The Spine of the World

In my homeland of Menzoberranzan, where demons play and drow revel at the horrible demise of rivals, there remains a state of necessary alertness and wariness. A drow off-guard is a drow murdered in Menzoberranzan, and thus few are the times when dark elves engage in exotic weeds or drinks that dull the senses.

Few, but there are exceptions. At the final ceremony of Melee-Magthere, the school of fighters that I attended, graduated students engage in an orgy of mind-blurring herbs and sensual pleasures with the females of Arach-Tinilith, a moment of the purest hedonism, a party of the purest pleasures without regard to future implications.

I rejected that orgy, though I knew not why at the time. It assaulted my sense of morality, I believed (and still do), and cheapened so many things that I hold precious. Now, in retrospect, I have come to understand another truth about myself that forced rejection of that orgy. Aside from the moral implications, and there were many, the mere notion of the mind-blurring herbs frightened and repulsed me. I knew that all along, of course as soon as I felt the intoxication at that ceremony, I instinctively rebelled against it but it wasn't until very recently that I came to understand the truth of that rejection, the real reason why such influences have no place in my life.

These herbs attack the body in various ways, of course, from slowing reflexes to destroying coordination altogether, but more importantly, they attack the spirit in two different ways. First, they blur the past, erasing memories pleasant and unpleasant, and second, they eliminate any thoughts of the future. Intoxicants lock the imbiber in the present, the here and now, without regard for the future, without consideration of the past. That is the trap, a defeatist perspective that allows for attempted satiation of physical pleasures wantonly, recklessly. An intoxicated person will attempt even foolhardy dares because that inner guidance, even to the point of survival instinct itself, can be so impaired. How many young warriors foolishly throw themselves against greater enemies, only to be slain? How many young women find themselves with child, conceived with lovers they would not even consider as future husbands?

That is the trap, the defeatist perspective, that I cannot tolerate. I live my life with hope, always hope, that the future will be better than the present, but only as long as I work to make it so. Thus, with that toil, comes the satisfaction in life, the sense of accomplishment we all truly need for real joy. How could I remain honest to that hope if I allowed myself a moment of weakness that could well destroy all I have worked to achieve and all I hope to achieve? How might I have reacted to so many unexpected crises if, at the time of occurrence, I was influenced by a mind-altering substance, one that impaired my judgment or altered my perspective?

Also, the dangers of where such substances might lead cannot be underestimated. Had I allowed myself to be carried away with the mood of the graduation ceremony of Melee-Magthere, had I allowed myself the sensual pleasures offered by the priestesses, how cheapened might any honest encounter of love have been?

Greatly, to my way of thinking. Sensual pleasures are, or should be, the culmination of physical desires combined with an intellectual and emotional decision, a giving of oneself, body and spirit, in a bond of trust and respect. In such a manner as that graduation ceremony, no such sharing could have occurred; it would have been a giving of body only, and more so than that, a taking of another's offered wares. There would have been no higher joining, no spiritual experience, and thus, no true joy.

I cannot live in such a hopeless basking as that, for that is what it is: a pitiful basking in the lower, base levels of existence brought on, I believe, by the lack of hope for a higher level of existence.

And so I reject all but the most moderate use of such intoxicants, and while I'll not openly judge those who so indulge, I will pity them their empty souls.

What is it that drives a person to such depths? Pain, I believe, and memories too wretched to be openly faced and handled. Intoxicants can, indeed, blur the pains of the past at the expense of the future. But it is not an even trade.

With that in mind, I fear for Wulfgar, my lost friend. Where will he find escape from the torments of his enslavement?

– Drizzt Do'Urden

Chapter 1 INTO PORT

"I do so hate this place," remarked Robillard, the robed wizard. He was speaking to Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite as the three-masted schooner rounded a long jettie and came in sight of the harbor of the northern port of Luskan.

Deudermont, a tall and stately man, mannered as a lord and with a calm, pensive demeanor, merely nodded at his wizard's proclamation. He had heard it all before, and many times. He looked to the city skyline and noted the distinctive structure of the Hosttower of the Arcane, the famed wizards' guild of Luskan. That, Deudermont knew, was the source of Robillard's sneering attitude concerning this port, though the wizard had been sketchy in his explanations, making a few offhand remarks about the «idiots» running the Hosttower and their inability to discern a true wizardly master from a conniving trickster. Deudermont suspected that Robillard had once been denied admission to the guild.

"Why Luskan?" the ship's wizard complained. "Would not Waterdeep have better suited our needs? No harbor along the entire Sword Coast can compare with Waterdeep's repair facilities."

"Luskan was closer," Deudermont reminded him.

"A couple of days, no more," Robillard retorted.

"If a storm found us in those couple of days, the damaged hull might have split apart, and all our bodies would have been food for the crabs and the fishes," said the captain. "It seemed a foolish gamble for the sake of one man's pride."

Robillard started to respond but caught the meaning of the captain's last statement before he could embarrass himself further. A great frown shadowed his face. "The pirates would have had us had I not timed the blast perfectly," the wizard muttered after he took a few moments to calm down.

Deudermont conceded the point. Indeed, Robillard's work in the last pirate hunt had been nothing short of spectacular. Several years before, Sea Sprite — the new, bigger, faster, and stronger Sea Sprite — had been commissioned by the lords of Waterdeep as a pirate hunter. No vessel had ever been as successful at the task, so much so that when the lookout spotted a pair of pirateers sailing the northern waters off the Sword Coast, so near to Luskan, where Sea Sprite often prowled, Deudermont could hardly believe it. The schooner's reputation alone had kept those waters clear for many months.

These pirates had come looking for vengeance, not easy merchant ship prey, and they were well prepared for the fight, each of them armed with a small catapult, a fair contingent of archers, and a pair of wizards. Even so, they found themselves outmaneuvered by the skilled Deudermont and his experienced crew, and out-magicked by the mighty Robillard, who had been wielding his powerful dweomers in vessel-to-vessel warfare for well over a decade. One of Robillard's illusions had given the appearance that Sea Sprite was dead in the water, her mainmast down across her deck, with dozens of dead men at the rails. Like hungry wolves, the pirates had circled, closer and closer, then had come in, one to port and one to starboard, to finish off the wounded ship.

In truth, Sea Sprite hadn't been badly damaged at all, with Robillard countering the offensive magic of the enemy wizards. The small pirate catapults had little effect against the proud schooner's armored sides.

Deudermont's archers, brilliant bowmen all, had struck hard at the closing vessels, and the schooner went from battle sail to full sail with precision and efficiency, the prow of the ship verily leaping from the water as she scooted out between the surprised pirateers.

Robillard dropped a veil of silence upon the pirate ships, preventing their wizards from casting any defensive spells, then plopped three fireballs-Boom! Boom! Boom! — in rapid succession, one atop each ship and one in between. Then came the conventional barrage from ballista and catapult, Sea Sprite 's gunners soaring lengths of chain to further destroy sails and rigging and balls of pitch to heighten the flames.

De-masted and drifting, fully ablaze, the two pirateers soon went down. So great was the conflagration that Deudermont and his crew managed to pluck only a few survivors from the cold ocean waters.

Sea Sprite hadn't escaped unscathed, though. She was under the power of but one full sail now. Even more dangerous, she had a fair-sized crack just above the waterline. Deudermont had to keep nearly a third of his crew at work bailing, which was why he had steered for the nearest port-Luskan.

Deudermont considered it a fine choice, indeed. He preferred Luskan to the much larger port of Waterdeep, for while his financing had come from the southern city and he could find dinner at the house of any lord in town, Luskan was more hospitable to his common crew members, men without the standing, the manners, or the pretensions to dine at the table of nobility. Luskan, like Waterdeep, had its defined classes, but the bottom rungs on Luskan's social ladder were still a few above the bottom of Waterdeep's.

Calls of greeting came to them from every wharf as they neared the city, for Sea Sprite was well known here and well respected. The honest fishermen and merchant sailors of Luskan, of all the northern reaches of the Sword Coast, had long ago come to appreciate the work of Captain Deudermont and his swift schooner.

"A fine choice, I'd say," the captain remarked.

"Better food, better women, and better entertainment in Waterdeep," Robillard replied. "But no finer wizards," Deudermont couldn't resist saying. "Surely the Hosttower is among the most respected of mage guilds in all the Realms."

Robillard groaned and muttered a few curses, pointedly walking away.

Deudermont didn't turn to watch him go, but he couldn't miss the distinctive stomping of the wizard's hard-soled boots.

*****

"Just a short ride, then," the woman cooed, twirling her dirty blonde hair in one hand and striking a pouting posture. "A quick one to take me jitters off before a night at the tables."

The huge barbarian ran his tongue across his teeth, for his mouth felt as if it were full of fabric, and dirty cloth at that. After a night's work in the tavern of the Cutlass, he had returned to the wharves with Morik for a night of harder drinking. As usual, the pair had stayed there until after dawn, then Wulfgar had crawled back to the Cutlass, his home and place of employment, and straight to his bed.

But this woman, Delly Curtie, a barmaid in the tavern and Wulfgar's lover for the past few months, had come looking for him. Once, he had viewed her as a pleasurable distraction, the icing on his whisky cake, and even as a caring friend. Delly had nurtured Wulfgar through his first difficult days in Luskan. She had seen to his needs, emotional and physical, without question, without judgment, without asking anything in return. But of late the relationship had begun to shift, and not even subtly. Now that he had settled more comfortably into his new life, a life devoted almost entirely to fending the remembered pain of his years with Errtu, Wulfgar had come to see a different picture of Delly Curtie.

Emotionally, she was a child, a needful little girl. Wulfgar, who was well into his twenties, was several years older than she. Now, suddenly, he had become the adult in their relationship, and Delly's needs had begun to overshadow his own.

"Oh, but ye've got ten minutes for me, me Wulfgar," she said, moving closer and rubbing her hand across his cheek.

Wulfgar grabbed her wrist and gently but firmly moved her hand away. "A long night," he replied. "And I had hoped for more rest before beginning my duties for Arumn."

"But I've got a tingling-"

"More rest," Wulfgar repeated, emphasizing each word.

Delly pulled away from him, her seductive pouting pose becoming suddenly cold and indifferent. "Good enough for ye, then," she said coarsely. "Ye think ye're the only man wanting to share me bed?"

Wulfgar didn't justify the rant with an answer. The only answer he could have given was to tell her he really didn't care, that all of this-his drinking, his fighting-was a manner of hiding and nothing more. In truth, Wulfgar did like and respect Delly and considered her a friend-or would have if he honestly believed that he could be a friend. He didn't mean to hurt her.

Delly stood in Wulfgar's room, trembling and unsure. Suddenly, feeling very naked in her slight shift, she gathered her arms in front of her and ran out into the hall and to her own room, slamming the door hard.

Wulfgar closed his eyes and shook his head. He chuckled helplessly and sadly when he heard Delly's door open again, followed by running footsteps heading down the hall toward the outside door. That one, too, slammed, and Wulfgar understood that all the ruckus had been for his benefit Delly wanted him to hear that she was, indeed, going out to find comfort in another's arms.

She was a complicated one, the barbarian understood, carrying more emotional turmoil than even he, if that were possible. He wondered how it had ever gone this far between them. Their relationship had been so simple at the start, so straightforward: two people in need of each other. Recently, though, it had become more complex, the needs having grown into emotional crutches. Delly needed Wulfgar to take care of her, to shelter her, to tell her she was beautiful, but Wulfgar knew he couldn't even take care of himself, let alone another. Delly needed Wulfgar to love her, and yet the barbarian had no love to give. For Wulfgar there was only pain and hatred, only memories of the demon Errtu and the prison of the Abyss, wherein he had been tortured for six long years.

Wulfgar sighed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then reached for a bottle, only to find it empty. With a frustrated snarl, he threw it across the room, where it shattered against a wall. He envisioned, for just a moment, that it had smashed against Delly Curtie's face. The image startled Wulfgar, but it didn't surprise him. He vaguely wondered if Delly hadn't brought him to this point on purpose; perhaps this woman was no innocent child, but a conniving huntress. When she had first come to him, offering comfort, had she intended to take advantage of his emotional weakness to pull him into a trap? To get him to marry her, perhaps? To rescue him that he might one day rescue her from the miserable existence she had carved out for herself as a tavern wench?

Wulfgar realized that his knuckles had gone white from clenching his hands so very hard, and he pointedly opened them and took several deep, steadying breaths. Another sigh, another rub of his tongue over dirty teeth, and the man stood and stretched his huge, nearly seven-foot, frame. He discovered, as he did nearly every afternoon when he went through this ritual, that he had even more aches in his huge muscles and bones this day. Wulfgar glanced over at his large arms, and though they were still thicker and more muscular than that of nearly any man alive, he couldn't help but notice a slackness in those muscles, as if his skin was starting to hang a bit too loosely on his massive frame.

How different his life was now than it had been those mornings years ago in Icewind Dale, when he had worked the long day with Bruenor, his adoptive dwarven father, hammering and lifting huge stones, or when he had gone out hunting for game or giants with Drizzt, his warrior friend, running all the day, fighting all the day. The hours had been even more strenuous then, more filled with physical burden, but that burden had been just physical and not emotional. In that time and in that place, he felt no aches.

The blackness in his heart, the sorest ache, was the source of it all.

He tried to think back to those lost years, working and fighting beside Bruenor and Drizzt, or when he had spent the day running along the wind-blown slopes of Kelvin's Cairn, the lone mountain in Icewind Dale, chasing Catti-brie. .

The mere thought of the woman stopped him cold and left him empty and in that void, images of Errtu and the demon's minions inevitably filtered in. Once, one of those minions, the horrid succubus, had assumed the form of Catti-brie, a perfect image, and Errtu had convinced Wulfgar that he had managed to snare the woman, that she had been taken to suffer the same eternal torment as Wulfgar, because of Wulfgar.

Errtu had taken the succubus, Catti-brie, right before Wulfgar's horrified eyes and had torn the woman apart limb from limb, devouring her in an orgy of blood and gore.

Gasping for his breath, Wulfgar fought back to his thoughts of Catti-brie, of the real Catti-brie. He had loved her. She was, perhaps, the only woman he had ever loved, but she was lost to him now forever, he believed. Though he might travel to Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale and find her again, the bond between them had been severed, cut by the sharp scars of Errtu and by Wulfgar's own reactions to those scars.

The long shadows coming in through the window told him that the day neared its end and that his work as Arumn Gardpeck's bouncer would soon begin. The weary man hadn't lied to Delly when he had declared that he needed more rest, though, and so he collapsed back onto his bed and fell into a deep sleep.

Night had settled thickly about Luskan by the time Wulfgar staggered into the crowded common room of the Cutlass.

"Late again, as if we're to be surprised by that," a thin, beady-eyed man named Josi Puddles, a regular at the tavern and a good friend of Arumn Gardpeck, remarked to the barkeep when they both noticed Wulfgar's entrance. "That one's workin' less and drinkin' ye dry."

Arumn Gardpeck, a kind but stern and always practical man, wanted to give his typical response, that Josi should just shut his mouth, but he couldn't refute Josi's claim. It pained Arumn to watch Wulfgar's descent. He had befriended the barbarian those months before, when Wulfgar had first come to Luskan. Initially, Arumn had shown interest in the man only because of Wulfgar's obvious physical prowess-a mighty warrior like Wulfgar could indeed be a boon to business for a tavern in the tough dock section of the feisty city. After his very first conversation with the man, Arumn had understood that his feelings for Wulfgar went deeper than any business opportunity. He truly liked the man.

Always, Josi was there to remind Arumn of the potential pitfalls, to remind Arumn that, sooner or later, mighty bouncers made meals for rats in gutters.

"Ye thinkin' the sun just dropped in the water?" Josi asked Wulfgar as the big man shuffled by, yawning.

Wulfgar stopped, and turned slowly and deliberately to glare at the little man.

"Half the night's gone," Josi said, his tone changing abruptly from accusational to conversational, "but I was watchin' the place for ye. Thought I might have to break up a couple o' fights, too."

Wulfgar eyed the little man skeptically. "You couldn't break up a pane of thin glass with a heavy cudgel," he remarked, ending with another profound yawn.

Josi, ever the coward, took the insult with a bobbing head and a self-deprecating grin.

"We do have an agreement about yer time o' work," Arumn said seriously.

"And an understanding of your true needs," Wulfgar reminded the man. "By your own words, my real responsibility comes later in the night, for trouble rarely begins early. You named sundown as my time of duty but explained that I'd not truly be needed until much later."

"Fair enough," Arumn replied with a nod that brought a groan from Josi. He was anxious to see the big man-the big man whom he believed had replaced him as Arumn's closest friend-severely disciplined.

