The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Bah, but it’s not for her to be giving!” Bruenor said.

  “My place is in the Halls of Tempus,” Wulfgar insisted, catching on to the dwarf’s meaning and rising to his feet imperiously and defiantly.

  “And so the choice is yours to make,” Catti-brie agreed, “for never would the goddess demand such service from the follower of another. Mielikki demands of you no fealty, but offers you, then, this choice.”

  “I am here!” Wulfgar argued. “There is no choice!”

  “Aye,” agreed Bruenor.

  “There is,” Catti-brie replied with a smile that surely disarmed both. “For this place is not permanent and everlasting—indeed, its time of end is nearly upon us. The enchantment of Mielikki, Iruladoon, will soon be no more. Forever gone, not to return. And so we must choose and we must leave.”

  “As I tried,” Wulfgar reminded.

  “Indeed,” Catti-brie replied with a nod. “But you did so blindly, without preparation, without bargain, and so you were doomed. Better for you that your experience ended as soon as it began. Better for you that the midwife dashed you down upon the stones!”

  “Without bargain?” Regis echoed under his breath, the halfling catching the curious phrase buried within Catti-brie’s explanation.

  The blood drained from Wulfgar at Catti-brie’s remark, as memories of his brief experience outside of Iruladoon came flooding back to him—magically, he knew, through the words of Catti-brie. He had come forth into the arms of a giantess, so he thought, but in truth, into the arms of a midwife. And when he had protested, when he had called out in the voice of a babe, but in the words of one much older, the horrified midwife had done her duty and had thrown him down, dashing him on the warm stones heating the hut.

  The memory of the weight of that terror, of the explosion as his soft head struck the unyielding rock, stunned him once more. He stumbled back into the pond a couple of steps and sat there in the shallow water for many heartbeats before dragging himself back to the bank.

  “Aye,” Catti-brie explained to Bruenor and Regis as Wulfgar floundered, “the goddess revealed it all to me. Indeed, she likely incited the midwife to destroy the haunted child.”

  “Not much of a merciful goddess!” Bruenor argued.

  “The cycle of life and death is neither merciful nor merciless,” Catti-brie explained. “It is. It has ever been and will ever be. Wulfgar could not leave Iruladoon as he attempted—none of us can. That is not the pact or the choice Mielikki offers to us four. We are afforded two paths from this forest before the magic fades. The first is as Wulfgar chose, but on condition.” She looked directly at Wulfgar. “One you had not met, and so you were doomed to fail.”

  Wulfgar stared back at her, his expression rife with suspicion.

  “The second route from here is through that very pond,” Catti-brie finished.

  “On condition?” Regis asked.

  “To leave the forest, to return to Faerûn, requires an oath to Mielikki.”

  “You would proselytize?” Wulfgar protested.

  “By Moradin’s hairy arse!” Bruenor similarly protested. “I love ye girl, and love Drizzt as me brother, but I ain’t for chasing flowers in a glade of Mielikki’s choosing!”

  “An oath, a quest, not everlasting fealty,” Catti-brie explained. “To accept the blessing of Mielikki and depart Iruladoon to be born again upon the lands of Faerûn, you must accept one condition alone: that you will act on the side of Mielikki in the darkest hour.”

  “To be sure, I’m not knowin’ what that’s to mean, girl,” said Bruenor.

  “In Drizzt’s darkest hour she means,” said Regis. When the others all looked to him he added, “A gift to Drizzt most of all, you said.”

  “Are ye sayin’ that Drizzt will be needing our help?” asked Bruenor.

  Catti-brie shrugged, appearing sincerely at a loss. “It seems likely.”

  “So we can return to the aid of Drizzt, whatever that might mean, but we are free to honor and serve a god of our choosing?” Regis asked, and it was obvious from his tone that he was only asking the question to help clarify things for Bruenor and Wulfgar, whose faces continued to express grave doubts.

