Sojourn - Chapter Twenty-Five and Epilogue

[kalinara]

We've made it to the last chapter! That means we'll be finishing this book, and the second (chronologically first) Drizzt trilogy! It's a milestone, of sorts!

And a little funny, because I think I'm finishing Pride of Princes this week too. Which is all well and good, but it means I'll need to decide on TWO books for next week. Egads.

Anyway, let's get going!



The question I asked in my cut text is immediately answered, as the first paragraph involves him jumping out of a boulder and grabbing Catti-brie by the arm. Hey! Hands off the little girl, you cretin!

One thing I appreciate about Roddy as an adversary is that while he's uncouth, rude and a total dick with a combined wisdom and charisma score of negative 3, he's not actually stupid. He recognized in Bruenor's throne room that Catti-brie had known who Drizzt was.

I don't like this next bit at all though:

Roddy’s grimace softened then, suddenly, and Catti-brie liked even less the look that came into his eye. “Vfe’re a spirited girl, ain’t ye?” Roddy purred, grabbing Catti-brie’s other shoulder and turning her to face him squarely. “Full o’ life, eh? Ye’ll take me to the drow, girl, don’t ye doubt. But mighten be there’s other things we can do first, things to show ye not to cross the likes o’ Roddy McGristle.” His caress on Catti-brie’s cheek seemed ridiculously grotesque, but horribly and undeniably threatening, and Catti-brie thought she would gag.

Seriously, Salvatore? Seriously? Roddy's been bad enough this whole book. He's racist, vengeful, he strangled Kellindil, he murdered Tephanis in a sack, does he REALLY need to threaten to rape a child???

This does give Catti-brie a lovely moment to prove that she's a fighter like her dad, and she knees him in the crotch. She also manages to claw his face and almost get away.

Almost.

I hate to say that, but I do like this bit too. Not the rape threat part, as that seems entirely unnecessary, but that Catti-brie as an eleven year old girl can't actually break free from a grown man, even with a crotch shot.

Happily, Catti-brie is immediately pulled out of Roddy's grasp by Drizzt, who tells her to run. She does. It's time for a showdown.

“Enough of this,” Drizzt said, suddenly serious. “You have pursued me through years and leagues. I salute your resilience, but your anger is misplaced, I tell you. I did not kill the Thistledowns. Never would I have raised a blade against them”

It's a good moment, but of course, for Roddy, it was never about the Thistledowns. It was about his dog and his ear. And ultimately about his wounded pride.

Drizzt tells him that he wants no fight. But Roddy promises to chase him to the ends of the earth. They fight.

Roddy's no Artemis Entreri. He's agile for his size, but he's very clearly no match for Drizzt, who, after some fisticuffs, punches both hilts into Roddy's face. He tells him again to go to Maldobar. I'm still wondering what he did to the friars!

Roddy is pretty tenacious though. At some point, he uses some thrown daggers to distract Drizzt, and between that and Roddy's "unnerving" confidence, he actually starts getting the upper hand. Especially when he gets Drizzt into close quarters, where his size is a tremendous advantage.

But Drizzt has Guen, who manages to break away from the dog and get Roddy away from Drizzt. Now, Drizzt is fighting in earnest. And it's not too long until he's got Roddy down.

“I told you to be on your way” Drizzt said grimly, not moving his blades an inch but letting Roddy feel the cold metal acutely.

“Kill me,” Roddy said calmly, sensing a weakness in his opponent, “if ye got the belly for it!”

Drizzt hesitated, but his scowl did not soften. “Be on your way” he said with as much calm as he could muster, calm that denied the coming trial he knew he would face.

Roddy laughed at him. “Kill me, ye black-skinned devil!” he roared, bulling his way, though he remained on his knees, toward Drizzt. “Kill me or I’ll catch ye! Not for doub-tin’, drow. I’ll hunt ye to the corners o’ the world and under it if need!”

Drizzt is rather bewildered by this homoerotic display of masochism. I'm starting to wonder if Roddy's time with the friars didn't take a different form than I was thinking.

I have to say, for all my bitching about Drizzt, I definitely find this relatable:

Waves of jumbled emotions assaulted Drizzt. He wanted to kill Roddy at that moment, more out of stupefied frustration than vengeance, and yet he knew that he could not. As far as Drizzt knew, Roddy’s only crime was an unwarranted hunt against him and that was not reason enough. For all that he held dear, Drizzt had to respect a human life, even one as wretched as Roddy McGristle’s.

"I want to kill you just for being really fucking obnoxious" is a sentiment we can all understand I think. To make the subtext worse, we're told that Roddy is taking "lewd pleasure" in Drizzt's growing disgust.

Finally, Drizzt basically beats the guy unconscious and leaves him there in the snow.

It's a good moment for Drizzt - not killing a defeated opponent, but I am annoyed at the lack of justice for Kellindil. Poor forgotten Kellindil. It saddens me that Drizzt will never know what that guy did and tried to do for him.

