The Spine of the World

The course of events in my life have often made me examine the nature of good and evil. I have witnessed the purest forms of both repeatedly, particularly evil. The totality of my early life was spent living among it, a wickedness so thick in the air that it choked me and forced me away.

Only recently, as my reputation has begun to gain me some acceptance among the human populations-a tolerance, at least, if not a welcome-have I come to witness a more complex version of what I observed in Menzoberranzan, a shade of gray varying in lightness and darkness. So many humans, it seems, a vast majority, have within their makeup a dark side, a hunger for the macabre, and the ability to dispassionately dismiss the agony of another in the pursuit of the self.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Prisoner's Carnival at Luskan and other such pretenses of justice. Prisoners, sometimes guilty, sometimes not-it hardly matters-are paraded before the blood-hungry mob, then beaten, tortured, and finally executed in grand fashion. The presiding magistrate works very hard to exact the most exquisite screams of the purest agony; his job is to twist the expressions of those prisoners into the epitome of terror, the ultimate horror reflected in their eyes.

Once, when in Luskan with Captain Deudermont of the Sea Sprite, I ventured to the carnival to witness the «trials» of several pirates we had fished from the sea after sinking their ship. Witnessing the spectacle of a thousand people crammed around a grand stage, yelling and squealing with delight as these miserable pirates were literally cut into pieces, almost made me walk away from Deudermont's ship, almost made me forego a life as a pirate hunter and retreat to the solitude of the forest or the mountains.

Of course, Catti-brie was there to remind me of the truth of it, to point out that these same pirates often exacted equal tortures upon innocent prisoners. While she admitted that such a truth did not justify the Prisoner's Carnival-Catti-brie was so horrified by the mere thought of the place that she would not go anywhere near it-she argued that such treatment of pirates was preferable to allowing them free run of the high seas.

But why? Why any of it?

The question has bothered me for all these years, and in seeking its answer I have come to explore yet another facet of these incredibly complex creatures called humans. Why would common, otherwise decent folk, descend to such a level as the spectacle of Prisoner's Carnival? Why would some of the Sea Sprite's own crew, men and women I knew to be honorable and decent, take pleasure in viewing such a macabre display of torture?

The answer, perhaps (if there is a more complicated answer than the nature of evil itself), lies in an examination of the attitudes of other races. Among the goodly races, humans alone «celebrate» the executions and torments of prisoners. Halfling societies would have no part of such a display-halfling prisoners have been known to die of overeating. Nor would dwarves, as aggressive as they can be. In dwarven society, prisoners are dealt with efficiently and tidily, without spectacle and out of public view. A murderer among dwarves would be dealt a single blow to the neck. Never did I see any elves at Prisoner's Carnival, except on one occasion when a pair ventured by, then quickly left, obviously disgusted. My understanding is that in gnome society there are no executions, just a lifetime of imprisonment in an elaborate cell.

So why humans? What is it about the emotional construct of the human being that brings about such a spectacle as Prisoner's Carnival? Evil? I think that too simple an answer.

Dark elves relish torture-how well I know! — and their actions are, indeed, based on sadism and evil, and an insatiable desire to satisfy the demonic hunger of the spider queen, but with humans, as with everything about humans, the answer becomes a bit more complex. Surely there is a measure of sadism involved, particularly on the part of the presiding magistrate and his torturer assistants, but for the common folk, the powerless paupers cheering in the audience, I believe their joy stems from three sources.

First, peasants in Faerun are a powerless lot, subjected to the whims of unscrupulous lords and landowners, and with the ever-present threat of some invasion or another by goblins, giants, or fellow humans, stomping flat the lives they have carved. Prisoner's Carnival affords these unfortunate folk a taste of power, the power over life and death. At long last they feel some sense of control over their own lives.

Second, humans are not long-lived like elves and dwarves; even halflings will usually outlast them. Peasants face the possibility of death daily. A mother fortunate enough to survive two or three birthings will likely witness the death of at least one of her children. Living so intimately with death obviously breeds a curiosity and fear, even terror. At Prisoner's Carnival these folk witness death at its most horrible, the worst that death can give, and take solace in the fact that their own deaths, unless they become the accused brought before the magistrates, will not likely be nearly as terrible. I have witnessed your worst, grim Death, and I fear you not.

The third explanation for the appeal of Prisoner's Carnival lies in the necessity of justice and punishment in order to maintain order in a society. This was the side of the debate held up by Robillard the wizard upon my return to the Sea Sprite after witnessing the horror. While he took no pleasure in viewing the carnival and rarely attended, Robillard defended it as vigorously as I might expect from the magistrate himself. The public humiliation of these men, the public display of their agony, would keep other folk on an honest course, he believed. Thus, the cheers of the peasant mob were no more than a rousing affirmation of their belief in the law and order of their society.

It is a difficult argument to defeat, particularly concerning the effectiveness of such displays in dissuading future criminals, but is it truly justice?

Armed with Robillard's arguments, I went to some minor magistrates in Luskan on the pretense of deciding better protocol for the Sea Sprite to hand over captured pirates, but in truth to get them talking about Prisoner's Carnival. It became obvious to and very quickly, that the carnival itself had little to do with justice. Many innocent men and women had found their way to the stage in Luskan, forced into false confession by sheer brutality, then punished publicly for those crimes. The magistrates knew this and readily admitted it by citing their relief that at least the prisoners we brought to them were assuredly guilty!

For that reason alone I can never come to terms with the Prisoner's Carnival. One measure of any society is the way it deals with those who have walked away from the course of community and decency, and an indecent treatment of these criminals decreases the standards of morality to the level of the tortured.

Yet the practice continues to thrive in many cities in Faerun and in many, many rural communities, where justice, as a matter of survival, must be even more harsh and definitive.

Perhaps there is a fourth explanation for the carnival. Perhaps the crowds gather around eagerly merely for the excitement of the show. Perhaps there is no underlying cause or explanation other than the fun of it. I do not like to consider this a possibility, for if humans on as large a scale are capable of eliminating empathy and sympathy so completely as to actually enjoy the spectacle of watching another suffer horribly, then that, I fear, is the truest definition of evil.

After all of the hours of investigation, debate, and interrogation, and many, many hours of contemplation on the nature of these humans among whom I live, I am left without simple answers to travesties such as the Prisoner's Carnival.

I am hardly surprised. Rarely do I find a simple answer to anything concerning humans. That, perhaps, is the reason I find little tedium in my day-to-day travels and encounters. That, perhaps, is the reason I have come to love them.

– Drizzt Do'Urden

Chapter 14 STOLEN SEED

Wulfgar stood outside of Luskan, staring back at the city where he had been wrongly accused, tortured, and publicly humiliated. Despite all of that, the barbarian held no anger toward the folk of the town, even toward the vicious magistrate. If he happened upon Jharkheld, he would likely twist the man's head off, but out of a need for closure on that particular incident and not out of hatred. Wulfgar was past hatred, had been for a long time. As it was when Tree Block Breaker had come hunting him at the Cutlass, and he had killed the man. As it was when he happened upon the Sky Ponies, a barbarian tribe akin to his own. He had taken vengeance upon their wicked shaman, an oath of revenge he had sworn years before. It was not for hatred, not even for unbridled rage, but simply Wulfgar's need to try to push forward in a life where the past was too horrible to contemplate.

Wulfgar had come to realize that he wasn't moving forward, and that point seemed obvious to him now as he stared back at the city. He was going in circles, small circles, that left him in the same place over and over, a place made tolerable only through use of the bottle, only by blurring the past into oblivion and putting the future out of mind.

Wulfgar spat on the ground, trying for the first time since he had come to Luskan months before to figure out how he had entered this downward spiral. He thought of the open range to the north, his homeland of Icewind Dale, where he had shared such excitement and joy with his friends. He thought of Bruenor, who had beaten him in battle when he was but a boy, but had shown him such mercy. The dwarf had taken him in as his own, then brought Drizzt to train him in the true ways of the warrior. What a friend Drizzt had been, leading him on grand adventures, standing by him in any fight, no matter the odds. He'd lost Drizzt.

He thought again of Bruenor, who had given Wulfgar his greatest achievement in craftsmanship, the wondrous Aegis-fang. The symbol of Bruenor's love for him. And now he'd lost not only Bruenor, but Aegis-fang as well.

He thought of Catti-brie, perhaps the most special of all to him, the woman who had stolen his heart, the woman he admired and respected above all. Perhaps they could not be lovers, or husband and wife. Perhaps she would never bear his children, but she was his friend, honest and true. When he thought of their last encounter he came to understand the truth of that friendship. Catti-brie would have given anything to help him, would have shared with him her most intimate moments and feelings, but Wulfgar understood that her heart was truly for another.

The fact didn't bring anger or jealousy to the barbarian. He felt only respect, for despite her feelings, Catti-brie would have given all to help him. Now Catti-brie was lost to him, too.

Wulfgar spat again. He didn't deserve them, not Bruenor, Drizzt, nor Catti-brie. Not even Regis, who, despite his diminutive size and lack of fighting prowess, would leap in front of Wulfgar in time of crisis, would shield the barbarian, as much as he could, from harm. How could he have thrown all that away?

His attention shifted abruptly back to the present as a wagon rolled out of Luskan's western gate. Despite his foul mood, Wulfgar could not hold back a smile as the wagon approached. The driver, a plump elderly woman, came into view.

Morik. The two had been banished only days before, but they had hung about the city's perimeter. The rogue explained that he was going to have to secure some supplies if he was to survive on the open road, so he'd reentered the city alone. Judging from the way the pair of horses labored, judging from the fact that Morik had a wagon and horses at all, Wulfgar knew his sneaky little friend had succeeded.

The rogue turned the wagon off the wide road and onto a small trail that wove into the forest where Wulfgar waited. He came right up to the bottom of the bluff where Wulfgar sat, then stood up and bowed.

"Not so difficult a thing," he announced.

"The guards didn't notice you?" Wulfgar asked.

Morik snorted, as if the notion were preposterous. "They were the same guards as when we were escorted out," he explained, his tone full of pride.

Their experience at the hands of Luskan's authorities had reminded Wulfgar that he and Morik were just big players in a small pond, insignificant when measured against the larger pond that was the backdrop of the huge city-but what a large player Morik was in their small corner! "I even lost a bag of food at the gate," Morik went on. "One of the guards ran to catch up to me so that he could replace it on the wagon."

Wulfgar moved down the bluff to the side of the wagon and pulled aside the canvas that covered the load. There were bags of food at the back, along with rope and material for shelter, but most prominent to Wulfgar's sensibilities were the cases of bottles, full bottles of potent liquor.

"I thought you would be pleased," Morik remarked, moving beside the big man as he stared at the haul. "Leaving the city doesn't have to mean leaving our pleasures behind. I was thinking of dragging Delly Curtie along as well."

Wulfgar snapped an angry glare at Morik. The mention of the woman in such a lewd manner profoundly offended him.

"Come," Morik said, clearing his throat and obviously changing the subject. "Let us find a quiet place where we may quench our thirst," The rogue pulled off his disguise slowly, wincing at the pain that still permeated his joints and his ripped stomach. Those wounds, particularly in his knees, would be slow to heal. He paused again a moment later, holding up the wig to admire his handiwork, then climbed onto the driving bench, taking the reins in hand.

"The horses are not so fine," Wulfgar noted. The team seemed an old, haggard pair.

"I needed the gold to buy the drink," Morik explained.

Wulfgar glanced back at the load, thinking that Morik should have spent the funds on a better team of horses, thinking that his days in the bottle had come to an end. He started up the bluff again, but Morik stopped him with a call.

"There are bandits on the road," the rogue announced, "or so I was informed in town. Bandits on the road north of the forest, and all the way to the pass through the Spine of the World."

"You fear bandits?" Wulfgar asked, surprised.

"Only ones who've never heard of me," Morik explained, and Wulfgar understood the deeper implications. In Luskan, Morik's reputation served him well by keeping most thugs at bay.

"Better that we are prepared for trouble," the rogue finished. Morik reached under the driver's bench and produced a huge axe. "Look," he said with a grin, obviously quite proud of himself as he pointed to the axe head. "It's still stained with Creeps Sharky's blood."

The headsman's own axe! Wulfgar started to ask Morik how in the Nine Hells he'd managed to get his hands on that weapon but decided he simply didn't want to know.

"Come along," Morik instructed, patting the bench beside him. The rogue pulled a bottle from the closest case. "Let's ride and drink and plot our defense."

Wulfgar stared long and hard at that bottle before climbing onto the bench. Morik offered him the bottle, but he declined with gritted teeth. Shrugging, the rogue took a healthy swallow and offered it again. Again Wulfgar declined. That brought a puzzled look to Morik's face, but it fast turned into a smile as he decided that Wulfgar's refusal would leave more for him.

"We needn't live like savages just because we're on the road," Morik stated.

