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[Iituem]

13th Slate, 354


Jora wiped soot-laden sweat from her brow and continued to stir the massive spoon in the pot.  Around her slaves in simple lintgrass or pipemoss clothing, most in far worse condition than her own tunic and cloak, carried blocks of coal to the kitchen fires or sacks of ingredients to the pots.  She was surprised that she and Datan were allowed to keep their clothes, but over the course of her three-day incarceration she had gleaned that the pair looked threatening enough that none of the other slaves had dared try to take them yet.

When it had become apparent that neither she nor Datan were likely to retrieve their weapons immediately, the pair decided to keep their heads down and try to gather as much information as they could in preparation for an escape.  This had proved markedly disappointing as their duties rarely gave them leave to go beyond the kitchens, a horrendous complex of stone hearths and storage rooms extending above the surface for ventilation and below it for the cold stone.  The kitchens bore the same evidence of haphazard origins as the rest of the fort; most of the stewing cauldrons were not cauldrons at all but old iron laundry vessels presumably looted from sietches and townships.  Having once disguised as a washerdwarf to evade the law in a distant human port, Jora claimed intimate experience with them, a level of expertise Datan had been more than happy for her to keep to herself.

What they had learned owed largely to the friends they had made and Datan's skill with numbers.  The canny dwarf had made a judgement on the amount of slops grubbed together for the slaves, then the amount of actual stew being produced for everyone else and the number of proper meals cooked or baked per night, then divided them up into portions appropriately.  With a little trial and error he reckoned Stonebreaker had about thirty trained and equipped military soldiers (who were eating sufficiently), maybe ten skilled artisans (who were eating from the pot with meat in it), about the same number of command staff and experienced soldiers (who were eating very well indeed) and eighty to ninety slaves (who were supplementing their diet with grubs, rats and in the case of the goblins, anyone or anything too slow or too dead to stop them).  He and Jora had heard stories of slaves who had tried eating pebbles to fake the sensation of being fed.  The goblins had not only picked the bones clean, but sucked the marrow out for good measure.  Serving in Stonebreaker's forces apparently had a slightly worse life expectancy than a career in the cinnabar mines.

Within the kitchens the pair had become fast friends with a pair of dwarves, Petra and Caul (second name Dren, and yes he had heard all the jokes, thank you very much).  Petra turned out to be an escapee from the big gaolbreak who had fallen on the wrong side of Stonebreaker's recruiting parties and ended up in the kitchens rather than the barracks.  She was considered something of a veteran of the kitchens, having lasted nearly two years without succombing to exhaustion, starvation or rank violence (though not for lack of trying, as her scars attested) and as such was entrusted to deliver meals directly to the high command and the artisans.  This very position prompted a measure of envy in the other slaves, doing nothing to alleviate the fighting she was forced into on a daily basis.  Kitchen gossip held she had a thing for one of the captains, Torir, usually followed by a couple of crude jokes about his massive hammer.  Upon hearing these the girl would blush and look away hotly, but never actually denied the rumours.  With a little cautious probing, Petra had let slip some details about the General and his goblin allies, as well as a bit of gossip about a new sergeant brought in to toughen up the recruits.


"I hear them talking, you know," she had said over a bowl of watery brown chow.  "Sometimes they make me stay there to pour drinks for them.  The officers are all in a fuzz about him."

"The new guy?" Jora had asked.

"Aye.  Nirur - Captain Torir, he doesn't trust him.  The dwarf turns up out of nowhere, bullies his way into a non-com and acts like he owns the place.  They say one of the other sergeants brought him on.  So who is he?  The other officers don't seem to care.  He's shaping the troops up like a real staff-sergeant, forcing them through drills and fighting for proper equipment for them, and so long as he keeps doing that it's all they want to know.  Nirur doesn't like it.  Wants to send him out on a mission, test his resolve."

"You know where?"  Petra had shaken her head.

"They never talk tactics at the table.  I got kicked out pretty soon after that, anyway."


