Chapter 2

The deep rhythmic booming of the alarm drums brought Durog out of a deep sleep.

It took a moment for him to realize that this particular rhythm meant a dragon was incoming.

He exclaimed, "but we're not ready yet!" as he got up and hurriedly prepared to go to his post.

But as he pulled on his clothes and his brain finished waking up, he realized the utter futility of such complaining.

No one had ever promised that life would be fair.

And a mindset that believed it was owed anything was a mindset prepared to fail.

He did not intend to fail.

He thrust aside the useless thoughts that began with "if only..." and got down to planning what they could realistically do with what they had.

He found comfort in embracing the usual grim determination of the dwarves.

Well, mostly.

But he also found some comfort in the handful of lucky rabbits feet he grabbed from the hatstand as he left his room and started running down the corridor.

They were all on necklaces, as was the fossilized 4-leaf clover that had been hanging with them. He put the cluster of necklaces around his neck as he ran towards his battle station.

He wished that there had been time to grab his lucky hat, socks, and various other good luck charms, but any delay was out of the question.

Besides, he still wasn't sure whether good luck charms worked.

He was in the middle of a years long effort to test that proposition.

As he ran, the alarm drums shut down, their job done, and the signal drums took over. They used dwarven mine code to broadcast detailed updates on the situation.

Boom, BaBoom BaBoom Boom pause Boom Boom...

On it went, in a series of single and double thumps representing the letters of the dwarven alphabet.

Mine code usually used two hammers - one in each hand, but a skilled dwarf could send it with just one.

It allowed dwarves to communicate from one mine tunnel to another, or even to dwarves cut off by a roof collapse - something that happened rarely due to the quality of dwarven stonework.

The drums told of a size 3 flying dragon landing a mere quarter mile beyond the outer watch towers. Dragons usually wouldn't fly that close to any defenders. The last thing they wanted to do was present their unarmored bellies to anyone armed with a bow, crossbow, sling etc. And they were smart enough to know that watch towers often had the very large crossbows known as ballistae too.

Durog smiled as he remembered a story he'd heard a human villager telling to other humans, about a flying fire-breathing dragon swooping low over a town and blasting it with fire, in one attack run after another.

It was a funny story in its way, since it was effectively self-contradictory.

It sounded very dramatic and probably looked dramatic in their puppet shows, but any dragon that acted that way would not be the unreachable and unstoppable threat implied by the story, but the very opposite. It would hardly be any threat at all, since swarms of arrows would easily penetrate their completely unarmored and unprotected bellies as they flew. In fact it would be very hard to hit them anywhere except their unarmored area.

Dwarves told no such fanciful yet dramatic tales.

They lived too close to the real thing, and so had to know the plain truth and practical realities. Lives depended on it.

So Durog had grown up hearing the real stories of dragons, which often didn't end well for the dwarves. Dragons had very strong armor on their sides, backs, necks... everyplace but their bellies really.

Some could breathe fire.

Some could fly.

And some were bigger than others, resulting in longer reach and stronger muscles multiplying the effectiveness of their long, sharp teeth and claws.

But even the smallest dragons outclassed the dwarves by so much in terms of reach and strength that it was a fools game to try to combat them on those terms.

The world had no shortage of fools though.

Durog mumbled, "you'd think it would though, given how fast they get themselves killed."

But, to be fair, Durog had to admit that even a very slim chance was better than no chance at all. So when no better option was available, and it came down to swinging a sword or axe at a dragon to try to defend yourself or your family, even he would try the sword rather than just give up and be eaten.

Dwarves were stubborn that way.

And sometimes even slim chances worked out, and dwarves had defeated dragons despite all the odds.

Well, if Durog had anything to say about it, the odds were about to change in their favor.

His plans for Defensive Architecture, as he'd chosen to call it, were anything but complete. But even the small amount he had built so far should be enough to deal with a size 3 dragon.

Size 1 dragons - the smallest anybody had ever seen - were about the size of a horse, not counting the dragon's neck or tail.

Size 2 were twice as big as size 1's.

Size 3 were three times as big as size ones, and so on.

Dragons didn't have any qualms about fighting with each-other over things they wanted And Size 3's, being relatively small, were used to being comparatively weak and easily bullied by other dragons.

That explained why this one had flown as close as it had before landing and then continuing on foot - it was in a hurry. It had probably heard there was treasure here and wanted to grab what it could, then hurry away and hide it before a bigger dragon heard about treasure and came to take it.

With that thought still in his mind, Durog reached his post, whipped open the door, and hurried in to the small, almost unadorned room beyond.

