As Sledgefist entered the Rhûl’s Holt, Chargrim was leaning forward on his chair, rubbing at the wasted muscle of his calf. His pipe lay in front of him, trailing smoke. From beneath the stone table, his brother’s gilke, Rightauger, poked out his head.
“Are you well brother?” Sledgefist asked.
“As well as I have any hope of being,” Chargrim answered, straightening.
“How fares Onyx?”
“She is well, so they tell .”
“Not delivered yet?”
“No. So hours more, they say.”
Sledgefist nodded.
“I trust all will be well.”
Chargrim forced a smile, then folded his hands on the table.
“Brother, I can tell you didn’t co to inquire after Onyx.”
“No, no.” Sledgefist hesitated. He had been dreading this conversation, even as the conviction of necessity grew upon him.
“I need to leave,” he said at last.
“Where to?”
“I’ll go find a new claim.”
“A new claim?” Chargrim leaned back and motioned to a chair across the table. “Sit, brother.”
Sledgefist sighed. He’d rather stand; it made him feel more confident, but he could not refuse without implying offense, so he sat.
“Ay yes, sowhere. I just need to leave.”
“What about your wif? Your gilke?”
Sledgefist squinted. Chargrim knew well enough that their wifs did not get along. No doubt, separating them would ease everyone’s tension, but that had nothing to do with it.
“I will find the claim and send for them.”
“What is wrong?” Chargrim asked. “What has brought this about? Are you not honored here?”
“No. I an, yes. It’s just. . .” He hesitated, struggling for the words. He had rehearsed this, but he found it hard to say to his brother’s face. Once, Chargrim had just been his younger brother, but now he was the Irik-Rhûl. So much had happened. He half hoped that Chargrim would say sothing, would interrupt, or suggest sothing, but his brother kept his peace, waiting for Sledgefist to explain himself.
“It’s not the sa,” he said at last. “The gold is found, and there are so many here now. I spend my days telling others what to do.”
“If you do not wish to be rinlen, I can appoint another.”
“Maybe I just want a little of the old excitent.”
“Excitent?” Chargrim leaned forward again, his brow furrowing. “You an starving to death? Being hunted by ürsi?”
“Sothing like that.”
“Isn’t this what we have worked for?”
“To sit and. . . grow fat?” Sledgefist asked. He had almost said “and waste away,” but he had changed at the last mont to avoid offense; Chargrim looked two stone lighter than when he first arrived in the Red Ridges.
“If that’s what you want. . . Did sothing bring about this realization? Why now?”
“I don’t want to. . .” Sledgefist struggled for words, and his intent to avoid offense succumbed to exasperation: “I don’t want to be like you. We used to do things. Now look. You barely leave this chamber. Your life is ledgers and reports.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to be like ? Because I could easily ruin your leg. It has its drawbacks, though.”
Sledgefist winced.
“I don’t an—”
Chargrim waved his hand.
“You said what you ant.”
“I hardly even swing a pick anymore.”
“Then swing it.”
“I don’t need to,” Sledgefist said. “I’m. . .” He shook his head. “This is not why I ca to the Ridges.”
“You have a wif. Gilke. A hoard to rival any of our folk. This is precisely why we ca to the Red Ridges.”
Sledgefist folded his arms. He could not out-argue his brother. There was no point. But he knew he couldn’t stay.
“You’d rather be chased by ürsi?” Chargrim asked, his tone softening.
“Maybe.”
“So. . .” Chargrim picked up his pipe and drew back on it, releasing a cloud of fragrant hill-smoke. “Convince to stay, and now you leave, will you?” He held up his other hand to stop Sledgefist from replying, then rifled through so parchnts on his desk.
“Here.” He spread out a parchnt and turned it toward Sledgefist. “Look.”
“I can’t read.”
“It’s a map,” Chargrim said, smirking. Sledgefist stood and leaned over the table, looking down at the markings. He could read a map well enough. It depicted the Gold River Range. Chargrim pointed.
“There is a spot, here.”
“The east pass.”
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“Yes. Most of the ürsi use this route to move west from the plains. There is a prominence that overlooks it. It has no great wealth, but you don’t need wealth. It would be a useful waystation for trade, but. . . dangerous.”
