Late Autumn: 23rd Timber, 1056.(
enter mayor DATAN, grower STODIR, miner ASTETH [attending party]; ENGRAVER, ARMORER, various other dwarves [idling]; dogs)
ASTETH: Marry, these are reasonable mandates, Datan.
STODIR: "Make iron items!" "Export of iron items prohibited!"
Silly they seem, yet a shrewd cunning lies behind. Two ores smelted
and farewell to one. A healthy fortress in merest reflex of
operation puts paid to the second.
DATAN: By Zas's flame imperishable, these guttersnipe migrants seem to
expect them. Else I would not place my fancy's clappers on honest
labor. As ordered they must be, best to fix them where already set
by nature.
STODIR: We'll be named a county soon. A prancing and pronouncing
purplish wave of nobility shall darken our barrels.
DATAN: Rot and mildew! Nobles! Genealogy, the complacent cant
of family tree cartography, remains the chiefest purchase of their
hours. High adrift in branches intricate, anatomizing every nut and
acorn, their way back to earth is lost. They fester, lost, upon that
airy cage of cousins, and anon the blood strikes hot for heir-making.
What result? A mumbling, milkblooded tribe of barren-brained
dandies. A once brave palace of princes is thereby o'ercapped with a
weak-limbed, stuttering, bland-faced attic of albinoes.
STODIR: I'll drink, plant, and even soldier to that.
ARMORER: My lady Trustedtours, by whose very arms we, the
Crowded Rampart, have been roofed! I beg your leave to speak.
DATAN: Leave off the prelude. Spew or scatter.
ARMORER: Why have we so few traps? A scant three do enguard our
northern gates.
ENGRAVER: He speaks aright.
ASTETH: Logic tells that your complaints are naught. Datan, Goden and
I labored to the end of sweat on our defense. I hope you take no
offense.
DATAN: Let him take and keep it. We miners three did make cliffs of
all surrounding hills. Canyoned and well-cloistered is this fort. Only
those most northerly parts will porter guests to door. Cleaving to
perpendicular the wide grades of savannah ramps is no small labor.
STODIR: More than this--Datan has said, and truly, that we are not to
be a gear-carvers hovel. Know you the fate of a fort sole-guarded by
widgets and cogs? I shall tell you. Undwarfly weakness seizes the
sinews of population, and pompous in blasphemous worship become the
mechanics. On their clattering altar of wheels and gears a vile heap
of unearned praise is laid. This is the hollowest brag of security, as
when their acres of cages be overcome, there is naught to defend
the fort but the red ones' quivering cowardice. Or perhaps the
scattering sounds of their fleeing servants.
DATAN: Well spoke on. You are answered, sir. We are not to hide
behind a wall of traps, but rather are meant to be free and general
as the cave river, hard as darkling adamant, and founded as the
mountain's roots. Our arms shall make us so, and not these toys.
Author
Topic: The True Chronicle of Sarekeshtan, "Echosmiths." (Read 6955 times)