His 2 assistants and a message-runner had all beaten him there. But there was no shame in that - they all lived closer to it.

"Runner", he said, "go tell site 1 they are on local control. They can time their own activation better than we can from here." He gestured to the small sets of peepholes to emphasize his point. They could see as far as site 1, but not as well as he would like.

His Command Center, as he thought of this small room, had 3 sets of peepholes pierced through the walls. They looked out on the approach tunnel which led up to the entrance to Lonely Mountain.

The king had been planning to build a gate at the far end of the tunnel, and use it as the main entrance to Lonely Mountain.

Durog had managed only to delay those plans, and even then only on the excuse of construction priorities.

Perhaps this attack would let him revisit that argument. A lot could be done to an enemy enclosed in a tunnel.

Those thoughts flashed past in an instant as the runner leapt to his feet, confirmed what he'd been told, and raced off.

Durog turned to the dwarf he alternately thought of as "assistant number 2" and simply "skinny". He'd been assigned to Durog since having been sickly in his youth, he was weak and spindly, for a dwarf, and would be no use in a fight.

"Run to site two", Durog ordered, "and tell the workers there to shove the scaffolding out of the way. Then choose a worker to climb with you up into its mechanical spaces and prepare it to be dropped on my order. You take one end, and he'll take the other. You will have to coordinate your timing with each-other. You won't be able to see anything from in there, so you'll have to listen for my signal."

"How will you know we can hear you?" Skinny asked.

"Thanks. Once again you remind me that I'm glad you're working with me. You use your brain. That's too rare." Durog took a fist-sized bell from a small table and handed it to him.

"Take this with you and use it to ring out a reply in mine code if you hear me. I'll be ringing the big bell here" He patted the torso-sized bell set near the corner of the room.

He turned to his other assistant, whom he thought of as "Squinty" because he was extremely nearsighted. "Number one," he continued, "Go with him as far as the bell at the defenses at the temporary gate. You'll be the relay between us if he can't hear me. Site two is close enough to the temporary gate that you'll have no trouble hearing each-other."

They all took a moment to make sure everyone was clear on the plan and on any other relevant information. Then the 2 assistants hurried off.

As Durog sat before a set of peepholes, he reflected that he was glad that Squinty had had the idea, weeks ago, for the bells.

He would make a note to give Squinty a bonus as a reward.

It was a simple idea.

Mine code didn't have to be drums. It could be sent by almost any kind of sound: a mining pick against stone, a weapon banged on a shield, a bell, a whistle, and so on.

One type of drums sound an awful lot like another, especially at a distance and through the distortion which tunnels can cause.

That's why the alarm drums had shut down once everyone was alerted to an emergency, so that the signal drums could take over and send out updates in mine code.

And Durog's operation was still considered just a test - too small and insignificant to get a share of time on the signal drums.

But bells sounded very different from drums, so they could be used at the same time, allowing two kinds of communication to happen at the same time.

They had planned for one assistant to listen to the bells, and the other to listen to the drums, and take turns summarizing to Durog every so often. Speech conveys information much faster than mine code, so that would probably have worked.

But the best laid plans go oft astray, as they said.

The sites were not finished. So the assistants needed to be there, not here.

That would have meant that Durog would be busier, except that most of his plans were still only plans. So there wasn't much for him to do at present, but listen to the signal drums, watch through the peepholes for the dragon's approach, and listen for Squinty to signal that they were in place. Then he'd try communicating with Skinny by his bell.

Having sorted that out in his mind, he felt he'd done what he could, was as ready as he could be, and so took a good look through the peepholes.

He saw the long approach tunnel, which got progressively wider as it went.

The king had been planning to widen the tunnel along its whole length. Durog hoped to convince him otherwise.

The only reason to widen it was for the grandiose appearances they could achieve.

The reason to keep it small was that that would be a significant disadvantage to large monsters.

That was one of the main points of his Defensive Architecture idea.

It ran something like this:

Dwarves carve their dwellings out of solid rock, and so have complete control over the size of what they carve. Plus, Dwarves are small, and most of the time have no need to make their tunnels any bigger than is necessary to accommodate a dwarf.

Dwarves sometimes fought with humans and elves, both of whom tended to be much taller than dwarves.

In a tunnel only a couple inches higher than is needed for a dwarf, any invading human or elf would fight at a significant disadvantage - they'd be moving along hunched over and unable to stand upright.

Dwarves often fought dragons and trolls, both of whom were a lot bigger than dwarves. Neither of those races would even be able to threaten dwarves, if the only access was tunnels barely tall enough for a dwarf.

