The Companions s-1

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Druidic magic,” agreed a third woman, Rhyalle, like Eerika barely more than a teenager. “Like her shapechanging.”

  Lady Avelyere, meticulous as ever, had absorbed it all, trying to make some sense of this unusual child. Lord Ulfbinder, her dear friend Parise, had not exaggerated, she knew in that moment, and she could certainly understand his interest! She was a teacher most of all, and her students exclusively female, like Eerika and Rhyalle and the other three she had brought to the plains of Netheril. She wondered what Lord Parise’s intentions for this one might be; wouldn’t it be grand for her to add this marvelous little Ruqiah to her house of magic?

  Another lightning bolt flashed, and a growling rumble of thunder shook the ground beneath their feet.

  “When this child waters her garden, beware!” the lighthearted Rhyalle remarked with a laugh, and the others join;}span.bigI stopped oned in-all except for Lady Avelyere, who intently watched the girl and her dance through the magic of the scrying pool, wondering what she could teach her, and wondering even more so what she might learn from the child.

  But first, of course, she would have to catch her.

  The Year of Splendors Burning (1469 DR) Netheril

  Some months later, Catti-brie drifted on the hot updrafts in the guise of a great hawk, far above the dark brown sands of Netheril. The day was bright and clear and the world spread wide below her. She saw the snake of a river, glistening silvery in the sunlight as it wound its way to a small lake far in the northwest.

  Straighter north, she saw the distant outline of Shade Enclave, with its dark towers and high walls, an entire city hovering above the plain on an inverted floating mountain of rock. Of all the sights Catti-brie had ever known, from the mysterious tapestry of Menzoberranzan to the spires of Silverymoon, none quite matched the one in the distance before her. The place didn’t appeal to her sensibilities, but certainly Shade Enclave intrigued her, evoking both curiosity and a sense of unnerving displacement. As magnificent and incredible as the sight might be, Catti-brie didn’t dwell on it.

  The tents of the Desai shone white below her to the west-she could imagine the tribesmen going about their day. She thought of her parents, and reminded herself that she was due to meet with them again in just a tenday. She looked forward to it; Kavita was teaching her several potent spells to manipulate and create fire …

  The thought couldn’t hold. Not up here, free on the updrafts, gliding around as a hawk. The world looked so different to her from this vantage, and with her new insights. She looked at the river again, then off to the west, where dark clouds had gathered. She could even see the lowering darkness of heavy rain falling. The perfection of nature’s design overwhelmed her, for the simple clockwork of the world was truly a beautiful thing. The rain would fall, the rivers would run, and the rising heat would lift again the moisture into the air, cleansing it that it might fall and nurture the plants and the creatures once more.

  The whole of Mielikki’s cycle flowed through her thoughts as her feathered wings spread wide to lift her on the winds. Life, death, the continuum of time and space. The cycle, and within it, the great wheel of civilization, rolling forward so slowly.

  She could appreciate more clearly the life she had lived, the roles she had played, the gains she and her powerful companions had made for those goodly folk around them.

  CHAPTER 10

  PATRON

  The Year of the Third Circle (1472 DR) Citadel Felbarr

  The overhead chop came as predicted, painfully predictable to the sensibilities of the seasoned warrior.

  Bruenor found himself disgusted with how pedestrian his opponent proved to be. This was the top student of Bruenor’s training group.

  But still, Bruenor’s feint had been obvious, and the idea that the dwarfling had swallowed it so fully …

  Bruenor easily turned aside to avoid the downward strike, sliding one hand up to the middle of his fighting stick-straight poles this day-and thrusting his arm out behind him, driving the weapon hilt into the ribs of the stumbling dwarfling. Bruenor’s continuing turn put him directly behind the gasping youth-and he in the general direction, then paBo her father remembered that it was, after all, just a child here, and that thought almost slowed his next merciless strike.

  Almost.

  His two-handed slash cracked his weapon across the dwarfling’s head and sent him flying to the side and to the floor, where he abandoned his weapon and grabbed at his head with both hands, tears flowing and cries of pain echoing.

