The Spine of the World

by Philip Athans

  Wulfgar sighed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then reached for a bottle, only to find it empty. With a frustrated snarl, he threw it across the room, where it shattered against a wall. He envisioned, for just a moment, that it had smashed against Delly Curtie’s face. The image startled Wulfgar, but it didn’t surprise him. He vaguely wondered if Delly hadn’t brought him to that point on purpose. Perhaps the woman was no innocent child, but a conniving huntress. When she had first come to him, offering comfort, had she intended to take advantage of his emotional weakness to pull him into a trap? To get him to marry her, perhaps? To rescue him that he might one day rescue her from the miserable existence she had carved out for herself as a tavern wench?

  Wulfgar realized that his knuckles had gone white from clenching his hands so very hard, and he pointedly opened them and took several deep, steadying breaths. Another sigh, another rub of his tongue over dirty teeth, and the man stood and stretched his huge, nearly seven-foot, frame. He discovered, as he did nearly every afternoon when he went through this ritual, that he had even more aches in his huge muscles and bones this day. Wulfgar glanced over at his large arms, and though they were still thicker and more muscular than that of nearly any man alive, he couldn’t help but notice a slackness in those muscles, as if his skin was starting to hang a bit too loosely on his massive frame.

  How different his life was now than it had been those mornings years ago in Icewind Dale, when he had worked the long day with Bruenor, his adoptive dwarven father, hammering and lifting huge stones, or when he had gone out hunting for game or giants with Drizzt, his warrior friend, running all the day, fighting all the day. The hours had been even more strenuous then, more filled with physical burden, but that burden had been just physical and not emotional. In that time and in that place, he felt no aches.

  The blackness in his heart, the sorest ache, was the source of it all.

  He tried to think back to those lost years, working and fighting beside Bruenor and Drizzt, or when he had spent the day running along the windblown slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn, the lone mountain in Icewind Dale, chasing Catti-brie….

  The mere thought of the woman stopped him cold and left him empty, and in that void, images of Errtu and the demon’s minions inevitably filtered in. Once, one of those minions, the horrid succubus, had assumed the form of Catti-brie, a perfect image, and Errtu had convinced Wulfgar that he had managed to snare the woman, that she had been taken to suffer the same eternal torment as Wulfgar, because of Wulfgar.

  Errtu had taken the succubus, Catti-brie, right before Wulfgar’s horrified eyes and had torn the woman apart limb from limb, devouring her in an orgy of blood and gore.

  Gasping for his breath, Wulfgar fought back to his thoughts of Catti-brie, of the real Catti-brie. He had loved her. She was, perhaps, the only woman he had ever loved, but she was lost to him now forever, he believed. Though he might travel to Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale and find her again, the bond between them had been severed, cut by the sharp scars of Errtu and by Wulfgar’s own reactions to those scars.

  The long shadows coming in through the window told him that the day neared its end and that his work as Arumn Gardpeck’s bouncer would soon begin. The weary man hadn’t lied to Delly when he had declared that he needed more rest, though, and so he collapsed back onto his bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  Night had settled thickly about Luskan by the time Wulfgar staggered into the crowded common room of the Cutlass.

  “Late again, as if we’re to be surprised by that,” a thin, beady-eyed man named Josi Puddles, a regular at the tavern and a good friend of Arumn Gardpeck, remarked to the barkeep when they both noticed Wulfgar’s entrance. “That one’s workin’ less and drinkin’ ye dry.”

  Arumn Gardpeck, a kind but stern and always practical man, wanted to give his typical response, that Josi should just shut his mouth, but he couldn’t refute Josi’s claim. It pained Arumn to watch Wulfgar’s descent. He had befriended the barbarian those months before, when Wulfgar had first come to Luskan. Initially, Arumn had shown interest in the man only because of Wulfgar’s obvious physical prowess—a mighty warrior like Wulfgar could indeed be a boon to business for a tavern in the tough dock section of the feisty city. After his very first conversation with the man, Arumn had understood that his feelings for Wulfgar went deeper than any business opportunity. He truly liked the man.

