Chapter 6
"...so that's what's bothering me: Is this event lucky or unloucky? Are we lucky that no dwarves died, or unlucky because we were attacked at all? Are we lucky that we defeated them all, or unlucky that we're going to have a lot of work to do to clean up the mess?..."
Durog's voice stopped, as the roar of a nearby troll drowned it out.
Durog and Skinny cautiously moved down the tunnel towards the sounds of a troll - one bellowing in frustration.
They were ready for combat, but not expecting it.
They were "cleanup crew" as the King had put it.
Specifically he had said "It's you who have cluttered up my tunnels with a bunch of trolls, and so it's you who get to figure out how to get them unstuck and out of our way. Try not to get dead while doing it."
The sounds got louder and louder as they approached, until at last they carefully edged around a corner and saw it - an enormous pair of troll legs kicking frantically as the troll sought for leverage to free itself.
It's whole torso was wedged firmly into the tunnel beyond, so firmly stuck it might not even be possible to free it with a winch, given the tight quarters involved. And a winch could only be tried if the troll stopped struggling, which wasn't likely.
The trolls feet and legs flailed about wildly in such a fashion that, given the turn in the tunnel, they would only have a very small safe area in which to stand and work - perhaps the length of one sword.
"This is the biggest one?" Durog asked Skinny.
"Yah, boss. So they said. And the stuck-est."
They both gazed at the frantically kicking troll legs for a moment, speculating on just how the monster could have gotten stuck as completely as that.
They didn't wonder at all that it had gotten stuck.
Durog had designed these tunnels so that monsters would get stuck.
These were the "new escape tunnels" leading away from the forts on Lonely Mountain's projecting spurs. Those 'spur-forts' were frequently the first thing attacked by an enemy or monster, so they had escape tunnels for when the going got too tough. These new escape tunnels gradually narrowed until they were barely wide enough and tall enough for a dwarf. They also had places where dwarves could turn to fight, or turn and taunt pursuers into pursuing further. Occasionally they widened out, solely to give hope to any pursuers and thus keep them pursuing. And they were strong, with many feet of very solid stone on all sides, so that when a monster got stuck, even a very strong monster, it wasn't going to be able to batter its way back out.
But how this troll had gotten himself in backwards - with his legs where they'd expected his head and arms, and how he had stuck so tightly, was beyond them.
The troll's belly looked square, because it was wedged so tightly into the square tunnel that it was squished into even the corners.
"Wow - getting stuck as bad as that took some doing. Trolls are stupid, but this is well beyond expectations...You know, that just may be a watertight seal" Durog mused.
"Do you mean you have an idea Boss?" queried Skinny.
"Nah, not a practical one. It'll still be the easiest thing just to carve a new tunnel out of the solid rock next to this."
Skinny nodded. Dwarves were very good at tunneling through solid rock.
They didn't have so much experience with popping out huge corks, or what amounted to the same thing.
"Skinny, you stay here and see if you can find a way to safely measure his maximum reach. We need to know where we can set stuff up without him kicking it - or us - to death. I'll go check on the arrangements for the light show." Durog said.
"Ok Boss, I think I have an idea for that." Skinny said as he drew his sword.
All dwarves carried hand weapons, even those few who were only a fraction as big and strong as average, like Skinny.
He carried a sword because it was lighter and easier to wield than the more typically dwarvish options such as axes and war-hammers.
And, being an engineer and a thinker, he had personalized it to his taste.
Despite being skinny, he was tall for a dwarf, so his sword was long, to take advantage of his extra reach.
And it was wickedly sharp, because he had specially ground the edge of the blade. Most blades were either sabre-ground or double-bevel ground, to combine sharpness with the ability to hold an edge despite strenuous use.
Unlike those, he had combined two other techniques at once with his blade, so it was both hollow-ground, like the straight-razors humans shaved with (no self-respecting drawf shaved, but they knew about the human practice), and chisel-ground, which left a blade twice as narrow as any other grinding technique, and therefore twice as sharp.
