"The same," Stumpet answered.
"Yerself can call me prince," Bruenor said to Berkthgar, who huffed and looked away.
"Thus you have returned to Icewind Dale," Revjak intervened, before the discussion could turn ugly. It seemed to the barbarian leader that Bruenor did not appreciate the level of antipathy Berkthgar had cultivated for the dwarves-either that, or Bruenor simply didn't care. "You're here to visit?"
"To stay," Bruenor corrected. "The mines are being opened as we sit here talkin'. Cleaning out the things that've crawled in and fixing the supports. We'll be taking ore in a week and hammering out goods the day after that."
Revjak nodded. "Then this is a visit for purposes of business," he reasoned.
"And for friendship," Bruenor was quick to reply. "Better if the two go together, I say."
"Agreed," Revjak said. He looked up to notice that Berkthgar was chewing hard on his lip. "And I trust that your clan will be fair with its prices for goods that we need."
"We've got the metal, ye've got the skins and the meat," Bruenor answered.
"You have nothing that we need," Berkthgar interjected suddenly and vehemently. Bruenor, smirking, looked up at him. After returning the look for just a moment, Berkthgar looked directly to Revjak. "We need nothing from the dwarves," the warrior stated. "All that we need is provided by the tundra."
"Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Yer stone speartips bounce off good mail!"
"Reindeer wear no mail," Berkthgar replied dryly. "And if we come to war with Ten-Towns and the allies of Ten-Towns, our strength will put the stone tips through anything a dwarf can forge."
Bruenor sat up straight and both Revjak and Stumpet tensed, fearing that the fiery red-bearded dwarf would pounce upon Berkthgar for such an open threat.
Bruenor was older and wiser than that, though, and he looked instead to Revjak. "Who's speaking for the tribe?" the dwarf asked.
"I am," Revjak stated firmly, looking directly at Berkthgar.
Berkthgar didn't blink. "Where is Aegis-fang?" the giant man asked.
There it was, Bruenor thought, the point of it all, the source of the argument from the very beginning. Aegis-fang, the mighty warhammer forged by Bruenor himself as a gift to Wulfgar, the barbarian lad who had become as his son.
"Did you leave it in Mithril Hall?" Berkthgar pressed, and it seemed to Bruenor that the warrior hoped the answer would be yes. "Is it hanging useless as an ornament on a wall?"
Stumpet understood what was going on here. She and Bruenor had discussed this very point before they had set out on the return to Icewind Dale. Berkthgar would have preferred it if they had left Aegis-fang in Mithril Hall, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Icewind Dale. So far away, the weapon would not have cast its shadow over him and his own great sword,
Bankenfuere, the Northern Fury. Bruenor would hear nothing of such a course, though. Aegis-fang was his greatest accomplishment, the pinnacle of his respectable career as a weaponsmith, and even more importantly, it was his only link to his lost son. Where Bruenor went, Aegis-fang went, and Berkthgar's feelings be damned!
Bruenor hedged for a moment on the question, as if he was trying to figure out the best tactical course. Stumpet was not so ambivalent. "The hammer's in the mines," she said determinedly. "Bringed by Bruenor, who made it."
Berkthgar's scowl deepened and Stumpet promptly attacked.
"Ye just said the dale'll give ye all ye're needin'," the priestess howled. "Why're ye caring for a dwarf-made hammer, then?"
The giant barbarian didn't reply, but it seemed to both Bruenor and Revjak as if Stumpet was gaining the upper hand here.
"Of course that own sword ye wear strapped to yer back was not made in the dale," she remarked. "Ye got it in trade, and it, too, was probably made by dwarves!"
Berkthgar laughed at her, but there was no mirth in Revjak's tent, for his laugh seemed more of threat than of mirth.
"Who are these dwarves who call themselves our friends?" Berkthgar asked. "And yet they will not give over to the tribe a weapon made legendary by one of the tribe."
"Yer talk is getting old," Bruenor warned.
"And you are getting old, dwarf," Berkthgar retorted. "You should not have returned." With that, Berkthgar stormed from the tent.
"Ye should be watchin' that one," Bruenor said to Revjak.
The barbarian leader nodded. "Berkthgar has been caught in a web spun of his own words," he replied. "And so have many others, mostly the young warriors."
"Always full o' fight," Bruenor remarked.
Revjak smiled and did not disagree. Berkthgar was indeed one to be watched, but in truth, there was little Revjak could do. If Berkthgar wanted to split the tribe, enough would agree and follow him so that Revjak could not stop him. And even worse, if Berkthgar demanded the Right of Challenge for the leadership of the united tribe, he would have enough support so that Revjak would find it difficult to refuse.
Revjak was too old to fight Berkthgar. He had thought the
ways of the barbarians of Icewind Dale changed when Wulfgar had united the tribes. That is why he had accepted the offered position as leader when Wulfgar had left, though in the past such a title could be earned only by inheritance or by combat, by deed or by blood.
Old ways died hard, Revjak realized, staring at the tent flap through which Berkthgar had departed. Many in the tribe, especially those who had returned from Mithril Hall, and even a growing number of those who had remained with Revjak waxed nostalgic for the freer, wilder days gone by. Revjak often happened upon conversations where older men retold tales of the great wars, the unified attack upon Ten-Towns, wherein Wulfgar was captured by Bruenor.
Their nostalgia was misplaced, Revjak knew. In the unified attack upon Ten-Towns, the warriors had been so completely slaughtered that the tribes had barely survived the ensuing winter. Still, the stories of war were always full of glory and excitement, and never words of tragedy. With the excitement of Berkthgar's return along with the return of Bruenor and the dwarves, many remembered too fondly the days before the alliance.
Revjak would indeed watch Berkthgar, but he feared that to be all he could do.
*****
Outside the tent, another listener, young Kierstaad, nodded his agreement with Bruenor's warning. Kierstaad was truly torn, full of admiration for Berkthgar but also for Bruenor. At that moment though, little of that greater struggle entered into the young man's thoughts.
Bruenor had confirmed that Aegis-fang was in the dale!
*****
"Might be the same storm that hit us near the Gull Rocks," Robillard remarked, eyeing the black wall that loomed on the eastern horizon before the Sea Sprite.
"But stronger," Deudermont added. "Taking power from the water." They were still in the sunshine, six days out from Caerwich,
with another eight to the Moonshaes, by Deudermont's figuring.
The first hints of a head wind brushed against the tall captain's face, the first gentle blows of the gales that would soon assault them.
"Hard to starboard!" Deudermont yelled to the sailor at the wheel. "We shall go north around it, north around the Moonshaes," he said quietly, so that only Robillard could hear. "A straighter course to our port."
The wizard nodded. He knew that Deudermont did not want to turn to the north, where the wind was less predictable and the waters choppier and colder, but he understood that they had little choice at this point. If they tried to dodge the storm to the south, they would wind up near the Nelanther, the Pirate Isles, a place the Sea Sprite, such a thorn in the side of the pirates, did not want to be.