Disclaimer: Obsidian owns everybody but Kayla, and much of the dialogue.

Four days, and not a whiskered face in sight. Still, there was time. They were still exploring the area Callum had mentioned. Khelgar couldn't see his people making their home here. It wasn't just that it was barren as the board of a miser's hall. No dwarf worth his beard would care much for fountains or glades if the stone was bad, but that was the problem. The stone here was bad, at least near the surface. Get down thirty, forty feet, things might improve, but up here, it was nothing but crumbling shale and packed grit.

If his people had come here, they would not stay long. Maybe they left already.

It was getting on to sunset again, so time to stop for the night. At least Callum had given them provisions, so they didn't have to waste time hunting. They would run out before they reached Neverwinter, but there was no help for that. Cas, Neesh and Nobby had bows, if it came to that, but he did not like his people wandering off where he could not keep his eyes on them. The gods knew what trouble the tiefling would get up to while his back was turned, and the lass just wasn't easy unless she could see the paladin any time she turned her head.

Khelgar couldn't understand that one. Lala liked to talk and the paladin didn't. He knew from the other day that the man was eager enough to mine that ore, to judge by the shoring timbers he brought along for the job, as his old da would have said, but whenever he opened his mouth, it was "Yes, my lady, this" or "No, my lady, that" or "It's time to train, my lady." Not that Khelgar could fault him for wanting to improve his leader's weapon skills. The girl did all right, but that mace was just too big for her. It slowed her down. He'd told her that himself a dozen times on the road to Highcliff. But if she wouldn't give it up for Khelgar, she wasn't going to put it aside for Cas.

They had tried her on just about everything they carried, between them, those first two days. Kayla could barely lift Khelgar's battle axe, so that was out. The dwarf had not let her try his hammer or war axe. They were dwarf-made, and he would sooner have cut off his beard than let a human at them. Cas' hammer felt wrong to her. Probably a paladin thing. Just as well. It was twice as heavy as her mace.

She'd terrified them all with his greatsword, lurching around with it like some mad thing. She could get the end of it up off the ground all right, but once the downward arc started, it wouldn't stop until it hit the ground again. She'd nearly taken off the paladin's foot. They'd taken it away from her after that, and tried her on Neesh's rapier instead. She was fast enough, all right, but the shield slowed her down. Cas had taken her shield away and tried teaching her to parry with a dagger in her off hand, but that had ended badly... with a couple of healing spells and another ruined tunic, if he remembered correctly. And Cas had been beside himself with guilt over stabbing her.

She'd taken instantly to knife-work, oddly enough. To him, it looked like the pair of them were dancing, circling each other and sometimes lunging in quick for a strike with their wooden daggers. After the rapier incident, Cas would not allow either of them real weapons until Kayla had demonstrated her proficiency, so they practiced with bits of wood coated in chalk. The very first time they'd tried it, Kayla had fought the paladin into a corner.

"Very good, my lady," he'd said, "but you have left yourself open. All I need do is raise my blade like this, and the fight is over."

Lala had smiled then, right up in the paladin's face.

"All you have to do is look down," she'd said. For a good girl, she sure could sound evil. And it was true. The paladin had a stripe of chalk across his belly clear as a belt. If that had been a real knife, he'd have been standing in a pile of his own innards.

Still, Khelgar was not satisfied. A knife was fine as a back-up weapon, but it was useless in a real fight, or against a creature that didn't have its squishy bits close to the skin. The whole idea was to keep the other bastard as far away as possible, but with a knife, you had to practically stand on top of each other. He suspected that was the reason the paladin enjoyed training her with knives so much. Well, that and he seemed to like it when she kicked his ass.

"Listen, Cas," Khelgar began, trying his hand at diplomacy, "you've done fine work with the lass, but I reckon she might have learned enough."

"It is important that she learn to protect herself, Khelgar," the paladin protested.

"And she can!" he'd insisted. "Truth to tell, she's better at knives than you are. She's faster, anyway. Besides, how close do you want her to get to the pointy end of an orc?"

That had shut him up, but it wasn't enough. They couldn't find a good weapon for her, and that bothered the paladin. Khelgar didn't necessarily agree, since she'd done well enough before Cas showed up. She was good with that mace of hers... if only it were a pound or two lighter.

