that would be the basis of topsoil when it was completed.
In the meantime, foraging parties were roaming the caverns, gathering tons of edible fungus, various kinds of meat that no one questioned too far, and a dozen varieties of vining fruits which grew naturally in these subterranean realms, wherever there was light from a quartz layer.
“It is magnificent,” Olim Goldbuckle said, surveying his new realm. “It goes beyond anything that any of us dreamed.”
Slate Coldsheet shook his grizzled head, frowning. “This place is big, right enough. But I’d feel better if I knew how people are supposed to live here.”
The others looked at him curiously. “Like people live anywhere else, old one,” Gem said. “By using what we have found.”
“But what have we found?” the old delvemaster spread his arms, turning. “A place. A place with water and worms.”
“And fresh air and sunlight,” Gem added.
“And — Reorx willing — defendable against invasion,” the prince pointed out. “What is bothering you, Delvemaster?”
“Food and fuel,” Slate said flatly. “Oh, our foragers are feeding us now, but those supplies will run out. And wood. We need timber, Sire. We will always need timber, and no forests grow beneath mountains.”
Olim scratched his beard, looking up at the delves. Without timber for beams, they would be shallow and unreliable. Doors would be a problem, as well, and furnishings.
“And rich ores,” the delvemaster continued. “There are no real lodes here, Sire. And no way to reach the rich veins to the south.”
“We can still trade,” Olim told him. “Our road will serve.”
“Fifty miles of tunnel, going the wrong direction? And that isn’t all.” The old dwarf pointed downshore, where long lines of Daewar were operating a bucket brigade. They were carrying water from the lake to the delvings, where it was lifted by ropes. “In Daebardin, Sire, we collected water from above. Cisterns and flows. Here we have to carry it from below. It is not efficient. Your people don’t like it.”
“Oh? They are grumbling, then? And what else don’t they like?”
“Many of them don’t like it here,” Slate told him. “Gil Gemcrust and his weavers are upset because there is nothing to weave. The artisans wear gloomy faces because the forges are cold. The woodcrafters … most of them are there in the water line because they have nothing else to do. And not an hour ago I heard Winna Redthread complaining that the only grain left in the stores is oats.”
“Winna Redthread!” Olim spat. “That female would be desolate if she didn’t have something to complain about.”
“It is the delvers, too, Sire. And their families. There is much discontent. They say people are supposed to delve into mountainsides, not from the bellies of mountains. They say people are supposed to live inward from outside, not outward from inside.”
Olim Goldbuckle felt a growl coming on, and stifled it to a rumble in his throat. Leave it to a gray-headed delvemaster to burst the bubbles of dreams! Impatiently, he turned away. “We’ll think of something,” he said.
It was a logging crew, outbound through the great tunnel, that found the remains of the Theiwar and Daergar who had died fighting each other beyond the iron grate. Hundreds of bodies littered the siding cave, and others beyond. The Daewar wandered for a mile or more, gawking at the fallen dwarves, then turned around and went back to report.
Gem Bluesleeve led a company of warriors to investigate, all the way back to the north slope of Sky’s End. There he found the wreckage of the citadel and surmised what had occurred.
Olim Goldbuckle listened to the reports with his council, then sent parties to remove the bodies in the passage and to reseal the tunnel at its far end.
“Sky’s End is behind us,” he told the council of thane elders. “We came from there to here and will not go back. We will find other ways to the outside. We will explore the paths of Urkhan. If there are not suitable routes from these caverns, then we will drill our own routes, just as we drilled our passage here.”
Late autumn lay on the Kharolis Mountains when Daewar explorers probing upward broke through into some old, nearly deserted lairs of the Theiwar — lairs that had been worn out and largely abandoned, high on the south shoulder of the peak called Cloudseeker. A few Theiwar were there, and a few Daewar fell to stones and dark blades in the first moments of penetration, but the defense mounted by the Theiwar was pitifully small. In this entire cave system, only a few hundred Theiwar remained, mostly women and children and the very old. But among them at the time were some Theiwar leaders arranging for food supplies. The Daewar troop that followed the delvers through, led by Gem Bluesleeve, subdued and disarmed them with little effort.
And it was then that Olim Goldbuckle learned that the human intruders had regrouped and attacked again out on the eastern slopes.
Along a wide front, up through the foothills from the plains, thousands upon thousands of humans now mounted an invasion upon Kal-Thax. Pushed westward by the dragon war in the east, shunned and harried by the organized realm of Ergoth, new hordes of humans — and other races among them — had found themselves blocked by the domains of the dwarves and had reacted as humans do. They had fallen back, milled around in confusion until there were enough of them massed there, then they had organized themselves and attacked.
With only the Theiwar, Daergar, and Klar to patrol the eastern borders of Kal-Thax, the invaders had pushed far into the passes, farther than they ever had managed to go before. Taking advantage of the latest war between Theiwar and Daergar — with Klar intervening on both sides — the humans and their allies had established a cordon from Grand Gorge to the Cliffs of Shalomar and begun a series of bloody raids against the dwarves.
A tenuous treaty stood now between the Theiwar and the Daergar, linked in their defense of Kal-Thax against the outsiders. Most of the warriors of both tribes were on the eastern slopes, fighting.
“Rust!” a thunderous Olim Goldbuckle roared when he heard this report. “Rust and tarnish! Daewar, to arms! The Pact of Kal-Thax calls!”
Before him, three Theiwar captives stood in wide-eyed awe, staring around them at the immense cavern to which they had been brought blindfolded.
“What … what is this place?” Slide Tolec asked finally.
At his arm, a Daewar guard grinned. “It may be your last, best hope, Theiwar,” he whispered. “If we do not beat off the outsiders this time, you and your kind had better hope that our prince will allow you sanctuary in New Daebardin.”
*
The war that raged along the east slopes of the Kharolis range was more than a war. It was an ongoing clash between the stubborn, immovable determination of the dwarven nations who had sworn in the name of Reorx to allow no outsiders into Kal-Thax, and the desperate, irresistible drive of thousands upon thousands of displaced creatures who had nowhere else to go.
The first Daewar company to pour down the slopes of Cloudseeker to reinforce the ragtag army of Theiwar, Daergar, Klar — and, now and then, even clots of terrified Aghar, the reclusive gully dwarves, caught up in a skirmish — ran headlong into the fury of a band of ogres fighting alongside humans. Outnumbered a dozen to one by the Daewar, the ogres yet managed to decimate the company before taking to their heels. In that one clash, seventeen Daewar died and four others were wounded. Five ogres were killed, one captured, and none knew how many were injured.
From their towering captive, Gem Bluesleeve learned that the ogres had fled a place called Bloten, driven out by a dragon seeking a base from which to fly against elves in the east.
All up and down the slopes of the Kharolis Mountains, dwarves were fighting against humans, ogres, and — beneath the Cliffs of Shalomar — even some squadrons of goblins. The dwarven lines held day after day, but Olim Goldbuckle of the Daewar, Slide Tolec of the Theiwar, and Vog Ironface of the Daergar all knew that they could not hold for long unless they could somehow turn from defense to attack. Autumn lay upon the mountains, and the advancing ices might give the dwarves a brief reprieve — but only if they could hold the invaders east of the frontal ranges. If the outsiders made it into the high mountains and found shelter in some of the deep valleys hidden there, then by spring, Kal-Thax would be indefensible.
It was Olim Goldbuckle’s captain, Gem Bluesleeve, who led the first assault down the slopes, hoping to break the cordon.