Caul was another old-timer and actually entrusted with his own private cooking pot, although unlike Petra he was not regularly challenged for his position.  Caul had gotten the job through a bloodyminded refusal to cook ordinary stews and even fine meals combined with an amazing resiliance to bludgeoning, beating, whipping and having his head dunked into the privy, followed thereafter by the deaths of each slavemaster who had attempted to instill 'discipline' in him.  After the third terminal case of food poisoning, the late kitchen master's successor carefully roped off an alcove for the dwarf on the grounds that he frankly had no idea how to do him in short of shooting him six times with a crossbow and driving an ice pick through his head.  Caul had subsequently cemented his position by producing a series of fantastic meals against all culinary logic, primarily from bedding, rat fur and discarded teeth found after slave pit boxing matches.  He had also become General Stonebreaker's personal cook and food taster, at least partly on the grounds that nearly everyone in charge wanted to see him dead but nobody had the stones to do it themselves.


It was Caul who was finally able to use his unique influence to get Jora and Datan out of the kitchens.  Having bribed him with a handful of slugs, a discarded bone and a lump of chalk (he had mentioned something about needing it for a fondue), Caul had convinced the slavemasters to give the pair of dwarves the job of taking the meals to the western wall where the wagon carrying their weapons had been sent.  This raised no suspicions; it was common enough for kitchen slaves to bribe their way into fresh air, even for a few minutes.  The pair of dwarves took covered pots of hot stew to the western guardhouse that evening, delivering them to the marksdwarves on the wall with servile bows. 

After a few half-hearted words of abuse from the watchdwarves, the pair had left the guardhouse and begun prowling along the half-finished wall, searching for the blocks for new construction.  They found the blocks stacked up in preparation against one wall, including to their great relief the very wagon they had brought in.  Jora and Datan clambered onto the wagon with hopeful thoughts, turning swiftly to despair as they saw how many blocks had already been removed for construction, then even more swiftly to fear when they caught sight of the empty wrappings their weapons had been concealed in.

Someone knew they were here.

"I know you're here!" cried a voice from behind them. 

Both dwarves spun around, gripped by terror.  A marksdwarf had a crossbow levelled at them.  His head was cocked and so was the bow.  All four free hands in the situation shot up like daffodils.  They could only make out his silhouette; with the moon behind him his face was hidden while their own were dangerously visible.

"Please, no!" cried Jora.  "We're just kitchen dwarves!"

"Long way from the kitchen," said the dwarf, crossbow steady as a stone.

"We got lost," said Datan quickly, his eyes darting to the left and his thoughts racing.  "It's dark, we barely ever get out of them, we just went the wrong way."

"So you decided to search for, what, ingredients?"  Even though they could not see it, both dwarves could feel his eyes boring through them.  There was a long, granite silence, marred only by the faint creak of tension in the crossbow's string.

"Please," begged Jora.  "We won't get lost again."

The bow glinted unmercifully in the moonlight.  Eventually the dwarf relented and spoke.

"Kitchens are that way," he said, indicating a street to their right with the bow.  "Get going, and if I see you again tonight I'll shoot so I don't have to bother with questions." 

The two dwarves nodded gratefully and ran down the street as if Gigin Herself was chasing them, the marksdwarf's eyes following them all the way.  The silhouetted dwarf watched them until a faint reflection of orange light on a wall testified to the opening of the kitchen doors, then returned to his post on the walls.



---------

Update Word Count: 1,422

About 1300-1500 words seems to be a comfortable amount for the time I have available to sit down and write in a concerted effort at the moment, so let's stick that as the 'normal' update range.  Still, hopefully back to meatier and more regular updates now!

[Bloogonis]

Broose you vindictive bastard 

[Jim Groovester]

I figure that Broose is mingling with the enemy to later betray them. Or maybe he's planning on joining them and betraying his comrades. At the very least, he's planning on betraying someone. And Brickbeard will probably play a large factor in his decision.

*grits teeth and stares off into the distance*

Brickbeard....

[Petra]

Yay! Petra has been integrated into deh story! Woot!

