dotted rarely by the sails of another distant ship.
Drizzt moved to join Catti-brie at the rail. Though she didn't turn around, she knew by the footsteps that followed the near-silent drow that Bruenor and Regis had come too.
'Only a few more days to Baldur's Gate,' the drow said.
Catti-brie glanced over at him, noting that he kept the cowl of his traveling cloak low over his face-not to block any of the stinging spray, she knew, for Drizzt loved that feel as much as she, but to keep him in comfortable shade. Drizzt and Catti-brie had spent years together aboard Deudermont's Sea Sprite, and still the high sun of midday glittering off the waters bothered the drow elf, whose heritage had designed him for walking lightless caverns.
'How fares Bruenor?' the woman asked quietly, pretending not to know that the dwarf was standing behind her.
'Grumbling for solid ground and all the enemies in the world to stand against him, if necessary, to get him off this cursed floating coffin,' the ranger replied, playing along.
Catti-brie managed a slight grin, not surprised at all. She had journeyed the seas with Bruenor farther to the south. While the dwarf had kept a stoic front on that occasion, his relief had been obvious when they had at last docked and returned again to solid ground. This time Bruenor was having an even worse time of it, spending long stretches at the rail-and not for the view.
'Regis seems unbothered,' Drizzt went on. 'He makes certain that no food remains on Bruenor's plate soon after Bruenor declares that he cannot eat.'
Another smile found its way onto Catti-brie's face. Again it was short-lived. 'Do ye think we'll be seeing him again?' she asked.
Drizzt sighed and turned his gaze out to the empty waters. Though they were both looking south, the wrong
direction, they were both, in a manner of speaking, looking for Wulfgar. It was as if, against all logic and reason, they expected the man to come swimming toward them.
'I do not know,' the drow admitted. 'In his mood, it is possible that Wulfgar has found many enemies and has flung himself against them with all his heart. No doubt many of them are dead, but the north is a place of countless foes, some, I fear, too powerful even for Wulfgar.'
'Bah!' Bruenor snorted from behind. 'We'll find me boy, don't ye doubt. And the worst foe he'll be seeing'll be meself, paying him back for slapping me girl and for bringing me so much worry!'
'We shall find him,' Regis declared. 'And Lady Alustriel will help, and so will the Harpells.'
The mention of the Harpells brought a groan from Bruenor. The Harpells were a family of eccentric wizards known for blowing themselves and their friends up, turning themselves-quite by accident and without repair-into various animals and all other manner of self-inflicted catastrophes.
'Alustriel, then,' Regis agreed. 'She will help if we cannot find him on our own.'
'Bah! And how tough're ye thinking that to be?' Bruenor argued. 'Are ye knowin' many rampaging seven- footers then? And them carrying hammers that can knock down a giant or the house it's living in with one throw?'
'There,' Drizzt said to Catti-brie. 'Our assurances that we will indeed find our friend.'
The woman managed another smile, but it, too, was a strained thing and could not last. And what would they find when they at last located their missing friend? Even if he was physically unharmed, would he wish to see them? And even if he did, would he be in a better humor? And most important of all, would they— would she- really wish to see him? Wulfgar had hurt Catti-brie badly, not in body, but in heart, when he had struck her. She could forgive him that, she knew, to some extent at least.
But only once.
She studied her drow friend, saw his shadowed profile under the edge of his cowl as he stared vacantly to the empty waters, his lavender eyes glazed, as if his mind were looking elsewhere. She turned to consider Bruenor and Regis then and found them similarly distracted. All of them wanted to find Wulfgar again-not the Wulfgar who had left them on the road but the one who had left them those years ago in the tunnels beneath Mithral Hall, taken by the yochlol. They all wanted it to be as it had once been, the Companions of the Hall adventuring together without the company of brooding internal demons.
'A sail to the south,' Drizzt remarked, drawing the woman from her contemplation. Even as Catti-brie looked out from the rail, squinting in a futile attempt to spot the too-distant ship, she heard the cry from the crow's nest confirming the drow's claim.
'What's her course?' Captain Vaines called from somewhere near the middle of the deck.
'North,' Drizzt answered quietly so that only Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Regis could hear.
'North,' cried the crewman from the crow's nest a few seconds later.
'Yer eyes've improved in the sunlight,' Bruenor remarked.
'Credit Deudermont,' Catti-brie explained.
'My eyes,' Drizzt added, 'and my perceptions of intent.'
'What're ye babbling about?' Bruenor asked, but the ranger held up his hand, motioning for silence. He stood staring intently at the distant ship whose sails now appeared to the other three as tiny black dots, barely above the horizon.
'Go and tell Captain Vaines to turn us to the west,' Drizzt instructed Regis.
The halfling stood staring for just a moment, then rushed back to find Vaines. Just a minute or so later the friends felt the pull as Quester leaned and turned her prow to the left.
'Ye're just making the trip longer,' Bruenor started to complain, but again Drizzt held up his hand.
'She is turning with us, keeping her course to intercept,' the drow explained.
'Pirates?' Catti-brie asked, a question echoed by Captain Vaines as he moved up to join the others.
'They are not in trouble, for they cut the water as swiftly as we, perhaps even more so,' Drizzt reasoned. 'Nor are they a ship of a king's fleet, for they fly no standard, and we are too far out for any coastal patrollers.'
'Pirates,' Captain Vaines spat distastefully.
'How can ye know all that?' an unconvinced Bruenor demanded.
'Comes from hunting 'em,' Catti-brie explained. 'And we've hunted more than our share.'
'So I heard in Waterdeep,' said Vaines, which was why he had agreed to take them aboard for a swift run to Baldur's Gate in the first place. Normally a woman, a dwarf, and a halfling would find no easy-and surely no cheap-passage out of Waterdeep Harbor when accompanied by a dark elf, but among the honest sailors of Waterdeep the names Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie rang out as sweet music.
The approaching ship showed bigger on the horizon now, but it was still too small for any detailed images-except to Drizzt, and to Captain Vaines and the man in the crow's nest, both holding rare and expensive spyglasses. The captain put his to his eye now and recognized the telltale triangular sails. 'She's a schooner,' he said. 'And a light one. She cannot hold more than twenty or so and is no match for us.'
Catti-brie considered the words carefully. Quester was a caravel, and a large one at that. She held three strong banks of sails and had a front end long and tapered to aid in her run, but she carried a pair of ballistae, and had thick and strong sides. A slender schooner did not seem much of a match for Quester, to be sure, but how many pirates had said the same about another schooner, Deudermont's Sea Sprite, only to wind up fast filling with sea water?
'Back to the south with us!' the captain called, and Quester creaked and leaned to the right. Soon enough, the approaching schooner corrected her course to maintain her intercepting route.
'Too far to the north,' Vaines remarked, striking a pensive pose, one hand coming up to stroke the gray hairs of his beard. 'Pirates should not be this far north and should not deign to approach us.'
The others, particularly Drizzt and Catti-brie, understood his trepidation. Concerning brute force at least, the schooner and her crew of twenty, perhaps thirty, would seem no match for the sixty of Vaines's crew. But such odds could often be overcome at sea by use of a single wizard, Catti-brie and Drizzt both knew. They had seen Sea Sprite's wizard, a powerful invoker named Robillard, take down more than one ship single-handedly long before conventional weapons had even been used.
'Shouldn't and aren't ain't the same word,' Bruenor remarked dryly. 'I'm not knowing if they're pirates or not, but they're coming, to be sure.'
