him regarding that very feeling.
"Perhaps you were right," Wulfgar said to the empty room.
He laughed then, at himself, as he considered the steps that had brought him back to that place. He had been turned around by a storm.
He, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, who had grown tall and strong in the brutal winters of frozen Icewind Dale, had been chased back into the dwarven complex by the threat of winter snows!
Then it hit him. All of it. His meandering, empty road for the last eight years of his life, since his return from the Abyss and the torments of the demon, Errtu. Even after he had gathered up Colson from Meralda in Auckney, had retrieved Aegis-fang and his sense of who he was, and had rejoined his friends for the journey back to Mithral Hall, Wulfgar's steps had not been purposeful, had not been driven by a clear sense of where he wanted to go. He had taken Delly as his wife, but had never stopped loving Catti-brie.
Yes, it was true, he admitted. He could lie about it to others, but not to himself.
Many things came clear at last to Wulfgar that morning in his room in Mithral Hall, most of all the fact that he had allowed himself to live a lie. He knew that he couldn't have Catti-brie - her heart was for Drizzt - but how unfair had he been to Delly and to Colson? He had created a facade, an illusion of family and of stability for the benefit of everyone involved, himself included.
Wulfgar had walked his road of redemption, since Auckney, with manipulation and falsity. He understood that finally. He had been so determined to put everything into a neat and trim little box, a perfectly controlled scene, that he had denied the very essence of who he was, the very fires that had forged Wulfgar son of Beornegar.
He looked at Aegis-fang leaning against the wall then hefted the mighty warhammer in his hand, bringing its crafted head up before his icy-blue eyes. The battles he had waged recently, on the cliff above Keeper's Dale, in the western chamber, and to the east in the breakout to the Surbrin, had been his moments of true freedom, of emotional clarity and inner calm. He had reveled in that physical turmoil, he realized, because it had calmed the emotional confusion.
That was why he had neglected Delly and Colson, throwing himself with abandon into the defenses of Mithral Hall. He had been a lousy husband to her, and a lousy father to Colson.
Only in battle had he found escape.
And he was still engaged in the self-deception, Wulfgar knew as he stared at the etched head of Aegis-fang. Why else had he allowed the trail to Colson to grow stale? Why else had he been turned back by a mere winter storm? Why else...?
Wulfgar's jaw dropped open, and he thought himself a fool indeed. He dropped the hammer to the floor and swept on his trademark gray wolf cloak. He pulled his backpack out from under the bed and stuffed it with his blankets, then slung it over one arm and gathered up Aegis-fang with the other.
He strode out of his room with fierce determination, heading east past Bruenor's audience chamber.
"Where are you going?" he heard, and paused to see Regis standing before a door in the hallway.
"Out to check on the weather and the ferry."
"Drizzt is back."
Wulfgar nodded, and his smile was genuine. "I hope his journey went well."
"He'll be in with Bruenor in a short while."
"I haven't time. Not now."
"The ferry isn't running yet," Regis said.
But Wulfgar only nodded, as if it didn't matter, and strode off down the corridor, turning through the doors that led to the main avenue that would take him over Garumn's Gorge.
Thumbs hooked in his suspenders, Regis watched his large friend go. He stood there for a long while, considering the encounter, then turned for Bruenor's audience chamber.
He paused after only a few steps, though, and looked back again to the corridor down which Wulfgar had so urgently departed.
The ferry wasn't running.
PART 1 Chapter 2 THE WILL OF GRUUMSH
Grguch blinked repeatedly as he moved from the recesses of the cave toward the pre-dawn light. Broad-shouldered and more than seven feet in height, the powerful half-orc, half-ogre stepped tentatively with his thick legs, and raised one hand to shield his eyes. The chieftain of Clan Karuck, like all of his people other than a couple of forward scouts, had not seen the light