Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 5

A ray of morning sunlight peeked in through the window and tickled Catti-brie’s senses. She slowly came out of her wonderful night’s sleep. She was naked, but huddled under piles of blankets and delightfully warm-and warmer still as memories of the previous night flooded through her.

She reached back behind her at that warm thought, feeling for her companion, but he was not there. Surprised, Catti-brie moved up to her elbows and peeked out from under the edge of the blankets.

Drizzt was across the room, near the hearth, the flames shining off his ebon skin, orange highlighted reflections showing in his long white hair. He, too, was quite naked, and Catti-brie took the moment to admire his form, the grace of his movements as he tossed another log onto the fire. It bounced around the half-consumed faggots within and settled too near to the front, and she heard Drizzt’s sigh as he considered it. She thought he would reach for the poker, but he did not. Indeed, he moved the small iron screen farther off to the side and reached in with his bare hand to retrieve the log, which had not caught yet, though tiny sparks could already be seen within the folds of the bark.

Drizzt laid that log aside and turned back to the low-burning fire, bending low, then instinctively jumping back as one burning log popped, sending a spray of sparks up the chimney.

Catti-brie muffled her laugh with the blankets, not wanting Drizzt to know that she was spying on him. She pulled the blankets down from in front of her face, though, her mouth hanging wide open, when Drizzt reached into the fire to rearrange the smoldering logs within. He grabbed one glowing log, flames erupting all around his forearm, with hardly a wince, and reset it upon the others.

Apparently satisfied with his handiwork, he retrieved the new log he had set aside and carefully placed it on the others. He stood, brushed his hands together, and replaced the screen.

“How?” Catti-brie asked from the bed and Drizzt turned to regard her. The woman’s gaze moved across the small room, to the far wall where Drizzt had hung his sword belt. She noted the gem-encrusted, black cat-shaped pommel of the scimitar Icingdeath, which she knew could offer Drizzt such protection from the bite of fire. Had he grown so attuned to the blade that it could lend him such even when he was not carrying it?

“Good morning!” he greeted. “And oh, it is a fine one, though the stubborn wind of winter’s end bites hard this day. The others are off to gather mounts and supplies.”

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You reached into the fire. It should have curled the flesh from your finger bones!”

Drizzt came over to the bed and sat beside her, lifting his left hand to reveal a ring, made wholly of ruby, a sparkling red band around his finger.

“I took it from a mage, a drow noble,” he explained as he slid it off and held it up for Catti-brie. “In the bowels of Gauntlgrym-it is a long tale, and a good one for the road.” He reached his hand out, offering the ring to the woman for a closer look.

“It protects you from the flames?”

“As surely as my scimitar,” Drizzt replied. “Indeed, when first I put it on, I felt a sense of affinity between the two, scimitar and ring. It was almost as if their magic had … nodded respectfully to each other.”

Catti-brie looked at him curiously, and skeptically, for she had never heard of such a thing. Drizzt’s weapon, powerful though it was, was not sentient in any way that she knew, and rings such as this ruby band were not uncommon, not overly powerful, and not known to possess any type of empathy or telepathy.

She handed it back, but Drizzt caught her hand before she could retract it.

“In many cultures, the ring is the sign of fidelity and undying love,” he explained as he slipped it onto her finger. “Take this in that spirit, and with the added benefit of the protection it offers. With my scimitar in hand, we two can walk across hot coals!”

Catti-brie looked curiously at the jewel. For just a fleeting second when it had gone onto her hand, she had felt something … something like a call from afar, or as if the ring was feeling her as surely as she was feeling it. The sensation was gone in a moment, and then it seemed just a ruby band once more, but one that had shrunken already to perfectly fit her, as magical rings were wont to do.

She held her hand up to better view it with the ring on, and looked through her fingers to the violet eyes of the drow she so loved.

“The others are gone?” she asked.

“They left with the dawn,” Drizzt replied.

Catti-brie lifted the edge of the blanket, and Drizzt didn’t need to be invited into the bed twice.

“I thought we had returned for Drizzt,” Regis said to Catti-brie, the two at the back of the line of five as they made their way into the rocky dells around Kelvin’s Cairn, the long and winding approach to the dwarven complex. He didn’t even try to hide the regret from his voice, and Catti-brie caught it, he knew, when she turned to regard him with obvious concern.

