The Companions

CHAPTER 25

The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Gauntlgrym

With all the stubbornness of a dwarf, Bruenor ignored the reaching monsters and fought against the press of the boot, driving himself with every ounce of his strength toward the many-notched axe. If he could just get his hand around it …

But he could not, and he let out a little grunt as the boot crushed down harder, pressing him with supernatural strength, grinding his arm into the stone. Clawed hands tore at his clothing and skin, and the otherworldly shrieks of hungry undead dark elves echoed off the cavern walls.

“Get ye back!” Bruenor heard, and the gruff voice and accent gave him pause. The hands stopped clawing at him then, but the boot held him fast. He managed to turn enough to get a glimpse of his captor, and he gasped in shock and was too numb from that shock to resist as a thick hand{font-size: 0.75rem;Ieshis opponent no less reached down and grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him roughly, and so very easily, to his feet.

“Ye’re breathin’ still only because ye’re a dwarf, thief, but know that ye’re not long to be breathin’!” the vampire, an undead dwarf in ridged armor, said. “I’m wantin’ ye to know the grave ye’re robbing afore I break yer neck.”

“The cairn of King Bruenor,” Bruenor breathed, and he added, his voice thin from absolute shock, “Pwent.”

The vampire gave him a quick shake, so roughly that it rattled his bones. “What’d ye call me?”

“Pwent … oh, me Pwent, what’ve ye become then?”

The vampire dwarf, Thibbledorf Pwent, stared hard at this young dwarf, looking him up and down, then settling on his eyes. They locked gazes and stared silently through many heartbeats-heartbeats from Bruenor, and not from the dead battlerager.

“Me king?” Thibbledorf Pwent asked. He let go of Bruenor’s collar then, his hand visibly trembling as he retracted it. “Me king?”

All around, the drow vampires hissed and shuffled uneasily, clearly wanting to leap back in at the living dwarf and tear him apart.

“Bah! Get ye gone!” Pwent demanded, shouting at them and waving his arm menacingly. The group retreated into the darkness, falling back, hissing in protest, and soon falling on Bruenor’s three companions to feast on their still-warm blood.

“What are ye doing?” Bruenor asked incredulously, looking around in obvious horror. “Pwent, what-?”

“Ye died pulling the lever,” Pwent replied, and there seemed to Bruenor to be a bit of resentment in his tone. “Meself did’no. Aye, but that damned vampire friend o’ Dahlia’s got me on the neck and put his curse into me.”

“A vampire,” Bruenor muttered, trying to piece it all together, trying to make some sense of this craziness. Pwent was a vampire haunting the halls of Gauntlgrym, and with a drow troupe in support? “Pwent,” he said with sympathy and concern and clear confusion, “what are ye doing?”

“A pack of damned drow took home in this place,” the battlerager answered. His face turned into a fierce scowl and he issued a feral snarl, and Bruenor feared for a moment that Pwent would fall over him in murderous rage-and Bruenor knew in his heart that such fear was not unfounded. Thibbledorf Pwent was on the edge; the struggle showed clearly in his dead eyes.

“I’m holdin’ ’em. I’m fightin’ ’em!” Pwent said. “Aye, but that’s all I got left, me king. All that’s left o’ Pwent. And suren that it’s a sweet taste when I get me fangs in their skinny necks, don’t ye doubt. Aye, but that’s the joy, me king!”

As he said it, he advanced a step and flashed his elongated canines, and for a moment, Bruenor again expected him to leap for his king’s throat!

But Pwent pulled back, obviously with great effort.

“I’m yer king,” Bruenor stated. “I’m yer friend. E’er been yer friend, and yerself me own.”

The vampire managed a nod. “If ye was me friend, ye’d kill me, looked at her curiously. o holding im” he said. “Ah, but ye cannot, and I’m not about to let ye.” He glanced down at the cairn and kicked at it, and with his great strength sent a pile of large stones bouncing away.

Bruenor looked upon his own corpse, upon his many-notched axe, surviving the decades intact as if nary a day had passed. He noted his old armor, fit for a king, and a buckler set with the foaming mug of Clan Battlehammer, a shield that had turned the blows of a thousand enemies. He stared at the skull, at his skull, grayish white with flecks of discolored dried skin, and so shocking was the realization that he was looking at his own rotting head that it took Bruenor a long while to realize that his one-horned helm was missing. He tried to remember where he had lost it. Had it fallen into the primordial pit when he and Pwent had dragged themselves across the chasm, perhaps?

It didn’t matter, he tried to tell himself.

“Tried to kill meself,” Pwent went on, clearly oblivious to Bruenor’s inner turmoil. “Thought I could, ah, but when the sunlight came into that cave and burned at me … I runned off. Runned down here into the dark. Runned into the madness, I did, but meself’s not surrendering, me king. I be fightin’!”

Bruenor eased his trusty old weapon from the skeletal grip.

“But me king?” Pwent asked suddenly, and from the tone, Bruenor understood what was coming next.

“H-how?” Pwent stuttered. “Ye can’t be!”

Bruenor turned to regard his old friend. “Ah, but I be, and that’s the durned part of it. I got a tale to tell, me old friend, but it’s one that’s as dark as yer own, I’m fearin’.” As he finished, he looked at the throne of Gauntlgrym, the conduit to divine power that had so forcefully rejected him. He had come here all full of hope, and with renewed faith in Moradin, and admiration in the dwarf god’s clever ruse to use Mielikki.

But now, after the rejection, Bruenor didn’t know what to think.

“Help me get me armor and me shield,” Bruenor said.

Thibbledorf Pwent looked at him skeptically.

“It’s meself, ye dolt, and I don’t think I’ve seen such a look from ye since Nanfoodle poisoned me so’s I could get meself out o’ Mithral Hall.”

Pwent blinked in shock, sorting out the words. “Me king,” he said, nodding, and he moved to help Bruenor with the corpse.

As he donned his old outfit, Bruenor told Pwent the tale of Iruladoon, of the promise to Mielikki and the assigned rendezvous atop Kelvin’s Cairn. It occurred to him that the vampire wasn’t interjecting much, as he would have expected from Thibbledorf Pwent, who always had an opinion to share, but it wasn’t until he looked closely at his old friend that he understood the truth of it: Pwent wasn’t even really listening. Indeed, the way in which Pwent regarded Bruenor at that moment warned Bruenor that the vampire was struggling even then against the urges of his affliction. Bruenor could see that Pwent was thirsty for blood, any blood, even Bruenor’s blood.

“So now ye’re here killin’ drow, eh?” Bruenor said sharply to distract him.

“Aye, but not much killin’ now that them below’re knowin’ o’ me,” Pwent replied. “Got me a fewline-height: Ilisteningon, as ye seen, and a few more killed to death, but most o’ me time’s in th’upper halls now and not near the Forge and them damned drow elfs.”

“The Forge?”

“Aye, they be usin’ it.”

Bruenor winced at the thought of the Forge of Gauntlgrym, among the most hallowed workshops in his Delzoun heritage, in the hands of dark elves.

“Ye should be going,” Pwent said, and he seemed to be struggling with every word. “I failed ye, me king, don’t ye make me fail ye more.”