Chapter 4: A Hundred Words for Snow

Binna awoke with a start to find the humans already packing and putting on their armor. She hadn't realized that she'd at last fallen asleep in the early morning hours. She had only tossed and turned fitfully as every popping from the fire, every shuffle of the humans turning in their sleep awoke her. By now she was sure that the humans had no ill will towards her, but she still couldn't shake the feeling of being surrounded by large predators. The faint odor of meat that came from their packs didn't help alleviate that feeling, but the still delicious scent of the cooling pot of 'chilli' from last night let her ignore it for the most part.

The older human Kurt was filling bowls with the remains of last night's meal. Seeing that she had awoken, he spoke to her. "The chilli's only this side of stone cold, but I think day old chilli tastes better anyway."

The immense warrior Brian stopped in the middle of fastening his wide armored belt and added, "Yeah, man. Spaghetti tastes way better after you reheat it the next day too. We should totally bring some noodles and tomato sauce next time."

"Still thinking with your second most important organ?" Charlotte needled her companion from the other side of the room.

"No need to be jealous." The warrior made an unusual wiggling motion with his eyebrows at the small woman as he continued to fasten the many straps on his armor.

Binna tried the now cold chilli and found it nearly as delicious as last night, even though it was no longer steaming hot. The humans joined her in eating breakfast quickly and then returned their bowls in a pile to be cleaned.

Binna decided that it was starting to get cold as the fire now only smouldered in its place on the floor. She re-wrapped her feet and put on her robes and cloak as the leader Kurt busied himself with cleaning the small iron pot and cooking implements from last night over the stone latrine in the corner.

Gradually the dim light in the redoubt brightened, a brilliant white glare increased from the exit. Brent, the russet skinned scout came back around the bend in the room covered in powdery snow crystals. "I cleared a way out. The drift is deep here, but it only looks two or three feet deep down the hill."

Kurt, drying the now clean cooking implements responded, "That's good. I thought that it'd be up to our necks for sure."

"Looks like the wind carried most of it down the pass." Brent brushed the snow off his armor and then retrieved his cloak, pack, and weapons. He paused to pull out a pair of roughly circular wicker and string objects and returned to the exit.

Binna went to have a look out of the redoubt's exit as the humans finished making ready to leave. The pass was covered in an even layer of fresh snow and she saw Brent tieing the wicker objects to his feet before walking out onto the snow. At first it didn't make sense to her why he would tie the awkward looking things to his feet, but it occurred to her that humans were much larger and heavier than her people, and so the snow wouldn't support them without spreading out their weight.

As the ranger went out to check the surroundings for safety Kurt and Brian joined her at the exit. "That snow looks too powdery, I don't think it's going to hold you even with your snowshoes on." The human leader shook his head slightly as he gazed out over the snowcovered pass.

"Yeah, boss. Probably not. But I guess I might as well get used to it. It might not hold you either, not with your pack and armor on. Maybe we should look into getting a sled of some kind for the return trip? It'd be better than lugging all this crap on our backs, and it'd be nice to bring some more fresh food with us. I ain't lookin' forward to crackers and jerky for the next three weeks."

"Me neither, but maybe Brent will be able to bag us a deer or something along the way." Kurt winced a little and glanced over his shoulder at Binna. "Or maybe not. If our friend here is going to lead us to the trade post, dressing a deer might be a little traumatic."

"Some eat and some are eaten, it is the way of nature. Though I do appreciate your concern." Binna didn't actually feel as confident as she sounded, but as long as she didn't have to watch it wouldn't be too bad would it? After all, her people did eat burrowgrubs that were too old to produce silk anymore. It was only a difference in scale, wasn't it? Binna herself had never actually eaten one but the scouts often deep fried them to use as trail rations. As the winter larder dwindled and spring approached, breastfeeding matrons would often begin supplementing their diet with the cooked grubs in order to keep their milk supply sufficient. It didn't used to be that way, but the growing season was getting shorter and shorter and while they used to have sufficient supplies of nuts and legumes for the entire winter that hadn't been the case for a while now.

Brian waded out into the snow that rose above his hips here on the slope where it had piled up. Kurt tied on his own pair of 'snowshoes' and tested their effectiveness. Unfortunately Brian's prediction was close to being right and he sunk several inches into the snow with each step. Charlotte and Michael joined her at the door similarly tieing on their own snowshoes.

Michael smiled down at her, "I really enjoyed our conversation last night, hopefully we can continue it on our walk."

"I'd like that." And she really would. They'd spent part of the night talking about the large island that the humans came from and the lion's share teaching Michael how to read dwarven runes. He was a very fast study and had nearly memorized every one of them already. They'd also started on vocabulary, but frankly dwarvish was very complicated and each class of verb, noun, and adjective had different rules for how they needed to be modified. It would take weeks to go over every class of word and how they needed to be modified, let alone actually going into the vocabulary within each of those classes.

Binna lept out into the snow and tread lightly across it, scattering crystals as she went. Under the powdery top the snow was at least slightly compacted by the weight above so while she sunk in slightly she was able to stay on top. She followed the three male humans who were heading for the ruined fort down the slope. The other two humans trailing behind.

