Drizzt shook his head, slowly turning to scan the perimeter of the cave, fearing more that Regis had been cut down than that he had run off.
They heard their little friend a few moments later, whistling happily as he exited the goblin escape tunnel. He looked at Drizzt and Bruenor, who stared at him in blank amazement, then tossed something to Drizzt.
The drow caught it and regarded it, and his smile widened indeed.
A goblin ear, wearing a golden cuff.
The dwarf and the dark elf looked at the halfling incredulously.
“I heard what he said,” Regis answered their stares. “And I do understand goblin.” He snapped his little fingers in the air before the stunned pair and started across the cave toward Catti-brie. He stopped a few strides away, though, turned back, and tossed the second ear to Drizzt.
“What's gettin' into him?” Bruenor quietly asked the drow when Regis was far away.
“The adventurous spirit?” Drizzt asked more than stated.
“Ye could be right,” said Bruenor. He spat on the ground. “He's gonna get us all killed, or I'm a bearded gnome.”
The five, for Guenhwyvar remained throughout the night, waited out the rest of the storm in the goblin cave. They found a pile of kindling at the side of the cave, along with some rancid meat they didn't dare cook, and Bruenor set a blazing fire near the outside opening. Guenhwyvar stood sentry while Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Regis deposited the goblin bodies far down the passageway. They ate, and they huddled around the fire. They took turns on watch that night, sleeping two at a time, though they didn't really expect the cowardly goblins to return anytime soon.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Many miles to the south and east of the companions, another weary traveler didn't have the luxury of comrades who could stand watch while he slept. Still, not expecting that many enemies would be out and about on a stormy night such as this, Wulfgar did settle back against the rear wall of the covered nook he chose as his shelter and closed his eyes.
He had dug out this nook, and so he was flanked left and right by walls of solid snow, with the rock wall behind and a rising snow wall before him. He knew that even if no monsters or wild animals would likely find him, he had to take his sleep in short bursts, for if he didn't regularly clear some of the snow from the front, he ran the risk of being buried alive, and if he didn't occasionally throw another log on the fire, he'd likely freeze to death on this bitter night.
These were only minor inconveniences to the hearty barbarian, who had been raised from a babe on the open tundra of brutal Icewind Dale, who had been weaned with the bitter north wind singing in his ears.
And who had been hardened in the fiery swirls of Errtu's demonic home.
The wind sang a mournful song across the small opening of Wulfgar's rock and snow shelter, a long and melancholy note that opened the doorway to the barbarian's battered heart. In that cave, in that storm, and on that windy note, Wulfgar's thoughts were sent back across the span of time.
He recalled so many things about his childhood with the Tribe of the Elk, running the open and wild tundra, following the footsteps of his ancestors in hunts and rituals that had survived for hundreds of years.
He recalled the battle that had brought him to Ten-Towns, an aggressive attack by his warrior people upon the settlers of the villages. There an ill-placed blow on the head of a particularly hard-headed dwarf had led to young Wulfgar's defeat—and that defeat had landed young Wulfgar squarely in the tutelage and indenture of one Bruenor Battlehammer, the surly, gruff, golden-hearted dwarf who Wulfgar would soon enough come to know as a father. That defeat on the battlefield had brought Wulfgar to the side of Drizzt and Catti-brie, had set him on the road that had guided the later years of his youth and the early years of his adulthood. That same road, though, had landed Wulfgar in that most awful of all places, the lair of the demon Errtu.
Outside, the wind mourned and called to his soul, as if asking him to turn away now on his road of memories, to reject all thoughts of Errtu's hellish lair.
Warning him, warning him. .
But Wulfgar, as tormented by his self-perception as he was by the tortures of Errtu, would not turn away. Not this time. He embraced the awful memories. He brought them into his consciousness and examined them fully and rationally, telling himself that this was as it had been. Not as it should have been, but a simple reality of his past, a memory that he would have to carry with him.
A place from which he should try to grow, and not one from which he should reflexively cower.
The wind wailed its dire warnings, calling to him that he might lose himself within that pit of horror, that he might be going to dark places better left at rest. But Wulfgar held on to the thoughts, carried them through to the final victory over Errtu, out on the Sea of Moving Ice.
With his friends beside him.
That was the rub, the forlorn barbarian knew. With his friends beside him! He had forsaken his former companions because he had believed that he must. He had run away from them, particularly from Catti-brie, because he could not let them come to see what he had truly become: a broken wretch, a shell of his former glory.
Wulfgar paused in his contemplation and tossed the last of his logs onto the fire. He adjusted the stones he had set under the blaze, rocks that would catch the heat and hold it for some time. He prodded one stone away from the fire and rolled it under his bedroll, then worked it down under the fabric so that he could comfortably rest atop it.
He did just that and felt the new heat rising beneath, but the new-found comfort could not eliminate or deflect the wall of questions.
“And where am I now?” the barbarian asked of the wind, but it only continued its melancholy wail.
It had no answers, and neither did he.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The next morning dawned bright and clear, with the brilliant sun climbing into a cloudless eastern sky, sending the temperatures to comfortable levels and beginning the melt of the previous day's blizzard.
Drizzt regarded the sight and the warmth with mixed feelings, for while he and all the others were glad to have some feeling returning to their extremities, they all knew the dangers that sunshine after a blizzard could bring to mountain passes. They would have to move extra carefully that day, wary of avalanches with every step.
The drow looked back to the cave, wherein slept his three companions, resting easily, hoping to continue on their way. With any luck, they might make the coast that very day and begin the search in earnest for Minster Gorge and Sheila Kree.
Drizzt looked around and realized they would need considerable luck. Already he could hear the distant rumblings of falling snow.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Wulfgar punched and thrashed his way out of the overhang that had become a cave, that had become a snowy tomb, crawling out and stretching in the brilliant morning sunlight.
The barbarian was right on the edge of the mountains, with the terrain sloping greatly down to the south toward Luskan and with towering, snow-covered peaks all along the northern horizon. He noted, too, with a snort of resignation, that he had apparently been on the edge of the rain/snow line of the blizzard's precipitation, for those sloping hillsides south of him seemed more wet than deep with snow, while the region north of him was clogged with powder.
It was as if the gods themselves were telling him to turn back.
Wulfgar nodded. Perhaps that was it. Or perhaps the storm had been no more than an analogy of the roads now facing him in his life. The easy way, as it would have been out of Luskan, was to the south. That road called to him clearly, showing him a path where he could avoid the difficult terrain.