Dwarven Rifleman Series: Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman Read online

  “For now we think the 'bosses' should stay in charge of their crew,” Deandra said, “Do you think this will be a problem?”

  Squirrel thought about that for a minute before replying, “Maybe, maybe not. Some good bosses, some bad. Make bad bosses be good, is good. Some...”

  He was interrupted by a commotion at the back of the room, raised voices and a scuffle followed by a scream. Ynghilda scooped up her rifle as she and Deandra rushed to the source of the disturbance. She pushed through the crowd and bellowed, “MAKE A HOLE!”

  The Braell may or may not have understood the words but they took the meaning well enough and parted to let them pass. A muscular older dwarf was holding a girl by the wrist with one hand and a thwittle menacingly in the other to hold off a group that Deandra thought were the girl's crew.

  Ynghilda leveled her rifle at him and in a quiet but penetrating voice said, “Drop the knife or I will end you.”

  Again the exact words might have eluded them but her intent was crystal-clear. The dwarf holding the thwittle let it fall and released the girl, dropping into a cringe. The girl scrambled away and her crew closed ranks between her and her assailant.

  Deandra realized her teeth were gritted in a savage grimace and her sax-knife was in her hand. She forced herself to relax and slid the blade back into its sheath. Ynghilda advanced on the cringing dwarf and stopped with the big gun's muzzle inches from his face.

  “Squirrel! Translate,” she commanded, “Deandra, was this man on kitchen-duty today?”

  Deandra stood up to her full height, crossed her arms and favored the dwarf with a cold stare before replying, “No. He was not. He was not given that knife.”

  Spotting the empty sheath tied to the girl's belt she continued, “The girl however was. He apparently stole it.”

  Deandra turned to the girl and nodded to Squirrel to make sure that he translated, “Tell her that she is not in trouble, but that she must tell Ynghilda what happened.”

  An older woman stepped forward and said, “I boss crew. I say?”

  “Yes,” Ynghilda told her.

  The woman spoke quickly to Squirrel, who nodded. Turning to Deandra and Ynghilda he gestured to the cringing dwarf and explained, “This one, Breaks Rock, is boss. Girl is Rock-flower. Breaks Rock take her knife, she say no. He say he take her for ridta, teach her he is boss. Her crew try to stop. This is all.”

  “I see,” said Ynghilda tightly, “and what is this... ridta?”

  “Is for making babies,” Squirrel responded matter-of-factly.

  “I rather thought so,” Ynghilda said, “Ask Rock-flower if she wanted to have ridta with Breaks Rock.”

  The girl shook her head violently as she said, “No no no!”

  “Did she tell Breaks Rock that she did not want to have ridta with him?”

  Squirrel asked her and she nodded, “She says she told him she did not want to.”

  “And he tried to force her?” Ynghilda asked calmly. The girl nodded.

  “I see,” said Ynghilda. Suddenly she spun the heavy rifle in her grip and smashed the butt into Breaks Rock's face hard enough to send him rolling across the floor. Stepping forward she jammed the muzzle into his groin.

  “Translate this very carefully,” she told Squirrel, then raised her voice to continue, “We have a rule. No person may force another person to ridta. No boss, not anyone may force another to do this.”

  She looked around, meeting the eyes of the gathered Braell as Squirrel translated.

  “Breaks Rock did not know this, so I will not punish him this time but next time I will cut off his balls,” she said, jamming the rifle into his groin for emphasis, “and leave him outside for the wolves.”

  She stepped back and pointed the rifle at the ceiling.

  “Now you all know this rule. You have no excuses for breaking it. If you break this rule I will kill you. No more second chances. Do you understand?”

  The Braell all nodded and voiced their agreement. Deandra stepped forward and said, “One more thing.”

  She looked to Ynghilda, who nodded for her to continue.

  “Breaks Rock is not a boss now. If he causes any trouble for you tell Ynghilda or me and we will deal with him,” she said, fingering the handle of her sax-knife. Reaching down she yanked the dwarf to his feet. He wasn't quite able to stand fully upright and he clutched at his bloodied face.

