Interestingly enough, the four Dradrien who were the sole inhabitants of the Iron Folk’s small quarter didn’t seem to mind the resurgence of Rumel’s folk in Vanador at all – indeed, they thought it was amusing. They had little experience with the Wood Dwarves, traditionally, I discovered. The Malkas Alon had always been a Karshak problem. The Dradrien held them in the same disdain as they did the Karshak proper, but no more. To the Dradrien Alon, you were either Iron Folk or not . . . and if you weren’t, it didn’t really matter what you were.
Without their help, building Vanador would have taken years longer. Their immense strength and ability to work in a coordinated manner meant that, with the assistance of Carmella’s Hesian magi, the first stronghold in Vanador was nearing completion of its basic construction as my father and I arrived.
No castle, this – Carmella had assessed the abysmal defensive situation in Vanador and decided an emergency stronghold was required, until more elaborate fortifications could be built. There were thirty-thousand vulnerable refugees on the plateau, more in the surrounding vales, and two thousand or so magi, artisans and such. But not a real wall in sight. If the goblins attacked unexpectedly, there was just no place to find refuge.
Carmella chose the naturally protected juncture of the Anvil with the ground, the perpetually dim region in the crevice of the great rock above. Under her direction, a basic three-hundred-foot section of the most protected spot was excavated and foundations were laid on the bedrock, below. A thick wall of hastily-quarried blocks of granite were brought in by hoxter . . . and that’s where the benefit of Rumel’s folk was truly seen.
Moving the blocks from the quarry was routine magic, at this point. Carmella had dozens of construction wands capable of transporting them instantly. But once under the Overhang, it took the strength and ingenuity of the Wood Dwarves to place the blocks quickly and efficiently into place before another mage melded them into place.
It was they who had contrived the great iron hook that was embedded in the ceiling of the Overhang, supporting a long wooden boom, allowing it to be used as a crane. With twenty or thirty Malkas pulling the cables, a fair-sized block of granite could be placed precisely in very little time. That allowed the great wall to grow by a dozen blocks a day, compared to the days it could take a human stonemason and his team to place just one block.
The result was impressive, if inelegant. The stronghold had a wall rising from the floor of the Overhang to the naked rock underneath, more than fifty feet high. Punctuated with arrow slits and simple turrets, the great doorway, once closed, could protect a few thousand defenders in a pinch. Inside it was barely habitable. It was dark and damp. It wasn’t nearly adequate for our needs, but it was a start.
To facilitate construction, Carmella had hung a huge bright magelight over the site, under the hook, allowing work to continue day and night, if necessary. She had plans to utilize some of the natural cracks in the rock to drive a shaft from the simple fortress to the far more complex castle she planned for on top of the Anvil, one day, as well as allowing some natural light through the rock to illuminate the shadowy Overhang, but that was still a low priority dream in the early days. For now, the squalid little refuge was enough, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the Malkas Alon.
The Wood Dwarves’ Quarter was always fascinating to visit. Rumel’s folk were a lively bunch who enjoyed simple pleasures, and their neighborhood demonstrated a kindred hospitality to the average Wilderlands freeholder.
If the Wood Dwarves had one identifying characteristic, it was their penchant to constantly carry a distinctive broad-bladed, short-hafted axe, much as any common peasant would carry a hoe, spade, or belt-knife. The Malkas were more likely to forget to wear their beards as carry their axes.
The steel-headed axes of the Wood Dwarves were sneered at by the Dradrien smiths, of course, which only meant that they were far superior in construction to anything a human smith could forge. Each head was simply decorated in stylized geometric patterns that – I assumed – were tied to clan and individual. They were worn in a sheath on the broad belts Rumel’s folk preferred to cinch up their tunics, right next to the cunning knives the Wood Dwarves used to whittle, which they loved almost as much as the Kasari.
