The prospect of war, of Bruenor's people coming down from the mountains and driving the barbarians away, was not so outlandish.
All because of Aegis-fang.
"Wulfgar would not be so glad to know the source of the arguing," Catti-brie remarked as she and Drizzt neared the settlement. " 'Twas he who bringed them all together. Seems a pity indeed that it's his memory threatening to tear them apart.»
A pity and a terrible irony, Drizzt silently agreed. His steps became more determined; put in that light, this diplomatic mission took on even greater significance. Suddenly Drizzt was marching to Settlestone for much more than a petty squabble between two unyielding rulers. The drow was going for Wulfgar's honor.
As they came down to the valley floor, they heard chanting, a rhythmic, solemn recitation of the deeds of a legendary warrior. They crossed into the empty ways, past the open house doors that the hardy folk never bothered to secure. Both knew where the chanting was coming from, and both knew where they would find the men and women and children of Settlestone.
The only addition the barbarian settlers had made to the town was a large structure that could fit all four hundred people of
Settlestone and a like number of visitors. Hengorot, "the Mead Hall," it was called. It was a solemn place of worship, of valor recalled, and ultimately of sharing food and drink.
Hengorot wasn't finished. Half its long, low walls were of stone, but the rest was enclosed by deerskin canopies. That fact seemed fitting to Drizzt, seemed to reflect how far Wulfgar's people had come, and how far they had to go. When they had lived on the tundra of Icewind Dale, they had been nomadic, following the reindeer herd, so all their houses had been of skin, which could be packed up and taken with the wandering tribe.
No longer were the hardy folk nomads; no longer was their existence dependent on the reindeer herd. It was an unreliable source that often led to warring between the various tribes, or with the folk of Ten-Towns, on the three lakes, the only non-barbarians in Icewind Dale.
Drizzt was glad to see the level of peace and harmony that the northmen had attained, but still it pained him to look at the uncompleted part of Hengorot, to view the skins and remember, too, the sacrifices these people had made. Their way of life, which had survived for thousands of years, was no more. Looking at this construction of Hengorot, a mere shade of the glories the mead hall had known, looking at the stone that now enclosed this proud people, the drow could not help but wonder if this way was indeed "progress.»
Catti-brie, who had lived most of her young life in Icewind Dale, and who had heard countless tales of the nomadic barbarians, had understood the loss all along. In coming to Settlestone, the barbarians had given away a measure of their freedom and more than a bit of their heritage. They were richer now, far richer than they could have ever dreamt, and no longer would a harsh winter threaten their very existence. But there had been a price. Like the stars. The stars were different here beside the mountains. They didn't come down to the flat horizon, drawing a person's soul into the heavens.
With a resigned sigh, a bit of her own homesickness for Icewind Dale, Catti-brie reminded herself of the pressing situation. She knew that Berkthgar was being stubborn, but knew, too, how pained the barbarian leader was over Wulfgar's fall, and how pained he must be to think that a dwarf held the key to the
warhammer that had become the most honored weapon in his tribe's history.
Never mind that the dwarf had been the one to forge that weapon; never mind that the man who had carried it to such glory had, in fact, been like that dwarf's son. To Berkthgar, Catti-brie knew, the lost hero was not the son of Bruenor, but was Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, of the Tribe of the Elk. Wulfgar of Icewind Dale, not of Mithril Hall. Wulfgar, who epitomized all that had been respected and treasured among the barbarian people. Perhaps most of all, Catti-brie appreciated the gravity of the task before them.
Two tall, broad-shouldered guards flanked the skin flap of the mead hall's opening, their beards and breath smelling more than a little of thick mead. They bristled at first, then moved hastily aside when they recognized the visitors. One rushed to the closest end of the long table set in the hall's center to announce Drizzt and Catti-brie, listing their known feats and their heritage (Catti-brie's at least, for Drizzt's heritage would not be a source of glory in Settlestone).
Drizzt and Catti-brie waited patiently at the door with the other man, who easily outweighed the two of them put together. Both of them focused on Berkthgar, seated halfway down the table's right-hand side, and he inevitably looked past the man announcing the visitors to stare back at them.
