Rise of the King

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Do you know who controls Luskan?” he asked.

  “High Captain Kurth,” Effron said, his tone one of mocking disrespect.

  “Jarlaxle,” Beniago admitted, and when Effron’s eyes betrayed his surprise, the red-haired man merely shrugged.

  “It was Jarlaxle who told me to return the jeweled dagger to Artemis Entreri and fashion the deal with Drizzt when he and Entreri came north to Luskan,” Beniago explained. “On the command of Jarlaxle, I arranged your transport to Icewind Dale those many years ago. And still I serve our drow friend, and by his bidding am I here now.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “South.”

  “Why? Did you not leave Drizzt and his companions in Port Llast?”

  “If you know, why are you asking?”

  The red-haired man rubbed his face with obvious exasperation. “Come,” he said. “I do not wish to delay you. We will walk together.”

  “I prefer to travel alone.”

  “It is not your choice.”

  Effron cocked an eyebrow at that, and at the obvious change of tone.

  “I am Jarlaxle’s eyes and ears in the north,” Beniago said bluntly. “I fear his wrath more than yours, I assure you, and also …” He glanced back to the south, and Effron turned around, to see a contingent of drow soldiers on the road. Beniago then turned north, leading Effron’s gaze back that way, and to another group of dark elves who had appeared there, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Let us walk,” Beniago said. “My associates will remain at bay.”

  Effron stared at him hard, his reservations clear. “Half-elf?” he asked sarcastically, and Beniago laughed as if it did not matter.

  “Jarlaxle has earned your trust,” Beniago reminded him. “Many times over. Jarlaxle seeks information. It is how he survives. It is how he is able to know when he is most needed, as in the castle of Draygo Quick, yes?”

  Effron couldn’t deny that, and he felt his visage soften a bit.

  “Besides,” Beniago added, “perhaps I can be of some assistance to you, young warlock. Once I know more of your destination and your plans, you will find that I am no enemy—indeed, were I an enemy, you would be on your way to Luskan now, in chains stronger than iron, and you would tell me anything I wished to know … eventually.”

  It wasn’t a threat, but it hung there like it might become one. Effron looked at the drow soldiers behind, and those ahead, and knew he was woefully overmatched. He thought to assume wraith form and slip away into the stones, and perhaps make an escape.

  But these were dark elves, and a shudder coursed his spine as he considered the damage and destruction this very band had exacted upon the castle of Draygo Quick, a warlock many times more powerful than Effron could hope to be.

  And also, he considered, there was more than a kernel of truth to Beniago’s words. Jarlaxle had never been anything but an ally, and given the dark elves all around, and given that High Captain Kurth had come out to find him, the only sense he could make of this was the explanation Beniago had just offered.

  He started off, Beniago at his side, the dark elves disappearing from sight, and soon the two were talking like old friends, without reservation.

  The companions lingered in Port Llast for many days, begged to stay by the people of the town, who feared another drow raid—and not without some reason, given the explosive breakout from Gauntlgrym. A sense of duty and responsibility had forced them to remain in the vulnerable city, despite Bruenor’s constant grumbling against that course—for the dwarf’s sense of duty wanted him on the road to finally resurrect, redeem, and put to rest Thibbledorf Pwent. And more importantly, Bruenor felt as if he had been called by his gods to the road to Mithral Hall.

  The days became a tenday, then two, and with no signs that the dark elves were coming for retribution, Bruenor finally got his way. Regis on his fat-bellied pony, Drizzt on Andahar, Catti-brie on her summoned spectral mount and Bruenor and Wulfgar trading stories and taking turns guiding the wagon, the Companions of the Hall set out from Port Llast, riding north.

  They stayed along the coast road for a short while, seeking a trail Drizzt knew to take them more easily through the rolling hilly region of the Crags. The air was light, the weather fine, and the five companions made the most of the journey, sharing songs and tales, and even engaging in some sparring as they set their nightly camps.

  “The new Wulfgar’s so much akin to the old,” Catti-brie remarked to Bruenor, sitting by the fire one night. The barbarian had just battled Drizzt in a wild back-and-forth affair, countering the drow’s superior speed with brute force and a much longer reach. The fight had ended with Wulfgar hoisting Drizzt up in one arm, Wulfgar seemingly at an insurmountable advantage—and all three of the onlookers cried out in surprise that Wulfgar had bested Drizzt.

