Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf Read online

  He reciprocated, and Uween felt the warmth, the sincere love coming back at her.

  “King Bruenor, they’re sayin’,” she whispered.

  “Aye, ‘tis true, but that’s a part o’ me,” he whispered back. “Uween’s boy, Reginald’s boy, I be, and proud of it, don’t ye doubt.”

  “But ye’re this other one, too,” Uween said when she composed herself. She pulled back a bit to look her son in the eye.

  “Aye, Bruenor Battlehammer, son o’ Bangor and Caydia, and don’t ye know but that I’m shakin’ me head every time I’m thinking about it!” Bruenor replied with a self-deprecating laugh. “Two Mas, two Das, two lines o’ blood.”

  “And one’s royal.”

  Bruenor nodded. “Still got me royal blood. Been to Gauntlgrym, to the Throne o’ the Dwarf Gods, and ye canno’ sit on it if …” His voice trailed away, and Uween blushed, recognizing that she hadn’t hid her disinterest well enough. She didn’t care about his other Ma and Da, or this whole King Bruenor business. Nay, this was her Little Arr Arr and not some Battlehammer!

  “I’m not meanin’ to hurt ye,” Bruenor said. “It’s the last thing I’d be wanting to do.”

  “Then what’s this craziness that’s come over ye?”

  “It’s not. Me name’s Bruenor—always been. By the grace of a goddess was I brought back from the grave.”

  “So someone telled ye!”

  “No,” Bruenor said somberly, shaking his head. “No. It is not a tale needin’ telling, for it’s one I’ve walked awake.”

  “And what’s that meanin’?” Uween started to ask, but Bruenor’s expression, deadly serious and certain, clued her to another direction. “How long ye knowin’ this?”

  “Whole time.”

  “And what’s that to mean?”

  “Whole time,” Bruenor repeated. “From me old life to me death, to the forest o’ Catti-brie’s goddess, to the womb o’ Uween. I knowed who I was.”

  “From the moment ye was born again?”

  “Before,” Bruenor said.

  Uween fell back, overwhelmed, confused, and horrified to think that she held some sentient, knowing adult creature in her womb! What was he claiming? What madness was this?

  “Ye spent the better part of a year in me belly, ye’re sayin’?” she gasped.

  “No,” Bruenor replied. “I come in as I was comin’ out. At the time o’ birth …”

  “Oh, but ye’re a fat liar!”

  “No.”

  “No babe’s to be knowin’ that! No memories go that far back, for any of us!”

  Bruenor shrugged. “I can tell ye every bit o’ the day yer husband, me Da, did no’ come back. When Parson Glaive and King Emerus come to yer door.”

  Before she could even think of the motion, Uween slugged him in the face. She gasped and brought her hands to her mouth, tears flowing freely. “Ye knew in the crib?” she asked breathlessly. “Ye knew and ye did no’ tell me? What … what madness?”

  “I could no’, and ye’d not have believed me,” Bruenor said. He gave a little snort. “Are ye even believin’ me now, I’m wonderin’? It was me own secret and me own burden, and why I had to go.”

  “To Mithral Hall?” She tried to sound understanding, now that her anger had manifested itself with the strike. She had let her horror overtake her, but only briefly, she decided. Only briefly.

  “Through Mithral Hall,” Bruenor answered. “And all the way to the Sword Coast.”

  “Did ye tell ’em? Them boys from Mithral Hall?”

  “Nah,” Bruenor said, shaking his head. “Not till I come back now with me friends aside me—and some o’ them went through death, too. That was the deal with the goddess, and I was oath-bound. And oh, don’t ye doubt that the throne of our gods let me know their anger when I was thinkin’ o’ breakin’ that oath!”

  “Ye keep claimin’ the gods’re on yer side then.”

  “I know what I know, and I know who I be. And I be Bruenor, and remember all o’ that other life I knew. The life afore I died.”

  Uween nodded, beginning to digest it all, and telling herself that she had no choice but to accept it.

  “And ye’re still me Ma, I’m hopin’, but course the call’s yer own to make.”

