“By the bearded gods,” Bruenor muttered when he turned that way.
“Athrogate,” Bruenor whispered to his companions, for though he hadn’t seen this one in many years, bawdy and bullish Athrogate was a tough fellow to forget. “Jarlaxle’s friend.”
The black-bearded dwarf waded through the patrons as easily as a ship skimming a glassy pond, so intent on Bruenor and the other two that he knocked Nesmé citizens all around.
“Strong fellow,” Wulfgar remarked dryly.
“Strong as a giant, says his belt,” Bruenor quietly replied, for he knew well the magical girdle Athrogate wore.
The dwarf bobbed up to stand before the three friends, and greeted them with a hearty, “Well met.”
All around, patrons looked on curiously, and nervously, and none more so than the innkeeper behind the bar.
“Ye got yerself heroes here, Master,” Athrogate called to the man. The black-bearded dwarf began walking a slow circuit about the trio, eyeing them studiously. “Great heroes, aye, greater than their age’d be showin’.”
“Do I know ye, strange dwarf?” Bruenor asked.
“Aye, ye know me, and ye’re thinkin’ I’m not knowin’ yerself, but I am.” Athrogate replied, still stalking about.
“Bonnego Battl …” Bruenor started to say, but a great “Bwahaha!” cut that short.
“Still holdin’ that name are ye?” Athrogate asked, and he leaned in close and added quietly, so only the three friends could hear, “Are ye then, King Bruenor?”
Bruenor stared at him hard. “Not knowin’ what ye’re about,” he quietly replied.
“Jarlaxle,” Catti-brie reasoned. “Is there anything that one does not know?”
“Didn’t know how to find ye,” Athrogate said to the woman. “When yer Da and Drizzt asked him to. Oh, but he tried—we tried. Looked across half the Realms for pretty Catti-brie, but not a sign. And here ye are, walkin’ again.”
The innkeeper had moved around the bar by then, and approached the group with a host of patrons flanking him.
“What are you about?” he asked, moving to collect his plates and silverware. Wulfgar moved quicker, gathering the meat and the bread, tearing the loaves in half and using them as plates for the steaks.
“Just came from Jolen Firth,” Athrogate answered before Bruenor could. “He’s looking to speak with these three.”
“You know them, then?”
“Just that one,” Athrogate said, pointing to Bruenor. “Bonnego’s his name, and a fine young fellow he be.”
“We would not steal your plates, good sir,” Catti-brie added. “But we must be to the wall, for we’ve friends out in the night, who should be soon to your gate.” When the innkeeper looked at her skeptically, she added, “Friends who battled beside us to save the Rider named Giselle. They stayed out to hold back any more of the monsters, that we could get Giselle and the horses to the safety of Nesmé.”
The innkeeper nodded and seemed to shrink back a bit at that not-subtle reminder of how these three had come in here. He sheepishly handed the three plates up to Wulfgar, and helped the big man put the food back in place.
“Aye, and a poor lot am I to question,” he said, seeming quite embarrassed. He glanced back over his shoulder and called to one of the townsmen leaning on the bar. “Three full tankards—nay, four,” he ordered.
In short order, the now-four companions left Torch, their hands full of food and drink.
“The First Speaker’s a tough one,” Athrogate said to the others as soon as they were outside. “Suspicious fellow, and harsh with his words, though he’s likely to be more kindly to yerselves than he was to meself. I killed a few trolls to death, and that makes ’em happy, but yerselves rescued the girl, did ye? Bwahahaha! Right back from the dead and ye’re making yer legends anew.”
Bruenor pulled him aside immediately. “How do ye know?” he demanded.
“Yer girl already telled ye how.”
“Jarlaxle?”
“Aye, o’ course.”
“Where’s he at?”
Athrogate shrugged. “Ain’t seen him much in long tendays. Got me orders to get meself to Nesmé, and so I got meself to Nesmé. Didn’t know why until I saw the three o’ ye coming through the gate. Now here ye are and here I be.”
“What is going on about these parts?” Wulfgar asked.
