Last Stand of the Blood Land

by Andrew Carpenter

  The sandstone, which consisted of compacted sand, was remarkably easy to tunnel into. With a pick axe and a shovel a single Dwarf could dig ten to twenty yards of tunnel in a single day. With the help of a team of Giants and Centaurs to haul the sand away, that same Dwarf could create thirty yards of tunnel. With close to one hundred of his warriors tunneling each day, an elaborate network of storerooms, sleeping quarters, and fighting positions was under construction beginning just a short walk from Fort Hope. Fritigern had the Dwarves build the tunnels tall enough so that a Cherub or a human could pass through them in a hunched over, shuffling manner. At this height, Humans and Cherubim loyal to the Dwarves could take refuge in the tunnels but any soldiers of the South who attempted to root them out of their defenses would be at a significant disadvantage. In the pitch black confines of the tunnels the Dwarves would be unstoppable. Our size and night vision are not weaknesses if we pick the battlefield.

  The tunnel inside the fort was intended to connect Fort Hope to the larger network of tunnels so that they could resupply and launch raids against a much larger enemy force, disappearing back into their caves before the Southlanders could counterattack. Unfortunately Fort Hope was built on a foundation of solid rock that ran down out of the mountains and it had taken months of backbreaking labor to progress just a few dozen yards under the wall. Fritigern had worried that solid rock would extend far out in front of the fort, making it impossible that they would reach the Canyon Lands before the Southlanders arrived. But, just a few days earlier, they had finally hit the sandstone. After spending so much time working with solid rock, the miners working under the fort had been amazed at the relative ease with which they made progress. If my warriors’ training is as difficult as tunneling through solid rock perhaps when they face the Southlanders it will be like digging through sandstone.

  A tunneler’s head poked out from the hole, his red skin obscured by a fine coat of chalky white sand. The Giant who had pulled the worker skyward in the bucket they used to haul rubble from the tunnel picked up the little fellow with ease and set him on the solid earth. Fritigern watched as the Dwarf grimaced at the bright light, shaking himself like a dog to get rid of the coating of earth that his labors had produced. He stretched, muscles tightened from hours of work in a space that was cramped, even for a Dwarf, and then looked around until his eyes fell on Fritigern.

  “We’ve broken through,” he said before spitting out a gob of sandy phlegm.

  Fritigern nodded and walked over to the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Don’t you dare pick me up,” he said sternly to the Giant who shook his head and smiled.

  “I wouldn’t dare,” said the Giant, turning to the windlass that would allow him to lower the master into the pit.

  Fritigern hopped nimbly into the air and caught his hands on the wooden supports that had been constructed to raise the bucket above ground level so it could be emptied with ease. He was familiar with the individual muscles in his hands, in his arms, and his core, and he was aware of their exertions as he moved hand over hand to the rope and climbed down into the bucket. He enjoyed the physical ability of his youth, an ability he could not have appreciated or commanded without years of training. Warriors do not get many days where they feel healthy. Injury or war makes health a short-term state.

  The ride down into the pit was satisfying, his eyes relaxing as the light turned into a small moon far above him. He let his fingers drag on the walls, feeling the marks of thousands of hours of labor. What could that labor have accomplished if there was no war? He pondered if his life’s work would be meaningless in a peaceful world and concluded that the contest of being against being would still be valuable as art, rather than as a practical tool, in such a world. The thought cleared from his head as a shout from below indicated he had reached the bottom.

  The Dwarf manning the loading station looked at him with surprise when he jumped out of the bucket. Fritigern had the worker stand, balanced on the bucket rim, for there was no room for two in such close quarters. This allowed the commander to give the miner a break and unload the cart that served to haul earth from the other end of the tunnel. When the cart was empty Fritigern climbed in, laying flat like cargo for the ride to the other side. The Dwarf gave a tug on the rope to signal the worker on the other end to begin hauling and in a moment Fritigern felt the cart lurching forward on wooden wheels across the rough mine floor.

  Here and there a piece of wood had been applied over a particularly rough bit of stone. The wood served as a guide so the cart wouldn’t catch on the jagged, solid rock. It was easier to put up guides than to smooth and shape the unyielding stone. The lurching and banging of his journey consumed the Dwarf’s thoughts but after just a few yards the cart suddenly began to glide smoothly forward. Even with his vision, capable of clear sight on a moonless night, this portion of the tunnel was completely black. He reached up and felt the smooth sandstone ceiling, so easy to tunnel into that the miners had been able to level it to make it easier for the cart to progress.

  He suddenly felt fear and panic well up in his body, something that he had felt as a young fighter each time he faced an opponent. He felt the instinct to thrash and yell, an instinct of panic he hadn’t felt in years but which he could easily recognize in his students. He worked consciously to calm the panic, a process that until now had been subconscious, internalized through years of practice. He calmed his breathing, focused on his body and the muscles that were tensing in his chest. He relaxed them one by one, aware of his breath and becoming completely mindful of his own thoughts and body in that moment. He knew, as Aram had taught him, that this awareness of mind and body was only possible because he was not his mind, not his body, and this thought comforted him.