  Uween started to nod—how could she not love this one, even if he wasn’t …

  The woman froze, her face locking into an expression of pure shock. “Me own boy,” she finally managed to whisper after a long, long pause. “Me own boy …”

  “Aye, if ye’ll have me.”

  “Not yerself! Me boy what was in there,” she said, and rubbed her belly. “What’d ye do to him then? Where’s me boy o’ Reginald’s seed?”

  Bruenor sucked in his breath and held up his hands helplessly, clearly at a loss.

  Uween believed him—he had no answer as to how that transformation might have occurred, of how he had gotten into the tiny body in the womb and what had been there before him. Had the child been a blank slate awaiting the consciousness of Bruenor Battlehammer? Or some other, maybe, and so expelled—was that the way it worked?

  “Get yerself out o’ me house, ye murderin’ dog!” the woman said, trembling and with tears pouring down her cherubic cheeks. “Oh, ye doppelganger! Abomination! Ye killed me baby!”

  As she ranted, she pushed Bruenor toward the door, and he gave ground, shaking his head with every step. But he couldn’t deny her charges, and could only hold his hands up helplessly, clueless.

  Uween shoved him outside and slammed her door in his face, and he could hear her wailing from behind the stone.

  He staggered away, but had only gone a few steps before Ragged Dain caught up to him. “Come on, then, ye fool king!” the dwarf said lightheartedly. “Might be the greatest swarm o’ orcs above us the world’s e’er seen, but ho, we’re still to drink to King Bruenor this day! The gods’ve blessed us—they sent ye here for a reason!” he said, dragging Bruenor along. “We’ll be singin’ and dancin’ and drinkin’ all the night, don’t ye doubt!” Bruenor nodded—he knew the expectation, of course, and would go along. But he kept looking back at the humble home he had known in this childhood, kept thinking of the woman he had left behind the stone door, broken and grieving.

  They had an army of orcs camped up above them, flooding the land, sacking the towns, but anyone looking in on the celebration that night in Citadel Felbarr would never know it. For one of the most legendary dwarves of the past two centuries had returned from the grave, and while many in the Silver Marches grumbled about Bruenor’s signature on the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, the dwarves of the North were not among those naysayers.

  King Bruenor was kin and kind, friend of Felbarr, friend of Adbar, and so the celebration roared.

  Bruenor spent the early part of the gathering beside Drizzt and Catti-brie. He nodded and smiled, clapped tankards, and shared hugs and well-wishes with a line of Felbarran dwarves. He did well to mask his inner turmoil over Uween, and truthfully, over the whole process that had brought him back to life and back to Toril. Had his arrival in Uween’s womb thrown aside a babe? Had he taken the infant’s body like some mind flayer?

  The horror of that notion had him rubbing his hairy face.

  “I fear for them, too, my friend, but take heart,” Drizzt whispered to him on one such beard-stroking. Bruenor looked at him curiously.

  “Hold faith in Wulfgar and Regis,” Catti-brie clarified, and she reached over and put her hand on Bruenor’s forearm.

  The reminder jolted Bruenor from his other concerns. He hadn’t been thinking of his lost friends at all that day—too many other problems nipped at his every step. He nodded solemnly at his beautiful daughter and put his hand atop hers. “Aye, the little one’s grown. With him aside Wulfgar, sure that it’s them orcs we should be worrying for!”

  He lifted his mug and clapped it against the flagon Catti-brie put up, and a third came in from Drizzt, and then more as another band of well-wishers bobbed over.

  And on it we
nt, with cheers and promises that the orcs of Many-Arrows would rue the day they came forth from their smelly keep, and every drink lifted repeatedly for “Delzoun!” and “Bruenor!”

  On one side of the room, a chorus began, a troupe of dwarves with tones both wistful and dulcet, singing tales of war, of victory and great sorrow. As one song, a merrier melody, gathered momentum, some dwarves began to dance, and others called for Drizzt and Catti-brie to join in.

  And so they did, and soon the dwarven dancers fell back and circled them, cheering them on.

