Gauntlgrym

AN OLD DWARF’S LAST ROAD

HE WAS JUST A BOY… MANY YEARS AGO,” THE WOMAN PROTESTED. SHE rubbed her elderly father’s shoulders, and the man was clearly uncomfortable with the obvious contradictions between his tale and the reality before them.

Drizzt Do’Urden held up his dark hands to reassure the two, to show the older man that he didn’t disbelieve him.

“It was here,” the man, Lathan Obridock, said. “As wondrous a wood as I’ve e’er seen or heard tell of. Full o’ springtime and warmth, and singing, and bells ringing. We all seen it, me and Spragan, and Addadearber and… what was that captain’s name now?”

“Ashelia,” Drizzt answered.

“Aye!” the old man said. “Ashelia Larson, who knew the lake better than any. Great captain, that lady. Just out fishing, you know. And we come across the lake…” He pointed back at the dark waters of Lac Dinneshere, tracing a line from a distance out to the rotted old remnants of what had once been a wharf, the ruins of an old shack just up the shore from it. “We were bringing that ranger… Roundie. Aye, Roundie. He paid Ashelia to get him across the lake, I guess. You should be speaking with him.”

“I did,” Drizzt replied, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice, for he had told Lathan that bit of information a dozen times at least that day, and twice that number the day before, and even before that. The previous year, Drizzt had met with the ranger, commonly known as Roundabout, or Roundie, to the south of Icewind Dale, at the urging of Jarlaxle.

Roundabout’s description of the wood was exactly the same as Lathan’s: a magical place, inhabited by a beautiful witch with auburn hair, and a halfling caretaker who lived in a hillside cave-home by a small pond. According to Roundabout, though, only the wizard Addadearber had actually seen the halfling, and only Roundabout himself and a man named Spragan had seen the woman, and they had come away with very different impressions. To the ranger, she had seemed as a goddess dancing on a ladder of stars, but Spragan, according to Roundabout and confirmed by Lathan, had never truly recovered from the horror of that encounter.

Drizzt sighed as he looked around at the sparse trees and stony ground of the sheltered nook at the end of a small cove, cleverly hidden by rocky outcroppings. Up above on the hillside stood scattered small pine trees typical of Icewind Dale.

“Perhaps it was north of here,” Drizzt offered. “There are many sheltered vales along the high ground at the northeastern stretches of Lac Dinneshere.”

The old man shook his head with every word. He pointed to the cabin. “Right behind the lodge,” he insisted. “No other lodge near here. That’s the place. This is the place. The forest was here.”

“But there is no forest,” said Drizzt. “And no sign that any forest ever was here, beyond these few trees.”

“Telled you that, too,” said Lathan.

“They came back after their encounter,” his daughter, Tulula, said. “They looked for it. Of course they did, and so did many others. Roundie’d been here many the time before that day, and came back many the time after, and never did he see the same forest again, or the witch or halfling.”

Drizzt put his hand on his hip, his expression doubtful as he continued his scan, seeking something, anything, he could bring back to Bruenor, who, along with Pwent, was visiting with some clan dwarves in the tunnels under the lone mountain of Kelvin’s Cairn, the complex that had housed Clan Battlehammer in the decades before Bruenor had reclaimed Mithral Hall.

Mithral Hall. Four decades had passed since they’d left that wondrous dwarven kingdom, since Bruenor had abdicated his throne in a most extreme and irreversible manner. How many adventures the three of them had shared, along with Nanfoodle the gnome and Jessa the orc. Drizzt couldn’t help but smile as he considered those last two, gone from the band for more than twenty years now.

And once more he’d found himself in Icewind Dale, the land of Drizzt’s first real home, the land of the Companions of the Hall, the land of Catti-brie and Regis and Wulfgar, of a displaced dwarf king and a wayward dark elf searching, forever searching, it seemed, to find a place he could rightly call his home. What a troupe they had been! What adventures they had known!

Drizzt and Bruenor had put those three lost friends far behind them, of course, and had long ago given up any notion of finding the wayward spirits of Catti-brie and Regis, or of rejoining Wulfgar, for a human’s lifetime had passed, more than two-thirds of a century, and none of the three had been young on those fateful days so long ago. With Pwent, Nanfoodle, and Jessa, they had searched the hilly crags east of Luskan and the foothills of the Spine of the World for Gauntlgrym, the elusive ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves. A thousand maps had led them down a thousand trails, through a hundred deep caves, their thoughts only of Gauntlgrym, or, on those occasions when Bruenor and Drizzt quietly reminisced about Bruenor’s adopted children and their halfling friend, it was just to share their memories, so dear.

