The Spine of the World

by Philip Athans

  The young woman clutched at her belly, both overwhelmed with joy and fear.

  She was sick again the next morning, and the next after that, but she was able to hide her condition by going nowhere near the smell or sight of eggs. She felt well after throwing up in the morning and was not troubled with it after that, and so it became clear to her that she was, indeed, with child.

  In her fantasies, the thought of having Jaka Sculi’s babe was not terrible. She could picture herself married to the young rogue, living in a castle, walking in the gardens beside him, but the reality of her situation was far more terrifying.

  She had betrayed the lord of Auckney, and worse, she had betrayed her family. Stealing that one night for herself, she had likely condemned her mother to death and branded herself a whore in the eyes of all the village.

  Would it even get that far? she wondered. Perhaps when her father learned the truth he would kill her—he’d beaten her for far less. Or perhaps Lord Feringal would have her paraded through the streets so that the villagers might taunt her and throw rotten fruit and spit upon her. Or perhaps in a fit of rage Lord Feringal would cut the baby from her womb and send soldiers out to murder Jaka.

  What of the baby? What might the nobles of Auckney do to a child who was the result of the cuckolding of their lord? Meralda had heard stories of such instances in other kingdoms, tales of potential threats to the throne, tales of murdered infants.

  All the possibilities whirled in Meralda’s mind one night as she lay in her bed, all the terrible possibilities, events too wicked for her to truly imagine, and too terrifying for her to honestly face. She rose and dressed quietly, then went in to see her mother, sleeping comfortably, curled up in her father’s arms.

  Meralda silently mouthed a heartsick apology to them both, then stole out of the house. It was a wet and windy night. To the woman’s dismay, she didn’t find Jaka in his usual spot in the fields above the houses, so she went to his house. Trying not to wake his kin, Meralda tossed pebbles against the curtain screening his glassless window.

  The curtain was abruptly yanked to the side, and Jaka’s handsome face poked through the opening.

  “It’s me, Meralda,” she whispered, and the young man’s face brightened in surprise. He held his hand out to her, and when she clenched it, he pulled it close to his face through the opening, his smile wide enough to take in his ears.

  “I must talk with you,” Meralda explained. “Please come outside.”

  “It’s warmer in here,” Jaka replied in his usual sly, lewd tone.

  Knowing it unwise but shivering in the chill night air, Meralda motioned to the front door and scurried to it. Jaka was there in a moment, stripped bare to the waist and holding a single candle. He put his finger over his pursed lips and took Meralda by the arm, walking her quietly through the curtained doorway that led to his bedchamber. Before the young woman could begin to explain, Jaka was against her, kissing her, pulling her down beside him.

  “Stop!” she hissed, pulling away. “We must talk.”

  “Later,” Jaka said, his hands roaming.

  Meralda rolled off the side of the bed and took a step away. “Now,” she said. “’Tis important.”

  Jaka sat up on the edge of the bed, grinning still but making no move to pursue her.

  “I’m running too late,” Meralda explained bluntly.

  Jaka’s face screwed up as though he didn’t understand.

  “I am with child,” the woman blurted softly. “Your child.”

  The effect of her words would have been no less dramatic if she had smashed Jaka across the face with a cudgel. “How?” he stammered after a long, trembling pause. “It was only once.”

  “I’m guessing that we did it right, then,” the woman returned dryly.

  “But—” Jaka started, shaking his head. “Lord Feringal? What are we to do?” He paused again, then turned a sharp eye upon Meralda. “Have you and he—?”

  “Only yourself,” Meralda firmly replied. “Only that once in all my life.”

  “What are we to do?” Jaka repeated, pacing nervously. Meralda had never seen him so agitated.

  “I was thinking that I had to marry Lord Feringal,” Meralda explained, moving over and taking hold of the man to steady him. “For the sake of my family, if not my own, but now things are changed,” she said, looking Jaka in the eyes. “I cannot bring another man’s child into Castle Auck, after all.”

  “Then what?” asked Jaka, still appearing on the very edge of desperation.

