Leona and Larrik were in front of the caravan, and as they scouted, almost every problem they came across was just solved by sending for Creighton. A tree here, a washout there. He could turn a fallen tree into firewood in less than half the time it would take the footmen, and with his help Cole could move far more of the roadbed back into place than any mage would have been able to manage alone. At the end of their shift, they went back to Tom’s carriage. He had signed on to help transport building materials to the top, but his wagon was mostly an impromptu tavern following the convoy along. He was selling it all cheap, as he wanted to stock up on dwarven vintages while they were at the Peak.

Keith’s many papers were all stacked in a corner, as the dwarf had made himself at home in Tom’s wagon. The floorspace it offered gave him enough room to spread the entirety of the designs out while he was working, and he had kept returning to marvel at the frames they’d be casting. Currently he was off either trying to get more blacksmiths onboard for the colossal undertaking, or perhaps talking to Creighton about one of the many new tools he had pulled out of nowhere.

“Finally almost out of the caves.”

“You make it back to daylight?”

“Yeah. The tunnels made for easy going, but you won’t see me complaining when we are back in the sunlight again.”

“Don’t let Keith hear you.”

“I don’t care if he hears. He’ll be able to spend months underground when we get there. I need some fresh air.”

“Mountain air is said to be some of the freshest, you know.”

“I suppose.”

“Who are they going to give the captainship to?”

“Yeah, we’ve been keeping an eye out as we passed all the fancy carriages in front, and we still haven’t seen anyone with any kind of naval uniform.”

“The rumor in the caravan is that it’s going to be the Baron’s son, or some dwarf that bullied his way in because of their excitement about the new artifice.”

“Really? The Baron’s son didn’t strike me as captain material. Too green for command.”

“No, you’re probably right about Rawphor, but what I said was that those were the rumors. I have it on good authority that the planned captain will be joining us later.”

“So do you know who it is?”

“You know him too.”

“We don’t know any sailors. The Dutchy is landlocked.”

“Rodney isn’t a native of the Dutchy.”

~~~

The trip up the mountain was much easier when we entered into the valley. The interior mountainside had fewer cliffs, and there were plenty of switchbacks that let us make good progress up the mountain. It was the third day after we’d left the caves that we entered back into the underground. It was a T junction, the path to the left sloped down, whereas the path to the right was a climb. We passed a group of dwarves passing down, and they were all equipped to go mining. Pickaxes, candle helmets, and a number of hand drawn carts lightly loaded with what must have been their supplies.

I could see them meet up with the head of our procession, and they passed him after only a short conversation. I had been on my way back from helping reload a wagon that had spilled it’s cargo of fabric when I met them. They didn’t stop, but they were all staring at me. I suppose that is the normal reaction when a six foot and change statue walks past you. I could hear them talking amongst themselves, but it wasn’t Wernst. I would need to make it a point to find Keith, as I now realized I don’t know what to expect from the dwarves here inside The Cloven Peaks.

My attempts to find him were interrupted by a new call going up from behind. I turned around and started walking in the direction of the shouting. I then started running when I heard a weapon strike stone. The tunnel we had entered was an underground road, and it had curved slightly to the left as we’d ascended. Now that I was descending, the tunnel was curving to my right in front of me. I saw, by flickering torchlight, the outline of a giant spider. Not a tarantula, that was about the size of the little guys swarming around it. This thing was bigger than a horse.

We had soldiers all throughout the caravan, and I could already see that Leona, Larrik and a few others were pulling the attention of the smaller spiders away from the wagons. There was already one big one down that Larrik had cut some of the legs off of, but the one I'd seen first was dragging a horse into the cave they had come from. I hadn’t had a lot of time to practice throwing, but now was when I’d find out if it was enough. I pulled a harpoon from the palm of my left hand, and then hurled it for the one trying to escape with the horse. I overshot the spider, but as the harpoon passed over it I increased both its weight and my own.

My chain now pinned the spider to the ground, and my heavy footsteps echoed as I broke into a sprint past the last two wagons and dove into the immobilized spider. Its carapace was tough, but it still dented under my body slam. I took the harpoon and plunged it into the monstrosity's center mass, and it did not rise again. As I stood up to start dealing with the smaller ones, magical flames engulfed me. I sealed the holes in my armor with a thin foil to ensure my normal clothes wouldn't catch fire, though I should have done that before risking getting them covered in spider juices.

Most of the small spiders were dead or dying now, a few still burning as they skittered in every direction. Standing amongst their corpses, I pulled my harpoon back out. The cavern they had emerged from had appeared to have been collapsed, but had instead been an illusion created by stones stuck into a web, with a large hole now opened up in the center. I channeled light mana into my harpoon and tossed it into the area beyond the hole. Cocoons of spider silk hung from the ceilings, and the floor was littered with the remains of the spider's previous victims.

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Leona was already helping the men who had been injured, including a few of the dwarves who'd seemed no less interested in me now than when they had passed me by before. I stepped through the hole, and surveyed the room while carefully stepping over the corpses littering the floor. Most of the humanoid ones looked dwarven to me, with wide shoulders, but human proportioned skeletons appeared infrequently. There were also horses and other pack animals I didn't recognize. With no further threat in here, as the other exit to this chamber was blocked by another faux collapse, I turned back towards the caravan.

God, I hate spiders. Please let that be the last of them.

