Chapter 4

Durog rolled lazily out of bed, scratched himself, and proceeded about his usual morning routine in no particular hurry.

After a leisurely breakfast, he enjoyed his casual stroll on the way to his work at his command center.

There were not many others in the halls - most dwarves liked to start at dawn - a time easy to coordinate on, even when most of you are underground. But Durog liked to start a couple hours after dawn it felt more luxurious somehow, even though he put in the same total number of work hours.

On the way to work, he mused about the various challenges they were having in casting the metal looted from goblins, in boring special new ventilation shafts, and in some unusual spring-loaded catches he needed. All had various potential solutions, each with its own costs and benefits, and he enjoyed weighing them against the needs of particular projects.

He currently had broad powers and a large budget, and was working on getting the most out of both.

Durog arrived and pushed the door open, anticipating today's reports on the latest reconstruction work in the main tunnel. The work was intended to accommodate the King's wishes about future dragon incursions - he wanted more magic weapons - and was almost complete, which was good because Durog was getting lots of complaints about how it restricted access while it was ongoing.

But as the door opened, he was greeted by one of the strangest social dynamics he could think of.

He stood for a moment, unnoticed and listening, as his staff chattered and exhibited a curious mix of excitement and relaxation. It was like they felt danger and safety at the same time - like they'd gotten all keyed up for a battle, and then skipped battle and gone straight to the celebration of victory afterwards.

Finally, he said "What's going on?"

Half a dozen heads turned, and Skinny replied "Ooh, boss, come look. The troops are about to to bring in the spoils of battle."

Durog started, shocked that he had somehow missed a big event. "What battle? How can there have been a battle? I didn't hear any drums."

Squinty smiled "What an odd thing it is to hear such a comment coming from the only dwarf who participated in the battle."

Durog looked perplexed until Squnity had mercy on him, saying "Congratulations boss, one of your 'sun rooms' got a couple trolls. The maintenance crew just found them."

There followed quite a bit of handshaking, backslapping, smiling and other congratulations until someone at a viewport said "here they come".

Then all crowded around viewports to watch.

Durog could see that the remaining construction work - its tools and supplies - had been hastily removed from the tunnel, and he was doubly glad that the rebuilding of the floor was complete. He hoped the bracing was adequate - it really should be, and then some, with plenty to spare - but they'd find out soon.

A hundred dwarves, dressed for working and not for battle, entered the tunnel, half pulling and half pushing on a very sturdily built low-slung wagon, on which was sitting a troll - one which had been turned to stone.

That happened to them when sunlight hit them.

Or so the legends said. It had been a long time since it had happened. Trolls are just as concerned about staying alive as any other race, and so have learned to be very careful about avoiding the sunlight.

It took clever planning and trickery to get a troll to take even a small risk of exposure to sunlight.

They were always very careful to be underground well before the sun came up.

So Durog had had some "sun rooms" dug. These were artificial caves bored into the mountain and expertly disguised as "natural caves". They were dug into the part of the mountain that faced away from the sun, so that, even though the tunnels were straight with no turns, and only 50 to 100 feet deep, sunlight would never penetrate very deep into them.

Trolls cared deeply about such things, and watched for them.

So these "sun rooms" were perfectly set up to attract any trolls in the area.

It was a good bet that some would come, attracted by rumors of dwarf gold.

And it was certain that, if and when they did come, they would need and seek shelter exactly like these caves seemed to be.

The important part was really very simple.

The dwarves just positioned a nice, rough, non-reflective (trolls noticed such things) boulder the right distance away from the cave mouth, and in the right spot to catch the morning sun.

Then they worked on it as only dwarves can, such that when they were done, it could not be discerned as being any different from a natural boulder, yet contained mechanisms, such that when the sun came up (determinable by clockwork or hourglass-based timers), the rock face would pivot aside revealing a big mirror. That mirror would, at that time of day, bathe the whole cave in sunlight, with no shelter at all, thus making it a "sun room".

These would also be helpful against orcs, who were sickened and disoriented by sunlight, and so also looked for such places to camp. So the sun rooms got checked up on daily, in case there were a bunch of unhappy orcs inside.

The dwarves actually had a lot more experience with mirror-redirected sunlight than most outsiders guessed.

Since they could not see in the dark, the dwarves needed light from somewhere, and torches and candles got expensive quickly in the kinds of numbers and durations the dwarves needed down in their underground homes and mines.

