He waited a few moments, and confident that his location would hold steady, he removed a shoe, looped the line around his big toe, and dropped his pack to use as a pillow. He had barely settled down and closed his eyes when a noise from the north startled him.
He recognized the source before he even sat up to look beyond the rounded stone.
Orcs.
Several young ones had gathered at the water’s edge. They argued noisily—why were orcs always so boisterous? — about fishing lines and fishing nets and where to cast and how to cast.
Regis almost laughed aloud at himself for his bubbling annoyance, for he understood his anger even as he felt it. They were orcs, and so he was angry. They were orcs, and so he was impatient. They were orcs, and so his first reaction had to be negative.
Old feelings died hard.
Regis thought back to another time and another place, recalling when a group of boys and girls had begun a noisy splash fight not far from where he had cast his line in Maer Dualdon. Regis had scolded them that day, but only briefly.
As he thought of it, he couldn’t help grin, remembering how he had then spent a wonderful afternoon showing those youngsters how to fish, how to play a hooked knucklehead, and how to skin a catch. Indeed, that long-ago night, the group of youngsters had arrived at Regis’s front door, at his invitation, to see some of his carvings and to enjoy a meal of trout prepared only as Regis knew how.
Among so many uneventful days on the banks of Maer Dualdon, that one stood out in Regis’s memory.
He considered the noisy orc youngsters again, and laughed as he watched them try to throw a net—and wind up netting one young orc girl instead.
He almost got up, thinking to go and offer lessons as he had on that long ago day in Icewind Dale. But he stopped when he noticed the boundary marker between his spot and the orcs. Where the mountain spilled down to the Surbrin marked the end of Mithral Hall and the beginning of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, and across that line, Regis could not go.
The orcs noticed him, then, just as he scowled. He lifted a hand to wave, and they did likewise, though more than a little tentatively.
Regis settled back behind the stone, not wanting to upset the group. One day, he thought, he might be able to go up there and show them how to throw a net or cast a line. One day soon, perhaps, given the relative peace of the past four years and the recent cooperative ambush that had destroyed a potential threat to the Silver Marches.
Or maybe he would one day wage war against those very orc youngsters, kill one with his mace or be taken in the gut by another’s spear. He could picture Drizzt dancing through that group then and there, his scimitars striking with brilliant precision, leaving the lot of them squirming and bleeding on the rocks.
A shudder coursed the halfling’s spine, and he shook away those dark thoughts.
They were building something there, Regis had to believe. Despite Bruenor’s stubbornness and Obould’s heritage, the uneasy truce had already become an accepted if still uneasy peace, and it was Regis’s greatest hope that every day that passed without incident made the prospect of another dwarf-orc war a bit more remote.
A tug on the line had him sitting up, and once he had the line in hand, he scrambled to his feet, working the line expertly. Understanding that he had an audience, he took his time landing the fish, a fine, foot-long ice perch.
When at last he landed it, he held it up to show the young orcs, who applauded and waved enthusiastically.
“One day I will teach you,” Regis said, though they were too far away—and upwind and with a noisy river bubbling by—and could not hear. “One day.”
Then he paused and listened to his own words and realized that he was musing about orcs. Orcs. He had killed orcs, and with hardly a care. A moment of uncomfortable regret seized the halfling, followed quickly by a sense of complete confusion. He suppressed all of that, but only momentarily, by going back to work on his line, putting it back out in the calmer waters of the pool.
Orcs.
Orcs!
Orcs?
“Bruenor wishes to speak with you?” Catti-brie asked Drizzt when he returned to their suite of rooms late one night, only to be met by Bruenor’s page with a quiet request. A tenday had passed since the fight with the devils and the situation had calmed considerably.
“He is trying to sort through the confusion of our recent adventure.”
“He wants you to go to Mirabar with Torgar Hammerstriker,” Catti-brie reasoned.
“It does seem ridiculous,” Drizzt replied, agreeing with Catti-brie’s incredulous tone. “In the best of times, and the most secure, Marchion Elastul would not grant me entrance.”
“A long way to hike to camp out on the cold ground,” Catti-brie quipped.
Drizzt moved up to her, grinning wickedly. “Not so unwelcome an event if I bring along the right bedroll,” he said, his hands sliding around the woman’s waist as he moved even closer.
Catti-brie laughed and responded to his kiss. “I would enjoy that.”
“But you cannot go,” Drizzt said, moving back. “You have a grand adventure before you, and one you would not wisely avoid.”
“If you ask me to go with you, I will.”
Drizzt stepped back, shaking his head. “A fine husband I would be to do so! I have heard hints of some of the wonders Alustriel has planned for you throughout the next few months, I could not deny you that for the sake of my own desires.”
“Ah, but don’t you understand how alluring it is to know that your desires for me overwhelm that absolute sense of right and wrong that is so deeply engrained into your heart and soul?”
Drizzt fell back at that and stared at Catti-brie, blinking repeatedly. He tried to respond several times, but nothing decipherable came forth.
Catti-brie let her laughter flow. “You are insufferable,” she said, and danced across the room from Drizzt. “You spend so much time wondering how you should feel that you rarely ever simply do feel.”
Knowing he was being mocked, Drizzt crossed his arms over his chest and turned his confused stare into a glare.
“I admire your judgment, all the while being frustrated by it,” Catti-brie said. “I remember when you went into Biggrin’s cave those many years ago, Wulfgar at your side. It was not a wise choice, but you followed your emotions instead of your reason. What has happened to that Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“He has grown older and wiser.”
“Wiser? Or more cautious?” she asked with a sly grin.
“Are they not one and the same?”
“In battle, perhaps,” Catti-brie replied. “And since that is the only arena in which you have ever been willing to take a chance….”
Drizzt blew a helpless sigh.
“A span of a few heartbeats can make for a greater memory than the sum of a mundane year,” Catti-brie continued.
Drizzt nodded his concession. “There are still risks to be had.” He started for the door, saying, “I will try to be brief, though I suspect your father will wish to talk this through over and over again.” He glanced back as he grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, shaking his head and smiling.
His expression changed when he considered his wife.
She had unfastened the top two buttons of her colorful shirt and stood looking at him with a sly and inviting expression. She gave a little grin and shrug, and chewed her bottom lip teasingly.
“It wouldn’t be a wise choice to keep the king waiting,” she said in a voice far too innocent.
Drizzt nodded, paused, and slammed and locked the door. “I’m his son by marriage now,” he explained, gliding across the room, his sword belt falling to the floor as he went. “The king will forgive me.”