Flint watched her go, then leaned back in his seat before the fire, deep in morose reflection. A last bit of burning log dropped through the fire grate and rolled forward; Flint stood and jabbed it back into the fireplace with his toe, then watched sparks fly, burning from red to gray, long into the night.
Clumping through the cold room in his heavy farming boots at first light, Ruberik brought Flint to his senses the next morning. The older dwarf did not remember having fallen asleep. Someone had covered him with a rough wool blanket during the night, which tumbled to the ground as he jumped up.
“No place to make hot chicory in my new rooms,” Ruberik grumbled by way of apology. Pots banged and kettles clanged while he clumsily heated water over the fire, then poured it through a length of coarse netting that held some fresh ground, roasted root. Taking a sip of the brew he shivered. “Nice and bitter,” he concluded, looking as pleased as Ruberik ever did. With that he pulled on a heavy leather coat and grumbled his way into the dawn, slamming the door behind him. A current of damp, cold air rushed through the room and fanned the fire in the grate.
Flint chuckled at his brother’s ill humor despite his own fatigue. He dug his hairy fists into his eye sockets, stretched, and smacked his lips. Hoping to douse the sour taste in his mouth, he took the water kettle from the fireside and made his way to the kitchen, across the room from the front door. The area was small but well organized. Using Ruberik’s netting, Flint managed to rustle up his own pot of brew. Bertina kept the cream in the same place his mother had: against the back of a low cupboard along the cold north wall, where it stayed fresh longer.
When he’d downed enough chicory to feel his senses straighten, Flint looked about and noticed that the house sounded empty, its usual occupants apparently having already gone about their day. He decided to give Ruberik a hand in the barn.
Helping himself to two big hunks of bread and cheese, Flint slipped his boots on and stepped outside into a bright but brisk morning. He picked his way along the narrow, muddy path that led from the small front yard to the barn far off to the right of the house. He stopped at the well to rinse himself, letting the brisk autumn air dry his cheeks and beard and refresh his tired soul.
Swallowing the last of his bread in one big bite, Flint covered the remaining distance to the barn.
Pausing at the massive door, Flint grasped the thick, brass ring that served as a handle. It was polished and smooth from centuries of use. He remembered the times when, as a child, he had strained and hauled on that ring with all his strength without ever budging the massive door. Now he gave it a tug and the heavy timbers swung out.
Even before his eyes had adjusted to the dim light inside the barn, its odors washed over him. The hay, animals, manure, rope, stone, and beams blended together into a smell that was unique, yet each odor could be separated from the others and identified individually. Flint paused there for a moment, savoring that aroma.
Chickens roamed throughout, flapping from beam to beam, picking at the grain mixed in with the fresh straw scattered across the floor. Three cows tethered in tidy stalls raised their heads from an oat-filled trough to eye Flint disinterestedly. At the rear of the barn, six goats jostled and clambered over each other to get to the two buckets of water Ruberick had set inside their pen. A pair of swallows swooped down from the rafters and out the open door, passing inches above Flint’s scruffy hair. The dwarf ducked reflexively, then chuckled at his reaction.
Ruberik stomped into the light from the depths at the back of the barn, a shiny milking pail in each hand. He saw Flint, looked surprised, then seemed about to grumble some insult. He thrust a pail into Flint’s hands.
“Let’s see if you remember how to milk a cow, city boy,” Ruberik said, his tone unexpectedly light.
“Solace is hardly a city,” Flint scoffed, then rose to the challenge. “I’ve been milking cows since before you even knew what one was, baby brother.” Hitching up his leather pantlegs, he lowered himself onto a three-legged wooden stool next to a brown-spotted cow.
“Make sure your hands aren’t cold. Daisyeye hates that—won’t give you a drop,” warned Ruberik.
Flint just glared at him, then rubbed his hands together furiously. He reached out quickly and began tugging; in seconds, he had milk streaming into the pail. Daisyeye chewed contentedly.
“Not bad,” Ruberik said, nodding as he looked over Flint’s shoulder, “for a woodcarver.”
Flint ignored the jibe, handing his brother the full pail of creamy milk. “You know,” he said, wiping his damp hands on his vest, “I’d forgotten how much the smell of a barn reminds me of Father.” He inhaled deeply, and his mind wandered back to other mornings, when he had been dragged from his warm bed at the crack of dawn to work in this place. He had hated it at the time.…
“You’re lucky to have any memories of him,” Ruberik said enviously. “He died before I was really of any use to him. Aylmar had his smith—and then one day you were gone, too. Had to teach myself to run a dairy farm,” he finished, using his cupped hands to scoop more oats into the feeding trough.
