“Look, I just don’t have the mental energy for courtship at the moment,” Fregi said. He pushed away a miniature portrait that Boulder was trying to show to him. It featured a young blond dwarf girl who was somehow related to Boulder.
“You’ve been saying that for at least a century,” Boulder said and put away the portrait. “She’s not getting any younger, you know.”
“Especially as the portrait is at least two centuries old at this point,” Flint said from the other end of the counter.
All the six bachelors joined in on the laughter. They were the original group of dwarven refugees who had arrived at Böndelheim back in the day. They had all been male, so they had formed a club to help each other find wives and to have company to talk to in their new and otherwise human home. For the longest time, it had led to nothing. There were no other dwarves they could find. The first dwarf-human child broke the dam. The dwarves realised they could have families, after all.
At the moment, Fregi was the only bachelor left. The meetings were now mostly spent on telling stories about what everyone’s kids and grandkids had been up to and heckling Fregi about finally settling down.
“There are many nice humans in the village too at the moment,” Granite said. “Old Lanster’s widow, for example. She’s about sixty, so why not take her up for a decade or two? You’d get this lot off your backs.”
“Granite! That’s absolutely morbid,” Slate said. He had eight children at the moment. Six were older than his current wife, Frida, and had families of their own. They visited Böndelheim only rarely, but when they did, they brought their whole families and the parties were legendary. Slate filled up a mug from a smaller keg and passed it to Linn. “Here you go, doctor.”
“Thank you, Slate,” Linn said. He threw off his light jacket and sat next to Fregi at the counter.
As most of the beer in the village was wheat beer at the moment, Slate had brewed a personal batch for Linn using just barley. As a real bachelor, Linn had been accepted into the bachelor’s club as an honorary member. That meant he had to have something to drink as well. The beer brewed for Linn was good, but even Flint agreed it couldn’t hold a candle to this year’s wheat beer.
Flint thumped Granite on the head with his fist. There was general laughter at the suggestion. Granite, like all the dwarves except Flint and Fregi, was married to a human. He would outlive her wife by centuries, most likely. It was a sad part of all serious dwarven-human relationships, but people accepted it as part of life.
“It’s not like Fregi could hold that woman down long enough anyways,” Boulder said. “She’s quick on her feet, that one.”
“Slate. Her marriage lasted 19 years. You can’t still be sore about Hank,” Flint said.
“Hank was a wonderful man, and it was a dirty trick to change him for a teenager,” Boulder said and nodded. His jaw was set firmly.
“Lanster was over forty when they married,” Linn said and took a long drink from his mug.
“Well, who can keep track anyways,” Boulder said. “People change spouses like socks these days.”
“Once in two decades?” Granite asked.
“If socks were made like they used to be, then why not,” Boulder said and took a drink.
There was more laughter. Fregi grabbed a mug of beer and took it to Marble. He had been quiet, but that was usual. Now Fregi felt he should at least try to lighten his mood.
“Here, grab another one,” he said and thrust the mug at Marble. “Did you manage to clean up the mess and... handle things?”
Marble accepted the mug and nodded at Fregi. He took a gulp, and a smile cracked his lips. He looked like he was trying to fight it, but even he couldn’t keep his face straight.
Marble shook his head. He took another gulp and sighed. “It’s still a shame and a bloody waste and I’m not really in the mood for light banter about widows,” he said. “But the beer is good.”
“That it is. How has it been going otherwise?” Fregi asked.
Marble shrugged.
“Can’t complain, can’t complain. I managed to get just half a field of the wheat, so I have to wait for the rest of my harvest like a peasant. The crops are going to be good, though. No pests, no mould, none of the usual annoyances,” he said, counting the missing troubles with his fingers. “Birds are going wild for the fields but I built a new scarecrow from Marjorie’s old dress.”
Fregi nodded along. He had heard the same story from all the farmers in the village. The wheat was growing like crazy. Other crops also, though not as violently vigorously as the wheat. Fregi wasn’t much of a farmer himself. He had his garden plot, but it was mostly for herbs, garlic, and such.
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“And my animals have been keeping well,” Marble said. His face went dark for a moment, but he took another drink and continued. “Not everyone can say the same of their animals, though.”
Fregi perked up.
“What do you mean? Someone else’s pig got sick too?”
“Nothing like what happened to Pudding,” Marble said, and his frown deepened again for a moment. “It’s just that Jordan’s wife said that their chickens are laying fewer eggs than usual. She said they’ve tried feeding them more and they seem happy and eat up everything, but there’s just fewer eggs every week.”
“Huh, hope that’s not anything serious. But at least it can’t be related to what happened to Pudding. Completely different symptoms. Right, Linn?” Fregi shouted to the other side of the counter.
Linn didn’t seem to hear him. The old man was looking at the door and frowning harder than Fregi had seen in a moment.
“Linn? Something up?” Fregi asked.
“There’s some commotion outside,” Linn said.
The room became quiet. Dwarven voices were powerful, but maybe because of that, their hearing was not that good. Now that the discussions died down, they could hear shouting from outside. Someone was running towards the tavern. The stomping of boots on the gravel path was coming closer. Fregi waved a hand at the group to keep still and crept towards the door.