“Just got here,” the dwarf explained. “Sky’s dark, even in the day, and the trolls are thick as a birch tangle. Well, thinner now on the path me and Snort rode, bwahahaha!”
He cut the laughter short when he realized that none of the others had joined in. “They’ll be coming to take ye to Speaker Firth.”
“They’ll find us at the wall, then, and we’ll go when our friends have joined us,” Catti-brie said, her tone brooking no debate, and she started off for the city gate.
“Friends?” Athrogate asked. “Tell me it’s Drizzt, if ye will. Ah, but I’d be likin’ to see that black-skinned hunter again.”
He and the other two hustled to catch up to Catti-brie.
Before they ever made the wall, they were intercepted by a pair of Nesmé guards, informing them that First Speaker Jolen Firth requested an audience with them immediately.
“Then he can meet us on the wall by the gate,” Catti-brie told the guards. “For that’s where we’ll be.”
The guard shifted quickly about to block her path.
“I’ve spent the night killing orcs, ogres, and a frost giant,” Catti-brie said evenly into the man’s face. “And saving the life of Giselle, Rider of Nesmé. I am tired and worried for my friends who have not yet arrived to this most inhospitable town. We will await their arrival on the wall, by the gate, and if the First Speaker or any others wish to speak with us, he, they, will find us there.”
The man looked to his companion, his expression unsure, and that hesitance gave Catti-brie all the room she needed to shove past him, the others following.
“But …” he started to argue, but was cut short by a riotous roar of “Bwahahaha!”
Regis sucked in his breath as Drizzt disappeared into the night, and Innanig immediately moved over to stand right beside him and glare down at him.
“You agree to this change in plan?” the orc shaman asked, his tone revealing that he didn’t think the drow’s orders should go unquestioned.
“You heard the dark elf.”
“We are the western flank,” Innanig replied. “One of three groups, and the smallest of them.”
Regis tried to digest that information. There were hundreds of goblins, and scores of orcs and ogres. And if that wasn’t enough, the northern patrol group returned right at that time, numbering a trio of giants among their ranks!
And this was the smallest of the battle groups? The halfling-turned-goblin swallowed hard as he grasped the size of the forces that had been arrayed against Nesmé.
“More glory to us in the morning, then, when we overrun the city ahead of our kin,” he snapped at Innanig, bulling in and forcefully poking his hand to drive the orc shaman back a step. “Would you ignore the drow orders? Will you? Will you tell your orcs to stay behind?”
The shaman tried to stand strong against the aggressive posture, but it was clear that Regis had the upper hand.
“Then you and yours can join my goblins when we are in the city,” Regis shouted, and the goblins began to cheer all around him, a growing wave of bloodlust. “And tell the drow Ragfluw why you did not fight. Perhaps I will shrink your head, and Korock’s too, and make a necklace. Yes!”
The goblins whooped and hollered, leaping about in a frenzy, and Regis feared he might have started a battle then and there.
It was settled before it could begin, though, when the frost giants stormed in and demanded to know what was going on.
“Your kin was killed in the west,” Innanig, ever the troublemaker, cried, and the orc pointed at Regis as if to implicate him.
“And Korock is dead for it,” Regis yelled back immediately. “K
illed by a drow who demands that we attack at midday tomorrow.”
“We cannot go without the other armies!” Innanig shrieked. “The plan was told!”
The giant swatted the orc aside as it finished speaking, and turned directly upon the diminutive goblin shaman. For a heartbeat, Regis thought his life was at its end, but the behemoth nodded approvingly.
“The main battle group is in position, east of our camp,” the frost giant explained. “Three thousand orcs and a score of my kin. And hordes of ogres pulling war machines.” The monster paused and turned to the other giants. “We move fast, yes,” he said, nodding, and the others agreed.
“We will avenge our dead kin,” the giant promised, turning back to Regis. “What battle groups would you have for the charge?”
The halfling-turned-goblin sputtered and stammered for a moment. “All at once,” he blurted. “A full charge under the midday sky.”
