Robert Salvatore: The Orc King

For Catti-brie, the permeating cold seemed to forever settle on her injured hip and leg, and she hadn’t seen much improvement in her mobility. She could walk with a crutch, but even then every stride made her wince. Still she wouldn’t accept a chair with wheels, such as the one the dwarves had fashioned for the crippled Banak Brawnanvil, and she certainly wanted nothing to do with the contraption Nanfoodle had designed for her: a comfortable palanquin meant to be borne by four willing dwarves. Stubbornness aside, her injured hip would not support her weight very well, or for any length of time, and so Catti-brie had settled on the crutch.

For the last few days, she had loitered around the eastern edges of Mithral Hall, across Garumn’s Gorge from the main chambers, always asking for word of the orcs who had dug in just outside of Keeper’s Dale, or of Drizzt, who had at last been seen over the eastern fortifications, flying on a pegasus across the Surbrin beside Innovindil of the Moonwood.

Drizzt had left Mithral Hall with Catti-brie’s blessing those tendays before, but she missed him dearly on the long, dark nights of winter. It had surprised her when he hadn’t come directly back into the halls upon his return from the west, but she trusted his judgment. If something had compelled him to go on to the Moonwood, then it must have been a good reason.

“I got a hunnerd boys beggin’ me to let ’em carry ye,” Bruenor scolded her one day, when the pain in her hip was obviously flaring. She was back in the western chambers, in Bruenor’s private den, but had already informed her father that she would go back to the east, across the gorge. “Take the gnome’s chair, ye stubborn girl!”

“I have my own legs,” she insisted.

“Legs that ain’t healing, from what me eyes’re telling me.” He glanced across the hearth to Wulfgar, who reclined in a comfortable chair, staring into the orange flames. “What say ye, boy?”

Wulfgar looked at him blankly, obviously having no comprehension of the conversation between the dwarf and the woman.

“Ye heading out soon to find yer little one?” Bruenor asked. “With the melt?”

“Before the melt,” Wulfgar corrected. “Before the river swells.”

“A month, perhaps,” said Bruenor, and Wulfgar nodded.

“Before Tarsakh,” he said, referring to the fourth month of the year.

Catti-brie chewed her lip, understanding that Bruenor had initiated the discussion with Wulfgar for her benefit.

“Ye ain’t going with him with that leg, girl,” Bruenor stated. “Ye’re limpin’ about here and never giving the durned thing a chance at mending. Now take the gnome’s chair and let me boys carry ye about, and it might be—it just might be—that ye’ll be able to go with Wulfgar to find Colson, as ye planned and as ye started afore.”

Catti-brie looked from Bruenor to Wulfgar, and saw only the twisting orange flames reflected in the big man’s eyes. He seemed lost to them all, she noted, wound up too tightly in inner turmoil. His shoulders were bowed by the weight of guilt, to be sure, and the burden of grief, for he had lost his wife, Delly Curtie, who still lay dead under a blanket of snow on a northern field, as far as they knew.

Catti-brie was no less consumed by guilt over that loss, for it had been her sword, the evil and sentient Khazid’hea, that had overwhelmed Delly Curtie and sent her running out from the safety of Mithral Hall. Thankfully—they all believed—Delly hadn’t taken her and Wulfgar’s adopted child, the toddler girl, Colson, with her, but had instead deposited Colson with one of the other refugees from the northland, who had crossed the River Surbrin on one of the last ferries to leave before the onslaught of winter. Colson might be in the enchanted city of Silverymoon, or in Sundabar, or in any of a host of other communities, but they had no reason to believe that she had been harmed, or would be.

And Wulfgar meant to find her—it was one of the few declarations that held any fire of conviction that Catti-brie had heard the barbarian make in tendays. He would go to find Colson, and Catti-brie felt it was her duty as his friend to go with him. After they had been turned back by the storm, in no small part because of her infirmity, Catti-brie was even more determined to see the journey through.

Truly Catti-brie hoped that Drizzt would return before that departure day arrived, however. For the spring would surely bring tumult across the land, with a vast orc army entrenched all over the lands surrounding Mithral Hall, from the Spine of the World mountains to the north, to the banks of the Surbrin to the east, and to the passes just north of the Trollmoors in the south. The clouds of war roiled, and only winter had held back the swarms.

When that storm finally broke, Drizzt Do’Urden would be in the middle of it, and Catti-brie did not intend to be riding through the streets of some distant city on that dark day.

“Take the chair,” Bruenor said—or said again, it seemed, from his impatient tone.

Catti-brie blinked and looked back at him.

“I’ll be needin’ both o’ ye at me side, and soon enough,” Bruenor said. “If ye’re to be slowing Wulfgar down in this trip he’s needing to make, then ye’re not to be going.”

“The indignity….” Catti-brie said with a shake of her head.

But as she did that, she overbalanced just a bit on her crutch and lurched to the side. Her face twisted in a pained grimace as shooting pains like little fires rolled through her from her hip.

“Ye catched a giant-thrown boulder on yer leg,” Bruenor retorted. “Ain’t no indignity in that! Ye helped us hold the hall, and not a one o’ Clan Battlehammer’s thinking ye anything but a hero. Take the durned chair!”

“You really should,” came a voice from the door, and Catti-brie and Bruenor turned to see Regis the halfling enter the room.

His belly was round once again, his cheeks full and rosy. He wore suspenders, as he had of late, and hooked his thumbs under them as he walked, eliciting an air of importance. And truly, as absurd as Regis sometimes seemed, no one in the hall would deny that pride to the halfling who had served so well as Steward of Mithral Hall in the days of constant battle, when Bruenor had lain near death.

“A conspiracy, then?” Catti-brie remarked with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.

They needed to smile more, all of them, and particularly the man seated across from where she stood. She watched Wulfgar as she spoke, and knew that her words had not even registered with him. He just stared into the flames, truly looking inward. The expression on Wulfgar’s face, so utterly hopeless and lost, spoke truth to Catti-brie. She began to nod, and accepted her father’s offer. Friendship demanded of her that she do whatever she could to ensure that she would be well enough to accompany Wulfgar on his most important journey.

So it was a few days later, that when Drizzt Do’Urden entered Mithral Hall through the eastern door, open to the Surbrin, that Catti-brie spotted him and called to him from on high. “Your step is lighter,” she observed, and when Drizzt finally recognized her in her palanquin, carried on the shoulders of four strong dwarves, he offered her a laugh and a wide, wide smile.

“The Princess of Clan Battlehammer,” the drow said with a polite and mocking bow.

On Catti-brie’s orders, the dwarves placed her down and moved aside, and she had just managed to pull herself out of her chair and collect her crutch, when Drizzt crushed her in a tight and warm embrace.

“Tell me that you’re home for a long while,” she said after a lingering kiss. “The winter has been cold and lonely.”

“I have duties in the field,” Drizzt replied. He added, “Of course I do,” when Catti-brie smirked helplessly at him. “But yes, I am returned, to Bruenor’s side as I promised, before the snows retreat and the gathered armies move. We will know the designs of Obould before long.”