The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  “From the spellscar?”

  Now it was Lady Avelyere who could only shrug. “She bears two curious markings. Perhaps they are relevant, perhaps not.”

  “You trust your bevy of students?” Parise asked.

  “Implicitly,” Lady Avelyere assured him. “I am, after all, a fine spy.”

  Parise could only laugh as he figured out her meaning, and he lifted his glass in toast to her undoubtedly considerable ability in understanding the actions of those around her.

  “I would not have the knowledge of Ruqiah spreading beyond this room and your tower,” the Netherese lord explained. “If word got out among Shade Enclave that this child killed two Netherese agents and that she was training in the Art under the auspices of two Bedine wizards … well, the implications would be dire indeed.”

  “You don’t wish to punish her.”

  “I do not wish a slaughter of this Desai tribe, nor any war at all, nor anyone else taking an interest in this curious Ruqiah. This child may prove of great value to us, but she is not our enemy. Not now, and hopefully not ever. Untaris and Alpirs were not sent as assassins, but as kidnappers, the fools, and so they deserved their fate. And I only sent them, as others have gone on similar expeditions for other potentially favored mortals, because I did not anticipate such an easy look into the events that may soon be circulating around this one.”

  “What would you have me do with her?”

  “What would you wish me to answer?” He shrugged and took another drink, seeming as if he simply did not care.

  A great smile widened across Lady Avelyere’s face.

  She considered the potential of her newest student.

  PART THREE

  UNINTENDED BONDS

  I could not have planned my journey. Not any particular journey to a town or a region, but the journey of my life, the road I’ve walked from my earliest days. I’ve often heard people remark that they have no regrets about choices they’ve made because the results of those choices have made them who they are.

  I can’t say that I agree fully with such sentiments, but I certainly understand them. Hindsight is easy, but decisions made in the moment are often much more difficult, the “right” choice often much harder to discern.

  Which circles me back to my original thought: I could not have planned out this journey I have taken, these decades of winding roads and unexpected twists and turns. Even on those occasions when I purposely strode in a determined direction, as when I walked out of Menzoberranzan, I could not begin to understand the long-term ramifications of my choice. Indeed on that occasion, I thought that I would likely meet my death, and soon enough. It wasn’t a suicidal choice, of course—never that!—but merely a decision that the long odds were worth the gamble when weighed against the certainty of life in Menzoberranzan, which seemed to me emotional suicide.

  Never did I think those first steps would lead me out of the Underdark to the surface world. And even when that course became evident, I could not have foreseen the journeys that lay ahead—the love of Montolio, and then the home and family I found in Icewind Dale. On that day I walked away from Menzoberranzan, the suggestion that my best friend would be a dwarf and I would marry a human would have elicited a perplexed and incredulous look indeed!

  Imagine Drizzt Do’Urden of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon sitting at the right hand of King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall, fighting beside King Bruenor against the raiding drow of Menzoberranzan! Preposterous!

  But true.

  This is life, an adventure too intricate, too interconnected to too many variables to be predictable. So many people try to outline and determine their path, rigidly unbending, and for them I have naught but a sigh of pity. They set the goal and chase it to the exclusion of all else. They see the mark of some imagined finish line and never glance left or right in their singular pursuit.

  There is only one certain goal in life: death.

  It is right and necessary and important to set goals and chase them. But to do so singularly, particularly regarding those roads which will take many months, even years, to accomplish is to miss the bigger point. It is the journey that is important, for it is the sum of all those journeys, planned or unexpected, that makes us who we are. If you see life as a journey to death, if you truly understand that ultimate goal, then it is the present that becomes most important, and when the present takes precedence above the future, you have truly learned to live.

  One eye looking toward your future destination, one eye firmly gazing on your present path, I say.

  I have noted before and do so again—because it is a valuable lesson that should often be reinforced—that many who are faced with impending death, a disease that will likely take them in a year’s time, for example, quite often insist that their affliction is the best thing that ever happened to them. It takes the immediacy of mortality to remind them to watch the sunrise and the sunset, to note the solitary flower among the rocks, to appreciate those loved ones around them, to taste their food, and revel in the feel of a cool breeze.

