“We’re moving,” Father announced that night at dinner.
“What? When? Why?” asked Mother, myself, and Heidi, respectively.
“The council has decided to form a new city, or, really more of a mountain fortress, to facilitate the work of scouting. They have asked many of the families in this city to move, and then new colonists will move in here.”
He turned to me. “It will take some time. But you and I will be part of the group that will help build the fortress. Indeed, all of your friends will be coming along to help.” He glanced at Benedicta. “I received special permission for bethQuirinus to come as well. It seems that your group leader was most vociferous about the subject.”
Turning back to the family, “The rest of you will be coming as soon as we can get the minimum facilities built, including quarters and walls.”
Father, Benedicta, and I left two weeks later. It took that long to get some Spearmen to force march from their nearest fortresses. Everything was done on the fly. Their families would travel later, with even more escort.
It was a flying trip-- we had tools to carry with us, and the Spearmen had to guard us. Dwarves don’t walk quickly as a general rule, but we did this time. We didn’t even really have a path, although we did have a destination. Some of the scouts that had gone the farthest in this direction had found us a nice location, a little shelf jutting out from a cliff.
Unless I explain how we Dwarves normally work, you won’t understand how different this next part was. We love beauty, we Dwarves, and our building is no exception. We always try, when we dig, to get stone out in nice, beautiful blocks. Then we take whatever chips, etc, are left, and we use them to form terraces, covering them with dirt and plants. We even cover the walls with plants.
So I was shocked when, on arriving at the new city, the men formed lines at the cliff face, and just began digging; hacking away at the cliff face in several different spots. Each of the men took turns swinging their heavy picks at the wall… picks that we never used for straight digging like this, but only for breaking apart large rocks or opening the walls of small corridors.
Father grabbed me, and forced me to my knees. “Get in there,” he said, “and shovel out the refuse. Quick lad.”
I crawled between the men and began shoveling the stones and dust backwards. I felt another boy directly behind me. He was taking what I was shoveling between my legs, and passing it back between his.
For hours we worked like this. The men changed positions frequently, bringing a fresh man to the face every few minutes, where they slammed at the wall like madmen… accurate, careful madmen. The holes, five in all, began to disappear into the face of the cliff. I moved forward with them, farther and farther, until finally the leader of our hole said, “OK. That’s far enough. Our Spearmen are in.”
I turned and looked. I could hardly see back that far, through all the bodies, but the front of our hole did seem blocked with large bodies.
“Get your tools,” he commanded.
I reached up to my back for my pick, which I had strapped there, and suddenly a large body plopped down next to me. “They wouldn’t let me up before,” Benedicta complained.
“Sorry. You weren’t small enough. But unless I miss my guess, you’ll have plenty to do in a minute.”
I was right. The men in our group divided into two, and they began to split our corridor into two and drove it deeper. We boys were given the task of beginning rooms off the main corridor. And we were to make blocks now, not just trash.
“Just small rooms, mind you” said the leader. “Places for us to rest over the next few days. This isn’t the place for real rooms. Big enough for Spearmen, though,” he added, which changed my idea of a ‘small room’ somewhat.
It was a number of minutes till someone had a block ready, but after that, Benedicta worked harder than all the rest of us. She seemed bent on making up for lost time, and grabbed each rock, pushing it outside. One time when she was busy, some friends and I pushed a block out.
“Where would you like this one, Father?” I asked, for he was one of the wall builders outside. Father always did like building more than digging. He pointed, and went back to fitting stones together.
It seemed that, although the shelf was small, we were going to build a double wall, two layers of stone, with chips between them.
Dwarves aren't Farmers, or Spearmen. We don’t have the ability to work solidly that Farmers have, or to work the long shifts that Spearmen do. But we worked hard, very hard. Twenty-four hours after we arrived, our leader said, “Okay, time to rest. Then we will set up regular shifts.”
We weren’t Fishermen, either, but you couldn’t have told it from the way my buddies and I crawled together into one big heap and fell asleep. Or, maybe you could, as Fisherboys would have talked and fooled around for a while, and we just went right to sleep. No one even objected that Benedicta crawled in with us; we were too tired.
The Spearmen didn’t sleep. They wouldn’t need sleep for a while, and we still needed guarding. When we awoke the next morning, they sent some of their number into the room where we had slept, and they took turns sleeping the next few days, whenever we weren’t using the room.
After another day of digging, my leader called to me, “Heinrich, bring three of the squad and come with me.”
I chose three of my buddies, and we came. He took us into the left corridor to the end. It was progressing quickly, and some other boys were working on what looked to be real quarters. We came to the end, where the men were carving out blocks. Nearby there was a crack in the wall.
“This crack might be useful. Get scouting, but rapidly now. We aren’t interested in the end right now, just where it goes over the next few yards.”
This crack petered out, but a few hours later we found one that was an incredible blessing.
“Sir, Sir, you’ve got to come see this!” I said, poking my head down the crack to where our leader was waiting.
“What do you have?” he asked, a couple of the off duty men coming over to listen.
“It is a huge open area, big enough for all of us to sleep in.” (I really had been changed by my time among the Fisherboys. I don’t think, before our trip, it would have occurred to me to describe a room as ‘big enough for us all to sleep in.’)
The off-duty men, interested, began working at the crack. “You just have to do about ten feet,” I told them, “and then it opens out.”
Soon indeed our leader, and the off-duty men were climbing up the chimney and into the room we had found.
“Oh, this is indeed a blessing,” said our leader. It was a large room and almost circular. I estimated it at eight yards across. “Where are the others?”
"They went up over here," I answered, pointing at a crack in the far end of the room. “Since you were coming, they decided to explore further.”
He and the men went around and around the room, making some technical comments about what they would need to do to improve it. But finally, “Ok, call them back. Good job. This will really help our work, but we need you all to get back to work.”
Three weeks we spent there. By the time we finished, besides the large room which we had improved, we had almost a mile of corridors, and dozens of smaller rooms. And, more importantly, the walls outside had risen to a height of twenty feet. After ten feet, they were hollow instead of filled, with slits on the outside and in. It was there, now, that our Spearmen stood on guard.
The Dragons had attacked us several times in the digging, but as the Dwarves were always near to the holes, and the Spearmen ready and able to defend themselves against them, the Dragons were frustrated. Four Spearmen died in the battles, but the Dragons weren’t able to claim any of their prey.
We boys (and Benedicta) dropped into an exhausted heap each night. This was Dwarf work, but not our style of working. But we knew that we needed to get this finished, in order to move onto the next phase. We were truly glad when a whistle called from outside, and we looked through the cracks to see a convoy coming from our city. The women and children were finally coming.
Island People
Island People is a young adult fantasy book centring on a young prince. The book starts with his kidnapping and follows his adventures as he not only escapes from his kidnapper but gains critical allies and friends.
The entire book is scheduled on Substack, and there are several sequels. This is a book I wrote years ago, so it is in a bit of a rough form. Critiques and comments are more than welcome, they are requested.
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von