In a single day, Noth had Reaped half a million souls who thought to make a permanent settlement on some unnamed shore just because it had remained dry for a century.
“Yes, I can see that. Did you have to give him that black eye?”
“I didn’t have to,” Noth said. “I got to. I don’t have the sway with the Boulderguts that Hal has. Nor the Leadership, and probably not the Charisma either.”
“What is yours at?” Ashera asked, then she put a hand over her mouth. “I am sorry. I did not mean to be so presumptuous! My curiosity got the better of me.”
Noth waved away her concern with a flapping hand. “It’s fine, Ashera, really. My Charisma is only at six. It seemed fitting. I’m not liable to stick my leg in my mouth, but I am also not very good with other people.”
“Foot,” Ashera said helpfully. When Noth only gave her a blank stare, she added, “The expression is, ‘stick my foot in my mouth,’ not leg.”
At one point not too long ago, Noth would have blushed fiercely or flown into a rage. But she was used to making such common slips. Especially now that she was trying very hard to use colloquialisms that she had heard.
Ashera was just being helpful, so Noth nodded her thanks and left it at that.
“Perhaps I should rotate them out once the Quarry is operational,” Noth mused aloud.
“Rotate them out where, exactly?” Ashera asked, turning her attention back to the window. It was a lovely view of the rolling hills at the heart of the Settlement.
“I was thinking of making a stair up to the high ridges that sweep out to encase the valley’s entrance. From up there, if it was adequately staffed, we could probably have some form of defense to rain down on the gap.
“After all, the gap is quite large. With a few towers or even some level platforms and defenses in place, we could do a lot of damage before an attacking force ever came close.” Noth caught the strange look Ashera was giving her. She hunched her shoulders defensively as she added, “Hal did say that if I saw a way to improve our defenses to do so.”
“You seem to have everything well in hand,” Ashera congratulated, raising her mug in salute. That caught Noth off-guard. She must have made a face because Ashera laughed and gently laid her hand on Noth’s arm. “You are doing fine, Noth. You worry too much.”
She tried to accept the compliment, but she still had her doubts. She wasn’t a leader. Her role had always been to take the leaders, the fighters, the noble warriors that died in defense of their home.
Not once had she ever given thought to how they could have been spared from their end.
And now she was frantically scrambling to search her fading memories. They weren’t gone, but they were fuzzy around the edges. Crystal-clear images were a rarity.
Unfortunately, throughout every memory, she could find little to aid her. Most of her memories were focused on the souls in question and not the moments leading up to their deaths.
As a Reaper, she was often called moments before the calamitous end arrived. It afforded them an understanding of mortality, or so they were told. Mostly, Reapers waited until the moment the soul was sheared from its mortal coil.
It was less time spent on the mortal planes, something few Reapers enjoyed.
Now she was cursing her indolence.
One of the few fragmented memories she had was of a failed siege against a powerful force. The layout was similar to what their Settlement had - large towering walls and an entryway through which all attackers would be funneled.
She doubted whatever force that came against them would have siege engines, ladder towers, or catapults. But the tactics of that long-dead force gave her an idea.
Noth stood up from the table suddenly. Ashera looked up at her, a bit alarmed at the sudden motion. “Are you well?” she asked.
“I have an idea that needs a dwarf’s input,” she said. “Hal said I should trust you to help me, will you?”
After all the bodies Ashera put in the ground, the aura of death was still appallingly strong around her. So much so, that even with her severely reduced senses, Noth could detect it.
It was ironic that she was now in a position to trust somebody she knew could unequivocably not be trusted. And yet, she felt that Ashera was trustworthy somehow. How many of her victims had that same last thought?
Hal trusted her, so Noth could at least appear to do the same. It would make it easier to keep an eye on her if she was close by. Throughout the entire trip, Ashera had given her no cause to doubt her dedication to the group, but she couldn’t just ignore her past.
