“A testament?” he heard himself muttering, with clear distaste.
He came to the cairn of Reginald Roundshield, his father.
He didn’t know what to feel concerning the dwarf. He had never really known him, though so many spoke highly of him. And surely, Uween’s character spoke highly of any dwarf who would take her as a wife.
He stared at the inscription that bore his father’s name, his name.
“No!” he said emphatically asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh holding on at the thought. Never his name! He was Bruenor Battlehammer of Clan Battlehammer, the Eighth King of Mithral Hall and the Tenth King of Mithral Hall.
And what did that mean?
“Ah, Reginald,” he said, for he felt as if he should say something. He had come out here, after all, to the cairn of a respected warrior. “Arr Arr, they called ye, and with great affection. Might be that yerself was Emerus’s Pwent, eh?”
The mention of his own trusted guard sent Bruenor’s thoughts spinning back to Gauntlgrym and that last fateful battle. All had been lost, so it had seemed, but then in had come the dwarves of Icewind Dale, led by Stokely Silverstream, and most importantly, with old Thibbledorf Pwent in tow-nay, not in tow, never in tow, but leading the charge!
As always, Pwent had been there, fighting beside Bruenor, propping Bruenor up, helping Bruenor along. Untiring, without surrender, ever with hope and ever full of the word of Moradin and the loyalty and glory of Clan Battlehammer, Pwent had carried Bruenor to the lever, had placed Bruenor’s hand upon it, and had helped Bruenor pull the lever, ending the threat of the primordial volcanic beast.
Now Bruenor was crying, but for Pwent and not for Reginald.
Nay, not for Pwent alone, he came to realize, but for them all. For traditions that seemed quaint to him so suddenly-silly, even. For homage to gods who did not deserve it.
That last thought slapped back at him profoundly.
He wanted to curse Moradin, but inevitably wound up cursing himself. “Ah, but what a fool I be,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He shook his head, a stream of curses escaping his lips. “A fool’s choice,” he ended. “I throwed it all away.”
He nodded as he spoke the words, as if trying to convince himself. For every image he conjured of his just reward at Moradin’s side, he found a complementary one of Catti-brie, or of Drizzt or Regis. Catti-brie, his adopted daughter … how could he abandon her in this time of her greatest need?
He would see her again in a few short years, so he hoped.
“Nay,” he heard himself saying, for those years would not be “short,” but interminable.
He focused on Drizzt. Had he ever known a better friend? One more loyal to him, including a willingness to tell him when he was wrong? Oh, Bruenor was beloved by many, and counted among his clan hundreds of loyal minions and scores of dear friends, like Thibbledorf Pwent. But Drizzt had known him on a deeper level, he understood, and Drizzt had not treated him with the deference afforded to a king, but rather, with the bluntness often needed from a friend.
“Them was me thoughts when I chose me path out o’ the forest,” a sitting Bruenor said to the cold cairn. “Me friends were needin amp;#ce, the softne
CHAPTER 11
The Year of the Third Circle (1472 DR) Delthuntle
Shasta Furfoot, proprietor of the Lazy Fisherman, the delthuntle inn closest to the water, pausedon of a son of a son of a son of a captain, The Reborn Hero.
That patron, Eiverbreen Parrafin, gawked at her for a few moments, not really knowing what to do. She had warned him that folks had been inquiring about him of late-one powerful character in particular, and her expression now told him in no uncertain terms that the person in question had caught up to him.
Eiverbreen lifted his glass and swallowed its contents in one courage-inducing gulp. At least he had hoped it would have such an effect, though with or without the brandy, the stubble-faced halfling couldn’t quite summon the fortitude to turn around. He heard the hard boots tapping on the floor, coming nearer.
Sweating now, he glanced around, moving only his eyes, for he daren’t move his head.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked down to see an ivory cane. He slightly turned, keeping his eyes defensively down, to see a pair of beautiful, shining black boots, neat trousers tucked firmly inside, and a sash of golden thread holding a slender rapier whose elaborate hand cage left no doubt of this one’s identity.
Eiverbreen swallowed hard and managed through sheer determination to turn around farther to square up to this most famous and dangerous halfling. He noted Grandfather Pericolo’s neatly trimmed goatee, and the fabulous beret he wore, a tight headband with an octagonal flare up above, fashionably tilted higher on the left and with a golden clasp buttoning down the front flap. It was made of some shiny blue material, some exotic fabric which Eiverbreen didn’t know, and stitched in small squares angled to give it a flecked look as it captured and reflected the light.
“Grandfather Pericolo,” he said quietly, and he caught himself and quickly looked back down.
“A bit early for the drink, eh?” Pericolo replied. “But, ah well, it is a fine day! Might I join you, then?”
So nervous was he that Eiverbreen hardly registered the words, and it took him a long while to digest them enough to nod and stutter out, “At your pleasure.”
Pericolo Topolino sat on the stool next to him. “Yes, one for me,” he said to Shasta, motioning to Eiverbreen’s empty glass, “and another for my friend here.”
“We’ve better libations than that,” Shasta replied.
“And I’ve spent nights nursing my head from far worse,” Pericolo replied with a hearty laugh. “If it is good enough for my friend Eiverbreen, then so it is for me!”
Shasta’s eyes went wide, as indeed did Eiverbreen’s, at that proclamation.
“To Jolee,” Pericolo said, hoisting his glass in toast. “A pity that she was lost in childbirth.”
Now Eiverbreen did look at him, curiously and skeptically. “You didn’t know my wife,” he dared to say.
“But I knew indeed her important work,” Pericolo explained. “I am a connoisseur of the finer things, my halfling friend.”
His use of that word, “halfling,” settled Eiverbreen in his seat more than a little, a clear reminder that they were, after all, of the same race-a race often denigrated by those of greater physical stature. Naming another little person as such was, in the end, a salute of brotherhood.
Eiverbreen lifted his glass and tapped it against Pericolo’s and in the general direction moment wooden axeon they shared a drink.
“And I count the deep-sea oysters among those delicacies,” Pericolo went on. “I admit that I have not known for very long the specifics of how those came to the fishmonger, but I did indeed notice their absence, or perhaps their rarity would be a better way to put it, a decade ago. Now I know why. So, to Jolee Parrafin.” He toasted and took another sip.
“You must be devastated by her loss,” Pericolo said.
Eiverbreen hunched over his glass. He had indeed been devastated, but not for any reason of love that he would admit, even if it was there, in the back of his darkened heart. The loss of Jolee had financially devastated him-what little wealth they’d had.
Without oysters to sell, he had become a beggar, and only now, as his boy began to realize his potential as a deep diver, had Eiverbreen’s purse-and his choice of whiskey-begun to recover.
“And now the oysters have returned, and I am pointed once more in your direction as the source,” Pericolo said. “Your boy, I believe.”
Eiverbreen didn’t look up, fearful of where this might be going.
“Spider? Is that his name?”
“Heard him called that.”