Chapter 7: Oh The Humanity
Rictus chewed absentmindedly on the end of a rat bone quill and pondered the last two months. Since the Mayor had been overthrown (as popular myth had it) the Fortress had come about as close to normal as it was ever going to get. The new nobility had their quarters refurbished and engraved, the migrants had been housed and the road was gradually being extended under the watchful vigilance of the Fortress military. Food was now beginning to pile up in the coffers, which handily averted a potential catastrophe there. The Mayor still railed against his supposed captivity, occasionally threatening to bring vengeful legions of merciless dawrven armies crashing down on Axefather like an Age of Legends childs story, but after the first three weeks not even the most gullible of the population worried that much anymore. True be told, Rictus suspected he enjoyed the luxury he now found himself in too much to risk jeopardising it by wrecking the place by calling in a cohort of trigger-happy marksdarves.
With peace and calm reigning through out the prosperous and happy outpost Rictus had, with the help of the councillors drawn up plans to exploit the magma breach. Areas were zoned that would – it was hoped –one day lead to a series of forges that could start churning out expensive iron, gold and platinium bars. For now, however, Rictus prided herself not on what she hoped to achieve, but on what she had done. And she was right to be proud.
Another, smaller group of migrants had appeared on the 13th Malachite, taking the population of the fortress up to one hundred and fifteen. There was already enough spare capacity to house and bed them all in the existing Habitat extensions. In addition, on the Brokers suggestion, she drafted three of the biggest of them into the Fortress Guard, taking the Sheriffs squad up to five members.
The migrants also told Rictus of a human caravan in the area. They had passed on word of the fortresses location to the humans, and had then bid them farewell, carrying on their journey, so Rictus and the councillors, flanked grandly by the largest of Axefathers soldiers, had been well prepared to meet the humans when they finally turned up a few days after.
Unfortunately, a lack of a road and a large group of prowling ogres had meant that their well stocked caravans had been forced to stay well away, but nonetheless, Rictus remembered fondly a group of merchants and guardsmen forcing pack mules over the half completed track in a stubborn effort to trade something. She liked humans. There was something incredibly appealing about their gawkiness, and the way they looked so spindly and fragile that just made her want to ruffle their hair. If she could reach it. Which was why when their guild representative had presented her with an order for warhammers and swords she had happily accepted despite having no intention or ability of being able to fulfil it. In return, she urged the humans to come back with food and drink, and agreed, rather rashly that they would pay handsomely for it.
“Those crazy humans” she murmured, chuckling to herself
Geshud Earthenknighted, one of the Fortresses many dwarflings, knocked on the door to Rictus’s office. He was a foppish boy, with a mane of bright orange hair and freckles that worked their way around his cheeks and disappeared under his wispy beard. His mind was rarely on earthly matters, despite his name, and he was more likely to be found lounging around in the long grass of the moated encampment day dreaming about Fikod Workbreach, the only Fortress girl his age.
“Good morning Geshud. How can I help you?”
“Nekose said I should come get you.” He said sheepishly, not looking at Rictus, but smiling widely, “he said you’ll like this.”
“Like what?” Rictus was suddenly suspicious, it was not beyond Geshud to play a practical joke on someone – even Dear Leader.
“He says I have to bring you outside, and not to worry.”
“Look Earthenknighted, I’m a busy person. Can you not just tell me what this is about?”
“I – I’m sorry, no, but you will like this.”
Reluctantly, Rictus allowed herself to be herded through the Fortress, pulled onward by a visible more excited Geshud with ever step. Rictus was a cautious individual by nature, and this just reeked of a set up. But she needn’t have worried. As she stepped out in the brilliant morning sunshine, she was greeted by a wide semi-circle of cheering and clapping dwarves. They stood facing away from her, looking inwards at something. Rictus, satisfied that she was probably not going to be butt of some bad joke pushed her way through the mass of celebrating dwarves to see Mononn Tinkey, one of the Fortress miners locked in mortal combat with a bemused warthog, his pick discarded and evidently forgotten. The bulky miner, whose muscles shimmered with exertion in the morning air, had one hand under the pig’s belly and the other clasped around a yellow tusk. As Rictus watched the stout little dwarf, who even among miners was considered to be a bit of a powerhouse, hoisted his porcine opponent into the air and pile-drived the animal back into the ground, just as a tumultuous roar broke out from amongst the onlookers. Laughing, Tinkey let the dazed animal go. It meandered in a wide circle, hopelessly injured and confused, trying to get a bead on its assailment. Tinkey stood up, still holding his belly in laughter, and watched the animal whose grey and brown fur was matted with sweat and blood eventually focus on him and begin to charge.
