The Spine of the World

by Philip Athans

  “You stink Morik get done it?” the tattooed pirate, Tee-a-nicknick, asked first thing when he awoke in an alley.

  Next to him among the trash, Creeps Sharky looked over curiously, then deciphered the words. “Think, my friend, not stink,” he corrected.

  “You stink him done it?”

  Propped on one elbow, Creeps snorted and looked away, his one-eyed gaze drifting around the fetid alley.

  With no answer apparently forthcoming, Tee-a-nicknick swatted Creeps Sharky hard across the back of his head.

  “What’re you about?” the other pirate complained, trying to turn around but merely falling face down on the ground, then slowly rolling to his back to glare at his exotic half-qullan companion.

  “Morik done it?” Tee-a-nicknick asked. “Kill Deudermont?”

  Creeps coughed up a ball of phlegm and managed, with great effort, to move to a sitting position. “Bah,” he snorted doubtfully. “Morik’s a sneaky one, to be sure, but he’s out of his pond with Deudermont. More likely the captain’ll be taking that one down.”

  “Ten thousand,” Tee-a-nicknick said with great lament, for he and Creeps, in circulating the notion that Deudermont might be taken down before Sea Sprite ever left Luskan, had secured promises of nearly ten thousand gold pieces in bounty, funds they knew the offering pirates would gladly pay for the completed deed. Creeps and Tee-a-nicknick had already decided that should Morik finish the task, they would pay him seven of the ten, keeping three for themselves.

  “I been thinking that maybe Morik’ll set up Deudermont well enough,” Creeps went on. “Might be that the little rat’ll play a part without knowing he’s playing it. If Deudermont’s liking Morik’s friend, then Deudermont might be letting down his guard a bit too much.”

  “You stink we do it?” Tee-a-nicknick asked, sounding intrigued.

  Creeps eyed his friend. He chuckled at the half-qullan’s continuing struggles with the language, though Tee-a-nicknick had been sailing with humans for most of his life, ever since he had been plucked from an island as a youth. His own people, the savage eight-foot-tall qullans were intolerant of mixed blood and had abandoned him as inferior.

  Tee-a-nicknick gave a quick blow, ending in a smile, and Creeps Sharky didn’t miss the reference. No pirate in any sea could handle a certain weapon, a long hollow tube that the tattooed pirate called a blowgun, better than Tee-a-nicknick. Creeps had seen his friend shoot a fly from the rail from across a wide ship’s deck. Tee-a-nicknick also had a substantial understanding of poisons, a legacy of his life with the exotic qullans, Creeps believed, to tip the cat’s claws he sometimes used as blowgun missiles. Poisons human clerics could not understand and counter.

  One well-placed shot could make Creeps and Tee-a-nicknick wealthy men indeed, perhaps even wealthy enough to secure their own ship.

  “You got a particularly nasty poison for Mister Deudermont?” Creeps asked.

  The tattooed half-qullan smiled. “You stink we do it,” he stated.

  Arumn Gardpeck sighed when he saw the damage done to the door leading to the guest wing of the Cutlass. The hinges had been twisted so that the door no longer stood straight within its jamb. Now it tilted and wouldn’t even close properly.

  “A foul mood again,” observed Josi Puddles, standing behind the tavernkeeper. “A foul mood today, a foul mood tomorrow. Always a foul mood for that one.”

  Arumn ignored the man and moved along the hallway to the door of Delly Curtie’s room. He put his ear against the wood and heard soft sobbing from within.

  “Pushed her out again,” Josi spat. “Ah, the dog.”

  Arumn glared at the little man, though his thoughts weren’t far different. Josi’s whining didn’t shake the tavernkeeper in the least. He recognized that the man had developed a particular sore spot against Wulfgar, one based mostly on jealousy, the emotion that always seemed to rule Josi’s actions. The sobs of Delly Curtie cut deeply into troubled Arumn, who had come to think of the girl as his own daughter. At first, he had been thrilled by the budding relationship between Delly and Wulfgar, despite the protests of Josi, who had been enamored of the girl for years. Now those protests seemed to hold a bit of truth in them, for Wulfgar’s actions toward Delly of late had brought a bitter taste to Arumn’s mouth.

