“I pulled you out of the water,” Ogduan said.
Mog closed his eyes, trying to remember. “I do recall something tugging at me, and a face… a face!” He slapped his knee and pointed at the old dwarf. “I thought you were death come to take me.”
Smiling, Ogduan pulled a battered trunk from under the bed and flipped back its lid, revealing a carefully folded black robe, a leather-bound book, and a white skull mask. “Not death, just a death skald,” he said.
Mog shrank back from the skald in horror. ” B u t… no one is allowed to know the identity of a death skald. Why are you telling me?”
Ogduan shrugged, looking around innocently. “Who are you going to tell?”
Mog stared at the strange dwarf, pondering. “I can’t place your name, stranger, and you look like you could be just about any of the five clans,” he said. “So what clan are you from?”
“I’m not exactly of any clan,” the dwarf said. “I’m a death skald, after all.”
“But who are the Bloodspikes? I’ve never heard the name before.”
The old dwarf shrugged as he returned to his place beside the cooking fire. “I’m not surprised,” he said, lifting a battered pewter ladle from its hook and dipping it into the pot. He leaned closer, shielding his face from the heat of the fire as he stirred and stirred.
Resting his hands upon the coverlet, Mog waited for what the old dwarf would say next. “So you live here alone?” he finally asked.
“Mostly,” came the gruff reply. “I expect you are hungry.”
Mog nodded. “How long have I been here anyway?”
The old dwarf shrugged. In the corner beside the fire, an old cabinet leaned upon three legs, one of its doors hanging from one hinge. Ogduan opened it, and removed a pair of pottery bowls. “One day runs into another out here,” he said as he carefully ladled each bowl full of steaming stew. He crossed back to the bedside and set one bowl in Mog’s lap. He produced a pair of wooden spoons from a pocket of his somewhat tattered garments, then sat down on a low stool beside the bed.
Mog lifted his bowl and inhaled the aroma of the stew. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever been so hungry, nor when he’d smelled anything so delicious. “I-I-I thought my legs were crushed by the stone,” he managed to stammer. “They seem fine now, so I must have been mistaken.”
“Oh, they were badly crushed alright,” Ogduan answered over a mouthful of stew.
“Surely I didn’t sleep through the entire healing process,” Mog said in surprise. “It would have taken months for me to heal.” Ogduan merely shrugged and continued to blithely shovel spoonfuls of stew between his copper-bearded lips.
Mog tasted the stew and found it even more delicious than it smelled. Several different types of meat swam in a hearty thick brown broth. Some bits were so tender they fell apart in the mouth, while others had some bite to them, chewy but pleasant. “If I’ve been here for months, why didn’t anyone come to look for me? Surely you told the people who bring your supplies to let someone in Norbardin know that I was here.”
“No one brings me supplies,” the old dwarf explained. “No one comes here at all.”
Mog paused, the spoon lifted halfway to his lips. “Then where do you get your food?” he asked, somewhat alarmed.
“There’s food to be found just about anywhere, if you know where to look,” Ogduan answered.
Mog stared in horror at the bowl resting between his legs, at the strange little clumps of meat floating in it. Steeling himself, he asked, “What kind of meat is this, may I ask?”
“Gully dwarf.”
Mog felt a solid column of gorge rise to the back of his mouth. A rank belch nearly gagged him. He set the bowl aside, biting back nausea.
Ogduan bellowed with laughter. “By my bones, you must think me truly depraved if you think I’d serve you gully dwarf just when you are beginning to heal.”
Mog eyed the old dwarf suspiciously. “Well, what is it, then?” he asked.
“Urkhan eel and feral mushrooms. Didn’t anyone ever cook Underdark Stew when you were a boy? By my beard, I shudder to think of the poor quality of practical survival education young dwarves receive these days,” Ogduan said, his cheeks stuffed with stew and rich brown gravy dribbling into his beard.
“It’s been a long time since I encountered Underdark Stew. I had forgotten,” Mog chuckled as he resumed eating. Despite his hunger, he found that his appetite had been severely dampened by the old dwarfs joke. Though he knew well enough that he wasn’t eating gully dwarf, a niggling doubt remained in the back of his mind.
“Besides, I finished off the last of the gully dwarf weeks ago,” Ogduan added with a wink.
Mog set his bowl down. “I’d better take it easy,” he said. “Too much rich food.”
The old dwarf nodded in agreement as he continued to wolf down his meal. Between mouthfuls, he said, “Out here in the perimeter there are no markets, just stone and water and darkness and earth. There’s the ruins and what you can scrounge for and dig for. When you’re starving, you’re not above boiling bones. Dwarves these days don’t really know what hard times are like.”
Mog snorted. “What about the Chaos War?” he asked.
“Chaos War? And how long did that last?” Ogduan replied, pointing at him with a dripping spoon. “It’s been forty years now and what have you all learned? It was nigh on to three hundred years of misery after the Cataclysm before things started to improve. Forty years? A mere twinkle in the eye of Reorx! I piss in the milk of your miserable forty years.”
“You talk like you’ve lived forever,” Mog said, growing steadily irritated.
“And what if I have! Who are you to question me?” the old dwarf shouted, his own temper rising.
“You’re crazy,” Mog answered, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. “What are you, feral Klar? Bloodspike sounds like a Klar name.”
“Klar? Klar?” Ogduan practically shrieked. “I piss in the milk of the Klar.”
“Exile, then. A Hylar exile. Who exiled you?”
“No one exiled me. I was deceived. I was robbed and did not know it! Oh, wicked deceiver, evil temptress!” Ogduan was busy railing to the heavens. Mog sighed, realizing that he’d been rescued by some half-mad untamed Klar who had cast off dwarven civilization. Known as feral Klar, these pitiful creatures preferred to live as the ancient Klar had done, wild and free barbarians of the deep earth. Mog was only lucky that Ogduan hadn’t murdered him in some pique of rage, after having bothered to rescue and heal him.
From now on, he’d have to be careful.
His dinner forgotten now, Ogduan raged up and down the room, raining down curses upon the heads of enemies both real and imagined. “Oh, foul vermin that should invade my home!” he screeched, pointing at a dark empty corner of the chamber. “I shall feast upon thy flesh and spit thy bones into my fire!”
Mog watched in growing curiosity as Ogduan crept to his makeshift fireplace and reached behind a pile of broken bits of wooden furniture (fuel for the fire). From some hiding place in the woodpile, he withdrew a gleaming silver warhammer. Hefting the massive weapon, he edged toward the dark empty corner in which he had spied his enemies.
Mog was both surprised and awed by the beauty of the weapon. At the same time, he felt some old memory niggling at his consciousness, a feeling that he had seen this weapon before. Surely so magnificent a weapon had once been the property of a dwarf of great power and influence. To see this mad dwarf stalking the ghosts of his dementia with such a noble weapon filled him with dismay. Flinging back the bedsheets, he tried to stand and grab it away. The floor tilted beneath his bare feet, dumping him back in the bed.
Meanwhile, Ogduan continued to silently stalk his unseen adversary. Lifting the hammer above his head, he brought it thundering down upon the shadows inhabiting the empty corner, bellowing a mighty war cry as he swung.
Mog heard a squeak cut short by a sickening thud. “Ha, that got you!” the insane old dwarf shouted. “What, another?” A small dark form shot out of the corner and scurried toward the bed. Ogduan leapt after the large rat, his giant hammer already streaking down. It smacked the floor just behind the rat, shattering the floorstone into a spiderweb of cracks. He raised it again, staggering toward Mog’s bed, under which the rat had fled.