Page 31 of Stalk the Sky

Beyond the dry docks, more ships’ hulls were in progress, resting on more bracings as they were built on solid ground before they would be sent down slipways to plunge into the bay at their launch.

Teams upon teams of dwarves worked on each ship. Other teams of trolls and humans were interspersed among the dwarves, but the dwarves were the ones in charge here.

On the nearest hull under construction, a team of dwarves pounded in the rivets that held the hull plates together. One dwarf heated the rivet in a small, portable forge. Once the rivet was red-hot, the dwarf used a pair of tongs to toss it up to another dwarf, who caught it in a bucket. This dwarf then plucked the still hot rivet from the bucket with another set of tongs and placed it in the hole pre-drilled in the two sheets of iron being clamped together.

While Pip couldn’t see the inside of the ship, she could imagine a dwarf on the inside holding the bucking bar against the back of the rivet. A dwarf on the outside then pounded the rivet with his large ball-peen hammer, flattening the outside head and smushing the base of the rivet against the bucking bar on the inside. When the rivet cooled, it would shrink, holding the two sheets of iron together.

All the while, the dwarves kept up a steady rhythm with their heating, tossing, and pounding, at one with the metal. Magic curled around them as they worked it into the rivets, the metal plates, the very bones of this ship in progress.

Pip couldn’t work her magic the way a dwarf did, but she tapped her hand against her thigh in time with the rhythm as she approached the working dwarves.

The noise of all the drilling and hammering reverberated in her ears, and she dug into her pocket and pulled out a set of elven moss earplugs. While full dwarves like her mother or a half-dwarf like her brother had an extra flap inside their ears that they could use to plug their own ears when working, Pip had inherited her dacha’s elven, sensitive hearing.

Pip waited to one side of the massive hull, simply soaking up the presence of so many dwarves.

A pang shot through her. Would she still be gone fighting this war next winter when her family made their yearly trek to the dwarven mountains to visit her grandparents?

With Dar Goranth so remote, letters came sporadically every few weeks. Unlike at Fort Linder, they no longer could call home, unless it was a dire emergency, and even then they had to go up the chain of command to request such a thing. There were only two telephone lines sunk in the channel running from Drogenvroh Island and Kostaria’s mainland, and those had to be reserved for military purposes.

Between the phone calls and frequent letters, she hadn’t felt so cut off from her family at Fort Linder. Plus she was surrounded by the familiar Escarlish culture.

Here, everything was foreign, and her family felt so very far away. She’d finally received a packet of letters from home, making her miss her parents and Mak all the more.

After several more minutes, a female dwarf who had been shouting out orders to the others wandered in Pip’s direction. The dwarf’s beard was braided in an intricate pattern, the colors of the bands and beads telling Pip the dwarf came from Clan Herfaed, a dwarf clan from one of the more northern dwarven clans.

The dwarf glanced over Pip, taking in her height to the hand Pip still tapped against her thigh. The dwarf pounded her fists together in front of her in the dwarven greeting. “Kiddakak of Clan Herfaed.”

Pip made the gesture as well. “Pippak of Clan Detmuk.”

“A good meeting.” The dwarf nodded, then pointed toward one of the hulls only starting construction. “Dwarves of Clan Grustraen are down that way.”

Clan Grustraen was part of the same dwarven kingdom as Clan Detmuk, their mountain only a few mountains over from Mount Detmuk.

“Nomdet.” After so long of speaking Escarlish and elvish in the last few months, the dwarvish thank-you felt rough on Pip’s tongue and deep in her throat. She pounded her fists against each other again in farewell, then turned to head in that direction.

The interaction likely would have felt abrupt to a human or an elf. But dwarves didn’t linger over conversation during a workday. Socializing was for when the work was done.

But when they did socialize, well, dwarves knew how to party.

Pip strode along the shipyard until she reached the hull the female dwarf had indicated.

Here, a male dwarf with a thick, black beard down to his waist shouted orders in between tapping out a rhythm of his own against the hull with a small hammer.

Pip halted next to him and knocked her fists. “Durid mouna. Pippak of Clan Detmuk.”

“Clan Detmuk! Durid mouna.” The other dwarf didn’t pause in his rhythm as he wished her good morning, though a large grin spread beneath his thick beard. “I’m Yamrarlig of Clan Grustraen. I’ve been to Mount Detmuk many times.”

“Perhaps you know my grandak, Jordrouth?” Pip spoke in dwarvish as she mentioned her grandfather.

“Jordrouth! Yes, I know him well! Didn’t he have a daughter who married an elf?” Yamrarlig eyed her, as if taking in all the elven features that made her slimmer and slightly tall for a full dwarf.

“My muka.” Pip kept her shoulders straight, facing the other dwarf without flinching. This was the part where most dwarves said something disparaging about her dacha.

“Ah, quite the story there. Made its way all the way to Mount Grustraen.” Yamrarlig nodded, still pounding out a rhythm with his hammer. A swirl of his magic spread through the ship’s hull every time the hammer clanged against the metal, merging with the dwarven magic from all the other dwarves matching this lead dwarf’s rhythm. “Not judging, mind you. I’m here with my crew, after all.”

“I was surprised to see so many crews of dwarves working here.” Pip waved toward the long line of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers under construction.

“The Alliance pays quite well.” Yamrarlig grinned, showing off his large teeth. “Ships built by dwarves are far superior. We infuse our magic into the iron as we build the ships, and that makes the hulls all but impervious to the newfangled guns and torpedoes.”

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