Sea of Swords

 

EVICTION NOTICE



The people of Faerun's northern cities thought they understood the nature of snowstorms and the ferocity of winter but in reality, no person who hadn't walked the tundra of Icewind Dale or the passes of the Spine of the World during a winter blizzard could truly appreciate the raw power of nature unleashed.



Such a storm found the four friends as they traversed one high pass southeast of Auckney.



Driven by fierce and frigid winds that had them leaning far forward just to prevent being blown over, icy, stinging snow crashed against them more than fell over them. That driving wind shifted constantly among the alternating cliff faces, swirling and changing direction, denying them any chance of finding a shielding barricade, and always seeming to put snow in their faces no matter which way they turned. They each tried to formulate a plan and had to shout out their suggestions at the top of their lungs, putting lips right against the ear of the person with whom they were trying to communicate.



In the end, any hope of a plan for achieving some relief had to rely completely upon luck - the companions needed to find a cave, or at least a deep overhang with walls shielding them from the most pressing winds.



Drizzt bent low on the white trail and placed his black onyx figurine on the ground before him. With the same urgency he might have used if a tremendous battle loomed before him, the dark elf called to Guenhwyvar. Drizzt stepped back, but not too far, and waited for the gray mist to appear, swirling and gradually forming into the shape of the panther, then solidifying into the cat itself. The drow bent low and communicated his wishes, and the panther leaped away, padding off through the storm, searching the mountain walls and the many side passes that dipped down from the main trail.



Drizzt started away as well, on the same mission. The other three companions, though, remained tight together, defensively huddled from the wind and other potential dangers. That proximity alone prevented complete disaster when one great gust of wind roared up, knocking Catti-brie to one knee and blowing the poor halfling right over backward. Regis tumbled and scrambled, trying to find his balance, or at least find something to hold onto.



Bruenor, sturdy and steady, grabbed his daughter by the elbow and hoisted her up, then pushed her off in the direction of the scrambling halfling. Catti-brie reacted immediately, diving out over the lip of the trail's crest, pulling Taulmaril off her shoulder, falling flat to her belly and reaching the bow out toward the skidding, sliding halfling.



Regis caught the bow and held on a split second before he went tumbling over the side of the high trail, a spill that would have had him bouncing down hundreds of feet to a lower plateau and would have likely dropped an avalanche on his head right behind him. It only took a couple of minutes for Catti-brie to extract the halfling from the open face, but by the time she yanked him in he was covered white with snow and shivering terribly.



"We canno' stay out here," the woman yelled to Bruenor, who came stomping over. "The storm'll be the death of us!"



"The elf'll find us something!" the dwarf yelled. "Him or that cat o' his!"



Catti-brie nodded, Regis tried to nod as well, but his shivering only made the motion look ridiculous. All three knew that they were fast running out of options. All three understood that Drizzt and Guenhwyvar had better find them some shelter. And soon.



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



Guenhwyvar's roar came as the most welcome sound Drizzt Do'Urden had heard in a long, long time. He peered through the blinding sheets of blowing white, to see the huge black panther atop a windblown jag of stone, ears flat back, face masked with icy white snow.



Drizzt half skipped and half fell along a diagonal course that kept the mighty wind somewhat behind him as he made his way to Guenhwyvar.



"What have you found?" he asked the cat when he arrived just below her, peering up.



Guenhwyvar roared again and leaped away. The drow rushed to follow, and a few hundred feet down a side trail piled deep with snow, the pair came under a long overhang of rock. Drizzt nodded, thinking that this would provide some shelter, at least, but then Guenhwyvar prodded him and growled. She moved into the shelter, toward the very back, which remained shadowed. The panther was moving and peering more intently, the drow understood, for there, in the back of the sheltered area, Drizzt spotted a fair-sized crack at the base of the stone wall.



The dark elf padded over, quickly and silently, and kneeled down to the crack, taking heart as his keen eyes revealed to him that there was indeed an even more sheltered area within, a cave or a passage. Hardly slowing, reminding himself that his friends were still out in the blizzard, Drizzt dived into the opening head first, squirming to get his feet under him as he came to a lower landing.



