The Companions s-1

by R. A. Salvatore

  Uween wailed and fled the room.

  Bruenor followed her only far enough to slam the bedchamber door behind her.

  He went back to his original position, though the chair was gone, and picked up his bandage to continue his work. But then he snarled and growled and spat and threw it, too, across the room.

  He glanced back at the door and only then fully realized what he had just done-and done to an undeserving and always supportive dwarf widow!

  The shame overwhelmed him and sent him to his knees, where he threw his face into his hands and wept openly. Shoulders bobbing in sobs, Bruenor lay down on the stone and splintered wood.

  He fell asleep right there, face wet with tears, and troubling dreams began to descend upon him, and flitter up like dark wings all around him. Dreams of Catti-brie lying dead, of Obould’s orcs drinking mead with tankards marked by the foaming mug, the standard of Mithral Hall-and indeed, drinking mead within Mithral Hall, and in a room littered with dwarf corpses!

  The room’s door banged open, startling him awake, but it took him a long while, time he didn’t have, to determine if this was reality or another image in his dream.

  He finally figured it out when King Emerus Warcrown lifted him roughly to his feet and slapped him across the face.

  Behind the king, Parson Glaive stood solemnly, hands intertwined before him in prayer.

  “What’re ye about, then?” the king demanded.

  “Wh-what?” Bruenor stammered, not knowing where to begin.

  “How dare ye dishonor yer Da!” Emerus shouted in his face. “How dare ye treat yer Ma as such?”

  Bruenor shook his head, but could not begin to offer a response. Not verbally. Dishonor? The word screamed in his mind! Could these two even begin to understand the word? He had died a good dwarf’s death-he had earned his place at Moradin’s side, and it had been taken from him through guilt and a foolish choice!

  Dishonor? That was dishonor, not some meaningless argument in a meaningless house in a meaningless citadel!

  asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh holding onHis previous existence, his glorious tenure as King of Mithral Hall, had been ripped from relevance! Oh, and not by his own impulsive, foolishly emotional choice, but by the mere fact that he had been given that choice in the first place. What point this-any of it! — if a god’s whim could undo everything?

  “Well, Little Arr … Reginald?” Emerus Warcrown growled in his face. “What do ye got to say?”

  “What playthings we be,” Bruenor replied quietly, calmly.

  The king looked at him curiously, then glanced back at Parson Glaive, who opened his eyes at the young dwarf’s curious words.

  “Self-congratulating,” Bruenor went on undeterred. He gave a helpless chuckle. “And all our great deeds be tiny spots on the altars o’ the laughing gods.”

  “His father,” Parson Glaive explained to the king, who nodded and turned back to Bruenor.

  “Ye don’t know me father,” Bruenor snarled at him. “Nor his father afore him.”

  He was sitting on the floor then, flying down at the end of a fist, with the room swimming around him in uneven turns.

  “Yer time on the training grounds is done, Reginald,” Emerus Warcrown told him. “Ye go out and fight aside them that’s keeping Felbarr free o’ damned orcs, and then ye come back and tell me about yer playthings! If ye live to get back to me, I’m meanin’!”

  They left abruptly, King Emerus first, and Bruenor caught a glimpse of him offering Uween a much-needed hug before Parson Glaive, with a profound and purposely loud sigh, closed the bedroom door.

  Perhaps no section of Citadel Felbarr was more revered and less visited than this one, where rows and rows of piled stones stretched into the vast darkness of the huge cavern. The cemetery of Clan Warcrown encompassed many rooms, and a new one was always under construction.

  Bruenor heard the solitary digger’s pick chipping at the stone when he entered the main chamber of the cemetery, the heartbeat-like cadence ringing somewhere far off in the distance to his left. He moved to his right, across the huge main room, the oldest room, and through one low tunnel into the next section. This room, too, he crossed, and another beyond the next tunnel and another beyond that.

  He could no longer hear the lonely tap of the worker, who was digging out a chamber that would not be used for decades. As most of this solemn place was a testament to the past, to the fallen of the clan, so that dwarf excavator was the promise of the future. Citadel Felbarr would go on and she would bury her dead with reverence and tradition.