  But alas, when the combatants unwound, the last to be revealed was the drow’s arm, bent back behind his shoulder at a seemingly impossible angle, and yet a perfect angle to hold the fine edge of Twinkle against Wulfgar’s throat.

  “Fightin’ better, I’m thinking,” Bruenor replied. “Seems to me the boy had the drow there.”

  “Many the dead enemies thinked they had the drow there,” Catti-brie said with a grin, her blue eyes sparkling as she studied the lithe form of her dark elf husband.

  Bruenor’s teeth showed through his orange beard as he looked at his girl. “Ye’re talkin’ like a Battlehammer, girl,” he said.

  It was true enough, Catti-brie could not deny; being around Bruenor again was bringing out the brogue.

  “Yerself should get into the ring,” Bruenor remarked. “Yer magic’s all fine and good, but might be the time when ye’re needing a bit o’ the fist, or the blade. Have ye forgotten that ye was once a fine fighter? And trained by the best of all?”

  Catti-brie thought back to her time in the floating city of the Shade Enclave, when she was in training under the tutelage of Lady Avelyere and her sisterhood known as the Coven. Those sorceresses relied fully on their magic and their wiles, and Avelyere had taken Catti-brie to task when she watched the gruff young battle-mage at her furious play, as often kicking an opponent as blasting it with magic.

  “I’ve not forgotten a thing,” the woman replied.

  “Then go and fight,” said Bruenor. “Rumblebelly’s waitin’.”

  “Aye, and he’s waiting for yerself,” Catti-brie replied. “I’ll be tangling with Drizzt later.”

  Bruenor’s face became a scowl for just a moment, a reminder that he was still her father, as he replied, “Aye, but I’m talkin’ about fighting.”

  “Well, dwarf?” Regis called from the other side of the fire. He held his rapier up in salute. “Have you rodents in your beard needing to be plucked?” He finished with a flourish and sudden stab of his slender blade, poking it in Bruenor’s direction several times in rapid succession.

  “Bah, but I’d find more challenge in downing me mug o’ ale,” Bruenor yelled back, and made no move to stand. “Ye go and kick the little one around,” the dwarf quietly offered to Catti-brie.

  “They’d be small rodents, I am sure,” Regis added. “Have to be, to hide in a beard so thin and short.”

  Walking to the dwarf and Catti-brie, both Wulfgar and Drizzt burst out in laughter.

  And Bruenor didn’t even seem to move, but he had indeed, flipping to his feet so quickly that he had gathered up his axe and shield before Catti-brie even realized that he was no longer sitting beside her.

  “I’ll be keepin’ me boot up yer arse until it grows thicker then, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor grimly promised, and he banged his many-notched axe against his shield and stomped off, pushing roughly between Drizzt and Wulfgar and kicking the edges of the campfire so that sparks and embers leaped into the night air.

  Drizzt collapsed onto the ground beside Catti-brie, breathing heavily.

  “I go to tend the horses, and to fetch a bit more wood,” Wulfgar said, his words coming
in bursts that showed he, too, had been exhausted by the match.

  “Not too far, I hope,” Drizzt replied. “You would wish to see this, I expect.” He nodded to the combatants across the fire.

  “Aye, I’ll move around to the other side in the trees,” Wulfgar said with a wide grin, “to keep those two with the fire behind them.”

  “He fights well,” Drizzt said as soon as he and Catti-brie were alone. “Better than I remember, even.”

  “He lived in Icewind Dale to be a very old man,” Catti-brie reminded him. “It is a place full of battle, and so his experiences grew as his body weakened.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Not so,” Catti-brie replied. “Not for him. A couple of days in the forest and he was given a new body. A new body, but with the experiences of an old warrior. He trained, from the beginning of his new life, I expect, as did we all.”

  She turned to the match across the way. “It is all we had.”