"The situation's changed," Arumn went on. "Ye've made a reputation and more than a few enemies. Every night, ye wander in late, and yer. . our enemies take note. I fear that one night soon ye'll stagger in here past the crest o' night to find us all murdered."

Wulfgar put an incredulous expression on his face and turned away with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Wulfgar," Arumn called after him forcefully.

The barbarian turned about, scowling.

"Three bottles missing last night," Arumn said calmly, quietly, a note of concern evident in his tone.

"You promised me all the drink I desired," Wulfgar answered.

"For yerself," Arumn insisted. "Not for yer sculking little friend."

All about widened their eyes at that remark, for not many of Luskan's tavernkeepers would speak so boldly concerning the dangerous Morik the Rogue.

Wulfgar lowered his gaze and chuckled, shaking his head. "Good Arumn," he began, "would you prefer to be the one to tell Morik he is not welcome to your drink?"

Arumn narrowed his eyes, and Wulfgar returned the glare for just a moment.

Delly Curtie entered the room just then, her eyes red and still lined with tears. Wulfgar looked at her and felt a pang of guilt, but it was not something he would admit publicly. He turned and went about his duties, moving to threaten a drunk who was getting a bit too loud.

"He's playing her like he'd pick a lute," Josi Puddles remarked to Arumn.

Arumn blew a frustrated sigh. He had become quite fond of Wulfgar, but the big man's increasingly offensive behavior was beginning to wear that fondness thin. Delly had been as a daughter to Arumn for a couple of years. If Wulfgar was playing her without regard for her emotions, he and Arumn were surely heading for a confrontation.

Arumn turned his attention from Delly to Wulfgar just in time to see the big man lift the loudmouth by the throat, carry him to the door, and none too gently heave him out into the street.

"Man didn't do nothing," Josi Puddles complained. "He keeps with that act, and you'll not have single customer."

Arumn merely sighed.

*****

A trio of men in the opposite corner of the bar also studied the huge barbarian's movements with more than a passing interest. "Cannot be," one of them, a skinny, bearded fellow, muttered. "The world's a wider place than that."

"I'm telling ye it is," the middle one replied. "Ye wasn't aboard Sea Sprite back in them days. I'd not forget that one, not Wulfgar. Sailed with him all the way from Waterdeep to Memnon, I did, then back again, and we fought our share o' pirates along the way."

"Looks like a good one to have along for a pirate fight," remarked Waillan Micanty, the third of the group.

"So 'tis true!" said the second. "Not as good as his companion, though. Ye're knowin' that one. A dark-skinned fellow, small and pretty lookin', but fiercer than a wounded sahuagin, and quicker with a blade-or a pair o' the things-than any I ever seen."

"Drizzt Do'Urden?" asked the skinny one. "That big one traveled with the drow elf?"

"Yep," said the second, now commanding their fullest attention. He was smiling widely, both at being the center of it all and in remembering the exciting voyage he had taken with Wulfgar, Drizzt, and the drow's panther companion.

"What about Catti-brie?" asked Waillan, who, like all of Deudermont's crew, had developed a huge crush on the beautiful and capable woman soon after she and Drizzt had joined their crew a couple of years before. Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Guenhywvar had sailed aboard Sea Sprite for many months, and how much easier scuttling pirates had been with that trio along!

"Catti-brie joined us south o' Baldur's Gate," the storyteller explained. "She came in with a dwarf, King Bruenor of Mithral Hall, on a flying chariot that was all aflame. Never seen anything like it, I tell ye, for that wild dwarf put the thing right across the sails o' one o' the pirate ships we was fighting. Took the whole danged ship down, he did, and was still full o' spit and battle spirit when we pulled him from the water!"

"Bah, but ye're lyin'," the skinny sailor started to protest.

"No, I heard the story," Waillan Micanty put in. "Heard it from the captain himself, and from Drizzt and Catti-brie."

That quieted the skinny man. All of them just sat and studied Wulfgar's movements a bit longer.

"Ye're sure that's him?" the first asked. "That's the Wulfgar fellow?"

Even as he asked the question, Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang off of his back and placed it against a wall.

"Oh, by me own eyes, that's him," the second answered. "I'd not be forgettin' him or that hammer o' his. He can split a mast with the thing, I tell ye, and put it in a pirate's eye, left or right, at a hunnerd long strides."

Across the room, Wulfgar had a short argument with a patron. With one mighty hand the barbarian reached out and grabbed the man's throat and easily, so very easily, hoisted him from his seat and into the air. Wulfgar strode calmly across the inn to the door and tossed the drunk into the street.

"Strongest man I ever seen," the second sailor remarked, and his two companions weren't about to disagree. They drained their drinks and watched a bit longer before leaving the Cutlass for home, where they found themselves running anxiously to inform their captain of who they'd seen.

*****

Captain Deudermont rubbed his fingers pensively across his neatly trimmed beard, trying to digest the tale Waillan Micanty had just related to him. He was trying very hard, for it made no sense to him. When Drizzt and Catti-brie had sailed with him during those wonderful early years of chasing pirates along the Sword Coast, they had told him a sad tale of Wulfgar's demise. The story had had a profound effect on Deudermont, who had befriended the huge barbarian on that journey to Memnon years before.

Wulfgar was dead, so Drizzt and Catti-brie had claimed, and so Deudermont had believed. Yet here was one of Duedermont's trusted crewmen claiming that the barbarian was very much alive and well and working in the Cutlass, a tavern Deudermont had frequented.

The image brought Deudermont back to his first meeting with the barbarian and Drizzt in the Mermaid's Arms tavern in Waterdeep. Wulfgar had avoided a fight with a notorious brawler by the name of Bungo. What great things the barbarian and his companions had subsequently accomplished, from rescuing their little halfling friend from the clutches of a notorious pasha in Calimport to the reclamation of Mithral Hall for Clan Battlehammer. The thought, of Wulfgar working as a brawler in a seedy tavern in Luskan seemed preposterous.

Especially since, according to Drizzt and Catti-brie, Wulfgar was dead.

Deudermont thought of his last voyage with the duo when Sea Sprite had put onto a remote island far out at sea. A blind seer had accosted Drizzt with a riddle about one he thought he had lost. The last time Deudermont had seen Drizzt and Catti-brie was at their parting, on an inland lake, no less, where Sea Sprite had been inadvertently transported.

So might Wulfgar be alive? Captain Deudermont had seen too much to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

Still, it seemed likely to the captain that his crewmen had been mistaken. They had little experience with northern barbarians, all of whom seemed huge and blond and strong. One might look like another to them. The Cutlass had taken on a barbarian warrior as a bouncer, but it was not Wulfgar.

He thought no more of it, having many duties and engagements to attend at the more upscale homes and establishments in the city. Three days later, however, when dining at the table of one of Luskan's noble families, the conversation turned to the death of one of the city's most reknowned bullies.

"We're a lot better off without Tree Block Breaker," one of the guests insisted. "The purest form of trouble ever to enter our city."

"Just a thug and nothing more," another replied, "and not so tough."

"Bah, but he could take down a running horse by stepping in front of the thing," the first insisted. "I saw him do so!"

"But he couldn't take down Arumn Gardpeck's new boy," the other put in. "When he tried to fight that fellow, our Tree Block Breaker flew out of the Cutlass and brought the frame of a door with him."

Deudermont's ears perked up.

"Yeah, that one," the first agreed. "Too strong for any man, from the stories I am hearing, and that warhammer! Most beautiful weapon I've ever seen."

The mention of the hammer nearly made Deudermont choke on his food, for he remembered well the power of Aegis-fang. "What is his name?" the captain inquired.

"Who's name?"

"Arumn Gardpeck's new boy."

The two men looked at each other and shrugged. "Wolf-something, I believe," the first said.

When he left the noble's house, a couple of hours later, Captain Deudermont found himself wandering not back to Sea Sprite, but along infamous Half-Moon Street, the toughest section of Luskan, the home of the Cutlass. He went in without hesitation, pulling up a chair at the first empty table. Duedermont spotted the big man before he even sat down. It was, without doubt, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar. The captain hadn't known Wulfgar very well and hadn't seen him in years, but there could be no question about it. The sheer size, the aura of strength, and the piercing blue eyes of the man gave him away. Oh, he was more haggard-looking now, with an unkempt beard and dirty clothes, but he was Wulfgar.

The big man met Duedermont's stare momentarily, but there was no recognition in the barbarian's eyes when he turned away. Deudermont became even more certain when he saw the magnificent warhammer, Aegis-fang, strapped across Wulfgar's broad back.

"Ye drinking or looking for a fight?"

Deudermont turned about to see a young woman standing beside his table, tray in hand.

"Well?"

"Looking for a fight?" the captain repeated dully, not understanding.

"The way ye're staring at him," the young woman responded, motioning toward Wulfgar. "Many's the ones who come in here looking for a fight. Many's the ones who get carried away from here. But good enough for ye if ye're wanting to fight him, and good enough for him if ye leave him dead in the street."

"I seek no fight," Deudermont assured her. "But, do tell me, what is his name?"

The woman snorted and shook her head, frustrated for some reason Deudermont could not fathom. "Wulfgar," she answered. "And better for us all if he never came in here." Without asking again if he wanted a drink, she merely walked away.

Deudermont paid her no further heed, staring again at the big man. How had Wulfgar wound up here? Why wasn't he dead? And where were Drizzt, and Catti-brie?

He sat patiently, watching the lay of the place as the hours passed, until dawn neared and all the patrons, save he and one skinny fellow at the bar, had drifted out.

"Time for leaving," the barkeep called to him. When Duerdermont made no move to respond or rise from his chair, the man's bouncer made his way over to the table.

Looming huge, Wulfgar glared down upon the seated captain. "You can walk out, or you can fly out," he explained gruffly. "The choice is yours to make."

"You have traveled far from your fight with pirates south of Baldur's Gate," the captain replied. "Though I question your direction."

Wulfgar cocked his head and studied the man more closely. A flicker of recognition, just a flicker, crossed his bearded face.

"Have you forgotten our voyage south?" Deudermont prompted him. "The fight with pirate Pinochet and the flaming chariot?"

Wulfgar's eyes widened. "What do you know of these things?"

"Know of them?" Deudermont echoed incredulously. "Why, Wulfgar, you sailed on my vessel to Memnon and back. Your friends, Drizzt and Catti-brie, sailed with me again not too long ago, though surely they thought you dead!"

The big man fell back as if he had been slapped across the face. A jumbled mixture of emotions flashed across his clear blue eyes, everything from nostalgia to loathing. He spent a long moment trying to recover from the shock.

"You are mistaken, good man," he replied at last to Deudermont's surprise. "About my name and about my past. It is time for you to leave."

"But Wulfgar," Deudermont started to protest. He jumped in surprise to find another man, small and dark and ominous, standing right behind him, though he had heard not a footfall of approach. Wulfgar looked to the little man, then motioned to Arumn. The barkeep, after a moment's hesitation, reached behind the bar and produced a bottle, tossing it across the way where sure-fingered Morik caught it easily.

"Walk or fly?" Wulfgar asked Deudermont again. The sheer emptiness of his tone, not icy cold, but purely indifferent, struck Deudermont profoundly, told him that the man would make good on the promise to launch him out of the tavern without hesitation if he didn't move immediately.

"Sea Sprite is in port for another week at the least," Deudermont explained, rising and heading for the door. "You are welcomed there as a guest or to join the crew, for I have not forgotten," he finished firmly, the promise ringing in his wake as he slipped from the inn.

"Who was that?" Morik asked Wulfgar after Deudermont had disappeared into the dark Luskan night.

"A fool," was all that the big man would answer. He went to the bar and pointedly pulled another bottle from the shelf. Turning his gaze from Arumn to Delly, the surly barbarian left with Morik.

*****

Captain Duedermont had a long walk ahead of him to the dock. The sights and sounds of Luskan's nightlife washed over him-loud, slurred voices through open tavern windows, barking dogs, clandestine whispers in dark corners-but Duedermont scarcely heard them, engrossed as he was in his own thoughts.

So Wulfgar was alive, and yet in worse condition than the captain could ever have imagined the heroic man. His offer to the barbarian to join the crew of Sea Sprite had been genuine, but he knew from the barbarian's demeanor that Wulfgar would never take him up on it.

What was Deudermont to do?

He wanted to help Wulfgar, but Deudermont was experienced enough in the ways of trouble to understand that you couldn't help a man who didn't want help.

"If you plan to leave a dinner engagement, kindly inform us of your whereabouts," came a reproachful greeting as the captain approached his ship. He looked up to see both Robillard and Waillan Micanty staring down at him from the rail.

"You shouldn't be out alone," Waillan Micanty scolded, but Deudermont merely waved away the notion.

Robillard frowned his concern. "How many enemies have we made these last years?" the wizard demanded in all seriousness. "How many would pay sacks of gold for a mere chance at your head?"

"That's why I employ a wizard to watch over me," Deudermont replied calmly, setting foot up the plank.

Robillard snorted at the absurdity of the remark. "How am I to watch over you if I don't even know where you are?"

Duedermont stopped in his tracks, and a wide smile creased his face as he gazed up at his wizard. "If you can't locate me magically, what faith should I hold that you could find those who wish me harm?"

"But it is true, Captain," Waillan interjected while Robillard flushed darkly. "Many would love to meet up with you unguarded in the streets."

"Am I to bottle up the whole crew, then?" Deudermont asked. "None shall leave, for fear of reprisals by friends of the pirates?"

"Few would leave Sea Sprite alone," Waillan argued.

"Fewer still would be known enough to pirates to be targets!" Robillard spouted. "Our enemies would not attack a minor and easily replaced crewman, for to do so would incur the wrath of Deudermont and the lords of Waterdeep, but the price might be worth paying for the chance to eliminate the captain of Sea Sprite." The wizard blew a deep sigh and eyed the captain pointedly. "You should not be out alone," he finished firmly.

"I had to check on an old friend," Deudermont explained.

"Wulfgar, by name?" asked the perceptive wizard.

"So I thought," replied Deudermont sourly as he continued up the plank and by the two men, going to his quarters without another word.

*****

It was too small and nasty a place to even have a name, a gathering hole for the worst of Luskan's wretches. They were sailors mostly, wanted by lords or angry families for heinous crimes. Their fears that walking openly down a street in whatever port their ship entered would get them arrested or murdered were justified. So they came to holes like this, back rooms in shanties conveniently stocked near to the docks.

Morik the Rogue knew these places well, for he'd got his start on the streets working as lookout for one of the most dangerous of these establishments when he was but a young boy. He didn't go into such holes often anymore. Among the more civilized establishments, he was highly respected and regarded, and feared, and that was probably the emotion Morik most enjoyed. In here, though, he was just another thug, a little thief in a nest of assassins.

He couldn't resist entering a hole this night, though, not with the captain of the famed Sea Sprite showing up to have a conversation with his new friend, Wulfgar.

"How tall?" asked Creeps Sharky, one of the two thugs at Morik's table. Creeps was a grizzled old sea dog with uneven clumps of dirty beard on his ruddy cheeks and one eye missing. "Cheap Creeps," the patrons often called him, for the man was quick with his rusty old dagger and slow with his purse. So tight was Creeps with his booty that he wouldn't even buy a proper patch for his missing eye. The dark edge of the empty socket stared out at Morik from beneath the lowest folds of the bandana Creeps had tied about his head.

"Head and a half taller than me," Morik answered. "Maybe two."

Creeps glanced to his pirate companion, an exotic specimen, indeed. The man had a thick topknot of black hair and tattoos all about his face, neck, and practically every other patch of exposed flesh-and since all he wore was a kilt of tiger skin, there was more than a little flesh exposed. Just following Creeps's glance to the other sent a shudder along Morik's spine, for while he didn't know the specifics of Creeps's companion, he had certainly heard the rumors about the "man," Tee-a-nicknick. This pirate was only half human, the other half being qullan, some rare and ferocious warrior race.

"Sea Sprite 's in port," Creeps remarked to Morik. The rogue nodded, for he had seen the three-masted schooner on his way to this drinking hole.

"He wore a beard just about the jawline," Morik added, trying to give as complete a description as he could.

"He sit straight?" the tattooed pirate asked.

Morik looked at Tee-a-nicknick as if he did not understand.

"Did he sit straight in his chair?" Creeps clarified, assuming a pose of perfect posture. "Lookin' like he had a plank shoved up his arse all the way to his throat?"

Morik smiled and nodded. "Straight and tall."

Again the two pirates shared a glance.

"Soundin' like Deudermont," Creeps put in. "The dog. I'd give a purse o' gold to put me knife across that one's throat. Put many o' me friends to the bottom, he has, and cost all o' us prettily."

The tattooed pirate showed his agreement by hoisting a bulging purse of coins onto the table. Morik realized then that every other conversation in the hole had come to an abrupt halt and that all eyes were upon him and his two rakish companions.

