The Companions

CHAPTER 16

The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR) Citadel Felbarr

Bruenor’s heavy eyelids eased open, leaving a fuzzy grayness where before there had been only darkness. Gradually, painfully, the air around began to take shape, images coming into view in the low firelight, including two wide-eyed faces leaning in close, looking back at him intently.

Bruenor noted an older dwarf male and a younger female, both dressed as clerics. The names Parson and Mandarina hovered around his thoughts, just out of reach. The two continued to study him, their expressions shifting from surprise to concern to, finally, relief and joy.

“Blessed by Moradin,” said the woman, and she bent low and kissed young Reginald Roundshield on the cheek. “I’d thought we’d lost ye.”

The other dwarf nodded his agreement. “And she’s been with ye since yer fall,” he explained to the dizzy and dazed dwarf lying on the cot in Citadel Felbarr. “Ain’t left yer side for a moment, that one.”

“Arr Arr saved us all out there, don’t ye doubt,” said the woman-yes, it was Mandarina Dobberbright. “What a sorry and ungrateful friend meself’d be if I left him with healing to be done!”

The other, Parson Glaive, nodded again. “Aye, but I thought ye’d be meetin’ yer father, me young friend.”

“Bangor?” the confused Bruenor whispered under his breath, his lips sticking together with dryness.

“Eh, what’s that then?” asked Parson Glaive, leaning forward.

Only then did Bruenor’s sensibilities begin to return to the present. He considered what the female cleric had called him, “Arr Arr,” and remembered then that he was not King Bruenor, son of Bangor, anymore.

At least, not yet.

That last thought bounced around in his head for a little while, slowly replaced by the returning details of the battle in the mountains, particularly those last few desperate moments when all had seemed lost in the shadow of a towering mountain giant.

“Been days,” Parson Glaive went on when no answer seemed forthcoming from the patient. “And Mandarina’s been at yer side the whole time, all the way back from the mountains.”

“The others?” Bruenor managed to whisper more audibly.

“Ye won the day,” Mandarina said, though it didn’t seem to Bruenor as if she was doing so in response to his question. “When that durned giant tumbled down, how the ground shook! And how them orcs turned tail and run away! Bwahaha, but ye should’ve seen ’em, I tell ye, fallin’ all over each other and screeching every step. And Ragged Dain, he weren’t about to let ’em go, but chased them a mile an’ more, choppin’ and kickin’ and bitin’ all the way!”

“Ognun Leatherbelt’s talked to King Emerus about ye,” Parson Glaive added. “Ye get yer rest, I tell ye, because ye’ve a party waitin’ in yer honor.”

Bruenor, still trying to sort out the fightAlpirs and UntarisI upon heron-he remembered throwing his axe and charging the giant, but what he recalled most of all was the explosive pain in his gut-tried to prop himself up on his elbows.

He realized immediately that that was a bad idea.

Waves of agony laid him low, replaced only gradually by waves of nausea. He began to cough and choke, and Mandarina and Parson Glaive were quick to roll him to his side so that he could safely throw up.

He looked at the puddle on the side of his bed with shock and even fear, for more than a little blood was mixed in with the bile.

“It’s all right, boy,” Parson Glaive said as they settled him onto his back. “Better than it’s been. Not to worry.”

“Aye, we’ll have ye up and about in a tenday or two, but we’ll hold yer party off for a month, I’m thinkin’,” added Mandarina.

“Aye, a month at least afore this one can drink the toasts he’ll be getting!” Parson Glaive agreed with great zest and a wide smile. He looked down at Little Arr Arr and nodded, then produced a small vial, which he moved to his patient’s lips. “Ye drink it, boy,” he coaxed, tipping the sweet-tasting liquid in.

It did not make Bruenor gag-quite the opposite-it felt warm and soft and steadying. And as the magical potion went down, so too did Bruenor’s eyelids, the darkness taking him to a land of confusing and troubled dreams.

Bruenor was the last to arrive of the six battle group members who had gone scouting in the Rauvin Mountains, and to the loudest cheers of all-of all the others combined, those in attendance understood. For this was Reginald Roundshield’s moment of glory, with hundreds of Felbarr tankards hoisted high as Parson Glaive led him into the Hall of Ceremony, a grand and high, partly natural, partly carved cavern. On one wall loomed a giant hearth, a bonfire blazing within, lighting all the place with great waves of orange glow, and to the side of it, far enough to avoid the blast of heat from the conflagration, sat King Emerus Warcrown on a great throne on a raised dais.

A second throne had been placed beside his own, less ornate, perhaps, but no less high in position or stature. To this second chair, Parson Glaive led the hero of the evening, and when Bruenor went to respectfully bow to the king, he found that Emerus dipped first.

The king then stood and turned the hero around to face the community, who raised mugs in toast and voices in a great “Huzzah!”

And there in the front row of that crowd, her face wet with tears, stood Uween Roundshield, nodding and sniffling.

