CHAPTER TWO: REFUGEEmerin understood the concept behind democrancy* quite well; when six people put their vote to you and you didn't accept their ruling, what they said happened or you wouldn't find yourself in a fit state to take part in making the next decision. She reasoned that monarchy worked on a similar principle, except with axes and hammers acting as vote-multipliers. If you put your vote to six peasants and your axe and armour counted for six votes by themselves, you passed your resolution pretty quickly.
Insightful as this political analysis was, it did nothing to prepare her for the arrival and demands of nineteen immigrants on her doorstep, beyond making her acutely aware that nineteen pairs of fists could pass some pretty decisive resolutions if you handled them poorly."Ho!" cried Broose as the first pair of dwarves in the trail trudged into the middle of the encampment. They looked bedraggled and beaten. "What business brings you here?"
"Sanctuary," breathed one of the dwarves in desperation, propping himself up with his pickaxe. He tried to manage more, but slumped onto the ground from bitter exhaustion. An older dwarf in tattered leather armour, holding an ancient sword almost as battered as the dwarves, stepped forward.
"We seek refuge here," she announced, "from oppression and from the law. We are fugitives." She looked Broose over, then to the conspicuous half-demolished boat that still served as the centrepiece of the camp. "As were you."
By the time all the refugees had stumbled in, nearly nineteen in total were counted. Some had taken up seats in the beerhall, others perched on the boat; many simply dropped to the ground, grateful for respite from the days of forced marching. The migrants had even brought livestock; a breeding pair of donkeys struggled to carry what provisions and possessions they had saved, tethered to a foal and a pet dog. The miner who had collapsed, Ascubis, had been propped up against a rock and given some watered-down glow wine to try and help him recover. Urgash and Frey looked onto the scene from the doorway of one of the apartments, where the older dwarf who had spoken was being interviewed by Broose and Emerin. A couple of other dwarves, a male and female holding newer but equally broken weaponry, leant against the walls as this went on.
"They're too knackered to make much of it now," said Urgash, "but soon they're going to remember how long they've not eaten for. How long haven't they eaten for?"
"Two and a half days," said the old dwarf. "We've been tightening our belts to make do. This deep into the Dipped Moist, there aren't even coyote melons to scavenge."
"Well we're not exactly bursting with food here, but I could try and scrape together a big chow bowl for tonight and maybe some rations to put you through for a week or so. It'll set us back quite a bit, but we've got a harvest coming up soon. Should last you long enough to get to your next stop."
"No," said the old dwarf, shaking her head. "There is no next stop."
"I'm sorry," said Emerin, "but we don't have room for refugees here. We're barely surviving ourselves."
"No, you don't understand. There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere else we
can go." Emerin stared at the old dwarf's face for a moment, then sighed deeply, running a hand through her hair.
"Look," she said. "It's Ragna, right? What did you mean about fleeing from the law and oppression? What happened to you people?"
"The Queen happened," replied Ragna darkly.
Not long after the King had been assassinated, the Mountainhomes had undergone a massive upheaval. Nearly sixty prisoners had escaped the citadel and fled into the countryside and internal factioning over the new King had led to a temporary alliance of nobles. One of the few things the oligarchs could agree on was the issue of security, given how anonymously the old King had been killed. Parties were sent into the caverns of the Mountainhomes, returning with distressing news that the city was riddled with secret passages, many of which were completely forgotten by the people who had built them. As well as filling these up, the nobility had ordered a sweep of the old, cloistered sections of the city. These brief military incursions disrupted the hermitude of an old swordsdwarf and eventually forced her out and into the countryside.
Ragna had watched the battle take place from the waterfalls in the upper mountain, the Elven army crashing against the impenetrable fortress walls of the Mountainhomes. They shouldn't have been able to get in. The walls should have held. By some treachery, the gates of the mountain were opened and the elven flood had entered. Ragna saw no more of the battle from her external view, but she later heard that the army survived inside the mountain long enough to slaughter every oligarch before nearly a third of it defected to the dwarven side. The elven general, Atis, crowned herself while her troops were still resident in the mountain and then set them about the kingdom to consolidate her rule.
Ragna, having fought in a number of wars a century prior, had little difficulty evading the army scouts and the bounty hunters alike, but along the way she had started to run into outlaws; some escapees from the prison, some wanted but never captured, all struggling to survive against the huntsdwarves. She travelled with them, leaving the worst behind her and taking some of the less villainous under her wing. They travelled as a small group of outlaws, though Ragna did her best to steer them away from outright banditry.