"What's your problem, Khelgar?" the tiefling asked. "You don't like her form?"

"Nah," the dwarf answered, "her form is fine. It's just that the mace is too heavy."

"Give her the strength belt," Neeshka suggested. "You'll never miss it."

"You have a 'strength belt'?" Cas was "all horns," as Neesh would say.

"Yeah," the dwarf admitted. "The lass bought it for me herself, from that Eldario, down in Highcliff. A 'girdle of Frost Giant strength.' Don't mind giving it up for her, but you'll have to cut a few more holes in it."

With the girdle on, Kayla had no trouble at all with the mace. Even Cas was pleased, though he still insisted on sparring with her every break. That was getting old quick. Khelgar knew Casavir meant well, and Kayla was holding up all right, but it was starting to tell on the paladin. He could keep on his pins for quite some time, for a human, but Lala was a Harborman, and tough as they come, even if she didn't weigh more than Khelgar's thigh. Cas would break under the strain a long time before she would. By the end of the third day, the paladin was nodding at the fire before he'd even finished eating, and that fourth morning, he'd staggered a bit after their breaktime sparring session.

"So tell me, Cas," Khelgar said as they were gathering up their gear, "what's the plan if the lass comes up against somebody who isn't a paladin?"

"I do not follow," The paladin even sounded beat.

"She can fight you all right, but can she fight a gnome? Or a dwarf? Or how about a druid? Don't reckon there's any point in setting her against Qara, since there aren't a lot of ways you can block a fireball, but still, it would do the others good to get a little practice in, as well."

"I see your point," he agreed. "We'll rotate the training."

"Good man," Khelgar said, contented. Nice and neat, that way. Everybody gets a turn to get sunburned and overheated.

Sunburn had been a real problem, at first. With the orcs scattered, they no longer marched with their helmets on. Khelgar did not love the sun, but he could bear it. His ruddy skin just got ruddier. The tree-hugger had turned a healthy-looking walnut, and the gnome got a bit tanned, but that was about the end of it. Qara kept her hood up, most of the time, and just as well, because Khelgar hated the sight of her. Lala looked like a freckled lobster, though, and had to stop every so often to cast healing spells on either herself or the paladin. Cas, too, was frying under the sunlight. Khelgar had to laugh at Kayla. Tyr was an indoor kind of god, so perhaps Cas might be excused for having a hide the color of new parchment, but Lala was a Dawnbringer. She wasn't supposed to burst into flame if she stood under the noontime sun for more than five minutes. The tree-hugger had come to the rescue, there. She'd whipped up some foul concoction out of gods-knew-what and handed each of the humans a pot of it. Even Qara took it, which Khelgar cursed, because it meant having to look at her again. A couple smears from the little pots ever few hours, and they were back to their usual pallor. It smelled vile, but it kept the bugs away.

And gods, what bugs they had here! Swarms of flies weren't even the worst of it.

That third night, he'd been sitting with the tiefling, trying to keep her hands out of his belt pouch, and they'd been half-devoured by biting gnats. And the ants... he didn't even want to think about the ants. They'd crawled into his bedroll and bitten him raw. So the fourth day, he'd put on El's salve, too, and enjoyed his first bug-free morning in days.

That druid did have her uses, he had to admit. He might never love her, but he'd been grateful enough that fourth morning to cook breakfast without a scrap of meat, and it wasn't even a veggie day. She'd smiled at him. It had felt... odd. She was an elf. He didn't like elves. And she was a tree-hugger, and wouldn't even touch that nice juicy salmon he'd caught, the day after they left Neverwinter, but when she smiled at him for cooking the barley without bacon, he felt like he'd finally done something right. It was the least he could do, really. It hadn't even tasted that bad, the barley, if he put enough salt in it.

But still, no beer! Damn, but he'd even be willing to share with the fiendling, if he could have a pot of ale to go with his cheese-and-onions, that fourth night. That meal, too, had been meatless, though it was a meat day, and Lala's turn to cook. Still, he could forgive her for humoring the druid. Of them all, Kayla had been most plagued by sunburn. Some cleric of Lathander!

