A helmet was to protect one’s head from falling stone in a delve. A shield was for clearing rubble and deflecting rock showers. Body armor — sometimes metal and sometimes leather — was for working in the foundries, where sparks could fly, and in the finishing shops where implements might be flung from grindstones and burnishing wheels. But these could have other uses as well.
Raise your hammer and see it in a mirror. Look to the left side of your tools. Be ready to stop work and fight. It was a thing that any dwarf understood. The difference between a tool and a weapon is in the mind of the user and in the circumstances of use.
Word had already spread to the crafters’ galleries by the time Handil the Drum arrived there, carrying the great, deep-throated vibrar with which he had begun the Call to Balladine. The mighty drum was his own invention — a steel-banded barrel of tapered and curved hardwood slats, capped at each head by tightly drawn buffalo-hide leather. Within were other “heads” of various materials, each pitched to capture and amplify the resonance of the membrane before it. Oval openings around the center of the barrel broadcast its thunder when either head was struck.
Played atop the Sentinels, Handil’s drum could be heard for miles and its echoes much farther. The Thunderer was not the biggest drum in Thorin, but it was by far the most powerful.
He carried it wrapped and muted now — as the drums always were when brought within the undermountain realm.
The sun-tunnel lighted concourse leading to the crafters’ galleries was crowded, as usual, with dwarves hurrying here and there on their various errands. Handil stepped aside to let a sled crew pass. Two great Calnar horses in harness hauled an eight-foot block of hewn granite from one of the new delves while a dozen sturdy Calnar armed with prybars and mallets worked the skids. When the crew was past, Handil went on, nodding to an acquaintance now and then. Sledges rang at a side tunnel where cart rails and tow-rings were being placed for a new cable-way leading up from the farming warrens. Across the concourse, hewers and reaves were at work, fitting massive timbers into newly cut stone to expand the weavers’ stalls.
The chieftain’s order to be ready for trouble had put worried frowns on many of the faces in the concourse but had not interrupted the rhythm of the place. As always, there were Calnar everywhere, doing all kinds of things, and like every public part of Thorin, the great way was a bustling, flowing turmoil of busy dwarves.
Handil slowed his pace as he neared the shops. Here the corridors were even more crowded than usual, and it seemed everyone was carrying various tools and items of armor. Lines had formed as people waited their turns to sharpen spikes, fit wrist straps onto hammers, repair buckles on chest-guards, or mount horns or spikes on their helmets. Handil grinned at sight of a gray-haired, aging woman dragging a long-handled heavy maul taller than herself. In her free hand she carried a foot-long, curved spike as sharp as a dagger. A glance at the maul’s head told him what she intended to do. She wanted the spike welded to the trailing face of the big splitter.
She was looking to the left side of her tools.
His grin deepened, strong teeth glinting behind his dark whiskers. The venerable mother probably had not the faintest idea of who might be an enemy, he thought, but gods help the enemy who got in the way of that tool.
“Handil? I thought I saw you here!” The voice from behind made his eyes light, and he turned. Wide-set, serious eyes looked up at him from a broad, pretty face framed by reddish hair. Jinna Rockreave smiled at him, raising a finely crafted net sling. “I need a wrist strap for this,” she said, glancing at his drum. “What are you after? Blades for your drum rings?”
“Hardly.” He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very practical. I thought I might modify the mallets a bit, though.” He studied her, seeing the pleasure in her eyes at their meeting. It was like his own pleasure at seeing her. “It has been too many days since we were together, Jinna. The Call and everything … but I’ve missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you.” She nodded. “Things have been so hectic, lately, I was afraid we might not meet until our day of joining. I didn’t want to wait that long to see you.”
“Nor did I.” He was still gazing into her eyes. “I … well, I keep having troublesome dreams. Sometimes I wake up thinking we might never wed at all … that you might change your mind or something. You haven’t, have you? Changed your mind, I mean?”
“Not in a million years, Handil Coldblade,” she chuckled, then turned serious. “What is the weapon call about? Is there danger?”
“There could be,” he warned her. “Probably not, but my father is being cautious. Tolon and some of the elders are concerned. There are strange humans about who seem not to like us very much.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Who can understand humans? It’s probably nothing, but with Balladine at hand, it’s as well to be prepared.”
“I suppose. Hurry, Handil. The line is moving.”
He looked around. A gap had opened in the line outside the shops, and dozens of people were looking at the two of them, some of them grinning openly. Many of the Calnar knew Handil Coldblade, and everyone knew of him. Handil the Drum was a famous person in Thorin, not so much for being the chieftain’s eldest son — everyone was somebody’s son — but for his magnificent drum and for other things he had invented, such as the turnable vanes which now were installed in most airshafts, allowing for pleasant temperatures in any season, and the winch-operated lift stages in the keep. Throughout Thorin, Handil the Drum was a celebrity.
Most also knew of the betrothal of Handil and Jinna Rockreave, pretty daughter of Calk Rockreave. Sight of the two young dwarves so obviously engrossed in each other was amusing to many of those waiting at the stalls.
The old woman with the splitting maul raised an eyebrow and said, “If you want to be in this line, then get a move on, or we’ll go around you.”
Handil glanced again at the big maul and the spikes, then stepped back. “Go ahead, mother. What you are doing looks far more useful than anything I had in mind.”
“I can see what you have in mind,” the woman said, glancing at Jinna Rockreave. “But the shops are hardly the place for it.”
Handil grinned, conceding, and turned away. “Come and walk with me, Jinna. We can see to our tools later.”
He was so absorbed in her that he didn’t see the rail-setter approaching, carrying heavy lengths of steel on his shoulder, until the workman turned and his burden collided with the forward end of the great, muted drum slung from Handil’s shoulder. The result was stunning, almost deafening. Even swathed, the Thunderer responded to the blow on its drawn head with a throb of sound that seemed to shake the very walls of Thorin. Here and there, little showers of dust and shards of stone fell from ceilings. People staggered, their hands going to their ears. A short distance away, timbers groaned and dwarves shouted curses as the massive, unsecured framing of the weavers’ stalls shifted in its footings.
Quickly, Handil swung the drum around, wrapping his arms around the center of it to muffle its resonance. The throb died to a rumbling echo, like distant thunder. Jinna was staring at him, wide-eyed, as were others all around.
The powerful drum-tone was followed by a moment of silence all along the concourse, then shouts and babbling as people hurried about, making sure no one was hurt and looking for structural damage in the stone walls. Apparently — and luckily — there was none. Still, Handil found a crowd of Calnar facing him as he redoubled the muting wraps on his drum.