Large numbers of torches and candles lit things poorly, but also fouled the air, and it was already a lot of work, even without that factored in, just to keep enough breathable air moving in reliably.

So it was all connected. Dwarves knew about mining, and that meant they knew about the things mining required - ventilation, lighting, pumping out the water that inevitably runs down into mines, and so on.

So since they were already boring through the rock to make myriad small (3 inch diameter was the favorite size, since nothing threatening could sneak in through that) ventilation shafts and ducts, they had also mastered the simple art of placing mirrors into the parts of those shafts which would face the sun.

The result was nothing like the bright light of being outside. The sunlight diffusing from each ventilation shaft mainly achieved a widespread "dim twilight" sort of effect. But that was adequate at need, even when not augmented by torches and candles, and certainly better than the pitch-blackness that was the default alternative.

Candles and torches were still needed, but not in such numbers as they would have been without sunlight from mirrors.

A creak from the tunnel brought Durog's mind back to the present, where a second hundred dwarves were bringing in the next wagon with another stone troll on it, while the first hundred dwarves were just bringing their wagon through the gate.

Durog was relieved to note that the creak had come from a wagon and not his newly-rebuilt floor. The multiple, thin, complicated channels cut into the floor were mostly still open, having not yet received their metal inlays. But the wagon wheels were especially wide to better distribute load, and neither they nor the channels appeared to have been damaged by their passing.

The wagon barely fit through the permanent gate, since Durog had succeeded in arguing that big monsters need big spaces and the dwarves could use that to their advantage. So the main entrance tunnel had not been and would not be widened - it still started out 50 feet wide to attract big monsters and armies, then narrowed gradually to 15 feet wide to impair them by making them fight in cramped and awkward spaces while relatively few dwarves could hold them off from behind their stout gate, which was more of a floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall door pierced with shutterable firing ports for both crossbows and ballistae.

The king had wanted big impressive architecture to inspire awe, but Durog had managed to redirect that urge into making huge statues just outside the main entrance.

He had his plans for those too, but that was another project.

As the second wagon passed through the gate, a collective sigh went up from the half dozen dwarves in the room.

They all sat back and Durog said,

"Now we can find out if the legends are true - the ones about troll stone, properly prepared and treated, regenerating from damage just like trolls do. This is marvelous! Does anyone remember the process? Something about lots of vinegar, ashes, and ice I seem to recall."

His glance around the room showed only shaken heads

"Rats, Now I'll have to find it in the sagas. It takes forever to find anything in there - you have to look through hundreds of pages of quotes like 'Ye shall die by this axe, foul monster, quoth Thrung Thunderbeard".

Noting lots of disapproving looks from around the room, he hastened to add,

"Don't misunderstand me - I mean only that, when you are looking specifically for rubies stored among large amounts of diamonds, the diamonds may seem to get in the way. Of course I value the noble words of our brave ancestors and hold them in the highest esteem, just as all of you do."

The other dwarves nodded and got back to work.

Durog quietly sighed, relieved at his luck in having probably avoided days of argument over the subject.

It wasn't easy to be different.

Then he wondered - was he lucky to have come up with something to say which defused the disapproval of the other dwarves for not properly respecting brave quotes from the ancestors (a very big deal among dwarves)? Or was he unlucky at having sparked that disapproval in the first place, also by his choice of words?

He pondered that while pretending to look over some blueprints and idly fingering his lucky rabbit's foot - one of only a "standard load" of a dozen or so such items today, since he hadn't expected anything unusual.

He caught himself expanding that thought and wondering - was luck entirely dependent on your perspective, or only partially?

Certainly what was lucky for him - his sun room working as planned and trolls getting caught in it, was very unlucky for those same trolls.

But was there more to it? The warriors would probably see it as unlucky that they didn't get to fight these trolls, while their wives and children would see it as lucky that none of them died in doing so. Though the warriors, who had doubtlessly been preparing brave things they could say to be quoted in the sagas in case they died, may see that same event - their own survival - as partly unlucky, since next time they may forget their brave quote and lose their chance at being remembered forever.

It seemed very odd to think that someone would see his own survival as even partly unlucky, yet that aspect was definitely there in some degree - such was the strength of their desire to be remembered in the sagas.

Durog puzzled away at this while staring unseeing at his blueprints.