Flint’s hands froze under Daisyeye in mid-milking stroke. He’d left Hillhome those many years ago, never thinking how it might make his siblings feel. He felt compelled to say something—to offer some explanation—and he tried. “Uh, well, I—” And then he stopped, unable to think of anything. He stole a glance at Ruberik.
His younger brother moved about the barn, whistling softly, oblivious to Flint and his halting response.
Ruberik finished feeding the animals and clapped his hands to remove grain chaff. “I’ve got to stir some cheese vats,” he said, finally aware of Flint again. “Care to help?”
“Uh, no thanks,” Flint gulped; he hated the overpoweringly sour smell of fermenting cheese. He took the bucket out from under Daisyeye, handing it to his brother. “I’ll finish up the chores in here, if you’d like me to.”
“You would?” Ruberik said, surprised. Flint nodded, and Ruberik listed the remaining morning tasks. With that, he left through a door at the far right of the barn, the scent of cheese billowing in after him.
Flint covered his nose and began milking his second cow in many decades.
He finished the chores by late morning. Ruberik had left to deliver cheese, so Flint sat at the edge of the well and looked opposite his family’s homestead, through the multicolored autumn foliage and steady green conifers at Hillhome below. The Fireforge house was about midway up the south rim of the valley that surrounded the village—the notch known simply as the Pass cut into the eastern end of the valley; the Passroad continued through the town and down the valley to the eastern shore of Stonehammer Lake.
Flint could see the town beginning to bustle with the activity of a new day, and without really deciding to do so, he found himself walking on the road that snaked down to the center of the village. The stroll stretched his stiff joints and freshened his spirits. He passed many houses like his family’s, since most of the buildings here were set into the hills, made of big stone blocks, with timbered roofs and small, round windows.
The village proper was more or less level, and thus had many wooden structures, certainly more now than Flint ever remembered. As he came around a bend in the road, bringing him within sight of the village, he was again surprised at the extent of the changes in Hillhome.
The great wagon yard and forge seemed to serve as a central gathering place for work on the heavy, iron-wheeled freight wagons. The trade route ran east and west, straight through Hillhome on the Passroad. His view of the yard was blocked by a high stone fence. New buildings stood crowded together along the Passroad, extending the town past the brewery building, which Flint remembered as once marking the town’s western border. Off Main Street, there were still the neat, stone houses with yards; narrow, smooth streets; little shops. But the pace of life seemed frantic.
That busyness nettled Flint, for reasons he could not even explain to himself. He had intended to explore Hillhome
, to see the new sights, but instead he found himself resenting the changes and heading toward the safety of Moldoon’s once again to enjoy the comfortable familiarity of the place.
“Welcome, my friend!” Moldoon greeted the dwarf pleasantly, wiping his hands on his apron front before he took Flint’s arm and drew him forward. At this time of day, the place was virtually empty, just a table of three humans in the center of the room before the fire, and a pair of derro drinking quietly at another.
“Have you a glass of milk for an old dwarf’s touchy stomach?” Flint asked, spinning a stool at the bar to his height. He slipped onto it easily, propping his chin up in his hand.
Moldoon raised his eyebrows and grinned knowingly. “Don’t you mean a touchy old dwarf’s stomach?” He reached under the bar for a frosty pewter pitcher and poured Flint a mug of the creamy liquid. Flint tossed back half of it in one gulp.
“I heard your family got together last night,” said the bartender, topping Flint’s glass again. “You cost me half my customers!”
The dwarf smiled wryly, shuffling the mug between his hands on the bar. Then he remembered the one family member who had remained at Moldoon’s rather than greet his uncle. “Not Basalt,” he said to the barkeep. “He didn’t seem any too glad to see me … when he finally got home.”
Moldoon sighed as he filled two mugs with ale. “Aylmar’s death really hit him hard, Flint. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with you. He blames himself—he was his father’s apprentice. But he was here, not at home, when Aylmar went off to the wagon camp.”
“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 nighttime 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 himself 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, desperate 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 expressing 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 inwardly 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 hummingbird. 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 engrossed 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 intricately 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?” Flint asked, wishing he could bite his tongue off the second the patronizing words left his mouth.
Basalt eyed Flint’s own mug. “That’s not milk you’re drinking, either.”
Hint set down his tools and sighed, swallowing the irritation 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 Basalt by the shoulders and shook him, hard.
“Look, I feel terrible about your father,” he began, searching 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 whispered, 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 father’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 someone 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 astonishment 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 h
ad 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, already 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 second 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 behind 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 innkeeper 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 only at the derro.
“He insulted us!” one of them claimed, shaking his fist at Flint.
Flint pushed the pale fingers away. “Your presence insults everyone in this bar,” he muttered.
Flint the King Page 6