  Drizzt and Catti-brie had never actually danced before, and certainly not publicly. But they had trained for war together many times, sparring in mock battle, and no two creatures in Faerûn were more attuned to the movements of each other. They glided around the floor with ease, lost only in each other, moving with sympathy and grace, and not a stumble could be found.

  Bruenor couldn’t help but smile as he watched the couple, and surely it did his heart good to see the love that remained between the two. It brought him back to the days before the Spellplague, when at last, Catti-brie and Drizzt had admitted to, and surrendered to, their love for one another. And here it was again.

  No, not again, Bruenor thought, but still.

  Eternal.

  He nodded and felt warm.

  Then he went back to clapping tankards and sharing hugs and handshakes.

  At one pause in the procession of well-wishers, Bruenor looked past Drizzt and Catti-brie, who were returning to their seats, and noted King Emerus, Ragged Dain, and Parson Glaive sitting around a small table in an animated conversation with Athrogate.

  Drizzt followed his gaze, then looked back to Bruenor with concern. Bruenor nodded and held up his hands to ward off a group coming to greet him, thinking to make his way to that table and see what Athrogate might be telling Emerus.

  “Ah, but there’s a slap in me face,” a woman’s voice followed him as he took a step in that direction.

  “Aye, but ain’t he the king now?” another woman asked with biting sarcasm. “Too good for the likes of us.”

  Bruenor stopped and dropped his head to hide the smile growing within the red-orange flames of his beard, his hands going to his hips.

  Oh, but he knew these two!

  “Might that we should kick him in the hairy butt,” said the first, and all around, other dwarves were laughing.

  “Aye, and stick the one horn o’ his helm up it,” said the other.

  Bruenor leaped around as the two dwarves charged at him, and he caught them both, or they caught him, or they all caught each other.

  And he got kissed—oh, did he get kissed!—on both his cheeks and flush on the lips.

  When he came up for air, Bruenor saw Drizzt and Catti-brie standing beside him, staring at him with amused expressions. He pulled the two young ladies out to either side, keeping them firmly wrapped with his arms around their shoulders.

  “Drizzt and me girl, Catti-brie, I give ye Tannabritches and Mallabritches Fellhammer, two o’ the toughest fighters what ever whacked an orc!” Bruenor said. He looked to Tannabritches, then to her twin sister, noting their nicknames, “Fist’n’Fury!”

  “Well met!” said Tannabritches.

  “And better met!” added Mallabritches.

  “Glad that ye bringed us back our Little Arr Arr,” said the first.

  “Ah, Sister, don’t ye know he’s the king?” Mallabritches scolded.

  “Aye,” Tannabritches lamented. “King Bruenor, we’re telled.”

  “Aye, and he ain’t young. No, he’s four hunnerd if he’s a day, and woe to his poor old legs.”

  “Woe and more when we’re done dancin’!” Tannabritches insisted, and she and her sister pulled Bruenor out to the floor, to the rousing cheers of all.

  Delighted, Drizzt and Catti-brie took their seats and watched the show as the trio bumbled, bounced, and banged their way through it all. There wasn’t much graceful about their dance—at times, they more resembled three famished dwarves fighting over the last beer—but truly, Drizzt and Catti-brie had never seen a purer expression of joy from their grumbling friend Bruenor.

  And so it went, and for that night at least, the companions could forget the orcs above and their friends lost in the tunnels.

  Just for that one night.

  PART ONE

  THE WINTER OF THE IRON DWARF

  LOST AGAIN.

  It has become a recurring nightmare among my companions, both these old friends returned and the newer companions I traveled beside in recent times. So many times have I, have we, been thrown to a place of hopelessness. Turned to stone, captured by a powerful necromancer, captured by the drow, even dead for a hundred years!

  And yet, here we are, returned. At times it seems to me as if the gods are watching us and intervening.

  Or perhaps they are watching us and toying with us.

  And now we have come to that point again, with Regis and Wulfgar lost to us in the tunnels of the Upperdark. There was an aura of finality to their disappearance, when the devilishly-trapped wallstone snapped back into place. We heard Regis fall away, far away. It didn’t seem like a free fall, and orcs are known to prefer traps that capture victims rather than kill them outright.

