The Companions

by R. A. Salvatore

  He had traveled a thousand miles as the crow flies, and likely twice that distance in his meandering but enjoyable western journey.

  Enjoyable, but only when he wasn’t looking back to the east, as he was now, images of beautiful Donnola Topolino so clear in his thoughts. When he closed his eyes, he could see her more clearly, and could feel her touch, her gentle fingers brushing his skin, her warm breath whispering into his ear. He could smell her sweetness, taste her …

  “Runt!” he heard loudly, shattering his memories, and Regis nearly fell off the wagon as he wheeled around to regard the shouter, the dirty man driving the wagon.

  “Get me some water, and be quick!” the man, Kermillon by name, ordered. “Or I’ll slap ye in the mud and suck the water out o’ yer ears!”

  “Aye, and might be taking a bit of your brains with it, then, eh?” said Kermillon’s co-pilot, Yoger, a burly man who was dressed and bathed a bit cleaner, but by all accounts remained no less a ruffian than the other.

  Regis climbed fully into the wagon and inched his way along the right-hand rail to the back of the driver’s seat, where Yoger handed him a waterskin. He quickly filled it at the tapped keg, then handed it back.

  “Ye listen better and move quicker!” Kermillon warned.

  Yoger took a deep drink, but never stopped staring at the halfling.

  “You know my namesake, I trust,” Regis said.

  “Can’t say that I do,” said Yoger.

  “They call him Grandfather Pericolo.”

  “Thought he was your uncle.”

  “Everyone calls him Grandfather,” Regis said slyly, but he could only snort and shake his head, for the obvious reference to Pericolo as the head of an assassin’s guild was clearly lost on this ignorant peasant.

  “Get back and sit down and shut yer mouth,” Kermillon told him. “Ye paid for a ride to Daggerford, and ye might be getting there, but if ye’re too much the bother, I’m dropping ye in the mud and leaving ye.”

  Regis was more than happy to comply. He started to turn, but paused just long enough to view the smoke of campfires rising above the trees not far ahead. He nodded, remembering the Boareskyr Bridge, and the merchant encampments perpetually set on either side.

  “It is a good place,” he said, hardly thinking, and only realized he had spoken it out loud when both men turned to regard him curiously.

  Regis just tipped his fabulous beret at them and moved to the back of the wagon.

  The white tents dotted the sides of the road long before the mouth of the bridge, a virtual city of merchant kiosks and open markets. The ten wagons of the Daggerford caravan pulled up into an open field along the right side of the road, where corrals had been set up and smoke rose from blacksmith fires. This place was well-suited for resupply, for shoeing horses and even buying new ones if necessary, though, since the roads were empty for scores of miles on either side of the bridge, such services and goods did not come cheap.

  Regis was glad to be away from his thuggish drivers, and glad to be wandering around the bustle of a marketplace. Dressed in silken finery, all purple and blue, with blue-dyed lambskin riding gloves, and with his beret and bejeweled rapier both prominently displayed, he played the role of halfling aristocrat perfectly. Donnola had trained him well, after all, and that after decades of his previous life in the palaces of the pashas of Calimport. Many of the merchants around Boareskyr Bridge were from the kingdom of Amn, and Regis knew the traditions and customs of that land very well.

  He was the perfect blend of experience and seeming innocence, floating around the tents with smiles and tips of his beret. He wandered from kiosk to kiosk, feigning approving looks at many trite trinkets and baubles, but then stopped at one table, his eyes locked on a square piece of whitened bone.

  “You fancy the ivory?” said the chubby merchant dressed in the white robes and colorful vestments common in the southern deserts. “Very rare. Very rare! From the great beasts of Chult!”

  Regis moved his hand toward the block, but paused and looked to the merchant for permission. The man nodded eagerly.

  Regis rolled the block around his hands, the feel bringing him to another place and time.

  “Ivory from the jungles,” the merchant proclaimed.

  But Regis knew better. “Trout bone,” he corrected. “From the northern lakes.”

  The merchant started to argue, but Regis fixed him with a look that brooked no debate. The halfling knew this material intimately, and just holding it now brought his thoughts careening back to the banks of Maer Dualdon in Icewind Dale.

