The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt

those increasingly rare occasions when we do remember! There is always the guilt, perhaps, because we are self- centered creatures to the last. It is the truth of individuality that cannot be denied.

In the end, we, all of us, see the world through our own, personal eyes.

G’nurk broke his momentum and swung around to face the surprising dwarf. “You would let me leave?” he asked in Dwarvish.

“Take yer girl and get out o’ here.”

“Why would you …?”

“Just get!” Pwent growled. “I got no time for ye, ye dog. Ye came here for yer girl, and good enough for her and for yerself! So take her and get out o’ here!”

G’nurk understood almost every word, certainly enough to comprehend what had just happened.

He looked over at his girl-his dear, dead girl-then glanced back at the dwarf and asked, “Who did you lose?”

“Shut yer mouth, dog,” Pwent barked at him. “And get ye gone afore I change me mind.”

The tone spoke volumes to G’nurk. The pain behind the growl rang out clearly to the orc, who carried so similar a combination of hate and grief.

He looked back to Tinguinguay. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dwarf lower his head and turn to go.

G’nurk was no average orc warrior. He had served in Obould’s elite guard for years, and as a trainer for those who had followed him into that coveted position. The dwarf had beaten him-through a trick, to be sure-and to G’nurk that was no small thing; never had he expected to be defeated in such a manner.

But now he knew better.

He covered the ground between himself and the dwarf with two leaps, and as the dwarf spun to meet the charge, G’nurk hit him with a series of quick slaps and shortened stabs to keep him, most of all, from gaining any balance.

He kept pressing, pushing, and prodding, never allowing a counter, never allowing the dwarf to set any defense.

He pushed the dwarf back, almost over, but the stubborn bearded creature came forward.

G’nurk sidestepped and crashed the pommel of his sword against the back of the dwarf’s shoulder, forcing the dwarf to overbalance forward even more. When he reached up to grab at G’nurk, to use the orc as leverage, G’nurk ducked under that arm, catching it as he went so that when he came up fast behind the arm, he had it twisted such that the dwarf had no choice but to fall headlong.

The dwarf wound up flat on his back, G’nurk standing over him, the sword in tight against his throat.

I have heard parents express their fears of their own mortality soon after the birth of a child. It is a fear that stays with a parent, to a great extent, through the first dozen years of a child’s life. It is not for the child that they fear, should they die-though surely there is that worry, as well-but rather for themselves. What father would accept his death before his child was truly old enough to remember him?

For who better to put a face to the bones among the stones? Who better to remember the sparkle in an eye before the crow comes a’calling?

“Bah, ye murderin’ treacherous dog!” Thibbledorf Pwent yelled. “Ye got no honor, nor did yer daugh-” He bit the word off as G’nurk pressed the blade in tighter.

“Never speak of her,” the orc warned, and he backed off the sword just a bit.

“Ye’re thinking this honorable, are ye?”

G’nurk nodded.

Pwent nearly spat with disbelief. “Ye dog! How can ye?”

G’nurk stepped back, taking the sword with him. “Because now you know that I hold gratitude for your mercy, dwarf,” he explained. “Now you know in your heart that you made the right choice. You carry with you from this field no burden of guilt for your mercy. Do not think this anything more than it is: a good deed repaid. If we meet in the lines, Obould against Bruenor, then know I will serve my king.”

“And meself, me own!” Pwent proclaimed as he pulled himself to his feet.

“But you are not my enemy, dwarf,” the orc added, and he stepped back, bowed, and walked away.

“I ain’t yer durned friend, neither!”

G’nurk turned and smiled, though whether in agreement or in thinking that he knew otherwise, Pwent could not discern.

It had been a strange day.

I wish the crows would circle and the wind would carry them away, and the faces would remain forever to remind us of the pain. When the clarion call to glory sounds, before the armies anew trample the bones among the stones, let the faces of the dead remind us of the cost.

It is a sobering sight before me, the red-splashed stones.

It is a striking warning in my ears, the cawing of the crows.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

Iruladoon

Forest of Iruladoon

Spring in the waning years of the Post-Spellplague

We’re not going to get there in time!” shouted a frantic Lathan Obridock.

He turned back from the prow to regard his fellow fishermen, his face wet from spray as Larson’s Boneyard bounced across the considerable swells on the always unpredictable Lac Dinneshere. His teeth chattered, both from fear and from the brutal cold of Icewind Dale waters, lakes that spent more than half the year covered in thick ice.

“Young Lathan, be at ease,” counseled Addadearber of the Lightning, a rather colorful and flamboyant resident of Caer-Dineval, the boat’s home port on the western bank of the great lake, one of three that defined this region about the singular mountain known as Kelvin’s Cairn. “I’d not have sailed with Ashelia Larson there if I thought she’d lead me to a watery grave!”

As he spoke, Addadearber waved his arms dramatically, but the effect was much less so than usual, since he had abandoned his red wizard robes for garments more practical to sailing. Nothing could pull a man to the bottom faster than water-soaked woolen robes, after all. Addadearber still wore his floppy black hat, though. Once conical and pointed, standing tall and straight, the hat was bent over halfway to its apex, its point leaning to Addadearber’s left-hand side, and its once-stiff brim sagging on both sides. It seemed a fitting reflection of the aging wizard, with his gray hair and bushy gray beard, crooked posture, and with his magic, too, rendered unreliable at best and often impotent by the fall of Mystra’s Weave, the great event known throughout the Realms as the Spellplague.

“You’re old and don’t care if you die, then!” accused the youngest member of Boneyard’s crew, Spragan Rubrik, at fifteen almost two years Lathan’s junior. His long curly brown hair dripped water from every lock, but it seemed obvious that his darker brown eyes would have been wet with moisture anyway, as he had been the first to discover the leak in the fish hold, the cold, dark water of Lac Dinneshere creeping in to claim her prize.

“I’d watch my wagging tongue, were I speaking to Addadearber of the Lightning,” advised Ashelia from the middeck tiller, her tone decidedly less dread-ridden than that of the two young fishermen. Nearing middle age and quite sturdy for her gender, the broad-shouldered Ashelia was still a quite handsome woman, with straight blond hair, sharply parted on the right, hanging to her shoulders, and light gray eyes shining. Her skin retained the texture and look of porcelain, unlike the other veteran fishermen, with just a hint of a tan showing so early after the end of a particularly deep winter.

“He’s hoping the old warlock will turn him into something that can swim, then,” quipped the fifth man from