He was in a cave, large and with many rocky shelves and boulders. The floor was clay, mostly, and as he allowed his vision to shift into the heat-seeing spectrum of the Underdark dwellers, he did indeed note a heat source, a fire pit whose contents had been very recently extinguished.



So, the cave was not unoccupied, and given their locale and the tremendous storm blowing outside, Drizzt would have been honestly surprised if it had been.



He spotted the inhabitants a moment later, moving along the shadows of the far wall, their warmer bodies shining clearly to him. He knew at once that they were goblins, and he could well imagine that there were more than a few in this sheltered area.



Drizzt considered going back outside, retrieving his friends, and taking the cave as their own. Working with their typical efficiency, the companions should have little trouble with a small gang of goblins.



But the drow paused, and not out of fear for his friends. What of the morality involved? What of the companions walking into another creature's home and expelling it into the deadly weather? Drizzt recalled another goblin he had once met in his travels, long before and far away, a creature who was not evil. These goblins, so far out and so high up in nearly impassable mountains, might have never encountered a human, an elf, a dwarf, or any other of the goodly reasoning races. Was it acceptable, then, for Drizzt and his friends to wage war on them in an attempt to steal their home?



"Hail and well met," the drow called in the goblin tongue, which he had learned during his years in Menzoberranzan. Though the dialect of the goblins of the deep Underdark was vastly different from that of their surface cousins, he could communicate with them well enough.



The surprise on the goblin's face when it discovered that the intruder was not an elf, but a dark elf, was obvious indeed as the creature neared - or started to approach, only to skitter back, its sickly yellowish eyes wide with shock.



"My friends and I need shelter from the storm," Drizzt explained, standing calm and confident, trying to show neither hostility nor fear. "May we join you?"



The goblin stuttered too badly to even begin a response. It turned around, panic-stricken, to regard one of its companions. This second goblin, larger by far and likely, Drizzt surmised from his understanding of goblin culture, a leader in the tribe, stepped out from the shadows.



"How many?" it croaked at Drizzt.



Drizzt regarded the goblin for a few moments, noted that its dress was better than that of its ugly fellows, with a tall lumberjack's cap and golden ear-cuffs on both ears.



"Five," the drow replied.



"You pay gold?"



"We pay gold."



The large goblin gave a croaking laugh, which Drizzt took as an agreement. The drow pulled himself back out of the cave, set Guenhwyvar as a sentry, and rushed off to find the others.



It wasn't hard for Drizzt to predict Bruenor's reaction when he told the dwarf of the arrangement with their new landlords.



"Bah!" the dwarf blustered. "If ye're thinking that I'm givin' one piece o' me gold coins to the likes o' smelly goblins, then ye're thinkin' with the brains of a thick rock, elf! Or worse yet, ye're thinking like a smelly goblin!"



"They have little understanding of wealth," Drizzt replied with all confidence. He pointedly led the group away as he continued the discussion, not wanting to waste any time at all out in the freezing cold. Regis in particular was starting to look worse for wear, and was constantly trembling, his teeth chattering. "A coin or two should suffice."



"Ye can put copper coins over their eyes when I cleave 'em down!" Bruenor roared in reply. "Some folks do that."



Drizzt stopped, and stared hard at the dwarf. "I have made an arrangement, rightly or wrongly, but it is one that I expect you to honor," he explained. "We do not know if these goblins are deserving of our wrath, and whatever the case if we simply walk in and put them out of their own home then are we any better than they?"



Bruenor laughed aloud. "Been drinking the holy water again, eh, elf?" he asked.



Drizzt narrowed his lavender eyes.



"Bah, I'll let ye lead on this one," the dwarf conceded. "But be knowing that me axe'll be right in me hand the whole time, and if any stupid goblin makes a bad move or says a stupid thing, the place'll get a new coat o' paint - red paint!"



Drizzt looked at Catti-brie, expecting support, but the expression he saw there surprised him. The woman, if anything, seemed to be favoring Bruenor's side of this debate. Drizzt had to wonder if he might be wrong, had to wonder if he and his friends should have just walked in and sent the goblins running.



The dark elf went back into the cave first, with Guenhwyvar right behind. While the sight of the huge panther set more than a few goblins back on their heels, the sight of the next visitor - a red-bearded dwarf - had many of the humanoid tribe howling in protest, pointing crooked fingers, waving their fists, and hopping up and down.