  “How much?” he asked, for he needed to have this piece. His gaze roamed the table and out to nearby tents. He had some items on his housebreaker harness, small-tipped knives and tiny files, that would suffice for many of the cuts, but he would need a true carving knife, he decided.

  “Ivory,” the merchant insisted. “Five pieces of gold.”

  “Knucklehead trout bone,” Regis corrected, “and I will give you two.”

  “Two and twenty silver!”

  “Two and five,” said Regis. “It is only impatience that makes me offer that, as I will be along the Sword Coast soon enough, traveling north, where the material is plentiful.”

  “You are a carver then?”

  Regis nodded. “I was.”

  “Was? When you were a child?” the man said with a laugh, and Regis joined in, reminding himself silently that he wore the body of a young halfling, barely an adult.

  “You make something pretty and I will sell it for you, yes?” the merchant asked, taking the coin and handing over the block. “You will find me here—I will sell your wares, sixty-forty!”

  “Seventy-thirty.”

  “Sixty-one.”

  “Seventy-one!” Regis said, more than matching the merchant’s zest, his halfling eyes sparkling. This was all about the arguing, he knew—the bargaining was worth more to these merchants than the extra coin they sometimes gained or saved.

  “Ahaha!” said the merchant. “Sixty-five then, but you must promise to be quiet so my other vendors will not carve me into something not so pretty, yes?”

  “Spider Pericolo Topolino,” the young halfling introduced himself with a slight bow.

  “Adi Abba Adidas,” said the merchant with a much more flowery dip. They shook hands and the merchant patted the halfling hard on the shoulder. “We will do very much good business, yes!” he declared.

  Spider moved around the tents, always politely feigning interest in this or that. He walked with the air of importance and confidence, one gloved hand always resting on the sparkling hilt of his magnificent rapier, the other ever-ready to tip his beret.

  Across the road, following directions Adi had given him, he found a kiosk that held many herbs of interest to him. He had no intention of giving up his alchemy training, after all, particularly with a small still and other needed alchemy items safely tucked away in his magical belt pouch. To Regis’s delight, the merchant herbalist also had several scrolls for sale, details for various concoctions Regis did not know, including a recipe for a potion of healing.

  That lightened his supply of coin considerably, of course, but Regis left with a lighter step and a sincere grin. Yes, this day was moving along splendidly, all the more so because it had brought him a reprieve from the annoying Kermillon and Yoger.

  That thought almost was prophetic for coming around the corner of one row of tents, Regis spotted the drivers talking to a pair of scruffy-looking fellows, a one-eyed dwarf and a tall man dressed in clothes that might have once been fine but had seen far too much of the open road. The tall man had long black hair and a thin mustache, with golden earrings on both ears. Regis thought he’d look more in place on a pirate ship sailing the Sword Coast than here at Boareskyr Bridge.

  Not quite sure what to make of the parlay, if there was anything at all to it, Regis ducked back out of sight. He felt a bit uneasy when he saw Kermillon hand over a small purse to the tall man, at the same time as Yoger
held out his hand, palm down, just above his waist level, as if describing someone of about Regis’s height.

  “Probably nothing,” he told himself, scurrying back across the road to the more fashionable tents.

  Soon after, full of the sounds and smells and the bickering of the auctions, he had forgotten all about it and once more realized the fine mood that so befit his current persona and dress. He bought no more, though he showed interest in many items at many different kiosks, and he entertained offers of his own as various merchants sought to purchase his wondrous beret—although they didn’t know how wondrous it might be, Regis silently mused—or mostly, inquired about his rapier.

  “Five thousand pieces of gold!” one woman offered, pointing to the weapon without ever having even held it.

  “Good madam,” Regis replied, “it may be no more than an unbalanced stick bedecked with imperfect stones!”

  The woman smiled at him and shook her head knowingly. “I know a stone,” she said, and she held forth her hand.

  Regis considered it for a moment, then gave a little shrug and drew out the blade, graciously handing it over.

  The woman took it and whipped it around gracefully—she knew how to handle it, the halfling realized, and that thought shook him a bit as he realized his vulnerability. But no, he told himself, this was an honest market, and she would not skewer him.

