relationships where so many people sublimate their own true feelings and desires in consideration of others, we take many steps off that true path.
In the end, though, if we are to be truly happy, we must follow our hearts and find our way alone. I learned that truth when I walked out of Menzoberranzan and confirmed my path when I arrived in Icewind Dale and found these wonderful friends. After the last brutal fight in Mithral Hall, when half of Menzoberranzan, it seemed, marched to destroy the dwarves, I knew that my path lay elsewhere, that I needed to journey, to find a new horizon on which to set my gaze. Catti-brie knew it too, and because I understood that her desire to go along was not in sympathy to my desires but true to her own heart, I welcomed the company.
We each have our own path to tread, and so I learned, painfully, that fateful morning in the mountains, that Wulfgar had found one that diverged from my own. How I wanted to stop him! How I wanted to plead with him or, if that failed, to beat him into unconsciousness and drag him back to the camp. When we parted, I felt a hole in my heart nearly as profound as that which I had felt when I first learned of his apparent death in the fight against the yochlol.
And then, after I walked away, pangs of guilt layered above the pain of loss. Had I let Wulfgar go so easily because of his relationship with Catti-brie? Was there some place within me that saw my barbarian friend's return as a hindrance to a relationship that I had been building with the woman since we had ridden from Mithral Hall together?
The guilt could find no true hold and was gone by the time I rejoined my companions. As I had my road to walk, and now Wulfgar his, so too would Catti-brie find hers. With me? With Wulfgar? Who could know? But whatever her road, I would not try to alter it in such a manner. I did not let Wulfgar go easily for any sense of personal gain. Not at all, for indeed my heart weighed heavy. No, I let Wulfgar go without much of an argument because I knew that there was nothing I, or our other friends, could do to heal the wounds within him. Nothing I could say to him could bring him solace, and if Catti-brie had begun to make any progress, then surely it had been destroyed in the flick of Wulfgar's fist slamming into her face.
Partly it was fear that drove Wulfgar from us. He
believed that he could not control the demons within him and that, in the grasp of those painful recollections, he might truly hurt one of us. Mostly, though, Wulfgar left us because of shame. How could he face Bruenor again after striking Catti-brie? How could he face Catti-brie? What words might he say in apology when in truth, and he knew it, it very well might happen again? And beyond that one act, Wulfgar perceived himself as weak because the images of Errtu's legacy were so overwhelming him. Logically, they were but memories and nothing tangible to attack the strong man. To Wulfgar's pragmatic view of the world, being defeated by mere memories equated to great weakness. In his culture, being defeated in battle is no cause for shame, but running from battle is the highest dishonor.
Along that same line of reasoning, being unable to defeat a great monster is acceptable, but being defeated by an intangible thing such as a memory equates with cowardice.
He will learn better, I believe. He will come to understand the he should feel no shame for his inability to cope with the persistent horrors and temptations of Errtu and the Abyss. And then, when he relieves himself from the burden of shame, he will find a way to truly overcome those horrors and dismiss his guilt over the temptations. Only then will he return to Icewind Dale, to those who love him and who will welcome him back eagerly.
Only then.
That is my hope, not my expectation. Wulfgar ran off into the wilds, into the Spine of the World, where yetis and giants and goblin tribes make their homes, where wolves will take their food as they find it, whether hunting a deer or a man. I do not honestly know if he means to come out of the
mountains back to the tundra he knows well, or to the more civilized southland, or if he will wander the high and dangerous trails, daring death in an attempt to restore some of the courage he believes he has lost. Or perhaps he will tempt death too greatly, so that it will finally win out and put an end to his pain.
That is my fear.
I do not know. We each have our own roads to tread, and Wulfgar has found his, and it is a path, I understand, that is not wide enough for a companion.
Chapter 8 INADVERTENT SIGNALS
They moved somberly, for the thrill of adventure and the joy of being reunited and on the road again had been stolen by Wulfgar's departure. When he returned to camp and explained the barbarian's absence, Drizzt had been truly surprised by the reactions of his companions. At first, predictably, Catti-brie and Regis had screamed that they must go and find the man, while Bruenor just grumbled about 'stupid humans.' Both the halfling and the woman had calmed quickly, though, and it turned out to be Catti-brie's voice above all the others proclaiming that Wulfgar needed to choose his own course. She was not bitter about the attack and to her credit showed no anger toward the barbarian at all.
But she knew. Like Drizzt, she understood that the inner demons tormenting Wulfgar could not be excised with comforting words from friends, or even through the fury of battle. She had tried and had thought that she was making some progress, but in the end it had become painfully apparent to her that she could do nothing to help the man, that Wulfgar had to help himself.
And so they went on, the four friends and Guenhwyvar, keeping their word to guide Camlaine's wagon out of the dale and along the south road.
That night, Drizzt found Catti-brie on the eastern edge of the encampment, staring out into the blackness, and it was not hard for the drow to figure out what she was hoping to spot.
'He will not return to us any time soon,' Drizzt remarked quietly, moving to the woman's side.
Catti-brie glanced at him only briefly, then turned her eyes back to the dark silhouettes of the mountains.
There was nothing to see.
'He chose wrong,' the woman said softly after several long and silent moments had slipped past. 'I'm knowin' that he has to help himself, but he could've done that among his friends, not out in the wilds,'
'He did not want us to witness his most personal battles,' Drizzt explained.
'Ever was pride Wulfgar's greatest failing,' Catti-brie quickly replied.
'That is the way of his people, the way of his father,
and his father's father before him,' the ranger said. 'The tundra barbarians do not accept weakness in others or in themselves, and Wulfgar believes that his inability to defeat mere memories is naught more than weakness.'
Catti-brie shook her head. She didn't have to speak the words aloud, for both she and Drizzt understood that the man was purely wrong in that belief, that, many times, the most powerful foes are those within.
Drizzt reached up then and brushed a finger gently along the side of Catti-brie's nose, the area that had swelled badly from Wulfgar's punch. Catti-brie winced at first, but it was only because she had not expected the touch, and not from any real pain.
'It's not so bad,' she said.
'Bruenor might not agree with you,' the drow replied.
That brought a smile to Catti-brie's face, for indeed, if Drizzt had brought Wulfgar back soon after the assault, it would have taken all of them to pull the vicious dwarf off the man. But even that had changed now, they both knew. Wulfgar had been as a son to Bruenor for many years, and the dwarf had been purely devastated, more so than any of the others, after the man's apparent death. Now, in the realization that Wulfgar's troubles had taken him from them again, Bruenor sorely missed the man, and surely would forgive him his strike against Catti- brie … as long as the barbarian was properly contrite. They all would have forgiven Wulfgar, completely and without judgment, and would have helped him in any way they could to overcome his emotional obstacles. That was the tragedy of it all, for they had no help to offer that would be of any real value.
Drizzt and Catti-brie sat together long into the night, staring at the empty tundra, the woman resting her head on the strong shoulder of the drow.