***

"So what's the progress on learning dwarvish?" Kurt queried Michael.

"I've learned more about it in four hours than the Academy has in forty years. But what I can tell you so far is that I've learned enough to know what I don't know." Michael flashed a lopsided grin as he considered his next words. "It's a 'hundred words for snow' sort of problem. Dwarvish has sixty-four runes according to Binna, which is sixteen more than the Academy knows about. But that's the easy part, the hard part is that according to our fuzzy scholar they literally have over six-hundred words for rock."

Kurt's eyebrows shot up in surprise at that number.

"Well, it's not as bad as it sounds of course and it makes sense for a people who excavated, tunneled, and built with stone pretty exclusively to have words to describe how that stone feels, looks, and works. The bad part is that each word has a number of different versions based on how the word is used, and where in the sentence it goes and the rules for how they change differ based on what class of words they are. For example, the words for stone underground are modified one way, but the words for stone on the surface are modified a different way, and stone used to construct buildings in yet another way. Not to mention all the non-rock words. So basically it's going to take a long time not only to learn the different classes of words and how they're modified, but also the vocabulary that falls within each one of those classes. And as always the exceptions to the rules will take the longest to learn. For example, take the name for the capital, 'Mor'ke-dum.' 'Great Stone Home', right? You'd assume that 'ke' is stone, and it is, it means like 'all the kinds of stone in the world' but it's only 'ke' when used in a place name. If you wanted to ask someone to bring you a stone, any stone then just that word would be 'n'ke'bahn.' Well, I think it's pronounced like that."

"I see. You sound intrigued, so I assume it's not an insurmountable problem?"

"No, just a matter of time, and I'll need another couple of journals to record it all in. The problem is how much time. It's going to take months to get to the point where I can translate inscriptions, even with a high amount of uncertainty."

"Ah, yeah. I mean I guess we shouldn't be complaining about it taking a few months to learn an incredibly complicated lost language." Kurt barked a laugh. "It's pretty amazing how fast you can suck up that knowledge after all. But we can't wait months to continue can we?"

"Maybe Binna or one of the other storykeepers from her clan would be willing to come with us?" Michael looked hopeful.

"Yeah, maybe. I should ask her." Though Kurt suspected that the twitching ears of the kennik had already caught their conversation. But that could wait until after they arrived at her clan's burrow and she could discuss it with her people. No need to rush things.

Michael continued, "At least if nothing else it seems that we'll likely be able to converse with any reasonable civilized species we find here. Binna says most of the scholarly types among those on the continent can understand English, or as she calls it 'the old tongue'."

"That's a welcome surprise."

"Apparently, it was the 'lingua franca' on the continent back during what she refers to as 'the great war'. The timing coincides with the timetable that the Academy puts on the imprisonment of whatever baddies are causing that smoke." Michael gestured upward with his hand at the smoky mist streaming high in the sky and cutting into what otherwise would have been a bright sunny day.

Kurt considered the implications of that as Michael changed his path to put him closer to their fuzzy companion so he could continue their conversation from the night before.

***

The party arrived at the snowbound remains of the fort below the redoubt. Only a few stones peaked above the snow now, the blocky dwarves were buried to their necks.

Brent had climbed to the highest point he could get to as the remainder of the group arrived.

Charlotte trudged up beside Binna and anounced, "Alright Officer Hopps, point us to your burrow!"

"Offic- what?" Charlotte's bright smile did nothing to reduce Binna's confusion at the unfamiliar words, but she simply shrugged it off and pointed up the pass towards the western cliff. "We should cross the pass here and walk along the cliff face on the western side. There's a thin tree line there that will offer us some cover. We need to proceed up the pass about a mile or two and then the cliff face will merge into another branch of the pass. Then we can go back down the mountain about six miles or so to where the Meddowvale burrow is located. It's a small valley off the main southwestern pass. Unfortunately changing from this southeastern pass to the southwestern one will require that we get much closer to the heavy forest up there." She gestured much higher up the pass. "You can see that the thicket where the long ones were waiting yesterday is connected to that larger forest further up. There will be more of them there. It's the most dangerous part of the path, and I have to imagine that the remaining long ones will be out looking for their missing fellows."

Kurt looked to where the serious little rabbit was pointing and saw that the pass flattened out a bit and over the lip he could see the tops of some trees. Likely the flatter terrain up there allowed some soil to resist being washed down the pass and lead to the growth of a thick forest. Originally they had planned to head right into it even after the failed ambush yesterday. If the fragmentary map was to be believed they'd still have to enter the woods to get to the trade post, but the brief stop at Binna's clan would come first. "Brent, you got that?"

"Yeah, I'll head over first and scout it out. You guys follow that cliff face up the pass and I'll meet you where it ends."

With that the scout hopped down from stone to stone and took off at a deceptively quick pace to the thin tree line on the other side of the pass.

The rest of the party followed at a slower pace accounting for their much heavier packs and armor, confident that Brent would spot any trouble before they got there.

Kurt had a feeling that they'd see more of those long limbed beasts before the day was out.

(End of Chapter 4)

Written by Charles Caplan, all characters and situations are fiction.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.