Catti-brie thought the man a fool in his argument with Bruenor, but neither she nor Drizzt could help but be impressed by the giant barbarian. He was nearly as tall as Wulfgar, fully six and a half towering feet, with broad shoulders and hardened arms the size of a fat dwarf's thighs. His brown hair was shaggy, hanging low over his shoulders, and he was beginning a beard for winter, the thick tufts on his neck and cheeks making him appear all the more fierce and imposing. Settlestone's leaders were picked in contests of strength, in matches of fierce battle, as the barbarians had selected their leaders through their history. No man in Settle-stone could defeat Berkthgar—Berkthgar the Bold, he was called—and yet, because of that fact, he lived, more than any of the others, in the shadow of a dead man who had become legend.
"Pray, join us!" Berkthgar greeted warmly, but the set of his expression told the two companions that he had been expecting
this visit, and was not so thrilled to see them. The chieftain focused particularly on Drizzt, and Catti-brie read both eagerness and trepidation in the large man's sky-blue eyes.
Stools were offered to Drizzt and Catti-brie (a high honor for Catti-brie, for no other woman was seated at the table, unless upon the lap of a suitor). In Hengorot, and in all this society, the women and children, save for the older male children, were servants. They hustled now, placing mugs of mead before the newest guests.
Both Drizzt and Catti-brie eyed the drinks suspiciously, knowing they had to keep their heads perfectly clear, but when Berkthgar offered a toast to them and held his own mug high, custom demanded they likewise salute. And in Hengorot, one simply did not sip mead!
Both friends downed their mugs to rousing cheers, and both looked to each other despairingly as another full mug quickly replaced the emptied one.
Unexpectedly, Drizzt rose and deftly hopped up on the long table.
"My greetings to the men and women of Settlestone, to the people of Berkthgar the Bold!" he began, and a chorus of deafening cheers went up, roars for Berkthgar, the focus of the town's pride. The huge, shaggy-haired man got slapped on the back a hundred times in the next minute, but not once did he blink, and not once did he take his suspicious gaze from the dark elf.
Catti-brie understood what was going on here. The barbarians had come to grudgingly accept Drizzt, but still he was a scrawny elf, and a dark elf on top of it all! The paradox was more than a little uncomfortable for them. They saw Drizzt as weak—probably no stronger than some of their hardy womenfolk—and yet they realized that not one of them could defeat the drow in combat. Berkthgar was the most uncomfortable of all, for he knew why Drizzt and Catti-brie had come, and he suspected this issue about the hammer would be settled between him and Drizzt.
"Truly we are grateful, nay, thrilled, at your hospitality. None in all the Realms can set a table more inviting!" Again the cheers. Drizzt was playing them well, and it didn't hurt that more than half of them were falling-down drunk.
"But we cannot remain for long," Drizzt said, his voice
suddenly solemn. The effect on those seated near the drow was stunning, as they seemed to sober immediately, seemed to suddenly grasp the weight of the drow's visit.
Catti-brie saw the sparkle of the ruby pendant hanging about Drizzt's neck, and she understood that though Drizzt wasn't actively using the enchanting gem, its mere presence was as intoxicating as any amount of thick
mead.
"The heavy sword of war hangs over us all," Drizzt went on gravely. "This is the time of allian—"
Berkthgar abruptly ended the drow's speech by slamming his mug on the table so brutally that it shattered, splattering those nearby with golden-brown mead and glass fragments. Still holding the mug's handle, the barbarian leader unsteadily clambered atop the table to tower over the dark elf.
In the blink of an eye, Hengorot hushed.
"You come here claiming alliance," the barbarian leader began slowly. "You come asking for alliance." He paused and looked around at his anxious people for dramatic effect. "And yet you hold prisoner the weapon that has become a symbol of my people, a weapon brought to glory by Wulfgar, son of Beornegar!"
Thunderous cheers erupted, and Catti-brie looked up to Drizzt and shrugged helplessly. She always hated it when the barbarians referred to Wulfgar by his legacy, as the son of Beornegar. For them to do so was an item of pride, and pride alone never sat well with the pragmatic woman.
