The Fortress of the Hidden

The battle in the pass had been won, but the cost was steep. The Raven Clan—cold, exhausted, and mourning their dead—huddled in the rocky defile as Lord Osric WindHammer stood before the sheer, icy face of the mountain. Caer Y Cudd. Home.

It presented no gate, no door, only an unbroken cliff face.

"Malach," Osric ordered, his voice raw. The Ranger stepped forward. "You found the pass. Now, find the door."

Malach and his 'Fist' of Rangers ran their hands over the frozen rock, searching for the seams their ancestors had cut. It was Cynraeg, the Junior Stonepriest, who found it. He pressed his bare palms against a section of stone that looked no different from any other.

"She remembers us," he whispered.

Cynraeg closed his eyes, his breath frosting in the air. He chanted in the old tongue, not of opening, but of returning. The mountain groaned. A seam, invisible seconds before, cracked open, grinding stone on stone.

The first breath from the hold was a putrid stench of decay, a decade of filth, and the dry, dusty smell of old bones.

"Rangers, front," Malach commanded.

He and Artur led the way, crossbows raised. The grand entrance hall was a graveyard. Goblin and Ratkin skeletons were everywhere, evidence of a brutal, forgotten war for the scraps of the hold after the Dwarfs had fled. But it was silent. The enemy had moved on, believing the fortress to be nothing more than a tomb.

"Clear," Malach called.

Lord Osric stepped inside, his boots crunching on verdigris-coated bronze. He looked at the defiled statues of his ancestors, their stone eyes staring blankly. "We are home," he growled. "Now, we make it ours."

The re-inhabitation began not with a cheer, but with a cough. The air was thick and dead.

"The fans," Osric ordered. "Get the great ventilation fans working before we choke on our own history. Warsmiths! To the engine rooms!"

A team of artificers, their hammers now tools of repair, descended into the mountain's depths. The hold's lifeblood was its air, and the great fans, marvels of Dwarf engineering, were rusted solid. For three days, the clang-clang-clang of hammers on metal was the only sound. It was the sound of a heart being forced to beat again.

Then, a shudder. A deep, mechanical groan echoed up from below, followed by a rush of sound like a rising gale. A blast of stale air, thick with dust and spores, rushed out of the main hall, and a second later, a torrent of sweet, cold mountain air rushed in. Dwarfs, their faces caked in grime, took their first deep breath of home.

With air came the noise. The hold, silent for so long, now "echoed to the sound of the Dwarfs."

Every clan-member was put to work. The "decade of filth" was scraped from the floors, shoveled from the living quarters, and carted to the refuse shafts. The great cisterns were unblocked, and fresh spring water was channeled to wash the halls.

As the stone was slowly revealed, Cynraeg led the Stonepriests to the central shrine. The altar to Dianek, Goddess of the Underworld, had been used as a Ratkin midden. With solemn duty, the priests cleansed it, relit the ancient forge-brazier, and reconsecrated the hold. They gave thanks to the stone, to the heart of the mountain, for keeping its embrace for them.

By the end of the first week, the hold was habitable. Lord Osric sat on the Opal Throne, no longer a refugee, but a Lord in his own hall. He called his council.

"We are hidden," Osric said, "but we are not safe. We need steel, we need ale, and we need allies. We have a guerrilla war to fight, and we cannot do it alone."

He turned to his most trusted Thanes. "You," he said to a scarred Stoneclaw Rider, "fly to Cwl Gen. Find Sveri Egilax. Tell him the Raven Clan holds the north-east flank. Tell him we have returned to Caer Y Cudd. We need reinforcements—Berserkers, Brock Riders, anything he can spare to help us hold this ground."

The Rider slammed a fist to his chest and was gone, his raven launching from the newly cleared eyrie high on the mountain's peak.

"And you," Osric said to Malach. "You know the lands of our exile. Take your 'Fist'. Go back to Helgarth. Find a ship to Estacarr. Go to Bowland. Find the Brock and Bear clans. Tell them what we have done. Tell them the Halpi Mountains are breathing again. It is time for all Free Dwarfs to come home."

Malach nodded, the weight of the task settling on him. "And what of the Imperials, my Lord?"

A grim laugh escaped Osric. "Let Bannick Kholearm waste his words on Golloch. That King will send us nothing but demands for taxes. Our hope lies with the Free Dwarfs. Our war of reconquest begins with us."

With the messengers dispatched, Osric turned to his Warsmith. "The smithies. I want them roaring. Light the forges. We have Ironclad to armor and weapons to craft."

He then looked to his Brewmaster, who was already inspecting the great vats. "And you. I want the breweries at full output. A Dwarf cannot fight for his home if he hasn't the taste of it in his mouth."

Soon, a new sound joined the echoes of repair: the roar of the great bellows, the CLANG-HISS of the Warsmith forges, the rumble of mining carts as the first Dwarfs returned to the mines, and the sweet, bubbling gurgle of the breweries.

Caer Y Cudd was no longer a tomb. It was a fortress. And it was alive.