  To appreciate the journey is to live in the present, even as you aim for the future.

  There are unintended consequences to be found, in any case. We do not usually choose to love those who become important to us. Oh, perhaps we choose our mate, but that is but one of a myriad of beloved we will know. We do not choose our parents or our siblings, but typically these people will become beloved to us. We do not choose our neighbors in our youth, and our city or kingdom is determined for us, initially at least. Few are those who break from that societal bond. I did, but only because of the extreme nature of Menzoberranzan. Had I been born and raised in Baldur’s Gate, and that city became involved in a war with Waterdeep, under whose flag would I fight? Almost assuredly the place of my birth, the place of my kin and kind. This would not be a neutral choice, and would be one, almost assuredly, influenced by past events large and small, by past emotional attachments of which I might not even be consciously aware. I would fight for my home, most of all, because it was my home!

  And not one I had purposely chosen.

  This is even truer regarding the followers of various gods, I have found. For most people, at least. Children are typically raised within the guidelines of their family’s faith; this moral code becomes a part of their very identity, true to the core of who they are. And though the ultimate morality of so many of the gods is, when stripped of nearly irrelevant particulars, identical. Only those particular pieces, whether in ritual or minor tenet, may be at odds, and in the larger context, what should that matter? Even these seemingly minor discrepancies go to the heart of the tribal bonds of every sentient being, and few can step above their partisan outlook to evaluate a conflict at hand, should there be one, through the eyes of the opposing people.

  These are journeys that we do not individually determine, full of beloved people we did not consciously choose to love. Familiarity may breed contempt, as the old saying goes, but in truth, familiarity breeds family and familial love, and that bond is powerful indeed. It would take extraordinary circumstances, I expect, for a brother to fight against a brother. And sadly, most wars are not waged over extraordinary moral quandaries or conflicting philosophies.

  And so the bond will usually hold in the face of such conflict. To pass through childhood beside our siblings is to forge a special bond that those outside the family cannot enter. A wise drow once told me that the surest way to rally citizens around their king is to threaten him, for even if those same citizens loathed the man, they would not loathe their homeland, and when such a threat is made, it is made upon that homeland most of all.

  I find that such parochialism is true more often for humans and the shorter-living races than it is for elves, drow or surface, and for a very simple reason: rarely are elf children raised together in a singular family unit. A child of the People is more likely to have a sibling a century older than he is to have one passing through childhood beside him.

  Our journeys are un
ique, but they are not in isolation. The roads of a thousand individuals crisscross, and each intersection is a potential side street, a wayward path, a new adventure, an unexpected emotional bond.

  Nay, I could not have planned this journey I have taken. For that, I am truly glad.

  —Drizzt Do’Urden

  CHAPTER 13

  A CHIP OFF THE OLD … AXE

  The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR) Citadel Felbarr

  YER DA FAVORED THE HAMMER AND THE SWORD,” RAGGED DAIN SAID AS the group neared the outer gate. Dain had been so nicknamed for his scrappy fighting style, typically leading with his face, which was crisscrossed now by battle scars.

  “I ain’t me Da,” Bruenor gruffly answered, hoisting his battle-axe to rest on his shoulder.

  “Fine tone for a beardless one, eh?” Ognun Leatherbelt, the battle commander, chimed in. He gave Little Arr Arr a shove on the shoulder and a playful half-punch on the jaw. His eyes widened as he did, though, and as he took closer notice of his youngest foot soldier. “Here now! Little Arr Arr’s got the beginnin’s of a beard, does he?”

  “Reginald,” Bruenor corrected, and how he wanted to throw aside this whole facade, then and there. He was Bruenor Battlehammer, Eighth King of Mithral Hall, Tenth King of Mithral Hall, champion of Icewind Dale. How he wanted to shout that out, loud and clear!