Besides, Wulfgar needed no claim of lineage to heighten his short life's achievements. His children, had he sired any, would have been the ones to rightfully speak of their father.
"We are friends of the dwarf king you serve, dark elf," Berkthgar went on, his booming voice resonating off the stone sections of Hengorot's walls. "And we ask the same of Bruenor Battle-hammer, son of Bangor, son of Garumn. You shall have your alliance, but not until Aegis-fang is delivered to me.
"I am Berkthgar!" the barbarian leader bellowed.
"Berkthgar the Bold!" several of the man's advisors quickly piped in, and another chorus went up, a toast of mugs lifted high to the mighty chieftain of Settlestone.
"Bruenor would sooner deliver his own axe," Drizzt replied, thoroughly fed up with Berkthgar's glories. The drow understood
then that he and Catti-brie had been expected in Settlestone, for Berkthgar's little speech, and the reaction to it, had been carefully planned, even rehearsed.
"And I do not think you would enjoy the way he would deliver that axe," the drow finished quietly, when the roaring had died away. Again came the hush of expectation, for the drow's words could be taken as a challenge, and Berkthgar, blue eyes squinting dangerously, seemed more than ready to pick up the gauntlet.
"But Bruenor is not here," the barbarian leader said evenly. "Will Drizzt Do'Urden champion his cause?"
Drizzt straightened, trying to decide the best course.
Catti-brie's mind, too, was working fast. She held little doubt that Drizzt would accept the challenge and put Berkthgar down at once, and the men of Settlestone surely would not tolerate that kind of embarrassment.
"Wulfgar was to be my husband!" she yelled, rising from her chair just as Drizzt was about to respond. "And I am the daughter of Bruenor—by rights, the princess of Mithril Hall. If anyone here is to champion my father's cause—"
"You will name him," Berkthgar reasoned.
"I will be… her," Catti-brie replied grimly.
Roars went up again, all about the mead hall, and more than a few women at the back of the room tittered and nodded hopefully.
Drizzt didn't seem so pleased, and the look he put over Catti-brie was purely plaintive, begging her to calm this situation before things got fully out of hand. He didn't want a fight at all. Neither did Catti-brie, but the room was in a frenzy then, with more than half the voices crying for Berkthgar to "Fight the woman!" as though Catti-brie's challenge had already been launched.
The look that Berkthgar put over Catti-brie was one of pure outrage.
She understood and sympathized with his predicament. She had meant to go on and explain that she would be Bruenor's only champion, if there was to be a champion, but that she had not come here to fight. Events had swept her past that point, however.
"Never!" Berkthgar roared above the din, and the room
calmed somewhat, eager cries dying away to whispers. "Never have I battled a woman!"
That's an attitude Berkthgar had better overcome soon, Drizzt thought, for if the dark elves were indeed marching to Mithril Hall, there would be little room for such inhibitions. Females were typically the strongest of drow warriors, both magically and with weapons.
"Fight her!" cried one man, obviously very drunk, and he was laughing as he called, and so, too, were his fellows about him.
Berkthgar looked from the man to Catti-brie, his huge chest heaving as he tried to take in deep breaths to calm his rage.
He could not win, Catti-brie realized. If they fought, he could not win, even if he battered her. To the hardy men of Settlestone, even lifting a weapon against her would be considered cowardly.
Catti-brie climbed onto the table and gave a slight nod as she passed in front of Drizzt. Hands on hips—and her hip out to the side to accentuate her feminine figure—she gave a wistful smile to the barbarian leader. "Not with weapons, perhaps," she said. "But there are other ways a man and woman might compete.»
All the room exploded at that comment. Mugs were lifted so forcefully in toast that little mead remained in them as they came back down to the eager mouths of the men. Several in the back end of Hengorot took up a lewd song, clapping each other on the back at every crescendo.
Drizzt's lavender eyes grew so wide that they seemed as if they would simply roll out of their sockets. When Catti-brie took the moment to regard him, she feared he would draw his weapons and kill everyone in the room. For an instant, she was flattered, but that quickly passed, replaced by disappointment that the drow would think so little of her.
