The Companions s-1 Read online

  “Or we can be,” Wulfgar stated coldly, almost angrily. “As is the way of the world, natural and right.” He met Catti-brie’s stare without blinking, without bending. “I lived a good life, a long life. I have known children-I have buried children!”

  “No doubt they are all dead now,” Catti-brie admitted. “Even had they been blessed with your longevity, for many decades have passed on Toril since you entered Iruladoon.”

  Wulfgar winced at that, and seemed near panic, or rage, at that moment, digesting the almost incomprehensible truth.

  “Nothing is demanded of you, of us, any of us,” Catti-brie said to them all. “The goddess intervened, for the sake of her favored Drizzt, but will not take from us our choice. I am her messenger here, nothing more.”

  “But yerself’s going back,” Bruenor said.

  Catti-brie smiled and nodded.

  “Well, if ye’re going back to be born as a baby, then ye ain’t to be much help to Drizzt, I’m thinking,” said Bruenor., I believe.”Itim“ Not for many the year!”

  Again she nodded. “The Sundering is not yet upon the world of Toril. I expect then, that the time of Drizzt’s peril is not yet upon him.”

  “So ye’re to go back and grow up all over again?” Bruenor asked incredulously. “And where might ye be?”

  Catti-brie shrugged. “Anywhere,” she admitted. “I will be born of human parents, though in Waterdeep or Calimport, Thay or Sembia, Icewind Dale or the Moonshaes, I cannot say, for it is yet to be known. To be reborn into the great cycle is to fly free in spirit until you are found and bound within a suitable womb.”

  “When druids reincarnate, they can come back as different races, as animals, even,” Regis remarked. “Am I to leave the forest to become a little rabbit, scampering away from wolves and hawks?”

  “You will be a halfling, born of halfling parents,” Catti-brie promised. “That would surely be more in the way of Mielikki, and more in accordance with Mielikki’s demands.”

  “What good might ye be to Drizzt as a rabbit, ye dolt?” Bruenor asked.

  “Maybe he’s hungry,” Regis replied with a shrug.

  Bruenor sighed against the halfling’s sly grin, but the dwarf turned more serious again, obviously so, as he spun back on his beloved daughter. He breathed hard and tried to speak, but shook his head, defeated by emotion.

  “I can’no do it,” he said suddenly, and he choked upon the words. “I had me day and found me rest!” He seemed almost frantic, and looked at Catti-brie with eyes rimmed with moistness. “I earned me way to Moradin’s seat, and so Dwarfhome’s waitin’.”

  Catti-brie stepped aside and motioned to the pond. “The road is there.”

  “And what’ll me girl think o’ me, then? Bruenor the coward?”

  Catti-brie laughed, but sobered quickly and rushed to throw a great hug upon Bruenor. “There is no judgment in this choice,” she whispered into his ear, and she let herself then slip into the Dwarvish accent she used to carry when she was very young and living in the Battlehammer tunnels beneath Kelvin’s Cairn. “Me Da, yer girl’ll e’er love ye, and not e’er forget ye.”

  She hugged him tighter, and Bruenor returned the grip tenfold, crushing Catti-brie against him. Then, abruptly, he pushed her back to arms’ length, the tears now rolling down his hairy cheeks. “Ye’re going back to Faerun?”

  “I am indeed.”

  “To help Drizzt?”

  “To help him, so I pray. To love him once more, so I pray. To live beside him until I am no more, so I pray. The Deep Wild awaits, eternally so, and Mielikki is a patient hostess.”

  “I’m going back,” Regis stated flatly, surprising them all and turning every eye toward him.

  The halfling didn’t melt under those curious looks.

  “Drizzt would go back for me,” he explained, and he said no more, and crossed his arms over his small chest and set his jaw firmly.

  Catti-brie offered him a warm smile. “Then we will meet again, alive, so I hope.”

  , I believe.”Itim“ Oh, by the iron balls o’ Clangeddin!” Bruenor huffed. He hopped back from Catti-brie and put his hands on his hips. “Beardless?” he asked.

  Catti-brie smiled, seeing all too clearly where this was heading.

  “Bah!” the dwarf grumbled and spun away. “Let’s be goin’ then, and if we’re to be landin’ all around Faerun, then where’re we to meet and how’re we to know, and what …?”

