Dwarven Camp in Zospu Smaxa
27th of Sandstone, 1051
Mekboy stared at Novod as though he were the one who was mad. "He says he is our what?"
"Our trade liaison to the mountainhomes," Novod repeated distractedly. Cilob and Aban scurried impatiently around his feet, their little jaws nibbling carefully at his pant leg. The jumping spiders both knew he had a dead rat in his pocket for them. "We've met him before. Always seemed like a harmless old fella."
"That's ridiculous," Mekboy said, eyeing the miner suspiciously. Novod felt the ground swing under his feet a little and scratched at his unkept beard. " Just how much have you had to drink today?"
"Not enough," Novod grumbled. They'd started to risk sending a few dwarves down to the caverns to pick mushrooms between assaults on the cave creatures and there was a brewery bubbling away slowly, but Mekboy was making sure the alcohol was all being rationed out slowly. Unlike Dzharius or Lofn, Novod didn't trust these Kubuk Ikud dwarves, this Mekboy one in particular. Any dwarf that stingy with the booze had to be up to no good. If they asked his opinion, and no one ever did, they'd have been better off back out in the forest. At least they could manage to trade for a drink out there.
"Look, I'm just telling you what he said. Talk to him yourself, you don't believe me. I've got a few hours with one of the beds and I'm gonna go take it."
"Not according to the work schedule," Mekboy answered, hefting a thin-scraped stone table and a piece of rock she'd used to scratch characters onto it. "You're due down in the caverns, helping to mine out space for a barracks for the soldiers."
Novod felt something hard press between his eyes. His brow, squinting together as he glared. "That's not what I was told."
"Then you were told wrong," Mekboy said, turning away and dismissing Novod with a wave of her hand. "Caverns, go. I've got to meet with this so-called trade liaison, if he exists."
"Bitch..." Novod grunted at her back. The soft click of his jumping spider's mandibles pulled his eyes away from Mekboy, to the blue-shelled arachnids bouncing about his feet. The glare smoothed out of his eyes and he smiled at them, fishing the rat from his pocket and dropping it to their waiting jaws. As they tossed it about and started to wrap it up in sticky web, he stroked their smooth glittering carapace. Whatever else was bad about this place, at least he had them. "C'mon my loveliess. Hell with what that ponce says. Lets go get a nap in while no one's looking."
---
Zospu Smaxa Meeting Hall
27th of Sandstone, 1051
Mekboy stopped in the middle of the meeting hall and looked the dwarf in front of her up and down. He was an ancient sort, his beard gone white and his hair gone out. His clothes were clean, beyond a light dusting of snow, and better condition than anyone at the outpost had, even if they were made from the green threads of rope reed cloth. One of the other Losiszas dwarves... Storm? Rain? Mekboy checked her ledger to see which of them would not have been assigned to other duties at that moment. Rain, stood beside the elderly dwarf, helping spoon up a bowl of crundle-meat soup.
"Trade liaison?"
"Id Omerimush, at your service," the old dwarf said, rising to his feat and bowing with a flourish. "I am your liaison from the mountainhomes. Are you the broker of this fortress? Why don't we sit and discus your needs for the coming year?"
Mekboy ignored him, giving Rain an expectant look. She smiled, all patience and soft-featured, a gentle hand on the old man's shoulder. "Our trade liaison, yes. He always manages to find us, where ever we go. He's sort of been our link to home all these years."
"Get rid of him," Mekboy answered bluntly, then eyed the bowl of soup. "And stop giving him our food. We don't have the rations to feed every mountain goat who wanders in."
"He's a not goat," Rain answered, a troubled look wrinkling her round face. "Besides that, it's tradition. Lenod the Whisker of Morning grants good luck to those who the elderly."
"If he eats without doing any work, he's close enough. But," Mekboy paused, looking Rain up and down. "If you want to feed him, I'm fine taking the meal from your own rations for the month. Is that what you'd prefer?"
The Losiszas woman hesitated guiltily and Mekboy nodded, inwardly pleased. It was going to be easier to get these new comers into line under her than she had thought. A pack of old drunks, rainy-day bleeding hearts, and over eager helpers. Once she had them dancing to her tune like the others, she could finally oust that idiot Zero, send him off into the snow with their 'trade liaison.' Old white-beared old man simply stood and watched the whole exchange with befuddled gray eyes.
"Alright then, get rid of him. If he's too crazy to do any real work, we can't afford to feed him. Once he's gone, you're needed in the caverns to cut lumber. There are also those white-furred things-"
"Yetis," Rain cut in, marshaling her dignity somewhat after bowing
Mekboy pretended not to notice. "- in the cage traps at the entrance. Haul them down with the other animals we caught and pass word on to Kiratha to put new cages in. We've been getting a lot of annoying things trying to come in here lately."
