The commander worked his way around each Patroller. When he came to me, he said, “You did very well out there. Quick, smart thinking under pressure. How do you feel you went?”

  I just shrugged my shoulder, as I didn’t really know how I felt. I was still weak. I managed to save Titless and get away, but I wasn’t causing enough damage. I didn’t say any of that.

  “We lost Skat and Sheila, but your actions saved Thran. They also saved me when you passed me your shield and rode the griffon so that it took off. Thank you,” he said. “We will have a burial for Skat and Sheila tomorrow. Get some rest. Check your skill growth. You will find that the Guard class has leapt forward. You demonstrated excellent Guard qualities out there. You will definitely have the class before winter, and you are well suited for it.”

  He moved on. He was a Guard trainer, so he has the skills to know how I am progressing in my class training. I will check my skills later. For now, I stripped off my ripped and useless armour. I had lost my spear, axe and shield, so I had no weapons.

  I transformed into a polar bear, grabbed a leg of what was cooking, and took it around to my den. I settled into my shallow hole and chewed the meat as I rested. I needed to be alone.

  I could hear the dwarves drinking. They needed to be together and with their precious ale. I needed to be alone.

  My mind was going over the fight again and again, especially the last ten minutes when everything went to shit. It might not have even been that long. Five minutes.

  Could I have done anything different? Yes, a thousand things. Running would have been sensible. Staying out of it to guard Thran, rather than go back in, would also have been less dangerous.

  Why did I toss my shield to the Commander? The main reason was I couldn’t have held it and stayed on the griffon as long as I did. The Commander using it to save his life was on him, not me. I needed to be rid of it and thought he might have a use for it.

  Why did I get on the griffon's back? My main thinking was that it was the one place it couldn’t reach me with its beak and claws. It wasn’t heroic. I really wasn’t thinking how the griffon might react. I certainly didn’t have the power to hurt it significantly. The griffon probably thought I did, though.

  I knew Sheila better than Skat. Could I have seen the griffons coming and saved Sheila? I was focused on the fight, not my surroundings. That is a weakness, but if you lose focus in a fight, you get dead. Yoboc is probably beating himself up with this. He has Farsight as well.

  Felix appeared, lay down next to me, and started chewing on the other end of the leg bone. Seriously, that dog is fearless. No other animal would come and share the food of a polar bear while he was eating it. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I growled at him. He just wags his tail, knowing I don’t mean it, somehow. I growl at myself.

  Eventually, I left Felix to it and curled up to sleep. I woke early. There is one good thing about working with dwarves. They are not early risers. They work hard, drink late and sleep in late. For most, lunch is the first meal of the day.

  Felix is curled up beside me. Before I get up and hunt for a nice fat seal for breakfast, I check my skills. My Tough Hide has gone up to Apprentice. I have Seismic Smash, which is still at the Novice level, but I can use it with most blunt weapons, not just the shield. That is handy. I will have to check if it works with my fists or paws. I don’t see why not. It has a moderate cost in Spiritual Energy, and to make it much more effective, I need more Spiritual Strength. The cost reduces as the skill levels.

  Shield, Spear, and Axe all went up one or two levels. Then I saw Sprint. It had jumped into the Journeyman levels. It was my third Journeyman-level skill after Common Language and Nightsight. I did use it a lot. Thinking about it, the jump to Journeyman probably happened early in the fight as the cost has reduced drastically at Journeyman level, and I would have run out of stamina otherwise. I was supposed to have been regulating my energy levels, but I think I forgot somewhere in there. That was dangerous. That is a lesson to learn.

  I was surprised to have Anatomy in my lore and Novice First Aid. Anatomy was just the general Anatomy Lore and was not specialised for any species. Novice First Aid did little more than aid in bandaging and stopping bleeding, which was what I did for Titless Thran. The skill was strongly tied with the Anatomy skill, and the more I knew, the better the first aid was. Once it gets to apprentice, it will help slightly boost the Physical Constitution and the natural recovery. Very slightly. It was not a proper healing skill; it was to keep people alive and get them to a healer.

  My Hunter/Scavenger Class went up a level even though the hunt was not successful. One step closer to getting the attributes I need to get Clearsight. In fact, one more level, and I will have them. I noted I did not earn any attribute points in the fight. That was a shame, but it was getting a lot harder to earn points. They told me it would get like that.