"Aye, Morik, but ye're likin' the sight," Creeps remarked, indicating the purse. "Well, it's yer own to have, and ten more like it, I'm guessin'." Creeps jumped up suddenly, sending his chair skidding back across the floor. "What're ye sayin', lads?" he cried. "Who's got a gold coin or ten for the head o' Deudermont o' Sea Sprite?"

A great cheer went up throughout the rathole, with many curses spoken against Deudermont and his pirate-killing crew.

Morik hardly heard them, so focused was he on the purse of gold. Deudermont had come to see Wulfgar. Every man in the place, and a hundred more like them, no doubt, would pitch in a few more coins. Deudermont knew Wulfgar well and trusted him. A thousand gold pieces. Ten thousand? Morik and Wulfgar could get to Deudermont, and easily. Morik's greedy, thieving mind reeled at the possibilities.

Chapter 2 ENCHANTMENT

She came skipping down the lane, so much like a little girl, and yet so obviously a young woman. Shiny black hair bounced around her shoulders, and her green eyes flashed as brightly as the beaming smile upon her fair face.

She had just spoken to him, to Jaka Sculi, with his soulful blue eyes and his curly brown hair, one strand hanging across the bridge of his nose. And just speaking to him made her skip where she might have walked, made her forget the mud that crept in through the holes in her old shoes or the tasteless food she would find in her wooden bowl at her parents' table that night. None of that mattered, not the bugs, not the dirty water, nothing. She had spoken to Jaka, and that alone made her warm and tingly and scared and alive all at the same time.

It went as one of life's little unrealized ironies that the same spirit freed by her encounter with the brooding Jaka inspired the eyes of another to settle upon her happy form.

Lord Feringal Auck had found his heart fluttering at the sight of many different women over his twenty-four years, mostly merchant's daughters whose fathers were looking for another safe haven northwest of Luskan. The village was near to the most traveled pass through the Spine of the World where they might resupply and rest on the perilous journey to and from Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale.

Never before had Feringal Auck found his breathing so hard to steady that he was practically gasping for air as he hung from the window of his decorated carriage.

"Feri, the pines have begun sending their yellow dust throughout the winds," came the voice of Priscilla, Feringal's older sister. She, alone, called him Feri, to his everlasting irritation. "Do get inside the coach! The sneezing dust is thick about us. You know how terrible-"

The woman paused and studied her brother more intently, particularly the way he was gawking. "Feri?" she asked, sliding over in her seat, close beside him and grabbing his elbow and giving it a shake. "Feri?"

"Who is she?" the lord of Auckney asked, not even hearing his sister. "Who is that angelic creature, the avatar of the goddess of beauty, the image of man's purest desires, the embodiment of temptation?"

Priscilla shoved her brother aside and thrust her head out the carriage window. "What, that peasant girl?" she asked incredulously, a clear note of contempt sounding in her tone.

"I must know," Lord Feringal sang more than said. The side of his face sank against the edge of the carriage window, and his unblinking gaze locked on the skipping young woman. She slipped from his sight as the carriage sped around a bend in the curving road.

"Feri!" Priscilla scolded. She moved as if to slap her younger brother but held up short of the mark.

The lord of Auckney shook away his love-inspired lethargy long enough to eye his sister directly, even dangerously. "I shall know who she is," he insisted.

Priscilla Auck settled back in her seat and said no more, though she was truly taken aback by her younger brother's uncharacteristic show of emotion. Feringal had always been a gentle, quiet soul easily manipulated by his shrewish sister, fifteen years his senior. Now nearing her fortieth birthday, Priscilla had never married. In truth, she had never had any interest in a man beyond fulfilling her physical needs. Their mother had died giving birth to Feringal, their father passed on five years later, which left Priscilla, along with her father's counselor, Temigast, the stewardship of the fiefdom until Feringal grew old enough to rule. Priscilla had always enjoyed that arrangement, for even when Feringal had come of age, and even now, nearly a decade after that, her voice was substantial in the rulership of Auckney. She had never desired to bring another into the family, so she had assumed the same of Feri.

Scowling, Priscilla glanced back one last time in the general direction of the young lass, though they were far out of sight now. Their carriage rambled along the little stone bridge that arched into the sheltered bay toward the tiny isle where Castle Auck stood.

Like Auckney itself, a village of two hundred people that rarely showed up on any maps, the castle was of modest design. There were a dozen rooms for the family, and for Temigast, of course, and another five for the half-dozen servants and ten soldiers who served at the place. A pair of low and squat towers anchored the castle, barely topping fifteen feet, for the wind always blew strongly in Auckney. A common joke was, if the wind ever stopped blowing, all the villagers would fall over forward, so used were they to leaning as they walked.

"I should get out of the castle more often," Lord Feringal insisted as he and his sister moved through the foyer and into a sitting room, where old Steward Temigast sat painting another of his endless seascapes.

"To the village proper, you mean?" Priscilla said with obvious sarcasm. "Or to the outlying peat farms? Either way, it is all mud and stone and dirty."

"And in that mud, a jewel might shine all the brighter," the love-struck lord insisted with a deep sigh.

The steward cocked an eyebrow at the odd exchange and looked up from his painting. Temigast had lived in Waterdeep for most of his younger days, coming to Auckney as a middle-aged man some thirty years before. Worldly compared to the isolated Auckney citizens (including the ruling family), Temigast had had little trouble in endearing himself to the feudal lord, Tristan Auck, and in rising to the post of principal counselor, then steward. That worldliness served Temigast well now, for he recognized the motivation for Feringal's sigh and understood its implications.

"She was just a girl," Priscilla complained. "A child, and a dirty one at that." She looked to Temigast for support, seeing that he was intent upon their conversation. "Feringal is smitten, I fear," she explained. "And with a peasant. The lord of Auckney desires a dirty, smelly peasant girl."

"Indeed," replied Temigast, feigning horror. By his estimation, by the estimation of anyone who was not from Auckney, the "lord of Auckney" was barely above a peasant himself. There was history here: The castle had stood for more than six hundred years, built by the Dorgenasts who had ruled for the first two centuries. Then, through marriage, it had been assumed by the Aucks.

But what, really, were they ruling? Auckney was on the very fringe of the trade routes, south of the westernmost spur of the Spine of the World. Most merchant caravans traveling between Ten-Towns and Luskan avoided the place all together, many taking the more direct pass through the mountains many miles to the east. Even those who dared not brave the wilds of that unguarded pass crossed east of Auckney, through another pass that harbored the town of Hundelstone, which had six times the population of Auckney and many more valuable supplies and craftsmen.

Though a coastal village, Auckney was too far north for any shipping trade. Occasionally a ship-often a fisherman caught in a gale out of Fireshear to the south-would drift into the small harbor around Auckney, usually in need of repair. Some of those fishermen stayed on in the fiefdom, but the population here had remained fairly constant since the founding by the roguish Lord Dorgenast and his followers, refugees from a minor and failed power play among the secondary ruling families in Waterdeep. Now nearing two hundred, the population was as large as it had ever been (mostly because of an influx of gnomes from Hundelstone), and on many occasions it was less than half of that. Most of the villagers were related, usually in more ways than one, except, of course, for the Aucks, who usually took their brides or husbands from outside stock.

"Can't you find a suitable wife from among the well-bred families of Luskan?" Priscilla asked. "Or in a favorable deal with a wealthy merchant? We could well use a large dowery, after all."

"Wife?" Temigast said with a chuckle. "Aren't we being a bit premature?"

"Not at all," Lord Feringal insisted evenly. "I love her. I know that I do."

"Fool!" Priscilla wailed, but Temigast patted her shoulder to calm her, chuckling all the while.

"Of course you do, my lord," the steward said, "but the marriage of a nobleman is rarely about love, I fear. It is about station and alliance and wealth," Temigast gently explained.

Feringal's eyes widened. "I love her!" the young lord insisted.

"Then take her as a mistress," Temigast suggested reasonably. "A plaything. Surely a man of your great station is deserving of at least one of those."

Hardly able to speak past the welling lump in his throat, Feringal ground his heel into the stone floor and stormed off to his private room.

*****

"Did you kiss him?" Tori, the younger of the Ganderlay sisters, asked, giggling at the thought of it. Tori was only eleven, and just beginning to realize the differences between boys and girls, an education fast accelerating since Meralda, her older sister by six years, had taken a fancy to Jaka Sculi, with his delicate features and long eyelashes and brooding blue eyes.

"No, I surely did not," Meralda replied, brushing back her long black hair from her olive-skinned face, the face of beauty, the face that had unknowingly captured the heart of the lord of Auckney.

"But you wanted to," Tori teased, bursting into laughter, and Meralda joined her, as sure an admission as she could give.

"Oh, but I did," the older sister said.

"And you wanted to touch him," her young sister teased on. "Oh, to hug him and kiss him! Dear, sweet Jaka." Tori ended by making sloppy kissing noises and wrapping her arms about her chest, hands grabbing her shoulders as she turned about so that it looked as if someone was hugging her.

"You stop that!" Meralda said, slapping her sister across the back playfully.

"But you didn't even kiss him," Tori complained. "Why not, if you wanted to? Did he not want the same?"

"To make him want it all the more," the older girl explained. "To make him think about me all the time. To make him dream about me."

"But if you're wanting it-"

"I'm wanting more than that," Meralda explained, "and if I make him wait, I can make him beg. If I make him beg, I can get all that I want from him and more."

"What more?" Tori asked, obviously confused.

"To be his wife," Meralda stated without reservation.

Tori nearly swooned. She grabbed her straw pillow and whacked her sister over the head with it. "Oh, you'll never!" she cried. Too loudly.

The curtain to their bedroom pulled back, and their father, Dohni Ganderlay, a ruddy man with strong muscles from working the peat fields and skin browned from both sun and dirt, poked his head in.

"You should be long asleep," Dohni scolded.

The girls dived down as one, scooting under the coarse, straw-lined ticking and pulling it tight to their chins, giggling all the while.

"Now, I'll be having none of that silliness!" Dohni yelled, and he came at them hard, falling over them like a great hunting beast, a wrestling tussle that ended in a hug shared between the two girls and their beloved father.

"Now, get your rest, you two," Dohni said quietly a moment later. "Your ma's a bit under the stone, and your laughter is keeping her awake." He kissed them both and left. The girls, respectful of their father and concerned about their mother, who had indeed been feeling even worse than usual, settled down to their own private thoughts.

Meralda's admission was strange and frightening to Tori. But while she was uncertain about her sister getting married and moving out of the house, she was also very excited at the prospect of growing into a young woman like her sister.

Lying next to her sister, Meralda's mind raced with anticipation. She had kissed a boy before, several boys actually, but it had always been out of curiosity or on a dare from her friends. This was the first time she really wanted to kiss someone. And how she did want to kiss Jaka Sculi! To kiss him and to run her fingers through his curly brown hair and gently down his soft, hairless cheek, and to have his hands caressing her thick hair, her face. .

Meralda fell asleep to warm dreams.

*****

In a much more comfortable bed in a room far less drafty not so many doors away, Lord Feringal nestled into his soft feather pillows. He longed to escape to dreams of holding the girl from the village, where he could throw off his suffocating station, where he could do as he pleased without interference from his sister or old Temigast.

He wanted to escape too much, perhaps, for Feringal found no rest in his huge, soft bed, and soon he had twisted and turned the feather ticking into knots about his legs. It was fortunate for him that he was hugging one of the pillows, for it was the only thing that broke his fall when he rolled right off the edge and onto the hard floor.

Feringal finally extricated himself from the bedding tangle, then paced about his room, scratching his head, his nerves more on edge than they'd ever been. What had this enchantress done to him?

"A cup of warm goat's milk," he muttered aloud, thinking that would calm him and afford him some sleep. Feringal slipped from his room and started along the narrow staircase. Halfway down he heard voices from below.

He paused, recognizing Priscilla's nasal tone, then a burst of laughter from his sister as well as from old, wheezing Temigast. Something struck Feringal as out of place, some sixth sense told him that he was the butt of that joke. He crept down more quietly, coming under the level of the first floor ceiling and ducking close in the shadows against the stone bannister.

There sat Priscilla upon the divan, knitting, with old Temigast in a straight-backed chair across from her, a decanter of whisky in hand.

"Oh, but I love her," Priscilla wailed, stopping her knitting to sweep one hand across her brow dramatically. "I cannot live without her!"

"Got along well enough for all these years," Temigast remarked, playing along.

"But I am tired, good steward," Priscilla replied, obviously mocking her brother. "What great effort is lovemaking alone!"

Temigast coughed in his drink, and Priscilla exploded with laughter.

Feringal could take no more. He swept down the stairs, full of anger. "Enough! Enough I say!" he roared. Startled, the two turned to him and bit their lips, though Priscilla could not hold back one last bubble of laughter.

Lord Feringal glowered at her, his fists clenched at his sides, as close to rage as either of them had ever seen the gentle-natured man. "How dare you?" he asked through gritted teeth and trembling lips. "To mock me so!"

"A bit of a jest, my lord," Temigast explained weakly to defuse the situation, "nothing more."

Feringal ignored the steward's explanation and turned his ire on his sister. "What do you know of love?" he screamed at Priscilla. "You have never had a lustful thought in your miserable life. You couldn't even imagine what it would be like to lay with a man, could you, dear sister?"

"You know less than you think," Priscilla shot back, tossing aside her knitting and starting to rise. Only Temigast's hand, grabbing hard at her knee, kept her in place. She calmed considerably at that, but the old man's expression was a clear reminder to watch her words carefully, to keep a certain secret between them.

"My dear Lord Feringal," the steward began quietly, "there is nothing wrong with your desires. Quite the contrary; I should consider them a healthy sign, if a bit late in coming. I don't doubt that your heart aches for this peasant girl, but I assure you there's nothing wrong with taking her as your mistress. Certainly there is precedent for such an act among the previous lords of Auckney, and of most kingdoms, I would say."

Feringal gave a long and profound sigh and shook his head as Temigast rambled on. "I love her," he insisted again. "Can't you understand that?"

"You don't even know her," Priscilla dared to interject. "She farms peat, no doubt, with dirty fingers."

Feringal took a threatening step toward her, but Temigast, agile and quick for his age, moved between them and gently nudged the young man back into a chair. "I believe you, Feringal. You love her, and you wish to rescue her."

That caught Feringal by surprise. "Rescue?" he echoed blankly.

"Of course," reasoned Temigast. "You are the lord, the great man of Auckney, and you alone have the power to elevate this peasant girl from her station of misery."

Feringal held his perplexed pose for just a moment then said, "Yes, yes," with an exuberant nod of his head.

"I have seen it before," Temigast said, shaking his head. "It is a common disease among young lords, this need to save some peasant or another. It will pass, Lord Feringal, and rest assured that you may enjoy all the company you need of the girl."

"You cheapen my feelings," Feringal accused.

"I speak the truth," Temigast was quick to reply.

"No!" insisted Feringal. "What would you know of my feelings, old man? You could never have loved a woman to suggest such a thing. You can't know what burns within me."

That statement seemed to hit a nerve with the old steward, but for whatever reason Temigast quieted, and his lips got very thin. He moved back to his chair and settled uncomfortably, staring blankly at Feringal.

The young lord, more full of the fires of life than he had ever been, would not buckle to that imposing stare. "I'll not take her as a mistress," he said determinedly. "Never that. She is the woman I shall love forever, the woman I shall take as my wife, the lady of Castle Auck."

"Feri!" Priscilla screeched.

The young lord, determined not to buckle as usual to the desires of his overbearing sister, turned and stormed off, back to the sanctuary of his room. He took care not to run, as he usually did in confrontations with his shrewish sister, but rather, afforded himself a bit of dignity, a stern and regal air. He was a man now, he understood.

"He has gone mad," Priscilla said to Temigast when they heard Feringal's door close. "He saw this girl but once from afar."

If Temigast even heard her, he made no indication. Stubborn Priscilla slipped down from the divan to her knees and moved up before the seated man. "He saw her but once," she said again, forcing Temigast's attention.

"Sometimes that's all it takes," the steward quietly replied.

Priscilla quieted and stared hard at the old man whose bed she had secretly shared since the earliest days of her womanhood. For all their physical intimacy, though, Temigast had never shared his inner self with Priscilla except for one occasion, and only briefly, when he had spoken of his life in Waterdeep before venturing to Auckney. He had stopped the conversation quickly, but only after mentioning a woman's name. Priscilla had always wondered if that woman had meant more to Temigast than he let on. Now, she recognized that he had fallen under the spell of some memory, coaxed by her brother's proclamations of undying love.

