had been those mornings years ago in Icewind Dale, when he had worked the long day with Bruenor, his adoptive dwarven father, hammering and lifting huge stones, or when he had gone out hunting for game or giants with Drizzt, his warrior friend, running all the day, fighting all the day. The hours had been even more strenuous then, more filled with physical burden, but that burden had been just physical and not emotional. In that time and in that place, he felt no aches.
The blackness in his heart, the sorest ache, was the source of it all.
He tried to think back to those lost years, working and fighting beside Bruenor and Drizzt, or when he had spent the day running along the wind-blown slopes of Kelvin's Cairn, the lone mountain in Icewind Dale, chasing Catti-brie. . . .
The mere thought of the woman stopped him cold and left him empty and in that void, images of Errtu and the demon's minions inevitably filtered in. Once, one of those minions, the horrid succubus, had assumed the form of Catti-brie, a perfect image, and Errtu had convinced Wulfgar that he had managed to snare the woman, that she had been taken to suffer the same eternal torment as Wulfgar, because of Wulfgar.
Errtu had taken the succubus, Catti-brie, right before Wulfgar's horrified eyes and had torn the woman apart limb from limb, devouring her in an orgy of blood and gore.
Gasping for his breath, Wulfgar fought back to his thoughts of Catti-brie, of the real Catti-brie. He had loved her. She was, perhaps, the only woman he had ever loved, but she was lost to him now forever, he believed. Though he might travel to Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale and find her again, the bond between them had been severed, cut by the sharp scars of Errtu and by Wulfgar's own reactions to those scars.
The long shadows coming in through the window told him that the day neared its end and that his work as Arumn Gardpeck's bouncer would soon begin. The weary man hadn't lied to Delly when he had declared that he needed more rest, though, and so he collapsed back onto his bed and fell into a deep sleep.
Night had settled thickly about Luskan by the time Wulfgar staggered into the crowded common room of the Cutlass.
"Late again, as if we're to be surprised by that," a thin, beady-eyed man named Josi Puddles, a regular at the tavern and a good friend of Arumn Gardpeck, remarked to the barkeep when they both noticed Wulfgar's entrance. "That one's workin' less and drinkin' ye dry."
Arumn Gardpeck, a kind but stern and always practical man, wanted to give his typical response, that Josi should just shut his mouth, but he couldn't refute Josi's claim. It pained Arumn to watch Wulfgar's descent. He had befriended the barbarian those months before, when Wulfgar had first come to Luskan. Initially, Arumn had shown interest in the man only because of Wulfgar's obvious physical prowess-a mighty warrior like Wulfgar could indeed be a boon to business for a tavern in the tough dock section of the feisty city. After his very first conversation with the man, Arumn had understood that his feelings for Wulfgar went deeper than any business opportunity. He truly liked the man.
Always, Josi was there to remind Arumn of the potential pitfalls, to remind Arumn that, sooner or later, mighty bouncers made meals for rats in gutters.
"Ye thinkin' the sun just dropped in the water?" Josi asked Wulfgar as the big man shuffled by, yawning.
Wulfgar stopped, and turned slowly and deliberately to glare at the little man.
"Half the night's gone," Josi said, his tone changing abruptly from accusational to conversational, "but I was watchin' the place for ye. Thought I might have to break up a couple o' fights, too."
Wulfgar eyed the little man skeptically. "You couldn't break up a pane of thin glass with a heavy cudgel," he remarked, ending with another profound yawn.
Josi, ever the coward, took the insult with a bobbing head and a self-deprecating grin.
"We do have an agreement about yer time o' work," Arumn said seriously.
"And an understanding of your true needs," Wulfgar reminded the man. "By your own words, my real responsibility comes later in the night, for trouble rarely begins early. You named sundown as my time of duty but explained that I'd not truly be needed until much later."
"Fair enough," Arumn replied with a nod that brought a groan from Josi. He was anxious to