Icevein: Chapter 27

The wardens led Gretti back into their hold, to the small chamber left bare except a latrine bucket in one corner and a few sheep pelts in another. A narrow band of Miner’s Eye grew around the seams of the door, providing a little light.

“Lengthen the chain, Tormelek ,” said one of the wardens, “but do not remove the shackles.”

A young dwarf moved in front of Gretti while two others held spanned crossbows trained upon him.

“Kulkur Named of Strength,” Gretti muttered. The young dwarf didn’t meet his gaze and instead released an inner lock on the shackles, opening a clamp and allowing more chain to slide through. It was clear by the dwarf’s hurried movements that he was nervous being so close. Gretti didn’t care for the Named of Strength and their disregard for the traditions of their folk. It was not surprising that one ashamed of his forebeards should be a coward, and it gave Gretti pleasure to unnerve him. The job done, the wardens slowly backed out of the chamber and shut the door behind, leaving their prisoner alone.

Gretti’s hands were shackled but his legs at least were free. The jackals had been kind under stone and brutal above. So far, the wardens were abundantly cautious. He hoped they would not leave him in this chamber without respite for the months it would take to bring the Highlodes from East Spire.

At least he would get some rest and allow his body to fully heal. His final chance at fulfilling his duty might be on the other side of this long wait. After the audience in the Judgment Hall, Gretti was tired. He lay down upon the sheepskins and stared toward the chamber ceiling. He still had not fully recovered from the battle and his journey to Glint.

He had found the claim near Fox Scree, but it had been empty, with little sign of recent working. The drift was only twenty yards deep, and the narrow quartz vein it had followed appeared to have quickly narrowed to nothing. Yet the claim had a door, lockable from within, and Gretti shut it. The jackal pannier had more than just food. It had flint and steel, a few candles, some clean bandage cloth, and a sewing kit as well. He stripped and searched his body for wounds, of which he had many. Most were shallow enough, lacerations rather than punctures, but his face was a wreck. Using his calloused fingertips to guide him, he sewed his cheeks closed as best he could, puckering the wounds together, tears streaming down from his cheeks. One by one, he sewed his other wounds closed with the rawhide thread.

With food and shelter, he laid in the dark of that claim for days, drinking water from a pool in the rock. When his wounds no longer tore and stung at every move, he had risen and set out again, but not along the path to Glint. With ürsi about, that would be death. He took to the ridge crests. It was a long hard way, cruel in the winter, but the ürsi would hunt the valleys where game was plentiful, not the high crests.

Gretti still did not know what had happened at Fox Scree. He could hardly describe it to himself. Somehow, he had been spared. He tried to remember the flashes of light and the great booming voice. Had his forebeards somehow intervened? That was a silly idea. The dead did not meddle with the living. Perhaps they could not. Yet something had happened he could not explain, or else it was some kind of battle madness. How could he even tell what he had seen, if someone asked?

The Ridge Wardens did not welcome Gretti into their society as the jackals had done at first, but neither did they treat him with cruelty. He was allowed to leave the the chamber from time to time, if only to walk under guard. He was given plain food and weak beer, but it was enough to satisfy his hunger and thirst. When he requested to keep is mourning, they even shaved his head for him. The wardens often sang in their hold, and he would lie upon his sheepskins and listen to the deep strains carried through the stone.

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The small space did not bother him so much. Dwarves beneath the stone—especially those who were not wealthy—lived in close confinement from the time they were born. For years, Gretti had endured privation, hardship, wounds, and bitterness in pursuit of his single goal. He was tired, and he wished to rest, to sleep and forget it all. But tired though he was, he was not used to inactivity, and after the first few days, it was the inactivity that weighed most upon him. Days led to weeks. Gretti lost count. He paced back and forth in the small chamber for hours at a time. His wounds knit deep and the red blush of the new tissue faded. To regain his strength, he spent many hours placing his hands and feet against the opposing stone doorjambs, straining to force them apart as if he could move the very rock.

Time and again, he imagined what it would be like to see the last of the Highlodes stand before him in the Judgment Hall. He imagined springing toward a warden, wrenching free an axe or a spear. He pictured the look of horror on the faces of the Highlodes, the shouts and cries of the folk of Glint, the blood shed to avenge his kin, his father and his brothers.

It was a two day journey to the western reaches of Deep Cut, where narrow sandstone caverns wound deep beneath the sands of the Waste, carved in fathomless time by the workings of water long since dried. Gretti could smell the feldspar and muscovite strike as they approached, but there was something else—something foul he had never smelled before. It was the stink of the days-old dead. The three Deep Cut guards accompanying Gretti kept silent. As they reached the cavern, the guards halted outside. One put his hand on Gretti’s shoulder.

“They must be removed from the strike. Take them to the niche and wall it up until you can come for the bones. Be quick about it. ”

The smell was even worse inside the cavern. The ceiling was low near the entrance, and Gretti had to crouch to work his way back to where the seam of feldspar had been found, flecked with green chalcedony. The bodies lay just beyond the rise of the cavern ceiling. It was clear that the bodies lay as they had fallen, twisted and sprawled or doubled over gut wounds. The blood on the rock was dry and brown. Gretti set the oil lamp on the stone and stared at the bodies of his father, his brothers, and his uncles, all dead, stiff, and beginning to bloat. The Council had not let him come before, not until the arbitration was complete. The Highlodes had already carried off their dead—only one killed, though others were wounded.

“The guards will examine them,” Gretti was told. The Council will rule soon, and you may see to the bodies.

Now Gretti stared down. He had heard what the guards had said when they had first come to the Low Collier hold:

“ They are all dead.”

But he had not truly understood it. He still didn’t, but understand or no, seeing them there drove the reality like a three-hand drill. Sinking to his knees, he gasped for breath, even as his stomach lurched from the smell. His throat felt constricted. Why? How could this happen? How could his father have attacked the Highlodes? How could such a thing be? Chalcedony was precious, ay yes, but he could not imagine his father shedding blood. And yet blood had been shed. It had pooled and clotted in the crevasses.

It was as he stared, uncomprehending, that a new sense of wrongness grew on him. All of the Low Colliers slain, and only one Highlode? How could this be? Surely they would have made a better account of themselves. The dwarves lying in front of him were miners, strong and able, and their daggers and picks were in their hands.

“We came to tell the guards. We did not move the Low Colliers,” Tornheft Highlode had told the Council. “They lay as they fell.”

And Gretti saw it. He had the truth of it plain in the grizzly display of his slain kin, screaming at him from the hands of the dead.

Gretti replayed the moment again and again as he waited in that cell of the Ridge Warden hold. It was his worst memory, but he needed it. It stoked the rage that would carry him through. It gave him his purpose. Call him what they may, there was no ice in his veins, only red hate.