Markus Heitz - The Revenge of the Dwarves

“It was good in the past when you could meet a child of the Smith and not have to worry about whether they were telling the truth,” she groaned. “I can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but in all the orbits she’s been here there hasn’t been anything suspicious about her.” She stroked his bearded chin. “The stone is exactly where we hid it.”

“I’ll go and tell it I’m home.”

“I’ll make us something to eat. If I know you and Boindil, you’ll both be ravenous.” Balyndis got up and quickly threw on a simple woolen dress over her linen nightgown, then put on her boots. “The meal will be ready soon, so don’t spend too long talking to your precious one.”

“My precious,” he hissed, imitating the stance of the greedy rock gnome that grabbed and kept anything that looked valuable. Then he laughed and walked out of the chamber hand in hand with his wife. Soon their ways parted and he took a different corridor, using an oil lamp to light his path into the other gallery where once Lot-Ionan’s apprenticed famuli had had their quarters. Most of the iron doors were still in place. Behind them the student initiates had followed their studies of magic and had dreamed of one day inheriting Lot-Ionan’s enchanted realm.

Now nothing was left. No magic, no enchanted realms. No Lot-Ionan.

Tungdil entered the laboratorium.

It was in this very room that a trick had once been played on him that had resulted in most of the fittings and equipment going up in flames; it had not been his fault. The flasks full of elixirs, the pots of ointments, the glass tubes containing extracts and essences, all that priceless experimentation had melted into one dangerous mass. A powerful explosion had ensued and little had survived of the benches, shelves, tables and apparatus.

And that was still how it looked. He stepped over the splintered glass and the broken pottery, walking over to where a pile of glass was all that remained of what had been complicated distillation equipment. Before the explosion.

The dwarf bent down and rummaged around. He didn’t locate the diamond immediately. There was so much broken glass that it was practically invisible. Nobody would ever find it if they didn’t suspect it was hidden in the rubbish.

Tungdil took delight in the cold fire shining from the stone’s facets. His heart leaped. He turned it this way and that, so that it could blaze at its best, returning the lamplight, and throwing reflections onto the dark and somber walls.

Whenever he took the stone in his hand he waited for the jewel to show him somehow whether it was just a diamond or the most powerful, magic artifact in all Girdlegard.

And, as always, he waited in vain. He put the stone back in its mound of glass fragments and pushed it down to the bottom of the pile.

Girdlegard,

Kingdom of the Fourthlings,

Brown Mountains,

Early Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle

A shrill whistle sounded up through the broad shaft and straightaway the bell rang in the winch room. Apart from one alcove, the entire room was filled with a strictly logical system of pulleys, winches, winding gear, cogwheels and levers, weights and counterweights in every conceivable size, all carefully proportioned. The alcove was the lift master’s post.

Ingbar Onyxeye of the clan of the Stone Turners, faithfully carrying out his important duties, had recognized the signal. “Here it comes!” he shouted back down.

His hands worked the various iron levers in turn, each as big as a dwarf; these released the brake blocks from the rollers and the wheels. Machinery whirred loudly into action.

The rotating parts set up a draught that smelled of oil and lubricating grease; the sheer mass of weights on the end of their chains pulled the lift upwards without a single dwarf wasting his muscle power. By this means, forty hundredweight could be heaved up easily.

Ingbar closed his eyes to listen better. Responding to the sounds, he took his oil can and applied lubrication where the machinery needed it to run more smoothly. It was intolerable to know metal was rubbing against metal, causing lasting damage. Oil would prevent unnecessary wear.

Suddenly there was a sound the lift master had never heard before, and the whole winding gear came to a halt.

“What’s wrong?” he muttered, swiftly checking all the most vulnerable parts of the equipment. He couldn’t find anything untoward. The cogwheels were intact, as were the chains, and the pulley belts had not come out of their runners.

Ingbar went over to the shaft. Right at the bottom he could see a pale shimmer of light coming from the lift cage. It had to be at least fifty paces down. “Oi, you down there! Has the pulley jammed?” he yelled.

In reply the little bell rang wildly, somersaulting and ringing fit to bust, so loud that it hurt his ears. Then its cord broke and the bell fell silent. “What are you doing down there?” he called, worried now.

The chain jerked, started and stopped, the metal screeching as the load increased.

“Have you gone mad? What are you doing? Are you dancing down there in the cage?” Ingbar stared at the winding gear. The whole system was running in reverse and the lift was dropping down. He ran back over to the levers and applied the brakes. “You’re overloaded. Unload something quickly, otherwise…”

With a scream of grinding metal the first brake gave way. A high-pitched metallic clang resounded as the other holding devices failed one after another. The bolts shot out like bullets. One of them, sharp-edged, flew through the chains and pierced the lift master’s leg. Slowly the chains unwound, sending lift and cargo down toward the bottom.

“What the hell?” Ingbar clamped a hand over the gaping wound. There was no time to bandage it now. He had to save the workers in the cage and stop them crashing to their deaths.

He limped over to the ramps where the extra counterweights were stored. They used these when particularly heavy loads were being transported; they would be applied to the winches, but nobody had ever tried to do that while the lift was already running.

Ingbar knew the winding gear very well indeed; he knew the ins and outs of the system and its peculiarities and foibles. He fixed new weights to a long chain, attached a huge hook and thrust it into the emergency slot on one of the winches that was still moving.

The hook sat firm. The chain came taut with a clank and pulled the new weights down toward itself. Because of the tons of extra ballast the chain was prevented from unwinding, so the lift came to a standstill.

“Are you all right down there?” he called down the shaft. The cage with the workers must be a hundred paces down, he reckoned, judging by the chain length. They’d stopped by one of the secondary galleries. “Good,” he shouted. “Now unload the shale-tailings or some of you will have to get out. Otherwise it’ll never move.”

He waited a while to be sure they had followed instructions, then removed the counterweights and set the winding-gear into action, to get the lift up at last. For brake power he took a long iron bar and inserted it into one of the smallest cogwheels; as soon as the cage arrived he jammed the bar all the way in to block the cog. The cage had come up.

“That was a near thing.” Ingbar wondered why the lights had gone out. The faint glow given by the lamps in the engine room was not strong enough to show what was inside the cage. The iron door rattled open. “I’ll have to close the shaft down till we’ve renewed the brakes. What were you…?” What he saw robbed him of the power of speech.

Huge figures stepped out of the lift cage. They were armed to the teeth, carrying cudgels and shields with unfamiliar writing. But one glance at the brutal faces with the jutting tusks was enough to tell the dwarf what he had here: Orcs!