  Gasps came from all around the room, along with a call from Master Muttonchops Stonehammer to two other dwarflings.

  Bruenor sighed and turned around to meet the charge of not one, but two students this time.

  Fist and Fury, they were called, the powerful Fellhammer sisters, considered among the top students of the training class above Bruenor’s level. And Bruenor had to admit that by the way they were coming in at him, their coordination appeared sophisticated and correct.

  He settled himself calmly, feet widespread, and easily defeated the twin thrusts with a sudden down-and-over, leftward sweep of his fighting stick, at the same time hopping out to the left to further exaggerate the miss.

  The nearest of the twins, though, extracted herself almost immediately and with a quick two-step, launched herself at Bruenor, swinging with one hand, punching with the other.

  He dived down low, shouldering her just above the knee and launching her into a somersault past him, to thump down hard on her back on the dirt floor of the chamber. The collision staggered Bruenor a bit, but he never lost his balance, and was already into his next move, sweeping a tremendous uppercut that froze the second sister in her tracks, and just barely missed taking the tip from her nose.

  She charged in right behind the uppercut with a roar.

  Bruenor had known that he would miss with his wild swing; the point of the attack was to give him just an eye-blink of time to reset his footing and to get his momentum going. As his stick lifted, he veered that momentum and threw himself into a rolling back flip over the stabbing stick of the female and over her arms, as well, landing only a step back to the right, but directly in front of her.

  She was just a child, a girl child, he reminded himself. But with a growl, he slammed his forehead into her face anyway, and as she staggered backward under the blow, he leaped up, flattened out, and double-kicked her in the torso.

  He landed on his side, bounced right back up and parried the incoming attack from the first of the sisters.

  “Bungo’s Roll,” Emerus Warcrown said to Muttonchops at the side of the room, correctly naming the maneuver Bruenor had used on the second charging teenager. “When did ye start teachin’ the dwarflings to dance such a move as that?”

  “Haven’t,” Muttonchops said with a shake of his head.

  Emerus Warcrown turned his attention back to the fight, just in time to see one of the sisters go flipping head-over-heels to the right and to see the second cringe in pain as Little Arr Arr, working her hands, her weapon, and her attention up high, stomped down on her foot.

  She cringed and started reflexively to double over, and a left hook sent her sprawling.

  “His father’s sitting at Moradin’s side, laughin’ at us,” said the king. As he spoke, the other of the young sisters went somersaulting aside yet again, the victim of a beautifully appearanceI holding onbalanced parry, hook, and throw.

  “I’m guessin’ that Arr Arr’s jaw’s hanging as open as yer own,” Muttonchops replied. “Moradin’s too.”

  They came at him in a long line, a stream of attackers, sometimes two at once, and in the end, the last four together.

  This wasn’t Little Arr Arr they were battling, but Bruenor Battlehammer, King of Mithral Hall, the great warrior who had held back Obould’s hordes in Keeper’s Dale beyond Mithral Hall’s western gate.

  And it was Bruenor Battlehammer who had sat upon the throne of Gauntlgrym, who had heard the words of Moradin, the whispers of Dumath
oin and the battle shouts of Clangeddin. Though he wore the frame of a child’s body, inferior to those of his older attackers, his understanding of balance and movement kept those attackers constantly turning and shifting, often right into each other, and always clumsily.

  And whenever that happened, Bruenor’s fighting stick invariably and painfully cracked against an opponent’s skull.

  In the very first moments of that last assault, four coming at him furiously, Bruenor had stopped their charge and tied them up with misdirection, feinting left, then right, then left again so smoothly that the edges of the foursome collapsed upon the middle.

  He swept the legs out of the teenage dwarf the farthest to his left, half-turned and backhand stabbed the second in line, then pivoted the other way to parry and roll around the stabbing sticks of the remaining two. Running back out to the right afforded him a few moments of single combat with the one on that end of the line. He stabbed, pulled up short and swept across, taking his opponent’s weapon and her balance with him, then reversed suddenly and snapped his fighting stick across her chin, dazing her. In a one-on-one fight, Bruenor would have let it end there, but this opponent had three allies, after all, and so he leaped up and spun, lifting his stick over his head, and came around with a resounding chop that knocked the dwarfling girl senseless, and shattered Bruenor’s fighting stick in the process.

