The Butcher of Gadobhra-Chapter 529: Traditional Dwarven Barbecue
Makken didn't often take a day off from the pepper fields, but the fall harvest was all in, and he had some extra time on his hands. He'd start a new crop soon, but not today. He was hungry for some old-fashioned dwarven barbecue, like his pappy had used to make. He could have gone into Sedgewick for a bite to eat, but even though the Butcher was handy with smoke and knew his way around a grill, that was human cookery and never tasted quite right. A good dwarven cut of meat was tough and chewy, something that took strong teeth to chew. For choices of meat, he had plenty. Gadobhra had a nice selection of weird critters that got cut up for the dungeons. Ozzy had been on the lookout for him, and one day, he brought over a dozen large armadillo shanks.
"You sure about this, Makken? This meat will take an axe to carve up, a very sharp axe. What the hell are you planning to do with it?"
They were good friends, but no dwarf gave up cooking secrets. "Old family recipe. Don't worry about how tough it is. I've got a way to work with the meat to get it ready for cooking."
His daddy, and every other older male relative, had a saying, 'There's a right way, the wrong way, and the traditional dwarven way.' In the case of tough shank meat, the traditional dwarven method was to pack it in salt and spices for a month to flavor the meat and cure it until it was tough as boot leather. Then a day in the sauce, and it was ready to go on the grill for a few hours at high heat. Dwarven cooking wasn't for everyone, especially grilled shank. Dwarves don't trust soft meat; they love a good piece of tough leather you could chew on for a day or three.
Besides his marinated shanks, he had another sixty pounds of meat to cook. His grill was a converted pepper roaster, and you didn't fire it up for just a couple of steaks. He had a good assortment today: A rack of pork ribs, ostrich wings, rabbit legs, six whole chickens that he'd soaked in a beer barrel for two nights, snake steaks, and a dozen twenty-pound porterhouse steaks he'd paid a pretty penny for at the Butcher Shop. If the rest of his clan knew what kind of meat was coming out of Gadobhra, half the clan would move here in an instant. Probably the wrong half, though, so none of his letters home mentioned anything good about the place.
Traditional dwarven cooking also meant taking precautions, and Makken was wearing his full suit of Dwarven Hostile Enviroment Armor. There was a lot of pepper residue caked on the inside of the roaster. It flavored the meat but also tended to spurt flames, noxious fumes that could singe a beard, or blow a hard-working dwarf into the afterlife. He checked the fire, slammed the lid, and started the fans, which moved the hottest air across the meat and out the smokestack. Then carefully opened the armored hatch to the side cooker. Nothing exploded, so he glanced at the glowing white-green peppers roasting in a thick metal pot inscribed with Safety Runes to absorb a harmful blast. He hadn't even named this variety yet, but they'd given even him blisters when he bit into one. This batch was almost ready for final tests. Maybe in a couple of hours, when they'd absorbed the maximum amount of heat and mana. They were going to make one hell of a batch of strawberry surprise.
The wind was picking up a bit, blowing the smoke to the North and West and carrying with it the scent of roasting meat. He'd heard a few barks and howls, but had paid them no mind. You got used to odd noises when you lived in a place like this. When a dozen loud howls echoed in his helmet, he looked up from the grill and saw a wave of wolves and a bigger critter loping across the dormant wheat fields towards him. A few wolves were one thing, but this pack was in the hundreds. He slammed the main hatch, flipped the locks, then daringly grabbed the handle of his pepper pot and raced for his house. He didn't have time for the cantrips and prayers to the gods for a proper closing ritual. The best he could manage was a mumbled prayer as he shot the bolts on his metal door and swung the crossbars into place.
"That ought to hold a few puppy dogs, but no sense wasting the afternoon indoors. Let's watch the fun from the top." Anyone with any sense put their house underground, and dwarves prided themselves on being sensible. Makken had a small, fortified farmhouse up top for entertaining visitors. Some days, he liked to be daring and sit on his small porch on the peak of his roof, sipping whiskey and watching the peppers grow. Popping open the top hatch, he had just enough time to pour himself a glass of amber fluid and get the straw through the grill of his helmet before the starving wolfpack arrived, following their noses to his grill. The pack filled his pepper farm, and whined when they couldn't open the locked lid of the grill. He was chuckling about that when the Snarlfang leading the pack took hold of his pride and joy and threw it into the pack, then tore the steel roaster open with its fangs.
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Makken stood up, angry as only a dwarf watching thieves steal from him can be. He raised a hand, spoke to the dormant pepper plants, and said, "Bloom and grow. Triple Time. Extra Strength." It wasn't healthy for the plants. Forced growth used up a lot of the nutrients in the ground. He'd have to fertilize heavily if he didn't want a substandard crop and half his plants dying off. But some things just couldn't be allowed to happen!
Within thirty seconds, the dormant plants were blooming. After a minute, wolves were whining and prancing about, feeling the burn in their tender paws. Makken pointed and laughed at them. "How do you like the taste of that? Huh? I'll teach you to freeload on my barbecue! Stupid, inbred, mutts."
The Snarlfang was fairly immune to the growing peppers, at least for a time, and had continued to feed until the dwarfs' insults hit his ears. All wolves have a high level of dignity, even brain-dead, and Snarfangs had a terrible amount of pride in their small brains. It commanded the pack to surround the house and kill the dwarf, probably the last thing they should have done. As the peppers reached maturity and produced the essential oils that kicked them up the Scoville scale, wolves began to choke and die. None of them could reach the roof. The walls were smooth granite without a bit of decoration or ivy to give them traction. They tried to get on top of each other, but were dying too fast.
Makken laughed, "Yeah, don't think I'm gonna have a fertilizer problem, I can...MOUNTAIN LORD, Give me strength!"
The Snalfang was charging, and the pile of dead wolves would let him make it to the roof in one leap. Makken saw it coming, but didn't have time to open the hatch. "Oh, this is going to hurt us both, puppy, but it'll hurt you a whole lot worse!" He reached into the pepperpot where his masterpieces of breeding were still simmering. It would only take a little mana to weaponize them. "Hope to hell Cousin Brok made this gauntlet strong enough."
As the Snarlfang leaped, Makken drew his fist back, poured his meagre mana into the handful of peppers, and struck the Snarlfang in its snout.
"GHOSTFANG PEPPERPUNCH! IGNITE"
The power of the glowing peppers in his fist exploded into the Snarlfangs face, cut through its skull, and burst out of the back of its head. The spell could be seen as far away as Rowan Keep, and the explosion echoed for miles as well. The remains were tossed onto the pepper fields, where the still-growing crops quickly dissolved most of it.
Makken sat down and gingerly unclenched his fist. The gauntlet had been blown to pieces. "Shit, I think I broke most of the bones in my hand. Gonna have to tell Cousing Brok to make me a stronger one." He looked at the remaining peppers, still sizzling. He poured the rest of the bottle of whiskey into the pot, then scooped up a glass. "Ghostfang? Wonder what made me think of that? Good name though, and they're gonna win me first prize at the next pepper fair."
He took a sip of the whiskey, feeling it burn down his throat. "Damn, and makes a tasty Strawberry Surprise." His legs were a little wobbly, and it was sort of nice to watch the peppers grow and the wolves turn into fertilizer. He sat for long hours into the evening, drinking whiskey and making plans for his new pepper roaster.
