Gauntlgrym (4 page)

Huffing and puffing, the gnome wriggled and squirmed his way through a tumble of boulders, great smooth gray stones lying about as if piled by a catapult crew of titans. Nanfoodle knew the area well, though—indeed, he had set the place for the rendezvous—and so he was not surprised when he pushed through a tightly twisting path between a trio of stones to find Jessa sitting on a smaller stone in a clearing, her midday meal spread on a blanket before her.

“You need longer legs,” the orc greeted.

“I need to be thirty years younger,” Nanfoodle replied. He let his heavy pack slide off his shoulders and took a seat on a stone opposite Jessa, reaching for a bowl of stew she’d set out for him.

“It’s done? You’re certain?” Jessa asked.

“Three days of mourning for the dead king … three and no more—they haven’t the time. So Banak is king at long last, a title he’s long deserved.”

“He steps into the boots of a giant.”

Nanfoodle waved the thought away. “The best work of King Bruenor was to ensure the orderliness of Mithral Hall. Banak will not falter, and even if he did, there are many wise voices around him.” He paused and looked at the orc priestess more closely. Her gaze had drifted to the north, toward the still-young kingdom of her people. “King Banak will continue the work, as Obould II will honor the desires and vision of his predecessor,” Nanfoodle assured her.

Jessa looked at him curiously, even incredulously. “You’re so calm,” she said. “You spend too much of your life in your books and scrolls, and not nearly enough time looking into the faces of those around you.”

Nanfoodle looked at her with a curious expression.

“How can you be so calm?” Jessa asked. “Don’t you realize what you’ve just done?”

“I did only as I was ordered to do,” Nanfoodle protested, not catching on to the gravity in her voice.

Jessa started to scold him again, meaning to school him on the weight of feelings, to remind him that not all the world could be described by logical theorems, that other factors had to be considered, but a commotion to the side, the scraping of metal on stone, stole her words.

“What?” Nanfoodle, slurping his stew, asked as she rose to her feet.

“What was ye ordered to do?” came the gruff voice of Thibbledorf Pwent, and Nanfoodle spun around just as the battlerager, arrayed in full armor, squeezed out from between the boulders, metal ridges screeching against the stone. “Aye, and be sure that meself’s wonderin’ who it was what’s orderin’ ye!” He ended by punching one metal-gloved fist into the other. “And don’t be doubtin’ that I’m meanin’ to find out, ye little rat.”

He advanced and Nanfoodle retreated, dropping the bowl of stew to the ground.

“Ye got nowhere to run, neither of ye,” Pwent assured them as he continued his advance. “Me legs’re long enough to chase ye, and me anger’s more’n enough to catch ye!”

“What is this?” Jessa demanded, but Pwent fixed her with a hateful glare.

“Ye’re still alive only because ye might have something I need to hear,” the vicious dwarf explained. “And if ye’re not yapping words that make me smile, know that ye’ll be finding a seat.” As he finished, he pointed at the large spike protruding from the top of his helm. And Jessa knew full well that more than one orc had shuddered through its death throes impaled on that spike.

“Pwent, no!” Nanfoodle yelped, holding his hands up before him, motioning the dwarf to stop his steady approach. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I’m knowin’ more than ye think I’m knowin’,” the battlerager promised. “Been in yer workshop, gnome.”

Nanfoodle held up his hands. “I told King Banak that I would be leaving.”

“Ye was leaving afore King Bruenor died,” Pwent accused. “Ye had yer bag all packed for the road.”

“Well, yes, I have been considering it for a—”

“All packed up and tucked right under the bench of
poison
ye brewed for me king!” Pwent yelled, and he leaped forward at Nanfoodle, who was nimble enough to skitter around the side of another stone, just out of Pwent’s murderous grasp.

“Pwent, no!” Nanfoodle yelled.

Jessa moved to intervene, but Pwent turned on her, balling his fists, which brought forth the retractable hand spikes from their sheaths on the backs of his gloves. “How much did ye pay the rat, ye dog’s arse-end?” he demanded.

Jessa kept retreating, but when her back came against a stone, when she ran out of room, the orc’s demeanor changed immediately, and she snarled right back at Pwent as she drew forth a slender iron wand. “One more step.…” she warned, taking aim.

