R Salvatore: Gauntlgrym

Jessa looked at him curiously, even incredulously. “You’re so calm,” she said. “You spend too much of your life in your books and scrolls, and not nearly enough time looking into the faces of those around you.”

Nanfoodle looked at her with a curious expression.

“How can you be so calm?” Jessa asked. “Don’t you realize what you’ve just done?”

“I did only as I was ordered to do,” Nanfoodle protested, not catching on to the gravity in her voice.

Jessa started to scold him again, meaning to school him on the weight of feelings, to remind him that not all the world could be described by logical theorems, that other factors had to be considered, but a commotion to the side, the scraping of metal on stone, stole her words.

“What?” Nanfoodle, slurping his stew, asked as she rose to her feet.

“What was ye ordered to do?” came the gruff voice of Thibbledorf Pwent, and Nanfoodle spun around just as the battlerager, arrayed in full armor, squeezed out from between the boulders, metal ridges screeching against the stone. “Aye, and be sure that meself’s wonderin’ who it was what’s orderin’ ye!” He ended by punching one metal-gloved fist into the other. “And don’t be doubtin’ that I’m meanin’ to find out, ye little rat.”

He advanced and Nanfoodle retreated, dropping the bowl of stew to the ground.

“Ye got nowhere to run, neither of ye,” Pwent assured them as he continued his advance. “Me legs’re long enough to chase ye, and me anger’s more’n enough to catch ye!”

“What is this?” Jessa demanded, but Pwent fixed her with a hateful glare.

“Ye’re still alive only because ye might have something I need to hear,” the vicious dwarf explained. “And if ye’re not yapping words that make me smile, know that ye’ll be finding a seat.” As he finished, he pointed at the large spike protruding from the top of his helm. And Jessa knew full well that more than one orc had shuddered through its death throes impaled on that spike.

“Pwent, no!” Nanfoodle yelped, holding his hands up before him, motioning the dwarf to stop his steady approach. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I’m knowin’ more than ye think I’m knowin’,” the battlerager promised. “Been in yer workshop, gnome.”

Nanfoodle held up his hands. “I told King Banak that I would be leaving.”

“Ye was leaving afore King Bruenor died,” Pwent accused. “Ye had yer bag all packed for the road.”

“Well, yes, I have been considering it for a-”

“All packed up and tucked right under the bench of poison ye brewed for me king!” Pwent yelled, and he leaped forward at Nanfoodle, who was nimble enough to skitter around the side of another stone, just out of Pwent’s murderous grasp.

“Pwent, no!” Nanfoodle yelled.

Jessa moved to intervene, but Pwent turned on her, balling his fists, which brought forth the retractable hand spikes from their sheaths on the backs of his gloves. “How much did ye pay the rat, ye dog’s arse-end?” he demanded.

Jessa kept retreating, but when her back came against a stone, when she ran out of room, the orc’s demeanor changed immediately, and she snarled right back at Pwent as she drew forth a slender iron wand. “One more step…” she warned, taking aim.

“Pwent, no! Jessa, no!” Nanfoodle yelped.

“Got a big burst o’ magic in that puny wand, do ye?” Pwent asked, unconcerned. “Good for ye, then. It’ll just make me angrier, which’ll make me hit ye all the harder!”

On he came, or started to. Jessa began her incantation, aiming her explosive wand at the dwarf’s dirty face, but then both paused and Nanfoodle’s next shout caught in his throat as the sound of sweet bells filled the air, joyously tinkling and ringing.

“Oh, but now ye’re goin’ to get yers,” Pwent said with a sly grin, for he knew those bells. Everyone in Mithral Hall knew the bells of Drizzt Do’Urden’s magical unicorn.

Slender and graceful, but with lines of powerful muscles rippling along his shimmering white coat, ivory horn tipped with a golden point, blue eyes piercing the daylight as if mocking the sun itself, bell-covered barding announcing the arrival in joyous notes, Andahar trotted up to the edge of the boulder tumble and stomped the ground with his mighty hoof.

“Good ye come, elf!” Pwent yelled to Drizzt, who sat staring at him with his jaw hanging open. “Was just about to put me fist into-”

How Thibbledorf Pwent jumped back when he turned to regard Jessa and found himself confronted by six hundred pounds of snarling black panther!

And how he jumped again when he caught his balance, just in time to see Bruenor Battlehammer hop down from his seat on the unicorn just behind Drizzt.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Bruenor demanded, looking to Nanfoodle.

The little gnome could only shrug helplessly in reply.

“Me… king?” Pwent stammered. “Me king! Can it be me king? Me king!”

“Oh, by the pinch o’ Moradin’s bum,” Bruenor lamented. “What’re ye doing out here, ye durned fool? Ye’re supposed to be by King Banak’s side.”

“Not to be King Banak,” Pwent protested. “Not with King Bruenor alive and breathin’!”

Bruenor stormed up to the battlerager and put his nose right against Pwent’s. “Now ye hear me good, dwarf, and don’t ye never make that mistake again. King Bruenor ain’t no more. King Bruenor’s for the ages, and King Banak’s got Mithral Hall!”

“But… but… but me king,” Pwent replied. “But ye’re not dead!”

Bruenor sighed.

Behind him, Drizzt lifted his leg over the saddle and gracefully slid down to the ground. He patted Andahar’s strong neck, then lifted a unicorn-fashioned charm hanging on a silver chain around his neck and gently blew into the hollow horn, releasing the steed from his call.

Andahar rose up on his hind legs, front hoofs slashing the air, and whinnied loudly then thundered away. With each stride, the horse somehow seemed as if he had covered a tremendous amount of ground, for he became half his size with a single stride, and half again with the next, and so on, until he was seen no more, though the air in his wake rippled with waves of magical energy.

By that time, Pwent had composed himself somewhat, and he stood strong before Bruenor, hands on hips. “Ye was dead, me king,” he declared. “I seen ye dead, I smelled ye dead. Ye was dead.”

“I had to be dead,” Bruenor replied, and he, too, squared up and put his hands on his hips. Once more pressing his nose against Pwent’s, he added very slowly and deliberately, “So I could get meself gone.”

“Gone?” Pwent echoed, and he looked to Drizzt, who offered no hint, just a grin that showed he was enjoying the spectacle more than he should. Then Pwent looked to Nanfoodle, who merely shrugged. And he looked past the panther, Guenhwyvar, to Jessa, who laughed at him teasingly and waved her wand.

“Oh, but yer thick skull’s making Dumathoin’s task a bit easier, ain’t it?” Bruenor scolded, referring to the dwarf god known more commonly as the Keeper of Secrets under the Mountain.

Pwent scoffed, for the oft-heard remark was a rather impolite way of one dwarf calling another dwarf dumb.

“Ye was dead,” the battlerager said.

“Aye, and ’twas the little one there what killed me.”

“The poison,” Nanfoodle explained. “Deadly, yes, but not in correct doses. As I used it, it just made Bruenor look dead, quite dead, to all but the cleverest priests-and those priests knew what we were doing.”

“So ye could run away?” Pwent asked Bruenor as it started to come clear.

“So I could give Banak the throne proper, and not have him stand as just a steward, with all the clan waiting for me return. Because there won’t be a return. Been done many the time before, Pwent. Suren ’tis a secret among the dwarf kings, a way to find the road to finish yer days when ye’ve done all the ruling ye might do. Me great-great-great-grandfather did the same, and it’s been done in Adbar, too, by two kings I know tell of. And there’re more, don’t ye doubt, or I’m a bearded gnome.”