“So this is them?” I asked as I stared across the uniform ranks of the first contingent of murder-flopsy’s that were being shipped to the dwarves. The flickering blue light made their matte black outer armour look slick and oily.

  “That is they,” Kat agreed.

  “What? Nevermind. How many?”

  She looked up from her tiny desk, off to one side of the rows of glowing blue portals, and put down the tiny pen she’d been using to scribble on some paperwork. “One hundred and fifty. Simeon and Rational-Rab have cranked up production. We can churn out a hundred a week as long as the materials last.”

  “We’ll have fifty dwarven miners coming back today. Everything sorted for them?”

  “Yes, Bob.”

  “Any blowback on Light Invincible?” A question I’d been carefully avoiding, but it had to be asked before I popped back over to the Saalk?nig clan.

  “You mean as to why he just wants to play with teddy bears and have tea parties? You really need to be more careful with that spell. One use per person at most! There are suspicions, but no one remembers anything specific. They’ve started a hunt for a Mentis Gormand.” I gave her a blank look. “It’s like a brain slug. Rare monster. Obviously, Light Invincible is going to get retired. Please don’t mind-fuck his replacement. We’re already on thin ice with the Inquaesition. How’s the morning sickness?” She didn’t smirk at me as she asked the question, but it felt like she did.

  “Better, thanks,” I grumbled. “Control crystals?” I held out a hand and bent down. Kat passed me a small leather pouch, and I tipped the tiny gems out onto my palm. I felt my mind link with the robo-bunnies, and they all pivoted on their heels to march toward me.

  “OK. Off to get my gold. Don’t wait up!”

  I opened a portal to the battle hall and stepped through, looking around the dark cavern. I’d emerged just by the command post, off to one side, and a steady trickle of carts was being pulled along by grumpy dwarves and lizard-men who were cursing in German.

  Asleep on what looked remarkably like a folding lawn chair, Kurt was snoring like a freight train. I tried calling his name, tried to gently shake his arm, but nothing disturbed him. His moustache puffed out every time he exhaled with a sound like logs being sawn in half.

  I kicked the chair over, spilling him onto the hard rock floor, and still he continued to sleep. I brought back a foot with the intent of kicking him awake when his eyes flicked open, and a hammer appeared in his hand.

  “Whassat? Verdammter drache! Rock and stone, Bob, you could have just nudged me! You’ve got the stuff?” he asked excitedly.

  “You’ve got the gold?” Why did it feel like I was selling drugs on a street corner?

  “Hundred and eighty grand is ready and waiting.” He waggled a pouch of holding at me. I reached into my pocket and grasped the ten portal gems I had tucked away. A line of blue portals opened behind me, and I marched fifteen cyborgs through each one to form up in tidy rows.

  “Gimme the crystals!” he said excitedly.

  I paused after tipping the control gems back into the pouch Kat had provided. “Why are you so excited?” I asked.

  “I’m being made Gruppen Kommandant for the bunnie division. I’m the best at managing them. They only attack allies fifteen percent of the time when I’m running the squad. Now I’ll have enough to train my teams properly.”

  “You’ve been using them up close with your regular forces? I did say that wasn’t a good idea, and I’m not bloody liable for any damage they do once I had them over!” I really should have added a clause about that to the contract.

  “Bob, we lose more people to cart accidents each year. We aren’t going to ban carts, are we? Or demand blood-gold from the wheelwrights. Here.” He tossed me his pouch, and I stuck a finger in. One hundred and eighty grand in shiny golden discs. Nice. I gave him the bag with the control gems.

  “Where are the miners?” I asked. Like clowns spilling out of a car that was much too small for the number of them, a swarm of dwarves erupted from the command post behind Kurt. They all sported a pick over one shoulder, a bright yellow hard hat. Ruddy cheeks smeared with dirt and dust. I half expected them to start whistling a jaunty tune about how off to work they go.

  “Reporting for mining detail, kamerade! Where’s the ore?” asked one who was slightly taller than the rest, and his coveralls were a fancy orange colour instead of the drab greys and browns of his colleagues' clothes. He clicked his heels together and gave me a deep bow.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “You’re the boss?” I asked.

  “Nein. You’re the boss. I’m Gunther. Gunther Grimmigergriff, your foreman. I’ll keep these teufel in line for ya, boss.”

  “My name’s Bob.” I was getting sick of introducing myself, to be honest.

  “Bob-Boss. Point us to the ore, and we’ll get to work. You got a place for us to drop our personal effects?” he asked in a brisk tone.

  “Sure, speak to Kat, the pixie, on the other side of the portals. Beds and food are all ready for you, and she’ll have someone show you where the deposits are.”

