He had been nothing but a complaining fool over the last few days, and Deudermont had to know of his past, or at least to suspect that Dunkin had done some pirating in his day. Yet the captain was not treating him as a prisoner, and, by the words of the dark elf, they actually wanted him to go along to Caerwich.
Dunkin leaned over the rail, took note of a school of bottle-nosed dolphins dancing in the prow waves and lost himself in thought.
* * * * *
"You're thinking about them again," came a voice behind the sullen dwarf. It was the voice of Regis, the voice of a friend.
Bruenor didn't answer. He stood on a high spot along the rim of the dwarven valley, four miles south of Kelvin's Cairn, a place known as Bruenor's Climb. This was the dwarf king's place of reflection. Though this column of piled stones was not high above the flat tundra, barely fifty feet up, every time he climbed the steep and narrow trail it seemed to Bruenor as though he was ascending to the very stars.
Regis huffed and puffed as he clambered up the last twenty feet to stand beside his bearded friend. "I do love it up here at night," the halfling remarked. "But there will not be much night in another month!" he continued happily, trying to bring a smile to Bruenor's face. His observation was true enough. Far, far in the north, Icewind Dale's summer days were long indeed, but only a few hours of sun graced the winter sky.
"Not a lot o' time up here," Bruenor agreed. "Time I'm wantin' to spend alone." He turned to Regis as he spoke, and even in the darkness, the halfling could make out the scowling visage.
Regis knew the truth of that expression. Bruenor was more bark than bite.
"You would not be happy up here alone," the halfling countered. "You would think of Drizzt and Catti-brie, and miss them as much as I miss them, and then you would be a veritable growling yeti in the morning. I cannot have that, of course," the half-ling said, waggling a finger in the air. "In fact, a dozen dwarves begged me to come out here and keep up your cheer."
Bruenor huffed, but had no reasonable response. He turned away from Regis, mostly because he did not want the halfling to see the hint of a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. In the six years since Drizzt and Catti-brie had gone away, Regis had become Bruenor's closest friend, though a certain dwarven priestess named Stumpet Rakingclaw had been almost continually by Bruenor's side, particularly of late. Giggled whispers spoke of a closer bond growing between the dwarf king and the female.
But it was Regis who knew Bruenor best, Regis who had come out here when, Bruenor had to admit, he truly needed the company. Since the return to Icewind Dale, Drizzt and Catti-brie had been on the old dwarfs mind almost continually. The only things that had saved Bruenor from falling into a deep depression had been the sheer volume of work in trying to reopen the dwarven mines, and Regis, always there, always smiling, always assuring Bruenor that Drizzt and Catti-brie would return to him.
"Where do you think they are?" Regis asked after a long moment of silence.
Bruenor smiled and shrugged, looking to the south and west, and not at the halfling. "Out there," was all that he replied.
"Out there," Regis echoed. "Drizzt and Catti-brie. And you miss them, as do I." The halfling moved closer, put a hand on Bruenor's muscled shoulder. "And I know that you miss the cat," Regis said, once again drawing the dwarf from dark thoughts.
Bruenor looked at him and couldn't help but grin. The mention of Guenhwyvar reminded Bruenor not only of all the conflict between himself and the panther, but also that Drizzt and Catti-brie, his two dear friends, were not alone and were more than able to take care of themselves.
The dwarf and halfling stood for a long time that night, in silence, listening to the endless wind that gave the dale its name and feeling as though they were among the stars.
*****
The gathering of supplies went well at Wyngate and the Sea Sprite, fully provisioned and fully repaired, put out and soon left the Moonshaes far behind.
The winds diminished greatly, though, just a day off the western coast of the Moonshaes. They were out in the open ocean with no land in sight.
The schooner could not be completely calmed, not with Robillard aboard. But still, the wizard's powers were limited; he could not keep the sails full of wind for very long, and settled for a continual fluttering that moved the ship along slowly.
Thus the days passed, uneventful and hot, the Sea Sprite rolling in the ocean swells, creaking and swaying. Deudermont ordered strict rationing three days out of Wyngate, as much to slow the rising incidents of seasickness as to preserve the food stores. At least the crew wasn't worried about pirates. Few other ships came out this far, certainly no cargo or merchant vessels, nothing lucrative enough to keep a pirate happy.
The only enemies were the seasickness, the sunburn, and the boredom of days and days of nothing but the flat water.
They found some excitement on the fifth day out. Drizzt, on the forward beam, spotted a tail fin, the dorsal fin of a huge shark, running parallel to the schooner. The drow yelled up to Waillan, who was in the crow's nest at the time.
"Twenty footer!" the young man called back down, for from his high vantage point, he could make out the shadow of the great fish.
All of the crew came on deck, yelling excitedly, taking up harpoons. Any thoughts they might have had of spearing the fish dissolved into understandable fear, though, as Waillan continued to call down numbers, as they all came to realize that the shark was not alone. The counts varied-many of the dorsal fins were hard to spot amidst the suddenly churning water-but Waillan's estimate, undoubtedly the most accurate, put the school at several hundred.
Several hundred! And many of them were nearly as large as the one Drizzt had spotted. Words of excitement were fast replaced by prayers.
The shark school stayed with the Sea Sprite throughout the day and night. Deudermont figured that the sharks did not know what to make of the vessel, and though no one spoke the words, all were thinking along the same lines, hoping that the voracious fish didn't mistake the Sea Sprite for a running whale.
The next morning, the sharks were gone, as suddenly and inexplicably as they had come. Drizzt spent the better part of the morning walking the rails of the ship, even climbing up the mainmast to the crow's nest a few times. The sharks were gone, just gone.
"They're not answering to us," Catti-brie remarked late that morning, meeting Drizzt as he came down the mast from one of his skyward jaunts. "Never that. Suren they're moving in ways they know, but we cannot."
It struck Drizzt as a simple truth, a plain reminder of how unknown the world about him really was, even to those, like Deudermont, who had spent the bulk of their lives on the sea. This watery world, and the great creatures that inhabited it, moved to rhythms that he could never truly understand. That realization, along with the fact that the horizon from every angle was nothing but flat water, reminded Drizzt of how small they really were, of how overwhelming nature could be.
For all his training, for all his fine weapons, for all his warrior heart, the ranger was a tiny thing, a mere speck on a blue-green tapestry.
Drizzt found that notion unsettling and comforting all at once. He was a small thing, an insignificant thing, a single swallow to the fish that had easily paced the Sea Sprite. And yet, he was a part of something much bigger, a single tile on a mosaic much huger than his imagination could even comprehend.