"Ye wouldn't be doing well to underestimate Bruenor," Agrathan advised. "His boys're good at what they do."
"Irrelevant," Elastul said again, settling back comfortably. "That curiosity piece Gandalug is dead, may the stones powder his bones, and Bruenor is inheriting a kingdom on the decline."
Again, Shoudra looked over at Agrathan, this time wearing a doubting smirk, for she and the dwarf knew what was coming.
"More than two dozen metallurgists and alchemists." Elastul boasted. "I'm paying them well, and they'll be showing results soon enough!"
Agrathan lowered his eyes so that Elastul wouldn't see his doubting expression as the marchion went on to describe the most recent promises of those folks he had hired in an effort to strengthen the metal produced by Mirabar's mines. The metallurgists had been promising from the day they arrived, several years before, combinations of strength and flexibility beyond anything anyone in all the world could produce. Grand, and as far as Agrathan believed, empty claims all.
Agrathan hadn't worked the mines in over a century -since he had turned to the practice of preaching the word of Dumathoin-but as a priest of that dwarf god, a deity who was known as the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, Agrathan firmly believed that the claims of the hired alchemists and metallurgists were not among those secrets. To Agrathan, if some magical way to enhance any metal wasn't among the secrets of Dumathoin, then it simply didn't exist.
The hired group was very good at what it did. What it did, as far as Agrathan was concerned, was keep the marchion curious and intrigued enough to keep the gold flowing, and that was all that was flowing. Mirabar boasted less than half the dwarves of Mithral Hall, just over two thousand, and several hundred of those were busy serving in the Axe. keeping the mines clear of monsters. The thousand who worked the mines could barely meet the quotas set out by the Council of Sparkling Stones each year and that from existing veins. Little exploration was being done at the deeper levels, where the dangers were greater, but so too were the true promises of better quality in the form of better ore.
The simple fact was that Mirabar couldn't afford to cut production long enough to seek out those better veins, so the marchion had fallen into the scam of these supposed specialists-with not a dwarf among them - who claimed to understand metals so well. Besides, to Agrathan's thinking, if there were such processes as the marchion believed, why hadn't they been put in practice centuries before? Why hadn't these metallurgists and alchemists reduced the dwarves of Mithral Hall, the dwarves of all the world, to positions of providing base material alone? They promised weapons, armor, and other metal goods strong enough to outshine anything Bruenor's folk might produce, and yet, if they knew of such secrets, if there were such secrets, then why weren't there weapons of legend that had been produced through such processes?
"Even if your specialists deliver their promises, we will still be far from making King Bruenor and Mithral Hall 'irrelevant'," Shoudra Stargleam replied, and Agrathan was glad that she was taking the lead. "They are out-producing us in volume more than three-to-two."
The marchion waved his hands at her. "There was nothing for me to say to Bruenor Battlehammer anyway. Why did he come here? Who invited him? Who asked . . ." He ended with a derisive snort.
"Perhaps we should not have allowed him entrance," Shoudra remarked.
Agrathan looked up at Elastul, guessing correctly the dangerous glare the marchion would be offering to Shoudra at that moment. When word that King Bruenor was at Mirabar's gate had been passed along, it had been Elastul's decision to let Bruenor and the others in. None on the council, or the secptrana, had even been informed until the Clan Battlehammer dwarves had already set up their carts on Mirabar's streets.
"Yes, perhaps my faith in the loyalty of my citizens was misplaced," the marchion countered, harsh words aimed more at Agrathan, the dwarf knew, than at Shoudra. "I expected King Bruenor to find greater embarrassment than rejection by the ruler of the city. I expected the folk of Mirabar to know enough to not even bother with our guests."
Agrathan glanced over to see that the marchion was indeed staring directly at him as he spoke. No humans, after all, had gone to do business with Clan Battlehammer, only dwarves, and Agrathan was the highest-ranking dwarf in the city, the