Flint the King (Dragonlance: Preludes, #5; Preludes II, #2)

"King of the Gully Dwarves? I'd sooner drown!"--King Flint I of Mudhole

Flint Fireforge, paternal dwarven member of the Heroes of the Lance, returns to his sleepy boyhood village in the foothills near Solace and unexpectedly finds it booming with commerce. When he stumbles upon the ominous source of this prosperity, he is pushed to his death in the Beast Pit.

And saved by gully dwarves, along with an interesting--and interested--female dwarf. Made their monarch against his will, Flint struggles to unite the scruffy dwarves as an army to stop a fiendish plot.