  “You said you wanted me,” Meralda said softly, hopefully. “So, with what’s in my belly you’ve got me, and all my heart.”

  “Lord Feringal will kill me.”

  “We’ll not stay, then,” Meralda replied. “You said we’d travel the Sword Coast to Luskan and to Waterdeep, and so we shall, and so I must.”

  The thought didn’t seem to sit very well with Jaka. He said “But …” and shook his head repeatedly. Finally, Meralda gave him a shake to steady him and pushed herself up against him.

  “Truly, this is for the better,” she said. “You’re my love, as I’m your own, and now fate has intervened to put us together.”

  “It’s crazy,” Jaka replied, pulling back from her. “We can’t run away. We have no coin. We have nothing. We shall die on the road before we ever get near Luskan.”

  “Nothing?” Meralda echoed incredulously, starting to realize that this was more than shock speaking. “We’ve each other. We’ve our love, and our child coming.”

  “You think that’s enough?” Jaka asked in the same incredulous tone. “What life are we to find under such circumstances as this? Paupers forever, eating mud and raising our child in mud?”

  “What choice have we?”

  “We?” Jaka bit back the word as soon as it left his mouth, realizing too late that it had not been wise to say aloud.

  Meralda fought back tears. “Are you saying that you lied to get me to lay down with you? Are you saying that you do not love me?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Jaka reassured her, coming over to put a hand on her shoulder, “but what chance shall we have to survive? You don’t really believe that love is enough, do you? We shall have no food, no coin, and three to feed. And how will it be when you get all fat and ugly, and we have not even our lovemaking to bring us joy?”

  The woman blanched and fell back from his reach. He came for her, but she slapped him away. “You said you loved me,” she said.

  “I did,” Jaka replied. “I do.”

  She shook her head slowly, eyes narrowing in a moment of clarity. “You lusted for me but never loved me.” Her voice quivered, but the woman was determined to hold strong her course. “You fool. You’re not even knowing the difference.” With that she turned and ran out of the house. Jaka didn’t make a move to go after her.

  Meralda cried all through the night on the rainy hillside and didn’t return home until early in the morning. The truth was there before her now, whatever might happen next. What a fool she felt for giving herself to Jaka Sculi. For the rest of her life, when she would look back on the moment she became a woman, the moment she left her innocent life as a girl behind her, it would not be the night she lost her virginity. No, it would be this night, when she first realized she had given her most secret self to a selfish, uncaring, shallow man. No, not a man—a boy. What a fool she had been.

  hey sat huddled under the wagon as the rain pelted down around them. Rivulets of water streamed in, and the ground became muddy even in their sheltered little place.

  “This is not the life I envisioned,” a glum Morik remarked. “How the mighty have fallen.”

  Wulfgar smirked at his friend and shook his head. He was not as concerned with physical comforts as Morik, for the rain hardly bothered him. He had grown up in Icewind Dale, after all, a climate more harsh by far than anything the foothills on this side of the Spine of the World could offer.

  “Now I’ve ruined my best breeches,” M
orik grumbled, turning around and slapping the mud from his pants.

  “The farmers would have offered us shelter,” Wulfgar reminded him. Earlier that day, the pair had passed clusters of farmhouses, and Wulfgar had mentioned several times that the folk within would likely offer them food and a warm place to stay.

  “Then the farmers would know of us,” Morik said by way of explanation, the same answer he had given each time Wulfgar had brought up the possibility. “If or when we have someone looking for us, our trail would be easier to follow.”

  A bolt of lightning split a tree a hundred yards away, bringing a startled cry from Morik.

  “You act as though you expect half the militias of the region to be chasing us before long,” Wulfgar replied.

  “I have made many enemies,” Morik admitted, “as have you, my friend, including one of the leading magistrates of Luskan.”

  Wulfgar shrugged. He hardly cared.

  “We’ll make more, I assure you,” Morik went on.

  “Because of the life you have chosen for us.”

  The rogue cocked an eyebrow. “Are we to live as farmers, tilling dirt?” “Would that be so terrible?”