But both would try anyway, if some tunnels and rooms were made just big enough for them.

They would try, and so could be trapped in such places, where, at least, they would fight at a big disadvantage - with not enough room to move very well.

And at best, such rooms could be trapped. That way, the architecture itself could be made to kill the invaders without even risking any dwarven lives.

Durog wasn't thinking of small or simple traps, but rather big strong traps designed into the rooms. Trolls and dragons were very tough, but there were limits to their strength and no limits to the size of stone blocks that could be dropped on them - if you had them contained in a small space and unable to dodge.

The signal drums brought Durog's attention back to the present.

They were giving a running account of the dragon's progress.

After it landed, it had run towards the entrance of Lonely Mountain, until a nearby guard tower fired a ballista at it.

The dwarven guards practiced with their ballista quite a bit, and it showed, since the ballista bolt hit the dragon. And that might have done some good if the range hadn't been extreme. But as it was, the bolt had lost a lot of its energy, and so bounced off the armored hide of the scaly beast.

After that first hit, the dragon changed from a run into what the dwarves commonly called the "combat waddle". This was a mode of movement that resembled a crocodile waddling along on its short legs. The point of it was that it kept the dragon's unarmored belly flush up against the ground, so no vulnerable spot was exposed to attacks.

A crocodile could move remarkably fast in this manner, and so could a dragon. In fact, even more so, since the dragon's legs were not short, and so had a much better range of movement resulting in longer 'strides'.

The dragon waddled straight towards the guard tower, as fast as it could go. Before it arrived, there was only time for two more shots from that ballista, both of which the dragon dodged.

This one was smart - it had watched the ballista's reload process and prepared itself to dodge when it fired.

Hails of crossbow bolts hit the dragon, exploring for any weak-spot in its armor. They found none - all those shots bounced off.

When the dragon was close enough to the tower, it paused, hunched its shoulders, angled its neck, inhaled deeply, then breathed fire all over the tower.

But the dwarves were smart too. They knew those signs, and what they meant.

They'd seen fire-breathers before, or at least been trained by those who had.

When the fire bathed the tower, it hit closed shutters, not dwarves.

The fire was plenty hot enough to completely destroy the shutters, but that was known too.

The shutters were there to take the brunt and interrupt the flow of the flames, so that less penetrated into the tower.

Some still would, but not enough to swirl around inside and still burn the trapdoors through which the dwarves had descended into dwarf-sized tunnels in the mountain beneath them.

Dragon fire flowed like water in some ways.

A wave of the sea could hit with significant impact. But even something comparatively weak could, as it was destroyed by the impact, turn aside and deflect much of the energy that remained.

That was the idea behind the shutters.

In any case, no more arrows came from the tower, and the ballista had been burned, so the dragon resumed running for the entrance to lonely mountain.

As it approached, Durog heard a bell banging out mine code. It said that his apprentices were in position, and he could try signaling now.

He did so, moving to the big bell in the corner and banging out a short message in mine code on it with the special hammers that hung from its frame.

The answer came back quickly - both apprentices could hear him just fine.

Skinny sent a question: "this dragon is smart. when you signal us, won't it recognize something is up and change it's approach?"

They had a brief discussion, via the bells, in which it was agreed that Durog would send regular updates on the dragon's progress and estimated timing. That way there would not be a single bell signal right when the dragon needed to react, but rather a whole series of bell signals it would learn to ignore. The final signal would be just another one in the series, and so not serve as any kind of warning.

With that settled, Durog sat back at the set of peepholes closest to the bell.

He looked out the peepholes while reaching around with the hammers, and sent a few practice messages.

His first couple of messages were unintelligible, but after that he got the hang of it.

He was ready none too soon. The dragon came into sight.

It paused by the great arch where the entrance tunnel began, and spat a brief burst of fire so it could see better.

The tunnel had not looked dark to Durog - there were plenty of lit torches along its length.

But, compared to how it looked when lit by dragon fire, it had been almost pitch black before.

The burst of flame showed every detail of the tunnel in stark relief.

Each stone of the paved road that ran alongside the Running River was clearly outlined.

Every wavelet or splash in the river stood out.

The temporary gate hundreds of feet into the tunnel was also clearly illuminated.

It became the dragon's next goal.

As predicted, it apparently had not seen any of the peepholes along the tunnel walls through which it was being spied upon. Each was cleverly concealed in a natural shadow formed by the rough rock walls.

The walls had been left rough for that purpose.

