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"Oh, for heavens' sake," Gisella moaned. "What's this, now?
Shoo, shoo, you little beasties!" she clucked, taking a step down and
waving the backs of her hands toward where the eyes had stood.
"Miss Hornslager, get back into the wagon!" Woodrow called.
"We're under attack!" He swung his branch at the eyes in a gesture
meant to look brave.
"By gully dwarves?" Her voice cracked on a high note. "Don't be
ridiculous. They're as annoying as horseflies, I'll grant you that,
but they're harmless."
She turned back to glare in the direction of the stillaproaching
eyes. "I said shoo!" She waved the hem of her nightshirt at them like
a farmer's wife scattering chickens with her apron.
"Gully dwarves?" Tas asked, lowering his hoopak. He took a step
toward the wagon and squinted into the darkness. The air was filled
with the sound of uncontrollable giggling. Finally, Tas could see
eleven or more short creatures who looked vaguely like dwarves
gathered before the door. Instead of "shooing," they were looking up
at Gisella expectantly, like pigeons waiting for breadcrumbs in a city
square.
Tas knew from his mountain dwarf friend, Flint, that gully
dwarves, or Aghar, were the lowest caste in dwarven society. They were
very clannish, keeping to themselves and living in places so squalid
that no other creatures, including most animals, would live in them.
Which would leave them with a lot of privacy, Tas supposed.
Tasslehoff hadn't seen many gully dwarves up close, except for a
few who had been cleaned up and recruited into domestic labor by
ambitious but notoriously cheap merchant middle-class Kendermorians,
as they called themselves
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