  Morik snorted, and Wulfgar only chuckled again helplessly.

  “We need a base,” Morik announced suddenly as another rivulet found its way to his bottom. “A house … or a cave.”

  “There are many caves in the mountains,” Wulfgar offered. The look on Morik’s face, both hopeful and fearful, told him he needn’t speak the thought. Mountain caves were almost always occupied.

  The sun was up the next morning, shining bright in a blue sky, but that did little to change Morik’s complaining mood. He grumbled and slapped at the dirt, then stripped off his clothes and washed them when the pair came across a clear mountain stream.

  Wulfgar, too, washed his clothes and his dirty body. The icy water felt good against his injured shoulder. Lying on a sunny rock waiting for their clothes to dry, Wulfgar spotted some smoke drifting lazily into the air.

  “More houses,” the barbarian remarked. “Friendly folk to those who come as friends, no doubt.”

  “You never stop,” Morik replied dryly, and he reached behind the rock and pulled out a bottle of wine he had cooling in the water. He took a drink and offered it to Wulfgar, who hesitated, then accepted.

  Soon after, their clothes still wet, and both a bit lightheaded, the pair started off along the mountain trails. They couldn’t take their wagon, so they stashed it under some brush and let the horses graze nearby, with Morik noting the irony of how easy it would be for someone to rob them.

  “Then we would just have to steal them back,” Wulfgar replied, and Morik started to laugh, missing the barbarian’s sarcasm.

  He stopped abruptly, though, noting the suddenly serious expression on his large friend’s face. Following Wulfgar’s gaze to the trail ahead, Morik began to understand, for he spotted a broken sapling, recently snapped just above the trunk. Wulfgar went to the spot and bent low, studying the ground around the sapling.

  “What do you think broke the tree?” Morik asked from behind him.

  Wulfgar motioned for the rogue to join him, then pointed out the heel print of a large, large boot.

  “Giants?” Morik asked, and Wulfgar looked at him curiously. Already Wulfgar recognized the signs of Morik becoming unhinged, as the rogue had over the rat in the cage at Prisoner’s Carnival.

  “You don’t like giants, either?” Wulfgar asked.

  Morik shrugged. “I have never seen one,” he admitted, “but who truly likes them?”

  Wulfgar stared at him incredulously. Morik was a seasoned veteran, skilled as a thief and warrior. A significant portion of Wulfgar’s own training had come at the expense of giants. To think one as skilled as Morik had never even seen one surprised the barbarian.

  “I saw an ogre once,” Morik said. “Of course, our gaoler friends had more than a bit of ogre blood in them.”

  “Bigger,” Wulfgar said bluntly. “Giants are much bigger.”

  Morik blanched. “Let us return the way we came.”

  “If there are giants about, they’ll very likely have a lair,” Wulfgar explained. “Giants would not suffer rain and hot sun when there are comfortable caves in the region. Besides, they prefer their meals cooked, and they try not to advertise their presence with campfires under the open sky.”

  “Their meals,” Morik echoed. “Are barbarians and thieves on their menu of cooked meals?”

  “A delicacy,” Wulfgar said earnestly, nodding.

  “Let us go and speak with the farmers,” said Morik, turning around.

  “Coward,” Wulfgar remarked quietly. The word had Morik spinning back to face him. “The trail is easy enough to follow,” Wulfgar explained. “We don’t even know how many there are. Never would I have expected Morik the Rogue to run from a fight.”

  “Morik the rogue fights with this,” Morik countered, poking his finger against his temple.

  “A giant would eat that.”

  “Then Morik the Rogue runs with his feet,” the thief said.

  “A giant would catch you,” Wulfgar assured him. “Or it would throw a rock at you and squash you from afar.”

  “Pleasant choices,” said Morik cynically. “Let us go and speak with the farmers.”

