By the turn of the winter of the Year of the Dark Circle, though, the darkness began to descend upon Bruenor once more, and when came the turn of Dalereckoning 1479, the Year of the Ageless One, the red-bearded dwarf’s patience had fully run out.
Day after day, he prodded his elders on when the first caravan out from Citadel Felbarr to Mithral Hall would commence, and he confronted Parson Glaive many times to ensure that the priest would not reverse his recent determination that Reginald was ready for the road.
In his whole life, this one and the previous, Bruenor had never felt himself more ready for the road.
He knew that he was becoming more and more testy, his patience long gone. Fist and Fury began avoiding him.
In a sparring match one day early in the second month, Alturiak, Bruenor nearly split the skull of his opponent, so hard was his chop with his practice weapon.
“Ah, but that’s enough of ye,” Ragged Dain said a short while later, coming into the training grounds all red in the face, eyes wide and lips full of froth. He moved to the weapons rack and grabbed out a wooden axe, then stormed over to Bruenor.
“Yerself and me, then,” he said.
“My session is done,” Bruenor replied, and he turned away-and Ragged Dain whacked him across the back, sending him into a forward?” she asked5N3 treasureesto stagger.
Bruenor straightened and took a deep breath. He noted all the other warriors moving to the side of the room, staring at him. He slowly turned around to face Ragged Dain.
“Come on, then,” the old veteran demanded.
Bruenor held his hands out wide, as if to ask why.
“Ye been grumpin’ and spittin’ and kickin’ all the year!” Ragged Dain said. “Ye so durned determined to get out o’ here, are ye?” Bruenor e would love t
CHAPTER 17
The Year of the Grinning Halfling (1481 DR) Delthuntle
Theyhad been among the best years of either life for Regis, and mostly because of this very dance, with this very opponent. The tip of the blade came at him in a series of rapid thrusts, Donnola’s lead foot tapping solidly on the matt as she strode and maintained perfect balance.
Regis countered with an upraised blade, tapping each thrust off to the left, Donnola’s rapier turned only a couple of degrees, but enough to barely miss the mark. a long while to realizem his head travel her father
“Both ways!” she scolded, for she had warned Regis against falling into a dangerous parry rhythm, and to accentuate her point, she held her next thrust just an eye-blink longer, then stabbed in behind Regis’s waving rapier, her eyes and smile wide at her apparent kill.
But up came Regis’s dirk, left arm rising behind his right, the small blade angling Donnola’s attack to the right. And in that movement, Regis began his rapier retraction, bringing it down and dropping his right shoulder back, throwing himself right around, right behind left, farther from Donnola’s turned blade.
He came around with a devastating thrust that brought a yelp from his opponent, who nearly tripped over backward, so fast did she retreat.
But Regis stayed up with her, thrusting high, thrusting low, and always maintaining his perfect fencing posture, with his back foot perpendicular to the line of battle, his front foot aiming the way forward.
Donnola ducked off to the right, and as Regis turned to keep the pressure, she quickly skipped back to the left. This wasn’t the way she typically fought, and Regis understood that she was testing him, using techniques he would more likely see from an opponent with a heavier blade, or a slashing or bludgeoning weapon. She was moving him, turning him, to see if he could react without losing his posture.
It went on for many strikes and parries, Regis gaining a clear and lasting advantage for the first time in their years of sparring.
“Well done, but hold!” Donnola demanded, leaping back and lowering her blade.
“Oh, fie!” Regis argued, for he had her. He knew it!
“You have shown your agility and ability to hold your balance,” Donnola said. “But you could not close.”
“I did not have to close,” Regis protested. “You use rapier and dirk, as do I!”
“Close,” Donnola challenged, assuming a ready position once more. “You can never win without it. Do you think you’ll be fighting a halfling with a rapier? Nay, Spider, you’ll be battling an orc or a human, bigger and stronger, and able to smash your skull from afar!
“Haha!” she added with a deft parry as Regis rushed ahead with a series of sudden, balanced steps, never crossing his trailing foot before his front, the perfect fencing “charge.”
“You can’t win from there!” Donnola laughed, and when Regis came on more ferociously, the woman twirled away.
“Oh, but here comes the club for your head!” she said, or started to say, for then she was rolling back and away once more as Regis kept up the pursuit. Now he moved her deliberately, cutting the room down, guiding her to a corner.
She saw it, he knew.
“Can’t catch me!” she declared, spinning out to the side, but Regis had anticipated it and moved even as she did, his rapier reaching out for her. She fended it brilliantly, as usual, with a rolling block and a riposte, but Regis was ready for that sudden turn of events, and he, too, rolled his blade, back up and over, then down under and suddenly up, lifting Donnola’s arm as he rushed in.
He slammed against her, pressing her back into the wall, and they were so close, face-to-face, Donnola’s sword arm up over her head, pinned to the wall by Regis’s trapping blade.
The tip asked, and Catti-brie nodded.we"›“Eh?”im of her dirk came against his ribs at the same moment his own found her ribs.
He had taken her breath away, and lost his own in the process, for he could not draw any air so close to this beautiful creature.
They stared at each other for a long moment.
Donnola kissed him suddenly, passionately, and pressed out from the wall.
Regis felt his knees go weak and it was all he could do to hold his balance. But then Donnola broke the kiss and he nearly overbalanced forward once more, and might have fallen on his face.
Except that the woman’s rapier prodded into his chest in what would have been a clean kill.
She laughed at him. “You will learn,” she said, and she spun away as gracefully as any butterfly and skipped out of the room.
Regis just stood there, his blades lowered, feeling positively naked, his thoughts spinning helplessly. He tried to focus on the fight, on the flow that had garnered him such an advantage. He tried to learn from this moment, but that was a useless exercise with the heat of Donnola’s kiss so warm in his mind and body.
To think that she had kissed him so!
She was only eight years his senior, in her mid-twenties, and so smart and beautiful and brilliant with the blade, and brilliant in her diplomacy …
Brilliant in her diplomacy?
Regis shook his head to clear the cobwebs and looked at the door where Donnola had departed-had departed after disarming him with an unexpected kiss and defeating him in the match!
Brilliant diplomacy?
Pericolo’s index finger jabbed down onto the map spread wide on a table and a wry smile came over his face.
Donnola looked at the map, a nautical chart of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and perhaps the most complete one in existence. For this had been a project Pericolo had been pursuing for years now, as long as Donnola could remember and more. The Grandfather had spent a small fortune on the detailed nautical chart, at one point offering any boat that went out a small bounty on soundings around the various reefs and shoals. And years earlier, Pericolo had hired the best known cartographer of this sea, and had brought him to Delthuntle, giving him a fine set of rooms and all the charts they could purchase to compile this one grand work.