The giant began to question him, but Regis broke away and starting calling out glorious platitudes to the massed warriors. “We will beat the others to the city wall,” he promised. “The victory will be ours.”
The cheering mounted around him, and the goblin shaman played the part, leaping about enthusiastically. But inside, Regis was in knots.
If that second battle group reacted to the charge and moved fast, Nesmé might indeed be overrun, and in short order!
His friends were in there.
He thought about sneaking out soon after, when the goblins and orcs and others went to rest for the coming storm. Perhaps he should run off into the night, to Nesmé, to warn Drizzt and the others.
Perhaps he should go to the east, to see if there was some way he could deter or divert that main battle group.
Truly, though, he realized that there was very little he could do at this time. Even if he got to his friends, where would they go? Certainly the Companions of the Hall would not desert Nesmé with such a force arrayed against the city. And certainly the whole of that town could not be evacuated ahead of such a force.
He looked to the east and saw the flickers of campfires far, far afield.
He didn’t know what to do.
THE LONG GAME
YOU ARE CERTAIN OF THIS?” THE DAMARAN SOLDIER ASKED THE YOUNG girl, standing at the side of the road named Wall’s Around in the Damaran Capital of Helgabal, a city formerly known as Heliogabalus. Traditionally, Heliogabalus served as the principle city of the Kingdom of Damara, and certainly it was the largest city of the Bloodstone Lands. Other than the decades when King Gareth Dragonsbane had moved the seat of power to Bloodstone Village years before the advent of the Spellplague, this city had also served as the seat of power.
As it was again. The city’s rightful place as the capital of Damara had been restored, and the King of Damara resided once more in the city now known as Helgabal.
The young girl blew a curly blond lock out of her face and sheepishly nodded.
“You saw it?”
“Yes sir,” she said with the cutest of lisps.
Chewing his lip nervously, the soldier glanced along the lane to the curiosity shop the child had indicated, Mickey’s Bag of Holding.
The child watched him, measuring him. The man was trying to muster the courage to investigate the story, she knew. But then, that was easier thought than done, particularly given the teasing hints she had dropped the soldier’s way.
The soldier couldn’t be sure, of course, but the little girl had taken great pains to make it quite clear that the object of her story, if things were indeed as she had claimed to the soldier, could eat him.
In one bite.
“You stay away from there, child,” the soldier scolded, and he pushed the girl along, hustling her away from the merchant area of Wall’s Around and Mickey’s. “Go on, now, to your home, and don’t come down this way again.”
Skipping as much as running, the little girl rushed off and turned a corner into an alleyway, disappearing into the shadows. The soldier passed by the entrance, hustling along the street away from Wall’s Around—and who could blame him?
The little girl leaned against the stone wall of the building and put her cherubic little face in her pink hands. She took a deep breath, trying to digest yet again the startling changes that had come over this land of Damara. The line of Dragonsbane was dead—how had this gone unnoticed?—and the new king hardly seemed a worthy successor to the power, popular support, and righteousness King Gareth and Queen Christine had enjoyed!
The little girl had learned so much in the last few days, though many questions remained. What of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, secluded along the high plateau between the Galenas and the Earthspurs?
The little girl meant to turn these surprising changes to her advantage, of course. She took another deep breath, trying to clear her pretty little head, trying not to think of how ridiculous and dangerous this perhaps too-clever ruse might prove.
Despite her innocent appearance, she was no stranger to danger.
“So be it,” she said quietly, and he moved back out of the alleyway. She glanced to her left, to where the soldier had gone, and noted with a nod that the man was out of sight already. The little girl skipped down to the right, down to the merchant lane of Wall’s Around, to Mickey’s Bag of Holding and the shop across the street, A Pocketful of Zzzzs.
“So ye done tellin’ them yer tale?” Ambergris asked, bobbing into the side wing of the great library of the monastery of the Yellow Rose.