The irony of that statement from a man guzzling so potent a drink was not lost on Wulfgar. The barbarian managed to resist the bottle throughout the afternoon, and Morik happily drained it. Keeping the wagon at a swift pace, Morik tossed the empty bottle against a rock as they passed, then howled with delight when it shattered into a thousand pieces.

"You make a lot of noise for one trying to avoid highwaymen," Wulfgar grumbled.

"Avoid?" Morik asked with a snap of his fingers. "Hardly that. Highwaymen often have well-equipped campsites where we might find some comfort."

"Such well-equipped campsites must belong to successful highwaymen," Wulfgar reasoned, "and successful highwaymen are likely very good at what they do."

"As was Tree Block Breaker, my friend," Morik reminded. When Wulfgar still didn't seem convinced, he added, "Perhaps they will accept our offer to join with them."

"I think not," said Wulfgar.

Morik shrugged, then nodded. "Then we must chase them off," he said matter-of-factly.

"We'll not even find them," Wulfgar muttered.

"Oh?" Morik asked, and he turned the wagon down a side trail so suddenly that it went up on two wheels and Wulfgar nearly tumbled off.

"What?" the barbarian growled as they bounced along. He just barely ducked a low branch, then got a nasty scratch as another whipped against his arm. "Morik!"

"Quiet, my large friend," the rogue said. "There's a river up ahead with but one bridge across it, a bridge bandits would no doubt guard well." They burst out of the brush, bouncing to the banks of the river. Morik slowed the tired horses to a walk, and they started across a rickety bridge. To the rogue's dismay they crossed safely with no bandits in sight.

"Novices," a disappointed Morik grumbled, vowing to go a few miles, then turn back and cross the bridge again. Morik abruptly stopped the wagon. A large and ugly man stepped onto the road up ahead, pointing a sword their way.

"How interesting that such a pair as yourselves should be walking in my woods without my permission," the thug remarked, bringing the sword back and dropping it across his shoulder.

"Your woods?" Morik asked. "Why, good sir, I had thought this forest open for travel." Under his breath to Wulfgar, he added, "Half-orc."

"Idiot," Wulfgar replied so that only Morik could hear. "You, I mean, and not the thief. To look for this trouble. .»

"I thought it would appeal to your heroic side," the rogue replied. "Besides, this highwayman has a camp filled with comforts, no doubt."

"What're you talking about?" the thug demanded.

"Why, you, good sir," Morik promptly replied. "My friend here was just saying that he thought you might be a thief and that you do not own this forest at all."

The bandit's eyes widened, and he stuttered over several responses unsuccessfully. He wound up spitting on the ground. "I'm saying it's my wood!" he declared, poking his chest. "Togo's wood!"

"And the cost of passage through, good Togo?" Morik asked.

"Five gold!" the thug cried and after a pause, he added, "Each of you!"

"Give it to him," Wulfgar muttered.

Morik chuckled, then an arrow zipped past, barely an inch in front of his face. Surprised that this band was so well organized, the rogue abruptly changed his mind and started reaching for his purse.

However, Wulfgar had changed his mind as well, enraged that someone had nearly killed him. Before Morik could agree on the price, the barbarian leaped from the wagon and rushed at Togo barehanded, then suddenly changed his mind and direction. A pair of arrows cut across his initial path. He turned for the monstrous archer he'd spotted perched high in a tree a dozen feet back from the road. Wulfgar crashed through the first line of brush and slammed hard into a fallen log. Hardly slowing, he lifted the log and threw it into the face of another crouching human, then continued his charge.

He made it to the base of the tree just as an arrow thunked into the ground beside him, a near miss Wulfgar ignored. Leaping to a low branch, he caught hold and hauled himself upward with tremendous strength and agility, nearly running up it. Bashing back small branches, scrambling over others, he came level with the archer. The creature, a gnoll bigger than Wulfgar, was desperately trying to set another arrow.

"Keep it!" the cowardly gnoll yelled, throwing the bow at Wulfgar and stepping off the branch, preferring the twenty-foot drop to Wulfgar's rage.

Escape wasn't that easy for the gnoll. Wulfgar thrust out a hand and caught the falling creature by the collar. Despite all the wriggling and punching, the awkward position and the gnoll's weight, Wulfgar had no trouble hauling it up.

Then he heard Morik's cry for help.

*****

Standing on the driver's bench, the rogue worked furiously with his slender sword to fend off the attacks from both Togo and another human swordsman who had come out from the brush. Worse, he heard a third approaching from behind, and worse still, arrows regularly cut the air nearby.

"I'll pay!" he cried, but the monstrous thugs only laughed.

Out of the corner of his eye Morik spotted an archer taking aim. He leaped backward as the missile came on, dodging both it and the thrust from the surprisingly deft swordsman in front of him. The move cost him, though, for he tumbled over the back of the bench, crashing into a case of bottles, shattering them. Morik leaped up and shrieked his outrage, smashing his sword impotently across the chair back.

On came Togo, gaining the bench position, but angry Morik matched his movements, coming ahead powerfully without regard for the other swordsman or archers. Togo retracted his arm for a swing, but Morik, quick with the blade, stabbed first, scoring a hit on Togo's hand that cost the thug his grip. Even as Togo's sword clanged against the wooden bench Morik closed in, turning his sword out to fend off the attacks from Togo's partner. He produced a dagger from his belt, a blade he promptly and repeatedly drove into Togo's belly. The half-orc tried desperately to fond off the attacks, using his bare hands, but Morik was too quick and too clever, stabbing around them even as his sword worked circles about Togo's partner's blade.

Togo fell back from the bench to the ground. He managed only a single running step before he collapsed, clutching his torn guts.

Morik heard the third attacker coming in around the side of the wagon. He heard a terrified scream from above, then another from the approaching enemy. The rogue glanced that way just in time to see Wulfgar's captured gnoll archer flying down from on high, arms flailing, screaming all the way. The humanoid missile hit the third thug, a small human woman, squarely, smashing both hard against the wagon in a heap. Groaning, the woman began trying to crawl away; the archer lay very still.

Morik pressed the attack on the remaining swordsman, as much to get down from the open driver's bench as to continue the fight. The swordsman, though, apparently had little heart remaining in the battle with his friends falling all around him. He parried Morik's thrust, backing all the while as the man leaped down to the road.

On Morik came, his sword working the thug's blade over and under. He thrust ahead and retracted quickly when the swordsman blocked, then came forward after a subtle roll of his slender sword that disengaged the thug's blade. Staggering, the man retreated, blood running from one shoulder. He started to turn and flee, but Morik kept pace, forcing him to work defensively.

Morik heard another cry of alarm behind him, followed by the crack of breaking branches. He smiled with the knowledge that Wulfgar continued to clear out the archers.

"Please, mister," Morik's prey grunted as more and more of the rogue's attacks slipped through with stinging results and it became clear that Morik was the superior swordsman. "We was just needing your money."

"Then you wouldn't have harmed me and my friend after you took our coin?" Morik asked cynically.

The man shook his head vigorously, and Morik used the distraction to slip through yet again, drawing a line of red on the man's cheek. Morik's prey fell to his knees with a yelp and tossed his sword to the ground, begging for mercy.

"I am known as a merciful sort," Morik said with mock sympathy, hearing Wulfgar approaching fast, "but my friend, I fear, is not."

Wulfgar stormed by and grabbed the kneeling man by the throat, hoisting him into the air and running him back into a tree. With one arm-the other tucked defensively with a broken arrow shaft protruding from his shoulder-Wulfgar held the highwayman by the throat off the ground, choking the life out of him.

"I could stop him," Morik explained, walking over and putting his hand on his huge friend's bulging forearm. Only then did he notice Wulfgar's serious wound. "You must lead us to your camp."

"No camp!" the man gasped. Wulfgar pressed and twisted.

"I will! I will!" the thug squealed, his voice going away as Wulfgar tightened his grip, choking all sounds and all air. His face locked in an expression of the purest rage, the barbarian pressed on.

"Let him go," Morik said.

No answer. The man in Wulfgar's grasp wriggled and slapped but could neither break the hold nor draw breath.

"Wulfgar!" Morik called, and he grabbed at the big man's arm with both hands, tugging fiercely. "Snap out of it, man!"

Wulfgar wasn't hearing any of it, didn't even seem to notice the rogue.

"You will thank me for this," Morik vowed, though he was not so sure as he balled up his fist and smashed Wulfgar on the side of the head.

Wulfgar did let go of the thug, who slumped unconscious at the base of the tree, but only to backhand Morik, a blow that sent the rogue staggering backward, with Wulfgar coming in pursuit. Morik lifted his sword, ready to plunge it through the big man's heart if necessary, but at the last moment Wulfgar stopped, blinking repeatedly, as if he had just come awake. Morik recognized that Wulfgar had returned from wherever he had gone to this time and place.

"He'll take us to the camp now," the rogue said.

Wulfgar nodded dumbly, his gaze still foggy. He looked dispassionately at the broken arrow shaft poking from his wounded shoulder. The barbarian blanched, looked to Morik in puzzlement, then collapsed face down in the dirt.

*****

Wulfgar awoke in the back of the wagon on the edge of a field lined by towering pines. He lifted his head with some effort and nearly panicked. A woman walking past was one of the thugs from the road. What happened? Had they lost? Before full panic set in, though, he heard Morik's lighthearted voice, and he forced himself up higher, wincing with pain as he put some weight on his injured arm. Wulfgar looked at that shoulder curiously; the arrow shaft was gone, the wound cleaned and dressed.

Morik sat a short distance away, chatting amiably and sharing a bottle with another of the gnollish highwaymen as if they were old friends. Wulfgar slid to the end of the wagon and rolled his legs over, climbing unsteadily to his feet. The world swam before his eyes, black spots crossing his field of vision. The feeling passed quickly, though, and Wulfgar gingerly but deliberately made his way over to Morik.

"Ah, you're awake. A drink, my friend?" the rogue asked, holding out the bottle.

Frowning, Wulfgar shook his head.

"Come now, ye gots to be drinkin'," the dog-faced gnoll sitting next to Morik slurred. He spooned a glob of thick stew into his mouth, half of it falling to the ground or down the front of his tunic.

Wulfgar glared at Morik's wretched new comrade.

"Rest easy, my friend," Morik said, recognizing that dangerous look. "Mickers here is a friend, a loyal one now that Togo is dead."

"Send him away," Wulfgar said, and the gnoll dropped his jaw in surprise.

Morik came up fast, moving to Wulfgar's side and taking him by the good arm. "They are allies," he explained. "All of them. They were loyal to Togo, and now they are loyal to me. And to you."

"Send them away," Wulfgar repeated fiercely.

"We're out on the road," Morik argued. "We need eyes, scouts to survey potential territory and swords to help us hold it fast."

"No," Wulfgar said flatly.

"You don't understand the dangers, my friend," Morik said reasonably, hoping to pacify his large friend.

"Send them away!" Wulfgar yelled suddenly. Seeing he'd make no progress with Morik, he stormed up to Mickers. "Be gone from here and from this forest!"

Mickers looked past the big man. Morik gave a resigned shrug.

Mickers stood up. "I'll stay with him," he said, pointing to the rogue.

Wulfgar slapped the stew bowl from the gnoll's hand and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him up to his tiptoes. "One last chance to leave of your own accord," the big man growled as he shoved Mickers back several steps.

"Mister Morik?" Mickers complained.

"Oh, be gone," Morik said unhappily.

"And the rest of us, too?" asked another one of the humans of the bandit band, standing amidst a tumble of rocks on the edge of the field. He held a strung bow.

"Them or me, Morik," Wulfgar said, his tone leaving no room for debate. The barbarian and the rogue both glanced back to the archer to see that the man had put an arrow to his bowstring.

Wulfgar's eyes flared with simmering rage, and he started toward the archer. "One shot," he called steadily. "You will get one shot at me. Will you hit the mark?"

The archer lifted his bow.

"I don't think you will," Wulfgar said, smiling. "No, you will miss because you know."

"Know what?" the archer dared ask.

"Know that even if your arrow strikes me, it will not kill me," Wulfgar replied, and he continued his deliberate stalk. "Not right away, not before I get my hands around your throat."

The man drew his bowstring back, but Wulfgar only smiled more confidently and continued forward. The archer glanced around nervously, looking for support, but there was none to be found. Realizing he had taken on too great a foe, the man eased his string, turned, and ran off.

Wulfgar turned back. Mickers, too, had sprinted away.

"Now we'll have to watch out for them," Morik observed glumly when Wulfgar returned to him. "You cost us allies."

"I'll not ally myself with murdering thieves!" Wulfgar said simply.

Morik jumped back from him. "What am I, if not a thief?"

Wulfgar's expression softened. "Well, perhaps just one," he corrected with a chuckle.

Morik laughed uneasily. "Here, my big and not so smart friend," he said, reaching for another bottle. "A drink to the two of us. Highwaymen!"

"Will we find the same fate as our predecessors?" Wulfgar wondered aloud.