[Iituem]

Stug trudged through the busy main street of the town as dwarves milled back and forth along the rough brook in their daily business, truncheon at belt, shield on back.  His eyes roved the crowd for his target until his ears found it, the jilted notes of an iron harmonica.  He climbed the steps to the flat workhouse roof and plunged a hand into the trash heaps, dragging out a leather-jacketed dwarven minstrel and bringing the tune to an abrupt cessation.

"What ho, fair watchdwarf!  What troubles you so?" asked a rather surprised troubadour, her stubby legs flailing as the thin-bearded guardsdwarf held her aloft.

"What?" said Stug, his brow furrowing.

"You hold me aloft, what wish you to know?"  Stug tilted his head at the odd speech pattern, then shrugged and let the dwarf onto the rubbish heap again, keeping a firm grip on her jacket.

"Dwarf poison prisoner.  Say dwarf with eye... move?"  Stug struggled for the word for a moment, then gave up.  "Music-dwarf know all dwarves.  Tell who."

"Well I don't know all dwarves, though I do try,
Kel Ragebrew's the one with the errant eye.
A brewer of tonics, alchemy, beer,
A merchant of dreams; a servant of fear."

"Where can find Rage-dwarf?" asked Stug irritably, releasing the minstrel.

"Why, e'en as we speak, he's down at his still,
Brews respite for haulers; whiskey and swill
To coddle their bellies and cloud their heads
And send them with sweet dreams to their sweet beds."

"Too much flower," growled Stug.  "Why cannot just say simple?"  The troubadour put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes.

"I know you're honest, I don't think you're thick,
But frankly, Stug, you're a pretty big-"

The troubadour's stanza was cut off abruptly by the fingers wrapped around her throat.

"Just point."

She gestured mutely to the construction site of Urgash's upcoming dog farm, nestled against the southeastern corner of the town wall.  Stug glanced to it, nodded and tossed her bodily back into the piles of refuse, paying no heed to the flowery but surprisingly explicit insults that followed.



Kel Ragebrew's still was a ramshackle affair constructed of a handful of disused construction blocks arranged into a rough table, several stone mugs for patrons and a number of copper and brass stills fermenting away under Kel's watchful eye, some of which he actually wore on a dogskin bandolier across his chest as a protection against thieves.  Kel was midway throuugh serving some shots of slatterjack to construction workers on their shift break when he spotted Stug heading towards him like a dwarf on the warpath.  He grabbed the handfuls of dried firecaps on the makeshift table, stuffed them in his pockets and jumped atop the blocks to his customers' surprise, launching himself onto the lip of the town wall.  He dragged himself onto the walkway and ran south along it as the guardsdwarf, in far better shape, leapt onto the rough stall and then to the wall, pulling himself onto the lip and making chase.

Kel hurried along the course of the wall, paying no heed to the Stug's calls for him to halt but acutely aware of the burning in his lungs.  A quick glance back confirmed his fears; the guardsdwarf was gaining ground on him easily.  He turned off the wall where it joined the Nishan chapel and clambered up the slanted roof, scrabbling over alternating orthoclase and microcline tiles until he reached the broad open dome.  He turned, circling around the open roof until the arriving Stug was on the other side.

"Give up!" called Stug.  "Have no where go!"

"You'll never take me, copper!" yelled the brewer, reaching into his pocket and producing one of Mincewind's 'specially prepared' firecaps.  He flung it at Stug's feet where it exploded violently, causing the dwarf to lose his footing and tumble toward the open dome over the trading depot.  Stug's arms flailed and by pure chance one found purchase on the dome's lip, screaming in pain as the force of his falling body pulling against his resisting arm wrenched his shoulder.  Whimpering, he swung himself on his throbbing shoulder and caught the lip with his other hand, dragging himself back onto the lip of the dome to the rapt attention of the Nishan churchgoers below.  He allowed himself a few seconds' rest before getting back to his feet and continuing the chase. 

