'I know how he feels,' grumbled Flint into the last of his milk.
'Barkeep, do we have to wait all day?' A scruffy-looking derro at the table behind Flint waved two empty mugs over his greasy yellow head, smacking his lips and glaring at
Moldoon.
Moldoon held up the overflowing mugs in his hands, splitting an apologetic look between the derro and Flint.
'Right away,' he called sheepishly, muttering, 'Be back in a moment,' to Flint before hurrying to the table.
'Wagondrivers,' he breathed as he returned to the bar.
The dwarf stared as his old friend absently popped two steel pieces into his cash box.
'For two mugs?' Flint asked in amazement.
Moldoon nodded, looking both incredulous and a bit ashamed. 'That's the price to them anyway. Apparently they don't get much good ale in Thorbardin, so most of the crews load up on it late in the afternoon before their night time run.' He mopped at a sweat ring on the bar. 'Business has never been better — for every business in town. Most of us merchants think the return is worth putting up with a few rowdies, now and then.' With that, Moldoon excused him self and shuffled into the kitchen to settle a dispute with the village butcher, who had called angrily from the back door.
Flint walked around the end of the bar and helped himself to a mug of ale. He dropped one steel piece onto the bar.
Suddenly cold, he shivered and headed for the fire, desper ate to return some warmth to his old bones.
When the fire failed to lift his spirit, Flint pulled from his belt pouch his sharp whittling knife and a small, rough piece of wood he'd been saving. Sometimes, when ale failed to ease his mind, only carving would help. He would forget everything except the feel of the wood in his hands as he worked life into it. Think of the wood, he told himself as he sat in front of the fire.
Like most dwarves, Flint was not much given to express ing his feelings. Not like his emotional friend Tanis, who was always tormenting himself about something. For Flint, things either were or they weren't, and there was no point worrying either way. But every now and then something could get under his skin, like the uncomfortable feelings he'd had since returning to Hillhome. Flint shivered in wardly and drew his mind back to the wood. He stayed the afternoon at Moldoon's, slowly, painstakingly shaping his lifeless piece of lumber into the delicate likeness of a hum mingbird. Moldoon refilled his mug now and then, and soon all was forgotten in the joy of his creation.
The tavern filled steadily with more hill dwarves, and more wagondrivers replaced the previous group. Flint scarcely noticed much beyond his sphere, though, so en grossed was he in the finishing details of his bird.
'So, it's good old Uncle Flint.'
Flint nearly sliced off one of the hummingbird's intri cately detailed wings. The sarcastic voice at his shoulder sounded like animated ice. Basalt. Flint slowly looked up.
His nephew loomed, glaring at him with a humorless half smile on his red-bearded jaw. 'It's a bit early for drink, isn't it?' Hint asked, wishing he could bite his tongue off the sec ond the patronizing words left his mouth.
Basalt eyed Flint's own mug. 'That's not milk you're drinking, either.'
Flint set down his tools and sighed, swallowing the irrita tion he felt because of his ruined good mood. 'Look, pup,
I've always had a soft spot for you.' Flint eyed him squarely now. 'But if you keep using that tone of voice with me, I'm going to forget you're family.'
Basalt shrugged, taking an empty chair near his uncle's. 'I thought you already had.'
Flint had never struck someone for telling the truth, and he was not of a mind to start now. Instead, he grabbed Ba salt by the shoulders and shook him, hard.
'Look, I feel terrible about your father,' he began, search ing his nephew's freckled face. 'I'm not one for wishing, but
I'd give anything to have been here, anything to have known. But I wasn't and I didn't, and that's what is, Bas.'
Trying hard to look unperturbed, Basalt rolled his eyes in disbelief and looked away. 'Don't call me that,' he whis pered, referring to the affectionate nickname Flint had let slip.
Flint had seldom seen such suffering as he noted in his nephew's face, and he had felt it only once: after his own fa ther's death. 'Aylmar was my big brother — my friend — just like you and I were before I left.'
'You're nothing like my father.'
Flint ran a hand through his hair. 'Nor would I try to be. I just wanted you to know I feel his loss, too.'
'Sorry, old man. No consolation.' Basalt turned his back on his uncle.
Flint was getting angry. 'I'm still young enough to whip the smartmouthedness out of you, harrn.'
But Flint could see by his nephew's reaction that he no longer heard him. Basalt strutted before his uncle, wearing a patronizing smirk. 'I can't blame you for coming back now, you know, when there's real money to be made.' He did not even try to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
It was Flint's turn to poke at his nephew, his thick index finger within an inch of Basalt's bulbous Fireforge nose.
'I've had about all I'll take from you today. You want some one to be angry at, and you've chosen me, when the two people you're really hopping mad at are your father and yourself!'
Basalt's ample cheeks burned scarlet, and suddenly his right fist flew out toward Flint's jaw. His uncle quickly blocked the punch, landing a right jab of his own squarely on Basalt's chin. The younger Fireforge's head jerked back, his eyes bulged, and he slithered to the floor.
Basalt wiped his lip and discovered blood on the back of his hand; he looked up at his uncle at the bar in astonish ment and shame. Flint turned back sourly to his mug, and in a moment Basalt got to his feet and left the inn.
Flint dropped his care-worn face into his hands. He had fought wolves and zombies, and they'd taken less of a toll on him than the confrontations he'd endured in the last day.
The clamor of noise surrounded him; the smell of greasy, unwashed bodies began to fill the tavern. These familiar things seemed less comforting and enveloping than before.
Nothing about Hillhome seemed the same. He resolved at that moment to make his hasty good-byes in the morning and get back to the life he understood in Solace.
At that moment a party of pale blue-skinned derro dwarves noisily entered Moldoon's. Turning his back to them in disgust, Flint tried to ignore the bustle around him.
He knew no one in the tavern except Moldoon. And though the barkeep had been joined around dusk by two matronly barmaids, he was too busy with the throng of customers to talk.
It might have been the ale, his fight with Basalt, or the whole unsettling day combined, but Flint grew suddenly annoyed with the presence of the derro in Moldoon's. Now that it was dusk, a pair of the fair, big-eyed dwarves, al ready drunk, sat down beside the agitated dwarf and rudely bellowed at Moldoon for more ale.
'Don't they teach you manners in that cave of a city you come from?' demanded Flint, all of a sudden swinging around on his stool to face the two mountain dwarves.
'It's a grander town than you can claim,' sneered one, lurching unsteadily to his feet.
Flint rose from his stool too, his fists clenching. The sec ond derro stepped up to his companion, and the hill dwarf saw him reach for the haft of a thin dagger. Flint's own knife was in his belt, but he let it be for now. Despite his anger, he sought no fight to the death with two drunks.
At that moment, luckily, Garth clumped in, carrying a sack of potatoes, and headed for the door to the kitchen be hind the bar. He took one look at Flint's angry face nose-to nose with the derro and he let out a loud, plaintive wail that caused everything else to fall silent. Moldoon looked up from where he was serving patrons across the inn. Garth was alternately pointing at Flint and the derro, babbling, and holding his head and sobbing. The gray-haired inn keeper covered the distance in four strides. Instructing a barmaid to lead Garth into the kitchen to calm down, he planted himself between Flint and the derro.
'What's the problem here, boys? You're not thinking of rearranging my inn, are you?' Moldoon was looking
