explosions using only a few drops of the oil of impact, the dwarf couldn't even begin to guess what clever Nanfoodle had in mind for so much of the potent mix.
"Right there," Nanfoodle instructed a pair of other dwarves who had been put in his charge. He pointed to a flat wall in the western entry chamber, to the side of the doors that led into the main upper level corridors. He motioned for Ivan to bring the pail up, which Ivan did, to the continuing "hee hee hee" of his brother Pikel.
"Would you be so kind as to go and inquire of Candles how he fares in his work?" Nanfoodle asked, referring to a thin, squint-eyed dwarf named Bedhongee Waxfingers, nicknamed Candles because of his family's line of work.
Ivan gently set the bucket on the floor before the wall and glanced back at the other two helpers, both of who were carrying brushes. "Aye, I'll go," he said, looking back at the gnome. "But only because I'm wanting to be far from here when one o' them dolts kicks the bucket."
"Boom!" said Pikel.
"Yeah, boom, and ye're not knowing the half of it," Ivan added, and he started away.
"What were the dimensions again?" Nanfoodle asked him before he had taken two strides.
"For Candles? Two dwarves abreast and one atop another," Ivan replied, which meant five feet wide and eight high.
He watched Nanfoodle motion to the pair with the brushes.
"Durned gnome," he muttered, and he left the chamber.
Barely in the hallway, he heard Nanfoodle lift his voice in explanation: "Bomblets, Pikel. No big explosions in here, of course - not like what we did outside."
"Boom!" Pikel replied.
Ivan closed his eyes and shook his head, then moved along more swiftly, thinking it prudent to put as much ground between himself and Nanfoodle as possible. Like most dwarves, Ivan applauded clever engines of war. The Battlehammer sideslinger catapults and "juicer," a rolling cart designed to flatten and crush opponents, were particularly impressive. But Nanfoodle's work assaulted Ivan's pragmatic dwarven sensibilities. Outside, in the battle for the ridge, the gnome had brought trapped subterranean gasses up under a ridgeline held by frost giants, and had blown the entire mountain spur to pieces.
It occurred to Ivan that while Nanfoodle's efforts might help secure Mithral Hall, it was also quite possible that he would destroy the whole complex in the process.
"Not yer business," the dwarf grumbled to himself. "Ye're the warrior, not the warcommander."
He heard his brother laughing behind him. More often than not, Ivan knew all too well, that laugh didn't lead to good things. Images of flames leaping a thousand feet into the air and the rubble of a mountain ridge flying wide filled his thoughts.
"Not the warcommander," he muttered again, shaking his head.
Regis shifted at the unexpected sound, sending a small avalanche of soot tumbling back on his friend, who was climbing the narrow chimney behind him. Bruenor grumbled and coughed, but offered no overt griping.
"You're certain this will get us out?" Regis asked between his own coughs.
"Used it meself after ye all left me in here with the stinking duergar," Bruenor assured him. "And I didn't have the climbing tools, either! And carried a bunch o' wounds upon me battle-weary body! And ..."
He rambled on with a string of complaints, and Regis just let them float by him without landing. Somehow having Bruenor below him, ranting and raving, brought the halfling quite a bit of comfort, a clear reminder that he was home. But that didn't make the climb any easier, given Regis's still-aching arm. The wolf that had bitten him had ground its teeth right into his bone, and even though tendays had passed, and even though Cordio and Stumpet had cast healing spells upon him, he was a battered halfling indeed.
He knew the honor Bruenor had placed upon him in asking him to lead the way up the chimney, though, and he wasn't about to slow down. He let the cadence of Bruenor's grumbling guide him and he reached up, hooked his fingers on a jag in the rough stone and hauled himself up another foot. Over and over, he repeated the process, not looking up for many minutes.
When he finally did tilt his head back, he saw at last the lighter glow of the nighttime sky, not twenty feet above him.
Regis's smile faded almost immediately, though, as he considered that there could be an orc guard out there, standing ready