours again, he helped them dig. They were his kith.

Survival was less and less a concern as the summer wore on. First nine, then fifteen, then twenty-one garden terraces opened in the cliff, perfectly symmetrical and full of life, not counting the terraces of the upper dell. The vines from the squash plants Onyx had found hung down the rockfaces, yellow gourds growing upon them in midair. The dell was full of stock and vegetable. Tonkil and his hunters kept bringing in kill, and storerooms grew. They had to create two more smoke closets, bereft of salt as they were. They were digging more storerooms for the gardens in dry rock where the cool air would preserve the produce. The cultivators also explained to Yorvig that ice could be cut from the river during the winter and stored for many months in deep closed storerooms to keep food fresh. It was a revelation to Yorvig. Over the winters, they had survived with smoked meat, though some bits had grown rank and suspicious over time. He had never considered ice. Ever, he was learning how ignorant he truly had been and still was.

And while Yorvig made decisions and aided in this work and that, his fear lessened that if he did not take charge, his friends might perish in their single-minded pursuit of ore. The claim had come to life. He had taken on being rinlen to prevent their deaths, but he also did not want anyone else to die for his orders.

But who was he to have the joy and privilege of marriage and family when Savvyarm was eaten by ürsi on a trip Yorvig had ordered? Yellowkettle—he had repeated the name over and over until committed to memory—moldered in a shallow depression of rock with a slab atop it, awaiting the time his family could claim him, a time that might never come.

Even as the mine grew and prospered, he felt a growing sense of dread. His nights were disturbed, and his eyes bleary red. Whatever he wanted, it was not this. If he could go back to being a simple apprentice miner in Deep Cut, he would. But then, he would have no chance at a wif. Now, he could barely mine. The days were filled with managing the frustrations and wants of scores of dwarves, and all the blood of all their foolishness would always fall to his account. The rest would grow rich while he carried the shame. He'd come to his brother's claim to work in the wild hope of establishing their lines. He'd become rinlen just to try to keep them alive. Maybe his dread was ill-founded. The mine did not truly need him, now. He could make peace with it. Any of the other owners could take his place. They could vote again, and he could recuse himself. He would still be a wealthy dwarf, and surely Hobblefoot or Sledgefist would heed his advice, now, if needed. Maybe he could talk to them instead. Maybe they would relent and release him from the oath. Or no, they would not relent until they gave up hope, and even so it would embitter them if he asked. Just asking felt like a betrayal of the oath.

One thing at least was sure: Onyx had challenged him that day upon the terrace. He would not be at peace unless he took that challenge or denied it. He could not live in indecision.

An evening came when Yorvig found himself before Onyx's private chamber door—whether because of the two mugs of whiskey he'd taken that night with his brother, or whether he simply could not tolerate it anymore, he didn't think to question. Part of him hoped she was not present within, but it was late. He might be disturbing her from sleep, but she had avoided him for weeks, and there was no opportunity to speak with her alone, not since she had brushed by him at the entrance of the Owner's Drift long ago. Always he was in the presence of dwarves. He needed to speak with her one more time before he did anything rash. After checking up and down the drift to ensure no one would see him knocking at the maid’s chamber, he rapped on the stone, just loud enough to trust it carried within.

“Who knocks?” came Onyx’s voice.

“Chargrim,” he said lowly.

“This is not proper.”

“Then don’t open the door.” He leaned in, his face nearly against the stone near the air-channel.

“What do you want?”

He checked the drift again. Her stonehold was closest to the door of the Owners Drift. Hopefully, he couldn’t be heard by anyone.

“Did you mean what you said?”

“I mean what I say.” She sounded exasperated already.

“You. . . I wasn’t sure. . . You have not spoken with me.”

“What more is there to say?”

“You aren’t. . . this is no game?”

“What kind of maid do you take me for?”

“I. . . I don’t know!”

“Then why would you seek my vow?”

“No, I mean. I don’t know what to think.”

“If you don’t know what to think, what does it matter what I say?”

“Can you give me no promise?”

“Do not forget your oath! I have said what I have said. Do what you will do.”

“Onyx,” he said, searching for more words.

“Leave before someone sees you!”

Yorvig was just making things worse, he knew. He left with sweat on his forehead.