  The woman handed back the blade, nodding. “I had thought my offer generous,” she said. “Perhaps not.”

  “Indeed,” said Regis, replacing the rapier inside his belt loop at his left hip, after performing a couple of practiced moves himself.

  “It is worth that ornamentally alone,” said the woman. “Those are perfect gems.”

  “You have a good eye.”

  “It keeps me thick with coin. Ten thousand, then?”

  Regis smiled, tipped his cap and shook his head, but politely.

  “Fifteen!” she said, “for I know your secret. The blade is powerfully magicked.”

  “Indeed,” Regis agreed. He wasn’t sure of the dweomer upon the rapier, for he hadn’t much used it outside of simple practice. He had sensed nothing unusual in the blade, unlike his strange and powerful dagger, to be sure, but the rapier seemed far lighter than it should have been and struck with tremendous effect, its fine tip boring through most armor with ease.

  “Sentimental value,” he answered, graciously kissing her hand before starting away.

  He had barely gone a dozen strides when another vendor hailed him. “Here, then,” called the merchant, and Regis looked up, then fell back a step reflexively at the sight of the vendor, a one-eyed dwarf standing before a large tent.

  The hairs on the back of Regis’s neck stood up as he recalled his earlier view of this one—now only coincidentally hailing him? He thought of running away, or of politely responding from afar and slipping off into the bustle of the marketplace.

  “That’s what the old Regis would do,” he whispered to himself, as he approached the waving dwarf.

  “Sure that a little one as finely cut as yerself ain’t thinking o’ sleeping in the wagon, then!”

  “I hadn’t thought of it at all, good fellow,” Regis replied. “But then, I have slept in the wagons these last days, have I not? Indeed, all the way from Suzail. And in an open boat for tendays before that.”

  “Yer clothes look none the worse for wear, eh?”

  “New clothes, some,” Regis answered.

  “Well, put ’em in a bed tonight, then,” said the dwarf. “Got many open, I do—them drivers are pinchin’ tighter, I say!—and I’ll put ye up on the copper.”

  Regis knew it was a trap, of course, and again his instincts told him to just walk away. But again he reminded himself that he wasn’t that halfling anymore, shying from trouble, or in this case, from a likely fight. He thought of his many lessons with Donnola, and of the years he had spent training his body for a situation just such as this.

  He wouldn’t be any good to Catti-brie and Drizzt if he was killed, he reminded himself, and he wavered.

  So I won’t be killed, Spider Pericolo Topolino stubbornly determined. “The copper, you say? And pray tell how many coppers you might be looking for, good Mister …?”

  “Tinderkeg,” the greasy dwarf replied. “Mister Tinderkeg at yer service, Mister …?”

  “Topolino. Spider Pericolo Topolino.”

  “Aye, but that’s a mouthful o’ i’s an’ o’s, haha!”

  “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many coppers for a bed, Mister Tinderkeg?”

  “Oh, yeah, that.” The one-eyed dwarf paused and seemed at a loss for a bit, as if he was only then calculating an answer—yet another clear hint to Regis that it was more than coincidence that had brought him together with this particular dwarf, at this particular time.

  “Just a few, then,” Tinderkeg stuttered. “Whatever good Mister Perico … Perica … er, yerself, can spare.”

  Regis reached into his pouch and pulled out a few coins, silver and copper, and handed them over. He looked to the west, where the sun was very low now, long shadows darkening the kiosks as the merchants began to close up their wares for the night.

  “Show me to my bed, then,” he bade the dwarf. “It has been a long and dirty road.”

  “Dirty, eh? Well, I can draw ye a bath for a few copper more,” said the dwarf. “And I’ll get the water from the east side of the bridge, eh!”

  That last reference almost slipped by Regis, who hadn’t yet looked into the river Winding Water, but he recalled some tales of this place that he had heard soon after the Time of Troubles. According to some bards who had performed in Mithral Hall, the water upstream of the Boareskyr Bridge was clear, but downstream, below the bridge, the flow was foul indeed, the result of a battle between gods, it was said. Regis didn’t recall the full fable of it, but whatever magic had soiled the Winding Water beyond Boareskyr had brought about an oft-heard curse in these parts of, “Go drink from the west side of the bridge!”