They called their distinctive tools baraksi, in their native language (which is like Karshak, I’m told, but not Karshak). I didn’t fully appreciate their facility with their axes until I was visiting the lumber yard, outside Vanador, where the incredible quantity of wood we needed to build an entire town, all at once, was cut, kilned and stored. Much of the hard work was done by magi, hired wizards using kilning and planking wands to do in a day what would take an ordinary crew weeks.
But there was also a large contingent of Rumel’s folk – indeed, they had taken over the organization and execution of the yard, when they’d arrived. Not only did they have a preternatural understanding of any particular piece of timber, but when it came to more intricate jobs than merely sawing, sanding or planing, there were entire crews of specialists from deep within the forest who could do the work quickly and efficiently . . . and almost entirely with those short, sharp little axes.
I was astonished at just how little time it took a three-Dwarf crew to trim and cut an ordinary beam into a precise, intricately-carved piece using a couple of chalk lines scribbled sums, a few words of discussion, and twenty minutes of highly coordinated, entrancingly rhythmic action.
The little axes flew with precision; each cut was designed to achieve a particular aim, and delivered with just the right amount of force. Wood chips showered the cutting yard as the bearded workers cleaved the beam at thrice the speed any human carpenter could have done. I discovered that the little axes were extremely versatile. Indeed, many of the designs I had thought ornamental had practical purpose, from providing leverage to serving as a file to sharpen other blades.
It was a far superior display of work than I’d seen Rumel’s folk perform in Sevendor, or even in Vorone. Rumel, himself, explained to me that his people were eager to take up the opportunity I’d offered them at Vanador and had encountered a strange feeling along the way: pride. As they were working for themselves, not their cousins the Karshak, they wanted to show off what they could do for their appreciative humani friends. The Wood Dwarves quarter was a display of Malkas Alon art and craftsmanship like they had never undertaken before.
I also learned later that evening a bit about Malkas Alon sport. Not only did Rumel’s folk enjoy ale at least as much as the Karshak, their favorite sport was flinging those little axes at wooden targets, once enough ale had been enjoyed. Indeed, the game was so popular that one of the larger taverns in their quarter installed a three-lane range behind their long, low building. Drunken Malkas delighted in raucous competitions in the sport.
The Karshak proper were not amused by my indulgence of their country kin.
When Master Guri visited by the Alkan Ways to update me on how the construction was progressing at the new Sevendor Castle, a month after I’d arrived in Vanador, we walked through the Wood Dwarves’ quarter. I watched as Guri’s face turned more and more sour at the sight of so many brown-bearded folk strutting arrogantly through their own neighborhood. Like they owned the place.
He was mostly too polite to bring it up, but I could hear him muttering in Karshak under his breath. While I didn’t understand more than two words in the language, the source of his muttering was unmistakable.
We were passing by the exterior of one of Rumel’s younger brother’s semi-subterranean manse, which resembled a croft in function but not in style. A steeply-pitched roof, contrived of beams and tightly-fitting oaken shingles, covered the structure that led to the underground quarters of the family. The entrance was almost ostentatiously grand. Columns of deftly-carved shapes, including a number of grotesque faces and cartoonish animal heads, were in the process of being painted by a couple of Malkas maidens in the most garish colors the dwarves could produce.
The sight seemed
to tip Master Guri from irritation to anger.
“I knew when you let them have their way at Salik Tower, they’d get out of hand! Now look at them,” he muttered, as we stopped to watch the two young Wood Dwarves painting the columns. “Look at that rubbish: wasting time with such nonsense, when there’s real work to be done!”
“These are their homes, Guri,” I pointed out, confused. “Why wouldn’t they want them decorated?”
“Homes? These aren’t homes – these are holes,” he snorted, derisively. “They won’t last more than two centuries. Hardly worth the trouble – better to be in a tent than in the dirt, if you can’t be under stone,” he sneered. “Holes! Yet, you see how arrogant they are about them. Like they were made of stone. Ridiculous! And look at that nonsense!” he scoffed, gesturing dismissively at the clock tower that was being built atop the great hall that served as the district’s administrative center.