An unexpected meeting with Jarlaxle in Luskan a few years previous had rekindled great hopes and great pains. Immediately after the loss of Catti-brie and Regis, both Drizzt and Bruenor had enlisted the worldly Jarlaxle to find them, at any cost. The passage of seven decades and more hadn’t deterred the clever dark elf, apparently, or perhaps it had just been dumb luck, but Jarlaxle had stumbled upon a legend that was growing in the northwestern corner of Faer?n, the legend of a magical forest inhabited by a beautiful witch who apparently quite strikingly resembled the human daughter of King Bruenor Battlehammer.

The hunt had led Drizzt, Bruenor, and Pwent to Roundabout the ranger, in the small mountain village of Auckney, and he had directed them to Lac Dinneshere, one of the three lakes about which were scattered the communities that gave Ten-Towns its name.

Drizzt looked at Lathan, whose story verified what the old ranger in Auckney had said, but where was the forest? Icewind Dale had changed little in the last century. Ten-Towns had not grown-in fact, it seemed to Drizzt that there were less people in each of the towns than had been there when he’d called the place home.

“Are ye even listening to me, then?” Tulula scolded, her tone telling the daydreaming Drizzt that she had asked that question several times already.

“Just thinking,” he apologized. “So they and others searched for the forest, but nothing was ever found? Not a trace, nor a hint?”

Tulula shrugged. “Rumors,” she said. “And when I was a young girl, one boat came in with the crew all atwitter. Do ye remember that, Da?”

“Barley Farhook’s boat,” Lathan said, nodding. “Aye, and Spragan wanted to put right out, he did, after all them years where folk snickered at our own tale. Aye, and we did go out, a few boats, but there was nothing to be found here, and they laughed at us again.”

“Where are your crewmates now?” Drizzt asked.

“Bah, all dead,” Lathan replied. “Addadearber taken in the Spellplague, Ashelia’s boat taken by the lake with Spragan aboard her, too. All gone, many years ago.”

Drizzt scanned the ruined cottage and the vale behind it, trying to figure out if there was anything left to do. He hadn’t expected to find anything, of course-the world was full of wild tales of the most unusual sort, especially in the sixty-six years since the Spellplague had descended upon Faer?n, since the death of Mystra and the great turmoil and tribulations that had shaken the foundation of civilization itself.

Then again, the world was full of actual surprises, as well.

“You got enough?” Tulula asked, glancing back across the lake. “We’ve a long ride home and you promised we’d be back in Caer-Dineval tomorrow.”

Drizzt hesitated a bit, helplessly scanning the horizon, then he nodded. “Help your father back into the wagon,” he told her. “We’ll be away soon.”

The drow trotted off to the cottage and poked about it for a bit, then moved up into the scraggly wood, hardly a forest, crunching through the dried pine needles of seasons past. He looked for clues, any clue: the hint of a door on a hillside, a patch of ground that once might have been a pond, the hint of music in the windy air…

From the side of one hillock, he looked back to see Tulula in the open wagon, her father beside her. She waved to Drizzt, ready to depart.

He moved about a bit more, hoping against all reason that he would find something, anything, to give him hope that this place-Iruladoon, Roundie had called it-had once been the forest as described to him, that the caretaker had been Regis and the marvelous witch, Catti-brie. He thought of his return to Kelvin’s Cairn, and dreaded telling Bruenor that their journey to Icewind Dale had been for naught.

Where might they go now? Did old Bruenor have any more roads left in him?

“Come along then!” Tulula called from the wagon, and reluctantly the drow started down, his keen eyes still scanning the ground and trees for some sign, any sign.

Drizzt’s eyes were keen, but not sharp enough to see all. In his passing, he brushed by some trees and old branches, and dislodged something that fell behind him. He didn’t notice, and went on his way to the wagon. The trio started off on the long road that would take them around the lake and back to Caer-Dineval.

