Chapter 9 – Part 9

“Hold steady now, steady,” Van Deers d’Kundarak said, eyeing the crack in the warforged’s leg as he applied the adhesive. The elderly dwarf used a thick magnifying monocle, attached to his head by a worn piece of leather tugged around his wool cap. He eyed the warforged’s limb to make sure that not a dab of the substance was wasted.

“This unit, Saul, follows your direction, Master Artificer,” the warforged responded with a deep bass tone. Of the three in the camp, he was the only one with adamantine plating, so it was ironic that he had been injured when excavating the gully that the accounting wagon was hidden in.

“I keep telling you to just call me Van, I’ve no official rank,” the bemused dwarf said with a smile. “Ah! That ought to do it.” He paused, watching the air dry the exposed sealant in second. “Flex the leg a bit, would you please?” The warforged obeyed. “Splendid!”

“Thank you Van,” Saul told him. “May this – may I return to my duties?”

“You are quite welcome, Saul, quite welcome,” Van Deers said. “And yes, you can go back to guarding the wagon with John and Davv.”

The warforged called Saul nodded, and turned to walk the few yards to the wagon. Van Deers sighed, removed his monocle, and rubbed his mostly bald head through the cold weather cap. The damp was hurting his bones. He’d left Mror because he was tired of this weather.

And because he was tired of the ghosts.

Van Deers tucked his monocle and its strap into a pouch, and pulled on some gloves as he encircled the wagon. John was at its front, so he soon saw Davv at its back. The warforged, sleepless creatures that they were, always had two of the three on the outside and one on the inside.

“Good morning, Davv,” the dwarf said with forced cheer as he walked up to the basket on the peg. The coals had long banked, and even a warforged felt this sort of cold.

“Good morning, squad leader,” Davv said in a quiet voice. Davv was always quiet. His composite plating was black-coated mithril, and it had been silenced when Davv was first acquired by the Eldeen army. Van Deers had enhanced that silence, and as a result Davv always saw the dwarven artificer as another commando, despite any evidence to the contrary.

“Too cold and wet,” Van Deers said, laying his hand above the basket. It was made of iron mesh, and with the proper infusion the coals fired up, generating enough heat to keep the warforged from being damaged by the cold. “There, that should hold for another four hours.”

“You are considerate, squad leader,” Davv said.

“I try, anyway,” Van Deers beamed. “You’re a good fellow Davv, and I like you and the others a lot.”

“Why do you call us these names?” Davv asked suddenly. His voice was as flat as usual, and his eyes unreadable, but something in his stance said it was important.

“Well, er, that is…” Van Deers trailed off. “You are entitled to names, and you didn’t object to my naming you, I mean to call you by numbers, when you are valued, er, well…”

“I do not object to having a name,” Davv said. “Nor do I object to the squad leader who repaired us on the battlefield being the one to choose the name. I just wondered why these three names.”

“They – they meant something to me,” Van Deers said. His eyes were misting with tears. “I have to go.”

The warforged called Davv watched the dwarf go, its face impassive. If it was aware that it had accidentally upset the artificer, it didn’t show it.

It had a job to do. An important one. The records of which soldier would be paid what were stored in the wagon. Without them, the soldiers could not be paid.

And soldiers, particularly the independent-minded ones in the Reaches, would not take kindly to not being paid.