He (Bedwyr Beddsson, a mountain dwarf -Ed.) loved Bleddyn, his wife of many years, and his children were doing just fine in the school in Lancre, but today he was troubled. The grags had called and were quite polite this time, although either he nor Bleddyn really cared for politics ... He just wanted to provide for his family as best he could. What was a dwarf to do?
...
Bleddyn had cooked a good rat supper and was upset when she saw his face and said, 'Those damn grags again! Why don't you tell them to put their nonsense where the light shines too much!' (FOOTNOTE: Humans would have said, 'Put it where the sun don't shine.')
Bleddyn didn't usually swear, so that surprised him, and she continued, 'They had a point once. They said that we were being swallowed up by the humans and the trolls, and you know it's true, except that it's the wrong kind of truth. The kids've got human friends and one or two trolls as well and nobody notices, nobody thinks about it. Everyone is just people.'
He looked at her face and said, 'But we're diminished, less important!'
But Bleddyn was emphatic and said, 'You silly old dwarf. Don't you think the trolls consider themselves diminished too? People mingle and mingling is good! You're a dwarf, with big dwarf hobnail boots and everything else it takes to be a dwarf. And remember, it wasn't so long ago that dwarfs were very scarce outside of Uberwald. You must know your history? Nobody can take that away, and who knows, maybe some trolls are saying right now, "Oh dear, my little pebbles is being influenced by the dwarfs! It's a sin!" The Turtle moves for everybody all the time, and those grags schism so often that they consider everyone is a schism out there on their own ...'
When he laughed she smiled and said, 'All that's good in the world is that it's spilling over us as if we're stones in a stream, and it'll leave us eventually. Remember your old granddad telling you about going to fight the trolls in Koom Valley, yes? And then you told your son how you went back to Koom Valley and found out the whole damn thing was a misunderstanding. And because of all this, our Brynmore won't even have to fight unless someone is extremely stupid. Say no to the grags ... You're a dwarf. You won't stop being a dwarf until you die. And you could be a clever dwarf or you could be a stupid dwarf, like the ones who knock down clacks towers.'
Bedwyr ... as a wise husband does ... thought about things.
Two days later ... Bedwyr found two dark dwarfs setting fire to the base of a clacks tower. All he had on him were his tools and it was amazing how useful a simple miner's tools could be. A number of clacksmen and goblins joined him hastily in putting out the fire, and they had to stop Bedwyr from using his heavy boots to show his disdain to those who resort to arson. He told them, 'My brother's daughter, our Berwyn, she works on the clacks down in Quirm ... All this stuff you don't notice until it's on your doorstep, and now I think I've woken up.'
Bedwyr didn't kill the delvers, he just, as it were, disabled them ... From the point of view of people working in an undefended clacks tower in the wilderness, the world was seen as black and white, and for these delvers it went black.