"You alright there, Alhild? You look a little out of it," Haursi said.
She sipped from her brew and smiled wanly at him. "I'm just tired, is all. Lord Snorri has brought out a new line of prosthetics, and the temple is running us apprentices ragged getting them sorted out." She coloured slightly. "Which is a good thing, of course! I'm very happy for those getting help, it's just a lot of work keeping up with Lord Snorri."
"Funny you should say that," Asmund said. "I heard from Folki yesterday that the blacksmiths have it pretty tough right now, because Lord Snorri's doing some maintenance thing on the gromril smelter at night and they have to work extra hard during the days to get everything needs doing done. And we saw him in Tunnel 317 earlier today, inspecting the runeworks."
"Arms and legs in the morning, excavating in the afternoon and smelterwork at night," Haursi muttered. "Ancestors, does the man ever sleep?" Only after having said his piece did he notice the warning look in Asmund's eyes; he was about to ask what was wrong when he heard something behind him that sent a chill up his spine. There was a quiet hiss and a subtle displacement of air, and he knew through that instinct peculiar to young dwarfs that what he'd noticed all too late was an old dwarf, taking a deep breath in preparation for a grumble. He turned to face his fate and, sure enough, there was a pair of old fogeys sitting further down the bar, both looking at him with brows deeply furrowed. It was the closer of the two who was about to speak up.
"So the young master has views on Lord Snorri's sleeping habits, has he? Thinks they're a deserving target for his sarcasm?" The man pointed accusingly at him. "You oughta count yourself lucky the lord don't sleep, boy!"
"I- I am of course deeply grateful for all Lord Snorri's hard work, sir-"
"'Grateful for his work,' he says. Pfeh! You don't geddit, youngster. I said you should count yourself lucky because a sleeping Lord Snorri is the scariest thing there ever was."
There was a moment of silence as Haursi and his friends all tried to figure out what in the world the old man was talking about. Then his companion nudged him, quietly amused. "The beardlings've all gone glass-eyed, Arvid. If you want them to understand, you'll have to educate them proper."
"Hmph, suppose you're right at that, Einar. Aright, beardlings, ears pricked and eyes front, because this old miner is gonna tell you what's up." Haursi allowed himself to relax fractionally, because the elder being in the mood for storytelling meant he might just make it out without too bad a tongue-lashing. "This is a story from long ago, when me and Einar were part of the work crews excavating the ungdrin. 'Course, we were youngsters ourselves back then, weren't we?"
"That's right. We would've been a hundred or thereabouts? No more than fullbeards."
"Fullbeards, yeah, bright-eyed and full of vim and with rune tools in our hands, each forged personal by Lord Snorri, may stone shield him from the sky always. I've used the pickaxe he gifted me ever since and it's reliable like only a true ancestor can make them- but anyway! Lord Snorri had finished his great forging-works and his gronti, and joined us down in the tunnels to build the underway."
"My grandfather worked on it as well," Haursi said, in what he hoped was an appropriately respectful tone. "He told me the Gift Giver was foremost among the runesmiths working alongside the miners and masons who shaped the ungdrin into what it is."
"You don't know the half of it, kid. Lord Snorri was down there, aye, working quadruple shifts and doing more than the rest of us put together, and when he did take a break, he slept right there in the tunnel, to save the time it'd take him to walk to any of the base camps and back again, you see. And his snoring! The noise of all that rock being cracked and hauled away is so loud it can strike an unprepared miner deaf, and yet over all that din we could hear the lord's snoring clear as you please, much as we wished we couldn't. Loud enough to wake the dead, it was." He paused to wet his throat. "Of course, we'd get farther away from him as we excavated new lengths of tunnel and the terrifying roar gradually receded behind us, so the first time, we figured we were pretty much in the clear after a while. Well, we couldn't have been more wrong."
"Why is that, elder?" Asmund asked.
"Because soon as he woke up, he got back to work on the sections we'd excavated while he slept, strengthening and reinforcing and laying many a devious rune-trap for our enemies, should they ever assault the tunnels. We young ones thought it excessive at the time, in our foolishness, but as always Lord Snorri could see clearer than anyone else and the defences he designed would prove their worth many times over during the Invasion. Why, I witnessed it myself when I fought under Prince Gloin (as His Majesty was titled then) and we faced down the foul crawling things who thought to make good dwarf tunnels their own-"
The second elder interrupted him with a scoff. "Think you're getting a mite off track there, Arvid."
The first deployed an immediate counter-scoff. "As if you had any clue what a track looks like in the first place, you blind old lichen-eater. But as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Lord Snorri was working on the newest ungdrin segments, and the folk who tell you he works fast? They have a talent for understatement, let me tell you. Just as the terror of his snoring had begun to lift from our hindbrains, we could hear him again, cackling while he was catching up to us. Lord Snorri always indulges in a good cackle whenever he works on a particularly cunning snare, you see, and it's every bit as terrifying as his snoring, in its own way. But even that was only a prelude, because soon enough he was with us right at the front of the tunnel, and then we got to hear him express his deep disappointment we'd made it no farther than this, even with all the advantages he'd given us."