“What do you mean?” I asked, even more confused. I was familiar with that clock. Rumel had showed off its construction, proud as he could be. It wasn’t a water clock, it was all run by springs and weights. I’d thought it was incredibly intricate. “The Wood Dwarves want a common signal to end their work day,” I said, defensively. “What’s wrong with that?”
“The work day stops when the foreman says it stops!” he declared, with the confidence of holy writ. “If you let these layabouts decide when to stop working, mark my words, nothing will get done!”
I had to stifle a laugh. Of all the residents of Vanador, the Wood Dwarves were among the most industrious. Their quarter had sprung up (and down) faster than the High Street, the foundries, or the nicer human halls being built around us. They had been tireless workers, carpenters and woodcutters, as well as valuable tradesmen. The average Malkas Alon with his axe and knife alone could do the work of a woodcutter, a carpenter, a sawyer, a cooper, a wheelwright, a wainwright and a dozen other professions – often better than a human professional. Their incredible strength likewise made them valuable workers, and their jovial humor was popular among the human majority.
“We’ll manage,” I soothed him. “I’m actually quite impressed at what Rumel’s folk have accomplished, in the short time they’ve been here. And they seem eager enough for the coin,” I added. While the cost for a crew of Wood Dwarves was about twice that of a crew of humans, you often got three times the work out of them for the price, I knew.
“Well, of course they are!” Guri muttered. “But what will they spend it on? Gaudy clothes, gambling and too much ale. They’ll squander it in idle pursuits and debauchery, and be broke again before market day, without someone to hold their pay for them. They wouldn’t know what to do with real wealth if you gave it to them!”
I bit my tongue before I mentioned that underpaying them, as the Karshak traditionally did when they hired the Wood Dwarves for a project, was unlikely to put them into that position. One of the things that had drawn hundreds of Rumel’s folk from their forest settlements to Vanador was word that I was paying better wages than the Karshak lodges for skilled labor. And paying in coin, not promises.
“Have they ever had a place of their own? Outside of the forest?” I continued, conversationally.
“Who would want them? They’re mostly a nuisance. Aye, some are clever lads – Rumel is among the best. He picks up things quickly, and gets the work done. But the clever ones are the dangerous ones,” he continued, his eyes narrowing. “They start getting ideas about who should be in charge. Or what is fair pay. Sometimes they revolt against their betters. The Karshak have always thought it best to keep them quiet, offer them enough work for charity’s sake, and try to keep them out of view. It’s just embarrassing.”
He glared at a couple of giggling Wood Dwarf women who were carrying three times as many buckets as human women back from the well. They were young enough that they hadn’t yet started to grow their full manes in, yet, and while I considered them modesty dressed, clearly Guri took issue with the bright red and yellow skirts they wore.
“You’re . . . embarrassed by them?” I realized.
“Well, of course I am! Who wouldn’t be? Parading around like they’re a bunch of chickens pretending to be falcons. Dressed up as flashy as cardinals and bluejays! Acting bold as brass, a bunch of ignorant fools with no more wit than an ox,” he said, miserably. As appalling as it was to hear such things from my friend, I had to admit, I was impressed with his command of humani idioms.
“They don’t seem that different than their human neighbors, in most respects,” I pointed out, gently. The Dwarves did not mind entertaining a small human population within their quarter, and a few human families had moved into the neighborhood. You could tell their houses because they were generally taller, cruder, and less ornate.
“I know,” Guri said, despairing, as he watched the two Dwarven maids cheerfully greet a human girl going the other way. “Going on like that with mere humani, no offense intended. It’s just bloody shameful!”
I learned later, from Rumel’s brother, that one of the objections that the Karshak Alon had with their rustic cousins was breeding. Not their lineage (although that was hardly respectable) but their birthrate. Among the Karshak, vocational excellence was paramount. A skilled mason might marry late in life, or never marry, devoting himself exclusively to his craft. Such masterful bachelors were considered heroic figures of legend, in Karshak society. Only about two-thirds of the Karshak reproduced, as a result.
