"Every day we come to him. . " Cordio Muffinhead remarked when he and Catti-brie were alone in the room.
Catti-brie moved to her father's side and knelt by the bed. She took his hand in her own and squeezed it to her breast. How cool he felt, as if the energy of his life had diminished to almost nothingness. She gave a cursory glance around the room, to the many candles and the warm furnishings, trying to remind herself that this was a very different place than the cramped, dark, and wet tunnels beneath the ruins of Withegroo's crumbled tower in Shallows. Surely it was more comfortably furnished and ventilated, and gently lit, but to Catti-brie, it didn't seem all that different. The focus of the young woman could not be the furnishings, nor the light, but on, always on, the central figure that lay so very still in the middle of the room.
In looking at him at that moment, Catti-brie was reminded of another friend lying close to death. Back in the west, along the Sword Coast, she and the others had found Drizzt in such a state, lying mortally wounded on one side of the room with Le'lorinel—Ellifain—that most tragic of elves, similarly slashed on the other. Drizzt had begged her to save Ellifain instead of him, to use the one magical potion available to them to heal the elf's wounds and not his own.
Bruenor had been the one to dismiss that thought out of hand, and so Drizzt had survived. Still, Catti-brie and the others had been given a difficult choice at that moment, and they had acted for their own personal needs and for the greater good—fortunately, the two had seemed congruous.
But what about now? Were their personal, perhaps even selfish, desires making them all follow a course that was not for the greater good?
The heroics of the clerics were keeping Bruenor alive—if what he was now could even be considered alive. Every day, often more than once, they had to rush in and put forth their greatest healing efforts just to bring him back to that comatose state of near-death.
"Should we just let ye go?" the woman asked Bruenor quietly.
"What was that ye say?" asked Cordio, hustling over beside her.
Catti-brie looked up at the dwarf, studied his concerned expression, and smiled and said, "Not a thing, Cordio. Was just calling to my father."
She looked back at Bruenor's grayish face and added, "But he's not hearing me."
"He knows ye're here," the dwarf whispered, and he put his hands on the back of the woman's shoulders, offering her his strength.
"Does he? I'm not thinking it so," Catti-brie replied. "Might that that's the Problem. Have ye lost all of your heart and hope?" she asked Bruenor. "Are you thinking me dead, and Wulfgar and Regis and Drizzt all dead? The orcs won at Shallows, from what you know, didn't they?"
She stared at Bruenor a moment longer, then looked up at Cordio, and his expression was all the agreement she needed.
"Is he all right?" came a call from the door, and the two looked to see Regis come running into the room, Wulfgar close behind.
Cordio assured them that Bruenor was fine, then took his leave, but not before bowing low to Catti-brie's side and offering her a kiss on the cheek.
"Keep talking to him, then," the dwarf whispered.
Catti-brie squeezed Bruenor's hand all the tighter and focused all of her senses on that hand, seeking some return grasp, some tiny hint that Bruenor felt her presence.
Nothing. Just the cool, seemingly inanimate skin.
The woman took a deep breath, gave another squeeze, then forced herself back to her feet and turned around to regard her friends.
"We've got some choices we're needing to make," she said, holding her voice steady with great determination.
Wulfgar looked at her curiously, but Regis, more familiar with all that was going on within the hall, offered a loud sigh.
"The priests grow more and more frustrated," he said.
"And they're needed elsewhere, as much as here," Catti-brie made herself admit, though every word stung her profoundly. She looked back at poor Bruenor, his breath coming so shallow that she couldn't even see the rise and fall of his chest. "We have wounded with injuries that can be tended."
"Do you believe they will leave their king? Wulfgar asked, with a hint of anger edging his tone. "Bruenor is Mithral Hall. He brought his clan back here and brought them back to prominence. They owe him all of their efforts and more."
"And do you think Bruenor would want that?" Regis asked before Catti-brie could reply. "If he knew that others were suffering, perhaps even dying, because so many priests were stuck here time after time, holding him alive when he had so little life left in him, he would not be pleased."
"How can you speak such words?" Wulfgar shouted back. "After all that Bruenor has—"
"None of us love him less than yourself," Catti-brie interrupted. She moved right up to Wulfgar and pushed his pointing, accusing fingers aside, battling with him for a moment before wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close. "Not me, and not Rumblebelly."
She finished by hugging Wulfgar even tighter, and he didn't resist.
"None of us can serve in his stead," Regis remarked. "I am Steward of Mithral Hall, but that is only because I speak for Bruenor. I cannot speak without Bruenor—not to Clan Battlehammer."
"Nor can I, and not Wulfgar nor Drizzt," Catti-brie agreed, finally letting go and stepping back from the overwhelmed barbarian. "Only a dwarf can serve as King of Mithral Hall, but I'm thinking that we three, as Bruenor's family and friends, will have a large say in who succeeds him. We owe it to Bruenor to choose well."
"It would have been Dagnabbit, I think," said Regis.
"His father, then?" Catti-brie asked, and though she had incited it, she could hardly believe that they were discussing such grim business.
Regis shook his head and replied, "Dagna wouldn't take it… as he refused the stewardship. We should speak with him, of course, but he's shown little interest."
"Then who?" asked Wulfgar.
"Cordio Muffinhead has been an amazing leader among the dwarves in the hall," Regis remarked. "He has organized the defense of the lower tunnels brilliantly, as well as putting all of the priests into balanced shifts to handle the wounded and Bruenor."
"But Cordio's not a Battlehammer," Catti-brie reminded them. "And never has a priest led Mithral Hall."
"The Brawnanvil's are the closest cousins of Bruenor," said Wulfgar. "And surely none has distinguished himself any greater than Banak in the fighting outside the hall."
The other two thought on that for a moment, then each nodded their agreement.
"Banak, then," said Regis. "If he survives the war with the orcs."
"And if…" Catti-brie started to add, but the words caught in her throat, and she turned back to regard Bruenor.
They would recommend Banak as the new King of Mithral Hall, but only, of course, after her father, the dear old dwarf who had taken her in as an orphaned child and raised her with dignity and hope, had passed on from the world of flesh and blood.
PART TWO — LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
I erred, as I knew I would. Rationally, in those moments when I have been able to slip away from my anger, I have known for some time that my actions have bordered on recklessness, and that I would find my end out here on the mountain slopes.
Is that what I have desired all along, since the fall of Shallows? Do I seek the end of pain at the end of a spear?
There is so much more to this orc assault than we believed when first we encountered the two wayward and wounded dwarves from Citadel Fel-barr. The orcs have found organization and cooperation, at least to an extent that they save their sharpened swords for a common enemy. All the North is threatened, surely, especially Mithral Hall, and I would not be surprised to learn that the dwarves have already buttoned themselves up inside their dark halls, sealing their great doors against the assault of the overwhelming orc hordes.