The crowd fell silent. Tinkey stood his ground, watching the enormous beast thunder onwards. Rictus felt herself take a deep breath, and for the first time noticed the long line of drool emanating from the warthogs mouth. Just as it appeared that Tinkey might have his stomach gored out from those still-powerful tusks, he daintily side stepped the raging animal and elbow dropped it. The pig squealed in pain and tried to get away, but the momentum of its charge was broken and Tinkey, who had grabbed hold of a leg, yanked the frightened animal back in front of him.
The crowd, sensing an end to the fight, bayed for blood, Rictus among them. The warthog shrieked as Tinkey pummelled it hard, bringing his ham-sized fists down again and again, the crack of ribs and legs was audible even to the onlookers. The bloodthirsty cheering reached a crescendo, drawing what few dwarves remained inside the Fortress outside to see what was going on. The pig, hopelessly outclassed by the grinning miner, lay on its side, gulping in shallow mouthfuls of air, its life blood draining inexorably away, its one eye wide open with fear and darting this way and that. Tinkey retrieved his pick and held it aloft until the cheering and catcalls died away.
“For Axefather!” he roared, bringing the tool down in an arc used more to hacking away stubborn rock. As the pick crushed the pigs skull, the crowd took up the chant.
“For Axefather!”
The warthog twitched, and then lay still.
Chapter 8: An Omen of Evil
Rictus and the other councillors nodded solemnly as the caskets passed down the long line of dwarves. One was draped in the livery of the Fortress Guard, all elaborate purple and red and gray, topped with a beautiful stone wrought axe that denoted a death in battle. The other had a plain yellow covering and no trinket, no artefact to give an indication of how its occupant had died. This was, Rictus thought, in itself a very powerful symbol. The lack of a tool, or weapon or piece of clothing sent a powerful message to all present: this dwarf had died in disgrace.
And so he had. Ingish Kadolathel had been like another dwarf, busy working away, toiling hard at his crafts workshop, just like any other of the hundred-plus dwarves who now called Axefather home, when, so his family said, he just disappeared. This in itself was not a problem. He had finished his yearly quota five months early and had no one but himself and Armok to answer to. It was not unusual for dwarves to take to their beds for days or even weeks at a time in melancholy or bizarre isolated fits of paranoia, but Kadolathel never recovered. Life carried on however, people got on with their lives all but forgetting the unfortunate craftsdwarf. Rictus blamed herself partly for what happened. Witnesses recalled hearing Ingish calling for equipment and materials, and apparently reports from the sheriff had been given to her, but she was just too busy overseeing the expansion of the Catacombs to follow them up in any meaningful way.
So Ingish had festered, letting his paranoia consume him, letting the hate and rage build and grow inside, tormenting and twisting every action and memory until all that was left was a fragmented spiteful dwarf who could only remember and think of pain in his life. And suddenly, on the 26th of Limestone some perceived injustice had caused him to snap. He wanted revenge. Hurtling down the long corridors and gray avenues of Axefather nobody would escape his wrath. And when he came across one of the off-duty Fortress guards making her way to a party, he bloodily tore her limb from limb, hanging her entrails from nooks and crannies in the high walls in a ghastly parody of festival decorations. Her skull was excavated and paraded in a sickly mime while her gutted skin was stretched across the hallway to act as a nauseating drapery. All the while he kicked about bones and organs, laughing gaily as he covered himself in blood and intestines.
This was how Ingish Kadolathel was discovered by a trio of other party goers. They wrestled him to the ground and sought help from the Sheriff, who happily beat Ingish to death with a hammer and, oddly enough, the skull of the deceased Fortress Guard.
