Night of the Hunter

PART TWO

I am haunted by the expression on Bruenor’s face, and by the words of Catti-brie. “The burden you carry blurs your judgment,” she told me without reservation. “As you see yourself, you hope to find in others-in orcs and goblins, even.”

She alone said this, but Bruenor’s expression and wholehearted nod certainly agreed with Catti-brie’s assessment. I wanted to argue, but found I could not. I wanted to scream against them both, to tell them that fate is not predetermined by nature, that a reasoning being could escape the determination of heredity, that intellect could overwhelm instinct.

I wanted to tell them that I had escaped.

And so, in that roundabout reasoning-turned-admission, Catti-brie’s description of my burden ultimately rang true to me, and so, were I not bound by my own experiences, and the uncertainty that has followed me every step out of Menzoberranzan, even these many decades later, my expression would likely have matched Bruenor’s own.

Was the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge a mistake? To this day, I still do not know, but I find now, in light of this discussion, that my ambiguous stance relies more on the averted suffering to the dwarves and elves and humans of the Silver Marches, and less on the benefit to the orcs. For in my heart, I suspect that Bruenor is right, and that Catti-brie’s newfound understanding of orc nature is confirmed by the goings-on in the Silver Marches. The Kingdom of Many-Arrows holds as an entity, so Bruenor claims, but the peace it promotes is a sham. And perhaps, I must admit, that peace only facilitates the orc raiders and allows them more freedom than they would find if Many-Arrows did not exist.

Still, with all the revelations and epiphanies, it hurts, all of this, and the apparent solution seems a chasm too far for me to jump. Bruenor is ready to march to Mithral Hall, rouse the dwarves, and raise an army, and with that force, wage open war on the Kingdom of Many-Arrows.

Bruenor is determined to begin a war. So determined is he that he will put aside the suffering, the death, the disease, the utter misery that such a conflict will wreak on the land, so that, as he puts it, he might right the wrong he caused that century ago.

I cannot start a war. Even if I embraced what Catti-brie has claimed, even if I believed that her every word came from the mouth of Mielikki herself, I cannot start a war!

I will not, I say-and I fear-nor will I allow Bruenor to do so. Even if his words about the nature of orcs are true-and likely they are-then the current situation still, in my view, remains better than the open conflict he so desires. Perhaps I am bound to caution because of my burden of personal experience, but Bruenor is bound by guilt to try to correct what he sees as his chance at redemption.

Is that any less a burden?

Likely it is more so.

He will run headlong into misery, for himself, his legacy, and for all the goodly folk of the Silver Marches. That is my fear, and as such, as a friend, I must stop him if I can.

I can only wince at the possibilities illuminated by this course, for I have never seen Bruenor more determined, more sure of his steps. So much so, that should I try to dissuade him, I fear we might come to blows!

As indeed, I fear my road back to Mithral Hall. My last visit was not pleasant, and not one I often consider, for it pains me to realize that I, a ranger, have worked openly against dwarves and elves for the sake of orcs. For the sake of the “peace,” I tell myself, but in the end, that dodge can only hold true if Catti-brie’s admonition, if Mielikki’s claim, is not true. If orcs are not to be counted among the reasoning beings born of a choice in their road, then …

I will follow Bruenor to Mithral Hall. If the orc raiders are as prevalent as Bruenor insists, then I am sure I will find good use for my blades, and likely at Bruenor’s side, vigilant hunters striking without hesitation or guilt.

But I will not start a war.

That chasm is too wide.

Am I wrong, then, in hoping that the decision is taken from us before we ever arrive? In hoping that the Kingdom of Many-Arrows proves Catti-brie’s point in no uncertain terms?

“Where’s the babies’ room!” I hear her again, often in my thoughts, in that Dwarvish brogue of old, and with the ferocity befitting a daughter of King Bruenor Battlehammer. And though Catti-brie carried this accent for many years, and can fight as well as any, this time her cheer rang discordantly, painfully, in my ears.

What of Nojheim, then, the goblin I once knew who seemed a decent sort undeserving of his harsh fate?

Or am I really saying, what, then, of Drizzt?

I want to deny the message of Mielikki; once I claimed the goddess as that which was in my heart, a name for what I knew to be true and right. And now I want to deny it, desperately so, and yet I cannot. Perhaps it is the harsh truth of Faerûn that goblinkin and evil giantkind are just evil, by nature and not nurture.

And likely, my perception of this truth has been distorted by my own determined escape from the seemingly inevitable path I was born to follow, and perhaps distorted in dangerous ways.

On a very basic level, this message wounds me, and that wound is the burden. Is there, in this instance, no place for optimism and an insistence that there is good to be found? Does that outlook, the guiding philosophy of my existence, simply have no place in the darkness of an orc’s heart?

Can I start a war?

I walk this road tentatively, but also eagerly, for I am filled with conflict. I wish to know, I must know! I am afraid to know.

Alas, so much has changed, but so much remains the same. The Spellplague is gone, yet trouble seems ever to be brewing in our wake. Yet we walk a road into deeper darkness, into Gauntlgrym for the sake of a lost friend, and then, if we survive, into the midst of a greater storm.

For all of that, have I ever been happier?

— Drizzt Do’Urden