“Are you not being too anxious to make your coveted mark, my young friend?”

“Or am I offering you the opportunity to truly finish that which you started so many years ago?” Brambleberry countered. “To deal a blow such as this would ensure that all of your efforts these years were far more than a temporary alleviation of misery for the merchants sailing the Sword Coast.”

Captain Deudermont sat back in his chair and lifted his glass before him to drink. He paused, though, seeing the flickering fire in the hearth twisting through the facets of the crystal.

He couldn’t deny the sense of challenge, and the hope of true accomplishment.

CHAPTER 4

FISHING FOR MEMORIES

I t was a prime example of the good that can come through cooperation,” Drizzt remarked, and his smirk told Regis that he was making the lofty statement more to irk Bruenor than to make any profound philosophical point.

“Bah, I had to choose between orcs and demons…”

“Devils,” the halfling corrected and Bruenor glared at him.

“Between orcs and devils,” the dwarf king conceded. “I picked the ones what smelled better.”

“You were bound to do so,” Regis dared say, and it was his turn to toss a clever wink Drizzt’s way.

“Bah, the Nine Hells I was!”

“Shall I retrieve the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge that we might review the responsibilities of the signatories?” Drizzt asked.

“Yerself winks at him and I put me fist into yer eye, then I toss Rumblebelly down the hallway,” Bruenor warned.

“You cannot blame them for being surprised that King Bruenor would go to the aid of an orc,” came a voice from the door, and the three turned as one to watch Catti-brie enter the room.

“Don’t ye join them,” Bruenor warned.

Catti-brie bowed with respect. “Fear not,” she said. “I’ve come for my husband, that he can see me on my way.”

“Back to Silverymoon for more lessons with Alustriel?” Regis asked.

“Beyond that,” Drizzt answered for her as he walked across to take her arm. “Lady Alustriel has promised Catti-brie a journey that will span half the continent and several planes of existence.” He looked at his wife and smiled with obvious envy.

“And how long’s that to take?” Bruenor demanded. He had made it no secret to Catti-brie that her prolonged absences from Mithral Hall had created extra work for him, though in truth, the woman and everyone else who had heard the dwarf’s grumbling had understood it to be his way of admitting that he sorely missed Catti-brie without actually saying the words.

“She gets to escape another Mithral Hall winter,” Regis said. “Have you room for a short but stout companion?”

“Only if she turns you into a toad,” Drizzt answered and led Catti-brie away.

Later that same day, Regis walked outside of Mithral Hall to the banks of the River Surbrin. His remark about winter had reminded him that the unfriendly season was not so far away, and indeed, though the day was glorious, the wind swept down from the north, blustery and cold, and the leaves on the many trees across the river were beginning to show the colors of autumn.

Something in the air that day, the wind or the smell of the changing season, reminded Regis of his old home in Icewind Dale. He had more to call his own in Mithral Hall, and security—for where could be safer than inside the dwarven hall? — but the things he’d gained did little to alleviate the halfling’s sense of loss for what had been. He had known a good life in Icewind Dale. He’d spent his days fishing for knucklehead trout from the banks of Maer Dualdon. The lake had given him all he needed and more, with water and food—he knew a hundred good recipes for cooking the delicious fish. And few could carve their skulls more wonderfully than Regis. His trinkets, statues, and paperweights had earned him a fine reputation among the local merchants.

Best of all, of course, was the fact that his “work” consisted mostly of lying on the banks of the lake, a fishing line tied to his toe.

With that in mind, Regis spent a long time walking along the riverbank, north of the bridge, in search of the perfect spot. He finally settled on a small patch of grass, somewhat sheltered from the north wind by a rounded gray stone, but one not high enough to shade him at all. He took great care in getting his line out to just the right spot, a quieter pool around the edge of a stony jut in the dark water. He used a heavy weight, but even that wouldn’t hold if he put the line into the main flow of the river; the strong currents would wash it far downstream.

He waited a few moments, and confident that his location would hold steady, he removed a shoe, looped the line around his big toe, and dropped his pack to use as a pillow. He had barely settled down and closed his eyes when a noise from the north startled him.

He recognized the source before he even sat up to look beyond the rounded stone.

Orcs.

Several young ones had gathered at the water’s edge. They argued noisily—why were orcs always so boisterous? — about fishing lines and fishing nets and where to cast and how to cast.

Regis almost laughed aloud at himself for his bubbling annoyance, for he understood his anger even as he felt it. They were orcs, and so he was angry. They were orcs, and so he was impatient. They were orcs, and so his first reaction had to be negative.

Old feelings died hard.

Regis thought back to another time and another place, recalling when a group of boys and girls had begun a noisy splash fight not far from where he had cast his line in Maer Dualdon. Regis had scolded them that day, but only briefly.

As he thought of it, he couldn’t help grin, remembering how he had then spent a wonderful afternoon showing those youngsters how to fish, how to play a hooked knucklehead, and how to skin a catch. Indeed, that long-ago night, the group of youngsters had arrived at Regis’s front door, at his invitation, to see some of his carvings and to enjoy a meal of trout prepared only as Regis knew how.

Among so many uneventful days on the banks of Maer Dualdon, that one stood out in Regis’s memory.

He considered the noisy orc youngsters again, and laughed as he watched them try to throw a net—and wind up netting one young orc girl instead.

He almost got up, thinking to go and offer lessons as he had on that long ago day in Icewind Dale. But he stopped when he noticed the boundary marker between his spot and the orcs. Where the mountain spilled down to the Surbrin marked the end of Mithral Hall and the beginning of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, and across that line, Regis could not go.

The orcs noticed him, then, just as he scowled. He lifted a hand to wave, and they did likewise, though more than a little tentatively.

Regis settled back behind the stone, not wanting to upset the group. One day, he thought, he might be able to go up there and show them how to throw a net or cast a line. One day soon, perhaps, given the relative peace of the past four years and the recent cooperative ambush that had destroyed a potential threat to the Silver Marches.

Or maybe he would one day wage war against those very orc youngsters, kill one with his mace or be taken in the gut by another’s spear. He could picture Drizzt dancing through that group then and there, his scimitars striking with brilliant precision, leaving the lot of them squirming and bleeding on the rocks.

A shudder coursed the halfling’s spine, and he shook away those dark thoughts.

They were building something there, Regis had to believe. Despite Bruenor’s stubbornness and Obould’s heritage, the uneasy truce had already become an accepted if still uneasy peace, and it was Regis’s greatest hope that every day that passed without incident made the prospect of another dwarf-orc war a bit more remote.