Chapter 28: Ch. 028 – (Then) A Helping Hand

One morning after a breakfast of stale bread and warm beer, an engineer that Jonathan had seen around now and then came into Maxom’s office. The two had a long talk dwarvish, which wasn’t particularly unusual, but the way they kept looking at Jonathan while they did certainly was. Most dwarves pretended he wasn’t there unless they were new to the city. Jonathan grew increasingly nervous at the attention, and tried to focus on the ledgers in front of him, to distract him from whatever fresh torments awaited him at the hands of some other man hater like Fedon. Had he broken some new law, Jonathan wondered? Had they come to lock him up in whatever cell they’d kept Marcus in for all those weeks? 

Jonathan willed himself to become invisible, but it was no good. Eventually the conversation ended and the stranger walked over to him. “Alright lad - yer commin with me today,” the stranger said an accented Wenlish that was, if anything, slightly better than Boriv’s. Jonathan was shocked at this revelation. How many other dwarves were down here that were perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation that simply chose not to?

Jonathan looked to his new master for permission or explanation, but Maxom only scowled, waving his hands dismissively. “Go - go!” After that Jonathan had no choice but to obey. He expected the worst of course, but he still stood and followed the stranger out like a man condemned.

He was completely shocked when the dwarf offered him his hand. “The name’s Kaspov, and today we need yer help decidin whether or not we can repair a particularly expensive piece of kit or not on an ailing locomotive.” 

Jonathan shook Kaspov’s hand weakly, feeling the dwarf’s rough skin and thick fingers in contrast to his own hopelessly smooth hands. The hands of a boy that had never held a sword, as his brother liked to say. “I think maybe you have me confused with someone else,” Jonathan offered. “I don’t know the first thing about fixing trains…”

“Ye know it’s rude not to introduce yerself when someone else gives ye their name,” Kaspov admonished him. “And not just that, but first ye don’t introduce yerself, and then ye go on telling me about how wrong I am. This is not the way to start the day, boy. What’s say we try this again. I’m Kaspov, pleased to meet ye.” This time he didn’t stop to shake hands again, but as he kept walking Jonathan belatedly realized he was walking further into the rail yard rather than towards the temple of law, or whatever other terrible destinations lay deeper in Khaghrumer. Maybe this wasn’t some awful new trick.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan answered, moving quickly to try to keep up.”I’m Jonathan and I’m happy to help you however I can.” 

“Well,” Kaspov asked, sounding suddenly gruff. “Are ye sorry or are ye Jonathan? Make up your mind lad!” The dwarf couldn’t keep a straight face though, and after a few seconds he was laughing hard at his own joke while Jonathan struggled to keep up.

They approached a siding near the very edge of the cavern that Jonathan had never seen before the dwarf said, “This here is the overhaul yard. We do maintenance and repairs on all the engines of the region, and occasionaly work on some of the more specialized cars if something tricky comes up. It’s hard work - but it beats fightin’ gobblers or diggin’ in the mines, right?” With his last word he gave Jonathan a friendly shove that almost knocked him off his feet.

“What’s that got to do with me?,” Jonathan asked warily, still expecting some sort of trap.

“We’ll we didn’t bring ye over here for yer incredible grasp on mechanical engineering boy,” Kaspov laughed. “We just need to borrow those long skinny arms for a bit, and I figured you could do with a day or two out from under Moxom’s thumb. Surely even men like you get tired of books and scribbling after a while, don’t ye?”

“That… Well that certainly sounds interesting,” Jonathan said, surprised to find he meant it. “Just tell me what you need me to do”. This agreement led to a whirlwind of activity. Over the next few hours Kaspov explained what the basic parts of what they were working on were, as well as the names of the rest of his crew. By the end of it he couldn’t remember if valve was the name for a part of the engine or a part of the crew, and if a spanner was a tool they used or a problem he was supposed to find, but he felt like even with most of the information going right over his head he was still learning tons about how this steel behemoth worked. It was dizzying, but in a good way. For the first time in months Jonathan was learning something new, and surprised to find how much he’d missed it. 

It turned out that what Kaspov really needed was for him to roll up his sleeves and reach just as far down into the cylinders of the part called an engine as he could and tell him if he felt any roughness or cracks. This was something they usually did with something called a pressure test, but something about the way this engine was acting made that a little bit dangerous, and the dwarf wanted a more thorough inspection first. Jonathan did find cracks near the bottom on two of the holes, once he dug past the thick grease that seemed to coat everything. He couldn’t explain them well, but after he tried drawing them the dwarves caught on soon enough. 

“The block is a complete loss,” Kaspov decided, after further discussions with his crew that were utterly incomprehensible to Jonathan. Even if they’d spoken in Wenlish it would have been every bit as foriegn and incomprehensible though. He had neither the concepts nor the vocabulary for the work they were doing. Dwarf magic was far stranger than the human kinds he was used to. “We’ll have to dismantle the engine, replace the block, and then melt this one down for scrap.” 