  “When the cycle turns once more, when you die again, as you surely will,” Catti-brie replied, “you will find your way to the altar of the god of your choosing, at that god’s suffrage.” She whirled around to face Wulfgar and the pond, and added, “Indeed, that choice is the second option before you now.” She pointed into the pond. “For beneath the waters of this pond is a cave, a tunnel winding through the multiverse to the promised rewards of devoted followers. That path is open to you now, should you so choose. For you, Wulfgar, the road to Warrior’s Rest, and the children and friends you knew among your tribe who had predeceased you, or have died in the years since you entered Iruladoon. A place of honor is there for you, I am sure. For you, my father, Dwarfhome and your seat beside Moradin, and a grand seat it will be, for you have sat upon the throne of Gauntlgrym and have been touched by his favor and power. For you, Regis, the Green Fields, and more to roam in the ways of Brandobaris, and know that I will find you there when I am no more of this world, and Drizzt will find us both, for the Deep Wilds of Mielikki touch the Green Fields.”

  “What’re ye sayin’, girl?” Bruenor asked. “Are we dead or ain’t we?”

  “We are,” Regis answered. “But we don’t have to be.”

  “Or we can be,” Wulfgar stated coldly, almost angrily. “As is the way of the world, natural and right.” He met Catti-brie’s stare without blinking, without bending. “I lived a good life, a long life. I have known children—I have buried children!”

  “No doubt they are all dead now,” Catti-brie admitted. “Even had they been blessed with your longevity, for many decades have passed on Toril since you entered Iruladoon.”

  Wulfgar winced at that, and seemed near panic, or rage, at that moment, digesting the almost incomprehensible truth.

  “Nothing is demanded of you, of us, any of us,” Catti-brie said to them all. “The goddess intervened, for the sake of her favored Drizzt, but will not take from us our choice. I am her messenger here, nothing more.”

  “But yerself’s going back,” Bruenor said.

  Catti-brie smiled and nodded.

  “Well, if ye’re going back to be born as a baby, then ye ain’t to be much help to Drizzt, I’m thinking,” said Bruenor. “Not for many the year!”

  Again she nodded. “The Sundering is not yet upon the world of Toril. I expect then, that the time of Drizzt’s peril is not yet upon him.”

  “So ye’re to go back and grow up all over again?” Bruenor asked incredulously. “And where might ye be?”

  Catti-brie shrugged. “Anywhere,” she admitted. “I will be born of human parents, though in Waterdeep or Calimport, Thay or Sembia, Icewind Dale or the Moonshaes, I cannot say, for it is yet to be known. To be reborn into the great cycle is to fly free in spirit until you are found and bound within a suitable womb.”

  “When druids reincarnate, they can come back as different races, as animals, even,” Regis remarked. “Am I to leave the forest to become a little rabbit, scampering away from wolves and hawks?”

  “You will be a halfling, born of halfling parents,” Catti-brie promised. “That would surely be more in the way of Mielikki, and more in accordance with Mielikki’s demands.”

  “What good might ye be to Drizzt as a rabbit, ye dolt?” Bruenor asked.

  “Maybe he’s hungry,” Regis replied with a shrug.

  Bruenor sighed against the halfling’s sly grin, but the dwarf turned more serious again, obviously so, as he spun back on his beloved daughter. He breathed hard and tried to speak, but shook his head, defeated by emotion.

  “I can’no do it,” he said suddenly, and he choked upon the words. “I had me day and found me rest!” He seemed almost frantic, and looked at Catti-brie with eyes rimmed with moistness. “I earned me way to Moradin’s seat, and so Dwarfhome’s waitin
’.”

  Catti-brie stepped aside and motioned to the pond. “The road is there.”

  “And what’ll me girl think o’ me, then? Bruenor the coward?”

  Catti-brie laughed, but sobered quickly and rushed to throw a great hug upon Bruenor. “There is no judgment in this choice,” she whispered into his ear, and she let herself then slip into the Dwarvish accent she used to carry when she was very young and living in the Battlehammer tunnels beneath Kelvin’s Cairn. “Me Da, yer girl’ll e’er love ye, and not e’er forget ye.”

  She hugged him tighter, and Bruenor returned the grip tenfold, crushing Catti-brie against him. Then, abruptly, he pushed her back to arms’ length, the tears now rolling down his hairy cheeks. “Ye’re going back to Faerûn?”

  “I am indeed.”

  “To help Drizzt?”

  “To help him, so I pray. To love him once more, so I pray. To live beside him until I am no more, so I pray. The Deep Wild awaits, eternally so, and Mielikki is a patient hostess.”