“It would control the valley north to south, and form a bulwark against the fall raids,” Sledgefist said.
“It would.”
Sledgefist placed a finger on the map and nodded.
“I’ll miss you, brother,” Chargrim said.
“It’s only what, fifty miles away?”
“Over seventy, but you’re right. I’ll still hear you snore.”
“Rinlen?”
Sledgefist jerked awake. He had drifted to sleep, sitting naked on the stool, his breastplate across his lap. He must have been burnishing it, for the burnishing stonewas still in his hand. Redburn, rinlen of the Hamr cadreon watch, leaned in the doorway of the chamber.
“Ay yes?” Sledgefist said, then cleared his throat and repeated himself louder. “Ay yes?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but there’s trouble at the adit.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“There’s a. . . a prospector. Or soone. He’s knocked down a Hamr.”
“You need bother over a prospector?”
“Sorry, rinlen. It’s just. . . I think you’d find this interesting.”
Redburn was not a frivolous dwarf. There was sothing there, sothing Sledgefist had to see for himself.
Sledgefist’s wif stepped into the chamber from the side passage, bundled in a heavy quilted wool robe.
“What is going on?” she asked, looking from Redburn to Sledgefist. “When did you return?”
“You may go,” Sledgefist told Redburn. “I’ll be there shortly.” The rinlen ducked out the door without another word.
“When did you return?” Pyrope asked again.
“Just now,” he said, “but I must go again. I was just cleaning myself.” He stood and started to dress. His clothes were musty from having been dampened by sweat and rain, dried, and dampened again. He would have to bathe again when he returned. He did not bother to re-arm with his mail and plate.
“I would have had food and drink prepared,” she said. “You could have sent word.”
He had not returned to his stonehold in two weeks, not since he had gone with a patrol to hunt the remaining bands of ürsi in the valley, only to return to fresh skirmishing in the pass.
“I had other things to attend to,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head.
“I’m sure.” Pyrope folded her arms and watched him finish dressing. Sledgefist picked up his hamr. “Will you be long again?” she asked.
“I hope not.” He hesitated as he passed her. “Put the tea on, please.”
Redburn was waiting in the drift and followed Sledgefist back up the winding stair.
“I expect this to be truly interesting,” Sledgefist said. Redburn didn’t answer.
They squinted as they passed through the adit and back into the light. The sun was near the western ridge, which told Sledgefist he must have slept for a couple of hours at least. Feeling the ache of the light on his eyes, Sledgefist beheld an odd standoff on the muddy flagstones before the gate.
Half a dozen Hamrs stood in a loose circle around a single dwarf, while to the side sat two more Hamrs, one with an eye already swelling shut, and another staunching the blood running from his nose with the back of his hand. Seeing Sledgefist’s arrival, the two injured dwarves climbed to their feet. The other Hamrs guarded the dwarf in their midst with crossbows, looking warily at the brute, for brute he was. A broad face sat upon a thick neck atop even broader shoulders. His legs were thick as pillars. His clothes were weathered, filthy, torn in more than one place, and layered for warmth. While he may have been a prospector, he carried no mining tools to prove it, but a handaxe hung from his grasp, his arms at his side. His beard was brown as a deer’s hide, its bristles ungrood and wild. The dwarf t Sledgefist’s gaze without a hint of wavering.
“What have we here?” Sledgefist asked.
“He ca to the gate and assaulted the guards,” Redburn said, nodding to the two Hamrs who looked like they’d had their heads slamd together.
“Why?”
“Tried to push his way through, they said,” Redburn answered.
“Ca up to us pretending to be peaceable,” one of the battered guards said, his eye swollen to the size of a spring radish. “Then attacked.”
Sledgefist had hardly taken his gaze off the prospector. There was poise, there, no matter how bedraggled. He certainly believed that the dwarf could fight.
“Why did you assault my Hamrs?” he asked him.
“For being worthless kulkur who disgrace the law of the wilderness.”
The Hamrs shifted with irritation, but Sledgefist had to restrain himself from grinning; the dwarf had spoken with a flat tone, as if he was simply reporting on the quality of a seam of quartz that wasn’t worth digging. With more emotion, it might have appeared as braggadocio, ringed about by Hamrs as he was, but Sledgefist didn’t think it was that at all, and now he understood why Redburn had summoned him.
