R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

They gathered around their campfire and Drizzt called in Guenhwyvar and set her off to make sure they were alone.

“Should I warn her of your associates?” Drizzt asked.

“I came out alone and dare not remain long,” Beniago replied. He looked around into the darkness, again seeming nervous. “I only came here because of your … mutual friendship with one of my associates.”

“Jarl-?” Drizzt started to ask, but Beniago held up his hand, as if he didn’t want the name spoken aloud. Only then did Drizzt begin to fathom the gravity of the meeting.

“The one you seek is not in Luskan,” Beniago explained, his voice going even quieter. “I doubt he will ever return. Nor should you go in there. Nor should you ever mention, to anyone, that you have traveled with Braelin. For his sake, I beg of you.”

The surprising request, and the even more surprising humility from one who was High Captain of Ship Kurth, and thus, the nearest thing Luskan had to a ruler, set Drizzt back in his seat.

“Eat,” Wulfgar offered, holding forth a bowl of stew, but Beniago shook his head and rose up.

“Fare well, wherever you travel.”

“We’re headin’ for-” Bruenor started to say, but Beniago cut him short with an emphatic wave. The red-haired man bowed then, and disappeared into the night.

“Well, that was interesting,” said Bruenor when he was gone.

Regis looked at Drizzt.

“Tiago Baenre,” Drizzt remarked, his voice still a whisper, and the halfling nodded, and Catti-brie said, “Oh,” and also nodded, apparently catching on.

“What’re ye huffing about?” Bruenor demanded.

“I would guess more trouble has followed in Drizzt’s wake than the demon fight at Bryn Shander’s gate,” said Regis.

“Demon fight?” Bruenor asked.

Wulfgar gave a laugh. “Such a simple life I left behind,” he lamented.

“So Entreri’s been by here and Jarlaxle is gone and won’t return,” said Catti-brie. “You said he had a secret way into Gauntlgrym, but that is lost to us, I would expect.”

“I got me a map,” Bruenor said. “We’ll get there.”

“But not straightaway,” Drizzt said, looking at the woman who had once been his wife.

“Longsaddle,” Catti-brie agreed.

“Perhaps we should use our new names,” Regis suggested. “And find an alias for Drizzt.”

“No!” Bruenor insisted and stamped his boot. “Carried that name too long already.”

“Someone’s hunting-”

“Then let ’em come,” said the dwarf, and he was no longer whispering. “Me name’s King Bruenor to any who’re askin’, and King Bruenor to any who ain’t.”

“How much can we trust this Beniago?” Wulfgar asked, and when Drizzt gave him a noncommittal look, the giant barbarian stood up, began re-rolling his bedroll, and packing up the wagon.

They set off soon after, heading east across the fields. Barely into the journey, Bruenor began to sing, a mournful song of loss and a grandeur and era that could not be again, the Delzoun song of Gauntlgrym.

There was no moon this night, and no clouds, and a million stars twinkled in the clear skies above, and the gray swirl of a distant galaxy-clouds in one of the overlapping celestial spheres, Regis named them-striped the sky directly above. It was one of those nights when the heavens seemed to reach down to the earth itself, lifting up the soul and the imagination, much as Drizzt had known in the quiet dark atop Bruenor’s Climb on Kelvin’s Cairn.

It was a night where the rogue drow felt tiny, and yet grand, a part of something ancient, eternal, and as vast as his imagination and as warm as the love among these five friends surrounding him in the wagon, even Guenhwyvar, for he could not bring himself to dismiss her back to her Astral home.

Indeed, on a night such as this, in a night such as this, it seemed to Drizzt as if Guenhwyvar’s home had come to them.

Yes, it was good to be home, Drizzt decided.

And this, a rolling wagon bouncing across the farmlands east of Luskan, was home, because home wasn’t a place, oh no, but a bond, and one that had never seemed stronger.

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 …