“Pwent, no! Jessa, no!” Nanfoodle yelped.

“Got a big burst o’ magic in that puny wand, do ye?” Pwent asked, unconcerned. “Good for ye, then. It’ll just make me angrier, which’ll make me hit ye all the harder!”

On he came, or started to. Jessa began her incantation, aiming her explosive wand at the dwarf’s dirty face, but then both paused and Nanfoodle’s next shout caught in his throat as the sound of sweet bells filled the air, joyously tinkling and ringing.

“Oh, but now ye’re goin’ to get yers,” Pwent said with a sly grin, for he knew those bells. Everyone in Mithral Hall knew the bells of Drizzt Do’Urden’s magical unicorn.

Slender and graceful, but with lines of powerful muscles rippling along his shimmering white coat, ivory horn tipped with a golden point, blue eyes piercing the daylight as if mocking the sun itself, bell-covered barding announcing the arrival in joyous notes, Andahar trotted up to the edge of the boulder tumble and stomped the ground with his mighty hoof.

“Good ye come, elf!” Pwent yelled to Drizzt, who sat staring at him with his jaw hanging open. “Was just about to put me fist into—”

How Thibbledorf Pwent jumped back when he turned to regard Jessa and found himself confronted by six hundred pounds of snarling black panther!

And how he jumped again when he caught his balance, just in time to see Bruenor Battlehammer hop down from his seat on the unicorn just behind Drizzt.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Bruenor demanded, looking to Nanfoodle.

The little gnome could only shrug helplessly in reply.

“Me … king?” Pwent stammered. “Me king! Can it be me king? Me
king!”

“Oh, by the pinch o’ Moradin’s bum,” Bruenor lamented. “What’re ye doing out here, ye durned fool? Ye’re supposed to be by King Banak’s side.”

“Not to be
King
Banak,” Pwent protested. “Not with King
Bruenor
alive and breathin’!”

Bruenor stormed up to the battlerager and put his nose right against Pwent’s. “Now ye hear me good, dwarf, and don’t ye never make that mistake again. King Bruenor ain’t no more. King Bruenor’s for the ages, and King Banak’s got Mithral Hall!”

“But … but … but me king,” Pwent replied. “But ye’re not dead!”

Bruenor sighed.

Behind him, Drizzt lifted his leg over the saddle and gracefully slid down to the ground. He patted Andahar’s strong neck, then lifted a unicorn-fashioned charm hanging on a silver chain around his neck and gently blew into the hollow horn, releasing the steed from his call.

Andahar rose up on his hind legs, front hoofs slashing the air, and whinnied loudly then thundered away. With each stride, the horse somehow seemed as if he had covered a tremendous amount of ground, for he became half his size with a single stride, and half again with the next, and so on, until he was seen no more, though the air in his wake rippled with waves of magical energy.

By that time, Pwent had composed himself somewhat, and he stood strong before Bruenor, hands on hips. “Ye was dead, me king,” he declared. “I
seen
ye dead, I
smelled
ye dead. Ye
was
dead.”

“I had to be dead,” Bruenor replied, and he, too, squared up and put his hands on his hips. Once more pressing his nose against Pwent’s, he added very slowly and deliberately, “So I could get meself gone.”

“Gone?” Pwent echoed, and he looked to Drizzt, who offered no hint, just a grin that showed he was enjoying the spectacle more than he should. Then Pwent looked to Nanfoodle, who merely shrugged. And he looked past the panther, Guenhwyvar, to Jessa, who laughed at him teasingly and waved her wand.

“Oh, but yer thick skull’s making Dumathoin’s task a bit easier, ain’t it?” Bruenor scolded, referring to the dwarf god known more commonly as the Keeper of Secrets under the Mountain.

Pwent scoffed, for the oft-heard remark was a rather impolite way of one dwarf calling another dwarf dumb.

“Ye was dead,” the battlerager said.

“Aye, and ’twas the little one there what killed me.”

“The poison,” Nanfoodle explained. “Deadly, yes, but not in correct doses. As I used it, it just made Bruenor look dead, quite dead, to all but the cleverest priests—and those priests knew what we were doing.”