  “In the night of the spring equinox in your twenty-first year,” Catti-brie answered. “The Night of Mielikki, in a place we all know well.”

  Bruenor stared at her. Regis stared at her. Wulfgar stared at her. The gaze of all three burned into her, so many questions spinning, so much left to ask, and yet none of it, they all knew, possible to answer.

  “Bruenor’s Climb,” she said. “Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale, on the night of the spring equinox. There we will join anew, if we have not found each other previously.”

  “No!” Wulfgar stated flatly behind her, and she turned around to see the big man step farther into the pond. His stern visage softened under the gazes of his three friends. “I cannot,” he said quietly.

  He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “My days beside you, I treasure,” he told them. “And know that I did love you once,” he said to Catti-brie directly. “But I gained a life beyond our time, back in my homeland with my people, and there I found love and family anew. They are gone now, all of them …,” His voice trailed off and he pointed to the pond, and he was pointing toward Warrior’s Rest, they all knew, the promised heaven of his god, Tempus. “They await. My wife. My children. Forgive me.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Catti-brie said, and both Bruenor and Regis echoed the sentiment. “There is no debt to be repaid here. Mielikki would offer the choice to Drizzt’s dearest friends, to the Companions of the Hall, and you are among that group. Farewell, my friend, and know that I once and ever loved you and will never forget you.”

  She walked to the pond, right into the water, and embraced Wulfgar warmly and lovingly and kissed him on the cheek. “Warrior’s Rest will be greater with Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who too awaits your arrival.”

  She walked out as Bruenor and Regis moved to similarly embrace the barbarian. Regis came back from the pond eagerly, Catti-brie noted, but Bruenor glanced back many times as he moved to join the other two.

  Withending the con

  CHAPTER 4

  SON O’ THE LINE

  The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Citadel Felbarr

  "Suren that the winter’s in me old bones,” King Emerus Warcrown said to Parson Glaive, his friend and advisor. King Emerus stretched his arms wide, his muscular shoulders flexing and bulging. He was past his two-hundredth birthday by many years, but still possessed a physique that would make a fifty-year-old jealous, and few of any age would wish to engage in combat with this proud old shield dwarf! He walked to the side of the room and grasped a large log in just one hand, easily hoisting it in his powerful grip and tossing it onto the flames.

  “Aye, but she’s a rough one,” agreed Parson Glaive, the principle cleric in Citadel Felbarr, leader of the church, and the dwarf Emerus had recently appointed as Steward-in-Waiting should anything ill befall the king. “Snow’s piled high around the west Runegate. I’ve set a horde o’ shov’lers to work cleaning it afore the next caravan rolls through.”

  “Won’t be rolling anytime soon!” Emerus said with a belly laugh. “Sledding, maybe, but not rollin’!”

  “Aye,” said his black-bearded, bald-headed friend, and he joined in the laughter. For the dwarves of Citadel Felbarr, the turn of 1463 had brought with it a welcomed respite from the constant conflicts-orcs and highwaymen and other such annoyances-that had plagued the area throughout the previous year. Hammer, the first month, had been quite frigid, allowing little melt from the ending snows of 1462, and the second month, aptly nicknamed the Claw of Winter, had come in with a roar, dumping heavy snowfalls acros
s the Silver Marches. Parson Glaive’s description of the situation at the Runegate was not an exaggeration, not in the least.

  Emerus Warcrown clapped his hands together to get the wood chips and dirt from them, then ran them through his great beard, more gray than yellow now, but still as thick as any beard any dwarf had ever worn. “Can’t seem to get the chill from me old bones this day,” he said, and he tossed his friend an exaggerated wink. “Bit o’ brandy might be needed.”

  “Aye, a good bit,” Parson Glaive happily replied.

  Emerus went for his private stock, set in a sturdy decorated cabinet to the side of the comfortable room. He had just grasped the most decorated bottle of all, a thin-necked but wide-bodied flask of Mirabar’s best brandy, when the door of his private chamber burst open with a loud bang. Emerus Warcrown dOh, aye, again the time wandering of lonely world!

  And s lookingropped the bottle and cried out, “What!” and only caught the bottle again as it crashed against the cabinet’s shelf, fortunately without breaking.