But if Ashera was making an effort to no longer be defined by the person she once was, Noth wasn’t going to stand in her way.
Ashera blinked a bit too much, but that was as good as a sharp gasp from the reserved lamora. “He said that?” She stood a bit taller. “What do you need?”
“I need a dwarf that isn’t one of the few I’ve already had to talk to, preferably somebody that would have a good deal of mining knowledge. Hal knows all the dwarves by name it seems, but I can hardly keep them straight.
“They’re kind enough, and I enjoy spending time with them - when I do not have to order them to do something they don’t want to do - but aside from a handful, I don’t know many that well.”
“And you need ones that are proficient in mining, why?”
“I have an idea,” Noth said with a grin. “One that will, hopefully, break two stones with a single bird.”
Ashera stifled a laugh but didn’t say anything. Noth was too distracted, trying to remember the details of that long-ago memory to care. “I can make some inquiries, would you like them to come meet you here?”
“Please.”
“Very well,” Ashera said, getting up from the table. “One dwarf, specializing in mining, coming up.”
Noth sipped her mulled wine, relishing the warmth and the spices that made her feel all cozy inside. Chief among her favorite things about being a mortal was the small comforts of the flesh. A warm fire on a cold day. Pleasant drink and food. And good company.
That last thought pulled her thoughts back to Hal and wherever he was. Her chest ached when she thought about him, though she didn’t understand the meaning of it. Sometimes her stomach hurt or felt like it was fluttering when he looked at her.
Noth sipped her mulled wine and stared out the window, hoping that Hal was okay.
141
The fact that several hours later, Noth wasn’t rubbing her temples to soothe the constant stress was nothing short of a miracle.
Hours of talking to the square-shaped dwarf renowned as the best Delver of the Bouldergut Clan and nobody had a black eye.
In truth, things were going better than Noth ever thought they could have.
Bardan Burlybrawn, her newest dwarf friend, stepped back from the eastern cliff face within the gap. He dusted his hands free of the chalk he had just used to mark out a rough outline of a tunnel.
“If ye be wanting to get that stone back, yer looking at a slower job. But gimme four or five dwarfs and I’ll make yer tunnels. Get me double that, and I’ll make ye one complex on each side,” Bardan said, meaty hands readjusting his wide leather girdle set with gemstones.
As far as Noth was considered, Bardan was exactly what she was looking for. She gave Ashera, standing off to her right, a thankful nod.
She hardly cared how Ashera managed to find him, but she was beyond grateful.
“I can do that,” she said with a grin.
“Oh, aye?” Bardan said. His ginger beard was more gray than red, but he still had that spark of life in his green eyes. “I was hearing some of the lads griping and moaning about being put on quarrying du- Ah… I see what yer fer. Braw work lass!
“That’s why ye asked me about taking the stone then, eh? Aye, I see where yer going with this. Killing two goblins with a single rock, I like it! Ye get me them boys, and I’ll do ye proud.”
Your Leadership has risen to Level 3.
Your
Leadership has risen to Level 4.
+1% Party damage (+4%).
+2% Leadership efficacy (+8%).
“I’ll make sure it’s done,” she said with a nod of her head. “Do you think you’ll be able to make it all the way up to the top in three days?”
“Oh, aye. Ain’t gotta go all the way up, just far enough outta reach.” Bardan pointed toward a small shelf about 50 feet up in the air. “The stone’s telling me ears that’s where we’ll wanna be coming out. But we’ll get up to the top o’ the ridge if ye like. Fifty feet of stonecutting is nothing fer a dwarf. Less than nothing fer a Delver like meself!”
“What precisely is a Delver?” Noth asked.
“Ye be knowing what a Miner is?” Bardan asked, one bushy gray-red eyebrow quirked up.
“I do.”
“A Miner’s a wee baby compared to a Delver,” Bardan said with a belly-laugh, though Noth didn’t get the joke. She chalked it up to dwarven sensibilities and calmly waited for him to continue. “Ye see, dwarfs, we got a connection to the stone, lass.