"Our predecessors were not so smart," Morik explained. "I knew where to find them because they were too predictable. A good highwayman strikes and runs on to the next target area. A good highwayman seems like ten separate bands, always one step ahead of the city guards, ahead of those who ride into the cities with information enough to find and defeat him."

"You sound as if you know the life well."

"I have done it from time to time," Morik admitted. "Just because we're on the wild road doesn't mean we must live like savages," the rogue repeated what was fast becoming his mantra. He held the bottle out toward Wulfgar.

It took all the willpower he could muster for Wulfgar to refuse that drink. His shoulder ached, and he was still agitated about the thugs. Retreat into a swirl of semiconsciousness was very inviting at that moment.

But he did refuse by walking away from a stunned Morik. Moving to the other end of the field, he scrambled up a tree, settled into a comfortable niche, and sat back to survey the outlying lands.

His gaze was drawn repeatedly to the mountains in the north, the Spine of the World, the barrier between him and that other world of Icewind Dale, that life he might have known and might still know. He thought of his friends again, mostly of Catti-brie. The barbarian fell asleep to dreams of her close in his arms, kissing him gently, a respite from the pains of the world.

Suddenly Catti-brie backed away, and as Wulfgar watched, small ivory horns sprouted from her forehead and great bat wings extended behind her. A succubus, a demon of the Abyss, tricking him again in the hell of Errtu's torments, assuming the guise of comfort to seduce him.

Wulfgar's eyes popped open wide, his breath coming in labored gasps. He tried to dismiss the horrible images, but they wouldn't let him go. Not this time. So poignant and distinct were they that the barbarian wondered if all of this, his last months of life, had been but a ruse by Errtu to bring him hope again so that the demon might stomp it. He saw the succubus, the horrid creature that had seduced him. .

"No!" Wulfgar growled, for it was too ugly a memory, too horrible for him to confront it yet again.

I stole your seed, the succubus said to his mind, and he could not deny it. They had done it to him several times in the years of his torment, had taken his seed and spawned alu-demons, Wulfgar's children. It was the first time Wulfgar had been able to consciously recall the memory since his return to the surface, the first time the horror of seeing his demonic offspring had forced itself through the mental barriers he had erected.

He saw them now, saw Errtu bring to him one such child, a crying infant, its mother succubus standing behind the demon. He saw Errtu present the infant high in the air, and then, right before Wulfgar's eyes, right before its howling mother's eyes, the great demon bit the child's head off. A spray of blood showered Wulfgar, who was unable to draw breath, unable to comprehend that Errtu had found a way to get at him yet again, the worst way of all.

Wulfgar half scrambled and half tumbled out of the tree, landing hard on his injured shoulder, reopening the wound. Ignoring the pain, he sprinted across the field and found Morik resting beside the wagon. Wulfgar went right to the crates and frantically tore one open.

His children! The offspring of his stolen seed!

The potent liquid burned all the way down, the heat of it spreading, spreading, dulling Wulfgar's senses, blurring the horrid images.

Chapter 15 A CHILD NO MORE

"You must give love time to blossom, my lord," Temigast whispered to Lord Feringal. He'd ushered the young lord to the far side of the garden, away from Meralda, who was staring out over the sea wall. The steward had discovered the amorous young man pressuring Meralda to marry him the very next week. The flustered woman was making polite excuse after polite excuse, with stubborn Feringal defeating each one.

"Time to blossom?" Feringal echoed incredulously. "I am going mad with desire. I can think of nothing but Meralda!"

He said the last loudly, and both men glanced to see a frowning Meralda looking back at them.

"As it should be," Steward Temigast whispered. "Let us discover if the feeling holds strong over the course of time. The duration of such feelings is the true meaning of love, my lord."

"You doubt me still?" a horrified Lord Feringal replied.

"No, my lord, not I," Temigast explained, "but the villagers must see your union to a woman of Meralda's station as true love and not infatuation. You must consider her reputation."

That last statement gave Lord Feringal pause. He glanced back at the woman, then at Temigast, obviously confused. "If she is married to me, then what harm could come to her reputation?"

"If the marriage is quickly brought, then the peasants will assume she used her womanly tricks to bewitch you," Temigast explained. "Better for her, by far, if you spend the weeks showing your honest and respectful love for her. Many will resent her in any case, my lord, out of jealousy. Now you must protect her, and the best way to do that is to take your time with the engagement."

"How much time?" the eager young lord asked.

"The spring equinox," Temigast offered, bringing another horrified look from Feringal. "It is only proper."

"I shall die," wailed Feringal.

Temigast frowned at the overwrought lord. "We can arrange a meeting with another woman if your needs become too great."

Lord Feringal shook his head vigorously. "I cannot think of passion with another woman."

Smiling warmly, Temigast patted the young man on the shoulder. "That is the correct answer for a man who is truly in love," he said. "Perhaps we can arrange the wedding for the turn of the year."

Lord Feringal's face brightened, then he frowned again. "Five months," he grumbled.

"But think of the pleasure when the time has passed."

"I think of nothing else," said a glum Feringal.

"What were you speaking of?" Meralda asked when Feringal joined her by the wall after Temigast excused himself from the garden.

"The wedding, of course," the lord replied. "Steward Temigast believes we must wait until the turn of the year. He believes love to be a growing, blossoming thing," said Feringal, his voice tinged with doubt.

"And so it is," Meralda agreed with relief and gratitude to Temigast.

Feringal grabbed her suddenly and pulled her close. "I cannot believe that my love for you could grow any stronger," he explained. He kissed her, and Meralda returned it, and glad she was that he didn't try to take it any further than that, as had been his usual tactics.

Instead, Lord Feringal pushed her back to arms' length.

"Temigast has warned me to show my respect for you," he admitted. "To show the villagers that our love is a real and lasting thing. And so I shall by waiting. Besides, that will give Priscilla the time she needs to prepare the event. She has promised a wedding such as Auckney-as the whole of the North-has never before seen."

Meralda's smile was genuine indeed. She was glad for the delay, glad for the time she needed to put her feelings for Lord Feringal and Jaka in the proper order, to come to terms with her decision and her responsibility. Meralda was certain she could go through with this, and not as a suffering woman. She could marry Lord Feringal and act as lady of Auckney for the sake of her mother and her family. Perhaps it would not be such a terrible thing.

The woman looked with a glimmer of affection at Feringal, who stood watching the dark waves. Impulsively she put an arm around the man's waist and rested her head on his shoulder and was rewarded with a chaste but grateful smile from her husband-to-be. He said nothing, didn't even try to take the touch further. Meralda had to admit it was. . pleasant.

*****

"Oh, tell me everything!" Tori whispered, scrambling to Meralda's bed when the older girl at last returned home that night. "Did he touch you?"

"We talked and watched the waves," Meralda replied noncommittally.

"Do you love him yet?"

Meralda stared at her sister. Did she love Lord Feringal? No, she could say for certain she did not, at least not in the heated manner in which she longed for Jaka, but perhaps that was all right. Perhaps she would come to love the generous lord of Auckney. Certainly Lord Feringal wasn't an ugly man-far from it. As their relationship grew, as they began to move beyond the tortured man's desperate groping, Meralda was starting to see his many good qualities, qualities she could indeed grow to love.

"Don't you still love Jaka?" Tori asked.

Meralda's contented smile dissipated at once with the painful reminder. She didn't answer, and for once Tori had the sense to let it drop as Meralda turned over, curled in upon herself, and tried hard not to cry.

It was a night of torrid dreams that left her tangled in her blankets. Still, Meralda's mood was better that next morning, and it improved even more when she entered the common room to hear her mother talking with Mam Gardener, one of their nosier neighbors (the little gnome had a beak that could shame a vulture), happily telling the visitor about her stroll in the castle garden.

"Mam Gardener brought us some eggs," Biaste Ganderlay explained, pointing to a skillet of scrambled eggs. "Help yourself, as I'm not wanting to get back up."

Meralda smiled at the generous gnome, then moved to the pan. Unexplicably, the young woman felt her stomach lurch at the sight and the smell and had to rush from the house to throw up beside the small bush outside the door.

Mam Gardener was there beside her in an instant. "Are you all right, girl?" she asked.

Meralda, more surprised than sick, stood back up. "The rich food at the castle," she explained. "They're feeding me too good, I fear."

Mam Gardener howled with laughter. "Oh, but you'll be getting used to that!" she said. "All fat and plump you'll get, living easy and eating well."

Meralda returned her smile and went back into the house.

"You still got to eat," Mam Gardener said, guiding her toward the eggs.

Even the thought of the eggs made Meralda's stomach turn again. "I'm thinking that I need to go and lay down," she explained, pulling away to head back to her room.

She heard the older ladies discussing her plight, with Mam telling Biaste about the rich food. Biaste, no stranger to illness, hoped that to be all it was.

Privately, Meralda wasn't so sure. Only then did she consider the timeline since her encounter with Jaka three weeks before. It was true she'd not had her monthly, but she hadn't thought much about it, for she'd never been regular in that manner anyway. .

The young woman clutched at her belly, both overwhelmed with joy and fear.

She was sick again the next morning, and the next after that, but she was able to hide her condition by going nowhere near the smell or sight of eggs. She felt well after throwing up in the morning and was not troubled with it after that, and so it became clear to her that she was, indeed, with child.

In her fantasies, the thought of having Jaka Sculi's babe was not terrible. She could picture herself married to the young rogue, living in a castle, walking in the gardens beside him, but the reality of her situation was far more terrifying.

She had betrayed the lord of Auckney, and worse, she had betrayed her family. Stealing that one night for herself, she had likely condemned her mother to death and branded herself a whore in the eyes of all the village.

Would it even get that far? she wondered. Perhaps when her father learned the truth he would kill her-he'd beaten her for far less. Or perhaps Lord Feringal would have her paraded through the streets so that the villagers might taunt her and throw rotten fruit and spit upon her. Or perhaps in a fit of rage Lord Feringal would cut the baby from her womb and send soldiers out to murder Jaka.

What of the baby? What might the nobles of Auckney do to a child who was the result of the cuckolding of their lord? Meralda had heard stories of such instances in other kingdoms, tales of potential threats to the throne, tales of murdered infants.

All the possibilities whirled in Meralda's mind one night as she lay in her bed, all the terrible possibilities, events too wicked for her to truly imagine, and too terrifying for her to honestly face. She rose and dressed quietly, then went in to see her mother, sleeping comfortably, curled up in her father's arms.

Meralda silently mouthed a heartsick apology to them both, then stole out of the house. It was a wet and windy night. To the woman's dismay, she didn't find Jaka in his usual spot in the fields above the houses, so she went to his house. Trying not to wake his kin, Meralda tossed pebbles against the curtain screening his glassless window.

The curtain was abruptly yanked to the side, and Jaka's handsome face poked through the opening.

"It's me, Meralda," she whispered, and the young man's face brightened in surprise. He held his hand out to her, and when she clenched it, he pulled it close to his face through the opening, his smile wide enough to take in his ears.

"I must talk with you," Meralda explained. "Please come outside."

"It's warmer in here," Jaka replied in his usual sly, lewd tone.

Knowing it unwise but shivering in the chill night air, Meralda motioned to the front door and scurried to it. Jaka was there in a moment, stripped bare to the waist and holding a single candle. He put his finger over his pursed lips and took Meralda by the arm, walking her quietly through the curtained doorway that led to his bedchamber. Before the young woman could begin to explain, Jaka was against her, kissing her, pulling her down beside him.

"Stop!" she hissed, pulling away. "We must talk."

"Later," Jaka said, his hands roaming.

Meralda rolled off the side of the bed and took a step away. "Now," she said. " 'Tis important."

Jaka sat up on the edge of the bed, grinning still but making no move to pursue her.

"I'm running too late," Meralda explained bluntly.

Jaka's face screwed up as though he didn't understand.

"I am with child," the woman blurted softly. "Your child."

The effect of her words would have been no less dramatic if she had smashed Jaka across the face with a cudgel. "How?" he I stammered after a long, trembling pause. "It was only once."

"I'm guessing that we did it right, then," the woman returned dryly.

"But-" Jaka started, shaking his head. "Lord Feringal? What are we to do?" He paused again, then turned a sharp eye upon Meralda. "Have you and he-?"

"Only yourself," Meralda firmly replied. "Only that once in all my life."

"What are we to do?" Jaka repeated, pacing nervously. Meralda had never seen him so agitated.

"I was thinking that I had to marry Lord Feringal," Meralda explained, moving over and taking hold of the man to steady him. "For the sake of my family, if not my own, but now things are changed," she said, looking Jaka in the eyes. "I cannot bring another man's child into Castle Auck, after all."

"Then what?" asked Jaka, still appearing on the very edge of desperation.

"You said you wanted me," Meralda said softly, hopefully. "So, with what's in my belly you've got me, and all my heart."

"Lord Feringal will kill me."

"We'll not stay, then," Meralda replied. "You said we'd travel the Sword Coast to Luskan and to Waterdeep, and so we shall, and so I must."

