The Spine of the World

Chapter 22 GOOD LORD BRANDEBURG

 
"I hate wizards," Morik muttered, crawling out of the rubble of the slide, a dozen cuts and bruises decorating his body. "Not really a fair fight. I must learn this spellcasting business!"
The rogue spent a long while surveying the area, but of course, Wulfgar was nowhere to be found. The wizard's choice in taking Wulfgar seemed a bit odd to Morik. Likely the man thought Wulfgar the more dangerous of the two foes, probably the leader. But it had been Morik, and surely not Wulfgar, who had made an attempt at the lady in the carriage. Wulfgar was the one who had insisted that they let her go, and quickly enough to save the wounded driver. Obviously, the wizard had not come well informed.
Now where was Morik to turn? He went back to the cave first, tending his wounds and collecting the supplies he would need for the road. He didn't want to stay here, not with an angry band of goblins nearby and Wulfgar gone from his side. But where to go?
The choice seemed obvious after but a moment's serious thought-back to Luskan. Morik had always known he would venture back to the streets he knew so well. He'd concoct a new identity as far as most were concerned, but he'd remain very much the same intimidating rogue to those whose alliance he needed. The snag in his plans thus far had been Wulfgar. Morik couldn't walk into Luskan with the huge barbarian beside him and hope to maintain secrecy for any length of time.
Of course, there was also the not-so-little matter of dark elves.
Even that potential problem didn't hold up, though, for Morik had done his best to remain with Wulfgar, as he had been instructed. Now Wulfgar was gone, and the way was left open. Morik took the first steps out of the Spine of the World, heading back for the place he knew so well.
But something very strange happened just then to Morik's sensibilities. The rogue found himself taking two steps westward for every one south. It was no trick of the wizard but a spell cast by his own conscience, a spell of memory that whispered the demands Wulfgar had placed on Captain Deudermont at Prisoner's Carnival that Morik, too, must be set free. Bound by friendship for the first time in his miserable life, Morik the Rogue was soon trotting along the road, sorting out his plan.
He camped on the side of a mountain that night and spotted the campfire of a group of circled wagons. He wasn't far from the main northern pass. The wagons had come from Ten-Towns, no doubt, and were on the road to the south, thus wouldn't go anywhere near to the fiefdom in the west. It was unlikely these merchants had even heard of the place.
"Greetings!" Morik called to the lone sentry later that night.
"Stand fast!" the man called back. Behind him, the others scrambled.
"I am no enemy," Morik explained. "I'm a wayward adventurer separated from my group, wounded a bit, but more angry than hurt."
After a short discussion, which Morik could not hear, another voice announced that he could approach, but it warned that a dozen archers were trained on his heart and he would be wise to keep his palms showing empty.
Wanting no part of a fight, Morik did just that, walking through twin lines of armed men into the firelight to stand before two middle-aged merchants, one a great bear of a man, the other leaner, but still quite sturdy.
"I am Lord Brandeburg of Waterdeep," Morik began, "returning to Ten-Towns, to Maer Dualdon, where I hope to find some remaining sport fishing for knucklehead. Fun business that!"
"You are a long way from anywhere, Lord Brandeburg," the heavier merchant replied.
"Late in the year to be out on Maer Dualdon," the other replied, suspicious.
"Yet that is where I am going, if I find my playful, wandering friends," Morik replied with a laugh. "Perchance have you seen them? A dwarf, Bruenor Battlehammer by name, his human daughter Catti-brie-oh, but the sun itself bows before her beauty!-a rather fat halfling, and . . ." Morik hesitated and appeared somewhat nervous suddenly, though the smiles of recognition on the faces of the merchants were exactly what he had hoped to see.
"And a dark elf," the heavy man finished for him. "Go ahead and speak openly of Drizzt Do'Urden, Lord Brandeburg. Well known, he is, and no enemy of any merchant crossing into the dale."
Morik sighed with feigned relief and silently thanked Wulfgar for telling him so much of his former friends during their drinking binges over the last few days.
"Well met, I say to you," the heavy man continued. "I am Petters, and my associate Goodman Dawinkle." On a motion from Petters, the guards behind Morik relaxed, and the trio settled into seats around the fire, where Morik was handed a bowl of thick stew.
"Back to Icewind Dale, you say?" Dawinkle asked. "How have you lost that group? No trouble, I pray."
"More a game," Morik answered. "I joined them many miles to the south, and perhaps in my ignorance I got a little forward with Catti-brie." Both merchants scowled darkly "Nothing serious, I assure you," Morik quickly added. "I was unaware that her heart was for another, an absent friend, nor did I realize that grumbling Bruenor was her father. I merely requested a social exchange, but that, I fear was enough to make Bruenor wish to pay me back."