He ran along the wall until it reached the northern ridge, where he could see Kel hurrying down the steep slopes to the extremely relative safety of the desert below.  He was already halfway down the mountain at this stage and Stug would be damned if he would let him get to those sands.  The guardsdwarf unslung the broad iron shield from his back and dropped it over the wall, mouthing a prayer to Gigin as he leapt onto the shield and held on for dear life as it tobogganed down the rocky diorite slopes.  Wind hurling against his face and the screeching of metal against rock in his ear, Stug managed through a mixture of luck, skill and bloodyminded rage to steer the shield straight into Kel's path, knocking the brewer to the ground and sending them both tumbling into a scratched and bruised heap in the sands at the base of the cliffs.

Stug was first up and used the advantage to scramble onto Kel and pummel him with his good arm until the dwarf seemed inclined to stay down.  Then he slapped sense back into him and dragged his head up.

"Poisoned prisoner!" he barked.  "No deny, have word of prisoners!"  Kel coughed a little blood and blinked his swelling eye.  Alas for him, it was not the one with the tic.

"So the gobbers talked," he spat.  "Should've known you'd listen.  So what?"  Stug answered by banging Kel's head into the sands roughly.

"So against law!  Not harm prisoner!"

"Why?" seethed Kel.  "They do nothing but drain our resources, fill up our gaols!  Who gives a damn if they live or die?  Do you?"

"No," answered Stug truthfully.  "But is law.  Do not make, just enforce.  What kind is poison?"

"Iss' tonic," said Kel, whose swelling tongue and aching head were making his speech slur.  "Makes y'angry.  Hass snage vemom."

"Cure," ordered Stug.  Kel shook his head.

"No cure." 

Stug narrowed his eyes and then plucked a copper vessel from Kel's bandolier, spotting the unusual floral design on it.  He smirked as he spotted the brewer's twitching eye open wider than usual.

"If no cure," he said, unstoppering the flask, "make one.  Justice is balance, yes?" 

Pinning Kel's arms down with his knees and covering his nose with his good hand, Stug forced the contents of the flask down the brewer's throat.  He stood up and trudged back toward the town with a little vindictive pleasure as Kel began to thrash and scream on the ground, his thoughts numbing with incoherent rage and haunting terror of the growing shadows at the edges of sight.

[Jim Groovester]

Wow, the only way that chase could be better is with seventies action cop music.

"This Officer Stug; scumbag is mine."

Emerin's Log

While it's certainly not the weirdest thing I've ever seen, Stug chasing Kel Ragebrew along the walls is one of the strangest things I've seen recently. I better get a report about this.

Ah, wall chases. Brings me back to when I was stealing little amethysts from the shopkeepers back in the mountainhomes. Guardsman Cerol, he was a good sport. Always keeping an eye on me and chasing me up and down the walls or knocking over the towercaps I'd climb up, always with a harsh word about my father's parenting skills. I miss those days.

[Nirur Torir]

I offer generic words of encouragement and praise.

I think Stug's my favorite character.

[Eagle]

Ragna's Log

    Stug dragged in the culprit of the poisoning today: Kel Ragebrew, our local drinks supplier. He was frothing at the mouth, clearly in some sort of insane, raging fit, and we had to wrestle him into a cage to keep him from harming someone. Im keeping him isolated from the other prisoners; i want to "talk" to him about this........incident.
    Along with Kel, Stug brought back a bandoleer of various other liquids, and a search of Kel's home uncovered more, including a nearly empty barrel of snakeman vemon. Where did he get that? He must have stolen it from the caravan at some point. I need to keep these under lock and key, perhaps petition Emerin to get a vault dug. I now suspect that Kel was involved in spreading the drinks i banned earlier this year; I'll need to talk to him about that when he regains his mind.
-------------------------------
Stug's report mentioned him chasing Kel across the walls, and the insane sled idea he had. We need more guards, to patrol both the walls and the city. I should start teaching the guards how to use bolas; they're a non-lethal way of restraining running suspects.
-------------------------------
 I had a look at the drink that Stug forced Kel to drink; it had nearly the same texture and smell as something the Elves call "Sederire", or, in dwarven, "Mind-Break", as evidenced in the incoherent rage displayed by Kel.
-------------------------------
Ragna's Thoughts
Once again, I sense that discordant edge in the Force......is it Kel's fault? No, the sense that was in his home was sharper, more present, not the looming, dull wave I felt earlier. I need to talk to the Elves; I've been avoiding those that come here to trade for too long. I just hope I'm still considered Amalaramana after all this time...

