“The first, at least.”
Drizzt stared at her. “They’re simple merchants.”
“Yes, from Luskan, I heard. Simple men in the employ of the high captains-pirates one and all, and they who destroyed that city.”
Drizzt tried to hold steady against that truth-a truth that he, who had been in the City of Sails during the fall of his dear friend Captain Deudermont, knew all too well, and all too painfully.
“So what they’re carrying is ill-gotten from the start, then, and which highwayman is which, Drizzt Do’Urden?” said Dahlia.
“You twist everything to suit your conclusions.”
“Or everything is twisted to begin with, and few are what they seem, and a good man does evil and a beggar is a thief.”
More noise sounded from down the road.
“We will finish this discussion later,” Drizzt said, and he motioned for Guenhwyvar to take a position in the brush.
“To no conclusion that will satisfy the idealist drow,” Dahlia assured him, and she too sprinted off into the brush at the side of the road.
Drizzt thought to follow, but the sound of galloping horses, and Dahlia’s words stabbing at his thoughts, changed his mind. He lifted his bow, setting an arrow and leveling it.
A quartet of riders came into view a moment later, tightly grouped and leaning low against the driving rain.
Drizzt drew back, thinking he could strike down two with a single shot, for it would take more than a man’s girth to halt a bolt from Taulmaril.
“Beggar man or thief?” he whispered.
The riders neared, and one held a sword up high.
Drizzt dipped the angle of the bow and let fly. A sizzling blue-white flash rent the air, momentarily stealing the night, and the arrow burrowed into the road in front of the riders, blasting through cobblestone and dirt with a thunderous report.
The horses reared and bucked. One rider went tumbling, and hung desperately from the side of the saddle. The other two fared better, until Dahlia came soaring out of the trees to the side. Her staff clipped one hard as she stretched out and double-kicked the other.
And then came Guenhwyvar, and the horses spun and bucked and reared in terror.
Dahlia hit the ground with a twist and roll, came right back to her feet, and swung around. She planted her staff to vault up high once more, this time kicking the female rider she had struck with her staff. To the woman’s credit, she still held her seat, but Dahlia wasn’t done with her. As she landed, the elf whipped her staff out to strike the rider again, and this time sent a burst of magical lightning through the metal pole. Shaking uncontrollably, her hair dancing, her limbs waving wildly, the woman had no chance of remaining on her turning, terrified horse, and down she tumbled.
Three of the horses rushed away, riderless. Guenhwyvar kept the fourth turning and turning, the poor rider hanging on to the side.
“More are coming,” Dahlia called to Drizzt when he joined her above the three prone highwaymen, his scimitars informing two that they would be wise to lie still.
“But don’t ye kill me, Master Do’Urden!” one middle-aged man whimpered. “Be sure that I ain’t no enemy o’ yers!”
Drizzt looked at him with puzzlement, not recognizing the man at all.
“You know him?” Dahlia asked.
Drizzt shook his head and demanded of the man, “How do you know my name?”
“Just a guess, good sir!” the man cried. “The cat, the lightning bow, the blades ye carry…”
“Guen!” Drizzt called.
Off to the side, the panther was getting a bit carried away with her game, and had the poor horse spinning furiously. As the panther backed off and the horse stopped its spinning, only then did the dizzy highwayman fall to the ground.
“Ye’re Drizzt?” the fallen woman asked, her teeth still chattering from the residual lightning.
“That a highwayman would find that a comforting possibility perplexes me,” the drow replied.
The woman gave a snort and shook her head.
“They have friends approaching,” Dahlia warned. “Finish them or let’s be on our way.”
Drizzt considered the ragtag group for a few heartbeats then flipped his scimitars into their scabbards. He even offered the man who’d recognized him his hand and hoisted him up to his feet.
“I’ve no love for the high captains of Luskan,” Drizzt explained to the highwaymen. “Only that fact spares you the blade this day. But know that I will be watching you, and any assault upon an innocent will be viewed as an attack upon my own body.”