“Some o’ us feel it stronger than others. Legends used to say that there were those o’ us what could talk to stone. Ain’t nothing so grand as that, being a Delver, but it’s right close! Me tools can cut the hardest stone, and this here cliff’s got good stone for building but it ain’t too hard.
“Let me get set up and I’ll show ye just how fast I can carve ye a tunnel. All while salvaging all the blocks I can fer ye to use. Good thinking on that. We’ll use the stones to build the stairs and the defenses. Waste not, want not me dad’s always said!”
“Could you teach others to become a Delver?” Noth asked, more out of curiosity than for any specific reason.
Your Persuasion has risen to Level 3.
+1% Persuasion success (+3%).
+0.5% Antagonistic persuasion success (+1.5%).
Bardan turned back toward her, a twinkling light in his eyes. “Aye, if they got their Miner up to at least Level 15, I sure could.”
Noth filed that information away for later. More Delvers definitely seemed like an excellent idea to her. By having the dwarves excavate the stone while they made the tunnels, she could pull all the dwarves that were angry at her off Quarry duty.
In one fell swoop, she could boost morale by letting the reassigned dwarves continue to work on the defenses of the Settlement while also Quarrying. Neither would be as fast as a wholly dedicated force, but that was fine.
Hal didn’t say anything about expressly needing the stone by a certain time. Noth was certain that the cunningly worked tunnels and pathways she was having Bardan and his crews make would help with the coming battle. If not for the one after.
The memory of that overwhelming defending force came back to her in full then. At the time she hadn’t cared, but looking back, she was impressed at their ingenuity and craftiness.
Noth was determined for her memories to serve in defense of her new burgeoning kingdom. And while she didn’t allow herself much idleness to fantasize, she rather liked the thought of being Queen to Hal’s King.
Try as she might, she couldn’t quite shake that old conversation from her mind. The one she had with Hal, when he had explained the kind of Queen he wanted. Somebody who would dive into a dungeon headlong with him rather than sit in a palace.
With a farewell to Bardan, Noth turned and gathered up Ashera in her wake. “I know at least half of the reassigned dwarves are likely in the Town Hall, could you tell them to meet me at the gap? I’ll be there shortly.”
“Of course,” Ashera said as she broke off toward Town Hall.
Noth would never be that sort of woman. She had no desire to sit in a palace, or attend balls. Her place was at Hal’s side, out in the wilds. It hurt more than she wanted to admit that she had to stay here while he was out there alone.
Turning her attention northward, she picked up her pace until her eyes fell upon a pool of shadowy darkness 10 feet to her left. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching her, Noth walked into the dark shade of a nearby rise of stone.
The Settlement valley was full of varying elevations, often terraced in a way that seemed manmade. At one such area, the sun was angled high and away from the stone, setting the rocky ground in black shadow.
It was enough for her purposes.
One last look around to make sure she wasn’t seen, Noth walked into the shadow and crouched down like a little girl playing hide-and-seek.
To anybody who may have been watching her, she would have seemed to simply vanish into the darkness.
Noth called upon a natural talent of hers, something that belonged to neither her Reaper past nor her new Dark Knight Fabled Class. Shadow Plunge made her one with the shadow at her feet, and she stood up nearly a quarter-mile to the north, not too far from the Manaseed’s glade.
It cost an outrageous amount of MP. A grand total of 307 for the distance she just took. With only 355 MP to her name, it wasn’t an ability she could call on regularly.
Resisting the urge to go to the Manaseed, she turned toward the location the Rangers had spotted as a potential Quarry. Not all of the dwarves would be there. Perhaps none of them would be if they didn’t take her seriously.
“We shall see,” she muttered under her breath.
The sharp report of hammers on stone told her that at least some of the dwarves had heeded her order.