The woman turned away from him, jealous anger burning within her, but, as always, she was fast to let it go, to remember her lot and her pleasures in life. Temigast's own past might have softened his resolve against Feringal running after this peasant girl, but Priscilla wasn't so ready to accept her brother's impetuous decision. She had been comfortable with the arrangement in Castle Auck for many years, and the last thing she wanted now was to have some peasant girl, and perhaps her smelly peasant family, moving in with them.

*****

Temigast retired soon after, refusing Priscilla's invitation to share her bed. The old man's thoughts slipped far back across the decades to a woman he had once known, a woman who had so stolen his heart and who, by dying so very young, had left a bitterness and cynicism locked within him to this very day.

Temigast hadn't recognized the depth of those feelings until he realized his own doubt and dismissal of Lord Feringal's obvious feelings. What an old wretch he believed himself at that moment.

He sat in a chair by the narrow window overlooking Auckney Harbor. The moon had long ago set, leaving the cold waters dark and showing dull Whitecaps under the starry sky. Temigast, like Priscilla, had never seen his young charge so animated and agitated, so full of fire and full of life. Feringal always had a dull humor about him, a sense of perpetual lethargy, but there had been nothing lethargic in the manner in which the young man had stormed down the stairs to proclaim his love for the peasant girl, nothing lethargic in the way in which Feringal had accosted his bullying older sister.

That image brought a smile to Temigast's face. Perhaps Castle Auck needed such fire now; perhaps it was time to shake the place and all the fiefdom about it. Maybe a bit of spirit from the lord of Auckney would elevate the often overlooked village to the status of its more notable neighbors, Hundelstone and Fireshear. Never before had the lord of Auckney married one of the peasants of the village. There were simply too few people in that pool, most from families who had been in the village for centuries, and the possibility of bringing so many of the serfs into the ruling family, however distantly, was a definite argument against letting Feringal have his way.

But the sheer energy the young lord had shown seemed as much an argument in favor of the union at that moment, and so he decided he would look into this matter very carefully, would find out who this peasant girl might be and see if something could be arranged.

Chapter 3 FINAL STRAW

"He knew you," Morik dared to say after he had rejoined Wulfgar very late that same night following his venture to the seedy drinking hole. By the time the rogue had caught up to his friend on the docks the big man had drained almost all of the second bottle. "And you knew him."

"He thought he knew me," Wulfgar corrected, slurring each word.

He was hardly able to sit without wobbling, obviously more drunk than usual for so early an hour. He and Morik had split up outside the Cutlass, with Wulfgar taking the two bottles. Instead of going straight to the docks the barbarian had wandered the streets and soon found himself in the more exclusive section of Luskan, the area of respectable folk and merchants. No city guards had come to chase him off, for in that area of town stood the Prisoner's Carnival, a public platform where outlaws were openly punished. A thief was up on the stage this night, asked repeatedly by the torturer if he admitted his crime. When he did not, the torturer took out a pair of heavy shears and snipped off his little finger. The thief's answer to the repeated question brought howls of approval from the scores of people watching the daily spectacle.

Of course, admitting to the crime was no easy way out for the poor man. He lost his whole hand, one finger at a time, the mob cheering and hooting with glee.

But not Wulfgar. No, the sight had proven too much for the barbarian, had catapulted him back in time, back to Errtu's Abyss and the helpless agony. What tortures he had known there! He had been cut and whipped and beaten within an inch of his life, only to be restored by the healing magic of one of Errtu's foul minions. He'd had his fingers bitten off and put back again.

The sight of the unfortunate thief brought all that back to him vividly now.

The anvil. Yes, that was the worst of all, the most agonizing physical torture Errtu had devised for him, reserved for those moments when the great demon was in such a fit of rage that he could not take the time to devise a more subtle, more crushing, mental torture.

The anvil. Cold it was, like a block of ice, so cold that it seemed like fire to Wulfgar's thighs when Errtu's mighty minions pulled him across it, forced him to straddle it, naked and stretched out on his back.

Errtu would come to him then, slowly, menacingly, would walk right up before him, and in a single, sudden movement, smash a small mallet set with tiny needles down into Wulfgar's opened eyes, exploding them and washing waves of nausea and agony through the barbarian.

And, of course, Errtu's minions would heal him, would make him whole again that their fun might be repeated.

Even now, long fled from Errtu's abyssal home, Wulfgar often awoke, curled like a baby, clutching his eyes, feeling the agony. Wulfgar knew of only one escape from the pain. Thus, he had taken his bottles and run away, and only by swallowing the fiery liquid had he blurred that memory.

"Thought he knew you?" Morik asked doubtfully.

Wulfgar stared at him blankly.

"The man in the Cutlass," Morik explained.

"He was mistaken," Wulfgar slurred.

Morik flashed him a skeptical look.

"He know who I once was," the big man admitted. "Not who I am."

"Deudermont," Morik reasoned.

Now it was Wulfgar's turn to look surprised. Morik knew most of the folk of Luskan, of course-the rogue survived through information-but it surprised Wulfgar that he knew of an obscure sailor (which is what Wulfgar thought Deudermont to be) merely visiting the port.

"Captain Deudermont of the Sea Sprite," Morik explained. "Much known and much feared by the pirates of the Sword Coast. He knew you, and you knew him."

"I sailed with him once. . a lifetime ago," Wulfgar admitted.

"I have many friends, profiteers of the sea, who would pay handsomely to see that one eliminated," Morik remarked, bending low over the seated Wulfgar. "Perhaps we could use your familiarity with this man to some advantage."

Even as the words left Morik's mouth, Wulfgar came up fast and hard, his hand going about Morik's throat. Staggering on unsteady legs, Wulfgar still had the strength in just that one arm to lift the rogue from the ground. A fast few strides, as much a fall as a run, brought them hard against the wall of a warehouse where Wulfgar pinned Morik the Rogue, whose feet dangled several inches above the ground.

Morik's hand went into a deep pocket, closing on a nasty knife, one that he knew he could put into the drunken Wulfgar's heart in an instant. He held his thrust, though, for Wulfgar did not press in any longer, did not try to injure him. Besides, there remained those nagging memories of drow elves holding an interest in Wulfgar. How would Morik explain killing the man to them? What would happen to the rogue if he didn't manage to finish the job?

"If ever you ask that of me again, I will-" Wulfgar left the threat unfinished, dropping Morik. He spun back to the sea, nearly overbalancing and tumbling from the pier in his drunken rush.

Morik rubbed a hand across his bruised throat, momentarily stunned by the explosive outburst. When he thought about it, though, he merely nodded. He had touched on a painful wound, one opened by the unexpected appearance of Wulfgar's old companion, Deudermont. It was the classic struggle of past and present, Morik knew, for he had seen it tear men apart time and again as they went about their descent to the bottom of a bottle. The feelings brought on by the sight of the captain, the man with whom he had once sailed, were too raw for Wulfgar. The barbarian couldn't put his present state in accord with what he had once been. Morik smiled and let it go, recognizing clearly that the emotional fight, past against present, was far from finished for his large friend.

Perhaps the present would win out, and Wulfgar would listen to Morik's potentially profitable proposition concerning Deudermont. Or, if not, maybe Morik would act independently and use Wulfgar's familiarity with the man to his own gain without Wulfgar's knowledge.

Morik forgave Wulfgar for attacking him. This time. .

"Would you like to sail with him again, then?" Morik asked, deliberately lightening his tone.

Wulfgar plopped to a sitting position, then stared incredulously through blurry eyes at the rogue.

"We must keep our purses full," Morik reminded him. "You do seem to be growing bored with Arumn and the Cutlass. Perhaps a few months at sea-"

Wulfgar waved him to silence, then turned about and spat into the sea. A moment later, he bent low over the dock and vomited.

Morik looked upon him with a mixture of pity, disgust, and anger. Yes, the rogue knew then and there he would get to Deudermont, whether Wulfgar went along with the plan or not. The rogue would use his friend to find a weakness in the infamous captain of Sea Sprite. A pang of guilt hit Morik as he came to that realization. Wulfgar was his friend, after all, but this was the street, and a wise man would not pass up so obvious an opportunity to grab a pot of gold.

*****

"You stink Morik get done it?" the tattooed pirate, Tee-a-nicknick, asked first thing when he awoke in an alley.

Next to him among the trash, Creeps Sharky looked over curiously, then deciphered the words. "Think, my friend, not stink," he corrected.

"You stink him done it?"

Propped on one elbow, Creeps snorted and looked away, his one-eyed gaze drifting about the fetid alley.

With no answer apparently forthcoming, Tee-a-nicknick swatted Creeps Sharky hard across the back of his head.

"What're you about?" the other pirate complained, trying to turn around but merely falling face down on the ground, then slowly rolling to his back to glare at his exotic half-qullan companion.

"Morik done it?" Tee-a-nicknick asked. "Kill Deudermont?"

Creeps coughed up a ball of phlegm and managed, with great effort, to move to a sitting position. "Bah," he snorted doubtfully. "Morik's a sneaky one, to be sure, but he's out of his pond with Deudermont. More likely the captain'll be taking that one down."

"Ten thousand," Tee-a-nicknick said with great lament, for he and Creeps, in circulating the notion that Deudermont might be taken down before Sea Sprite ever left Luskan, had secured promises of nearly ten thousand gold pieces in bounty money, funds they knew the offering pirates would gladly pay for the completed deed. Creeps and Tee-a-nicknick had already decided that should Morik finish the task, they would pay him seven of the ten, keeping three for themselves.

"I been thinking that maybe Morik'll set up Deudermont well enough," Creeps went on. "Might be that the little rat'll play a part without knowing he's playing it. If Deudermont's liking Morik's friend, then Deudermont might be letting down his guard a bit too much."

"You stink we do it?" Tee-a-nicknick asked, sounding intrigued.

Creeps eyed his friend. He chuckled at the half-qullan's continuing struggles with the language, though Tee-a-nicknick had been sailing with humans for most of his life, ever since he had been plucked from an island as a youth. His own people, the savage eight-foot-tall qullans were intolerant of mixed blood and had abandoned him as inferior.

Tee-a-nicknick gave a quick blow, ending in a smile, and Creeps Sharky didn't miss the reference. No pirate in any sea could handle a certain weapon, a long hollow tube that the tattooed pirate called a blowgun, better than Tee-a-nicknick. Creeps had seen his friend shoot a fly from the rail from across a wide ship's deck. Tee-a-nicknick also had a substantial understanding of poisons, a legacy of his life with the exotic qullans, Creeps believed, to tip the cat's claws he sometimes used as blowgun missiles. Poisons human clerics could not understand and counter.

One well-placed shot could make Creeps and Tee-a-nicknick wealthy men indeed, perhaps even wealthy enough to secure their own ship.

"You got a particularly nasty poison for Mister Deudermont?" Creeps asked.

The tattooed half-qullan smiled. "You stink we do it," he stated.

*****

Arumn Gardpeck sighed when he saw the damage done to the door leading to the guest wing of the Cutlass. The hinges had been twisted so that the door no longer stood straight within its jamb. Now it tilted and wouldn't even close properly.

"A foul mood again," observed Josi Puddles, standing behind the tavernkeeper. "A foul mood today, a foul mood tomorrow. Always a foul mood for that one."

Arumn ignored the man and moved along the hallway to the door of Delly Curtie's room. He put his ear against the wood and heard soft sobbing from within.

"Pushed her out again," Josi spat. "Ah, the dog."

Arumn glared at the little man, though his thoughts weren't far different. Josi's whining didn't shake the tavernkeeper in the least. He recognized that the man had developed a particular sore spot against Wulfgar, one based mostly on jealousy, the emotion that always seemed to rule Josi's actions. The sobs of Delly Curtie cut deeply into troubled Arumn, who had come to think of the girl as his own daughter. At first, he had been thrilled by the budding relationship between Delly and Wulfgar, despite the protests of Josi, who had been enamored of the girl for years. Now those protests seemed to hold a bit of truth in them, for Wulfgar's actions toward Delly of late had brought a bitter taste to Arumn's mouth.

"He's costin' ye more than he's bringin' in," Josi went on, skipping to keep up with Arumn as the big man made his way determinedly toward Wulfgar's door at the end of the hall, "breakin' so much, and an honest fellow won't come into the Cutlass anymore. Too afraid to get his head busted."

Arumn stopped at the door and turned pointedly on Josi. "Shut yer mouth," he instructed plainly and firmly. He turned back and lifted his hand as if to knock, but he changed his mind and pushed right through the door. Wulfgar lay sprawled on the bed, still in his clothes and smelling of liquor.

"Always the drink," Arumn lamented. The sadness in his voice was indeed genuine, for despite all his anger at Wulfgar, Arumn couldn't dismiss his own responsibility in this situation. He had introduced the troubled barbarian to the bottle, but he hadn't recognized the depth of the big man's despair. The barkeep understood it now, the sheer desperation in Wulfgar to escape the agony of his recent past.

"What're ye thinking to do?" Josi asked.

Arumn ignored him and moved to the bed to give Wulfgar a rough shake. After a second, then a third shake the barbarian lifted his head and turned it to face Arumn, though his eyes were hardly open.

"Ye're done here," Arumn said plainly and calmly, shaking Wulfgar again. "I cannot let ye do this to me place and me friends no more. Ye gather all yer things tonight and be on yer way, wherever that road might take ye, for I'm not wanting to see ye in the common room. I'll put a bag o' coins inside yer door to help ye get set up somewhere else. I'm owin' ye that much, at least."

Wulfgar didn't respond.

"Ye hearin' me?" Arumn asked.

Wulfgar nodded and grumbled for Arumn to go away, a request heightened by a wave of the barbarian's arm, which, as sluggish as Wulfgar was, still easily and effectively pushed Arumn back from the bed.

Another sigh, another shake of his head, and Arumn left. Josi Puddles spent a long moment studying the huge man on the bed and the room around him and particularly the magnificent warhammer resting against the wall in the far corner.

*****

"I owe it to him," Captain Deudermont said to Robillard, the two standing at the rail of the docked, nearly repaired Sea Sprite.

"Because he once sailed with you?" the wizard asked skeptically.

"More than sailed."

"He performed a service for your vessel, true enough," Robillard reasoned, "but did you not reciprocate? You took him and his friends all the way to Memnon and back."

Deudermont bowed his head in contemplation, then looked up at the wizard. "I owe it to him not out of any financial or business arrangement," he explained, "but because we became friends."

"You hardly knew him."

"But I know Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie," Deudermont argued. "How many years did they sail with me? Do you deny our friendship?"

"But-"

"How can you so quickly deny my responsibility?" Deudermont asked.

"He is neither Drizzt nor Catti-brie," Robillard replied.

"No, but he is a dear friend of both and a man in great need."

"Who doesn't want your help," finished the wizard.

Deudermont bowed his head again, considering the words. They seemed true enough. Wulfgar had, indeed, denied his offers of help. Given the barbarian's state, the captain had to admit, privately, that chances were slim he could say or do anything to bring the big man from his downward spiral.

"I must try," he said a moment later, not bothering to look up.

Robillard didn't bother to argue the point. The wizard understood, from the captain's determined tone, that it was not his place to do so. He had been hired to protect Deudermont, and so he would do just that. Still, by his estimation, the sooner Sea Sprite was out of Luskan and far, far from this Wulfgar fellow, the better off they would all be.

*****

He was conscious of the sound of his breathing, gasping actually, for he was as scared as he had ever been. One slip, one inadvertent noise, would wake the giant, and he doubted any of the feeble explanations he'd concocted would save him then.

Something greater than fear prodded Josi Puddles along. More than anything, he had come to hate this man. Wulfgar had taken Delly from him-from his fantasies, at least. Wulfgar had enamored himself of Arumn, replacing Josi at the tavernkeeper's side. Wulfgar could bring complete ruin to the Cutlass, the only home Josi Puddles had ever known.

Josi didn't believe that the huge, wrathful barbarian would take Arumn's orders to leave without a fight, and Josi had seen enough of the brawling man to understand just how devastating that fight might become. Josi also understood that if it came to blows in the Cutlass, he would likely prove a prime target for Wulfgar's wrath.

He cracked open the door. Wulfgar lay on the bed in almost exactly the same position as he had been when Josi and Arumn had come there two hours earlier.

Aegis-fang leaned against the wall in the far corner. Josi shuddered at the sight, imagining the mighty warhammer spinning his way.

The little man crept into the room and paused to consider the small bag of coins Arumn had left to the side of the door beside Wulfgar's bed. Drawing out a large knife, he put his fingertip to the barbarian's back, just under the shoulder-blade, feeling for a heartbeat, then replaced his fingertip with the tip of the knife. All he had to do was lean on it hard, he told himself. All he had to do was drive the knife through Wulfgar's heart, and his troubles would be at their end. The Cutlass would survive as it had before this demon had come to Luskan, and Delly Curtie would be his for the taking.