  Always, Josi was there to remind Arumn of the potential pitfalls, to remind Arumn that, sooner or later, mighty bouncers made meals for rats in gutters.

  “Ye thinkin’ the sun just dropped in the water?” Josi asked Wulfgar as the big man shuffled by, yawning.

  Wulfgar stopped, and turned slowly and deliberately to glare at the little man.

  “Half the night’s gone,” Josi said, his tone changing abruptly from accusational to conversational, “but I was watchin’ the place for ye. Thought I might have to break up a couple o’ fights, too.”

  Wulfgar eyed the little man skeptically. “You couldn’t break up a pane of thin glass with a heavy cudgel,” he remarked, ending with another profound yawn.

  Josi, ever the coward, took the insult with a bobbing head and a self-deprecating grin.

  “We do have an agreement about yer time o’ work,” Arumn said seriously.

  “And an understanding of your true needs,” Wulfgar reminded the man. “By your own words, my real responsibility comes later in the night, for trouble rarely begins early. You named sundown as my time of duty but explained that I’d not truly be needed until much later.”

  “Fair enough,” Arumn replied with a nod that brought a groan from Josi. He was anxious to see the big man—the big man whom he believed had replaced him as Arumn’s closest friend—severely disciplined.

  “The situation’s changed,” Arumn went on. “Ye’ve made a reputation and more than a few enemies. Every night, ye wander in late, and yer … our enemies take note. I fear that one night soon ye’ll stagger in here past the crest o’ night to find us all murdered.”

  Wulfgar put an incredulous expression on his face and turned away with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Wulfgar,” Arumn called after him forcefully.

  The barbarian turned around, scowling.

  “Three bottles missing last night,” Arumn said calmly, quietly, a note of concern evident in his tone.

  “You promised me all the drink I desired,” Wulfgar answered.

  “For yerself,” Arumn insisted. “Not for yer skulking little friend.”

  All around widened their eyes at that remark, for not many of Luskan’s tavernkeepers would speak so boldly concerning the dangerous Morik the Rogue.

  Wulfgar lowered his gaze and chuckled, shaking his head. “Good Arumn,” he began, “would you prefer to be the one to tell Morik he is not welcome to your drink?”

  Arumn narrowed his eyes, and Wulfgar returned the glare for just a moment.

  Delly Curtie entered the room just then, her eyes red and still lined with tears. Wulfgar looked at her and felt a pang of guilt, but it was not something he would admit publicly. He turned and went about his duties, moving to threaten a drunk who was getting a bit too loud.

  “He’s playing her like he’d pick a lute,” Josi Puddles remarked to Arumn.

  Arumn blew a frustrated sigh. He had become quite fond of Wulfgar, but the big man’s increasingly offensive behavior was beginning to wear that fondness thin. Delly had been as a daughter to Arumn for a couple of years. If Wulfgar was playing her without regard for her emotions, he and Arumn were surely heading for a confrontation.

  Arumn turned his attention from Delly to Wulfgar just in time to see the big man lift the loudmouth by the throat, carry him to the door, and none too gently heave him out into the street.

  “Man didn’t do nothing,” Josi Puddles complained. “He keeps with that act, and you’ll not have single customer.”

  Arumn merely sighed.

  A trio of men in the opposite corner of the bar also studie
d the huge barbarian’s movements with more than a passing interest. “Cannot be,” one of them, a skinny, bearded fellow, muttered. “The world’s a wider place than that.”

  “I’m telling ye it is,” the middle one replied. “Ye wasn’t aboard Sea Sprite back in them days. I’d not forget that one, not Wulfgar. Sailed with him all the way from Waterdeep to Memnon, I did, then back again, and we fought our share o’ pirates along the way.”

  “Looks like a good one to have along for a pirate fight,” remarked Waillan Micanty, the third of the group.

  “So ’tis true!” said the second. “Not as good as his companion, though. Ye’re knowin’ that one. A dark-skinned fellow, small and pretty lookin’, but fiercer than a wounded sahuagin, and quicker with a blade-or a pair o’ the things-than any I ever seen.”

  “Drizzt Do’Urden?” asked the skinny one. “That big one traveled with the drow elf?”

