The Companions: The Legend of Drizzt by R. A. Salvatore

Author:R. A. Salvatore [Salvatore, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786964352
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2013-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

DISMAYED GLORY

The Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR) Citadel Felbarr

BRUENOR’S HEAVY EYELIDS EASED OPEN, LEAVING A FUZZY GRAYNESS WHERE before there had been only darkness. Gradually, painfully, the air around began to take shape, images coming into view in the low firelight, including two wide-eyed faces leaning in close, looking back at him intently.

Bruenor noted an older dwarf male and a younger female, both dressed as clerics. The names Parson and Mandarina hovered around his thoughts, just out of reach. The two continued to study him, their expressions shifting from surprise to concern to, finally, relief and joy.

“Blessed by Moradin,” said the woman, and she bent low and kissed young Reginald Roundshield on the cheek. “I’d thought we’d lost ye.”

The other dwarf nodded his agreement. “And she’s been with ye since yer fall,” he explained to the dizzy and dazed dwarf lying on the cot in Citadel Felbarr. “Ain’t left yer side for a moment, that one.”

“Arr Arr saved us all out there, don’t ye doubt,” said the woman—yes, it was Mandarina Dobberbright. “What a sorry and ungrateful friend meself’d be if I left him with healing to be done!”

The other, Parson Glaive, nodded again. “Aye, but I thought ye’d be meetin’ yer father, me young friend.”

“Bangor?” the confused Bruenor whispered under his breath, his lips sticking together with dryness.

“Eh, what’s that then?” asked Parson Glaive, leaning forward.

Only then did Bruenor’s sensibilities begin to return to the present. He considered what the female cleric had called him, “Arr Arr,” and remembered then that he was not King Bruenor, son of Bangor, anymore.

At least, not yet.

That last thought bounced around in his head for a little while, slowly replaced by the returning details of the battle in the mountains, particularly those last few desperate moments when all had seemed lost in the shadow of a towering mountain giant.

“Been days,” Parson Glaive went on when no answer seemed forthcoming from the patient. “And Mandarina’s been at yer side the whole time, all the way back from the mountains.”

“The others?” Bruenor managed to whisper more audibly.

“Ye won the day,” Mandarina said, though it didn’t seem to Bruenor as if she was doing so in response to his question. “When that durned giant tumbled down, how the ground shook! And how them orcs turned tail and run away! Bwahaha, but ye should’ve seen ’em, I tell ye, fallin’ all over each other and screeching every step. And Ragged Dain, he weren’t about to let ’em go, but chased them a mile an’ more, choppin’ and kickin’ and bitin’ all the way!”

“Ognun Leatherbelt’s talked to King Emerus about ye,” Parson Glaive added. “Ye get yer rest, I tell ye, because ye’ve a party waitin’ in yer honor.”

Bruenor, still trying to sort out the fight—he remembered throwing his axe and charging the giant, but what he recalled most of all was the explosive pain in his gut—tried to prop himself up on his elbows.

He realized immediately that that was a bad idea.

Waves of agony laid him low, replaced only gradually by waves of nausea.

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