…the royal diapers won't clean themselfs, will it then? hop to it, frog…

…his name is hop-frog, but he's more like to shuffle; come, hop-frog, let us see you dance. dancing-frog has a certain ring to it…

…lowman hop-frog, don't you hear the wounded? why are you letting them die? get over that wall! to the skirmishers! never mind the arrows, do your duty, get your hands in those wounds! will you let your betters die, you boots-shaking nancy boy?

…

These voices, and more. They are always with Hop-Frog, the slope-shouldered dwarf. As he awaits Boarface's response to the plaintive questions of the planar dwarves, he feels a great pity. To not be homeless — there is shelter all around, inns, lodges, caves if one needs them — but to be vanquished from one's home. He was but a deformed little lad when his brother scooped him out of the Berbatov holdings, in the mountains ringing the Broken Lands. Days, or months, certainly not a year, before the ancient, but small, holdfast was extinguished at last.

Yet against the pity a great anger rose in him. Furious, unkind. Unspoken… for now. With few choices, they were left to bow and scrape at one noble Glantrian house or another. His brother disappeared. He became Hop-Frog, the leap and tumbler, Hop-Frog, the bodyguard, Hop-Frog the nanny, Hop-Frog the beating boy, Hop-Frog the field nurse. Hop-Frog the the survivor, not sure who he was, but that he was alive, and that was a dignity unto itself. In his pocket, hidden deep in the caverns of his heart, he kept his true name, and the fact that he was a Berbatov. Once.

But these dwarves, fearful, begging the party to tell them who they were, what to do. Mewling like he had mewled, clutching when he had clutched. It made him angry. Pity… self-pity… anger. Anger at himself. He wanted to scream at them, shake them, tell them to take stock in themselves, but he couldn't. All these were his.

The strange dwarves from beneath the Chateau, Gathring and Odd, approach him. They sit on a nearby chunk of rubble. Their expressions show signs of unhappiness and worry. "Boarface," says Gathring. "I know you're not at your best right now, and I'm sorry. But we need to talk." He clenches his jaw. "I guess this is what's been going on these last few weeks, with all those private conversations we've been shut out of, and all that strange behavior. You were plotting against Evangelista — someone who treated us decently, who you came to some sort of agreement with. And now we —"

"Gathring and I," adds Odd helpfully.

"Yes. Now Odd and I are stuck in the middle." He shakes his head. "We introduced you people to her. We vouched for you. It's our necks under the wedge here. We would have gone to Rusty —"

"Oh, Rusty!" Odd tugs unhappily at his hair and beard.

"— but he's gone now. So we're turning to you, as a brother dwarf. Please, tell us what's going on. What happens now? What are we to do?"