The look Mekboy gave Id Omerimush was lost on him, but not on Rain. She glared at the broker, but Mekboy didn't have time to care. There was a schedule to keep and too many dwarves lingering in the halls. No one appreciated her work... yet. But they would.
---
Dwarven Camp in Zospu Smaxa, Crafts Hall
26th of Moonstone, 1051
The Crafts Hall wasn't really a hall. It was just the level of the cave they'd chosen to put the workshops in. The only one with the room for workshops and stockpiles both. It was cramped and grew uncomfortably hot when every workshop was occupied and the noise of clicking, scraping, popping tools was enough you had to shout to be heard across the room.
Like now.
"... then tells me it's my shift again. AGAIN! I put in five extra hours in here to get those hides tanned and turned into armor like she wanted made and that crundle brained bitch says I don't even get an hour in bed for it? Told her she could eat the damn armor," Remalle said with a loud, derisive snort, looking around the chamber at the other dwarves packed in with him. "How can you stand her?"
He was the only dwarf Urist had ever met who had black hair. He braided his mustache just like every other dwarf, but did the same with his hair too and had several leather thongs wrapped about the ends of each rope-like length. Reminded her a bit of some elves they had met once, which was probably why Karakzon didn't like him. Urist did though. They'd been working in the cramped quarters of the crafts hall for months now. He was young, or at least younger, cocky and full of pep and spite.
Cheveux laughed mightily as his burly arms scraped the flat side of a length of bone across a rough grinding stone. A fine white dust filled the air, covering the hefty craftsdwarf head to toe. Not from this one blade, but from the pile of them assembled beside the small work station. How he managed to move about the area without carving himself to pieces was a mystery even Shedim would never unwravel. "Don't let old Mekboy worry you none. She's always thought she run the show, even since we were little. Zero has her number though. He's good at playing crazy-"
"It's not all play," Urist added with a wan smile. She was glad to finally have Chev back on his feet. His fever had broken just the week before and he'd taken a few more days to get better, at Lofn's insistence, before rushing down here to help them out. He'd taken over the workshop that Firelordsky had left in disarray after his manic fit that resulted in the earring they now had on display up in the meeting hall. Chevuex had taken triple shifts and even when they did force him to take a break, he still came down to the Crafts Hall to 'watch' everyone else work (which often meant pitching in to help with some of the smaller details) and fetch them water. Urist was sure they couldn't get rid of him if they tried. Not that anyone was eager to.
"Ha! Fair enough, but it's the sort of crazy that gets things done and keeps Mekboy from turning us all into the sort of ant hive she'd like us to be. Speaking of getting things done..." Cheveux hefted the slender blade and tested it's edge against his finger nail, adding just another notch to the dozens of others that already cracked them. Yet another bone blade clattered onto the pile. "Done with that lot. You want a hand with those leathers, son?"
"Like you could keep up with me, old man," Remalle grinned as his little stone hammer and spike etched out another image in the leather armor he was making.
"Hey, HEY!" A new voice cut into the hall and Urist and the rest glanced to the scuffy looking dwarf who had just shuffled up from the cavern floors below. Urist did not know Novod very well. Enough to recognize him, at least, though there was little mistaking the look. Or the scent. How someone could smell that strongly of dwarven vodka when there was barely any in the whole fortress was beyond her. The miner leaned on his pick as he stood, red faced and sweating from the climb up the stairs. A jumping spider scurried past him to poke about the piles of bone that littered the craftshall floor. "Any of you here seen Cilob? My jumping spider?"
"Right there, isn't it?" Chevuex said, nodding to the spider already hunting through the room for anything smaller than itself to chew apart.
"No, that's Aban, her friend. Cilob's lighter blue and a little bigger. Had the most adorable face..."
Remalle shook his head, braids swaying. "Ain't seen any spiders in here all day, Novod. Must still be down in the caverns, if you were there with her last."
The scruffy dwarf grunted, lurched around, and shuffled back down the slope. The spider, Aban, chittered at them in a far more friendly manner before it bounded off after them. They heard the distant thud of the cavern hatchway being closed.
Remalle clicked his tongue against his teeth, then went back to sculpting the sheets of rat leather in front of him. "Poor ole Novod. Almost makes me wish we hadn't started brewing stuff again. He's drunk enough to be miserable, without being so drunk he forgets that he is."
It was an old familiar saying that was probably applied to every dwarf at some point in their lives.
"Did something happen to him?" Urist asked, her gaze lingering on the darkened tunnel a little longer.