The thought didn't seem to sit very well with Jaka. He said "But. ." and shook his head repeatedly. Finally, Meralda gave him a shake to steady him and pushed herself up against him.

"Truly, this is for the better," she said. "You're my love, as I'm your own, and now fate has intervened to put us together."

"It's crazy," Jaka replied, pulling back from her. "We can't run away. We have no money. We have nothing. We shall die on the road before we ever get near Luskan."

"Nothing?" Meralda echoed incredulously, starting to realize that this was more than shock speaking. "We've each other. We've our love, and our child coming."

"You think that's enough?" Jaka asked in the same incredulous tone. "What life are we to find under such circumstances as this? Paupers forever, eating mud and raising our child in mud?"

"What choice have we?"

"We?" Jaka bit back the word as soon as it left his mouth, realizing too late that it had not been wise to say aloud.

Meralda fought back tears. "Are you saying that you lied to get me to lay down with you? Are you saying that you do not love me?"

"That's not what I'm saying," Jaka reassured her, coming over to put a hand on her shoulder, "but what chance shall we have to survive? You don't really believe that love is enough, do you? We shall have no food, no money, and three to feed. And how will it be when you get all fat and ugly, and we have not even our lovemaking to bring us joy?"

The woman blanched and fell back from his reach. He came for her, but she slapped him away. "You said you loved me," she said.

"I did," Jaka replied. "I do."

She shook her head slowly, eyes narrowing in a moment of clarity. "You lusted for me but never loved me." Her voice quivered, but the woman was determined to hold strong her course. "You fool. You're not even knowing the difference." With that she turned and ran out of the house. Jaka didn't make a move to go after her.

Meralda cried all through the night on the rainy hillside and didn't return home until early in the morning. The truth was there before her now, whatever might happen next. What a fool she felt for giving herself to Jaka Sculi. For the rest of her life, when she would look back on the moment she became a woman, the moment she left her innocent life as a girl behind her, it would not be the night she lost her virginity. No, it would be this night, when she first realized she had given her most secret self to a selfish, uncaring, shallow man. No, not a man-a boy. What a fool she had been.

Chapter 16 HOME SWEET HOME

They sat huddled under the wagon as the rain pelted down around them. Rivulets of water streamed in, and the ground became muddy even in their sheltered little place.

"This is not the life I envisioned," a glum Morik remarked. "How the mighty have fallen."

Wulfgar smirked at his friend and shook his head. He was not as concerned with physical comforts as Morik, for the rain hardly bothered him. He had grown up in Icewind Dale, after all, a climate more harsh by far than anything the foothills on this side of the Spine of the World could offer.

"Now I've ruined my best breeches," Morik grumbled, turning around and slapping the mud from his pants.

"The farmers would have offered us shelter," Wulfgar reminded him. Earlier that day, the pair had passed clusters of farmhouses, and Wulfgar had mentioned several times that the folk within would likely offer them food and a warm place to stay.

"Then the farmers would know of us," Morik said by way of explanation, the same answer he had given each time Wulfgar had brought up the possibility. "If or when we have someone looking for us, our trail would be easier to follow."

A bolt of lightning split a tree a hundred yards away, bringing a startled cry from Morik.

"You act as though you expect half the militias of the region to be chasing us before long," Wulfgar replied.

"I have made many enemies," Morik admitted, "as have you, my friend, including one of the leading magistrates of Luskan."

Wulfgar shrugged; he hardly cared.

"We'll make more, I assure you," Morik went on.

"Because of the life you have chosen for us."

The rogue cocked an eyebrow. "Are we to live as farmers, tilling dirt?"

"Would that be so terrible?"

Morik snorted, and Wulfgar only chuckled again helplessly.

"We need a base," Morik announced suddenly as another rivulet found its way to his bottom. "A house. . or a cave."

"There are many caves in the mountains," Wulfgar offered. The look on Morik's face, both hopeful and fearful, told him he needn't speak the thought: mountain caves were almost always occupied.

The sun was up the next morning, shining bright in a blue sky, but that did little to change Morik's complaining mood. He grumbled and slapped at the dirt, then stripped off his clothes and washed them when the pair came across a clear mountain stream.

Wulfgar, too, washed his clothes and his dirty body. The icy water felt good against his injured shoulder. Lying on a sunny rock waiting for their clothes to dry, Wulfgar spotted some smoke drifting lazily into the air.

"More houses," the barbarian remarked. "Friendly folk to those who come as friends, no doubt."

"You never stop," Morik replied dryly, and he reached behind the rock and pulled out a bottle of wine he had cooling in the water. He took a drink and offered it to Wulfgar, who hesitated, then accepted.

Soon after, their clothes still wet, and both a bit lightheaded, the pair started off along the mountain trails. They couldn't take their wagon, so they stashed it under some brush and let the horses graze nearby, with Morik noting the irony of how easy it would be for someone to rob them.

"Then we would just have to steal them back," Wulfgar replied, and Morik started to laugh, missing the barbarian's sarcasm.

He stopped abruptly, though, noting the suddenly serious expression on his large friend's face. Following Wulfgar's gaze to the trail ahead, Morik began to understand, for he spotted a broken sapling, recently snapped just above the trunk. Wulfgar went to the spot and bent low, studying the ground around the sapling.

"What do you think broke the tree?" Morik asked from behind him.

Wulfgar motioned for the rogue to join him, then pointed out the heel print of a large, large boot.

"Giants?" Morik asked, and Wulfgar looked at him curiously. Already Wulfgar recognized the signs of Morik becoming unhinged, as the rogue had over the rat in the cage at Prisoner's Carnival.

"You don't like giants, either?" Wulfgar asked.

Morik shrugged. "I have never seen one," he admitted, "but who truly likes them?"

Wulfgar stared at him incredulously. Morik was a seasoned veteran, skilled as a thief and warrior. A significant portion of Wulfgar's own training had come at the expense of giants. To think one as skilled as Morik had never even seen one surprised the barbarian.

"I saw an ogre once," Morik said. "Of course, our gaoler friends had more than a bit of ogre blood in them."

"Bigger," Wulfgar said bluntly. "Giants are much bigger."

Morik blanched. "Let us return the way we came."

"If there are giants about, they'll very likely have a lair," Wulfgar explained. "Giants would not suffer rain and hot sun when there are comfortable caves in the region. Besides, they prefer their meals cooked, and they try not to advertise their presence with campfires under the open sky."

"Their meals," Morik echoed. "Are barbarians and thieves on their menu of cooked meals?"

"A delicacy," Wulfgar said earnestly, nodding.

"Let us go and speak with the farmers," said Morik, turning around.

"Coward," Wulfgar remarked quietly. The word had Morik spinning back to face him. "The trail is easy enough to follow," Wulfgar explained. "We don't even know how many there are. Never would I have expected Morik the Rogue to run from a fight."

"Morik the rogue fights with this," Morik countered, poking his finger against his temple.

"A giant would eat that."

"Then Morik the Rogue runs with his feet," the thief said.

"A giant would catch you," Wulfgar assured him. "Or it would throw a rock at you and squash you from afar."

"Pleasant choices," said Morik cynically. "Let us go and speak with the farmers."

Wulfgar settled back on his heels, studying his friend and making no move to follow. He couldn't help but contrast Morik to Drizzt at that moment. The rogue was turning to leave, while the drow would, and often had, eagerly rushed headlong into such adventure as a giant lair. Wulfgar recalled the time he and Drizzt had dispatched an entire lair of verbeeg, a long and brutal fight but one that Drizzt had entered laughing. Wulfgar thought of the last fight he had waged beside his ebon-skinned friend, against another band of giants. That time they'd chased them into the mountains after learning that the brutes had set their eyes on the road to Ten-Towns.

It seemed to Wulfgar that Morik and Drizzt were similar in so many way, but in the most important ways they were nothing alike. It was a contrast that continually nagged at Wulfgar, a reminder of the startling differences in his life now, the difference between that world north of the Spine of the World and this world south of it.

"There may only be a couple of giants," Wulfgar suggested. "They rarely gather in large numbers."

Morik pulled out his slender sword and his dagger. "A hundred hits to fell one?" he asked. "Two hundred? And all the time I spend sticking the behemoth two hundred times, I'll be comforted by the thought that one strike from the giant will crush me flat."

Wulfgar's grin widened. "That's the fun of it," he offered. The barbarian hoisted the headman's axe over one shoulder and started after the giant, having little trouble in discerning the trail.

Crouching on the backside of a wide boulder by mid-afternoon, Wulfgar and Morik had the giants and their lair in sight. Even Morik had to admit that the location was perfect: an out-of-the-way cave nestled among rocky crests, yet less than half a day's march to one of two primary mountain passes, the easternmost of the pair, separating Icewind Dale from the southlands.

They watched for a long while and noted only a pair of giants, then a third appeared. Even so, Wulfgar was not impressed.

"Hill giants," he remarked disparagingly, "and only a trio. I have battled a single mountain giant who could fell all three."

"Well, let us see if we can find that mountain giant and prompt him to come and evict this group," said Morik.

"That mountain giant is dead," Wulfgar replied. "As these three shall soon be." He took up the huge axe in hand and glanced about, finally deciding on a roundabout trail that would bring him to the lair.

"I have no idea of how to fight them," Morik whispered.

"Watch and learn," Wulfgar replied, and off he went.

Morik didn't know whether he should follow or not, so he stayed put on the rock, noting his friend's progress, watching the trio of giants disappear into the cave. Wulfgar crept up to that dark entrance soon after, slipping to the edge and peering in. Glancing back Morik's way, he went spinning into the gloom.

"You don't even know if there are others inside," Morik muttered to himself, shaking his head. He wondered if coming out here with Wulfgar had been a wise idea after all. The rogue could get back into Luskan easily, he knew, with a new identity as far as the authorities were concerned, but with the same old position of respect on the streets. Of course, there remained the not-so-little matter of the dark elves who had come calling.

Still, given the size of those giants, Morik was thinking that he just might have to return to Luskan. Alone.

*****

The initial passageway inside the cave was not very high on open, at least for giants. Wulfgar took comfort in the knowledge that his adversaries would have to stoop very low, perhaps even crawl, to get under one overhanging boulder. Pursuit would not be swift if Wulfgar were forced to retreat.

The tunnel widened and heightened considerably beyond that curving walk of about fifty feet. After that it opened into a wide, high chamber where a tremendous bonfire reflected enough orange light down the tunnel so that Wulfgar was not walking in darkness.

He noted that the walls were broken and uneven, a place of shadows. There was one particularly promising perch about ten feet off the ground. Wulfgar crept along a bit farther, hoping to catch a glimpse of the entire giant clan within. He wanted to make sure that there were only three and that they didn't have any of the dangerous pets giants often harbored, like cave bears or huge wolves. The barbarian had to backtrack, though, before he even got near the chamber entrance, for he heard one of the giants approaching, belching with every booming step. Wulfgar went up the wall to the perch and melted back into the shadows to watch.

Out came the giant, rubbing its belly and belching yet again. It stooped and bent in preparation for the tight stretch of corridor ahead. Caution dictated that Wulfgar hold his attack, that he scout further and discern the exact strength of his enemy, but Wulfgar wasn't feeling cautious.

Down he came with a great roar and a tremendous overhead chop of the headsman's axe, his pure strength adding to the momentum of the drop.

The startled giant managed a slight dodge, enough so that the axe didn't sheer through its neck. Despite its great size, Wulfgar's power would have decapitated the behemoth. Still, the axe drove through the giant's shoulder-blade, tearing skin and muscle and crushing bone, knocking the giant into a howling, agonized stagger that left it crouched on one knee.

But in the process, Wulfgar's weapon snapped at mid-shaft. Ever one to improvise, the barbarian hit the ground in a roll, came right back to his feet, and rushed in on the wounded, kneeling giant, stabbing it hard in the throat with the pointed, broken end of the shaft. As the gurgling behemoth reached for him with huge, trembling hands, Wulfgar tore the shaft free, tightened his grip on the end, and smashed the giant across the face.

He left the giant there on one knee, knowing that its friends would soon come out. Looking for a defensible position, he noticed then that the action of his attack, or perhaps the landing on the floor, had re-opened his shoulder wound, his tunic already growing wet with fresh blood.

Wulfgar didn't have time to think about it. He made it back to his high perch as the other two entered the area below him. He found his next weapon in the form of a huge rock. With a stifled grunt, Wulfgar brought it up overhead and waited.

The last giant in line, the smallest of the three, heard that grunt and looked up just as Wulfgar brought the rock smashing down-and how that giant howled!

Wulfgar scooped his club and leaped down, once again using his momentum to heighten the strike as he smashed this one across the face. The barbarian hit the floor and pivoted back at the behemoth, rushing past its legs to smash at its kneecaps. Altering his grip, he stabbed hard at the tender hamstrings on the back of the giant's legs, just as Bruenor had taught him.