“How did they disgrace the law of the wilderness, stranger?” Sledgefist asked.
“I ca from the wilds beseeching shelter and comfort, calling on the hospitality of the ownerof this hold, and these—” the dwarf motioned to the two battered Hamrs “—demanded a bribe.”
“A lie!” one of the guards shouted. The bedraggled dwarf flexed his grip on his axe, but otherwise remained still, not even looking at the guards. He kept his eyes fixed on Sledgefist.
“You accuse my Hamrs of disgracing my hospitality?” Sledgefist asked.
“If the truth is accusation.”
“It is a lie!” the guard yelled again.
“Shut up,” Sledgefist snapped at the Hamr, then looked back to the stranger.
“We will prove it by unard combat.”
The stranger squinted and looked over at the injured guards.
“No,” Sledgefist said. “Not with them. They serve my hospitality, and so your accusation rests with .” Sledgefist handed his hamr to Redburn and stripped off his shirt. The air was still cold this early in the spring, but he felt more invigorated than chilled.
The stranger dropped his axe and began peeling away layers of shirts until he stood bare-chested beneath his matted beard. Though he clearly had not eaten well in so ti, he was well muscled and stouter in chest and arm than most. In pri shape, no doubt he would be formidable, indeed. Both he and Sledgefist had ample scars to prove them no strangers to fighting. The stranger stepped forward, and the Hamrs stepped aside to let the two combatants draw near. A group of kulhan laborers returning from their shift stopped to watch.
There was no use waiting. Sledgefist rushed. He t the stranger arms to arms, tried to twist him to the side, but it was like trying to flip a boulder. The stranger torqued Sledgefist’s shoulders and for a mont, he feared he would be lifted, but he squared his stance, dropped his weight, and pulled his elbows downward, breaking the dwarf’s grasp. Sledgefist jerked his face back to avoid a headbutt, and he brought a fist around and slamd it against the dwarf’s jaw. The blow hardly phased the brute, and Sledgefist received a blow to the gullet that made him grunt.
Blows traded hard and fast, and then Sledgefist closed again for a grapple, looking for reprieve—foreheads together, arms locked, each trying to throw down the other, teeth gritting. The shift was changing, and now the flagstoned terrace in front of the adit was full of dwarves. They watched in silence. Sledgefist pulled away again and threw all his force into another blow, catching the dwarf by the ear. The stranger grunted, his head jerked to the side, but even before Sledgefist could draw his fist back, he received a blow from the dwarf’s elbow that caught him on the jaw. He saw a flash of light even as he lunged forward, trying to hook his opponent’s foot with his heel, but the dwarf lowered his stance and pushed, nearly toppling Sledgefist. Sledgefist wrapped his arms around the dwarf’s neck to steady himself.
All it took to claim victory in such a combat was for one dwarf to be thrown down, but neither could gain the upper hand. Each ca close to being unbalanced again and again, their faces red and swollen. Their breaths ca in gasps and sweat mixed with blood. At last, in the midst of another grapple, both dwarves reared back and slamd their foreheads forward at the sa ti. At the impact, they released each other and staggered back. Sledgefist shook his head as his vision wavered.
“Shit,” he said. He squinted hard, trying to focus. They had separated by a few yards. The stranger was breathing heavily, too, his lips parted in an unmoving grimace, his eyes squeezed nearly closed. “Shit,” Sledgefist said again. He tried to stand straight, feeling his body ache in complaint. He knew it would all feel worse in a few more hours, and yet now a strange exhilaration filled him. Now that he was gaining so more breath, the desire to keep fighting surged, but he knew that in order to overco this foe, he would have to do him so true injury, and no doubt the stranger knew the sa of him.
“What is your na?” Sledgefist asked.
The stranger hesitated, then spit a glob onto the flagstones.
“I have been called Ironbucket,” he said.
“Ironleg suits you better,” Sledgefist said, tasting blood. “I am Sledgefist, and this is my rock. If any gave offense, then let wash it out with beer and at and song.”
“I accept.”
“Co then. We will light the braziers.”
Sledgefist didn’t bother to put his shirt back on, leading the way back under stone.
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