  The thought nagged at Bruenor as he passed into the last chamber out here on the right flank of the centuries-old graveyard.

  “A testament?” he heard himself muttering, with clear distaste.

  He came to the cairn of Reginald Roundshield, his father.

  He didn’t know what to feel concerning the dwarf. He had never really known him, though so many spoke highly of him. And surely, Uween’s character spoke highly of any dwarf who would take her as a wife.

  He stared at the inscription that bore his father’s name, his name.

  “No!” he said emphatically asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh holding on at the thought. Never his name! He was Bruenor Battlehammer of Clan Battlehammer, the Eighth King of Mithral Hall and the Tenth King of Mithral Hall.

  And what did that mean?

  “Ah, Reginald,” he said, for he felt as if he should say something. He had come out here, after all, to the cairn of a respected warrior. “Arr Arr, they called ye, and with great affection. Might be that yerself was Emerus’s Pwent, eh?”

  The mention of his own trusted guard sent Bruenor’s thoughts spinning back to Gauntlgrym and that last fateful battle. All had been lost, so it had seemed, but then in had come the dwarves of Icewind Dale, led by Stokely Silverstream, and most importantly, with old Thibbledorf Pwent in tow-nay, not in tow, never in tow, but leading the charge!

  As always, Pwent had been there, fighting beside Bruenor, propping Bruenor up, helping Bruenor along. Untiring, without surrender, ever with hope and ever full of the word of Moradin and the loyalty and glory of Clan Battlehammer, Pwent had carried Bruenor to the lever, had placed Bruenor’s hand upon it, and had helped Bruenor pull the lever, ending the threat of the primordial volcanic beast.

  Now Bruenor was crying, but for Pwent and not for Reginald.

  Nay, not for Pwent alone, he came to realize, but for them all. For traditions that seemed quaint to him so suddenly-silly, even. For homage to gods who did not deserve it.

  That last thought slapped back at him profoundly.

  He wanted to curse Moradin, but inevitably wound up cursing himself. “Ah, but what a fool I be,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He shook his head, a stream of curses escaping his lips. “A fool’s choice,” he ended. “I throwed it all away.”

  He nodded as he spoke the words, as if trying to convince himself. For every image he conjured of his just reward at Moradin’s side, he found a complementary one of Catti-brie, or of Drizzt or Regis. Catti-brie, his adopted daughter … how could he abandon her in this time of her greatest need?

  He would see her again in a few short years, so he hoped.

  “Nay,” he heard himself saying, for those years would not be “short,” but interminable.

  He focused on Drizzt. Had he ever known a better friend? One more loyal to him, including a willingness to tell him when he was wrong? Oh, Bruenor was beloved by many, and counted among his clan hundreds of loyal minions and scores of dear friends, like Thibbledorf Pwent. But Drizzt had known him on a deeper level, he understood, and Drizzt had not treated him with the deference afforded to a king, but rather, with the bluntness often needed from a friend.

  “Them was me thoughts when I chose me path out o’ the forest,” a sitting Bruenor said to the cold cairn. “Me friends were needin amp;#ce, the softne

  CHAPTER 11

  MENTOR

  The Year of the Third Circle (1472 DR) Delthuntle<
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  Shasta Furfoot, proprietor of the Lazy Fisherman, the delthuntle inn closest to the water, pausedon of a son of a son of a son of a captain, The Reborn Hero.

  That patron, Eiverbreen Parrafin, gawked at her for a few moments, not really knowing what to do. She had warned him that folks had been inquiring about him of late-one powerful character in particular, and her expression now told him in no uncertain terms that the person in question had caught up to him.

  Eiverbreen lifted his glass and swallowed its contents in one courage-inducing gulp. At least he had hoped it would have such an effect, though with or without the brandy, the stubble-faced halfling couldn’t quite summon the fortitude to turn around. He heard the hard boots tapping on the floor, coming nearer.

