Robert Salvatore: The Spine of the World

"Please, friend," stammered the man Wulfgar held aloft.

"Shut up!" the barbarian roared, bringing his arm down forcefully, bending his head and snapping his powerful neck muscles so that his forehead collided hard with the thug's face.

A primal rage boiled within the barbarian, an anger that went beyond this incident, beyond the attempted mugging. No longer was he standing on a dock in Luskan. Now he was back in the Abyss, in Errtu's lair, a tormented prisoner of the wicked demon. Now this man was one of the great demon's minions, the pincer-armed Glabrezu, or worse, the tempting succubus. Wulfgar was back there fully, seeing the gray smoke, smelling the foul stench, feeling the sting of whips and fires, the pincers on his throat, the cold kiss of the demoness.

So clear it came to him! So vivid! The waking nightmare returned, holding him in a grip of the sheerest rage, stifling his mercy or compassion, throwing him into the pits of torment, emotional and physical torture. He felt the itching and burning of those little centipedes that Errtu used, burrowing under his skin and crawling inside him, their venomous pincers lighting a thousand fires within. They were on him and in him, all over him, their little legs tickling and exciting his nerves so that he would feel the exquisite agony of their burning venom all the more.

Tormented again, indeed, but suddenly and unexpectedly, Wulfgar found that he was no longer helpless.

Up into the air went the thug, Wulfgar effortlessly hoisting him overhead, though the man weighed well over two hundred pounds. With a primal roar, a scream torn from his churning gut, the barbarian spun him about toward the open sea.

"I cannot swim!" the man shrieked. Arms and legs flailing pitifully, he hit the water fully fifteen feet from the wharf, where he splashed and bobbed, crying out for help. Wulfgar turned away. If he heard the man at all, he showed no indication.

Morik eyed the barbarian with some surprise. "He can't swim," Morik remarked as Wulfgar approached.

"Good time to learn, then," the barbarian muttered coldly, his thoughts still whirling down the smoky corridors of Errtu's vast dungeon. He kept brushing his hands along his arms and legs as he spoke, slapping away the imagined centipedes.

Morik shrugged. He looked down to the man who was squirming and crying on the planks at his feet. "Can you swim?"

The thug glanced up timidly at the little rogue and gave a slight, hopeful nod.

"Then go to your friend," Morik instructed. The man started to slowly crawl away.

"I fear his friend will be dead before he gets to his side," Morik remarked to Wulfgar. The barbarian didn't seem to hear him.

"Oh, do help the wretch," Morik sighed, grabbing Wulfgar by the arm and forcing that vacant gaze to focus. "For me. I would hate to start a night with a death on our hands."

With a sigh of his own, Wulfgar reached out his mighty hands. The thug on his knees suddenly found himself rising from the decking, one hand holding the back of his breeches, another clamped about his collar. Wulfgar took three running strides and hurled the man long and high. The flying thug cleared his splashing companion, landing nearby with a tremendous belly smack.

Wulfgar didn't see him land. Having lost all interest in the scene, he turned about and, after mentally recalling Aegis-fang to his grasp, stormed past Morik, who bowed in deference to his dangerous and powerful friend.

Morik caught up to Wulfgar as the barbarian exited the wharf. "They are still scrambling in the water," the rogue remarked. "The fat one, he keeps foolishly grabbing his friend, pulling them both underwater. Perhaps they will both drown."

Wulfgar didn't seem to care, and that was an honest reflection of his heart, Morik knew. The rogue gave one last look back at the harbor, then merely shrugged. The two thugs had brought it on themselves, after all.

Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, was not one to be toyed with.

So Morik, too, put them out of his mind-not that he was ever really concerned-and focused instead on his companion. His surprising companion, who had learned to fight at the training of a drow elf, of all things!

Morik winced, though, of course, Wulfgar was too distracted to catch it. The rogue thought of another drow, a visitor who had come unexpectedly to him not so long ago, bidding him to keep a watchful eye on Wulfgar and paying him in advance for his is services (and not-so-subtly explaining that if Morik failed in the «requested» task, the dark elf's master would not be pleased). Morik hadn't heard from the dark elves again, to his relief, but still he kept to his end of the agreement to watch over Wulfgar.

No, that wasn't it, the rogue had to admit, at least to himself. He had started his relationship with Wulfgar for purely personal gain, partly out of fear of the drow, partly out of fear of Wulfgar and a desire to learn more about this man who had so obviously become his rival on the street. That had been in the beginning. He no longer feared Wulfgar, though he did sometimes fear for the deeply troubled, haunted man. Morik hardly ever thought about the drow elves, who had not come around in weeks and weeks. Surprisingly, Morik had come to like Wulfgar, had come to enjoy the man's company despite the many times when surliness dominated the barbarian's demeanor.

He almost told Wulfgar about the visit from the drow elves then, out of some basic desire to warn this man who had become his friend. Almost. . but the practical side of Morik, the cautious pragmatism that allowed him to stay alive in such a hostile environment as Luskan's streets, reminded him that to do so would do no one good. If the dark elves came for Wulfgar, whether Wulfgar expected them or not, the barbarian would be defeated. These were drow elves, after all, wielders of mighty magic and the finest of blades, elves who could walk uninvited into Morik's bedroom and rouse him from his slumber. Even Wulfgar had to sleep. If those dark elves, after they were finished with poor Wulfgar, ever learned that Morik had betrayed them. .

A shudder coursed along Morik's spine, and he forcefully shook the unsettling thoughts away, turning his attention back to his large friend. Oddly, Morik saw a kindred spirit here, a man who could be (and indeed had been) a noble and mighty warrior, a leader among men, but who, for one reason or another, had fallen from grace.

Such was the way Morik viewed his own situation, though in truth, he had been on a course to his present position since his early childhood. Still, if only his mother hadn't died in childbirth, if only his father hadn't abandoned him to the streets. .

Looking at Wulfgar now, Morik couldn't help but think of the man he himself might have become, of the man Wulfgar had been. Circumstance had damned them both, to Morik's thinking, and so he held no illusions about their relationship now. The truth of his bond to Wulfgar-the real reason he stayed so close to him-despite all his sensibilities (the barbarian was being watched by dark elves, after all!), was that he regarded the barbarian as he might a younger brother.

That, and the fact that Wulfgar's friendship brought him more respect among the rabble. For Morik, there always had to be a practical reason.

The day neared its end, the night its beginning, the time of Morik and Wulfgar, the time of Luskan's street life.

In my homeland of Menzoberranzan, where demons play and drow revel at the horrible demise of rivals, there remains a state of necessary alertness and wariness. A drow off-guard is a drow murdered in Menzoberranzan, and thus few are the times when dark elves engage in exotic weeds or drinks that dull the senses.

Few, but there are exceptions. At the final ceremony of Melee-Magthere, the school of fighters that I attended, graduated students engage in an orgy of mind-blurring herbs and sensual pleasures with the females of Arach-Tinilith, a moment of the purest hedonism, a party of the purest pleasures without regard to future implications.