It was a day like any other down in the mines of Járnfast. Afli was working deep in the east lodes, in one of the newer levels. It followed the iron vein further down, about eight hundred feet into the lower mountain. The tunnel he was working on had only been delved inwards for about two feet. There were no raises to the other level yet, and he barely had enough of a ledge to sit on and rest. This tunnel he was working on would lead to another ore deposit, of that Foreman Brumber was sure. Foreman Brumber was a wise dwarf and metallurgist. He worked the miners hard, but he had to. This life was not for the faint of heart, and there was little room for mistakes. There were plenty of dangers in the mines to account for that. Just the other day in the north lodes the stope on the sixteenth level had caved in, entombing five honest dwarves.
‘The foreman may not be as wise as we had thought,’ Afli said aloud to himself.
He was still in mourning, all the miners were, for they knew each other well. They counted many hundreds, but you could ask any of them to speak of the miners in another lode, and they would tell you all of their names and whether their beard hang high or low. They were iron miners, the best in Middle-Earth. The iron they dug up, would see service as weapons and armour across the lands. Some unfortunately found its way into the hands of the Enemy, to be used in grievous deeds. But that was not something the miners concerned themselves with and neither did Afli. There were enough dangers to mind as it were. Like dropping down a shaft hundreds of feet deep. Dwarves are a stocky sort, but none would live to tell the tale after a fall like that. Fortunately there was enough air in the east lodes. Of that the foreman had made sure. It was one of the larger bellows that pumped air into the tunnels and caused a current, allowing the miners to breathe. It refreshed them also, for it could get really hot down there, especially in summer.
Afli’s feet were dangling out of the main shaft as he sat on the ledge. The main shaft went further down for about a hundred feet into the slump. There was another tunnel down there, just above the waterline, that descended at a steep angle. That was what we would today call the adit, a tunnel through which excess water drifted out of the mines to join the Carnen. Sometimes when the dust crept up his beard into his mouth from all the chiseling, he would spit over the ledge and wait for the faint dripping sound to echo upwards.
Dust always found its way past his heavy brow and scruffy hairs. But this was no ordinary dust the like which you could find creeping in the corners of a house. This was dust filled with small slivers of rock, iron and rust. Everything would be covered in it in the mines and no dwarf could escape it. Luckily, the rusty scent was something they could hardly smell anymore. They worked in it, they feasted in it and they slept in it. But there was a danger in it too, and that Afli knew all too well, for his father had lost his eyesight to just that, albeit over many long years of toil in the iron mines. Every dwarf could rinse the face with a flask of water, which naturally every dwarf carried, but waters in the iron hills were red, so it only added to the smell of rust in beard and face.
To drink, many dwarves drank ale instead of the rusty water. It was not only safer to drink, it also tasted much better. The ale they drank was no stiff pint, rather something brewed quickly to stave off the sleep in their eyes and give them the courage to hammer on. Only at the end of each turn, the dwarves would pick up their tools and head for the inn to drink something finer and with more flavour. This was often ale from Erebor, or Dorwinion wine for the more well-to-do dwarves. The foreman drank wine with the other foremen.
‘The foreman and his wine. Why do my thoughts dwell thereto? I had better mind my work ere something goes amiss,’ he said in the dim light of his mounted candle.
It was not his best of days. The work was going slow and he had not done his best hammering. Núri would soon come to take his place for the day. Not that he knew how low the sun hung in the sky. It was easy to lose track of time in the mines. Only the foreman knew whether sun or moon shone outside. ‘What is with you today, you idle dwarf!’ he said angrily to himself.
When the moment came that Núri was lowered to his level, they embraced and exchanged places. He took his tools with him. Every dwarf had his own tools, that was important. Their mattocks especially, for in the wooden handle they would carve a bar for each day passed in the mines. It was just something they did. A dwarf with many mattock handles was said to be an expert miner. It was a reminder of all the hard work he had done. ‘Like that needs reminding’, Afli thought, looking at the callus on his hands. Miners do indeed look aged beyond their years, Afli being no different. His creased face and scruffy charcoal hair make him seem like an old dwarf with few winters still before him.