  “He’s costin’ ye more than he’s bringin’ in,” Josi went on, skipping to keep up with Arumn as the big man made his way determinedly toward Wulfgar’s door at the end of the hall, “breakin’ so much, and an honest fellow won’t come into the Cutlass anymore. Too afraid to get his head busted.”

  Arumn stopped at the door and turned pointedly on Josi. “Shut yer mouth,” he instructed plainly and firmly. He turned back and lifted his hand as if to knock, but he changed his mind and pushed right through the door. Wulfgar lay sprawled on the bed, still in his clothes and smelling of liquor.

  “Always the drink,” Arumn lamented. The sadness in his voice was indeed genuine, for despite all his anger at Wulfgar, Arumn couldn’t dismiss his own responsibility in this situation. He had introduced the troubled barbarian to the bottle, but he hadn’t recognized the depth of the big man’s despair. The barkeep understood it now, the sheer desperation in Wulfgar to escape the agony of his recent past.

  “What’re ye thinking to do?” Josi asked.

  Arumn ignored him and moved to the bed to give Wulfgar a rough shake. After a second, then a third shake the barbarian lifted his head and turned it to face Arumn, though his eyes were hardly open.

  “Ye’re done here,” Arumn said plainly and calmly, shaking Wulfgar again. “I cannot let ye do this to me place and me friends no more. Ye gather all yer things tonight and be on yer way, wherever that road might take ye, for I’m not wanting to see ye in the common room. I’ll put a bag o’ coins inside yer door to help ye get set up somewhere else. I’m owin’ ye that much, at least.”

  Wulfgar didn’t respond.

  “Ye hearin’ me?” Arumn asked.

  Wulfgar nodded and grumbled for Arumn to go away, a request heightened by a wave of the barbarian’s arm, which, as sluggish as Wulfgar was, still easily and effectively pushed Arumn back from the bed.

  Another sigh, another shake of his head, and Arumn left. Josi Puddles spent a long moment studying the huge man on the bed and the room around him and particularly the magnificent warhammer resting against the wall in the far corner.

  “I owe it to him,” Captain Deudermont said to Robillard, the two standing at the rail of the docked, nearly repaired Sea Sprite.

  “Because he once sailed with you?” the wizard asked skeptically.

  “More than sailed.”

  “He performed a service for your vessel, true enough,” Robillard reasoned, “but did you not reciprocate? You took him and his friends all the way to Memnon and back.”

  Deudermont bowed his head in contemplation, then looked up at the wizard. “I owe it to him not out of any financial or business arrangement,” he explained, “but because we became friends.”

  “You hardly knew him.”

  “But I know Drizzt Do’Urden and Catti-brie,” Deudermont argued. “How many years did they sail with me? Do you deny our friendship?”

  “But—”

  “How can you so quickly deny my responsibility?” Deudermont asked.

  “He is neither Drizzt nor Catti-brie,” Robillard replied.

  “No, but he is a dear friend of both and a man in great need.”

  “Who doesn’t want your help,” finished the wizard.

  Deudermont bowed his head again, considering the words. They seemed true enough. Wulfgar had, indeed, denied his offers of help. Given the barbarian’s state, the captain had to admit, privately, that chances were slim he could say or do anything to bring the big man from his downward spiral.

  “I must try,” he said a moment later, not bothering to look up.

  Robillard didn’t bother to argue the point. The wizard understood, from the captain’s determined tone, that it was not his place to
do so. He had been hired to protect Deudermont, and so he would do just that. Still, by his estimation, the sooner Sea Sprite was out of Luskan and far, far from this Wulfgar fellow, the better off they would all be.

  He was conscious of the sound of his breathing, gasping actually, for he was as scared as he had ever been. One slip, one inadvertent noise, would wake the giant, and he doubted any of the feeble explanations he’d concocted would save him then.

  Something greater than fear prodded Josi Puddles along. More than anything, he had come to hate this man. Wulfgar had taken Delly from him—from his fantasies, at least. Wulfgar had enamored himself of Arumn, replacing Josi at the tavernkeeper’s side. Wulfgar could bring complete ruin to the Cutlass, the only home Josi Puddles had ever known.