But the beer, now, that was a hardship El's balms couldn't cure. They'd better find his clan soon, or he might die of thirst.

He'd lost the last of his firewhiskey in a bet with the tiefling the night before. Khelgar wondered if he could win it back tonight, but discarded the idea. She was better at "rocks, parchment, shears" than he was, and he'd taught her the damn game.

What the hells. It wasn't as if they had anything better to do on watch. Lala had put an end to his plan of exempting her from watch duty, but he usually put her on first watch, since she'd always be up at first light, anyway. Cas kept her company most nights. He said it was to help her stay awake, but he was always the one falling asleep at it. Now that he'd cut back on his training, though, he might last longer. Some people just didn't understand that you broke your march for a reason. He usually put Nobby on after Kayla, then he'd stand watch himself, then Neesh, though truth to tell, Neesh usually woke up early enough to sit up with him a bit, and if he stayed up after his own shift ended, well, somebody had to keep an eye on the tiefling. Cas took the last watch of the night, usually just as Lala was waking up. If somebody was having an off night, he'd swap him out with Qara or El, but he liked to keep those two out of it. He couldn't trust Qara not to let every orc in the Sword Mountains make off with their gear if it suited her, and he wasn't sure that El wouldn't let a bear ransack their provisions on the off chance it might be another druid.

The tiefling had her thieving ways, but she kept Khelgar on his toes. Besides, she was the only one besides Nobby that he didn't have to crane his neck to talk to. She was barely a thumb's breadth taller than dwarf height. That was strange. Khelgar always thought that demons were supposed to be huge, leathery things with bat wings and flaming breath, but Neesh was a tiny little thing, for someone who was supposed to be half demon. Maybe demons came in more than one size.

Khelgar didn't have much of an imagination, as a rule, but he spared a chuckle over the possible scene of Neeshka's conception. He could just imagine a two foot tall demon standing in front of some human female saying "You will submit!" in a tinny little voice. The woman would have laughed at him and said "But you're only two feet tall!" And the demon would have said "Yeah, and I've only got one leg, to boot. Want to guess what the other one is?" And that might have given Cas some competition, the freak.

But Neesh was all right... if you kept her where you could see her. She wasn't a dwarf, but she was easy enough to look at, if you could ignore the horns. The tail, now, that was fun to watch. It seemed to have a life of its own, lashing out at this and that. He'd been disappointed to learn that she couldn't grab things with it, but then, Neeshka's da had been a cambion, likely as not, and not a monkey. Though the tiefling was a bit of a monkey herself, or a magpie, filching anything shiny. She'd tricked him into letting her guess the number and type of coins in his purse... until he'd learned that she'd pinched the three biggest for herself. Damn thief.

The fifth morning, they hit pay dirt. Neesh had found the traces of it, of all people. She'd called Khelgar over to show him a clumsy looking snare, and he'd found a scrap of cloth in his clan's colors trapped in the knot. It bode ill for his clansmen, but ill news was better than none. His people had been here.

Around midmorning, they stopped for a break. Khelgar had been uneasy about it, but he knew better than to argue with Lala when she used that voice. Qara was falling behind, and the sun was fierce, that morning.

No sparring this morning, at least, the dwarf noticed. They sat on boulders, waiting for the sorceress and the gnome to catch their breath.

"Tindul wurgyn," Khelgar heard a voice say, far away, maybe, but there could be no mistake. That was dwarven.

"Lala!" he jumped up. "They're here! I just heard them. Must be down that slope!"

It did not take them long to find his kin, or to walk right into them, as it happened.

"You're a strange band to be wandering these mountains," a yellow-bearded dwarf was eying Kayla up and down... and Neeshka.

Clangeddin's beard, was that Khulmar? The bastard still owed him five gold.

"Khulmar?" he asked. "I could say the same - what are you doing here, far from Ironfist lands?"

"Not as far you'd think Khelgar," what in the nine hells was that supposed to mean? Ironfists made their home in these mountains, but it was many leagues to the north. "Though I doubt we are here for the same reasons."

"Care to introduce us, Khelgar?" Lala asked.