So the twin caskets made their way down the line, with each dwarf in turn taking the opportunity to touch the drapery and mutter a few words private to each person in turn. It was a grand affair, solemn in its dignity, sombre in its bearing and the whole population of the Fortress had turned out for the double funeral. First the fortress guard, who Rictus realised with guilty pangs, did not even know the name of, reached the cave river. There she was laid down reverently, and nudged gently onto the fast flowing waters of the river Ax, which quickly carried her away into the dark and unknown depths of the mountain.
The second cask was dumped unceremoniously down a short time after, and dwarves with tears in their eyes kicked the coffin into river where it landed with a splash that echoed around the high ceiling and archways of the tree farm. The dwarves who were close enough watched the yellow-covered casket flow away, bobbing gently, until it too disappeared. Those who couldn’t see the river remained lost in their own thoughts.
Eventually, after what seemed a silent eternity, Aargh piped up. “Drink?” he asked
“Absolutely” Rictus grinned
The dwarves broke off into smaller, chattering groups, determined to put a brave face on. Ingish had been a lunatic, true, but he was also just a regular dwarf. The same could happen to all of them, and that was a disturbing thought. Rictus climbed the short steps and made her way through the party-hall slowly filling up with dwarves, past the empty Habitat and workshop area and leaned against one of the enormous catapults that stood like silent sentinels against the Fortresses foes. In her slightly elevated position she could see the whole plain as it stretched out in front of her. She could see, in the distance, the boxes and masonry of the road building party, and on either side of that the felled remains of a dozen trees. Nearer to her, the thick forest still teemed with life, more so over these last few months unfortunately, as sightings of ogres, and harpies came on a nearly daily basis and the I.S.M.E.L.L. had been hard pressed trying to deal with all of them.
Idly she watched her breath mist, lazily curling and twisting in the air. Winter had came upon them quickly. Almost overnight the farms had been reduced to a dry, frozen patches useless to the Fortress growers, the river had more gradually seized up, icing over, though it was still of some use to the fishers and those desperate enough to drink from its muddy depths. With winter came the twilight days of Rictus’s tenure as Dear Leader. She thought of that list she had been given on her first day, what seemed a life time ago now, and mentally ticked off everything that had been completed. Only the road remained to be done now, and that was so near completion that it should be done in a matter of days.
A commotion behind brought her back to cold reality. Naturally, it was the sheriff.
“Rictus, you elephant-loving kobold rat, are you actually blind, or just dangerously stupid?” He was hauling something with him. Rictus sighed: she was not in the mind to be taunted.
“What now, Violentwhips?”
“While the Fortress is off toasting the death of a loony and an incompetent, we’ve been having visitors. They even managed to sneak past you, although a horde of rampaging dragons could have done that, as long as they held up a sign saying ‘we’re not really here’. I caught this-” he threw down a body in the space between them “-going through our stockpile.”
Rictus peered at it. The bundle seemed all grey and dark red leather, with small tufts of wiry hair peeking out from a mud encrusted cap. Two spindly legs, skinnier than a human poked out from beneath the multi-layered mass, showing skin so green it was nearly black. Rictus sucked in a cold breath.
“A goblin?”
“Such sparkling brevity is wasted in Axefather. Maybe your mother did something right after all, and here I was thinking she placed another miserable burden on the world by not throwing you into ogre pit after the third time she dropped you. Yes, it’s a goblin. One of a pair that we caught while everyone else was boo-hooing earlier.”
“Where’s the other one?”
“We put him in your office and gave him dinner. What do you think we did, you nitwit? I used his brains to repaint the Habitats walls. He was a child snatcher, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I cannot stand funerals he might have succeeded, and as much as I would have loved seeing you explain to some distraught parents why you can’t run a Fortress worth a damn, it was actually much more fun to batter that little ingrate upside the head some.”
Rictus delicately poked the prone goblin with her shoe. It stirred, and she took a step back, eyes wide. “It’s alive!”
“Congratulations. You are officially the last person in the Fortress to notice. Is there not a shallow puddle you could drown in while someone with modicum of intelligence actually runs this place? Of course it’s alive. How else would we find out where it came from?”
“What if it escapes?”
“The only way that would happen is if I went suddenly insane and left it in your care. Plus, I’ve broken both its legs.”