As the sun dipped lower over the lake, the light flashed white on bone-a fish bone, a piece of scrimshaw carved into the likeness of a woman holding a magical bow.

The same bow Drizzt Do’Urden carried on his back.

The air was unseasonably chilly, and storm clouds had gathered off in the northwest on the morning Drizzt walked back out of Caer-Dineval, a reminder that the season was soon to turn. He looked to the distant peak of Kelvin’s Cairn and thought that perhaps he should spend another day in town and let the storm pass.

Drizzt laughed at himself, at his cowardice, and not for anything to do with the weather. He didn’t want to tell Bruenor that he’d found not a sign, not a tease. He knew he shouldn’t tarry, of course. Autumn was falling, and in a matter of tendays, the first snows would come sweeping down upon Icewind Dale, sealing the one pass through the mountains to the south.

On the rocky cliff between the town’s welcoming inn and the old castle of the Dinev family, the drow lifted his unicorn pendant to his lips and blew into the horn. He spotted Andahar, a tiny flash of white before him, approaching fast.

The steed seemed no bigger than his closed hand at first, but each stride along the rift between dimensions doubled its size, and in moments, the powerful equine beast trotted to a stop in front of Drizzt. Andahar pawed the ground and shook his thick neck, white mane flying wildly.

Drizzt heard the excited chatter of the guards at the caer’s gate, but he didn’t even look back to acknowledge them, nor was he surprised by their reaction. Who would not be awe-stricken at the first glimpse of Andahar, tacked and with barding that glittered in the daylight with rows of bells and jewels?

Drizzt grabbed the steed’s mane and agilely leaped into the saddle. Then he did salute the gawking folk at the gate before turning the magnificent unicorn to the north and thundering off toward Kelvin’s Cairn.

What a wonderful gift Andahar had been, the drow thought, and certainly not for the first time. The ruling council of Silverymoon had commissioned the mount for Drizzt, in gratitude for his work, both with the blade and diplomacy, in the Third Orc War.

The wind whistled past his ears as Andahar galloped across the miles. The drow wasn’t cold, though, not with the warmth generated by the unicorn’s great muscles. His hair and cloak flew wide behind him. He called forth the bells to sing with the ride, and they answered to his will. Trusting in Andahar, Drizzt let his thoughts slip back to pleasant memories of his old friends. He was disappointed, of course, in not finding any sign of the mysterious witch of the wood, or the curious halfling caretaker, disappointed at the reaffirmation of that which he already knew to be true.

He still had his memories, though, and on occasions like this, alone and on the trail, he looked for them and found them, and couldn’t help but smile as he thought of that previous life he had known.

That previous life he knew he should forget.

That previous life he could not forget.

The sun was still high in the sky when he dismissed Andahar and entered the dwarven tunnels. Once the complex had been the home of Clan Battlehammer, and those few dozen dwarves who had remained there still considered themselves part of the clan. They knew of Drizzt, though only a couple had ever met the drow. They also knew of Pwent and the legendary Gutbuster Brigade, and glad they were to welcome travelers from Mithral Hall, including one who named himself as a distant cousin to the late King Bruenor Battlehammer himself.

“To King Connerad Brawnanvil Battlehammer!” the leader of the Kelvin’s Cairn Battlehammers, Stokely Silverstream, greeted Drizzt when he entered the main forge area. Stokely lifted a mug in toast and waved to a younger dwarf, who hustled to get Drizzt a drink.

“He fares well, I would hope,” Drizzt replied, not surprised that, four decades on, Connerad had succeeded his father, Banak. “Good blood.”

“Ye fought with his father.”

“Many the time,” Drizzt replied, accepting the mug and taking a welcomed swallow.

“And yer own salute?” Stokely asked.

“There can be only one,” Drizzt replied, and he lifted his mug high and waited until all the dwarves in the room turned to regard him.

“To King Bruenor Battlehammer!” Drizzt and Stokely said together, and a rousing cheer went up in the chamber. Every dwarf drank deep then scrambled to get their mugs refilled.

“I was but a dwarfling when me dad bringed us back to Icewind Dale,” Stokely explained. “But I’d’ve known him, and well, had I not been a fool and stayed so close to me home up here.”

“You served your own clan,” Drizzt replied. “Short are the times of respite in Icewind Dale. Could your father have fared as well, had you, and others with the wanderlust, traveled all the way to Mithral Hall?”

