That evening, Jess failed to find Gred at his rented room, so he went to the Pig and Whistle Tavern in Old Town.

He knew Gred often drank there, and he was hardly alone. Many veterans of the wars surrounding the Dark Portal, as well as immigrants who had come to Stormwind from every corner of the world, favored the place.

Old Town—or the East District, as it was also called—had been one of the best-preserved parts of the city after the war. That was why it had become the base for the reconstruction effort.

Countless laborers and merchants had lived there during the early stages of rebuilding, which had elevated the Pig and Whistle to its present standing.

Sure enough, the moment Jess entered the tavern, he saw Gred drinking in a corner. It was the same corner every time and the same enormous mug of ale. Jess was already used to it.

Gred was once again staring blankly into his empty mug, his expression grave and solemn, as though the mug were responsible for blinding him.

Jess leaned closer. "Gred, I need to talk to you about something."

"Talk. We can talk about anything." Gred belched, making Jess wonder whether a half-dead young dragon lived inside his stomach. Several young men and women nearby, who had been laughing heartily a moment ago, abruptly lowered their voices and began sneaking glances their way.

Jess frowned and shifted a little farther away.

"It's something fairly important. Tomorrow or the day after... Are you sober right now?"

"Of course I'm sober. Listen." Gred's eyes slowly rolled toward him and fixed on Jess's.

The longer Gred stared, the more uncomfortable Jess became. He knew something unpleasant was probably about to happen.

Gred drew a slow breath, opened his mouth stiffly, and suddenly began reciting in an unnaturally loud, wooden voice.

"Wildhammer warriors are the best! They beat down trolls and every elf! But damned elves are hard to find, so beat down trolls of every kind! One on the left and one on the right—that makes two trolls in one line. Two trolls have four glaring eyes, four tusks all pointing at the skies. Knock them out one after one; once they're gone, our work is done!"

By the time Gred finished his "opening verse," he had become the focus of the entire tavern.

It took Jess a long while to recover. He coughed awkwardly and waited in silence as Gred refocused on his mug and returned to his earlier vacant stare.

Only when the frozen tavern resumed its former bustle did Jess finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Gred muttered something under his breath. Jess did not catch a word of it.

"What?"

"I said it was perfect."

"What was perfect?"

"The poem. I recited it perfectly."

"That counts as a poem? You just made it up, didn't you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not that talented."

"What—talented?" Jess froze for a moment before realizing the conversation had gone completely off course.

He rapped his knuckle against the table to draw the dwarf's attention back. "Let's talk about something serious. I have a job that can make money. Are you interested?"

"Honestly, not particularly, because I'm planning to join the Warriors' Guild," Gred said. "Their people approached me. It comes with steady pay, and I can take jobs through them—helping capture wanted criminals, clearing wolves from farms, things like that. Stormwind doesn't have enough guards right now. There are bandits, orcs, gnolls... I even heard the murlocs around Crystal Lake have a new leader. Everything's gone to hell. I think the Warriors' Guild might be worth a try."

Seeing Gred trying to recover his passion for fighting made Jess suddenly feel embarrassed to bring up his own idea.

But the dwarf soon continued, "Most of the Warriors' Guild's members are middle-aged fellows, though there are a few Bronzebeard whelps among them too. Many have families and livelihoods of their own. The guild can't force everyone to work full-time. Even if they accept me, I can still find work on my own. So tell me about it, Jess. Let's see whether your job has anything attractive to offer."

Since Gred had put it that way, Jess said, "I plan to leave the city, gather herbs, and sell them for money. What do you think?"

"Gathering herbs?" Gred asked with a frown. "Isn't that work for women and elves?"

"Aren't the women where you come from about the same as the men here?" Jess lowered his voice as much as possible and made certain there were no female dwarves nearby before continuing. "So the men here can gather herbs if they want. Nobody will say anything."

Then he gave Gred a rough account of the prices the alchemy merchants in the Mage Quarter paid for herbs. As soon as he finished, the dwarf slammed the table and rose, bringing his eyes level with Jess's across the table. "Really?"

"To hell with the Warriors' Guild! It's nothing but a club for the middle-aged and elderly!" Gred roared toward the counter. "Miss, bring me my usual dark ale! Ironforge brew will do too!"

After shouting, he sat back down and pondered for a moment. Then he lowered his voice. "But it must be dangerous, right? For that much money. And do you actually know anything about gathering herbs? You're so young. Did you attend herbalism lessons back in Lordaeron or something? It's not that I don't believe you. It's mainly... uh, mainly that I don't trust you very much."

Was this fellow truly sober? Why was every word out of his mouth nonsense?

Jess stared helplessly at the dwarf, who was barely managing to keep his eyes open, then said softly, "Look, even the herb merchant trusts me. She's willing to buy my herbs and even shared her purchase prices with me. What reason do you have not to trust me, Gred? Isn't gathering herbs women's work where you come from? An old man like you is a complete outsider."

