Sea of Swords

Chapter 5 THE HONESTY OF LOVE

 
ulfgar was the first off Sea Sprite when the pirate hunter returned to her berth at Waterdeep's long wharf. The barbarian leaped down to the dock before the ship had even been properly tied in, and his stride as he headed for shore was long and determined.
"Will you take him back out?" Robillard asked Deudermont, the two of them standing amidships, watching Wulfgar's departure.
"Your tone indicates to me that you do not wish me to," the captain answered, and he turned to face his trusted wizard friend.
Robillard shrugged.
"Because he interfered with your plan of attack?"Deudermont asked.
"Because he jeopardized the safety of the crew with his rash actions," the wizard replied, but there was little venom in his voice, just practicality. "I know you feel a debt to this one, Captain, though for what reason I cannot fathom. But Wulfgar is not Drizzt or Catti-brie. Those two were disciplined and understood how to play a role as part of our crew. This one is more like . . . more like Harkle Harpell, I say! He finds a course and runs down it without regard to the consequences for those he leaves behind. Yes, we fought two successful engagements on this venture, sank a pirate, and brought another one in - "
"And captured two crews nearly intact," Deudermont added.
"Still," the wizard argued, "in both of those fights, we walked a line of disaster." He knew he really didn't have to convince Deudermont, knew the captain understood as well as he did that Wulfgar's actions had been less than exemplary.
"We always walk that line," Deudermont said.
"Too close to the edge this time," the wizard insisted. "And with a long fall beside us."
"You do not wish me to invite Wulfgar back."
Again came the wizard's noncommittal shrug. "I wish to see the Wulfgar who took Sea Sprite through her trials at the Pirate Isles those years ago," Robillard explained. "I wish to fight beside the Wulfgar who made himself so valuable a member of the Companions of the Hall, or whatever that gang of Drizzt Do'Urden's was called. The Wulfgar who fought to reclaim Mithral Hall and who gave his life, so it had seemed, to save his friends when the dark elves attacked the dwarf kingdom. All these tales I have heard of this magnificent barbarian warrior, and yet the Wulfgar I have known is a man consorting with thieves the likes of Morik the Rogue, the Wulfgar who was indicted for trying to assassinate you."
"He had no part in that," Deudermont insisted, but the captain did wince even in denial, for the memory of the poison and of the Prisoner's Carnival was a painful one.
Deudermont had lost much in granting Wulfgar his reprieve from the vicious magistrate that day in Luskan. By association, by his generosity to those the magistrates believed were truly not deserving, Deudermont had sullied Sea Sprite's reputation with the leaders of that important northern port. For Deudermont had stolen their show, had granted so unexpected a pardon, and all of that without any real proof that Wulfgar had not been involved in the attempt on his life.
"Perhaps not," Robillard admitted. "And Wulfgar's character on this voyage, whatever his shortcomings, has borne out your decision to grant the pardon, I admit. But his discretion on the open waters has not borne out your decision to take him aboard Sea Sprite"
Captain Deudermont let the wizard's honest and fair words sink in for a long while. Robillard could be a crotchety and judgmental sort, a curmudgeon in the extreme, and a merciless one concerning those he believed had brought their doom upon themselves. In this case, though, his words rang of honest truth, of simple and undeniable observation. That truth stung Deudermont. When he'd encountered Wulfgar in Luskan, a bouncer in a seedy tavern, he recognized the big man's fall from glory and had tried to entice Wulfgar away from that life. Wulfgar had denied him outright, had even refused to admit his own true identity to the captain. Then came the assassination attempt, with Wulfgar indicted while Deudermont lay unconscious and near death.
The captain still wasn't sure why he'd denied the magistrate his murderous fun at Prisoner's Carnival that day, why he'd gone with his gut instinct against the common belief and a fair amount of circumstantial evidence, as well. Even after that display of mercy and trust, Wulfgar had shown little gratitude or friendship.
Deudermont had been pained when they parted outside of Luskan's gate that day of the reprieve, when Wulfgar had again refused him his offer to sail with Sea Sprite. The captain had been fond of the man once and considered himself a good friend of Drizzt and Catti-brie, who had sailed with him honorably those years after Wulfgar's fall. Yes, he had dearly wanted to help Wulfgar climb back to grace, and so Deudermont had been overjoyed when Wulfgar had arrived in Waterdeep, at this same long wharf, a woman and child in tow, announcing that he wished to sail with Deudermont, that he was searching for his lost warhammer.
Deudermont had correctly read that as something much more, had known then as he did now that Wulfgar was searching for more than his lost weapon, that he was searching for his former self.
