Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(6)

“And so I must apologize to him,” said Nanfoodle, and all in the room were listening. “I came here with Lady Shoudra, never meaning to stay, and yet I find that decades have passed. I’m not a young one anymore—in a month I’ll be celebrating my sixty-fifth year.”

“Hear hear,” Cordio interrupted, never missing a chance to toast, and they all drank to Nanfoodle’s continuing health.

“Thank you all,” Nanfoodle said after the drink. “You’ve been as a family to me, to be sure, and my half-life here’s been no less a half than the years before. Or the years after, I am sure.”

“What are ye saying, little one?” asked Cordio.

“I’ve another family,” the gnome replied. “One I’ve seen only in short visits, lo these last thirty-some years. It’s time for me to go, I fear. I wish to spend my last years in my old home in Mirabar.”

Those words seemed to suck all the noise from the room, as all sat in stunned silence.

“Ye’ll owe me dad no apology, Nanfoodle of Mirabar,” Connerad eventually assured the gnome, and he lifted his mug in another toast. “Mithral Hall’ll ne’er forget the help of great Nanfoodle!”

They all shared in that toast, heartily so, but something struck Thibbledorf Pwent as curious then, though, in his exhausted and overwhelmed state, he couldn’t sort it out.

Not quite yet.



Huffing and puffing, the gnome wriggled and squirmed his way through a tumble of boulders, great smooth gray stones lying about as if piled by a catapult crew of titans. Nanfoodle knew the area well, though—indeed, he had set the place for the rendezvous—and so he was not surprised when he pushed through a tightly twisting path between a trio of stones to find Jessa sitting on a smaller stone in a clearing, her midday meal spread on a blanket before her.

“You need longer legs,” the orc greeted.

“I need to be thirty years younger,” Nanfoodle replied. He let his heavy pack slide off his shoulders and took a seat on a stone opposite Jessa, reaching for a bowl of stew she’d set out for him.

“It’s done? You’re certain?” Jessa asked.

“Three days of mourning for the dead king … three and no more—they haven’t the time. So Banak is king at long last, a title he’s long deserved.”

“He steps into the boots of a giant.”

Nanfoodle waved the thought away. “The best work of King Bruenor was to ensure the orderliness of Mithral Hall. Banak will not falter, and even if he did, there are many wise voices around him.” He paused and looked at the orc priestess more closely. Her gaze had drifted to the north, toward the still-young kingdom of her people. “King Banak will continue the work, as Obould II will honor the desires and vision of his predecessor,” Nanfoodle assured her.

Jessa looked at him curiously, even incredulously. “You’re so calm,” she said. “You spend too much of your life in your books and scrolls, and not nearly enough time looking into the faces of those around you.”

Nanfoodle looked at her with a curious expression.

“How can you be so calm?” Jessa asked. “Don’t you realize what you’ve just done?”

“I did only as I was ordered to do,” Nanfoodle protested, not catching on to the gravity in her voice.

Jessa started to scold him again, meaning to school him on the weight of feelings, to remind him that not all the world could be described by logical theorems, that other factors had to be considered, but a commotion to the side, the scraping of metal on stone, stole her words.

“What?” Nanfoodle, slurping his stew, asked as she rose to her feet.

“What was ye ordered to do?” came the gruff voice of Thibbledorf Pwent, and Nanfoodle spun around just as the battlerager, arrayed in full armor, squeezed out from between the boulders, metal ridges screeching against the stone. “Aye, and be sure that meself’s wonderin’ who it was what’s orderin’ ye!” He ended by punching one metal-gloved fist into the other. “And don’t be doubtin’ that I’m meanin’ to find out, ye little rat.”

He advanced and Nanfoodle retreated, dropping the bowl of stew to the ground.

“Ye got nowhere to run, neither of ye,” Pwent assured them as he continued his advance. “Me legs’re long enough to chase ye, and me anger’s more’n enough to catch ye!”

“What is this?” Jessa demanded, but Pwent fixed her with a hateful glare.

“Ye’re still alive only because ye might have something I need to hear,” the vicious dwarf explained. “And if ye’re not yapping words that make me smile, know that ye’ll be finding a seat.” As he finished, he pointed at the large spike protruding from the top of his helm. And Jessa knew full well that more than one orc had shuddered through its death throes impaled on that spike.

“Pwent, no!” Nanfoodle yelped, holding his hands up before him, motioning the dwarf to stop his steady approach. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I’m knowin’ more than ye think I’m knowin’,” the battlerager promised. “Been in yer workshop, gnome.”

Nanfoodle held up his hands. “I told King Banak that I would be leaving.”

“Ye was leaving afore King Bruenor died,” Pwent accused. “Ye had yer bag all packed for the road.”