The merchants and guards laughed now. They had heard of surly and overprotective Bruenor Battlehammer, as had anyone who spent time in Icewind Dale.
"I fear that I bragged of some tracking, some ranger skills," Morik continued, "and so Bruenor decided to test me. They took my horse, my fine clothes, and disappeared from the road-so well into the brush, led by Drizzt, that one not understanding the dark elf's skills would think they had magical aid." The merchants bobbed their heads, laughing still.
"So now I must find them, though I know they are already nearing Icewind Dale." He chuckled at himself. "I'm sure they'll laugh when I arrive on foot, wearing soiled and tattered clothing."
"You look as if you've had a fight," Dawinkle remarked, noticing the signs of the landslide and the goblin battle.
"A row with a few goblins and a single ogre, nothing serious," the rogue replied nonchallantly. The men raised their eyebrows, but not in doubt-never that for someone who had traveled with those powerful companions. Morik's charm and skill was such that he understood how to weave tales beneath tales beneath tales, that the basic premise became quickly accepted as fact.
"You are welcome to spend the night, good sir," merchant Petters offered, "or as many nights as you choose. We are returning to Luskan, though, the opposite direction from your intended path."
"I will accept the bed this night," Morik replied, "and perhaps . . ." He let the words hang in the air, bringing his fingers to his lips in a pensive pose.
Both Petters and Dawinkle leaned forward in anticipation.
"Would you know where I might purchase a horse, a fine riding horse?" Morik asked. "Perhaps a fine set of clothing as well. My friends have left the easy road, and so I might still beat them to Ten-Towns. What wondrous expressions I might paint on their faces when they enter Lonelywood to find me waiting and looking grand, indeed."
The men about him howled.
"Why, we have both, horse and clothing," Petters roared, sliding over to slap Morik on the shoulder, which made him wince because he had been battered there by rocks. "A fine price we shall offer to Lord Brandeburg!"
They ate, they exchanged stories, and they laughed. By the time he finished with the group, Morik had procured their strongest riding horse and a wondrous set of clothing, two-toned green of the finest material with gold brocade, for a mere pittance, a fraction of the cost in any shop in Luskan.
He stayed with them through the night but left at first light, riding north and singing a song of adventure. When the caravan was out of sight he turned to the west and charged on, thinking that he should further alter his appearance before he, Lord Brandeburg of Waterdeep, arrived in the small fiefdom.
He hoped the wizard wouldn't be around. Morik hated wizards.
*****
Errtu found him. There, in the darkness of his dungeon cell, Wulfgar could not escape the haunting memories, the emotional agony, twisted into his very being by the years of torment at the clawed hands of Errtu and his demonic minions.
The demon found him once again and held him, taunted him with alluring mistresses to tempt and destroy him, to destroy, too, the fruit of his seed.
He saw it all again so vividly, the demon standing before him, the babe-Wulfgar's child-in its powerful arms. He had been revulsed at the thought that he had sired such a creature, an alu-demon, but he remembered, too, his recognition of that child-innocent child?-as his own.
Errtu had opened wide his drooling maw, showing those awful canine teeth. The demon's face moved lower, pointed teeth hovering an inch above the head of Wulfgar's child, jaws wide enough to fit the babe's head inside. Errtu moved lower . . .
Wulfgar felt the succubi fingers tickling his body, and he woke with a start. He screamed, kicked, and batted, slapping away several spiders but taking bites from more. The barbarian scrambled to his feet and ran full out in the pitch darkness of his cell, nearly knocking himself unconscious as ho barreled into the unyielding door.
He fell back to the dirt floor, sobbing, face buried in his hands, full of anger and frustration. Then he understood what had so startled him from his nightmare-filled sleep, for he heard footsteps out in the corridor. When he looked up he saw the flickers of a torch approaching his door.
Wulfgar moved back and sat up straight, trying to regain some measure of his dignity. He recalled that doomed men were often granted one last request. His would be a bottle of potent drink, a fiery liquid that would burn those memories from his mind for the last time.
The light appeared right outside his cell, and Lord Feringal's face stared in at him. "Are you prepared to admit your crime, dog?" he asked.
Wulfgar stared at him for a long, long moment.
"Very well, then," the unshaken lord continued. "You have been identified by my trusted driver, so by law I need only tell you your crime and punishment."
Still no response.
