Free The Hammer of Fire by Tom Liberman Page A

Craggen Steep, of course,” said
Fierfelm with a little wave of his left hand as he sipped from the
cup and grimaced again. “That’s what it was called before, at least
so the chronicles say. They say Gazadum ruled there for a countless
years while he and his fellow elementals shaped the world. It is
his residual heat that still fires the Deep Forge all these
centuries later.”
    “What does all this have to do with the
Hammer of Fire, and Dol?” said Milli as she leaned forward, “Not
that I mind hearing the stories.”
    “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.”

Chapter
6
    “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