“Bah, but true enough! I’m guessin’ me and me boys’ll have to settle for yer tales, elf, and we’re holdin’ ye to that promise! Yerself and old Pwent and Bonnego Battle-axe, of the Adbar Battle-axes.”

“This very night,” Drizzt promised. He set his mug down and patted Stokely on the shoulder as he moved past him, heading for the lower tunnels, where he knew his friends to be.

“Well met, Bonnego,” he said to Bruenor when he entered the small side room, to find Bruenor, as always, spreading maps across the floor and taking notes.

“What do ye know, elf?” Bruenor replied a bit too hopefully.

Drizzt winced at the optimism, and let his expression convey the truth of the rumor.

“Just a few pines and a bit of scrag,” Bruenor said with a sigh and a shake of his head, for that was what they had heard of this supposedly enchanted forest from practically everyone in Icewind Dale they had asked.

“Ah, me king,” said Thibbledorf Pwent, limping into the room behind Drizzt.

“Shoosh, ye dolt!” Bruenor scolded.

“Perhaps there was once a forest there,” said Drizzt. “Perhaps enchanted in some way, and with a beautiful witch and halfling caretaker. The tale of Lathan mirrored that of Roundabout, and both I find credible.”

“Credible and wrong,” said Bruenor, “as I was knowin’ they’d be.”

“Ah, me king,” said Pwent.

“Ye quit calling me that!”

“Their words are no longer accurate,” Drizzt replied. “But that does not mean their memories are wrong. You saw the eyes of both men when they remembered that time, that encounter. Few could wear such expressions falsely, and fewer still could tell tales so aligned, separated by miles and decades.”

“Ye think they saw her?”

“I think they saw something. Something interesting.”

Bruenor growled and shoved a table over onto its side. “I should’ve come here, elf! Those years ago, when first we lost me girl. We sent that rat Jarlaxle on the hunt, but it was me own road to be walkin’.”

“And even Jarlaxle, with resources beyond any we could imagine, found no trail at all,” Drizzt reminded him. “We know not the truth or fancy of this forest called Iruladoon, my friend, and could not have found it in time in any case. You did as your station demanded, through two wars that would have grown to engulf the whole of the Silver Marches had wise King Bruenor not been there to end them. The whole of the North owes you its gratitude. We have seen the world beyond that land we once called home, and it’s a dark place indeed.”

Bruenor considered the words for a few heartbeats then nodded. “Bah!” he snorted, just because. “And I’m for seeing Gauntlgrym afore me old bones surrender to the years.” He indicated some maps on the far side of the floor. “One o’ them, I’m thinking, elf. One o’ them.”

“When’re ye thinking to be on the road?” Thibbledorf Pwent asked, and there was something in his voice that caught Drizzt off guard.

“It has to be soon, very soon,” the drow replied, studying Pwent through every word.

Always before, the battlerager had shown eagerness, a fanatical need, even, to march beside his King Bruenor. On many occasions, particularly their infrequent visits to Luskan, Bruenor had looked for ways to avoid taking Pwent along. The dirty dwarf was always a sight, of course, and always drew attention, and in the pirate-run City of Sails, such notice was not always a welcomed thing.

But there was something else in Pwent’s eye, in his posture, and in the timbre of his voice when he asked the question.

“We’ll be going right this day, then,” said Bruenor and he began rolling a parchment to stuff it back into his oversized pack.

Drizzt nodded and moved to help, but again he watched the hesitating battlerager.

“What do ye know?” Bruenor finally asked Pwent, noticing that the dwarf didn’t move to help with the packing.

“Ah, me king…” Pwent replied, voice full of regret.

“I telled ye not to call me-“Bruenor started to scold him, but Drizzt put his hand on Bruenor’s shoulder.

The drow locked stares with Pwent for a long while, then silently nodded his understanding. “He’s not coming,” Drizzt explained.

“Eh? What’re ye saying?” Bruenor looked at Drizzt with puzzlement, but the drow deflected his gaze to Pwent.

“Ah, me king,” the battlerager said again. “I’m fearin’ that I can’no go. Me old knees…” He sighed, his face long, like a dog that couldn’t head out on the hunt.