He leaned over the blade. Wulfgar stirred, but just barely, the big man very far from consciousness.

What if he missed the mark? Josi thought with sudden panic. What if his thrust only wounded the big man? The image of a roaring Wulfgar leaping from the bed to corner a would-be assassin sapped the strength from Josi's knees, and he nearly fell over the sleeping barbarian. The little man skittered back from the bed and turned for the door, trying not to cry out in fright.

He composed himself and remembered his fears for the expected scene of that night, when Wulfgar would come down to confront Arumn, when the barbarian and that terrible warhammer would take down the Cutlass and everyone in the place.

Before he could even consider the action, Josi rushed across the room and, with great effort, hoisted the heavy hammer, cradling it like a baby. He ran out of the room and out the inn's back door.

*****

"Ye shouldn't've brought 'em," Arumn scolded Josi Puddles again. Even as he finished, the door separating the common room from the private quarters swung open and a haggard-looking Wulfgar walked in.

"A foul mood," Josi remarked, as if that was vindication against Arumn's scolding. Josi had invited a few friends to the Cutlass that night, a thick-limbed rogue named Reef and his equally tough friends, including one thin man with soft hands-not a fighter, to be sure-whom Arumn believed he had seen before but in flowing robes and not breeches and a tunic. Reef had a score to settle against Wulfgar, for on the first day the barbarian arrived in the Cutlass Reef and a couple of his friends were working as Arumn's bouncers. When they tried to forcefully remove Wulfgar from the tavern, the barbarian had slapped Reef across the room.

Arumn's glare did not diminish. He was somewhat surprised to see Wulfgar in the tavern, but still he wanted to handle this with words alone. A fight with an outraged Wulfgar could cost the proprietor greatly.

The crowd in the common room went into a collective hush as Wulfgar made his way across the floor. Staring suspiciously at Arumn, the big man plopped a bag of coins on the bar.

"It's all I can give to ye," Arumn remarked, recognizing the bag as the one he had left for Wulfgar.

"Who asked for it?" Wulfgar replied, sounding as if he had no idea what was going on.

"It's what I told ye," Arumn started, then stopped and patted his hands in the air as if trying to calm Wulfgar down, though in truth, the mighty barbarian didn't seem the least bit agitated.

"Ye're not to stay here anymore," Arumn explained. "I can't be having it."

Wulfgar didn't respond other than to glare intensely at the tavernkeeper.

"Now, I'm wanting no trouble," Arumn explained, again patting his hands in the air.

Wulfgar wouldn't have given him any, though the big man was surely in a foul mood. He noticed a movement from Josi Puddles, obviously a signal, and half a dozen powerful men, including a couple Wulfgar recognized as Arumn's old crew, formed a semicircle around the huge man.

"No trouble!" Arumn said more forcefully, aiming his remark more at Josi's hunting pack than at Wulfgar.

"Aegis-fang," Wulfgar muttered.

A few seats down the bar, Josi stiffened and prayed that he had placed the hammer safely out of Wulfgar's magical calling range.

A moment passed; the warhammer did not materialize in Wulfgar's hand.

"It's in yer room," Arumn offered.

With a sudden, vicious movement, Wulfgar slapped the bag of coins away, sending them clattering across the floor. "Are you thinking that to be ample payment?"

"More than I owe ye," Arumn dared to argue.

"A few coins for Aegis-fang?" Wulfgar asked incredulously.

"Not for the warhammer," Arumn stuttered, sensing that the situation was deteriorating very fast. "That's in yer room."

"If it were in my room, then I would have seen it," Wulfgar replied, leaning forward threateningly. Josi's hunting pack closed in just a bit, two of them taking out small clubs, a third wrapping a chain about his fist. "Even if I did not see it, it would have come to my call from there," Wulfgar reasoned, and he called again, yelling this time, "Aegis-fang!"

Nothing.

"Where is my hammer?" Wulfgar demanded of Arumn.

"Just leave, Wulfgar," the tavernkeeper pleaded. "Just be gone. If we find yer hammer, we'll get it brought to ye, but go now."

Wulfgar saw it coming, so he baited it in. He reached across the bar for Arumn's throat, then pulled up short and snapped his arm back, catching the attacker coming in at his right flank, Reef, square in the face with a flying elbow. Reef staggered and wobbled, until Wulfgar pumped his arm and slammed him again, sending him flying away.

Purely on instinct, the barbarian spun back and threw his left arm up defensively. Just in time as one of Reef's cronies came in hard, swinging a short, thick club that smashed Wulfgar hard on the forearm.

All semblance of strategy and posturing disappeared in the blink of an eye, as all five of the thugs charged at Wulfgar. The barbarian began kicking and swinging his mighty fists, yelling out for Aegis-fang repeatedly and futilely. He even snapped his head forward viciously several times, connecting solidly with an attacker's nose, then again, catching another man on the side of the head and sending him staggering away.

Delly Curtie screamed, and Arumn cried "No!" repeatedly.

But Wulfgar couldn't hear them. Even if he could, he could not have taken a moment to heed the command. He had to buy some time and some room, for he was taking three hits for every one he was delivering in these close quarters. Though his punches and kicks were heavier by far, Reef's friends were no novices to brawling.

The rest of the Cutlass's patrons stared at the row in amusement and confusion, for they knew that Wulfgar worked for Arumn. The only ones moving were skidding safely out of range of the whirling ball of brawlers. One man in the far corner stood up, waving his arms wildly and spinning in circles.

"They're attacking the Cutlass crew!" the man cried. "To arms, patrons and friends! Defend Arumn and Wulfgar! Surely these thugs will destroy our tavern!"

"By the gods," Arumn Gardpeck muttered, for he knew the speaker, knew that Morik the Rogue had just condemned his precious establishment to devastation. With a shake of his head and a frustrated groan, the helpless Arumn ducked down behind the bar.

As if on cue, the entire Cutlass exploded into a huge brawl. Men and women, howling and taking no time to sort out allegiance, were just punching at the nearest potential victim.

Still at the bar, Wulfgar had to leave his right flank exposed, taking a brutal slug across the jaw, for he was focusing on the left, where the man with the club came at him yet again. He got his hands up to deflect the first strike and the second, then stepped toward the man, accepting a smack across the ribs, but catching the attacker by the forearm. Holding tightly Wulfgar shoved the man away, then yanked him powerfully back in, ducking and snapping his free hand into the staggering man's crotch. The man went high into the air, Wulfgar pressing him up to the limit of his reach and turning a quick circle, seeking a target.

The man flew away, hitting another, both of them falling into poor Reef and sending the big man sprawling once again.

Yet another attacker came hard at Wulfgar, arm cocked to punch. The barbarian steeled his gaze and his jaw, ready to trade hit for hit, but this ruffian had a chain wrapped around his fist. A flash of burning pain exploded on Wulfgar's face, and the taste of blood came thick in his mouth. Out pumped the dazed Wulfgar's arm, his fist just clipping the attacker's shoulder.

Another man dipped his shoulder in full charge, slamming Wulfgar's side, but the braced barbarian didn't budge. A second chain-wrapped punch came at his face-he saw the links gleaming red with his own blood-but he managed to duck the brunt of this one, though he still got a fair-sized gash across his cheek.

The other man, who had bounced off him harmlessly, leaped onto Wulfgar's side with a heavy flying tackle, but Wulfgar, with a defiant roar, held fast his footing. He twisted and wriggled his left arm up under the clinging man's shoulder and grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head.

Ahead strode the barbarian, roaring, punching again and again with his free right hand, while tugging with his left to keep the clinging man in check. The chain-fisted ruffian backed defensively, using his left arm to deflect the blows. He saw an opening he couldn't resist and came forward hard to land another solid blow on Wulfgar, clipping the barbarian's collar bone. The ruffian should have continued retreating, though, for Wulfgar had his footing and his balance now, enough to put all his weight behind one great hooking right.

The chain-fisted ruffian's blocking arm barely deflected the heavy blow. Wulfgar's fist smashed through the defenses and came crashing down against the side of the ruffian's face, spinning him in a downward spiral to the floor.

*****

Morik sat at his table in the far corner, every now and then dodging a flying bottle or body, unperturbed as he sipped his drink. Despite his calm facade, the rogue was worried for his friend and for the Cutlass, for he could not believe the brutality of the row this night. It seemed as if all of Luskan's thugs had risen up in this one great opportunity to brawl in a tavern that had been relatively fight-free since Wulfgar had arrived, scaring off or quickly beating up any potential ruffians.

Morik winced as the chain slammed into Wulfgar's face, splattering blood. The rogue considered going to his friend's aid, but he quickly dismissed the notion. Morik was a clever information gatherer, a thief who survived through his wiles and his weapons, neither of which would help him in a common tavern brawl.

So he sat at his table, watching the tumult around him. Nearly everyone in the common room was into it now. One man came by, dragging a woman by her long, dark hair, heading for the door. He had hardly gone past Morik, though, when another man smashed a chair over his head, dropping him to the floor.

When that rescuer turned to the woman, she promptly smashed a bottle across the smile on his face, then turned and ran back to the melee, leaping atop one man and bearing him down, her fingernails raking his face.

Morik studied the woman more intently, marking well her features and thinking that her feisty spirit might prove quite enjoyable in some future private engagement.

Seeing movement from his right, Morik moved fast to slide his chair back and lift both his mug and bottle as two men came sailing across his table, smashing it and taking away the pieces with their brawl.

Morik merely shrugged, crossed his legs, leaned against the wall, and took another sip.

*****

Wulfgar found a temporary reprieve after dropping the chain-fisted man, but another quickly took his place, pressing in harder, hanging on Wulfgar's side. He finally gave up trying to wrestle away the powerful barbarian's arm. Instead he latched onto Wulfgar's face with two clawing hands and tried to pull the barbarian's head toward him, biting at his ear.

Yelping with pain, roaring with outrage, Wulfgar yanked hard on the man's hair, jerking his head and a small piece of Wulfgar's ear away. Wulfgar brought his right hand under the man's left arm, rolled it over and out, twisting the arm until breaking the hold on Wulfgar's shirt. He grabbed hard to the inside of the man's biceps. A twist turned Wulfgar square to the bar, and he drove both his arms down toward it hard, slamming the man's head against the wood so forcefully that the planking cracked. Wulfgar pulled the man back up. Hardly noticing that all struggling had abruptly ceased, Wulfgar slammed him facedown into the wood again. With a great shrug followed by a greater roar, Wulfgar sent the unconscious thug flying away. He spun about, preparing for the next round of attacks.

Wulfgar's blood-streaked eyes focused briefly. He couldn't believe the tumult. It seemed as if all the world had gone mad. Tables and bodies flew. Practically everyone in the place, near to a hundred patrons this night, was into the brawl. Across the way Wulfgar spotted Morik where he sat quietly leaning against the far wall, shifting his legs now and then to avoid whatever flew past them. Morik noticed him and lifted his glass cordially.

Wulfgar ducked and braced. A man, chopping a heavy board down at Wulfgar's head, went rolling over the barbarian's back.

Wulfgar spotted Delly then, rushing across the room, ducking for cover where she could and calling out for him. She was halfway across the inn from him when a flying chair cracked across the side of her head, dropping her straight down.

Wulfgar started for her, but another man came at the distracted barbarian hard and low, crunching him across the knees. The barbarian fought to hold his balance, staggered once, then another man leaped onto his back. The man below him grabbed an ankle in a two-armed hug and rolled around, twisting Wulfgar's leg. A third man rammed him full speed, and over they all went, falling down in a jumble of flailing arms and kicking legs.

Wulfgar rolled atop the last attacker, slamming his forearm down across the man's face and using that as leverage to try to rise, but a heavy boot stomped on his back. He went down hard, his breath blasted away. The unseen attacker above him tried to stomp him again, but Wulfgar kept the presence of mind to roll aside, and the attacker wound up stepping on his own comrade's exposed belly.

The abrupt shift only reminded Wulfgar that he still had a man hanging tough onto his ankle. The barbarian kicked at him with his free leg, but he had no leverage, lying on his back as he was, and so he went into a jerking, thrashing frenzy, trying desperately to pull free.

The man held on stubbornly, mostly because he was too scared to let go. Wulfgar took a different tact, drawing his leg up and taking the man along for the slide, then kicking straight out again, bringing his trapped foot somewhat below his opponent's grasp. At the same time, the barbarian snapped his other leg around the back of the man and managed to hook his ankles together.

A second thug jumped atop the barbarian, grabbing one arm and bringing it down under his weight while a third did likewise to the other arm. Wulfgar fought them savagely, twisting his arms. When that didn't work, he simply growled and pushed straight up, locking his arms in right angles at the elbows and drawing them up and together above his massive chest. At the same time, Wulfgar squeezed with his powerful legs. The man fought frantically against the vice and tried to cry out, but the only sound that came from him was the loud snap as his shoulder popped out of its socket.

Feeling the struggling ended down below, Wulfgar wriggled his legs free and kicked and kicked until the groaning man rolled away. The barbarian turned his attention to the two above who were punching and scratching him. With strength that mocked mortal men, Wulfgar extended his arms, lifting both the ruffians up to arms' length, then pulling them up above his head suddenly, at the same time rolling his legs up with a jerk. The momentum sent Wulfgar right over backward, and he managed to push off with his hands as he came around, landing unsteadily on his feet, facing the two prone and scrambling men.

Instinct alone spun the barbarian around to meet the latest charge, his fist flying. He caught the attacker, the chain-fisted man, square in the chest. It was a tremendous collision, but Wulfgar hadn't turned fast enough to get any defense in place against the man's flying fist, which hit him square in the face at the same time. The two shuddered to a stop, and the chain-fisted man fell over into Wulfgar's arms. The barbarian brushed him aside to land heavily, facedown, far, far from consciousness.

The blow had hurt Wulfgar badly, he knew, for his vision spun and blurred, and he had to keep reminding himself where he was. He got an arm up suddenly, but only partially deflected a flying chair, one leg spinning about to poke him hard in the forehead, which only heightened his dizziness. The fight around him was slowing now, for more men were down and groaning than still standing and punching, but Wulfgar needed another reprieve, a temporary one at least. He took the only route apparent to him, rushing to the bar and rolling over it, landing on his feet behind the barricade.

He landed face-to-face with Arumn Gardpeck. "Oh, but ye've done a wonderful thing this night, now haven't ye?" Arumn spat at him. "A fight every night for Wulfgar, or it's not a fun one."

Wulfgar grabbed the man by the front of his tunic. He pulled him up roughly from his crouch behind the bar, lifted him with ease, and slammed him hard against the back wall above the bottle shelving, destroying more than a bit of expensive stock in the process.

"Be glad your face is not at the end of my fist," the unrepentant barbarian growled.

"Or more, be glad ye've not toyed with me own emotions the way ye've burned poor Delly," Arumn growled right back.

His words hurt Wulfgar profoundly, for he had no answers to Arumn's accusation, could not rightly argue that he had no blame where Delly Curtie was involved. Wulfgar gave Arumn a little jerk, then set him down and took a step back, glaring at the tavernkeeper unblinkingly. He noticed a movement to the side, and he glanced over to see a huge, disembodied fist hovering in the air above the bar.

Wulfgar was hit on the side of the head, harder than he ever remembered being struck. He reeled, grabbing another shelf of potent whisky and pulling it down, then staggered and spun, grabbing the bar for support.

Across from him, Josi Puddles spat in his face. Before Wulfgar could respond, he noted the magical floating hand coming at him hard from the side. He was hit again, and his legs went weak. He was hit yet again, lifted right from his feet and slammed hard into the back wall. All the world was spinning, and he felt as if he were sinking into the floor.

He was half-carried, half-dragged, out from behind the bar and across the floor, all the fighting coming to an abrupt end at the sight of mighty Wulfgar finally defeated.

"Finish it outside," Reef said, kicking open the door. Even as the man turned for the street, he found a dagger point at his throat.

"It's already finished," Morik casually explained, though he betrayed his calm by glancing back inside toward the thin wizard who was packing up his things, apparently unconcerned by any of this. Reef had hired him as a bit of insurance. Since the wizard apparently held no personal stake in the brawl, the rogue calmed a bit and muttered under his breath, "I hate wizards." He turned his attention back to Reef and dug the knife in a bit more.

Reef looked to his companion, holding Wulfgar's other arm, and together they unceremoniously threw the barbarian into the mud.

Wulfgar climbed back to his feet, sheer willpower alone forcing him back into a state of readiness. He turned back toward the closed door, but Morik was there, grabbing his arm.

"Don't," the rogue commanded. "They don't want you in there. What will you prove?"

Wulfgar started to argue, but he looked Morik in the eye and saw no room for debate. He knew the rogue was right. He knew that he had no home.

