Farmer Stuyles thought on it for a few moments, as Kale entered the tent.

“I can,” he said, motioning for Kale to hold his news for the moment. “For almost all, at least. One or two might need some questioning, but I will leave that to you.”

Drizzt nodded, and both he and Stuyles looked to Kale.

“Gone,” the man informed them. “It would seem that Effron has flown away. I have sent out scouts.”

“Recall them,” Drizzt said. “He is likely back in the Shadowfell. And I would ask of both of you, as a friend, please mention nothing of Effron to my companions.”

“Not even Lady Dahlia?” Stuyles asked.

“Especially not Lady Dahlia,” said Drizzt.

A single wagon had departed Port Llast a couple days earlier, but nearly a score now rumbled down the last road to the town, though most of those had been stolen along the road over the previous months. Stuyles’s band had done quite well, for there was no shortage of people in the region left behind by the designs of the high captains of Luskan, forgotten by the lords of Waterdeep, and expelled from the turmoil of Neverwinter. The band of highwaymen numbered well over a hundred, for they had joined with another similar group of civilization’s refugees.

It hadn’t taken much convincing from Stuyles, for almost all had readily accepted Drizzt’s invitation: the promise of a new life, and true homes once more, as they had known in better times.

At the head of the caravan rode Farmer Stuyles, driving a wagon beside Drizzt and Andahar. They took their time along the last stretch of road, the long descent between the cliffs to the city’s guarded gate, and by the time they arrived, word had spread before them and much of the town was waiting to greet them.

Dorwyllan came out from the gate to stand before Drizzt and Stuyles.

“Refugees,” Drizzt explained. “Folk abandoned by the shrinking spheres of civilization.”

“Highwaymen,” Dorwyllan replied with a grin.

Farmer Stuyles turned a concerned glance at Drizzt.

“Former highwaymen,” Drizzt corrected.

“Port Llast citizens, then,” the elf agreed, and his smile widened as he extended his hand to Farmer Stuyles. “Throw wide the gates!” Dorwyllan cried, looking back over his shoulder. “And tell the minions of Umberlee that they’ll find no ground within Port Llast uncontested!”

A great cheer went up inside the wall, and following that rose an answering cheer among the weather-beaten and beleaguered folk of Stuyles’s renegade band.

“There’ll be more to join us,” Stuyles explained to the elf. “Coming from all parts.”

“The farmlands outside of Luskan, mostly,” Drizzt explained to the nodding Dorwyllan.

“I’ve sent runners,” Stuyles explained.

“We’ve many empty homes, and a plentiful harvest to be culled from the sea,” Dorwyllan replied. “Welcome.”

Drizzt had always suspected it, but now it was confirmed, that “welcome” was his favorite word in the Common Tongue, and a word, he understood, with no equivalent in the language of the drow.

Part 2: Familial Relationships

Freedom. I talk about this concept often, and so often, in retrospect, do I come to realize that I am confused about the meaning of the word. Confused or self-deluded.

“I am alone now, I am free!” I proclaimed when Bruenor lay cold under the stones of his cairn in Gauntlgrym.

And so I believed those words, because I did not understand that buried within my confusion over the battling shadows and sunlight of the new world around me, I was in fact heavily shackled by my own unanswered emotions. I was free to be miserable, perhaps, but in looking back upon those first steps out of Gauntlgrym, that would seem the extent of it.

I came to suspect this hidden truth, and so I pressed northward to Port Llast.

I came to hope that I was correct in my assessment and my plans when that mission neared completion, and we set out from Port Llast.

But for all my hopes and suspicions, it wasn’t until the caravan led by me and Farmer Stuyles approached the gate of Port Llast that I came to fully realize the truth of that quiet irritation that had driven me along. I asked myself which road I would choose, but that question was wholly irrelevant.

For the road that I find before me determines my actions and not the other way around.

Had I not gone to Port Llast to try to help, had I not remembered the plight of Farmer Stuyles and so many others, then I would have been abandoning that which is so clear in my heart. There is no greater shackle than self-deception. A man who denies his heart, either through fear of personal consequence—whether regarding physical jeopardy, or self-doubt, or simply of being ostracized—is not free. To go against your values and tenets, against that which you know is right and true, creates a prison stronger than adamantine bars and thick stone walls. Every instance of putting expediency above the cries of conscience throws another heavy chain out behind, an anchor to drag forevermore.

Perhaps I wasn’t wrong when I proclaimed my freedom after the last of my companions had departed this world, but I was surely only part of the way there. Now I am without obligation to anyone but myself, but that obligation to follow that which is in my heart is the most important one of all.

So now I say again, I am free, and say it with conviction, because now I accept and embrace again that which is in my heart, and understand those tenets to be the truest guidepost along this road. The world may be shadowed in various shades of gray, but the concept of right and wrong is not so subtle for me, and has never been. And when that concept collides against the stated law, then the stated law be damned.

