tales_of_faerun | Tales of the Companions

Tales of the Companions (932 words) by

senmut
Chapters: 1/1
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Canon-typical violence and behavior
Characters: Catti-brie, Bruenor Battlehammer, Drizzt Do'Urden, Wulfgar son of Beornegar,Bruenorson son of Wulfgar
Additional Tags: Drabble/Ficlet collection
Summary:

A collection of the Companions in various moments

Five ficlets under cut

Bruenor Battlehammer had taken his dwarves to the fight because it had been right… and goblins were always good to smash.

Now, though, he had a pickle of a situation, having found a girl among the bodies that was still alive.

Sure, there was more of Ten Towns with all their humans. Mayhaps the girl would find a place among them.

He looked down at the bairn in his arms, axe leaned against a smoldering wood pile for the moment.

Did he want that for her? No. She'd just lost her kin, her home, and seen it happen. He might only be able to remember the flight from the Hall in his nightmares, mostly, but he knew what she was going through.

It couldn't be that much harder raising a human girl, could it?

She should have other survivors, ones as had lost things pieces of their own lives. He couldn't condemn her to being little more than a servant to greedy men fleeing their own pasts because of wicked deeds.

No, he'd keep her.

That decided, Bruenor shifted her into one arm, tucked tight to himself, grabbed the axe, and headed back to his own caverns with his people.

"Wish there was a yeti. Or a frost giant," Bruenor griped. He irritably swiped his weapon sideways, cleaving a drift and making snow dump on the nearly cleared track they followed.

"You, my friend, merely wish an excuse to not go to the Towns' meet." The dark-skinned, cloaked ranger looked at the dwarf in amusement. "You're still in uproar over the delegation, aren't you?"

For answer, Bruenor muttered dark imprecations over the breeding habits of humans and the ancestry of one in particular.

"Me daughter's no trading asset!" the dwarf roared. His voice was answered by a resounding yowl and roar from the nearby hills, making the dwarf light up.

"It seems we have your wish," Drizzt said, as the pair of friends changed direction to go deal with the unseen monster.

"Watch yer blank, not the hammer! If'n ye don't know where the hammer'll land, you've got no right to be forgin'," Bruenor snapped at the barbarian youth. "Ye keep eyes on the metal, so you see the stresses and the impurities, should there be any."

"This is not the work of my people," Wulfgar muttered darkly… and felt the smack of a hand on the back of his head. His only consolation was that the dwarf had to stand on a stool to oversee the work and reach like that.

"Maybe if'n it was, yer people wouldna come up against Ten Towns with such piss poor weapons," Bruenor told him.

Instead of retorting, Wulfgar thought on that. It was true that Ten Towns' militia-folk were outfitted better than many towns could hope, though they traded dear for it. Bruenor's people were not charitable where trade was concerned, and knew how to get fair price.

"Maybe you have a point," he conceded.

Bruenor hid his smile in his beard; the lad was learning, and maybe when the boy's apprenticeship was up, there would be good to come of it.

Then again, maybe Bruenor was getting too rosy-eyed in his old age.

"Ye best be thinking something else," Catti-brie warned with mock ferocity.

Regis looked at her sheepishly, then shrugged. "I'd not even be able to hold it steady to fit an arrow to the string," he admitted. "So of what use would it be to me?"

"Bribe to a drow, mayhaps?" she asked, just to watch him flush brightly, his reddened cheeks matching ears and nose now. She came and crouched in front of him. "Regis, if it is true a dark elf seeks ye, trust in your friends, not stealing, to keep you safe."

He nodded, chastened and reassured again.

Lavender eyes gleamed with the impossible odds, as this band had him surrounded, complete with two winter wolves baying for his blood.

Drizzt had come to escape losses, and forgotten the first rule of the Far North, that the winds could deceive even his sensitive ears in these passes.

The verbeeg were aware that numbers and terrain favored them. As the first one advanced, a familiar blur of motion slammed into that one's chest, before vanishing back to the hand of the one that wielded it.

"Go, or die. The ranger is under protection of the Tribe of the Elk," a strong voice boomed, not quite the sound of one Drizzt had known.

A flicker of attention back, and Drizzt saw five warriors of that tribe, one with Aegis-fang in hand now.

A winter wolf lunged, and the battle commenced, but with much more even odds. Drizzt fought alongside the Uthgardt, until not a giant-kind nor a winter wolf breathed. Then, he could truly see his rescuers.

"Bruenorson, son of Wulfgar," the wielder of Aegis-Fang introduced. "And you are Drizzt Do'Urden, friend of my father."

"Well-met, King Bruenorson," Drizzt said. "I leave the spoils to your people."

"Come to stay with us in our hunting camp, for you are known to us, and we remember those that made it possible for my father's blood to rule," the king said, even as he flicked a hand for the others to pick over the corpses.

"I would like that, and to hear of Wulfgar's line," Drizzt agreed, moving to the wolves. Their pelts could be his project, while he remained in the Far North, unless the tribesmen wished them.

"We have much to share, for my father was a bold man all the way to his death."

"How could he be otherwise?"