  “Come on,” she told him roughly, “Let's go take care of that face.”

  She half dragged him over to the kitchen. Aunt Gerdy was standing in the door, arms crossed with a cleaver in one hand. She glared at Breaks Rock but gave way. Thrusting him onto a stool Deandra gathered a bowl of hot water and a clean cloth. When he would not pull his hands away from his face, she cuffed him sharply and pulled them away herself to examine his injury. He had a serious gash on the side of his head, a broken cheek-bone and there was something wrong with his eye on that side.

  “Please, Misses,” said Aunt Gerdy, “let us tend to him.”

  She yielded her place. Aunt Gerdy and one of her kitchen girls bathed, stitched and bound his wound while she watched. The old woman did not offer him anything for the pain. When she finished she said, “That'll do then. You just tell him, from me- if he tries somethin' like that again he'd best just hope the Mistress gets to him before I do!”

  The dwarf was escorted back out to the great hall to his bedroll, and Deandra went to report to Ynghilda.

  “You did him up proper,” she told her, “It'll be weeks before he can forget tonight's lesson. He may lose the use of that eye too.”

  Deandra found she was shaking slightly from reaction and when Ynghilda poured her a tiny cup of Uis-Ge she accepted it gratefully. She downed it quickly, feeling herself relax as the liquor burned her throat. After taking a moment to catch her breath she said, “This was in some measure our own fault; we should have made the rules plain to them first thing.”

  “Well, that's one rule they’re not likely to forget soon,” responded Ynghilda grimly. “Tomorrow we'll lay down the law for them, and now that they have some sense of the consequences it'll more likely stick with 'em.”

  Deandra had to agree with that. Sunlight did not put in an appearance to learn embroidery that night and she was just as glad. It had been a long, hard day.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “War is an iffy business. All of a dwarf’s skill and cunning can be rendered moot by a random arrow or catapult stone. It is said that chance favors the prepared mind, but in war she plays no favorites.”

  From the diaries of

  Engvyr Gunnarson

  “Well,” Engvyr said as he lowered the spyglass and handed it to Taarven, “I think it's safe to say that we found the main body of their forces.”

  Taarven accepted the glass and took a long look through it. He gave a low whistle.

  “Lord and Lady, I hope this is the main body of their forces!” he exclaimed.

  They were at one of the lower summits in the area looking down into a broad river valley. Where the ground wasn't covered with tents it seethed with Baasgarta. Rather than the neat rows and columns of a dwarven army encampment the goblins favored round tents organized in circles. Not being used to their formations or unit organization Engvyr was having a hard time coming up with a decent count of their numbers. Somewhere between 'lots and lots' and 'oh Lord and Lady we're all gonna die,' he thought.

  “It's hard to be sure at this distance,” Taarven said, “But I'm thinking in the neighborhood of fifty to seventy thousand?”

  “That's a mighty big neighborhood,” Engvyr said, “And we have four regiments? Call it fifteen thousand effectives? That hardly seems fair...”

  “Be reasonable, Engvyr. If we wait around for more of 'em to show up we could be here all winter!”

  The Rangers shared an ironic look and eased back from their viewpoint. They were getting ready to work their way back down the mountain to their ponies when Engvyr realized Taarven had frozen, eyes wide and surprised.<
br />
  “You've gotta be kidding me!” he exclaimed.

  Engvyr followed his gaze to the cliff opposite them. There in the middle of an apparently sheer cliff stood an ulvgaed. Its rider was staring at them in shock that near-equaled their own.

  “Bloody Maker-taken mountain goat mother...” Engvyr swore. The rider began to raise a horn to his lips as the ranger brought his long rifle to bear. WHACK!

  As the heavy bullet slammed into his ribs the rider's horn gave a short 'honk' before dropping from his nerveless fingers. He overbalanced his mount as he toppled from the saddle and the pair plummeted from sight, the ulvgaed howling all the way down.

  “Well, that won't attract attention,” Taarven commented mildly and began to slide down the slope towards their own mounts. Engvyr launched himself after him.

  “Well, I couldn't very well let him blow that horn, could I?” Engvyr protested, wincing as his backside bounced off a rock protruding from the slope.