"Nothing that hadn't happened to the rest of us," Remalle shrugged, his shoulders a little more tense than before. "Dead family, dead friends... just he fell into a barrel of wine when it did and never climbed back out. He'd been sober for at least a year before we came here. Had to be, since we'd run out of booze. Nice enough guy when he'd dried out or dead drunk. Little less so when he's just on his way to one or the other."
"Seen plenty like that," Cheveux put in as he maneuvered through the death-trap that was his work station to gather up more bones. He seemed to be under the impression that they could never have enough swords. Urist didn't entirely disagree. "Our old healer was a real bad case. Couldn't even stitch a wound unless he'd downed a barrel of something first."
"You must'a run out of booze a long time ago too then," Remalle said, getting a confused look from Cheveux. The black haired dwarf tried to hide his grin, but couldn't. "No one sewed Mekboy's mouth shut."
---
Dwarven Construction Site in the Zospu Smaxa Caverns
23rd of Obsidian, 1051
"Something is about to happen," Shaman said.
Bob glanced at the wild-haired dwarf who sat legs folded on the cavern floor beside she and Eric. As always, several creatures crawled about Shaman. A jumping spider, a pair of fancy rats. There was even one of the mole rats they'd captured, flopped onto it's fat side behind him so he could lean on it's flank. The three dwarves sat on the edge of the cavern pool, as far away from work and company as they were allowed to go. A mismatched trio. Eric shirtless and bound up with several pick axes and leather padding, Bob in cavern browns and bare foot, and Shaman dressed in rags made out of still-living cave moss. Bob had her flute with her, a bone one that she'd traded Cheveux a fresh cave lobster to make for her, and trilled at it artlessly. Anyone else would have likely slapped it out of her hands to shut her up, but the two beside her seemed almost lulled by the sound.
Or maybe the mushrooms were just kicking in.
There was a bowl of cave-cloud mushrooms between them that Zero or Lofn would have surely confiscated. White topped toadstools, about the size of her thumb, they were hidden under a piece of spider silk cloth while the three dwarves waited for them to dry a little more. Shaman had come back from one of his frequent visits into the darker depths of the cavern with them and brought them straight to Bob and Eric, instead of taking them to the stockpile. The gesture was appreciated, as they were not, strictly speaking, allowed to be used for anything other than a religious ceremony. The old priest who had died when Bob was a kid said that cave-cloud carried you up to see the divine.
Of course, what could be a more deeply moving religious experience than to go fishing?
Her line trailed out far into the waters of the cavern pool, the other end tied to her big toe as she lay against the cool, soft moss that grew on the cavern floor. They'd cleared out most of the crundle corpses and cleaned up the blood. A few yards away, piles of tower-cap and fungiwood that had been cut and pressed into planks were waiting to be assembled into a barn. A smaller pile waited just beyond, the beginnings of what Zero promised would be a house just for her. The camp leader had been thrilled to finally have something more to do than play good-parent to Mekboy's stern-parent. They hadn't needed an architect for anything these last few months, but now that they were finally ready to build, he'd been scribbling diagrams and designs over every wall he could.
He might have even been in good enough a mood to let them keep the cave-clouds, though Bob wasn't going to risk finding out the hard way that he wasn't.
"Something's always happening," Bob said philosophically, or at least that's how she hoped it sounded, as she lowered her flute. "That's why you've got to take the time to appreciate the quiet moments. Right, Eric?"
"Sure," the flaxen haired dwarf sighed, tossing a pebble that skipped across the surface of the water. Back when she was fishing in lakes or rivers, Bob might have smacked him for that, but cave fish usually came up if there was some sort of disturbance in the water, since it usually meant a meal for them. "... though at this point, any time I'm not fighting a damn lizard is paradise to me."
Shaman shook his head. Something small and many-legged fell out of his hair as he did. "Something else. Something bad. I can feel it. The crundles ghosts warned me. The cave spiders wrote it in their webs."
"... wait," Eric said, his eyes stretched wide as he stared at Shaman. "You hear crundle ghosts talking too? I knew I wasn't the only one! Is one of them named Rofel? Do they want you to make statues to remember them, too?"
"No, not yet," Shaman answered, not questioning the possibility at all. "Something will be made, but it will honor nothing. Only bring the shedding of tears."
"I gotta be honest, I have no idea what you're talking about," Bob said, her bobbing toe tugging at the line in the water.
"Nor do I. I am just the messenger."
---
Dwarven Barracks in the Zospu Smaxa Caverns
23rd of Obsidian, 1051
"A day! An hour! ANYTHING!"
Novod's wretched cry rang through the barren stone walls of the formative barracks and seemed to bounce off Mekboy with just as much effect. The administrative dwarf looked at the scruffy miner with a twinge of impatience. "I told you last time this happened not to bring your silly pets down here. That it was dangerous for them. That they should have been in the food stockpile hunting rats anyway..."