“Were you hoping for a fight?”

“I was hoping that I would be of use,” Regis replied. “I left much behind me to get to Icewind Dale.”

“He would have died without us,” the woman replied.

“Without you, not me. You arrived armed with healing spells. My potions were not needed-indeed, I was not needed. Had I remained in the south, the outcome here would have been the same.”

“You cannot know that,” said Wulfgar. He slowed to let the other two catch up to him. Drizzt and Bruenor were far in the distance, already around the next bend. “Something you might have done, someone you might have met and influenced, perhaps played a part before we ever came upon him atop the mountain.”

“Or perhaps those assassins we fought on the bank of the lake would have come for me instead, and, alone, I would have been slain,” Catti-brie added.

But Regis shook his head, having none of it. His thoughts were to the south, with the Grinning Ponies. His memories drifted across the Sea of Fallen Stars, to sweet Donnola Topolino and a mercantile empire he could claim beside her. It was wonderful to be among the Companions of the Hall again, of course, but there remained the question of why. Duty had brought him here, running. But what duty might that be?

To fight a war for Bruenor and Mithral Hall? To go and do battle with a vampire? Laudable missions, both, he reasoned, but neither seemed above the work he was doing with the Grinning Ponies.

Catti-brie stopped her walk and grabbed him by the shoulder to halt him, too, then called Wulfgar close to join them. “Drizzt won his fight on the night we rejoined him,” she explained. “Even if we had not been there and he had succumbed to his wounds, that night, victory was his.”

Regis looked to Wulfgar for some clarification of the surprising remark, but the barbarian could only shrug, obviously as much at a loss as he.

“The battle was for his soul, not his body,” Catti-brie explained. “For the very identity of Drizzt Do’Urden, and such a fight must be won or lost alone. And yet, Mielikki bade us to return, and facilitated it-and that is no small thing, even for a god!”

“Because she knew he would win,” Wulfgar put in, and Regis stared at him, trying to catch up to the reasoning.

“And because he won against the desires of a vengeful goddess, one Drizzt has cheated since his earliest days,” Catti-brie added. “This is not ended, I expect. Lolth cannot get his soul, but she will exact retribution, do not doubt.”

“She will try,” Regis corrected, his voice steeled, his shoulders squared. He was glad that he had kept most of his doubts private, for how trivial they suddenly seemed to him. Yes, he would like to ride beside Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies once more-those were fine years of camaraderie and adventure. And yes, of course, he desperately wanted to find Donnola again-he had been away from her for years, yet his love for her had not diminished. Indeed, it seemed to him that he loved her more now than he had when she had forced him to flee the ghost of Ebonsoul.

But even that love had to wait, he resolutely reminded himself. He was only alive again because of this, because of Mielikki.

A sharp whistle up ahead turned the trio to see Drizzt back at the bend, waving for them to hurry along.

Soon after, the five had crossed into the dwarf complex. Only Drizzt had revealed his true identity, and unlike the snarling folk of Bryn Shander, Stokely Silverstream’s dwarves were more than willing to hear the drow’s side of the Balor story. The guards escorted the group straight to Stokely, who was taking his breakfast in proper dwarf fashion, with a heaping plate of eggs and breads, and a flagon of beer to wash it down.

“Well now,” the dwarf leader greeted, rising and offering his hand to Drizzt. “Heared ye might be about. Some friends o’ yers came looking for ye. A monk fellow, the pretty Amber Gristle O’Maul …”

“Of the Adbar O’Mauls,” Drizzt said before Stokely could, and the dwarf chuckled and went on.

“They came looking for ye, and surprised we were! Where ye been, elf? Near to twenty years gone by …”

“It is a long tale, my friend, and one I am anxious to tell,” Drizzt replied. “But trust me when I say that it will be the least interesting of the tales you hear this day.”

Drizzt nodded from Stokely to the other dwarves in the room, his look begging for some privacy.

“Bah, but ye ain’t to be trusted, Drizzt,” said another of the dwarves in the room, a mining boss named Junky. “That’s what them o’ the towns’re sayin’!”

“Then them in the towns’re stupid,” Bruenor retorted.

“We need to speak with you,” Drizzt said quietly to Stokely. “On my word, and on the graves of Bruen-” He paused and flashed a little grin. “On the graves of Bonnego Battle-axe and Thibbledorf Pwent,” he corrected.