~~~

There had been rumors that Duke Drake was sending some remarkable Soulsteel up the mountain in a bid to gain the new High King’s support in an expedition to the Forbidden lands. Beghaim had thought it was nothing more than the next generation of humans trying to make another pass at the adventure the previous generation had failed at, but his opinion started to change when he saw just how large and independant the Soulsteel was when Beghaim and his company passed it. When Thriel stepped on a Rubble Spider’s line, they’d still been arguing about if it was still Soulsteel, or something greater. The human knight had grabbed Thriel and slashed at the spider trying to drag him in, and their mage was preparing a spell for the swarmlings when the Soulsteel slammed into the matriarch. The mage’s fire spell briefly blinded him, and when he could see again the Soulsteel had just retrieved its spear and was flinging it into the Rubble Spider nest, the chain following behind it illuminating the entire side cavern.

Rubble Spiders could grow to be dangerous in unused passages, but a proper matriarch this high up in the Cloven Roads was unheard of. The corpses inside the nest implied it had been here a while, and if it had been here so long it should have been caught months ago. Beghaim’s thoughts had just turned to how he was going to thank the caravan for jumping to their defense when the Soulsteel walked up to him and offered a handshake.

“Creighton.”

“Beghaim, Son of Jeklain, of Clan Gritten.”

“Safe are them?”

“Aye, Thank you.”

“Most welcome.”

As it departed, his men started to talk amongst themselves.

“So It really can talk.”

“Did you see how it pinned the matriarch?”

“No, but I did see it flatten her.”

“Quiet you lot, and start gathering up the dead. Prospectin’s canceled.”

The small mining company promptly filled their rockwagons with the remains of the recovered victims, wrapped them in fabric borrowed from the humans, and joined the long procession heading Peakward to report the incident to the High King.

~~~

The incident with the Facade Spiders caused Eugene to amend his orders to the scouts. They had been relaxed due to entering areas that should be well traveled by the dwarves, and therefore safe, but once burned twice shy. The band that had started following them back up the tunnels was carrying the corpses of those they had found inside the cavern. The standard for recovery of materials and dead was that they were to be brought back to their families, and then whoever had brought justice to the departed was either compensated with a bounty of gold based on what they killed, or if the family didn’t want to pay the reward, the party could lay salvage claims on the loot they had retrieved.

Eugene was his father’s representative, and by extension the Duke’s, so he had already decided to waive the process as the Soulsteel had killed the broodmother, and Leona and Larrik were already being compensated by the value of the spider’s corpses. The upcoming negotiations with High King Gryger Ramrest would get off to a far greater start if they started with the return of missing dwarves and generosity. He wouldn’t rely on them not seeing the gesture as a simple negotiation tactic, but it couldn’t hurt. He didn’t think it was likely it would hurt, anyways, as the dwarves would sometimes take offense to those who acted too humble after their success, especially if it was something the dwarves themselves had ‘recently’ failed at.

As long as he could get a foot in the door, he was certain they’d be past the hardest part. The information they had been given on the Conclave already proved the dwarves were more willing to work with them now than any other time in the past century. Cooperative artifice and research generally went fine, but the information given to their artificers and researchers were always narrow in scope. Telling a human to go find what they wanted for themselves in the Cloven Stacks was telling them to grow old and gray searching through ancient dwarven dialects that were crammed into shelves and scattered inside a network of maze-like tunnels that forced humans to hunch. Dwarven librarians spent most of their lives among their books, and were said to guard them as fiercely as dragons guarded their gold.

The trip would take another few days, but as the caravan ascended higher and higher, the full scope of their endeavor was spreading throughout the craftsmen, and they were making better and better time. That was until the last day, as they were crossing a massive stone arch bridge that spanned a gorge. It was a minor marvel of the skill dwarven masons possessed. As they crossed it, and entered through the large stone double doors that served not just as an entrance, but also a massive fresh air intake.

A dwarven city was built tall and skinny, where the bottom was shaped like a vase, and then the average diameter pulled back in as it ascended. This was because, right at the bottom, there was a massive forge and hearth that induced a draft. The smoke of the massive deepfire, and all other fires burning inside the city, funneled into one massive chimney running the entire height of the settlement. Fresh air was then sucked into even the most miserable of dead ends, so long as a fire was lit and the vents were kept clean. It also kept the stagnant air from slowly building up, and posing a risk to dwarves in flat pockets or lower levels. The caravan had to stop and wait as the fire’s ashes were dumped, as the gate needed to be shut to prevent the torrent of ashes flowing out from being sucked back in. Most of the caravan watched as the gray avalanche of dust rushed down the steep mountainside.