  Josi didn’t believe that the huge, wrathful barbarian would take Arumn’s orders to leave without a fight, and Josi had seen enough of the brawling man to understand just how devastating that fight might become. Josi also understood that if it came to blows in the Cutlass, he would likely prove a prime target for Wulfgar’s wrath.

  He cracked open the door. Wulfgar lay on the bed in almost exactly the same position as he had been when Josi and Arumn had come there two hours earlier.

  Aegis-fang leaned against the wall in the far corner. Josi shuddered at the sight, imagining the mighty warhammer spinning his way.

  The little man crept into the room and paused to consider the small bag of coins Arumn had left to the side of the door beside Wulfgar’s bed. Drawing out a large knife, he put his fingertip to the barbarian’s back, just under the shoulder-blade, feeling for a heartbeat, then replaced his fingertip with the tip of the knife. All he had to do was lean on it hard, he told himself. All he had to do was drive the knife through Wulfgar’s heart, and his troubles would be at their end. The Cutlass would survive as it had before this demon had come to Luskan, and Delly Curtie would be his for the taking.

  He leaned over the blade. Wulfgar stirred, but just barely, the big man very far from consciousness.

  What if he missed the mark? Josi thought with sudden panic. What if his thrust only wounded the big man? The image of a roaring Wulfgar leaping from the bed to corner a would-be assassin sapped the strength from Josi’s knees, and he nearly fell over the sleeping barbarian. The little man skittered back from the bed and turned for the door, trying not to cry out in fright.

  He composed himself and remembered his fears for the expected scene of that night, when Wulfgar would come down to confront Arumn, when the barbarian and that terrible warhammer would take down the Cutlass and everyone in the place.

  Before he could even consider the action, Josi rushed across the room and, with great effort, hoisted the heavy hammer, cradling it like a baby. He ran out of the room and out the inn’s back door.

  “Ye shouldn’t’ve brought ’em,” Arumn scolded Josi Puddles again. Even as he finished, the door separating the common room from the private quarters swung open and a haggard-looking Wulfgar walked in.

  “A foul mood,” Josi remarked, as if that was vindication against Arumn’s scolding. Josi had invited a few friends to the Cutlass that night, a thick-limbed rogue named Reef and his equally tough friends, including one thin man with soft hands—not a fighter, to be sure—whom Arumn believed he had seen before but in flowing robes and not breeches and a tunic. Reef had a score to settle against Wulfgar, for on the first day the barbarian arrived in the Cutlass Reef and a couple of his friends were working as Arumn’s bouncers. When they tried to forcefully remove Wulfgar from the tavern, the barbarian had slapped Reef across the room.

  Arumn’s glare did not diminish. He was somewhat surprised to see Wulfgar in the tavern, but still he wanted to handle this with words alone. A fight with an outraged Wulfgar could cost the proprietor greatly.

  The crowd in the common room went into a collective hush as Wulfgar made his way across the floor. Staring suspiciously at Arumn, the big man plopped a bag of coins on the bar.

  “It’s all I can give to ye,” Arumn remarked, recognizing the bag as the one he had left for Wulfgar.

  “Who asked for it?” Wulfgar replied, sounding as if he had no idea what was going on.

  “It’s what I told ye,” Arumn started, then stopped and patted his hands in the air as if trying to calm Wulfgar down, though in truth, the mighty barbarian didn’t seem the least bit agitated.

  “Ye’re not to stay here anymore,” Arumn explained. “I can’t be having it.”

  Wulfgar didn’t respond other than to glare intensely at the tavernkeeper.

  “Now, I’m wanting no trouble,” Arumn explained, again patting his hands in the air.

  Wulfgar wouldn’t have given him any, though the big man was surely in a foul mood. He noticed a movement from Josi Puddles, obviously a signal, and half a dozen powerful men, including a couple Wulfgar recognized as Arumn’s old crew, formed a semicircle around the huge man.

  “No trouble!” Arumn said more forcefully, aiming his remark more at Josi’s hunting pack than at Wulfgar.

  “Aegis-fang,” Wulfgar muttered.

  A few seats down the bar, Josi stiffened and prayed that he had placed the hammer safely out of Wulfgar’s magical calling range.

  A moment passed, but the warhammer did not materialize in Wulfgar’s hand.

  “It’s in yer room,” Arumn offered.

