Caden spent two days in recovery. For the most part, he spent that time making repairs to his clothes and getting to know Dueril -- who, understandably, refused to tell Caden his full name. Considering what a Wizard can do with names, Caden didn't blame him. Once you got him started, Dueril transformed from mountain man to storyteller, and he was a fine cook too. It was the first time in years that Caden sat down to a homecooked meal without war or death putting a blade at his throat.

"I'm a hundred-and-eleven," Dueril told him one day, all while hauling up a barrel from what Caden now knew to be a basement-level cellar that doubled as a freezer. "Just one of many sons of the Lines of Dueril..."

As it turned out, and Dueril spent the better part of the day explaining this in detail, the Dueril were a clan of half-breeds descending from a mixed population of Dwarves and Drow. Their history dated back to a Dwarf-sided resistance fighter named Dueril Delgadril khesh-Klevak. Delgadril was one of the few successful military leaders on the Dwarf side of the War of Inference; a real diamond mind, as Kachukian scholars would put it. He was the bastard son of an Alerian noblewoman and a Dwarven prisoner of war, spirited away by his uncles and raised to the blade from an early age.

As the War of Inference dragged on, Delgadril established himself as one of the few successful generals on the Dwarves' side, even if his own people distrusted him because of his dark purple skin, white hair and pointed ears. When the war ended, Delgadril was among the final signers of the Treaty of Congruity, joining on only with the condition that he and his men -- pureblooded Dwarves, mostly -- would be allowed to start their own Clan. Dueril: The Blackfaces. While the clan was initially almost as pure as any other, Dueril made it a policy of accepting the unwanted children of Drow and Dwarf unions as its own. Over time, Dueril even began to accept true Drow into its ranks, provided they were outcast by their own people or sincerely in love with a Dwarf.

"Near as I know, Dueril's still going strong back in Kachuk. They're a broker for what happens when magic meets metallurgy; run one of the finest factories arcane in that whole region."

"Why did you leave?" Caden asked just before dinner.

"I was never much for minin', and I only grew to like smithing in my seventies. I left 'cos I wanted to be a soldier." Dueril took a few minutes of eating before picking up right where he left off, "I was a damn good one too. Best axe in my unit, best sword in my platoon, best rifleman in my company."

It took a few hours before Caden finally worked up the nerve to ask the obvious. By then, he was sprawled on the floor and Dueril was laying in bed. "Dueril?"

"What."

"D'you still know how to fight with a sword?"

"Swords, axes, daggers, hammers, spears, guns..."

Caden nodded. "D'you think you could teach me?"

"Was wonderin' when you'd ask that."