Uhoh pointed at the dog curled up by the hearth, watching them with her chin on her paws. At the sound of her name, she wagged her tail.
"Lumpo stand on chair to reach pots on shelf, but he too short," Uhoh explained. "So I climb on Lumpo's shoulders. Then Glabella climb on me. We do good. Glabella reach pot. Then Millisant jump on chair, chair break. Millisant break chair."
Nalvarre sighed and shook his head. "You ate all my food. You ate my barley cakes. You even ate the garbage. Why?"
"We very hungry," Uhoh said.
Lumpo nodded in agreement. "Bad fish. Too many bones," he said.
"Did you ask if you could come in my house and eat my food and break my chair and destroy my bed?" Nalvarre asked.
"No," Uhoh said.
"No, you didn't!"
"Of course, you not here when we get here," Uhoh amended.
"Well, I'm here now! What do you have to say?" Nalvarre shouted.
"I tired and hungry. I stay two days," Glabella answered. Uhoh and Lumpo concurred.
Nalvarre was stunned to silence. He'd heard about gully dwarves, he had seen them at a distance but had never encountered one before. These seemed to be prime examples. Well, he didn't mind the occasional visitor- that went for raccoons raiding his fish traps or bears devouring his picked berries. Looking them over Nalvarre laughed.
"Oh, I see," he said. "Only two days?"
"Not more than two," Uhoh said.
"Well, supper will be ready in a bit," Nalvarre said. "Do sit down." The gully dwarves eagerly settled themselves on the floor around the fireplace.
"You can sit at the table. There is a bench," Nalvarre said. "I'll be back. Lucky for me, you didn't find my root cellar." He stepped outside.
"Uhoh, you think he gonna nail door shut like the last innkeeper?" Glabella wondered aloud. "I not want this inn to burn down with us in it."
"You do bad job picking inns," Uhoh said. "One burn down, one hit by lightning, one we wake up everybody gone poof, one they chase us out with sticks." He rubbed his head with pained remembrance.
"At least I pick inns. Way you go, there no inns nowhere. Just trees and rocks and nothing to eat forever," Glabella said. "I starve. I disappear poof if I not get supper."
Uhoh countered. "I pick this inn. This good inn!"
"Bed break. Chair break. Lumpo get bone stuck in throat. I eat two apples and my belly hurt," she said.
"You eat two and two and two apples. You not fool me,"‹ Uhoh said.
Nalvarre bustled back in the room, his arms loaded with various edible roots. He tossed them directly into the fire. Lumpo began to sniff the air and eye them hungrily.
"You're still sitting on the floor!" Nalvarre said. "Please, do try the benches." With obvious reluctance, the three rose from the floor and settled onto the bench beside the table-Lumpo at one end, Glabella at the other, and Uhoh in the middle.
Nalvarre lifted a skillet from the nail where it hung and set it on the coals of the fire. He looked around, then snapped his fingers.
"No butter," he said. "Well, we must make do. A little wine, perhaps."
From a gourd, he sent a stream of red liquid hissing into the heating pan. He tossed the fish in after it, then while shielding his face against the heat with the palm of one hand, he sprinkled herbs over the lot and flipped the trout with a wooden fork. A fine aroma filled the air, and Lumpo's stomach growled like a bear. Millisant pricked up her ears.
In no time at all, Nalvarre had a hearty meal prepared and set on the table for all. Millisant had already begun her supper; she lay on the packed earth floor and gingerly picked out fish bones with her teeth. The gully dwarves would have begun as well, but Nalvarre thwacked their knuckles with his fork enough times that they finally agreed to wait until everything was ready. He produced a loaf of bread from somewhere (how the gully dwarves had missed it was a mystery, but he was glad they had), and though there was no butter, there was plenty of fresh, sweet honey. He set candles of beeswax on the table and the mantle, and he filled a large stone bowl with wine into which everyone dipped their cups. Neither Glabella nor Lumpo had ever before tasted wine, but Uhoh had sometimes been allowed to lick clean Lord Gunthar's glass at the end of meals. Nalvarre's heady upland vintage was more potent than anything Uhoh had tasted, and it certainly delivered a stouter wallop than the beers and ales familiar to the gully dwarves' palates.