Still holding its smashed face and howling in pain, the giant tumbled to the ground behind Wulfgar, where it fell in the way of the last of the group, the only one who had not yet felt the sting of Wulfgar's weapons.

*****

Outside the cave, Morik winced as he heard the cries and the groans, the howls and the unmistakable sound of boulder against bone.

Curious despite himself, the rogue moved up closer to the entrance, trying to get a look inside, though he feared and honestly believed that his friend was already dead.

"You should be well on your way to Luskan," Morik scolded himself under his breath. "A warm bed for Morik tonight."

*****

He'd hit them as hard as he could both times, yet he hadn't killed a single one of the trio, probably hadn't even knocked one of them out of the fight for long. Here he was, exposed and running into the main chamber without even knowing if the place had another exit.

But memories of Errtu weren't with the barbarian now. He was temporarily free of that emotional bondage, on the very edge of present desperation, and he loved it.

For once luck was with him. Inside the lair proper Wulfgar found the spoils of the giants' last raid, including the remains of a trio of dwarves, one of whom had carried a small, though solid hammer and another with several hand axes set along a bandolier.

Roaring, the giant rushed in, and Wulfgar let fly one, two, three, with the hand axes, scoring two gouging hits. Still the brute came on, and it was only a single running stride away when a desperate Wulfgar, thinking he was about to get squished into the wall, spun the hammer right into its thigh.

Wulfgar dived desperately, for the staggering giant couldn't begin to halt its momentum. It slammed headlong into the stone wall, dropping more than a bit of dust and pebbles from the cave ceiling. Somehow Wulfgar managed to avoid the crunch, but he had left his new weapons behind and couldn't possibly get to them in time as the giant Wulfgar had smashed with the rock came limping into the chamber.

Wulfgar went for the snapped axe shaft instead. Scooping it up, he dived aside in another roll as the behemoth stomped down with a heavy boot. Wulfgar was already in motion, charging for those vulnerable knees, smashing one repeatedly, then spinning about the trunklike leg, out of the giant's grasp. Turning his weapon point out as he pivoted, he stabbed again at the back of the bloodied leg. The giant lying against the wall kicked out, clipping Wulfgar's wounded shoulder and launching the man away to slam hard against the far wall.

Wulfgar was in his warrior rage now. He came out of the slam with a bellow, charging right back at the limping behemoth too fast for it to recognize the movement. His relentless club went at the knees again, and though the giant slapped at him, Wulfgar took hope in finally hearing the bone crunch apart. Down went the behemoth, clutching its broken knee, the sheer volume of its cries shaking the entire cave. Shaking off the dull ache of that slap, Wulfgar taunted it with laughter.

The one against the wall tried to rise, but Wulfgar was there in an instant, standing on its back, his club battering it about the back of the head. He scored several thunderous hits and had the behemoth flat down and trying to cover. Wulfgar dared hope he might finally finish one off.

Then the huge hand of the other giant tightened about his leg.

*****

Morik could hardly believe his movements, felt as if his own feet were betraying him, as he crept right up to the cave entrance and peered inside.

He saw the first of the giant group, standing bent over at the waist under the overhanging rock, one arm extended against the wall to lend support as it coughed up the last remnants of blood from its mouth.

Before his own good sense could overrule him, Morik was on the move, silently creeping into the gloom of the cave along the wall. He got by the giant with hardly a whisper of sound, his small noises easily covered by the giant's hacking and wheezing, then climbed to a ledge several feet from the ground.

The sounds of battle rang out from the inner chamber, and he could only hope that Wulfgar was doing well, both for his friend's sake and because he realized that if the other giants came out now he would be in a difficult position indeed.

The rogue held his nerve, and waited, poised, dagger in hand, lining up his strike. He considered the attack from the perspective of those backstabs he knew from his experiences fighting men, but he looked at his puny dagger doubtfully.

The giant began to turn around. Morik was out of time. Knowing he had to be perfect, figuring that this was going to hurt more than a little, and wondering why in the Nine Hells he had come in here after foolish Wulfgar, Morik went with his instinct and leaped for the giant's torn throat.

His dagger flashed. The giant howled and leaped up-and slammed its head on the overhanging boulder. Groaning, it tried to straighten, flailing its arms, and Morik flew aside, his breath blasted away. Half-tumbling, half-running, and surely screaming, Morik exited the cave with the gasping, grasping giant right behind.

He felt the giant closing, step by step. At the last instant Morik dived aside and the behemoth stumbled past, one hand clutching its throat, wheezing horribly, its face blue, eyes bulging.

Morik sprinted back the other way, but the giant didn't pursue. The huge creature was down on its knees now, gasping for air.

"Going home to Luskan," Morik mumbled over and over, but he kept moving for the cave entrance as he spoke.

*****

Wulfgar spun and stabbed with all his strength, then drove ahead ferociously, twisting and pulling at the giant's leg. The giant was on one knee, its broken leg held out straight as it struggled to maintain some balance. The other meaty hand came at Wulfgar, but he slipped under it and pulled on furiously, breaking free and leaping to the giant's shoulder.

He scrambled behind the behemoth's head and wrapped his hands back around, lining up the point of his axe shaft with the creature's eye. Wulfgar locked his hands around that splintered pole and pushed hard. The giant's hands grabbed at him to stop his progress, but he growled and pulled on.

The terrified giant tried to wriggle away, pulled with its huge hands with all its strength, bunched muscle that would stop nearly any human cold.

But Wulfgar had the angle and was possessed of a strength beyond that of nearly any human. He saw the other giant climbing back to its feet, but reminded himself to take the fight one at a time. Wulfgar felt the tip of his axe shaft sink into the giant's eye. It went into a frenzy, even climbing back to its feet, but Wulfgar held on. Driving, driving.

The giant ran blindly for the wall and turned around, going in hard, trying to crush the man. Wulfgar growled away the pain and pressed on with all his strength until the spear slipped in deeper to the behemoth's brain.

The other giant came in then. Wulfgar fell away, scrambling across the chamber, using the spasms of the dying giant to cover his retreat. The butt end of Wulfgar's impromptu spear remained visible within the folds of the dying brute's closed eyelid. Wulfgar scarcely had time to notice as he dived headlong across the way to retrieve the hammer and one of the bloody hand axes.

The giant threw its dead companion aside and strode forward, then staggered back with a hand axe embedded deep into its forehead.

Wulfgar continued to press in with a mighty overhead chop that slammed the hammer hard into the behemoth's chest. He hit it again, and a third time, then went down under the flailing fists and struck a brutal blow against the giant's knee. Wulfgar skittered past and ran behind the brute to the wall, leaping upward two full strides, then springing off with yet another wicked, downward smash as the turning giant came around.

The hammer's head cracked through the giant's skull. The behemoth dropped straight down and lay very still on the floor.

Morik entered the chamber at that moment and gaped at the battered Wulfgar. The barbarian's shoulder was soaked with blood, his leg bruised from ankle to thigh, and his knees and hands were skinned raw.

"You see?" Wulfgar said with a triumphant grin. "No trouble at all. Now we have a home."

Morik looked past his friend to the gruesome remains of the half-eaten dwarves and the two dead giants oozing blood throughout the chamber. "Such as it is," he answered dryly.

*****

They spent the better part of the next three days cleaning out their cave, burying the dwarves, chopping up and disposing of the giants, and retrieving their supplies. They even managed to get the horses and the wagon up to the place along a roundabout route, though they simply let the horses run free after the great effort, figuring that they would never be very useful as a pulling team.

A full pack on his back, Morik took Wulfgar out along the trails. The pair finally came to a spot overlooking a wide pass, the one true trail through this region of the Spine of the World. It was the same trail that Wulfgar and his former friends had used whenever they'd ventured out of Icewind Dale. There was another pass to the west that ran through Hundelstone, but this was the most direct route, though more dangerous by far.

"Many caravans will roll through this place before winter," Morik explained. "They'll be heading north with varied goods and south with scrimshaw knucklehead carvings."

More familiar with the routine than Morik would ever understand, Wulfgar merely nodded.

"We should hit them both ways," the rogue suggested. "Secure our provisions from those coming from the south and our future monies from those coming from the north."

Wulfgar sat down on a slab and stared north along the pass, beyond it to Icewind Dale. He was reminded again of the sharp contrast between his past and his present. How ironic it would be if his former friends were the ones to track down the highwaymen.

He pictured Bruenor, roaring as he charged up the rocky slope, agile Drizzt skipping past him, scimitars in hand. Guenhwyvar would already be above them, Wulfgar knew, cutting off any retreat. Morik would likely flee, and Catti-brie would cut him down with a single, blazing arrow.

"You look a thousand miles away. What's on your mind?" Morik inquired. As usual, he was holding an open bottle he'd already begun sampling.

"I'm thinking I need a drink," Wulfgar replied, taking the bottle and lifting it to his lips. Burning all the way down, the huge swallow helped calm him somewhat, but he still couldn't reconcile himself to his present position. Perhaps his friends would come after him, as he, Drizzt and Guenhwyvar, and the others following, had gone after the giant band they suspected to be highwaymen in Icewind Dale.

Wulfgar took another long drink. He didn't like the prospects if they came after him.

Chapter 17 COERCION

"I cannot wait until the spring, I fear," Meralda said coyly to Feringal after dinner one night at Auckney Castle. At Meralda's request the pair was walking the seashore this evening, instead of their customary stroll in the garden.

The young lord stopped in his tracks, eyes wider than Meralda had ever seen them. "The waves," he said, drawing closer to Meralda. "I fear I did not hear you correctly."

"I said that I cannot wait for the spring," Meralda repeated. "For the wedding, I mean."

A grin spread from ear to ear across Feringal's face, and he seemed as if he were about to dance a jig. He took her hand gently, brought it up to his lips, and kissed it. "I would wait until the end of time, if you so commanded," he said solemnly. To her great surprise-and wasn't this man always full of surprises? — Meralda found that she believed him. He had never betrayed her.

As thrilled as Meralda was, however, she had pressing problems. "No, my lord, you'll not be waiting long," she replied, pulling her hand from his and stroking his cheek. "Suren I'm glad that you'd wait for me, but I can no longer wait for the spring for my own desires." She moved in close and kissed him, and felt him melting against her.

Feringal pulled away from her for the first time. "You know we cannot," he said, though it obviously pained him. "I have given my word to Temigast. Propriety, my love. Propriety."

"Then make it proper, and soon," Meralda replied, stroking the man's cheek gently. She thought that Feringal might collapse under her tender touch, so she moved in close again and added breathlessly, "I simply can't wait."

Feringal lost his thin resolve and wrapped her in his arms, burying her in a kiss.

Meralda didn't want this, but she knew what she had to do. She feared too much time had passed already. The young woman started to pull the man down to the sand with her, setting her mind firmly that she would seduce him and be done with it, but there came a call from the castle wall: Priscilla's shrill voice.

"Feri!"

"I detest it when she calls me that!" With great effort, the young lord jumped back from Meralda and cursed his sister under his breath. "Can I never escape her?"

"Feri, is that you?" Priscilla called again.

"Yes, Priscilla," the man replied with barely concealed irritation.

"Do come back to the castle," the woman beckoned. "It grows dark, and Temigast says there are reports of thieves about. He wants you within the walls."

Brokenhearted Feringal looked to Meralda and shook his head. "We must go," he said.

"I can't wait for spring," the woman said determinedly.

"And you shan't," Lord Feringal replied, "but we shall do it properly, in accordance with etiquette. I will move the wedding day forward to the winter solstice."

"Too long," Meralda replied.

"The autumn equinox then."

Meralda considered the timeline. The autumn equinox was six weeks away, and she was already more than a month pregnant. Her expression revealed her dismay.

"I cannot possibly move it up more than that," Lord Feringal explained. "As you know, Priscilla is doing the planning, and she will already howl with anger when she hears that I wish to move it up at all. Temigast desires that we wait until the turn of the year, at least, but I will convince him otherwise."

He was talking more to himself than to Meralda, and so she let him ramble, falling within her own thoughts as the pair made their way back to the castle. She knew that the man's fears of his sister's rage were, if anything, an underestimation. Priscilla would fight their plans for a change of date. Meralda was certain the woman was hoping the whole thing would fall apart.

It would fall apart before the wedding if anyone suspected she was carrying another man's child.

"You should know better than to go out without guards in the night," Priscilla scolded as soon as the pair entered the foyer. "There are thieves about."

She glared at Meralda, and the woman knew the truth of Priscilla's ire. Feringal's sister didn't fear thieves on her brother's account. Rather, she was afraid of what might happen between Feringal and Meralda, of what had nearly happened between them on the beach.

"Thieves?" Feringal replied with a chuckle. "There are no thieves in Auckney. We have had no trouble here in many years, not since before I became lord."

"Then we are overdue," Priscilla replied dryly. "Would you have it that the first attack in Auckney in years happen upon the lord and his future wife? Have you no sense of responsibility toward the woman you say you love?"