From any angle, the peepholes would just be a darker shadow within a natural shadow - a shadow that should be there given the texture of the rock, and would therefore seem normal and unremarkable to anyone, even an expert on stone.

The dwarves were good at concealing stonework when they thought it worth the effort.

That was part of what Durog was pinning his hopes on.

And it worked, but only so far.

As the dragon advanced into the tunnel, a dwarf at the local command post by site 1 judged the timing, and hauled on his activation lever.

The dragon never saw it coming.

But he lucked out anyway.

The mechanical delay was just a little longer than had been estimated, and so the fast-moving dragon got entirely through the danger zone and safely on the other side before the portcullis came down.

Durog wasn't sure why he still thought of it as a portcullis. Normally he was a stickler for getting the details right - like all engineers - and several important details here were not those of a classic portcullis.

Classic Portcullises were a grid of stout metal bars that dropped suddenly from the ceiling and thereby barred the way to folks trying to enter or leave.

But, typically, no attempt was made to hide them, and consequently, the chances of dropping it onto a target were small enough to not bother counting.

What Durog had built was like a portcullis in several ways, and unlike it in others.

It was not a grid of metal bars, but a very solid slab of stone.

It had been hidden very well.

And it had a blade affixed to the bottom edge of the stone.

The blade was for style as much as anything.

The entrance to the tunnel was 40 feet high and 50 feet wide.

The not-portcullis spanned the entire tunnel, plus the 5 feet it extended into the walls and ceiling for stability, and was 3 feet thick of solid granite.

The resulting 8100 cubic feet of granite weighed, at 168 pounds per cubic foot, 1,360,800 pounds, or a whopping 680.4 tons.

That was more than enough to split into two pieces anything that got caught under it, even before you factored in how fast it dropped.

The massive stone slab had been quarried in place - carved from bedrock in the same spot it now used as a slot in which to move up and down.

After quarrying, they had inscribed magic dwarven runes on it to make the stone far more resilient than it naturally was, so that it could survive being used, without that sudden drop shattering it into a million pieces.

Then they had tested it, once.

It had taken them many days, with 24 dwarves at once turning the biggest geared iron capstan they could borrow from the mines, to jack it back up into position, a fraction of an inch at a time.

All that time to lift it up... yet it fell in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

The not-portcullis hit the ground so hard that the shock-wave knocked down anyone nearby.

Durog was thrown off his stool even though he had braced for the impact.

The dragon certainly would have been killed, if only it had been hit.

But it hadn't even been knocked prone - not so you could tell anyway - the combat waddle was close enough to prone so it hardly made a difference.

Apparently, the only effects on the beast were to almost deafen it, so loud was the thump of its impact, and to make it cautious.

It certainly gave the dragon something to think about.

But it was also still thinking about gold.

So it proceeded, but cautiously.

It was clearly intelligent, since it tried to move unpredictably. It would surge forward in sprints of varying lengths, stop suddenly, make false starts and so on.

It also frequently spat brief puffs of fire to give it better light by which to examine the ceiling for any hints of anything else about to drop down

Not that that would help it - dwarven stonework skills were more than up to the task of perfectly hiding things, even in full sunlight.

Durog studied the dragon's approach, trying to detect any pattern in its movements.

He did this while sending regular updates to site 2.

There was time to tell them everything, including the new information about how the actual delay between triggering and movement was longer than had been estimated.

They would need to know that.

If site 2 also failed, then this dragon would have to be fought the old-fashioned way, with the usual heavy losses.

And speaking of the old-fashioned way of fighting dragons, Durog noticed that the dwarves at the temporary gate were getting an early start - firing their crossbows down the long tunnel at the dragon even before it was really in range.

The long range, plus the low ceiling, which necessitated firing in a fairly flat arc, combined to cause an interesting result.

Several of the crossbow bolts fell short of the dragon, hit the pavement, and skipped like a flat stone thrown at a low arc across a pond would skip.

The skipping bolts came as close as possible to attacking the dragon from beneath.

If the beast had turned sideways, the bolts might possibly have hit the very narrow strip of unarmored underbelly which was occasionally exposed despite the combat waddle.

But they hit the front, where the dragon's excellent armor extended quite far. Fighting enemies in front of them was a dragon's primary mode, after all.

Their best armor was there.

So the crossbow bolts bounced off to no apparent effect.

Or rather, to no apparent damage.

There was an effect.

The big fiery lizard managed to speed up, while somehow waddling even lower to the ground.

It became more focused on the gate than on potential threats falling from above.