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  I roused myself. I was a little stiff and sore, but the cuts on my back were closed over. However, my ribs were still healing. The wounds transferred when I transformed, making the transformation painful. I was going to go and see how my new Journeyman Sprint worked in bear form, but I decided that I would have to wait for my ribs to heal. I wandered to the cooking area and scavenged for food. Not even the cook was awake yet. I then settled down with Felix to snooze till a more suitable hour.

  Dwarves are a people of the earth. For this reason, they bury their dead and create ornate stone markers to honour them. Sheila was honoured as if she was a full dwarf and not a hawk. The burial sites were dug near the mine entrance and two large rocks were brought out. Yoboc and Goldie would carve Sheila's monument over the next few months and the relatives of Skat would carve his.

  After the burial, where people spoke, we went back to the cooking area, drank, and remembered the dead. Many a toast was raised, and it was considered bad manners if you were able to walk home afterwards.

  During the drinking, Thran approached me. He had a wooden crutch. His leg stopped mid-thigh. “I am told I have you to thank for my life. Thank you for saving me. I … ah, I apologise again for my actions when we first met. This … this,” he waved at his missing leg, “this has made me reconsider a lot of things.” Then he got formal, “I, Thranmak Bolderblade, owe you a life debt. Whatever you need, call on me, and I will do everything in my power to meet that need.”

  What on earth do you say to something like that?

  “You don’t need to respond,” Thran said. “The debt is mine. Just ask.” Then he nodded to me and limped away.

  “He didn’t need to do that,” Goldie said from behind me as Thran walked away. I looked at her. “Dwarves don’t recognise formal personal debts these days, not even life debts. Only rarely in special circumstances, and usually only amongst kin.”

  “So what do I do?” I said, worried I was going to breach some cultural taboo. Dwarves have all these unknown customs.

  “You don’t have to do anything. If you need anything, just ask him.”

  “What happens after this?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Goldie asked.

  “People died. What happens here? Is there any fallout from this?”

  “Thomwea will get in trouble when she gets back. Death penalties will be paid, and she has nothing to show for it. It was planned, and the risk managed, and it still went to shit,” Goldie replied.

  “That’s it?”

  Goldie shrugged, “I stay away from that weak rock stuff.”

  “Weak rock?”

  “Politics, management, you know, weak rock.”

  I didn’t get that. It must be a dwarf thing. I will stay out of it, too.

  “Drink up, Ivan,” she said, “You don’t want to be walking home,”

  I sleep around the back of the cookfires. How else am I getting home? Dwarves are weird. When I had enough, I escaped, changed back to my bear and snuggled down for the night.

  I don’t know how to help Yoboc. He is the dwarf who has invested in me the most, and not only in training. I still haven’t worked out if he and Goldie are together. They yell and fight, but that might be normal for a dwarf relationship. She was certainly making sure he couldn’t walk home.

  I was on light duty until my ribs healed. I made sure I spent time with Yoboc, but he seemed diminished. He went out hunting with Goldie, but more ofter then not, they came back empty. His spare time was spent carving the monument for Sheila.

  Felix and I would go and watch him carve. Goldie often brought him a meal at the grave site.

  One day, he handed me a chisel and a small hammer, “That area that is marked is all waste stone. If you want to help, you can carefully chip it away.” So, I started to help a little. I wasn’t very good, but he took the time to show me how to chip away the stone. He described the design of Sheila catching a fish from the sea. A sculpture like that requires a lot of imagination to form it from a lump of stone.

  I earned a point in Mental Agility when I learned the Carving skill. I was only doing the rough work; Yoboc did all the fine work, and he seemed to have a real feel for the stone, for all that he is not a miner. I guess all the dwarves spend time with stone and mining. It must give them some sort of innate sense of the stone and the micro-cracks and minor variations in density. I was starting to see more by the time Carving went to the Apprentice level, which gave me another point in Mental Agility. I was certainly better at carving than I was at composing limericks.

  Goldie was better at limericks. She piped up one day with:

  “There once was a carver alone,

  Who worked with a hammer on stone.

  With each chisel’s bite,

  He brought forms to the light,

  Till the rock seemed to sigh and intone.”

  Goldie also came up with the words in tribute to Shiela, which would be carved into the mounting.

  “The osprey, a master of flight,

  Soars high with a keen, piercing sight.

  With talons that flash,

  Through waters they splash,

  A predator, swift and contrite.”

  I was carving the mount, but Yoboc would carve the words.