There Shouldn’t Be Elves In Hammertown
Written By : S.P.Dorning
Copyright 2012 Stephen Dorning
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The phone rang at a quarter ‘til six. I had been in the process of locking up and heading home for the night. “That figures,” I thought to myself as I stood there with my hand on the knob of my office door. I stared at the frosted glass window with its stenciled black letters proclaiming ‘Sebastion Locke, Private Investigator’ and compared the weight of my wallet with my desire to go home. It took three more rings before the wallet finally won out and I walked over and picked up the handset.
“Sebastion Locke, Private Investigator. What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Locke? I need your help.” The voice on the other end of the line was that of a dwarven male. From the sound of him I would’ve guessed a hundred, maybe a hundred and forty years old, still just a young dwarf.
“Well, why don’t you come by my office around six in the morning, Mr…?”
“It’s Kenson. Kenson Jerrit , and I can’t, Mr. Locke.” The voice went up a notch, which meant it was only deep enough to vibrate the speaker instead of the whole handset. “If my Boss even suspected I was calling…”
“I’m not sure how much good I can do for you, over the phone, son.” I know it sounds odd calling a hundred year old dwarf ‘son’ when I’m only thirty-eight myself, but after you’ve lived around dwarves for as long as I have, you start treating them by how they act, not by how old they are.
“Listen…just listen,” He said. “I work for Johnson’s Delivery as a Pack Runner. You know what that is, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Jerrit, I know what a Pack Runner is.” Pack Runners were parcel delivery guys. You wanted something delivered, you dropped it by their office and for a price you could have a Pack Runner take it anywhere in the city you asked them to.
“Anyway, I been looking to get married. I done asked Elsa, Elsa Davenritch, and she said yes!”
“That’s nice, Mr. Jerrit, but what has that got to do with me?” I asked.
“Well, I needed some extra cash as a down payment on an apartment off of Brewer’s Street. So when my Boss asked me if I wanted a chance to boost my income a little, I jumped at it.”
“Ummhmm,” I said, just to let him know I was paying attention. And I was, even if I was slightly distracted by the soft calls of my bed from the apartment upstairs.
“He said to be there after quittin’ time. Said that he had a special package for me to deliver. So I showed up. Hammer and Anvil, Mr. Locke, I swear I didn’t mean to open it, but on the way to the delivery spot I dropped it. There was this puddle of water…you see…and the package just kind of fell apart. I think…I think…”
“Yes, what do you think, Mr. Jerritt?”
“I think it’s an Elven Artifact.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.
That got my attention. Elves were bad news. They believed that all other races were inferior and should be exterminated. Dwarves and the gnomes were fighting a desperate war against them far to the South. The war was not going in their favor. Humans were still remaining neutral, but it was getting to the point where they were going to have to join the fight. That made elves very bad news. But it couldn’t be elves. Hammertown was a long ways from the front lines. What possible reason could elves have for being here? We wouldn’t even be considered a viable military target. Hammertown was just a town of dwarven civilians.
“What does it look like? Are there any markings on it? Have you touched it at all with your bare skin? ” I hadn’t dealt with Elven Artifacts before, but I had heard stories. None of them had pleasant endings.
“It’s about the size of a pocket watch, made out of metal. It has some kind of leaves etched into the casing. There are some markings on it…I didn’t see them before…” As he spoke I jotted down the basics in my notebook.
“Okay. Okay. We need to find someplace to meet. I have some friends…”
“No, no friends, Mr. Locke. Elsa says we shouldn’t trust anyone.” From what I could hear over the handset, I assumed that Elsa Davenritch was there with him.
“Look, Mr. Jerrit. I know these people. I trust them. We need to verify that the artifact is indeed Elven before we take this further. I can’t do that myself, but I know someone who can. You called me, remember?”
“Yes, I remember, Mr. Locke.” I could hear Elsa saying something in the background, but I couldn’t make out what it was over the phone. Mr.Jerrit relayed what I had said and then, “Elsa says just you and your expert then. We can meet in Old Town. There’s a coffee shop there at the corner of Mendington and Blacksmith’s Way.”
“Yeah, I know it. It will take me about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to get my friend. I’ll meet you there at about eight.”
“Okay, yeah…sure.” He sounded relieved. “And thank you, Mr. Locke. Please hurry.”
I hung up the phone, then immediately picked it back up and dialed Yon Uthen, my gnomish inventor friend. If anybody could help me verify an Elven Artifact, it would be Yon.
“Hello..?” Yon’s voice was kind of thick and sluggish. I figured I probably woke him up. He was really bad about keeping weird hours. Sometimes he would spend twenty-four hours in his workshop, and then sleep for the next twenty-four. You just never knew with Yon.
“Yon, listen…it’s me.”
“Sebastion?”
“Yeah, look, I need a favor.”
“You got a case?”
“Sort of. What do you know about Elven Artifacts?” I asked him. While I was talking I checked my piece, made sure it was fully loaded, and put on my shoulder rig. It was a very special gun, one of Yon’s inventions. It fired projectile slugs, but unlike most guns, it wasn’t limited to two shots. The Swivel-Click Cylinder Yon developed replaced the loading chamber and would hold twice that. He had even designed some special ammo for it. I had the choice between regular lead slugs, or Splinter-Slugs that were designed to fragment, spreading the damage over a wider area. A similar system was used on the big guns in the dwarven military, but Yon had just found a way to make it small enough for a pistol. I don’t always go armed, but when elves might be involved I wasn’t going to take any chances.
“A little. Why?”
“I’ve got a client who thinks he might have one.” Which reminded me, I didn’t even ask Mr. Jerrit how he would be paying. I sighed, thinking I had probably just taken on another charity case.
“Holy crow! Those things can be dangerous. You need me to back you up?”
“As a matter of fact…”
“Sprockets! Just swing by the lab an’ pick me up.”
“I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
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