Chapter 4 A LADY'S LIFE

"Ganderlay," Temigast announced as he entered the room to join Priscilla and Feringal. Both looked at the steward curiously, not understanding. "The woman you saw, my Lord Feringal," Temigast explained. "Her family name is Ganderlay."

"I know of no Ganderlays in Auckney," Priscilla argued.

"There are few families in the village whose names are familiar to you, my dear lady," Temigast replied, his tone somewhat dry, "but this woman is indeed a Ganderlay. She lives with her family on the south slope of Maerlon Mountain," he explained, referring to a fairly populated region of Auckney some two miles from the castle on a step-carved mountainside facing the harbor.

"Girl," Priscilla corrected condescendingly. "She's nowhere near to being a woman."

Feringal didn't even seem to hear the comment, too excited by the steward's news. "Are you certain?" he asked Temigast, jumping up and striding determinedly to stand right before the man. "Can it be?"

"The gir-the woman, was walking the road at the same time your coach rolled through," the steward confirmed. "She matches the description given by several people who know her and saw her on the road at the time. They all mentioned her striking long, black hair, which matches your own description of her, my lord. I am certain she is the eldest daughter of one Dohni Ganderlay."

"I'll go to her," Feringal announced, pacing back and forth eagerly, tapping one finger to his teeth, then turning fast, and then again, as if he didn't know where to go or what to do. "I will call the coach."

"My Lord Feringal," Temigast said quietly in a commanding tone that seemed to steady the eager young man. "That would be most inappropriate."

Feringal stared at him wide-eyed. "But why?"

"Because she is a peasant and not worthy of. ." Priscilla began, but her voice trailed off for it was obvious that no one was listening to her.

"One does not go unannounced to the house of a proper lady," Temigast explained. "The way must be prepared by your steward and her father."

"But I am the lord of Auckney," Feringal protested. "I can-"

"You can do as you like if you desire her as a plaything," Temigast was quick to interrupt, drawing a frown from both Feringal and Priscilla, "but if you desire her as a wife proper, then arrange things properly. There is a way, my Lord Feringal, a manner in which we are all expected to act. To go against the etiquette in this matter could prove most disastrous, I assure you."

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't," Temigast said, "but I do, fortunately for us all. Now go and bathe. If the young Ganderlay doe stood downwind of you she would run away." With that he turned Lord Feringal toward the door and gave him a solid push to start him on his way.

"You have betrayed me!" Priscilla wailed when her brother was gone.

Temigast snorted at the ridiculous assertion.

"I'll not have her in this house," the woman said determinedly.

"Have you not come to realize that there's nothing short of murder you can do to stop it?" Temigast replied in all seriousness.

"The murder of your brother, I mean, not of the girl, for that would only invite Feringal's wrath upon you."

"But you have aided him in this foolish pursuit."

"I have provided only what he could have learned on his own by asking questions of any peasant, including three women who work in this very house, one of whom was on the road yesterday."

"If the fool even noticed them," Priscilla argued.

"He would have discovered the girl's name," insisted Temigast, "and he might have embarrassed us all in the process of his undignified hunt." The steward chuckled and moved very close to Priscilla, draping one arm across her shoulders. "I understand your concerns, dear Priscilla," he said, "and I don't entirely disagree with you. I, too, would have preferred your brother to fall in love with some wealthy merchant girl from another place, rather than with a peasant of Auckney-or for him to forget the concept of love altogether and merely give in to his lust when and where it suited him without taking a wife. Perhaps it will yet come to that."

"Less likely, now that you have so aided him," Priscilla said sharply.

"Not so," Temigast explained with a wide smile, one that caught Priscilla's attention, for her expression changed to intrigue. "All I have done is heightened your brother's trust in me and my judgments. Perhaps he will hold fast to his notion of loving this girl, of marrying her, but I will watch him every step, I promise. I'll not allow him to bring shame to family Auck, nor will I allow the girl and her family to take from us what they do not deserve. We cannot defeat his will in this, I assure you, and your indignation will only strengthen Feringal's resolve."

Priscilla snorted doubtfully.

"Can't you hear his anger when you berate him about this?" Temigast demanded, and she winced at his words. "If we distance ourselves from your brother now, I warn you, the Ganderlay girl's hold over him-over Auckney-will only heighten.

Priscilla didn't snort, didn't shake her head, didn't show any sign of disagreement. She just stared at Temigast long and hard. He kissed her on the cheek and moved away, thinking that he should summon the castle coach at once and be on with his duties as emissary of Lord Feringal.

*****

Jaka Sculi looked up from the field of mud along with all the other workers, human and gnome, as the decorated coach made its way along the dirt lane. It came to a stop in front of Dohni Ganderlay's small house. An old man climbed out of the carriage door and ambled toward the house. Jaka's eyes narrowed slightly. Remembering suddenly that others might be watching him, he resumed his typically distant air. He was Jaka Sculi, after all, the fantasy lover of every young lady in Auckney, especially the woman who lived in the house where the lord's carriage had stopped. The notion that beautiful Meralda desired him was no small thing to the young man-though, of course, he couldn't let anyone else believe he cared.

"Dohni!" one of the other field workers, a crooked little gnome with a long and pointy nose, called. "Dohni Ganderlay, you've got guests!"

"Or mighten be they've figured you for the scoundrel you are!" another gnome cried out, and they all had a good laugh.

Except for Jaka, of course. Jaka wouldn't let them see him laugh.

Dohni Ganderlay walked over the ridge behind the peat field. He looked to those who yelled for some explanation, but they merely nodded their chins in the direction of his house. Dohni followed that movement, spotted the coach, and broke into a frantic run.

Jaka Sculi watched him run all the way home.

"You figuring to do some digging, boy?" came a question beside Jaka. When he turned to regard the toothless old man, the fool ran a hand through Jaka's curly brown hair.

The young man shook his head with disgust, noting the black peat encasing the old digger's fingers. He shook his head again and brushed his hair robustly, then slapped the man's hand away when it reached up to give another rub.

"Hee hee hee," the old man giggled. "Seems your little girlie's got a caller," he snickered.

"And an old one at that," remarked another, also more than willing to join in the play at Jaka's expense.

"But I'm thinking I might give the girl a try meself," the dirty old duffer at Jaka's side remarked. That drew a frown from Jaka, and so the old man only laughed all the harder at finally evoking some response from the boy.

Jaka turned his head slowly about, surveying the field and the workers, the few houses scattered on the mountainside, Castle Auck far in the distance, and the dark, cold waters beyond that. Those waters had brought him, his mother, and his uncle to this forlorn place only four years before. Jaka didn't know why they had come to Auckney-he had been quite content with his life in Luskan-except that it had something to do with his father, who used to beat his mother mercilessly. He suspected that they were running, either from the man or from the executioner. It seemed to be a typical tactic for the Sculi family, for they had done the same thing when Jaka was a toddler, fleeing from their ancestral home in the Blade Kingdoms all the way to Luskan. Certainly his father, a vicious man whom Jaka hardly knew, would search them out and kill his mother and her brother for running away. Or perhaps Jaka's father was already dead, left in his own blood by Rempini, Jaka's uncle.

Either way, it didn't matter to Jaka. All that he knew was that he was in this place, a dreadful, windy, cold, and barren fiefdom. Until recently, the only good thing about it all, in his view, was that the perpetual melancholy of the place enhanced his poetic nature. Even though he fancied himself quite the romantic hero, Jaka had passed his seventeenth birthday now, and had many times considered tagging along with one of the few merchants who happened through, going out into the wide world, back to Luskan perhaps, or even better, all the way to mighty Waterdeep. He planned to make his fortune there someday, somehow, and perhaps get all the way back to the Blade Kingdoms.

But those plans had been put on hold, for yet another positive aspect of Auckney had revealed itself to the young man.

Jaka could not deny the attraction he felt to a certain young Ganderlay girl.

Of course, he couldn't let her or anyone else know that, not until he was certain that she would give herself over to him fully.

*****

Hurrying past the coach, Dohni Ganderlay recognized the driver, a gray-bearded gnome he knew as Liam Woodgate. Liam smiled and nodded at him, which relaxed Dohni considerably, though he still kept his swift pace through the door. At his small kitchen table sat the steward of Castle Auck. Across from him was Dohni's ill wife, Biaste, whose beaming expression the peat farmer hadn't seen in a long, long time.

"Master Ganderlay," Temigast said politely. "I am Temigast, steward of Castle Auck, emissary of Lord Feringal."

"I know that," Dohni said warily. Never taking his eyes from the old man, Dohni Ganderlay made his way around the table, avoiding one of the two remaining chairs to stand behind his wife, dropping his hands on her shoulders.

"I was just explaining to your wife that my lord, and yours, requests the presence of your eldest daughter at the castle for dinner this evening," the steward said.

The startling news hit Dohni Ganderlay as solidly as any club ever could, but he held his balance and his expression, letting it sink in. He looked behind the words into Temigast's old, gray eyes.

"Of course, I have suitable clothing for Miss Meralda in the coach, should you agree," Temigast finished with a comforting smile.

Proud Dohni Ganderlay saw behind that smiling facade, behind the polite and respectful tone. He saw the condescension there and recognized the confidence within Temigast. Of course they could not refuse, Temigast believed, for they were but dirty peasants. The lord of Auckney had come a'calling, and the Ganderlays would welcome that call eagerly, hungrily.

"Where is Meralda?" the man asked his wife.

"She and Tori've gone to trading," the woman explained.

Dohni couldn't ignore the weak trembling in her voice. "To get a few eggs for supper."

"Meralda can eat at a banquet this night, and perhaps for many nights," Temigast remarked.

Dohni saw it so clearly again, the wretched condescension that reminded him of his lot in life, of the fate of his children, all his friends, and their children as well.

"Then she will come?" Temigast prompted after a long and uncomfortable silence.

"That'll be Meralda's to choose," Dohni Ganderlay replied more sharply than he had intended.

"Ah," said the steward, nodding and smiling, always smiling. He rose from his chair and motioned for Biaste to remain seated. "Of course, of course, but do come and retrieve the gown, Master Ganderlay. Should you decide to send the young lady, it will be better and easier if she had it here."

"And if she doesn't want to go?"

Temigast arched a brow, suggesting he thought the notion that she might refuse absurd. "Then I will have my coachman return tomorrow to retrieve the gown, of course," he said.

Dohni looked down at his ill wife, at the plaintive expression on her too-delicate features.

"Master Ganderlay?" Temigast asked, motioning for the door. Dohni patted Biaste on the shoulders and walked beside the steward out to the coach. The gnome driver was waiting for them, gown in hand, and his arms uplifted to keep the delicate fabric from dragging in the dusty road.

"You would do well to urge your daughter to attend," Temigast advised, handing over the gown, which only made Dohni Ganderlay steel his features all the more.

"Your wife is sick," Temigast reasoned. "No doubt a meager existence in a drafty house will not do her well with the cold winter approaching."

"You speak as if we've a choice in the matter," Dohni replied.

"Lord Feringal is a man of great means," Temigast explained. "He has easy access to amazing herbs, warm beds, and powerful clerics. It would be a pity for your wife to suffer needlessly." The steward patted the gown. "We shall dine just after sundown," he explained. "I will have the coach pass by your home at dusk." With that, Temigast stepped into the coach and closed the door. The driver wasted no time in putting whip to horses to speed them away.

Dohni Ganderlay stood for a long while in the cloud of dust left by the departing coach, gown in hand, staring at the empty air before him. He wanted to scream out that if Lord Feringal was such a connected and beneficent lord, then he should willingly use his means for the welfare of his flock. People like Biaste Ganderlay should be able to get the aid they needed without selling their daughters. What Temigast had just offered him was akin to selling his daughter for the benefit of the family. Selling his daughter!

And yet, for all his pride, Dohni Ganderlay could not deny the opportunity that lay before him.

*****

"It was the lord's coach," Jaka Sculi insisted to Meralda when he intercepted her on her way home later that same day. "At your own front door," he added with his exotic accent, a dialect thick with sighs and dramatic huffs.

Tori Ganderlay giggled. Meralda punched her in the shoulder and motioned for her to be on her way. "But I want to know," she whined.

"You'll be knowing the taste of dirt," Meralda promised her. She started for her sister but stopped abruptly and composed herself, remembering her audience. Meralda turned back to Jaka after painting a sweet smile on her face, still managing to glare at Tori out of the corner of her eye.

Tori started skipping down the road. "But I wanted to see you kiss him," she squealed happily as she ran on.

"Are you sure about the coach?" Meralda asked Jaka, trying very hard to leave Tori's embarrassing remarks behind.

The young man merely sighed with dramatic exasperation.

"But what business has Lord Feringal with my folks?" the young woman asked.

Jaka hung his head to the side, hands in pockets, and shrugged.

"Well, I should be going, then," Meralda said, and she took a step, but Jaka shifted to block her way. "What're you about?"

Jaka looked at her with those light blue eyes, running a hand through his mop of curly hair, his face tilted up at her.

Meralda felt as if she would choke for the lump that welled in her throat, or that her heart would beat so forcefully that it would pound right out of her chest.

"What're you about?" she asked again, much more quietly and without any real conviction.

Jaka moved toward her. She remembered her own advice to Tori, about how one had to make a boy beg. She reminded herself that she should not be doing this, not yet. She told herself that pointedly, and yet she was not retreating at all. He came closer, and as she felt the heat of his breath she, too, moved forward. Jaka just let his lips brush hers, then backed away, appearing suddenly shy.

"What?" Meralda asked again, this time with obvious eagerness.

Jaka sighed, and the woman came forward again, moving to kiss him, her whole body trembling, telling, begging him to kiss her back. He did, long and soft, then he moved away.

"I'll be waiting for you after supper," he said, and he turned with a shrug and started slowly away.

Meralda could hardly catch her breath, for that kiss had been everything she had dreamed it would be and more. She felt warm in her belly and weak in her knees and tingly all over. Never mind that Jaka, with one simple hesitation, had done to her exactly what she had told Tori a woman must do to a man. Meralda couldn't even think of that at the time, too entranced was she by the reality of what had just happened and by the promise of what might happen next.

She took the same path down the road Tori had taken, and her skipping was no less full of the girlish joy, as if Jaka's kiss had freed her of the bonds of temperance and dignity that came with being a woman.

Meralda entered her house all smiles. Her eyes widened when she saw her sick mother standing by the table, as happy as she had seen the woman in weeks. Biaste held a beautiful gown, rich emerald green with glittering gems sewn into its seams.

"Oh, but you'll be the prettiest Auckney's ever seen when you put this on," Biaste Ganderlay said, and beside her, Tori exploded in giggles.

Meralda stared at the gown wide-eyed, then turned to regard her father who was standing at the side of the room, smiling as well. Meralda recognized that his expression was somewhat more strained than Biaste's.

"But Ma, we've not the money," Meralda reasoned, though she was truly enchanted by the gown. She moved up to stroke the soft material, thinking how much Jaka would love to see her in it.

"A gift, and nothing to buy," Biaste explained, and Tori giggled all the more.

Meralda's expression turned to one of curiosity, and she looked to her father again for some explanation, but, surprisingly, he turned away.

"What's it about, Ma?" the young woman asked.

"You've a suitor, my girl," Biaste said happily, pulling the gown out so that she could hug her daughter. "Oh, but you've got a lord hisself wanting to court you!"

Always considerate of her mother's feelings, especially now that the woman was ill, Meralda was glad that Biaste's head was on Meralda's shoulder, so her mother couldn't see the stunned and unhappy expression that crossed her daughter's face. Tori did see it, but the girl only looked up at Meralda and pursed her lips repeatedly in a mockery of a kiss. Meralda looked to her father, who now faced her but only nodded solemnly.

Biaste pulled her back to arms' length. "Oh, my little girl," she said. "When did you get so beautiful? To think that you've caught the heart of Lord Feringal."

Lord Feringal. Meralda could hardly catch her breath, and not for any joy. She hardly knew the lord of Castle Auck, though she had seen him on many occasions from afar, usually picking his fingernails and looking bored at the celebratory gatherings held in the town square.

"He's sweet on you, girl," Biaste went on, "and in it thick, by the words of his steward."

Meralda managed a smile for her mother's sake.

"They'll be coming for you soon," Biaste explained. "So be quick to get a bath. Then," she added, pausing to bring one hand up to her mouth, "then we'll put you in this gown, and oh, how all the men who see you will fall before your feet."

Meralda moved methodically, taking the gown and turning for her room with Tori on her heels. It all seemed a dream to the young woman, and not a pleasant one. Her father walked past her to her mother. She heard them strike up a conversation, though the words seemed all garbled to her, and the only thing she truly heard was Biaste's exclamation, "A lord for my girl!"

