Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(25)

So it would be in the presence of a Baenre, Ravel realized, and the more he might do to keep Tiago beside him, the better. It didn’t take the spellspinner long to determine which fungal pie might be given at this time and in this place.

Tutugnik, the bugbear king, offered little to impress Ravel as anything other than ordinary. He was larger than most bugbears, particularly those clans which lived so deep in the Underdark, and even sitting strapped to a stone chair, he could look Ravel in the eye. Perhaps he was considered handsome for his race; to Ravel they all looked the same, other than the occasional garish scar, with their flat faces, bloodshot eyes, and broken yellow and brown teeth, all sharpened and crooked. Like all bugbears, Tutugnik’s hair was greasy and dirty, matted in no particular style.

Nor was he impressive intellectually, answering Ravel’s pointed demand that Tutugnik and all his minions would now serve the drow, with an uninspired, “Tutugnik is leader.”

Perhaps he meant that he wished to continue to serve as leader of the slave force. Perhaps, but Ravel didn’t care to find out.

He convened an audience with the whole of the cavern, drow and drider, orc and bugbear. Standing on a high and well-lit ledge beside Jearth and Tutugnik, Ravel ordered the bugbear lord brought out to stand on the other side of his weapons master. Tiago Baenre accompanied the brutish creature.

“You are conquered,” Ravel yelled out simply to the orcs and bugbears, his volume magnified by a simple dweomer so that his voice boomed off every stone in the cavern. “You will fight for me, or you will die, and if you fight well, perhaps I will allow you to fight for me again.” He nodded and started to turn away, as if there was really nothing more to be said, but then he paused and looked to the bugbear king.

“Leader?” Ravel asked loudly, pointing to Tutugnik, who puffed out his massive chest with pride.

Among the gathered orcs and bugbears, the response was muted, with the captives looking to one another for hints about how they should react. Gradually that direction led them to a tentative few affirmative stomps of heavy feet, even a huzzah or two.

All of which evaporated in the blink of an eye as Ravel glanced at Tiago. The young Baenre leaped and spun, drawing one of his swords too quickly for anyone to realize it, including Tutugnik, who had barely begun to glance the leaping Baenre’s way before that sword sliced under Tutugnik’s chin, front to back.

The bugbear’s expression never even changed as his head tumbled free of his neck, so swift was the blow.

“Some of them cheered,” Ravel said to Tiago and Jearth.

The warriors smiled and nodded, and started down from the ledge.

Among the prisoners, the game was quite simple: any who told of another who had cheered Tutugnik would be pressed into service. Those pointed to as Tutugnik loyalists were dragged aside and tortured to death, in full view.

“Am I to be beaten, or murdered?” Ravel asked when he answered his sister’s summons to a large cave that she had taken as her own.

Berellip’s many goblin slaves had already cleared the place of bugbear debris and feces, scrubbing it dutifully. The drow priestess had not traveled light, with many pack lizards devoted entirely to her comforts. Though the expedition would remain in the caverns only for a couple of days, as scouts moved around the region to determine their exact position and plot the most likely trails to this sought-after dwarf homeland, Berellip’s well-trained goblins had turned the cave into a room fitting for a drow noble House. Tapestries covered nearly every wall, and plush pillows and blankets adorned every rock or ledge that could serve as bed or chair.

Saribel lounged on one such stone, far to the side of her sister, but watching Ravel quite intently. Beyond the three Xorlarrins and a handful of meaningless goblin slaves, the cave was empty.

“You ask lightheartedly, as if either would not be a distinct possibility, or quite legal, even fitting,” Berellip replied.

“Because I wish to know which path you would take,” Ravel pressed. “If the former. . . .” He shrugged. “But if the latter, then I suppose that I would be wise to defend myself.”

“You miss the third possibility,” Berellip said, her tone suddenly cold, “to join with Yerrininae.”

Ravel laughed, but even though he was quite confident that Berellip was merely taunting him. The thought of becoming a drider was truly too awful for any honest levity.

“Or the fourth,” he said suddenly.

Berellip looked at him curiously, then glanced over at her sister, who shook her head and shrugged, obviously at a loss.

“Do tell.”

“You could accept that all of my actions, even those seeming disrespectful of your superior station—”

“Seeming?”

“They were disrespectful, I accept,” Ravel conceded, and he bowed deeply and slowly, exaggerating the movement. “But they were done with no disrespect intended, and for the benefit of House Xorlarrin.”

“Sit down,” Berellip commanded, and Ravel turned for the nearest cushioned stone chair.

“On the floor,” Berellip clarified.

Ravel looked at her with incredulity, but wiped it from his face almost immediately and plopped down to the floor as quickly as he could manage.

“For the benefit of House Xorlarrin?” the priestess asked.

Ravel took a deep breath and lifted his hand to tap the side of his head, trying to phrase his explanation precisely and carefully. But Berellip stole his thunder.