"You drow, no dwarf!" the big goblin protested.



"Duergar," Drizzt replied. "Deep dwarf." He nudged Bruenor and whispered out of the corner of his mouth, "Try to act gray."



Bruenor turned a skeptical look his way.



"Dwarf!" the goblin leader protested.



"Duergar," Drizzt retorted. "Do you not know the duergar? The deep dwarves, allies of the drow and the goblins of the Underdark?"



There was enough truth in the dark elf's statement to put the goblin leader off his guard. The deep dwarves of Faerun, the duergar, often traded and sometimes allied with the drow. In the Underdark, the duergar had roughly the same relationship with the deep goblins as did the drow, not so much a friendship as tolerance. There were goblins in Menzoberranzan, many goblins. Someone had to do the cleaning, after all, or give a young matron a target that she might practice with her snake whip.



Regis was the next one in, and the goblin leader squealed again.



"Young duergar," Drizzt said before the protest could gain any momentum. "We use them as decoys to infiltrate halfling villages."



"Oh," came the response.



Last in was Catti-brie, and the sight of her, the sight of a human, brought a new round of whooping and stomping, finger-pointing and fist waving.



"Ah, prisoner!" the goblin leader said lewdly.



Drizzt's eyes widened at the word and the tone, at the goblin leader's obvious intentions toward the woman. The drow recognized his error. He had refused to accept that Nojheim, the exceptional goblin he'd met those years before, was something less than representative of his cruel race. Nojheim was a complete anomaly, unique indeed.



"What'd he say?" asked Bruenor, who wasn't very good at understanding the goblin dialect.



"He said the deal is off," Drizzt replied. "He told us to get out."



Before Bruenor could begin to question what the drow wanted to do next, Drizzt had his scimitars in hand and began stalking across the uneven floor.



"Drizzt?" Catti-brie called to the drow. She looked to Bruenor, hardly seeing him in the dim light.



"Well, they started it!" the dwarf roared, but his bluster ended abruptly, and he called out to the dark elf, in less than certain terms, "Didn't they?"



"Oh, yes," came the drow's reply.



"Put up a torch for me girl, Rumblebelly!" Bruenor said with a happy howl, and he slapped his axe hard against his open hand and rushed forward. "Just shoot left, girl, until ye can see! Trust that I'll be keepin' meself to the right!"



A pair of goblins rushed in at Drizzt, one from either side. The drow skittered right, turned, and went into a sudden dip, thrusting both scimitars out that way. The goblin, holding a small spear, made a fine defensive shift and almost managed to parry one of the blades.



Drizzt retracted and swung back around the other way, turning right past his friends and letting his right hand lead in a vicious cross. He felt the throb in his injured shoulder, but that remark by the goblin leader, "prisoner," that inference that it would be happy to spend some time playing with Catti-brie, gave him the strength to ignore the pain.



The goblin coming in at him ducked the first blade and instinctively lifted its spear up to parry, should Drizzt dip that leading scimitar lower.



The second crossing scimitar took out its throat.



A third creature charged in on that goblin's heels and was suddenly lying atop its dead companion, taken down by a quickstep and thrust, the bloodied left-hand scimitar cutting a fast line to its heart, while Drizzt worked the right-hand blade in tight circles around the thrusting sword of a fourth creature.



"Damn elf, ye're taking all the fun!" Bruenor roared.



He rushed right past Drizzt, thinking to bury his axe into the skull of the goblin parrying back and forth with the dark elf. A black form flew past the dwarf, though, and launched the goblin away, pinning it under six hundred pounds of black fur and raking claws.



The cave lit suddenly with a sharp blue light, then another, as Catti-brie put her deadly bow to work, sending off a line of lightning-streaking arrows. The first shots burrowed into the stone wall to the cave's left side, but each offered enough illumination for her to sort out a target or two.



By the third shot, she got a goblin, and each successive shot either found a deadly mark or zipped in close enough to have goblins diving all about.



The three friends pressed on, cutting down goblins and sending dozens of the cowardly creatures running off before them.



Catti-brie kept up a stream of streaking arrows to the side, not really scoring any hits now, for all of the goblins over there were huddled under cover. Her efforts were not in vain, though, for she was keeping the creatures out of the main fight in the cave's center.