"This here's Khulmar," he said, "one of the best scouts of the Ironfist clan and good in a fight. Neither one, of course, explains what he's doing here, though."

"It's clan business," Khulmar grunted, "not for outsiders."

"Ah, but Khulmar, these are friends... " Khelgar noticed Khulmar's glare at the tiefling, "well, most of them, anyways. Who's blood is that on your armor? Orc?"

"We are scouting out the old Ironfist clan hold in these mountains," Khelgar's ears perked up at that, "seeing if it can be reopened - or retaken. There are bugbears blocking the way, but they will not do so for long."

"Bugbears?" Khelgar hooted. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's bury them!"

"It's nothing we can't handle, Khelgar," Khulmar protested quickly. "No need to shed the blood of non-clan - and this is an Ironfist matter."

"Nonsense, these all are spoiling for a fight!" the sweep of Khelgar's arm included Kayla and Casavir. Damn it. Why did the fool paladin have to pick right then to yawn? "What say you all - you all want to give the vultures some bugbear corpses to feast on?"

"If they are in need of help, we should do what we can," Khelgar heard Cas say to Kayla. "The more allies we have in these mountains, the better. A dwarven presence in these mountains, especially the Ironfist clan, would also make tactical sense as well. "

Hey, was that respect in Cas' voice? Maybe he wasn't such a bag of grit, after all.

"Yeah, that's great, Casavir," Qara's voice dripped sarcasm, "fight the good fight. Maybe we can carve that on our tombstones - if anyone finds our bodies at all."

Damn sorceress. Like anybody cared what happened to her worthless hide.

"You know," Neesh wheedled, "old dwarven halls tend to have lots of gold and gems, just lying around for the taking."

"Maybe so," Khelgar sputtered, "but nothing your thieving hands will see, fiendling."

Elanee said something about wanting to go home, but Khelgar wasn't paying attention. That little thief...

"Why does one even need to ask?! It sounds like a tale waiting to happen- " Oh, no. Not Grobnar...

"Think of it," Nobby went on, "Grobnar Gnomehands, and the liberation of the Ironfist clan, and all its engineering marvels, a tale for any tavern, for every man, woman, and child!"

"Who is this gnome?" Khulmar asked Khelgar irritably.

"He's arrow bait," Khelgar muttered. "I'll tell you about it later."

"We'll help you," Kayla said firmly.

"We are grateful for the... gesture," Khulmar spat, "but such false courtesies are wasted on us."

Don't bash him, old boy, Khelgar fumed, he doesn't know what she's like.

"Khelgar," Khulmar went on, "stay with your new band, we neither asked for your help nor require it. This is Ironfist clan business."

"Eh?" What was Khulmar on about? "I'm Ironfist clan - your fight is my fight."

Khulmar's face was red. "Those were not the words you used when you left so long ago to pursue this mad... idea of yours. You seek to learn how to fight, but you have cast the aside the why of it - clan honor, duty, these are things you have forgotten the value of."

"If you wish to help," he relented a bit, "then know that the door is sealed to the clanhold - and if you can recount the legend of King Loudram, then you will know how to open it... I think that part of our history is fresh enough in your mind. Whether you return or not, it does not matter to me, and it does not matter to the clan."

"We are with you, Khelgar," Kayla had her hand on his shoulder, "and we want to help."

That's my Lala! Khelgar thought happily.

"All right then," Khelgar rumbled, "let's get to the clanhold door... and hopefully there's something beyond it that needs to be taught a lesson in battle."

"If you truly want to help us," Khulmar said, "then come back to us when you have done something of note, not words, Khelgar. Until then, we have little more to say."

With that, the scout folded his arms and sat down on a boulder.

"Thanks for backing me up, back there," Khelgar said to his leader as they set off down the trail Khulmar showed them.

"You do it often enough for me," she smiled. He was a bit flustered by the kiss she put on the top of his head, but he could live with it.

It didn't take them long to find the trail... or to find the present those wretched bugbears left for them. The dead scout lay in the road. One less kinsman. Damn! There were too few already.

The first warning was nothing more than a crunch of gravel, and it came too late.

"Leira's lamentations!" Khelgar cried. "We've walked into a bloody ambush!"