  Drizzt kept looking at her for a long while, absorbing her words. What must it have been like to be trapped in a child’s body with the memories of an old warrior? They had described to him the sensation of simply trying to control the movements of a finger in their earliest days of rebirth. Was it a hopeful experience, where the conquering of movements came quickly, to be celebrated? Or was it a tenday of frustration for every minor victory, a moment of control separated by endless hours of unanswered demands?

  “With determination,” Catti-brie said, drawing him from his thoughts, and Drizzt gave her a puzzled expression.

  “How we got through it,” Catti-brie explained. “That’s what ye were thinking, aye?” She turned to face him directly, a knowing grin on her face.

  “Determination,” she said, and she nodded across the way, drawing Drizzt’s gaze to the joined fight.

  And what a row it was.

  Bruenor rolled around, axe arm extended in a great sweep. He pulled up short and launched into a bull rush, so suddenly and brutally that Drizzt was sure he’d bury Regis where he stood.

  But no, the halfling was too quick, and beautifully balanced. He darted to the right a step, tapped off three quick thrusts, jabbing his rapier into Bruenor’s leading shield, then cut back the other way, forcing Bruenor to skid to a stop and whirl around to keep his shield in line.

  “The cadence,” the drow heard himself say.

  “What?”

  “Regis tapped his blade to set a cadence for Bruenor, and only for that,” Drizzt explained. “He knew he could not get through Bruenor’s perfect defense, so he coaxed him like a drummer’s march, goading him forward enough for Regis to get beside the charge.”

  “Determination,” Catti-brie repeated. “Our little Regis is all grown up.”

  “He fights brilliantly,” Drizzt agreed.

  They two went through a series of thrusts and sweeping cuts, and every time Bruenor bulled forward with his shield, Regis was quick enough to disengage. Clearly he had surprised the dwarf, as Bruenor’s frustration shined in the firelight, his toothy grimace clear within his beard. He wasn’t expecting this, for he was remembering Regis—nay, Rumblebelly—and did not know this creature before him, this Spider Parrafin.

  But still, this was Bruenor Battlehammer, who had sat on the Throne of the Dwarven Gods, who had basked in the light of Moradin, who had heard the whispers of Dumathoin, who had bathed in the blood of Clangeddin Silverbeard. He hadn’t found a way to get at Regis, perhaps, but neither had the halfling found a weakness in the dwarf’s skilled defenses and solid balance.

  They moved in to close quarters then, the dwarf waving his axe in short cuts, Regis poking and prodding, seeking an opening.

  Bruenor rolled his shield arm forward, but Regis sidestepped. Out flashed Bruenor’s axe, but out came the halfling’s dagger at a perfect angle to intercept.

  Now Regis came forward with a thrust, but Bruenor’s axe wagged back in close, slapping it sidelong.

  The halfling rolled his blade and Bruenor turned his axe, the weapons winding and wrapping around each other in a confusing blur.

  “Take care,” Drizzt whispered, for the two were putting each other off-balance, and in such a twisting clench …

  The rapier slipped free, too fast for either to react, and Regis’s weight was forward, and so forward went the blade.

  Bruenor cried out and fell back,

  “Regis!” Catti-brie shouted, for the rapier had stabbed the dwarf in the neck, and a thick line of blood ran down Bruenor’s throat, disappearing behind the metal collar of his breastplate.

  “Ah, ye rat!” Bruenor howled, and he leaped forward, bulling and chopping wildly.

  Regis got his blade up at the correct angle to intercept the leading shield, and used the collision to help propel him back from the charge.

  But on came Bruenor again, furiously, howling and spitting curses, bearing down on Regis like a swooping eagle descending on a helpless rabbit.

  Catti-brie sucked in her breath and Drizzt winced, both thinking their little halfling friend was about to be clobbered.

  Bruenor thought so, too, as was evident by the expression on his face when Regis disappeared, simply disappeared, warp-stepping ahead and to the side as the dwarf skidded past.

  “Aha!” the halfling cried, and he swatted Bruenor across the arse with the side of his blade. “Victor …”

  He almost got the word out before Bruenor swung around and shouted, “Tricksters are we?” And the dwarf reached behind his shield and produced a flagon of ale, and promptly flung the foamy contents into Regis’s face.

  His ensuing bull rush connected this time and sent the halfling flying.