  But Ognun’s observations were true enough, for Bruenor had indeed begun to see—finally—the beginnings of a beard, a fiery red one much like the one he’d worn in his previous existence. He wondered if he would look the same as he had in that other life. He hadn’t really thought about it very much, but now with the beard coming in, it occurred to him that he might well indeed be a physical twin for the king he had been.

  Without the scars, at this point, of course, and without, he lamented, glancing at his new axe, the many notches he had earned in battle.

  He brought the axe down before him, ignoring the continuing banter at his expense, and instead studying the clean and smooth curving blade of the weapon. He thought of his first notch in his previous existence, in the great ettin adventure in the tunnels around Mithral Hall, and realized that he had been much older in that fight than he was now. Reginald Roundshield’s fifteenth birthday was just three months behind him, which put him a decade and more short of Bruenor’s first true adventure in his former life. Indeed, Reginald Roundshield, Little Arr Arr, was much more accomplished among the soldiers of Citadel Felbarr at this age than a teenaged Bruenor had been among the fighters of Clan Battlehammer, even though all of Reginald’s exploits thus far had been on the training grounds. But of course, in counterbalance, in that previous life as the prince of Mithral Hall, Bruenor had been presented with great opportunities to do great things that he, as Reginald, would never know.

  His memories swirled through the years, to the many battles—leaping upon the back of Shimmergloom, freeing Wulfgar from the demon Errtu, splitting the skull of Matron Baenre when the drow came a’calling, splitting the waves of Obould’s minions like a stone against the incoming tide in Keeper’s Dale—and Bruenor blew a profound and resigned sigh. Could he really live that journey again? Could he really begin over, not a scratch on his axe, and forge a name worthy of Clan Battlehammer?

  And the most troubling question of all, to what end?

  “So the gods can just wipe it clean and pretend it never happened, eh?” he mumbled.

  “What’s that now, boy?” Ragged Dain asked. “Wipe it clean? Nah, that’s the real hair ye got there, yer beard comin’ in thick and red. No more Little Arr Arr then! Just Arr Arr, as was yer Da.”

  “Reginald,” Bruenor calmly replied, and Ragged Dain burst out laughing, as did the other five dwarves on this scouting patrol. They’d never give in and stop the teasing, Bruenor knew.

  Not that it bothered him. What did it matter? His name could be Moradin itself and that too would become bones and stones and nothing more.

  He felt a snarl coming to his lips but he suppressed it.

  “One day at a time, one step at a time,” he told himself, his growing litany against the whispering despair.

  “Through the gate, we’re turnin’ north, lads and lasses,” Ognun told his battle group. “Into the Rauvins and Warcrown Trail. Been word o’ some goblinkin getting a bit too comfortable there.”

  “Heigh-ho, then, for a fight!” said Tannabritches Fellhammer, the “Fist” of Fist and Fury.

  “Heigh-ho!” Ragged Dain joined in the cheer, but in a mocking way. Every patrol that walked out of Felbarr was told to expect trouble, but, alas, trouble was rarely found.

  “Now, don’t ye get all Mallabritches on me,” Ognun Leatherbelt said with a laugh, referring to Tannabritches’s twin, who was aptly nicknamed Fury. The two had been split up, and Mallabritches had been sent back for more training after she had punched a traveling human merchant in the nose when he laughed at her suggestion that he might be selling his wares to orcs.

  Mallabritches’s demotion had given Bruenor his spot on the battle group, something that hadn’t sat well with Tannabritches, who was three years Bruenor’s senior, as she had reminded him often with the constant refrain of, “Don’t ye get yerself too comfortable, Little Arr Arr. Me sister’s to return and ye’re to be put back with yer own dwarfling friends.”

  “Ah, but then might I tell them all again o’ how I whomped yer skinny butt, eh?” Bruenor always responded, and time and again, it had almost come to blows. Almost, for it became obvious that the blustering Tannabritches wanted no part of Little Arr Arr one-against-one.

  “We’ll be half-a-tenday in the mountains,” Bruenor heard Ognun explain as he focused back to the present conversation. “And we’ll be watchin’ all about us every heartbeat o’ them five days, don’t ye doubt. If them goblins are up there, we’re to make sure King Emerus knows it.”