"For the robbery on the road, I shall take your hands," Lord Feringal explained matter-of-factly. "One at a time and slowly. For your worse crime-" He hesitated, and it seemed to Wulfgar, even in that meager light, as if the man was suddenly pained.
"My lord," prompted old Temigast behind him.
"For your worse crime," Lord Feringal began again, his voice was stronger, "for the ravishing of Lady Meralda you shall be publicly castrated, then chained for public spectacle for one day. And then, dog Wulfgar, you shall be burned at the stake."
Wulfgar's face screwed up incredulously at the reading of the last crime. He had saved the woman from such a fate! He wanted to yell that in Lord Feringal's face, to scream at the man and tear the door from its fitting. He wanted to do all of that, and yet, he did nothing, just sat there quietly, accepting the injustice.
Or was it injustice? Wulfgar asked himself. Did he not deserve such a fate? Did it even matter?
That was it, Wulfgar decided. It mattered to him not at all. He would find freedom in death. Let Lord Feringal kill him and be done with it, doing them both a favor. The woman had falsely accused him, and he could not understand why, but . . . no matter.
"Have you nothing to say?" Lord Feringal demanded.
"Will you grant a final request?"
The young man trembled visibly at the absurd notion. "I would give you nothing!" he screamed. "Nothing more than a night, hungry and wretched, to consider your horrid fate."
"My lord," Temigast said again to calm him. "Guard, lead Lord Feringal back to his chambers." The young man scowled one last time at Wulfgar through the opening in the door, then let himself be led away.
Temigast stayed, though, taking one of the torches and waving the remaining guards away. He stood at the cell door for a long while, staring at Wulfgar.
"Go away, old man," the barbarian said.
"You did not deny the last charge," Temigast said, "though you protested your innocence to me."
Wulfgar shrugged, but said nothing and did not meet the man's gaze. "What would be the point of repeating myself? You've already condemned me."
"You did not deny the rape," Temigast stated again.
Wulfgar's head swung up to return Temigast's stare. "Nor did you speak up for me," he replied.
Temigast looked at him as if slapped. "Nor shall I."
"So you would let an innocent man die."
Temigast snorted aloud. "Innocent?" he declared. "You are a thief and a dog, and I'll do nothing against Lady Meralda, nor against Lord Feringal, for your miserable sake."
Wulfgar laughed at him, at the ridiculousness of it all.
"But I offer you this," Temigast went on. "Say not a word against Lady Meralda, and I will ensure that your death will be quick. That is the best I can offer."
Wulfgar stopped laughing and stared hard at the complicated steward.
"Or else," Temigast warned, "I promise to drag the spectacle of your torture out for the length of a day and more, shall make you beg for your death a thousand thousand times before setting you free of the agony."
"Of the agony?" Wulfgar echoed hollowly. "Old man, you know nothing of agony."
"We shall see," Temigast growled, and he turned away, leaving Wulfgar along in the dark . . . until Errtu returned to him, as the demon always did.
*****
Morik rode as fast as his horse would take him, for as long as the poor beast would last. He crossed along the same road where he and Wulfgar had encountered the carriage, past the same spot where Wulfgar had overturned the thing.
He came into Auckney late one afternoon to the stares of many peasants. "Pray tell me the name of your lord, good sir," he called to one, accentuating his request with a tossed gold piece.
"Lord Feringal Auck," the man supplied quickly. "He lives with his new bride in Castle Auck, there," he finished, pointing a gnarly finger toward the coast.
"Many thanks!" Morik bowed his head, tossed another couple of silver coins, then kicked his horse's flanks, trotting down the last few hundred yards of road to the small bridge leading to Castle Auck. He found the gate open with a pair of bored-looking guards standing to either side.
"I am Lord Brandeburg of Waterdeep," he said to them, bringing his steed to a stop. "Pray announce me to your lord, for I've a long road behind me and a longer one ahead."
With that, the rogue dismounted and brushed off his fine pantaloons, going so far as to draw his slender sword from his belt, wiping clean the blade as he brought it forth, then launching into a sudden, dazzling display of swordsmanship before replacing it on his hip. He had impressed them, he realized, as one ran off for the castle and the other moved to tend his horse.
Within the span of a few minutes, Morik, Lord Brandeburg, stood before Lord Feringal in the audience hall of Castle Auck, He dipped a low bow and introduced himself as a traveler who had lost his companions to a band of giants in the Spine of the World. He could see from Feringal's eyes that the minor nobleman was thrilled and proud to be visited by a lord of the great city of Waterdeep and would drop his guard in his efforts to please.
"I believe that one or two of my friends escaped," Morik finished his tale, "though on my word not a giant can say the same."