Never have I walked more purposefully than in my journey to find and retrieve Farmer Stuyles and his band. Never have fewer doubts slowed my steps.

It was the right thing to do.

My road presented this opportunity before me, and what a fraud I would have been to turn my back on these demands of my heart.

I knew all of that as I descended beside Stuyles along the road to Port Llast’s welcoming gate. The expressions from the wall, and those among the caravan, all confirmed to me that this seemingly simple solution for the problems of both these peoples was the correct, the just, and the best answer.

The road had brought me here. My heart had shown me the footsteps of Drizzt Do’Urden along that road. In following that conscience-dictated trail, I can claim now, with confidence, that I am free.

How amazing to me that an early confirmation of my trail came not in the cheers of the citizens of Port Llast, nor from the relief I noted so commonly among Stuyles’s refugee band that they would at last be finding a place to call a home, but in the slight nod and approving look of Artemis Entreri!

He understood my scheme, and when Dahlia publicly denounced it, he offered his quiet support—I know not why—with but a look and a nod.

I would be a liar if I insisted that I wasn’t thrilled to have Artemis Entreri along with me for this journey. Is he a redeemed man? Unlikely. And I remain wary of him, to be sure. But in this one instance, he showed to me that there is indeed something more there within his broken and scarred heart. He’ll never admit his own thrill at finding this solution, of course, no more than he returned from our first foray against the sahuagin with a satisfied grin upon his ever-dour face.

But that nod told me something.

And that something makes this choice of mine—nay, makes these choices of mine—for I coerced Entreri into coming north with me in the first place, as I accepted his offer of help against Herzgo Alegni previously, and even trusted his guidance through the sewers of Neverwinter—all the more important and supportive of that which I now know to be true.

I am choosing correctly because I am following my conscience above all else, because my fears cannot sway me any longer.

Thus, I am free.

Equally important, I am content, because my faith has returned that the great cycle of civilization inexorably moves the races of Faerûn toward a better destination. Ever will there be obstacles—the Spellplague, the fall of Luskan to pirates, the advent of the Empire of Netheril, the cataclysm that leveled Neverwinter—but the bigger tale is one of trudging forward, of grudging resolve and determination, of heroes small and large. Press on, soldier on, and the world grows tamer and freer and more comfortable for more people.

This is the faith that guides my steps.

Where before I saw uncertainty and walked with hesitancy, now I see opportunity and adventure. The world is broken—can I fix it all?

I know not, but I expect that trying to do so will be the grandest adventure of all.

—Drizzt Do’Urden

Chapter 9: Competing Self-Interests

WITH THE SUN HIGH IN THE SKY, DORWYLLAN WATCHED THE LONG procession winding down the road below his perch on the side of a steep hill. Ramshackle carts pulled by haggard donkeys and painfully thin horses and cows bobbed by on uneven, wobbly wheels.

More women than men drove those carts, and more elderly folk than young—except for the very young. Children raced around from cart to cart, wagon to wagon, playing fanciful games of great imagined adventures. Looking at the sullen faces of the drivers, Dorwyllan understood that their parents desperately hoped that any such adventures remained imagined.

They answered the call of good farmer Stuyles, and several of his agents were among the caravan ranks. Winter was letting go finally, the roads clearing, and Stuyles had sent wagons north to the farmlands outside of Luskan, spreading the word for the folk to join in the tenday-long journey to Port Llast, to a new home.

And indeed, Port Llast was thriving, compared to the previous autumn. With the help of Drizzt and his friends, and the reinforcements from the band of highwaymen, the citizens had reclaimed the city all the way to the sea, and a new wall was nearly complete, one battered more by the high tide than by any sahuagin activity. The catapults along the cliff faces had been repaired and were well-manned … or well half-ogred, as the case might be. And best of all, a dozen boats were now seaworthy once more, and a plentiful harvest was to be found within the harbor, within the protection offered by the grenadiers on the wall.

Just a couple of months before, Dorwyllan had explained to Drizzt that he had remained in the dying town of Port Llast merely out of loyalty to the stubborn and stoic townsfolk, and his answer had clearly shown his sincere belief that the town was in her last days. But now the recollection of that answer, of those doubts, almost embarrassed the elf.

And here before him came new citizens, and the bustle of children playing would once again fill the lanes of Port Llast, and truly that was a sound Dorwyllan had never expected would return to the battle-scarred, bloodstained city.

“If they get there,” the elf reminded himself, and scolded himself as he turned his attention back to the winding road north of the procession. They had many days before them, but none would be more dangerous than these first steps, Dorwyllan feared. He put his hand over his eyes and squinted to the north, imagining the uneven skyline of Luskan. The high captains of that city had abandoned these people, it was true, but Dorwyllan doubted that those same high captains would tolerate reciprocal treatment.

The elf let the procession get beyond his position, rolling down to the south, then took up his bow and moved out to the north, scouting the road.