  “What?” the dwarf king cried again, turning to the door to see a muscular, wild-eyed warrior dwarf jumping around and waving his arms, his face as red as his fiery beard. A myriad of terrible scenarios rushed through the king’s thoughts as he considered the newcomer, Reginald Roundshield, or “Arr Arr” as he was more commonly known, Citadel Felbarr’s Captain of the Guard.

  But those imagined catastrophes faded away as Emerus calmed and considered Arr Arr more carefully, particularly the red-bearded dwarf’s supreme grin.

  “What’d’ye know?” Emerus demanded.

  “A son, me king!” Reginald answered.

  “What ho!” cried Parson Glaive. “What ho! But I’ll be blessin’ that lad in the name o’ Clangeddin, or Arr Arr’s sure to be whining!”

  “Clangeddin’s the choice,” Reginald confirmed. “Son o’ the captain.”

  “Son o’ the line,” Emerus Warcrown agreed, and he set three large cups out and began pouring the celebratory brandy, liberally so!

  “Me Da was the captain, me Grand Da was the captain, and his Da afore him,” Reginald said proudly. “And so’s me son to be!”

  “Son o’ the son o’ the son o’ the son of a captain, then!” Parson Glaive congratulated, taking his cup from Emerus and hosting it immediately in toast.

  “A strappin’ big one,” Reginald told the others, tapping their glasses hard. “And ‘e’s full o’ fight already, I tell ye!”

  “Could’no be any other way,” Emerus Warcrown agreed. “Could’no be any other way!”

  “And what’s his name to be? Same as yer own, then?”

  “Aye, both halves, as me Da and his Da and his Da and his Da.”

  “A little Arr Arr, then!” the king of Felbarr proclaimed, lifting his brandy for another toast, but then he reconsidered and pulled it back down.

  Reginald Roundshield and Parson Glaive looked at him curiously.

  “Gutbuster?” Emerus Warcrown asked slyly, referring to that most brutal and potent of dwarven beverages.

  “What else’d be fittin’ for the birth of a Roundshield?” Parson Glaive replied.

  The king nodded and looked at his guard commander somberly. “Ye just make sure that meself’s about when ye’re for givin’ little Arr Arr his first sip o’ the Gutbuster,” he said. “Ah, but I’m wantin’ to see the look on the tyke’s face!”

  “It’ll be a look wantin’ more,” Reginald boasted, and the three laughed again as King Emerus went for his private stash of the potent liquid.

  He wasn’t prepared for this. How could anyone be properly prepared for this?

  Bruenor Battlehammer, twice King of Mithral Hall, lay in a cradle in a dark room in Citadel Felbarr, his baby arms waving, his baby legs in the tunnels around Mithral Hall, and paimonkicking, and little of that in his control. It was all too strange, all too weird. He could feel his limbs, was aware of his body, but only vaguely, distantly, as if it was not really his own, but a borrowed thing.

  And was it, he wondered, in the few clips of time when he could keep his thoughts straight, for even his brain seemed only partially his to control!

  Was this the way it was for babies, then? Were they all like this, strangers in their own forms, lacking more than simple coordination, but an actual path to find that dexterity, as if their little brains had not yet found a way to speak to their own limbs?

  Or was it something more, the old baby dwarf feared. Was this a perversion, a theft of another’s body, and as such, might the act have damaged the corporeal coil? Would he be ever doomed to flail and gurgle?

  A helpless stooge and a fool for leaving the forest as he had, for not continuing on to his just rewards at the side of Moradin!

  Bruenor tried to focus, tried to concentrate deeply, calling to his arms to stop their incessant flailing. But he could not, and he knew that something was wrong.

  Mielikki’s gift was a curse, then, he realized to his horror. This was no blessing, and now he’d suffer out his days-how many years? Two hundred? Three hundred? — as a bumbling fool, a curiosity.

  He fought for control.

  He failed.

  He battled with all of his strength, the willpower of a dwarf king.

  He failed.

  He felt the frustration bubbling up inside of him, a primal terror that pushed forth a primal scream, and even in that shriek, Bruenor could not control his inflection or timber.