-----------------------------------------------------

Nice job, and yes, we need chase music for Stug. Sorry if i took too many liberties with Ragna's journal.

[Lord Dullard]

Brilliant. I am still watching this thread faithfully for updates. It seems Stug is finding a niche in dwarven society after all. He may have to attempt another journal entry soon.

I'm curious to see just what Broose has up his sleeve. Whatever the case, it seems that poor Jora and Datan are going to have to find out the hard way...

[scuba]

journal. i am locked up in this cage for beating a berserk prisoneer. boy does my head ache. i wonder when i am going o get released. only time will tell. i hope i didnt hurt the goblin to badly.

[Iituem]

19th Slate, 354

Jora and Datan glanced up from their pot as the heavy kitchen doors burst open and a handful of slaves were herded in by the drivers.  Some looked excited, some fearful, others sick.  The two would-be spies caught sight of Petra amongst the huddle, whose feet were stumbling and expression was numb.  Abandoning their post, the pair guided the unsteady dwarf to her bunk.  They slave drivers were busy after their recent arrival, so the pair were able to give Petra a little something to eat and drink until she could speak again.

"What happened?" Jora prompted when she judged the dwarf had recovered enough.

"It was the sergeant," Petra mumbled.  "Sergeant Helmedentranced."  Jora and Datan exchanged looks of furtive concern, then urged her to continue.

"It started not long after we left for Steppetoe..."



As Jora and Datan had heard before the party left, the new sergeant had physically whipped the fortress troops into something resembling a militia and had on Captain Torir's orders prepared to engage them in a training exercise.  Slaves from throughout the fortress had been gathered for the march, expected to serve as cooks and labourers for the battallion during the night.  If the slaves had been surprised by it, the troops were outright shocked at the news that the slaves would be fighting as well and the soldiers would be taking an even share of the labour work.

"An army that cannot build its own encampments," Sergeant Broose had explained, "is an army that will wake up to find the enemy let in by the ones who did, and a soldier who cannot cook his own food is liable to die at the spoon of the one who did."

Not that this had been any relief for the slaves.  Petra and the others had still carried heavy loads of supplies and tools, only now the soldiers were doing the same.  It had quickly become clear that nobody needed that much equipment for a five day expedition, resulting in many of the soldiers actually carrying backpacks full of rocks.  This had struck up a particular storm with some of the goblin knights (rors, in their tongue), used to having a crew of slaves to carry their belongings.  Five of them had ambushed Broose's tent during the first night after embarkment.  Three of them were missing fingers and carrying double-loads the next morning, swiftly sending the message down the line that the new sergeant did not much care for traditional goblin heirarchy.

"How do you reckon the Captain's going to take it when he finds out about the rors?" Petra had overheard Brickbeard saying as she hauled a portion of his gear; some dwarves were getting away with light loads at least.

"I don't give a rat's arse what Torir thinks," Broose had replied, very deliberately carrying his own pack as he marched.  "The General knows that he would rather lose two upstarts who won't get in line now than a whole battallion to the first siege we run up against because they were too lazy to bring their own supplies."

"How will the other rors take it, though?" fretted Brickbeard, who had something of a grasp of the social dynamics of Threepools.  "Stonebreaker's alliance with the goblin clans isn't exactly iron-shod and, well, he's always respected their tradition of slavery before."

