Chapter 20: Ch. 020 – (Then) The First Stop

The trip to the first junction took less than a day according to Boriv, but with the nightmares it felt longer. Keeping track of time on the train was impossible. The darkness was uniform and featureless, and conversation was close to impossible with all the mechanisms clattering and vibrating so loudly that Jonathan sometimes couldn’t hear the howling of the wind as it blew by the train. Instead for mile after mile they charged along into the endless night of the underways. At times they slowed to navigate tight turns or stopped completely to check the track for a right away or to check a switch. At least that’s what Boriv told him they were doing, but to Jonathan it was all the same. He would sleep fitfully for a while, wake up to the feeling of some part of his body cramping, and then after he soothed it, he would try to go back to sleep even though he knew there was only a different sort of darkness waiting there for him in his dreams. 

The dreams were a whole separate problem. He’d had them before they boarded the train, but now each night was a different flavor of awful. Sometimes he dreamed of his father. Sometimes he dreamed of the masacre, of his brother berating him, or of the manor burning. Mostly he dreamed about how pathetic he was to do anything about any of it though. That was his real fear apparently. Not that terrible things had happened, but that he could have stopped them if only he’d been stronger or less afraid. Every scrap of sleep he stole now came with it’s own random terror, but enduring that was something he had to do. He deserved that much. Shying away from sleep just because he couldn’t accept his own cowardice would have been just one more example of it, so he faced his fears in this one small way. He would have at least, if only sleep wasn’t so hard to come by in the cramped box he was stuck inside of. 

He couldn’t say which chased away sleep more - the knowledge that he was hundreds of feet underground and sinking, the way the cars would sometimes jerk like they’d struck something instead of just shaking and rattling like usual, or the foul air that they were forced to breathe. At first Jonathan had thought that the air was an issue with the engine’s exhaust, blowing smoke into the carriage as it barreled along on its track, but it persisted even after they stopped for some time. It was stale, smelling of smoke and mildew, and he could barely tolerate it. He sometimes suffered from allergies when they were cutting hay, this provoked a similar reaction, making his eyes water and his throat swell. It was a minor thing, but it still managed to make the day worse than it already was.

By the time they finally arrived at the crossroads station that Boriv mentioned before, every part of Jonathan’s body ached, and his ass had fallen asleep because it had been so long since he’d last moved. He stood on the stone platform, doing his best to stretch while Boriv ordered the dwarves handling the luggage about. Then he followed his master down what looked like the place's only street before stopping in front of a building made from brick and heavy timbers. Even though Jonathan couldn’t read the sign, it looked an awful lot like an inn to him, which was exactly what it turned out to be, when they walked inside with their porters. 

From the outside of the establishment Jonathan had heard the sounds of cutlery and crockery as well as half a dozen conversations, but all that noise stopped as soon as he stepped into the room. You could have heard a coin drop in that moment. Ten seconds later the shock had dissipated at some unseen signal and everything was back to normal as the two dozen dwarves returned to their own affairs, but Jonathan didn’t let go of it quite so easily. “What was all that about,” he whispered to Boriv as they walked to the counter. 

“We don’t see yer kind very often this deep,” the dwarf said matter of factly before he brushed off Jonathan and started talking to the innkeep in their incomprehensib native tongue, leaving Jonathan to measure the truth of those words against his alien surroundings. Nothing about this room, or any part of this crossroads that he’d seen so far spoke to being built with man in mind. The ceilings were too low, the furniture was too small, and every room was much too dim. This room was lit the same way the car had been with small glow stones rather than with oil lamps or candles. That made a sort of sense, Jonathan supposed, as they seemed to stay lit much longer than the lights he was used to, but he found their light far less pleasing. It was too thin and faint and as he was finding out now, most of the colors they came in were ugly. The ones on the street outside and the ones here in the inn had a distinctly blue cast to them. 

Jonathan tried to see what the dwarves seated around them were eating, but in the dim light, none of it looked particularly appetizing. Before he could make out any details though, Boriv pulled him away and they set up in a corner of the common room. “Two eighths for a room?” Boriv fumed quietly. “Who does he think he is?”

“Is that a lot?” Jonathan asked. He knew it was a quarter of a crown of course. A room in the inn back in Dalmarin might be had for four paupers which was something like a fifth of this price. He didn’t really know how much things should cost in a place like this though.

“It’s enough that we’ll sleep here in the common room until our train gets here. That’s only a watch and a half from now so it aint worth the coin for a real bed.” Jonathan did that math quickly enough. The dwarves divided their days into three watches of eight hours each rather than the way men divided the day into halves of twelve hours each. He’d never asked why they did it beyond the fact that they loved the number eight so much, but he was sure there was a reason if he took the time to find out. Right now it didn’t matter though. Right now what mattered was that they were stuck here for the next twelve hours. 