Among Rumel’s folk, however, nearly ninety percent of his folk married and reproduced, though far more slowly than humanity. They also had children more prolifically than the Karshak, and they saw family life as nearly as important as their skills as craftsmen. There were a lot of only children, among the Karshak Alon, whereas Malkas Alon usually had multiple siblings. That gave them a more extensive family structure than the Karshak. It also made the Karshak consider the large, rural families of Malkas Alon unruly – one of the reasons they were referred to derisively as “Petty Dwarves.”
It was amusing, to me, to watch the Alon Dradrien’s reaction to the spat among the Karshak and Malkas clans. I fully expected the haughty Iron Folk to treat the Malkas Alon with similar disdain as the Karshak masons, but was surprised to see them mostly getting along.
Apparently, the squabbles of the Karshak toward their kin vindicated the Dradrien’s generally low opinion of the masons. They weren’t responsible for the Wood Dwarves, since the great split between the clans of the dwarves that happened a few centuries ago, so they didn’t mind socializing with them. They weren’t any better or worse than a “real” Karshak Alon, in the squinty black eyes of the Dradrien, so they didn’t give a damn. Indeed, you could frequently find a Dradrien or two in one of the more popular Malkas establishments.
Master Guri was right about another thing, too. The Wood Dwarves did love to drink. And gamble. The taverns of their quarter became famous in Vanador, and there were twice as many there as in any other quarter of the city.
But the Malkas Alon weren’t as unruly as Guri suggested. They mostly managed their own affairs in a surprisingly democratic manner. I learned that each house within the quarter sent a representative to the main Hall every new moon, when they voted on the matters that concerned them . . . and who their leadership would be for the next month.
They had their own rules about the process, and they were entirely unlike the Karshak’s customs. The Malkas were content with the system. It had evolved in the forests from ancient custom calcified into unwritten law . . . until Brother Bryte offered to write it down for them.
That was a bit of a novelty. Like the Karshak and the other Alon, most of the Wood Dwarves’ culture and commerce was oral. They had tremendous memories, nearly as good as the Alka Alon. While they used their own special symbols, signs, and notations for their work, anything truly important was memorized by a special class of scholar who specialized in keeping the laws and customs among the clans. Many of the Wood Dwarves had picked up Narasi signs and sy
mbols, after working so closely with us, but only a few read Narasi, and fewer wrote in our language.
That changed when they came to Vanador. I was surprised at how willing they were to consider learning the art of literacy . . . and when it was demonstrated that reading Narasi was actually not that difficult, we had the beginnings of a literacy program in the Wood Dwarves’ quarter. Once Brother Bryte codified their laws for them, reading became a popular fashion.
Within a year, Rumel’s folk became some of the biggest purchasers from the few booksellers in the market. Some even went on to pen their own volumes, some of which became classics in technical lore. Indeed, when the millwrights we invited to construct a few mills saw the materials available in the Wood Dwarve’s Quarter, it ended up revolutionizing the millworkers’ craft.
They were a fascinating addition to the City of Magi. Rumel’s folk learned a new kind of pride in their accomplishments and found kindred spirits in the Kasari and Wilderfolk they worked with. Only when dealing with the Tudrymen did they find conflict.
The core of Vanador’s new civic life was the contingent who had emigrated from the doomed city of Tudry the previous year, I knew. They were largely poor artisans and craftsmen who hadn’t been able to afford to flee during the invasion and had clung to the brief security Magelord Astyral had provided, hoping for better times in Tudry.
Those times never came. I ended up having Tudry razed in one of the last battles of the last war. But instead of fleeing into the Wilderlands with only the clothes on their back as their city fell, we’d managed a relatively organized migration from the squalid little hill town to the plateau of Vanador. With the help of wains and carts, subsidized by Astyral, the bulk of Tudry’s artisan class managed to pull up the most valuable of their tools and relocate to the northeast.
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