"He hasn't respected their tradition," Broose laughed harshly.  "He's been killing off the leaders in suicide raids and slaughtering the slaves building that fortress.  How many dwarves has he sent out to die, hm?  Not a fifth of the number of goblins, I'd wager, and belike as not those who've displeased him.  Always use the mercenaries first, Brick, so when they're spent your dwarves are still fresh.  Else they'll be fresh when you're worn fighting, and be the first to put their blades to your throat."

"So why bother bringing them aboard?  Why not just use dwarves from the get-go?"

"Fortress like that takes a lot of dwarf-power, goblin-power in this case, to build.  Can't get that from the dwarves, not enough open rebels left in the kingdom.  Besides, why make your own forces hostile with deadly labour when you can have someone else's do it?  Slaves are useful for getting a lot of work done quickly, but reliance on them makes you weak."  Broose smirked.  "What, you thought dwarves don't practice slavery out of some sense of nobility?  Once that fortress is done though, well, let's just say you ought to be glad you're on the dwarven side of that equation."

Petra herself had been glad to be a dwarf at that time, though not so glad to be a slave.  When the evening of the second day had come and the camp had been made, the sergeant had ordered the slaves to begin sparring in preparation for the morning's work; Steppetoe was not far ahead.  Broose moved between the pairs and threes of slaves fighting one another as the soldiers formed rings to jeer and watch; an entertainment cut short by the sergeant's swift assignment of sparring sessions to the recruits as well.  This inspired more than a little jealousy amongst the dwarves at seeing the sergeant give fighting tips to the slaves (many of whom fought better, if dirtier, than the soldiers) and one ill-considered corporal had taken issue.

"What's the point of training them?" he had jeered.  "They're only going to die against some elf's sword!"

"I often wonder the same about you," Broose had muttered, then dragged Petra at random from one of the bands of sparring slaves.  Her opponent took a chance overhand swing at the opportunity, but the dwarf brought her club up despite the sergeant's grip and struck the slave in the hand.

"You," Broose barked.  "Do you serve the General?"

"I, I'm a slave," stumbled Petra, surprised at the question.

"So do you serve the General or not?" demanded Broose testily.

"Yes," said Petra quickly.  "Yes, sir!"  Broose let her go and turned back to the corporal.

"The girl here fights for the General, which makes her as good as you, sunshine.  Better, actually, as she seems to remember the fact.  Now get back to your training, corporal, or you'll be feeling a dwarf's axe long before you get the chance to experience an elf's sword close up."  When the grumbling soldier had returned to his sparring, Broose turned and addressed the slave dwarf.

"You.  What's your name?"

"Petra, sir," she replied.

"You fight before?  Outside the pits, I mean."

"Yes, sir.  Hammerdwarf, sir.  Training for the city guard."

"How long?"

"Year's basic training, sir, then ten hard labour.  Commander got too close on the night training was completed, needed surgery."  Broose grunted approval.

"Ever see the elephant?"

"Sir?"

"Combat.  You know, elephant?  Raging war elephants attacking you in violent droves, fires of battle raging in your ears?  Felt like everything was going to Boatmurdered around you?"

"Not as such, sir, no.  Reinhammers had good defences, I never saw any real action."

"Well, that'll change.  Get back to practice, soldier, you're leaving your left flank wide open."






The next morning, the troop of soldiers and slaves marched across the sands to the sietch of Steppetoe, barely a hamlet of sixteen dwarves marked in the sands by a handful of stone posts.  There was no battle as such, the mere presence of so many soldiers forced a surrender in minutes and a handful of beatings and one brief exchange of metal wrested picks and axes from the few defenders who refused to give up immediately.  By the end of an hour all the supplies of the sietch, enough for a year to those sixteen dwarves, had been hauled out of the grotto and packed into the backpacks of the soldiers in place of the rocks they had carried on the way.  Four of the dwarves, the strongest of them, were bound and brought amongst the troops to be pressganged into service.  Sergeant Helmedentranced considered the remaining twelve, then gave orders for the troops to surround them.  As the regimented soldiers formed a ring around the prisoners, he picked out six of the slaves he had thought most promising from the night before, including Petra.