  “Ah, me little Reggie,” he heard a comforting female voice, and a cherubic dwarf face peered over the edge of his cradle, her smile bright, her expression tired.

  Giant hands reached in and so easily lifted Bruenor, guiding him toward a monstrous, huge breast …

  “Ah, ye brought yer brat,” Emerus Warcrown said to his captain of the guard when Reginald Roundshield arrived in the war room, his child strapped into a dwarfling holster on his back.

  Reginald grinned at his king. “Can’t be havin’ me boy layin’ about all day. He’s much to learn.”

  “The boy’s been breathing for a month,” Parson Glaive remarked.

  “Aye, should have a sword in his hand by now, I’m thinkin’,” said Reginald, and they all laughed some more.

  Bouncing around on his father’s back, Bruenor was glad to be out of the nursery and the cradle, and his happiness at being brought along only increased when the three dwarves began discussing the political and security situation of the Runegates of Citadel Felbarr.

  Bruenor listened intently-for a few moments. But then he thought of eating, because his stomach growled. Then he thought of the itchiness around his backside.

  Then he looked at his hand, his chubby little dwarfling hand … and a “goo” sound came forth from his saliva-dripping lips.

  He tried to remind himself to focus, to listen to this conversation, for it would take him from the immediate needs that seemed so ever-pressing to him. But he found himself lamentJelvus GrinchIDraygo Quickestoing the indignities of his station. He, King Bruenor Battlehammer, was bouncing around helplessly on the back of a guard captain. He, the king of Mithral Hall, had to be fed and changed and bathed and …

  The baby let out a shriek, one that came from somewhere deep inside and simply bubbled out before Bruenor could even consider it. How he hated this!

  “ ’Ere now, ye keep yer brat quiet or drop him back on his Ma,” Parson Glaive said.

  “Bah, not for worryin’,” King Emerus said. “Them shrieks’ll be battle cries soon enough, and little Arr Arr’s got some orc heads to squish.”

  So they went on with their meeting, and Bruenor tried to listen, hoping to catch up on the events here in the Silver Marches.

  But he was hungry, and he was itchy, and his hand was so enticing …

  “And how long?” Uween Roundshield asked Parson Glaive when he arrived at her house one morning a couple of months later. The Roundshield home was a neat stone affair in the upper level of the Citadel Felbarr complex.

  Bruenor perked up his ears and tried to turn aro
und on the blanket his mother Uween had set out on the floor for him. He wanted to get a better look at the speaker, but alas, his little body would barely move to his call and he had to settle for turning his too-big head hard to the side and staring at the cleric out of the very corner of his eye.

  “Hard to say,” Parson Glaive replied. “The passes’re open again, and the orcs been fast to fill ’em.”

  “Orcs, always orcs!” Uween grumbled. “Many-Arrows, many orcs!”

  Those words caused the child on the blanket to wince, and brought great discomfort to the confused sensibilities of Bruenor Battlehammer. Many-Arrows … the kingdom of orcs … set up by the beast Obould, its existence ratified in a treaty signed by Bruenor himself a century before. Bruenor had spent the rest of his life-his first life at least-wondering if he had erred in signing the peace with Obould. He had never been content with his decision, even though he had been given little choice in the matter. His forces of Mithral Hall could not have defeated Obould’s thousands, could not have begun to drive them from the land, and the other kingdoms of the Silver Marches, notably Sundabar and Silverymoon, and even the dwarven citadels of Felbarr and Adbar, had deferred from entering such a war. The price would have been too high, so they all had determined.

  And so the Kingdom of Many-Arrows had come to be, and peace had ensued … such as it was.

  For these were orcs, after all, and the constant incursions of rogue bands had plagued the land throughout the rest of Bruenor’s (first) life, and apparently, given the conversation before him now, continued to this day.

  “Arr Arr’ll put ’em back in their holes,” Parson Glaive assured Uween.

  “We should be marchin’ across the Surbrin, and put ’em down for the dogs they are,” Uween replied.

  “I’m not for arguin’,” said Parson Glaive. “And know that many’re grumbling that same song o’ late. Too many fights, too many raids. King Obould the Whatever’s been telled to put a rein on his underlings, and evenextract{text-indent: 0an;font-style: italic;font-weight: on Mithral Hall’s been sounding that warning.”