Role

Chapter 3

It was a morning like many others in the Grath smithy. The forge was fresh
lit, and people were trickling in and out to collect and make requests. Not
many. Never many. Weapons trade was where the money was, and all the locals
well knew not to waste there time with that here. If you wanted something
else though, there was a good chance the wait would be shorter.

So Gochon was quite surprised when one of the customers who pushed open the
door and entered was someone he recognised. It was a weathered dwarf that
he'd met just the night before after all, a newcomer to Akan from somewhere
off west. "What'll it be fella?" Gochon's father could sense a new customer
too, but Gochon had an impending sense of doom.

"Needin a new axe," the newcomer validated said worry promptly. "Goin down
south a bit to push them damn skulls back into their caves."

"No axes here," Grakken responded stiffly. "No weapons."

The conversation rapidly degenerated from there, but Gochon had seen it all
before. Eventually the dwarf threw up his hands and stormed out, but this
time Gochon couldn't hold his tongue.

"That fella might be dyin if we don't make him an axe da."

Grakken snorted. "And someone will be dyin if we be makin 'im one lad. You
know that."

"Better an orc than a good man."

"It ain't our place to say who be livin and who be dyin. I won't be havin
any part of it."

On another day, Gochon may have left it there. He had in the past after all.

Today was not that day. The slowly simmering resentment that had been
building these past years finally boiled over, and Gochon said something he
immediately wished to take back. "You're just a bloody coward. Our people
be dyin out there and you care more about keepin your hands clean than doin
the right thing."

His father blinked, a stricken expression upon his face, for what kind of
dwarf questions the honour of their own blood?

Gochon opened his mouth to apologise.

And his father vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.