  “Yep,” said the second, now commanding their fullest attention. He was smiling widely, both at being the center of it all and in remembering the exciting voyage he had taken with Wulfgar, Drizzt, and the drow’s panther companion.

  “What about Catti-brie?” asked Waillan, who, like all of Deudermont’s crew, had developed a huge crush on the beautiful and capable woman soon after she and Drizzt had joined their crew a couple of years before. Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Guenhwyvar had sailed aboard Sea Sprite for many months, and how much easier scuttling pirates had been with that trio along!

  “Catti-brie joined us south o’ Baldur’s Gate,” the storyteller explained. “She came in with a dwarf, King Bruenor of Mithral Hall, on a flying chariot that was all aflame. Never seen anything like it, I tell ye, for that wild dwarf put the thing right across the sails o’ one o’ the pirate ships we was fighting. Took the whole danged ship down, he did, and was still full o’ spit and battle spirit when we pulled him from the water!”

  “Bah, but ye’re lyin’,” the skinny sailor started to protest.

  “No, I heard the story,” Waillan Micanty put in. “Heard it from the captain himself, and from Drizzt and Catti-brie.”

  That quieted the skinny man. All of them just sat and studied Wulfgar’s movements a bit longer.

  “Ye’re sure that’s him?” the first asked. “That’s the Wulfgar fellow?”

  Even as he asked the question, Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang off of his back and placed it against a wall.

  “Oh, by me own eyes, that’s him,” the second answered. “I’d not be forgettin’ him or that hammer o’ his. He can split a mast with the thing, I tell ye, and put it in a pirate’s eye, left or right, at a hunnerd long strides.”

  Across the room, Wulfgar had a short argument with a patron. With one mighty hand the barbarian reached out and grabbed the man’s throat and easily, so very easily, hoisted him from his seat and into the air. Wulfgar strode calmly across the inn to the door and tossed the drunk into the street.

  “Strongest man I ever seen,” the second sailor remarked, and his two companions weren’t about to disagree. They drained their drinks and watched a bit longer before leaving the Cutlass for home, where they found themselves running anxiously to inform their captain of who they’d seen.

  Captain Deudermont rubbed his fingers pensively across his neatly trimmed beard, trying to digest the tale Waillan Micanty had just related to him. He was trying very hard, for it made no sense to him. When Drizzt and Catti-brie had sailed with him during those wonderful early years of chasing pirates along the Sword Coast, they had told him a sad tale of Wulfgar’s demise. The story had had a profound effect on Deudermont, who had befriended the huge barbarian on that journey to Memnon years before.

  Wulfgar was dead, so Drizzt and Catti-brie had claimed, and so Deudermont had believed. Yet here was one of Deudermont’s trusted crewmen claiming that the barbarian was very much alive and well and working in the Cutlass, a tavern Deudermont had frequented.

  The image brought Deudermont back to his first meeting with the barbarian and Drizzt in the Mermaid’s Arms tavern in Waterdeep. Wulfgar had avoided a fight with a notorious brawler by the name of Bungo. What great things the barbarian and his companions had subsequently accomplished, from rescuing their little halfling friend from the clutches of a notorious pasha in Calimport to the reclamation of Mithral Hall for Clan Battlehammer. The thought of Wulfgar working as a brawler in a seedy tavern in Luskan seemed preposterous.

  Especially since, according to Drizzt and Catti-brie, Wulfgar was dead.

  Deudermont thought of his last voyage with the duo when Sea Sprite had put onto a remote island far out at sea. A blind seer had accosted Drizzt with a riddle about one he thought he had lost. The last time Deudermont had seen Drizzt and Catti-brie was at their parting, on an inland lake, no less, where Sea Sprite had been inadvertently transported.

  So might Wulfgar be alive? Captain Deudermont had seen too much to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

  Still, it seemed likely to the captain that his crewmen had been mistaken. They had little experience with northern barbarians, all of whom seemed huge and blond and strong. One might look like another to them. The Cutlass had taken on a barbarian warrior as a bouncer, but it was not Wulfgar.

  He thought no more of it, having many duties and engagements to attend at the more upscale homes and establishments in the city. Three days later, however, when dining at the table of one of Luskan’s noble families, the conversation turned to the death of one of the city’s most renowned bullies.