  He dived to the floor, retrieving her stick-she wasn’t going to need it any longer, after all-and just managed to turn sidelong and brace the butt of the stick against his hip as the next in line leaped at him.

  If it had been an actual spear instead of a blunt stick, that second dwarf would have surely impaled himself. The stick bowed but did not break. The flying dwarf bowed as well, doubling over the forward end, eyes going wide, breath blasted from him. He hung there for what seemed like an eternity, feet off the floor, until the momentum played out and Bruenor’s stick dipped, dropping him back to his feet.

  He didn’t stay on his feet for long, however, grabbing at his belly, wailing in shock and pain, and tumbling to the side.

  “Are ye having fun, then?” Bruenor roared, becoming disgusted with this whole ridiculous exercise. “Are ye, damned Moradin?”

  The blasphemy drew more than a few gasps around the room, but Bruenor hardly heard them. Up again, he launched himself at the remaining two, his stick whirling with seeming abandon, though in truth, in perfectly timed and aimed angles and strikes. He cried out with every hit, his voice filling the air, and soon, so too did his two opponents cry out in pain and terror. They turned and fled … or tried to.

  asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh holding onBruenor kicked the feet out from under the nearest, the same poor dwarf whose legs he had swept out at the beginning of the encounter. He ran right over the poor lad, stomping him flat. He couldn’t catch the other one, though, for she was older and faster, so he hoisted his fighting stick like a javelin and let fly.

  The missile caught the poor girl right in the back of the neck and sent her sprawling to the floor in a cloud of dust.

  “Are ye having fun, then?” an outraged Bruenor yelled at Muttonchops and King Emerus.

  “Promote him at once to the town guard,” King Emerus mumbled to Muttonchops Stonehammer.

  “But ’e’s just a laddie.”

  “He’ll be trainin’ with the adults,” the king sharply replied. “Take him to new heights of prowess.” He paused and looked Muttonchops in the eye. “And humble him. Three gods as me witness, I’ll not again be hearin’ the son of Reginald Roundshield blaspheme Moradin.”

  “Yes, me king,” Muttonchops said with a low bow.

  And so began the next journey for Bruenor, where he would spend the next three years on the training grounds with the finest warriors of Citadel Felbarr-and where he would spend most of those brutal sessions on the floor, truth be told.

  But for the angry young dwarf, that journey was not humbling.

  Just infuriating.

  The Year of the Final Stand (1475 DR) Citadel Felbarr

  The young dwarf, Reginald Roundshield, had gained much notice in Citadel Felbarr. Every clan in the city buzzed about “Arr Arr’s tough son,” no longer referring to this teenager as “Arr Arr’s little boy.” For though he had seen no action outside of the city guard’s training grounds, his strength and battle prowess had been nothing short of amazing, given his tender age and his still small and underdeveloped body.

  For the one named Reginald Roundshield, who had been named Bruenor Battlehammer in his previous existence, the whispers that followed him to the training grounds each morning and home again late each night did nothing to flatter him, and everything to remind him of how ridiculous this whole process had become.

  Day after day, tenday after tenday, month after month, and now year after year, he had played the game and assumed the role: “child prod’gy,” they said.

  “A fittin’ tribute to Arr Arr!” they whispered behind his solitary walks.

  Even, “Clangeddin reborn!”

  For a long while, the whispers bothered Bruenor, particularly the most outrageous, as if the dwarf gods had any part in the travesty that had put him back in Faerun instead of granting him his due to sit beside them in his well-earned place of honor. Now, though, he didn’t even hear the whispers or the applause, and when he did, he didn’t let the words sink in below a cursory level of awareness. He went to the training grounds and he fought, viciously, tirelessly, and fearlessly, and came home each night battered and bruised and exhausted.

