Flinthammer Hall

Me brother, Kort, and I arranged to surprise our mum with flowers and a day with all her grandchildren together in one house. May Khaz bless her happy home!

“Khaz’goroth on a cracker,” breathed Ringo, surveying the crowd through the fog and mist. “Ah didn’t expect all this.”

On the southernmost ledge of Ulduar, the great construction of the Titans, an army had gathered. Two, in fact: The Alliance and the Horde each in their own tent cities, a forest of banners bounded by suspicious sentries eyeing the foes that – for the moment – they were no longer fighting.

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A half-dozen four-fingered hands thrust forward into the circle, resting one atop the other.

“All right, on three: One, two, three …”

“FOR GNOMEREGAN!” the gnomes roared.

The Argent Tournament was still in the process of being set up, but that was the kind of thing they had dwarves for. Dwarves liked construction and excavation and, well, anything that involved a lot of manual labor. Gnomes were meant for higher pursuits.

“OK, who’s on first?” said Voca Lodestone, pulling out her clipboard.

“That reminds me of a joke,” said Vamen.

“Is it that hat?” Milven grinned evilly.

“Quiet, you,” Vamen replied, sticking out his tongue.

“I’ll go first,” said Gnoir, climbing up into the saddle of his mechanostrider.

“OK, great,” said Voca, looking up from her clipboard and waving to a nearby Argent Crusader. “Squire David is going to send another valiant onto the field. This is just like we practiced with the dummies before: Charge him once he’s in range. Once you get into melee range, you can try and smash his shield or …”

“I know what to do,” the death knight said flatly.

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“All me life,” said Ringo Flinthammer, gently scratching the jawline of the cat of living stone that rumbled its approval beside him, “All me life, Ah’ve felt like a tool that didn’t know what he was for.”

Ringo’s feet dangled off the edge of the ledge, above a gulf with the clouds almost a mile below his boots.

“Ah mean,” he explained, pantomiming with one hand, “Am Ah a pick? A hammer? One of them Gnomish Army Knives with all the fiddly little bits? Ah always knew Ah had a purpose, but no one could tell me what it was.

“Me mam, and later me wife, they was nuts for the Holy Light. They dragged me to church, made me sit there, pretend that it made sense, instead of bein’ fuzzy-headed nonsense.”

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It takes a special kind of cold to chill a dwarf to the bone. The snows of Dun Morogh last year-round, with only the hottest days of summer thinning the ice that cover Iceflow and Helm’s Bed Lakes the rest of the year, save for the fishing holes the dwarves hack out with axes.

Dwarves and even gnomes scoff at outlanders who find Dun Morogh inhospitable: “It’ll put hair on yer chest,” “toughen up, Sally” or “here, have another mornbrew” are their standard replies.

But the cold of Icecrown was different somehow; it seemed almost malicious, creeping inside Ringo Flinthammer’s boots and gloves, plastering his ice-coated whiskers to his face and neck and giving him the first windburn he’d gotten in a cold climate since he was a child. And there were times where the wind sounded like something whispering terrible thoughts into his ears …

Ringo shuddered, putting such thoughts from his head, and headed back inside the tent he shared with Beli. From outside, there was a crash of thunder from the Storm Peaks that loomed above the plain where the Argent Crusade was building their jousting grounds.

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