  When they made it down they stopped briefly. They could feel the ground thrumming under their feet and hear the crackling rush echoed back to them from the direction of the cliff. A cloud of dust rose from the gully.

  “Because this is so much better,” Taarven commented dryly, then held up a hand to forestall further protest from his partner, “But we can discuss that later. For now I suggest we should perhaps run like hell?”

  --**--

  It was well after midnight when the two rangers rode their exhausted ponies into the fortified camp. After unsaddling them and giving them a good rub-down they turned them loose into a corral and made their way to Captain Gauer's tent to report what they had found.

  “That tallies with the other reports that had been coming in,” the captain told them.

  He looked at them sharply, his eyes taking in their condition for the first time. “You boys look like hell. Get cleaned up and get some chow in you. Likely it's gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

  They took his advice. As Engvyr drew a basin of water to wash up he pondered about the Baasgarta. Between the reports of the Braell and the statements of some of the captured Baasgarta the goblins had experienced a major religious upheaval a few decades before. A messianic figure called The Dreamer had emerged and claimed that a God, the True God, spoke to him in his dreams. He had rallied the Baasgarta and gotten them all working together. His message, supposedly channeled from their god, was that they would rise up and take the world for their own, eradicating or enslaving all the lesser creatures and establishing a new order in the world. Whatever had been dug up in the Makepeace Valley was apparently crucial to this 'uprising,' but none of their captives were clear as to exactly what that might be.

  Despite the disparity in numbers Engvyr was confident that the Baasgarta would be defeated. The goblins fought as a mob, with little organization or discipline. Thus far they had proven to be no match for the well-trained and highly disciplined dwarven regiments, even when they had the dwarves massively outnumbered.

  Some held that faith made men powerful, that religious fanaticism made them strong. He had nothing against faith; Engvyr, like many dwarves, was a student of history. He had studied the military history of his people and he had observed fanaticism was more likely to make an army stupid, over-confident and ineffective. If the Lord and Lady favor an army, he thought, they seem to have a marked preference for well-disciplined and organized ones.

  He put such thoughts aside as he wrapped himself in his bedroll and fell quickly asleep. He dreamed of the Daenteg Idengeord, that strange un-living plain at the top of the world he passed through as a boy. He hadn't dreamed of that place in years. He woke ill-rested, oppressed by a heavy sense of foreboding.

  He was quiet and still out of sorts when he joined Taarven in the mess-tent at breakfast. Taarven was caught up in his own thoughts and did not comment on his partner's moodiness. They had finished their meal and were each nursing a cup of coffee when a Senior Ranger entered.

  “Formation in fifteen minutes, people!” he yelled, “Fall in on the stables in fifteen!”

  Engvyr and Taarven looked at each other with raised eyebrows. The Mountain Guard almost never held a formal formation where they actually assembled by squads. Too many of them tended to be out on their rounds at any given time to make it worth bothering with such formalities. They finished their drinks and went to join the other rangers gathering by the stables. They managed to get themselves lined up credibly enough and waited to see what would happen.

  The Senior Ranger came out and called them to attention, then Captain Gauer addressed them.

  “We have a movement order, people. At first light tomorrow morning our assembled forces will be maneuvering to contact with the Baasgarta. Skirmishers from the 1st, 3rd and 4th will be scouting ahead. We have been assigned to guard the baggage train and perform as a rear-guard.”

  The Captain ignored the groaning that followed this announcement and continued.

  “Command expects that we will be in contact with the enemy by nightfall tomorrow. The plan is to dig in hasty defensive positions and not engage until morning. At that time we will be assigned individually as runners for the Army commanders. When you are dismissed you will see to your weapons and equipment and insure that all is in readiness for the move tomorrow.”

  The Captain paused and looked at each of them before continuing.

  “Get some rest. Unless I miss my guess we're fighting tomorrow night, whatever the commanders are planning.”