“And ye don’t even want to know what the chiselin bastard is charging us for food,” Boriv said to on one in particular as he sat down at the table nearest their things. A few minutes later a waitress brought out two large mugs, a pair of dishes, and a loaf of bread that Boriv split between them. Jonathan realized only after the woman had left that she was the first female dwarf he’d ever seen. She didn’t look so different from a young woman on the surface, he decided, just bustier, and with the same proportions as dwarves. Intellectually he’d always been sure they existed, but practically it was hard to imagine what a lady might look like when the men of their race were known for their big bushy beards. 

Jonathan looked at the thick lumpy soup. It might have been the least appetizing thing he had ever considered eating. It smelled a little sour, but the light made it look almost gray. He looked from the bowl to Boriv and opened his mouth, but before he could complain the old dwarf said, “Don’t ask what’s in it. Just eat it. It’s fine.” Boriv was already attacking his meal viciously, and hadn’t died yet, so after another few seconds of poking at it, Jonathan hazarded a bit and had to admit it was fine. It could have used more salt and less of whatever the pickled meat was, but he’d certainly eaten worse before. 

After he was a few mouthfuls in Boriv finally volunteered, “It’s a potage. Ye’ll eat plenty of the stuff down here. Stores well. This one is pickled pork, potatoes, and mushroom I think.”

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“What else do dwarves eat?” Jonathan asked, taking a drink from the tankard. He’d feared that Boriv had gotten him one of those horribly strong dwarven ales, but he’d wisely chosen to get him water instead. 

“The same things as humans mostly,”  Boriv said, wiping foam from his ale off of his beard. “Just shipped further and only half as fresh. Yer servants get yer meat fresh from the butcher the night you eat it, but to get that same cut down here it has to be smoked, pickled, canned, or salted.”

“Canned?” Jonathan asked. He’d heard the term before in conversations at the station, but he hadn’t known they were talking about food. 

“Just another way of preservin food,” Boriv answered dismissively. “Storin it is the easy part. It’s makin it taste good once ye are ready to eat it that’s hard. Down here we use different herbs and spices to mask that - so stuff’s going to look and taste a little different, but almost all our food comes from the same farms yers does, so ye have nothin to worry about.” 

“Well that’s a relief,” Jonathan said finally digging into his meal with real gusto. “I was worried it was going to be boiled goblin or something.”

“Well ye could eat a gobbler if you like, though it would be close to the worst mistake of yer life,” Boriv chuckled without looking up at him, “Wouldn kill ye or anythin of course. They just taste awful. Like Garbage boiled in acid. Better to starve to death honestly.” 

“Have you ever eaten one,” Jonathan asked. Now he was curious. In the years he’d worked under Boriv he had learned very little about him, and though he’d always been curious there’d never been a good time to ask many questions. At least not as good as a dwarven tavern hundreds of feet underneath the ground. 

“I’ve done a lot of things to survive lad,” Boriv answered cryptically, taking another drink. “Sometimes ye eat the monster or it eat’s ye. It’s as simple as that. Now eat yer food before it gets cold.”

They ate in silence for a while after Boriv had put a nail firmly in the idea of getting to know him better, leaving Jonathan all the time in the world to get lost in his thoughts. He studied the dim world around him between bites - from the small wooden utensils to the art of the walls, none of it felt quite right. Sometimes that was because it wasn’t designed for him, but other times like with the art, it was because the perspective seemed off. A human painter might have used a greater depth of field or more variety in their brush strokes, but whatever dwarf had painted this had painted it for other dwarves, and so it came away looking… alien. That was the only word to describe it. Everything about this world was alien, and it was unapologetically so. 

“I’m going to go talk to some people,” Boriv said finally, before Jonathan had a chance to finish his meal. “Ye wait here and don’t get into any trouble and I’ll be back in a while.” Jonathan had his mouth full when Boriv made his pronouncement, so by the time he’d finished chewing, he was alone at the table. It took him a while to notice that without his escort, the other dwarves were paying him fractionally more attention than they had before, but still no one bothered him, and he did his best to studiously ignore them. 

When Jonathan was done eating the waitress came and took their dishes and he had another chance to see how pretty she was before she vanished into the kitchen. Then he sat down against his trunk and enjoyed the feeling of being warm and full for the first time in what felt like days. He had no idea what he’d eaten but it had really hit the spot. He fell asleep on the floor in front of their pile of luggage before his master returned.

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