"I know! Please! I just... I couldn't leave him alone! Without Cilob, he didn't know what to do anymore!" Novod sobbed, reaching to Mekboy and gripping the front of her coat. "You've GOT to let me go find Aban! He's hurt out there! He could be dying!"
Mekboy endured the hands upon her stoically, cold eyes staring down at the dwarf before her. Novod had only gotten more pathetic and ragged since his first pet spider had been killed. He'd brought it down here and it had happily run off to hunt down bugs, only to get torn to pieces by something beyond the cavern-wall. Mekboy had insisted they leave the thing out there to rot, as a lesson to Novod and anyone else about letting their pets run free in the caverns. Everyone else had learned, Novod had not.
"If it's out past the wall, then it's probably already dead. You know that."
"No! NO! Aban isn't dead! He isn't!" The anger in Novod's voice and the violence of his grip on her clothes was enough to shock Mekboy. She tried to pull away, but the scruffy miner only held on tighter and began to shake her violently. "You just want him to be! You hated him! You hate me and want me to suffer!"
"I don't..." Mekboy started, words cut off as she endured another violent rattling. With fury and disgust, she brought her knee hard into his gut and shoved violently. Novod doubled over, then toppled back to the floor, curled into a ball. Mekboy took a breath, straightening out her clothes. "I don't care about him. I don't even care about you, as long as you're not harming the welfare of this colony. Which you have come dangerously close to doing several times now. You forced me to assign Firelordsky to guard the alcohol simply to keep you from stealing from it. You mined out the wrong walls several times and forced us to divert labor into fixing them. If you can't learn to keep control of yourself, I am going to have a talk with Zero and Lofn and arrange to have you put in a cage like those yeti."
"Bastards... all of you... bastards..." Novod groaned, rolling on the floor. "Aban..."
"Will stay where ever he is. I'll not risk any dwarf in this outpost, not even you, for the sake of your stupidity," Mekboy tugged her coat with finality and stepped around the figure on the floor before her. "Now I have work to do. And so do you. This... break is coming out of your allotted rest time. When you pick yourself back up, report to the butchery to help haul bones to the craftshall. I won't trust you with mining duties just yet."
She didn't hear him rise behind her. Didn't hear him draw close until it was too late. She saw his shadow against the ground just in time to turn, wide eyed, to see him raise it up above his head. Mekboy saw his face, his eyes, both burning with mad, maniacal glee and the empty barracks rang out with his course laughter.
The pick came down. Mekboy saw no more.
---
Dwarven Construction Site in the Zospu Smaxa Caverns
23rd of Obsidian, 1051
Head tilted back, Bob watched as a lone dwarf came shuffling out of the empty door frame of the unfinished barracks. They cut a rather ragged figure, even by local standards, clothes stained and back strained under the weight of a lumpy looking burden. She twisted onto her belly to get a better look.
"Isn't that Novod? He was having a meeting with Mekboy, wasn't he? Think anyone could use a little relaxation after that. Novod! Hey! Come join us!" Bob called, waving to the approching dwarf. She was forced to stop as Shaman's hand snapped out to still her arm. "Hey-"
She started to speak, but cut herself short when she saw the look on Shaman's face. The normally placid dwarf sat with eyes screwed closed tight and his wide mouth drawn into a deep frown. The tamed animals around him let out an assortment of snarls and snorts, marshaling themselves around the trio of dwarves protectively as Novod came closer. It was only then that Bob noticed the trail of blood that was dripping from the thing he carried on his shoulder.
Not stopping as he moved towards the ramp to the upper cave, Novod shook his head. "Can't. Schedule says I'm on duty."
Eric frowned, his hand settling slowly onto the handle of one pick. "Where you headed, Novod?"
The scruffy miner smiled, more cheerfully than Bob had ever seen him... and the bundle on his shoulder seemed to let out a soft groan.
"Butchers shop."
---
Alas poor Mekboy, you got ganked!
Didn't even notice that Novod was so miserable until it was too late. Hoping his fell mood doesn't start a tantrum spiral. Mekboy only had two friends in the fortress, Zero and Urist, and neither of them are thrilled about events. No one else really seems to care.
Beyond this rather unexpected turn, things have been going well. We've got whats left of the cave critters bottled up. Bob's been able to start fishing and building farm plots and we finally have enough wood so that everyone can have a bed. Spring just arrived too and we might get elves with it, which will give us somewhere to unload the metric TON of bone swords Chev's been making.
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Topic: Clan of the Cave Spider - Community Cavern Fortress (Read 9631 times)