Regis, meanwhile, made his way around the other wall, creeping past boulders and stalagmites and huddling goblins. He noted that the goblins were disappearing sporadically through a crack in the back of the cave and that the leader had already gone in.



Regis waited for a lull in the goblin line, then slipped into the deeper darkness of the inner tunnels.



The fight was over in a short time, for in truth, other than the initial three goblins' charge at Drizzt, it never was much of a fight. Goblins worked harder at running away than at defending themselves from the mighty intruders - some even threw their kinfolk into the path of the charging dwarf or leaping panther.



It ended with Drizzt and Bruenor simultaneously stabbing and chopping a goblin as it tried to exit at the back of the cave.



Bruenor yanked back on his axe, but the embedded blade didn't disengage and he wound up hoisting the limp goblin right over his shoulder.



"Big one got through," the dwarf grumbled, seeming oblivious to the fact that he was holding a dead goblin on the end of his axe. "Ye going after it?"



"Where is Regis?" came Catti-brie's call from the cave entrance.



The pair turned to see the woman crouching just before the entrance slope, lighting a torch.



"Rumblebelly ain't good at following directions," Bruenor griped. "I telled him to do that!"



"I didn't need it with me bow," Catti-brie explained. "But he ran off." She called out loudly, "Regis?"



"He ran away," Bruenor whispered to Drizzt, but that just didn't sound right - to either of them - after the halfling's brave work on the roads outside of Ten-Towns and his surprisingly good performance against the ogres. "I'm thinking them ogres scared the fight outta him."



Drizzt shook his head, slowly turning to scan the perimeter of the cave, fearing more that Regis had been cut down than that he had run off.



They heard their little friend a few moments later, whistling happily as he exited the goblin escape tunnel. He looked at Drizzt and Bruenor, who stared at him in blank amazement, then tossed something to Drizzt.



The drow caught it and regarded it, and his smile widened indeed.



A goblin ear, wearing a golden cuff.



The dwarf and the dark elf looked at the halfling incredulously.



"I heard what he said," Regis answered their stares. "And I do understand goblin." He snapped his little fingers in the air before the stunned pair and started across the cave toward Catti-brie. He stopped a few strides away, though, turned back, and tossed the second ear to Drizzt.



"What's gettin' into him?" Bruenor quietly asked the drow when Regis was far away.



"The adventurous spirit?" Drizzt asked more than stated.



"Ye could be right," said Bruenor. He spat on the ground. "He's gonna get us all killed, or I'm a bearded gnome."



The five, for Guenhwyvar remained throughout the night, waited out the rest of the storm in the goblin cave. They found a pile of kindling at the side of the cave, along with some rancid meat they didn't dare cook, and Bruenor set a blazing fire near the outside opening. Guenhwyvar stood sentry while Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Regis deposited the goblin bodies far down the passageway. They ate, and they huddled around the fire. They took turns on watch that night, sleeping two at a time, though they didn't really expect the cowardly goblins to return anytime soon.



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



Many miles to the south and east of the companions, another weary traveler didn't have the luxury of comrades who could stand watch while he slept. Still, not expecting that many enemies would be out and about on a stormy night such as this, Wulfgar did settle back against the rear wall of the covered nook he chose as his shelter and closed his eyes.



He had dug out this nook, and so he was flanked left and right by walls of solid snow, with the rock wall behind and a rising snow wall before him. He knew that even if no monsters or wild animals would likely find him, he had to take his sleep in short bursts, for if he didn't regularly clear some of the snow from the front, he ran the risk of being buried alive, and if he didn't occasionally throw another log on the fire, he'd likely freeze to death on this bitter night.



These were only minor inconveniences to the hearty barbarian, who had been raised from a babe on the open tundra of brutal Icewind Dale, who had been weaned with the bitter north wind singing in his ears.



And who had been hardened in the fiery swirls of Errtu's demonic home.



The wind sang a mournful song across the small opening of Wulfgar's rock and snow shelter, a long and melancholy note that opened the doorway to the barbarian's battered heart. In that cave, in that storm, and on that windy note, Wulfgar's thoughts were sent back across the span of time.



