The tavern was a sight nicer than those Franco typically frequented. The tables all seemed to have been crafted by the same hand, and chairs reigned in place of long benches. All food and drinks were either served on ceramics or in glasses.

The tableware here wouldn’t last a week in back in The Dog’s Head, Franco thought to himself, proudly. But if Whunmar’s paying, why the hells not?

“Any news of the war?” Kherrin asked the man behind the bar.

“Oh, not the bloody war,” Franco whined, “I’m sick of talking about the bloody war. It hasn’t even started yet, and already I’m sick of hearing of it.”

The youngest dwarf, Ghanmar, laughed heartily. “The Bloody War would be an awful name for it. The Dreary War would suit better. Perhaps The War of Little Interest.”

“The War of No Widows” Franco cut in, “The War of Sons Who Still Have Fathers. Nothing’s happened in, what, four years? I propose a toast; to peace. Uneventful, boring peace.”

Franco had only been a soldier for a short time – and never saw a real fight during – but he knew enough of what war could do to a family.

“To uneventfulness” Whunmar toasted quite seriously as he raised his glass, meeting Franco’s. They shared a look that said Whunmar fully understood the sentiment. With half the table toasting, Kherrin and Ghanmar joined and the four glasses clinked together.

“Nothing obvious has happened, maybe” Kherrin added, after the toast. He always enjoys a good bit of war talk, does Kherrin. “Nothing the likes of you or I would know about, but there are always developments. A sighting at the border here, an ambassador detained there. Things are happening, mark my words.”

Ghanmar sat up proudly in his stool, “Drab things. Dull things. Give me a battle any day. I’d rather wield an axe than a rumour.”

“Don’t be a fool, son. You don’t want to arrive on the day of a fight, axe in hand. You want to be there the day before, with a cartload of whetstones and bandages and oilcloths. By the time the battle begins, you’ll be miles away with a cartload o’ gold. Har.”

“So? Any developments war-wise?” Kherrin asked the barkeep again.

“Kherrin,” Franco started, “we’ve been on the road for four days. What could have possibly happened?”

“That’s what I mean to find out. Barman?” Franco sighed internally. If he’s asked a third time, he’ll ask a tenth. May as well let it happen.

“Nothing I’ve heard about,” the man answered, “We don’t get too many generals in here.”

“Har!” Franco laughed. “You see?”

A man at another table rose from his chair and leaned over. “I’ve got a story for you fella’s. I was sitting in a well-to-do joint across town, The Golden Bells, and I heard something quite interesting about a close friend of a cousin of the King of Aren himself.”

Bloody hells.

The next two days passed in a blur of pints, pipe smoke and old stories well told. Whunmar’s patronage paid for rooms for all of the escort. Separate rooms, mercifully. No larger than a chicken coop, but they were dry and clean enough and Franco found no cause for complaint. As the sun rose on the last day the caravan gathered in the same square they arrived at, inside the same gate. They were to depart from there and continue on the same road they had been following since Altome. Franco’s eyes felt dry and his head ached. Too little sleep and too much wine. They do love their wine around these parts, he reflected.

There was a commotion at the head of the caravan; the Eda brothers had yet to grace the procession with their presence. Whunmar was chastising Kherrin for not finding reliable help. Kherrin was impetuous, insisting that the fault lie either with the Eda brothers themselves, men without facial hair in general or humans as a species, Franco could not be sure which.

Last night they were singing bawdy tavern songs together, now look at them.

When Mag returned with news that the brothers had not been seen at their inn last night, all the hells fell open. Over and sometimes between yelling Kherrin was able to issue orders to his remaining hirlings to search the city and return in no more than a half hour. Franco was amused to find Mag had as low an opinion of the Edas as he had. She opted to search the whore-houses of Terni, him the city jail. Franco couldn’t be sure what Groxx’s plan was, but it involved the words “look” and “city” so he left the lizardfolk to it.

The guards at the prison were not overtly happy to find a dwarf seeking entry in the waking hours of the morning. That did not surprise Franco. It turned out both the Eda brothers were inside, being kept in separate cells. That also did not surprise Franco. According to the gaoler; after a card game gone awry tempers flared and the smaller Eda had stabbed another player. In the ensuring altercation the bigger Eda had injured a guard. Informed but still thoroughly unsurprised, Franco brought the news back to Kherrin. For good measure he relayed the cost of bailing the two Edas out, and all dwarves present agreed it was not a price worth paying.