“Sounds like you’ve got quite a job ahead of you then.” Jonathan said. 

“Me, lad? Abandoning us so soon?” Kaspov answered smiling. 

“Well, I just thought that…” Jonathan started to speak before going silent. He didn’t know what to think anymore so it would just be better if he waited to be told what to do. 

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“Maxom and I agreed that I could rent ye for a job,” the engineer clarified, “and as far as I’m concerned, that job ain’t over yet, so unless ye really want to get back to yer counting and yer scribbles…”  

“Not really,” Jonathan confessed. “If I stay in that office too many more days I might just go blind.” They both laughed at that, and for the first time in a long time Jon felt the warmth of camaraderie. 

“Well then when we finish up here for the day I’ll talk to Maxom and let him know all about the overhaul.” Kaspov couldn’t stop grinning as he spoke - like he was eager to irritate Maxom or something. 

Jonathan had no idea why the dwarf included him at first, but it was the breath of fresh air that he desperately needed. It turned out that even though he had no idea what he was doing, there were still plenty of parts of the job where his reach was a real advantage. After a week or so, most of the rest of the crew even started treating him as one of their own. Most of them only spoke the most fragmented Wenlish, but over time the manner and the atmosphere improved remarkably, even if from time to time he spotted Fedon lurking on the sidelines while he looked on with what was either suspicion or jealousy. Jonathan had no talent for reading the emotions of the stone men unless they were particularly outgoing like Kaspov. 

  It turned out that the reason for his excellent grasp of the common tongue and his brash outgoing nature had the same origin: he’d spent decades as a mercenary for the empire using the strength of his axe and his brand to save money for a proper dowry before coming back to Khagrumer to start a family and lead a quiet life. It wasn’t an uncommon choice that dwarves from poorer families and clans made apparently. Fortunately for Jonathan though, most dwarves that spent enough time among men developed a liking to them. Apparently Boriv was in the minority there. 

Kaspov was the first dwarf he told his story to about the train robbery and how he’d tried to stop it, that actually commiserated. “Ye humans will never understand the law as we do, and you shouldn’t have to try.” he agreed one day, when there were no other dwarves around to hear what was almost certainly blasphemy to most of the city dwarves that had never seen the sun. “Let the iron laws apply to stone men, and let the men above spend all day arguing about what is or isn’t just. That’s what I say.”

“I’ll tell ye something else too,” the engineer said, leaning in conspiratorially, “Our laws rely almost entirely on confession and testimony, because dwarves find it so hard to lie in the face of honor, but if ye get tangled up in the law ever again just… well, present the facts in the way that best represents ye. It’s not lying exactly, but admitting guilt is the same thing as accepting punishment here.” Jonathan took those words to heart, even if he though he was sure he would never run afoul of the law again. 

Despite their growing friendship, they spent most of their time working hard to tear apart the locomotive. It took almost a week before it was stripped down enough that they could remove the broken engine with a mechanical iron bird they called a crane. It didn’t look like any bird that Jonathan had ever seen - but they probably didn’t see many things flying down here anyway, so he didn’t try to correct them. This was the first time he’d seen ropes of woven steel, and was told it could lift the weight of 400 dwarves. That seemed impossible, but he was told there were even bigger cranes in the stone quarries where the loads were bigger than any train. 

It was only when they started putting everything back together that Fedon finally found another new reason to give him a hard time. The day they dropped the chassis he made a nuisance of himself, and after a long argument in dwarvish Kaspov told Jonathan not to worry about it. Two days later he came back again, but this time added some arguments in broken Wenlish presumably so Jonathan could know how much trouble he was in. 

“It is forbidden,” Kaspov yelled, making a spectacle of himself while the crew was busy trying to reconnect the boiler to the smokestack. “Ye may not teach outsiders our secrets. That is the law!” 

“Maybe ye should read it again,” Kaspov countered, because that ain't what it says at all. The law reads, ‘No dwarf may share secrets of our craft with anyone likely to steal them upon pain of death.’”

“He is man,” Fedon yelled back. “Of course he steal.” Several sentences in dwarvish were added after that, as if to drive the point home, but they made no sense to Jonathan. 

“Even if he knew our secrets, who exactly is he going to tell? Hmmmm?” Kaspov yelled back at his bully, “The boy doesn’t know the difference between a bolt and a rivet, but even if he did he’s exiled here for the rest of his days. As far as I’m concerned we could teach him how to make mithril and it wouldn’t do the kingdom any harm!” Jonathan was conflicted. For the first time in a long time someone was standing up for him, but he was pretty sure the engineer had just done it by calling him stupid. It didn’t matter. He would take it.

Note: Today I launched a second series. Letter of the Law will be gearing down to 3 days a week for the month, so I'm trying a couple other things to fill in the gaps. Death after Death will now be every Thursday (after an initial posting spree) https://www.scribblehub.com/series/555454/death-after-death-roguelike-isekai/ 

Let me know what you think!

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