"How far away was this?" asked Lord Feringal. The man seemed somewhat distracted, but Morik's tale obviously alarmed him.
"Many miles, my lord," Morik supplied, "and no threat to your quiet kingdom. As I said, the giants are all dead." He looked around and smiled. "A pity it would be for such monsters to descend on such a quiet and safe place as this."
Lord Feringal took the bait. "Not so quiet, and not so safe," he growled through clenched teeth.
"Danger, here?" he said incredulously. "Pirates, perhaps?" Morik appeared surprised and looked to the old steward standing beside the throne. The man shook his head imperceptively, which Morik took to mean he should not press the issue, but that was exactly the point.
"Highwaymen," Lord Feringal snarled.
Morik started to respond but held his tongue, and his breath, as a woman whom Morik surely recognized entered the room.
"My wife," Lord Feringal introduced her distractedly. "Lady Meralda Auck."
Morik bowed low, took her hand in his, and lifted it to his lips, pointedly staring her right in the eyes as he did. To his ultimate relief, and pride at his own clever disguise, he detected no flicker of recognition there.
"A most beautiful wife," Morik stated. "You have my envy, Lord Feringal."
That brought a smile at last to Feringal's face, but it quickly turned into a frown. "My wife was in the coach attacked by these highwaymen."
Morik gasped. "I would find them, Lord Feringal," he saw "Find them and slay them on the road. Or bring them back to you, if you would prefer."
Lord Feringal waved his hands, quieting the man. "I have the one I desire," he said. "The other was buried under a rock-slide."
Morik's lips pursed at the painful thought. "A fitting fate," he said.
"More fitting is the fate I have planned for the captured barbarian," Feringal grimly replied. "A most horrible death, I assure you. You may witness it if you will stay in Auckney for the night."
"Of course, I shall," Morik said. "What have you planned for the scoundrel?"
"First, castration," Lord Feringal explained. "The barbarian will be killed properly two mornings hence."
Morik assumed a pensive pose. "A barbarian, you say?"
"A huge northerner, yes," Feringal replied.
"Strong of arm?"
"As strong as any man I have ever seen," the lord of Auckney replied. "It took a powerful wizard to bring him to justice, and even that man would have fallen to him had not my guards surrounded him and beat him down."
Morik almost choked over the mention of the wizard, but he held his calm.
"Killing a highwayman is surely an appropriate ending," Morik said, "but perhaps you would be better served in another manner." He waited, watching carefully as Lord Feringal eyed him closely.
"Perhaps I might purchase the man," Morik explained. "I am a man of no small means, I assure you, and could surely use a strong slave at my side as I begin the search for my missing companions."
"Not a chance," Feringal replied rather sharply.
"But if he is familiar with these parts . . ." Morik started to reason.
"He is going to die horribly for the harm he brought to my wife," Lord Feringal retorted.
"Ah, yes, my lord," Morik said. "The incident has distressed her."
"The incident has left her with child!" Feringal yelled, grabbing the arms of his chair so forcefully that his knuckles whitened.
"My lord!" the steward cried at the unwise announcement, and Meralda gasped. Morik was glad for their shock, as it covered his own.
Lord Feringal calmed quickly, forcing himself back into his seat and mumbling an apology to Meralda. "Lord Brandeburg, I beg your forgiveness," he said. "You understand my anger."
"I will castrate the dog for you," Morik replied, drawing forth his sword. "I assure you that I am skilled at such arts."
That broke the tension in the room somewhat. Even Lord Feringal managed a smile. "We will take care of the unpleasantries," he replied, "but I would, indeed, enjoy your company at the execution of sentence. Will you stay as my guest for the two days?"
Morik bowed very low. "I am at your service, my lord."
Soon after, Morik was brought to an inn just beyond the castle bridge. He wasn't thrilled to learn that Lord Feringal kept guests outside the castle walls. That would make it all the harder for him to get near Wulfgar. He did learn from the escort, though, that Wulfgar was being kept in a dungeon beneath the castle.
Morik had to get to his friend, and fast, for, given the false accusations placed against Wulfgar, Lord Feringal would surely and horribly kill the man. A daring rescue had never been a part of Morik's plan. Many thieves were sold to adventuring lords, and so he had hoped Lord Feringal would part with this one for a handsome sum-and the lord's own gold, at that-but rapists, particularly men who ravished noblewomen, found only one, horrible fate.
Morik stared out the window of his small room, looking to Castle Auck and the dark waters beyond. He would try to find some way to get to Wulfgar, but he feared he would be returning to Luskan alone.