  “We’re a lot better off without Tree Block Breaker,” one of the guests insisted. “The purest form of trouble ever to enter our city.”

  “Just a thug and nothing more,” another replied, “and not so tough.”

  “Bah, but he could take down a running horse by stepping in front of the thing,” the first insisted. “I saw him do so!”

  “But he couldn’t take down Arumn Gardpeck’s new boy,” the other put in. “When he tried to fight that fellow, our Tree Block Breaker flew out of the Cutlass and brought the frame of a door with him.”

  Deudermont’s ears perked up.

  “Yeah, that one,” the first agreed. “Too strong for any man, from the stories I am hearing, and that warhammer! Most beautiful weapon I’ve ever seen.”

  The mention of the hammer nearly made Deudermont choke on his food, for he remembered well the power of Aegis-fang. “What is his name?” the captain inquired.

  “Who’s name?”

  “Arumn Gardpeck’s new boy.”

  The two men looked at each other and shrugged. “Wolf-something, I believe,” the first said.

  When he left the noble’s house, a couple of hours later, Captain Deudermont found himself wandering not back to Sea Sprite, but along infamous Half-Moon Street, the toughest section of Luskan, the home of the Cutlass. He went in without hesitation, pulling up a chair at the first empty table. Deudermont spotted the big man before he even sat down. It was, without doubt, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar. The captain hadn’t known Wulfgar very well and hadn’t seen him in years, but there could be no question about it. The sheer size, the aura of strength, and the piercing blue eyes of the man gave him away. Oh, he was more haggard-looking now, with an unkempt beard and dirty clothes, but he was Wulfgar.

  The big man met Deudermont’s stare momentarily, but there was no recognition in the barbarian’s eyes when he turned away. Deudermont became even more certain when he saw the magnificent warhammer, Aegis-fang, strapped across Wulfgar’s broad back.

  “Ye drinking or looking for a fight?”

  Deudermont turned around to see a young woman standing beside his table, tray in hand.

  “Well?”

  “Looking for a fight?” the captain repeated dully, not understanding.

  “The way ye’re staring at him,” the young woman responded, motioning toward Wulfgar. “Many’s the ones who come in here looking for a fight. Many’s the ones who get carried away from here. But good enough for ye if ye’re wanting to fight him, and good
enough for him if ye leave him dead in the street.”

  “I seek no fight,” Deudermont assured her. “But, do tell me, what is his name?”

  The woman snorted and shook her head, frustrated for some reason Deudermont could not fathom. “Wulfgar,” she answered. “And better for us all if he never came in here.” Without asking again if he wanted a drink, she merely walked away.

  Deudermont paid her no further heed, staring again at the big man. How had Wulfgar wound up here? Why wasn’t he dead? And where were Drizzt, and Catti-brie?

  He sat patiently, watching the lay of the place as the hours passed, until dawn neared and all the patrons, save he and one skinny fellow at the bar, had drifted out.

  “Time for leaving,” the barkeep called to him. When Deudermont made no move to respond or rise from his chair, the man’s bouncer made his way over to the table.

  Looming huge, Wulfgar glared down upon the seated captain. “You can walk out, or you can fly out,” he explained gruffly. “The choice is yours to make.”

  “You have traveled far from your fight with pirates south of Baldur’s Gate,” the captain replied. “Though I question your direction.”

  Wulfgar cocked his head and studied the man more closely. A flicker of recognition, just a flicker, crossed his bearded face.

  “Have you forgotten our voyage south?” Deudermont prompted him. “The fight with pirate Pinochet and the flaming chariot?”

  Wulfgar’s eyes widened. “What do you know of these things?”

  “Know of them?” Deudermont echoed incredulously. “Why, Wulfgar, you sailed on my vessel to Memnon and back. Your friends, Drizzt and Catti-brie, sailed with me again not too long ago, though surely they thought you dead!”

  The big man fell back as if he had been slapped across the face. A jumbled mixture of emotions flashed across his clear blue eyes, everything from nostalgia to loathing. He spent a long moment trying to recover from the shock.