That set Feringal back on his heels. Priscilla always seemed able to do that with just a few words. She made a mental note to remedy that situation as soon as she had a bit of power behind her.

" 'Twas my own fault," Meralda interrupted, moving between the siblings. "I'm often walking the night, my favorite time."

"You are no longer a common peasant," Priscilla scolded bluntly. "You must understand the responsibility that will accompany your ascent into the family."

"Yes, Lady Priscilla," Meralda replied, dipping a polite curtsey, head bowed.

"If you wish to walk at night, do so in the garden," Priscilla added, her tone a bit less harsh.

Meralda, head still bowed so that Priscilla could not see her face, smiled knowingly. She was beginning to figure out how to get to the woman. Priscilla liked a feisty target, not an agreeable, humble one.

Priscilla turned to leave with a frustrated huff.

"We have news," Lord Feringal said suddenly, stopping the woman short. Meralda's head shot up, her face flush with surprise and more than a little anger. She wanted to choke her intended's words back at that moment; this wasn't the time for the announcement.

"We have decided that we cannot wait until the spring to marry," the oblivious Feringal went on. "The wedding shall be on the day of the autumn equinox."

As expected, Priscilla's face turned bright red. It was obviously taking all of the woman's willpower to keep her from shaking. "Indeed," she said through clenched teeth. "And have you shared your news with Steward Temigast?"

"You're the first," Lord Feringal replied. "Out of courtesy, and since you are the one making the wedding preparations."

"Indeed," Priscilla said again with ice in her voice. "Do go tell him, Feri," she bade. "He is in the library. I will see that Meralda is escorted home."

That brought Lord Feringal rushing back to Meralda. "Not so long now, my love," he said. Gently kissing her knuckles, he strode away eagerly to find the steward.

"What did you do to him out there?" Priscilla snapped at Meralda as soon as her brother was gone.

Meralda pursed her lips. "Do?"

"You, uh, worked your charms upon him, didn't you?"

Meralda laughed out loud at Priscilla's efforts to avoid coarse language, a response the imposing Priscilla certainly did not expect. "Perhaps I should have," she replied. "Put a calming on the beast, we call it, but no, I didn't. I love him, you know, but my ma didn't raise a slut. Your brother's to marry me, and so we'll wait. Until the autumn equinox, by his own words."

Priscilla narrowed her eyes threateningly.

"You hate me for it," Meralda accused her bluntly. Priscilla was not prepared for that. Her eyes widened, and she fell back a step. "You hate me for taking your brother and disrupting the life you had set out for yourself, but I'm finding that to be a bit selfish, if I might be saying so. Your brother loves me and I him, and so we're to marry, with or without your blessings."

"How dare you-"

"I dare tell the truth," cut in Meralda, surprised at her own forwardness but knowing she could not back down. "My ma won't live the winter in our freezing house, and I'll not let her die. Not for the sake of what's proper, and not for your own troubles. I know you're doing the planning, and so I'm grateful to you, but do it faster."

"That is what this is all about, then?" Priscilla asked, thinking she had found a weakness here. "Your mother?"

" 'Tis about your brother," Meralda replied, standing straight, shoulders squared. "About Feringal and not about Priscilla, and that's what's got you so bound up."

Priscilla was so overwrought and surprised that she couldn't even force an argument out of her mouth. Flustered, she turned and fled, leaving Meralda alone in the foyer.

The young woman spent a long moment considering her own words, hardly able to believe that she had stood her ground with Priscilla. She considered her next move and thought it prudent to be leaving. She'd spotted Liam with the coach out front when she and Feringal had returned, so she went to him and bade him to take her home.

*****

He watched the coach travel down the road from the castle, as he did every time Meralda returned from another of her meetings with the lord of Auckney.

Jaka Sculi didn't know what to make of his own feelings. He kept thinking back to the moment when Meralda had told him about the child, about his child. He had rebuffed her, allowing his guard to slip so that his honest feelings showed clearly on his face. Now this was his punishment, watching her come back down the road from Castle Auck, from him.

What might Jaka have done differently? He surely didn't want the life Meralda had offered. Never that! The thought of marrying the woman, of her growing fat and ugly with a crying baby about, horrified him, but perhaps not as much as the thought of Lord Feringal having her.

That was it, Jaka understood now, though the rationalization did little to change what he felt in his heart. He couldn't bear the notion of Meralda lying down for the man, of Lord Feringal raising Jaka's child as if it were his own. It felt as if the man were stealing from him outright, as every lord in every town did to the peasants in more subtle ways. Yes, they always took from the peasants, from honest folk like Jaka. They lived in comfort, surrounded by luxury, while honest folk like Jaka broke their fingernails in the dirt and ate rotten food. They took the women of their choice, offering nothing of character, only wealth against which peasants like Jaka could not compete. Feringal took his woman, and now he would take Jaka's child.

Trembling with rage, Jaka impulsively ran down to the road waving his arms, bidding the coach to stop.

"Be gone!" Liam Woodgate called down from above, not slowing one bit.

"I must speak with Meralda," Jaka cried. "It is about her ma."

That made Liam slow the coach enough so that he could glance down and get Meralda's thoughts. The young woman poked her head out the coach window to learn the source of the commotion. Spotting an obviously agitated Jaka, she blanched but did not retreat.

"He wants me to stop so he can speak with you. Something about your ma," the coachman explained.

Meralda eyed Jaka warily. "I'll speak with him," she agreed. "You can stop and let me out here, Liam."

"Still a mile to your home," the gnome driver observed, none too happy about the disturbance. "I could be taking you both there," he offered.

Meralda thanked him and waved him away. "A mile I'll walk easy," she answered and was out the door before the coach had even stopped rolling, leaving her alone on the dark road with Jaka.

"You're a fool to be out here," Meralda scolded as soon as Liam had turned the coach around and rambled off. "What are you about?"

"I had no choice," Jaka replied, moving to hug her. She wished him away.

"You know what I'm carrying," the woman went on, "and so will Lord Feringal soon enough. If he puts you together with my child he'll kill us both."

"I'm not afraid of him," Jaka said, pressing toward her. "I know only how I feel, Meralda. I had no choice but to come to you tonight."

"You've made your feelings clear enough," the woman replied coldly.

"What a fool I was," Jaka protested. "You must understand what a shock the news was, but I'm over that. Forgive me, Meralda. I cannot live without your charity."

Meralda closed her eyes, her body swaying as she tried to digest it all. "What're you about, Jaka Sculi?" she asked again quietly. "Where's your heart?"

"With you," he answered softly, coming closer.

"And?" she prompted, opening her eyes to stare hard at him. He didn't seem to understand. "Have you forgotten the little one already then?" she asked.

"No," he blurted, catching on. "I'll love the child, too, of course."

Meralda found that she did not believe him, and her expression told him so.

"Meralda," he said, taking her hands and shaking his head. "I can't bear the thought of Lord Feringal raising my-our child as his own."

Wrong answer. All of Meralda's sensibilities, her eyes still wide open from her previous encounter with this boy, screamed the truth at her. It wasn't about his love for the child, or even his love for her. No, she realized, Jaka didn't have the capacity for such emotions. He was here now, pleading his love, because he couldn't stand the thought of being bested by Lord Feringal.

Meralda took a deep and steadying breath. Here was the man she thought she had loved saying all the things she'd once longed to hear. The two of them would be halfway to Luskan by now if Jaka had taken this course when she'd come to him. Meralda Ganderlay was a wiser woman now, a woman thinking of her own well-being and the welfare of her child. Jaka would never give them a good life. In her heart she knew he'd come to resent her and the child soon enough, when the trap of poverty held them in its inescapable grip. This was a competition, not love. Meralda deserved better.

"Be gone," she said to Jaka. "Far away, and don't you come back."

The man stood as if thunderstruck. "But-"

"There are no answers you can give that I'll believe," the woman went on. "There's no life for us that would keep you happy."

"You're wrong."

"No, I'm not, and you know it, too," Meralda said. "We had a moment, and I'll hold it dear for all of my life. Another moment revealed the truth of it all. You've no room in your life for me or the babe. You never will." What she really wanted to tell him was to go away and grow up, but he didn't need to hear that from her.

"You expect me to stand around quietly and watch Lord Feringal-"

Clapping her hands to her ears, Meralda cut him off. "Every word you speak takes away from my good memories. You've made your heart plain to me."

"I was a fool," Jaka pleaded.

"And so you still are," Meralda said coldly. She turned and walked away.

Jaka called after her, his cries piercing her as surely as an arrow, but she held her course and didn't look back, reminding herself every step of the truth of this man, this boy. She broke into a run and didn't stop until she reached her home.

A single candle burned in the common room. To her relief, her parents and Tori were all asleep, a merciful bit of news for her because she didn't want to talk to anyone at that time. She had resolved her feelings about Jaka at last, could accept the pain of the loss. She tried hard to remember the night of passion and not the disappointments that had followed, but those disappointments, the revelations about who this boy truly was, were the thing of harsh reality, not the dreamy fantasies of young lovers. She really did want him to just go away.

Meralda knew that she had another more pressing problem. The autumn equinox was too far away, but she understood that she would never convince Lord Feringal, let alone Priscilla and Temigast, to move the wedding up closer than that.

Perhaps she wouldn't have to, she thought as an idea came to her. The fiefdom would forgive them if they were married in the fall and it was somehow revealed that they had been making love beforehand. Auckney was filled with "seven month babies."

Lying in her dark room, Meralda nodded her head, knowing what she had to do. She would seduce Feringal again, and very soon. She knew his desires and knew, too, that she could blow them into flame with a simple kiss or brush of her hand.

Meralda's smile dissipated almost immediately. She hated herself for even thinking such a thing. If she did soon seduce Feringal he would think the child his own, the worst of all lies, for Feringal and for the child.

She hated the plan and herself for devising it, but then, in the other chamber, her mother coughed. Meralda knew what she had to do.

Chapter 18 THE HEART FOR IT

"Our first customers," Morik announced. He and Wulfgar stood on a high ridge overlooking the pass into Icewind Dale. A pair of wagons rolled down the trail, headed for the break in the mountains, their pace steady but not frantic.

"Travelers or merchants?" Wulfgar asked, unconvinced.

"Merchants, and with wealth aboard," the rogue replied. "Their pace reveals them, and their lack of flanking guardsmen invites our presence."

It seemed foolish to Wulfgar that merchants would make such a dangerous trek as this without a heavy escort of soldiers, but he didn't doubt Morik's words. On his own last journey from the dale beside his former friends, they had come upon a single merchant wagon, riding alone and vulnerable.

"Surprised?" Morik asked, noting his expression.

"Idiots always surprise me," Wulfgar replied.

"They cannot afford the guards," Morik explained. "Few who make the run to Icewind Dale can, and those who can usually take the safer, western pass. These are minor merchants, you see, trading pittances. Mostly they rely on good fortune, either in finding able warriors looking for a ride or an open trail to get them through."

"This seems too easy."

"It is easy!" Morik replied enthusiastically. "You understand, of course, that we are doing this caravan a favor." Wulfgar didn't appear convinced of that.

"Think of it," prompted the rogue. "Had we not killed the giants, these merchants would likely have found boulders raining down on them," Morik explained. "Not only would they be stripped of their wealth, but their skin would be stripped from their bones in a giant's cooking pot." He grinned. "So do not fret, my large friend," he went on. "All we want is their money, fair payment for the work we have done for them."

Strangely, it made a bit of sense to Wulfgar. In that respect, the work to which Morik referred was no different than Wulfgar had been doing for many years with Drizzt and the others, the work of bringing justice to a wild land. The difference was that never before had he asked for payment, as Morik was obviously thinking to do now.

"Our easiest course would be to show them our power without engaging," the rogue explained. "Demand a tithe in payment for our efforts, some supplies and a perhaps a bit of gold, then let them go on their way. With only two wagons, though, and no other guards evident, we might be able to just knock them off completely, a fine haul, if done right, with no witnesses." His smile as he explained that latter course disappeared when he noted Wulfgar's frown.

"A tithe then, no more," Morik compromised. "Rightful payment for our work on the road."

Even that sat badly with the barbarian, but he nodded his head in agreement.

*****

He picked a section of trail littered with rocks where the wagons would have to slow considerably or risk losing a wheel or a horse. A single tree on the left side of the trail provided Wulfgar with the prop he would need to carry out his part of the attack, if it came to that.

Morik waited in clear view along the trail as the pair of wagons came bouncing along.

"Greetings!" he called, moving to the center of the trail, his arms held high. Morik shrank back just a bit, seeing the man on the bench seat beside the driver lifting a rather large crossbow his way. Still, he couldn't back up too much, for he had to get the wagon to stop on the appropriate mark.

"Out o' the road, or I'll shoot ye dead!" the crossbowman yelled.

In response, Morik reached down and lifted a huge head, the head of a slain giant, into the air. "That would be ill-advised," he replied, "both morally and physically."