  Yes, exhausted most of all, because exhaustion was his defense against the restless sleep he too often fell into. Even his dreams proved disjointed and off-balance, interspersing the experiences of his previous life with those of this existon of a son of a son of a son of a captainan in any caseimence. And worse, those dreams, like his thoughts, too often contained a scowling image of Moradin.

  He sat in his bedchamber one night, wrapping bandages around the newest wounds on one forearm-how had he missed such an easy parry?

  “Nah, not missed,” he stubbornly told himself, for the block had been good, but his still immature muscles had not given him the strength to properly deflect the veteran warrior’s blow far enough from his exposed shield arm. But he had indeed erred in not anticipating that, he reminded himself. He had gone for the kill in the sparring match, trying a complicated cross-body deflection with his wooden axe instead of the safer block with his buckler. If he had been older and stronger, he would have properly pushed that striking wooden sword out wide enough, and left himself in perfect balance to smack the fool across the face with a “killing” backhand.

  But he was not older and stronger, and so he had lost the match. “Keep tellin’ yerself that,” Bruenor counseled, for while little mattered to him in those dark days of his young second life, he wanted above all else to beat them all, to knock down these city guards one after another and stand atop the bleeding pile!

  Why?

  He came to this point of reasoning and questioning often, his anger driving his thoughts onward and onward until they reached that fantasy of seemingly pointless supreme victory.

  What would he win?

  “Ah, but ye got yerself a nasty one,” said Uween, his mother, stepping into the room. “I heared ye fought well against Priam Thickbelt, though, and he’s a good one, I know. Fought him meself …”

  Her voice trailed off, and Bruenor knew it was because he hadn’t even afforded her the courtesy of looking at her while she rambled. He winced at the realization-Uween was not deserving of his disrespect.

  But still, neither was she his mother. Not to his present thinking, and allowing her to continue along with the delusion truly insulted him and reminded him of how helpless he was in the face of his errant choice in Iruladoon.

  A strong hand grabbed his ear and yanked his head around, to stare into the scowling face of Uween Roundshield.

  “Ye look at me when I’m talkin’ to-!” Then her voice became a garbled grunt
of surprise and pain as Bruenor, acting purely reflexively, acting as Bruenor Battlehammer and not Reginald Roundshield, slapped his arm back, catching her by the wrist, breaking her grasp and driving her arm down, twisting it to force her to lurch to the side.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, catching her breath when Bruenor let her go.

  He looked away, embarrassed but still angry, and was not really surprised when Uween smacked him on the back of his head.

  “Ye don’t disrespect yer Ma!” she scolded and she poked him in the side of the head. “And look at me!”

  He did, his face a mask of anger.

  “I come in here givin’ ye praise and ye slight me?” Uween asked incredulously.

  “I’m not wantin’ yer praise or anyone else’s.”

  “By the gods!” cried the exasperated woman.

  “Damn the gods!” Bruenor exploded at her. Before he even realized his movements, he was on his feet, hoisting his wooden chair above his head appearanceI holding on. With a growl he threw it across the room, against the wall, shattering it to kindling.

  “Oh, but get yer head, boy!” Uween scolded. “Ye don’t go cursin’ Moradin in me house!”

  “Ah, but it’s all a stupid joke, don’t ye see?”

  “What’s all?”

  “All of it!” Bruenor insisted. “All a durned game for them to laugh about. All a puny try for puny glories that none’ll remember or care about. ‘Bones and stones,’ so me friend used to say. Bones n’ stones and nothing more. For all our cries o’ glory, for all our cheers to lost kin … bah, but ain’t it just a game then!” He kicked at some of the wood that rebounded near to his feet, and when he missed it, he scooped up the plank instead and snapped it in half, then threw both pieces, sending them spinning across the room.

  “Stop it!” Uween demanded.

  Bruenor froze, stared her hard in the eye, then calmly walked over and picked up another chair. With a look of supreme defiance at this dwarf who would be his mother, he lifted the chair up high and brought it crashing down on the floor, smashing it to kindling.