“And that’s it, then?” asked the woman, looking miserable and beaten. “We’re to forage and starve so as not to offend the sensibilities of the great Drizzt Do’Urden?”
Drizzt looked at her curiously, but for just a moment before he noted Dahlia’s superior, knowing smile.
“I was a farmer,” explained the man Drizzt had just lifted. “Right near Luskan. Goodman Stuyles at yer service.” He held out his hand, but Drizzt didn’t take it. “My family worked the land since before the fall o’ the Hosttower of the Arcane.”
“Then why are you here?” the drow asked suspiciously.
“Ain’t no use for farms around Luskan no more,” the man replied. “Folks’re trading for their food now, and most by ship, or by the wagon like the one that just passed.”
“And most of it stolen food, don’t ye doubt!” another man interjected. “They got no patience for a farm, nor no means to protect one.”
Drizzt glanced over at Dahlia, who merely shrugged as if it was all quite expected.
“We grew it, they stole it, and burned that what they couldn’t take,” said Stuyles.
Down the road, more of the highwaymen came into view, but only briefly before scattering into the brush, no doubt to try to flank the newcomers.
“Go,” Drizzt bade the four, waving them away.
A couple moved to do just that, one going over to help the woman to her feet and calling for the nearest horse as he did.
“I would think you would offer a meal and a dry bed for the two of us for letting you go,” Dahlia said to the group, drawing surprised looks from all four, and most of all, from Drizzt. “Weary travelers, rainy night…” she went on.
Drizzt’s jaw hung open, and didn’t begin to close when Goodman Stuyles answered, “Join us, then.”
“We have other business,” Drizzt said rather sternly, aiming his remark squarely at Dahlia.
But Dahlia just laughed and followed the four highwaymen. With a great sigh, Drizzt did, too.
The bandits had set up several wide lean-tos among a row of thick pines just off the road, affording them a comfortable enough camp despite the driving rain. They proved to be surprisingly hospitable, offering a warm meal and some good, strong drink.
Goodman Stuyles stayed with Drizzt and Dahlia through the meal and afterward, prodding Drizzt for tales of Icewind Dale-old adventures that had apparently become legendary in these parts so many years later. Drizzt had never fancied himself a storyteller, but he complied with the requests, and soon found quite the audience-a dozen or so-sitting around him and listening intently.
Most of those drifted off to sleep as the fires burned low, but a couple remained, enjoying the banter. “And what business might you have now that brings you south of that forsaken land?” asked one of them, a tall man named Hadencourt, after Drizzt had finished the story of battling a white dragon in an ice cave.
“We’re on our way to Luskan,” Drizzt answered, “to inquire after some old friends.”
“And then to Neverwinter Wood, eh?” Dahlia added, and Drizzt couldn’t react fast enough to suppress his surprise at her inclusion of that tidbit.
“There’s a great battle raging there,” farmer Stuyles remarked.
“Neverwinter Wood?” Hadencourt pressed. “What would bring a drow elf and a”-he looked rather curiously at Dahlia, as if not quite knowing what to make of her-“a lady such as yourself to that war-sc
arred place?”
Dahlia started to reply, but Drizzt spoke over her. “We’re adventurers. It would seem that Neverwinter Wood is now a place of adventure!” He ended by lifting his cup of brandy in a toast. “Though in truth, we haven’t decided our course after Luskan, and in truth, we are not even certain that our road will take us all the way to the City of Sails. I’ve been thinking that it’s far past time for a return to Mithral Hall.”
The whole time he spoke, the drow stared intently at Dahlia, warning her to keep silent. When he looked back at Hadencourt, he noted that the man wore a smile that seemed a bit too informed for his liking.
“Call it personal,” Dahlia said, and she never stopped looking at Hadencourt.
The discussion ended there, abruptly, with Drizzt commenting that it was past time for them all to get some rest. As the others dispersed, Dahlia watched Hadencourt head off to his lean- to for the night.