“Well that’s today done,” grumbled Kherrin, “I’ll set about finding replacements.”

Whunmar’s chest puffed up. “You will do no such thing. We agreed on hiring five swords, plus yourself. We hired five swords and paid for them. The other merchants won’t agree to paying for any more now, and it won’t be coming out of my pocket.”

“You want us to go all the way to Lochtagh with only four of us guarding the wagons? Have ye gone daft?”

“Have I gone daft, he asks? Have I gone daft? I’m experienced. I’ve made this route many times and I’ve never even caught a whiff of banditry. You lot are just a deterrent, nothing more.”

“Aye, and what do ye get without a deterrent? You get a bloody mess.”

The argument carried on for some time, eventually devolving into torrents of Dwarvish cursing.

A real masterclass in troglobitic vituperation.

Just before midday, only five hours later than planned, the merchant’s caravan set off, with two guards at the fore and two at the aft. Kherrin and Whunmar each had strong opinions on the subject and were not shy about voicing them. Loudly. Even eight wagons behind Franco could pick out words. Perhaps to drown out the repetition of their arguing, Mag turned to him.

“They keep saying we are going to Lochtagh.”

“Aye, because we are.”

“I thought the only way into the mountain-city was via Tarvi.”

“Har. Tarvi, she says. The bureaucrats in Altome call it Tarvi, but I can assure you, nobody else does.”

“So, the locals call it Lochtagh?”

“Ah, well not exactly. The locals call it Tarnpoole. The dwarves call it Lochtagh.”

A familiar, freckled face jumped out from the wagon in front of them. “How does a town get three names?” asked Lyla, the gnome’s daughter.

“Well, allow this old Dwarf to spin ye a yarn. Originally it wasn’t a town, so much as a nice spot where dwarves travelling to and from Caghdun would stop and rest by a lake, maybe try a spot of fishing. We called it Lochtagh. Several centuries down the line, humans moved in and built a walled town over the same spot. The dwarves of the time weren’t upset, mind you. It just meant a safer spot to stay the night, even if the angling became a little crowded. They named their town Tarnpoole. And Tarnpoole it remained, until a couple of decades back when the local lord of those parts genuflected the moment the Altoman Empire reared its massive head. Now in governance over a small lake-side town the Altoman higher-ups renamed the place Tarvi. The locals, decidedly, did not. Thus, all these years later, three names remain. Lochtagh the choice fishing spot, Tarnpoole the town built by settlers and Tarvi the spoil of war.”

“You’re so smart, master Franco” Lyla giggled, “So what should we call it?”

“You ought to call it Tarnpoole, whilst yer there at least. Once we’re safely in the mountain and amongst dwarves we can call it Lochtagh.” Lyla smiled a childish smile. Mag just listened in interested silence.

Firstly; the Dwarven cities. There are three such cities in Londor and only one in Eldun. Putting an age to one is no simple feat, but the extensive far-reaching-ness of the tunnels of both would suggest the cities in Londor are, in fact, much older. Secondly; the Elven communities. A number of Elven architectural wonders exist in Elf-built cities around Londor. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there exists no such architecture in Eldun. Thirdly, there are no Gnomic communities within Eldun that cannot trace their lineage to the exact generation that emigrated. So it is the authors’ conclusion that Londor was settled and civilised earlier (possibly much earlier) than Eldun.

The two exceptions are Humans and Goliaths. Goliaths are native to Artok, and as far as the author is aware Goliaths have never set foot in Londor. As for Humans, the kingdoms and empires of Humans are notoriously fleeting, relative to those of other races. Their architecture and histories rarely survive these frequent transitions, and so it is nigh impossible to put accurate ages on their abundant collapsed and built-over civilisations.

On the Ages of Civilisations – Wortham Graskill

Later that evening Franco, Mag and Groxx sat around a campfire. Just as she had threatened to, Mag had made off with a portion of the food stipend back in Terni and spent it all on vegetables. Green shite, Franco had though initially, but plated alongside sausages and after a generous washing down with cider they didn’t seem so bad. That had been almost an hour ago, and Franco’s throat was getting dry. He retrieved a small cask from the back of one of the wagons and brought it to the fire. Groxx refused, as he had expected. They don’t much like to drink, those lizardfolk. Mag refused as well. Something about wanting to keep a clear head.