  With a final nod the Captain turned the formation over to the Senior Ranger, who split them up into different details to prepare for the advance. Engvyr and Taarven wound up helping to break up the ranger's supplies and get them distributed. Since they would be working as runners each man would have to be self-supporting. They would carry their own food, water and ammunition for the day, in addition to bandages, their bedroll, cleaning kits and a measure of Uis-Ge for pain-relief and disinfecting wounds.

  As they finished other chores the rangers accepted their packs from Engvyr and Taarven, then went through them to check every item for themselves. It wasn't that they didn't trust them; it was simply that they were all tired and anyone can make a mistake. Best to catch any errors while they were still easy to fix.

  Engvyr and the others sat up for a time after dinner cleaning their carbines, touching up the edge of a sax-knife, reinforcing the stitching of their boots or other mending chores. The Mountain Guard chose it's rangers from among the ranks of the veterans of the regiments, so there wasn't a one of them that didn't know what to expect in the coming days. Most worked in silence, lost in their own thoughts and memories.

  If there had been any among them that were going into their first fight they might have been insulted at being relegated to bringing up the rear and guarding the supplies. But these dwarves knew the importance of those supplies, and were grateful for what would probably be a relatively easy day in the saddle. Once the battle started they would be in the thick of it, running orders and information from unit to unit to help coordinate the battle, and to make sure that those supplies got where they were needed.

  Engvyr missed Deandra fiercely. Her wit, her quick mind, her iron will and her soft touch. She was a balm to him, and one he needed that night. Given his druthers she would be tucked safely away in Ironhame, but she would never have stood for that. Deandra was not a person to sit and wait while there was work to be done. She was far away from the battle with people he trusted and would be safe even if he didn't survive what was to come. That was the best he could hope for.

  One thing Engvyr was keenly aware of: while the battles of the coming days might break the back of the Baasgarta they would not end the war. Somewhere ahead were the plantations, the great pit-mine of the dwarven slaves and the as yet undiscovered city or cities of the Baasgarta. It was going to be a long, hard winter.

  PART FOUR: THE SWORD

  Chapter Thirty

  “To the young, war is glorious, adventurous and romantic. To the vetera
n it is hard work, drudgery and boredom with brief spikes of terror, with the added spice that one can die.”

  From the diaries of

  Engvyr Gunnarson

  Even firm ground can become dusty after fifteen thousand men have trod upon it. Engvyr adjusted the scarf tied over his mouth and nose as the last of the supply wagons rolled past, but that did not keep his eyes from burning.

  They rode close when the land was narrow, ranging far out to the flanks when the ground opened up. Riding rear-guard and watching the supply train was its own kind of awful. Not only was he eating the dust of the entire army but he was too well aware that the first sign of an ambush was likely to be a crossbow-bolt.

  Taarven rode up, his clothing, gear and pony a uniform dirt gray from the dust. He lifted the edge of his scarf with the lip of his water bottle and drank before trying to speak.

  “Seems like the road’s still clear behind us,” he said.

  “Pretty much as we expected,” Engvyr agreed, “Seems like the Baasgarta are happy to set and wait for us to come join the party.”

  Taarven favored him with an ironic look, then checked the sun's position and said, “Less'n I miss my guess they'll not be waiting much longer.”

  “Going to be a bloody business. There is a powerful lot of them.”

  Taarven shrugged.

  “Quantity has a quality of its own, but truth be told these Baasgarta fellows aren't real good at large-scale combat. If'n I had to guess I'd say they've never fought a real war before.”

  Engvyr nodded agreement, but said, “Even so, this isn't going to be a cakewalk.”

  Taarven said, “That’s as may be. Regardless, we got it to do. Best we catch up.”

  It was not long in fact before the column halted and a company of Heavy Infantry came back to take over guarding the supplies. The experienced teamsters quickly unhitched the oxen, laagered the wagons and the soldiers began to dig in around them.

  Engvyr and Taarven unsaddled their ponies, rubbed them down and fed them. They got their bedrolls off of the saddles and lashed them across the tops of their packs. Engvyr left his long-rifle scabbarded with his tack and harness; his carbine was better suited to the job ahead. By that time a corral had been set up and the other rangers had gathered as Captain Gauer briefed them.