But Robillard's observations had been on the mark, as well. While Wulfgar had not been a problem in any way during the routine tendays of patrolling, in the two battles Sect Sprite had fought, the barbarian had not performed well. Courageously? Yes. Devastating to the enemy? Yes. But Wulfgar, wild and vicious, had not been part of the crew, had not allowed the more conventional and less risky tactics of using Robillard's wizardry to force submission from afar, the chance to work. Deudermont wasn't sure why Wulfgar had gone into this battle rage. The seasoned captain understood the inner heat of battle, the ferocious surge that any man needed to overcome his logical fears, but Wulfgar's explosions of rage seemed something beyond even that, seemed the stuff of barbarian legend - and not a legend that shone favorably on the future of Sea Sprite.
"I will speak with him before we sail," Deudermont offered.
"You already have," the wizard reminded.
Deudermont looked to him and gave a slight shrug. "Then I will again," he said.
Robillard's eyes narrowed.
"And if that is not effective, we will put Wulfgar to duty on the tiller," the captain explained before Robillard could begin his obviously forthcoming stream of complaints, "below decks and away from the fighting."
"Our steering crew is second to none," Robillard did say.
"And they will appreciate Wulfgar's unparalleled strength when executing the tightest of turns."
Robillard snorted, hardly seeming convinced. "He will probably ram us into the next pirate in line," the wizard grumbled quietly as he walked away.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Deudermont could not suppress a chuckle as he watched Robillard's typical, grumbling departure.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Wulfgar's surprise when he burst through the door to find Delly waiting for him was complete and overwhelming. He knew the woman, surely, with her slightly crooked smile and her light brown eyes, and yet he hardly recognized her. Wulfgar had known Delly as a barmaid living in squalor and as a traveling companion on a long and dirty road. Now, in the beautiful house of Captain Deudermont, with all his attendants and resources behind her, she hardly seemed the same person.
Before, she had almost always kept her dark brown hair pinned up, mostly because of the abundant lice she encountered in the Cutlass, but now her hair hung about her shoulders luxuriously, silken and shining and seeming darker. That, of course, only made her light brown eyes - remarkable eyes, Wulfgar realized - shine all the brighter. Before, Delly had worn plain and almost formless clothing, simple smocks and shifts, that had made her thin limbs seem spindly But now she was dressed in a formed blue dress with a low-cut white blouse.
It occurred to the barbarian, just briefly (for other things were suddenly flooding his thoughts!) how much an advantage the wealthy women of Faerun held over the peasant women in terms of beauty. When first he and Delly had arrived, Deudermont had thrown a party for many of Waterdeep's society folk. Delly had felt so out of place, and so had Wulfgar, but for the woman, it was much worse, as her meager resources for beauty had been called to attention at every turn.
Not so now, Wulfgar understood. If Deudermont held another of his many parties on this stay in port, then Delly Curtie would shine more beautifully than any woman there!
Wulfgar could hardly find his breath. He had always thought Delly comely, even pretty, and her beauty had only increased for him in their time on the road from Luskan, as he had come to appreciate the depth of the woman even more. Now, combining that honest respect and love with this physical image proved too much for the barbarian who had spent the last three months at sea.
He fell over her with a great, crushing hug, interrupting her words with kiss after kiss, lifting her with ease right from the ground and burying his face in that mane of brown hair, biting gently at her delicate - and now it seemed delicate and not just skinny - neck. How tiny Delly seemed in his arms, for Wulfgar stood a foot and a half taller than her and was nearly thrice her body weight.
With hardly an effort, Wulfgar scooped her more comfortably into his arms, spinning her to the side and sliding one arm under her knees.
He laughed, then, when he noted that she was barefoot, and even her feet looked prettier to him.
"Are ye making fun o' me?" Delly asked, and Wulfgar noted that her peasant accent seemed less than he remembered, with the woman articulating the "g" on the end of the word "making."
"Making fun of you?" Wulfgar asked, and he laughed again, all the louder. "I am making love to you," he corrected, and he kissed her again, then launched into a spinning dance, swinging her all about as he headed for the door of their private room.
They almost got past the threshold before Colson started crying.
The two did find some time alone together later that night, and made love again before the dawn. As the first slanted rays of morning shone through the eastern window of their room, Wulfgar lay on his side beside his lover, his hand gently tracing about her neck, face, and shoulders.
"Sure that it's good to have ye home," Delly said quietly, and she brought her small hand up to rub Wulfgar's muscular forearm. "Been a lonely time with ye out."