But his band did well. There were six bugbears. Khelgar's thrown axe took out the first one before it even saw him, and Cas had his down before the first bugbear body stopped twitching. Lala was doing well, too, with her new-found proficiency. Cas caught a claw to the face when he closed on Kayla's bugbear, but Kayla had the killing blow. Qara took one out with a something bright and flashy, and Nobby lay about himself with his longsword clutched in both hands. He wasn't hitting anything, but he sure seemed to be having fun. Khelgar casually walked up and snapped the bugbear's spine with a well-placed hammer blow. The bugbear fell, paralyzed. Nobby gleefully darted in and drove his longsword through the beast's chest, finishing it.

The gnome squealed in glee and did a little victory dance, but Khelgar just ignored him and looked for the sixth. It was buried under a pile of El's summons. The thing was dead, likely as not, but bear and badger tore at it just to make sure.

Damn, but they were a force to be reckoned with. Khelgar was pleased.

"Hold still, Casavir," he heard Lala say, "or you'll have a terrible scar."

"I am unhurt, my lady!" the paladin protested.

"Do as she says," Khelgar barked. "Wouldn't want your pretty face all scarred and nasty. Don't you paladins have rules about that kind of thing?"

Lala ignored them both.

"Don't be an idiot, Casavir," she said. "Facial wounds hurt like hades, and it will just slow you down. I need you to be focused, not thinking about how much your face smarts."

The paladin submitted to her healing, then, and Khelgar couldn't blame him. Scars were the mark of a true warrior, but when it came right down to it, they were best acquired on the way home. Besides, she had a point. No use putting up with the pain if he didn't need to.

After that, they defeated another pack of bugbears to free an Ironfist prisoner. Khelgar didn't know him, but the former captive blessed them, and he counted that for something.

The clanhold... what a sight it had been. At first, they had seen no more than a few more bugbears, but they got to watch the finer points of bugbear treasure division up close. It all boiled down to "surviver takes all," so they didn't have to do anything more than wait for the bastards to kill each other off and mop up the leftovers.

At first, the stone was still bad, and some passages were closed to cave-ins. But the gnome was happy. He found some gadget that fit into a slot, and spouted a load of rubbish about engineering and fulcrums and gears.

"Gond's gears, Nobby," Khelgar interrupted, "can you open that door or not?"

He could, as it turned out. After a tough fight with some of the meanest bugbears he'd ever seen, they found a treasure indeed. Gauntlets.

"I don't believe it," Khelgar breathed. "Our clan thought they had been lost forever."

"What are they," Kayla asked, stepping closer for a better look.

"My clan history may not be what it should," he admitted, "but I know what these are - the Gauntlets of Ironfist, held by the first of our kings..."

And now he held them... in his actual hands...

"Torim Ironfist, our last great king, was said to have worn them when our homeland fell to the orcs," he explained. "But that would mean this clanhold is... This must be our first clanhold, the halls where Torim made his final stand... if I had only known this place was here... that these were here."

"So they're relics of your clan," Kayla said respectfully, "an heirloom."

"Oh, it's much more than that," Khelgar's chest swelled with pride. "We Ironfists wouldn't wear something like these if they didn't have a practical use, too. Anyone who wears them gains the strength of ten, maybe twenty... it's how the clan earned the name Ironfist. With these, you could probably punch through a stone wall. And that's just the beginning. It's said that if the wearer also wielded the Hammer of Ironfist, he could fell dragons with one blow."

"I'm not sure you couldn't do that anyway, Khelgar," Kayla smiled at him, but he never heard her.

"It must be destiny that I've found them," he said. "It must mean that the Ironfist clan shall reclaim our home."

"That would be a great day," Kayla said.

Khelgar looked at Kayla then.

"And to think..." he said. "I would never have come here, met my brothers, if you had not brought me here to these mountains."

His voice trailed off. He was still looking at Kayla, but he weighed the gauntlets in his hands.

"Here. You should take the gauntlets, Lala," he said. "You've performed a great service for me and my clan."

"Those gauntlets belong on Ironfist hands, Khelgar," Kayla replied. "You keep them."

"I... I thank you," Khelgar said. "I'm far from a king, but it means a lot to me that you feel I'm worthy enough to wear them."

