without aid," Deudermont said.
"Oaf," Robillard said again.
"Look at him!" the captain cried. "He could have turned south, as you predicted, but he did not. No, he went out to the north and into the frozen mountains, a place where few would travel, even in the summer and even in a group, and fewer still would dare try alone."
"That is the way of nature," Robillard quipped. "Those who would try alone likely have and thus are all dead. Fools have a way of weeding themselves out of the bloodlines."
"You wanted him to go north," the captain pointedly reminded.
"You said as much, and many times. And not so that he would fall and die. You insisted that if Wulfgar was a man deserving of such friends as Drizzt and Catti-brie, that he would go in search of them, no matter the odds.
"Look now, my curmudgeonly friend," Deudermont stated, waving his arm out toward the water bowl, to the image of stubborn Wulfgar.
Obviously in pain but just grimacing it away, the man was scrambling inch by inch to scale back up the mountainside. The barbarian didn't stop and cry out in rage, didn't punch his fist into the air. He just picked his path and clawed at it without complaint.
Deudermont eyed Robillard as intently as the wizard was then eyeing the scrying bowl. Finally, Robillard looked up. "Perhaps there is more to this Wulfgar than I believed," the wizard admitted.
"Are we to let him die out there, alone and cold?"
Robillard sighed, then growled and rubbed his hands forcefully across his face, so that his skinny features glowed bright red. "He has been nothing but trouble since the day he arrived on Waterdeep's long dock to speak with you!" Robillard snarled, and he shook his head. "Nay, even before that, in Luskan, when he tried to kill - "
"He did not!" Deudermont insisted, angry that Robillard had reopened that old wound. "That was neither Wulfgar nor the little one named Morik."
"So you say."
"He suffers hardships without complaint," the captain went on, again directing the wizard's eyes to the image in the bowl. "Though I hardly think Wulfgar considers such a storm as this even a hardship after the torments he likely faced at the hands of the demon Errtu."
"Then there is no problem here."
"But what now?" the captain pressed. "Wulfgar will never find his friends while wandering aimlessly through the wintry mountains."
Deudermont could tell by the ensuing sigh that Robillard understood him completely.
"We spotted a pirate just yesterday," the wizard remarked, a verbal squirm if Deudermont had ever heard one. "Likely we will do battle in the morning. You can not afford - "
"If we see the pirate again and you have not returned, or if you are not yet prepared for the fight, then we will shadow her. As we can outrun any ship when we are in pursuit, so we can when we are in retreat."
"I do not like teleporting to unfamiliar places," Robillard grumbled. "I may appear too high, and fall."
"Enact a spell of flying or floating before you go, then."
"Or too low," Robillard said grimly, for that was ever a possibility, and any wizard who wound up appearing at the other end of a teleport spell too low would find pieces of himself scattered amongst the rocks and dirt.
Deudermont had no answer for that other than a shrug, but it wasn't really a debate. Robillard was only complaining anyway, with every intention of going to the wounded man.
"Wait for me to return before engaging any pirates," the wizard grumbled, fishing through his many pockets for the components he would need to safely - as safely as possible, anyway - go to Wulfgar. "If I do return, that is."
"I have every confidence."
"Of course you do," said Robillard.
Captain Deudermont stepped back as Robillard moved to a side cabinet and flung it open, removing one of Deudermont's own items, a heavy woolen blanket. Grumbling continually, the wizard began his casting, first a spell that had him gently floating off of the floor, and another that seemed to tear the fabric of the air itself. Many multicolored bubbles surrounded the wizard until his form became blurred by their multitude - and he was gone, and there were only bubbles, gradually popping and flowing together so that the air seemed whole again.
Deudermont rushed forward and stared into the watery bowl, catching the last images of Wulfgar before Robillard's divining dweomer dissipated.
He saw a second form come onto the snowy scene.
* * * ** * *