*
Three days later an exhausted rider and horse approached a gap in the mountains across which a large wooden palisade had been erected. Two dwarves stood on either side of the road, dutifully taking their turn at watch, though for years it had hardly been necessary. They waved him through, recognizing him from previous visits, and Alystan entered Caldara.
The village looked lovely in the morning light, nestled in a cosy valley. Trails led up to the high alpine meadows that were used for summer grazing, and down to lower valleys where the cattle and sheep were kept during the winter. Alystan remembered that beyond well-tended fields, a small stand of apple trees in an orchard marked the eastern boundary of the holding.
The wooden buildings were heavily thatched and plastered to keep out the winter cold. They shone pristine white in the morning sun, save for the massive longhouse that dominated the community. The King and his retainers lived there, with a large part of the local population. The longhouse was the hub of dwarven activity and on most nights any member of the community was as likely to be found sleeping on the floor of the great room before the huge fire as he was to be found in his own bed. Unlike the plastered walls, this building had been constructed in the old way: the boles of huge trees were stacked in cradles, forming the outer walls that defied both the elements and attacking enemies. The floor was made of stones laid upon the earth, flattened and smoothed so one could barely feel the joints when walking over them. But they were as impenetrable from sappers tunnelling up from below as the walls were from assaults above ground. The dwarves were miners and understood the uses of tunnels in warcraft as well as in mining.
Alystan pulled up his mount before the entrance to the longhouse and dismounted. He unsaddled his horse, and put the tack over the hitching log, then quickly wiped down the animal with a rag from his saddlebags. It would have to do until he had time to take the animal to the stables and tend to it properly. Dwarves were not horsemen, and the only horses they did keep were draught animals, all of whom would be out in the fields this time of day pulling ploughs as the dwarves readied the ground for the spring planting.
As he finished, a dwarf emerged from the building. ‘Alystan of Natal!’ he said with pleasure. ‘What brings you our way?’
‘I come to see your grandfather, Hogni. Is he inside?’
The young dwarf’s grin split his long black beard. The dwarves were small compared to humans, but still broad of shoulders and powerful of frame, averaging a little over five feet in height. Nearing five feet, five inches tall, Hogni was especially tall for a dwarf. He had a merry light in his eye as he said, ‘Grandfather refuses to take his rank seriously, as always. He says he’s still "new to this King business" as it’s "only been a little over a hundred years or so".’
‘He’s down in the fields ploughing. Come along, I’ll take you there.’
He waved over a dwarven boy and said, ‘Toddy, take that horse to grandfather’s stable and see to him, will you?’
Alystan took his longbow off his shoulder and returned it to the familiar grip of his left hand. He wore a dubious expression: the horse had rendered stout service and deserved to be well treated and the boy barely reached three feet in height, topped with a shock of red-blond hair and an apple-cheeked grin; but if Hogni was confident that Toddy could somehow reach the gelding’s withers and groom him sufficiently, he wasn’t going to argue. The urgency of his news kept him from properly tending to the mount before seeing the King.
They quickly made their way through the village to the eastern fields where a half a dozen draught horses pulled ploughs. Crossing carefully over the new furrows, they approached a dwarf with a grey head of hair and a long grey beard. He was perspiring heavily as he wrestled the plough’s iron blade through the hard soil, compacted by a winter’s weight of snow and the morning’s frost. The horses, like their masters, were powerful but diminutive. They looked more like broad-chested ponies than true horses, yet Alystan knew that they were a special breed of horse, used by the dwarves for centuries.
Dolgan, King of the Dwarves and Warleader of Caldara, reined in the gelding pulling his plough and waved a greeting. ‘Alystan of Natal! Well met!’
‘Greetings, King Dolgan. Have you no liegemen to plough your fields?’