  That is not a reason to hope, however, given the way orcs typically deal with their captives.

  In the first days of our return, I convinced King Connerad to double the guard along the lower tunnels, even to allow me to slip out from the guarded areas still secured as Mithral Hall, out into the regions we know to be under the control of the orcs. Bruenor begged to come with me, but better off am I navigating alone in the Underdark. Catti-brie begged me to remain in the hall, and claimed that she would go out with her magic to scout for our friends.

  But I could not sit tight in the comfort of Mithral Hall when I feared they were out there, when I heard, and still hear, their cries for help in my every thought. A recurring nightmare invades my reverie: my dear friends frantic and fighting to get to the lower tunnels still held by the dwarves, but by way of an environment unsuited to a halfling and a human. One dead end after another, one ambush after another. In my thoughts, I see them battling fiercely, then fleeing back the way they had come, orc spears and orc taunts chasing them back into the darkness.

  If I believe they are out there, how can I remain behind the iron walls?

  I cannot deny that we in the hall have much to do. We have to find a way to break the siege and begin to turn the battles above, else the Silver Marches are lost. The misery being inflicted across the lands …

  We have much to do.

  Nesmé has fallen.

  We have much to do.

  The other dwarf citadels are fully besieged.

  We have much to do.

  The lone lifelines, the tunnels connecting Adbar, Felbarr, and Mithral Hall, are under constant pressure now.

  We have much to do.

  And so much time has passed in dark silence. We traveled to Citadel Felbarr and back, and many tendays have passed without a hint from Wulfgar and Regis.

  Are they out there, hiding in dark tunnels or chained in an orc prison? Do they cry out in agony and hopelessness, begging for their friends to come and rescue them? Or begging for death, perhaps?

  Or are they now silenced forevermore?

  All reason points to them being dead, but I have seen too much now to simply accept that. I hold out hope and know from experience that it cannot be a false hope wrought of emotional folly.

  But neither is it more than that: a hope.

  They fell, likely to their deaths, either immediately or in orc imprisonment. Even if that is not the case, and their drop through the wall took them to a separate tunnel free from the orcs and drow that haunt the region, so many tendays have passed without word. They are not suited to the Underdark. For all their wonderful skills, in that dark place, in this dark time, it is highly unlikely that Wulfgar and Regis could survive.

  And so I hold out that finger
of hope, but in my heart, I prepare for the worst.

  I am strangely at peace with that. And it is not a phony acceptance where I hide the truth of my pain under the hope that it is mere speculation. If they are gone, if they have fallen, I know that they died well.

  It is all we can ask now, any of us. There is an old drow saying—I heard it used often to describe Matron Mother Baenre in the days of my youth: “qu’ella bondel,” which translates to “gifted time,” or “borrowed time.” The matron mother was old, older than any other, older than any drow in memory. By all reason, she should have been dead long before, centuries before Bruenor put his axe through her head, and so she had been living on qu’ella bondel.

  My companions, returned from the magical forest of Iruladoon, through their covenant with Mielikki, are living on qu’ella bondel. They all know it, they have all said it.

  And so we accept it.

  If Wulfgar and Regis do not return to us, if they are truly gone—and Catti-brie has assured me that the goddess will not interfere in such matters again—then so be it. My heart will be heavy, but it will not break. We have been given a great gift, all of us. In saying hello once more, we all knew that we were making it all right to say farewell.

  But still …

  Would I feel this way if Catti-brie were down there?

  —Drizzt Do’Urden

  CHAPTER 1

  DUKE TIAGO

  HARTUSK GRUMBLED AT EVERY STEP AS HE KICKED THROUGH THE deepening mounds with heavy, wet snow falling all around him. Behind him, Aurbangras, his dragon mount, reveled in the fluffy stuff, rolling around like a playful kitten. To the mighty wyrm, the snow signaled the onset of winter, the season of the white dragons with their frosty breath.

  The storm was general across the Silver Marches, piling deep around Hartusk Keep, formerly known as Sundabar, settling in Keeper’s Dale and Cold Vale, burying the surface doors of the underground dwarven citadels, locking the humans in their cities.