by dlloyd

A while ago an idea occurred to me of a way in which several aspects of dwarven nature could be made to conflict with one another, and I’ve been meaning to cobble together a short story to explore the possibilities a bit. Well, today I finally forced myself to write the thing!

This was written quickly, amidst distraction, and has barely been edited – meaning that I’ll probably re-read it in the morning and absolutely hate it. Here it is anyway, though!

Wetbeard Druni reached for his mug of ale, careful not to damage or drip on the delicate old maps spread before him on the table. Watered-down mannish stuff, this drink was, but it was the best he could hope for in this little coastal town so far from home. At least this tavern was still quiet at this time of day, so he could eat, drink, and pore over these documents in relative privacy before heading down to the docks to do further testing on the machine.

The dwarf seldom took notice of the comings and goings in the room when he was engrossed in his work; thus, he failed to note the sound of a new group of patrons entering the tavern and approaching the bar. But when a familiar, gruff voice called to the barkeep for ale, Druni looked up. Rer Axgrind was a boor, a braggart, and a bully; just about the last dwarf Druni wanted to run into. The three brownbeards who accompanied Rer were not familiar, but their choice of companions spoke volumes about them. No doubt they were passing through this town of men on some trade errand or other.

Druni reached for one of the maps; maybe if he held it up and sat silently behind it, Rer would miss his presence. “Druni? Druni Foesmiter?” Too late. “Greetings, Rer,” Druni said, forcing indifference into his tone rather than the disdain he felt. “It is you! Good old Wetbeard!” Druni fought the urge to outwardly cringe at the sound of that tiresome nickname. “Druni here left the Blue Mountains in search of a career in the Gondorian navy!” Rer joked to the other dwarves, ending his statement with that annoying guffaw sound he often made.

“He’s a dwarf who wishes he was a fish, that’s what they say! It’s unnatural, it is! Have ye learned to swim yet, Wetbeard?” Druni tried to ignore the foursome of laughing dwarves. He calmly stood and rolled up his maps, then stuffed them into a leather satchel and slung it over his back. “Excuse me. I have work to do.” He started for the door, but the other dwarf imposed himself between Druni and the exit. “What’s the matter, Wetbeard? Been out of the water too long? Drying up?” Druni sighed resignedly. Then, in a swift, fluid motion, he snatched at Rer’s beard with one hand while with the other reaching for a knife that hung from the belt of one of Axgrind’s nameless companions.

Rer, pulled off-balance, toppled forward onto the tavern table just as Druni had intended. He was further startled by the sound of the knife embedding itself deeply into the table’s surface among the beard hair just inches from his chin. Before he could recover the presence of mind to defend himself, he found his beard tied tightly in multiple knots around the knife blade. “I remind you,” Druni said, glaring at all four newcomers, “that unlike some dwarves I did not inherit my surname from family. I earned the title Foesmiter. Do not make yourselves my foes, or you may discover how I earned it.” With that, he marched out the door. The trip to the docks - and the small, rented shed there where he kept his equipment - could have been a shorter one, had Druni been willing to walk along the water’s edge.

But contrary to Rer’s accusations, he shared the same distrust of the sea that all dwarves exhibited, and though his work demanded he spend time near the water, he was not yet ready to casually stroll on the beach! This, and his natural, understandable fear of boats would have to be overcome at some point for him to succeed, but there was still plenty of time to pursue that. There was plenty of time because he had so much to learn, so much to research, even assuming he could get the machine working! Already he was studying men’s trick of navigating by the stars, and their way of using criss-crossed lines on a map to determine the exact location of a place.

It was difficult to even think in such terms, especially since such studies brought with them a constant reminder of the need to actually go out on a ship onto open water if he ever wanted to bring his dream to fruition. A grand dream it was, though, and his belief that he could achieve it drove him to master these talents which no dwarf had even tried to understand before him. If they knew his plans, those fools back at the tavern would be rushing here themselves, racing to be the first.

It sometimes pained him not to end the abuse and shed the “Wetbeard” nickname by explaining himself, but for now he must keep his goals secret. When he reached his destination, he withdrew a key from his belt and opened the heavy lock he himself had made. The shed’s door swung open with a creak to reveal a stack of supplies, a small work table, and the machine: the one item without which all his planning and learning would be in vain. Druni had forged an armor-like, full-body suit, its metal plates as light and thin as he dared without compromising their strength. Its helmet covered the wearer’s entire head, with a visor of sturdy glass bolted tightly to the front for visibility.

The joints of the suit were made watertight – he hoped – using a stretchy, flexible substance some of the locals had learned to make from tree sap of some variety. He had initially tried to use waxes of various consistencies, but those had proved always either too brittle or too soft to be workable. The suit was man-sized, as it was from among men that he was most likely to find an assistant crazy enough to actually wear the thing – another problem to be resolved in time. From the helmet ran a long, hollow tube of leather, dipped in that same substance to seal it. He had wondered if it would be possible to make a better air tube by shaping it entirely from the tree sap; that was yet another item he would have to put more thought into.

The final piece of the machine was wooden framework incorporating a winch, so he could lower the suit into the water one-handed, and a simple bellows which connected to the tube and pushed air down into the suit so its wearer could breathe. Druni hauled the entire apparatus out onto a long pier, fighting his own fear of the water all the while. He checked all the joint seals; he clamped, cinched, and tightened every connection, and, when he was finally satisfied, tied a rope to a ring on the suit’s torso and slowly, almost gingerly turned the crank on the winch to lower the suit into the water.

He used his left hand to pump at the bellows as he did so; he’d learned early on that air pressure had to be applied at all times to keep water from forcing its way in. When the rope line slackened, he knew the suit had touched bottom – a depth greater than the height of twelve dwarves standing shoulder upon shoulder. He would have to test at much greater depths, of course, but that, too, would come later. He pumped the bellows until his arms grew sore - which took much longer than it had during his early tests – and finally began cranking the winch to lift the suit back toward the surface to see how it had faired.

By its weight coming up he could tell that it had taken on some water, but it was encouraging at least to realize that it held much less this time that it had the last – he was making progress! Thinking back, he realized he had come a long way in a short time – only a few months ago, the suit had almost always surfaced missing the helmet or one or more limbs, sending him back to the forge to remake the lost pieces. His water-armor emerged intact, but he could see right away that a gap had opened around the knee joint, where perhaps there was a flaw in the seal.

If he acted quickly, Druni might be able to patch that today and still have time left to run another test before dark! Before turning back toward the shed to mix another batch of the sap-sealant, he stretched his sore arms and tired back and gazed out across the small harbor toward the ocean beyond. They were out there somewhere. Gabilgathol. Tumunzahar. Belegost and Nogrod, they would be called by such among the Eldar as still remembered, and by men whose legends still held stories of those ancient realms.

Lost when the world was broken in the War of Wrath, the ruins of those great dwarven kingdoms of Beleriand waited out there somewhere beneath the waves, empty of life but surely filled with treasures crafted with such surpassing skill that not even the sea itself could devour them! Druni would find them; the wealth and glory of the dwarves of old would be restored, and his own name would resound in legend next to those of the Seven Fathers themselves! “I will conquer you!” Druni shouted his vow to the ocean. Then he turned and made his way back to land – nervously, for there was still water all around him – and his thoughts returned to the preparation of tree sap.