  He turned and ran an eye over his men like they were soldiers. “Straighten up the pick, Lahmebein! You heard the human! Fall in through the portals and wait for me to speak to the site supervisor. I do not want any bullshit today! Lustigerwitz, that means you! If you switch someone's pick for a mimic again, I’ll eat your arse!” Charming. At least he seemed to have a handle on things. Lustigerwitz flinched at being called out as he filed past the foreman. “We’ll get production up in no time, Bob-Boss. Now if you don’t mi–”

  “I need to speak to Saalk?nig. It’s a draconic matter,” I interrupted. Kurt looked up from where he was stirring the control gems on his palm with one finger.

  “Not my place to be involved in Forge Lord happenings,” Grumbled Gunther. “I’ll get the lads to work.”

  “Don’t eat any arses if you can help it. Kat is pretty good at disciplining minions who act out. You might want to get your men fitted with armoured cod-pieces,” I replied absently, then looked expectantly at Kurt.

  “When you say draconic matter, what exactly do you mean, Bob?” he asked nervously.

  “I need to ask him about the TOTS. I’ve got a… situation, and it’s best I discuss it with other dragons.”

  Kurt led me unhappily through the halls and tunnels to the throne room. The place was alive, at least in comparison to before. Having driven the Deep Ones back another battlehall since I’d last visited, the abandoned rooms and homes were being cautiously reoccupied. Where it had been a few workers ferrying supplies to the front, and the rest of this section of the warren had been empty, it was now filled with voices and the noise of people living their lives.

  Dwarven children, all of whom had thick beards to match their parents, ran around the tunnels waving wooden battlehammers at each other while their parents carried out the humdrum activities of life. Chopping mushrooms, doing laundry, braiding beard hair.

  Saalk?nig was perched up high, chin on fist, staring at the wall above the entrance when Kurt pushed the door open and showed me in. He dropped to one knee at the foot of the steps.

  “King, I’ve brought the first delivery. I can do another one in a month.” I needed to increase my own forces as well, after all. War was coming.

  “You disturb my meditation to tell me that all is as it should be?” Saalk?nig asked in a tombstone voice.

  “You need to get out a bit more, mate. Touch grass once in a while. It’s good for your humours. I wanted to ask about the TOTS. I need to find them,” I called up to him.

  His head rose and swivelled slowly to face me. It was like being glared at by an oversized gerbil, one of the really fluffy ones. “You have the token?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then follow the instructions in it. We would prefer if you could make the next delivery in two weeks, not four.”

  “It’s just a coin!” I snapped. “It’s not a map!”

  “Channel your mana into it, fool. Bob, I am grateful to you. We had been steadily retreating for a hundred years, gradually ceding our tunnels to the Deep One. Now we can advance again. We need more of your troops.” Greed-goblin loved the word need. It rubbed its paws together in my mind.

  I inhaled through my teeth like a plumber preparing to explain how expensive the repair was going to be. “It’ll cost you. Half the delivery time means twice the price.” I figured it was worth a shot. I’d need gold for the war. “But then it has to be a monthly delivery. The next lot will come out of my own forces, and I’m going to need every psycho-bunny I can get soon enough.”

  “Dwarven troops would help you against the human nobles, no?” Saalk?nig’s beady eyes glinted down at me from within his face of fur.

  “You guys are stuck with the Deep Ones,” I replied with a shrug. I wasn’t sure how the other nobles would react if I turned up to a fight with swarms of robo-bunnies, a horde of Orlics and a small army of dwarves. Hah, a small army.

  “With sufficient cyborgs, we could free up a battalion or so of mechs and hammerers. The bunnies are weak against magic, yes? Our troops are not.”

  “How many is a battalion?” I asked.

  “About six hundred frontline fighters. Perhaps a hundred of them mechs.” Saalk?nig’s beard moved. Was he smiling? It was impossible to tell.

  Now this was tempting. The hunters guild fighters had taken apart dozens of the old Mark One bunnies like it was playtime. The current Mark Threes were a lot tougher, but a handful of powerhouses would cut through them like a hot knife through butter.

  “I’ll need a contract. An alliance,” I countered.

  “Of course, we will have one prepared in two weeks' time for your return with the next shipment.”

  “And the price?”

  “Double pay for double the rate,” Saalk?nig agreed. Greed began jumping around in my mind and high-fiving the other anthropomorphisms of my traits. I needed more mod docs, and fast.

  “Great. Well, I’ll be off then. You stay hairy, dude,” I nodded happily up at him as Saalk?nig resumed his thinking-dwarf pose as though I no longer existed.

  I said farewell to Kurt outside the king’s hall and made my own way to the surface. Once there, I transformed back into my real body and stretched my wings. It would be good to fly for a while. I’d spent too much time as a human over the last week. Fretting about the walls, dealing with the increasingly annoyed letters from the Inquaesition, which I had happily ignored or passed to Kat, getting the Mill organised for when the nobles decided to stop messing about and get their dick measuring contest going in earnest.

  But I needed to have a word with a certain super-cyan before I could start working down the rest of my list. If anyone would know how to get more mod docs, it would be that big green bastard.