[VanimaEdhel]

Barzûn watched as the soldiers stumped into the town. Men tended to the wounded while the Dwarves attempted to clean up. The progress was slow, however. The attacking Hillmen had ruined much of the work Barzûn and the other Dwarves had accomplished before the battle. As he pushed debris away to make room for his cart, Barzûn eyed the etchings on the carved stones. For some reason, he had felt a part of his heart sink a bit lower when the Dwarves had returned to the camp and learned of the attack.

“Sir,” a young Dwarf said, panting, “The Northern Quarter is about cleared. We salvaged what stone we could, but most of it is unusable. What should we do with what we have?”

“Pile it over there,” Barzûn said. “And was there anything left standing?”

“Parts of foundations,” the young Dwarf said, looking back at the Northern Quarter, trying not to meet Barzûn’s eye. “But those will probably have to be knocked down anyway. There are large chunks taken out of them.”

Barzûn sighed. “All right. Do what you can.” The young Dwarf trotted away to his Quarter and Barzûn turned back to the rubble that he was hauling. Men continued to trickle slowly into the settlement, some more injured and some less. Other men quickly tended to their injuries, but the Dwarves pushed on with their cleaning up of the city. The beings worked as a unit, trying to efficiently make up as much lost time as they could. However, now that they lost so much workable stone, it was impossible to predict how much time it would actually take to build the city. They would certainly need more stone. The old settlement was too far away to try to cart new stone every time they needed to resupply. If only they had an area more closely situated to the camp. Barzûn squinted up into the sun and looked around. He did not know of any easily obtained stone, though. Perhaps the Hillmen could help them—but no, after this battle, the Hillmen would be in no mood to help either the Men or the Dwarves. Barzûn wondered how much damage the Hillmen had taken. He assumed that the Men had won the battle, as so many were still alive, but he did not know whether they had annihilated the Hillmen or not. For all Barzûn knew, all of the Hillmen could be dead.

“Well, at least we could have the rock from their settlement then,” Barzûn grumbled out loud, tossing a stone aside to reveal a partially smashed foundation. He swore and kicked the destroyed structure, knocking it down completely. Every now and again a Dwarf would approach cautiously, telling Barzûn of a different failure in salvaging the beginnings of the construction.

Finally, Barzûn told the Dwarf Olin to spread the word that the Dwarves were to take a break for about an hour. Barzûn sat on a pile of rubble and took out his pipe. As he exhaled a trail of smoke, Barzûn took the slabs of stone with the engravings and looked at them again. He pondered whether to tell the Men of his findings or not. Finally, stepping out of the small cloud of smoke a few minutes later, Barzûn set off to find one of the Men in charge. He would not just tell any man. The Dwarf set off, wandering through the streets to find one of the few Men he knew in camp.