He recalled so many things about his childhood with the Tribe of the Elk, running the open and wild tundra, following the footsteps of his ancestors in hunts and rituals that had survived for hundreds of years.



He recalled the battle that had brought him to Ten-Towns, an aggressive attack by his warrior people upon the settlers of the villages. There an ill-placed blow on the head of a particularly hard-headed dwarf had led to young Wulfgar's defeat - and that defeat had landed young Wulfgar squarely in the tutelage and indenture of one Bruenor Battlehammer, the surly, gruff, golden-hearted dwarf who Wulfgar would soon enough come to know as a father. That defeat on the battlefield had brought Wulfgar to the side of Drizzt and Catti-brie, had set him on the road that had guided the later years of his youth and the early years of his adulthood. That same road, though, had landed Wulfgar in that most awful of all places, the lair of the demon Errtu.



Outside, the wind mourned and called to his soul, as if asking him to turn away now on his road of memories, to reject all thoughts of Errtu's hellish lair.



Warning him, warning him . . .



But Wulfgar, as tormented by his self-perception as he was by the tortures of Errtu, would not turn away. Not this time. He embraced the awful memories. He brought them into his consciousness and examined them fully and rationally, telling himself that this was as it had been. Not as it should have been, but a simple reality of his past, a memory that he would have to carry with him.



A place from which he should try to grow, and not one from which he should reflexively cower.



The wind wailed its dire warnings, calling to him that he might lose himself within that pit of horror, that he might be going to dark places better left at rest. But Wulfgar held on to the thoughts, carried them through to the final victory over Errtu, out on the Sea of Moving Ice.



With his friends beside him.



That was the rub, the forlorn barbarian knew. With his friends beside him! He had forsaken his former companions because he had believed that he must. He had run away from them, particularly from Catti-brie, because he could not let them come to see what he had truly become: a broken wretch, a shell of his former glory.



Wulfgar paused in his contemplation and tossed the last of his logs onto the fire. He adjusted the stones he had set under the blaze, rocks that would catch the heat and hold it for some time. He prodded one stone away from the fire and rolled it under his bedroll, then worked it down under the fabric so that he could comfortably rest atop it.



He did just that and felt the new heat rising beneath, but the new-found comfort could not eliminate or deflect the wall of questions.



"And where am I now?" the barbarian asked of the wind, but it only continued its melancholy wail.



It had no answers, and neither did he.



* * * * * * * * * * * *



The next morning dawned bright and clear, with the brilliant sun climbing into a cloudless eastern sky, sending the temperatures to comfortable levels and beginning the melt of the previous day's blizzard.



Drizzt regarded the sight and the warmth with mixed feelings, for while he and all the others were glad to have some feeling returning to their extremities, they all knew the dangers that sunshine after a blizzard could bring to mountain passes. They would have to move extra carefully that day, wary of avalanches with every step.



The drow looked back to the cave, wherein slept his three companions, resting easily, hoping to continue on their way. With any luck, they might make the coast that very day and begin the search in earnest for Minster Gorge and Sheila Kree.



Drizzt looked around and realized they would need considerable luck. Already he could hear the distant rumblings of falling snow.



* * * * * * * * * * * *



Wulfgar punched and thrashed his way out of the overhang that had become a cave, that had become a snowy tomb, crawling out and stretching in the brilliant morning sunlight.



The barbarian was right on the edge of the mountains, with the terrain sloping greatly down to the south toward Luskan and with towering, snow-covered peaks all along the northern horizon. He noted, too, with a snort of resignation, that he had apparently been on the edge of the rain/snow line of the blizzard's precipitation, for those sloping hillsides south of him seemed more wet than deep with snow, while the region north of him was clogged with powder.



It was as if the gods themselves were telling him to turn back.



Wulfgar nodded. Perhaps that was it. Or perhaps the storm had been no more than an analogy of the roads now facing him in his life. The easy way, as it would have been out of Luskan, was to the south. That road called to him clearly, showing him a path where he could avoid the difficult terrain.



The hearty barbarian laughed at the symbolism of it all, at the way nature herself seemed to be pushing him back toward that more peaceful and easy existence. He hoisted his pack and the unbalanced bardiche he carried in Aegis-fang's stead and trudged off to the north.