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Newest chapter · Tovrik · Chapter III · page 3 of 5

TovrikThe Hearth at Kharanos

The Hearth at Kharanos

Kharanos arrived as roofs, then as voices, then as the particular gold of a hearth seen through a doorway at the end of a cold walk. He did not stride. Level 6 was not a parade. He came in under the eaves with snow melting in his beard and the hatchet down along his leg, so he did not look like a problem the town had to solve before supper.

The inn took him without a speech. That was the best of it. Heat. A bench that had held heavier dwarves than him. The smell of stew, spilled ale, and wet wool drying into something almost kind. He set his back to a post where he could see the door, because Coldridge had taught him things he did not intend to unlearn between one bowl and the next, and he let the fire find the parts of him the vest had not reached.

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TovrikThe Hearth at Kharanos

Nobody asked him to be a hero of Ironforge. A server nodded. He ate, drank something that burned in the correct direction, and counted what he had carried in: a hatchet something else had chewed, a vest the frost had signed, level 6 from a narrow place, and one death that had failed to be the last word.

He touched the notch above his eye, the one from the frozen rill, and it was already just a line. He touched the place on his chest where the club had ended the earlier argument, and that was not just a line. Not yet. Under the vest it answered with a dull, living ache. He welcomed the ache. Aches belonged to people who had gotten back up and then walked far enough to sit down on purpose.

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