The stomping stopped, and the door was flown open. Basalt stood behind it with her huge axe in her hand. She took a look around the room.
“Everyone here?” she asked.
“Yeah, what’s going on, Basalt?” Fregi asked.
“The bandits are back,” she said.
----------------------------------------
Fregi lifted the ripped sack into the air. Grains poured out of the hole and mixed with the mud and debris the bandits had left behind.
“How did the bandits know where to strike?” Jordan practically screamed.
“Jordan, this is the only granary in the village,” Fregi said. He couldn’t keep the strain from his voice. “There’s no other place to strike if you were after the food.”
“But...”
“The bandits knew that the food was the most important thing to steal in Böndelheim,” Fregi cut in. “The caravan that went out before the first harvest must have talked. Word must have spread.”
Jordan pushed hands into his face and his breathing slowed down. He lowered his hands and took a look around the scene.
Fregi waited for Jordan to calm himself down. Jordan was second in the loose power structure of the village. The Rye family had always been important, but they concentrated on local matters. Fregi was a trader, and that made his personal pond bigger and him a bigger fish in the pond of Böndelheim.
There had still always been some tension between him and Jordan. Fregi tried not to care, but he also knew he was the better elder for the village. Jordan was too stuck in some of the old ways, he thought. The old ways were something Fregi had seen come and go, so he knew some of them had been left behind for a reason. He guessed he had his own issues that he couldn’t let go. Fregi shook himself out of his revelry. This was not the moment to be thinking about politics or magic.
“How much did we lose?” Fregi asked. “How much did they get?”
“Everything in the granary. So far I haven’t heard the bandits taking anything else, so everyone still has their personal storages,” Basalt said. After fetching Fregi and the bachelors, she had kept running and collecting people and news around the village. She wasn’t even sweating, even though she had only barely arrived back.
“They got enough for a caravan,” Jordan said between clenched teeth. “The whole granary was filled to the brim. Wheat mostly. There wasn’t much else, if that’s any consolation, but it’s not.” He spat out the last words.
“What are they going to do with it?” Fregi asked, but stopped himself. He waved a hand to brush off the question. “We can think about that later. How did they do it, Basalt?”
Basalt snapped to attention. Fregi winced, and Basalt shrugged.
“Sorry, old habit,” she said and chuckled. “It probably wasn’t too hard, to be frank. We don’t really have a proper watch set up and, as you know, no proper defences. They could have crept in from basically any direction, one by one. Forced the lock to the granary once the whole band was present. Basic smash and grab, but well planned and executed. They emptied the whole place in one go.”
“No one noticed anything?” Fregi asked.
“Not before it was too late,” Basalt said. “One of the Jordan’s farmhands saw the group running away. He alerted the foreman, who alerted Jordan, and so on. The farmhand had already seen them move about earlier but hadn’t realised what he was seeing, because at that point it had just looked like some people walking about the town.”
Jordan kicked a nearby bucket that clattered somewhere into the night. Everyone jumped at the sudden noise. “Damn that nitwit,” he said. “We lost a full harvest because of him.”
Fregi shook his head. “I wouldn’t blame him. The fault is ours for not organising proper lookouts. More likely he would have just got himself killed if he had gone looking closer.”
Jordan huffed, but stayed silent.
Fregi glanced around the square where the granary stood. The bachelors had all followed him. More villagers gathered slowly. Angry and disappointed shouts sounded as people learned what had happened.
“Let’s find them and beat up the whole lot!” someone shouted. The shouting started to spread and people brandished tools and makeshift weapons in the air.
Jordan’s jaw was working, and his nose was flared.
Basalt looked at Fregi and cleared her throat. “We got to calm the people down. Going after them would be lethally stupid,” she said.
Fregi nodded and breathed in deep.
“PEOPLE!” he shouted.
There was a ripple as everyone flinched and took a step away from Fregi. After all the commotion, the silence was deafening.
“Everyone is angry, and for a good reason!” Fregi began. “We’ve been raided and looted. Our home has been violated.”
“Yeah!” someone shouted.
“BUT,” Fregi shouted through the murmuring that had begun again. “Going after armed bandits in the dark is suicide. That might be exactly what they want. We can’t leave the village undefended in case they circle back!”
“Are we just going to let them get away with this?” a man shouted.
“What are we going to eat?” a woman shouted.
“No one is going to starve!” Fregi said. “We will pool our food like we did during the bad years. We will stick together and help each other.”
“We can’t just let the bandits go,” Basalt said under her breath. “People will not stand for it.”
“I know, I know,” Fregi said and turned back to the crowd. “People! We’re not running into the night to get ourselves ambushed and killed! But we’re absolutely not going to take this lying down! The bandits will pay!”
There was a cheer, but Fregi continued talking over it. “We’re farmers and husbands and wives. We will concentrate on what’s important: replacing our losses and growing more food than ever! But we’ll also burn redsap until we’ve got all the mercenaries in the area sweeping the lands and hunting down bandits. They will sing songs of how Böndelheim culled their lands to the last robber who drew breath!”