Those two processes worked well together, and left the blade impressively sharp, but with very thin metal at the edge, so it would not stand up to heavy use: the first few impacts against a parrying blade, shield, or armor would dull his sword very quickly and could easily dent or chip the edge.
But with Skinny's lack of muscles, he himself would not last long in melee combat anyway.
So he figured the cost to this approach was minimal, and the benefits were worth it. His first few blows in combat - the only blows he could expect to deliver, if it came to that - would be far more effective than if he'd sharpened his blade in a more traditional manner.
Skinny considered the blade, and the troll's kicking legs, then carefully reached out with the sword and set the point against the wall, leaving the edge towards the troll's feet and just barely past the furthest point that Skinny thought the troll could reach.
Then he waited.
If his estimate was right, he had left a mark on the wall where his sword-point rested, and that mark would tell them the safety zone.
And if he was wrong, the trolls feet would hit his blade with two effects.
First, it would score a mark in the far wall, as the blade got shoved away from the troll's feet and the sword-point scored a line on the wall. That line would indicate the troll's real reach.
And second, the troll would get his foot cut, and that may teach it not to kick.
A few minutes later, when Durog came back carrying the last two mirror stands, complete with mirrors, there were several marks on the far wall, and Skinny's sword had a couple new chips and dents in it.
Skinny explained while they both worked on setting up a mirror on its stand, and carefully aimed it down the long hallway at the next mirror positioned there.
It did not light up, since the dwarves working the other end of the chain of mirrors had not yet connected the chain all the way to the sunlight on the surface. They were working on that as Durog and Skinny worked on this end.
Durog nodded approval, and said "I can see your point - the troll isn't kicking as much anymore".
Skinny eagerly agreed "Yah, it took several tries but he seems to have learned that - these trolls seem to heal more rapidly than average by the way. Anyway, now we can set up this last mirror without as much risk. And I have a refinement to the technique that I think will work."
He gingerly laid the edge of his blade against the length of the troll's leg, taking care to stand in a position where he would not be hurt if the troll surprised him and kicked anyway.
The troll's leg went still.
"See? He knows the feel of that edge and realizes that if he kicks, there is no way to avoid being cut. I'll hold this position while you set up the last mirror."
"Yes Boss," Durog smirked.
They both chuckled at the implied role reversal, and Durog got to work.
He certainly was no stranger to hard work, and this wasn't even hard.
It didn't take long to set up the last mirror.
But as Durog was double-checking the alignment one last time, some wild urge took the troll and he kicked hard.
Skinny had been holding firmly onto his sword: he had held onto it through several previous unexpected impacts with this troll and knew what to expect.
But this kick was harder - it embedded the sword completely - all but the handle - in the troll's leg and sent Skinny flying.
Luckily Skinny hit only the wall - not any of the mirrors nor Durog - and though he crumpled, he was still a dwarf and even skinny underdeveloped dwarves are tough. He would be fine.
The troll's kick missed Durog and the mirrors, but it still had Skinny's sword embedded in it when the dwarves at the other end completed their alignments and sunlight, reflected down a chain of mirrors all the way from the surface, shone in the hallway and directly on the troll.
The effect was dramatic.
With a sharp crack like a stone being broken in two, the troll stopped moving and became gray and stiff, having turned to stone.
Skinny sat up and said "Well, what's the phrase for that again? 'Successful, within acceptable margins for error'?"
They both chuckled while Skinny, without thinking about it, walked over and pulled his sword free out of the stone which recently had been a troll.
The sword came free easily.
It should not have, since it had been encased in stone.
Skinny had braced to tug it free from flesh - not yet having fully processed that that flesh was now stone - and went off-balance as the sword moved more easily than he had expected it to.
The sword swung around, with the energy of the yank Skinny had given it, and swished cleanly through a metal support rod on the mirror stand.
Skinny's sword was now glowing green.
He and Durog watched in awe as the chips, nicks, and dents in the blade repaired themselves.
"Those nicks look like they are healing the same way a troll's flesh does when cut."
"Did you see what it did to that metal rod? That's almost a half-inch thick and yet it is cut as cleanly as if it were cheese."