Goodman Stuyles stepped away to speak with several others of the band. “We’ll be moving tomorrow,” he reported back to Drizzt a few moments later. “That wagon will soon enough reach Port Llast and we’re thinking a garrison’ll come looking for us. Are ye to be coming with us, then? We’d be glad to have ye along.”
“No,” Drizzt stated flatly, over Dahlia’s opposite response. “I cannot.”
“We’re just surviving, is all,” Stuyles said. “A man’s a right to eat!”
“That you didn’t feel the bite of my blade is a testament that I don’t disagree,” Drizzt told him. “But I fear that traveling along beside you would show me choices with which I cannot agree and of which I cannot abide. Would you enter every adventure unsure of my allegiance?”
Stuyles took a step back and eyed the drow. “Better ye go then,” he said, and Drizzt nodded coldly.
“So the world is too dirty for Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia mocked when Stuyles had gone. “What rights, what proper recourse, for those who have not, when those who have keep all?”
“Waterdeep is not so far to the south.”
“Aye, and the lords of Waterdeep will throw open their gates and their wares to all those put out in the chaos.”
At that moment, Drizzt didn’t find Dahlia’s sarcasm very endearing. He calmed himself with memories of Icewind Dale, memories nearly a century old, of a time and place when matters of right and wrong seemed so much more apparent. Even in that unforgiving frontier, there seemed a level of civilization far beyond the current drama playing out along the Sword Coast. He considered the fall of Captain Deudermont in Luskan, when the high captains had seized full control of the City of Sails and thus, the surrounding region. A Waterdhavian lord had fallen beside Deudermont, and the other lords of that great city had surely failed in their subsequent inaction.
But even in that dark moment, Drizzt understood the fall of Luskan to darkness was just a minor symptom of a greater disease, as was the fall of Cadderly and Spirit Soaring. With the advent of the Shadowfell, the patches of shadow were both literal and figurative, and in those vast areas of darkness, anarchy and chaos had found their way.
How could Drizzt fight beside men like Stuyles and these highwaymen, however justified their ambushes, when he knew that those they ambushed would very often be men and women, like this band, simply trying to find a way to survive and keep their families fed?
Was there a “right” and “wrong” to be found here? To steal from the powerful or to toil for their copper coins?
“What are you thinking?” Dahlia asked him, her voice having lost its sharp edge.
“That I am one very small person, after all,” Drizzt replied without looking.
When he did at last turn around to regard the woman, she was grinning knowingly-too confidently, as if she was working some manipulation on him he didn’t yet understand.
Strangely, that notion didn’t bother Drizzt as much as he would have expected. Perhaps his confusion when faced by such a reality as the tumult of the Sword Coast was so profound that he would accept a hand, however offered, in lifting him from the darkness.
And now I am alone, more so than I’ve been since the days following the death of Montolio those many years ago. Even on that later occasion when I traveled back into the Underdark to Menzoberranzan, forsaking my friends in the foolish belief that I was unfairly endangering them, it was not like this. For though I physically walked alone into the Underdark, I didn’t go without the emotional support that they were there beside me, in spirit. I went with full confidence that Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Regis remained alive and well-indeed, more well, I believed, because I had left them .
But now I am alone. They are gone, one and all. My friends, my family.
There remains Guenhwyvar, of course, and she is no small thing to me-a true and loyal companion, someone to listen to my laments and my joys and my pondering. But it is not the same. Guen can hear me, but is there anything I would hear from her? She can share my victories, my joys, my trials, but there’s no reciprocation. After knowing the love of friends and family, I cannot so fool myself again, as I did in those first days after I left Menzoberranzan, as to believe that the wonderful Guenhwyvar is enough.
My road takes me from Gauntlgrym as it once took me from Mithral Hall, and I doubt I shall return-certainly I’ll not return to stand and stare at the cairn of Bruenor Battlehammer, as I rarely visited the graves of Catti-brie and Regis during my years in Mithral Hall. A wise elf lady once explained to me the futility of such things, as she taught me that I must learn to live my life as a series of shorter spans. It is the blessing of the People to live through the dawn and sunset of centuries, but that blessing can serve too as a curse. Few elves partner for life, as is common among the humans, for example, because the joy of such a partnership can weigh as an anchor after a hundred years, or two hundred.