"These days a beardling's knees go knocking if anyone over 200 so much as looks at 'em," the second elder added. "They should have a go at receiving a real grumble sometime, see what it's like." He let his voice drop deeper in imitation of someone much older than he. "'You think I made that gronti so a bunch of ungrateful layabouts could ride around on its shoulders all day while it does all the work? Does the youth of today not have hands? If I'd known you wastrels would repay me like this I would've saved myself the trouble of forging all that rune gear and dug out the ungdrin with my bare hands instead, because it would damn well go faster!' Real good motivator to work harder next time Lord Snorri went to sleep."
"Not that we ever disappointed him any less, no matter how hard we pushed ourselves. We had to decide by drawing lots who had to work suicide shift, which is what we called the shifts when Lord Snorri went to sleep and came barrelling back afterwards. The winners got to work double shifts while he was awake instead and the losers envied 'em something fierce."
"Don't get hung up on the little details, now. C'mon, tell them about Complex 30."
"Pull your ponies, Einar, I was just getting to that part. This one time we were digging out side galleries during suicide shift, working on a part that would become a rest stop and fortified hardpoint. Since we were working in multiple directions from a central junction, we were still close to Lord Snorri even though he'd been sleeping for a while, when we unexpectedly broke into a natural cave system. And there were giant cave spiders on the other side." He snorted. "Always excitin' times, finding a giant spider warren where you don't expect it. We're facing down this big one while the lads are getting themselves in order, knowing the uglies're going down but not knowing if a few of ours are getting bit and dying to poison in the process, you know? When Lord Snorri comes charging through the tunnels. How he knew to wake up for the spiders when he could sleep through a mining operation at full blast I'll never know, but out he comes, and a single blow from his bare fist is enough to break the beastie's carapace into one thousand pieces. Lord Snorri has many names and titles, but for his feat that day, to us miners of Clan Hardpick he is forever known as Old Shatterhand. His decisive action buys us enough time to get the proper gear brought forward and the rest is just standard spider mop-up. Of course, afterwards we had to answer to Lord Snorri for interrupting his nap." The old miner leaned forward and spoke his next words with utmost gravity. "Being woken early by careless youngins made him... grumpy." For a moment, beardling listeners and hoary old miners found common ground contemplating the yawning abyss that was a grumpy living ancestor, before the teller shook it off and continued. "Then he went to our foreman and chewed him out for not having at least five redundant anti-spider contingencies active at all times, so old Arni got the worst of it... is what I would say, except Lord Snorri went back to sleep afterwards and then we were stuck with Arni. If only one thing I've said makes it inside your thick skulls, beardlings, let it be this: if you can arrange to avoid it, do not work under a foreman who has just been personally grumbled at by an ancestor."
The elders took advantage of this natural breakpoint in their story to holler for more beer. Once that essential matter had been seen to and they had fresh tankards in hand, the first continued. "A century or so ago me and Einar went up to Kraka Grom for a bit, to maybe help the beardlings there not make a complete mess of things. They were just as confounded about Lord Snorri working round the clock and never sleeping as you are, and I'll tell you now as I told them then: You should be glad the lord don't sleep no more, because the modern beardling couldn't handle it!" He laid the flat of his palm on the bar with a meaty thump. "We may have been beardlings ourselves back in the ungdrin, aye, but we knew even then that Lord Snorri was tempering us! Whereas with lily-livered brats like you lot, the real thing wouldn't stiffen your spines so much as turn them to dust, so you need something softer for your own tempering."
"Something like a stiff breeze, aye," the second elder agreed.
"So there you have it, the truth and the whole of the truth: Lord Snorri don't need to sleep. He used to do it anyway, but since the weak and feckless youth of today couldn't possibly survive what comes of it, the lord has decided in his infinite wisdom and compassion to forgo sleep these days, and if you had any sense you'd thank him instead of trying to squeak out a grumble about it."
---
The story had transitioned over into nonspecific grumbling shortly afterwards, until Haursi, in a moment of inspiration, had offered to pay for the elders' next round as thanks for the educational story, which had improved their moods enormously and even prompted old Arvid to allow there was a remote possibility the three of them might screw their heads on right and become proper adults sometime in the far future. The young and the elderly had withdrawn to each drink among their own kind, Haursi had spent an enjoyable evening in the company of his fellows and he was making his way home. By chance, he happened to glance in the direction of the main gates, on the other side of which lay Lord Snorri's workshop and the little settlement that had sprung up around it.
Haursi had been told stories about the Gift Giver for as long as he could remember, but most of them were so grand their protagonist was made out as someone inhabiting a different world entirely. It was exciting to hear of the great hero commanding the fire and the earth, and doing battle with demon princes, but the reality behind them was so far removed from a mortal like Haursi that he couldn't honestly say he grasped what they meant. The runesmith apprentices he knew sometimes talked about living in the shadow of an unconquerable mountain, and he'd never quite understood them... but having heard the old miners recount their experiences, he supposed he had an inkling of what the mountain felt like, now.