*****

Auckney was not a large place, and though its houses weren't cluttered together, the folk were certainly within shouting distance of each other. It didn't take long for word of the arrangement between Lord Feringal and Meralda Ganderlay to spread.

Jaka Sculi learned the truth about the visit of Lord Feringal's steward before he finished eating that same evening, before the sun touched the western horizon.

"To think one of his station will dip low enough to touch the likes of a peasant," Jaka's ever-pessimistic mother remarked, her voice still thick with the heavy peasant accent of their long-lost homeland in the Blade Kingdoms. "Ah, to the ruin of all the world!"

"Evil tiding," Jaka's uncle agreed, a grizzled old man who appeared to have seen too much of the world.

Jaka, too, thought this a terrible turn of events, but for a very different reason-at least he thought his anger had come from a different source, for he wasn't certain of the reason his mother and uncle were so upset by the news, and his expression clearly revealed that confusion.

"We've each our station," his uncle explained. "Clear lines, and not ones to be crossed."

"Lord Feringal brings dishonor to his family," said his mother.

"Meralda is a wonderful woman," Jaka argued before he could catch and hold the words secret.

"She's a peasant, as we all be," his mother was quick to explain. "We've our place, and Lord Feringal's got his. Oh, them folk will rejoice at the news, do not doubt, thinking to draw some of their own hope at Meralda's good fortunes, but they're not knowing the truth of it."

"What truth?"

"He'll use her to no good ends," foretold his mother. "He'll make himself the fool and the girl a tramp."

"And in the end, she'll be broken or dead, and Lord Feringal will have lost all favor with his peers," added his uncle. "Evil tiding."

"Why do you believe that she will succumb?" the young man asked, working hard to keep the desperation out of his tone.

His mother and uncle merely laughed at that question. Jaka understood their meaning all too clearly. Feringal was the lord of Auckney. How could Meralda refuse him?

It was more than poor, sensitive Jaka could take. He banged the table hard with his fist and slid his chair back. Rising fast to his feet, he matched the surprised stares of his mother and uncle with a glower of utter rage. With that Jaka turned on his heel and rushed out, slamming the door behind him.

Before he knew it he was running, his thoughts whirling. Jaka soon came to high ground, a small tumble of rocks just above the muddy field he had been working earlier that same day, a place affording him a splendid view of the sunset, as well as Meralda's house. In the distant southwest he saw the castle, and he pictured the magnificent coach making its deliberate way up the road to it with Meralda inside.

Jaka felt as if a heavy weight were pressing on his chest, as if all the limitations of his miserable existence had suddenly become tangible walls, closing, closing. For the last few years Jaka had gone to great lengths to acquire just the correct persona, the correct pose and the correct attitude, to turn the heart of any young lady. Now here came this foolish nobleman, this prettily painted and perfumed fop with no claim to reputation other than the station to which he had been born, to take all that Jaka had cultivated right out from under him.

Jaka, of course, didn't see things with quite that measure of clarity. To him it seemed a plain enough truth: a grave injustice played against him simply because of the station, or lack thereof, of his birth. Because these pitiful peasants of Auckney didn't know the truth of him, the greatness that lay within him hidden by the dirt of farm fields and peat bogs.

The distraught young man ran his hands through his brown locks and heaved a great sigh.

*****

"You best get it all cleaned, because you're not knowing what Lord Feringal will be seeing," Tori teased, and she ran a rough cloth across Meralda's back as her sister sat like a cat curled up in the steaming hot bath.

Meralda turned at the words and splashed water in Tori's face. The younger girl's giggles halted abruptly when she noted the grim expression on Meralda's face.

"I'm knowing what Lord Feringal will be seeing, all right," Meralda assured her sister. "If he's wanting his dress back, he'll have to be coming back to the house to get it."

"You'd refuse him?"

"I won't even kiss him," Meralda insisted, and she lifted a dripping fist into the air. "If he tries to kiss me, I'll-"

"You'll play the part of a lady," came the voice of her father, Both girls looked to the curtain to see the man enter the room, "Leave," he instructed Tori. The girl knew that tone well enough to obey without question.

Dohni Ganderlay stayed at the door a moment longer to make sure that too-curious Tori had, indeed, scooted far away, then he moved to the side of the tub and handed Meralda a soft cloth to dry herself. They lived in a small house where modesty was pointless, so Meralda was not the least bit embarrassed as she stepped from her bath, though she draped the cloth about her before she sat on a nearby stool.

"You're not happy about the turn of events," Dohni observed.

Meralda's lips grew thin, and she leaned over to splash a nervous hand in the cold bath water.

"You don't like Lord Feringal?"

"I don't know him," the young woman retorted, "and he's not knowing me. Not at all!"

"But he's wanting to," Dohni argued. "You should take that as the highest compliment."

"And taking a compliment means giving in to the one complimenting?" Meralda asked with biting sarcasm. "I've no choice in the matter? Lord Feringal's wanting you, so off you go?"

Her nervous splashing of water turned angry, and she accidently sent a small wave washing over Dohni Ganderlay. The young woman understood that it was not the wetness, but the attitude, that provoked his unexpectedly violent reaction. He caught her wrist in his strong hand and tugged it back, turning Meralda toward him.

"No," he answered bluntly. "You've no choice. Feringal is the lord of Auckney, a man of great means, a man who can lift us from the dirt."

"Maybe I'd rather be dirty," Meralda started to say, but Dohni Ganderlay cut her short.

"A man who can heal your mother."

He could not have stunned her more with the effect of those seven words than if he had curled his great fist into a tight ball and punched Meralda hard in the face. She stared at her father incredulously, at the desperate, almost wild, expression on his normally stoic face, and she was afraid, truly afraid.

"You've no choice," he said again, his voice a forced monotone. "Your ma's got the wilting and won't likely see the next turn of spring. You'll go to Lord Feringal and play the part of a lady. You'll laugh at his wit, and you'll praise his greatness. This you'll do for your ma," he finished simply, his voice full of defeat. As he turned away and rose Meralda caught a glint of moisture rimming his eye, and she understood.

Knowing how truly horrible this was for her father did help the young woman prepare for the night, helped greatly to cope with this seemingly cruel twist that fate had thrown before her.

*****

The sun was down, and the sky was turning dark blue. The coach passed below him on the way to Meralda's meager house. She stepped from the door, and even from this great distance Jaka could see how beautiful she appeared, like some shining jewel that mocked the darkness of twilight.

His jewel. The just reward for the beauty that was within him, not a bought present for the spoiled lord of Auckney.

He pictured Lord Feringal holding his hand out of the coach, touching her and fondling her as she stepped inside to join him. The image made him want to scream out at the injustice of it all. The coach rolled back down the road toward the distant castle with Meralda inside, just as he had envisioned earlier. Jaka could not have felt more robbed if Lord Feringal had reached into his pockets and taken his last coin.

He sat wallowing on the peat-dusted hill for a long, long while, running his hands through his hair repeatedly and cursing the inequities of this miserable life. So self-involved was he that he was taken completely by surprise by the midden sound of a young girl's voice.

"I knew you'd be about."

Jaka opened his dreamy, moist eyes to see Tori Ganderlay staring at him.

"I knew it," the girl teased.

"What do you know?"

"You heard about my sister's dinner and had to see for yourself," Tori reasoned. "And you're still waiting and watching."

"Your sister?" Jaka repeated dumbly. "I come here every night," he explained.

Tori turned from him to gaze down at the houses, at her own house, the firelight shining bright through the window. "Hoping to see Meralda naked through the window?" she asked with a giggle.

"I come out alone in the dark to get away from the fires and the light," Jaka replied firmly. "To get away from pestering people who cannot understand."

"Understand what?"

"The truth," the young man answered cryptically, hoping he sounded profound.

"The truth of what?"

"The truth of life," Jaka replied.

Tori looked at him long and hard, her face twisting as she tried to decipher his words. She looked back to her house.

"Bah, I'm thinking you're just wanting to see Meralda naked," she said again, then skipped happily back down the path.

Wouldn't she have fun with Meralda at his expense, Jaka thought. He heaved another of his great sighs, then turned and walked away to the even darker fields higher up the mountainside.

"Fie this life!" he cried out, lifting his arms to the rising full moon. "Fie, fie, and fly from me now, trappings mortal! What cruel fate to live and to see the undeserving gather the spoils from me. When justice lies in spiked pit. When worth's measure is heredity. Oh, Lord Feringal feeds at Meralda's neck. Fie this life, and fly from me!"

He ended his impromptu verse by falling to his knees and clutching at his teary face, and there he wallowed for a long, long while.

Anger replaced self-pity, and Jaka came up with a new line to finish his verse. "When justice lies in spiked pit," he recited, his voice quivering with rage. "When worth's measure is heredity." Now a smile crept onto his undeniably handsome features. "Wretched Feringal feeds at Meralda's neck, but he'll not have her virginity!"

Jaka climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked up again at the full moon. "I swear to it," he said with a growl, then muttered dramatically, "Fie this life," one last time and started for home.

*****

Meralda took the evening in stoic stride, answering questions politely and taking care to avoid the direct gaze of an obviously unhappy Lady Priscilla Auck. She found that she liked Steward Temigast quite a bit, mostly because the old man kept the conversation moving by telling many entertaining stories of his past and of the previous lord of the castle, Feringal's father. Temigast even set up a signal system with Meralda to help her understand which piece of silverware she should use for the various courses of food.

Though she remained unimpressed with the young lord of Auckney, who sat directly opposite her and stared unceasingly, the young woman couldn't deny her wonder at the delicious feast the servants laid out before her. Did they eat like this every day in Castle Auck-squab and fish, potatoes and sea greens-delicacies Meralda had never tasted before?

At Lord Feringal's insistence, after dinner the group retired to the drawing room, a comfortable, windowless square chamber at the center of the castle's ground floor. Thick walls kept out the chill ocean wind, and a massive hearth, burning with a fire as large as a village bonfire added to the coziness of the place.

"Perhaps you would like more food," Priscilla offered, but there was nothing generous about her tone. "I can have a serving woman bring it in."

"Oh, no, my lady," Meralda replied. "I couldn't eat another morsel."

"Indeed," said Priscilla, "but you did overindulge at dinner proper, now didn't you?" she asked, a sweet and phoney smile painted on her ugly face. It occurred to Meralda that Lord Feringal was almost charming compared to his sister. Almost.

A servant entered then, bearing a tray of snifters filled with a brownish liquid Meralda didn't recognize. She took her glass, too afraid to refuse, and on Temigast's toast and motion, she raised it up and took a healthy swallow. The young woman nearly choked from the burning sensation that followed the liquid down her throat.

"We don't take such volumes of brandy here," Priscilla remarked dryly. "That is a peasant trait."

Meralda felt like crawling under the thick rug. Crinkling his nose at her, Lord Feringal didn't help much.

"More a trait for one who is not familiar with the potent drink," Temigast interjected, coming to Meralda's aid. "Tiny sips, my dear. You will learn, though you may never acquire a taste for this unique liquor. I haven't yet myself."

Meralda smiled and nodded a silent thank you to the old man, which relieved the tension again, and not for the last time. Feeling a bit light in the head, Meralda faded out of the conversation, oblivious to Priscilla's double-edged remarks and Lord Feringal's stares. Her mind drifted off, and she was beside Jaka Sculi-in a moonlit field, perhaps, or this very room. How wonderful this place would be, with its thick carpet, huge fire, and this warming drink if she had the companionship of her dear Jaka instead of the wretched Auck siblings.

Temigast's voice penetrated her fog, reminding Lord Feringal that they had promised to return the young lady by a certain hour, and that the hour was fast approaching.

"A few moments alone, then," Feringal replied.

Meralda tried not to panic.

"Hardly a proper request," Priscilla put in. She looked at Meralda and snickered. "Of course, what could possibly be the harm?"

Feringal's sister left, as did Temigast, the old steward patting Meralda comfortingly on the shoulder as he slipped past to the door.

"I trust you will act as a gentleman, my lord," he said to Feringal, "as your station demands. There are few women in all the wide world as beautiful as Lady Meralda." He gave the young woman a smile. "I will order the coach to the front door."

The old man was her ally, Meralda recognized, a very welcome ally.

"It was a wonderful meal, was it not?" Lord Feringal asked, moving quickly to take a seat on the chair beside Meralda's.

"Oh, yes, my lord," she replied, lowering her gaze.

"No, no," Feringal scolded. "You must call me Lord Feringal, not 'my lord. »

"Yes, my-Lord Feringal." Meralda tried to keep her gaze averted, but the man was too close, too imposing. She looked up at him, and to his credit, he did take his stare from her breasts and looked into her eyes.

"I saw you on the road," he explained. "I had to know you. I had to see you again. Never has there been any woman as beautiful."

"Oh, my-Lord Feringal," she said, and she did look away again, for he was moving even closer, far too close, by Meralda's estimate.

"I had to see you," he said again, his voice barely a whisper but he was close enough that Meralda heard it clearly and felt his breath hot on her ear.

Meralda fought hard to swallow her panic as the back of Feringal's hand brushed gently down her cheek. He cupped her chin then and turned her head to face him. He kissed her softly at first, then, despite the fact that she was hardly returning the kiss, more urgently, even rising out of his chair to lean into her. As he pressed and kissed, Meralda thought of Jaka and of her sick mother and tolerated it, even when his hand covered the soft fabric over her breast.

"Your pardon, Lord Feringal," came Temigast's voice from the door. Flushing, the young man broke away and stood up to face the steward.

"The coach is waiting," Temigast explained. "It is time for Lady Meralda to return to her home." Meralda nearly ran from the room.

"I will call for you again," Lord Feringal said after her. "And soon, to be sure."

By the time the coach had moved over the bridge that separated Castle Auck from the mainland, Meralda had managed to slow her heartbeat somewhat. She understood her duty to her family, to her sick mother, but she felt as if she would faint, or vomit. Wouldn't the wretch Priscilla have a grand time with that, if she found that the peasant had thrown up in the gilded coach.

A mile later, still feeling sick and aching to be out of all these trappings, Meralda leaned out the coach's window.

"Stop! Oh, please stop!" she yelled to the driver. The carriage shuddered to a halt, but even before it had completely stopped the young woman threw open the door and scrambled out.

"My lady, I am to take you to your home," Liam Woodgate said, leaping down to Meralda's side.

"And so you have," the woman replied. "Close enough."

"But you've a long dark lane before you," the gnome protested. "Steward Temigast'll have my heart in his hand if-"

"He'll never know," Meralda promised. "Don't fear for me. I walk this lane every night and know every bush and rock and person in every house between here and my own."

"But. ." the gnome began to argue, but Meralda pushed past him, shot him a confident smile, and skipped away into the darkness.

The coach shadowed her for a short while, then, apparently convinced the woman was indeed familiar enough with this area to be safe, Liam turned it around and sped away.

The night was chill, but not too cold. Meralda veered from the road, moving to the dark fields higher up. She hoped to find Jaka there, waiting for her as they had arranged, but the place was empty. Alone in the dark, Meralda felt as if she were the only person in all the world. Anxious to forget tonight, to forget Lord Feringal and his wretched sister, she stripped off her gown, needing to be out of the fancy thing. Tonight she had dined as nobility, and other than the food and perhaps the warm drink, she had not been impressed. Not in the least.

Wearing only her plain undergarments, the young woman moved about the moonlit field, walking at first, but as thoughts of Jaka Sculi erased the too recent image of Lord Feringal, her step lightened to a skip, then a dance. Meralda reached up to catch a shooting star, spinning to follow its tail, then falling to her rump in the soft grass and mud, laughing all the while and thinking of Jaka.

She didn't know that she was in almost exactly the same spot where Jaka had been earlier that night. The place where Jaka had spat his protests at an unhearing god, where he'd cried out against the injustice of it all, where he'd called for his life to flee, and where he'd vowed to steal Meralda's virginity for no better reason than to ensure that Lord Feringal did not get it.

Chapter 5 INSIDE A TIGHT FRAME

"Where'd you put the durned thing?" a frustrated Arumn Gardpeck asked Josi Puddles the next afternoon. "I know ye took it, so don't be lying to me."

"Be glad that I took it," an unrepentant Josi countered, wagging his finger in Arumn's face. "Wulfgar would've torn the whole place apart to kindling with that warhammer in his hands."

"Bah, you're a fool, Josi Puddles," Arumn replied. "He'd a left without a fight."

"So ye're saying," Josi retorted. "Ye're always saying such, always taking up the man's cause, though he's been naught but trouble to yerself and to all who been loyal to ye. What good's Wulfgar done for ye, Arumn Gardpeck? What good ever?"

Arumn narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the man.

"And every fight he stopped was one he started," Josi added. "Bah, he's gone, and good enough for him, and good enough for all of us."