  “I’m going back,” Regis stated flatly, surprising them all and turning every eye toward him.

  The halfling didn’t melt under those curious looks.

  “Drizzt would go back for me,” he explained, and he said no more, and crossed his arms over his small chest and set his jaw firmly.

  Catti-brie offered him a warm smile. “Then we will meet again, alive, so I hope.”

  “Oh, by the iron balls o’ Clangeddin!” Bruenor huffed. He hopped back from Catti-brie and put his hands on his hips. “Beardless?” he asked.

  Catti-brie smiled, seeing all too clearly where this was heading.

  “Bah!” the dwarf grumbled and spun away. “Let’s be goin’ then, and if we’re to be landin’ all around Faerûn, then where’re we to meet and how’re we to know, and what …?”

  “In the night of the spring equinox in your twenty-first year,” Catti-brie answered. “The Night of Mielikki, in a place we all know well.”

  Bruenor stared at her. Regis stared at her. Wulfgar stared at her. The gaze of all three burned into her, so many questions spinning, so much left to ask, and yet none of it, they all knew, possible to answer.

  “Bruenor’s Climb,” she said. “Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale, on the night of the spring equinox. There we will join anew, if we have not found each other previously.”

  “No!” Wulfgar stated flatly behind her, and she turned around to see the big man step farther into the pond. His stern visage softened under the gazes of his three friends. “I cannot,” he said quietly.

  He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “My days beside you, I treasure,” he told them. “And know that I did love you once,” he said to Catti-brie directly. “But I gained a life beyond our time, back in my homeland with my people, and there I found love and family anew. They are gone now, all of them …,” His voice trailed off and he pointed to the pond, and he was pointing toward Warrior’s Rest, they all knew, the promised heaven of his god, Tempus. “They await. My wife. My children. Forgive me.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Catti-brie said, and both Bruenor and Regis echoed the sentiment. “There is no debt to be repaid here. Mielikki would offer the choice to Drizzt’s dearest friends, to the Companions of the Hall, and you are among that group. Farewell, my friend, and know that I once and ever loved you and will never forget you.”

  She walked to the pond, right into the water, and embraced Wulfgar warmly and lovingly and kissed him on the cheek. “Warrior’s Rest will be greater with Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who too awaits your arrival.”

  She walked out as Bruenor and Regis moved to similarly embrace the barbarian. Regis came back from the pond eagerly, Catti-brie noted, but Bruenor glanced back many times as he moved to join the other two.

  With a final wave to Wulfgar, the three friends moved off into the forest, traveling a path that would take them to where, they could not know.

  Up to his knees in the water, Wulfgar watched them go. He allowed himself to reminisce about those years he had spent beside Bruenor and the others, the three decades, the prime of his life.

  Good years, he decided, among good friends.

  He turned back to the water and noted his own reflection in the pool, dancing over the ripples his movement had caused. He looked like a young man once more, the way he had looked when he had walked the road of wild adventures beside Drizzt and the others.

  He wondered if he would keep this appearance in Warrior’s Rest, and if his family would appear in their finest hour. And what of his father, Beornegar, whom he had never known as a young man?

  Wulfgar stepped deeper, slipping under the waves.

  CHAPTER 4

  SON O’ THE LINE

  The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Citadel Felbarr

  SUREN THAT THE WINTER’S IN ME OLD BONES,” KING EMERUS WARCROWN said to Parson Glaive, his friend and advisor. King Emerus stretched his arms wide, his muscular shoulders flexing and bulging. He was past his two-hundredth birthday by many years, but still possessed a physique that would make a fifty-year-old jealous, and few of any age would wish to engage in combat with this proud old shield dwarf! He walked to the side of the room and grasped a large log in just one hand, easily hoisting it in his powerful grip and tossing it onto the flames.

  “Aye, but she’s a rough one,” agreed Parson Glaive, the principle cleric in Citadel Felbarr, leader of the church, and the dwarf Emerus had recently appointed as Steward-in-Waiting should anything ill befall the king. “Snow’s piled high around the west Runegate. I’ve set a horde o’ shov’lers to work cleaning it afore the next caravan rolls through.”

  “Won’t be rolling anytime soon!” Emerus said with a belly laugh. “Sledding, maybe, but not rollin’!”