  With a sudden, vicious movement, Wulfgar slapped the bag of coins away, sending them clattering across the floor. “Are you thinking that to be ample payment?”

  “More than I owe ye,” Arumn dared to argue.

  “A few coins for Aegis-fang?” Wulfgar asked incredulously.

  “Not for the warhammer,” Arumn stuttered, sensing that the situation was deteriorating very fast. “That’s in yer room.”

  “If it were in my room, then I would have seen it,” Wulfgar replied, leaning forward threateningly. Josi’s hunting pack closed in just a bit, two of them taking out small clubs, a third wrapping a chain around his fist. “Even if I did not see it, it would have come to my call from there,” Wulfgar reasoned, and he called again, yelling this time, “Aegis-fang!”

  Nothing.

  “Where is my hammer?” Wulfgar demanded of Arumn.

  “Just leave, Wulfgar,” the tavernkeeper pleaded. “Just be gone. If we find yer hammer, we’ll get it brought to ye, but go now.”

  Wulfgar saw it coming, so he baited it in. He reached across the bar for Arumn’s throat, then pulled up short and snapped his arm back, catching the attacker coming in at his right flank, Reef, square in the face with a flying elbow. Reef staggered and wobbled, until Wulfgar pumped his arm and slammed him again, sending him flying away.

  Purely on instinct, the barbarian spun back and threw his left arm up defensively. Just in time as one of Reef’s cronies came in hard, swinging a short, thick club that smashed Wulfgar hard on the forearm.

  All semblance of strategy and posturing disappeared in the blink of an eye, as all five of the thugs charged at Wulfgar. The barbarian began kicking and swinging his mighty fists, yelling out for Aegis-fang repeatedly and futilely. He even snapped his head forward viciously several times, connecting solidly with an attacker’s nose, then again, catching another man on the side of the head and sending him staggering away.

  Delly Curtie screamed, and Arumn cried “No!” repeatedly.

  But Wulfgar couldn’t hear them. Even if he could, he could not have taken a moment to heed the command. He had to buy some time and some room, for he was taking three hits for every one he was delivering in these close quarters. Though his punches and kicks were heavier by far, Reef’s friends were no novices to brawling.

  The rest of the Cutlass’s patrons stared at the row in amusement and confusion, for they knew that Wulfgar worked for Arumn. The only ones moving were skidding safely out of range of the whirling ball of brawlers. One man in the far corner stood up, waving his arms wildly and spinning in circles.

  “They’re attacking the Cutlass crew!” the man
cried. “To arms, patrons and friends! Defend Arumn and Wulfgar! Surely these thugs will destroy our tavern!”

  “By the gods,” Arumn Gardpeck muttered, for he knew the speaker, knew that Morik the Rogue had just condemned his precious establishment to devastation. With a shake of his head and a frustrated groan, the helpless Arumn ducked down behind the bar.

  As if on cue, the entire Cutlass exploded into a huge brawl. Men and women, howling and taking no time to sort out allegiance, were just punching at the nearest potential victim.

  Still at the bar, Wulfgar had to leave his right flank exposed, taking a brutal slug across the jaw, for he was focusing on the left, where the man with the club came at him yet again. He got his hands up to deflect the first strike and the second, then stepped toward the man, accepting a smack across the ribs, but catching the attacker by the forearm. Holding tightly Wulfgar shoved the man away, then yanked him powerfully back in, ducking and snapping his free hand into the staggering man’s crotch. The man went high into the air, Wulfgar pressing him up to the limit of his reach and turning a quick circle, seeking a target.

  The man flew away, hitting another, both of them falling into poor Reef and sending the big man sprawling once again.

  Yet another attacker came hard at Wulfgar, arm cocked to punch. The barbarian steeled his gaze and his jaw, ready to trade hit for hit, but this ruffian had a chain wrapped around his fist. A flash of burning pain exploded on Wulfgar’s face, and the taste of blood came thick in his mouth. Out pumped the dazed Wulfgar’s arm, his fist just clipping the attacker’s shoulder.

  Another man dipped his shoulder in full charge, slamming Wulfgar’s side, but the braced barbarian didn’t budge. A second chain-wrapped punch came at his face—he saw the links gleaming red with his own blood—but he managed to duck the brunt of this one, though he still got a fair-sized gash across his cheek.