about Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder," Innovindil explained.
"Ye'd be learning more if ye'd let us off this stupid field."
"Perhaps, and perhaps soon."
As she finished Innovindil glanced at Tarathiel, who obviously wasn't sharing her generous thoughts. She gave him a hard nudge in the ribs.
"We shall see," was all that he would admit, and that grimly.
Thibbledorf Pwent kicked a stone, launching it many feet through the air.
"Bruenor's expecting better of ye," scolded Cordio Muffinhead, the cleric who had accompanied the wounded back to Mithral Hall.
They had found Pwent and the Gutbuster Brigade camped along the high ground north of Keeper's Dale, the battlerager having gone back out after escorting the main force into Mithral Hall.
What a sight that meeting had been, with Cordio and the others waving frantically to slow down the insane charge of Pwent and his boys. The relief had been palpable when Cordio had at last been able to explain that Bruenor and the others were fine and were moving along a different and roundabout course on their way back to Mithral Hall, checking in with the various settlements, as a good king must now and again.
"If he's knowin' me at all, then he should be knowin' that I'm about to set off to find the fool!" Pwent argued.
"He's knowing that ye're a loyal warrior, who's to do what ye're told to do!" Cordio yelled back at him.
Pwent hopped aside and did a three-step to another stone, kicking it with all his strength. This one was much larger, though, and not quite detached from the ground, and so it hardly moved. Pwent did well to hide his newly-acquired limp.
"Ye got two camps to organize," Cordio said sternly. "Quit breakin' yer toes and get yer runners to Mithral Hall. Ye build a camp here and get one set up on the Surbrin, north o' the mines."
Pwent spat and grumbled, but he nodded and went to work, barking orders that sent the Gutbusters scrambling. That same day, what had been a casual camp awaiting Bruenor's return was transformed into a small fortress with walls of piled stones, perched on the north side of a mountain north of Keeper's Dale.
The next morning, two hundred warriors left Mithral Hall, heading north to join up with the Gutbusters, while at the same time a hundred and fifty warriors moved out of Mithral Hall's eastern gate and marched north along the banks of the Surbrin, laden with supplies for constructing the second forward outpost.
Thibbledorf Pwent immediately set his Gutbusters into a liaison mode, working the direct trails between the two camps.
It tormented Pwent to stay so far south and wait, but he did his job, though he continually sent scouting parties to the north and northeast, searching for some sign of his beloved, and absent, king. It remained foremost in his thoughts that Bruenor wouldn't have ordered the establishment of advanced camps unless he believed they might be needed.
That only made the waiting all the more unsettling.
"He truly is a druid?" Tarathiel asked, hardly believing his ears as a pair of his clan reported the news to him that Pikel's spells were not some trick, that the dwarf did indeed seem to have druidic magic about him.
Beside him, Innovindil could hardly contain her grin. She was truly enjoying these unexpected guests, and indeed, she had been spending quite a bit of time with Ivan, the surly one, who was about as perfectly dwarflike as any dwarf she had ever seen. She and Ivan had swapped many fine tales over the past few days, and though he remained a prisoner it was fairly obvious that Innovindil's contact with Ivan had brightened his mood and lessened the trouble he was causing.
Still, Tarathiel thought her a fool for bothering.
"He prays, sincerely so, to Mielikki," said one of the observers, "and there can be no doubt of his magical abilities, many of which could not be replicated by any cleric of a dwarf god."
"It makes little sense," Tarathiel remarked.
"Pikel Bouldershoulder makes little sense," said the other, "but he is what he appears to be, by all that we can discern. He is a woodland priest, a 'Doo-dad,' as he himself puts it."
"How powerful is his magic?" asked Tarathiel, who had always held druids in great respect.
The two observers looked at each other, their expressions showing clearly that this was a question they had feared.
"It is difficult to discern," said the first. "Pikel's magic is ... sporadic."