R. Salvatore: Night of the Hunter

“They are all gone now?” Regis asked somberly.

Wulfgar nodded and looked back out at the lake, but his expression was not one of loss or sadness, or even resignation. “To Warrior’s Rest, so I must believe. And if that promise holds truth, then there they will be when I am no more again, when the road of my grave is straight to the halls. What are a few decades of delay against the hopes of the eternity of godly reward?”

“If?” Regis said, picking up on that curious reference. They had all been dead, of course, and through the power of a goddess had returned to life. Could there be any doubt for any of them now regarding an afterlife?

He studied Wulfgar carefully as the big man shrugged and answered, “I do not know what lies on the other side of the cave beneath the waters of the pond, any more than I knew the reality of life after death before my journey to that strange forest.”

“Yet you died and went there, by the power of a goddess.”

“Perhaps.”

Regis stared at him incredulously.

“Who can know the truth of it?” Wulfgar asked. “Perhaps it is all a wizard’s trick, yes? A magical weave of deception to twist us and turn us to his desires.”

“You cannot believe that!”

Wulfgar laughed, took a deep draw, and almost managed a smoke ring-and one accompanied by only a minor fit of coughing.

“It does not matter,” Wulfgar said absently. “And only when I came to appreciate that truth, that I could not know the end of the road through the cave at the bottom of Iruladoon’s pond …” He paused again and seemed to be fighting for the right words. It seemed to Regis that his friend had found an epiphany beyond his ability to explain it.

“Whatever the gods have planned for me after I am truly and fully dead is theirs to determine,” Wulfgar went on. “Only when I came to truly appreciate that was I able to stop asking myself what Tempus wanted from me.”

“And ask instead what course was best for you,” Regis finished for him.

Wulfgar looked down at him and smiled once more. “What an ungrateful son I would be, what a foul friend indeed, had I gone through the other way and dived into that pond.”

“None of us would have judged you.”

Wulfgar’s expression reflected sincerity as he nodded his agreement. “Yet more confirmation that I was right to return,” he said, and his next smoke ring actually looked like a ring.

Regis wasted no time in sending a smaller ring right through it.

“I wasn’t coming,” Bruenor admitted to Catti-brie and Drizzt. Catti-brie sat by the drow’s bed as Drizzt leaned back, half-sitting, half-lying, still weak from his wounds. The dwarf shook his hairy head-his beard was growing in thick once more-and paced around the small room as if it were a cage.

The admission didn’t really shake Drizzt, but he noted the surprise on Catti-brie’s face.

“Reginald Roundshield, Guard Captain o’ King Emerus himself, at yer service!” Bruenor said with an almost-graceful bow.

“It’s an incredible tale,” Drizzt replied, shaking his head and considering the adventures his four friends had shared with him in the last couple of days. Regis had taken center stage in those bardic games, and if only a portion of what the halfling had claimed was true, then he had lived a thrilling second life indeed. “You, all of you, lived as children of others, and with full recollection of your life before. I can hardly believe it, though I do not doubt you.”

“Knocked me brains about near to batty. Aye, took me to the drink, it did!” Bruenor said with an exaggerated wink.

“King Emerus,” Drizzt mused. “Citadel Felbarr?”

“Aye, the same.”

“And how fares the good king?”

Bruenor shrugged. “All the land’s on edge. And all the land’s smellin’ with the stench o’ orcs.”

“That is why you almost turned aside from your course here and your pledge to Mielikki,” Catti-brie reasoned, and once more, Drizzt noted a bit of surprise, and even a bit of annoyance, in her reaction to Bruenor’s claim.

Bruenor started to answer, but held back and seemed to Drizzt to be weighing his words very carefully. Uncharacteristically so.

“You just said-” Catti-brie prompted.

Bruenor waved a hand to silence her. “I came to fight for me friend, so let’s find the fight and be done with it.” He looked to Catti-brie as he finished, as if expecting her to lead them right out on the hunt.

“What fight?” Drizzt asked.

“Who can know?” Catti-brie answered, speaking to Bruenor, not Drizzt. “We have done as the goddess bade us. And had we not-”

“I would have died up there on Kelvin’s Cairn that night,” Drizzt interrupted. He took Catti-brie’s hand and she looked into his eyes and nodded. His wounds would have proven mortal, she had already told him, as she had explained that Mielikki had guided her and the others to that particular spot on that particular night.

“Then we’re done here, and I’ve a road to be walking!” Bruenor declared.

“You intend to leave us?” Drizzt asked.

“Oh, yerself’s coming with me, don’t ye doubt,” the dwarf replied. “Got something I need to fix-something yerself needs to fix with me.”

“Many-Arrows?”

“The same.”

Drizzt shook his head helplessly. “There is no war,” he said quietly. “Surely that is a good thing.”

“There’ll be war,” Bruenor argued. “Soon enough if it ain’t started already, don’t ye doubt! In me days with Felbarr, then with Mithral Hall-”

“You returned to Mithral Hall?” the other two asked in unison.

Bruenor stopped his pacing, finally, and took a deep and steadying breath. “Aye, but they’re not for knowin’ me as anything but Reginald Roundshield-Little Arr Arr, as Emerus’s boys called me. Spent the better part of ’79 there, and I’m tellin’ ye true. War’s coming to the Silver Marches, and coming soon if it ain’t already on.”

“You cannot know that,” Drizzt insisted. “It was averted before, and so it might be again.”

“No!” Bruenor shouted, and stamped his boot. “No more! Wrong I was in signing that damned treaty! Did nothin’ more than hold it off.”

“We had little choice.”

“We had every choice!” Bruenor came back, again loudly as he clearly grew more and more agitated. “I should’ve put me axe right through the skull o’ that stinkin’ Obould and been done with it! And Mithral Hall … aye, but we should’ve stood strong.”

“The other kingdoms refused to help!” Drizzt reminded.

“Stood strong!” Bruenor shouted, and stamped his boot again. “And they’d’ve come in, don’t ye doubt! And we’d’ve been done with Obould and his ugly orcs then and there.”

“With thousands killed on both sides.”

“No shame in dyin’ when ye’re killin’ orcs!”

The door pushed open and Regis and Wulfgar rushed in, looking around as if expecting to find a fight in progress.

“You took a chance,” Drizzt said, and he tried to calm his voice, though mostly unsuccessfully. “One that might reshape the relationship of the races to the orcs throughout the Realms, if the peace holds.”

“Maybe I ain’t wanting that.”

“You would prefer war?” Drizzt asked. He looked to Catti-brie for support, and was surprised by her stern expression-directed at him, not Bruenor. “King Obould offered us a different way,” Drizzt pushed on anyway. “We could not defeat him, not alone, perhaps not even if all the kingdoms of the Silver Marches had joined in with our cause, which they would not. The peace has held there, by all accounts.”

“I been there,” Bruenor muttered. “Not so peaceful.”

“But not war, either,” said Drizzt. “How many have been born, or have lived out their lives peacefully, who otherwise would have known only misery and death under the trample of armies?”