In fact, as she came through the thinning tree line, she saw that she had been wrong to send Ashera to the Town Hall. Every dwarf she had asked to come out to the Quarry site was there.
For all their grumbling and groaning, they had done precisely as she asked.
It warmed her heart to see them all there, setting up the supports and testing the stone for the ideal location. One of the dwarves spotted her and waved to her good-naturedly.
There was no arguing or aggression. And then she remembered one of the most basic tenets of being a dwarf. Having a purpose trumped all.
Of course, not all of them felt like that. But she had Reaped enough dwarves to understand that their purpose in life - beyond fealty to King and Clan - was the most important thing to them.
Having work to do, a task to get done, always seemed to cheer the ruddy-nosed folk. How could she forget something so simple and basic?
Was it because she saw their disgruntled looks and took them to be adversaries instead of people that just wanted to feel useful? Obviously, they weren’t happy where they were.
There was no greater purpose than defending one’s home, after all. And so they had groused and groaned when she ordered them to construct the Quarry and run it.
Now she could confidently say that she had managed to find a compromise. They could feel useful, and Noth would be following Hal’s wishes.
As well as things had gone, she couldn’t wait until Hal returned tomorrow. Being a leader was exhausting.
142
“Ain’t this a fine keg in the commode,” Durvin grumbled, looking at the pair of dwarfs, Fillin and Killis. “Durned Busterbacks!” He kicked one of the brothers, he could never tell them apart. Then, for good measure, he kicked the other.
“Wa-hey!” one of them cried. “Ye don’t have to be- Me ki- I mean, Durvin! Hullo!”
The lad smarted up, right quick. That told Durvin he was talking to Killis. For all the brothers looked alike, Fillin was dumber than a sack of goblin heads.
“Ye was working through the night, eh?” Durvin said, hands curled into fists and planted on his stout hips.
Killis got the hint and jumped up, dragging his half-asleep brother to his feet. Tomorrow night was the Big Event, as Durvin thought of it. When the Shiverglades would send its forces out at the fledgling kingdom.
There was still no sign of Hal.
Durvin had offered Noth to go out and look for him. The wall was all but completed. Even in the wee early hour’s dwarfs were rushing about stocking the walls with weaponry and supplies in preparation for the siege.
The Boulderguts were
no beardless novices to warfare. They had broken more attacker’s teeth on their stout walls and iron wills more time than the grizzled older dwarf patron could count.
And they would do it again.
Not because they had to, but because of their love for this strange new place and the man - aye, the man - that had brought them there. Hal was a lot of frustrating things, but a disappointment was never one of them.
Durvin tapped his heavy boot on the stones the brothers had been sleeping on. “I catch either o’ ye sleepin’ again, I’m going to have words with Athagan. Ye be wantin’ that, do ye?”
Even dim Fillin’s eyes bolted open, and the pair stumbled over each other, trying to rush back into the tunnel they should have been working on.
With a sigh that sounded a lot like a pair of stones being ground to dust, Durvin turned away from the shelf of leveled stone on the western end of the gap.
The air was chill and damp. Faint bits of frost clung to the crannies and cracks in the unworked stone around him. Bardan had done fine work in such a short time.
Metal rasped against stone, drawing Durvin’s attention to his boot. He stooped down and picked up the pickaxe. Turning toward the tunnel the twins had disappeared into, Durvin waited patiently while smacking the smooth haft of the pickaxe into his other empty hand.
Fillin poked his shaggy head out, ducked his head in reverence to Durvin, and took the proferred tool. “Me thanks,” he muttered before he dove back into the dark.
The ring of pick against stone was sweet music to Durvin’s ears. For too long his clan had been at the beck and call of the High Gauntlet, the five dwarven Clans that ruled the Anvil. They were the true power beneath the Iron King.
Everything the Boulderguts had, Durvin had clawed from their greedy little fingers. And it was never enough. They always wanted more to be made from less.
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