  With his body relaxed he turned to his emotions, following them to their source. Why did I panic? It is because I am confined in this tunnel and I am afraid I will become trapped. He recognized that his fear came ultimately from his attachment to life, an attachment the warrior in him had released years ago. He also recognized that he still had work to do to completely overcome his desire to live. This knowledge eased his stress somewhat, and he spent the remainder of his trip working to let go of his attachment so that his mind would no longer control his inner peace. When he felt the cart stop he opened his eyes to see a small cage of fireflies, woven from grass, providing enough intermittent light for his eyes to take in their surroundings.

  There, sitting next to a pile of rope, sat another Dwarf. He had a short handled shovel ready to load the empty cart and he looked curiously to find out why the cart was so heavy.

  “Fritigern!” he whispered loudly, the dark confines making it inappropriate to call out more loudly.

  “Are we through?” he asked, sitting up and looking at the wall.

  “See for yourself!”

  There was a gap, just a foot across, in the side of the tunnel. On the other side a pair of black eyes could be seen, peering through at them. Fritigern rolled over, crawling over the other Dwarf and across the piles of sandy rock that littered the floor.

  “Is that you Fritigern?” came a familiar voice through the window.

  “Onidas?” he asked, recognizing the voice of the archery instructor he had stationed in command of the tunnels in the Canyon Lands.

  He heard muffled laughter on the other side and caught a glimpse of the archery instructor’s black beard, illuminated neon yellow by a cage of fireflies on the other side. Fritigern pulled the intricate gold ringed hammer he had received when Aram had deemed him a master and used it to widen the window. When it was wide enough he squeezed through, landing in a pile with the two Dwarves who were stuffed into the compact space on the other side.

  “That hammer isn’t for tunneling you fool!” said the older archer.

  “What is it good for then?” replied the commander, his anxiety disappearing in the presence of camaraderie.

  Onidas laughed.

  “Load this rock first,” he said, instructing th
e third Dwarf to put the commander in the cart that carried debris in the other direction.

  Fritigern soon found himself taking the smooth ride down the sandstone tunnel the rest of the way to the Canyon Lands. This journey was much longer, hundreds and hundreds of yards with two stopping points where he changed carts. At those transitions he thought about his brave warriors, working these stations for hours and hours at a time. Alone in the dark there was nothing but the sound of a scraping cart and the glow of a few bugs to ease the crushing weight all the earth placed on one’s mind.

  When he finally reached the other side he sat, waiting for Onidas to make the same trip, appreciating the sacrifices his warriors were making. When war is changed into an art instead of a tool it will be worth it. If not for us, then for our decedents. He sat in the cool, darkness of the larger tunnel where there was enough room to stretch out and watch the Dwarf pulling the cart ever closer. He was disoriented, uncertain of where they were, but he knew they were safer down here in the dark confines of the earth than they were anywhere else in the Blood Lands.

  When Onidas finally emerged he followed the archer to where he had left his weapons and then down a twisting series of tunnels where the flashes of sporadically placed firefly cages lit up in sequence as the insects sent their neon yellow signals from cage to cage.

  “Why do we use lightening bugs instead of torches?” asked Fritigern.

  “We have a limited supply of oil for the torches and we need to save it for the winter, or when the fighting begins. These creatures don’t run out of flame if you feed them and we can catch them by the score at night. Another benefit is that a torch will suck the air out of a tunnel if you aren’t careful. If your lantern goes out, it’s a good time to get out.”

  “I see. I suppose the fireflies give off just enough light for us to fight but not so much that the Southlanders could see as well.”

  “That’s true,” said Onidas. “We must keep our advantages when we can get them.”

  They entered a large open room with shelves and racks carved out of the malleable sandstone. A scattering of warriors who doubled as tunnelers looked up from their meals. Fritigern motioned for them to continue eating and he marveled at the warmth, light, and cheer provided by a small fire that was kindled beneath a chimney that ran into the ceiling.

  “Won’t they see the smoke?” he asked.

  “Yes, but we camouflaged the exit and have guards on lookout. When the Southlanders approach we won’t be having any fires.”

  “Good work Dwarves,” said Fritigern in his native tongue.

  It had been too long since he had spoken the language. Living with the other races, he had gotten into the habit of speaking the tongue of the Cherubim, Giants, and Humans. The Centaurs at the fort had worked hard to understand that language and had made great strides although they spoke with a broken accent that was as thick as that of his own people. I wonder if one day we will all speak the same language. Perhaps that is how the Giants came to speak the language of the Cherubim and they the Angels. He could only guess at the order, or how the language of Men had been merged, but he made a mental note to keep his own tongue alive despite the pressure to conform to that of the other races.

  Onidas sat with him and offered a cup of water from a well they had dug, further increasing the self-sufficiency of their tunnels. He pulled out a parchment that showed the Canyon Lands in great detail, running from Fort Hope down along the river and out into the plains until they faded into the rolling grass to the east and the forests to the south and west. The tunnel system was drawn like worms across the map, some of them intersecting and others independent. The greatest concentration of tunnels was located near to the fort and as he watched Onidas used a piece of charcoal to connect the tunnel from the fort to the system in which they now sat. Here and there rooms were marked with beds or bushels of wheat to convey what they contained. Elsewhere skulls or arrows dotted the entrances of tunnels and Fritigern looked at them, guessing but not certain of what they meant.

