“You were completely out of line, Flinthammer!” Mountaineer Kadrell roared, quickly checking his volume as he realized he was in danger of waking all of Thelsamar. “You had no right to roust all of us out of bed …”

“The explosion woke ye lot as …”

“No one heard any damned explosion,” Kadrell snapped. The bleary-eyed mountaineers standing on the back road leading into Thelsamar all nodded, grumbling. “It was an earthquake or something.”

“Khaz Modan donnae have earthq- …”

“More importantly,” Kadrell continued, “You ignored the chain of command. You should have woken Pebblebitty, who would have woken Rugelfuss. You don’t have the authority to wake mountaineers in the middle of the night and send them on a wild wolpertinger chase.”

“Ah’m tellin’ ye, it were the Dark Irons and …”

“And I have socks with more seniority than you, Flinthammer. I don’t care what sort of big damn hero you’re supposed to have been; you don’t buck the chain of command whenever you feel like impressing all us yokels with what a big man you are. Consider yourself on report.”

Ringo sighed, his shoulders slumping, watching Kadrell march off to the northern guard tower, no doubt to begin writing up Ringo now, while the incident was fresh in his mind.

“I bet he’s not some big hero at all,” Mountaineer Ozmok grumbled, loudly enough for Ringo to hear, and probably intentionally so. “I bet he didn’t get no closer to Icecrown than Valgarde.”

“Probably got that ring of his secondhand from the auction house,” Mountaineer Langarr agreed, yawning as he headed off to bed.

There was a rumble and Ringo felt his bear’s wet nose pressed into his palm.

“It’s all right, Frostmaw,” Ringo said, patting the bear’s thick neck. “They’re jus’ frustrated.”

The bear grunted and turned toward home.

“Nay, we’re not done yet, old boy,” Ringo said, jerking his head to the north. “We don’t need no mountaineers to track Dark Irons. It’ll be jus’ like th’ old days, just ye and me.”

Frostmaw growled noncommitally and followed Ringo out of town.