"Perhaps my days out with Deudermont are at their end," Wulfgar replied.
Delly looked at him curiously. "Did ye find yer hammer, then?" she asked. "And if ye did, then why'd ye wait for telling me?"
Wulfgar was shaking his head before she ever finished. "No word of it or of Sheila Kree," he answered. "For all I know, the pirate went to the bottom of the sea and took Aegis-fang with her."
"But ye're not knowing that."
Wulfgar fell to his back and rubbed both his hands over his face.
"Then how can ye be saying ye're done with Deudermont?" Delly asked.
"How can I not?" Wulfgar asked. "With you here, and Colson? This is my life now, and a fine one it is! Am I to risk it all in pursuit of a weapon I no longer need? No, if Deudermont and his crew hear of Sheila Kree, they'll hunt her down without my help, and I hold great faith that they will return the war-hammer to me."
Now it was Delly's turn to come upon her elbows, the smooth sheets falling from her naked torso. She gave a frustrated shake to toss her tangled brown hair out of her face, then fixed Wulfgar with a glare of severe disapproval.
"What kind of a fool's words are spilling from yer mouth?" she asked.
"You would prefer that I leave?" Wulfgar asked, a bit of suspicion showing on his square-jawed face.
For so many years that face had held a boyish charm, an innocence that reflected in Wulfgar's sky blue eyes. No more, though. He had shaved all the stubble from his face before retiring with Delly, but somehow Wulfgar's face now seemed almost out of place without the blond beard. The lines and creases, physical manifestation of honest emotional turmoil, were not the markings of a young man, though Wulfgar was only in his twenties.
"And more the fool do ye sound now!" Delly scolded. "Ye know I'm not wanting ye to go - ye know it! And ye know that no others are sharing me bed.
"But ye must be going," Delly continued solemnly, and she fell back on the bed. "What's to haunt ye, then, if Deudermont and his crew go out without ye and find the pirate and some o' them die trying to get yer hammer back? How're ye to feel when they bring ye the hammer and the news, and all the while, ye been sitting here safe while they did yer work for ye?"
Wulfgar looked at Delly hard, studying her face and recognizing that she was indeed pained to be speaking to him so.
"Stupid Josi Puddles for stealing the damn hammer and selling it out to the pirate," the woman finished.
"Some could die," Wulfgar agreed. "Sheila Kree is known to be a fierce one, and by all accounts she has surrounded herself with a formidable crew. By your own reasoning, then, none of us, not Deudermont and not Wulfgar, should go out in search of her and Aegis-fang."
"Not me own reasoning at all," Delly argued. "Deudermont and his crew're choosing the road of pirate hunting - that's not yer doing. It's their calling, and they'd be going after Sheila Kree even if she'd ne'er taken yer hammer."
"Then we are back where we started," Wulfgar reasoned with a chuckle. "Let Deudermont and his fine crew go out and find the hammer if they - "
"Not so!" Delly interrupted angrily. "Their calling is to go and hunt the pirates, to be sure, and yer own is to be with them until they're finding yer hammer. Yers is to find yer hammer and yerself, to get back where ye once were."
Wulfgar settled back on the bed and ran his huge, callused hands over his face again. "Perhaps I do not wish to be back there."
"Perhaps ye don't," said Delly. "But that's not a choice for ye to make until ye do get back there. When ye've found out again who ye were, me love, only then will ye be able to tell yerself honestly where ye're wanting to go. Until ye get it to where all is for the taking, then ye'll always be wondering and wanting."
She went quiet then, and Wulfgar had no response. He sighed many times and started to repudiate her many times, but every avenue he tried to explore proved inevitably to be a dead end.
"When did Delly Curtie become so wise in the course of life?" a defeated Wulfgar asked a short while later.
Delly snickered and rolled to face him. "Might that I always been," she answered playfully. "Or might not be at all. I'm just telling ye what I'm thinking, and what I'm thinking is that ye got to get back to a certain place afore ye can climb higher. Ye need to be getting yerself back to where ye once were, and ye'll find the road ye most want to walk, and not just the road ye're thinking ye have to walk."
"I was back to that place," Wulfgar replied in all seriousness, and a cloud passed over his face. "I was with them in Icewind Dale again, as it had been before, and I left, of my own choice."
"Because of a better road calling?" Delly asked. "Or because ye weren't yet ready to be back? There's a bit o' difference there."
Wulfgar was out of answers, and he knew it. He wasn't sure that he agreed with Delly, but when the call from Deudermont and Sea Sprite came the next day, he answered it.