“Oaf,” Robillard quietly remarked.
They watched silently, Deudermont chewing his lip, as Wulfgar climbed to his feet at the bottom of the long slide. The barbarian leaned over to one side, favoring an injured shoulder. As he walked about, obviously trying to sort out the best path back to his equipment, the pair noted a pronounced limp.
“He'll not make it back up without aid,” Deudermont said.
“Oaf,” Robillard said again.
“Look at him!” the captain cried. “He could have turned south, as you predicted, but he did not. No, he went out to the north and into the frozen mountains, a place where few would travel, even in the summer and even in a group, and fewer still would dare try alone.”
“That is the way of nature,” Robillard quipped. “Those who would try alone likely have and thus are all dead. Fools have a way of weeding themselves out of the bloodlines.”
“You wanted him to go north,” the captain pointedly reminded.
“You said as much, and many times. And not so that he would fall and die. You insisted that if Wulfgar was a man deserving of such friends as Drizzt and Catti-brie, that he would go in search of them, no matter the odds.
“Look now, my curmudgeonly friend,” Deudermont stated, waving his arm out toward the water bowl, to the image of stubborn Wulfgar.
Obviously in pain but just grimacing it away, the man was scrambling inch by inch to scale back up the mountainside. The barbarian didn't stop and cry out in rage, didn't punch his fist into the air. He just picked his path and clawed at it without complaint.
Deudermont eyed Robillard as intently as the wizard was then eyeing the scrying bowl. Finally, Robillard looked up. “Perhaps there is more to this Wulfgar than I believed,” the wizard admitted.
“Are we to let him die out there, alone and cold?”
Robillard sighed, then growled and rubbed his hands forcefully across his face, so that his skinny features glowed bright red. “He has been nothing but trouble since the day he arrived on Waterdeep's long dock to speak with you!” Robillard snarled, and he shook his head. “Nay, even before that, in Luskan, when he tried to kill—”
“He did not!” Deudermont insisted, angry that Robillard had reopened that old wound. “That was neither Wulfgar nor the little one named Morik.”
“So you say.”
“He suffers hardships without complaint,” the captain went on, again directing the wizard's eyes to the image in the bowl. “Though I hardly think Wulfgar considers such a storm as this even a hardship after the torments he likely faced at the hands of the demon Errtu.”
“Then there is no problem here.”
“But what now?” the captain pressed. “Wulfgar will never find his friends while wandering aimlessly through the wintry mountains.”
Deudermont could tell by the ensuing sigh that Robillard understood him completely.
“We spotted a pirate just yesterday,” the wizard remarked, a verbal squirm if Deudermont had ever heard one. “Likely we will do battle in the morning. You can not afford—”
“If we see the pirate again and you have not returned, or if you are not yet prepared for the fight, then we will shadow her. As we can outrun any ship when we are in pursuit, so we can when we are in retreat.”
“I do not like teleporting to unfamiliar places,” Robillard grumbled. “I may appear too high, and fall.”
“Enact a spell of flying or floating before you go, then.”
“Or too low,” Robillard said grimly, for that was ever a possibility, and any wizard who wound up appearing at the other end of a teleport spell too low would find pieces of himself scattered amongst the rocks and dirt.
Deudermont had no answer for that other than a shrug, but it wasn't really a debate. Robillard was only complaining anyway, with every intention of going to the wounded man.
“Wait for me to return before engaging any pirates,” the wizard grumbled, fishing through his many pockets for the components he would need to safely—as safely as possible, anyway—go to Wulfgar. “If I do return, that is.”
“I have every confidence.”
“Of course you do,” said Robillard.
Captain Deudermont stepped back as Robillard moved to a side cabinet and flung it open, removing one of Deudermont's own items, a heavy woolen blanket. Grumbling continually, the wizard began his casting, first a spell that had him gently floating off of the floor, and another that seemed to tear the fabric of the air itself. Many multicolored bubbles surrounded the wizard until his form became blurred by their multitude—and he was gone, and there were only bubbles, gradually popping and flowing together so that the air seemed whole again.
Deudermont rushed forward and stared into the watery bowl, catching the last images of Wulfgar before Robillard's divining dweomer dissipated.
He saw a second form come onto the snowy scene.
* * * ** * * * * * *
Wulfgar started to slip yet again, but growled and fell flat, reaching his arm up and catching onto a jag in the little bare stone he could find. His pulled with his powerful arm, sliding himself upward.
“We will be here all afternoon if you continue at that pace,” came a familiar voice from above.
The barbarian looked up to see Robillard standing atop the pass, a heavy brown blanket wrapped around him, over his customary wizard robes,
“What?” the astonished Wulfgar started to ask, but with his surprise came distraction, and he wound up sliding backward some twenty feet to crash heavily against a rocky outcrop.
The barbarian pulled himself to his feet and looked back up to see Robillard, the bardiche in hand, floating down the mountain slope. The wizard scooped a few of Wulfgar's other belongings on the way, dropped them to Wulfgar, and swooped about, flying magically back and forth until he had collected all of the spilled possessions. That job completed, he landed lightly beside the huge man.
“I hardly expected to see you here,” said Wulfgar.
“No less than I expected to see you,” Robillard answered. “I predicted that you would take the south road, not the north. Your surprising fortitude even cost me a wager I made with Donnark the oarsman.”
“Should I repay you?” Wulfgar said dryly.
Robillard shrugged and nodded. “Another time, perhaps. I have no desire to remain in this godsforsaken wilderness any longer than is necessary.”
“I have my possessions and am not badly injured,” Wulfgar stated. He squared his massive shoulders and thrust out his chin defiantly, more than ready to allow the wizard to leave.
“But you have not found your friends,” the wizard explained, “and have little chance of ever doing so without my help. And so I am here.”
“Because you are my friend?”
“Because Captain Deudermont is,” Robillard corrected, and with a huff to deny the wry grin that adorned the barbarian's ruddy and bristled face.
“You have spells to locate them?” Wulfgar asked.
“I have spells to make us fly up above the peaks,” Robillard corrected, “and others to get us quickly from place to place. We will soon enough take account of every creature walking the region. We can only hope that your friends are among them.”
“And if they are not?”
“Then I suggest that you return with me to Waterdeep.”
“To Sea Sprite!”
“To Waterdeep,” Robillard forcefully repeated.
Wulfgar shrugged, not wanting to argue the point—one that he hoped would be moot. He believed that Drizzt and the others had come in search of Aegis-fang, and if that was the case he expected that they would still be there, alive and well.
He still wasn't sure if he had chosen correctly that day back in Luskan, still wasn't sure if he was ready for this, if he wanted this. How would he react when he saw them again? What would he say to Bruenor, and what might he do if the dwarf, protective of Catti-brie to the end, simply leaped at him to throttle him? And what might he say to Catti-brie? How could he ever look into her blue eyes again after what he had done to her?