  “Bah, but I’ll be takin’ a bit o’ yer hide, Rumblebelly!” the dwarf cried as he charged in behind the living halfling missile.

  Regis panicked, clearly, and cried out in terror. He flicked his dagger arm forward, though why the others could not tell.

  Bruenor’s charge ended abruptly, instantly, and he flew the other way and over backward, axe flying free, hand coming to his throat.

  And behind him, the specter loomed, tugging the snake garrote.

  “Regis!” Catti-brie and Drizzt cried together.

  Clearly, the halfling understood his mistake, for he leaped forward and stabbed over Bruenor’s shoulder, stabbed the spectral assassin so that it disappeared into blowing smoke. Bruenor gasped and fell flat.

  “Oh, but ye’re to pay for that,” Bruenor promised, slowly rolling up to a sitting position, then staring hard at the halfling as he started to his feet.

  Regis wanted no more of him. Not then. With a shriek, the halfling sprinted off into the trees.

  Up leaped Bruenor, grabbing his axe as he ran by, off into the darkness in pursuit. Even as the dwarf disappeared from sight, Wulfgar walked into the firelight, trying futilely to suppress his laughter.

  “Better than the entertainment in any tavern in Baldur’s Gate,” the barbarian declared, and he and Drizzt laughed heartily.

  “There could be monsters lurking out there in the forest,” Catti-brie reminded.

  “Let us hope so!” Wulfgar cried, and all three laughed then, and laughed all the harder when Bruenor roared and Regis shrieked.

  A long while later, Bruenor walked back into the camp, and his hands were not red from wringing a halfling’s neck.

  “The little ones are adept at hiding in the forest, so I’m told,” said Wulfgar, who was alone in the camp, as Drizzt and Catti-brie had wandered off.

  “Bah, I should’ve blowed me horn,” the dwarf said with a grumble. “The little rat.”

  “When we join in battle with real enemies, your feelings about Regis’s newfound skill might be different, I expect,” said Wulfgar, and Bruenor managed a smile and conceded with a nod.

  “Little one’s quicker’n I’m remembering,” the dwarf admitted.

  Not sure of his bearded friend’s remaining simmer, Regis thought it best to wander around the forest a bit longer. Silent as a shadow, wea
pons in hand, and the campfire in sight through the boughs, the halfling was not afraid.

  When he heard a noise beyond a ridge the other way, he didn’t flinch and didn’t hesitate. He fancied himself a scout, and it seemed that there was scouting to be done. As he neared, when he heard the ring of a blade, he only clutched his own weapons tighter and moved with more determination and speed.

  He slid up over the ridge on his belly, worming in between a pair of bushes, and there before him, on the banks of a small stream, stood Catti-brie and Drizzt, each holding one of the drow’s scimitars.

  They too were in practice, he realized.

  They passed with a ring of metal, each turning, scimitars lifting between them. Then back again the other way, Drizzt quickstepping and Catti-brie taking a simple step back to let him harmlessly past.

  Regis marveled at their dance, at the harmony of it, for even when they were engaged in sparring, these two blended together so well, and even when they struck at each other with weapons, the movements seemed more the dance of love than the fury of battle.

  This was an exercise more to achieve harmony of movement than to become quicker and more clever with the blades, a dance more than a fight indeed, where the couple were using the battle to find unity in their movements, to anticipate, to tease with a dodge, to tickle with a touch.

  Regis rolled on his back and slid back down the far side of the ridge, not wanting to further spy on a dance they had made private. He remained on his back and stared up at the stars, his heart full from the love he saw in his two dear friends.

  He thanked Mielikki with all his being for the chance to experience this again. All of it, from Bruenor’s spitting fury to Wulfgar’s seeming amusement with life, to the bond between Drizzt and Catti-brie, indeed, the bond between them all.

  He heard laughter from the other side of the ridge and could imagine the couple tumbling down together into the soft sand at the stream’s edge.

  Regis, too, had sparred like that, danced like that, and with a woman as dear to him as Catti-brie was to Drizzt.

  His heart ached for Donnola, but there was more warmth than pain as he remembered the sparring that had led to their first lovemaking.