The Three Peaks: Part 3 - The Struggle of Sparkbrook
The Fortress of Desperation
Sparkbrook had been founded five years ago as an act of hope bordering on madness. Thirty dwarves had been sent to establish a settlement in the deep mountains, far from established dwarven civilization, with minimal supplies and the expectation that they would “make it work.”
They had nearly all died instead.
The first winter had been catastrophic. Poor planning, limited supplies, an unexpected siege by goblins—the fortress had been on the edge of complete collapse when reinforcements finally arrived from the parent settlement. Seventeen dwarves had perished.
But the survivors had persisted. And slowly, gradually, impossibly, Sparkbrook had grown.
By Year 150, it held a population of forty-seven dwarves. The fortress was cramped, its layout awkward and inefficient (built by necessity, not design), its defenses makeshift and frequently in need of repair. The dwarves here lived with a constant awareness of scarcity: every stone, every scrap of food, every tool was precious and finite.
Mira Stonecarver stood in what was generously called the main hall—a rough chamber carved from stone with minimal ornamentation, functioning as meeting place, dining area, and emergency refuge. She was forty-two years old, strong-backed, with hands that bore the calluses of someone who had swung a pickaxe and a mason’s hammer for most of her life.
She was also the fortress overseer, a role she had never sought and had been forced into after the previous leader suffered a psychological break. Now, four years into her tenure, she bore the weight of every dwarven life in Sparkbrook like a physical burden.
“The food stores are lower than last week,” her chief accountant, Oska, reported grimly. They stood alone in the hall, reviewing the quartermaster’s records. “The fishing populations have declined. The fishing labors are producing thirty percent less than they were at this time last year.”
“Can we supplement with hunting?” Mira asked.
“The forests are picked clean within reasonable distance. To get better game, we’d need to send hunters three days’ journey north, and we can’t spare the labor.”
Mira closed her eyes. It was always like this. Every decision was a calculation of impossible choices. Food against labor. Defense against comfort. Survival against sustainability.
“We’ll reduce rations by five percent for everyone except the soldiers and laborers,” Mira decided. “They need to maintain strength for their work. Everyone else tightens their belts.”
Oska made a note. He didn’t protest—he knew as well as Mira that they were managing scarcity, not solving it.
The Engineer’s Miracle
As Oska left, another dwarf entered the hall: Erith Pickjaw, Sparkbrook’s chief engineer and, in Mira’s opinion, the only reason the fortress still stood.
Erith was brilliant in the way that some dwarves were brilliant—not from training or study, but from a kind of intuitive understanding of how mechanisms worked, how water flowed, how pressure built and released. In five years, Erith had transformed Sparkbrook from a barely-defensible hole in the ground into something approaching a fortress.
The defensive walls now held multiple layers. Water had been diverted from the underground river to create a moat and a fallback water supply. Mechanisms had been installed to control stone-fall traps and seal breach points. The workshop areas had been reorganized for maximum efficiency. It was Erith’s work that kept the fortress alive as much as any dwarf’s.
“Mira,” Erith said, her tone suggesting she had news. “We have a problem and a solution, in that order.”
“Tell me the problem,” Mira said.
“The main supports in the deep levels are showing stress fractures. I think there was minor seismic activity—nothing dramatic, but enough to put strain on the load-bearing walls. If we ignore it, in two to three years the entire eastern wing could collapse.”
Mira felt her stomach drop. “How much work to repair it?”
“Significant. Three to four months of intensive labor. And we’d need to reroute the caravan traffic to the western passages during that time, which means less efficient resource distribution and slower transport of goods.”
“Which means we lose resources we can’t afford to lose,” Mira said flatly.
“Yes,” Erith confirmed. “Which is where the solution comes in. I received word from the trading post—there’s a caravan from the western settlements arriving in two weeks. A large one. If we negotiate correctly, we might be able to import additional food supplies and trade goods to tide us over the repair period.”
“From where? We don’t have the capital for major imports.”
“No,” Erith agreed. “But we have something better. We have ore. The deep vein you authorized me to explore three months ago? It’s richer than initial surveys suggested. We could export processed ore—bars of steel, copper, tin—at rates that would provide significant trade value.”
Mira felt a flicker of hope. “How soon can you process it?”
“If I redirect labor from other projects, two weeks. Exactly when the caravan arrives.”
The Scout’s Warning
They were planning the resource reallocation when a guard rushed into the hall, dirt under his fingernails and urgency in his step.
“Overseer,” he said, breathless. “The eastern scouts have returned early. They reported… unusual activity to the north. Military formations. An army.”
Mira and Erith exchanged glances.
“An army?” Mira repeated carefully. “Whose army?”
“Unknown. They didn’t get close enough for clear identification, but the scouts report the formation is too large and too organized to be goblins. The estimate is two hundred soldiers, possibly more. They’re moving south and east, on a trajectory that would bring them through our territory.”
The hall seemed to close in around them.
“How long until they reach us?” Mira asked.
“Five weeks, maybe six. Maybe less if they increase their pace.”
Mira stood from the table, her mind already racing through implications. Two hundred soldiers. Sparkbrook had perhaps twenty soldiers, most of them farmers and laborers who trained in weapons only part-time.
“Get me the military records,” she said to the guard. “Then summon all officers to the war room. Erith, I need an assessment of our defensive capacity and how much of the repair work can be paused.”
As they moved to action, Mira caught Erith’s eye.
“We’re going to have to choose,” Erith said quietly. “Fix the fortress or defend it. We can’t do both.”
“Not yet,” Mira said. “First we find out what that army is doing. Maybe they’re just passing through.”
But even as she said it, she didn’t believe it. Armies didn’t move through dwarven territory by accident. And an army of two hundred moving toward a fortress of forty-seven dwarves was not a good omen.
The Fortress Prepares
Over the next days, Sparkbrook transformed. The engineers worked frantically to reinforce what defenses they had. Able-bodied dwarves who had never held a weapon received hasty training. The central stores were reorganized for siege consumption. Scouts were sent out on constant surveillance.
And in her small office carved from stone, Mira wrote letters.
To Stellarim, to the parent settlement, to the dwarven kingdom that had sent them into this godforsaken mountain five years ago. Requests for aid, for reinforcements, for supplies.
All of which would take months to arrive, if they arrived at all.
She wrote a second set of letters, these to the trading companies that dealt in military contracts, offering payment for mercenary support. Offers she wasn’t sure the fortress could actually afford.
By night, she walked the ramparts with Erith, studying the mountains to the north, watching for movement, for the glint of armor, for the smoke of an approaching army.
“We might not survive this,” Erith said once, quietly, as they stood in the darkness.
“No,” Mira agreed. “We might not. But we’ll make them pay for every inch of this fortress. And we’ll buy time for the people we can save to escape.”
Erith nodded in the darkness.
Neither of them spoke of fear, though they both felt it.
Next in the series: The Three Peaks: Part 4 - The Artifact of Power