As he was hoisted up through the main shaft, he could see lights flickering down every tunnel. There was always light down the tunnels, however dim. ‘As long as there is light in the tunnel, there is hope,’ he always said. Indeed, those parts in the mines where the mountain no longer yielded iron were cast into darkness. They became black pits where dwarves came no more. ‘But their bellows needs to keep blowing, or else the poisonous fumes come up from the deep. We cannot have the poisonous fumes come up, not again,’ Afli said remembering.
When he came to the top of the main shaft, the foreman was busy bawling commands to miners preparing to head into the deep for the evening. But to his miners there was no difference between evening, or morning or day. There were only the mines and in the mines it was ever night.
‘Now we have a load of wood coming in by the next moon, to strengthen the outlying levels about the sixteenth in the north lode. We cannot afford another cave-in,’ said the Foreman to one of the dwarves. And as he saw Afli come towards him he said: ‘And we will need some of that wood for a fire-setting down on your level Afli. How is the digging coming along?’
‘Just fine Foreman. The rock is giving way just fine.’
‘It had better. We need a new stope down there as soon as we are able. Has Núri taken over?’
‘He has,’ said Afli, peering at him with weary eyes.
‘Good, then you may retire for the day.’
And Afli went on straight to the inn, with his mattock resting on his shoulder and his sack of tools dangling from his waist. Right before he went in, he carved another bar into the handle of his mattock. ‘Another day in the east-lodes.’ And as he said that he went on into the inn, where dwarves were sitting at stone-carven tables, on stone-carven stools.
Wood was too precious to make tables of. It was needed to build mining supports and to set fires in the deep. And there was few of it in the Iron Hills. Most of the trees had been chopped in the long years of Grór’s ancient realm, so that now, there was no forest about for many miles. Instead they had to trade for it in distant lands and haul it in carts across the red wastes. From the west and the south, they came, carrying wood from forests now also threatened by the greed of dwarves. It was a sad story, but nothing Afli could help. It was this or no more mining. And Afli knew that the mining had to go on. It just had to go on.
It was a good day to be at the inn. The cook had a new store of cured pork meat. It was better food than they were accustomed to. Everyone got a few slices, even the younger dwarrows. It was cured in good salt, too. Salt from the far south, from the Sea of Rhûn. There was never a shortage of salt in the Iron Hills, and in that they were fortunate, for salt was not easy to come by in other places of the world. But here there was great store of both salt from the mountain and salt from the sea. Of the sea salt Afli had heard that it was taken from shallow beddings of seawater at the Sea of Rhûn where the seawater dried in the hot sun, and he had always learned that this was the best of salt. Not reddish, nor odorous like the salt of the hills, but clear salt, clear almost like ice. Meat cured in this salt retained more of its flavour, even when eaten without cooking. Paired with a stiff pint, it was the closest thing to a feast that Afli could wish for. As usually the miners were served some form of porridge or stew, a meal hardly worth mentioning.
‘Sink your teeth into this, master Nalf,’ said the cook. ‘A finer meal you have not had in quite some time!’
Afli took hold of the plate he offered. There were some slices of meat on it, some goat cheese and a few pale edible roots, almost carrot-like, but fleshier. It was a good meal.
As he sat down to enjoy his food, his brother Agni entered the inn. He had come down from the forging halls, after a long day of forging great stores of iron-wrought tools, armour and weapons. Sometimes Afli would visit him while he was working and then he would help in the making of dwarf mail, a design he valued greatly. Agni now called out to him. ‘Brother!' he said. ‘Let us feast together!’ And surely, they did, and before long others joined them also, so that soon they made a throng of dwarves all sitting together to feast. There was laughter and merriment and music that evening. But it did not last overlong, for there was much work to be done in the morrow, much work to be done deep in the mines of Járnfast.