Stokely nodded, considered the words for a moment, then waved the other dwarves out of the room.

As soon as they were gone, Drizzt stepped back and swept his arm out toward the other four, standing at his side. “You know my friends not, and yet you do,” Drizzt said.

“Eh?” Stokely looked them over, shaking his head, then focusing mostly on Bruenor, as would be expected. Soon his inspection became more than a simple perusal, though, for there seemed a spark in the clan leader’s eye, as if he should know this young dwarf standing before him, but couldn’t quite place him. He silently echoed the name Drizzt had just spoken.

“Might that I should be introducin’ meself as Bonnego Battle-axe,” Bruenor said, and Stokely scrunched his face up with confusion and fell back a step.

And his face unwound as the blood drained from it, as his jaw began to inevitably drop open.

“I give to you, King Bruenor of Clan Battlehammer,” Drizzt said. “It can no’ be,” Stokely breathed.

“Ain’t ye seen enough craziness in yer life to believe a bit more craziness?” Bruenor asked with a great “harrumph” and a derisive snort.

Stokely moved up to stand before him, studying him closely. Stokely had never known King Bruenor at the age of this dwarf before him, of course, for Bruenor was much older than he, but poor flummoxed Stokely wasn’t wearing an expression of denial on his face.

“I seen ye die in Gauntlgrym,” Stokely said. “Put a stone on yer cairn meself.”

“And ye was in Mithral Hall when Gandalug come back after a thousand years of deadness.”

Stokely tried to respond, but flapped his lips indecipherably for several heartbeats. “But I seen ye die,” he tried to explain. “More personal this time.”

“Aye ye did, and now I’m back. Been back to Gauntlgrym, too, and goin’ that way again, don’t ye doubt. Any o’ yer boys been there since the fightin’?”

Stokely continued to stare at him and didn’t seem to register the question for many heartbeats. Then he cleared his throat nervously and shook his head. “No. Them halls be a long walk through the Underdark, and the way’s full o’ damned drow …” He paused and looked at Drizzt. “Word’s that them drow’ve taken over the lower tunnels.”

“Aye, they have,” said Bruenor.

“Ye meanin’ to do something about that?”

Bruenor nodded, but looked to Drizzt, who was shaking his head emphatically. “Might, in time,” Bruenor explained to Stokely.

“King Bruenor will rouse Clan Battlehammer, then?”

“Much to do. Much to do,” said Bruenor. “And I’m askin’ ye now not to be spreading word of me return.”

“If ye be who ye say ye be, more an order than an ask,” Stokely remarked.

“If I be who I say I be, and I do, then I’m askin’ as a friend and not tellin’ ye as yer king.”

The two exchanged a long look then, both slowly nodding. Then Bruenor stepped back to introduce the others, but before he even started, Stokely rattled off their names. Any dwarf of Clan Battlehammer needed no introductions to the Companions of the Hall.

“What a glorious day it be!” Stokely said soon after, as the shock began to wear off. “Ah, but why, I’m wantin’ to ask, but it’s not to matter! Only that it be, that King Bruenor’s back from Moradin’s Hall in Dwarfhome. A good day for Clan Battlehammer!”

Bruenor did well to hide his wince at the reference to Dwarfhome, enough so that Stokely didn’t catch it. Drizzt did, though he wasn’t sure what it meant. He looked to Catti-brie, who had similarly noted it, and she returned his inquisitive expression with a subtle shake of her head, telling him that this was neither the time nor the place for that particular discussion.

“Here’s to a hunnerd years o’ good days for Clan Battlehammer, then!” Bruenor said, managing a fair amount of bluster.

“So where’s yer road? Ye meaning to spend the summer with us here in the Dale, are ye?”

“Nah, got to be going,” Bruenor replied. “I just came here to gather me friends, and now we’ve a long road to walk.”

“Mithral Hall?”

“Soon.”

Stokely paused and pondered things for a moment. “And I can’t be tellin’ no one?”

“Not a one,” said Bruenor. “I’m asking ye.”

“Then why’d ye come here?” Stokely asked. “Why not just ride out to the south? Are ye needin’ something from me, then?”

“Not a thing.”

“Then why’d ye come here?”