  “Aye,” said his black-bearded, bald-headed friend, and he joined in the laughter. For the dwarves of Citadel Felbarr, the turn of 1463 had brought with it a welcomed respite from the constant conflicts—orcs and highwaymen and other such annoyances—that had plagued the area throughout the previous year. Hammer, the first month, had been quite frigid, allowing little melt from the ending snows of 1462, and the second month, aptly nicknamed the Claw of Winter, had come in with a roar, dumping heavy snowfalls across the Silver Marches. Parson Glaive’s description of the situation at the Runegate was not an exaggeration, not in the least.

  Emerus Warcrown clapped his hands together to get the wood chips and dirt from them, then ran them through his great beard, more gray than yellow now, but still as thick as any beard any dwarf had ever worn. “Can’t seem to get the chill from me old bones this day,” he said, and he tossed his friend an exaggerated wink. “Bit o’ brandy might be needed.”

  “Aye, a good bit,” Parson Glaive happily replied.

  Emerus went for his private stock, set in a sturdy decorated cabinet to the side of the comfortable room. He had just grasped the most decorated bottle of all, a thin-necked but wide-bodied flask of Mirabar’s best brandy, when the door of his private chamber burst open with a loud bang. Emerus Warcrown dropped the bottle and cried out, “What!” and only caught the bottle again as it crashed against the cabinet’s shelf, fortunately without breaking.

  “What?” the dwarf king cried again, turning to the door to see a muscular, wild-eyed warrior dwarf jumping around and waving his arms, his face as red as his fiery beard. A myriad of terrible scenarios rushed through the king’s thoughts as he considered the newcomer, Reginald Roundshield, or “Arr Arr” as he was more commonly known, Citadel Felbarr’s Captain of the Guard.

  But those imagined catastrophes faded away as Emerus calmed and considered Arr Arr more carefully, particularly the red-bearded dwarf’s supreme grin.

  “What’d’ye know?” Emerus demanded.

  “A son, me king!” Reginald answered.

  “What ho!” cried Parson Glaive. “What ho! But I’ll be blessin’ that lad in the name o’ Clangeddin, or Arr Arr’s sure to be whining!”

  “Clangeddin’s the choice,”
Reginald confirmed. “Son o’ the captain.”

  “Son o’ the line,” Emerus Warcrown agreed, and he set three large cups out and began pouring the celebratory brandy, liberally so!

  “Me Da was the captain, me Grand Da was the captain, and his Da afore him,” Reginald said proudly. “And so’s me son to be!”

  “Son o’ the son o’ the son o’ the son of a captain, then!” Parson Glaive congratulated, taking his cup from Emerus and hosting it immediately in toast.

  “A strappin’ big one,” Reginald told the others, tapping their glasses hard. “And ‘e’s full o’ fight already, I tell ye!”

  “Could’no be any other way,” Emerus Warcrown agreed. “Could’no be any other way!”

  “And what’s his name to be? Same as yer own, then?”

  “Aye, both halves, as me Da and his Da and his Da and his Da.”

  “A little Arr Arr, then!” the king of Felbarr proclaimed, lifting his brandy for another toast, but then he reconsidered and pulled it back down.

  Reginald Roundshield and Parson Glaive looked at him curiously.

  “Gutbuster?” Emerus Warcrown asked slyly, referring to that most brutal and potent of dwarven beverages.

  “What else’d be fittin’ for the birth of a Roundshield?” Parson Glaive replied.

  The king nodded and looked at his guard commander somberly. “Ye just make sure that meself’s about when ye’re for givin’ little Arr Arr his first sip o’ the Gutbuster,” he said. “Ah, but I’m wantin’ to see the look on the tyke’s face!”

  “It’ll be a look wantin’ more,” Reginald boasted, and the three laughed again as King Emerus went for his private stash of the potent liquid.

  He wasn’t prepared for this. How could anyone be properly prepared for this?

  Bruenor Battlehammer, twice King of Mithral Hall, lay in a cradle in a dark room in Citadel Felbarr, his baby arms waving, his baby legs kicking, and little of that in his control. It was all too strange, all too weird. He could feel his limbs, was aware of his body, but only vaguely, distantly, as if it was not really his own, but a borrowed thing.