“Treat each parting as a rebirth,” Innovindil said to me. “Let go of that which is past and seek new roads. Perhaps never to forget your lost friends and family and lovers, but to place them in your memory warmly and build again with new friends those things that so pleased you.”
I’ve gone back to Innovindil’s lessons many times over the last few decades, since Wulfgar left Mithral Hall and since Catti-brie and Regis were lost to me. I’ve recited them as a litany against the rage, the pain, the sadness… a reminder that there are roads yet to walk.
I was deluding myself, I now know.
For I hadn’t let go of my dear friends. I hadn’t lost hope that someday, one day, some way, I would raze a giant’s lair beside Wulfgar once more, or would fish beside Regis on a lazy summer’s day on the banks of Maer Dualdon, or I would spend the night in Catti-brie’s warm embrace. I tasked Jarlaxle with finding them, not out of any real hope that he would, but because I couldn’t bear to relinquish the last flicker of hope for these moments, these soft joys, these truest smiles, I once knew.
And now Bruenor is gone and the Companions of the Hall are no more .
I watched him take his last breath. There is closure. There is finality. And only through Bruenor had I kept the dream of Catti-brie and Regis, and even Wulfgar, alive. Only through his determination and steadfastness did I allow myself to believe that somehow, some magical way, they might still be out there. Our journey to Icewind Dale should have disavowed me of that notion, and did so to some extent (and also pushed Bruenor, at long last, into a state of resignation), and whatever little flickers remained within my heart were snuffed out when I watched my dearest friend breathe his last.
So I am alone. The life I had known is ended.
I surely feel the sadness, the regret at things that couldn’t be, the loneliness. At every turn, I want to call out to Bruenor to tell him my news, only to remember that, alas, he is not there. All of it is there, all of the pain that one would expect.
But there is something else, something unexpected, something surprising, something bringing with it more than a bit of confusion and even guilt.
True guilt, and I feel, and fear, myself a cad.
/> Yet I cannot deny it.
As I turned my back on Gauntlgrym and the grave of King Bruenor Battlehammer, pushing up in my emotions beside the pain and the rage and the helplessness and the replaying of the scenario over and over again to wonder what I might have done differently, was… a deep sense of relief.
I am ashamed to admit this, but to deny it would be to lie, and worse, to lie to myself. For at long last I have a sense of finality. It is time for the past to rest and for me to move forward. It is time, as Innovindil explained to me in a forest far from here, for me to begin anew.
Certainly I’m not relieved that Bruenor has passed. Nor Thibbledorf Pwent, for that matter! A better friend than Bruenor I have never known, and I would wish him back to my side in an instant, were that possible.
But in the larger sense, the greater perspective of my life, there is a sense of relief. I have been ready to let go of Catti-brie and Regis and Wulfgar for a long time now-not to forget them! I’ll never forget them, never want to forget them! They are embedded in my heart and soul and walk with Drizzt Do’Urden every step of his road. But I accepted their loss-my loss-years, even decades, ago, and it was only the stubbornness of an old dwarf, refusing to let go, insisting that they were still to be found and that our wondrous years together would be restored, that forced me, too, to hang on.
I am alone now. I am free? What an awful thought! How disloyal am I, then, to feel any eagerness in looking forward, to a new road, a third life, taking the painful lessons of my first existence in Menzoberranzan along with the wondrous joys of my second life beside the Companions of the Hall. Now I am hardened by the whips of the drow matrons, and softened by the honest love of friends, and settled in what I know is, what should be, and what should never be. As my second life so exceeded my first in joy and purpose, could my third not climb higher yet?
I don’t know, and truly I understand how fortunate I was in finding these four amazing companions to share a road. Will I find such friends, ready to sacrifice all for me, again? Will I love again? Even if I do, will it be the same intensity of that which I knew with Catti-brie?
Neverwinter ns-2 Page 2