So Roddy wakes up, his dog standing over him. Aw. He now knows Drizzt will never be able to kill him, so he wants to resume his hunt. But he made a mistake threatening the daughter of a dwarf king.

“Ye don’t be touchin’ me girl, McGristle,” Bruenor said evenly. “Ye just shouldn’t be touchin’ me girl.”

“She’s in league with the drow!” Roddy protested. “She told the murdering devil of my comin”

Catti-brie immediately defends Drizzt, which upsets Bruenor. But it gives Catti-brie a chance to defend herself and Drizzt.

Bruenor’s lament stung Catti-brie profoundly, but she held fast to her beliefs. Bruenor had raised her to be honest, but that included being honest to what she knew was right. “Once ye said to me that everyone gets his due,” Catti-brie retorted. “Ve telled me that each is different and each should be seen for what he is. I’ve seen Drizzt, and seen him true, I tell ye. He’s no killer! And he’s-“ She pointed accusingly at McGristle-“a liar! I take no pride in me own lie, but never could I let Drizzt get caught by this one!”

Bruenor considered her words for a moment, then wrapped one arm about her waist and hugged her tightly. His daughter’s deception still stung, but the dwarf was “proud that his girl had stood up for what she believed. In truth, Bruenor had come out here, not looking for Catti-brie, whom he believed was sulking in the mines, but to find the drow. The more he recounted his fight with the remorhaz, the more Bruenor became convinced that Drizzt had come down to help him, not to fight him. Now, in light of recent events, few doubts remained.

Bruenor's a good egg at heart.

She also tells him that Drizzt saved her. Roddy tries to claim that Drizzt "got her mixed", but Breunor's not having it. He doesn't like when people call his daughter a liar. Or when they shake her.

The ensuing conversation doesn't take long. Roddy and his now three-legged dog end up leaving the valley. I'm both amused, horrified, and sympathetic. It wasn't the dog's fault that Roddy's an obsessive asshole! He doesn't deserve to have his leg eaten by Bruenor! Eat Roddy instead!

(At least that's what I'm assuming happened, as we see Bruenor admiring the dog's "meaty flank".)

Anyway, Roddy realizes that while Drizzt is unable to kill him, Bruenor would totally be fine with it. And he actually does leave.

Interesting! I hadn't remembered that Roddy actually survives this book. I don't recall him ever coming up in any of the books I read, but then I stopped a little shy of the thousand orcs, or whatever that was. I've read a handful of the later books: Gauntlegrym, Neverwinter, and some of the...ahem...return of spoiler character arc. But Roddy would be long dead by then.

Anyway, Drizzt watches the wagon leave. He's not sure what it means. But he's packed and ready to go. He's sad about it: he'd thought, for once, that he'd found a home. We get some paragraphs of angst about it.

Then:

“Bruenor’s Climb, this place is called,” said a gruff voice behind Drizzt. He spun about, thinking to flee, but the red-bearded dwarf was too close for him to slip by. Guenhwy-var rushed to the draw’s side, teeth bared.

“Put yer pet away, elf,” Bruenor said. “If cat tastes as bad as dog, I’ll want none of it!

That poor dog. Heh.

Bruenor notes that he's Bruenor after all, and this is Bruenor's Climb. Drizzt, too tired for pleasantries, is pretty indignant. There was no sign of ownership after all. I like Drizzt more when he's irritated than when he's sanctimonious.

Anyway:

Bruenor put a hand up, both to silence the drow and to stop him from leaving. “Just a pile o’ rocks,” he said, as close to an apology as Bruenor had ever given. “I named it as me own, but does that make it so? Just a damned piled o’ rocks!”

Drizzt cocked his head at the dwarfs unexpected rambling.

“Nothin’s what it seems, drow!” Bruenor declared. “Nothin’! Ye try to follow what ye know, ye know? But then ye find that ye know not what ye thought ye knowed! Thought a dog’d be tastin’ good-looked good enough-but now me belly’s cursing me every move!”

Heh.

Drizzt realizes that Bruenor sent Roddy away. Bruenor doesn't acknowledge this, as he's the gruff archetype who doesn't like to admit nice things. He gives a rather amusing racist rant:

Bruenor hardly heard him, and certainly wouldn’t have admitted the kind-hearted deed, in any case. “Never trusted humans,” he said evenly. “Never know what one’s about, and when ye find out, too many’s the time it’s too late for fixinl But always had me thoughts straight about other folks. An elf s an elf, after all, and so’s a gnome. And orcs are straight-out stupid and ugly. Never knew one to be other-ways, an’ I known a few!” Bruenor patted his axe, and Drizzt did not miss his meaning.

The point of this actually is for Bruenor to say he assumed the same about the drow. He knows what he's been told. But now there's a drow here. And his daughter's visiting him. And lying to him.

This all, of course, leads to:

“Thought I knowed what I knowed,” Bruenor continued after a short pause, his voice almost a lament. “Had the world figured, sure enough. Easy to do when ye stay in yer own hole.”

