Gauntlgrym

by R. A. Salvatore

Page 4

 

  “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. ”

  “Ye’ve run from the hall?”

  “Just said as much. ”

  “Forevermore?”

  “Ain’t so long a time for an old dwarf like meself. ”

  “Ye runned away. Ye runned away and ye didn’t tell me?” Pwent asked. He was trembling.

  Bruenor glanced back at Drizzt. When he heard the crash of Pwent’s breastplate hitting the ground, he turned back.

  “Ye telled a stinkin’ orc, but ye didn’t tell yer Gutbuster?” Pwent demanded. He pulled off one gauntlet and dropped it to the ground, then the other, then reached down and began unfastening his spiked greaves.

  “Ye’d do that to them what loved ye? Ye’d make us all cry for ye? Ye’d break our hearts? Me king!”

  Bruenor’s face grew tight, but he had no answer.

  “All me life for me king,” Pwent muttered.

  “I ain’t yer king no more,” said Bruenor.

  “Aye, that’s what I be thinkin’,” said Pwent, and he put his fist into Bruenor’s eye. The orange-bearded dwarf staggered backward, his one-horned helm falling from his head, his many-notched axe dropping to the ground under the severe weight of the blow.

  Pwent unbuckled his helmet and pulled it from his head. He had just started throwing it aside when Bruenor hit him with a flying tackle, driving him backward and to the ground, and over and over they rolled, flailing and punching.

  “Been wanting to do this for a hunnerd years!” Pwent cried, his voice muffled at the end as Bruenor shoved his hand into his mouth.

  “Aye, and I been wantin’ to give ye the chance!” Bruenor shouted back, his voice rising several octaves at the end of his claim, when Pwent bit down hard.

  “Drizzt!” Nanfoodle yelled. “Stop them!”

  “No, don’t!” Jessa cried, clapping in glee.

  Drizzt’s expression told the gnome in no uncertain terms that he had no intention of jumping in between that pile of dwarven fury. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against a tall stone, and truly seemed more amused than concerned.

  Around and around went the flailing duo, a stream of curses coming from each, interrupted only by the occasional grunt as one or the other landed a heavy blow.

  “Bah, but ye’re the son of an orc!” Bruenor yelled.

  “Bah, but I ain’t yer smelly son, ye damned orc!” Pwent yelled back.

  As it happened, they rolled around just then, coming apart just enough to look straight at Jessa, her arms crossed, glaring at them from on high.

  “Err … goblin,” both corrected together as they came to their feet side by side. Both shrugged a half-hearted apology Jessa’s way, and they went right back into it, wrestling and punching with abandon. They stumbled out of the boulder tumble and across a small patch of grass to the top of a small bluff, and there Bruenor gained a slight advantage, managing to pull Pwent’s arm behind his back. The battlerager let out a shriek as he looked down the other side of the bluff.

  “And I been wanting ye to take a bath all them hunnerd years!” Bruenor declared.

  He bulled Pwent down the hill into a short run, then threw the dwarf and flew after hi
m right into the midst of a cold, clear mountain stream.

  Pwent hopped up, and anyone watching would have thought the poor frantic dwarf had landed face down in acid. He stood in the stream shaking wildly, trying to get the water off. But the ploy had worked at least. He had no more fight left in him.

  “Why’d ye do that, me king?” a heartbroken Pwent all but whispered.

  “Because ye smell, and I ain’t yer king,” Bruenor replied, splashing his way to the bank.

  “Why?” Pwent asked, his voice so full of confusion and pain that Bruenor stopped short, even though he was still in the cold water, and turned back to regard his loyal battlerager.

  “Why?” Thibbledorf Pwent asked again.

  Bruenor looked up at the other three—four, counting Guenhwyvar—who had come to the top of the bluff to watch. With a great sigh, the dead King of Mithral Hall turned back to his loyal battlerager and held out his hand.

  “Was the only way,” Bruenor explained as he and Pwent started up the bluff. “Only fair way to Banak. ”

  “Banak didn’t need to be king,” said Pwent.

  “Aye, but I couldn’t be king anymore. I’m done with it, me friend. ”

  That last word gave them both pause, and as the implications of it truly settled on both their shoulders, they each draped an arm across the other’s strong shoulders and walked together up the hill.

  “Been too long with me bum in a throne,” Bruenor explained as they made their way past the others and back toward the boulder tumble. “Not for knowing how many years I got left, but there’s things I’m wanting to find, and I won’t be finding ’em in Mithral Hall. ”

  “Yer girl and the halfling runt?” Pwent reasoned.

  “Ah, but don’t ye make me cry,” said Bruenor. “And Moradin willing, I’ll be doing that one day, if not in this life, then in his great halls. But no, there’s more. ”

  “What more?”

  Bruenor put his hands on his hips again and looked out across the wide lands to the west, bordered by the towering mountains in the north and the still-impressive foothills in the south.

  “Gauntlgrym’s me hope,” said Bruenor. “But know that just the open road and the wind in me face’ll do. ”

  “So ye’re going? Ye’re going forever, not to return to the hall?”

  “I am,” Bruenor declared. “Know that I am, and not to return. Ever. The hall’s Banak’s now, and I can’t be twisting that. As far as me kin—our kin—are forever to know, as far as all the kings o’ the Silver Marches are forever to know, King Bruenor Battlehammer died on the fifth day of the sixth month of the Year of True Omens. So it be. ”

  “And ye didn’t tell me,” said Pwent. “Ye telled th’elf, ye telled the gnome, ye telled a stinkin’ orc, but ye didn’t tell me. ”

  “I telled them that’s going with me,” Bruenor explained. “And none in the hall’re knowing, except Cordio, and I needed him so them priests didn’t figure it out. And he’s known to keep his trap shut, don’t ye doubt. ”