"More than worthy, Khelgar," Kayla insisted. "But we should report back to Khulmar. He will want to hear of this place... and what we found."

When they returned to Khulmar, it was just going on sunset. They found them by the smell of roasting meat. Khelgar's mouth was watering while they were still a quarter mile out. And while they might not travel this far with beer, they must have firewhiskey...

Khulmar was not happy to see them.

"If you have not entered the clanhold,"Khulmar said, "then you have no business with us."

Khelgar just grinned behind his beard and let Lala do the talking.

"We explored the stronghold," she said, "but it's collapsed. There's no way through."

"Hnh," Khulmar grunted. "The rock in this region has always proven difficult to carve, and it's not one for keeping its shape without a good hammer disciplining it. We'll have to find another way, then - there's other entrances we might be able to uncover."

Khelgar could hold his peace no longer.

"But we found something else!" he said, thrusting his gauntleted fists in front of his clansman. "Look at this, Khulmar - what do you see?"

"It's a pair of gauntlets, Khelgar," Khulmar said irritably. Khelgar forgave him and just let him keep looking. "Well-crafted, to be sure... and they have the mark of... Clangeddin's hammer, are my eyes blinded... are those the Gauntlets of Ironfist?"

"The same," Khelgar agreed happily. "Who knows what other treasures are buried deep in the clanhold, Khulmar, but if we found these after a quick search... well, who knows? Even the rest of it might be down there."

"You've found a relic, Khelgar..." Khulmar sounded awed, "part of our history."

"I didn't do it," Khelgar admitted, "you have my friend here to thank. And we never would have known this place to be here if you hadn't been here before us, Khulmar. And the gauntlets, well, they should rest with the clan, I think."

"No, Khelgar," Khulmar disagreed, "if you two found them, then they were meant to be held by you both - for a time. When your journey is done, perhaps you shall return them to us."

"Are you good to keep traveling these mountains?" Khelgar asked. Some of his clansmen looked pretty battered. They might need his help. "If you like, I could -"

"Our wounds have healed," the other dwarf said, "and you've already given us enough aid. Perhaps we were too quick to judge your allies, Khelgar."

Khulmar paused, and addressed Kayla directly.

"The Ironfist Clan is in your debt, Kayla..." his voice trailed off, but he looked at Kayla expectantly.

Kayla's eyes widened. Khelgar almost laughed at her puzzlement. She wanted to give Khulmar a clan name, but she had none.

"Kayla Morrow," she said, after a slight pause. Khulmar nodded.

"The Ironfist Clan is in your debt, Kayla Morrow," Khulmar said solemnly, "this I swear to you in stone and steel. Such a debt shall not be forgotten in the days to come."

Khulmar turned to Khelgar again.

"And Khelgar," he said, "if your path lies with this one, so be it. But the clan shall await your return."

His clan. His people. But not yet.

"It shall not be long, I think, Khulmar," he said, "but someone needs to watch out for this little one or else she'll be lying in a grave."

Khulmar laughed at that.

"Very well, Khelgar," Khulmar chuckled, "may stone shield you from the sky, and ale be always at your hand - but not too much ale, you know how you get after the twelfth tankard."

Khelgar laughed, too. Twelve tankards would go down well, about now... or even one.

"But feast with us tonight, Kayla Morrow," Khulmar said. "Khelgar Ironfist has not supped with his brothers these many seasons, and we have plenty to share."

Khelgar's heart swelled with pride at the name. Khulmar had claimed him, and he was glad of it. He looked to Kayla, though he had no apprehensions about her acceptance of the Khulmar's offer. Harbormen knew the ways of hospitality, and she would not reject his kin, having come so far to find them. Nor did she disappoint.

"I would be honored to break bread with your clan," she said, "though I would be pleased if you would accept this token of gratitude."

Khelgar watched as she took a cup from her pack.

"This chalice was given to me by my own people," she said. "It is not much, but my own kin put much of themselves in it. It will light your steps in darkness, and heal your hurts. Please accept it as thanks for the welcome you have given us."