  Sweating now, he glanced around, moving only his eyes, for he daren’t move his head.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked down to see an ivory cane. He slightly turned, keeping his eyes defensively down, to see a pair of beautiful, shining black boots, neat trousers tucked firmly inside, and a sash of golden thread holding a slender rapier whose elaborate hand cage left no doubt of this one’s identity.

  Eiverbreen swallowed hard and managed through sheer determination to turn around farther to square up to this most famous and dangerous halfling. He noted Grandfather Pericolo’s neatly trimmed goatee, and the fabulous beret he wore, a tight headband with an octagonal flare up above, fashionably tilted higher on the left and with a golden clasp buttoning down the front flap. It was made of some shiny blue material, some exotic fabric which Eiverbreen didn’t know, and stitched in small squares angled to give it a flecked look as it captured and reflected the light.

  “Grandfather Pericolo,” he said quietly, and he caught himself and quickly looked back down.

  “A bit early for the drink, eh?” Pericolo replied. “But, ah well, it is a fine day! Might I join you, then?”

  So nervous was he that Eiverbreen hardly registered the words, and it took him a long while to digest them enough to nod and stutter out, “At your pleasure.”

  Pericolo Topolino sat on the stool next to him. “Yes, one for me,” he said to Shasta, motioning to Eiverbreen’s empty glass, “and another for my friend here.”

  “We’ve better libations than that,” Shasta replied.

  “And I’ve spent nights nursing my head from far worse,” Pericolo replied with a hearty laugh. “If it is good enough for my friend Eiverbreen, then so it is for me!”

  Shasta’s eyes went wide, as indeed did Eiverbreen’s, at that proclamation.

  “To Jolee,” Pericolo said, hoisting his glass in toast. “A pity that she was lost in childbirth.”

  Now Eiverbreen did look at him, curiously and skeptically. “You didn’t know my wife,” he dared to say.

  “But I knew indeed her important work,” Pericolo explained. “I am a connoisseur of the finer things, my halfling friend.”

  His use of that word, “halfling,” settled Eiverbreen in his seat more than a little, a clear reminder that they were, after all, of the same race-a race often denigrated by those of greater physical stature. Naming another little person as such was, in the end, a salute of brotherhood.

  Eiverbreen lifted his glass and tapped it against Pericolo’s and in the general direction moment wooden axeon they shared a drink.

  “And I count the deep-sea oysters among those delicacies,” Pericolo went on. “I admit that I have not known for very long the specifics of how those came to the fishmonger, but I did indeed notice their absence, or perhaps their rarity would be a better way to put it, a decade ago. Now I know why. So, to Jolee Parrafin.” He toasted and took another sip.

  “You must be devastated by her loss,” Pericolo said.

  Eiverbreen hunched over his glass. He had indeed been devastated, but not for any reason of love that he would admit, even if it was there, in the back of his darkened heart. The loss of Jolee had financially devastated him-what little wealth they’d had.

  Without oysters to sell, he had become a beggar, and only now, as his boy began to realize his potential as a deep diver, had Eiverbreen’s purse-and his choice of whiskey-begun to recover.

  “And now the oysters have returned, and I am pointed once more in your direction as the source,” Pericolo said. “Your boy, I believe.”

  Eiverbreen didn’t look up, fearful of where this might be going.

  “Spider? Is that his name?”

  “Heard him called that.”

  “Did you ever even bother to give him a name?” Pericolo asked, and Eiverbreen’s wince answered that seemingly ridiculous question quite clearly. “We just call him Eiverbreen, after his Da,” Shasta offered. “Spider,” Pericolo corrected, and the woman nodded. “He’s a promising diver, so say my sources,” Pericolo said to Eiverbreen. The other halfling grunted his agreement.

  “And yet, for all that talent at your fingertips, you have never managed to do more than merely, barely, survive,” said Pericolo. “Do you even understand the value of the treasures you possess?”

  Eiverbreen’s thoughts swirled around the words, winding over and under. He feared them to be a threat-was Pericolo going to kill him and “adopt” his boy? He looked up at the other halfling-he had to-trying to get some read of that smiling, disarming face.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Pericolo. “The oysters are merely a means to an end to you.” He lifted his expensive cane and tapped Eiverbreen’s glass. “This end. The only end for Eiverbreen. The all-encompassing purpose of his existence, eh?”