Bruenor put his hands on his hips and pasted on a most solemn expression. “Because I owed it to ye,” he said in all seriousness. “If I’m livin’ another thousand years, if I’m back after that for another thousand more, I’ll not be forgettin’ the charge o’ Stokely and his boys in Gauntlgrym. Ah, but we were lost, all of us and all our hopes, and there ye were, Pwent beside ye. No king could ask for a better clan and no friend for better friends, I tell ye. And so I’m owin’ ye.”

“Then ye’re owing us all, living here under the mountain, for I didn’t go there alone,” said Stokely.

Bruenor looked at him curiously.

“Ye tell ’em who ye be,” Stokely said. “I’ll give ye a send-off-oh, and she’ll be one to fit the miracle that bringed ye back to us, don’t ye doubt. And ye’ll get up on the durned table and tell yer tale, to meself and to all me boys.”

“Telling the world presents … complications,” Drizzt interrupted.

“And ye tell all me boys what ye telled me, about keepin’ our mouths shut,” said Stokely.

“It would be better-” Drizzt started to say, but Bruenor, whose eyes remained locked with Stokely’s, cut him short.

“Ye bring many the keg,” Bruenor agreed, “for I’ve a long tale, and one beggin’ a huzzah and heigh-ho at every turn.”

He clapped Stokely on the shoulder, and the other dwarf smiled from ear-to-hairy-ear, and shouted out for the dwarves who waited on the other side of the door.

“Call all the boys in from the mines,” Stokely ordered. “And ye tell Fat Gorin to cook us a feast fit for a king!”

“Huzzah!” the dwarves cried, as dwarves always yelled when an excuse was offered for libations.

No dwarf in attendance that night of the celebration of the return of King Bruenor would ever forget it.

Dwarves prided themselves on their storytelling, of course, epic adventures laced with solemn songs of long-lost lands and hills of gold, heroic feats tinged ever with sadness and ever gleaming with the hopes that the next round-aye the next-would bring them to a better place.

So many were the songs of old, so many the tales of places lost, places waiting to be found again, that the celebration of King Bruenor that night in the smoky halls under the mountain in Icewind Dale started out as a typical celebration, with few understanding that this would fast become a special occasion.

Not to the height it became, at least.

For when he rose upon the table, the introductions of his friends still ringing in the air with the echoes of huzzah, King Bruenor took Stokely’s boys to a place they’d never been. His song was not of lament, not of kingdoms lost. Nay, not that night. That night, King Bruenor spoke of friendship eternal, of fidelity and fealty, of purpose greater than that of any one dwarf.

He spoke of Iruladoon and the curse that he meant to make a blessing. He openly admitted to his boys his mistake in not going on to Dwarfhome, and begged forgiveness, which came from every corner. He spoke of Mithral Hall and of Adbar and of Felbarr, of King Connerad and Emerus Warcrown, and Harbromme’s twins, who ruled in Adbar. He spoke of the Silver Marches and of an orc kingdom that should not be.

And he wound it all back to Gauntlgrym, to Delzoun, the heritage, to all that had been, and to all that must be again.

Not all that could be, but all that must be.

And he was King Bruenor, the living legend, and so when he said it, the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer believed it, and when he said it would be so, so they determined they would make it so.

And the flagons raised and the cheers echoed, and the flagons raised again.

“Ah, but the dwarves, always up for a toast,” Regis remarked, sitting in the corner at the back of the hall beside Wulfgar.

Wulfgar gave him a wry smile, and said with sly irony, “You only live once.”

“Twice,” Catti-brie corrected, and she slid into the chair between the two.

“Aye,” Wulfgar agreed. “And for some, it seems, it takes the second turn around to understand the joy of it.”

Both Regis and Catti-brie looked at him curiously, and looked at each other, each offering a shrug.

“I loved you, you know,” Wulfgar said, and Catti-brie’s expression turned to one of sympathy and sadness.

“Oh no,” Regis whispered under his breath.

“Honestly, and with all my heart,” said Wulfgar.

“Wulfgar …” she started to reply, her eyes scanning as if searching for some way to stop this course.

But Wulfgar pressed on. “I just wanted you to know that.”

“I do-I did,” she assured him, and she took his hand and stared into his eyes, and he into hers, and a great grin spread over his face.

“My heart does not ache,” he said.

Catti-brie looked at Regis again, neither having an answer.

Wulfgar burst out laughing.

“Am I missing a finer tale than the one Bruenor is telling again?” Drizzt asked, moving up to the table.