The goblins turned out to be from Tubebsluronako. “The Glacial Torments” Rictus said, fumbling around with the staccato, guttural goblin vowels. “Never heard of it.”
The Sheriff snorted, “and you had never heard of your own navel before Nekose pointed it out to you. That’s not exactly a good indicator of its popularity.”
“So explain then” said Koji, who, along with Aargh, had joined them shortly after hearing the news.
“The Glacial Torments was ruled by an evil, vile human called Båx Emoson, back when I was just a little dwarfling. They built nothing, and destroyed or corrupted everything they come across. They created fear and suffering and exported it to the world. My father, Ubid Violentwhips, was part of the expedition to destroy that wretched hive, but clearly they failed where they thought they had succeeded. Or at least, they hadn’t been as thorough as they thought. This was six decades ago. I doubt Båx is still in charge. But it looks like they’re up to their old tricks.”
“What should we do?” Koji said, clutching a chisel in one hand, and a small engraving hammer in the other
“What can we do? We know the old location of Tubebsluronako, but it’s not likely to still be there, and even if we did know where it is today, what could our hundred dwarves do against the five thousand goblins likely to be at The Glacial Torments? Best we simply strengthen our defences, arm our soldier’s best we can and pray to Armok that Båx finds a more tempting target.”
The news of the goblin incursions had spread like miasma in the Fortress. Rictus was assailed constantly with advice from well meaning dwarves, or plagued for assurances from more worried ones. She felt under siege in her own office, as a line of dwarves twenty deep sought to give or seek counsel from her.
“I reckon we should invade them first. Take them out before they can prepare an army” said the broad shouldered peasant Onol Deadworks, as she paced back in forth in Rictus’s study.
“Uh-huh” grunted Rictus, distractedly. She had a map of the fortress laid out in front her, with overlays for planned extensions that she was busy making adjustments to.
“See, if we strike first with everything we have, the goblins will surely scatter and flee before the might of our fine army.”
“Uh-huh”
“We’ll be heroes! Bards and druids will sing our praises for a thousand years! The conquerors of The Glacial Torments! Onol Deadworks at their head, spearing a hundred goblins single handedly.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds good.”
“So you’ll do that then?” she enquired
“I’ll think about it Onol.”
“Great. If you do attack, can I come?”
“Oh, you’ll be the first in line.” Rictus ushered her out of the door, to be replaced by Koji and Nekose, who smiled good naturedly as Onol gushed about her new role as goblin-conqueror. “How’s goes the Catacombs?” Rictus asked, as they seated themselves.
“Well, what we thought was iron turned out to be platinum. And a lot of it. We’re excavating the entire vein now, however…”
“Useless until we get hematite.” Koji added. Rictus nodded. The expansion of the Catacombs had been the single largest and steadiest area of growth in the Fortress over her tenure, and still it had yielded nothing but cassiterite, malachite and galena. Now they could add gold and platinum to that list, but it might as well all be fresh air and rat tails until they hit the necessary iron ore. Three areas to contain the smelting operations and relevant stockpiles had also been annexed next to the most convenient exploratory tunnel, but they stood empty, licked red by the heat of the nearby lava flows.
“Keep trying. According to this map, our observers have spotted a likely vein far to the south of even our deepest tunnels. I believe this is our best hope for now, so I’ve laid out zoning to head in this direction.”
“It’s a long shot” said Nekose, clearly sceptical, “but the slow-and-steady approach hasn’t been much more successful either, so we’ll get on this.” He shrugged, almost to himself.
“How’s the road?” Koji asked, idly sketching patterns in the air
“Ask him yourself” Rictus said as Aargh sidled into the room, a broad, toothy grin breaking his leathery face.
“Finished!” he announced, happily.
__________________
OOC: I've rather rushed the last two chapters, in an effort to finish up quicker. I've also glossed over a lot of the minor information that has occurred, such as a third (count 'em!) group of migrants, a second metalsmith going insane, and a rat attacking a miner. Instead, I've focused on the bits that are easier to write about.
The last chapter will simply lay out Rictus's retirement, and set up the general tone of the place. That should come tonight or tomorrow morning, hopefully.
Author
Topic: /V/ Succession Game! (Read 18048 times)