Bruenor knew the decorum and ignored it. He wasn’t quite sure why Uween’s face touched him so at that particular moment, but he could not resist the urge. He broke from King Emerus’s grasp and leaped from the dais and across the way to wrap Uween in a tremendous embrace.

“For your Da,” she whispered to him amidst the thunderous applause.

Bruenor shed a tear, the first for his dead father. And he hugged Uween all the more and for a long, long while, lifting her from the floor and swaying her back and forth gently.

When he finally broke and turned back for the dais, a dozen hands reached for him, to pat him on the shoulder, and one voice lifted above the others to draw his attention.

“Ye sAlpirs and UntarisI upon heronaved me sister,” said Mallabritches Fellhammer. Bruenor locked gazes with her. “She telled ye to leave her, but ye would no’.” The tough warrior aptly nicknamed Fury had more than a little moisture in her eyes as she solemnly nodded her gratitude and approval.

Back on the dais, King Emerus signaled for Bruenor to take his seat, then called for the testimonials. One by one, starting with Ognun Leatherbelt, the other five members of the Rauvin scouting group stepped up to stand before the king and the hero, and offered to the gathering stirring tales of the battle. And each of those tales outdid the previous-clearly, they had rehearsed the roles each would play in this historical retelling. Ognun set the stage, then Tannabritches told of the opening volley, and of Arr Arr’s great courage in saving her. Mandarina came next, to confirm that “Fist” would have died if Arr Arr had chosen differently.

Magnus Leatherbelt brought out the “oos” and “ahs” with his description of the arrival of the giant, and the great behemoth surely sounded even bigger in his retelling than it had loomed on the field that day!

Last came Ragged Dain, the old warrior. He looked Bruenor in the eye, to offer a nod of respect and a wink of salute.

And then, with the sobriety of a veteran who had fought a hundred battles, the temperance of a dwarf who had seen many enemies killed, and the grim resolve of a dwarf who had fully expected to die in the foothills of the Rauvins, Ragged Dain showed himself to be as fine a bard as he was a warrior. He had the crowd hushed for a long while, hanging on his every word, and when he finished with, “And so I’m tellin’ ye here and tellin’ ye true, if not for Little Arr Arr …”

His dramatic pause right there brought an audible gasp from the crowd. “Nah,” he corrected. “Ain’t no ‘little’ left in that one.”

This pause brought the most raucous cheers of all.

“If not for Reginald-son o’ one o’ me dearest friends, Moradin keep him drunk! — then know that not one of us’d be standing with ye tonight, and ye’d not know that orcs and a giant prowled just to the north o’ Felbarr’s gates!”

The room exploded as Ragged Dain walked over to Bruenor and presented him with a flagon of Gutbuster, as sure a passage into adulthood as any dwarf could offer a teenager. He took Bruenor’s arm and coaxed him out of the chair, leading him to the center of the stage.

With a wink at Uween and a nod to Ragged Dain, then to King Emerus, Bruenor drained the flagon.

Up came Emerus, and from a pouch he produced a grand golden medal, fashioned in the shape of a round shield, and hung it around Reginald’s neck with a fine mithral chain.

“Grant a wish!” Mallabritches Fellhammer cried from the crowd, and the chant was taken up all across the hall.

“Grant a wish!”

King Emerus wore a surprised expression, but it was feigned, Bruenor could tell. The king had expected this, as Bruenor surely would have in one of the similar feasts of honor he had presided over in Mithral Hall. And indeed, Bruenor had granted more than a few such “wishes.”

The most common request, of course, would be for a tub of beer, a flask of brandy and the hand of a lovely lass for a dinner date, or a sturdy lad when a female was being so honored.?” she asked5N3 treasureesto

“Take the girl, Little Arr Arr!” someone yelled out from the back, and all started laughing at that.

“Ain’t so little if he takes the girl!” another cried.

“Fist!” yelled one.

“Fury!” argued another.

And so it went, with both Fellhammer lasses furiously blushing, and Bruenor wearing a little grin through it all.

“Might be the pair o’ them, if Fist ’n’ Fury’re meaning anything!” Ragged Dain shouted and the room exploded with laughter, King Emerus most of all.

Finally, Emerus quieted it all and put his arm around the hero. “Well there, Reginald,” he said. “It’s seemin’ that we’re all in agreement here. Ye’re deservin’ of a wish, be it a weapon or a suit o’ mithral or a tub o’ beer, as I can order. If it’s a girl yer wantin’ for a dance or a dinner, well, that’s for her to agree, course, and if it’s for the two o’ them Fellhammers, then I’m thinking their Da might have a word with ye.”

That brought more laughter, and even Bruenor joined in this time.

“But the wish is yers to ask and ourn to grant,” King Emerus proclaimed. “Ye name it. Moradin’s blessed ye and who’re ourselfs to argue?”

