Tom Liberman - The Hammer of Fire

“Gazadum,” said Fierfelm as he nodded his head.

Milli looked at him expectantly but the old dwarf just took another sip from his coffee.

“What about Gazadum,” said Milli.

“Haven’t I told you?” said Fierfelm, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Maybe I missed it,” said Milli with a little grin and put on the smile that always got her what she wanted. She patted the old dwarf on the back, “repeat it for me, please?”

“I’ve found out where he fled. It’s in the south, the far south, a place called Koalhelm Tol,” said Fierfelm with a silly little grin.

“Yes?” Milli.

“Don’t you see?” asked Fierfelm the many wrinkles on his forehead multiplying at an alarming rate.

“No,” said Milli with a shrug of her shoulders as she poked at her pastry in a rather desultory fashion. It didn’t look very good.

“Even Dar Drawhammer with the Great Shield could not slay Gazadum, but the hammer, Kanoner, was forged by Orin Firefist. It was the first thing created on the Deep Forge by dwarf hands, and inside is the essence of Gazadum himself. The haft is the bottom half of the Staff of Faelom taken from the elf king by a great dwarf warrior. It was fashioned from the first and most powerful of the shepherds. With this weapon a dwarf could slay the greatest of the fire elementals. And the dwarf who did that, he would live forever in the stories.”

Milli looked at the old dwarf for a long moment as the light of recognition shone in her sparkling yellow eyes, “I think Dol might like that.”

“Now you’re ready to steal the thing but it’s too late,” said Brogus as he glared at Dol across the small table, and the tall dwarf stared impassively back at him without any sort of expression at all on his face. “What do you have to say to that?”

Dol said nothing, nor did he change his blank expression.

“They’ve got it locked up in the Hall of Relics and there are guards on it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” continued Brogus as he pounded the table with his fist. “Pikemen, the High Council’s guard, they wear the gold helmets. The finest warriors in all of Craggen Steep. We can’t overpower them. It’s lost, if you had only listened to me yesterday Dol, you dolt.”

“Inside voice,” said Milli at her usual place between the two dwarves and with her usual glass of elf wine in front of her. “We don’t want everyone in Craggen Steep to know our plan, do we, Brogus?”

“They already know,” said the heavyset dwarf with a scowl. “We’re the laughing stock of the mountain. Everyone on my floor was laughing at me yesterday. Even the lowest of the apprentices from the worst families. I can’t stay in Craggen Steep now, with or without the hammer, we have to get out of here. We could have had it easy just yesterday but now, it’s impossible. Impossible! What does it matter if everyone knows what we wanted to do?”

“It’s not impossible,” said Milli in a quiet voice as she glanced around the crowded room. A number of young dwarves smiled and tried to catch her eye but she ignored them and turned back to her two companions. “I know you don’t like him,” she said with a glance to Brogus, “but Uldex can help us. His uncle Borrombus is in the inner sanctum and he knows how the hammer is guarded. What forces, how many and where, the location of reinforcements, the passageways to take to avoid them.”

“The Hall of Relics?” said Brogus. “How are we possibly going to get in there, steal the hammer,” here he lowered his voice, “and get back out again? There are hundreds of Council Stalwarts guarding it all the time.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” said Milli with a shake of her head that sent her hair flying, “it’s hardly hundreds and there are plenty of times it’s not guarded.”

“Now is the time,” said Dol as he contributed to the conversation for the first time. His face was still a mask of impassivity but his eyes glowed black and he nodded his head. “Now, they think they’ve won.”

“Dol’s right,” said Milli. “Their confident now that our plan was foiled and they’ll relax. With Uldex helping we can get in and get out. You still have a plan to leave Craggen Steep, right, Brogus?”

The burly dwarf nodded his head, “I’ve got friends in the lower levels who know about an old breakout section. Somebody split rock through to the surface years ago and it was patched up, but it’s only a few inches thick, there was an earthquake or something. We’ll poke a hole in it no trouble and be on our way. I can even have mules waiting for us. But I don’t know much about the outside world, I’ve only been with one caravan and that was when I was a kid. We don’t even know where this Koalhelm Tol is located.”

“It’s in the south,” said Milli, “as far south as you can get in a region filled with volcanoes. Fierfelm said…,”

“Fierfelm!” interrupted Brogus with a sudden exclamation that sent his beer slopping out of his mug, “I thought you said it was Uldex that told you all this.”

Milli paused and leaned back in her chair with a little twinkle in her eye and small grin on her face, “I may have led you to believe that, but I never said it.”

“What?” shouted Brogus, standing, putting both hands flat against the table, and leaning over so that his considerable bulk loomed directly above Milli. “You don’t think we should have known that?” He asked with a look over at Dol who sat impassively in his own seat. “Don’t you think little miss pretty should have told us that, Dol? Don’t you?”

Dol shrugged his shoulders and stared back at Brogus with calm black eyes, “What difference does it make where the information comes from, as long as it’s accurate. I want that hammer, I want to be the one remembered for killing Gazadum. You can either watch me to do it, or you can help.”

Brogus stood for a few long seconds as their eyes bored into one another and then he looked up at the ceiling and shook his head, “There’s no stopping you, once you’ve made up your mind. I’ve known that since we were kids. Remember when I broke your nose for eating more than half the brownies that time?”

Dol nodded and a small smile appeared on his face.

“What did he do to you?” asked Milli, looking quickly back and forth between the two.

“He ate all the brownies the next time,” said Brogus with a snort as he collapsed back in his seat. “I could have beat him some more, but what was the point? Then he’d probably just eat all the pie too. You can’t win with Dol.”

Milli laughed aloud, the sound almost like a song, “That’s our Dol. Now that we’ve settled the what, we need to figure out the how.”

“They’ll expect us to wait a few days at least to see the guard routines,” said Brogus with his hand on his chin as he looked at Milli. “I think Dol might be right. We should do it as soon as possible. If they knew about us stealing it in the first place they might have found out about my escape route too. It wouldn’t take a team of miners more than an hour to brick up that narrow break and we’d never get through.”

“So, we do it tonight then?” said Milli in a whisper.

“Why not now?” said Dol and suddenly stood up.

Milli’s eyes opened wide and she stared at her thick-haired friend with her mouth agape, and then she shut it with a snap. “Why not now?” she went on more to herself. “They certainly won’t be expecting it. We just run into the hall and grab the thing.”

“They’ll catch us quick enough,” said Brogus. “They can communicate through the tunnels and have a hundred stalwarts waiting for us whichever direction we go.”

“Uldex can help with that, he can send false messages, get them all confused, we’ll be half way to Das’von before they know we’re even gone. Once we’ve joined up with Corancil’s army they can’t stop us, not without revealing Craggen Steep’s location at least and they’ll never do that.”