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The jeweller turned the gold slowly over the tiny anvil, tapping the last strangely-cut diamond into place.
'From a troll's tooth, you say?' he muttered, squinting losely at his work.
'Yesh,' said Cohen, 'and as I shay, you can have all the resht.' He was fingering a tray of gold rings.
'Very generous,' murmured the jeweller, who was dwar-vish and knew a good deal when he saw one. He sighed.
'Not much work lately?' said Cohen. He looked out through the tiny window and watched a group of empty-eyed people gathered on the other side of the narrow street.
'Times are hard, yes.'
'Who are all theshe guysh with the starsh painted on?' said Cohen.
The dwarf jeweller didn't look up.
'Madmen,' he said. 'They say I should do no work because the star comes. I tell them stars have never hurt me, I wish I could say the same about people.'
Cohen nodded thoughtfully as six men detached themselves from the group and came towards the shop. They were carrying an assortment of weapons, and had a driven, determined look about them.
'Strange,' said Cohen.
'I am, as you can see, of the dwarvish persuasion,' said the jeweller. 'One of the magical races, it is said. The star people believe that the star will not destroy the Disc if we turn aside from magic. They're probably going to beat me up a bit. So it goes.'
He held up his latest work in a pair of tweezers.
'The strangest thing I have ever made,' he said, 'but practical, I can see that. What did you say they were called again?'
'Din-chewersh,' said Cohen. He looked at the horseshoe shapes nestling in the wrinkled palm of his hand, then opened his mouth and made a series of painful grunting noises.
The door burst open. The men strode in and took up positions around the walls. They were sweating and uncertain, but their leader pushed Cohen aside disdainfully and picked up the dwarf by his shirt.
'We tole you yesterday, small stuff,' he said. 'You go ut feet down or feet up, we don't mind. So now we gonna get really —.'
Cohen tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked around irritably.
'What do you want, grandad?' he snarled.
Cohen paused until he had the man's full attention, and then he smiled. It was a slow, lazy smile, unveiling about 300 carats of mouth jewellery that seemed to light up the room.
'I will count to three,' he said, in a friendly tone of voice. 'One. Two.' His bony knee came up and buried itself in the man's groin with a satisfyingly meaty noise, and he half-turned to bring the full force of an elbow into the kidneys as the leader collapsed around his private universe of pain.
'Three,' he told the ball of agony on the floor. Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it.
He looked up at the other men, and flashed his incredible srnile.
They ought to have rushed him. Instead one of them, secure in the knowledge that he had a broadsword and Cohen didn't, sidled crabwise towards him.
'Oh, no,' said Cohen, waving his hands. 'Oh, come on, lad, not like that.'
The man looked sideways at him.
'Not like what?' he asked suspiciously.
'You never held a sword before?'
The man half-turned to his colleagues for reassurance.
'Not a lot, no,' he said. 'Not often.' He waved his sword menacingly.
