The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Orcs!” he shouted, leaping from stone to stone down the steep decline and somehow, miraculously, managing to hold his balance.

  He pitched into the copse headlong, finally overbalancing and diving into a face plant, with Tannabritches bouncing over him, pressing his face harder into the ground as she rolled limply toward the fire.

  “Mandarina!” Ragged Dain shouted for Mandarina Dobberbright, the group’s cleric, and the female dwarf spat out a large mouthful of stew and scrambled to get her medicine bag.

  “Orcs!” Bruenor shouted, spitting dirt.

  As he spoke, there came a large cracking sound above and splintering tree limbs fell around the camp, and a huge stone crashed to the ground, crushing poor Ognun Leatherbelt’s toes! Oh, but how he howled!

  Bruenor and Magnus Leatherbelt, the sixth of the party and Ognun’s third cousin on his father’s side, reached the boulder at the same time, trying to push it off Ognun’s foot, but unfortunately, they came to the spot on opposite sides of the stone and inadvertently worked against each other. With a groan and a growl, the two rolled around to meet at opposite sides of their commander, but that, too, proved problematic for poor Bruenor, and poorer Ognun, for when Bruenor came around, the spear shaft, the missile firmly embedded in his shield, swung around and whacked Ognun across the side of his head.

  “Bother and bluster!” Bruenor cried and he dropped his axe, reached over with his free hand, and yanked the spear free. He swung around as soon as he had, and threw all of his weight and strength against the stone, and joining with Ognun and Magnus, they managed to hoist it enough for the commander to pull his foot free.

  “Better ground to the west!” Ragged Dain cried out from atop a boulder just beyond the dell.

  “Go! Go!” ordered Ognun.

  “Ah, but I can’t be movin’ her!” Mandarina protested.

  “Ye got yerself no choice!” Ognun insisted and he hobbled over, but his voice trailed away when he got there, for it was clear to him and the other two that Mandarina wasn’t speaking lightly, and wasn’t exaggerating.

  Tannabritches seemed on the very edge of death.

  But now the orcs were coming, and another heavy stone crashed through the branches just above them.

  “They’ve a giant,” warned Magnus.

  “Run away!” shouted Tannabritches with what seemed the last of her strength.

  The other three looked to Ognun—Bruenor could see the pain there on the face of the seasoned but compassionate leader. Ognun had no choice, Bruenor understood, for the good of them all and the good of Citadel Felbarr.

  “To Ragged Dain, with all haste,” Ognun said quietly, and somehow his words stuck out clearly among the mounting whoops of the charging orcs.

  Ognun fell to one knee and handed the nearly unconscious Tannabritches a long knife, then kissed her on the cheek. A good-bye kiss, surely.

  “Go! Go!” he ordered, coming to his feet.

  The words prodded at Bruenor’s heart more sharply than the spearhead stuck in Fist’s chest.

  “No!” he shouted before he could stop himself. Even as the word echoed in his own thoughts, Bruenor didn’t really understand it. It was a denial, and not just of leaving the girl, but of everything. It was a scream at the gods for this tragedy, for their very mocking of the life Bruenor had given them, centuries of fealty and honor.

  No! his mind screamed, at himself and at Moradin. No to everything. Just no!

  And in that eye-blink of time, Bruenor could not deny the sudden and unexpected sensation. He felt as he had felt on the throne in ancient Gauntlgrym, and heard the strategic whispers of Dumathoin, the calm command of Moradin, and felt, most of all, the strength of Clanggedin coursing through his young muscles.

  “No!” he said again, more forcefully, and he tore the cape off his back and threw it to Ognun. “Make her a litter!” he ordered.

  Ognun stared at him incredulously.

  “Too many!” Magnus cried.

  “They ain’t getting past me!” Bruenor roared, and he spun around, taking up his axe and shield, and with a feral growl, he rushed up to the boulder and threw his back against it. With an exaggerated, confident wink back at the other three tending Tannabritches, he rolled around the boulder, whooping and swinging.

  He caught the nearest orc by surprise just as it lifted its arm to hurl a spear at the group, his axe cracking into the beast’s chest and throwing it backward. No sooner had he pulled the axe free, then Bruenor charged along, cutting back in front of the boulder.