  “Have you come to taunt me, then?” Eiverbreen said before he could find the good sense to hold back the words. He even half-turned on his stool, as if to square into position to strike at Pericolo.

  Any thoughts of that disappeared almost immediately, though, as he looked into the smiling, so-confident cherubic face of the wealthy halfling who was known to all on the street as Grandfather Pericolo.

  Grandfather of Assassins.

  His bravado gone in the flash of that recognition, Eiverbreen’s eyes lowered and focused once more on that slender blade, the fabulous rapier of Pericolo. He wondered how badly it would hurt when the tip plunged through his skinny ribs and poked at his racing heart.

  “Oh, heavens no, my friend,” Pericolo said, however, and in such a lighthearted tone that Eiverbreen settled back once more-until he feared the words and tone were just a ruse to put him{font-size: 1.1em;5N3xplosionesto off his guard.

  Oh, he didn’t know what to think!

  But Pericolo kept talking. “You think small because you live small,” the Grandfather explained. “Whatever goals and hopes you might possess are pushed aside for the sake of one immediate goal, eh?” Again he lifted his cane and tapped the glass, then motioned for Shasta to refill Eiverbreen’s.

  “Perhaps that is the difference between us,” Pericolo said. “You are small and I am not.”

  Eiverbreen didn’t know how to answer that. He felt the insult keenly-all the more so because it was obviously true-but of course, to say such a thing would leave him dead on the floor, and that wasn’t where he wanted to be.

  “Ah, I have wounded your pride, and I assure you that such was not my intent,” said Pericolo. “Indeed, I envy you!”

  “What?”

  Pericolo glanced at Shasta Furfoot as Eiverbreen blurted out the question, and he laughed, for her expression clearly reflected that it might have come from her as well.

  “Ah, but to be done a day’s work when the sun sets,” Pericolo explained. “To think small, to live small, perhaps, is to live contented. I am never that, you see. Always is there another treasure, another conquest, to be found. Complacency is not a vice, my friend, but a blessing.”

  Not understanding whether he was being mocked or complimented, Eiverbreen took another deep gulp from his glass, and no sooner had he placed it back on the bar than Pericolo had motioned to Shasta to pour another one.

  “The world needs both of us, don’t you think?” Pericolo asked. “And
likely, we need each other.”

  Eiverbreen stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “Well, perhaps not ‘need,’ but we can surely profit from an … arrangement. Consider, you have goods and I have the trade network for such goods. What does the fishmonger pay you, a few pieces of copper, a silver or two perhaps, for an oyster? Why of course she would pay you so, because there is competition here for the things-your boy is not the only diver, although, admittedly, he seems to be quite good at it!

  “But there are places, not so far from here, where an oyster from the depths of the Sea of Fallen Stars could bring a gold piece, and I know how to get to those places,” Pericolo explained. “You cannot do it without me, of course, but, so it seems, neither can I without you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He means that your life’s about to get a bunch easier, from what I’m hearing,” Shasta Furfoot dared to say.

  “Indeed, my lovely,” Pericolo agreed, and to Eiverbreen, he added, “Do we understand each other?”

  “I give you the oysters my boy brings in?” Eiverbreen asked more than stated, for he did not really understand what was transpiring here.

  Pericolo nodded. “And I reward you,” he said, and he tapped his cane on the bar to make sure he had Shasta’s attention. “My friend here eats and drinks and resides here for free, this day forward.”

  The halfling woman’s face dropped in a protest she dared not utter aloud, but Pericolo took care of it anyway, by adding, “I will pay all his bills henceforth. a long while to realize become wooden axeon”

  He motioned to his glass, which Shasta moved quickly to fill. Pericolo stopped her short, though, with a thrust of his cane. “But just for Eiverbreen, yes,” he warned in no uncertain terms.

  The blood drained from Shasta Furfoot’s face. Pericolo moved his cane aside and she poured the brandy into his glass. Pericolo pushed it with his cane in front of Eiverbreen. With a tip of his fine beret, Pericolo Topolino took his leave.