“No,” Catti-brie said.

“You are missing an apology, my friend,” Wulfgar said.

Drizzt moved to the chair opposite Catti-brie. “An apology?”

“I was simply telling your wife that my love for her was honest and true,” Wulfgar said matter-of-factly.

“And it still is, then?” asked Drizzt.

Wulfgar laughed again, heartily, without the slightest hint of sarcasm or regret to be found.

“Aye,” he said. “Aye! How could it not be?”

Drizzt didn’t blink.

“Look at her!” Wulfgar cried. “As beautiful as the sunrise, as warm as the sunset, with the promise of peace close behind. Would you have me lie to you and tell you that I have no love for fair Catti-brie? Would that make it easier for you to travel the road beside me?”

“Yes,” Catti-brie said, at the same instant that Drizzt emphatically answered, “No!”

Drizzt and Catti-brie turned to each other, both appearing as if they had been slapped with a cold, wet towel.

“I’ll tell no lies to make our journey more comfortable,” Wulfgar said. “Of course I love her. I always have and I always will.”

“Wulfgar …” Catti-brie started to reply, but he spoke right past her.

“And I’ll always love him, fool dwarf, who gave me a life with mercy he ever denies he possesses. And you,” he added, looking to Regis. “Once I traveled to the end of Faerûn to find you, and I would do so again, with a song on my lips, and should I die trying, then know I died well!”

He turned to Drizzt and held up his huge hand, and Drizzt took it.

“And you, my brother, my friend,” Wulfgar said. “Do you fear my love for your wife?”

Drizzt stared into Wulfgar’s eyes for a long time, and gradually his lips curled into a confident smile. “No.”

“I would never betray you,” Wulfgar said.

Drizzt nodded.

“Never,” Wulfgar said again. He glanced over at Catti-brie. “Nor would she, of course, but then, you know that.” Drizzt nodded.

“You spoke of a second time around,” Catti-brie said, drawing their attention. “What have you learned?”

Wulfgar grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips for a gentle kiss. “My friend,” he said, “I have learned to smile.”

Catti-brie looked to Drizzt, and to Regis, the three passing around a grin none could quite decipher.

“And now if you will grant me your pardon,” Wulfgar said, hoisting himself to his feet with great effort, and clearly, he had offered more than a few huzzahs and heigh-hos of his own through Bruenor’s continuing tale. He nodded his chin to the far corner of the room, and following that motion, the friends noted a dwarf lass staring back at him.

“A pretty thing and I’ve always wondered,” Wulfgar said with a laugh.

“Truly?” Regis said.

Wulfgar straightened his shirt and pants, turned back to the halfling, and winked. “You only live once, eh?”

He sauntered away.

Regis gave a little snort, shaking his head.

“Go and watch over him,” Catti-brie bade the halfling, but as Regis started to stand, Drizzt put a hand out to stop him.

“What do you know?” Catti-brie asked him.

Drizzt was still staring at the departing barbarian. “I know that he is content. His heart is full.”

Catti-brie started to argue, but stopped before a single word had come forth. She looked back at Wulfgar, noting the unmistakable lightness of his step.

“He completed his journey the first time,” Catti-brie remarked, as much to herself as to the others, thinking those words would solve any riddle here. But when she turned back, she found the other two both staring at her to elaborate.

“He was married, with children,” she explained.

“Grandchildren,” Regis added. “All gone now.”

“So he lived by the rules and traditions,” said Catti-brie. “He did his duty to his people and to his god.”

“And now?” Drizzt asked.

Catti-brie looked back at Wulfgar, who was dancing with the young dwarf lass by then. “Now, he will play,” she said.

“It’s all a game to him,” Regis said, nodding as he reasoned it out. “Time borrowed from the calendar of the gods for pleasure and adventure, beyond what any man could ask or expect or hope to know.”

“He is free,” Catti-brie said as if only then understanding it.

Drizzt looked at the big man, and found, to his surprise, that he envied Wulfgar at that moment. But that moment passed, and instead the drow determined that he would learn from his large friend.

For in looking at Wulfgar, Drizzt couldn’t deny the light, the joy, which surrounded the man like a halo sent from the gods. With a burst of heartfelt laughter, Drizzt lifted his hand and snapped his fingers, gaining the attention of a dwarf handing out flagons.

Why not, indeed?