"This one good inn!" Glabella proclaimed after her third cup. "Best inn." She slapped Uhoh on the back in congratulations of his choice, causing him to spill his drink. He eyed her angrily and dipped his cup into the bowl again.
"Inn?" Nalvarre asked, puzzled. "Oh, I see. You think this is an inn."
"That right. I always pick inn, but Uhoh pick this inn. He pick good," Glabella said a little loudly as she took a yam from Uhoh's plate and stuffed it into her mouth.
"So you three are travelers," Nalvarre said.
"No, we Aghar," Lumpo said from the end of the table. "That mean we gully dwarves. Traveler is Papa's horse."
"Yes, of course. What I meant to say was, you three ^ gully dwarves are on a journey," Nalvarre amended.
"I thought you say this a bench," Lumpo said as he eyed the bench suspiciously.
Nalvarre laughed. "It is still a bench," he said. Lumpo relaxed. "What brings you to my… hmmm… inn?"
"Nobody bring us. We come alone," Glabella said as she swallowed the last of the yam. "We walk two days and two and two days, hunted by slagd. We hungry, we cold, but we brave. We not scared of slagd."
"I scared of slagd," Lumpo said.
"I not. I bite slagd on nose. That show 'em!" Glabella boasted.
Uhoh snorted. Glabella slapped him.
"Slagd scary," Lumpo agreed.
"Excuse me, but what are slagd?" Nalvarre asked.
"Dragonmen," Uhoh said with great solemnity.
"Draconians?" Nalvarre asked in astonishment.
"That right!" Glabella said."He's smart."
"Draconians are chasing you?"
"Uhoh see them kill Papa," Glabella said.
"That big secret!" Uhoh shouted as he slapped Glabella. He turned to Nalvarre and said fiercely, "You not supposed to hear that."
"Draconians killed your father?" Nalvarre asked mystified. "I don't understand. Why would they kill a gully dwarf?
"They not kill gully dwarf, they kill Papa," Glabella said.
"You not supposed to say!" Uhoh shouted.
"When did this killing happen?" Nalvarre asked with genuine curiosity.
Draconians were even more rare in his experience than gully dwarves. Of course he had heard of the evil dragonbred creatures, but to have gully dwarves and draconians both cross his threshold-mixed up together somehow- was hard to credit.
"Papa not killed two days ago," Lumpo said. Uhoh turned on him again, and seemed ready to strangle him. "I not tell him!" he whined as he backed to the end of the bench.
"Why we not tell?" Glabella asked Uhoh. "You say Papa tell you warn others. He others."
"He not others. You others. He maybe a bad Knight," Uhoh said.
"I'm not a Knight," Nalvarre said, a little miffed.
"You human," Uhoh said.
"That's right, but not all humans are Knights. I was a priest of Chislev once, the goddess of nature," Nalvarre said.
"You talk to gods?" Uhoh said in awe.
"I did, once upon a time," he explained hesitantly. "I still do sometimes, when I feel alone. I don't know if she listens, or if she can even hear me. But I protect and care for the land and the creatures that live on it. If draconians are really hunting you, though I can't imagine why, and you are in danger, perhaps I can help. I'd like to know more."
Uhoh gave him a long hard look, as though weighing his decision with all the mental powers at his disposal. Gunthar had been right when he said Uhoh was unusual for a gully dwarf, for he was unusually self-aware. Perhaps this was a result of his mother dropping him on his head when he was a baby, no one knew. The gully dwarf had spent the last few years living with Knights (or at least in their stables and kennels), so to him, being human had come to mean being a Knight. But this human was obviously quite different than every Knight he'd ever met. For one thing, Nalvarre wore a truly attractive beard, one enviable even by gully dwarf standards. No Knight of Solamnia wore a beard like that. His clothes weren't in much better condition than Uhoh's, while Knights tended to dress meticulously when not encased in armor.