"That's true enough, but I'm not old."

"Right, young man. Once we're outside, the two of us will work together. I'll find the herbs, and we'll deal with any trouble we encounter together—though that will mainly be your job, of course. Being a former gryphon rider carries plenty of weight. When we sell the herbs, we'll split the money thirty-seventy: seventy percent for you and thirty for me. How does that sound?"

"That doesn't seem right, does it?" Gred struggled to contain a grin that was about to break free and said with feigned embarrassment, "Since you know more about gathering herbs and already have a buyer, giving me the larger share would be unfair. Fifty-fifty will do."

"I have selfish reasons of my own, of course," Jess explained. "I have a use for the Kingsblood and the most expensive herb, Grave Moss, so we can't sell those."

"I see. That's fair enough," the dwarf said.

"And if we find any Wicked Claws, I'd like to keep those too," Jess added.

The dwarf asked, "Wicked Claws? You mean the claws taken from ominous beasts wreathed in the dark aura of necromancy?"

"You know about them?"

"Of course. Trolls like to use those things in their concoctions. Smeared on a weapon, the mixture inflicts a terrible curse. If one of those vicious shadow hunters' cursed weapons so much as grazes a dwarf's skin, it can cause untreatable sores. In the end, they can cripple or even kill you. Nasty business."

"You learn something new every day."

"Naturally." Gred chuckled twice. "Where are you planning to go?"

"Raven Hill."

"Raven Hill?" Hearing the name, the dwarf hesitated. "Isn't that too far? The round trip could take a week."

Jess said, "If we want Grave Moss, that's the only place to go. We'll hurry there and back without wasting time on the road. If we're lucky, four or five days will be enough. Don't forget I still have to return and work for my mage employer. He's away on some business, but he may be back within a week. I need to report to him, so we can't take too long."

"The question now is whether we go through the Redridge Mountains to Grand Hamlet or take the western detour to Raven Hill. What a nuisance. Why can't we just cross Elwynn Forest and the Nazferiti River and go straight to Raven Hill?"

The dwarf traced an arc through the air with one finger. "Unless you can fly there."

Jess recalled that Stormwind did not have gryphon service yet. After all, there were not even enough nests for people to live in, let alone nests for gryphons.

Since coming to this world, he had never seen a real gryphon up close, not even while he was in Lordaeron. He wondered whether the gryphon masters in the game were simply "teleport points" created for the sake of gameplay.

"Maybe we should take the long way around through Sentinel Hill," Gred said. "I hear the road through the canyon between the Redridge Mountains and Grand Hamlet is often seized by gnoll tribes. Whenever that happens, it gets cut off for days at a time. Westfall should be safer. Even the Church no longer uses the other route."

"Sentinel Hill it is. I'll trust your judgment," Jess said.

The dwarf swirled his mug. "Should we stop by Moonbrook on the way? We could restock our supplies and such. I hear their pork-liver pies taste twice as good as the ones in Stormwind."

Jess said helplessly, "That would cost us an entire day. The wagon fare, the travel expenses, the pies... Gred, it's simply too expensive."

"All right. Anything else?" the dwarf asked. "Preparations we need to make before leaving, for example."

"A large enough sack. It has to be sturdy and preferably waterproof," Jess said. "The bags sold in the city are too small and too expensive. Do you have anything suitable?"

Gred said, "My traveling sack was woven by people back home. It's sturdy enough to resist cuts. I carried it all the way here from my homeland, loaded with weapons, and it never tore. It's somewhat waterproof too. As long as we don't leave it submerged for too long, it should be fine. Most importantly, it's big. I reckon it can hold several dozen pounds of herbs."

"That's enough. More than enough," Jess said. "We shouldn't fill it too heavily and slow ourselves down. Besides, this is our first trip. We might not identify everything correctly, and perhaps we won't find that many herbs."

"Anything that looks right goes into the sack. Let the experts sort it out!" Gred asked, "So when do we leave?"

"Tomorrow morning?"

"The afternoon. Tomorrow morning, I arranged to fight someone from the Warriors' Guild here so they can see what I'm capable of."

"I thought you didn't want to join the Warriors' Guild anymore?"

"Whether I join the Warriors' Guild is secondary. The fight is mandatory, my little brother Jess. Want to watch your big brother show off his skills tomorrow?"

Jess watched Gred clench his fist, seemingly fighting to suppress the tremor in his wrist.

"Absolutely. I wouldn't miss it. Speaking of which, you always call me your little brother and yourself my big brother. How old are you? I've never asked."

"Somewhere in my sixties. I should be sixty-four. You're not losing anything by letting me call you little brother, are you?"

"And you call that young? I... You..."

"What's this 'you' and 'me' nonsense? Don't measure us by human ages. Muradin of Ironforge was more than two hundred years old when he fought in the Battle of Blackrock Mountain, and I'd say he was still in his prime. Those Bronzebeards might not be good for much else, but they certainly live a long time! Not that we do badly ourselves."