  “What are these?” he asked, pointing to the symbols.

  “I will show you,” answered Onidas.

  Grabbing two lanterns of lightening bugs from the shelf and handing one to the commander, the archer led the way down the tunnels without once referencing the map. Fritigern was so turned around that he began to doubt if he would ever find his way out on his own. In places they passed exposed roots and boulders that had forced the tunnelers to reroute their paths. From time to time they passed a lookout or digger, returning from their posts. When Fritigern began to notice a tiny trickle of light bouncing into the tunnel down the curving path, he ran into the archer’s back. In the brief flashes of light from his lantern Fritigern’s powerful eyes followed Onidas’ pointing finger while he listened to his words.

  “Here is the trigger that will collapse the entire tunnel,” he said, pointing to a small stick that was lodged into the supporting beams that had been installed to keep the tunnel from collapsing. “Where the tunnel breaches the surface it becomes weak and must be supported to keep it from falling in. If soldiers enter here and brush this stick, they will be crushed and this way will be closed to those that follow.”

  “How do we get in and out?” asked Fritigern, grimacing at the thought of being buried alive.

  Onidas led him back a few steps to a smaller hole, just big enough for one Dwarf to crawl through, that he had missed a few feet back. They crawled through the side tunnel and emerged near the mouth of their subterranean fort where a glowing wall of sticks and rocks made them once again cover their eyes. When his sight had adjusted, Fritigern looked down at the tunnel they had just exited, too small for a man, and then up at the larger direct route, realizing that after attempting to root them out and having their men buried alive the Southlander’s would think twice before entering the tunnels.

  Standing up and walking to the end of the tunnel he found the way blocked by a camouflaged network of rocks and sticks that hid the tunnel entrance. When Onidas moved the covering they emerged onto a boulder-strewn hillside somewhere inside a canyon he did not recognize. The boulders obscured the entrance to the tunnel even more and also provided cover from which a group of archers could decimate any soldiers that happened into the canyon.

  “It looks like a master archer picked this spot,” commented Fritigern.

  His old instructor cocked his head but did not smile.

  “We will have to outsmart this opponent, we can never out fight him. What do you do when you face a Giant in the ring?”

  Fritigern shook his head, the master stumped by the more experienced elder.

  “You punch him in the balls and then run until you can do it again.”

  Fritigern roared with laughter at the sage archer and felt the pressure of the tunnels lifting. Onidas joined him and the warriors bond, forged in training and tested in battle, made their glee all the more satisfying.

  “Well, we will punch them more than a few times if they come to take our fort,” said Fritigern. “Will you extend the tunnels so we can get more warriors and food into the fort?”

  “Yes, we will keep extending our network and socking away wood, food, weapons, and lightening bugs until they get here. It will have to last.”

  “Unless you can raid their supplies from here,” suggested Fritigern.

  “That will take some daring but in the dark a Dwarf is bold.”

  The commander watched from the outside as his old instructor rebuilt the cover to the tunnel. He heard the scraping when Onidas crawled away and he waited until the muffled sounds went silent. Taking just a few steps away from the spot he knew the entrance would be hard to find unless you were looking for it and even then a being would need to be right on top of it before he could see it. He climbed his way to the top of the canyon to get the lay of the land. At the crest he took a bearing based on the location of the mountains he could spy to the west. He set off in the direction of the fort, missing the comfort of his normal weapons, left be
hind by necessity. He clutched his hammer, still a deadly tool in his expert hands, and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as he made his way towards the fort. What eyes are watching me as I move, when will the arrow come that makes my end? He shuddered, happy it would be the Southerners who would ask those questions when it mattered. What surprises are the Southlanders happy that we must face? He tried to imagine the catapults the Elves had described and the thunder of hundreds of charging Rhinos as he walked through the quiet of the canyons back to his warriors.

  Fritigern was working with a Cherub and a Northman in the summer sun when a shadow passed over the group. The Dwarf’s sensitive eyes didn’t look up to scan the hot blue sky for the source of the darkness. Instead he told the pair to continue and wondered what could be approaching across the plains. Don’t let it be the South.

  He watched the young Cherub female, violet spots on her feathers glistening. Her hand made a semi circle, catching the young man’s ankle as he attempted to kick her so she could practice sweeping his foot to the side, spinning him to expose his back. The two were moving faster now, kaizen speeding their movements. Fritigern heard the wings of the approaching lookout as they braced against the stale air to slow his descent. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that it was Rondo, skidding to a stop in the sand of the training ground.

  He stopped the pair after watching the female return the kick, knocking the man over so she could pounce on him, mimicking the killing blows she would use in combat with her tomahawk. Rondo waited patiently, a fact that led Fritigern to believe that, whatever he had spied from his lookout in the mountains above Fort Hope, it was not a Southern army. He stood the pair up to show them how to take their attacks to the next level. Facing the man he had him hold up his shield.

  “When you strike,” he said to the man, “it is the earth that is hitting your opponent.”