“So ye could run away?” Pwent asked Bruenor as it started to come clear.

“So I could give Banak the throne proper, and not have him stand as just a steward, with all the clan waiting for me return. Because there won’t be a return. Been done many the time before, Pwent. Suren ’tis a secret among the dwarf kings, a way to find the road to finish yer days when ye’ve done all the ruling ye might do. Me great-great-great-grandfather did the same, and it’s been done in Adbar, too, by two kings I know tell of. And there’re more, don’t ye doubt, or I’m a bearded gnome.”

“Ye’ve run from the hall?”

“Just said as much.”

“Forevermore?”

“Ain’t so long a time for an old dwarf like meself.”

“Ye runned away. Ye runned away and ye didn’t tell me?” Pwent asked. He was trembling.

Bruenor glanced back at Drizzt. When he heard the crash of Pwent’s breastplate hitting the ground, he turned back.

“Ye telled a stinkin’ orc, but ye didn’t tell yer Gutbuster?” Pwent demanded. He pulled off one gauntlet and dropped it to the ground, then the other, then reached down and began unfastening his spiked greaves.

“Ye’d do that to them what loved ye? Ye’d make us all cry for ye? Ye’d break our hearts? Me king!”

Bruenor’s face grew tight, but he had no answer.

“All me life for me king,” Pwent muttered.

“I ain’t yer king no more,” said Bruenor.

“Aye, that’s what I be thinkin’,” said Pwent, and he put his fist into Bruenor’s eye. The orange-bearded dwarf staggered backward, his one-horned helm falling from his head, his many-notched axe dropping to the ground under the severe weight of the blow.

Pwent unbuckled his helmet and pulled it from his head. He had just started throwing it aside when Bruenor hit him with a flying tackle, driving him backward and to the ground, and over and over they rolled, flailing and punching.

“Been wanting to do this for a hunnerd years!” Pwent cried, his voice muffled at the end as Bruenor shoved his hand into his mouth.

“Aye, and I been wantin’ to give ye the chance!” Bruenor shouted back, his voice rising several octaves at the end of his claim, when Pwent bit down hard.

“Drizzt!” Nanfoodle yelled. “Stop them!”

“No, don’t!” Jessa cried, clapping in glee.

Drizzt’s expression told the gnome in no uncertain terms that he had no intention of jumping in between that pile of dwarven fury. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against a tall stone, and truly seemed more amused than concerned.

Around and around went the flailing duo, a stream of curses coming from each, interrupted only by the occasional grunt as one or the other landed a heavy blow.

“Bah, but ye’re the son of an orc!” Bruenor yelled.

“Bah, but I ain’t yer smelly son, ye damned orc!” Pwent yelled back.

As it happened, they rolled around just then, coming apart just enough to look straight at Jessa, her arms crossed, glaring at them from on high.

“Err … goblin,” both corrected together as they came to their feet side by side. Both shrugged a half-hearted apology Jessa’s way, and they went right back into it, wrestling and punching with abandon. They stumbled out of the boulder tumble and across a small patch of grass to the top of a small bluff,
and there Bruenor gained a slight advantage, managing to pull Pwent’s arm behind his back. The battlerager let out a shriek as he looked down the other side of the bluff.

“And I been wanting ye to take a bath all them hunnerd years!” Bruenor declared.

He bulled Pwent down the hill into a short run, then threw the dwarf and flew after him right into the midst of a cold, clear mountain stream.

Pwent hopped up, and anyone watching would have thought the poor frantic dwarf had landed face down in acid. He stood in the stream shaking wildly, trying to get the water off. But the ploy had worked at least. He had no more fight left in him.

“Why’d ye do that, me king?” a heartbroken Pwent all but whispered.

“Because ye smell, and I ain’t yer king,” Bruenor replied, splashing his way to the bank.

“Why?” Pwent asked, his voice so full of confusion and pain that Bruenor stopped short, even though he was still in the cold water, and turned back to regard his loyal battlerager.

“Why?” Thibbledorf Pwent asked again.

Bruenor looked up at the other three—four, counting Guenhwyvar—who had come to the top of the bluff to watch. With a great sigh, the dead King of Mithral Hall turned back to his loyal battlerager and held out his hand.