Thibbledorf Pwent wasn’t as old as ancient Bruenor Battlehammer, but the years, and thousands of particularly violent fights, had not been kind to the battlerager. The journey to Icewind Dale had taken a lot out of him, though of course Pwent had never complained. Pwent never complained at all, unless he was being excluded from a fight or an adventure, or told to take a bath.

Bruenor turned his stunned expression back to Drizzt, but the drow just nodded his agreement, for both knew that Thibbledorf Pwent would never have made such a claim unless he knew in his old heart that he simply couldn’t make the journey, that he had reached the end of his adventuring days.

“Bah, but ye’re just a child!” Bruenor said, more to boost the spirits of his friend than to try to change his mind.

“Ah, me king, forgive me,” Pwent said.

Bruenor considered him for a moment, then walked over and crushed Pwent in a great hug. “Ye been the best guard, the best friend an old dwarf could e’er know,” Bruenor said. “Ye been with me through it all, ye been, and how could ye even be thinking that ye’re needin’ me forgiving? I’m the one what’s should be asking! For all yer life-”

“No!” Pwent interrupted. “No! It’s been me joy, me king. It’s been me joy. And this isn’t how it’s supposed to end. Been waiting for that one great fight, that last fight. To die for me king…”

“Better in me own heart that ye live for me, ye dolt,” said Bruenor.

“So you mean to live out your days here in the dale?” Drizzt asked. “With Stokely and his clan?”

“Aye, if they’ll have me.”

“But they’d be fools not to, and Stokely ain’t no fool,” Bruenor assured him. He looked to Drizzt. “We go tomorrow, not today.”

The drow nodded.

“Today, tonight, we drink and talk o’ all the old times,” Bruenor said, looking back to Pwent. “Today, tonight, we toast every sip to Thibbledorf Pwent, the greatest warrior Mithral Hall’s e’er known!”

It may have been a bit of an exaggeration, for Mithral Hall had known many heroes of legend, not the least of whom was King Bruenor himself. But none who had ever battled Pwent would argue that claim, to be sure, what few who’d faced the rage of Thibbledorf Pwent were still around to argue anyway.

They spent all the day and night together, the three old friends, drinking and reminiscing. They talked of reclaiming Mithral Hall, of the coming of the drow, of their adventures on the road, to the dark days of Cadderly’s library, of the coming of Obould and three wars they had suffered and survived. They toasted to Wulfgar and Catti-brie and Regis, old friends lost, and to Nanfoodle and Jessa, new friends lost, and to a life well-lived and battles well-fought.

And most of all, Bruenor lifted his mug in toast to Thibbledorf Pwent, who, alongside Drizzt, had to be counted as his oldest and dearest friend. The old king was almost ashamed as he spoke words of gratitude and friendship, silently berating himself for all the times he had been embarrassed by the Gutbuster’s gruff demeanor and outrageous antics.

Under it all, Bruenor realized, none of that mattered. What mattered was the heart of Thibbledorf Pwent, a heart true and brave. Here was a dwarf who wouldn’t hesitate to leap in front of a ballista spear flying for a friend-any friend, not just his king. Here was a dwarf, Bruenor realized at long last, who truly understood what it was to be a dwarf, what it was to be of Clan Battlehammer.

He hugged his friend again the next morning, long and hard, and there was moisture in the eyes of King Bruenor as he and Drizzt walked out of Stokely Silverstream’s halls. And Pwent stood there at the exit, watching them go and quietly muttering, “Me king,” until they were long out of sight.

“A great dwarf is King Bruenor, eh?” Stokely Silverstream said, coming up to Pwent’s side.

The battlerager looked at him curiously, then widened his eyes in near panic as he feared that he’d just surrendered Bruenor’s identity with his foolish mumbling.

“I knowed from the moment ye arrived,” Stokely assured him. “What with Drizzt beside ye-could it be any but Bruenor himself?”

“Bruenor died many years ago,” Pwent said.

“Aye, and long live King Connerad!” Stokely replied, and he nodded and smiled. “And none need know otherwise, but don’t ye doubt, me new friend, that it does me heart good to know that he’s out there still, fightin’ the Battlehammer fight. Me only hope’s that we’ll see him again, that he’ll come back to Icewind Dale in his last days.”

Stokely put a hand on Pwent’s shoulder then, a shoulder bobbing with sobs.