“A clear head? Are ye’ a ghost?” Franco had asked, but she didn’t follow the jest.

Not wanting to drink alone he almost joined Kherrin and Whunmar, but Lyla appeared before that.

“Can I try some?” she asked, mischievous eyes flitting between the cider and the dwarf.

“Are ye allowed to drink this, lass?”

She raised her chin. “I’m a young woman, I drink what I please.”

“If the lady says so.” Franco chuckled, passing her a kiln cup and then filling it from the cask. The two toasted to the journey.

“Alright then,” said Mag, snatching a cup, “if you’re going to do this right in front of me, I may as well join you.”

“Har,” laughed the dwarf, “I knew we’d make a drunk o’ you yet. Cheers.” Cups met and companions drank.

Lyla straightened herself and looked to Franco. “Master Franco?”

“Little Miss?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Well that depends. Ask first, and I’ll tell you after how upset I am.”

She giggled. “How did you start, um, doing this?”

“Escorting the caravan? I thought you knew; Whunmar hired Kherrin and Kherrin hired us.”

“I mean your work. How did you begin travelling and protecting things for a living?”

“Well it started with a guild. It wasn’t too long ago either. I wasn’t content to work in a mine and I don’t have much of a head for numbers. I didn’t want to be a soldier neither; tried it, didn’t care for it. Didn’t see the excitement.”

“And how is that?” asked Mag.

“Tell me; if a Dwarven mountain city is impregnable, and believe me it is, then where’s the fun in defending it? There isn’t any. Sure, the armour shines real nice and the pay’s good. But it’s all pomp and ceremony. Never appealed to me. So I left, headed for the nearest human town and wandered into a guild. Haven’t looked back since.”

Lyla was studying him closely now. “Are you from Caghdun?”

“Me? No, no. I hail from Londor. We’re heading to a Dwarven city, aye, but this is no homecoming.”

“Mag? Did you join a guild?” asked the young gnome.

“No. My family lived in a small hamlet and my mother and father taught me to hunt. I left one day and found work with my bow shortly after. That was some time ago. Since then I’ve shot more men than game.”

Franco laughed dryly. “Aye, I bet you have.”

Lyla sat up again. “Was there a similar guild in Terni? Where we could have hired some more guards?”

“Har. At least five such guilds, I’d wager. You could have hired enough men to carry you to Tarnpoole if you had the money.”

Lyla’s eyes found the camp floor, her face blushed behind her freckles.

Gods, I can read this one like a book. He looked to Mag, and look confirmed she had seen it to.

“Lass? Is there something you’d like to share?”

“It’s nothing, really.”

Franco said nothing. He’d learned a while back that if you wanted someone to talk, the best thing you could do was to give them silence.

“It’s just,” Lyla peeped.

It’s just…

“I heard Whunmar and Da talking. It was about money. He seems to have a lot, but he said we shouldn’t hire more guards.”

“Whunmar gave that advice?”

“Yes. He said he did not want to throw gold away without good cause.”

Franco’s ire rose. “Not good cause? Do the Väahn screamers not warrant good cause?” Franco said, louder than he had meant to.

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.” Lyla’s eyes were glistening slightly, she was starting to tear up.

“I’m sorry lass. It’s not you who deserves a talking to.”

“Is something the matter?” It was Mr Fairmill, Lyla’s father. There was a challenge in his voice.

A slight one, but he seems to grow a few feet where his daughter is concerned. Franco respected that.

“It’s nothing Da, I was just…”

“What’s this!?” he almost squawked, snatching the cup from her hand and smelling its contents. “You’re too young to be trying alcohol. Especially not with these… And you.”

The look he gave almost made Franco feel guilty.

“You should know better.”

Franco thought very carefully about what he would say next. Can’t fault a father for being protective. I suppose gnomes don’t start drinking as young as we dwarves do.

“I’m sorry sir. It was just one cup, was all.”

“Well I’d appreciate it if you stayed well clear of my daughter from now on.”

“He will.” The familiar voice belonged to Kherrin. “I’ll make sure of that.”

His voice was firm, but his hand rested on Franco’s shoulder; the trust was there.

“See that you do.”

In the firelight it was difficult to tell but both gnomes seemed entirely red-in-the-face, though for different reasons. The two of them made for their wagon, and the others soon all went to bed, save for Kherrin and the human couple’s assistant who had drawn first watch.