She gave him a look that said just that as she turned and jumped down from the table. A man nearby reached out to catch her, but she slapped his hands away and strode defiantly for the door.
"There's fire in that one!" she heard behind her.
"Alas for poor Berkthgar!" came another rowdy cry.
On the table, the stunned barbarian leader turned this way and that, purposely avoiding the dark elf's gaze. Berkthgar was at a loss; Bruenor's daughter, though a famed adventurer, was not
known for such antics. But Berkthgar was also more than a little intrigued. Every man in Settlestone considered Catti-brie, the princess of Mithril Hall, the fairest prize in all the region.
"Aegis-fang will be mine!" Berkthgar finally cried, and the roar behind him, and all about him, was deafening.
The barbarian leader was relieved to see that Drizzt was no longer facing him, was no longer anywhere in sight, when he turned back. One great leap had taken the dark elf from the table, and he strode eagerly for the door.
Outside Hengorot, in a quiet spot near an empty house, Drizzt took Catti-brie by the arm and turned her to face him. She expected him to shout at her, even expected him to slap her.
He laughed at her instead.
"Clever," Drizzt congratulated. "But can you take him?"
"How do ye know that I did not mean what I said?" Catti-brie snapped in reply.
"Because you have more respect for yourself than that," Drizzt answered without hesitation.
It was the perfect answer, the one Catti-brie needed to hear from her friend, and she did not press the point further.
"But can you take him?" the drow asked again, seriously. Catti-brie was good, and getting better with every lesson, but Berkthgar was huge and tremendously strong.
"He's drunk," Catti-brie replied. "And he's slow, like Wulfgar was before ye showed him the better way o' fighting." Her blue eyes, rich as the sky just before the dawn, sparkled. "Like ye showed me.»
Drizzt patted her on the shoulder lightly, understanding then that this fight would be as important to her as it was to Berkthgar. The barbarian came storming out of the tent then, leaving a horde of sputtering comrades leering out of the open flap.
"Taking him won't be half the trouble as figuring out how to let him keep his honor," Catti-brie whispered.
Drizzt nodded and patted her shoulder again, then walked away, going in a wide circuit about Berkthgar and back toward the tent. Catti-b
rie had taken things into hand, he decided, and he owed her the respect to let her see this through.
The barbarians fell back as the drow came into the tent and pointedly closed the flap, taking one last look at Catti-brie as he
did, to see her walking side by side with Berkthgar (and he so resembled huge Wulfgar from the back!) down the windswept lane.
For Drizzt Do'Urden, the image was not a pleasant one.
*****
"Ye're not surprised?" Catti-brie asked as she removed the practice padding from her backpack and began sliding it over the fine edge of her sword. She felt a twinge of emotion as she did so, a sudden feeling of disappointment, even anger, which she did not understand.
"I did not believe for a moment that you had brought me out here for the reason you hinted at," Berkthgar replied casually. "Though if you had—"
"Shut yer mouth," Catti-brie sharply interrupted.
Berkthgar's jaw went firm. He was not accustomed to being talked to in that manner, particularly not from a woman. "We of Settlestone do not cover our blades when we fight," he said boastfully.
Catti-brie returned the barbarian leader's determined look, and as she did, she slid the sword back out from its protective sheath. A sudden rush of elation washed over her. As with the earlier feeling, she did not understand it, and so she thought that perhaps her anger toward Berkthgar was more profound than she had dared to admit to herself.
Berkthgar walked away then, to his house, and soon returned wearing a smug smile and a sheath strapped across his back. Above his right shoulder Catti-brie could see the hilt and cross-piece of his sword—a crosspiece nearly as long as her entire blade! — and the bottom portion of the sheath poked out below Berkthgar's left hip, extending almost to the ground.
Catti-brie watched, awestruck, wondering what she had gotten herself into, as Berkthgar solemnly drew the sword to the extent of his arm. The sheath had been cut along its upper side after a foot of leather so that the barbarian could then extract the gigantic blade.
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