— Drizzt Do’Urden
CHAPTER 21
PUTTING HIS WORLD TOGETHER
The wagon rocked, sometimes soothing, sometimes jarring, as it rolled along the rocky path, heading north. Sitting on the open bed and looking back the way they had come, Wulfgar watched the skyline of Luskan recede. The many points of the wizard’s tower seemed like a single blur, and the gates were too far for him to make out the guards pacing the city wall.
Wulfgar smiled as he considered those guards. He and his accomplice Morik had been thrown out of Luskan with orders never to return, on pain of death, yet he had walked right into the city, and at least one of the guards had surely recognized him, even tossing him a knowing wink. No doubt Morik was in there, too.
Justice in Luskan was a sham, a scripted play for the people to make them feel secure and feel afraid and feel empowered over the specter of death itself, however the authorities decided was timely.
Wulfgar had debated whether or not to return to Luskan. He wanted to join in with a caravan heading north, for that would serve as his cover, but he feared exposing Colson to the potential dangers of entering the forbidden place. In the end, though, he found that he had no real choice. Arumn Gardpeck and Josi Puddles deserved to learn of Delly Curtie’s sad end. They had been friends of the woman’s for years, and far be it from Wulfgar to deny them the information.
The tears shed by all three—Arumn, Josi, and Wulfgar—had felt right to the barbarian. There was so much more to Delly Curtie than the easy, clichéd idea that many in Luskan had of her, and that Wulfgar had initially bought into himself. There was an honesty and an honor beneath the crust that circumstance had caked over Delly. She’d been a good friend to all three, a good wife to Wulfgar, and a great mother to Colson.
Wulfgar tossed off a chuckle as he considered Josi’s initial reaction to the news, the small man practically launching himself at Wulfgar in a rage, blaming the barbarian for the loss of Delly. With little effort, Wulfgar had put him back in his seat, where he had melted into his folded arms, his shoulders bobbing with sobs—perhaps enhanced by too many drinks, but likely sincere, for Wulfgar had never doubted that Josi had secretly loved Delly.
The world rolled along, stamping its events into the books of history. What was, was, Wulfgar understood, and regrets were not to be long held—no longer than the lessons they imparted regarding future circumstance. He was not innocent of Josi’s accusations, though not to the extent the distraught man had taken them, surely.
But what was, was.
After one particularly sharp bounce of the wagon, Wulfgar draped his arm over Colson’s shoulder and glanced down at the girl, who was busying herself with some sticks Wulfgar had tied together to approximate a doll. She seemed content, or at least unbothered, which was the norm for her. Quiet and unassuming, asking for little and accepting less, Colson just seemed to go along with whatever came her way.
That road had not been fair so far in her young life, Wulfgar knew. She had lost Delly, by all measures her mother, and nearly as bad, Wulfgar realized, she had suffered the great misfortune of being saddled with him as her surrogate father. He stroked her soft, wheat-colored hair.
“Doll, Da,” she said, using her moniker for Wulfgar, one that he had heard only a couple of times over the last tendays.
“Doll, yes,” he said back to her, and tousled her hair.
She giggled, and if ever a sound could lift Wulfgar’s heart….
And he was going to leave her. A momentary wave of weakness flushed through him. How could he even think of such a thing?
“You don’t remember your Ma,” he said quietly, not expecting a response as Colson went back to her play. But she looked up at him, beaming a huge smile.
“Dell-y. Ma,” she said.
Wulfgar felt as if her little hand had just flicked against his heart. He realized how poor a father he had been to her. Urgent business filled his every day, it seemed, and Colson was always placed behind the necessities. She had been with him for many months, and yet he hardly knew her. They had traveled hundreds of miles to the east, and then back west, and only on that return trip had he truly spent time with Colson, had he tried to listen to the child, to understand her needs, to hug her.
He gave a helpless and self-deprecating chuckle and patted her head again. She looked up at him with that unending smile, and went immediately back to her doll.
He hadn’t done right by her, Wulfgar knew. As he had failed Delly as a husband, so he had failed Colson as her father. “Guardian” would be a better term to describe his role in the child’s life.
So he was on that road that would pain him greatly, but in the end it would give to Colson all that she deserved and more.
“You are a princess,” he said to her, and she looked up at him again, though she knew not what it meant.
Wulfgar responded with a smile and another pat, and turned his eyes back toward Luskan, wondering if he would ever travel that far south again.
The village of Auckney seemed to have changed not at all in the three years since Wulfgar had last seen it. Most of his last visit, of course, had been spent in the lord’s dungeon, an accommodation he hoped to avoid a second time. It amused him to think of how his time with Morik had so ingratiated him to the towns of that region, where the words “on pain of death” seemed to accompany his every departure.
Unlike those guards in Luskan, though, Wulfgar suspected that Auckney’s crew would follow through with the threat if they figured out who he was. So for the sake of Colson, he took great pains to disguise himself as the trading caravan wound its way along the rocky road in the westernmost reaches of the Spine of the World, toward the Auckney gate. He wore his beard much thicker, but his stature alone distinguished him from the great majority of the populace, being closer to seven feet tall than to six, and with shoulders wide and strong.
He bundled his traveling cloak tight around him and kept the cowl up over his head—not an unusual practice in the early spring in that part of the world, where the cold winds still howled from on high. When he sat, which was most of the time, he kept his legs tucked in tight so as not to emphasize the length of the limbs, and when he walked, he crouched and hunched his shoulders forward, not only disguising his true height somewhat, but also appearing older, and more importantly, less threatening.
Whether through his cleverness, or more likely sheer luck and the fact that he was accompanied by an entire parade of merchants in that first post-winter caravan, Wulfgar managed to get into the town easily enough, and once past the checkpoint, he did his best to blend in with the group at the circled wagons, where kiosks were hastily constructed and goods displayed to the delight of the winter-weary townsfolk.
Lord Feringal Auck, seeming as petulant as ever, visited on the first full day of the caravan faire. Dressed in impractical finery, including puffy pantaloons of purple and white, the foppish man strutted with a perpetual air of contempt turning up his thin, straight nose. He glanced at goods but never seemed interested enough to bother—though his attendants often returned to purchase particular pieces, obviously for the lord.
Steward Temigast and the gnome driver—and fine fighter—Liam Woodgate, stood out among those attendants. Temigast, Wulfgar trusted, but he knew that if Liam spotted him, the game was surely up.
“He casts an impressive shadow, don’t he?” came a sarcastic voice from behind, and Wulfgar turned to see one of the caravan drivers looking past him to the lord and his entourage. “Feringal Auck….” the man added, chuckling.