He had no time to think. He immediately called out his title: "I am Baron Richard, Lord of High Mountain Keep in the Pompey Empire. I've come with Miss Annie of the Voya Merchant Guild to reinforce our dwarf friends and resist the bandits."
A rare murmur rose among the dwarves who usually could not squeeze a fart out of them with three blows of a stick.
They were surprisingly good at grasping the key point. Although they had never heard of High Mountain Keep and knew even less about this Baron Richard's background, the Voya Merchant Guild was an old acquaintance of the dwarves—one of the few allies they could still trust. Their history of splitting loot together made their relationship solid enough anywhere.
The voice soon replied, "Please forgive the suspicion of a group of wretches. We wish to see Miss Annie."
"Please wait a moment." Richard thought, Good thing I'm resourceful enough to have coaxed this Half-Elf girl into coming.
He returned to the starting point, held out an arm for Annie to lean on, and whispered, "The dwarves insist on seeing you."
"Okay."
Not everyone could possess his sort of nerve when faced with the solemn atmosphere of hundreds of people silently watching. Annie was so nervous that her steps staggered. The ground was slippery from the rain, too, and over the short distance of several hundred yards, she nearly fell several times without someone supporting her.
"Don't panic. The Mountain Shield in my hand is sturdy enough to withstand even a couple of hits from a ballista."
The Lord's tone and expression were utterly sincere. Annie had been fine when he kept quiet, but the moment he spoke, she suddenly felt like turning around and running away.
"I'm Annie of the Voya Merchant Guild." Annie mustered her courage, poked her head out, and shouted before immediately ducking back behind the shield.
To be honest, she had begun to regret it. Chanting slogans together about reclaiming the iron mine had been exhilarating at the time, but when she truly faced a dangerous reality, the well-born Half-Elf lady began missing her comfortable goose-down quilt.
"Miss Annie, is that really you?" The deliberately gruff voice instantly broke character. It sounded like a boy who had only just begun changing his voice—in other words, a teenage boy with a duck-like croak.
"You're... Robbie?" Annie and the dwarves were indeed unusually familiar. She had actually recognized him from his voice.
"It's me."
Richard just stood there listening to the two of them exchange several lines of reminiscence, thinking, Are you two done yet? Let me in already.
"Miss Annie is our friend. Let her and her followers in." Robbie seemed to hear Richard's thoughts and ordered the dwarf warriors to open the entrance.
Why were you named Robbie? You might as well have been named Shabi. The Lord had inexplicably been demoted several ranks. He clutched his chest, fuming with indignation.
Annie waved toward the rear. The High Mountain Keep guards followed her through the gap in the wall one after another, while Richard brought up the rear with a long, bitter expression on his face.
Behind the wall was an open space. Two wooden watchtowers stood alone in the middle, their ballista firing lanes pointing high into the sky.
Farther back stood rows of short stone houses. Their construction was crude, but the rows and columns were extremely orderly. Roads paved flat with river sand covered the ground, and at a glance, they possessed a strangely neat, dwarven beauty.
It was deep in the night, yet lights still glowed from many of the stone houses.
Besides the dwarf warriors, many women and children were rushing back and forth across the open ground, tending to the wounded. The wounds left by the Bearfolk's brutal blows were horrifying, but the dwarves seemed to have long since grown accustomed to them—or perhaps numb to them.
Several dying people in a corner were screaming as they squandered the last of their vitality. Blood mingled with rainwater and trickled beneath them. Everyone knew they could not be saved; they simply had not died yet.
In such circumstances, the only thing their companions could do was grant them "mercy"—another name for a faceted, pointed dagger that could quickly bleed them to death and ease their suffering.
"May the God of Forging protect us both." Several dwarf warriors removed their helmets and greeted them, exhaustion plain on their faces.
It was clear that they were happy to reunite with their friends, but that happiness could not lessen the gloom hanging over the tribe in the slightest. To be honest, their current situation was even worse than the Lord had expected.
"Miss Annie, I never thought you would return at a time like this." The owner of the duck-like voice emerged from the crowd.
In Richard's impression, dwarves all had faces covered in thick beards, weathered features, armor worn at all times, and a perpetually disheveled appearance.
The male dwarves within sight did indeed largely fit that description, but this Robbie completely shattered his stereotype.
He wore a clean, beige cotton robe. His chin was completely bare, without a single hair, and his fair face could even be called handsome and delicate.
If not for the dwarves' distinctive short and stocky build, the Lord would have seriously doubted his ancestry.
"Where's your father?" Annie peered behind Robbie, as if searching for someone who was no longer there.
"My father, three uncles, and two older brothers all died in battle. I'm the clan chief now." Robbie sniffed, tears about to fall from his eyes, then desperately forced them back.
"I'm sorry. May they rest in peace." Annie continued, "But Robbie, before I left last time, didn't I leave all the holy water with you? Why haven't you brought it out to use now?"
Holy water was produced by the Church of Holy Light. It was somewhat at odds with the God of Forging worshiped by the dwarves, and the two sides had always attacked each other by claiming that the other's main god was merely a subordinate deity of their own.
She had assumed the dwarves were refusing to use the holy water for that reason. That would practically amount to murdering their own kin.
"We used it all. It was gone long ago." Robbie lowered his head like a child who had done something wrong.
"How could it have run out so quickly? Were you pouring it away?" Annie asked incredulously.
"It was gone by yesterday afternoon. Those Wildlanders were like madmen, and we suffered too many casualties. We had no choice." He held his head, looking both distressed and helpless.
"In any case, thank you for your help." A more seasoned warrior placed a fist to his chest and bowed to Annie, adding the polite words Robbie should have said, "Those few bottles of holy water saved the lives of many of our warriors."
Since no one was paying attention to him anyway, Richard smiled silently under the cover of night. He realized that Robbie's mouth seemed to be cursed. Ever since he had started speaking, the morale of the surrounding dwarf warriors had been slowly declining.
People were willing to risk their lives for different leaders. A commander's personal charisma could sometimes have a decisive effect on his subordinates' morale, and Robbie was still lacking in that regard.
He was like a child who had not yet grown up. He seemed clever and quick-witted, but he was far from strong enough to shoulder a responsibility. The dwarf warriors clearly knew that, too.
"Robbie, be strong." Annie actually bent down and patted him on the head.
As if he had finally found an outlet, Robbie's tears, which he had been desperately holding back, could no longer be restrained. Two wet trails ran down his cheeks, gathered at his chin, and dripped off.
"What are you laughing at? Are you laughing at me?" He raised his head and looked at Richard, his voice choked with sobs.
The Lord had overlooked one thing: dwarves whose ancestors had labored in dark mines possessed night vision tougher than ore.
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