  The halfling almost declined the dwarf’s offer, but quickly changed his mind, seeing an opportunity to turn the tables on his would-be assailants. No dwarf, certainly not this smelly fellow, would volunteer to draw a bath for anyone, and especially not for such a pittance, considering the labor involved. But what better way to get a victim away from his weapons and armor than to catch him by surprise in a tub of water?

  “Yes, a bath would well suit me,” Regis said, handing over some more coin. “And do throw some hot stones about the tub, good fellow, that I might ease the ache from my road-weary bones. I think I’ll take a last quick look at some of the wares about, and will return in short order to retire.”

  And with that, he went off into the marketplace, resisting the urge to assume yet another identity with his hat, hard though it was.

  “So ye come to pay visits and a beer for a tale!” Regis sang, and he splashed his hand around the water in the tub beside him. “Well we’ll take yer wishes, a song for an ale! And if ye’ve a burner that’s epic indeed, we’ll toss out the hops and give ye a mead!”

  He couldn’t remember any more of the words, so he hummed instead, occasionally throwing out a syllable or two that sounded rather Dwarvish in inflection. And he kept splashing his hand around, trying to make it sound to anyone outside the curtain as if he were actually in the tub.

  Sure enough, the curtain flew aside suddenly and a tall man with a thin mustache and long black hair rushed in, saber raised for a strike.

  Regis lifted his hand crossbow and shot him in the chest. “You look like a bad pirate,” he said as the man fell away. In behind the stumbling fellow came Tinderkeg, leaping forward with a mighty swing of his heavy hammer.

  Regis dropped his hand crossbow, drew forth his rapier, and jumped back in the same movement. He came forward almost immediately and stabbed behind the blow, scoring a hit on the dwarf’s arm. His rapier tip didn’t fully penetrate, though, for this one was heavily armored, but the
dwarf did indeed yelp and fall back.

  Regis drew out his dirk, though he didn’t know how much good it would do him here; certainly he wouldn’t try to block or catch that huge hammer with it!

  On came Tinderkeg furiously, driving the halfling back with another wild swing. Again the dwarf came in short of his mark, but this time smashed the weapon into the side of the tub, smashing the wood, and the water rushed out.

  Tinderkeg tore the hammer free, splintering more of the planks, and whipped it across again, then back the way it had come, left-to-right before the halfling.

  Seeing the tall man rising behind the dwarf, Regis knew that he had to move fast. He reversed his grip on the three-bladed dirk and quick-stepped to Tinderkeg’s left—and how he quick-stepped! The prism on his ring lit up as he started the movement and he felt its magic within him suddenly, along with an imparted thought: “warp step.” Indeed, it seemed to Regis as if time or distance or perhaps both had warped to his favor in that instant, the dwarf turning far too slowly to keep up with his movement as he bolted behind Tinderkeg’s left shoulder.

  Not sure of what was happening, but certainly not about to surrender such an opportunity, Regis drove his dagger out behind him, hard into the dwarf’s back. It bit in through a seam in the armor and dived deep into the dwarf’s flesh, and Regis turned as Tinderkeg turned, the dwarf lurching and reaching behind himself in pain.

  All of those hours standing in a door jamb, reading his alchemy books while practicing with his rapier, brought on the halfling’s next movement without him even thinking about it, his right arm snapping forward, the tip of his thin blade perfectly aimed.

  “Ah, ye blinded me!” Tinderkeg screamed, leaping back and dropping his hammer, both his hands slapping over his one eye. He dropped his hands almost at once, blood and ichor streaming from the stabbed eye, and shook his head weirdly, as if only then understanding his understatement.

  “Ye killed me,” he corrected, and he fell over dead, face first to the floor.

  Regis didn’t see it, for he was fast at work against the second murderer, and this one was no novice with the blade, the halfling quickly realized. He noted the pinpoint of blood on the man’s chest, just below the collar of his shirt. Regis had scored a solid hit indeed with the hand crossbow, but as he had feared, the drow poison had apparently lost most of its efficacy in the months since he had left Delthuntle. This one’s movements showed no sign of sluggishness, Regis recognized to his horror, his rapier working frantically to deflect the flurry of saber strikes.