In the Iron Hills, Thane Borin Ironbeard received the reports from his scouts with the specific satisfaction of a dwarf whose grudge was being validated by the events that the grudge had predicted.
He sat in the great hall of Khaz-Dorum, the throne room carved from living stone whose walls bore the weight of three thousand years of dwarven history, the runes of power and protection glowing faintly in the forge-light that the mountain's interior provided. The throne was iron, forged from the first ore the Ironbeard Clan's ancestors had pulled from the mountain's heart, and the dwarf who sat on it was the dwarf whose decision to sever the Threian trade agreement was producing the consequences that the decision had been designed to produce.
"Report," Borin said.