  He threw his shield up high as he skidded down to his knees, sweeping out an orc’s legs at the same time the beast’s mace thumped hard against the blocking buckler.

  The dwarf was to his feet in a heartbeat, leaping along to the next two in line, shield-rushing, skidding short and sweeping across with his bloody axe. He didn’t wound either, though he managed to rip the sword from one’s grasp and cut the other’s spear short by a third.

  He did not relent—he would not surrender his rage and ferocity, butting and swinging, shield-charging and screaming with every step. The overwhelmed orcs scrambled back, turning right into their reinforcements and slowing the orc charge.

  Into that confusion went Bruenor, wildly chopping and punching, shield-butting, and even biting when one opportunity presented itself. He got hit hard by a club, a resounding thud that nearly knocked his helmet from his head. Things didn’t sort out clearly for him at that moment and for many afterward, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t worried about precision or about tactics even.

  He was just mad. Mad at Mielikki for tempting him, for making him start anew. Mad at Moradin for allowing it! Mad at Catti-brie and Drizzt and mostly at himself for not having the sense to step into Iruladoon’s pond beside Wulfgar, to go to Dwarfhome and his just reward.

  And now … the uselessness of it all! The thought that he had wasted a decade-and-a-half only to be cut down on a cold mountain trail in defense of a clan that wasn’t his own, for the honor of a name that wasn’t his own, and to the ultimate futility of his “mission” to help Drizzt.

  It was too much … too, too much.

  He felt the punches—or were they stabs?—of orc spears, and he ignored them and charged on, roaring, denying. He felt his axe dig into flesh and crack through bone. He heard the varied screams of his enemies, of rage, of pain, and sweetest of all, of fear.

  He managed to glance back only once, and hardly registered the scene, though it seemed as if the three were hard at work with Tannabritches, attempting to ferry her away, he hoped.

  No longer did it even matter.

  He shield-rushed the next two orcs in line and down they went, all three, in a tangled ball. Even as he tasted dirt, Bruenor kept chopping, cutting the spine of one. He somehow got the edge of his shield on the throat of the other and pressed down, using the orc’s neck as support to allow him to stand once more.

  And then he was free, standing alone, and he hopped all around.

  Orcs fled in every direction, some, to Bruenor’s anger, past him. But when he glanced back, he took comfort in the fact that Magnus and Mandarina had Tannabritches up in a stretcher, and mighty Ognun was ready for the incoming enemies, and with capable Ragged Dain huffing and puffing to join him.

  Bruenor turned back, just in time to dodge a huge stone flying his way. And there before him stood the giant, an enormous behemoth. Not a hill giant, as one might expect with orcs, but bigger, far bigger indeed.

  “Run away!” he heard Ognun yell to him, and that, of course, was the only answer in the face of such an enemy.

  The only answer for a fifteen-year-old Reginald, perhaps.

  But not for Bruenor Battlehammer, King of Mithral Hall.

  He charged.

  The mountain giant stood more than thrice his height and outweighed him ten-to-one or more. But he charged, roaring, demanding the giant’s attention as it moved to hurl another boulder.

  With a stupid look and a grunt of “huh?” the giant flun
g the rock at the oncoming, nearly beardless young dwarf. It hit the ground a few feet in front of Bruenor and skipped up at him, and nearly clipped him as he dived to the ground.

  By the time the boulder bounced against the hard ground again, Bruenor was already up and running. He thought to charge straight into the behemoth, to rush around its treelike legs and whack at its knees with his axe.

  He changed his mind when the giant reached back and pulled forth its club, an uprooted tree, as thick across as Bruenor’s waist!

  To the left veered the dwarf, formulating another plan, for the trail rose up here, moving behind a wall of stone. He got under that cover just in time, the tree-club slamming down just behind him and shaking the ground so forcefully that he almost lost his balance.

  Cursing with every step, telling himself to just run away out of spite and to the Nine Hells with them all, Bruenor kept his young legs pumping. The curses were real, as was the rage, but he would not abandon his fellow dwarves. Part of him wanted to, just to spite Moradin, but it simply was not the way of Bruenor Battlehammer.