"Take up weapons," the sergeant ordered in a low voice.

"Sir?" asked Petra.

"That was an order," he stated.  Petra found a well-used steel hammer being pressed into her unresisting hands by one of the recruits; the other slaves took their weapons more readily, each confused, hesitant or, as Petra thought, strangely fearful.  One or two of the slaves not chosen looked away.

"Form rank and face the prisoners," ordered the sergeant.  With the other five slaves, Petra formed a loose phalanx of two rows, facing the frightened dwarves huddled in the ring.

"Execute them."

A brief, choked silence erupted into shouts from the pressganged four, murmurs from the slaves and screams of terror and for mercy from the prisoners.  Petra felt her breathing quicken, her pulse race.  The dead silence of the soldiers rang out amongst the chaos.

"But-" she protested, "but they're unarmed!  They're not even resisting!"

"You were given an order," said the sergeant coldly.

"They're not the enemy!" she shouted.

"But you were given an order."

"I can't do this!" Petra yelled, throwing down the hammer.  The women and children had broken into open bawling now, holding one another tightly and crying out to the Gods.  "It's not right!"

"Right has nothing to do with it," spoke the sergeant in a slow voice, his face the very steel mask of Gigin.  "Justice has nothing to do with it.  You are not a guard, you are not a watchdwarf.  You are a soldier.  Your job is not to think, it is to do.  Your job is to follow orders."

Petra opened her mouth to protest again, but could do nothing but choke on the tears in her own throat.  She wanted to tear her mind away from the madness around her, to avert her eyes from this horrific creature speaking to her, but somehow she could not turn, she could not escape.  The thing of steel before her spoke soft words in cold tones that cut through cacophony like an axe through bone, splintering her mind and drawing all focus she had toward it.

"Your job is to follow orders," it said, "or to die at the hand of one who will."

Petra wrenched her eyes from it and turned in search of support as the sickness in her gut brought her to her knee.  She found none, not in the five damned souls beside her, nor the screaming masses of flesh before her, nor the silent ring of steel statues upon whose axe blades her fate now rested.  The last shreds of sanity bled away and the steel spoke once again.

"You have your orders."

Her eyes were dead but her hand found purchase on the fallen hammer's hilt, purchase on the one certain thing in the chaos.  She stood up straight and turned.  The wall of steel advanced towards the flesh.



Petra brought her knees up to her chest in the bunk, huddling.  She did not speak for some time.

[Iituem]

23rd Slate, 354


Four days after Petra's return from the massacre at Steppetoe, the order came to march again, this time to war.  The bulk of the soldiers prepared their equipment and supplies, well-stocked with the haul from the raided sietch, for the two-day trek to Holddeep and the possibility of a siege.  If it were possible the level of bustle in Threepools actually managed to increase beyond its usual chaos, forcing the two spies well into kitchen duty during the preparations.  The order came from above that most of the slaves would be marching with the army as support and shock troops.  Jora was rather cynically inclined to believe the rumour about the General thinning the ranks.  In the scant hours before dawn that the fortress finally slumbered before the heavy march, Jora remarked as such.  Datan, in the bunk below her, grunted.

"You don't believe him?" she asked.

"I'm not sure what to believe right now," he said tiredly.  For some reason neither could sleep, though both were exhausted.  There were a few moments of silence as neither wanted to pursue the line the conversation would take.

"You ever killed anyone?" Jora asked eventually.

"What?" grumbled Datan, turning onto his side.  "Of course I have, you've been there when I've done it."

"Yeah, I know.  I didn't mean goblins, I meant-"

"Yes," he said in a tone that both cut her off and staved the next part of the question.  Another awkward silence followed.  "You?"

"Yeah," murmured Jora.  She rearranged herself in the bunk, listening to the relative quiet of the kitchens, still broken by dozens of grunts and whistles from heavy breathers, snorers and occasional night time flatulence.  "Self-defence, mostly."

"Lucky."

"I said mostly."  Jora shuffled again, uncomfortably.  "You ever worry about it?"