It was inevitable that eventually they would run into refugees. Many of the nobles had capitulated out of a desire for peace and order, but many rankled against the idea of submitting to an Elven Queen and so had to be met with war. The battles between the dwarves and elves continued also, with human mercenaries signing on to either side. In such turmoil the sins of war bred freely; mines were flooded, grottos pillaged and collapsed, fortresses razed to the ground. Dwarves fled, outpost to outpost, and some crossed the path of Ragna and her dwarves. Ragna had taken them too under her wing, protecting them as best she could from other outlaws and the predations of war and soldiers. The band had grown, moving in search of sanctuary until eventually hearing tell from a dwarven caravan guard headed north from Kulettögum of a small camp of fugitives that had escaped the Queen's eye.
"So you came here?" asked Emerin.
"As I said," answered Ragna, "there is nowhere else. The Elves declared a truce over a month ago and the Queen is focused entirely on finishing her work within the kingdom now. All the major colonies have been converted or captured, and there aren't any places left for anyone with whom the new order doesn't sit. Where would you have us turn? Kulettögum? We are not nationals, and their city is full to the brim already. Nist Akath? Less than a handful would survive the journey."
Emerin was speechless, so Frey spoke up instead.
"We need some time to consider your plea. Please, attend to your dwarves. We will return with a decision."
"Very well," said Ragna. "I will tell them that you are deliberating." She bowed her head and filed out of the apartment with the other two dwarves. Frey watched them join the group of resting dwarves, then looked back to the other founders present.
"We could just say no," he suggested quietly. "Pack them off with some provisions and tell them to try their luck with the salt mines."
"Could," said Broose, "but won't. For a start, they outnumber us three to one. That girl's lackeys looked green, but she could probably pull one over on me or you."
"If we take them on," protested Frey, "we'll need to use up wood for beds and such, even if we sit them all in a barracks. We won't have enough for the wagon."
"We may not have enough for one anyway," sighed Emerin, "and we all know we're getting nowhere with it. I did a bit of asking around while they were all filing in. One of the dwarves out there is a carpenter; a proper carpenter. Those two girls out there with the tool bags? Smelter and metalcrafter. Tools, parts and skills, which is what we need. If we can get through the trouble of housing and feeding them, we can hang on 'til summer and try and catch a human caravan, buy enough wood to build a single wagon. Once we've got one we can send you abroad to fell lumber, Broose, and have the beasts of burden drag it back. We can get wood from beyond our immediate region that way; enough to build a second wagon and from there we should pretty soon have enough wagon space to take everyone, refugees included. We can load up supplies and leave the country, make a longer journey than we could on foot and find a foreign outpost we can settle down in."
"You reckon that's what we should do?" asked Urgash.
"I reckon that's what we'll be able to sell
them," said Emerin, nodding in the direction of the doorway. "Pardon me for saying it, but appeasing the mob out there is the more pressing issue right now."
"You make a fair point," conceded Frey. "I say we go with that plan for now."
"I don't think it's going to work," said Urgash. "We can't know how much wood the humans will bring, and that many mouths runs the risk of outstripping our food stores in less than a fortnight."
"If we're going to vote," said Emerin, "we should do it when we're all here."
"Doubt we have time," said Frey. "Your 'mob' is going to want a quick response and the others are still out harvesting the firecaps. That's two yes, one no."
"I know Loksvig would say yes," volunteered Emerin.
"I know Dani would agree with me on the supplies and say no," countered Urgash.
"I have no idea what Fath would choose," said Frey, "but if Broose is a 'yes', that's the swing vote. What do you say, Broose?"
Broose stroked his beard, weighing the options.
Ousire looked up from her tool pack and prodded Yngwie awake. A blonde-bearded dwarf with an axe at his belt had stepped out from the little block of chalk apartments and was talking to Ragna, though the exchange appeared meant for all to hear.
"We've an offer for you," said the blonde-bearded Broose.
"Let's hear it then," said Ragna.
"You, your swordsdwarves, those two metalworkers and the carpenter. You're useful to us, so we'll take you on. The rest of them, we'll give them a week's provisions and then they're on their own. Don't have the fields to feed everyone."
"That's your offer?"
"Aye. What do you say?"
Ragna stared at Broose, then stared him down. Broose glared back, awaiting her reply. The migrant dwarves looked to Ragna with hopeful and fearful expressions.
"I say," said Ragna, after a long pause, "that either we all stay, or none of us stay."
Broose nodded, then reached out and shook her hand.
"Then you all stay," he pronounced. "And for the record? If you'd taken the offer I'd have cleaved off your arm right here and fed you to the hounds. Loyalty is important."
The gathered dwarves breathed a collective sigh of relief, a couple fainting again from the stress. Urgash, sparing a faint frown for Broose, headed to the kitchen to begin brewing stew for twenty-six.
* democrancy: 1. (n) The dark art of ballot stuffing. -------
Quite a lot of male dwarf requests went female, I'm afraid. Strongly female immigration wave. Opted to turn Ragnar to Ragna to give him/her the Weaponsmith that came with the wave (since it was established she forged her own weapon).
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