Brother Afafrenfere looked up from the stacks of books and scrolls piled about him as he sat on the floor. He considered his friend curiously for a moment, then nodded in answer to her question.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
“Brother Tadpole out there let me by,” Ambergris replied. “He’s still blushing from the kiss and little grab I gave him. Don’t they let you brothers out to meet some girls once in a bit?”
Afafrenfere scowled at her.
“Present company excepted,” she said with a gracious bow, and she hopped over to see what he was about.
“Are they treating you well?”
“Oh, aye,” Ambergris said. “Feedin’ me well, too! I’m a cleric o’ the dwarf gods, and no enemy, so why not?”
“You have heard of these dark times in Damara, no doubt.”
“Aye, tyrant king and whatnot,” the dwarf replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Old story, different place.”
“I only feared that they would be more suspicious of any newcomers, given the events in the Bloodstone Lands,” the monk explained. “They are not on good terms with King Frostmantle. Not at all. And they interrogated me endlessly in an attempt to determine that I was not, after all, a spy from that suspicious and wary court—and wary because this king, by all accounts I have heard, is a craven tyrant, fearing every shadow.”
“Most are.”
“Even dwarves?”
“Aye, ye’re knowin’ me own tale, so I ain’t to argue the point.”
Afafrenfere nodded. “They appreciated my stories of our journeys.”
“And ye telled them true o’ yer time with Parbid in the Shadowfell, did ye? Ye telled that ye served Netherese warlords and such, and that ye were well on yer way to becoming a shade, throwing aside yer pledges and promises to their sacred order?”
“Would you prefer to walk out into the open chapel and scream that to all who would listen?” the monk asked dryly.
“Well, better to get it out o’ yer own mouth in short order, I’m guessing,” Ambergris replied. “This place’s not without its own spies, now is it?”
“I told them everything,” Afafrenfere admitted. “Honestly so.”
“Brave monk.”
“It is a tenet of my order that forgiveness can only be given upon one who is truly repentant, and one who is truly repentant presents the truth of his errors. To run from admitting a mistake is to deceive yourself into believing that no mistake was made.”
“So it was a mistake for
ye, then? Going to the Shadowfell with yer lover, fighting for the Netherese, joinin’ the bounty hunters o’ Cavus Dun? All a mistake and one ye’re regretting?”
Afafrenfere stared at her calmly, and held his hand up to the sides in concession, indeed, in surrender. “A dwarf named Ambergris showed me the truth of that error.”
Ambergris took a step closer and comfortingly dropped her hand on Afafrenfere’s shoulder. “I know, boy,” she said. “Been a long and hard road, and one that’s gone awry. But ye’re home now, in body and in heart. Ye never was one o’ them bounty hunters. If I’d’ve thinked different on that, I’d’ve killed ye on the ridge above the fallen Drizzt Do’Urden.”
That brought a smile to Afafrenfere. He thought back to that day, when his band of bounty hunters had come upon Drizzt and Dahlia in Neverwinter Wood—and upon Artemis Entreri, they had learned the hard way. It rang as a painful memory for Afafrenfere, for he thought again of watching Parbid, whom he had loved dearly, die to the blades of Drizzt Do’Urden.
But it was a good memory as well, for in that fight, Ambergris had saved him and had pulled him away. And after that fight, Ambergris had saved him again, in spirit.
When he had left the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, Afafrenfere had thought the solemn place could never again be his home, but now he was here, and now it felt right. Indeed, a great serenity had come over him in simply entering these ancient halls of study and meditation.
“Jarlaxle might be back soon,” Ambergris reminded and the monk nodded. “He’ll be heading out on the road, and askin’ us to go beside him.”
“I cannot,” Afafrenfere replied. “Not now.”
“I’m knowing that.”
The monk looked at her curiously. “But you are going with him,” he reasoned from her posture and the resigned tilt of her head, and only as he spoke them did he realize that his words sounded a bit like an accusation.
“Nothing here for meself but yerself,” the dwarf replied. “And if ye’re to be staying, then ye’re to be buryin’ yer head in the books and the training and all the rest what goes with being a brother here. And a brother, err sister, here ain’t what I’m meaning to be, no offense intended.”
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