  He ran on, rounding a bend and climbing higher.

  An orc leaped out before him, startling him. He threw his shield across desperately, but didn’t deflect the weapon quite enough, and felt the bite of the spear tip in his belly, trading that severe hit with a downward chop of his axe that crushed the orc’s skull. The creature fell away and Bruenor stumbled forward, and that action only drove the spear in deeper.

  With a trembling hand, the dwarf reached down and grabbed the shaft, thinking to pull it out. As soon as he started to tug, though, he changed his mind. The head was barbed and surely his entrails would spill forth with it.

  “So now ye killed me to death in battle, did ye, Moradin?” he said, sliding down to one knee and trying hard to hold his balance there. “Bah, but ain’t that a fittin’ end for yer games? Ye couldn’t even let the giant do it. It had to be an orc …”

  The dwarf, grimacing and trying to stop the world from spinning, considered those words for a few heartbeats.

  An orc, probably an orc from Many-Arrows. An orc living around this region because of a decision Bruenor had made a century before.

  Another orc appeared on the trail ahead. Spotting the wounded dwarf, it let out a whoop of delight and charged at the kneeling dwarf with a spear deep in his gut.

  A huge rock crashed along the trail just behind them as they turned a bend, reminding the dwarves of the behemoth at their backs. But so too did they find trouble before them, as more orcs gathered along the trail ahead.

  “By the gods, but we’ll be fightin’ either way, then,” said Ragged Dain. “And fewer behind us!”

  “But bigger behind us!” Magnus reminded.

  “Aye, and better to die fightin’ a giant than a stinkin’ orc,” Ognun Leatherbelt cried, and he wheeled around, patted his old friend Ragged Dain on the shoulder, and said, “Let’s take out its knees then, and leave it limping fore’er!”

  Ragged Dain grinned as only a dwarf who knew he was about to die in battle might. He was first back around the bend.

  The giant saw him, and surely heard his cry and those of Ognun beside him.

  The giant had just come forth from its place before the rocky peak, massive club in hand, but when it saw the dwarves, it gave a chuckle that sounded like an avalanche and turned around to retrieve another boulder.

  And there on the ledge it saw, and Ragged Dain and Ognun saw, a most curious sight.

  The spear came out with a tug of angry denial, and Bruenor had it swiveled around and planted just as the orc leaped upon him—or almost upon him, as it skewered itself on the bloody spear. A wild shove of the dwarf’s shield had the flailing orc tumbling off to the side.

  Bruenor paid it no more heed. The forearm of his axe hand tight against his spilling guts, the dwarf growled through the blinding pain and charged up the path, spitting blood with every curse.

  The trail climbed up and wound around to the right, then broke into three branches, including a straight path back in the direction where Bruenor had left his friends. And at the end of that straight path, across a small ledge, Bruenor saw the back of the mountain giant’s head.

  All sense of agony left him then, replaced by the sheerest rage.

  He charged along, lifting his axe up high and shouting “Moradin!” at the top of his lungs, as much a curse at the god as a plea for strength. How thin his voice sounded against the rumble of the giant’s laughter!

  The giant turned around, apparently unaware of Bruenor, and reached for a stone. Its huge eyes widened at the sight of the dwarf, and widened some more when Bruenor, the strength of Clanggedin Silverbeard coursing through his muscular arms, flung the axe with all his might, and never slowed in his charge behind it.

  End over end, the newly bloodied weapon sailed, its silvery head catching the last rays of daylight in dramatic flashes.

  The giant dropped both its club and the rock and brought its hands up to block, but the missile split the gap between its fingers and turned perfectly in its last rotation, the axe blade creasing the giant’s nose and cracking hard into its face right between the eyes.

  “Whoa,” it moaned, fingers flexing repeatedly, but not daring to grab at the embedded weapon. Its big eyes tried each to look in, crossing in a confused and dizzy manner.

  And so with double vision it noted the second missile, the living missile that was Bruenor Battlehammer leaping from the ledge and flying in, shield forward.

