mainly apprentices and a few craftsmen here that there aren’t spies for the elders, the High Council members?” she said in a softer tone.
“I… I got excited,” said Brogus with his lips pursed and his chin tucked down into his thick neck. “Think of what we can do with the hammer! You’ll always be a foreigner here, a prisoner, I’m not smart enough to get far, and Dol… he’s… you know… a half-breed.”
“Brogus!” said Milli, her eyes came together and her hands slapped down on the table. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” said Dol with a shrug of his shoulders and in that same even tone. “It’s true enough, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that you’re a half-breed,” said Milli and folded her arms across her lithe chest. “It’s what half-breed means to the dwarves of Craggen Steep. To them it means you’re inferior by blood; that you can never do anything as well as a dwarf and that just isn’t true. You can sit there with no expression on your face and speak in a monotone all you want but you have to face the reality of what it means to be a half-breed,” she continued and stomped a foot on the stone floor of the tavern. “When you call yourself a half-breed you’re calling yourself inferior to the lowest born dwarf. And you know that’s just not true. It’s not even close to being true. You know you’re better than any of them, better than the Firefists, better than the Blackirons, and better than any old Drawhammer too! Tell me I’m wrong, go on, tell me!”
Dol stared at the pretty girl without blinking and finally shook his head although he remained resolutely silent on the subject.
“Nothing to say,” said Milli shaking her head which sent her long blonde hair swirling about. “That’s Dol for you. Not happy to get a promotion, not sad to be passed over. Just a block of wood. But, you remember this Mr. Delius, you remember that I know better. There’s a heart beating under your skin, not wood, and I know it. Someday you’ll know it too.”
Silence engulfed the trio. At a nearby table sat an older dwarf, his beard nearly a foot long and with three gold bands, a middle aged dwarf woman with graying hair tied back in a long ponytail, and two young girls who giggled at one another and stole surreptitious glances at Dol and his friends. The girls, no more than six or seven, looked to the table where they seemed fixated on Dol, then at each other where the covered their mouths as they giggled, and then back at the table where the three sat.
After a few more moments of silence between the three at the table the winner of the brawl returned and interrupted the silence. He put a little glass filled with an emerald liquid down in front of the halfling girl. “Here you go, Milli,” he said with a broad smile and a quick glance to the dwarf who still lay on the floorgiving off little groans now and again.
“Thank you… was it Otis?” she asked, giving him just the slightest of passing glances before turning her attention back to her companions.
“Umm… no, it’s Grephuk, Grephuk Ironspike, I’m a master apprentice in the upper forge. We met once at a party that…” He replied but Milli cut him off.
“Well, I almost remembered, you’re a real dear, thank you ever so much but could you leave me and my friends alone for just a moment.”
The dwarf stared at the two young men at the table with narrowed eyes and a curled lip that was already showing signs of swelling from the recent fight, “Well, ok, but if you need anything you just ask for Grephuk Ironspike, all right? I’m master apprentice at the upper forge, right?”
Milli nodded her head distractedly, “Of course I will, Ironside was it?”
“Ironspike… Grephus Ironspike, I’m a master apprentice,” he repeated and pointed to the bands on his sleeve. “That’s what the orange means. Blue means junior apprentice,” he continued emphasizing the word junior and gazing at the two dwarves at the table.
“I’ve lived in Craggen Steep long enough to know what colored jerkins means what,” said Milli and turned to face the dwarf with a roll of her eyes and a withering glance. “Are you saying I don’t know one grade from the next?”
“No, no, I didn’t… I mean,” started the dwarf as he backed away from the table in little stutter steps, “I just… what I meant to say
…,” he tried to continue but Milli turned her back to him and he stood there stammering for a little while, then bent down to help his friend up, and the two retreated back to the bar arm in arm.
Dol watched the dwarves go and then turned back to the table and Milli and Brugus, “I don’t like to admit it,” he said in a quiet voice with the slightest inflexion of sadness.
“Admit what,” said Brogus, having lost track of the conversation and wearing a quizzical expression on his youthful face. “What don’t you like to admit?”
“Actions should determine promotion,” he said looking down at the table and shaking his head. “Those who do well make promotion, those who don’t get left behind.”
“But, what don’t you want to admit?” said Brogus again as he leaned forward in his seat and put his hands on the thick stone table. “Either you don’t talk at all or you talk in riddles, Dol.”
“That I might be…,” started Dol.
At this second, before he could say that last terrible word, one of the young dwarf girls at the nearby table dashed across the divide between the two groups, snatched at Dol’s hair with a quick motion, and then ran back to her table where she opened her hand and showed something to her sister. Both girls broke into a fit of giggles and looked back and forth between the object and Dol.
Dol stopped in mid-sentence, slumped with his shoulders, slowly shook his head, and gave out a long sigh. Milli sat there with her mouth open for a half a second and then burst into a fit of laughter before she could cover her mouth with her hands. “I’m sorry, it’s just funny,” she said trying to stifle her laughs.
Suddenly the father of the girls was at the table with a serious expression on his face, “I’d like to apologize for my daughters,” he said a scowl on his craggy face, but this apology triggered another bout of laughter from Milli and Brogus’ own harsh guffaws soon joined in. Dol sat there quietly and looked at the two with black eyes through narrowed lids.
“It’s ok,” he said to the older dwarf, “it happens all the time.”
Milli shrieked with laughter and pounded Brogus on the back as the dwarf beat his fists onto the table, his face growing redder by the moment.
“I’m going to pee myself,” he finally gasped and this sent Milli off into another gale of shrieks.
The older dwarf stood at the table for much of this but eventually nodded his head to Dol and put down a small, green apple on the table. It looked about the size of a cherry but the surface was crisp and it had the distinctive shape of an apple. “You’ll be wanting this back then?”
Milli shrieked, fell out of her seat, and started to roll around on the floor while Brogus buried his face in his arms as his body shook with laughter.
Dol sat with a stony face, took the little apple, looked at it closely, put it into his pants pocket, and then waited for Milli and Brogus to stop laughing.
“I’m sorry,” said Milli gasping for breath as she regained her seat, “you have to admit, it gets funnier every time.”
“Maybe you should ask me if I want to do it,” said Dol in a low tone filled with strength. “There are times I find life here in Craggen Steep… trying,” he continued as he looked over at the table of the young girls and shook his head sadly.
“I thought when you kept your hair short-like they didn’t grow?” said Milli and then, suddenly realizing that Dol was not talking about the apples that grew in his hair, turned to him, “You’d want to do what?”
Dol looked at her and shook his head, “I could shave my head bald but then I’d be even more of a curiosity here in Craggen Steep. You know I don’t like people looking at me, talking about me. They just keep getting worse as I get older. When I was a teenager it was only once a year or so but now they pop-up at any time.”
“No, no, forget about the apples, your hair. Ask you what you want to do with what?” insisted Milli as another little burst of giggles erupted from her mouth unbidden.
“The Hammer of Fire,” said Dol in a low voice but there was passion in it. “If we take it, what do I want to do with it?”
“So, you’ll help us!” said Brogus his eyes glowing as he leaned forward at the table. “Dol, we can’t do it without you, you know that. Someone has to carry the thing.”
“First we have to decide what to do with it,” said Dol his face humorless and his gaze steady.