He looked back to Drizzt, straight into the dim shine of the drow’s lavender eyes. “Bruenor’s Climb?” the dwarf asked with a resigned shrug. “What’s it mean, drow, to put a name on a pile o’ rocks? Thought I knowed, I did, an’ thought a dog’d taste good.” Bruenor rubbed a hand over his belly and frowned. “Call it a pite o’ rocks then, an’ I’ve no claim on it more’n yersetfl Call it Drizzt’s Climb then, an’ ye’d be kicking me out!”

Drizzt is starting to learn how to speak gruff dwarf king. He says he wouldn't change the name.

Bruenor gets kind of flustered and storms away, basically declaring that if Catti-brie's stupid enough to go roaming around the mountains, Drizzt will be providing free babysitting.

Drizzt realizes that this translates to "welcome home" and the chapter, and story, basically ends.

Except of course for the epilogue. Because we need to hear Drizzt's babbling one last time.

Actually, though, I find it a little bewildering as it's all about humans.

Of all the races in the known realms, none is more confusing, or more confused, than humans. Mooshie convinced me that gods, rather than being outside entities, are personifications of what lies in our hearts. If this is true, then the many, varied gods of the human sects-deities of vastly different demeanors-reveal much about the race.

If you approach a halfling, or an elf, or a dwarf, or any of the other races, good and bad, you have a fair idea of what to expect. There are exceptions, of course; I name myself as one most fervently! But a dwarf is likely to be gruff, though fair, and I ha ve never met an elf, or even heard of one, tha t preferred a cave to the open sky. A human’s preference, though, is his own to know-if even he can sort it out.

I mean, okay. I guess. I always thought that was kind of crap writing myself. That's why some of my favorite characters are asshole surface elves. (It's also funny that this is the book where we meet Fred/t, who very much IS a non gruff dwarf. But I suppose Drizzt never really met him.)

So Drizzt talks about all the asshole humans he met and the good humans he met, like Catti-brie, Mooshie, Wulfgar, and even Agorwal. And um, okay. But this trilogy, this series of events, didn't actually feature that many humans.

I mean, obviously Mooshie and Catti-brie are really important parts of this book. But are they more important than Zaknafein? Belwar? Clacker? Even in this book, I'd argue Kellindil (though admittedly, Drizzt didn't know about him) and Bruenor's acceptance are equally valid as the humans'.

I can totally imagine that this is how Drizzt thinks about humans, but I just don't see how it's relevant here.

Anyway, we do FINALLY get to Drizzt reminiscing about the events in the trilogy.

This is my tale, then, told as completely as I can recall and as completely as I choose to divulge. Mine has been a long road filled with ruts and barriers, and only now that I have put so much so far behind me am 1 able to recount it honestly.

I will never look back on those days and laugh; the toll was too great for humor to seep through. I do often remember Zaknafein, though, and Belwar and Mooshie, and all the other friends I have left behind.

I have often wondered, too, of the many enemies I have faced, of the many lives my blades have ended. Mine has been a violent life in a violent world, full of enemies to myself and to all that I hold dear. I have been praised for the perfect cut of my scimitars, for my abilities in battle* and I must admit that I have many times allowed myself to feel pride in those hard-earned skills.

This makes more sense. He even thinks about Masoj Hun'ett. The only drow he's ever killed. I sincerely hope he gets over that by the next trilogy, because it's going to be really fucking contrived if he never kills a drow at that point. Also, he'll have killed plenty of humans, orcs, duergar, et cetera by then.

We then segue into what it means to be a hero. This is where Drizzt gets to be "modest" and talk about Mooshie and Belwar being heroes. Clacker and Wulfgar. Zaknafein. And of course, he gets to wax about Catti-brie.

None of these warriors, though, outshines a young girl I came to know when I first traveled across Ten-Towns. Of all the people I have ever met, none has held themselves to higher standards of honor and decency than Catti-brie. She has seen many battles, yet her eyes sparkle clearly with innocence and her smile shines untainted. Sad will be the day, and let all the world lament, when a discordant tone of cynicism spoils the harmony of her melodic voice.

Often those who call me a hero speak solely of my battle prowess and know nothing of the principles that guide my blades. I accept their mantle for what it is worth, for their satisfaction and not my own. When Catti-brie names me so, then will I allow my heart to swell with the satisfaction of knowing that I have been judged for my heart and not my sword arm; then will I dare to believe that the mantle is justified.

I think I knew, reading this part, that we were going to end up with Drizzt/Catti-brie, but I always wished they could have stayed platonic. Oh well. I'm years too late, in universe and out, to really complain about that.

Drizzt, of course, manages to end the entry with a pompous "I think not" (as answer to if all the tales are told.) And I'll end this entry by rolling my eyes in exasperation.

And prepping up a verdict. See you soon!

Comments

[kudzumac]

All I can say is that I don't think eating Roddy would be wise. Bruenor would probably have gotten worse food poisoning from eating Roddy than the dog.

No telling where all that man has been, ya know?

[kalinara]

Fair point!