The wagon bounced to a stop, forcing the one behind it to stop as well.

Morik used his foot, nearly straining his knee in the process, to move a second severed giant head out from behind a rock "I am happy to inform you that the trail ahead is now clear."

"Then get outta me way," the driver of the first wagon replied, "or he'll shoot ye down, and I'll run ye into ruts."

Morik chuckled and moved aside the pack he had lain on the trail, revealing the third giant head. Despite their bravado, he saw that those witnessing the spectacle of the heads were more than a little impressed-and afraid. Any man who could defeat three giants was not one to take lightly.

"My friends and I have worked hard all the week to clear the trail," Morik explained.

"Friends?"

"You think I did this alone?" Morik said with a laugh. "You flatter me. No, I had the help of many friends." Morik cast his gaze about the rocky outcroppings of the pass as if acknowledging his countless "friends." "You must forgive them, for they are shy."

"Ride on!" came a cry from inside the wagon, and the two men on the bench seat looked at each other.

"Yer friends hide like thieves," the driver yelled at Morik. "Clear the way!"

"Thieves?" Morik echoed incredulously. "You would be dead already, squashed flat under a giant's boulder, were it not for us."

The wagon door creaked open and an older man leaned out standing with one foot inside and the other on the running board. "You're demanding payment for your actions," he remarked, obviously knowing this routine all too well (as did most merchants of the northern stretches of Faerun).

"Demand is such a nasty word," Morik replied.

"Nasty as your game, little thief," the merchant replied.

Morik narrowed his eyes threateningly and glanced pointedly down at the three giant heads.

"Very well, then," the merchant conceded. "What is the price of your heroism?"

"We need supplies that we might maintain our vigil and keep the pass safe," Morik explained reasonably. "And a bit of gold, perhaps, as a reward for our efforts." It was the merchant's turn to scowl. "To pay the widows of those who did not survive our raid on the giant clan," Morik improvised.

"I'd hardly call three a clan," the merchant replied dryly, "but I'll not diminish your efforts. I offer you and your hiding friends a fine meal, and if you agree to accompany us to Luskan as guards, I will pay each of you a gold piece a day," the merchant added, proud of his largesse and obviously pleased with himself for having turned the situation to his advantage.

Morik's eyes narrowed at the weak offer. "We have no desire to return to Luskan at this time."

"Then take your meal and be happy with that," came the curt response.

"Idiot," Morik remarked under his breath. Aloud he countered the merchant's offer. "We will accept no less than fifty gold pieces and enough food for three fine meals for seven men."

The merchant laughed. "You will accept our willingness to let you walk away with your life," he said. He snapped his fingers, and a pair of men leaped from the second wagon, swords drawn. The driver of that wagon drew his as well.

"Now be gone!" he finished, and he disappeared back into the coach. "Run him down," he cried to his driver.

"Idiots!" Morik screamed, the cue for Wulfgar.

The driver hesitated, and that cost him. Holding the end of a strong rope, Wulfgar leaped from his concealment along the lefthand rock wall and swooped in a pendulum arc with a bloodcurdling howl. The crossbowman spun and fired but missed badly. Wulfgar barreled in at full speed, letting go of the rope and swinging his mighty arms out wide to sweep both crossbowman and driver from the bench, landing atop them in a pile on the far side. An elbow to the face laid the driver low. Reversing his swing, Wulfgar slammed the crossbowman on the jaw, surely breaking it as blood gushed forth.

The three swordsmen from the trailing wagon came on, two to the left of the first wagon, the third going to the right. Morik went right, a long and slender sword in one hand, a dagger in the other, intercepting the man before he could get to Wulfgar.

The man came at the rogue in a straightforward manner. Morik put his sword out beside the thrusting blade but rolled it about, disengaging. He stepped ahead, looping his dagger over the man's sword and pulling it harmlessly aside while he countered with a thrust of his own sword, heading for the man's throat. He had him dead, or would have, except that Morik's arm was stopped as surely as if he were trying to poke his sword through solid stone.

"What are you doing?" he demanded of Wulfgar as the barbarian stepped up and slugged the guard, nearly losing his ear to the thrashing sword and dagger. The man got his free hand up to block, but Wulfgar's heavy punch went right through the defense, planting his fist and the man's own forearm into his face and launching him away. But it was a short-lived victory.

Though staggered by Wulfgar's elbow, the driver was up again with blade in hand. Worse still, the other two swordsmen had found strong positions, one atop the bench, the other in front of the wagon. If that weren't bad enough, the merchant burst from the door, a wand in hand.

"Now we are the idiots!" Morik yelled to Wulfgar, cursing and spinning out from the attack of the swordsman on the bench. From the man's one thrust-and-cut routine, Morik could tell that this one was no novice to battle.

Wulfgar went for the merchant. Suddenly he was flying backward, his hair dancing on end, his heart palpitating wildly.

"So that's what the wand does," Morik remarked after the flash. "I hate wizards."

He went at the swordsman on the ground, who defeated his initial attempt at a quick kill with a circular parry that almost had the rogue overbalancing. "Do hurry back!" Morik called to Wulfgar, then he ducked and thrust his sword up frantically as the swordsman from the bench leaped atop the horse team and stabbed at his head.

The driver came at Wulfgar, as did the man he had just slugged, and the barbarian worked fast to get the hammer off his back. He started to meet the driver's charge but stopped fast and reversed his grip and direction, spinning the hammer the merchant's way instead, having no desire to absorb another lightning bolt.

The hammer hit the mark perfectly, not on the merchant, but against the coach door, slamming it on the man's extended arm just as he was about to loose yet another blast. Fire he did, though, a sizzling bolt that just missed the other man rushing Wulfgar.

"All charge!" Morik called, looking back to the rocky cliff on the left. The bluff turned his opponents' heads for just an instant. When they turned back, they found the rogue in full flight, and Morik was a fast runner indeed when his life was on the line.

The driver came in hesitantly, respectful of Wulfgar's strength. The other man, though, charged right in, until the barbarian turned toward him with a leap and a great bellow. Wulfgar reversed direction almost immediately, going back for the driver, catching the man by surprise with his uncanny agility. He accepted a stinging cut along the arm in exchange for grabbing the man's weapon hand. Pulling him close with a great tug, Wulfgar bent low, clamped his free hand on the man's belt, and hoisted the flailing fool high over his head. A turn and a throw sent the driver hard into his charging companion.

Wulfgar paused, to note Morik skittering by in full flight. A reasonable choice, given the course of the battle, but the barbarian's blood was up, and he turned back to the wagons and the two swordsmen, just in time to get hammered by another lightning stroke. With his long legs, Wulfgar passed Morik within fifty yards up the rocky climb.

Another bolt slammed in near to the pair, splintering rocks.

A crossbow quarrel followed soon after, accompanied by taunts and threats, but there came no pursuit, and soon the pair were running up high along the cliffs. When they dared to stop and catch their breath, Wulfgar looked down at the two scars on his tunic, shaking his head.

"We would have won if you had gone straight for the merchant after your sweep of the driver and crossbowman as planned," Morik scolded.

"And you would have cut out that man's throat," charged Wulfgar.

Morik scowled. "What of it? If you've not the heart for this life, then why are we out here?"

"Because you chose to deal with murderers in Luskan," Wulfgar reminded him, and they shared icy stares. Morik put his hand on his blade, thinking that the big man might attack him.

Wulfgar thought about doing just that.

They walked back to the cave separately. Morik beat him there and started in. Wulfgar changed his mind and stayed outside, moving to a small stream nearby where he could better tend his wounds. He found that his chest wasn't badly scarred, just the hair burned away from what was a minor lightning strike. However, his shoulder wound had reopened rather seriously. Only then, with his heavy tunic off, did the barbarian understand how much blood he had lost.

Morik found him out there several hours later, passed out on a flat rock. He roused the barbarian with a nudge. "We did not fare well," the rogue remarked, holding up a pair of bottles, "but we are alive, and that is cause for celebration."

"We need cause?" Wulfgar replied, not smiling, and he turned away.

"First attacks are always disastrous," Morik explained reasonably. "We must become accustomed to each other's fighting style, is all."

Wulfgar considered the words in light of his own experience, in light of the first true battle he and Drizzt had seen together. True, at one point, he had almost clobbered the drow with a low throw of Aegis-fang, but from the start there had been a symbiosis with Drizzt, a joining of heart that had brought them to a joining of battle routines. Could he say the same with Morik? Would he ever be able to?

Wulfgar looked back at the rogue, who was smiling and holding out the bottles of potent liquor. Yes, he would come to terms with Morik. They would become of like heart and soul. Perhaps that was what bothered Wulfgar most of all.

"The past no longer exists, and the future does not yet exist," Morik reasoned. "So live in the present and enjoy it, my friend. Enjoy every moment."

Wulfgar considered the words, a common mantra for many of those living day-to-day on the streets. He took the bottle.

Chapter 19 THE CHANCE

"We've not much time! What am I to wear?" Biaste Ganderlay wailed when Meralda told her the wedding had been moved up to the autumn equinox.

"If we're to wear anything more than we have, Lord Feringal will be bringing it by," Dohni Ganderlay said, patting the woman's shoulder. He gave Meralda a look of pride, and mostly of appreciation, and she knew that he understood the sacrifice she was making here.

How would that expression change, she wondered, if her father learned of the baby in her belly?

She managed a weak smile in reply despite her thoughts and went into her room to dress for the day. Liam Woodgate had arrived earlier to inform Meralda that Lord Feringal had arranged for her to meet late that same day with the seamstress who lived on the far western edge of Auckney, some two hours' ride.

"No borrowed gowns for the great day." Liam had proclaimed. "If you don't mind my saying so, Biaste, your daughter will truly be the most beautiful bride Auckney's ever known."

How Biaste's face had glowed and her eyes sparkled! Strangely, that also pained Meralda, for though she knew that she was doing right by her family, she could not forgive herself for her stupidity with Jaka. Now she had to seduce Lord Feringal, and soon, perhaps that very night. With the wedding moved up, she could only hope that others, mostly Priscilla and Temigast, would forgive her for conceiving a child before the official ceremony. Worst of all, Meralda would have to take the truth of the child with her to her grave.

What a wretched creature she believed herself to be at that moment. Madam Prinkle, a seamstress renowned throughout the lands, would no doubt make her a most beautiful gown with gems and rich, colorful fabrics, but she doubted she would be wearing the glowing face to go with it.

Meralda got cleaned up and dressed, ate a small meal, and was all smiles when Liam Woodgate returned for her, guiding her into the coach. She sat with her elbow propped on the sill, staring at the countryside rolling by. Men and gnomes worked in the high fields, but she neither looked for nor spotted Jaka Sculi among them. The houses grew sparse, until only the occasional cottage dotted the rocky landscape. The carriage went through a small wood, where Liam stopped briefly to rest and water the horses.

Soon they were off again, leaving the small woods and traveling into rocky terrain again. On Meralda's right was the sea. Sheer rock cliffs rose on the north side of the path, some reaching down so close to the water's edge that Meralda wondered how Liam would get the coach through.

She wondered, too, how any woman could live out here alone. Meralda resolved to ask Liam about it later. Now she spied an outpost, a stone keep flying Lord Feringal's flag. Only then did she begin to appreciate the power of the lord of Auckney. The slow-moving coach had only traveled about ten miles, but it seemed as if they had gone halfway around the world. For some reason she couldn't understand, the sight of Feringal's banner in this remote region made Meralda feel better, as if powerful Lord Feringal Auck would protect her.

Her smile was short lived as she remembered he would only protect her if she lied.

The woman sank back into her seat, sighed, and felt her still-flat belly, as if expecting the baby to kick right then and there.

*****

"The flag is flying, so there are soldiers within," Wulfgar reasoned.

"Within they shall stay," Morik answered. "The soldiers rarely leave the shelter of their stones, even when summoned. Their lookout, if they have one, is more concerned with those attacking the keep and not with anything down on the road. Besides, there can't be more than a dozen of them this far out from any real supply towns. I doubt there are even half that number."

Wulfgar thought to remind Morik that far fewer men had routed them just a couple of days before, but he kept quiet.

After the disaster in the pass, Morik had suggested they go out from the region, in case the merchant alerted Luskan guards, true to his belief that a good highwayman never stays long in one place, particularly after a failed attack. Initially, Morik wanted to go north into Icewind Dale, but Wulfgar had flatly refused.

"West, then," the rogue had offered. "There's a small fiefdom squeezed between the mountains and the sea southwest of the Hundelstone pass. Few go there, for it's not on most maps, but the merchants of the northern roads know of it, and sometimes they travel there on their way to and from Ten-Towns. Perhaps we will even meet up with our friend and his lightning wand again."

The possibility didn't thrill Wulfgar, but his refusal to go back into Icewind Dale had really left them only two options. They'd be deeper into the unaccommodating Spine of the World if they went east to the realm of goblins and giants and other nasty, unprofitable monsters. That left south and west, and given their relationship with the authorities of Luskan in the south, west seemed a logical choice.