  “By bringing back their ears, then?” Tannabritches asked.

  Ognun laughed. “Aye, if we’re finding the chance, I expect. But more likely we’ll find goblin sign—scat and prints. We find that and King Emerus is sure to send out a bigger fightin’ group, and …” He paused and patted his hand in the air, calming the ever-excited Tannabritches. “And aye,” he went on, “be sure that I’ll be askin’ for a leading place for us six in that battle group.”

  “Heigh-ho!” Tannabritches Fellhammer cheered.

  As the youngest members of the patrol, Bruenor and Tannabritches were given most of the menial tasks, like gathering kindling for the campfire. Winter had relinquished its grip on the Rauvin Mountains and all around the Silver Marches, but just barely. This high up above Citadel Felbarr’s gates, there were still some small patches of snow to be found, and the night wind could still send a thick-bearded dwarf’s teeth to chattering.

  “Come along then,” Tannabritches scolded Bruenor as they circled around one bend in the trail, moving through a channel carved by centuries of melting mountain streams through the heart of a huge rocky ledge. “They’ve already got the flames started,” she added when she came through the pass, in sight of the camp in a wooded, boulder-strewn dell below.

  “By the gods, Fist,” Bruenor replied, “but me legs’re aching and me belly’s grumblin’.”

  “All the reason to walk faster then, ain’t it?” she called back over her shoulder, and she ended with a curious grunt that Bruenor took as a snort.

  Until her armload of kindling fell to the ground and Tannabritches tumbled backward, a spear protruding from her chest.

  Bruenor’s eyes went wide. He threw his own kindling aside and dived down to the ground—and not a heartbeat too soon, for a spear flew just above him, cracking off the stone across the channel.

  Bruenor scrambled furiously on all fours to get to his fallen companion, and he winced at the severity of the wound, at the blood gushing around the spear shaft, deeply embedded just below her collarbone and not far above the poor girl’s heart. With a trembling hand, Bruenor tried to hold the spear shaft perfectly still, seeing that ever
y vibration brought wracking pain coursing through poor Tannabritches.

  “Get ye gone,” the fallen girl whispered, spitting blood with her words. “I’m for Dwarfhome. Warn th’ others!”

  She coughed and started to curl up, and Bruenor, trying to comfort her, looked up suddenly, hearing the approach of enemies, certain from the sound of them that they would swamp the channel in mere moments.

  “Go!” she pleaded.

  Had he really been Little Arr Arr, had he really been an inexperienced dwarfling of merely fifteen winters, Bruenor would have likely taken her advice—even with his experience, he couldn’t deny the fear that was inside him, or the truth that he had a duty to warn Ognun and Ragged Dain and the others …

  But he wasn’t Little Arr Arr. He was Bruenor Battlehammer, who had learned through centuries to put loyalty above all else, who had passed through death itself and come back with a deep and pervading sense of outrage.

  With a growl and a burst of strength he didn’t realize he possessed, he grasped the spear shaft in both hands and cleanly snapped it, leaving just a stub poking from the brutal wound. As one hand threw the broken shaft aside, the other grabbed Tannabritches by the collar, and he easily hoisted her across his shoulders, starting off in a run before she had even settled.

  He heard the whoops behind him and imagined a volley of spears flying his way, and that only made the furious dwarf spin to face that missile barrage head on, to keep Tannabritches mostly behind him that he wouldn’t inadvertently use her as a shield.

  Indeed, a trio of spears reached out at him, and their orc throwers, barely ten paces behind him, howled at the expected kills.

  Bruenor managed to dodge one, take a second with his shield and deflect the third enough with his axe so that it only glanced him along the side, stinging painfully through his chainmail armor but doing no mortal harm.

  The jerking movements nearly cost him his tentative hold on his companion, though, and she started to tumble. But again, Bruenor merely growled and realigned his feet, catching Tannabritches fully again and rushing off down the path.