The Hearth at Kharanos

Levels 5–6

Coldridge Pass was a throat of stone, and a trogg already stood in it.

Tovrik came in with the Whelp-Gnawed Hatchet in his right hand and the Frost-Rimed Trogg Vest pulling at his shoulders whenever he lifted his arms. There was no room for the wide step he still preferred. The pass chose the distance. The trogg swung a rock the size of a loaf. He took the graze along the ear, answered with two short blows because there was no space for a fancy third, and the trogg sat down as if it had remembered somewhere else to be. It did not get up.

He waited to see if level 6 would feel like a trumpet. It felt like warmer hands, a clearer eye, and a breath that went all the way down. He wiped his ear, looked at the blood, and decided it could freeze if it wanted. Then the pass opened.

Dun Morogh on the far side was the same kingdom and a different room. The snow was still there. The pines were still dark. But the land agreed, at last, to be a road. Smoke rose in the middle distance, several domestic threads of it, unashamed of being useful. Tovrik stopped and looked at that smoke the way a thirsty person looks at a cup before trusting it. He had been walking since Anvilmar. The walking had gotten into his knees.

The wind met him on the road down, and the vest earned its keep. Frost stayed in the seams. The smell of the shelf stayed in the hide. Between both and his bruised chest there was, at last, a layer. He kept one hand on it as he walked, the way a man checks a pocket to be sure the coin is still his.