R. Salvatore: The Companions

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.”

The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Luskan

The small figure in the gray traveling cloak leaned low against the rain as he slowly walked his dark bay pony toward the distant gates of the City of Sails. Spider hadn’t looked back over the miles of road since he had split with the Grinning Ponies, with Doregardo taking the band back to their usual haunts in the south. His road lay before him now, he continually reminded himself, resisting the urge to turn around and ride hard to catch up with his fellow riders.

So much had he left behind him in the years of this young second life … friends, including a very special one in Delthuntle, friends along the Trade Way … He would see them all again, he vowed. But now his road lay before him, not behind.

“Speak your name and your business!” a guard called down from a squat tower beside Luskan’s closed southern gate.

The halfling looked up and pulled the hood of his cloak back, revealing his blue beret, which he wore slightly off kilter to the left and now fastened flat in the front with a golden button shaped like a running pony. His curly brown hair, wet with drizzle, hung to his shoulders and he had grown a thin mustache and a goathat playthings we be,”, I all the louderes10ee that was little more than a line of hair from his bottom lip to the middle of his chin, so similar to the one his mentor, Pericolo Topolino, had worn.

“Spider Topolino,” he replied without hesitation, without even the urge to call himself Regis, a name he had long abandoned, “who rode with Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies.”

The guard’s eyes widened at that, just for a moment, and he looked back and whispered to someone unseen behind him.

“Never heard of them,” he said, turning back to Spider.

The halfling vigilante shrugged, hardly believing the man and hardly caring.

“And your business?” the guard demanded.

“Passing through,” said Spider, “to the north. I’ve family in Lonelywood, in Ten-Towns. The last caravans of the season will be leaving soon, I expect.” From his past life, he knew the schedule here well enough to know that he was speaking the truth, for the eighth month, Eliasis, of 1483 had just begun, and the pass through the Spine of the World was often closed by snows before the end of the ninth month. He should have come to Luskan a couple of tendays earlier, perhaps, but leaving the Grinning Ponies had proven a difficult thing. He had left two full lives behind, both that he had come to love, and now approached a third existence, and one he could only hope would prove no less full of such love and friendship.

“And you’ve the gold to get a caravan to carry you?” the guard asked, a bit too slyly for Spider’s liking.

“Since I wish to travel north in any case, it is my expectation that the merchants will have the gold to afford my company,” Spider answered.

The guard gave him a skeptical look.

“Pray open your gate,” Spider said. “This rain has gone to the bone, I fear, and I would dearly love to find a warm hearth and a fine meal before retiring.”

The guard hesitated and looked down on him from above. The halfling sat up straighter and loosened his cloak a bit, shifting his left arm so that the covering fell back behind his hip, thus revealing his rapier in all its bejeweled glory. Clever Spider made sure to turn his pony a bit to the right to afford the guard a good view.

The man finally glanced back and said something Spider could not hear, and the gates began to creak open soon after.

Spider Pericolo Topolino sat up very straight as he walked his pony through, his cloak off his left shoulder, his left arm hanging easily at his side while he guided his mount with his right hand alone. He tried to project an air of confidence-competence was the best deterrent against would-be robbers and murderers, after all.

As far as he could tell at first blush, and from the information he had garnered over the last months riding in the south, the city had changed very much for the worse in the century since he’d last been here. Luskan was still ruled by five High Captains and their respective “Ships,” pirates and cutthroats all, and thoroughly unpleasant sorts. She was a city of scurvy vagabonds, where a body lying on the side of the road was not an uncommon sight.

Spider could see the masts of the many boats in the harbor over to his left. Most would be sailing for the south soon enough, likely, and so their crews might be willing to take greater risks within Luskan, figuring that they would be out of port before the magistrates could catch up!” Bruenor warned.5N3 the kingon to them.

With that thought in mind, Spider moved along the right-hand, eastern lanes, the inland sections, staying in sight of the eastern wall as he made his way toward the city’s northern gate. Much of Luskan lay in ruins now, and when he came in sight of the Upstream Span crossing the River Mirar to the city’s north gate, he saw that the bridges, too, were in heavy disrepair, so much so that he had to wonder if caravans even left from Luskan any longer, bound across the river to the north.