It still varied its movements, but less so, especially as it got closer and closer to the defenders, whom it both wanted to punish for their effrontery, and also snack upon.

It was an item of bitter humor among the dwarves that they were delicious, at least judging from dragons' reactions to them.

But there was no time to reflect on that.

Events seemed to accelerate.

Crossbows fired frantically, the dragon advanced rapidly, and Durog banged out his updates on the bell with ever-increasing frequency.

As things got busier, it was easy to get lost in the tasks of the moment and let go of fear.

So it was with almost clinical detachment that Durog saw the dragon arrive at the temporary gate - at least arrive at its preferred distance for breathing fire, as the experienced dwarves had anticipated.

The beast paused, hunched it's shoulders, and drew in a deep breath just as Durog hit the final note on the bell to complete the "go" signal to site two.

Squinty was a good, reliable assistant, and apparently, so was whomever he had picked to remove the support holding up the other end of the not-portcullis at site 2.

But they had to remove them simultaneously for maximum effect.

And they didn't quite manage that.

So it was that, as dragon flame bathed the recently slammed shutters at the temporary gate, the huge not-portcullis came down with a tremendous screech, resulting from the friction of one edge being just a couple inches lower than the other.

The screech gave the dragon some warning, but only enough so that the not-portcullis hit its body instead of its neck.

Durog thought he heard the sickening crunch of breaking bones as the dragon was pinned under the massive stone slab.

It should have been more than just that.

At this point, the approach tunnel had narrowed to only 15 feet wide and tall. But that still meant this not-portcullis weighed 126 tons.

It was unfinished, so did not yet have the blade attached along its bottom edge.

Yet it should still have killed this dragon outright.

Except the extra friction from being slightly wedged in its track had slowed it.

The dragon roared, thrashed, and wiggled as best it could, but it was truly pinned.

The weight of the stone would have been enough, especially since the dragon wasn't in a good position for lifting things - it was off-center so leverage worked against it.

But Durog had taken no chances and had put in a ratcheting mechanism on the not-portcullis's track.

The stone slab could not be lifted without disengaging the ratchet.

So the dragon wasn't going anywhere.

And that was good, since Durog was at a loss.

All his plans ended at this point with "either monster is dead, or the fight devolves into classical melee".

This was neither option.

Drums and bells sent out updates while he searched among the lucky necklaces he was wearing. He found the one he was looking for, took hold of the fossilized 4-leaf clover, and rubbed it absently while he considered.

The dragon's snaky neck was free to move around. So it could still bite and kill anyone approaching on that side before they got with a weapon-length of it - that is, before they could hurt it.

And it may still be able to breathe fire, depending on how compressed its lungs were and whether enough ribs were broken.

And on the other side of the stone slab, its 4 legs still had some range of movement, and its tail could still whip around and smash folks into jelly.

So finishing it off with weapons was problematic.

And it probably wouldn't bleed to death or even starve anytime soon.

But as he watched the beasts legs scrabble around, Durog had an idea.

He signaled for his workers, plus picks and shovels, and a request for a pause before anybody tried just charging it with swords and axes.

A couple hours later, they had carefully dug a narrow slit trench under the dragon's belly, positioned so that none of the beasts legs could reach down in to attack any dwarves in the trench.

As it neared completion, and it became clear what he was doing, and that it would work, an urgent request came in from the weapon-smiths that delayed him even further.

So it was not until, a couple hours later yet, that six weapon-smiths arrived at a small temporary forge which had been set up near the trench under the dragon's belly.

There they re-heated the still red-hot blades on the spears they'd brought, and gave them some finishing touches.

Then they hurried into the slit trench, and, carefully coordinating their timing, all thrust their spears into the dragon.

It roared and thrashed mightily, but still died.

And the kingdom had 6 new magic spears, since quenching a new blade in the body of a live dragon made for potent magic, if done right.

Durog sighed with relief at the attack finally being over.

He signaled his men to check the not-portculli for cracks or damage, and to start arranging to get them raised back into position.

He gave the scene a last look, noting that the experts in taxidermy were already arriving.

The King would have a fine new trophy.

Then Durog headed off to finally get a late - a very late - breakfast.

On the way, he stopped by his rooms to get his luck ledger.

He always liked to update it as soon as possible so he didn't forget anything.

He would note in it how many good luck charms he'd had with him, and which ones, as well as the specific events that were notable for their luck - ether good or bad. He would include details like the likelihood of those events, and their significance as a indicator of the magnitude of good or bad luck they represented, as judged by observable results.

He hoped that, by doing so, eventually he could prove whether there was anything to the notion of good luck.