  Wulfgar settled back on his heels, studying his friend and making no move to follow. He couldn’t help but contrast Morik to Drizzt at that moment. The rogue was turning to leave, while the drow would, and often had, eagerly rushed headlong into such adventure as a giant lair. Wulfgar recalled the time he and Drizzt had dispatched an entire lair of verbeeg, a long and brutal fight but one that Drizzt had entered laughing. Wulfgar thought of the last fight he had waged beside his ebon-skinned friend, against another band of giants. That time they’d chased them into the mountains after learning that the brutes had set their eyes on the road to Ten-Towns.

  It seemed to Wulfgar that Morik and Drizzt were similar in so many way, but in the most important ways they were nothing alike. It was a contrast that continually nagged at Wulfgar, a reminder of the startling differences in his life now, the difference between that world north of the Spine of the World and this world south of it.

  “There may only be a couple of giants,” Wulfgar suggested. “They rarely gather in large numbers.”

  Morik pulled out his slender sword and his dagger. “A hundred hits to fell one?” he asked. “Two hundred? And all the time I spend sticking the behemoth two hundred times, I’ll be comforted by the thought that one strike from the giant will crush me flat.”

  Wulfgar’s grin widened. “That’s the fun of it,” he offered. The barbarian hoisted the headman’s axe over one shoulder and started after the giant, having little trouble in discerning the trail.

  Crouching on the backside of a wide boulder by mid-afternoon, Wulfgar and Morik had the giants and their lair in sight. Even Morik had to admit that the location was perfect, an out-of-the-way cave nestled among rocky crests, yet less than half a day’s march to one of two primary mountain passes, the easternmost of the pair, separating Icewind Dale from the southlands.

  They watched for a long while and noted only a pair of giants, then a third appeared. Even so, Wulfgar was not impressed.

  “Hill giants,” he remarked disparagingly, “and only a trio. I have battled a single mountain giant who could fell all three.”

  “Well, let us see if we can find that mountain giant and prompt him to come and evict this group,” said Morik.

  “That mountain giant is dead,” Wulfgar replied. “As these three shall soon be.” He took up the huge axe in hand and glanced around, finally deciding on a roundabout trail that would bring him to the lair.

  “I have no idea of how to fight them,” Morik whispered.

  “Watch and learn,” Wulfgar replied, and off he went.

  Morik didn’t know whether he should follow or not, so he stayed put on the rock, noting his friend’s progress, watching the trio of gian
ts disappear into the cave. Wulfgar crept up to that dark entrance soon after, slipping to the edge and peering in. Glancing back Morik’s way, he went spinning into the gloom.

  “You don’t even know if there are others inside,” Morik muttered to himself, shaking his head. He wondered if coming out here with Wulfgar had been a wise idea after all. The rogue could get back into Luskan easily, he knew, with a new identity as far as the authorities were concerned, but with the same old position of respect on the streets. Of course, there remained the not-so-little matter of the dark elves who had come calling.

  Still, given the size of those giants, Morik was thinking that he just might have to return to Luskan. Alone.

  The initial passageway inside the cave was not very high or open, at least for giants. Wulfgar took comfort in the knowledge that his adversaries would have to stoop very low, perhaps even crawl, to get under one overhanging boulder. Pursuit would not be swift if Wulfgar were forced to retreat.

  The tunnel widened and heightened considerably beyond that curving walk of about fifty feet. After that it opened into a wide, high chamber where a tremendous bonfire reflected enough orange light down the tunnel so that Wulfgar was not walking in darkness.

  He noted that the walls were broken and uneven, a place of shadows. There was one particularly promising perch about ten feet off the ground. Wulfgar crept along a bit farther, hoping to catch a glimpse of the entire giant clan within. He wanted to make sure that there were only three and that they didn’t have any of the dangerous pets giants often harbored, like cave bears or huge wolves. The barbarian had to backtrack, though, before he even got near the chamber entrance, for he heard one of the giants approaching, belching with every booming step. Wulfgar went up the wall to the perch and melted back into the shadows to watch.

  Out came the giant, rubbing its belly and belching yet again. It stooped and bent in preparation for the tight stretch of corridor ahead. Caution dictated that Wulfgar hold his attack, that he scout further and discern the exact strength of his enemy, but Wulfgar wasn’t feeling cautious.