The smile left Bruenor’s face in the blink of an eye at that, replaced by a frozen expression as he tried to hide his grimace. Emerus’s words, “Moradin’s blessed ye,” bounced around in his head with the force of a giant-hurled boulder, assaulting his sensibilities, reminding him of the futility, the sad joke, that was the reality of Little Arr Arr.

A roiling anger twisted his belly and stabbed at his heart. Moradin’s blessed ye? It was all Bruenor could do to keep from cursing Moradin in front of all of them, then and there!

“Reginald?” King Emerus asked, and Bruenor only then realized that a long while had passed. He looked up from the king to the gathering, to Uween, then to Ragged Dain and Ognun and the others of the battle group, including Fist and Fury, standing side-by-side and smiling widely at him, their eyes sparkling with anticipation.

He looked at Parson Glaive and wanted nothing more than to run over and dress the priest down, to tell him that it was all a joke, that Moradin played with them and ridiculed them, and laughed at their victories and failures equally!

But he didn’t.

And he knew what he wanted, above all: to be back in Iruladoon to bid farewell to Catti-brie, Regis, and Wulfgar, to enter the pool and go to his earned rewards in Dwarfhome.

But King Emerus couldn’t give that to him, and so another notion came to him suddenly.

“To go to Mithral Hall,” he said. “That’s me wish.”

King Emerus was smiling widely, and started to respond, but caught himself as he clearly digested the young dwarf’s demand, and just stared blankly at the hero of the night. The gathering in the hall around them went silent, with many shoulders lifting in a shrug.

“Mithral Hall?” the king asked.

“Aye,” Bruenor confirmed, and just to break the confusion, for indeed it was a surprising request, he added, “and a keg o’ this,” and held led them at a great pace o hesitatedon up his mug of Gutbuster.

That was what the gathering had expected to hear, of course, and their confusion flew away in the burst of a great cheer.

“Two wishes, then!” King Emerus declared. “And so it will be!” And the crowd cheered more, except for the Fellhammer sisters, Bruenor noted, who both seemed a bit disappointed.

Bruenor continued to smile, and took a hefty gulp of Gutbuster, but it was all for show, designed to keep up the charade of his feigned identity. He was truly looking back inside his own thoughts, and weighing the emotional cost of fulfilling his request to return to Mithral Hall, where he had twice been king.

His gut had told him to return there, but he wasn’t quite sure why.

Spring came on in full and turned to summer, but Bruenor did not get his wish in those seasons, or in that year at all. Parson Glaive overruled him, insisting that the young dwarf’s injuries were too severe for him to make that always-dangerous and burdensome trip. Bruenor wanted to argue; now that he had proclaimed his plan to return to Mithral Hall, his desire to be on with it had only grown. But he could not, for Parson Glaive had told him, and told King Emerus, that Reginald could well prove a liability on such a trip.

And so King Emerus had counseled patience, and Bruenor had agreed without complaint.

In truth, what did a few months, even a year, matter?

So he focused on getting healthy and strong once more, and was back to training by the end of the summer. He spent as much time as he could with Uween, as well, for her presence at the gathering had taught him something important: Perhaps he would never see himself as her son, as a Roundshield of Felbarr, but poor Uween could never see him as anything but. He had a responsibility to her, owed a debt to her, and he would not forsake it. For all of his anger at Moradin and the other gods, he would not show hostility or indifference to this dwarf woman who had offered him nothing but the unconditional love of a parent.

By the turn of the winter of the Year of the Dark Circle, though, the darkness began to descend upon Bruenor once more, and when came the turn of Dalereckoning 1479, the Year of the Ageless One, the red-bearded dwarf’s patience had fully run out.

Day after day, he prodded his elders on when the first caravan out from Citadel Felbarr to Mithral Hall would commence, and he confronted Parson Glaive many times to ensure that the priest would not reverse his recent determination that Reginald was ready for the road.

In his whole life, this one and the previous, Bruenor had never felt himself more ready for the road.

He knew that he was becoming more and more testy, his patience long gone. Fist and Fury began avoiding him.

In a sparring match one day early in the second month, Alturiak, Bruenor nearly split the skull of his opponent, so hard was his chop with his practice weapon.

“Ah, but that’s enough of ye,” Ragged Dain said a short while later, coming into the training grounds all red in the face, eyes wide and lips full of froth. He moved to the weapons rack and grabbed out a wooden axe, then stormed over to Bruenor.

“Yerself and me, then,” he said.

“My session is done,” Bruenor replied, and he turned away-and Ragged Dain whacked him across the back, sending him into a forward?” she asked5N3 treasureesto stagger.

Bruenor straightened and took a deep breath. He noted all the other warriors moving to the side of the room, staring at him. He slowly turned around to face Ragged Dain.

“Come on, then,” the old veteran demanded.

Bruenor held his hands out wide, as if to ask why.

“Ye been grumpin’ and spittin’ and kickin’ all the year!” Ragged Dain said. “Ye so durned determined to get out o’ here, are ye?” Bruenor e would love t