"Doesn't do me any good," said Datan, avoiding the question.  A brief flash of the tin dwarf in the mists touched the back of his eyes for a moment.  He shook his head like a horse dislodging flies.  "All my enemies are in the ground."

"I've never thought that phrase worked well amongst dwarves," Jora commented philosophically.  "I sometimes wonder if they might be waiting, you know?  On the other side."

"I think there's worse things for you and I to worry about on the other side of that veil."  The shadowy figures taunted Datan from the edge of consciousness.  He couldn't tell if he was dreaming already or if this was just some long-lasting effect from the drink.  He felt himself sinking towards them again, to the fight that kept returning to him in his dreams, when Jora's voice mercifully brought him back to the waking world.

"I've never been in a battle."

"What?"

"I've never been in a battle, Datan!  Not a scuff, I've been in plenty of those, and we've held our own against bands of goblins and hell, more than a few open street fights.  I've just never really been in a war before.  Not on the front, not like this."

"Lucky," Datan repeated.

"I'm scared," Jora confessed.  "I'm scared I'll die, or worse that I'll have to live my life as a cripple.  I'm scared that I'm going to die in a dirty little hole somewhere, in ragged, muddy clothing and treated like a slave, probably to archers or traps.  Worse than all of that, though, I'm scared I'll break and run, like with... with..."

"Goden," Datan finished for her.  He opened his eyes and looked up.  Jora had twisted to face him over the hammock and nodded slightly, her lips pressed together in apprehension.

"Then you're sane," he snapped.  After a moment he added in a tone less harsh; "Though a noble kind of sane, Jora.  Maybe you know a bit more about loyalty than I'd have been inclined to think.  Seems my judgement on that isn't perfect, lately."  He drew in a deep breath and exhaled.

"There's three kinds of people when battle starts, Jora.  The first kind are terrified, so scared of everything around them that they bolt.  They run, abandon their friends, get in the way of formations and if they don't die on their own blades or an enemy's, they'll meet the Hammerer when they're caught.  They're cowards and most of those don't make the battle anyway.  The second kind are scared too, but they're the ones who keep their head on the job in hand, who'll piss themselves from the fear but go ahead anyway.  That's courage, Jora, and those dwarves?  Well, some of them die too, but they've got a hell of a better chance of escaping Deler than the first sort, especially if they've got more than half a wit about them and know how and when to fight and when to run."

"And the third sort?"

"Those are the ones that don't feel anything, fear or otherwise.  They're lucky if they manage to get themselves killed, though it's not for lack of trying.  Those are the ones who don't care about anything.  Rich or poor, saint or slaughter, live or die.  Those are the monsters."

"What do you care about, Datan?" Jora asked.  Datan turned onto his side and stared into the abyss.

"Good night, Jora," he said, closing his eyes.

"Good night, Datan," he heard the dwarf say as the violet shadows reached out to slay him again, cackling filling his ears.




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Short update again, but the next one would be better done as a single large update or possibly two large updates.  Also needed to cleanse my palette before moving onto it after that last scene.  Not particularly fun to write.  -.-

On the bright side, if anyone wants a fortress marksdwarf, this is a good time to ask for one!

[Paulus Fahlstrom]

((I've been following your excellent story and figured I might as well request one.

Name: Eilam
Gender: (either)
Profession: Hunter/Marksdwarf/Hammerdwarf (in that order)

His family in the mountainhomes was a poor one, despite his father being a proficient bonecarver. Because of this once he was of age he asked his father to make him a crossbow and some bolts and he began hunting to help provide food, as well as extra bone and leather. Quiet and introverted he doesn't really like cities much, and doesn't mind sleeping just about anywhere.))

[Kanute]

I'm hoping we'll see some of the architectural styles and fortifications mentioned a few updates ago back in Olonkulet, especially with such a potent hostile force nearby. These updates are fantastic, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't prefer for the fort to grow so I can get my dwarf, instead!

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Don't hold back on the crazy when building stuff.
Fantastic writing.