  The collisions blasted the breath out of Bruenor, and sent waves of agony burning through him. He knew that he had smashed his shield against the back of the embedded axe, at least, and he knew the giant was falling, for he found himself descending above it.

  He felt the second impact, the earthquake it seemed, when they hit the ground, but that was all he knew.

  He didn’t realize that he was bouncing away, over the behemoth and along the ground. He didn’t know that he came to a stop all twisted and broken at the feet of Ragged Dain, with the other four of the dwarf scouting party close behind, and with a gang of orcs only a short distance behind them.

  CHAPTER 14

  CULTURED SOCIETY

  The Year of the Third Circle (1472 DR) Delthuntle

  HE DID WELL TO GET AS FAR AS HE DID,” PERICOLO TOPOLINO SAID TO TWO of his captains, a halfling prestidigitator aptly nicknamed Wigglefingers, and the Grandfather’s most trusted advisor, his own granddaughter, Donnola Topolino.

  “I had a bead on him halfway up the building,” Wigglefingers protested. “I could have blasted him from the wall with ease.”

  “He is just a child,” Donnola argued. “And it took you half the building to sight him?”

  Wigglefingers ran his fingers down one end of his deliciously curling black mustache, glanced at the pretty young halfling socialite out of the corner of his brown eyes and gave an unappreciative, “Hmm.”

  “Has he awakened yet?” an obviously amused Topolino asked, and indeed, he was often amused by the continual banter of these two. It was all in good fun, after all, and they were the best of friends when not vying for his attention. There were rumors that Wigglefingers—Topolino couldn’t even remember his real name most of the time—was even quietly training Donnola in some clever magical suggestion techniques, just to make her information gathering more lucrative to Morada Topolino.

  “You shot him good,” Donnola replied. “And perhaps with too much of the poison for one so little.”

  In response, Pericolo snapped at the handle of the weapon in the holster at his side, drawing it in the blink of an eye. As it came forth from the cleverly designed scabbard, the spring-loaded wings of the hand crossbow extended, showing the weapon to be cocked and ready to fire, a poison-tipped dart set in place.

  “Just a good batch, this one,” Pericolo said with a laugh.

  “You still draw well, old one,” said Wigglefingers, who was the same age as the Grandfather and had grown up beside Pericolo on Delthuntle’s
streets. Only Wigglefingers would dare to so tease Pericolo Topolino.

  “Quick enough to shoot a wizard before he casts his first spell, no doubt,” the Grandfather answered. He worked his hand on a hidden lever on the inside of the pearl-gripped hand crossbow, releasing the catch, and immediately the wings loosened. Pericolo gave the weapon a couple of spins, rolling the trigger guard around his index finger in a dramatic flair before spinning it right back into the holster.

  “Good poison,” he said again, for he, of course, had brewed it. “This Spider will sleep another day away, likely, and awaken with a mighty ache in his head, do not doubt.”

  “Good enough for the little thief,” said Wigglefingers. “A headache well-deserved for his impudence. How dare he assault the home of Pericolo Topolino? And a fellow halfling! Ah, but Brandobaris is surely shaking his head at that one, eh?”

  “A valuable little thief,” Pericolo corrected. “And given the agreement I’ve forced from his father, I expect that Brandobaris would be shaking his head in disappointment had the courageous one not tried to garner a bit of extra recompense.”

  “Courageous? Or foolish? He had no chance of succeeding.”

  “He is just a child,” Donnola reminded yet again. She rolled her hand around and a perfect pink pearl seemed to appear there out of nowhere. With a subtle movement, she flicked it to the wizard. “Another one worthy of enchanting,” she explained. “Another from the deepwater oysters our little nuisance so easily and skillfully collects.”

  Wigglefingers caught the pearl and stared at it lovingly. “Well, he does have his uses, I suppose,” he admitted.

  “And think how long and low he might dive when you’ve put enchantments upon him,” said Pericolo. “We have only begun to test the value of this one, I expect.” He turned to Donnola, who returned his look with a sly one of her own, as if catching the hint that the Grandfather might have something more in mind here. “You inspected him?”