"Try it again."
Skinny tried a careful cut at a large wooden club laying nearby - discarded as the trolls initially chased the dwarves down this tunnel.
The sword cut clear through it, scored a mark in the stone floor beneath it, and dumped Skinny on his butt, due to the unexpected force of the blow.
They gazed at the gash in the floor.
"I didn't swing it that hard - it sorta swung itself. No, that's not right. It multiplied the force I put into it with a result like a troll had swung it."
"Wow."
"And see, the blade should have been severely dulled and nicked by that,
but it isn't. It is just as sharp as ever."
They both pondered that for a while, then Durog spoke. "Skinny, I don't think you're going to be exempt from melee combat anymore. Not with that sword. With it, you can fight like the best of them. Better, even. It clearly has absorbed the magic inherent in the troll as the troll died. You'll be famous for discovering that too."
"But," protested Skinny, "killing a troll doesn't make a weapon magic, at least not that I've heard of. We've been fighting them for centuries and more, and something like that would have been recorded in the sagas."
"Ah," responded Durog, "but how many instances do you recall of a troll being impaled as sunlight hit it? I can't think of any. Maybe it's the combination of both at once."
Skinny nodded, then asked. "Do you think the king will let me keep it?"
"Oh yes," snorted Durog, "He's not like those human kings you hear about who do the 'see, want, take' sequence you hear about that so often results in their kingdoms falling or revolting. Our king has honor. And we have traditions. The discoverer has rights that no one dares trample on. If he tried, it would be put in the sagas and he would be remembered and mocked for it forever!"
"You're right. Thanks." Skinny murmured as he considered his sword as if it were new. In a way, it was.
"Of course," Durog continued, "That doesn't mean he won't want one like it. No, he will want as many as possible. Luckily the process seems fairly clear - impale the troll, then turn it to stone, and the magic making him heal so fast, and super strong, will drain into the weapon. We can do that. How many trolls did you say are stuck in my tunnels?"
Skinny looked up from his sword. "Twenty one all told - a whole village attacked the spur fort. They even brought along a few orcs to do things for them in daylight, if needed. Just a few, by orc standards - maybe 50. The trolls chased our garrison out of the spur fort and down into the tunnels. The garrison guys said it took some work to get them all stuck - they kept wanting to give up and leave. So the dwarves had to keep coming back and taunting them. But the monsters did all get stuck. Well, all but the last 3, which made it to one of your 'squisher' rooms, where the doors sealed and the whole ceiling descended and crushed them."
"Hmmm...", mused Durog. "the rest will be easy - set them up just like this one for making magic weapons, then after the trolls turn to stone, tunnel around them to open up the passage and free up the troll stone. I wonder if this troll stone," he poked the stone that had been a troll, "will self heal like other troll stone does, when properly treated and processed, or if it lost that magic as it drained into your sword?"
"We'll find out." Skinny confidently asserted. "And either way, we have uses for it, though troll stone is awesome for defensive doors and walls, and high-wear things like bridges."
"Yup," Durog said absently. Then "I've got it, we'll block the doors to the squisher room - all but one, then set up a chain of mirrors for sunlight when needed, and set traps to do the proper impaling. Then winch up the ceiling, wait for them to heal, leave, and get impaled on the traps. Then we enable the mirrors!"
"Yup, that should do it."
It did, and they got several nice magic daggers out of the traps.
When they were done, the king was quite happy with them, and even commissioned some new projects.
The dwarves of Lonely Mountain had several new magic weapons with trollish properties, and the king made sure to send word to other dwarvish communities, in hopes more dwarves would come live here.
None of the other new weapons were as nice as Skinny's.
They'd learned that a troll's magic was distributed among however many weapons were lodged in it when it turned to stone: or all the magic went into one weapon if there was only one in the troll. And the bigger the troll, the more magic he had.
Skinny had been granted an honorific by the king and was now known as Durathror Sword-Shaver.
They'd had to look up his actual name, because someone with an honorific couldn't just be called by his nickname anymore.