It appeared as if that choice would prove to be a good one, for the pair watched as a lone wagon, an ornate carriage such as a nobleman might ride, rambled down the road.

"It could be a wizard," Wulfgar reasoned, painfully recalling the lightning bolts he'd suffered.

"I know of no wizards of any repute in this region," Morik replied.

You haven't been in this region for years, Wulfgar reminded him. "Who would dare travel in such an elaborate carriage alone?" he wondered aloud.

"Why not?" Morik countered. "This area south of the mountains sees little trouble, and there are outposts along the way, after all," he added, waving his hand at the distant stone keep. "The people here are not trapped in their homes by threats of goblins."

Wulfgar nodded, but it seemed too easy. He figured that the coach driver must be a veteran fighter, at least. It was likely there would be others inside, and perhaps they held nasty wands or other powerful magical items. One look at Morik, though, told the barbarian that he'd not dissuade his friend. Morik was still smarting from the disaster in the pass. He needed a successful hit.

The road below made a great bend around a mountain spur. Morik and Wulfgar took a more direct route, coming back to the road far ahead of the coach, out of sight of the stone outpost. Wulfgar immediately began laying out his rope, looking for some place he might tie it off. He found one slender tree, but it didn't look promising.

"Just jump in," Morik reasoned, pointing to an overhang. The rogue rushed down to the road, taking out a whip as he went, for the coach appeared, rambling around the southern bend.

"Clear the way!" came Liam Woodgate's call a moment later.

"I must speak with you, good sir!" Morik cried, holding his ground in the middle of the narrow trail. The gnome slowed the coach and brought it to a halt a safe distance from the rogue-and too far, Morik noted, for Wulfgar to make the leap.

"By order of Lord Feringal of Auckney, clear the way," Liam stated.

"I am in need of assistance, sir," Morik explained, watching out of the corner of his eye as Wulfgar scrambled into position, Morik took a step ahead then, but Liam warned him back.

Keep your distance, friend," the gnome said. "I've an errand for my lord, and don't doubt that I'll run you down if you don't move aside."

Morik chuckled. "I think not," he said.

Something in Morik's tone, or perhaps just a movement along the high rocks caught the corner of Liam's eye. Suddenly the gnome understood the imminent danger and spurred his team forward.

Wulfgar leaped out at that moment, but he hit the side of the carriage behind the driver, his momentum and the angle of the rocky trail putting the thing up on two wheels. Inside the coach a woman screamed.

Purely on instinct, Morik brought forth his whip and gave a great crack right in front of the horses. The beasts cut left against the lean, and before the driver could control them, before Wulfgar could brace himself, before the passenger inside could even cry out again, the coach fell over on its side, throwing both the driver and Wulfgar.

Dazed, Wulfgar forced himself to his feet, expecting to be battling the driver or someone else climbing from the coach, but the driver was down among some rocks, groaning, and no sounds came from within the coach. Morik rushed to calm the horses, then leaped atop the coach, scrambling to the door and pulling it open. Another scream came from within.

Wulfgar went to the driver and gently lifted the gnome's head. He set it back down, secure that this one was out of the fight but hoping he wasn't mortally wounded.

"You must see this," Morik called to Wulfgar. He reached into the coach, offering his hand to a beautiful young woman, who promptly backed away. "Come out, or I promise I will join you in there," Morik warned, but still the frightened woman curled away from him.

"Now that is the way true highwaymen score their pleasures," Morik announced to Wulfgar as the big man walked over to join him. "And speaking of pleasures. . " he added, then dropped into the coach.

The woman screamed and flailed at him, but she was no match for the skilled rogue. Soon he had her pinned against the coach's ceiling, which was now a wall, her arms held in place, his knee blocking her from kicking his groin, his lips close to hers. "A kiss for the winner?"

Morik rose suddenly, caught by the collar and hoisted easily out of the coach by a fuming Wulfgar. "You cross a line,"

Wulfgar replied, dropping the rogue on the ground.

"She is fairly caught," Morik argued, not understanding his friend's problem. "We have our way, and we let her go. What's the harm?"

Wulfgar glared at him. "Go tend the driver's wounds," he said. "Then find what treasures you may about the wagon."

"The girl-"

"— does not count as a treasure," Wulfgar growled at him.

Morik threw his hands up in defeat and moved to check on the fallen gnome.

Wulfgar reached into the coach, much as Morik had done, offering his huge paw to the frightened young woman. "Come out," he bade her. "I promise you won't be harmed."

Stunned and sore, the woman dodged his hand.

"We can't turn your wagon upright with you in it," Wulfgar explained reasonably. "Don't you wish to be on your way?"

"I want you to be on your way," the woman snarled.

"And leave you here alone?"

"Better alone than with thieves," Meralda shot back.

"It would be better for your driver if you got out. He'll die if we leave him lying on the rocks," Wulfgar was trying very hard to comfort the woman, or at least frighten her into action. "Come. I'll not hurt you. Rob you, yes, but not hurt you."

She timidly lifted her hand. Wulfgar took hold and easily hoisted her out of the coach. Setting her down, he stared at her for a long moment. Despite a newly forming bruise on the side of her face she was truly a beautiful young woman. He could understand Morik's desire, but he had no intention of forcing himself on any woman, no matter how beautiful, and he certainly wasn't going to let Morik do so.

The two thieves spent a few moments going through the coach, finding, to Morik's delight, a purse of gold. Wulfgar searched about for a log to use as a lever.

"You don't intend to upright the carriage, do you?" Morik asked incredulously.

"Yes, I do," Wulfgar replied.

"You can't do that," the rogue argued. "She'll drive right up to the stone keep and have a host of soldiers pursuing us within the hour."

Wulfgar wasn't listening. He found some large rocks and placed them near the roof of the fallen carriage. With a great tug, he brought the thing off the ground. Seeing no help forthcoming from Morik, he braced himself and managed to free one hand to slide a rock into place under the rim.

The horses snorted and tugged, and Wulfgar almost lost the whole thing right there. "At least go and calm them," he instructed Morik. The rogue made no move. Wulfgar looked to the woman, who ran to the team and steadied them.

"I can't do this alone," Wulfgar called again to Morik, his tone growing more angry.

Blowing out a great, long-suffering sigh, the rogue ambled over. Studying the situation briefly, he trotted off to where Wulfgar had left the rope, which he looped about the tree then brought one end back to tie off the upper rim of the coach. Morik passed by the woman, who jumped back from him, but he scarcely noticed.

Next, Morik took the horses by their bridle and pulled them around, dragging the coach carefully and slowly so that its wheels were equidistant from the tree. "You lift, and I will set the rope to hold it," he instructed Wulfgar. "Then brace yourself and lift it higher, and soon we will have it upright."

Morik was a clever one, Wulfgar had to admit. As soon as the rogue was back in place at the rope and the woman had a hold of the team again, Wulfgar bent low and gave a great heave, and up the carriage went.

Morik quickly took up the slack, tightening the rope about the tree, allowing Wulfgar to reset his position. A moment later, the barbarian gave another heave, and again Morik held the coach in place at its highest point. The third pull by Wulfgar brought it over bouncing onto its four wheels.

The horses nickered nervously and stamped the ground, tossing their heads in protest so forcefully that the woman couldn't hold on. Wulfgar was beside her instantly, though, grabbing the bridles and pulling hard, steadying the beasts. Then, using the same rope, he tied them off to the tree and went to the fallen driver.

"What's his name?" he asked of the woman. Seeing her hesitation he said, "We can't do anything worse to you than we have already, just by knowing your name. I feel strange helping him but not knowing what to call him."

The woman's expression lightened as she saw the sense of his remark. "His name's Liam." Apparently having found some courage, she came over and crouched next to her driver, concern replacing fear on her face. "Is he going to be all right?"

"Don't know yet."

Poor Liam seemed far from consciousness, but he was alive, and upon closer inspection his injuries didn't appear too serious. Wulfgar lifted him gently and brought him to the coach, laying him on the bench seat inside. The barbarian went back to the woman, taking her arm and pulling her along behind him.

"You said you wouldn't hurt me," she protested and tried to fight back. She would have had an easier time holding back the two horses.

Morik's smile grew wide when Wulfgar dragged her by. "A change of heart?" the rogue asked.

"She's coming with us for a while," Wulfgar explained.

"No!" the young woman protested. Balling up her fist, she leaped up and smacked Wulfgar hard across the back of his head.

He stopped and turned to her, his expression amused and a little impressed at her spunk. "Yes," he answered, pinning her arm as she tried to hit him again. "You'll come with us for just a mile," he explained. "Then I'll let you loose to return to the coach and the driver, and you may go wherever you please."

"You won't hurt me?"

"Not I," Wulfgar answered. He glowered at Morik. "Nor him." Realizing she had little choice in the matter, the young woman went along without further argument. True to his word, Wulfgar released her a mile or so from the coach. Then he and Morik and their purse of gold melted into the mountains.

*****

Meralda ran the whole way back to poor Liam. Her side was aching by the time she found the old gnome. He was awake but hardly able to climb out of the coach, let alone drive it.

"Stay inside," the woman bade him. "I'll turn the team around and get us back to Castle Auck."

Liam protested, but Meralda just shut the door and went to work. Soon she had them moving back west along the road, a bumpy and jostling ride, for she was not experienced in handling horses and the road was not an easy one. Along the way, the miles and the hours rolling out behind her, an idea came to the woman, a seemingly simple solution to all her troubles.

It was long after sunset when they pulled back into Auckney proper at the gates of Castle Auck. Lord Feringal and Priscilla came out to greet them, and their jaws dropped when they saw the bedraggled woman and the battered coachman within.

"Thieves on the road," Meralda explained. Priscilla climbed to her side, uncharacteristically concerned. In a voice barely above a whisper, Meralda added, "He hurt me." With that, she broke into sobs in Priscilla's arms.

*****

The wind moaned about him, a sad voice that sang to Wulfgar about what had been and what could never be again, a lost time, a lost innocence, and friends he sorely missed yet could not seek out.

Once more he sat on the high bluff at the northern end of the pass through the Spine of the World, overlooking Icewind Dale, staring out to the northeast. He saw a sparkle out there. It might have been a trick of the light, or maybe it was the slanted rays of late afternoon sunlight reflecting off of Maer Dualdon, the largest of the three lakes of the Ten-Towns region. Also, he thought he saw Kelvin's Cairn, the lone mountain north of the range.

It was probably just his imagination, he told himself again or a trick of the light, for the mountain was a long way from him. To Wulfgar, it seemed like a million miles.

"They have camped outside the southern end of the pass," Morik announced, moving to join the big man. "There are not so many. It should be a clean take."

Wulfgar nodded. After the success along the shore road to the west, the pair had returned to the south, the region between Luskan and the pass, and had even bought some goods from one passing merchant with their ill-found gold. Then they had come back to the pass and had hit another caravan. This time it went smoothly, with the merchant handing over a tithe and no blood spilled. Morik had spotted their third group of victims, a caravan of three wagons heading north out of Luskan, bound for Icewind Dale.

"Always you are looking north," the rogue remarked, sitting next to Wulfgar, "and yet you will not venture there. Have you enemies in Ten-Towns?"

"I have friends who would stop us if they knew what we were about," Wulfgar explained.

"Who would try to stop us?" cocky Morik replied.

Wulfgar looked him right in the eye. "They would stop us," he insisted, his grave expression offering no room for argument. He let that look linger on Morik for a moment, then turned back to the dale, the wistfulness returning as well to his sky-blue eyes.

"What life did you leave behind there?" Morik asked.

Wulfgar turned back, surprised. He and Morik didn't often talk about their respective pasts, at least not unless they were drinking.

"Will you tell me?" Morik pressed. "I see so much in your face. Pain, regret, and what else?"

Wulfgar chuckled at that observation. "What did I leave behind?" he echoed. After a moment's pause, he answered, "Everything."

"That sounds foolish."

"I could be a king," Wulfgar went on, staring out at the dale again as if speaking to himself. Perhaps he was. "Chieftain of the combined tribes of Icewind Dale, with a strong voice on the council of Ten-Towns. My father-" He looked at Morik and laughed. "You would not like my father, Morik. Or at least, he would not like you."

"A proud barbarian?"

"A surly dwarf," Wulfgar countered. "He's my adoptive father," he clarified as Morik sputtered over that one. "The Eighth King of Mithral Hall and leader of a clan of dwarves mining in the valley before Kelvin's Cairn in Icewind Dale."

"Your father is a dwarven king?" Wulfgar nodded. "And you are out on the road beside me, sleeping on the ground?" Again the nod. "Truly you are a bigger fool than I had believed."

Wulfgar just stared out at the tundra, hearing the sad song of the wind. He couldn't disagree with Morik's assessment, but neither did he have the power to change things. He heard Morik reaching for his pack, then heard the familiar clink of bottles.