That was well done, Khelgar thought. He knew that Kayla gave Khulmar the Harvest Cup, the prize she had won at the Harvest Fair, and her last remembrance of home. It was a princely gift for a meal, but Khelgar did not grudge it. Her generosity toward his kin meant more to him than any inconvenience the loss of the item might cause.

Khulmar, too, seemed impressed with the gift, and gave Kayla the kiss of peace. For tonight, at least, Khulmar called her sister, and Khelgar was glad of it.

"I gladly accept your gift," Khulmar said formally, after he had kissed Kayla on each cheek, "and name you friend of my people. But come. We have no board in these lands, but what we have, we share freely. Eat with us, and drink, and leave all cares until tomorrow."

His kin were well-provisioned, Khelgar had to say. They ate fine salt pork and roasted boar, and had onions and barley in plenty. As Khelgar had predicted, they had no beer, but they drank each others' health with the finest dwarven firewhiskey. He was glad to be among his kin, and delighted that they welcomed him. They did not go to great lengths to show it, perhaps, but that was not the way of his people. And really, when all was said, was it not better to accept the freely offered flask than the ponderous words of some false comrade?

Kayla fit in well enough, in that she did what was expected of her. She was friendly to the Ironfists, but she did not ignore her human, elvish, tiefling, and gnomish companions. That, too, was as should be. Family had no need of pretenses.

Khelgar walked by Kayla, and overheard part of a conversation with Casavir.

"...no name for a cleric of Lathander," Casavir said reproachfully.

"It's good enough, Cas," Kayla shrugged it off. "Khulmar wanted my family name, and I have none. My foster father would be furious if I claimed his, and as much as I wish my mentor was my father, he was not. 'Morrow' was the best I could do. Besides, it's true enough. It's another word for 'morning', after all."

"Perhaps," the paladin consented, "but it still says nothing of your family."

"And what of yours, Casavir of Tyr?" she countered.

"My family could ill afford one," the paladin replied. "I have never had the presumption to take one for myself."

"And whose fault is that?" Kayla retorted. "But your training must have been expensive... I'm sorry, Cas, I did not mean to pry."

"Do not trouble yourself," Cas answered. "A paladin's training is expensive, but the temple itself will bear the cost, if there is no other way. Is it not thus among the clergy of Lathander?"

"I suppose," Kayla said. She accepted the flask that Khelgar passed her, then offered it to the paladin. He waved it away, so she handed it back to Khelgar. Cas' loss, Khelgar thought.

"Are you permitted to take drink?" Kayla asked.

"Ale or wine, perhaps," Cas said. "But you will have to take my share of the firewhiskey. Will my refusal offend our hosts?"

Kayla caught Khelgar's cloak.

"Will Cas offend your kin by refusing firewhiskey?" she asked him.

"Maybe," Khelgar admitted. "We take hospitality pretty seriously."

Casavir accepted the flask that time, though it wasn't a very big sip. Khelgar guffawed at the paladin's shudder. Firewhiskey packed quite a wallop.

"Between the dragon and the desert, eh, paladin?" he laughed. "That'll put hair on your chest, it will... er... do humans ever get that?"

Kayla giggled.

"Only the men," she said, then caught Khelgar's furtive glance at the paladin and added, "and not all, at that."

"Hmf," Khelgar snorted. "No wonder you all have to bundle up so much when it gets cold."

Khulmar himself came by a few moments later, and handed Kayla a drinking horn. Khelgar raised his eyebrows at that. The offer of the clan cup was an honor, and he hoped she would not refuse it. It was full of specially blessed firewhiskey, and Khulmar would give it to each of his clan in turn until the horn was empty.

She took it reverently, but she was in for a bath if he didn't say something.

"Point down, Lala," Khelgar hissed. She smiled her thanks and turned the horn so that the point of it faced her. That way, the contents would not slosh into her face when she lifted it. She took a drink and handed it back.

"Marthammor Duin keep guard your steps tomorrow," Khulmar said, then repeated the gesture to each of them in turn. Only Elanee refused, the tree-hugger. When Khelgar's turn came, Khulmar gripped his forearm afterward in the handshake of kindred.

Khelgar's heart was glad. Kayla had made a friend in Khulmar, and he had made his own peace with his clansman. He was well contented, indeed.