"Where'd ye put the warhammer?" Arumn pressed again.

Josi threw up his hands and spun away, but Arumn wouldn't let him go that easily. He grabbed the little man by the shoulder and whipped him about violently. "I asked ye twice already," he said grimly. "Don't ye make me ask again."

"It's gone," Josi replied. "Just gone, and far enough so that Wulfgar couldn't call to the thing."

"Gone?" Arumn echoed. His expression grew sly, for he understood Josi better than to think the man had simply thrown so wondrous a weapon into the ocean. "And how much did ye get for it?"

Josi stuttered a protest, waved his hand and stammered again, which only confirmed Arumn's suspicions. "Ye go get it back, Josi Puddles," the tavernkeeper instructed.

Josi's eyes widened. «Cannot-» he started to say, but Arumn grabbed him by the shoulder and the seat of his pants and ushered him along toward the door.

"Go get it back," Arumn said again, no room for debate in his stern tone, "and don't come back to me until ye got the hammer in hand."

"But I cannot," Josi protested. "Not with that crew."

"Then ye're not welcome here anymore," Arumn said, shoving Josi hard through the door and out into the street. "Not at all, Josi Puddles. Ye come back with the hammer, or ye don't come back!" He slammed the door, leaving a stunned Josi out in the street.

The skinny man's eyes darted around, as if he expected some thugs to step out and rob him. He had good cause for concern. Arumn's Cutlass was Josi's primary affiliation and, in a sense, his source of protection on the streets. Few bothered with Josi, mostly because he wasn't worth bothering with, but mainly because troubling Josi would shut down all routes to the Cutlass, a favorite place.

Josi had made more than few enemies on the street, and once word spread that he and Arumn had fallen out. .

He had to get back in Arumn's favor, but when he considered the necessary task before him, his knees went weak. He had sold Aegis-fang cheaply to a nasty pirate in a wretched drinking hole, a place he visited as rarely as possible. Josi's eyes continued to dart all around, surveying Half-Moon Street and the alleys that would take him to the private and secret drinking hole by the docks. Sheela Kree would not be there yet, he knew. She would be at her ship, Leaping Lady. The name referred to the image of Sheela Kree leaping from her ship to that of her unfortunate victims, bloody saber in hand. Josi shuddered at the thought of meeting her on the very deck where she was known to have tortured dozens of innocent people to horrible deaths. No, he decided, he would wait to meet with her at the drinking hole, a place a bit more public.

The little man fished through his pockets. He still had all the gold Sheela had paid him for Aegis-fang and a couple of his own coins as well.

He hardly thought it enough, but with Arumn's friendship at stake, he had to try.

*****

"It's wonderful to be with ye," Delly Curtie said, running her hand over Wulfgar's huge, bare shoulder, which drew a wince from the big man. That shoulder, like every other part of his body, had not escaped the battering at the Cutlass.

Wulfgar muttered something unintelligible and rose from the bed, and while Delly's hands continued to caress him, he continued to ignore the touch.

"Are ye sure ye're wantin' to leave already?" the woman asked in a seductive manner.

Wulfgar turned to regard her, stretching languidly on the rumpled bed.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he grumbled as he pulled on his clothes and headed for the door.

Delly started to call out after him but bit back her begging. She started to scold him but bit that back, too, understanding the futility of it and knowing that her own harsh words wouldn't cover her hurt. Not this time. She had gone to Wulfgar the previous night, as soon as Arumn closed his doors, which was not long after the fight had scuttled the Cutlass. Delly knew where to find the now homeless man, for Morik kept a room nearby.

How thrilled she had been when Wulfgar had taken her in, despite Morik's protests. She had let her guard back down again, for Delly had spent the night in Wulfgar's arms, fantasizing about escaping her miserable life with the heroic man.

They could run away from Luskan, perhaps, and back to wild Icewind Dale, where she might raise his children as his proper wife.

Of course, the morning-or rather, the early afternoon-had shown her the truth of those fantasies in the form of a grumbling rejection.

She lay on the bed now, feeling empty and alone, helpless and hopeless. Though things between her and Wulfgar had been hurtful of late, the mere fact that the man was still around had allowed her to hold onto her dreams. If Wulfgar wouldn't be around anymore, Delly would be without any chance of escape.

"Did you expect anything different?" came a question from Morik, as if the rogue were reading her mind.

Delly gave him a sad, sour look.

"You must know by now what to expect from that one," Morik reasoned, moving to sit on the bed. Delly started to pull the covers up but remembered that it was just Morik, and he knew well enough what she looked like.

"He will never give you that which you truly desire," Morik added. "Too many burdens clouding his mind, too many remembered agonies. If he opened up to you as you hope, he'd likely kill you by mistake."

Delly looked at him as if she didn't understand. Hardly surprised, Morik merely smiled and said again, "He'll not give you that which you truly desire."

"And will Morik then?" Delly asked with open sarcasm.

The rogue laughed at the thought. "Hardly," he admitted, "but at least I tell you that openly. Except for my word, I am no honest man and want no honest woman. My life is my own, and I don't wish to be bothered with a child or a wife."

"Sounds lonely."

"Sounds free," Morik corrected with a laugh. "Ah, Delly," he said, reaching up to run a hand through her hair. "You would find life so much more enjoyable if you basked in present joys without fearing for future ones."

Delly Curtie leaned back against the headboard, considering the words and showing no practical response against them.

Morik took that as a cue and climbed into the bed beside her.

*****

"I'll give you this part, me squeaky little friend, for your offered coins," the rowdy Sheela Kree said, tapping the flat of Aegis-fang's head. She exploded into a violent movement that brought the warhammer arching over her head to smash down on the center of the table separating her from Josi Puddles.

Suddenly, Josi realized with great alarm that there was only empty air between him and the vicious pirate, for the table had collapsed to splinters across the floor.

Sheela Kree smiled wickedly and lifted Aegis-fang. With a squeak Josi sprinted for and through the door, out into the wet, salty night air. He heard the explosion behind him, the hurled hammer connecting solidly against the jamb, heard the howls of laughter from the many cutthroats within.

Josi didn't look back. In fact, by the time he stopped running he was leaning against the wall of the Cutlass, wondering how in the Nine Hells he was going to explain the situation to Arumn.

He was still gasping to regain a steady breath when he spotted Delly moving fast down the road, her shawl pulled tight around her. She would not normally be returning to the Cutlass so late, for the place was already brimming with patrons, unless she were on an errand from Arumn. Her hands were empty, except for the folds of the shawl, so Josi had little trouble figuring out where she had gone, or at least who she had gone to visit.

As she neared, the little man heard her sobs, which only confirmed that Delly had gone to see Wulfgar and that the barbarian had ripped her heart open a bit wider.

"Are ye all right?" the man asked, moving out to intercept the woman. Delly jumped in surprise, unaware that Josi had been standing there. "What pains ye?" Josi asked softly, moving closer, lifting his hands to pat Delly's shoulders and thinking that he might use this moment of pain and vulnerability to his own gain, to finally bed the woman about whom he had fantasized for years.

Delly, despite her sobs and downcast expression, abruptly pulled away from him. The look she returned was not one of lust, not even of friendship.

"He hurt ye, Delly," Josi remarked quietly and comfortingly. "He hurt ye, and I can help ye feel better."

Delly scoffed openly. "Ye're the one who set it all up, aren't ye now, Josi Puddles?" she accused. "What a happy sot ye are for chasing Wulfgar away."

Before Josi could begin to answer, the woman brushed past him and disappeared into the Cutlass, a place where Josi could not follow. He stood out in the empty street, in the dark of night, with no place to go and no friends to speak of. He blamed Wulfgar for all of it.

Josi Puddles spent that night wandering the alleyways and drinking holes of the toughest parts of Luskan. He spoke not a word to anyone through the dark hours, but instead, listened carefully, always on the alert in these dangerous parts. To his surprise he heard something important and not threatening. It was an interesting story concerning Morik the Rogue and his large barbarian friend, and a hefty contract to eliminate a certain ship's captain.

Chapter 6 ALTRUISM

"Well, Lord Dohni, I'll bow until my face blackens in the mud," one old peasant geezer said to Dohni Ganderlay in the field the next morning. All the men and gnomes who had gathered about Dohni broke into mocking laughter.

"Should I be tithing you direct now?" asked another. "A bit of this and a bit of that, the feed for the pig and the pig himself?"

"Just the back half of the pig," said the first. "You get to keep the front."

"You keep the part what eats the grain, but not the plump part that holds it for the meal," said a pointy-nosed gnome. "Don't that sound like a nobleman's thinking!"

They broke into peals of laughter again. Dohni Ganderlay tried hard, but unsuccessfully, to join in. He understood their mirth, of course. These peasants had little chance of lifting themselves up from the mud they tilled, but now, suddenly and unexpectedly, it appeared as if fortunes might have changed for the Ganderlay family, as if one of their own might climb that impossible ladder.

Dohni could have accepted their teasing, could have joined in wholeheartedly with the laughter, even adding a few witticisms of his own, except lor one uncomfortable fact, one truth that nagged at him all the sleepless night and all that morning: Meralda hadn't wanted to go. If his girl had expressed some feelings, positive feelings, for Lord Feringal, then Dohni would be one of the happiest men in all the northland. He knew the truth of it, and he could not get past his own guilt. Because of it, the teasing bit hard at him that rainy morning in the muddy field, striking at raw nerves his friends couldn't begin to understand.

"So when are you and your family taking residence in the castle, Lord Dohni?" another man asked, moving right in front of Dohni and dipping an awkward bow.

Purely on instinct, before he could even consider the move, Dohni shoved the man's shoulder, sending him sprawling to the mud. He came up laughing, as were all the others.

"Oh, but ain't he acting the part of a nobleman already!" the first old geezer cried. "Down to the mud with us all, or Lord Dohni's to stomp us flat!"

On cue, all the peasant workers fell to their knees in the mud and began genuflecting before Dohni.

Biting back his rage, reminding himself that these were his friends and that they just didn't understand, Dohni Ganderlay shuffled through their ranks and walked away, fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white, teeth gnashing until his jaw hurt, and a stream of mumbled curses spewing forth from his mouth.

*****

"Didn't I feel the fool," Meralda said honestly to Tori, the two girls in their room in the small stone house. Their mother had gone out for the first time in more than two weeks, so eager was she to run and tell her neighbor friends about her daughter's evening with Lord Feringal.

"But you were so beautiful in the gown," Tori argued.

Meralda managed a weak but grateful smile for her sister.

"He couldn't have stopped looking at you, I'm sure," Tori added. From her expression, the young girl seemed to be lost in a dreamland of romantic fantasies.

"Nor could his sister, Lady Priscilla, stop mudding me,"

Meralda replied, using the peasant term for insults.

"Well, she's a fat cow," Tori snapped back, "and your own beauty only reminded her of it."

The two girls had a giggle at that, but Meralda's proved short-lived, her frown returning.

"How can you not be smiling?" Tori asked. "He's the lord of Auckney and can give you all that anyone would ever want."

"Can he now?" Meralda came back sarcastically. "Can he give me my freedom? Can he give me my Jaka?"

"Can he give you a kiss?" Tori asked impishly.

"I couldn't stop him on the kiss," Meralda replied, "but he'll get no more, don't you doubt. I'm giving me heart to Jaka and not to any pretty-smelling lord."

Her declaration lost its steam, her voice trailing away to a whisper, as the curtain pulled aside and a raging Dohni Ganderlay stormed into the room. "Leave us," he commanded Tori. When she hesitated, putting a concerned look over her sister, he roared even louder, "Be gone, little pig feeder!"

Tori scrambled from the room and turned to regard her father, but his glare kept her moving out of the house altogether.

Dohni Ganderlay dropped that awful scowl over Meralda, and she didn't know what to make of it, for it was no look she was accustomed to seeing stamped on her father's face.

"Da," she began tentatively.

"You let him kiss you?" Dohni Ganderlay retorted, his voice trembling. "And he wanted more?"

"I couldn't stop him," Meralda insisted. "He came at me fast."

"But you wanted to stop him."

"Of course I did!"

The words were barely out of her mouth when Dohni Ganderlay's big, calloused hand came across Meralda's face.

"And you're wanting to give your heart and all your womanly charms to that peasant boy instead, aren't you?" the man roared.

"But, Da-"

Another smack knocked Meralda from the bed, to land on the floor. Dohni Ganderlay, all his frustration pouring out, fell over her, his big, hard hands slapping at her, beating her about the head and shoulders, while he cried out that she was «trampin'» and «whorin'» without a thought for her ma, without a care for the folks who fed and clothed her.

She tried to protest, tried to explain that she loved Jaka and not Lord Feringal, that she hadn't done anything wrong, but her father wasn't hearing anything. He just kept raining blows and curses on her, one after another, until she lay flat on the floor, arms crossed over her head in a futile attempt to protect herself.

The beating stopped as suddenly as it had begun. After a moment, Meralda dared to lift her bruised face from the floor and slowly turn about to regard her father. Dohni Ganderlay sat on the bed, head in his hands, weeping openly. Meralda had never seen him this way before. She came up to him slowly, calmly, whispering to him that it was all right. A sudden anger replaced his tears, and he grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her up straight.

"Now you hear me, girl," he said through clamped teeth, "and hear me good. It's not yours to choose. Not at all. You'll give Lord Feringal all that he's wanting and more, and with a happy smile on your face. Your ma's close to dying, foolish girl, and Lord Feringal alone can save her. I'll not have her die, not for your selfishness." He gave her a rough shake and let her go. She stared at him as if he were some stranger, and that, perhaps, was the most painful thing of all to frustrated Dohni Ganderlay.

"Or better," he said calmly, "I'll see Jaka Sculi dead, his body on the rocks for the gulls and terns to pick at."

"Da. ." the young woman protested, her voice barely a whisper, and a quivering whisper at that.

"Stay away from him," Dohni Ganderlay commanded. "You're going to Lord Feringal, and not a word of arguing."

Meralda didn't move, not even to wipe the tears that had begun flowing from her delicate green eyes.

"Get yourself cleaned up," Dohni Ganderlay instructed. "Your ma'll be home soon, and she's not to see you like that. This is all her hopes and dreams, girl, and if you take them from her, she'll surely go into the cold ground."

With that, Dohni rose from the bed and started for Meralda as if to hug her, but when he put his hands near to her, she tensed in a manner the man had never experienced before. He walked past her, his shoulders slumping in true defeat.

He left her alone in the house, then, walking deliberately to the northwest slope of the mountain, the rocky side where no men farmed, where he could be alone with his thoughts. And his horrors.

*****

"What're you to do?" Tori asked Meralda after the younger girl rushed back into the house as soon as their father had walked out of sight. Meralda, busy wiping the last remnants of blood from the side of her lip, didn't answer.

"You should run away with Jaka," Tori said suddenly, her face brightening as if she had just found the perfect solution to all the problems of the world. Meralda looked at her doubtfully.

"Oh, but it'd be the peak of love," the young girl beamed. "Running away from Lord Feringal. I can't believe how our da beat you."

Meralda looked back in the silver mirror at her bruises, so poignant a reminder of the awful explosion. Unlike Tori, she could believe it, every bit of it. She was no child anymore, and she had recognized the agony on her father's face even as he had slapped at her. He was afraid, so very afraid, for her mother and for all of them.

She came then to understand her duty. Meralda recognized that duty to her family was paramount and not because of threats but because of her love for her mother, father, and pesky little sister. Only then, staring into the mirror at her bruised face, did Meralda Ganderlay come to understand the responsibility that had been dropped upon her delicate shoulders, the opportunity that had been afforded her family.

Still, when she thought of Lord Feringal's lips against hers and his hand on her breast, she couldn't help but shudder.

*****

Dohni Ganderlay was hardly aware of the sun dipping behind the distant water, or of the gnats that had found him sitting motionless and were feasting on his bare arms and neck. The discomfort hardly mattered. How could he have hit his beloved little girl? Where had the rage come from? How could he be angry with her, she who had done nothing wrong, who had not disobeyed him?

He replayed those awful moments again and again in his mind, saw Meralda, his beautiful, wonderful Meralda, falling to the floor to hide from him, to cover herself against his vicious blows. In his mind, Dohni Ganderlay understood that he was not angry with her, that his frustration and rage were against Lord Feringal. His anger came from his meager place in the world, a place that had left his family peasants, that had allowed his wife to sicken and would allow her to die, but for the possible intervention of Lord Feringal.

Dohni Ganderlay knew all of that, but in his heart he knew only that for his own selfish reasons he had sent his beloved daughter into the arms and bed of a man she did not love. Dohni Ganderlay knew himself to be a coward at that moment, mostly because he could not summon the courage to throw himself from the mountain spur, to break apart on the jagged rocks far below.