Gray Dwarrow
MEANWHILE, THE EVER-inquisitive Darren has been traveling and working with Cannedun, the tinker and ironsmith of Wildengard – a gentle, quiet dwarrow given to long moments of reverie while working at his forge. Darren has always admired the enthusiasm with which the dwarrow live their lives, and their love of ancient tales (the ones he’s heard are downright exotic, even compared to those of Kalitha the bard). Now, working with Cannedun, he comes to appreciate how despite the dwarrow’s short lifespans, their enhanced gifts of intuition and perception enable them to reach heights of mastery that no human could achieve over a similar period.
Two weeks outside of Lynar, Cannedun brings Darren to a large tent of woven skins at the outskirts of the army camp. “Some friends of mine have just joined us,” he explains with a slow smile. “You’ll get on well with them.” He whistles a complex trill.
“Cannedun!” comes the answering roar. A grizzled, middle-aged dwarrow with a many-braided beard bursts out of the tent, stalks up to Darren and inspects him boisterously. “What’s this you’ve brought us?”
“My new apprentice, Darren. Darren, meet Mullod of the gray dwarrow.”
“You took on a human?” Mullod gives a genial bellow. “Always the optimist. You’ll be dust before you teach him how to piss straight.” The scrappy dwarrow wears plain gray plate mail; despite its lack of ornamentation Darren senses that it is of extraordinary quality. A mace, an axe, and a length of spiked chain add to Mullod’s instantly formidable air.
“He knows a few things already,” Cannedun replies with amusement.
“I’ll be the judge of that!” barks Mullod. By now five or six other dwarrow have emerged from the tent; none are armored, but most of them are heavily armed, and all of them have a similar gleam of ferocity in their eyes. One of them tosses a roll of loose-knit cloth to Mullod, who reaches up and hauls Darren’s head down to his level. “So Cannedun thinks you’ve got dwarrow ken, eh?”
Darren inclines his head, a little stunned but undaunted. “If Cannedun says so,” he says, not resisting or pulling away as Mullod ties the blindfold around his eyes. As Cannedun had guessed, Darren’s outward mildness hides an unflappable readiness to venture anything -- part of his driving love of exploration and invention.
When the world around Darren is a barely discernable blur through the blindfold, Mullod slaps a club into his hands. “Right, long-legs! Have at me.”
Darren swallows hard and does his best to clear his head and apply his strong sense of direction to the task. He’s not a trained fighter, and is quite slight of build, especially compared to the boulder-like Mullod... but he gets remarkably lucky [natural 20!] and despite the blindfold, lands a blow that sends the dwarrow captain rolling backward with a delighted, “Ha!” The gray dwarrow band burst into cheers. “Well, lad,” Mullod growls, pulling off the blindfold, “you can fight like a dwarrow. That’s a fair start. But... can ye drink like a dwarrow?”
The gray dwarrow hoist Darren onto their shoulders, carry him into the tent, sit down around a small mountain of barrels and pour six massive flagons of ale. Then they pour a few dozen more. “These are for you,” Mullod declares, gesturing at the first six, and claims two others of his own. Darren sways through the test by sheer force of will and manages not to pass out. Halfway through, Cannedun produces a small bag full of ingenious tinkers’ puzzles made of tangled wire and tosses them one at a time toward Darren. Here the young human is in his element, and despite his ale-induced bleariness, he unweaves each fiendish puzzle with joking ease. Mullod shakes uproariously, crying tears of laughter into his beard. “Lads, lads, Cannedun was right. This is a human to grow old with!”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Cannedun shakes Darren awake beneath the barrels. From outside, they can hear Mullod and his band engaged in a deafening mock combat, with bellows nearly as loud as the clash of steel on steel. “You did well, lad. It’s not every human who can stand up to the gray tribe.”
Darren grins crookedly. “They’re... a little different from you.” Or, he thinks, the mild-mannered dwarrow craftsmen of Rim Hall.
“The grays have the same passion and gift for war that most dwarrow have for more peaceful arts.” Still thinking of Rim Hall, Darren suddenly has a terrible fear, which Cannedun senses. “What’s the matter, lad?”
Darren hesitantly describes the bloody scene he and his friends found in the caverns of the Rim. Cannedun’s face grows dark, and he quickly beckons in the gray dwarrow leader. “Mullod! There’s a colony to the south that’s been wiped out by the Delve.”
Mullod listens grimly to Darren’s account. “We’ll get a message to Houlan’s band. They’ve been pushing the bastards back under the western plains. They’ll be the best ones to know if this means a new front is opening up.”
“The Delve?” Darren asks cautiously.
“A mad race of dwarrow,” Mullod explains, and grasps Darren’s unspoken fear. “Not like us grays, lad. The Delve see beauty in blood and cruelty and death. They love to kill the same way I love to fight. And they’re... almost as good at it. They don’t usually show up this far west, though. Most of their territory is under the Arawai plains.”
“The horse clans have stories about them,” Cannedun adds. “Murderous spirits of the earth who will wipe out a camp by night. For the most part, the gray dwarrow keep the Delve too busy to trouble humans, though.”
DARREN BEGINS SPENDING most of his time with Mullod’s band, and one night, the hearty captain gives him a finely crafted amulet. “You’ve got a dwarrow heart, lad. You should have the eyes to go with it.” Darren puts the amulet on, feeling a strange tingle in his blood as he does so -- and the world around him changes. Where previously there was featureless darkness, now he sees sweeps of movement and color (but colors for which he has no name). The moons are gone, but the dwarrow and humans in the night are radiant blurs and the night wind ripples visibly around the tents.
“Heat, lad. Heat, and the dance of the air. We can see it as well as normal light. That little amulet lets you see it too. It won’t work for anyone else while you’re still breathing. And our priests have crafted it so we’ll be able to find it anywhere. So you be sure to hold on to it if we get separated.”
“Mullod – I don’t know how to thank you,” Darren says in disoriented awe.
“Hah,” Mullod snorts. “It would only embarrass me if you stumbled around the dwarrow caves like any other blind-stork human. Because mark my words, lad: we’ll get you underground one day.”